Slowly, he turned toward her until he was staring into her eyes. Abruptly, he left off playing then. He doffed his cap and bowed to her.
“Good evening, m’lady,” he called.
“Good evening,” she replied, standing.
“Wolfer Martin D’Ambry, at your service.”
“Oh—I’m Lydia Hazzard. I like your piping. Which do you use mostly—‘Wolfer,’ ‘Martin,” or ‘Ambry’?”
“I answer to all of them, Miz Hazzard. Address me as you would.”
“I like the sound of ‘Ambry.’ Please call me ‘Lydia.’ “
“And so I shall, Lydia,” he said, raising the pipes once again. “Join me if you would.”
He began to play, an eerily involving tune, like the breathing of the genius loci. She found herself moving to the trail, barely aware of doing so, taking the way downward and across the valley. The music moved above her as she passed through darkness, and when she reached the foot of Ambry’s hill she realized that the piper was no longer at the height he had occupied. He had moved, was moving, to the east.
She sought a trail. Suddenly, it was important that she catch up with him, continue their conversation.
The only trail she could discover led upward to where he had been standing. Very well…
She commenced climbing, out of the darkness toward the growing bar of moonlight. The sounds of Ambry’s piping were more distant now, and when she finally reached the summit they seemed far away indeed. She located what must have been the trail he had taken—the only one in sight—and hurried down it.
It was a long while through rugged ways before the notes came louder and she realized she was gaining. She had no sense of descent, but the way grew more level. Perhaps she had achieved a plateau.
This land looked different, smelled different, by night. Why was she hurrying so? The man and his pipes were intruders into her idyll. She was going to return to Verite, break the travel-trance, dine properly rather than via life-support, play tennis, perhaps, rather than electronstim isometrics, visit her family, then return after a few days and be more sociable. But there was a mystery here—and something else. She needed to find Ambry.
Almost as this realization occurred, the sound of his bagpipes died. She began running. Perhaps he’d only stopped to rest for a moment. But something might have happened to him. He could have fallen. Or—
She stumbled, rose, ran again. The night seemed suddenly colder, the shadows more than simple patches of darkness. It was as if each darkened area held something which stirred slowly and watched her. The trail dipped into the valley, passed over a stream by means of stepping stones, then rose again. At her back she heard a rattling of stones, as if something were following her without a great deal of stealth. She did not look back.
Abruptly, the piping resumed, somewhere far off to her left. She turned in that direction. She began to gain on it, and after a few minutes she seemed to be drawing near. When she felt that she was about to come into sight of Ambry the pipes grew still.
She cursed softly, and then she heard the following sounds again. A slight breeze brought her sea smells from somewhere to the left. Had she described a big loop, returning to the coast? She looked to the moon for guidance, but it was too high in the heavens now.
She continued to move in what seemed the proper direction. She had to slow, however, when she came to a region of standing stones, for her way seemed to lie among them. Entering, she could tell that there were many, but not whether there was a pattern to them.
As she walked, she seemed to detect a movement directly ahead. She halted and stared, but it was not repeated. Setting forth again, she noticed a movement to her right. Again, she paused to study it. This time, it seemed as if one of the huge stones itself had slid perhaps an inch. Then there came another such movement, from the left. Fascinated, she watched the towering stone slide for several inches before it came to a halt. By then, another was in motion. And another…
Soon all of them seemed to be moving. The sensation was peculiar, as if they stood still and she was drifting among them. And the one directly ahead of her now seemed to be growing in size.
She extended a hand and touched one. It brushed by. Another…
A hand seized her left biceps and drew her to the side. She gasped, turning.
“Sorry to take hold of you that way,” Ambry said, “but you were about to be run over.”
She nodded and followed him to the left, which seemed to be westward. The stones were sliding even more rapidly now, none of them swaying. They maintained a monumental stability as they headed into the south.
“Full moon on the equinox,” he said. “They awaken then and go to the river to drink. They be back at their stations by morn. ‘Tis not good to be in their way once they get going. Mass, inertia, momentum.”
“Thank you.” She laughed then, and there was a slight, hysterical rising to it.
“What is it, Miz Lydia?” he asked.
“You speak of hard, textbook properties of matter on the one hand,” she said, “and on the other you tell me of the stones going to take a drink. That part is right out of Gaelic legend.”
“Why, all legends have found their way to Virtu,” he said, continuing to draw her aside from the field of stones, “those of science as well as those of the folk.”
“But scientific principles, laws, constants are universal in Verite.”
“…And in Virtu as well. But here there are intelligences which manipulate them in terms of each other, as well as our own special sets.”
“But here they can be manipulated.”
“In accord with rules—some of them pretty tricky—but rules, nevertheless. It is all unifiable. Both sides can be made to match. It’s just that it’s sometimes hard on the senses, as well as the reasoning.”
He continued to move them away from the traffic. By now, the stones were moving very rapidly—a great rushing of black forms, and silent, totally silent.
She turned and walked with him, Ambry’s arm slipping over her shoulder now, bearing an edge of his cloak, enfolding her.
“Where are you taking me?” she asked him.
“Someplace warm and peaceful,” he said, and while she had been hoping for a virtual affair she had never decided what her lover would look like.
She glanced up at him and smiled.
John D’Arcy Donnerjack followed the Trails of Fire and Blood, Water and Dust, Wind and Steel. The closest he came to being tricked into departing the Way was on the Trail of Ivory and Wood, where a genius loci in the form of a child with a basket of flowers almost persuaded him that he had taken a wrong turning and was on the road to fair Elfland. But a moire passed between, and through the lens of its transform he had seen the child as it truly was and moved on. It leaped at him then, fangs bared, heavy metal tail striking sparks from the stone, but the Way of Ivory and Wood guards its travelers even from the masters of place. On the Trail of Earth and Ash a maddened phant emerged from a hole in the Trail itself and rushed toward them. Donnerjack, observant unto death, detected the swelling near the base of one of the beast’s fore-tusks, however, and lured it to the side of the Trail, away from Ayradyss, while summoning and reviewing the lifespecs of its sort.
Then, in a fit of the design inspiration which had made him a legend in both academic and engineering circles, Donnerjack dug his thumbs into two of the beast’s acupuncture points and waited. It shuffled its massive feet but remained where it stood, as if sensing the intent behind the human hands which used it so. Its breathing slowed, and it made small snuffling sounds and regarded the man intently. Then it turned away, departed the Trail, and headed for the woods.