Rod caught his breath for a blistering tirade, but Gwen's fingers touched his lips, and he just barely managed to bite it down. Probably wouldn't have been heard, anyway. "If thou wilt, holy man," Gwen said. "We would cry thy mercy."
They needed somebody's mercy, that was for sure—but the priest was nodding with a happy smile. "Come, then, come! Be assured, there's naught to fear!" And he turned away, striding north with the aid of his staff.
They followed, with Rod thinking at Gwen, You know I don't trust him, of course.
Neither do I, she answered, but I'd sooner be at his back than have him at mine. Yet we are proof against ambush whiles our senses are not dazed by this pandemonium.
Full vigilance, Fess. Rod directed the message by thought, knowing the robot would have his audio gain turned down again. Why don't you trust him, Gwen?
For that he wears no covers to his ears, yet seems to scarcely notice all this clamor, she answered. Thy reason?
Just the look of him—and the fact that he hasn't told us his name.
Rod set himself to the journey, feeling a bit more confident—but scrutinizing every outcrop of rock and every smallest shrub on the road ahead.
"I am Reverend Iago," the black-robed priest said over his shoulder.
"I am Rod." He hurried to catch up with Iago, wondering why he didn't prefix his name with the more usual "father" or "brother." He decided the man was just a little stuffy and asked, "Anything we should be careful about when we get there?"
Iago shrugged. "We must cope when we must. It is confusing, I will own, yet I find little enough danger in it."
Rod noted the qualifications; his adrenaline started flowing. "How far is it?"
"Yon it begins." Iago pointed to a lofty castle towering above the forest trees.
"Strange—I hadn't noticed that before," Rod said.
The turrets seemed to soften around the edges, then to melt, flowing together into a mountain.
The children gasped, and Gwen demanded, "What witchery is this?"
"Further," Iago urged. "There is more to see." He went forward another few steps, then looked back, frowning. "Do not delay—oh, come! You must hasten to see! See such wonders as thou never hast aforetime!"
Rod glanced at Gwen, but her face had hardened, and she nodded slowly. "Okay," Rod said, "we're coming."
The children followed, subdued, Magnus's glance flicking from his mother to his father and back, then on to the priest.
Above them, the mountain seemed to melt, like a dish of ice cream left in the sun—revealing a glittering diamond tower at its core.
Iago pushed through a stand of tall grass. The Gallow-glasses followed him—and came out into a broad plain. They stopped, and gasped.
The plain was filled with impossible forms, all in pastel colors. Behind them, the sky was all glowing mist, wreathing and curling in continually shifting shapes. The forms themselves weren't all that stable, either—here a giant clock stood in the form of a zero with nine hands, each a number, all revolving at different rates with two turning backward; there a giant beetle crawled before a towering obelisk that had an opaque, multicolored cloud churning about its top. Nearer and to their right, two knights jousted, never touching one another but forever wheeling and charging again. Here the plain suddenly bulged, the mound growing and swelling until it had become a hill, with skids sliding down it; then its northern face began to slump. Down its side a wheel rolled by itself, but as it rolled, it elongated into a cam, flipping along with an eccentric motion; then even the cam slowly changed, warping and squeezing into a long, slender track, then melting on down to disappear into the floor of the plain. But the line of it rose up again in an undulating form, until a hydra writhed where the wheel had melted—but the flailing arms grew heads, and the heads grew bodies and tails, and six snakes crawled away from the place where the hydra had been. As they crawled, though, they changed, one becoming a tapir, another a salamander, a third a raven, and so on.
In fact, all the forms on the plain were constantly in flux, the knights becoming dragons, the clock turning into a windmill, the cloud flowing down over the obelisk and forming a giant beehive. Behind and above all towered the diamond tower, though its surface was hardening and dulling now, beginning to show the mortar lines of masonry.
Over it, and under it and through it, ran the heavy, pulsing beat of the metal stones, snarling and whining back and forth across the plain, audible even through their filters.
Rod clutched at his wife. "Gwen! I'm hallucinating again!"
"Thou art not," she said, clinging to him just as tightly. "I see them too."
"And I," said Magnus, staring, and the other children chorused their agreement.
"Tell me," Rod demanded of Iago, "are any of these things real?"
Iago shrugged. "What is reality?"
"Oh, not again!" Geoffrey groaned. "Wilt thou answer him, Fess?"
Iago looked up, startled.
He cannot hear me, Fess reminded them.
"Reality is not a matter of opinion," Gregory informed the priest.
Rod and Gwen stared at-their youngest, taken aback. Rod turned to give Fess a narrow glare. But Iago only grinned, and his smile wasn't entirely pleasant. "Then thou shouldst not fear to walk among these dreams."
"Nay, not so," Geoffrey contradicted, "for though these things may not be what they seem, they may nonetheless be summat fearsome."
"These things shall not harm you," Iago insisted, "but if you seek to find the center of all this music, you must needs come within." He turned away, walked a few paces, then looked back, as though to ask them whether or not they were coming.
Magnus gazed out over the plain, frowning, but the younger children looked up at Rod and Gwen, who looked at each other; then Gwen said, reluctantly, "We are proof against it."
"So far," Rod agreed. "Fess, what do you see?"
Only a plain, Rod, with rocky outcrops here and there, and occasionally a grove.
"You're our touchstone, then. Okay, family, it's psionic—which means we can probably counter everything it can throw. Just remember, kids, that anything you're seeing isn't really there. Stay alert to your mother, and do whatever she does."
"Gramercy for thy confidence," Gwen said sourly. "How wilt thou guard?"
"As you do, of course—and with this." Rod drew his sword. "Just in case."
Steel slickered as Magnus and Geoffrey drew.
"Psi first, boys," Rod cautioned. "Don't start fencing unless I say to—I have a hunch our enemies here aren't going to be soldiers. Fess, tell us if you see anything armed."
Of course. Rod.
"After Iago, then. Let's go."
They stepped out onto the plain, and waded into the morass of illusion.
When they were in the center of the plain, surrounded by strange, transforming shapes, Rod suddenly stopped. "Wait!"
Iago turned back, still smiling but with glittering eyes. "Aye?"
"That—big thing!" Rod pointed. "It was a castle when we first saw it, and then it was a mountain, then a diamond tower, which turned to masonry—but now it's something huge and amorphous."
Iago turned to look. Sure enough, the masonry tower had melted into a sort of bulging obelisk that tapered at the top into a hyperbola. It was a melange of shifting colors, streaked through with melting bands of various hues, reminding Rod of a silken moire.
"It doth seem like to a giant chrysalis," Gregory said.
"If that is the chrysalis, brother, Heaven defend me from the butterfly!"