Which may have been why, partway along the path, he became aware of something to which the others were oblivious. It pulled him sharply out of reverie, and he walked a short distance in a different sort of silence before turning to the Dwarf beside him.
“Is there any reason,” he asked, very softly, “why the two of you would be followed?”
Matt Sören broke stride only momentarily. He took a deep breath. “Where?” he asked, in a voice equally low.
“Behind us, to the left. Slope of the hill. Is there a reason?”
“There may be. Would you keep walking, please? And say nothing for now—it may be nothing.” When Paul hesitated, the Dwarf gripped his arm. “Please?” he repeated. Schafer, after a moment, nodded and quickened his pace to catch up to the group now several yards ahead. The mood by then was hilarious and very loud. Only Paul, listening for it, heard the sharp, abruptly truncated cry from the darkness behind them. He blinked, but no expression crossed his face.
Matt Sören rejoined them just as they reached the end of the shadowed walkway and came out to the noise and bright lights of Bloor Street. Ahead lay the huge stone pile of the old Park Plaza hotel. Before they crossed the road he placed a hand again on Schafer’s arm. “Thank you,” said the Dwarf.
“Well,” said Lorenzo Marcus, as they settled into chairs in his sixteenth-floor suite, “why don’t you all tell me about yourselves? Yourselves,” he repeated, raising an admonitory finger at grinning Kevin.
“Why don’t you start?” Marcus went on, turning to Kim. “What are you studying?”
Kim acquiesced with some grace. “Well, I’m just finishing my interning year at—”
“Hold it, Kim.”
It was Paul. Ignoring a fierce look from the Dwarf, he levelled his eyes on their host. “Sorry, Dr. Marcus. I’ve got some questions of my own and I need answers now, or we’re all going home.”
“Paul, what the—”
“No, Kev. Listen a minute.” They were all staring at Schafer’s pale, intense features. “Something very strange is happening here. I want to know,” he said to Marcus, “why you were so anxious to cut us out of that crowd. Why you sent your friend to set it up. I want to know what you did to me in the auditorium. And I really want to know why we were followed on the way over here.”
“Followed?” The shock registering on Lorenzo Marcus’s face was manifestly unfeigned.
“That’s right,” Paul said, “and I want to know what it was, too.”
“Matt?” Marcus asked, in a whisper.
The Dwarf fixed Paul Schafer with a long stare.
Paul met the glance. “Our priorities,” he said, “can’t be the same in this.” After a moment, Matt Sören nodded and turned to Marcus.
“Friends from home,” he said. “It seems there are those who want to know exactly what you are doing when you… travel.”
“Friends?” Lorenzo Marcus asked.
“I speak loosely. Very loosely.”
There was a silence. Marcus leaned back in his armchair, stroking the grey beard. He closed his eyes.
“This isn’t how I would have chosen to begin,” he said at length, “but it may be for the best after all.” He turned to Paul. “I owe you an apology. Earlier this evening I subjected you to something we call a searching. It doesn’t always work. Some have defences against it and with others, such as yourself, it seems, strange things can happen. What took place between us unsettled me as well.”
Paul’s eyes, more blue than grey in the lamplight, were astonishingly unsurprised. “I’ll need to talk about what we saw,” he said to Lorenzo Marcus, “but the thing is, why did you do it in the first place?”
And so they were there. Kevin, leaning forward, every sense sharpened, saw Lorenzo Marcus draw a deep breath, and he had a flash image in that instant of his own life poised on the edge of an abyss.
“Because,” Lorenzo Marcus said, “you were quite right, Paul Schafer—I didn’t just want to escape a boring reception tonight. I need you. The five of you.”
“We’re not five.” Dave’s heavy voice crashed in. “I’ve got nothing to do with these people.”
“You are too quick to renounce friendship, Dave Martyniuk,” Marcus snapped back. “But,” he went on, more gently, after a frozen instant, “it doesn’t matter here—and to make you see why, I must try to explain. Which is harder than it would have been once.” He hesitated, hand at his beard again.
“You aren’t Lorenzo Marcus, are you?” Paul said, very quietly.
In the stillness, the tall man turned to him again. “Why do you say that?”
Paul shrugged. “Am I right?”
“That searching truly was a mistake. Yes,” said their host, “you are right.” Dave was looking from Paul to the speaker with hostile incredulity. “Although I am Marcus, in a way—as much as anyone is. There is no one else. But Marcus is not who I am.”
“And who are you?” It was Kim who asked. And was answered in a voice suddenly deep as a spell.
“My name is Loren. Men call me Silvercloak. I am a mage. My friend is Matt Sören, who was once King of the Dwarves. We come from Paras Derval, where Ailell reigns, in a world that is not your own.”
In the stone silence that followed this, Kevin Laine, who had chased an elusive image down all the nights of his life, felt an astonishing turbulence rising in his heart. There was a power woven into the old man’s voice, and that, as much as the words, reached through to him.
“Almighty God,” he whispered. “Paul, how did you know?”
“Wait a second! You believe this?” It was Dave Martyniuk, all bristling belligerence. “I’ve never heard anything so crack-brained in my life!” He put his drink down and was halfway to the door in two long strides.
“Dave, please!”
It stopped him. Dave turned slowly in the middle of the room to face Jennifer Lowell. “Don’t go,” she pleaded. “He said he needed us.”
Her eyes, he noticed for the first time, were green. He shook his head. “Why do you care?”
“Didn’t you hear it?” she replied. “Didn’t you feel anything?”
He wasn’t about to tell these people what he had or hadn’t heard in the old man’s voice, but before he could make that clear, Kevin Laine spoke.
“Dave, we can afford to hear him out. If there’s danger or it’s really wild, we can run away after.”
He heard the goad in the words, and the implication. He didn’t rise to it, though. Never turning from Jennifer, he walked over and sat beside her on the couch. Didn’t even look at Kevin Laine.
There was a silence, and she was the one who broke it. “Now, Dr. Marcus, or whatever you prefer to be called, we’ll listen. But please explain. Because I’m frightened now.”
It is not known whether Loren Silvercloak had a vision then of what the future held for Jennifer, but he bestowed upon her a look as tender as he could give, from a nature storm-tossed, but still more giving, perhaps, than anything else. And then he began the tale.
“There are many worlds,” he said, “caught in the loops and whorls of time. Seldom do they intersect, and so for the most part they are unknown to each other. Only in Fionavar, the prime creation, which all the others imperfectly reflect, is the lore gathered and preserved that tells of how to bridge the worlds—and even there the years have not dealt kindly with ancient wisdom. We have made the crossing before, Matt and I, but always with difficulty, for much is lost, even in Fionavar.”