Northern Lights
by Joyce
October 2001

Much to my surprise, this story turned into an X-Files/Due South crossover. 1013 Productions owns Fox Mulder and Walter Skinner while Alliance lays claim to Benton Fraser and Diefenbaker. I intend no infringement, nor am I making any money off of this story -- I'm just taking the characters out for a spin. Everyone else belongs to me. This story may NOT be archived anywhere either in part or in whole without my permission. If you are sensitive to profanity, be warned -- Mulder doesn't use heck, drat, or shucks a whole lot.

Summary: Mulder investigates a mysterious disappearance in the White Mountains.

Author's notes are at the end.

 

X-Files Office
Friday Afternoon
February 4, 2000
 

Special Agent Fox Mulder leaned back in his chair and contemplated the dart-riddled poster of Godzilla on the ceiling. Stretching, he felt several muscles in his shoulders and neck pop. He'd just finished the meticulous job of piecing the last of his burnt files back together and tried to enjoy a sense of accomplishment, but felt drained and empty instead. It was too damn quiet.

Hell, it's been too damn quiet for six fucking weeks.

Automatically, he flinched away from the reason for that quiet. For five weeks he'd tried to avoid even thinking about Scully, but he still found her present in all the small moments of his days. Shit, maybe it's time I just admitted that she's gone and get on with my life. Profiler, profile yourself.

Harsh words, but maybe it was time he listened to them. Skinner had quit trying to prod him into taking time off. The silence from Skinner on the subject of Scully was making him nervous. Mulder cautiously wondered what new tactic the A.D was going to try next. Skinner wasn't a man who gave up easily. All the more reason to deal with the problem before Skinner got really creative. Still staring up at the monster tacked to his ceiling, Mulder began to analyze what had gone wrong.

He didn't need to pull out her letter to remember her words -- he couldn't forget them, just as he couldn't forget her.

                I'm tired, Mulder. I've given too much. I need to find out if there's
                anything left of me before I'm simply swallowed up. Please, don't
                try to contact me. When I'm ready, I'll call you.

Short and to the point while being suitably vague and accusing -- that was Special Agent Dana Scully, his partner for over five years. Naturally, he'd ignored her request and tried to call her. Her mother had been equally brusque. Maggie's words were burnt into his memory. He remembered her cold, flat tone as she told him that the family would appreciate it if he respected Dana's wishes. She sounded as if she blamed him, which might make sense depending on just how Scully explained her decision to leave the FBI.

Idly twirling a dart around his fingers, Mulder wished he'd been a bit more sensitive to how deeply shocked Scully was by her cold-blooded killing of Donny Pfaster. It had never occurred to him that Scully wasn't aware of the darkness that lurked inside each of them, waiting for the right moment to emerge. He understood her reasons, even sympathized, but the fact remained that Scully either had to admit that she was capable of such an act, or else fall back on the belief that she'd been possessed by the devil. In the immediate aftermath of the killing and the onslaught of police, he'd dismissed her quiet comment about wondering who was talking to her, God or the devil as a simple case of shock. It wasn't the first time he’d misread her, but apparently it would be the last.

She had expressed a desire to be alone during her week-long suspension while the shooting underwent a routine investigation by the OPR. Now, Mulder realized that abiding by her wishes had been a mistake. He thrived on being alone to work through his emotional problems; Scully didn't. He wondered what conclusion she'd come to that prompted the letter to him and the curt letter of resignation she'd sent to Skinner barely twenty-four hours after OPR had cleared her for duty.

Failing at telephone contact, he'd made one last attempt to reach her; the letter was returned unopened. The message was clear: the Scully family had circled the wagons around her and as far as they were concerned, he was the enemy. It was probably easier for them to believe that he was responsible for everything that had happened to her. That left Scully as an innocent victim rather than a knowing participant in his madness. In a way they were right, but he'd always believed that Scully accepted the risks and stayed with him by choice. When did she lose faith in me . . . in us? That hurt more than he ever imagined it would. He loved Scully, but now he realized that she'd never really believed in his love and might have been unable to tell him that she didn't feel the same way in return.

At least he knew she was safe. Frohike had been very understanding and very efficient. His report was terse but clear -- two weeks after her resignation, Scully had checked into a remote retreat house in the hills of western Pennsylvania for counseling. Mulder had checked up on the reputation of the retreat and found it impeccable -- not a hint of cigarette smoke within five square miles. Cancer Man was good, but corrupting an entire order of Benedictine nuns might be a bit beyond his capabilities. It was an unsatisfactory ending, but Mulder could see the seeds of her decision stretching back for several years. Having lost her faith in science, her government, and herself, all she had left was her religious faith.

"I hope you find what you're looking for. Just remember that I'm always a phone call away," he whispered to the air over by the table she used whenever she needed to work in his office. If he closed his eyes, he could almost imagine he heard her soft repressive tsk that she used whenever he indulged in whimsy. She’d left a part of herself behind and Mulder held her memory as a talisman against the times when he might feel too isolated to continue. She had believed in him, once. Together they had challenged a global conspiracy. He owed it to her to continue to try to find the answers about what was done to her, as well as what happened to his sister.

Scully had been an invisible presence on the two cases he'd investigated since she left. She'd have loved this last one. He missed running outlandishly exaggerated theories past Scully just to see her eyebrows arch with disbelief or hear her gleefully puncture holes in the theories. Mulder smiled as he recalled telling a crestfallen sheriff that instead of Bigfoot roaming the woods and stealing a Congressman's prize hog, that he had local kids making a horror movie and a hog rustling that ended up as an impromptu barbecue. Skinner owed him one for that case, but he thought he could understand that Skinner was trying to find something he could sink his teeth into.

Looking at the facts, Mulder came to the only conclusion he could -- it was high time he stopped moping around the office waiting to hear Scully's heels clicking down the hallway and got back to being the FBI's most unwanted investigator of the weird. He'd gone it alone before; he could do it again -- once he got over this feeling that part of him had been amputated with a dull knife.

He recalled a comment he once made to Scully, "if I quit, they win." Guess it’s time I took my own advice. With one last long groaning sigh, he sat back up and tried to decide which of the unopened envelopes in the large stack on the edge of his desk needed his immediate attention.

The ringing of the phone came as a relief. Even his tried and true tabloids were coming up dry and empty on plausible weird happenings. As he reached for the phone, he considered the possibility that someone had declared February to be a holiday for anything remotely resembling an X-File. Even he couldn’t come up with a realistic pitch for investigating most of these stories. A few phone calls to his contacts had eliminated the two least fantastic stories. He wondered if Scully had ever realized just how much prep work he put into a case before he sprung it at her. She probably believed he just stuck his finger on a tabloid page and randomly picked a weird event. If she’d paid closer attention, she might have figured out that he did a lot of background checks before he ever brought up the case. There was more than one reason he attended all those paranormal conferences – cultivation of good, reliable sources didn’t just happen accidentally.

"Mulder."

"Agent Mulder, this is Kim. Assistant Director Skinner would like to see you in his office in ten minutes."

Mulder leaned his head back to stare accusingly at Godzilla. What’s Skinner up to now? We just had our weekly pep talk two days ago.

"Sure," he replied after briefly entertaining the temptation to just say no. It wasn’t fair to Kim to put her in the middle of his frustration with Skinner’s efforts to chivvy him out of his depression. After he hung up the phone, he tried to work up the necessary enthusiasm to convince Skinner that he wasn't brooding down here.

All these files and not a single damn case I could even attempt to run past Skinner without looking desperate.

As the elevator took him up the three flights to Skinner's floor, he wondered how long it would take before Skinner started assigning him to Violent Crimes. He might be out of the loop as far as advancement and inter-office politics were concerned, but he still had considerable contacts in the gossip mill. Word was that certain high-level people were pushing for the shutdown of the X-Files again and the forced return of one hotshot profiler back to active duty. He'd quit before he'd go back to Violent Crimes full-time, but he preferred not to be maneuvered into that last-stand position. He might be able to parlay some leeway in keeping the X-Files open in return for the occasional consulting job if push came to shove. What few people realized was that he could play politics when it suited him, which was rarely. How did they think he got the X-Files opened in the first place? It never failed to amuse him just how blind most people were -- give them an overt image and few ever thought to look beneath the mask. Unfortunately, Skinner was one of those rare people.

"Go right on in, Agent Mulder," Kim said with a warm smile. Mulder had the feeling that she wanted to say something more, perhaps to express her sympathy, but she merely nodded and went back to her work.

Thank you. Mulder gave her a nod in return and opened the door, pausing only to mentally brace himself for whatever Skinner had planned for him.

"Come in, Agent Mulder." Skinner was in one of his brusque moods which could either mean he had some very unpleasant news to relay, or else he was trying to cover up his delight in being able to spring a difficult case on his most difficult subordinate. Reading Skinner was like making sense out of an encrypted note -- it was possible, but not easy.

Mulder slouched in his usual chair and tried not to feel a pang at the sight of the empty chair beside his. Even when he had faced Skinner alone in the past five years, he always felt Scully's invisible presence at his side. He was beginning to realize that Scully was going to be a phantom presence for a long time to come.

"I have a request for . . . ." Skinner paused and picked up a letter from his desk and read from it. Mulder couldn't swear to it, but he thought he saw Skinner's lip twitch. "Quote, ‘Your agent who investigates weird stuff like this,' unquote." Skinner finally let go with a smile as he handed the letter to Mulder. "I can't think of anyone else who fits this description, can you, Agent Mulder?" Skinner asked with a decided lilt in his voice.

Mulder took the two-page letter and held it as gingerly as if it were a bomb.

"It won't bite, Agent Mulder. It might even be a genuine X-File, or just a simple case of murder, but the local agent who was called in has confirmed that he considers it to be more than just murder and the local sheriff told me over the phone that he'd accept any answers up to and including, quote 'aliens, Bigfoot, or any of kind of foot,’ unquote. I'll admit, his written request lacks a certain formality, but that shouldn't bother you. He's included the bare bones of the case, which he admits is just about all he has. Any questions?"

"Wouldn't Siberia be a lot less expensive?" Mulder snapped.

"Probably, but much less cost effective -- we don't have a bureau office in Siberia. However, we have one in Manchester and a crime to solve in Camlyn. You will either confirm that this is a case of murder, or provide some reason to believe the boy's wild story that the girl vanished in front of his eyes."

"What story?" Mulder asked, intrigued in spite of his attempt to remain indifferent to the lure Skinner was dragging in front of him.

"Read the letter and talk to the boy. The sheriff appears to be considering the boy's story. Unfortunately, the girl's father is not. The situation is volatile; I expect you to find the truth before the situation deteriorates. The local agent will meet you at the airport in Manchester and get you to north to Camlyn. The boy is either a murderer, or someone stuck with an impossible story. This is what you're good at, Mulder," Skinner added quietly.

Mulder glared at him for a moment, but saw no pity, or even sympathy, just understanding. That was almost harder to bear. Pity he could snarl at, but understanding cut too close to the truth -- he felt lost without Scully.

"Next time, sir, could you find a really interesting case somewhere in the Florida Keys?" Mulder replied sarcastically. He wasn't ready to talk about losing Scully, not yet, but he knew that when he did, it would be to Skinner.

"I'm not letting you anywhere near the Bermuda Triangle, again, Mulder," Skinner said flatly. His eyes flashed in a smile for an instant, almost too fast for Mulder to catch.

"One thing more. The father is a Canadian national who maintains a winter home in Camlyn. Try to get along with our northern neighbors," Skinner asked in an odd tone that suggested there had already been expressions of concern coming from Canada. At Mulder's puzzled look, Skinner shook his head as he glanced around the room.

"I'll practice my Canadian, sir, and I promise I won't annoy the Mounties," Mulder quipped as he nodded to show he understood Skinner's warning. This case was bigger than it looked, but Skinner wanted everything kept low-key. It didn't surprise Mulder that Skinner believed his office was bugged. He did a complete sweep of his own office and his apartment at least once a week now; he hadn’t found anything yet, but couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being watched.

"Just find out what happened, Mulder. Agent Hobbs has been instructed to be your back-up. He's young, but he's open-minded and a good agent."

"I don't need a wet nurse," Mulder protested, dismissing the need for anyone to act as back-up for him. "I've worked alone before."

"This is not an option, Agent Mulder. Agent Hobbs is there to help you. Try not to lose him."

Mulder tried to stare down Skinner, but grudgingly gave in when it became clear that this wasn't going to be a point of debate. "Then he’d better be able to keep up, sir," he snapped as he turned and stalked out of the office. As much as he hated the idea of another agent dogging his heels, he couldn't help but be intrigued by the idea that this case was far more important than it appeared on the surface.

==-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Mulder poured himself a cup of coffee before sitting down to read the sheriff's report. It was terse, but covered the basics.

So why do I feel as if the sheriff is only putting down a quarter of what he knows, or suspects?

The facts were simple enough. Four days ago, Jason Fairfax and Lisa Quatrain went hiking into the nearby mountains. By Jason's own admission, he and Lisa argued and she stalked off angrily. Jason refused to say what they argued about, only that it was a matter between him and Lisa. After an hour he said he got concerned and went after her. He found her up on one of the bluffs, and then she vanished in front of his eyes. The sheriff stated that he put several search teams out with no luck. Jason refused to admit to harming Lisa and insisted that she just vanished. Lisa's father was pressing for a charge of murder and had pulled the strings necessary to get the FBI called in to provide for ‘an impartial, intelligent investigation’.

Mulder reread the request for his services and wondered where this sheriff had heard of him. Skinner was right, this case was more than it appeared. Reading between the lines, Mulder suspected that the sheriff believed Jason's story and was more than happy to have outsiders deal with an angry and influential father.

Turning to his files, Mulder searched for any information on strange happenings in New Hampshire, particularly the northern section that included the town of Camlyn. It was nearly an hour before he found a reference to an incident one hundred years ago that could be an exact match to the current case. Only in this case, a young man disappeared in the mountains while exploring a peculiar structure known locally as the Round Table. His friends insisted that one minute he was there, and then they saw him fade away in front of their eyes. An exhaustive search of the area turned up nothing. The mystery was never solved, the official the story was that the young man had slipped and fallen off the mountain. There was also a strong suggestion that alcohol had played a role.

Mulder rechecked the sheriff's letter, but it gave no precise location where Jason saw Lisa disappear. No doubt a story this mysterious event had been passed down over the years until it became a local legend. It might explain the sheriff's willingness to believe Jason. Alien abduction didn't appear to fit the facts of the case, but he'd know more when he actually talked with Jason. Meanwhile, there were plenty of cases to check where people just vanished into thin air to check. He made a note to ask the sheriff if anyone had heard Lisa's voice when they were searching the area. There were so many possibilities, including, Mulder conceded, that the boy had murdered his girlfriend and was depending on the old legend to get him off. Interviewing Jason was his first priority.

Mulder spent the remainder of the afternoon going through case files involving mysterious disappearances, making notes in an old file folder to take along with him. The nineteenth-century case involving the disappearance of two children in the middle of a field appeared to be particularly applicable to his current case. Unfortunately, that disappearance was never solved. Mulder didn't think the elder Quatrain would accept a dimensional wrinkle in time and space as a viable explanation for his daughter's disappearance.

Quatrain apparently had influence and was prepared to use it. This suggested that he might be more than a simple Canadian businessman with a fondness for the New Hampshire hills in winter. Perhaps a discreet background check might turn up something interesting. A routine check turned up nothing out of the ordinary, but his profiler's sixth sense was suggesting a deeper, more covert check would be in order.

"Gertie's Bar and Grill."

"It's me, Frohike," Mulder said patiently. His friends were going through an extremely paranoid stage right now and were carefully screening all their calls. At least they hadn't suggested secret code words, although he wouldn't be surprised if that was the next step. He refused to speculate on what trouble they'd gotten themselves into through their persistent attempts to hack into secret government databases.

"It better be," Frohike responded in an irritated tone.

"Catch you at a bad time?"

"Not really. One of our programs crashed and Byers and Langly are arguing over whether it was just a systems failure or whether we were hacked. They kept me up all night trying to mediate."

"Who won?" Mulder asked with a chuckle. Frohike, for all his paranoia, was probably the most stable member of the Lone Gunmen.

"At 3 o'clock, I declared it a draw and told them both to shut up and let me get some sleep. Personally, I think one of our firewalls crashed and some kid wandered in and tweaked a few things. If it was the government, they sure missed a hell of a lot of very interesting stuff. I don't think they're that incompetent."

"Are all your computers down?" Mulder asked, trying to cover his disappointment. He wanted a very illicit search done and didn't want it traced back to him if his supposition was correct.

"Nah, just Langly's super drive. My computer is perfectly fine because I turn mine off at night."

Mulder suspected that the emphasis on those last words was not meant for him. No doubt Langly was catching hell from his rival and Frohike wasn't about to pass up a chance to place another sly poke at his carelessness.

"I want you to find out everything you can on a Mr. Quatrain. He's a Canadian citizen who owns property in Camlyn, New Hampshire. I need this by tonight. You can send an email to my home address."

"Quatrain from Canada via Camlyn. Gotcha. You got a case?" Frohike sounded excited.

"Yeah, and I'm supposed to be up in Camlyn tomorrow. Thanks. I owe you one."

"You owe us a lot, but who's counting?" Frohike said seriously. "Take care, Mulder. If you need help, just holler."

"Will do. Tell Langly I hope his computer gets better. If I have time, I'll send it a get-well card," Mulder quipped as he hung up. The guys were oddballs, but he knew of few other people he'd trust as much in a crunch.

Gathering up his notes and loading his laptop with assorted files, Mulder headed home. His normal get-away bag was going to have to be repacked. There was no way he was going to parade around a small town in northern New Hampshire in a suit, FBI protocol be damned. He'd take one, just in case he had to appear in court, but the situation called for warmth and comfort, not the FBI uniform suit.

Later, relaxing in front of the TV waiting for Frohike's e-mail, Mulder wondered what Scully would have thought of this case. He missed picking up the phone to surprise her with a new case. She'd grumble, even complain about running off after shadows and improbable stories told by people desperate to avoid responsibility for a crime, but he'd always believed she secretly enjoyed their work. When did she stop enjoying the mysteries and begin regarding them as threats to her belief in science and her faith? Maybe she never fully recovered from being infected with the alien virus. Perhaps that was the final straw, the one thing she could not deny however much she tried. She was willing to lie to protect her science; she had sacrificed him before the FBI board of inquiry rather than even concede that what happened to her was outside the boundaries of accepted scientific laws. At the time he resented her betrayal, but now he suspected he should have been warned that she had drawn a line in the sand. He'd never seen it.

The theme music to "The Twilight Zone" startled him out of his bleak reverie, alerting him that he had mail. It was almost midnight, but Frohike had finally come through. Mulder shied away from thinking about getting to the airport at six o'clock tomorrow morning. He could always sleep on the plane if he had to.

Frohike's information was brief and posed more questions than it answered. Peter Quatrain was a naturalized Canadian citizen, born in Jamaica. He’d served in the Canadian Navy, rising to the rank of Commander in charge of deployment and tactical movement of ships to support ground operations. Frohike had highlighted the years and inserted his own comment beside them. "In Nam. One of the covert boys." Now, that was interesting. Mulder couldn't recall if Canada had their equivalent of the Special Forces or the Seals, but he thought it highly likely. Whatever Quatrain did was apparently so secret it didn't even appear on his official records. Mulder was even more curious about Frohike's assumption. The dates certainly covered part of the Vietnam War years, but there was nothing to suggest Vietnam as his place of service. There were times when Mulder realized just how little he actually knew about Frohike. His friend had his secrets and Mulder never felt he could pry into them. What had led Frohike to draw this conclusion?

Other than his mysterious military service record, Quatrain's life appeared to be an open book. He was the CEO of a large multinational nonprofit corporation involved in distributing relief aid and medical supplies to developing countries. His corporation had on call some of the finest rescue and medical teams on call, prepared to jet out to all parts of the world in a matter of hours.

Frohike had included several articles from various Canadian newspapers and magazines describing Quatrain's fund-raising skills and his use of his military experience to achieve a high level of efficiency and success. He was popular, successful, and a minor player in Canada's political game. Glancing at a photograph in one of the articles, Mulder saw a tall, grave-looking light-skinned black man staring out from behind wire-rimmed glasses. His official bio included the names of countries his corporation had assisted; an impressive list, spanning nearly thirty years. Below the list, Frohike added his personal comment, limited to two words that didn't make sense until Mulder tracked them down in a slang dictionary -- wild geese.

Frohike gave no explanation, but carefully going back over the list, Mulder could see how the conclusion could be drawn. Countries in desperate need of aid were also usually countries in need of mercenary troops. There was no proof that Quatrain was a mercenary, only Frohike's terse supposition. Was Quatrain a mercenary using a benevolent, and effective, aid organization as cover, or did he have official sanction for covert activities mingled in with genuine aid? Or was he, as his bio suggested, simply a benevolent corporate CEO? Whatever he was, this information put a whole new wrinkle in the case.

Peter Quatrain obviously had resources of his own to call in if the case didn't go his way. It was also likely that he had enemies who might consider his daughter a very valuable hostage. How far was Quatrain willing to go to find or protect his daughter? If his daughter had simply vanished, would Quatrain be willing to accept a paranormal explanation? If the sheriff had told him he'd requested help from Washington, then Mulder suspected that by this time Quatrain knew who was coming.

Mulder sent off a quick acknowledgement to Frohike before downloading the information to a disk. Retiring to his couch, he considered how this new information would affect the case. His initial theories that the case was a simple murder, suicide, or the result of paranormal activity were still valid, but Quatrain's background complicated matters. Frohike would have warned him if he'd stumbled across any hint that Quatrain was involved with the Consortium, or what was left of it. Still, it was possible that someone in the Consortium, or an independent cartel, might have an interest in bringing Quatrain and his organization under their control. None of the articles about Quatrain mentioned a wife, much less a daughter, so Mulder could speculate that he was either a man who valued his privacy, a widower, or someone who had reason to fear that his family could be used against him.

He wondered if Skinner suspected that this case was more complex than it appeared. Mulder trusted Skinner not to deliberately set him up, but the A.D. wasn't above sending him into a situation that required an unconventional approach. There were times when he felt Skinner's confidence in his ability to think on his feet and negotiate around seemingly impossible obstacles to be misplaced. He wasn't the most diplomatic of agents, so why was Skinner sending him into a situation best suited for one of the FBI's proven brown-nosers? Scully normally handled the diplomatic end of their cases. He usually lost patience early on with people who refused to consider all possibilities. Mulder wondered if this was Skinner's way of telling him to brush up on his social skills? Somehow, he doubted if Skinner was willing to risk an international incident just to make a point, or at least he hoped so.

After setting the alarm, Mulder forced his mind away from the case and tried to go to sleep. He fell asleep confident that his subconscious would be able to sort out the few facts he knew and put them into some kind of order by the time he woke up. Instead, he dreamed he was chasing an elusive fact through snowy mountains and tangled forests, always just a step or two behind it, but never quite catching up to it. He woke up with the familiar feeling of irritable frustration he remembered from his profiling days -- he had the facts, he just wasn't putting them in the right order because he'd mislaid one of the vital corner pieces. Experience told him to shove the problem away and let it simmer in the back of his mind. Sooner or later the piece would fall into place -- perhaps once he had a few more of the pieces of the puzzle to play with.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Manchester Airport
Saturday, 11:30 a.m.

The parka which had seemed so out of place in D.C.'s balmy 50-degree weather, looked highly appropriate as Mulder glanced out at the snow swirling past the terminal windows. The Manchester airport was crowded with people in colorful parkas carrying ski bags and moving purposefully towards the exits with the determination of lemmings going for the edge of the cliff. Mulder prided himself on being good at most sports, but after one disastrous venture on the slopes, he'd decided that the trees held all the advantages.

Amid the colorful plumage of slope-bound skiers, Agent Hobbs stood out like a swallow among a pride of peacocks in his regulation FBI suit. As he approached, Mulder took a closer look and carefully smothered a smile. The suit was all prim and proper, but Hobbs was wearing snow boots trimmed with a broad neon yellow stripe. Apparently his devotion to FBI protocol stopped short of getting his feet wet or cold.

"Agent Mulder, welcome to New Hampshire," the tall, lean black man said cheerfully as he stepped forward to greet him. Mulder extended a hand and, after an almost imperceptible hesitation, Hobbs took it. If he hadn't been paying close attention, Mulder might have missed the wary flinch Hobbs gave when their hands met.

Now who's been filling his head with wild stories?

"I don't bite, Agent Hobbs," Mulder assured him with a smile. To his surprise, Hobbs looked flustered and released his hand.

"Sorry, sir," he said as he abruptly led the way towards the baggage claim area.

Giving Hobbs time to collect his wits, Mulder followed him and tried to fit the official bio to the actual man. Hobbs was only a few years younger than he was; a scholarly-looking man with glasses, but with a prestigious reputation attached to his name before he arrived in New Hampshire. Actually, Hobbs was as much a mystery as the case they were investigating. He had come into the FBI with double masters in criminal justice and Middle Eastern archaeology and had led his class in Quantico in crime scene analysis. Like Mulder, Horatio Hobbs was considered a golden boy and had easily landed a plum assignment to the San Francisco field office. Reading between the lines, Mulder sensed that Hobbs had been on the fast track for an ASAC position when an automobile accident sidelined him for six months. Three months after returning to duty, Hobbs had put in for a transfer to the New Hampshire field office, effectively burying himself in the boondocks. Since then, his record was filled with routine and ordinary accomplishments.

Everything Mulder had read suggested that Hobbs had been a bright, energetic, even innovative agent who had been headed for big things. He found himself wondering what had happened.

"We'll be taking a commuter plane north to Berlin when the snow lets up a bit. I left my Jeep at the Berlin airport. Camlyn is about a two hours' drive northwest from there. Unless the roads are really bad, I'd say we'll get there in time for dinner," Hobbs said in a studied casual tone.

Mulder gave him credit for trying to bridge over the odd incident by simply ignoring it. He'd done that on more than one occasion. Curiously, he found himself liking Hobbs. Upon reflection, Mulder wasn't sure the flinch was due to meeting Spooky Mulder. He noticed that Hobbs carefully avoided touching things -- moving stuff out of his way with his arm or leg rather than doing the simple act of just shoving it away with his hands. When they headed outside to cross over to the smaller commuter terminal, Hobbs pulled on a pair of thin leather gloves and almost visibly relaxed.

Odd. Hobbs doesn't seem like the fastidious sort.

"What can you tell me about this case? I've read the sheriff's report and terse takes on a whole new meaning," Mulder said as they finally reached the warmth of the commuter terminal. He wanted to learn more about the case, but right now he wanted to pry loose Hobbs' reserve and find the real agent behind the skittishness. The snow showed no signs of letting up, which meant that they were going to be here for a while. He might as well try to get to know his temporary partner.

"Not much, sir. I think the sheriff covered what we know adequately," Hobbs replied shortly, rebuffing the proffered opening. Mulder wasn't particularly over-sensitive, but it was clear that Hobbs had a problem, possibly with working with the FBI's premiere spook agent. He could either allow Hobbs to maintain this stiff, impersonal distance between them, or he could try to force the issue. Both options had potential for creating a nasty situation. Personally, he would just as soon let Hobbs keep his distance; he didn't want or need a partner. He'd worked alone before and done very well.

And what about Jason? his errant conscience reminded him. Shit, Mulder grumbled to himself as he realized that he occupied an uncomfortable position between the proverbial rock and a hard place. His natural inclination was to isolate himself, to deal with the aching absence of his partner by not dealing with even a temporary substitute. That's what he wanted to do and Hobbs was offering him the perfect opening, but two non-cooperating FBI agents was not going to help solve this case. If this case did prove to have a paranormal explanation, he was going to need Hobbs to run interference.

"Cut the sirs, Agent Hobbs. It's either Agent Mulder or just plain Mulder. I'm not sure what you've heard . . . ." Mulder started in a slightly impatient tone. He was used to his reputation, but that didn’t mean he liked being treated as an oddity.

"It's not that, sir," Hobbs interrupted brusquely. "It's not that I won't give you more details. It's because there are none to give. As for my impressions, I'll be glad to share them with you after you've had a look at the place and talked with the witnesses. However, I don't want to contaminate the evidence," he went on to explain in a crisp tone.

Well, that's clear enough. He wants to see Spooky Mulder in action before he commits himself. Mulder grumbled quietly to himself about being the one expected to argue for the weird theories and take all the subsequent heat from disbelieving, and usually irate, local officials who wanted a plain simple answer. Once in awhile, he wouldn't mind company out there on the firing line, but he understood Hobbs' reluctance to play the Bureau fool.

"And it's Hobbs, Mulder," he added with a smile.

Mulder did a quick re-evaluation of his assessment of Hobbs. The man was more complex than his surfaces attitudes suggested. He didn't like being brushed off, but he could understand Hobbs' logic. For most agents, the more they knew in advance, the more likely they were to try to make the evidence fit their pre-conceived theories. Scully was a lot like that, Mulder admitted ruefully. She was very fond of her preconceived theories and gave them up reluctantly. On the other hand, he reveled in getting as many different opinions and theories as he could. He formed lots of theories in the process of working on a case and discarded them as easily as leftover liver when new data shifted his perception of what happened. If pushed to explain how he came up with some of his theories, he’d be hard pressed. He operated on a mixture of intuition, a keen awareness of body language, and a thorough grounding in forensic psychology. One of his Quantico instructors had bluntly told him that he’d have been burned as a warlock in earlier times. That comment, and Patterson’s expectation that he could act as some sort of oracle, bothered him. He was just a keen observer with an open mind and a willingness to entertain extreme possibilities.

"OK, Hobbs, tell me what are the chances that the Canadians are going to be involved?" Mulder asked casually, determined to start over and give Hobbs the benefit of the doubt.. The last thing he wanted to do was deal with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. It was going to be hard enough trying to peddle a paranormal explanation to a local sheriff and Hobbs without having to worry about satisfying one of the super-professional Mounties. Mulder had made light of the prospect to Skinner, but after reading Quatrain's file, it didn't seem quite as humorous.

"About fifty-fifty, I'd say. Quatrain is kicking up quite a fuss. He doesn't seem to think much of Camlyn's sheriff. My arrival apparently staved off a major confrontation," Hobbs said awkwardly. "I'm afraid I was a disappointment. That's when Sheriff Thurgood informed Quatrain that he was calling in an expert from the FBI headquarters. He became much more cooperative after that."

So, am I a convenient diversionary tactic to take the heat off the local sheriff, or does this Sheriff Thurgood actually believe that there's something more than a simple murder or kidnapping behind this disappearance?

"I'm going to see when our plane is going to take off. Can I bring you some coffee?" Hobbs was clearly changing the subject. Apparently he was quite serious about not giving out any of his impressions or conclusions about the case. Mulder doubted if Hobbs was aware of just how much he really had said.

"Sure, although what I'd really like about now is some food. From the looks of the plane sitting outside, I doubt if they serve lunch," Mulder said, looking dubiously at the small prop plane gathering snow on the tarmac. It was painted a canary yellow with a bright red tail. It looked like an exotic bird who'd landed in New Hampshire by mistake.

The better to find it when it crashes, Mulder thought bleakly. Flying didn't bother him -- crashing into the side of a mountain did.

"Well, the pilot might have some peanuts he'd be willing to share with you," Hobbs cracked with a straight face that crumbled into a grin at Mulder's crestfallen expression. "Let me see how much longer the delay will be. If we have an hour, there’s a small restaurant in the terminal that serves passably good food." Hobbs headed off to the small desk across the room without waiting for an answer.

Mulder leaned back and stretched his legs out as he considered the stray bits and pieces of data he'd just gleaned. Hobbs was a difficult man to categorize, but he appeared to be intelligent, possibly willing to think outside the box, and definitely had diplomatic tendencies with a strong stubborn streak. He could be a very interesting man to work with, once they got past his refusal to commit to any opinion about the case. On the surface, his reticence might be taken as playing it safe, letting Mulder take all the flak while he stayed quietly in the background, but Mulder was beginning to realize that Hobbs wasn't going to be that easy to categorize and dismiss.

On the bright side, from the little Hobbs did say, Mulder suspected that he was in agreement with the sheriff that something didn't seem right about the easy explanations for Lisa Quatrain's disappearance. Hobbs also appeared to be impressed by the sheriff and very unimpressed by Quatrain. The sheriff's letter had been extremely blunt; he wanted someone used to investigating unusual phenomena, so that was probably a strong hint as to the sheriff’s feelings about the situation.

Now, to add to the problem, they were likely to be paid a visit by some representative of the Canadian government, who probably would not react well to Spooky Mulder's theories. It was looking more and more likely that he was going to be caught between the sheriff and Hobbs, Quatrain, and whoever the Canadians sent down to "assist" in the investigation. Well, he was used to being in the hot seat; he'd survive. Whether Quatrain and the Canadians, much less Hobbs' ASAC, would accept his findings was another matter. Despite the allure of a really good paranormal case, Mulder hoped for Lisa's and Jason's sakes that the explanation was a simple one and that Lisa would be found unharmed. He was doubtful, but he always hoped for a happy ending.

"Good news, Mulder. The pilot thinks he can get the plane off the ground in about an hour and a half. He even promised to get us there with a minimum of bouncing if we brought him back a beef on rye."

To Mulder's surprise, Hobbs did not appear to be joking.

"Relax, Mulder. I know the pilot. Hell, I've flown with him so often we're on a first name basis. He's good. He's also hungry. My mother always told me that if I had to bribe someone, bribe them with food -- that way there's no evidence," he said with an innocent look.

"Sounds like advice some of our politicians should have taken. I don't think that one beef sandwich will strain my professional ethics," Mulder quipped with a smile.

"Harry said he'd have them page us if he gets the plane ready sooner. Come on. The place will be crowded, but I can probably wrangle us a table in the corner."

"Let me guess, you know the owner?" Mulder asked

"Nah, the waitress," Hobbs shot back as he led the way back outside to the main terminal.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

By the time they'd finished lunch and headed back to the tarmac, it was nearly two o'clock. As far as Mulder could tell, the snow hadn't let up, but the clerk at the desk in the commuter terminal waved them towards the door leading to the tarmac.

A very young-looking assistant took Mulder's bag and slung it effortlessly into the cargo hold. Mulder looked at Hobbs and raised an eyebrow. If that was their pilot, he wanted to see at least a high school diploma.

Hobbs chuckled and shook his head. "Harry's always taking on extra help. He says he went into this business to fly planes, not sling luggage around. Since it's his plane, he gets to set the rules."

Mulder could sympathize with Harry's point of view. He’d entered the FBI to investigate crime and help people, but there were times when he spent more time in filling out reports and attending obligatory meetings than in fieldwork.

There were only two other passengers; businessmen from the looks of it. When Mulder and Hobbs entered along with a gust of icy wind, they never even looked up. They just spread their hands across the papers to keep them grounded and ignored the newcomers.

"Harry, got your sandwich," Hobbs yelled towards the cockpit. Apparently unconcerned by the snow blowing around the plane, he motioned Mulder towards two seats across the aisle from each other. "Might as well be comfortable. Once this plane takes off, conversations just aren't worth the trouble."

Mulder nodded and debated whether to shed his parka or not. From the looks of it, this plane wasn't long on the amenities. Hobbs had already peeled out of his coat and the other two men were sitting in suits, so Mulder decided that whatever else it lacked, the plane probably had a decent heating system.

"It's about time," a voice said behind Mulder. Mulder turned to look at their pilot. He wasn't sure what he was expecting, but a long-haired youngish-looking man who looked amused and peeved at the same time wasn't it. Apparently aware that he was under scrutiny, Harry turned to look at Mulder then grinned. "Relax, I can't afford to crash this bird -- I still owe money on her," he said in a low voice that rippled with his amusement.

Turning the to rest of the passengers, he went on to announce in a cavalierly cheerful voice, "We'll be taking off in about ten minutes, or as soon as I finish lunch. I figure we should reach Berlin in about an hour and a half with the tail wind we're gonna hit when we get airborne. So relax, take a nap, and just leave the driving to me. Backseat drivers will be let out to walk the rest of the way."

Mulder watched Harry head back to the cockpit, taking bites out of the sandwich as he went. Despite his cavalier attitude, there was something about him that radiated confidence and a capacity for handling any crisis that arose.

"Harry's been flying all over New Hampshire for as long as I've been here. He's a bit odd, but he says that New England was founded by eccentrics who didn't want anyone telling them what to do and he's a man who believes in tradition. In any event, he's flown through some of the worst weather this area can produce. If anyone can get us to Berlin in one piece in this snow, Harry can," Hobbs said confidently.

"Why the rush?" Mulder couldn't help asking. As eager as he was to reach the crime scene, he sensed that Hobbs was willing to fly into the teeth of a blizzard rather than waste more time getting back to Camlyn. What on earth was Hobbs not telling him? He was poised on the brink of applying some direct pressure on him to cough up more information when the plane's engines started. Even muffled by the cabin walls, Mulder was overwhelmed by the noise of the twin prop engines revving up. Hobbs shrugged and mouthed 'I told you so' before stretching out across the two seats. Using his parka for a pillow, he made it quite clear that he intended to use the time for a nap. Frustrated in his effort to get information out of Hobbs, Mulder stretched out his legs across the empty seat and decided to use the time to ponder Hobbs' odd reaction to this case. There wasn't much he could do about the case until he had more information, but profiling Hobbs would be enough to occupy his mind for the flight.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

3:30 p.m. Berlin Airport
 

"I told you Harry was good," Hobbs pointed out as he and Mulder headed out towards the parking lot. A light, icy rain , falling from low, leaden skies, made walking treacherous. Mulder walked carefully across the icy pavement. It wasn't very often he survived a landing that resembled a long, slow skid across ice. The plane had ended up nose-to-nose with a large snow bank, but as Hobbs kept saying, Harry was good. They'd rattled and shook, but once he touched down, Harry maneuvered the plane like he landed on ice-slick runways everyday.

"So you did," Mulder admitted in a voice a bit shakier than he would like. He wasn't normally bothered by rough landings, but landing on ice was a new experience and not one he wanted to repeat.

"OK, so that was above-and-beyond-the-call-of-duty good," Hobbs conceded. "I've flown with Harry for years and I don't think I ever saw him so shaky after a landing before."

Mulder suppressed the urge to groan. From his perspective, Harry had looked jauntily indifferent to the perilous landing.

I've been away from New England too long. I've forgotten how to read phlegmatic.

"The car's over there. This sleet is going to delay us a bit, but I'm still hoping to reach Camlyn by seven, at the latest."

"Will the sheriff be on duty tonight?" Mulder asked. Now that they were within a stone's throw of the crime scene, he was impatient to begin talking with the people who might be able to give him some answers.

"No, but he said to call him when we got in. I've already booked you at the bed and breakfast inn." Hobbs paused then continued uncertainly, "If I can make a suggestion?"

Mulder nodded for him to continue.

"Eat dinner first. Sarah’s cooking is an experience not to be missed," he advised with a grin. "Besides, it’ll give you a chance to talk to her and get a feel for the people up here. I thought I was used to New Englanders, but up here, they're an entirely different breed."

Mulder considered Hobbs' advice. Getting a feel for the local atmosphere was probably a good idea, Mulder didn't want to waste time eating when he could be talking with Jason or the sheriff. He gave Hobbs a non-committal grunt and followed him to the car. He remained silent for the next hour considering the situation. After a few anxious looks, Hobbs gave up and drove in silence.

"I'll compromise -- invite the sheriff to dinner. That way I can placate our hostess, eat dinner, and talk with the sheriff all at the same time," Mulder offered at last.

"Perfect," Hobbs exclaimed with a relieved grin. "When we get closer, I'll call the sheriff and give him our ETA and tell him to meet us at the B&B for dinner. Wish I'd thought of that," he added ruefully.

"Well, I can't very well go hiking out to the crime scene at night, so I'd prefer to get the interviews with the sheriff and Jason out of the way tonight." Mulder lapsed back into silence as he considered the inherent problems of investigating a case in a small town. Keeping a lid on new facts was going to be next to impossible, but he was determined to try to operate with a minimum of gossip flying about. Gossip could be useful in an investigation, but it could also create problems; people began remembering events that never occurred. Hopefully, the sheriff could give him a good feel for the town.

"We’re getting to the tricky part of the drive, so if you don't mind, I'll pay close attention to the road," Hobbs said apologetically.

Mulder took the hint. It was getting dark, but it was still light enough to see that the narrow, unlit two-lane road they were on was covered with packed snow that made it difficult to see where the road was. With a steep embankment on one side and a heavily forested slope on the other, Mulder had no desire to distract Hobbs. Getting to Dead Horse, Alaska had been easier than this trip, he reflected.

The sound of Hobbs' voice making dinner arrangements with the sheriff roused Mulder from an unplanned nap. Checking his watch, he was relieved to note that he'd only zoned out for about a half an hour.

"We should reach Camlyn in about forty-five minutes. The sheriff reports that the roads get better about ten miles from here. He said he'll meet us at the B&B. I think he wants to talk to you about as badly as you want to talk to him, Mulder," Hobbs added with just the suspicion of a chuckle in his voice.

Mulder decided to ignore Hobbs' amusement at his eagerness. Mulder was used to this kind of reaction. He'd never learned to adopt the reserved attitude most agents used to keep from seeming like over-eager hounds on a trail. Contrary to popular belief, he did care what other people thought of him -- he just didn't let it affect how he approached a case. Mulder felt the slight twitchy feeling he always got before a hard case -- like a runner's twitch just before launching into a marathon. One of the reasons he enjoyed bantering so much with Scully in the early days of a case was because that helped calm the jittery feeling of nerves and brain shifting into high gear.

Wonder how Hobbs would react to a few bad jokes?

Mulder discarded the idea as quickly as it occurred, but it reminded him again of how used to Scully he'd become. Now he was facing his first real case without her and he was going to have to readjust all the patterns of thought and reaction he’d come to depend on over the past six years. "It will be good for me, I guess," he muttered softly to himself. I was getting too predictable, he thought as they rounded a hairpin curve to see the dim lights of a fair-sized village about five miles away.

"Camlyn," Hobbs said.

Mulder looked at the small island of lights in the middle of the wide expanse of darkness and felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise. There was some allusion he was making subconsciously, but he couldn't put his finger on what it was. If his subconscious was getting bored enough to create allusions, then it was high time he gave it something substantial to deal with, he decided as Hobbs pulled the Jeep into a parking lot beside a classic clapboard two-story New England farmhouse. A softly illuminated sign by the front walk welcomed them to the Hemlock Inn.

The porch was bare, but Mulder could envision rockers set out for the summer visitors. If his sense of direction hadn’t completely deserted him, the porch faced west towards the mountains. The front door opened into a narrow hallway which led to a parlor that had been converted into a reception area.

"Welcome, gentlemen. You must be Agent Mulder. I'm Sarah Godfrey, the owner and chief cook and bottle-washer here," Sarah said in a pleasant alto voice. To Mulder's surprise, she swung around from behind the desk in an effortless move that spoke of long experience in manipulating her wheelchair around obstacles. When she was close enough, she stretched out her hand in greeting. Mulder took it and was surprised by the strength in her handclasp. Sarah looked to be in her mid-sixties, but her eyes struck Mulder as being perpetually youthful. Her energy, even confined by a wheelchair, was electric.

"Well met, Agent Mulder. Welcome to my home. Dinner will be slightly delayed. Sheriff Thurgood called and said he was tied up with a traffic accident, so I decided to set dinner back an hour to give you both some time to settle in.. Agent Hobbs, if you will show Agent Mulder to the Captain's Room, I'll set out some appetizers to tide you over until the sheriff arrives."

"No problem," Hobbs assured her as he headed up the stairs. Mulder glanced around the reception area which was probably once the formal parlor. A pamphlet rack caught his eye and he went over to see if it might contain anything useful. At this stage of an investigation, he was open to all sorts of stray information that might pop up. Scully had often chided him for not keeping his attention focused on the case and he’d never quite managed to convince her that these supposedly irrelevant facts were important.

"Camlyn: A Short History of the Back of Beyond" by Sarah Godfrey.

Opening it, Mulder quickly scanned the first page. It appeared to be a somewhat casual history of the town with a bit of gossip and legend interspersed as filler.

"Take it, Agent Mulder. Normally I charge a dollar for it, but I'll consider it my contribution owards young Fairfax's defense fund."

"Thank you, Mrs. Godfrey," Mulder replied as he carefully slipped the pamphlet in his pocket.

"It's Sarah to my guests. I'm not long on formality. Other than meal times, it's pretty much a come and go as you please place. If you need anything, just call. If I can't come, my son is in and about. Now, get comfortable. We're expecting snow later tonight, but you're here now and safe; it can come in its own time," Sarah said as she spun her wheelchair around in a circle and headed for the back of the house.

Mulder followed Hobbs upstairs absently. His sixth sense was telling him that one of the people he needed to have a long talk with was Sarah. Coincidences were the lifeblood of most of his investigations and he'd learned to let them take the lead. In almost every case, somebody he didn't expect would show up with the vital pieces of information he needed if he had the wits to recognize them. If Sarah was the local historian, then he definitely needed to talk with her.

"Is Sarah one of the people you've interviewed?" he asked casually as they reached the second floor.

Hobbs gave him a sheepish, apologetic look and ushered him to his room without answering. Mulder grumbled, but accepted that Hobbs was going to be stubborn about this non-interference dictate of his. What in the world had provoked this kind of unease in Hobbs? He was young, but not as inexperienced as Skinner had led him to believe. What on earth had happened to shake an experienced field agent this badly?

I'm getting a very bad feeling about this case.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

The room Hobbs guided him to had the basic amenities, but not much else. At least the bed was comfortable and roomy enough to stretch out on, Mulder decided after trying it out. It was too dark to see much out the window, but he could see heavy flakes of snow drifting down through the lights. His Antarctic gear was going to come in handy after all. Unpacking was a simple affair. He hung his suit in the closet and threw the rest of his clothes in the dresser drawers. After shoving his suitcase under the high bed, he settled into the only chair in the room, an old wooden rocker, to read the pamphlet.

As the title suggested, the pamphlet was short, but surprisingly informative. Camlyn had been founded nearly three hundred years ago by people who appeared to have been looking for someplace where no one could tell them what to believe or how to act. Sarah was blunt about the fact that it took a three-day debate before the settlement decided to support the Revolutionary War or whether to secede from the New Hampshire Grants in protest. The town had produced no local heroes and seemed intent on minding its own business throughout its long history. Despite the lack of heroes, Mulder detected a certain pride in local eccentrics who sprang up from time to time.

The most prominent was Galen Hatherford, a local man who went east in 1744 to be educated and returned ten years later full of very strange notions. The fact that he’d also returned a very wealthy man was cause for much speculation and gossip since he'd left with barely a farthing to his name. Hatherford's obsession appeared to be King Arthur and he was convinced that New Hampshire was the Avalon referred to in the old stories. Unable to prove this theory, Hatherford had decided to make it so on his own and towards that end imported stonemasons and builders to re-create the legendary Round Table high up in the mountains. He’d even imported stone from England to give his dream more authenticity. The construction had cost him his fortune, and apparently his life. The money ran out before he could complete the project. When the masons came to him to collect their overdue pay, Hatherford was gone. The last time anyone could recollect seeing him was the day before when he passed by a local herdsman on the trail up to the Table.

There were other eccentrics, but none who captured the town's imagination quite like Hatherford. Mulder wondered what stories Sarah did not include in her pamphlet. There was no mention of the mysterious disappearance of the young man at the Round Table a hundred years ago. In fact, Mulder discovered that Sarah had not included directions to the Round Table. Rereading the pamphlet very carefully, looking for subtle nuances, Mulder realized that Sarah had given the impression that the Round Table was either inaccessible or else was simply no longer there.

Interesting. Stones just don't get up and walk away, or at least I hope they don't. One hundred years ago the Table was there, if my files are correct. I'm willing to bet that when I get to talk to the sheriff that I'll find that Lisa Quatrain disappeared somewhere near that very same Table.

Sarah had just moved to the number three spot on his interview list. In fact, depending on whether the sheriff would let him talk to Jason tonight, she might be number two. Looking around for an electrical outlet for his laptop, Mulder was surprised to find an accessible phone jack as well. Obviously Sarah was keeping up with the demands of the modern tourist trade. This house might be nearly three hundred years old, according to the pamphlet, but Sarah was definitely firmly planted in the twentieth-century.

Going online, Mulder checked the chat room normally occupied by the Gunmen when they were online and found it empty. Balked at actually explaining his request to them, he sent off a quick email asking them to send him a map of any magnetic lines that crossed Camlyn or the surrounding counties. Ley lines didn't play quite as important a role in North America as they did in Britain and Europe, but it wouldn't hurt to check them out. Strange things could happen on these magnetic lines whether you believed in them or not. Mulder was a wary agnostic when it came to ley lines. He'd read too much to disbelieve, but the logic of the happenings seemed more random than he felt comfortable with. If Hatherford had attempted to recreate Arthur's Round Table smack on top of a powerful ley line, it could be a clue worth following.

A gong sounded somewhere below and he heard Hobbs' door open. It didn't take a trained FBI agent to deduce that dinner was served.

"That's the dinner bell, Mulder," Hobbs called to him from the hall.

"I'll be right down," Mulder replied as he pulled on a sweater over his flannel shirt. Showtime, he thought as he cloaked himself in his usual sardonic, brusque attitude. It usually irritated people, but it was very effective in deflating the astonished disbelief and anger from the local law when he started suggesting paranormal theories.

"Agent Mulder, glad to meet you." A tall, wiry man wearing a dark brown uniform stepped forward to greet him as he stepped into the parlor. His accent was hard to place -- there were a lot of regional variants competing for dominance. He was older than Mulder expected and had a ready, open smile; the sort that invites confidences from criminals. Mulder made a mental note not to underestimate this man.

Mulder smiled back and shook his hand. He could feel the sheriff sizing him up, piecing together what he saw with what he might have heard. It was a scrutiny Mulder was used to. He never quite seemed to be what the local police expected. One of these days he was going to have to see just what the FBI sent out in his official bio; it might make very entertaining reading.

"Gentleman, dinner is served," Sarah called from the next room. The dining room was large enough for the two trestle tables running down the middle of the room. The fire in the mammoth fireplace chased the chill off the stone walls without turning the room into an oven.

"Food's on the table. Serve yourself. I'll bring in dessert and coffee when you're ready. Meanwhile, make yourselves at home. Jasper, you let these gentlemen eat before you start in with your questions," Sarah said with a stern look at the sheriff, who just laughed.

"I'm hungry, too, Sarah. The case isn't going anywhere. You'll know it all soon enough," he assured her with a shooing motion.

With a hrumph quickly followed by a smile, Sarah wheeled herself through a swinging door. Mulder caught a brief glimpse of a short hallway and suspected she had retreated to the kitchen.

"There isn't much that goes on in this town that Sarah doesn't find out about eventually. I think it would save time if we just made her the editor of the town paper, but she won't have it. Now, Agents, there's dinner to attend to. Let's settle ourselves with some food before we try to make sense out of this case. The facts aren't going anywhere. They can wait a mite longer without doing any harm."

Mulder wanted to protest, but he caught Hobbs' slight shake of the head. Apparently this sheriff was going to be as stubborn as Hobbs in deciding when and how to dole out information. For a brief second Mulder felt his temper rise, but clamped down it on before it could escape. He'd let the sheriff tell him the story in his own way. There would be plenty of time for angry exchanges once they started fielding theories. Of course, that didn't mean that he couldn't pump the sheriff for details about the history of the town. With luck, he could lead the conversation around to old legends and be on the case before the sheriff realized what was happening.

"How long have you lived here, Sheriff?" Mulder asked as he dished out a large helping of stew and dumplings.

"Born and raised here. Left at twenty to see the world." The sheriff gave a reminiscent chuckle. "Came back twenty years later once I stopped and caught my breath long enough to realize I was homesick for these mountains. Been here ever since."

Mulder thoughtfully ate a few mouthfuls of an excellent stew as he tried to figure out a way to steer the conversation towards the Round Table. When he looked up, he met the sheriff's eyes and saw sympathy.

"I know -- you're impatient to begin, but I'm not being stubborn just to prove I can be," the sheriff said calmly. Mulder absently cataloged his body language was relaxed, almost deliberately non-confrontational. Apparently the sheriff didn’t feel he had to establish his dominance. Mulder found this almost as intriguing as the continued stonewalling.

"I promised Quatrain that I wouldn't infect you with my outlandish notions. Hobbs here had to give him that same promise before he'd back off from calling in his own private investigation team. We have enough people stumbling around on this case; I don't need any more outsiders. I've heard of you from a man I consider reliable and figured that you stood the best chance of making sense out of this case. I’ll admit, I also hoped Quatrain would listen to you." The sheriff gave him a catlike grin that suggested he had less exemplary motives.

Mulder considered this new information and wondered what on earth Sheriff Thurgood had told Quatrain to prompt that sort of reaction. Hobbs kept his eyes on his food, but Mulder caught the hint of a sheepish smile. So, failing to get the answer he wanted out of the sheriff and Hobbs, they were offering up a fresh sacrifice in the form of an FBI agent from the Hoover Building itself? Mulder wondered when Quatrain would figure out that he'd been had.

"Did you tell Quatrain what unit I work out of?" Mulder asked curiously.

"Nah, but he knows it now and he's not a happy man. Another reason I was late was because Quatrain was telling me exactly what he thought of me, you, and the entire American law enforcement community. Come tomorrow morning, we're going to have company." Thurgood looked resigned to having yet another outsider horning in on his case.

"He didn't?" Hobbs asked in a miserable voice.

"He did. The RCMP is sending an observer to assist us in facilitating our investigation. I have direct orders from the Governor to be nice to him. Quatrain is making a damn nuisance of himself, but I suppose that's how he gets things done his way. Well, I'm not going to railroad a boy until I have proof and Quatrain and his Mountie can just swallow that whole and deal with it," Thurgood said in a disgusted tone as he viciously buttered a roll that came apart in his hands. Looking down at the dismembered bread, Thurgood shook his head. "OK, it's been a long day. Agent Mulder, let's just eat and let me get my imagination off of throwing Quatrain in the nearest snow-bank to cool off. I refuse to let him ruin one of Sarah's dinners."

"If the case is off-limits for discussion, how about telling me all you know about the Round Table?" Mulder asked hopefully.

"Damn it, you are good. Jim-Jim said you could pull a theory straight out of thin air," the sheriff said as he shook his head. His expression was a curious mixture of satisfaction and amused awe. Mulder had to think for a moment to place the name. It didn't seem likely that a sheriff in a small town in northwestern New Hampshire would know the sheriff in a Florida circus town, but it appeared that there was more to Sheriff Thurgood than met the eye.

Thurgood chuckled when he saw the look of puzzlement on Mulder's face. "I was a circus roustabout for about five years. Wintered down in Gibsonton. We talk now and then. I remembered him mentioning some hotshot FBI agent who wasn't phased a bit by the weird and had an open mind. He gave me your name when I told him that weird wouldn't begin to describe this case. That's about as much as I want to tell you until you've talked with Jason and seen the place. Sarah could probably tell you every legend that's grown up around that place better than me. I'll let you pump her for the stories over coffee and dessert." Thurgood shook his head as Mulder started to protest.

"Agent Mulder, Quatrain is just waiting for a chance to get Jason moved to the next county where the sheriff doesn't know him and might be a mite more inclined to be impressed by Quatrain's view of his own importance. I'm not going to let that happen just to satisfy your curiosity," he added with a stern note of finality in his voice. His expression was sympathetic, but that didn't help Mulder's growing frustration at the brick wall the sheriff and Hobbs kept throwing up in front of him.

Mulder was tempted to storm out of the room, but throwing his temper around wasn't going to get him the answers he wanted. He didn’t lose his temper easily, but running into official roadblocks, however well-intentioned tended to irritate him. He found himself automatically disliking Quatrain before he even met him. That could be a problem, he acknowledged ruefully. He had an instinctive dislike of powerful men who tried to bulldoze their way through everyone else's rights to get what they wanted. Proving to these type of men that not everyone could be pushed around or bought had become something of a hobby for him and the subject of more than one discussion with Skinner over the meaning and practice of the art of diplomacy..

As he worked his way mechanically through a dinner that deserved better,, Mulder considered what Thurgood had said and came to the conclusion that both he and Hobbs were genuinely uneasy about this case. Judging from what Thurgood told him about Quatrain, it would have been very easy to just dismiss Jason's story and let Quatrain have his vengeance. Thurgood struck him as a man who was just New England stubborn enough to buck Quatrain, but not without good reason.

"When can I talk to Jason?" Mulder asked, although he was beginning to suspect he knew what the answer would be.

I'm getting psychic, or else getting used to Thurgood's stonewalling.

"Tonight, if you absolutely have to, but tomorrow morning would be better. Jason's nervous as hell about telling his story to a big-city FBI agent, so I gave him some herb tea to calm him down. I wasn't expecting you to want to hit the ground running, especially in this weather. You could talk to him, but by now he's probably so relaxed I'm not sure you'd get much sense out of him. Besides, I'm going to be gone all morning fetching that Mountie. You'll have the boy all to yourself and both of you will have had the benefit of a good night's sleep." Thurgood sounded so reasonable Mulder was sure there was a flaw in his argument, but he couldn't find one.

"Sheriff, have you ever considered taking up chess?" Mulder asked in an exasperated tone while he nodded his concession to the sheriff's maneuver.

Thurgood laughed sympathetically. "Yeah, I have, but I'm so erratic that I drive any player who knows what they're doing nuts." He turned serious. "Agent Mulder, I'm not trying to be difficult. You have a reputation as a damn good profiler and as a man who understands that not every solution can be fit into a nice, prefab box. Quatrain knows this and I don't want to give him the slightest excuse for claiming I entered into collusion with you to fix up an outlandish explanation for his daughter's disappearance. You have the bare facts of the case in my report. You can talk to Sarah about the Round Table. I suspect that by tomorrow, you'll already have a theory. I'm not saying it's the right one, just that you will need to keep an open mind and my opinions will only get in your way."

"Sheriff, you have the nicest way of telling me to just shut up and cooperate with your plan that I've ever encountered. I don't like it, but I'll accept your limitations, for now. However," Mulder said in a calm, serious tone, "in exchange for my cooperation tonight, I will expect your full cooperation tomorrow."

"Fair enough. Now, I'm ready for dessert. Sarah makes a blueberry pie that I consider to border on the edge of bribery. Let's call her in and I'll sit back and let her tell you everything I promised Quatrain I wouldn't mention," Thurgood said with a mischievous smile. Off to one side, Mulder heard Hobbs sigh with relief as the tension level in the room plummeted. Mulder had noticed he had been very quiet. It had been a smart move and showed a keen sense of strategy. Mulder knew that if both men had started in on the stonewalling that he would have felt cornered and reacted with the brusque lack of diplomacy he was famous for.

Thurgood was also a lot smarter than Quatrain realized. He might hold to his exact word, but that didn't mean he had to stop a gracious hostess from telling Mulder about the Round Table legends. Mulder smiled, unaware of just how feline he looked. If the Mountie Quatrain was importing proved to be as easy to maneuver around, then this case just might be workable.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

"Now don't go filling Agent Mulder's head with the notion that I'm some sort of local oracle, Jasper Thurgood," Sarah said in a reproving tone as she passed out plates of blueberry pie topped with mounds of ice cream. "There's nobody that knows the whole story behind that Table, 'cepting maybe Galen Hatherford."

"Your pamphlet mentioned that he was obsessed with King Arthur," Mulder commented as he leaned forward eagerly. Finally, maybe someone is going to answer a few questions.

"Eat your pie before it gets cold, Agent Mulder. I'm not going anywhere and neither is the story," Sarah replied nodding at his plate. "You eat, I'll talk. That way you'll know what questions to ask when I'm done. Can't guarantee I'll have the answers, but I'm always interested in the questions," she added with a smile. Mulder tried to stare her down, but finally gave up with a good-natured shrug and forked a bite of pie. One question, one bite of pie -- I can make this work.

"Galen Hatherford was the son of a farmer who got a bit above himself in these parts. His father decided to play squire and that meant his son had to be better educated than anyone else around, including the minister. There were some who claimed they knew that no good would come of such English pretensions, but that's just folks talking about someone trying to take on airs."

Mulder ate another bite of pie. One part of his brain registered the fact that it was good, but he was more anxious to hear the rest of the story than in the fact that his taste buds were having an orgy. Sarah's voice had taken on an almost hypnotic rhythm, which Mulder recognized as a gifted storyteller's way of drawing her audience into the story.

"Galen never explained what happened to turn him from a plain boy of mediocre intelligence into someone obsessed with a fantasy. Nor did he bother explaining how he left a poor man and came back a very wealthy one. My best guess is that he fell in with smugglers, but how a back-country mountain boy would do that is one of the many mysteries of this story."

"How long was he gone?" Mulder asked, ignoring the fact that he'd been asked not to interrupt. This wasn't only a story, but was quite possibly the foundation of the case he'd been asked to investigate.

Sarah sighed and shook her head.. Giving him an indulgent look, she responded, "About twelve years, with nary a letter the entire time. Time enough to earn a fortune, providing you aren't too terribly particular in how you earn it."

"Your pamphlet said that he was obsessed with the idea that New Hampshire was King Arthur's Avalon. Did he ever explain what his reasons were?" Mulder asked, absently eating another bite of pie as he waited for the answer.

"Apparently he tried explaining his theories to a lot of people, but no one bothered to write them down. Galen might have kept a journal, but nothing was ever found except a lot of ashes in his fireplace when the constable finally went to check on him four days after he was last seen." Sarah stopped and abruptly wheeled over to the windows. It was too dark to see anything, but she seemed to be staring at something. Her mood seemed heavy, even distant.

"So he just decided to recreate King Arthur's Round Table here in Camlyn. It fits, I suppose," Mulder conceded as his mind started chasing off after scattered pieces of the puzzle. It was easy to get distracted by interesting tangents at this stage of an investigation. The trick was to figure out what was the main trail and what were merely intriguing diversions.

"Good catch, Agent Mulder," Thurgood commented. Hobbs gave him a puzzled look. "Camlyn is another name for Camelot. I think I told you that the men who settled this town were different from most of the folks who came to New England for religious reasons. Our ancestors were looking for a place where no one could tell them what to think or how to pray. It took them a hundred years, but they finally ran out of civilization and came to rest here. Some wit among them decided that this was the place no one thought could exist, like Camelot at the time."

"And promptly became the most disputatious group of people who ever tried to live together," Sarah added with a laugh. Her quicksilver mood changing back to the relaxed story-teller, but Mulder sensed the dark mood of a moment ago wasn't entirely gone, just very well hidden.

"Towns aren't usually created by serious individualists, but our ancestors certainly were contrary enough to try. All in all, we haven't done too badly," Thurgood conceded with a chuckle.

"Have you been to the last few town meetings?" Sarah asked with an exasperated snort.

"Back to King Arthur," Mulder prompted, trying to avoid letting the conversation veer off into town politics. While interesting, he didn't think his investigation involved the town elders, yet.

"Not much more to tell. Galen decided to recreate King Arthur's Round Table up in the mountains. Bought the land and hired local stonemasons to carve the table out of native granite. Then he decided to import stones from England to complete the project. He was gone another three years before he returned with several rough-hewn stones. By this time, no local man would go near the Table, so Galen had to import stonemasons from Down East. By the time the English stones were set in place, Galen had run out of money to pay the stonecutters. He disappeared. Some folks think he ran off, but most think he picked a convenient place and jumped to his death rather than see his dream collapse."

"You said no local man would go near the Table, why?" Mulder pounced on the point. This felt important.

"The usual stories combined with the local legends of the mountains. The native people who were here when our ancestors arrived told stories about the mountain spirits who jealously guarded their secrets against intruders. A couple of accidents, a few travelers who operated on whiskey courage and pretty soon we had our very own legends of hauntings and mysterious happenings in the mountains on dark of the moon, full moon, or blue moon nights," Sarah said with a perfectly straight face that dissolved into a smile. "Local story-tellers wanting to keep people entertained on long winter nights for the most part."

"What about the least part?" Mulder asked. He sensed there were layers on meaning in Sarah's story. She might sound dismissive, but the look she gave out of the window suggested that she wasn't as much of a skeptic as she wanted him to believe. Mulder recalled that this side of the house faced the mountains. He wondered what she saw in the darkness.

"'The Northern Lights have seen queer sights. . . ," Sarah said in a soft voice as she turned back towards the window.

"The Arctic trails have their secret tales that would make your blood run cold," Hobbs added, then stopped abruptly with an embarrassed look at Mulder.

"I have to wonder what Robert Service ran into up there in the Yukon," Sarah said quietly. "Those mountains are strange and odd things happened up there to the unwary. Mountains are like cats -- skittish and inclined to go their own way. I think Galen disturbed something that has never gone back to sleep." Sarah spoke so softly Mulder had to strain to hear her.

"Now you see my problem, Agent Mulder," Thurgood said. "I was born and raised here. I've heard those same stories all my life and I've walked in those mountains after dark. I can't be sure whether I'm inclined to believe Jason because those stories are in my blood, or whether I believe him because there isn't any other logical explanation."

"Mulder, I . . ." Hobbs stopped and visibly tried to choose his words carefully. "I can't explain why right now, but I'm in something of the same boat as the sheriff. You're an outsider. Even if you're already inclined to believe in the paranormal, you don't necessarily believe in this paranormal." Hobbs' tone verged on pleading, but there was a note of obstinacy as well.

Mulder suspected that if he pushed Hobbs to explain that he would find himself nose-to-nose with a brick wall. Hobbs was shaping up to be as stubborn as he was. Mulder was impressed. Few people, even Scully, read him so well. Yes, he did believe in the paranormal and believed that more odd happenings occurred than were admitted to, but he didn't give the paranormal carte blanche as an excuse for everything unusual that happened. Very often, there were mundane explanations, if a bit on the odd side, for events. The trick was knowing how to tell the difference.

"So, I know enough to be dangerous, but not enough to be considered influenced. Fair enough. I'll talk to Jason in the morning, sheriff. Then I want to see this Round Table," Mulder said bluntly.

"If the weather permits, I'll take you there myself," Thurgood promised. "I hope this Mountie doesn't mind a bit of exercise," he added in a disgruntled tone.

So, I'm not the only one who would rather not have an RCMP observer dogging my step.

"Agent Hobbs, how's your Canadian?" Mulder asked with a sigh. If he had to put up with a Mountie, he wanted someone along to distract him. He hated the look that invariably came over by-the-book cops' faces when he started mentioning phenomena not covered in the U.S. Code.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Hemlock Inn
Early morning, February 6
 

It was still dark when Mulder awoke to the heavy rumble of a snowplow on the road outside. To his surprise, he discovered that at some point he had actually crawled under the covers. The bed was littered with notes scrawled on yellow paper that now fluttered to the floor as he turned over. They bore the evidence of a restless night spent trying to make sense of the few facts he had while researching the various legends of Arthur's Round Table. No wonder his dreams had been a confusion of conventional knights and shadowy Celtic heroes blended together. Nothing resembling a possible theory had emerged from the dreams, except a feeling that the answer was in there somewhere.

Groggily, Mulder got up. There were times he felt that not sleeping at all on cases was better than this half-rested, half-frustrated limbo he often found himself in. The best he could do right now was absorb as many of the facts of the case as possible until fact and supposition came together and formed a pattern he could work from. All he had now was suspicions and they weren’t even enough to float one of his initial way-out-there theories. Besides, without Scully around to look disapproving and skeptical, a lot of the fun had gone out of creating them.

By the time he'd showered and dressed, he could hear Hobbs moving around in the room next door. Going over to the window, Mulder looked out at the landscape lit by the first dawn light and was relieved to see that it had stopped snowing. The mountains were hulking dark masses looming against the western sky, almost obscured by low-hanging clouds. Unless the day cleared up, he doubted if the sheriff was going to be amenable to taking him for a hike to the crime scene.

"Shit," Mulder muttered helplessly. Even the weather seemed to be conspiring against him. If he didn't know better, he'd swear someone was tampering with the weather. Defiantly, he pulled on his hiking boots. Given half a chance, he was going to get up to the crime scene. Without even a photo to work with he felt like he was trying to piece together bits of fog. Hopefully, his interview with Jason would provide him with some solid ground on which to build some theories.

"Morning, Agent Mulder," Sarah greeted him cheerfully from behind the front desk. "Breakfast is on the sideboard. If you want anything you don't see, just holler."

Mulder nodded absently. Right now all he wanted was coffee, hot and strong, to chase the cobwebs out of his mind. He prided himself on being able to wake up clear-headed and alert, but this morning he felt mentally clogged up.

"Oh, Jasper called. You can see the Fairfax boy any time after 8."

Mulder grumbled under his breath at the delay. He supposed it was only fair to give the boy a chance to eat breakfast and get ready to talk with another stranger about what happened. Still, he wondered why Thurgood was being so solicitous about the boy and reluctantly could begin to see why Quatrain might feel the sheriff was prejudiced. Personally, he much preferred interviewing unprepared, hungry, and nervous suspects -- interesting truths slipped out when the interviewee didn't have time to get prepared for the interview.

After the first long sip of coffee, Mulder began believing in divine providence again. The coffee was not only strong, but had a caffeine kick sufficient to shake him out of his doldrums. Now, a little more than half awake, he allowed himself to be lured over to the sideboard to investigate Sarah's idea of breakfast. Normally he was content with a bagel and coffee, but the smell of fresh, hot cinnamon rolls and the sight of steaming pancakes strongly suggested stoking up for a hard day. He had an hour to kill so he might as well indulge.

"Morning," Hobbs said as he walked in and headed straight for the sideboard. "If I stay here much longer, I'm never going to be able to go back to granola bars and coffee for breakfast," he said with a rueful look at the heaping plate of potatoes, eggs, pancakes and muffins he carried to the table.

Mulder noticed that Hobbs carefully balanced the plate on his arm, while carrying a mug of coffee in his other hand. Hobbs wasn't wearing gloves this morning. For that matter, Mulder didn’t recall the other agent wearing them last night at dinner, but he suspected that as soon as Hobbs could do so without insulting anyone, the gloves would come back on. This glove fetish posed a minor mystery that intrigued Mulder, but he refused to allow himself to be distracted by this particular irrelevancy.

"We get to see Jason at 8. I presume that Thurgood is already on his way to the airport to pick up the Canadian observer," Mulder commented randomly. Energized by coffee and food, his mind was beginning to shift into high gear. The Gunmen had given him some interesting background history of the area, as well as some highly intriguing news about Quatrain's recent activities. The question now was whether he should share this information with Hobbs, or give him tit-for-tat and withhold the information until after he talked with Jason.

"Let's hope Harry can make it through; there's a major storm front moving in." Hobbs sounded apologetic.

"Shit," Mulder grumbled. There were only so many dead ends he could cope with before he started running out of patience. The problem was, he couldn’t be certain that the dead-ends weren’t part of the mystery he had to solve. At this point, he wasn’t sure where this case began and where it ended.

"The mountains are uneasy. They don't like having their secrets exposed." Sarah's calm alto voice from the window startled both men.

"Are you suggesting that the mountains are deliberately delaying us?" Mulder asked curiously. Hobbs had a look that could best be described as a mix of total disbelief and nervousness. At Mulder's question, he glanced quickly back and forth between him and Sarah and started to say something before closing his mouth.

"I'm not suggesting anything of the sort, young man. I'm just saying that these mountains like to keep their secrets and have been doing it for centuries. You're an outsider. So's Quatrain."

"I just want the truth, Sarah," Mulder replied earnestly. Despite her ominous words, Mulder didn't sense that Sarah was giving them a warning; she was simply stating the facts as she believed them.

"Just don't want it too badly, Agent Mulder. I don't *know* what happened up there on Blackthorn Mountain, but something has been disturbed and it's still waiting out there," Sarah said quietly. Abruptly she laughed. "Just listen to me go on. I'm beginning to sound like Gloria down at the Crescent Moon Tea Room. Next thing you know, I'll be casting your horoscopes and reading your palms," she said with a chuckle. "Too much time for sitting and thinking in the winter. No wonder we New Englanders are always fighting the Devil -- it beats being bored to death up here in the snow." With that, Sarah wheeled around and headed for the kitchen before Mulder could say a word.

Mulder simply stared after her, unawares that he was dripping maple syrup off a forkful of pancake onto the tablecloth. The sternly rational investigative side of him said that Sarah was a born storyteller who certainly knew how to set her listeners' hair on end. On another level, he sensed that she had given him a warning and perhaps another clue to fit into the puzzle. The books he’d found on the bookshelves in his room had been suspiciously informative now that he thought about it. There were odd legends about the White Mountains stretching back for generations -- legends that Sarah obviously knew. One of the research trails he'd followed until the wee hours last night had been chasing the legends surrounding mountains and mountain worship. Nothing about this case suggested the occult, but he'd run into odd cults that had grown up in isolated communities before. The more he knew, the better able he'd be to separate what things looked like and what they actually were.

"I'm awake, now," Hobbs said in a shaky voice. "Is this what you deal with on a regular basis?" he asked cautiously.

"Let's go talk to Jason Fairfax," Mulder suggested, avoiding giving Hobbs an answer to his question. He didn't want to go into what he believed and what he thought Sarah was trying to tell him until he'd had a chance to think about what she'd said. She was a strange woman, but he sensed no malice or subterfuge from her. In fact, she had appeared to be a little taken aback by her own frankness.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Coos County Jail
Later that morning
 

"Gentlemen, I want both of you to understand that my client is speaking to you against my advice. I'm here, Agent Mulder, to see that you don't make Jason into one of your paranormal exhibits." Jason Fairfax's lawyer sounded extremely put out as he glared at Mulder and Hobbs.

I doubt if he likes being dragged out of bed this early on a Sunday morning, Mulder thought with no sympathy whatever. Down the hall, he could hear the deputy bringing Jason from his cell.

So far, the morning had begun to resemble a gauntlet.

Quatrain had been waiting for them. Apparently, Thurgood had made it very clear he was not to interfere in any way until after the interview, but his angry presence spoke volumes about his dissatisfaction with the proceedings. Mulder noted that Hobbs didn't even make an effort to smooth things over. Mulder allowed Quatrain to lock eyes with him then quietly assessed the man as he attempted to dominate the situation. Quatrain was used to wielding power and having men jump when he gave the order. Feeling helpless was not something he dealt well with. Mulder sensed the unspoken threat, but refused to allow Quatrain to see any reaction other than cool indifference to his attempt to influence him. With a curse, Quatrain broke off eye contact and stormed down the street towards two very tough-looking security guards standing by a very expensive-looking SUV. Not a word had been spoken, but Mulder was left with the feeling that he hadn’t been exactly what Quatrain expected.

The next obstacle was the encounter with Jason's lawyer who made it quite clear that he disapproved of this interview, Agent Mulder, and the entire FBI which he apparently believed was in collusion with Quatrain to railroad his client. Mulder was thankful for the large breakfast he'd eaten. He was too full to argue, even with a lawyer intent on badgering him into saying something he could take action on. Fortunately, the lawyer wasn't very creative -- Mulder had heard most of the insinuations about the X-Files from other men with larger vocabularies and better imaginations.

"Mr. Chessman, all I want is to hear Jason's story and ask him a few simple questions. Whether he answers them is between you and your client. However, you are not doing your client a favor by insinuating that Mr. Quatrain is in any way orchestrating this interview. I believe your purpose is to advise your client as to his rights, not to make unfounded allegations about my sanity," Mulder said crisply, and turned his back on the lawyer to greet Jason as he was brought into the room.

Jason Fairfax nervously brushed his muddy-blond hair out of his face before taking a seat beside his lawyer. His eyes darted back and forth between Mulder and Hobbs before settling on Mulder. Mulder smiled and half stood up as the boy was brought in, all the while making his initial assessments. The boy was wound as tight as a coiled spring; his hands clenched tight around the arms of the chair as if he was trying to anchor himself against an onslaught. Jason was taller than Mulder expected from the police photo, lean as a whippet, but with wiry muscles that suggested he was stronger than he looked. He heard Hobbs mutter some barely audible reassurances, but the boy never took his eyes off Mulder. Mulder wasn't sure whether it was fear or desperate hope he saw reflected back, but he could sense that Jason was afraid and angry at his own fear.

"Jason, I'm Agent Mulder with the FBI. Sheriff Thurgood asked me to come here to listen to your story and to try to make some sense out of this case," Mulder said in a soothing voice as if he was gentling a scared animal. "Why don't you tell me what happened in your own words? Don't worry about trying to come up with an explanation, that's my job. You just tell me what you did and saw." Mulder leaned forward, his hands flat on the table. Ordinarily he would be taking notes, but Jason was nervous enough already without having to deal with the feeling that whatever he said was being recorded. Mulder would just have to trust his memory and the notes Hobbs and Thurgood had from their earlier interviews.

"I'm not sure what happened any more, sir. Lisa and I wanted to talk so we arranged to meet up on Blackthorn Mountain. It's an easy trail if you're in shape and the weather was pretty good. There's a spot, a notch really, where two trails meet. One goes further up Blackthorn, while the other heads off towards Moose Ridge. There's a shallow cave of sorts where we can sit out of the wind. We used to meet there when we didn't want her father to know we were meeting." Jason turned red and stuttered to a stop. His lawyer made a growling sound, but hushed when Jason shook his head.

"It's OK. Half the town knows I was seeing Lisa on the sly. If they didn't, they do now. Mr. Quatrain doesn't think much of me, you see," he added to Mulder. "I've only been to junior college and I want to be a forest ranger, not some corporate shmuck stuck in some climate-controlled office." Jason's expression turned defiant before it wavered and crumbled into uncertainty.

"So you and Lisa went to this notch separately?" Mulder asked curiously, encouraging Jason to continue with a nod.

"Yeah. I got there first and waited. She was late -- said she had to lie to her father to get away. We talked and I don't know. . " Jason swallowed and for the first time waved his hands helplessly. "Suddenly we were arguing and she stormed off up the trail. I figured I'd give her a few moments to calm down and go up after her. She had . . . has, I mean," Jason caught himself. "Lisa has a quick temper, sort of like her father, but telling her that just makes her mad. Anyway, I waited then followed her. I almost missed her sign going off towards the Table. It never occurred to me she'd be crazy enough to go up there." Jason swallowed hard, his tongue flicking across his lips. Mulder poured him a glass of water that he took gratefully and drained in one long swallow.

"I'm not crazy, Agent Mulder, and I'm not a killer. I swear that what I saw happened." Jason's voice trembled as he leaned forward, practically in Mulder's face.

"Just tell me what you saw, Jason," Mulder urged quietly. He resisted the urge to pull back, to put some distance between him and Jason's urgency, he didn't want to give Jason a chance to collect his thoughts. He willed the lawyer to stay quiet and let Jason talk. The boy was close to frantic now and all sorts of interesting facts might slip out if he just let himself talk.

"The sun was just setting on top of Summer's Peak. I came around the bend and saw Lisa sitting in the stone chair. She had a frightful look on her face and I thought she was trying to scream, nothing came out. Then the wind picked up and started blowing everything around, howling something fierce. As quickly as it started up, the wind stopped and everything went dead still. I looked and she was gone." Jason stopped and sniffled briefly, looking embarrassed.

"Did she just vanish abruptly or did she slowly fade?" Mulder asked casually as he leaned back and fiddled with a pencil. Hobbs gave a startled gasp which he valiantly tried to turn into a cough. Chessman's snort was contemptuous, but he held his peace. Now if he'd only stay quiet, Mulder thought as he waited for Jason's answer. Chessman had no idea just how important this question was, nor did Jason, and Mulder wanted to keep it that way. He was adopting a pose of almost casual indifference that masked his interest in Jason's response.

Jason looked confused. This was obviously not the tactic he was expecting from the FBI. He looked a bit dazed as he shook his head helplessly. "I don't know, sir. The wind was kicking up dust and debris so bad that I had to throw up my arms to cover my face. When I could see again, Lisa was gone."

"So you didn't actually see her disappear?" Mulder inserted a slight note of disbelief in his voice as he prodded Jason into remembering the small details of that afternoon.

"She was there, then she wasn't. I don't know what else you'd call it but disappearing," Jason replied in frustration. "I don't have any fancy words to describe what happened, but I didn't kill her," he asserted in a mulish tone.

"Was there any way the wind could have blown her off the edge of the trail?" Mulder asked, damning the lack of crime scene photos. He was operating blind and that was a sure way of overlooking the key questions to ask.

"I don't know. It was strong enough to keep me from getting to her, but . . . " Jason paused and screwed his face up as if he was trying to haul every last moment of that afternoon out of his memory.

"I looked for her. I searched that place until it was too dark to see and I had to head back to town. I looked, mister, I'd have torn the rocks apart with my bare hands to find her if I could have," Jason cried, sounding miserable. "I love her," he added in a voice so soft Mulder had to strain to hear barely a foot away from him. Mulder believed him, but lovers had killed before and regretted a moment's impulse with all the heartrending grief Jason was showing now. Grief was no indicator of innocence.

"What were you and Lisa arguing about?" Mulder asked abruptly, cutting through Jason's anguish.

"That's between me and Lisa," Jason replied stubbornly, if a bit unsteadily. Mulder noted that he rallied quickly, but he was on an emotional roller coaster that was rapidly speeding out of control. His eyes blazed with an anger that was quite at odds with his physical demeanor of grief and despair. Whatever he and Lisa had argued about, the issue was still a sore point with Jason.

"Not any more. The moment Lisa disappeared, your every movement, what you discussed with her, and everything else about your relationship with her ceased being private," Mulder informed him in a cold, official tone while watching him closely for minute reactions. Instinct was telling him that Jason had been handled with kid gloves so far. He needed reminding that his situation was extremely serious.

Jason shook his head with a resentful glare at Mulder. So the boy had a stubborn streak, possibly a quick temper if Mulder was reading the signs right. Was that enough to suggest a sudden outburst and an action bitterly regretted, if not entirely suppressed behind legends and fanciful wishes?

"I will find out, Jason. It would be better for you to tell me your side of the story," Mulder pointed out, pressing the issue. Part of him hated pushing a boy already on the edge of collapse, but unless he could find out the truth, that boy was looking at a very long prison sentence.

"If I won't tell the sheriff, why should I tell you? It doesn't matter what we were arguing about. Lisa got mad and stormed off. She's done it before and cooled down right quick." Jason paused as he fought some emotion that twisted his mouth into a bitter sneer. "Her father no doubt figures he knows, but he doesn't have the slightest idea what Lisa wanted." The way Jason practically spat out the word 'father' spoke volumes about what he thought about Peter Quatrain.

"Jason, Agent Mulder wants to help you. He's the last hope you have," Hobbs interjected in a pleading tone. Mulder held his breath. The abrupt change in tone might be enough to crack Jason's resistance, but the boy merely shook his head and folded his arms in a stubbornly defiant gesture. Mulder wondered if he really understood just how close he was to a murder trial. The mood in the room had shifted, however, and Mulder made no attempt to build up the pressure again. Unless he wanted to break Jason down piece by piece, he wasn't going to get any more answers today.

"Is there anything else you can remember? Any detail, no matter how small, how silly, or even how improbable?" Mulder asked, giving Jason no time to congratulate himself on outfacing two FBI agents. His emotions were raw right now and perhaps might jog some forgotten clue.

"I believe my client . . . ," Chessman interrupted.

"Wait!" Jason cried, starting up from the table, startling Chessman into silence and causing the deputy to step forward. Mulder waved him back and waited.

"I thought I was going insane. I kept hearing her voice in the wind. I swear I heard her call my name over and over until her voice just faded away. The last word I heard her say was 'Daddy’."

Jason's temper finally snapped free as he hit the table hard enough with his fist to splinter the wood. "Now tell me, Mister FBI man, that I'm insane, that I killed her and I might just believe you because the only other explanation is that the damned Table took her and I wish to God it had taken me instead," he shouted as he repeatedly slammed his fist against the table. Chessman shrank back, attempting to put distance between him and his unruly client. The deputy laid a hand on Jason's shoulder to restrain him, but Jason angrily shrugged it off. Before the deputy could intervene more forcibly, Mulder took hold of Jason's hands.

"I don't think you're insane. I don't know whether you're a murderer or not, but I intend to find out. You know the legends about the Table, don't you?" Mulder asked in an even tone, bracing his arms against Jason's frantic effort to free himself. "If you won't answer me, I can't help you," he said as he kept Jason's hands locked in his.

In the background, he could hear Chessman sputtering about police brutality and Hobbs soothing him, but Mulder kept his attention focused on Jason. They had reached the critical phase of this interview and he wasn’t about to let Jason recover his equilibrium just to play nice with a lawyer. Jason’s future could depend on the answers he gave in the next few moments.

With a curse, Jason abruptly quit struggling and slumped back into his chair. Biting his lower lip he struggled for control. "Yeah, I know the legends. Everyone does, but no one really believes in them -- well, mostly not. Lisa thought they were cool. Maybe if she'd believed a bit more, she wouldn't have gone up there."

Mulder remained silent. There wasn't much he could say. Jason's responses were either completely normal for a man who saw his lover vanish into thin air, or else were one of the most cleverly concocted stories Mulder had heard in a long time. His gut instinct was telling him that Jason wasn't lying, but Quatrain, not to mention Skinner, would want more than his instincts to settle the case.

"What do you think happened to Lisa, Jason?" Mulder asked in a gentle voice. This was the crux of the entire interview whether Jason knew it or not.

"I think that damn Table took her. She was mad enough at her father to dare the Luck and I don't know where it sent her," Jason sobbed.

Mulder sat back and gave him time to collect himself. He noted the curious inflection Jason put on the word 'luck.' He wondered if this 'luck' was the fey kind of luck which was always a risky thing to tempt, according to Celtic lore.

"I don't know any more except that Lisa's gone and I let it happen. Now, I'd like to go back to my cell, please," Jason requested in a quavering voice, The angry man was gone, replaced by a frightened youngster.

Mulder nodded and watched the deputy guide the slumping boy back down the hall. His instinct told him that Jason had told him all he knew. It was an improbable story, but Mulder believed him.

Hobbs started to clear his throat to speak, but Mulder shook his head. Without a word to Chessman, Mulder gestured Hobbs to the door. Only when they were in the sheriff's office did Hobbs speak.

"Now you see why you had to hear that. I think he's telling the truth, but what he says he saw is impossible."

"Not impossible, just highly improbable. There have been cases of people slipping through cracks in time or space. It's happened here once before, if you believe the legends. Perhaps more than once. I need to see this Table."

"It won't tell you anything. It's just a big stone oval surrounded by nine carved stones that might be taken for rough-hewn chairs if you use your imagination. The sheriff took me up there and we found nothing. What do you expect to find?" Hobbs asked curiously. His tone hovered on the edge of disbelief, but he appeared to be trying to keep an open mind.

"I won't know until I see it, but the answer's up there," Mulder replied confidently.

"Well, we'll have to wait until the sheriff gets back. I think he put the word around that no one is to go up there without his permission. Besides, I don't know the trail and this isn't the sort of weather I want to get lost in," Hobbs said firmly.

"Let's talk about it over coffee. I want to see your notes from the first interview. Didn't anyone think to take photos of the crime scene?" Mulder asked peevishly as they headed out the door into the cold.

"Well, Agent Mulder, did the boy convince you that he's one of your X-Files?" a pleasantly accented voice, roughened with anger, spoke behind them.

Mulder turned to see Peter Quatrain standing by the front door of the sheriff's office flanked by his two bodyguards. He felt Hobbs stiffen, but the other agent said nothing. Mulder took firm hold of his temper and lashed it down. Quatrain's methods were unexpectedly crude. Considering his dossier, Mulder anticipated far more subtlety and finesse than this overt attempt at intimidation. Saying nothing, Mulder waited, although he deliberately adopted a slouching, indolent stance that invariably drove self-important men up the wall. All the while, he was assessing Quatrain, trying to divine what prompted this frontal assault. Hobbs was obviously uneasy, but thankfully was letting him take the lead. Mulder made a mental note to commend Hobbs to Skinner when this was all over.

"Did he talk about spooks and mysterious disappearances? When can I expect to hear that my daughter was abducted by aliens, Agent Mulder?" Quatrain asked sarcastically, stepping forward until he was almost brushing up against Mulder's chest. Mulder noted that Quatrain had him beat by about two inches and probably about thirty pounds, all muscle. Apparently Quatrain had decided to go for overt intimidation after his earlier attempt at silent menance had failed.

"What Fairfax said is confidential, Mr. Quatrain, you should know that. I'm sure you wouldn't care for my interview with you to become public knowledge, would you?" Mulder asked pleasantly. Quatrain looked startled. Apparently it had never occurred to him that he would be interviewed. When Quatrain stiffened, one of the security men stepped forward menacingly. Mulder hoped Quatrain had his men on a short leash otherwise the situation was going to deteriorate badly. Engaging in a public brawl with Quatrain's people was probably not what Skinner had in mind when he suggested the diplomatic approach.

"Dodson, get back. When I want you, I'll call you," Quatrain snapped in a cold, crisp voice of command. The man who'd stepped forward flushed, and hastily moved back to rejoin his companion. Quatrain's anger was now tinged with the awareness that he'd just lost a point in this game.

"Threatening a federal officer in performance of his duties is a serious crime, Mr. Quatrain. You should also be aware that I will make sure that none of your men I might be forced to arrest will be housed in this jail," Mulder said in a deliberately amused tone calculated to tell Quatrain that he wasn’t impressed by his power-play. Quatrain's anger flashed for a moment, then to Mulder’s surprise it faded into a calculating appraisal.

"I underestimated you, Agent Mulder, or rather my informant didn't bother to look beneath the surface," Quatrain admitted with grudging respect. "However, understand this. I believe that the Fairfax boy is responsible for my daughter's disappearance. Whether he killed her or merely ran off and abandoned her to die alone in the cold doesn't matter. I will have my pound of flesh." Quatrain's attitude suggested that he had no doubt of his ability to fix the outcome to his satisfaction.

"I'm not interested in your pound of flesh, Mr. Quatrain. I'm interested only in finding out what happened to your daughter. I understand that you've requested the RCMP to send a man to assist in the investigation. Whatever you think of me and my theories, I'm not out to prove that this case is based on the paranormal, but I won't ignore evidence suggesting that it is, either," Mulder said flatly.

"We'll see. I'll be watching you, Agent Mulder. Find my daughter and I can be a very good friend to have. Side with that boy's ridiculous story and you'll find that I'm not a forgiving man," Quatrain said coolly.

"I'll consider your emotional state of mind and not report that as a threat, Mr. Quatrain.," Mulder said evenly, leaving the unspoken ‘this time’ hanging in the air between them. "Now, if you will excuse us, we have work to do," Mulder said as he deliberately turned his back on Quatrain and resumed walking down the street. After a momentary pause, Hobbs caught up with him. Mulder felt Quatrain's glare boring into the space between his shoulder blades, but ignored the urge to turn around. The encounter was just about a draw and Mulder wanted to keep it that way.

Hobbs let out his breath in a long whoosh, but said nothing as they walked back to their car. They drove back to the inn in silence. Mulder sensed Hobbs wasn't overly happy with the way he'd handled Quatrain, but from the little Hobbs had said, Mulder didn't think he'd done much better on his turn at bat. Quatrain was going to be a problem, but maybe this Mountie coming in would be able to keep him in line. However, he sensed an urgency about Quatrain's anger; a desire to shove everyone into line before his government showed up in the person of an RCMP officer. That raised some interesting questions about who the RCMP were sending as their liaison.

Interesting, Mulder thought as he tried to analyze the enigma that was Peter Quatrain. Maybe, if he could find the solution to the father, he might have a better idea of who Lisa Quatrain was and what might have prompted her disappearance. She was the ghost at the center of this whole investigation, but no one had yet given him a strong picture of who she was. Mulder was seeing her reflection in Jason's grief and her father's anger, but he was missing a sense of who the real Lisa was.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Back at the inn, Mulder commandeered a dining room table so he could spread out his notes and Hobbs' notes and start comparing them. Sarah brought out coffee and fresh bread before disappearing into another part of the house. Mulder wondered where the other guests were. He'd done a quick count of the rooms after breakfast, but so far he'd seen no one else in the inn. It seemed highly unlikely that Sarah would agree to shutting down her inn during the peak season just to accommodate visiting FBI agents and probably a stray Mountie, but that appeared to be the case.

"I'm afraid my notes aren't very organized. Every time I tried to write up a report I found myself imagining my SAC's reaction to the story and gave up. How do you manage to make all of this stuff sound convincing?" Hobbs asked hesitantly.

"Practice. It also helps not to care what other people think as long as you're satisfied you've found the truth," Mulder replied absently. Hobbs wrote clear, concise notes, but they made no sense when everything was added together. Hobbs was obviously conflicted between a sensible, rational explanation, and a grudging willingness to believe Jason. His sketchy notes on the crime scene gave little indication that Hobbs had been one of the best forensics investigators to come out of Quantico in the last decade.

"How do you know when you've found the truth when the truth seems to be an impossibility?" Hobbs asked earnestly. Mulder didn't have the feeling that Hobbs was baiting him. Rather, Hobbs seemed to be trying to understand how to reconcile scientific fact and the paranormal. For a moment, Mulder felt a wave of nostalgia as he recalled his early arguments with Scully over the same issue. When had she become closed off to the possibilities that lay beyond the boundaries of her science? When had he stopped noticing that her objections became less and less relevant and more just reactions against his beliefs?

"Instinct," he finally replied after sifting through various responses. "How do you know you've collected all the clues at a crime scene?" he asked in turn. Hobbs started, then gave him a rueful smile.

"Never thought of it that way. I doubt if my SAC will accept instinct as a rationale for my conclusions, but I might just try it. If all else fails, maybe I can write up my notes and sell them as a sci-fi novel."

"Don't plan a career as a novel-writer just yet, Hobbs. There's an answer here. We just have to find it," Mulder assured him with more confidence than he actually felt. Hobbs gave him a doubtful look, but nodded. Mulder wondered just how much faith Hobbs was putting in him. What stories had he heard about Spooky Mulder pulling fantastic answers out of thin air?

Perhaps I need to reassure myself, Mulder conceded. He felt as if he was floundering, unable to find the key that would unlock this case. The easy solution was to blame Lisa's disappearance on Jason, or call it at worst a freak accident, but every instinct he had told him that there wasn’t going to be an easy solution to this case. He had a few ideas already, but even to him they seemed fantastic. Hopefully, Hobbs' notes would give him more to go on.

To his surprise, there were no crime scene photos at all. That seemed highly unlikely given Hobbs' experience and reputation.

"Where are the crime scene photos?" Mulder asked as he continued to sift through the notes hoping he'd just overlooked them.

"There aren't any. Forgot my camera," Hobbs said in an apologetic voice that didn’t sound very convincing. When Mulder gave him a disbelieving stare, he shrugged. "I thought it was in my backpack. When we got up there, no camera. Sorry. I made a rough sketch of the area," he offered as he reached in and pulled out a simple drawing that showed a crudely drawn stone table surrounded by nine stone pillars, or chairs if Mulder used his imagination. Hobbs was clearly not offering a more detailed explanation of his oversight or his lapse in artistic skills. Mulder clamped down on his irritation for the moment. He could recognize a stonewall when he ran into one. Why Hobbs was stonewalling him was the question and there seemed to be no good answer to it unless he started treating Hobbs as a hostile witness and he preferred not to do that, just yet.

Mulder considered the options even as he kept reading. He was dimly aware of Hobbs moving about, but his presence barely registered except to note movement. Either Hobbs was participating in a willful campaign of misinformation, or else something else was at work influencing him. If the former, then Hobbs was hardly likely to welcome his arrival, yet Hobbs had given every impression of regarding him as a much-awaited relief force. If the latter, then this entire case was possibly more complicated that Mulder had thought. Drugs were a possibility, although imagining Sarah as a nefarious conspirator doling out drugs with her blueberry pie and pancakes took some doing. He'd seen innocent-seeming perpetrators too many times, but if he started seeing conspiracies everywhere, Skinner would have him in Psych Services before the ink was dry on his report.

After nearly an hour of reading Hobbs' reports and pondering the possibilities Mulder surfaced with a feeling of intense frustration. Lisa Quatrain continued to be the elusive ghost in this investigation. Hobbs' report barely skimmed the surface of who she was and why she would head off into the mountains in the dead of winter to meet a local boy. So far, all he had was a general description and little else. Lisa must have been a beauty with her milk chocolate skin and the red hair that one of Hobbs' witnesses had described as a lion's mane. In fact, Mulder noted as he reshuffled through Hobbs' brief notes, most of the people describing her used feline adjectives. The odd thing was that they didn't describe her as friendly -- most of the comments seemed to be from people who'd seen her in passing. There was no indication that she stopped and spoken with anyone, so how had Jason met her, and how, or if, they became friends?

"Damn." Mulder cursed tiredly as he tossed the folder back on the table. No crime scene photos, no photo of Lisa -- in fact, there seemed to be a complete lack of photos of any of the significant parts of this investigation.

"What are you looking for?"

"Somewhere you have to have either a more complete report on Lisa Quatrain, or at the very least a picture of her," Mulder snapped as he leaned back and glared at the ceiling. It was tempting to glare at Hobbs, but he wanted answers, not an argument. Hobbs wasn't incompetent, which meant that he had been withholding information about Lisa for a reason.

"Noticed the dearth of information on her, did you?" Hobbs said with a resigned shake of his head. "Her father has been less than forthcoming about the intimate details of his daughter's stay here in Camlyn. According to him, she was not seeing Jason other than in casual encounters, and the boy is fantasizing a relationship to cover-up his unwarranted assault on her."

Mulder looked at Hobbs with a raised eyebrow and a look of surprise. The whirlwind had just tossed another piece to this complex puzzle at him.

"Does Mr. Quatrain explain his reluctance to cooperate with the investigation into his daughter's disappearance?" Mulder asked abruptly. This was yet another piece to the puzzle and one he had not expected to find. His curiosity about Quatrain was growing even as he began revising some of his earlier theories.

"He's cooperated; he's just not saying much. He claims he doesn't have a recent photo of his daughter. I wanted to get a search warrant, but the sheriff thought it best to let the Mountie handle him, if he could. Quatrain has an ironclad alibi that includes the mayor and the local minister, otherwise I'd say he was hiding something."

"So, we have a father who appears to be outwardly extremely concerned over the fate of his daughter, but who is basically stonewalling the investigation into her disappearance?" Mulder felt his brain already shifting gears to incorporate this newest piece of the puzzle. In some ways it fit with the profile he'd drawn up on Quatrain from the information Frohike sent him. He just hadn't counted on Quatrain being more concerned about his privacy than about his daughter.

"I'm no profiler," Hobbs said apologetically. Mulder waved off his disclaimer and gestured for him to continue. Common sense could sometimes be as useful as all the profiling techniques he'd ever learned and Hobbs seemed endowed with his fair share of common sense. Mulder sensed that the time was fast approaching when he might start to shift into full profiling mode, which meant that he better warn Hobbs that he was likely to be uncommunicative and somewhat surly when interrupted until he created a working picture of the people involved in this case.

"Mr. Quatrain seems afraid of something. I think he brought Lisa here to protect her. I also think he's afraid that Jason didn't kill her," Hobbs ended on an uncertain note.

"You might have a point. Quatrain is definitely on the defensive and that's not a position he likes being in, I think," Mulder replied after thinking about Hobbs' conclusions for several minutes. "Is there anyone in town who knew Lisa?"

"According to her father, no, but I'm not sure how reliable he is right now. I'm beginning to suspect that Lisa lied to her father a lot. Thurgood intended to start asking around, but between your arrival and the Mountie's, I don't think he's gotten around to making serious inquiries."

"I can answer your question, Agent Mulder," Sarah said from the doorway. Startled, Mulder looked up. How long had she been sitting there listening to them? "I was just passing by and heard your question," she assured him as she waved a stack of mail at him. Mulder glanced at the clock and saw that it was past eleven. He'd just lost an hour. That wasn't unusual; when he got interested in a case, he lost days sometimes. Thankfully Hobbs had just left him to his thoughts, although he'd probably been warned by a number of people that Spooky Mulder did some strange shit when he started profiling. At least Hobbs didn't seem to expect him to start spouting off cryptic comments that would miraculously solve the case.

Sarah wheeled into the room and poured coffee into the mug attached to a sidebar on her wheelchair before coming over to the table. Hobbs started to say something, then just began gathering his folders together into a large pile. Mulder waited. As an investigator, he liked eavesdroppers -- they were often the most useful people to talk to in an investigation, but he didn't like the idea that the details of what he and Hobbs were talking about might hit the local gossip circuit.

"Don't worry, Agent Mulder, I'm not about to say anything. I regard innkeepers as belonging to the fraternity of bartenders who listen without feeling the need to repeat everything they hear," Sarah assured him.

Mulder looked startled. He hadn’t expected Sarah to be able to read him as well as she had.

"It’s pretty obvious that you wouldn’t want more gossip circulating than already is. In my wild and reckless youth, I served a couple of years as a deputy, more to keep the sheriff’s office organized and prevent Jasper’s predecessor from making major mistakes. Gridley Thompson was a nice man, but had absolutely no common sense where rules of evidence or even procedure were concerned," Sarah added with a reminiscent chuckle.

"You said that someone in town knew Lisa?" Mulder asked, getting back to the topic at hand. He was inclined to trust Sarah. She was a lot sharper than she appeared and probably knew far more than she was willing to tell him. He hoped they would not be adversaries.

"She didn't mix with most of the people in town. She met Jason by accident from what I heard. Maybe the idea that she was defying her father gave extra spice to their meetings. Or maybe they were just two young people falling in love for the first time. Jason's always been a loner -- a boy more at home in the woods and up in those mountains than living tight among his fellow man. Lisa struck me as someone very similar," Sarah explained in a fond, reminiscent tone.

"Then you've met her?" Mulder asked eagerly. He could hear Hobbs swearing softly and sympathized. It had to hurt his pride to realize that he'd overlooked a potential witness. Hobbs wasn't out to impress him, Mulder was sure of that, but he couldn't enjoy the feeling that he'd slipped up in front of a senior agent.

"Once or twice. She and her father came here to dinner a couple of times. I don't cater to the skiing crowd, but I do offer dinners about two or three times a week with reservations. I've done no more than speak casually with her, but I got the impression that she was being forced into a path she didn't want to follow. Peter Quatrain seems like a good man, but blind as a bat to any other path but the one he sees," Sarah said in an exasperated tone.

"It sounds like you've done more than just talk casually with her?" Mulder pressed.

"I'm a professional people watcher, Agent Mulder. I've always been a keen observer, except for one memorable occasion." Sarah paused and gave a sad glance out the window towards the mountains. "I wish now that I'd taken the time to talk with her," she added ruefully.

"So you think her father was forcing her to do something she didn't want to do?" Mulder asked bluntly.

"No, more like her father had her life all planned out and didn't bother consulting Lisa about it. He strikes me as a man who has a plan for everything and doesn't always stop to consider whether the people involved agree."

"That's a strong deduction from just people-watching, Sarah," Mulder commented, giving Sarah an intense stare meant to shake her up a bit. Sarah seemed to know more than she was telling him and he was getting tired of these evasions.

"Not really. The kitchen is just next door and it's hard not to overhear a loud argument carried on in here," she replied blandly, but with just enough of a twinkle in her eyes that Mulder knew she was on to his tactics. For a brief, irrational moment, Mulder wondered if Sarah would be interested in a job as an FBI agent, specifically one as his partner.

"Do you have a pat answer for everything?" Mulder retorted with mock sternness and a rueful nod of acknowledgment of her riposte. Normally, he’d find Sarah's cryptic comments annoying, but for some reason he found them challenging.

"Agent Mulder, I really don't know more than I'm telling you. I know some old legends that might or might not have something to do with this case, but if I fill your head with them, how will I ever know if you found the truth or just latched onto a legend that conveniently explained everything?" Sarah explained apologetically.

Mulder stared at her, willing her to give him those legends, but she just shook her head. Mulder was beginning to realize that Sarah was as implacable as those mountains of hers.

"When you've seen the Table for yourself, then I’ll try to answer some of your questions," Sarah conceded after a moment's thought. "Meanwhile, if you want to know more about Lisa, talk to Rachel down at the library. Lisa spent a lot of time there and helped Rachel out on occasion. It also doubles as our local historical center. If anyone can tell you about Lisa, it will be Rachel. I'll phone her that you'll be coming to see her."

Despite his irritation, Mulder had to admire Sarah's tactics, even if he felt as if he were a victim of a bait and switch game. The Table was beginning to prey on his imagination. Hobbs had almost dismissed it, yet here was Sarah implying that it was the key to the entire case. He was tempted to just start walking up to Blackthorn Mountain, but one push-your-luck-to-the-edge trip into the snow was probably his limit for this lifetime.

"Meanwhile, I think I hear the sheriff's Jeep turning into the driveway which means that there will be one more at lunch," Sarah said as she abruptly wheeled towards the kitchen. "It will be ready in half an hour," she announced as she disappeared through the swinging door.

"He's early," Hobbs commented uncertainly before straightening up and assuming what Mulder suspected was his official special agent persona. At least one of them wasn't going to be too much of a shock to the Mountie's sense of propriety, Mulder thought with resigned irritation. He really didn't have time to play games with a Mountie, but Skinner had been very clear -- be as diplomatic as possible. Mulder was tempted to go out for a run and let Hobbs handle the diplomacy. He had a case to solve and the sooner he started sifting together all the clues, the sooner they might have an answer to Lisa's disappearance. By this time, even if she had just disappeared normally, there was little hope of finding her alive. At worst, they might be able to find a body to give her father some closure. At best, all he saw was an answer Peter Quatrain might not be able to accept.

"Agent Mulder, Agent Hobbs, this is Constable Benton Fraser," the sheriff announced as he ushered in a tall, extremely good-looking young officer. Constable Fraser looked like he'd stepped out of a recruiting poster, Mulder grumbled to himself. Every crease in his official brown uniform was razor sharp. There hadn't been time for them to stop off at a dry cleaners to have the uniform pressed after the plane trip, but his uniform looked entirely too neat for the situation.

"Good morning, Agent Mulder, Agent Hobbs," Fraser said in a pleasant baritone voice as he extended his hand to each of them in turn.

From the quick glance he caught of Hobbs' face, Mulder sensed that he recognized this Mountie. There was a peculiar stunned glaze in Hobbs' eyes. The name did seem familiar, though. Mulder went through the automatic rituals of greeting and exchanging handshakes even as he searched his memory. Letting Hobbs handle most of the pleasantries, Mulder concentrated on pinning down why Constable Fraser's name rang a bell. Having a photographic memory was extremely useful; the problem was retrieving the relevant information on demand.

Grabbing a sweet roll and refilling his coffee cup, Mulder carefully stepped over to a corner where he was just on the edge of Hobbs' conversation with Fraser, but not close enough to be expected to participate. He needed time and hoped Hobbs could keep the Mountie occupied.

For some reason, he was associating an Inuit shaman with the name of Benton Fraser. As he followed this trail of thought, he vaguely sensed Hobbs making small talk with the Constable. Mulder noticed that even standing at ease and holding a cup of coffee in his hand, Fraser appeared to be standing at attention. He made Skinner look like a slouch, Mulder thought with growing dismay. This case did not need a straight-by-the-book Mountie messing with it, or rather he didn't need one, Mulder admitted. The case might survive; Mulder wasn't sure his promise to Skinner would.

Deciding that he'd deal with this Mountie after he'd found out why his name was so familiar, Mulder let the voices slide around him as he narrowed his mental search. Finally, he cornered the stray piece of information and pounced on it. Seven years ago, there had been a case that had sparked his interest before other things sidetracked him, like a brand new green partner.. The case had involved stolen Inuit tribal masks that had turned up in Chicago. There was heavy suspicion that the masks were more than just religious icons. Reading between the lines, Mulder was fairly certain that at least some of the masks were associated with power rituals and might be conduits of power themselves. One of the prominent names mentioned in the reports of the investigation was a Constable Benton Fraser, deputy liaison officer in the Chicago Canadian consulate office. The reports Mulder read were straightforward and clearly written with official etiquette in mind, but it was what wasn't said that had intrigued him at the time. The Inuit shaman had gone to Constable Fraser for help, not the Chicago PD. Mulder wished he'd followed his instincts and done a follow-up check, but he'd been busy and a stray report out of Chicago had quickly slipped into his "later" box.

The sound of claws on a wood floor brought Mulder abruptly back to the present. Staring at him from the doorway was a large white wolf. The wolf appeared to be studying him. Mulder didn't recall that wolves were standard-issue equipment for RCMP officers. Mulder stared back at the wolf dubiously. He wasn't prejudiced against wolves, as long as that's what they were. To his dismay, the wolf calmly started walking towards him with a predatory gleam in his eyes. Mulder wondered what the diplomatic fallout would be if he shot a Mountie's wolf in self-defense. He refused to back down, but with both hands full, he felt very vulnerable.

"Diefenbaker," Fraser said sternly as he stepped between them into the wolf's line of vision. "My apologies, Agent Mulder. Diefenbaker, we are guests. Guests don't beg," he admonished the wolf in a grave voice. The wolf lolled his tongue out and grinned at him as he sat down.

Mulder got the oddest feeling that the two of them were actually communicating and that Diefenbaker was not very impressed by Fraser's admonition.

"I'm sorry. Diefenbaker is a glutton where sweet rolls are concerned. I'm afraid the long journey has temporarily made him forget his manners. I must ask our hostess if she has some suitable food on hand. I'm afraid the sheriff didn't receive advance notice of Diefenbaker's arrival. He seemed quite taken aback," Fraser admitted in a regretful tone.

"It's not a problem, Constable Fraser. Sheriff Thurgood called ahead and warned me that we would be having an extra guest on hand," Sarah called out as the kitchen door swung open. "Hello, I'm Sarah Godfrey, Sarah to my guests. My son is taking your things up to your room -- second door on the left. It's a large room so you and your companion should be comfortable."

"I don't mean to put you out, Mrs. Godfrey . . . ," Fraser started.

"Nonsense. I have six rooms upstairs and only two are taken. Plenty of room for you and --Diefenbaker is it?" she said with a questioning tone.

"Yes ma'am," Fraser agreed formally.

"Good, then that's settled. Will Diefenbaker be dining in here with you, or would he prefer the kitchen?" Sarah asked as she shifted her attention from Fraser to the wolf. With a smart spin, she wheeled over to where the wolf sat quietly. "Good morning, Diefenbaker, welcome to my home." Extending her hand slightly, she looked pleased when the wolf gravely lifted a paw to touch her hand before putting it back down.

"Here is fine, if you don't mind," Fraser replied politely.

Mulder wondered if Fraser ever said anything informally. The man was almost a caricature of the classic Mountie, yet Mulder sensed there was more to him than met the eye. He noticed that Fraser's eyes were alert, shifting around the room, taking in everything, yet giving away nothing. Perhaps Fraser's formality perhaps served the same purpose as his own tendency to make smart-ass comments -- it was a convenient way to cover up his assessment and evaluation of the people he was going to work with. Underestimating Fraser would be a mistake, Mulder thought. Coping with him might be impossible, but Mulder definitely put him in the ranks of people to pay close attention to.

"Agent Mulder, I've read a great deal about you in the past twenty-four hours. Am I to assume that you believe that this case has some paranormal explanation?" Fraser asked, turning his full attention on Mulder.

The effect of Fraser's undivided attention was interesting, for lack of a better word. Mulder felt as if he was under a microscope camouflaged behind a polite, even friendly facade. Conditioned reflexes against this kind of treatment started snapping into place and it took a brief internal tussle to stop an extremely sarcastic remark from slipping out. That response was too easy, too automatic, and Mulder didn't want to give Fraser what he might be looking for -- the classic Mulder smart-ass brush-off. Mulder didn't like playing mind-games by other people's rules. It might do this Mountie some good to shake up some of his preconceptions. Mulder would play the game, but on his terms and by his rules.

"That has yet to be determined. My interrogation of the primary suspect yielded ambiguous results at best. Peter Quatrain's brief interview with me, however, was far more informative," Mulder replied with a friendly smile while carefully watching Fraser's eyes. They barely blinked, but Mulder sensed that his response was not the one Fraser had expected. Deliberately turning his eyes away from Fraser, Mulder noticed Hobbs standing very still with a fascinated look on his face. It was telling that he recognized the subtext going on in the room and even more revealing that he didn't seem particularly worried about it. Mulder made a note to ask Hobbs what he knew about Constable Fraser. That he recognized him, or at least the name, was obvious and Mulder didn't think Hobbs was interested in Inuit religious masks.

"Naturally, I assumed that if the FBI had called you in, that the initial findings suggested the need for your particular way of looking at things, Agent Mulder. Apparently my superiors took Mr. Quatrain's interpretation of events far too literally." Fraser actually did look apologetic. Whether for his misassumption or because he realized that Mulder was aware of his probing, Mulder couldn’t tell.

I'd say that match was a draw, Mulder decided.

"Sheriff Thurgood requested my services, Constable Fraser. If you want to know the reason why, you should ask him," Mulder retorted officiously.

"Shit," he muttered softly. This wasn't him. He might play mind-games, but this sort of bureaucratic tit-for-tat wasn't his style, or hadn't been until a few years ago. I've been in D.C. too long, he conceded irritably.

"Fraser, I honestly don't know whether there's a paranormal explanation or not, but I've gotten enough hints from the sheriff here and Sarah to think that they believe whatever happened to Lisa Quatrain wasn't normal," Mulder explained casually as he visibly relaxed his too straight stance. He hadn't realized that he'd been standing at attention until now. Fraser's formality was contagious, it seemed.

"I see," Fraser commented in a non-committal tone. His eyes continued to probe Mulder, but Mulder simply smiled blandly.

Mulder was intrigued by this Canadian enigma. He smothered a smile as he contemplated Quatrain's reaction to Constable Fraser. From the brief encounter earlier, it was clear to Mulder that Quatrain was even less happy with the arrival of this particular Mountie than he was with Mulder's arrival. That suggested that Quatrain did not believe that Fraser could be manipulated. No doubt Quatrain had been hoping on using his influence to control whoever the RCMPs sent down.

Mulder went dead silent as a new train of thought diverted him from mental jousting with Fraser. He barely breathed as he tried to clarify his sudden feeling that a disaster was in progress. His expression turned from sardonic to a feline intensity as he stared through Fraser.

"Sheriff, how many deputies do you have on duty at the jail?" Mulder asked sharply, half-starting towards the door as he made sense of what his instinct was trying to tell him. He replayed his impressions of Quatrain and did a quick profile of how he was likely to react to being balked of control over the situation yet again.

"I only have one deputy, plus a couple of part-timers who help out now and then," the sheriff replied slowly, giving Mulder a strange look. Before Mulder could say a word, he saw the same thought hit the sheriff.

"Damn. Quatrain wouldn't be that stupid, would he, Constable?" Thurgood growled at a startled Fraser. To his credit, Fraser merely blinked once then caught on immediately to what the sheriff was referring to.

"Sheriff Thurgood, if you're suggesting that Mr. Quatrain would attempt to spirit your prisoner away, I think that would be extremely unwise of him," Fraser responded evenly. His expression was calm, but the barest flicker of his eyes and the prick of Diefenbaker's ears told Mulder that he did indeed consider the possibility that Quatrain could be that impulsive.

"I'm not suggesting anything, Constable, but Quatrain has been hanging around my jail like a vulture. If he has tried anything, he may find that New England hospitality can be tried too far," the sheriff responded testily as he faced off with Fraser.

"Gentlemen, I'm not suggesting we be hasty about this, but perhaps a brief visit to the jail so that I can meet the suspect wouldn't be amiss at this moment," Fraser suggested as he headed for the door.

"Sarah, sorry, but lunch will have to wait," the sheriff yelled back, shrugging back into his coat as he stepped lively towards the front door, almost tangling with Diefenbaker who was fast on the heels of Fraser.

Fraser appeared to be very quick on the uptake and very adept at putting thought into action, Mulder observed as he tried to relax under the oppressive pressure of trying to make sense of what he feared was happening. Quatrain's motive were mixed, at best, but Mulder had encountered his temper earlier and recognized his need to get an answer to his daughter's disappearance. Taking charge by kidnapping Jason certainly fell within Quatrain’s personality profile, he admitted tohimself, a bit chagrined that he hadn’t anticipated this move. The mystery of the Table had been too attractive and he’d allowed himself to become distracted, Mulder conceded. He was used to the counter-balance Scully had provided for him and now he was going to have to act on instinct to recoup the situation.

"Wait up a minute, Hobbs," he said as he grabbed Hobbs' arm as he rushed past him in the sheriff's wake. "We can take your car. Let's grab our hiking gear, now. If Quatrain is trying something, this is the sheriff's territory and Quatrain is Fraser's responsibility. I don't want to waste time hunting up my gear if Quatrain has taken Jason, understand?" Mulder asked as he took the stairs two at a time. At a momentary pause, he heard Hobbs come up after him.

"No, but you can explain it to me in the car," Hobbs replied in a resigned tone. "SAC Hopkins told me that I'd better be prepared for abrupt left turns and your tendency to veer off in strange directions. I wished I'd listened better," he added with a broad smile as he headed towards his room.

Mulder didn't waste time answering him. Grabbing his heavy gloves and a ski mask from his tote bag, he headed back out the door almost in time to run into Hobbs who was exiting his room at a similar high rate of speed. He was still stamping his feet into his half-laced heavy boots as he went down the hall.

"Here, gentlemen, there's three thermoses of hot coffee and a sack of sandwiches. I was going to give them to you after lunch in case you persuaded Jasper to take you up to the Table. If you're going up Blackthorn, you'll need the energy," Sarah said as she intercepted them long enough to shove a large haversack in Mulder's hand as he hurried past her. Mulder didn't waste time thanking her. There would be time enough later, or sooner if he was wrong.

As he carefully put the haversack on the floor between his feet, Mulder barely had time to buckle up before Hobbs was speeding towards the jail. He hoped his suspicions were wrong, but instinct told him that Quatrain had stolen a march on them. He railed at his absorption with the Table. If he hadn't been so damn focused on the mysteries and half-hints Sarah and Jason were giving out, he might have used some of his vaunted intelligence to realize that Quatrain was a man who had been pushed into a corner and the only way he knew to react was to attack. Regrets were a poor use of time, but Mulder had very little else to do until they reached the jail and they found out whether his suspicions were correct. It wasn't his fault, but he couldn't help feeling that he should have known -- after all, he was the profiler, the man who was supposed to be able to read people and anticipate their reactions.

Ruefully, he acknowledged to himself that he had grown too accustomed to Scully's open skepticism and efforts to debunk his theories as soon as he offered them to balance his enthusiasm. Without her weight on the other end of the see-saw, he realized he had become too focused on the Table and its potential mysteries. It was time he adapted to working alone again. He’d done it once. He'd just have to remember how it was done and forget how comforting and stimulating it was to have someone constantly question his conclusions, forcing him to analyze and probe his own theories. It wasn't fair to expect Hobbs to slip into a role he had no idea existed, Mulder decided. Fraser, on the other hand, might prove to be extremely useful.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

"OK, Mulder. I gather that you believe Quatrain is going to try to break Jason out of jail?" Hobbs asked as he took a corner so fast that Mulder was forced to grab the strap over his head to balance himself. Broken out of his self-reproach, Mulder had to concentrate for a moment before he could recall what Hobbs said.

"I think there's a very good chance that Quatrain decided Constable Fraser wasn't going to be the kind of help he was hoping for. I'm not sure what, but something very wrong is happening," Mulder replied knowing he sounded vague, even Delphic, but that was the best he could explain the oppressive feeling that this entire case was going to hell.

"He didn't strike me as that stupid," Hobbs replied defensively.

"Not stupid -- scared. I think Quatrain suspects what happened to his daughter and may be forcing Jason to take him up to the Table. It might even be within Quatrain's response profile to force Jason after Lisa," Mulder replied cautiously. His theories were half-formed, at best, and vague, even to himself, but there was a pinpoint of light in the darkness and he had to trust that it would lead him to the truth.

"Who is Constable Fraser?" Mulder asked, abruptly shifting the topic of conversation. They were almost to the jail and he needed to know what they were dealing with. This might be the last chance he had to talk with Hobbs privately for awhile.

"He took on the entire RCMP to dig out his father's killer, who turned out to be a Mountie. His father was also a Mountie and apparently got involved in some conspiracy involving land fraud. I don't know the details, but Fraser basically uncovered some very nasty corruption within the RCMP ranks and his insistence on a public laundering of dirty linen wasn't much appreciated by the higher-ups. I got the feeling that the Chicago assignment was to get him out of the way -- partly for his own sake, partly as a form of exile. I never thought they'd send him here," Hobbs admitted in an astonished tone.

Mulder sensed a note of approval, even respect, in Hobbs' tone. He had to admit a certain admiration for anyone who took on an entire national police force to get at the truth. If Quatrain had expected a Mountie who could be influenced by his wealth and position, then he must have been dismayed when he learned that the RCMPs were sending a man who, from Hobbs' description, was not going to be his lap dog.

Who did Quatrain piss off? Mulder wondered. Or was this a gesture by the Canadian government to convince Quatrain that they didn't have a hand in what happened to his daughter? In either event, he suspected that a lot of Quatrain's presumption that he could control the investigation had been dashed with the news that Constable Fraser was the RCMP liaison for this case.

They reached the parking lot behind the jail in a long sliding flourish that left Mulder wondering if Hobbs was a closet stunt-car driver. Before they reached the door, the sound of loud, angry voices indicated that not all was well in the sheriff's office.

"Jim, how in Hell could you go off and leave Rick Parsons in charge? He and Jason's father don't get along, never did. Didn't that strike you as making him just a little bit unreliable?" the sheriff was yelling as Mulder and Hobbs came through the door. The deputy Mulder had met earlier was standing red-faced with his head down as he weathered the sheriff's anger. There was no sign of Fraser, but to his surprise, Mulder saw Peter Quatrain standing in a corner looking contemptuously on the scene while keeping a safe distance from Diefenbaker who was sitting by the sheriff's desk. It wasn't immediately apparent whether the wolf was guarding Fraser's coat or watching Quatrain. Mulder suspected it was a little of both.

"He's on the City Council," the deputy replied plaintively, as if that explained everything.

"Ross Jensen is on the City Council. My great aunt Mildred's dog could probably scrounge up enough votes to get elected if he were of a mind to it. No one's ever said being on that council endows a man with common sense." The sheriff threw up his hands and turned away, leaving his deputy looking embarrassed and aggrieved. It was obvious that his explanation was not being met with the understanding he expected.

"Agent Mulder, Hobbs, we have ourselves a situation," the sheriff said without preliminary. "I can't prove that Mr. Quatrain here had anything to do with Jason's disappearance, but I have suggested that he might want to stay very close to me until I am sure."

"My lawyer is going to have a very interesting chat with you over your arrest threat, Sheriff Thurgood," Quatrain commented sarcastically from his corner.

"Mr. Quatrain, I believe the sheriff merely requested that you remain available for questions should the need arise. It's our duty as guests in this country to assist the local law enforcement in the pursuance of their duties whenever possible," Fraser said as he came out of the jail area. Quatrain glowered at him, but kept silent.

"Sheriff, I believe the boy left under his own volition. I saw no signs of a struggle. I also noticed that the boy's boots and parka are missing from the now-unlocked closet. This suggests that he was either allowed to pick up his things, or else had the time and freedom to do so on his own. In addition, I think one of your winter trail packs is missing." Fraser looked dubious at the last statement, as if he was unaware he'd already been tossing bombshells into the middle of the room with his prior deductions. Hobbs gave an audible hoot of approval.

"Go double-check him, Hobbs. Kit Carson here might have missed something and you're a bit more familiar with the layout of this office than I am," Mulder said quietly to Hobbs.

"Right," Hobbs agreed, shaking himself free of his stunned admiration.

Fraser didn't look affronted at Mulder's suggestion that he might have overlooked something. It was irritating, but Fraser exuded a self-confidence that bordered on arrogance. Until Mulder had some grounds to believe it was competence speaking, he decided to err on the side of arrogance.

"What did you say to the boy, Mr. Quatrain?" Fraser asked calmly, turning to face a startled Peter Quatrain who was looking at Fraser as if he were a landmine he'd just stepped on.

"You have a distinctive tread on the bottom of your boots. And the floor in the jail has been mopped within the past two hours," Fraser explained frankly as if deciphering tracks in a slightly damp floor was everyday business.

"Quatrain, you were told to stay away from Jason. Judge Owens doesn't appreciate his orders being ignored." The sheriff took a step towards Quatrain, but didn't make any other move to threaten him.

"The boy who killed my daughter just ran off and you're wasting time questioning me," Quatrain blustered angrily, then clenched his jaw. After a moment though, he made a deliberate show of relaxing his aggressive attitude.

"All I wanted was to talk with the boy. Yes, I disobeyed a court order and you can probably throw bribing a public official into the pot, but I did not aid or abet the boy in escaping. I had already left the jail, as Mr. Parsons will testify. I returned when I heard your high-speed approach. I walked in a minute after you arrived, if you recall," Quatrain explained in a coldly-controlled tone.

"Mr. Quatrain, what was so important to say to Jason that you were willing to risk a contempt of court charge?" Mulder asked quietly. From the look on Quatrain's face, he had forgotten all about Mulder. He half spun around to stare at him. Mulder saw the first sign of uncertainty in the flicker of Quatrain's eyes from Fraser back to him. It was tempting to keep pushing Quatrain, but he didn't think Fraser would play along and it might prove useful simply to throw Quatrain off-balance by not applying pressure. Quatrain struck him as a man used to parlaying pressure for his own benefit.

Let's see how you react when you press back and there's nothing there to resist you.

"Let me guess. You started out by threatening him, demanding that he confess, but you ended up half-believing the boy's story, didn't you?" Mulder asked sharply. Quatrain blinked, opened his mouth briefly before shutting it again and withdrawing behind his impassive shield. Still, the momentary lapse was enough for Mulder. Jason had impressed him. He could just imagine how his story, his obvious despair, and his belief that something unnatural had happened to Lisa had affected Quatrain.

"Nonsense, Agent Mulder. The boy's story is complete nonsense designed to entrap gullible fools like you and it looks like he succeeded," Quatrain retorted bluntly.

"Mr. Quatrain, I hardly feel that insulting Agent Mulder is going to facilitate our finding Jason Fairfax," Fraser interjected before Mulder could respond. "We are here to cooperate with the United States authorities, not insult them," he added pleasantly.

Quatrain bristled but nodded. "Then find him," he snapped before brushing past Diefenbaker to sit down in one of the spare chairs. The rigid wooden chair seemed to match the stiff way he sat at attention. Mulder assessed the situation and decided that Quatrain was holding a very tight leash on his anger. There was a fair amount of confusion and fear mixed in which made the psychological situation extremely volatile. Mulder hoped Fraser could read men as well as he could read clues; otherwise one wrong word and they would have a very unpleasant situation.

"Jim, I want to talk with Rick Parsons, now. I don't care if you have to hog-tie him, but get him over here now," Thurgood snapped brusquely in a tone which clearly indicated that the matter was not open for discussion. Jim stiffened, but hurried for the door. Mulder didn't blame him. Even Quatrain looked slightly impressed by Thurgood's tone. Thurgood sounded like Skinner on one of those days when his patience with the X-Files had run out.

"Gentlemen, once I talk to Mr. Parsons and confirm Mr. Quatrain's story," Thurgood said with a stern glare in Quatrain's direction, "we are going climbing. Agent Mulder, you wanted to see the Table, well you're going to see it and not on a day I would have chosen." Thurgood glared at each of them. "When I say stop, you will stop, and my orders are not matters for discussion. When we go up Blackthorn, we are not going up as a democracy, understand?"

Mulder got the distinct impression that Thurgood was badly shaken, almost fearful of what they'd find up in the mountains. Automatically he nodded agreement and noted that Fraser looked keenly curious before remembering to nod and adding a "Yes, Sheriff."

"Agent Hobbs, drive Constable Fraser back to Sarah's. Robert already unloaded his gear and I think the constable is going to need his hiking boots. I see you and Agent Mulder are already prepared," Thurgood said in a calmer tone. Hobbs nodded.

"Sheriff, you are aware that there is a storm coming?" Fraser asked in a conversational tone as if the matter was of little interest.

"I'm damn well aware of it, but if Jason has gone where I think he's gone, then we have to go after him," Thurgood replied gruffly. "Mr. Quatrain, for your sins, I'm taking you with us because I want to keep an eye on you, and if you so much as attempt to ignore my word, you'll make the trip back down in handcuffs. Do I make myself perfectly clear?" the sheriff barked.

"Sheriff, I don't think handcuffs will be necessary. I believe Mr. Quatrain is very interested in cooperating with you," Fraser said confidently. Looking at Quatrain's mulish expression, Mulder wondered where Fraser's confidence was coming from.

"I'm glad to hear that, Constable Fraser," Thurgood replied evenly. Mulder began to sense a growing competition between Thurgood and Fraser to see who could be the most phlegmatic. He shook his head and decided that Skinner definitely owed him for this case.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Five minutes after Fraser and Hobbs left for Sarah's inn, the deputy returned, empty-handed. Sheriff Thurgood, caught in the final stages of lacing up his hiking boots, merely looked at him and waited for an explanation.

"Sir, Parsons won't come. He says that you don't have authority to arrest him and if I laid a hand on him that he'd arrest me as an officer of the court." The deputy didn't sound very convincing and Mulder could see Thurgood wasn't buying his explanation. It looked as if the deputy and Parsons had cooked up the deal together, never expecting things to get out of control.

"Jim, I'm taking these men up Blackthorn this afternoon and won't be back until after dark, most likely. That gives you plenty of time to consider where your loyalties lie. If they don't lie with this office, then you can leave your badge on my desk and I'll say nothing more about it," Thurgood said quietly. The deputy refused to meet his eyes, but gave a brief nod before heading into the back part of the jail. Mulder could hear him clattering about, presumably cleaning up the closet Jason had ransacked.

"Mr. Quatrain, I'm going to take you on faith for the moment. Constable Fraser has given me his assurance that you'll cooperate. I'm assuming that you have no desire to prove him wrong?"

"Sheriff, I think you run one of the sloppiest law enforcement offices I've ever encountered, but right now, I'm only interested in finding out what happened to Lisa. I'll let the good citizens of Camlyn decide what to do with you once I have her back," Quatrain replied in a curt tone.

Mulder turned his attention away from the play for position between the two men. It would be even money which man was the most dominant. Quatrain was overtly, blatantly dominant, but Thurgood had the subtle power of a man secure in who and what he was. Under other circumstances, Mulder would have found the by-play between the two men fascinating. Now, however, he turned his back on them and concentrated on trying to fit all the pieces of the puzzle together. All he had were shadows, but the answer was in there, he was certain of it. Or rather, the answer was up on Blackthorn Mountain. Glancing out the door up at the mountains, he saw the clouds that had concerned Fraser and wondered just what they'd find up there in the snow and fog. Whatever it was, it was strong enough to pull Jason out of a warm jail cell up onto the mountain he feared. What had happened to change his willingness to wait things out?

"Diefenbaker, come!" Thurgood's voice broke into his thoughts and Mulder looked up to see him holding open the door. Diefenbaker sat calmly in the office, ignoring the sheriff's efforts to call him out. Mulder wondered if they'd have to wait for Fraser to return when he realized that the wolf's attention was not on the sheriff, but on a plate containing a bacon cheeseburger cooling on the deputy's desk.

"Fine, wait here. We'll start on without you," Thurgood growled. Diefenbaker's stubborn refusal to come was not helping the sheriff's already edgy temper.

Mulder glanced at Diefenbaker, who glanced back and grinned. Well, that's clear enough. I wonder what the penalty is for snitching a deputy's lunch? he thought with a laugh and gave the plate a quick shove towards the edge of the desk as he followed the sheriff out the door. He tried to ignore the muffled clatter followed by slurping sounds behind him. Diefenbaker was at his heels before they reached the Jeep.

"How did you?" Thurgood started, then stopped. "On second thought, I don't want to know," he added with a smile. "Perks of a visiting cop. Agent Mulder," he said as he turned his attention away from Diefenbaker, "I called Sarah to tell her that we'd pick up Hobbs and Fraser. Her place is on the way. She said she already gave you some sandwiches and coffee -- that will have to take the place of our lunch. However, she promised to have lots of hot soup ready for us when we return."

Mulder nodded and climbed into the front seat. He felt a certain satisfaction in putting Quatrain in close proximity to Diefenbaker in the back seat. He could hear Quatrain muttering, but he made no overt objection. Perhaps he regarded the situation as being caught between a rock and a hard place -- the sheriff who had an obvious grievance with him, or a wolf who had a severe case of hamburger breath.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Blackthorn Mountain
Early Afternoon -- February 6, 2000
 

The trailhead to Blackthorn Mountain turned out to be nearly ten miles from Sarah's inn on a narrow, rutted country lane that sent Hobbs' van bouncing up, down, and sideways until Mulder felt a little like an egg in a washing machine. Mulder hung onto the strap and hoped that the van's suspension system would survive. A light mist blown about by a gusty wind almost obscured Thurgood's jeep up ahead. At Sarah's place, Thurgood had arbitrarily decided to take both vehicles. Mulder couldn't fault his reasoning. If they did find Jason, it wouldn't be prudent to put him and Quatrain in close quarters. Besides, five men and a wolf driving up here would have been a tight squeeze. Adding a sixth man, even one as slender as Jason, would have made the return trip a nightmare.

Thurgood had maneuvered the split adroitly -- FBI in one car, himself and the Canadian contingent in the other. It made sense, but Mulder wondered if Thurgood was trying to avoid him. It irritated him that both Thurgood and Sarah knew more than they were willing to tell him. Any other time he'd be thinking dark thoughts about deliberate obstruction and a conspiracy to conceal the truth. However, , looking up at the dark shadow of Blackthorn Mountain up ahead, it was easy to believe that whatever lay up there wasn't something easily talked about to an outsider.

When Thurgood pulled off the road, Mulder breathed a sigh of relief. He clambered out of the van eager to get started on the trail. Looking around for the trailhead, Mulder realized just how remote this place was. It was early afternoon and light enough out here in the open, but the area under the glistening pine trees looked dark and forbidding.

"A most uninviting trail, it would appear, Agent Mulder," Fraser said quietly as he came up to stand beside Mulder. Mulder didn't sense any reluctance to the trek and wondered why Fraser felt compelled to make the unnecessary comment. He gave Fraser a questioning look to prompt him to continue with whatever it was the constable was leading up to.

"I couldn't help but notice the boy's footprints. He approached in a great hurry, nevertheless, he hesitated for several minutes out there in the open, just where the trail begins as if he were afraid to continue, but more afraid not to. What's up there?" he asked off-handedly, as if he were simply making small-talk instead of expertly probing for Mulder's suspicions.

Mulder shook his head. Fear wasn't the impulse that drove Jason here, although Mulder sensed that he was afraid, desperately afraid. Staring up at the dark trail leading up onto the mountain, Mulder realized that once Jason had stepped onto the trail, he had made up his mind to do whatever he came out here to do. What had been a vague suspicion up to now was beginning to take form and substance as he analyzed Jason's actions. If what Jason told him about Lisa's disappearance was true, then Jason's reasons for escaping were becoming very clear.

"We need to hurry, Sheriff," Mulder snapped as he headed towards the trailhead. "Jason has over an hour's head-start on us. We've wasted too much time, already." Mulder felt his throat beginning to tighten with the certainty that Jason was rushing towards the same force that had taken Lisa. Jason was more than likely halfway to the Table by now and if they didn’t hurry, they’d have another mystery on their hands, another life lost. Quatrain shifted his feet and stared at him uneasily, clearly wanting to demand an explanation, but hesitating as if he feared the answers. Mulder barely noticed when Hobbs moved in to stand protectively between them. He was simply grateful that the silent pressure from Quatrain to give him an explanation had relaxed. The answers he saw were still too vague, too fantastic to make sense to a worried father.

The sheriff nodded his agreement as he slung Sarah's haversack over his shoulder. "I want each of you to take one of these emergency supplies," the sheriff said as he handed out compact beacon- flashlights and small waterproof pouches from the back of his Jeep. "I have no intention of being up on Blackthorn after dark, but I don't want you stumbling around in the dark if we don’t make it back down before sundown. If we're separated for any reason, turn on your light, stay put, and I'll find you. The pouches contain emergency rations, matches, and a survival blanket. I don't think the storm will hit before we get back down, but I'm not taking any chances," he added with a bleak look at the gathering clouds as if daring them to drop their load of snow on Blackthorn.

"Now, gentlemen, I have one very simple rule -- I'm in charge once we start up the mountain. I don't care how experienced you are with snow or mountains. You don't know these mountains -- I do. So no arguments, is that understood?" the sheriff demanded sternly, staring at each of them in turn waiting for an answer. The question barely registered with Mulder as he forced himself to pay attention. It wouldn't do Jason any good if he got so distracted that he fell off the mountain.

"Completely," Fraser snapped smartly. "Are suggestions allowed?" he inquired politely.

"You can suggest, but I decide whether to follow them," the sheriff replied firmly. Fraser nodded as if pleased he'd won this much concession.

Quatrain bristled, but complied with a barely audible, "Yes," after a stern look from Fraser.

Hobbs nodded and Mulder gave the sheriff a distracted nod as his attention was again pulled upwards. The air was heavy with anticipation. How can the others not feel it? he wondered, surprised as always that other people couldn't sense what was so clear to him. He fumbled around in his memory, hoping that this particular day didn't hold any significance in the worship of nature or mountains.

"Then stay together," the sheriff ordered as he led the way into the shadows under the trees.

"Mulder, you're profiling, aren't you?" Hobbs asked diffidently, as if he was being too personal. Even as distracted as he was, Mulder had to smile. Hobbs was trying very hard not to treat him like a live grenade. Mulder appreciated the effort. He got so tired of people acting as if he were some kind of oracle when all he did was fit pieces of the puzzle together without relying on preconceived borders.

Mulder turned to look at Hobbs who was biting his lip and trying very hard not to look up at the mountain they were about to climb. Clouds and mist hid the shape, but not the feel of the massive weight of rock and shale looming over them.

"What's the matter, Hobbs?" Mulder asked softly, being careful to stand with his back to Fraser. Hobbs didn't need the attention of the entire party focused on his sudden reluctance to climb Blackthorn.

"The last time I was here the sun was shining," Hobbs replied quietly. "I'm beginning to wish my mother hadn't been so fond of Robert Service," he added with an attempt at a grin that came out as a grimace.

"You believe Sarah's tales, don't you?" Mulder asked curiously. He sympathized with Hobbs' fear. There was something awesome about this mountain, almost fearsome that weighed on his spirit..

Hobbs shook his head, then shrugged with a half nod. "I don't know. I just know that something's waiting up there and I'm not in any hurry to meet it." Hobbs stomped off a few feet and Mulder could see him talking to himself as he strapped his gloves firmly in place -- his armor against whatever he feared was up there.

As they reached the trailhead, Hobbs balked just as Jason must have if Fraser had read the tracks correctly. Up ahead about ten paces on the trail, Mulder could see the sheriff and Fraser in front with Diefenbaker in the lead. Quatrain was not far behind them. Hobbs shivered, then grabbed a deep breath before resolutely putting his feet on the trail. The trail was wide enough, here at the base of the mountain, for them to walk the trail two-by-two and Mulder seized the opportunity to continue his conversation with Hobbs. Mulder didn't sense anything unusual, other than the sense that someone, or something, was watching them, waiting for them, and was patient beyond all human sense.

"What really happened to the crime scene photos?" Mulder asked in a deceptively casual tone, keeping his eyes on the trail to give Hobbs a chance to come clean without further prodding.

The trail was covered in a light carpet of snow which made the frozen earth and shale shards slick. The air was still, but above them Mulder could hear the wind ruffling through the treetops. Their boots made soft crunching sounds as they walked through a fine, cold mist. Ice was glistening on the limbs of the dark firs above them. Diefenbaker's white fur flashed as he moved among the dark trunks ahead of them.

Hobbs gave Mulder a guilty look. "You don't believe I forgot my camera?" he asked quietly with a resigned sigh.

"According to your file, you were one of the best crime scene analysts to come out of Quantico in the past ten years. Forgetting your camera isn't likely and it doesn't take a profiler to figure that one out," Mulder shot back brusquely. His patience with evasions had run out. Time was running out. He was groping for answers and it was time Hobbs started cooperating.

"I guess you would be the one person who would believe an impossibility," Hobbs said apologetically. "I wanted you to see for yourself, to reassure me that I wasn't losing my grip on reality." Hobbs paused, then continued in a brisk professional tone that still managed to ask Mulder if he actually believed this kind of stuff. "Two cameras, both loaded with fresh film, and every single photo I took came out fogged or light struck. I didn't think of sketching anything at the time since I was taking nearly thirty photos from every angle. When I discovered there were no photos, I tried to sketch what I'd seen and you saw the result," Hobbs grumbled. He was staring straight ahead, but the tense set of his shoulders told Mulder that he was bracing himself against disbelief.

"What do you think caused this phenomena?" Mulder asked curiously, trying to suppress his excitement. More pieces of the puzzle were falling into place and he sensed that the end result was something beyond even his expectations. His mind raced among the possibilities. He wished Hobbs had been more up-front with this key piece of information, but he could understand his reluctance to sound like a fool. It didn't justify him holding back, but Mulder wasn't sure that they could have stopped Jason's escape if he had known about this earlier. It lent credence to Jason's story, but it still wasn’t proof that Quatrain or Constable Fraser would be likely to accept.

"I don't know," Hobbs confessed, refusing to look at Mulder. His tone was subdued, almost apologetic.

Hobbs was a bad liar and too good an investigator not to have some theories, Mulder decided irritably. The oppressive weight of the mountain and people’s reluctance to talk frankly finally frayed his temper.

"Bullshit!"

Hobbs jumped and slipped, landing hard against a tree as he fought to regain his footing. A guilty flush betrayed his attempt to dodge the issue.

"You're too good an investigator not to have a damn good guess or two," Mulder shot back as he fought to control his irritation. "Just tell me what you think and I'll make sure you're name isn't connected to any crazy theories. What's one more wacky theory coming from Spooky Mulder?" he added sharply. He hadn't meant for that to sound quite as bitter as it came out, but he was so tired of people trying to cover their asses while letting his hang out.

"That's not it, Mulder," Hobbs protested in a surprised tone that silenced Mulder. "I've been known to come up with some pretty wild theories on my own, but nothing like this. You might be used to talking about power vortexes and spatial distortions, but I'm not." Hobbs' voice was sharp and loud enough to cause Quatrain to turn around to look questioningly at them. Hobbs growled something as he picked up the pace, forcing Quatrain to turn around and walk faster to avoid being run over.

"I don't know what the hell is up there, but I haven't been able to get it out of mind. There's something alive up there and it's not covered in any science books I've ever read. I think that Galen Hatherford was a damn fool who didn't know what the hell he was doing when he built that Table. The whole time we were up there I kept hearing barely audible whispers coming out of thin air. I want to believe it was the wind. Maybe it was the ghosts of all the people who've died in these mountains. Maybe I'm finally going mad," Hobbs conceded bluntly; his sudden passion deflating as he gave Mulder a defiant glare.

"Can you be more specific?" Mulder asked curiously. Hobbs' anger didn't bother him. In fact, it was rather refreshing to see the man behind the correct FBI agent exterior. Hobbs also sounded like he was a bit more familiar with some of the paranormal possibilities than he was willing to admit.

Hobbs smiled in spite of himself. "You realize that most people would be questioning my sanity right now?" He shook his head. "Sorry, even knowing your reputation, it's disconcerting hearing you accept my outrageous explanation and your only response is to ask for more details." Hobbs' expression was a comical mix of relief and bemusement with just a dash of guilt.

"I've heard stranger shit. Right now I need to know what to expect up there. Just tell me what you know happened, what you think happened, and any conclusions you've reached. Let me worry about sifting out what's useful and what isn't. Half the time my theories turn out to be wrong, but one theory leads to another until I usually manage to come up with the right one. The more information I have the faster I can get to the right theory. We don't have time for either of us to protect our reputations. If Jason is trying to do what I think he's doing, then we are running out of time," Mulder said bluntly, with a half smile to soften the harsh lecture he was delivering.

"Point taken. I haven't been holding back on any conclusions because I have none. I heard whispers that seemed to come from thin air. I felt drawn to the Table, but repelled at the same time." The words came out slowly, reluctantly as if dragged unwillingly from Hobbs' memories.

Hobbs stopped and stared fixedly at the ground. Mulder squelched the urge to pressure him into continuing. Hobbs struck him as someone who would balk if pushed too hard. He was asking Hobbs to trust him at face value. Hobbs had the air of a man who was about to take a leap of faith and didn't know what was waiting for him on the other side. They didn't have much time, but Mulder was willing to spare a few moments if it would get him to the truth faster.

In a barely audible voice, Hobbs continued, "I finally reached out and touched the Table, bare-handed . . . " Hobbs shivered. "All I got was an echo of something so old it terrified me. There's something alive up there and it's very patient, very old, and powerful beyond all belief. I think it took Lisa. I also think it was calling to me. I couldn't ask the sheriff, but I could see from his face that he heard it, too. After that, all I wanted to do was get as far away from that place as I could. Maybe you can make sense of it. I don't want to," Hobbs admitted in a flat tone that left little doubt that he had been badly shaken by his experience.

There was something more to it, but Mulder couldn't put his finger on it and didn't have the luxury of time to figure it out. The only thing that struck him was the feeling that it wasn't the shock of psychic sensing that had upset Hobbs, but rather the overwhelming power of what he felt.

Trusting that Hobbs would keep him from running into trees, Mulder put his body on automatic and let his mind sort through the pieces of the puzzle he'd assembled so far. The possibility that all the clues seemed to be pointing towards only confirmed his fear that they would be too late to save Jason, or even that they could even if they caught up to him in time.

Mulder came back to the present with a start when Hobbs grabbed his arm and pulled him to a stop. They had rounded a sharp bend to find Thurgood and the others waiting for them. Somehow Diefenbaker had gotten behind them and was sitting patiently by Mulder's knee looking very pleased with himself.

"I thought I told you that we all need to stay together," Thurgood barked.

"Sheriff, I believe that Diefenbaker is capable of making sure that Agent Mulder doesn't lag too far behind us," Fraser interjected quietly. Thurgood growled, but subsided after a sharp glare at Mulder.

Mulder ignored the glare. He was almost certain of the truth, but the details remained annoyingly fuzzy. As far as he was concerned, the sheriff had some questions to answer once they were safely back home. His stare back was just a hair short of a challenge. To his surprise, the sheriff relaxed.

"Diefenbaker, I'm deputizing you for the duration. Pay -- one steak. Duties -- keep Agents Mulder and Hobbs from getting lost until Agent Mulder decides to keep his mind on the trail instead of the case," Thurgood said with a nod to Diefenbaker.

Mulder stared down at Diefenbaker who grinned back at him. Hobbs was trying not to laugh and failing. Finally Mulder gave up and gave the sheriff a stiff smile.

"I'm done for the moment, sheriff. We can try to reach Jason in time, but we need to hurry," Mulder said as he gestured his acknowledgment of the sheriff's point.

"Then, gentlemen, let's bustle," Thurgood said as he took off up the trail in long, loping strides that were matched by Quatrain. To Mulder's surprise, Fraser hung back and waved Hobbs forward, clearing indicating that he wanted to speak with Mulder. Hobbs gave Mulder a slightly apologetic look that told him he was on his own, before taking off after Quatrain. Mulder wondered if people were playing 'take a number' game for the opportunity to talk to him. He couldn't recall when last he'd been so popular.

I'll be signing autographs next, he thought with a disgruntled growl. Fraser didn't strike him as the type to want to idly chat about the paranormal, so either he was intent on pumping him for information or he had his own theories to promote.

"Neither one, actually," Fraser said out of the blue with a slight smile. He looked so innocent that for a moment Mulder wasn't sure he'd heard him right. Then he realized that Fraser was reading his reaction far too well. If I'm becoming that predictable, maybe it's time I quit, Mulder grumbled to himself as he shifted his perspective of Fraser, again.

"I'm aware of your reputation, Agent Mulder. I'm also aware of your solve rate and it is an impressive one. The sheriff isn't coming right out and saying it, but I suspect he specifically asked for you which can only mean that he, and perhaps Agent Hobbs, experienced something which convinced them that a paranormal explanation was probable." Fraser sounded quite blase about the fact that he was more than likely walking into a paranormal experience. In fact, Mulder thought he could detect the faint hint of excitement. I thought getting excited was against the law for Mounties.

"I'm also conscious of the fact that the report I was sent was sketchy and completely unlike the efficient and fulsome reports normally written by FBI agents. Therefore, it's logical to assume that Agent Hobbs experienced something he's not prepared to talk about and that he and the sheriff don't want to become public knowledge. I'll admit that my curiosity is aroused," Fraser confessed without blinking an eye.

Mulder thought it most unfair that Fraser could drop intuitive bombshells while looking completely nonchalant. However, he was impressed by Fraser's conclusions which matched his own early suspicions about this case. He mulled over the situation while the trail turned into a rutted, mud-slick path between a narrow lane of jumbled boulders, that forced Fraser to pay attention to his footing. Mulder took the path almost automatically, his body accustomed to functioning on autopilot while his mind wrestled with a question. Behind him he heard Diefenbaker's claws scrabbling across the rocks as he took to the high ground.

"Constable Fraser, do you believe in extreme possibilities?" Mulder countered once they were back on a passable trail. It was his favorite question and never failed to reveal more about the person responding than they realized.

"How can I answer that when I don't know what you would consider extreme?" Fraser replied simply.

After a startled glance at Fraser, Mulder gave a rueful chuckle. As far as he could tell Fraser wasn't being sarcastic or even attempting to evade the question. For the first time since he started asking that question nine years ago, Mulder realized that he had finally encountered someone who understood the need to define what extreme meant. Just his luck to find someone with an open mind when what he really needed was someone with a tightly closed one. If what he suspected was even close to the truth, then a person oblivious to the paranormal would be easier to persuade to silence.

Fraser walked along beside him, apparently content to wait for his reply. Mulder sensed a faint hint of amusement lurking behind Fraser's placid demeanor. He was either laughing at Mulder's predicament, or with him. As near as Mulder could determine, Fraser wasn't put off by the question, but he wasn't going to expose himself until he learned the reasons behind Mulder's question. Mulder mentally acknowledged the adroit way Fraser had maneuvered him into position where he had to ante up his theories. His question had exposed more about Fraser than perhaps he realized, but Fraser had also forced the issue back onto Mulder.

"Point taken," Mulder conceded as he stopped to stretch his aching calf muscles. As pressed for time as they were, he needed a moment to catch his breath. Long distance running kept him in shape for most activities, but now he was using an entirely different set of muscles and pushing them harder than he was willing to admit to Thurgood.

"What do you think Fairfax intends to do up here?" Fraser asked when Mulder had straightened up and started walking again. Fraser was showing very little sign of exertion, which Mulder was trying hard not to resent. "You're pushing yourself to the limit which means that you are afraid of something Fairfax intends to do. Suicide?" Fraser asked casually.

Mulder didn't flinch from Fraser's intense scrutiny. Just as he was taking Fraser's measure, it was obvious that Fraser was taking his. Fair enough.

Mulder shook his head, concentrating on forcing his legs to keep up the pace despite the increasing difficulty of the trail. "I don't know. All I have is a suspicion based on old legends that may give you a definition of what I mean by extreme. Think about it, Constable," Mulder prodded testily, panting between words. "This is a stupid route to take if all Jason has in mind is escaping justice. Suicide is a possibility, but not in the way you mean. I think he's trying to follow Lisa," Mulder said slowly as he tried to make sense of the theory coalescing out of the scattered clues.

"Ho!" The sheriff's call silenced any reply Fraser might have been about to make. With a final push, Mulder reached the leveled out plateau where the Thurgood stood waving them on. The clearing was surrounded by trees twisted from years of withstanding the wind and rain. Quatrain was standing apart mumbling to himself, his expression angry and frightened -- a bad combination in Mulder's opinion. Mulder was gratified to see that he was breathing hard, as was Hobbs. The only people not affected by their final push up the trail seemed to be Fraser and Thurgood. Diefenbaker was nosing about a small hollowed-out area in the rock face that was obviously the trysting place Jason had mentioned. In a moment, Diefenbaker returned trailing a bright green silk scarf from his mouth. Quatrain lunged for it, but backed off when Diefenbaker growled a warning.

"Diefenbaker! Behave. You know better than to disturb evidence," Fraser chided the wolf sternly. Diefenbaker walked over to him and dropped the scarf at his feet before walking away nonchalantly.

"That's Lisa's," Quatrain said as he rushed over to the scarf. Fraser plucked it from the ground and examined it. He handed the scarf to Quatrain without a word as he walked over to the hollow with the sheriff. Quatrain stood silently, pouring the silk cloth from one hand to another before he stared sightlessly out on the mountain that had claimed his daughter.

Mulder watched impatiently as Fraser and Thurgood checked the area for any other evidence overlooked by the earlier investigation.

"I'd swear that the scarf wasn't here earlier," Hobbs commented in a disgruntled tone. He seemed to be taking this sudden appearance of overlooked evidence as a personal affront.

"I suspect that Diefenbaker has senses you don't," Mulder assured him absently as he tried to imagine the events of Jason's story unfolding. At first, he couldn't see the trail Jason said Lisa took, until he saw the break in the trees and the narrow stony path leading further up the mountain in a roughly northerly direction.

"Sheriff, we're losing time," Quatrain shouted as he paced angrily back and forth. He started towards the trail only to come face to face with Diefenbaker who was sitting on the trail blocking access. "Move, you stupid. . . . ," Quatrain started as he grabbed a stick and swung it at Diefenbaker.

"I wouldn't do that . . ." Fraser's voice echoed from the hollow.

"Mr. Quatrain, I'm not sure what the rules are about assaulting an officer in this county, but if you recall, the sheriff did deputize that wolf. Either Diefenbaker will take your arm off or the sheriff will handcuff you, but in either event you can't help your daughter this way," Hobbs shouted as he stepped between Quatrain and Diefenbaker.

"Damn you!" Quatrain growled as he and Hobbs stood nose-to-nose.

Hobbs wasn't budging an inch despite the disparity in their size and strength. Mulder felt the electricity of their confrontation as he brushed past them and started walking towards the trail. He could hear Fraser coming up fast behind him and hoped that he'd wave Diefenbaker aside. The pressure of time was closing in on him to the point where he could barely breathe. The heavy storm clouds rolling in were ominous with the threat of snow. In advance of the storm, a thin fog was beginning to settle down over the mountain. The trees were thinning out to rough scrub pines and brush clinging to the granite rocks. Looking up, Mulder saw the trail disappear into a gray mist that had settled down over the mountain. Coincidence, possibly, but one that impeded their attempts to reach the Table in time.

He was within three paces of Diefenbaker when the wolf got up and trotted off up the trail -- the mist swirling around him gave him the eerie look of an apparition before he disappeared.

"Agent Mulder, slow down," Thurgood barked from somewhere behind him, but Mulder ignored him and continued his punishing pace up the trail.

Can't he feel it? Mulder wondered incredulously. The entire mountain felt like it was poised to pounce on them. His head throbbed with the combined pressure of the storm front and whatever forces Jason was summoning up there. He'd reached the Table, Mulder was sure of that, but if he hesitated, they might have a chance of stopping him before he tried to force his way through whatever crack in time Galen's mischief had created.

A crack of light quickly followed by the crash of thunder nearly overhead brought Mulder to an abrupt halt. He'd been in snowstorms that had produced thunder and lightning, but not on a mountain with very little cover. Shaking from exertion, he realized that he had charged up the trail with no idea where the turnoff to the Table Jason mentioned was. In the after-glow of the lightning, he saw two ancient trees standing to one side of the trail. They were at the upper limits of the tree line and elsewhere along the trail he could see only pine scrub trees. Stunned by the implication of seeing two rowan trees arching over the turnoff, Mulder fought down the feeling that to step between those trees was to make a commitment, to open himself up to the most extreme form of possibilities he had yet imagined.

"Sorbus aucuparia," Fraser said with a note of surprise in his voice. "I hadn't expected to see rowan trees up here."

"Do . . . you . . . know . . . the . . . significance of the rowan?" Mulder gasped as he struggled to catch his breath. Behind them, he could hear Quatrain and Hobbs scrambling up the trail with Thurgood a ways behind. He wondered if Thurgood deliberately chose the rear position to make sure he didn't have any stragglers.

"It's reputed to have magical powers, if that's what you mean," Fraser replied calmly. Mulder realized that part of his resentment of Fraser was based in his annoying ability to sustain a climb like this without showing the least signs of exertion.

"Actually, the tree itself isn't magical, but it marks an area of magic. Consider the rowan a warning sign: proceed at your own risk," Mulder advised. Hobbs was breathing hard and fumbling with his gloved hands, every so often absently brushing them against his legs.

Turning to look at Quatrain, his reaction struck Mulder as being very odd. He was staring at the trees and the trail beyond like a thirsty man seeing a fountain. No fear, not even eager anticipation of getting close to solving the mystery of what happened to his daughter. Rather he looked as if he had finally found something he had desperately sought -- his personal Grail. Mulder's suspicion that there was more to this entire case than a simple disappearance grew into a certainty. If Quatrain had manipulated Jason into leading him to this place, it was becoming obvious that Quatrain was no longer in control of the situation. Something else was driving all of them to some confrontation and Mulder instinctively balked against the prodding of fate or whatever paranormal force existed up here.

"I have no right to ask you not to speak of what you may see, but I will ask you to consider if it is wise to speak," Thurgood said in a quiet, solemn tone as he pushed past them and disappeared into the mist. Another lightning bolt sizzled home somewhere nearby and the mist glowed for a moment with electricity. Mulder felt his hair stand on end and wasn't entirely sure it was due solely to the effects of the lightning. The air was heavy with ozone and the smell of damp rock and earth.

"’Into the Valley of Death . . ‘ Shit!" Hobbs muttered profanely when he realized he'd spoken aloud. "I'm really going to have to talk with my mother about what she considered appropriate reading material for young children," he added in a sotto voice to Mulder.

Thurgood started up the narrow trail with Diefenbaker at his side and Fraser close behind. Quatrain tore himself out of his daze and was on their heels before Hobbs or Mulder could get ahead of him. Hobbs gave Mulder a wry, twisted grin and eased carefully past the rowan trees as if afraid to touch them. He disappeared into the fog until all Mulder could hear was his feet scrabbling over the loose shale.

Now that he was this close, Mulder felt a curious reluctance to move forward. It wasn't exactly fear, although fear was a component of the emotion filling him. After a close examination of his feelings, he realized that he was experiencing something he rarely felt -- awe. The rowan trees weren't just some affectation of Galen Hatherford's, or else he had planted them here unwittingly.

Irritated by his hesitancy when he had striven so hard to reach this point in time, and with Jason's life hanging in the balance, Mulder forced himself to move forward. In the arch created by the intertwined branches of the rowan trees, he stopped, held motionless by too much knowledge, too many suspicions of what lay in wait for them. Old bits of lore and legend spiraled through his mind like sparks flowing off a Fourth of July sparkler.

The Babylonians had believed that mountains were solemn places of judgment by the spirits of the earth, implacable and not overly friendly to mankind. Scarcely a reassuring thought for anyone who carried the weight of as many misjudgments as he did. Looking for happier mountain allusions, he vaguely recalled that the Navajo had a mountain chant celebrating the story of how the eagles who lived in the high mountains brought men physical and spiritual health. As if the story were a key unlocking some distant memory, he heard Albert's deep voice singing the Blessing Way chant and felt the awe which had paralyzed him relax. With a sad smile for his departed friend, Mulder took a deep breath and hurried to catch up with the rest of the party.

The first thing that struck Mulder when he caught up to the rest of his party was the sound of the wind rising. The fog remained as thick as ever, but he could hear the wind howling among the rocks up ahead. Jason had told them about how the wind kept him from reaching Lisa. However, he hadn't mentioned that the wind sounded like a chorus of voices crying out in a babble of languages. Mulder saw Hobbs' mouth open as if he was trying to say something, but nothing carried past the sound of the wind. With a shrug, Hobbs gave up and simply pointed straight ahead and tried to move faster up the trail. Quatrain was trying to run and slipping back a step for every two he took on the loose, slippery shale. Fraser and Thurgood were sure-footed as they took the steep incline at a steady pace. Mulder assumed Diefenbaker was somewhere ahead of them, completely obscured by the fog.

"Jason!"

Mulder was startled out of his concentration on keeping his feet and his pace by a familiar voice cutting through the whirlwind of voices. Thurgood had a seaman's ability to make himself heard over the roar. Mulder scrabbled around a pile of rocks tumbled down across the trail and found himself standing on a flat plateau. The mist was gone, blown to tatters by a wind that threatened to flatten anything or anyone which stood against it. Mulder felt himself slide backwards for a step or two before he could brace himself.

For a moment, all he saw was the confusion of people blocking his view of the Table. Quatrain was fighting to move against the wind, straining to go forward. Hobbs was holding on to him, yelling something as he fought to restrain him. Thurgood was standing off to one side, his attention focused on something hidden from Mulder's view by the curious sight of Diefenbaker standing nose-to-nose against Fraser wrestling him backwards. Their odd dance finally took them out of Mulder's line of sight.

In the eye of the whirlwind, Jason stared out at Mulder and gave him a half-hearted smile. He mouthed something that was lost in the wind. Without thinking, or simply thinking only of stopping Jason, Mulder lunged forward. He felt calf and thigh muscles straining, but he stubbornly fought forward until the wind forced him to his knees within five feet of Jason. With a final surge of strength and will Mulder hurled himself against the wall of wind surrounding the Table.

In that instant, he felt himself lifted up, suspended in mid-air by the cyclonic force of the wind. Jason reached out to him, apology clear in his face. With a groan for muscles pushed past the breaking point, Mulder forced his arm through the wall, but before their hands could touch, the wind chorus spiraled up to an unearthly pitch, deafening Mulder and nearly stunning him. A rhythmic drumbeat warred with the shrieking wind as Mulder felt himself pulled forward and back. Insistently the drumbeat continued until the wind pushed his arm away hard enough for Mulder to feel the bones arch and bend. Enclosed by the wind once more, Jason threw back his head and opened his mouth in a silent scream as the wind slowly twisted him sideways into a shimmering cleft in the air. Mulder watched as the cleft closed, cutting off the sound of voices calling to him. A searing white light exploded from the chair, blinding Mulder, but not before every detail of the chair was etched in his memory. The wind abruptly vanished and Mulder fell to earth in shattered darkness.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Mulder swam back to consciousness to the sound of angry voices. Thurgood's angry baritone and Quatrain's furious bass sounded like a pair of contentious drums. He couldn't quite make out what they were saying, except that Thurgood sounded as if Quatrain had finally pushed him too far.

A wet nose nuzzled him insistently under the chin, causing Mulder to twitch away. Warm canine breath blew over his face before Diefenbaker, at least he hoped it was Diefenbaker, retreated. Mulder could hear him panting close by and wondered where Fraser was.

"Agent Mulder, are you awake?" Fraser asked solicitously. Coming a fraction closer to consciousness, Mulder realized that his head was pillowed on a heavy soft coat that smelled of pine. Fraser was pushing a cup at Mulder's lips, trying to get him to drink something. The smell of hot coffee was beginning to clear out some of the cobwebs. Groggy, Mulder felt like his mind was moving at the speed of cold molasses, but decided that at least he knew where Fraser was. That left Hobbs and for some reason his absence worried Mulder.

Opening his eyes was a mistake, Mulder decided, and quickly closed them again. The rocks glowed and patches of snow looked like white fires. Even the falling snow looked like a rain of fire. With his eyes closed, his headache was manageable and the ringing in his ears was rapidly falling to an acceptable level.

"Agent Mulder, we have a situation and if you're able, your assistance would be appreciated," Fraser said blandly although Mulder was beginning to realize that the more casual Fraser sounded, the more worried he was.

"Why?" Mulder mumbled flatly. Shaking his head to clear out the cobwebs left by his close encounter with whatever had snatched Jason away was not an option. With a deep groan, Mulder started prying himself to a sitting position aided by Fraser.

"I need you to pull rank on the sheriff before we have another man down," Fraser said when Mulder had achieved a more or less upright position and was holding it on his own. "The trail back down is completely unsuitable for a single travois, much less two, and while I might be able to carry Agent Hobbs, I doubt if any of us can manage an unconscious Mr. Quatrain," he went on to explain.

Mulder realized that he was missing a chunk of time and Fraser's ‘explanation’ wasn't explaining much of what happened.

"Constable Fraser, what happened?" he snapped. His words sounded a bit slurred, but they seemed to be coming out in a coherent fashion which meant that he probably didn't have a significant head injury. That left the problem of his eyesight. He didn't feel like confessing his blindness to Fraser until absolutely necessary. As long as he didn't have to move, he should be able to bluff his way through the situation until he understood what the situation was.

"Sorry, I forgot that you were unconscious," Fraser apologized with genuine remorse. "I believe Agent Hobbs attempted to prevent Mr. Quatrain from reaching Jason. In a regrettable lapse of manners, Quatrain hit Agent Hobbs who fell against the Table and is presently still unconscious. Sheriff Thurgood is currently engaged in describing Mr. Quatrain's probable destination and possible physical condition upon reaching said destination," Fraser said without a quiver of the amusement Mulder felt at listening to him. Fraser had the damnedest way of saying that Quatrain had just slugged a federal agent into unconsciousness and that the Sheriff was not taking it well.

Bracing himself for a surge in his headache, Mulder decided that Fraser's suggestion of pulling rank had merits.

"Sheriff Thurgood, Mr. Quatrain, shut up!" he shouted, wincing as the words rang in his ears. He heard Diefenbaker give a startled woof as Fraser muttered a "Well done," under his breath. To Mulder's relief, the angry argument stopped. Now to seize control of the situation while everyone was recovering from his interruption.

"Constable Fraser, please take Mr. Quatrain aside and explain to him just how much trouble he's in. Sheriff, what's Hobbs' condition?" Mulder snapped, trying to sound like he was in control or even knew what was going on.

"Yes, sir," Fraser retorted crisply. Mulder didn't dare open his eyes to check, but he could almost feel Fraser saluting. Fraser's hand gave his shoulder a hard squeeze. "Thank you, Agent Mulder," Fraser whispered softly as he hurried away. Mulder wondered if he had really fooled Fraser about his condition, but decided that as long as Fraser was willing to play along, he'd take the time.

"He's unconscious, bleeding slightly from his hands. Apparently he tried to break his fall when he struck the table and tore his gloves. His heart rate is faster than I'd like, but he's breathing normally," the sheriff reported tersely. Mulder could feel his resentment, but also his concern for Hobbs.

"He touched the King's Chair with his bare hand," Thurgood added in an apparent irrelevance.

Mulder tried to focus on those words. They were significant and he had the necessary clues to make sense of them, but he was still shaking from his close encounter with the rift in time.

"You're not much better off, are you, Agent Mulder?" Thurgood asked as he came over to kneel down beside him. "Me and my damn temper. Losing Jason like that, seeing you damn near torn apart, and then having Quatrain knocking Hobbs back against the Table -- I guess I just lost it," the sheriff confessed.

"I'll live. You knew what to expect?" Mulder accused Thurgood. It was plain now that Thurgood had expected this. Perhaps he thought Mulder was prepared as well.

"I know the stories," Thurgood admitted. "I've seen a lot of damn-fool stunts in my life, but what you just did beats them all to shame. What in hell were you thinking?"

"Trying to save Jason," Mulder replied quietly. He'd been too late, if there had ever been a chance once Jason fled the jail.

"We'll all need to talk this out, but right now I want to get you and Hobbs back down to the Trysting Cave and out of this snow. There’s shelter enough for all of us and I can build a fire. We have food, so I'd rather take the time to rest than stumble our way down this mountain in the middle of a snow storm. The trick to dealing with mountains, Mulder, is not to give them a chance," Thurgood said with a light chuckle.

Mulder tried opening his eyes and although the light reflecting from snow and rock was lessened, the pain was still excruciating. He thumped his fist against the ground in frustration.

"You caught the full force of that flash, didn't you? Damn it, why didn't you speak up?" Thurgood railed at him, then stopped abruptly. "Guess you were too busy separating a pair of angry men rattling their antlers. Quatrain is just one of those men I want to knock down a few notches, although he'd probably take me down with him. He's not all bluff and bluster, but he drives me mad," he admitted ruefully. "If you can stand, I'll ask Fraser to have Quatrain assist you down the trail. That will keep him busy and away from me while Fraser and I carry Hobbs."

"Do I get a vote?" Mulder asked irritably. He hated being dependent on help from a man who was not what Mulder would call reliable. He was tempted to say that he was fine, but supposed that the first time he ran headlong into a rock would be a dead giveaway.

"No," Thurgood replied shortly, but with a small laugh to take the sting out. "Constable Fraser, would you please ask Mr. Quatrain if it would be against his principles to assist Agent Mulder back down to the Trysting Cave so we can all get out of this snow?" Thurgood asked in a voice too polite to be true.

Mulder stifled a smile and concentrated on opening first one eye and then the other to see if the glare had gone down any. Thurgood moved off to give Quatrain a clear path. Apparently he wanted to keep some distance between them until they both cooled off. A wise idea, although Mulder disliked being used as a fence. Mulder heard a muffled discussion that ended with a profanity from Quatrain. A moment later, he saw Quatrain approach through a blinding glare.

"Can you stand?" Quatrain asked gruffly, his voice still tight with anger and some other emotion Mulder couldn't identify.

Mulder nodded and levered himself upwards. He swayed a bit, but stayed steady. The air was still and the normal woodland sounds of birds had replaced the roaring of the wind. As near as he could determine, the snow was coming down in thick heavy flakes that stuck to his clothes and eyebrows.

"Just follow me and try not to fall. I don't want both of us going down this mountain any faster than we have to," Quatrain growled as he grabbed Mulder's right hand and placed it on his right shoulder. Mulder understood -- the trail was too narrow for two men to go side-by-side, so Quatrain was going to have to lead him down the mountain.

Unable to see where he was going, the incline felt even more precipitous going down than it had going up. Mulder concentrated on keeping in step with Quatrain and not losing his footing. The snow made the loose shale slick and treacherous, but Quatrain was apparently experienced in negotiating nasty trails in miserable weather. They slid more than they walked, but they avoided a fall. Behind them, Mulder could hear Thurgood and Fraser moving cautiously and slowly down the trail.

"Constable Fraser, do you see any way five grown men are going to fit in that narrow overhang?" Quatrain shouted back sarcastically over his shoulder as Mulder felt them pass through the rowan tree gate. Under other circumstances, Mulder realized that he'd probably find the silent war for dominance between Quatrain and Thurgood amusing, but right now it was annoying.

"I believe you'll find a passage somewhere along the back wall that leads to a small cavern," Fraser shouted back. "I felt a draft when the sheriff and I examined the area earlier," he went on to explain.

Either Fraser didn't catch Quatrain's sarcasm, or else was choosing to take whatever he said literally as a way of defusing the situation. In either event, Mulder gave him points for patience. Even Fraser was beginning to sound tired although Mulder doubted if there was a single visual sign of the effort he must be exerting to help carry an unconscious man down that trail.

With a thump that shook his spine, Mulder felt himself propped up on shaky legs against a rock as Quatrain stepped away. He could hear Quatrain cursing softly as he searched for the promised opening. Mulder hoped Fraser was correct because it was getting cold. A blast of cold wind had hit them when they walked onto the plateau and the temperature suddenly felt about twenty degrees colder. A mountaintop was not exactly the place Mulder would have chosen as his favorite spot to go blind and experience a snowstorm simultaneously.

They had certainly botched this mission, Mulder thought disconsolately as he shivered in the cold wet snow. Jason was gone, they had one man walking wounded, and another unconscious, along with two men who weren't even speaking to each other. Hopefully this cavern was going to be big enough to accommodate all the people and issues they were dragging in with them.

Mulder tried not to think about the hot showers at the inn or the kettle of hot soup Sarah had promised to have ready for them. His parka was doing an excellent job of keeping his upper body dry and warm, but whatever force had picked him up and flung him back down had left his jeans soaked clear through with icy water and mud. His legs were beginning to shake with cold and he clutched at the rock to steady himself. Hobbs was probably just as bad off which meant both of them were candidates for frostbite at the very least. Mulder began giving serious consideration to opening up an X-File on himself. There had to be some paranormal explanation for his repeated attempts to court death by frostbite.

"Found it!" Quatrain's shout came just as Mulder heard Fraser and Thurgood arrive.

"Hobbs?" he asked, hoping to hear some response from his fellow agent. Skinner was not going to be very happy to hear that not only had they lost their suspect to an unseen paranormal event, but one half of the New Hampshire field office had been disabled besides.

"Still out, but beginning to stir. With luck, he'll be back on his feet by the time this storm lets up. Constable Fraser predicts we'll have a lull in about two hours," Thurgood said with no hint that he doubted the prediction. It seemed that Thurgood was developing a healthy respect for Fraser's woods skills.

"There's no way we can carry Agent Hobbs into that cavern," Thurgood announced flatly somewhere about ten feet from Mulder's position, as near as he could reckon it. "I'll stay with him in the overhang until he regains consciousness. He'll be out of the wind and I can wrap him in my survival blanket to start getting him warm again. Constable Fraser, take Agent Mulder inside and get some coffee and food into him. He's starting to turn blue," Thurgood ordered. "I am not going to lose two FBI agents up here," he added in a grim tone that sounded as if he were ordering the mountain to cease and desist.

"Is the cavern ventilated?" Fraser asked out of the blue with a slight grunt.

From the sounds of it, he and Thurgood were getting Hobbs settled in the overhang. Mulder hated having to decipher what was happening by sound alone. The wind’s soft moaning among the rocks make listening difficult.

"Yes, and you should find a small stack of dry wood and some kindling as well," Thurgood replied as he quickly caught on to what Fraser was suggesting. For once, Mulder was pleased to find that he was a half-step ahead of Thurgood in decoding Fraser's often cryptic comments.

The thought of a warm fire made waiting out here in the wind difficult. At this point, Mulder was willing to court smoke inhalation for the chance to get warm. His fear of fire was being rapidly overtaken by an insane desire to lie down on hot coals just to get some feeling back into his legs. The smell of wet fur, then a heavy warmth leaning against his legs, told him that Diefenbaker was taking matters into his own paws. With the wind effectively blocked by Diefenbaker, Mulder began feeling his knees again and felt much more secure pinned against the rocks by the wolf's weight.

"Good boy," Mulder whispered as he ran his gloved hand over Diefenbaker's head. He made a mental note to buy Diefenbaker several cheeseburgers and anything else he wanted with them when they got back to town.

"Well done, Diefenbaker. Now get up and let Agent Mulder get inside out of this wind. Why don't you go over and help the sheriff keep Agent Hobbs warm?" Fraser asked politely as he levered his shoulder under Mulder's arm.

Mulder felt the cold air hit his legs with redoubled force when Diefenbaker obediently trotted off. He bit his lips to stifle a moan when he tried to take the first aching step forward. At least he could feel the pain which suggested that the limbs were still alive, just not very functional. With Fraser's help, he hobbled to the overhang and felt himself maneuvered to what his hands told him was a very narrow slit in the rocks.

"You'll have to turn sideways, I'm afraid, the passage is extremely narrow. However, it's also very short so you shouldn't have any problems getting through. Just inch yourself along and Mr. Quatrain will take you on the other end." Fraser sounded confident, but Mulder recognized the professionally confident tone all lawmen tended to use in FUBAR'd situations to disguise just how fucked-up they thought the situation really was.

Mulder was not normally claustrophobic, but the combination of squeezing himself into a very narrow opening and being unable to see where he was going gave him the feeling that the mountain was pressing in on him. The passage took a slight bend about three feet in and for several anxious minutes Mulder was unable to move. The urge to hyperventilate was tempting, but Mulder forced himself to remain calm. With his chest pinned tight, panting would only complicate the situation. At least he'd remain upright if his legs gave out. Small comfort, but it meant that he wouldn't add a concussion to his other problems. Quatrain was a bigger man than he was so it stood to reason that if Quatrain could make it through, so could he. Unable to lift his arms to feel around, Mulder was forced to analyze the problem by the pressure the rocks were exerting on various parts of his body. His shoulders were caught fast, but by carefully twisting his hips, Mulder felt the pressure start to give.

"Agent Mulder, are you through?" Fraser stage-whispered from the entrance.

Mulder repressed the urge to snap back with a sarcastic comment and instead settled for a very simple, "No." Mulder heard Fraser speak sharply to Diefenbaker, then heard the sounds of someone entering the passageway. If Fraser had some idea of pushing him through the bend, he was going to have to think again. Mulder risked opening his eyes, but quickly shut them when all he could see was a white glaring haze.

"He's caught in that damn squeeze point, Constable. If he can't see, he can't tell that it's a corkscrew," Quatrain explained in an exasperated tone. "Agent Mulder, you can't move forward, but if you try twisting slightly to your left, you'll find some maneuvering room. Try exhaling completely before you try to move," he suggested calmly as if he'd done this sort of thing before. For the first time, Mulder felt a stirring of liking for the man. Quatrain was an arrogant ass, but he was a competent ass.

"Easy for you," Mulder quipped as he took several small deep breaths to stock up on oxygen before letting everything go in a long sigh that deflated his lungs and gave him a half-inch of wiggle room. His heard his jacket ripping across the rock but he could move. At first, he gained only an inch, but as he forced his body to twist to the left, he felt the passage widen ever so slightly. With a lurch, he popped out of the bottleneck and practically barreled into Quatrain who had entered the passage from his end to lend him a hand.

"Here, get some coffee in you," Quatrain urged as he pulled Mulder out of the narrow tunnel. Mulder felt a warm plastic cup being pressed into his hands and gratefully sipped the hot, sweet concoction Sarah had prepared. "Molasses and coffee -- it will drive the cold out and give you something to run on."

"Agent Mulder, my apologies. I neglected to consider your temporary handicap," Fraser apologized as he entered the cave. Mulder waved off his apology, but added a smile in an effort to do his part for international diplomacy.

"Here, have a sandwich. There's plenty of coffee and enough food to feed twice as many men," Quatrain added admiringly. "How long is that storm going to last, Constable?"

Quatrain's tone when he addressed Fraser was almost respectful and he was acting unusually solicitous towards Mulder. Years of profiling experience told him that Quatrain wasn't being completely honest with them. He got the distinct impression that Quatrain had decided on a course of action and was hiding his decision behind a conciliatory attitude. Sitting here in the dark, Mulder concentrated on listening to all the nuances of speech that he normally absorbed unconsciously. Losing Jason was not the end of this case, of that Mulder was sure, although he had to base this opinion on nothing but a hunch.

"Until it blows out, Mr. Quatrain, but I believe there will be a lull in about two hours that should allow us time to get back to the cars, providing Agents Mulder and Hobbs can travel by then," Fraser added gravely. There was just a hint of hearty ‘Can do’ in his voice, but blind as he was to visual signals, Mulder heard the slight edge of worry in Fraser's tone. Not about his weather prediction, certainly, but he probably had doubts that either FBI agent was going to be in traveling condition. Mulder intended to surprise this self-confident Mountie if he had to will his eyesight back. There was something about Fraser that spurred his competitive instincts.

Defiantly, Mulder opened his eyes and tried to convince himself that his sight was beginning to come back. To his disgust, the white haze was still there. He understood the implications of flash blindness, but couldn't resist pushing the recovery time.

"Agent Mulder, I'm going to put a scarf around your eyes. It will help," Fraser said in a low voice. "I've experienced snow blindness and trying to use your eyes will only slow down the recovery time. Please?" he said as Mulder felt a cotton cloth brush against his face.

Mulder wanted to tell him to go to hell. I don't need cosseting, he grumbled to himself. Scully's eternal and damnably frustrating "I'm fine," echoed in his mind and he gave a reluctant nod. I’m not admitting to weakness; I’m making a professional acknowledgment that I’m operating under less than optimum capacity, he assured himself.. Fraser’s cool professional detachment as he bound Mulder’s eyes was a salve to his injured pride.

There wasn't much he could do in his present situation, but try to stay out of the way. He could hear Fraser moving around and the heavy thud of wood being stacked -- sounds that promised the imminent arrival of a fire. Getting out of the snow and wind had helped, as had the coffee, but Mulder was still fighting off cold shivers that suggested a cold, if not pneumonia, was in his future. No doubt Scully would have assured him that people did not catch colds by being cold while efficiently pretending that nothing out of the ordinary had happened to put him in the position of having to be cared for.

What would she have made of the events up at the Table? he wondered idly. A convenient lightning flash sparking off the rocks and snow would probably have served as her explanation of his blindness. Jason's disappearance would be harder for her to explain away, but he'd heard her dismiss stronger evidence before with hidebound scientific skepticism. Perhaps she was better off removed from his world with its unsettling truths. She had never learned to cope with phenomena that challenged her belief in the inviolability of established scientific principles. Denying the truth didn’t make it any less real, he’d found, but Scully never stopped trying.

Stop this, he growled to himself. He was alone now and it was up to him to decide what actually did happen and how much of it he was going to put in his report.

Mulder ruefully wondered when he had turned the corner and started judging how much of the truth to tell in his official reports. After seven years of pounding his head against the brick wall of official indifference, he no longer believed that people wanted to know the truth -- especially the people whose power rested in keeping the truth within carefully delineated boundaries. Now he had come to realize that telling the whole truth might endanger the very mysteries that fascinated him. More and more he found himself in the position of weighing the consequences of revealing the truth. Cancer Man had once told him that he was becoming a player. Perhaps so, but he hoped that he never lost his doubts that hedging the truth was a good thing.

The welcome heat of a fire washed over him and instinctively Mulder edged closer until he could feel the heat baking through his soggy jeans into his aching legs. Whatever ventilation existed in this cave kept it from filling with smoke, but the air was soon thick with the smell of burning wood and steaming cloth. As he absorbed the heat, Mulder started to sort through what had happened up at the Round Table. Some details were burned into his memory like vivid after-images, while others were becoming hazy, fading into shadows even as he tried to pull them back into focus.

Tracking the hazy memories, he forced them back into high relief and carefully committed each detail to his conscious memory before they started fading again. When he took his attention off of them, they slipped away like fog before a wind. He wasn't prepared to say that the mountain was exercising its influence over his memories, but he sensed that something or someone was trying to smooth over his memories, to lull him into forgetting what he'd seen.

Sorting through the events slowly Mulder came to the conclusion that the problem he faced was usually the one he had at the beginning of a case -- too many theories and not enough hard data. He had a suspicion, but he needed some honest discussion with Thurgood and the others before he was willing to call it a theory. Mulder leaned back against the cave wall and let his mind slip into free fall, making associations and connections without any conscious effort to direct the random ideas milling about up there.

"We're coming in."

Thurgood's voice startled Mulder out of his reverie. He had no idea how much time had passed, but his headache was gone and he felt relaxed. The clues were all sorted and were being analyzed by his subconscious, but for the first time he sensed that he was close to the answer. He needed to hear what the others had seen and then he'd have to convince Fraser and Hobbs to listen.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

"Hobbs?" Mulder called out as he struggled to his feet, only to have his left calf muscle seize up in a cramp. Sinking back down to the floor, Mulder tried to stretch out the cramp while massaging the twisted muscle. His eyes were still useless, but he thought he detected a slight lessening of the glare through the scarf. Even with the scarf tied across his eyes, all he could see was the after-image of Jason, the chair, and the blinding aurora enveloping the chair and Jason. As long as he concentrated on the case, he could push away the nagging fear that his eyesight might not come back.

"I'm OK, Agent Mulder. I'll come to you," Hobbs suggested. "Besides, you've got the box office seat by the fire."

To Mulder's relief, Hobbs sounded tired, but coherent. The sound of feet shuffling towards him suggested that Hobbs was being assisted, but that could simply be Thurgood making sure no more accidents happened. Mulder felt a hand grasp his shoulder as Hobbs lowered himself to the ground beside him.

"I'll bring over coffee and sandwiches. When I've thawed out, we'll talk." Thurgood sounded relatively good-humored. Having Hobbs back among the conscious probably had something to do with it. There were too many awkward explanations as it was, but so far Mulder hoped they could avoid hospitals and official inquiries into how two FBI agents managed to be disabled by an unarmed suspect.

"What happened to you?" Hobbs asked cautiously as he shifted into a more comfortable position.

"Ever look straight into a flash bulb when it went off?" Mulder asked with a rueful smile. Scully would have given him an exasperated grumble, but would also have known that if he could crack a joke, however lame, he was OK.

"This case has sure gone to hell." Hobbs sounded disgusted.

"It's not quite that bad, Agent Hobbs, but it's not good," Thurgood said calmly.

Mulder felt hot coffee being poured into his cup and a hefty sandwich pressed into his other hand. Apparently it hadn't occurred to Hobbs that, as senior agent, Mulder was the one the Bureau would hold responsible for this mess.

"What happened up there? How can I explain that we lost our suspect in plain sight without sounding like a damn fool?" Hobbs exclaimed angrily.

"You let me explain it," Mulder said. "I've had experience and the Bureau expects this sort of spooky stuff from me," he added with a shrug.

"Perhaps it would be more conducive to a coherent report if we all came to a universal conclusion about the events we just witnessed," Fraser suggested. "Agent Mulder, you were closest to Jason Fairfax; what happened?"

Mulder thought for a moment. He could just lay out his theory without any preliminaries, but he wanted some build-up first, additional evidence supplied by people who hadn't been nose-to-nose with the force that resided in that chair. Thurgood was too willing to believe, Hobbs was possibly impressionable enough to go with whatever theory Mulder came up with, but Fraser and Quatrain were unknown elements. He wanted their honest testimony first before he contaminated their memories with his theories. All too often paranormal events were discounted by scientists simply because human memories were malleable.

"No," he replied, hesitating just long enough to hear the stiffening of bodies and the pent-up breaths waiting to explode into objections. He felt a momentary flicker of satisfaction at turning the tables on Thurgood and Hobbs. He'd never tried this technique blind before and hoped it wouldn't blow up in his face. Reading minute shifts in body language and expression had always guided him through this process of eliciting eyewitness testimony of events outside normal experience.

"I need to know what you saw," Mulder went on, cutting across Fraser's question before he could get more than a word out. "You're right, Constable, I was closest, but that also means that I couldn't see everything that was going on. When I came on the scene, the sheriff was standing about five feet from the Table talking to Jason, while you, Constable, were wrestling with Diefenbaker, and Hobbs, you and Mr. Quatrain were arguing." Mulder laid out the scenario as he remembered it in the brief moment before he charged after Jason.

"That does seem to sum up our respective positions, Agent Mulder," Fraser commented approvingly.

"Then I want to have each one of you tell me what you were doing, and why, to the best of your ability. Quatrain, you were the master manipulator of this little scenario. Why don't you tell us why you pressured Jason into running up here?" Mulder asked in a brusque, no-nonsense tone.

"I knew I should have pulled strings to get some nice, lazy FBI bureaucrat assigned to this case," Quatrain said in a brash, irritated tone. "You're good, Agent Mulder, and I suspect you know my reasons, but I'm going to force you to show off that analytical, oddball brain of yours. There's no reason for me to cooperate with you and every reason to make you try to prove your allegations." Quatrain shifted position and Mulder felt the fire flare up and sensed Hobbs relaxing. At a guess, Quatrain had been griping a handy piece of dead wood in a way that suggested its use as a club. Mulder wished he could spare the time to assure Hobbs that the last thing on Quatrain's mind was instituting another assault on a federal officer.

"Mr. Quatrain, as guests we have an obligation . . . . ," Fraser started before Quatrain interrupted.

"And I have no desire to remain here as a *guest* of the sheriff," Quatrain snapped.

"I'm not interested in whatever laws Sheriff Thurgood feels you may have broken, Quatrain," Mulder interjected, cursing his inability to read the faces of the others. "I think it's pretty clear that you manipulated Jason Fairfax into fleeing custody. I'm more interested in why. What did you expect him to do?" Mulder asked evenly. He sensed that Quatrain would welcome a chance to erupt into anger, to derail this discussion. Quatrain wanted an argument, therefore Mulder felt obliged to disappoint him.

"Why don't you tell me?" Quatrain snapped back sarcastically. He was doing a very good imitation of the brusque, arrogant military commander, but Mulder had a strange feeling that Quatrain was giving him what he thought Mulder expected. There was a sense of urgency about Quatrain that he was attempting to mask with a sharp-tongue and an uncooperative attitude. The fact that this technique was a familiar one to Mulder gave its appearance now a certain irony.

Fate uses a nasty boomerang, he grumbled to himself.

"Later, but thank you for confirming that you did know what you were sending Jason to meet," Mulder added in an exquisitely courteous tone. Quatrain muttered something in a foreign language that didn't sound very complimentary.

"Hobbs, what happened up there?" Mulder asked softly, instinctively turning to face him even though he couldn't see Hobbs' face.

He felt Hobbs take a deep breath and begin his report. "I was walking behind Mr. Quatrain and didn't see Jason Fairfax at first, but I could hear the sheriff yelling at him. When I stepped to one side, I could see Fairfax sitting down in one of the stone chairs. The wind was howling so hard around us that I could barely stand up." Hobbs paused and Mulder could feel him tense. They were coming very close to something Hobbs considered extremely private and Mulder gave him time to choose his words.

When Hobbs continued, it was in a soft, informal tone, clearly indicating his uncertainty about the chain of events. "It sounds mad, but I thought I could hear the chair calling to me -- offering me the chance to be where I was meant to be, to be what I was meant to be. When I realized that Mr. Quatrain was starting to run forward, I didn't even stop to think -- I just stepped in front of him and tried to stop him. All the while he was yelling at me, I could hear that voice in the back of my head urging me to follow my destiny. Suddenly I saw a huge burst of white light flash out from behind me and I started to turn. That's when Mr. Quatrain hit me. I don't remember anything else," Hobbs added quickly.

"You tripped and fell on your bloody ass," Quatrain muttered just loud enough for everyone to hear.

"Mr. Quatrain, I believe that you yielded the floor to Agent Hobbs. If you have anything to say that alters Agent Hobbs' recollection, then I'm sure Agent Mulder will allow you to speak." Fraser's voice had enough of an edge of curt command to it to effectively silence whatever else Quatrain had been about to say.

Mulder cursed Fraser's sense of fair play. He rarely objected to interruptions since they were usually spontaneous and offered excellent opportunities for someone to say more than they intended. Mulder wondered if anyone else realized how smoothly Hobbs was glossing over what happened when he hit the Table. Hobbs had seen more than he was telling. The question was whether it had any bearing on the case. For now, Mulder decided, he'd give Hobbs his breathing space. He was curious about what Hobbs was hiding, but he couldn't justify prying into his privacy, not yet.

"Male or female?" Fraser asked suddenly. It took Mulder a moment to follow his line of thinking. From the confused mutters around him, the others were completely lost. Fraser apologized and went on. "The voice -- was it male or female?"

Mulder tried to remember if he had heard anything over the howling of the wind. He didn't recall hearing a voice, just a persistent drumbeat that sounded as if it came from deep underground.

"Male," Hobbs replied. The murmurs of assent around the circle were unanimous. Apparently everyone had heard the voices except Mulder. It was possible that he had been so focused on Jason that he just blocked out anything which would interfere in his attempt to reach him, but he had an uneasy feeling that this was too easy an answer.

"Interesting. I would have thought that the voice would be female, but I distinctly heard a male voice urging me to step forward and sit down in the chair," Fraser commented in a curious tone. "He was very persuasive, as I recall, but Diefenbaker seemed to have other ideas. Of course, he couldn't hear the voice, but I wonder if it even affects animals." After a pause, he continued, "The voice appeared to exert a form of glamour, a compulsion to obey that I found quite unusual. At the time, it seemed perfectly reasonable to follow its suggestions," Fraser admitted ruefully.

"If you had, then I'm afraid we'd have some explaining to do to the Canadian government," Thurgood said with a chuckle. He seemed relaxed, almost relieved, as if the entire affair had ended better than he had expected. Mulder got the sense that nothing being said was coming as a surprise to him.

"You weren't affected by the voice, Sheriff." Quatrain turned the question into a flat statement of fact that sounded as if he was accusing the sheriff of complicity in the entire mess.

"Once bitten, Mr. Quatrain," was the sheriff's laconic reply. His subsequent silence indicated that he had said all he was going to say on the subject.

"Well, Agent Mulder -- have we given you enough time to cobble together a theory?" Quatrain thrust the question at him almost as a challenge. "Better make it a good one -- you have two governments to convince this time," he added in a mocking tone.

Mulder wished he had time to sit back and analyze Quatrain's response to the situation. He was pushing too hard, almost as if he wanted to force Mulder to jump to some conclusion. His reactions were wrong for a man who had not only lost his daughter, but also lost the main suspect in her disappearance. Mulder felt torn. His head told him that a man like Quatrain would be capable of going to any lengths if he thought he could control the force that existed up here on Blackthorn Mountain. At the same time, his instincts were telling him that despite appearances, Quatrain wasn't a threat. If his instincts were wrong, he'd be responsible for betraying a secret this town had kept for over two hundred years.

It all boiled down to whether he trusted his instincts or his brain. He was going to have to operate on blind trust and he could already feel the weight of it pressing down on his shoulders.

"How many chairs were around that Table, Constable Fraser?" Mulder asked, ignoring Quatrain's question. Fraser was, he sensed, close to understanding what existed up there. If Fraser understood the ramifications of the Table, then gaining Quatrain's cooperation might be that much easier.

Quatrain gave a short, harsh laugh that didn't sound remotely humorous. Mulder thought he could detect a hint of anxiety in the laugh. It occurred to him that this scenario was not playing out as Quatrain had planned. He began to see how Quatrain had manipulated events and the exact moment when those events slipped out of his control.

"Nine, as I recall. One larger one, the King's chair, I presume, seven smaller chairs carved out of the same rock, then the chair Jason sat in. I can't be sure without a closer examination, but I think it was carved out of an entirely different rock," Fraser offered cautiously as if he were trying to visualize the Table. "For some reason, I'm not remembering the details as clearly as I should be able to," he added in a puzzled tone.

"Mystic numbers with ancient meanings," Mulder explained. "Nine can symbolize truth or completeness. It was also associated with the worship of the Great Goddess. The seven lesser chairs could represent completion, fulfillment, even initiation into the mysteries."

"Didn't the original Round Table have fifty or more seats?" Hobbs asked.

"There are many variations in legend. Some stories say fifty seats, some say twenty-five, still others suggest that over five hundred knights could sit around the table. Galen Hatherford chose eight and the king's chair. His compulsion brought the stone chairs over here from somewhere in England and eight were perhaps all he could find. I wish we could trace back his journey to discover where he found these stone chairs," Mulder mused wistfully.

"You mentioned the numbers seven and nine, but there are eight knights' chairs," Hobbs objected.

"Seven lordly knights and one chair reserved for the perfect knight," Fraser whispered in a hushed voice.

"The Siege Perilous," Mulder replied in an equally soft voice. "It was death for any man to sit in it but the one destined to be the Grail Knight."

"Then my daughter is dead?" Quatrain asked in a choked voice that suddenly seemed bereft of hope.

"I don't know, but consider what you saw happen when Jason sat in the chair. A blinding flash of light and he disappeared. To the Tenth Century mind, that would seem pretty final. I wonder where Merlin found that chair and what he knew of its properties when he brought it to Camelot?" Mulder asked of no one in particular. The mystery had him in its grip now and all he could do was plow forward until he understood the truth standing in the shadows.

"The Siege Perilous is a myth, or so I've been taught," Fraser said with growing doubt. Mulder sympathized with him. Somehow, he suspected that this wasn't Fraser's first encounter with the paranormal, but it's never easy running headlong into a myth that suddenly was quite real.

"We'd like it to remain so," Thurgood suggested firmly. His tone was still pleasant, but Mulder wondered just how far Thurgood, or the town, would be willing to go to protect their secret.

"Are you suggesting that we falsify our reports?" Fraser asked stiffly.

Mulder wondered if Fraser was sitting at attention, physically registering his resistance to the idea of compromising the truth. He sympathized completely, but he also hoped to find a way to submit factual reports without alerting their respective governments to the existence of the chair. The potential for misuse by his government frightened Mulder, and he had no more confidence in the Canadian government.. Camlyn had kept its secret for over two hundred years. If any place was safe, this was it.

"Not me, Constable," Thurgood assured him gravely. "I'm only asking you to consider the consequences of reporting suppositions. You may be honorable -- can you say as much for every member of your government?"

Fraser remained silent for several moments. Mulder cursed softly at his inability to visually assess the situation. I can't do this blind, he thought angrily as he reached up and stripped off the blindfold. Glaring white light caused him to blink furiously and he felt his eyes tear up as they reacted to the harsh glare.

"Agent Mulder . . . ." Fraser sounded disapproving, but fell silent. Mulder guessed that someone, perhaps Thurgood, had gestured for him to stay out of it.

Closing and opening his eyes slowly and carefully every few seconds, Mulder discovered that the glare was beginning to diminish. His eyes stung and watered, but through the salty film he began to distinguish shapes and shadows. Curiously, every time he closed his eyes, he could still see the letters carved into the chair. They had been the last things he had seen before the exploding light had blinded him. Mulder hoped they weren't going to be a permanent after-image burned into the inside of his eyelids.

"Getting better?" Thurgood asked. Mulder turned towards his voice. To his relief, he could make out the sheriff squatting across from him. The firelight hurt when he stared through it, but the pain was manageable. The air was slightly hazy with smoke, but the natural chimney appeared to be drawing most of the smoke away.

Turning to look at Fraser sitting cross-legged beside Hobbs, Mulder was pleased to note that he could make out the buttons on Fraser's uniform where his parka hung open. It appeared that as long as he avoided direct light, he had functional vision. Mulder felt his mood improve dramatically along with his sight. They would find a way through this dilemma; they had to.

Risking a glance at Quatrain, Mulder saw him sitting slightly apart from everyone with a sardonic, grim expression on his face. For a moment he locked eyes with Mulder. There was challenge, anger, but also the strange sense that Quatrain would be an ally if Mulder managed to present the case in just the right way. If there was ever a man with mixed motives, Quatrain was that man, Mulder decided. He was wary of Quatrain because the man was apparently operating on his own agenda. Mulder could make a guess as to that agenda, but he deliberately pulled his mind away from speculating too deeply in that direction. It was enough, for now, that Quatrain was not an enemy. He might never know if he was an ally, but at the moment, their paths moved in the same direction.

"Jason Fairfax disappeared in front of our eyes. I don't see how we can avoid reporting that fact," Fraser replied, picking up the interrupted discussion.

"We lost the suspect in a storm?" Hobbs suggested doubtfully. Even he didn't sound convinced that this solution would satisfy their respective agencies.

"Haven't you heard? The Mounties don't lose suspects," Quatrain countered with a harsh, sarcastic laugh. Mulder refrained from looking at him. Quatrain was probing, pushing them, and Mulder had no desire to give him the satisfaction of responding. "Especially this Mountie."

"Does your government expect an official report, Constable?" Thurgood asked, ignoring Quatrain's interruption. Thurgood sounded hopeful.

"I am required to give a full account of the efforts made by the U.S. authorities to locate Lisa Quatrain," Fraser replied, choosing his words as precisely as they must have been given to him.

"Was anything said about the apprehension of a suspect or the prosecution of a suspect?" Mulder asked.

"Agent Mulder, are you suggesting that I submit an incomplete report based on the splitting of a semantic hair?" Fraser asked sternly.

Mulder stared at him and gave an imperceptible sigh of relief. The faint quiver he'd detected in Fraser's voice was matched by the barest hint of a smile in his eyes. Maybe it was just the glare from the fire, but Mulder sensed that Fraser was amused under his gruff exterior.

"I'm merely suggesting that you comply exactly with the orders you were given, Constable," Mulder replied innocently with a hint of a smile in his own eyes. He could get to like Fraser. It was rare that he met a man as quick on the uptake or with as good a grasp of the subtle nuances involved in composing reports.

"Sheriff, how far would you go to protect that chair -- off the record?" Mulder asked with studied casualness. He was still feeling his way towards a solution to the problem, but instinct told him that he was on the right path. The minefield now seemed less like an obstacle and more like a complex maze he was on his way towards solving.

"Whatever it takes, off the record, of course," Thurgood replied grimly. "If you report the existence of the chair and its power, I can guarantee you that neither of your governments will find the chair if they come looking for it."

"You wouldn't destroy it?" Quatrain blurted out in an appalled tone. To Mulder, he sounded like a man who saw a chasm open up beneath his feet. Whatever plans Quatrain had did not include having the chair disappear. Mulder began a quick reassessment of his profile of Quatrain. It was a roughly drawn picture, but despite the overt inference of a threat, Mulder didn't sense that Quatrain posed a danger. Instinct was a fragile and narrow walkway across treacherous waters, but it was all Mulder had to go on.

"I have no desire to try that experiment, Mr. Quatrain. If that chair serves as a doorway to other worlds, I don't want to find out what happens when you blow up the door."

"You'd hide it, like the ancient Britons must have done when the Saxons over-ran their land," Fraser mused. He sounded distracted as if his mind had been captivated by the possibilities the chair represented. Excusing himself, Fraser walked to the front of the cave and stood by the tunnel opening muttering to himself. Although Mulder couldn't make out what Fraser was saying, it sounded as if he was holding a one-sided conversation with himself. The Constable was a man of strange habits -- almost as strange as his own, Mulder concluded.

"I've never lied on a report, before," Hobbs said in a small voice, as if protesting the inevitable conclusion that that was exactly what he was going to end up doing.

"Maybe you won't have to," Mulder reassured him. The small signals he was picking up from Quatrain were finally making sense. If he was right, Quatrain already had a plan. On the other hand, if he was wrong, then they were firmly wedged between a rock and a hard place with no room to move.

"This is my daughter you are talking about, gentlemen," Quatrain barked, breaking the silence.

His authoritative tone of voice sent both Hobbs and Thurgood stiffening to attention for a moment. Fraser turned around a moment later with what Mulder thought was a whispered, "Not now, Father." Since Diefenbaker was still sprawled across Mulder's feet basking in the heat of the fire, Mulder doubted if he was talking to the wolf. Shelving the mystery of a Mountie who talked to himself for later, Mulder turned his attention to Quatrain.

"I have no reason to trust the Canadian government, nor any reason to hand them an artifact like the chair." Quatrain looked over at Fraser. "Don't even think about bristling at me, Constable. You're so straight they could use you as a flagpole, but you're not bloody stupid unless my intelligence men are damn fools, and they're not." Quatrain smiled grimly at a startled Fraser, then turned that same smile on Mulder, who braced himself.

"Agent Mulder, whoever you found to hack into my private files was good, damn good. They didn't get everything because my goddamned incompetent former security chief finally woke up to the fact that we were being hacked and slammed down the controls. Your hacker has some bloody fine defenses because we couldn't trace him. If he ever wants a job, I'll give you a name and number he can call." Quatrain sounded almost amused by the incident. Mulder released the breath he'd been holding in a long, slow exhale.

"Hacking aside, Agent Mulder, I doubt if you have any reason to trust your government with a secret like this, much less the shadow government you've uncovered." Quatrain was blunt, almost brusque, and it was clear he had done his research. Fraser, Hobbs, and Thurgood looked puzzled, but Mulder conceded the point to Quatrain with a brisk nod.

As he talked, Quatrain's rich Caribbean accent became clearer and more noticeable. Mulder guessed that he had deliberately suppressed his accent for everyday intercourse, but as he became more animated, his native accent emerged. Accustomed to Skinner's brusque, military attitude, Mulder caught the military command tone Quatrain was using. It seemed that Quatrain was a man accustomed to giving orders and being obeyed without question. So far, he appeared to be headed in the direction Mulder wanted to go, so he held his peace and let Quatrain open the path.

Mulder was amused to see that his silence earned him a wary glance from Quatrain. Mulder simply smiled in response and held his peace. Quatrain seemed to be as uneasy as Skinner usually was when faced with a Mulder smile and silence.

"Mr. Quatrain, I am sworn to uphold the law, as are Agents Mulder and Hobbs. You publicly accused Jason Fairfax of murder. It is now probable that he is innocent, based on what we saw up by the Table. We cannot allow the charge of murder to stand against an innocent young man," Fraser declared firmly as he returned to the circle by the fire. "Nor can we waste government resources perpetuating a search we now suspect would be futile."

"Let's hear what Mr. Quatrain has to say, Constable," Thurgood advised. "We can argue over procedural details, later."

"Thank you, Sheriff," Quatrain said with curt politeness. It appeared that Quatrain had a wary respect for the sheriff. In any event, this was the sheriff's jurisdiction. Ultimately, Thurgood had the final say over whatever accord they reached.

"I have no intention of explaining my reasons for offering this solution. I assure you, Sheriff Thurgood, that I have no hostile intentions towards the chair. It has remained hidden all these years and I see no reason to reveal its secret to venial men."

Mulder studied Quatrain, assessing the minute clues in body language and voice that would tell him whether Quatrain was sincere. It was possible that Quatrain had mastered the art of controlling all these signals, but Mulder doubted it. To all intents and purposes, Quatrain was being honest. Mulder suspected that he wasn't being completely forthcoming, but Mulder was beginning to have a strong suspicion about what Quatrain wasn't saying and saw no need at the present to bring it up.

"What I have in mind will clear Fairfax, Constable." Quatrain paused to take a deep breath, then plunged on. "My daughter ran away." Quatrain held up his hand to forestall Fraser's protest.

"In a literal sense, it's the truth. As I've discovered, Lisa knew the legends of the chair. I doubt if she really believed in them, but that isn't Fairfax's fault. I blame him for telling her, but Lisa is a headstrong, impulsive girl and Fairfax had no way of knowing Lisa would test the legend. We had argued earlier that day. I believe she sat in the chair, the Siege Perilous if you will, by her own choice. Lisa may have foolishly dared the chair as a gesture of defiance; we may never know." Quatrain paused to clear his throat. Thurgood reached out and laid a sympathetic hand on his shoulder for a moment. Mulder wondered how much of Quatrain's sudden emotion was genuine and how much was artifice. Quatrain was after something and from what Mulder had seen so far, he was an able manipulator and possibly a fair actor.

"I will make a public statement confirming that I now have reason to believe that my daughter ran away and was subsequently followed by Jason Fairfax. I think Fairfax won't mind being remembered as an impulsive Romeo who assisted a beautiful, young woman in her escape from a domineering father," Quatrain said with a sardonic smile that was almost a grimace. Mulder wondered what, if any, guilt Quatrain felt in knowing that he had driven his daughter into taking such a desperate move.

Hobbs chuckled, then tried to turn it into a cough. Quatrain shrugged and gave him an understanding nod. "I'll look foolish, but it's a fair trade if Agent Hobbs will consider that full payment for the disagreement we had up by the Table?"

Hobbs gave him a quick nod, looking slightly embarrassed. It was a better solution to the situation than he had expected from the relieved expression on his face. Mulder didn't blame him. He was fairly certain Hobbs had encountered something paranormal when he collided with the Table and an official investigation into the assault might prompt some very uncomfortable questions. Not that Mulder didn't have questions of his own, but he hoped his curiosity would be less threatening than the scrutiny of the FBI brass.

"It's the truth, Constable. It's just not the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I see no reason to flesh it out with a lot of unnecessary, complicated facts," Thurgood said, sounding relieved to have Quatrain's cooperation. Fraser kept looking off into the distance, giving no sign he even heard the sheriff.

"Look at it this way, Fraser, would including the whole truth on our official reports help either Lisa or Jason?" Mulder asked, pitching his voice loud enough to catch Fraser's attention and bring him back to the discussion at hand.

"My apologies, Agent Mulder, I was considering where my duty lay," Fraser apologized. "I agree that publicizing the existence of the chair would be unwise. While I doubt if we would be believed, there would always be someone eager to test it out and I believe we have a responsibility to the other worlds to prevent this sort of unauthorized travel," Fraser said with a perfectly straight face and complete sincerity, as least as far as Mulder could tell.

Fraser was one of those people who put Mulder on full mental alert. Fraser seemed to be a combination of Boy Scout and knight errant with a dash of practicality thrown in to confuse things. Profiling Fraser would be like predicting the weather -- chancy at best. At least he seemed to be willing to cooperate in keeping the existence of the Siege Perilous a secret. Mulder breathed a sigh of relief. He had no idea what he would have done if Fraser had insisted on reporting exactly what he had seen by the Table. His favorite coping strategy, the infamous plan B -- improvise on the run -- didn't offer the same attraction it usually did when pitted against Fraser's implacable honesty.

As if Fraser's acquiescence was a signal for everyone to relax, Thurgood muttered something about checking the weather and stepped outside while Hobbs retreated into silence. Mulder took one look and recognized the 'do not disturb' signs and left Hobbs alone with his thoughts. Fraser hesitated, then followed Thurgood outside. Quatrain moved away from the fire and squatted down against the cave wall. His expression was totally unreadable -- inscrutable was the word that came to mind. Quatrain gave Mulder a sardonic, almost challenging, smile as if he was daring Mulder to guess his intentions before deliberately closing his eyes and leaning his head back against the wall. Mulder knew when he'd been shut out and also knew that Quatrain wasn't going to give him any more information than he already had. It was almost enough, Mulder conceded, but there were still too many loose ends and Mulder detested loose ends when something this important was at stake.

Fuck.

Apparently he was the only one still interested in asking questions. Unfortunately, Mulder doubted if anyone had the answers he wanted. Thurgood might, but Thurgood was clearly intent on putting this all behind them without opening up the discussion for more questions. The case was closed, but Mulder wasn't satisfied.

Closing his eyes, he tried to memorize the strangely carved letters he'd seen on the chair. He assumed they were from the Ogham alphabet. While he still couldn't see well enough to write them down, they were indelibly imprinted on his memory, if not his eyes, so he felt secure that he would be able to identify them when he got to his reference books.

How many men had fled this world through the gate opened by the chair? From Fraser's and Hobbs' descriptions, they had both felt the pull of other worlds, yet he had heard nothing but the steady, insistent beat of a single drum. As he sat there in the dying light of the fire, he tried to recall why the sound of the drum sounded so familiar. It was as if the shadow of a memory haunted him -- something he had heard in a dream, perhaps. Mulder tried to trace down the memory, but it was like trying to catch smoke in a net.

"Storm's letting up," Thurgood called from the entrance as he re-entered the cave, followed by Fraser. "I'd say we’d better start down the trail while we still have the light. Even if we push our pace, it's going to be dark by the time we reach the trailhead. None of us want to be on this mountain after dark."

"I can agree that navigating a mountain trail after dark is dangerous, but you appear to be implying that something more serious could happen to us than blundering off the trail and getting lost," Quatrain said. His usual sarcasm had been replaced by an intense curiosity.

"Mr. Quatrain, we would be here all night if I tried to tell you all the stories people have told about Blackthorn Mountain over the years. The Indians thought Blackthorn was haunted long before Galen brought that chair here. I won't even deny that some of my ancestors might have worshipped up here; we're henotheists hereabouts. I prefer to play it safe by assuming that the mountain spirits are real, at least as long as I'm on the same mountain they are," Thurgood said with a grim smile than made it clear he wasn't joking. Quatrain looked intrigued.

The sheriff's earnest explanation made sense to Mulder. Henotheism could account for the town's apparent matter-of-fact acceptance of the chair. It was no doubt seen as a manifestation of a certain religion in an area where all religions were welcome. Mulder had never felt he had the right to dismiss long-held beliefs just because they also had a scientific explanation. He had resisted scientifically dismantling some of the miracles of Scully’s faith despite her repeated scoffing at his beliefs. It had been tempting to turn the tables, but hardly fair. She was the one who suffered by refusing to see the wonders that existed beyond the confines of her faith and science.

Mulder could cite cases of haunted mountains, rivers, caves, you name it. It certainly seemed reasonable to assume that Blackthorn was another one of those places where natural laws operated somewhat differently. While he didn't automatically believe all the stories, he could usually depend on the fact that if the stories existed then it suggested that something paranormal existed in that area. He never completely understood why Scully retreated to her oft-stated belief that country people transformed natural occurrences into something supernatural out of boredom or ignorance. A lack of education or social sophistication didn't render their testimony any less valid just because they used paranormal terms to describe phenomena.

"I can trust the wolf to keep you all in line and I'm not going to get us lost, but this storm is going to come back and the closest I've ever been to hell is being caught in a white-out on a mountain," Thurgood explained.

This time it was Mulder who nodded his understanding. Thurgood gave him a startled look and Quatrain actually smiled as if Mulder had just confirmed something. Mulder wasn't surprised. It had been clear that Quatrain had done his research once Mulder had been assigned to the investigation.

"When? Oh," Hobbs said with an apologetic smile. Mulder wondered what tall tales had spread across the Bureau about his trip down to Antarctica. He doubted if Hobbs remembered his earlier brush with freezer-burn in Alaska, but he wouldn't put it past Quatrain to have dug back that far.

"I'm not a superstitious man, but Blackthorn is not a normal mountain. Right now, our best protection is Diefenbaker. It's been over a century since these mountains have felt the presence of a wolf. Legend says that wolves were powerful guardians; some even say they were the walking manifestation of the spirit of a mountain. However, I'd like to add my own extra bit of protection. I want each of you to take these pouches and hang them around your neck so that they touch the skin. We're in the month of Luis which should give them extra power. Humor me," Thurgood suggested sternly as he handed out small leather pouches hung off a leather thong.

Hobbs gingerly took his with his gloved hand and hastily strung it around his neck, flinching when the leather touched his chest before relaxing with a relieved sigh. Quatrain stared at Thurgood for a long time before accepting his with a shake of his head and a muttered comment that sounded resigned and awed at the same time. Mulder couldn't define the language Quatrain was speaking, but he did catch the word loa and understood. Quatrain was probably already amply protected, but it never hurt to have backup.

When Thurgood handed him his pouch, Mulder glanced at him for permission to open it. Thurgood nodded. "It's natural magic, Agent Mulder; sort of like creating a balance of power that might just get us off this mountain in one piece."

Instead the pouch, Mulder found seven red berries, a small, smooth pebble that looked like it came from a streambed, and a piece of bark. Mulder was no botanist, but he was willing to bet that the berries were from the rowan trees guarding the trail to the chair. That made sense. Luis was the Celtic name of the month that stretched from mid-January to mid-February and, Mulder recalled, was traditionally associated with the rowan tree. There was probably a stream flowing somewhere off this mountain, and the bark could have come from any of the trees. Mulder guessed that if there were ash trees or an alder tree in the vicinity that would be the source of the bark. Apparently Thurgood was taking no chances and had anticipated difficulties. With a smile for Scully's imagined reaction to this scenario, Mulder closed the pouch and carefully hung it around his neck. The leather quickly warmed against his flesh. For a moment he heard the drum again, then the sound of it gradually faded away until even its echo was gone. It was hard not to feel that they were in a place of magic -- one of those rare places left on earth where the ancient powers still held sway.

Quatrain expertly doused the fire while Fraser checked to make sure that they left no trace behind of their brief stay. Hobbs followed Thurgood out of the cave with Diefenbaker at his heels. After a brief hesitation, Mulder followed Diefenbaker. The process of leaving the cave proved to be a lot easier now that he could see. It was easy to see where and how he had gotten hung up. The squeeze was an easy twist in then out curve when he could see where he was going. Despite the overcast skies, Mulder emerged shielding his eyes behind his sunglasses. He wanted to take no chances of going blind again.

"Quatrain, I want you in the middle to keep an eye on Agent Hobbs. He appears to be fine, but I don't want any more accidents," Thurgood instructed, just a little too casually. Hobbs looked rebellious, but nodded his agreement.

"I'll stay with Hobbs, Quatrain can follow us to make sure we make it," Mulder offered. Thurgood looked surprised, confirming Mulder's suspicion that he had deliberately placed Quatrain in the middle to forestall any unauthorized departures from the party. Quatrain gave Mulder a respectful nod as if surprised that Mulder trusted him. Mulder wasn't about to tell Quatrain that he didn't trust him, but he knew that Quatrain would cooperate until he had fulfilled his promise to clear Jason. Mulder didn't particularly like Quatrain, but his assessment of him was that he was a man who kept his word.

It started snowing again before they had made it halfway down the trail -- a steady pelting of fat flakes that blew about in the wind, obscuring vision, but didn't create a major obstacle to sight or footing. By the time they reached the trailhead, the snow had changed to an icy, misting rain.

"We made it, gentlemen. I think Blackthorn was glad to be rid of us,"

Thurgood sounded more relieved than Mulder had expected. Apparently their rapid descent was not something Thurgood had anticipated. That led Mulder to wonder just what Thurgood had expected, but he decided that was a question he could pursue after a long, hot shower.

"Agent Hobbs, it makes more sense for you to take Agent Mulder and Constable Fraser straight back to Sarah's. I'll take Mr. Quatrain to his car. No need for all of us to play Keystone Cops at Sarah's," Thurgood suggested wearily. "I'll come by afterwards to work out the final details of our respective reports. I'd suggest we make a public statement tomorrow morning when we've all had some sleep?" Thurgood gave a questioning look at Quatrain who nodded his agreement. Mulder suspected that Thurgood still didn't trust Quatrain not to disappear before he'd made his statement, but he had no good cause to place him under surveillance.

Cold and wet, they trudged to the waiting cars. Mulder collapsed gratefully into the front seat in front of the heavy-duty heater. Fraser appeared little affected by the trek; he was obviously accustomed to winter hiking, but Mulder felt that he could at least droop a bit, just to be sociable. Mulder hoped the sheriff remembered his bargain about the steak. Diefenbaker watched the sheriff's car pull away with a predatory look in his eyes before collapsing with a heavy sigh to sprawl across ninety percent of the backseat. Fraser calmly lifted the wolf's tail off of the seat and sat down. Diefenbaker gave him a long stare, then tucked his tail around his body as if to graciously give permission for his partner to share his seat. Mulder turned his attention to the road ahead with a mingled chuckle and grimace. The scene reminded him of the dance he and Scully used to do to accommodate each other's eccentricities.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Hemlock Inn
Evening -- February 6
 

Sarah greeted them at the door with mugs of hot coffee.

"Shuck your coats and boots here and go straight up to your rooms for hot showers. I have stew warming in the oven and bread cooling on the sideboard. I've put baskets outside each of your rooms for your wet clothes," she instructed in a crisp 'don't argue with me' tone that brooked no arguments.

"Here, Constable Fraser, you might want to dry off Diefenbaker before you go upstairs," Sarah said as she deftly tossed an oversized towel to Fraser. "I've put extra towels in your room if you want to do a more thorough drying-off upstairs. I've got dinner ready for him as well," she assured Diefenbaker with a smile.

Fraser immediately knelt down and wrapped Diefenbaker in the towel. Thankfully Diefenbaker had already shaken off most of the water dripping off his fur on the front porch, but he definitely looked soggy.

"Thank you, ma'am. Don't go to any extra trouble," Fraser began.

"Nonsense. I've got plenty of food. As long as Diefenbaker doesn't mind hamburger, he's all set," Sarah assured him.

Leaving Fraser to deal with Diefenbaker and negotiate the wolf's menu with Sarah, Mulder and Hobbs headed upstairs. Mulder felt ancient as he pulled his aching legs up the stairs. Hobbs wasn't doing much better, although some of the brightness had come back into his eyes now that they were back on safe ground.

"Do we leave any hot water for the Mountie?" Hobbs asked with a sly grin as he passed Mulder on the way to his own room.

"It would be the diplomatic thing to do and I did promise Assistant Director Skinner that I would try not to initiate any international incidents," Mulder replied with a straight face. "We'll leave him enough for a quick shower," he declared as he slipped into his room. Hobbs' laughter faded out as he shut the door behind him.

Throwing himself into the over-sized chair, Mulder stretched out his cramped legs until the burning sensation in the over-taxed muscles became almost unbearable before relaxing them again. He did that three times before he stood up on shaky legs and headed for the bathroom, stripping his clothes off as he went. The wet jeans had molded themselves to his body and resisted being pulled off. He finally got them off by sitting down on the floor of the bathroom and peeling them inch-by-inch down his body as if he was shedding a second skin.

Twenty minutes later, feeling comfortably parboiled, Mulder pulled on a pair of loose sweats, a black turtleneck, and running shoes and headed downstairs towards the smell of food. He carefully dumped the bundle of wet clothes in the hamper by his door, noting that Hobb's basket was full. As he passed Fraser's room he could hear the sound of the shower and hoped that he and Hobbs had managed to leave some hot water for the Mountie. He supposed that even if they didn't, Fraser wouldn't complain; Fraser didn't seem like the complaining type.

Hobbs was already in the dining room looking more at ease than Mulder had seen him all day. He waved a thick slab of bread in greeting. Casual seemed to be the order of the day. Hobbs was a step up the scale from Mulder's sweats, but his New England Patriots sweatshirt and jeans made him look more like a graduate student than a seasoned FBI agent. As Mulder dished out a savory beef stew, he wondered if Fraser even had casual clothes or whether he would show up for dinner in his uniform.

As he was sitting down, Sarah came in bearing a steaming, covered pot which she set onto a low iron shelf built into the fireplace. "Hot mulled cider, gentlemen, it keeps the cold bugs at bay -- at least that's what my grandmother used to say. Rum and brandy to kill the bugs and apples and spices to fortify your body's resistance. Doctors might not agree, but my family was never prone to catching colds," she said as she poured some into a mug and saluted them. Wheeling away from the sideboard, Sarah came over to the table to join them.

"You could have warned us.," Mulder said without preamble. Hobbs held his peace and didn't even choke on Mulder's abrupt tone. Mulder wondered if he was beginning to get used to these sudden conversational shifts. He gave Sarah a look just short of a challenge. He thought he understood Sarah's reasons, but he wanted to hear them from her.

"If I'd told you what to expect, I might have influenced what you saw. You might have doubted whether you saw what really happened or saw what you were influenced to see. Now you've seen for yourselves and believe," Sarah replied calmly.

Her calm, matter-of-fact acceptance of the chair's power made Mulder wonder what close encounter she'd had with it. Had she been tempted to step through that dimensional door, or had she been content to remain in this world and never felt the pull?

The sound of boots coming down the stairs followed by the clicking of claws heralded Fraser's and Diefenbaker's arrival and sent Sarah abruptly wheeling for the kitchen.

"Constable, send Diefenbaker in here, his dinner's ready, if he's not too proud to eat in the kitchen," Sarah called out.

Fraser pointed Diefenbaker towards the kitchen door and gave him a shove. Mulder never thought that wolves had a wide range of expressions, but he could swear Diefenbaker gave Fraser an exasperated look as if to say, 'I can manage on my own', before nosing his way into the kitchen.

"Sorry, I'm late, gentlemen. Diefenbaker was being somewhat obstinate about being blow-dried," Fraser apologized with a slightly amused look in his eyes. He was wearing a heavy fisherman's sweater, jeans, and soft boots.

Mulder was beginning to be able to read Fraser -- not well -- it was more along of the lines of pidgin-Fraser, but some of the nuances were beginning to come through. Fraser's technique was devastatingly effective. What made it more-so was that it wasn't a conscious technique, as far as Mulder could tell. Fraser was a combination of intuition and perception neatly tucked away behind his uniform and strong sense of duty.

"I imagine that persuading a wolf to use a hair dryer would take some doing," Hobbs said with a companionable grin. His tense manner of the past two days was gone and in its place was a relaxed, sly humor that seemed ready to take the unusual happenings on Blackthorn Mountain in stride. As unsatisfactory as losing Jason was, Hobbs had been reassured that his fantastic supposition about the Table had been right. If he had seen something when he collided with the Table, he was in no hurry to discuss it.

Fifteen minutes later, as Fraser was polishing off his second bowl of stew, Sarah reappeared with another steaming pot which she placed beside the first one. Diefenbaker was hard on her heels. While Sarah wheeled towards the table, Diefenbaker headed straight for the fireplace and sank down on the flagstones in front of the fire-screen with a heavy, contented sigh. For a wolf, Diefenbaker seemed to be very partial to fires. Mulder decided that if he was going to get any answers, he was going to have to be blunt, but Sarah started talking before he even had a chance to open his mouth.

"Jasper called while you boys were getting cleaned up. His deputy quit, so he's having to hold down the night shift. He's filled me in on what happened and told me to try to answer any questions you might have," Sarah explained with a rueful expression that spoke volumes about her opinion of being left to explain the unexplainable. "He also remembered to tell me about a certain bargain he made with Diefenbaker. Assure your companion that he will have steak for breakfast, courtesy of the Coos County Sheriff’s Department," she added in an amused tone.

"Thank you, ma’am. You don’t need to go to any trouble," Fraser assured her.

"No trouble. A bargain is a bargain in these parts," Sarah explained as she settled back in her chair cradling a steaming mug of cider in her hands.

"Constable, the second pot contains cider without alcohol. Jasper told me that you don't drink, but that's no reason not to enjoy hot, mulled cider. Just relax for a bit gentlemen while I clean off the table, then we'll talk."

Before Sarah had managed to collect a single plate, Fraser was up and gathering together the used dishes. Sarah glared at him, but he ignored her and headed into the kitchen with an armload of dishes. With a resigned shake of her head, Sarah collected the empty stewpot and followed him. Through the door, Hobbs and Mulder could hear her chiding Fraser about him being a guest and just letting her take care of her business. From the sound of it, however, she wasn't having much effect on deflecting Fraser's good-deed impulses.

By the time they both emerged from the kitchen, Hobbs had settled back into his chair and was working on his third mug of cider. Mulder was still working through his first mug. He'd had experience with the potency of mulled cider before and knew to be cautious. Either Hobbs was a cider-novice, or else he wanted to blur the events of the afternoon.

Fraser sat down under Sarah's stern glare and poured himself a mug of the alcohol-free cider. Soon all four of them were sitting comfortably in front of the fire, sipping hot cider, content to be silent for the moment.

The mugs of cider, the fire blazing in an old stone fireplace, even the ice rattling against the windows, combined with the homey atmosphere of the dining room to create a feeling that they were sitting around a campfire exchanging tall tales. Mulder silently applauded Sarah for a masterful set-up of atmosphere.

"Agent Mulder, I promised you that when you returned, I would explain what I could. However, I think you've guessed or surmised most of what I could tell you. I don't know if Galen knew what he was doing when he brought the chair here and set it up on Blackthorn Mountain . . ."

"He did," Hobbs interjected softly with the hint of anger in his voice. He stared into the fire as he took a long sip of cider. His words were slightly slurred, but he wasn't noticeably intoxicated. Mulder suspected that Hobbs might have deliberately drunk enough to relax his inhibitions. It might even be a relief for him to talk about what happened to him off the record where it could be passed off as one more phenomena and, hopefully, soon be lost among so many others.

"Ah, I've always wondered," Sarah replied without missing a beat. "There were rumors that he was a hard man to like, quick in judgment, and close-minded to any beliefs but his own."

Noting Fraser's quizzical look, Sarah gave him a brief synopsis of the history of the Round Table -- how the Siege Perilous ended up in a small New Hampshire village. Fraser looked thoughtful as he digested this information.

"Sarah and the sheriff didn't warn us what to expect, Constable," Hobbs offered. "I'd been up there the day before and got some of the weirdest damn feelings, not to mention two reels of fogged film, but I had nothing solid to go on. Feelings aren't evidence and I tend to suspect mine under certain conditions. I think Mulder, here, probably suspected what was going on. You certainly interviewed Jason as if you expected him to say exactly what he did," Hobbs said as he turned to Mulder. His smile let Mulder know he wasn't accusing him of holding out, but clearly he wanted an explanation -- Mulder's side of the investigation, as it were.

To Mulder's surprise, Sarah and Fraser both seemed equally interested in hearing his story. Sarah, the storyteller, he had expected would be interested, but Fraser had a look of keen interest as he leaned forward to hear what Mulder had to say that indicated he was just as interested. No telling what Fraser had heard or been told about him, Mulder thought with the rueful acceptance that he was going to earn his Spooky nickname tonight, unless Hobbs filched it. Mulder had a feeling that Hobbs was spookier than he wanted to admit and he wasn't going to lay bets that Fraser didn't have some spookiness of his own lurking behind that recruiting poster face.

"As long as we take turns," Mulder agreed with a smile that he hoped left no doubt that he was not going to be satisfied with a pasteurized version of events.

"What's said here will remain here, if everyone agrees," Sarah suggested. "What's told around a campfire at night dies with the fire -- it's an old custom hereabouts and one I think we'd be wise to heed." Sarah broke into a conspiratorial smile.

Hobbs' smile looked a bit weak, but he nodded. Fraser didn't appear to be phased at all as he gravely nodded his acquiescence to her terms. Mulder made a mental note to start finding out who Fraser was and why he was so blase about discussing paranormal experiences.

"Rifts in the wall between dimensions are not uncommon. There was an earlier recorded incident of someone disappearing from the Table, so it seemed reasonable to assume that there was some sort of localized phenomena centered around the Table," Mulder began. "The X-Files contain numerous cases of disappearances, sometimes occurring in front of eye-witnesses. I expected Jason's story, but found Hobbs' report of fogged film unusual. There have never been any reports of residual phenomena in the areas of the disappearances. The addition of the Arthurian legends and the knowledge that Galen Hatherford had transported stones from England to create his Table were additional unknown elements. I had the clues, but I couldn't account for all the clues in a single theory."

"Do you always expect to be able to account for all the clues?" Fraser asked curiously. "It would seem that by their nature paranormal events can't be classified."

"There are always loose ends, but I wonder if they aren't that part of the phenomena we haven't figured out how to define in terms we can understand. We try to fit the paranormal inside our scientific structure like kids trying to stuff sleeping bags back into their cases -- they never quite fit right," Mulder added, smiling at the memory of his very first attempt to stuff a bulky, awkwardly rolled sleeping bag into a tiny plastic bag.

"Do you feel it's advisable to formulate a theory before you've visited the crime scene?" Fraser managed not to sound accusatory, but Mulder could tell he was curious about his technique.

"I take all the available information I have, plus whatever research I can do based on the initial information, and come up with a working theory. When I get more information, uncover more clues, and talk with witnesses, the theory gets revised," Mulder explained. He found Fraser's curiosity stimulating. He'd never been asked to detail his investigative technique before. Patterson was just happy to have results and Scully never really wanted to know how he came up with his theories. He’d often wondered if she thought he just grabbed the weirdest theory he could find.

"Don't you find yourself trying to fit the evidence into your theory?" Hobbs asked curiously, looking like an eager student. Mulder knew the kinds of stories that circulated about him at Quantico and hoped Hobbs wouldn't be too disappointed to discover that Mulder didn't divine his theories from the stars or a crystal ball.

"Sometimes. Those are usually the times when I find I've missed the mark badly and have to go back to the beginning and start over. If I'm lucky, no one gets hurt. You know the drill, Hobbs, and you do as well, Fraser. If we want something to be true, it's damn easy to shave the facts in order to make them fit." Mulder tried to forget the times when he’d become so enamored of a theory that he refused to look at the facts, or got so caught up emotionally in the need to dig for the truth that he ignored everything else. A little girl in Boston still had nightmares because of one such case.

Mulder glimpsed a smile from Sarah and realized that her plan to get everyone relaxed enough to talk freely was working. She'd have made one hell of an interrogator, he thought with some amusement because he was aware he was caught up in her web as well.

"And I added to the mystery by implying that there was something unusual up on Blackthorn Mountain," Sarah interjected with a sly smile. "I wasn't playing fair, but I've known Jason Fairfax since he was a boy and I wanted to make sure that Agent Mulder was intrigued enough to dig for answers. Maybe if Jasper had told me a bit more about you, Agent Mulder, I would have trusted that you'd have gone the extra mile for an innocent man even without the mystery."

"But there is something up there," Hobbs protested. "You didn't make it up and I don't recall that you told us anything very important."

"Sugar for the fly, Hobbs," Mulder said with a mock stern look at Sarah, who glibly smiled back at him. She might have admitted to chicanery, but Mulder didn't think she had an ounce of guilt about it.

"You already believed, Agent Hobbs," Sarah said gently. "You'd been up there. I thought you had guessed that the power lay in the chair. I should have realized that what you felt was only the spirit of the mountain and Galen's mad dream," she went on to explain.

"You couldn't know," Hobbs assured her awkwardly, biting his lip. Mulder sensed he was close to being able to talk about his experience, but needed a bit more time.

"Sarah, you talk as if you know that mountain. You've been up on Blackthorn, haven't you?" Mulder asked to divert attention away from Hobbs until he was more comfortable. Sarah owed him for trying to manipulate him the way she had. Mulder thought that telling her own story would be payment enough.

"I used to be one of the best climbers in the county before I got cocky and thought that the stories about killer mountains were stories you told to impressionable tourists." Sarah looked wistful for a moment, then straightened up and shook her head. "Never take a mountain for granted, especially one like Blackthorn," she advised sternly.

"Yes, ma'am, that's wise advice, but do you honestly believe that a mountain deliberately tried to harm you?" Fraser asked in a curiously accepting tone.

Hobbs looked more disbelieving, but he was essentially a city boy. Encountering the power focus on Blackthorn must have been a shock. Mulder didn't consider himself experienced in wilderness, but he'd run into enough strange things in the forest and mountains that he wasn't going to discount anything. There were rivers and mountains that carried the reputation as killers even into modern times. The legends might have grown up around ancient places of sacrifice, aided by carelessness, accidents, even the attraction of such places for suicides, but that didn't explain why such places had been originally selected as sacrificial centers. What prompted ancient man to decide that such-and-such a mountain needed appeasement and a similar mountain or river did not?

"Constable, have you ever been completely alone on a mountain or an ice field and felt that something was watching you, waiting for you to make a mistake?" Sarah responded. "Blackthorn was considered a queer place long before the first white man wandered into this territory. It's not a place I would care to be on certain days of the year."

"Imbolc, for instance?" Mulder asked. Lisa had disappeared on the eve of Imbolc as the moon was waning. The significance of the date hadn't escaped him, but he couldn't justify linking a Celtic festival with Native American legends. He had no idea if the native peoples had had their own ritual festival on that day.

"As far as Blackthorn is concerned? No. Blackthorn is dangerous only on the full moon, or the blue moon," she said grimly. Mulder noted the slight clenching of her hand as it lay on her lap and wondered if she had dared Blackthorn Mountain on just such a night.

"The Chair owes its origins to Celtic magic, so Imbolc, or any other Celtic festival of ritual sacrifice, could awaken it.," Mulder mused.

"Strengthen its pull, perhaps, but the Chair has never been asleep," Sarah corrected him. "Galen woke it up when he took it from its place of hiding in England and brought it over here."

"So you believe the Chair is magical?" Fraser asked.

"Don't you?" Sarah shot back. "Are any of you willing to tell me you didn't hear that Chair calling to you, telling you that it could take you to the world where you were meant to be?" she asked bluntly, glaring at each of them.

"You didn't hear the voice, Agent Mulder," Fraser said as he turned to look at Mulder. It was clear he was puzzled. It was also clear that he wasn’t ready to answer Sarah’s question. Mulder didn’t get the feeling that Fraser was avoiding the question, just that he wasn’t prepared to give his answer just yet.

"What?" Sarah exclaimed, turning to stare at Mulder. There was no doubt she was startled and more than a little suspicious.

Feeling trapped, Mulder tried to choose his words carefully. He found it interesting that he alone hadn't heard the voice and he wasn't entirely sure why he would be exempt.

"I heard a drum and the wind. If there was a voice, I couldn't hear it," he explained. "I may have been too close to the center of the phenomena. The Chair didn't need to pull me in, I was right on top of it."

"Then why didn’t you go with Jason?" Sarah asked dubiously.

Mulder could tell she was trying to make sense of this anomaly. He wished he had an answer to give her. In fact, he wished he had an answer to give to himself. He should have been tempted. There was really nothing to hold him here any longer. Samantha was at peace. Scully had left to find her own peace – why shouldn’t he go exploring?

"You must be needed here very much, Agent Mulder," Sarah commented in an admiring tone. Her voice broke into Mulder’s brief reverie. He doubted if she was right, but he had no better explanation. Something had held him here. Who, or what, held him in such high regard made him more than a little uneasy.

"Maybe I couldn’t pass the entrance exam," Mulder quipped, hoping to divert the conversation back to the others. He had no intention of going into depth on his improbable place in an alien-human conspiracy. It would take too long to explain and he wasn't entirely sure which parts to believe in any more.

"I wonder where we would have ended up?" Hobbs mused. "I’m not sorry I managed to ignore the call, but I can’t help wondering what kind of world waited for me."

"I am curious as well," Fraser admitted. "What I find more curious is Diefenbaker’s interference. He’s deaf, so he could not have heard the voice."

"Maybe all he sensed was that you were responding to something he couldn't identify," Sarah said. "Animals are more sensitive to the paranormal, don't you agree, Agent Mulder?"

"In many cases, yes. Given Diefenbaker's reaction alone, I would feel safe in assigning a paranormal explanation to this case," Mulder agreed. He wasn’t willing to dismiss the chance that Diefenbaker had heard the Chair calling to Fraser and deliberately prevented him from responding. There was more to that wolf than met the eye. Reluctantly, he decided that opening up an X-File on Diefenbaker would definitely fall under Skinner’s definition of undiplomatic.

"But you won't?" Sarah asked anxiously.

"I'll be discreet," Mulder assured her, trying to sound as if he doctored reports everyday. His commitment to the truth was at war with his realization that some truths were too dangerous to reveal.

"I believe I'm glad I don't have to submit an official report. Not saying anything about what really happened might be construed as obfuscation, but just this once I may adopt your custom of don't ask, don't tell," Fraser said with a resigned expression. "I believe that justice has been served. Since this investigation is not on Canadian soil, I am not required to explain the details of that justice.. If Mr. Quatrain is satisfied, I believe my government will be satisfied."

"Well, then gentlemen, you've had a long day. Tomorrow will be even longer. Stay up if you wish, but I'm heading to bed," Sarah said as she wheeled herself towards the kitchen.

"I believe I'll take Diefenbaker for a walk. I have much to think about," Fraser said, rising courteously for Sarah. With a grunt, Diefenbaker rose as well and headed for the front door. "I'll see you in the morning," he said nodding at Hobbs and Mulder.

Mulder looked at the snow falling outside the window and considered the possibility that Fraser was insane. They had spent the afternoon out on a mountain in the middle of a storm, yet he barely took time to dry off and get warm before he wanted to go back out in the storm. Personally, Mulder had no intention of going back outside short of a national emergency.

Left alone, Hobbs stared at the fire. Some of his tenseness had come back, as if he was waiting for the inevitable awkward questions about his behavior.

"If you don't want to talk about it, I won't ask questions," Mulder assured him quietly. "You won't show up in my X-Files, or in any official or unofficial report I make."

Hobbs looked up and gave him a shaky smile. "I guess I thought you'd jump at the chance to add a new case to your files."

"I've got plenty of other cases in the X-Files. Most a lot stranger than yours," Mulder said with a companionable grin. He hoped Hobbs would confide in him, but he sensed that he wasn't ready to trust him that far. All he had to go on were a few disconnected clues and a suspicion. Psychometry wouldn't be easy for anyone to deal with, but for a crime scene investigator it must have been pure hell. It certainly wouldn't be something Hobbs could have talked to an FBI shrink about. The Bureau psychologists gave Mulder a wide berth and preferred not to talk to him at all, even when such discussions were mandated. For Hobbs it would have been worse.

No wonder he’d fled to the most remote field office he could find. When he came into direct contact with the Table, it would have been like grabbing a hot wire and getting run over by all the built up psychic and emotional history of that place. If some of the cases he'd read about were any clue, Hobbs was extremely lucky, or resilient enough, to come out of it sane.

"Then I'll leave it as an intelligent surmise on your part," Hobbs said apologetically as he got up and headed for the stairs at a fast, if slightly unsteady, pace.

His dismissal of Mulder's offer of a friendly ear was abrupt, but Mulder didn't sense that Hobbs meant it as in insult. He got the feeling that Hobbs was running away from a need to confide -- he was more afraid of talking about his problem than of dealing with it. Mulder understood. He hoped that Hobbs realized that if he ever needed to talk, Mulder would listen.

Left alone, Mulder walked over to the window and stared out at the mountains hidden by the darkness and the storm. A gateway to another world, or worlds, lay up there; a secret held fast by this town for over two hundred years. The idea of traveling to a world where he wouldn't be the odd man out was attractive, but he wasn't ready to leave this world yet. There were wonders enough here to keep him busy for many years. The biggest wonder of them all might be the carefully worded report he was going to submit to Skinner. Skinner would know that something more had happened, but he wouldn't ask. Someday, he might tell Skinner about the Chair and allow him the choice of whether to stay or find his own personal Camelot.

The fire had died into softly glowing embers by the time Mulder turned away from the window and walked up to his bed. He’d heard Fraser had return some time earlier and go directly upstairs. The storm frittered down to a few snowflakes blowing in the wind and a thin sliver of the moon played hide-and-seek with the clouds. Mulder gave up pondering the mysteries and accepted that in this case, like so many others, he came back with more questions than answers. There was still a sense of something left undone, a feeling that the case wasn't completely closed, but he could only wait and warn the sheriff to be on guard. It might just be paranoia, but Mulder felt that this drama wasn't complete. He'd warn Thurgood in the morning and ask Frohike and the guys to monitor Quatrain, but he couldn't arrest the man on the suspicion that he was up to something. Feeling faintly unsatisfied, Mulder went to bed, wondering if it was ever possible to protect secrets from men like Quatrain.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==

Epilogue

Assistant Director Skinner’s Office
Thursday, February 10, 2000
 

"You’re saying that this entire case wasn’t an X-File, Agent Mulder?" Skinner asked dubiously. He gave Mulder a glare that suggested he was impatiently waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Mulder gave a brief shrug and spread his hands apart as if to say that it wasn't his fault he couldn't report a paranormal explanation. With any other bureaucrat, Mulder would have been confident that his portrayal of a disappointed spook-chaser was convincing. With Skinner, he could never really be certain what he bought and what he didn't.

"Mr. Quatrain was satisfied that his daughter ran away and he was the one who summarily called off the investigation. Apparently the only crime left to investigate was Jason Fairfax’s escape from custody and that's purely a local matter, as the sheriff reminded me. Mr. Quatrain seemed to believe that Fairfax was attempting to join his daughter," Mulder asserted blandly. It was an effort not to overdo the act by looking innocently aggrieved. Dealing with Skinner required a delicate touch and infinite subtlety, not a sledgehammer.

"I've heard rumors that Peter Quatrain has withdrawn as CEO of Canadian Aid and gone into seclusion. Would that have anything to do with this case?" Skinner asked the question as if he wasn't entirely sure he wanted an answer.

"I believe Quatrain told Sheriff Thurgood of his intention to withdraw from public life. I have no information on his plans, sir," Mulder chose his words carefully. He had a pretty good idea what Quatrain was planning, and perhaps had already carried out. Given Quatrain's penchant for covert operations and careful planning, it might be weeks, or even months before anyone realized that Quatrain had disappeared. He may already have slipped up to Blackthorn Mountain and risked fate in the Siege Perilous. Whatever his plan of action, Mulder was certain that false trails had been laid which would confuse and baffle investigators until they ended up chasing shadows halfway across the globe.

Quatrain had kept his word. Early Monday morning, he had called a news conference and publicly proclaimed Jason Fairfax's innocence. Then he announced his resignation and his intent to go into seclusion and brusquely refused to answer any questions. Mulder wondered if he would ever know for certain what Quatrain had done, but his instincts told him that Quatrain would use the Chair.

"It's not against federal law to take an extended private vacation, sir," Mulder added cautiously. It was obvious to Mulder that Skinner suspected that he was concealing something, but couldn't put his finger on what. Mulder resisted the urge to smile at him. Tweaking Skinner might be fun, but the situation didn't need a curious Skinner nosing about.

"Besides, Quatrain is not our problem," he added off-handedly. "He said he was returning to Canada. I believe that Canada is not in our jurisdiction," Mulder offered blandly. It was a polite way of closing the door Skinner was holding open. One day he might tell Skinner about the Chair. If he did, it would be over drinks in a dark corner of his favorite bar in a completely unofficial and off-the-record conversation.

"Then congratulations on completing the case. The Canadian government has extended their thanks as well in the form of a letter which will be placed in your file. Mr. Quatrain also sent a letter commending both you and Agent Hobbs for your understanding and cooperation. Very well done for a case that turned out not to be a case," Skinner said, offering Mulder a chance to elaborate.

"If you want an X-File, sir, I could go back and investigate the mountain. The locals consider Blackthorn Mountain to be haunted and I have reason to believe that they may be right," Mulder added with a smile. If Skinner actually agreed, Mulder was more than willing to go back, but he was betting that Skinner was not in an indulgent mood.

"Agent Mulder, the last time I checked, ghosts, up to and including a haunted mountain, do not fall under the FBI’s jurisdiction. If you are that desperate for a case, I can loan you to Violent Crimes for a month. Section Chief Stone would be delighted to have you and I could use the marker," Skinner said with a perfect poker face that Mulder didn’t feel like challenging. He knew when he was outgunned and outmaneuvered.

"It was just a thought, sir. I have plenty to do." Mulder conceded the hit gracefully and prepared to withdraw back to his basement domain and dredge up some sort of case – anything to avoid going back to Violent Crimes and dealing with Stone.

"By the way, Agent Mulder, I’ve forwarded the resumes of two agents that I would like you to look over. They are both highly qualified men and could be an asset to the X-Files," Skinner said formally.

"They won’t let you operate alone, Mulder. You’re still too dangerous," Skinner warned softly, barely loud enough for Mulder to hear, but Mulder caught his meaning. He was running out of time. He could either have a say in who would be his new partner or he’d have a partner assigned to him. Skinner was giving him a chance, but it wasn’t one he wanted to take.

"Give these men a look, and this time at least open their files before you reject them," Skinner asked in a tone that bordered on a command. "They are good agents and deserve at least a cursory glance from you," he added with a look that told Mulder that Skinner trusted these men, but he was fast running out of candidates he could trust.

"Yes, sir," Mulder snapped in a fair imitation of an obedient subordinate. Skinner scowled at him, but nodded his understanding. Mulder knew nothing put Skinner on guard faster than a show of obedience from him. He'd made his point, but he accepted the reality that he would have to concede the battle and take on a new partner.

Back in his office, Mulder reluctantly opened his mail and pulled up the first personnel folder. He didn’t want a partner. He’d gotten along well with Hobbs, but it wouldn’t be fair to expose Hobbs to the type of cases he investigated, at least not until Hobbs had come to grips with his psychometric abilities. Give him a couple of years, and Mulder might just ask if he’d like to come to D.C. and investigate some really strange shit. Smiling at the thought, Mulder tried to work up interest in two very ordinary, although highly qualified agents Skinner felt could be trusted. At this point, flipping a coin might be as good as carefully screening each candidate. After all, he’d gotten lucky once, maybe he could push his luck for a second chance.

Somewhere, Quatrain was preparing to leave this world for one he believed would be better suited for his talents. Whether he found his daughter, or ended up in another harsher world, Mulder hoped that he found what he was looking for. Scully had also left seeking a better world. Although Mulder hadn't quite reached the point of hoping she found it, he accepted that his world was never going to satisfy her. Frankly, he didn't believe there was an ideal world out there. Perhaps that was why the Chair didn't call him as strongly as it did others.

Lack of faith, or just a dogged acceptance that this was where I was meant to be? Mulder wondered before pushing the question to the back of his mind. He had a feeling it was one of those two-in-the-morning type questions, and not one that could ever be answered.

Closing his eyes, Mulder saw the fiery Ogham letters still blazing against the back of his eyelids. They showed no signs of fading -- a persistent reminder of how close he'd come to exploring a whole new set of infinite possibilities. He'd been unsuccessful so far in translating the Ogham letters. While the letters were clear enough, when assembled together they made no sense in any Gaelic language he'd been able to find. Where had Merlin found the Chair? What ancient culture had learned the secrets of trans-dimensional travel and what happened to them? Had they finally tired of this world and traveled to new worlds through the gate?

Mulder stared at his report and its carefully worded half-truths and let his mind range over extreme possibilities. If the Siege Perilous existed, why not Arthur, himself? Did Arthur sleep somewhere in mystic Avalon, awaiting a call to arms from an imperiled land? Myths. Legends. Perhaps dreams only, but Mulder found hope in the possibilities.
 
 

The End
 
 

Author's Notes

I borrowed the idea behind this story from the Grand Master of Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Andre Norton, who used the Siege Perilous as a gate in the Witch World series. Her writing introduced me to the worlds of science fiction and fantasy and for that I will forever be in her debt.

The fragments lines of poetry quoted by Sarah and Hobbs are by Robert Service and come from his poem, "The Cremation of Sam McGee."

The poem quoted by Hobbs on Blackthorn Mountain was "The Charge of the Light Brigade" by Alfred Tennyson.

My deepest thanks to my beta readers Rhi, Cyn, and Ali.

 

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