And saw a brightness begin to grow at the opaque line of the horizon, spreading and creeping upward second by second, blotting out the stars with the fragile hues of dawn. The sun’s flaming face thrust itself up past the edge of the world, making him squint, rising with arcane speed and uncanny brilliance into a sky that remained stubbornly black with night. At last the whole sphere of the sun was revealed, and continued to climb in the midnight sky while now Wim could see a thin streak of sky-blue stretched along the horizon, left behind with the citron glow of dawn still lighting its center. Above the line in darkness the sun wore the pointed crown of a star that dimmed all others, and below it he could see the world at the horizon’s edge moving into day. And the horizon did not lie absolutely flat, but was bowing gently downward now at the sides . . . Below his feet was still the utter darkness that had swallowed Fyffe. He sighed.
“Quite a view.” Jagit sat back from the glowing table, drifting slightly above his seat, a tired smile on his face.
“You see it too?” Wim said hoarsely.
The peddler nodded. “I felt the same way, the first time. I guess everyone always has. Every time civilization has gained space flight, it’s been rewarded again by that sight.”
Wim said nothing, unable to find the words. His view of the bowed horizon had changed subtly, and now as he watched there came a further change—the sun began, slowly but perceptibly, to move backward down its track, sinking once more toward the point of dawn that had given it birth. Or, he suddenly saw, it was they who were slipping, back down from the heights of glory into his world’s darkness once more. Wim waited while the sun sank from the black and alien sky, setting where it had risen, its afterglow reabsorbed into night as the edge of the world blocked his vision again. He dropped to the seat of his chair, as though the world had reclaimed him, and the stars reappeared. A heavy lurch, like a blow, shook the cubicle, and then all motion stopped.
He sat still, not understanding, as the door slid back in darkness and a breath of cold, sharp air filled the tiny room. Beyond the doorway was darkness again, but he knew it was not the night of a building hallway.
Jagit fumbled wearily with the restraining straps on his seat. “Home the same day ...”
Wim didn’t wait, but driven by instinct freed himself and went to the doorway. And jerked to a stop as he discovered they were no longer at ground level. His feet found the ladder, and as he stepped down from its bottom rung he heard and felt the gritty shifting of gravel. The only other sounds were the sigh of the icy wind, and water lapping. As his eyes adjusted they told him what his other senses already knew— that he was home. Not Darkwood Corners, but somewhere in his own cruelly beautiful Highlands. Fanged shadow peaks rose up on either hand, blotting out the stars, but more stars shone in the smooth waters of the lake; they shivered slightly, as he shivered in the cool breeze, clammy with sweat under his thin shirt. He stood on the rubble of a mountain pass somewhere above the treeline, and in the east the gash between the peaks showed pinkish-gray with returning day.
Behind him he heard Jagit, and turned to see the peddler climbing slowly down the few steps to the ground. From outside, the magician’s chamber was the shape of a truncated rifle bullet. Jagit carried the guard’s stolen rifle, leaning on it now like a walking stick. “Well, my navigation hasn’t failed me yet.” He rubbed his eyes, stretched.
Wim recalled making a certain comment about flying over the moon on a broomstick, too long ago, and looked again at the dawn, this time progressing formally and peacefully up a lightening sky. “We flew here. Didn’t we, Mr. Jagged?” His teeth chattered. “Like a bird. Only ... we f-flew right off the world.” He stopped Jawed by his own revelation. For a moment a lifetime of superstitious dread cried that he had no right to know of the things he had seen, or to believe— The words burst out in a defiant rush. “That’s it. Right off the world. And…and it’s all true: I heard how the world’s round like a stone. It must be true, how there’s other worlds,’ that’s what you said back there, with people just like here: I seen it, the sun’s like all them other stars, only it’s bigger . . .” He frowned. “It’s—closer? I—”
Jagit was grinning, his teeth showed white in his beard. “Magician, first-class.”
Wim looked back up into the sky. “If that don’t beat all—” he said softly. Then, struck by more practical matters, he said, “What about them ghosts? Are they going to come after us?”
Jagit shook his head. “No. I think I laid those ghosts to rest pretty permanently. I changed the code words in their communications system, a good part of it is totally unusable now. Their computer net is broken up, and their space defense system must be out for good, because they didn’t destroy Fyffe. I’d say the World Government is finished; they don’t know it yet, and they may not go for a few hundred years, but they’ll go in the end. Their grand ‘stability’ machine has a monkey wrench in its works at last . . . They won’t be around to use their magic in these parts any more, I expect.”
Wim considered, and then looked hopeful. “You going to take over back there, Mr. Jagged? Use your magic on them Flatlanders? We could—”
But the peddler shook his head. “No, I’m afraid that just doesn’t interest me, Wim. All I really wanted was to break the hold those other magician sorts had on this world; and I’ve done that already.”
“Then . . . you mean you really did all that, you risked our necks, for nothing? Like you said, because it just wasn’t right, for them to use their magic on folks who couldn’t stop them? You did it for us—and you didn’t want anything? You must be crazy.”
Jagit laughed. “Well, I wouldn’t say that. I told you before: All I want is to be able to see new sights, and sell my wares. And the World Government was bad for my business.”
Wim met the peddler’s gaze, glanced away undecided. “Where you going to go now?” He half expected the answer to be, Back beyond the sky.
“Back to bed.” Jagit left the ballistic vehicle, and began to climb the rubbly slope up from the lake; he gestured for Wim to follow.
Wim followed, breathing hard in the thin air, until they reached a large fall of boulders before a sheer granite wall. Only when he was directly before it did he realize they had come on the entrance to a cave hidden by the rocks. He noticed that the opening was oddly symmetrical; and there seemed to be a rainbow shimmering across the darkness like mist. He stared at it uncomprehendingly, rubbing his chilled hands.
“This is where I came from, Wim. Not from the East, as you figured, or from space as the governor thought.” The peddler nodded toward the dark entrance. “You see, the World Government had me entirely misplaced—they assumed I could only have come from somewhere outside their control. But actually I’ve been here on earth all the time; this cave has been my home for fifty-seven thousand years. There’s a kind of magic in there that puts me into an ‘enchanted’ sleep for five or ten thousand years at a time here. And meanwhile the world changes. When it’s changed enough, I wake up again and go out to see it. That’s what I was doing in Sharn, ten thousand years ago; I brought art works from an earlier, primitive era; they were popular, and I got to be something of a celebrity. That way I got access to my new items of trade—my Sharnish magics—to take somewhere else, when things changed again.