I felt like a slowly animated statue, a thawing snowman, a buckling girder… Two more… Three… Glacial, my movements, but I who directed them had all of eternity and a perfect constancy of will that would be realized…
I passed through the Veil. A short arc followed. Three steps to cross it into blackness and peace. They were the worst of all.
A coffee break for Sisyphus! That was my first thought as I departed the Pattern. I’ve done it again! was my second. And, Never again! was my third.
I allowed myself the luxury of a few deep breaths and a little shaking. Then I unpocketed the jewel and raised it by its chain. I held it before my eye.
Red inside, of course — a deep cherry — red, smokeshot, fulgent. It seemed to have picked up something extra of light and glitter during the trip through the Pattern. I continued to stare, thinking over the instructions, comparing them with things I already knew.
Once you have walked the Pattern and reached this point, you can cause it to transport you to any place that you can visualize. All that it takes is the desire and an act of will. Such being the case, I was not without a moment’s trepidation. If the effect proceeded as it normally did, I could be throwing myself into a peculiar sort of trap. But Eric had succeeded. He had not been locked into the heart of a gem somewhere off in Shadow. The Dworkin who had written those notes had been a great man, and I had trusted him.
Composing my mind, I intensified my security of the stone’s interior.
There was a distorted reflection of the Pattern within it, surrounded by winking points of light, tiny flares and flashes, different curves and paths. I made my decision, I focused my will…
Redness and slow motion. Like sinking into an ocean of high viscosity. Very slowly, at first. Drifting and darkening, all the pretty lights far, far ahead. Faintly, my apparent velocity increased. Flakes of light, distant, intermittent. A trifle faster then, it seemed. No scale. I was a point of consciousness of indeterminate dimensions. Aware of movement, aware of the configuration toward which I advanced, now almost rapidly. The redness was nearly gone, as was the consciousness of any medium. Resistance vanished. I was speeding. All of this, now, seemed to have taken but a single instant, was still taking that same instant. There was a peculiar, timeless quality to the entire affair. My velocity relative to what now seemed my target was enormous. The little, twisted maze was growing, was resolving into what appeared a three-dimensional variation of the Pattern itself. Punctuated by flares of colored light, it grew before me, still reminiscent of a bizarre galaxy half raveled in the middle of the ever-night, haloed with a pale shine of dust, its streamers composed of countless flickering points. And it grew or I shrank, or it advanced or I advanced, and we were near, near together, and it filled all of space now, top to bottom, this way to that, and my personal velocity still seemed, if anything, to be increasing. I was caught, overwhelmed by the blaze, and there was a stray streamer which I knew to be the beginning. I was too close — lost, actually — to apprehend its over-all configuration any longer, but the buckling, the flickering, the weaving of all that I could see of it, everywhere about me, made me wonder whether three dimensions were sufficient to account for the senseswarping complexities with which I was confronted. Rather than my galactic analogy, something in my mind shifted to the other extreme, suggesting the infinitely dimensioned Hilbert space of the subatomic. But then, it was a metaphor of desperation. Truly and simply, I did not understand anything about it. I had only a growing feeling — Pattern-conditioned? Instinctive? — that I had to pass through this maze also to gain the new degree of power that I sought.
Nor was I incorrect. I was swept on into it without any slackening of my apparent velocity. I was spun and whirled along blazing ways, passing through substanceless clouds of glitter and shine. There were no areas of resistance, as in the Pattern itself, my initial impetus seeming sufficient to bear me throughout. A whirlwind tour of the Milky Way? A drowning man swept among canyons of coral? An insomniac sparrow passing over an amusement park of a July Fourth evening? These my thoughts as I recapitulated my recent passage in this transformed fashion.
…And out, through, over, and done, in a blaze of ruddy light that found me regarding myself holding the pendant beside the Pattern, then regarding the pendant, Pattern within it, within me, everything within me, me within it, the redness subsiding, down, gone. Then just me, the pendant, the Pattern, alone, subject-object relationships re-established — only an octave higher, which I feel is about the best way there is to put it. For a certain empathy now existed. It was as though I had acquired an extra sense, and an additional means of expression. It was a peculiar sensation, satisfying.
Anxious to test it, I summoned my resolve once again and commanded the Pattern to transport me elsewhere.
I stood then in the round room, atop the highest tower in Amber. Crossing it, I passed outside, onto a very small balcony. The contrast was powerful, coming so close to the supersensory voyage I had just completed. For several long moments I simply stood there, looking.
The sea was a study in textures, as the sky was partly overcast and getting on toward evening. The clouds themselves showed patterns of soft brightness and rough shading. The wind made its way seaward, so that the salt smell was temporarily denied me. Dark birds dotted the air, swinging and hovering at a great distance out over the water. Below me, the palace yards and the terraces of the city lay spread in enduring elegance out to Kolvir’s rim. People were tiny on the thoroughfares, their movements discountable. I felt very alone.
Then I touched the pendant and called for a storm.
Chapter 4
Random and Flora were waiting in my quarters when I returned. Random’s eyes went first to the pendant, then to my own. I nodded.
I turned toward Flora, bowing slightly.
“Sister,” I said, “it has been a while, and then a while.”
She looked somewhat frightened, which was all to the good. She smiled and took my hand, though.
“Brother,” she said. “I see that you have kept your word.”
Pale gold, her hair. She had cut it, but retained the bangs. I could not decide whether I liked it that way or not. She had very lovely hair. Blue eyes, too, and tons of vanity to keep everything in her favorite perspective. At times she seemed to behave quite stupidly, but then at other times I have wondered.
“Excuse me for staring,” I said, “but the last time that we met I was unable to see you.”
“I am very happy that the situation has been corrected,” she said. “It was quite — There was nothing that I could do, you know.”
“I know,” I said, recalling the occasional lilt of her laughter from the other side of the darkness on one of the anniversaries of the event. “I know.”
I moved to the window and opened it, knowing that the rain would not be coming in. I like the smell of a storm.
“Random, did you learn anything of interest with regard to a possible postman?” I asked.
“Not really,” he said. “I made some inquiries. No one seems to have seen anyone else in the right place at the right time.”
“I see,” I said. “Thank you. I may see you again later.”
“All right,” he said. “I’ll be in my quarters all evening, then.”
I nodded, turned, leaned back against the sill, watched Flora. Random closed the door quietly as he left. I listened to the rain for half a minute or so.
“What are you going to do with me?” she said finally.
“Do?”
“You are in a position to call for a settlement on old debts. I assume that things are about to begin.”