The Third Magik

On the original dragon world of the Third Earth, there was no asteroid impact on Yucatan 65 million years ago; ergo, no gulf stream.

Ice caps dominate and the temperate band is limited to the area of Earth between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. Dinosaurs continued for a long time and evolved into smaller, more intelligent, warm-blooded animals.

Mankind came out of Africa, but his tree had fewer branches, and most did not survive. The heavy-boned types ...Neanderthal ... proliferated. They have larger brains than the smaller folk. Faster, smaller homo sapiens ... us ... faced too many setbacks to establish supremacy: there were no massive plains to spread into; competition is crowded into the smaller land masses.

Modern man is limited to the Atlantic islands. These islands, the Canaries and the Azores, are massive land masses due to the lowered level of the Ocean and form a huge archepelago off the African coast. Central America is not far away. Also the inner Mediterranean has large islands that the light-boned inhabit.

These lighter-framed peoples are the same as our own ancestors, but they did not displace the neanderthal. Eventually they retreated to these island places for safety reasons, and continued to develop their culture. And science. And magik. This world shares some of the magik and science of the other two worlds and the light-boned folk of the Altantic become highly developed.

They know of other, parallel worlds and seek to explore them as a means of securing their own future. To do this, they bio-engineer a small, relatively bright dinosaur. This creature can now exist in, and travel through the event horizon between realities. They alter space-time.

Dragons become a race in their own right and inhabit all three human realities, although they do not survive in the null or non-magik one.

The new humans, now that they know of the doorway between realities, decide to leave their dangerous world and settle in another. They create special gateways to travel through en-masse, and in the days of pre-history the travellers become the Atlanteans of a new world.

The Neanderthals have a great earth-magik ability and use it to determine the true history of the ruins they find on the newly discovered islands. Soon they come to understand that a doorway between worlds is possible. And want to expand there.

Dragons know what's happening. They use the Salamander Ord transit to show Danny Royce the truth ( book two- The Skeins of Magik ) Dragons are loyal to the memory of their creators. Neanders fear dragons because they bend magik.

Salamander Ord is aghast. Leakage across realities could forever destroy the balance of the mirror worlds, both Garreth's and Danny's. And if Theolonia Crabbe was helping them, then the future was dire indeed.

A quest was called for; brave mages and soldiers called to duty and sent on dragon-back to hunt Theolonia once and for all and seek the gates. And for the first time the physical things from Danny's world would work in the Third Earth... some of them, anyway.

While Theolonia encourages the Neander shamans and magicians to unify the tribes, Ord's expedition seeks the gates. And finds them occupied. Except for one... and a rather familiar one at that.

Ord's world is ready and prepared, but Danny's isn't. It must be made aware of the danger about to descend upon it. But how? Maybe Danny's local member of Parliament could help; maybe, with a little earth-magik, he could be encouraged to take the wizard and his group to see the Prime Minister. A wizard, two twins from different realities, a crusty old were-wolf and a juvenile dragon were just the sort of ambassadors to tread the corridors of power. Surely they would be believed.

But if not, there was one avenue left. A trail both ancient and dangerous.

They could find the original magicians... they could seek the Dragon-builders. The only trouble was, they'd been gone from human history for a very long time. But one gate was active, and that one special place carried the clue to their whereabouts.

You see, beneath the Sphinx...