The Dutchman had never been one to linger in defeat. Even after his brief clash with Arthur Carey within Shamballa—one that had left him battered, his pride wounded—he carried himself with the cold resolve of a man who knew he still had a purpose. As he limped through the shadowed corridors of the ancient city, his gloved hand rested upon the strange brass case slung across his back. It was not an ordinary case. To most eyes, it looked like a battered instrument box, the kind a traveling surveyor or natural philosopher might carry. But to those who knew its secret, it was something far more sinister—a device not born of this age, a relic of powers that were neither fully understood by science nor by sorcery. The Dutchman called it The Whispering Machine.
He paused in a secluded alcove of
