It seemed as foolish to spring to my feet into a guard position when I did not know from which direction the danger was approaching as it did to remain a target. On the other hand, I had intentionally cast my cloak so that I lay with a large, low-limbed pine at my back. It would have been very difficult for someone to have approached me from the rear, let alone to have done so quietly. So it did not seem I was in danger of an imminent attack from that direction.
I turned my head slightly and studied Smoke, who had begun to seem a little uneasy. Frakir continued her now distracting warning till I willed her to be still.
Smoke was twitching his ears and moving his head about, nostrils dilated. As I watched, I saw that his attention seemed directed toward my right. He began edging his way across the camp, his long tether snaking behind him.
I heard a sound then, beyond the noise of Smoke’s retreat, as of something advancing from the right. It was not repeated for a time, and then I heard it again. It was not a footfall, but a sound as of a body brushing against a branch which suddenly issued a weak protest.
I visualized the disposition of trees and shrubs in that direction and decided to let the lurker draw nearer before I made my move. I dismissed the notion of summoning the Logrus and preparing a magical attack. It would take a bit more time than I thought I had remaining. Also, from Smoke’s behavior and from what I had heard, it seemed that there was only a single individual approaching. I resolved, though, to lay in a decent supply of spells the first chance I got, both offensive and defensive, on the order of the one I had primed against my guardian entity. The trouble is that it can take several days of solitude to work a really decent array of them out properly, enact them and rehearse their releases to the point where you can spring them at a moment’s notice — and then they have a tendency to start decaying after a week or so. Sometimes they last longer and sometimes less long, depending both on the amount of energy you’re willing to invest in them and on the magical climate of the particular shadow in which you’re functioning. It’s a lot of bother unless you’re sure you’re going to need them within a certain period of time. On the other hand, a good sorcerer should have one attack, one defense and one escape spell hanging around at all times. But I’m generally somewhat lazy, not to mention pretty easygoing, and I didn’t see any need for that sort of setup until recently. And recently, I hadn’t had much time to be about it.
So any use I might make of the Logrus now, were I to summon it and situate myself within its ambit, would pretty much amount to blasting away with raw power — which is very draining on the operator.
Let him come a little nearer, that’s all, and it would be cold steel and a strangling cord that he would face.
I could feel the presence advancing now, hear the soft stirring of pine needles. A few more feet, enemy… Come on. That’s all I need. Come into range…
He halted. I could hear a steady, soft breathing.
Then, “You must be aware of me by now, Magus,” came a low whisper, “for we all have our little tricks, and I know the source of yours.”
“Who are you?” I asked, as I clasped the haft of my blade and rolled into a crouch, facing the darkness, the point of my weapon describing a small circle.
“I am the enemy,” was the reply. “The one you thought would never come.
Chapter 9
Power.
I remembered the day I had stood atop a rocky prominence. Fiona — dressed in lavender, belted with silver — stood in a higher place before me and somewhat to my right. She held a silver mirror in her right hand, and she looked downward through the haze to the place where the great tree towered. There was a total stillness about us, and even our own small sounds came muffled. The upper portions of the tree disappeared into a low-hanging fog bank. The light that filtered through limned it starkly against another pile of fog which hung at its back, rising to join with the one overhead. A bright, seemingly self-illuminated line was etched into the ground near the base of the tree, curving off to vanish within the fog. Far to my left, a brief arc of a similar intensity was also visible, emerging from and returning to the billowing white wall.
“What is it, Fiona?” I asked. “Why did you bring me to this place?”
“You’ve heard of it,” she replied. “I wanted you to see it.”
I shook my head. “I’ve never heard of it. I’ve no idea what I’m looking at.
“Come,” she said, and she began to descend.
She disdained my hand, moving quickly and gracefully, and we came down from the rocks and moved nearer to the tree. There was something vaguely familiar there, but I could not place it.
“From your father,” she said at last. “He spent a long time telling you his story. Surely he did not omit this part.”
I halted as understanding presented itself, tentatively at first.
“That tree,” I said.
“Corwin planted his staff when he commenced the creation of the new Pattern,” she said. “It was fresh. It took root.”
I seemed to feel a faint vibration in the ground.
Fiona turned her back on the prospect, raised the mirror she carried and angled it so that she regarded the scene over her right shoulder.
“Yes,” she said, after several moments. Then she extended the mirror to me. “Take a look,” she told me, “as I just did.”
I accepted it, held it, adjusted it and stared.
The view in the minor was not the same as that which had presented itself to my unaided scrutiny. I was able to see beyond the tree now, through the fog, to discern most of the strange Pattern which twisted its bright way about the ground, working its passages inward to its off-center terminus, the only spot still concealed by an unmoving tower of white, within which tiny lights like stars seemed to burn.
“It doesn’t look like the Pattern back in Amber,” I said.
“No,” she answered. “Is it anything like the Logrus?”
“Not really. The Logrus actually alters itself somewhat, constantly. Still, it’s more angular, whereas this is mostly curves and bends.”
I studied it a little longer, then returned her looking glass.
“Interesting spell on the mirror,” I commented, for I had been studying this also, while I held it.
“And much more difficult than you’d think,” she responded, “for there’s more than fog in there. Watch.”
She advanced to the beginning of the Pattern, near the great tree, where she moved as if to set her foot upon the bright trail. Before it arrived, however, a small electrical discharge crackled upward and made contact with her shoe. She jerked her foot back quickly.
“It rejects me,” she said. “I can’t set foot on it. Try it.”
There was something in her gaze I did not like, but I moved forward to where she had been standing.
“Why couldn’t your mirror penetrate all the way to the center of the thing?” I asked suddenly.
“The resistance seems to go up the farther you go in. It is greatest there,” she replied. “But as to why, I do not know.”
I hesitated a moment longer. “Has anyone tried it other than yourself?”
“I brought Bleys here,” she answered. “It rejected him too.”
“And he’s the only other one who’s seen it?”
“No, I brought Random. But he declined to try. Said he didn’t care to screw around with it right then.”