No, not nowhere. Darius was the one who had stepped into its reality. The geography might be so similar as to be identical, and the animal life too—but men and creatures did not follow the same schedules here as in his own reality. So a bird had been roosting here. He had better move on before the local Cyng of Pwer spied him and asked him what he was doing here. He didn’t know how many others there might be like him, in these very similar Modes.
He walked on toward the rim of the disk. He hesitated, then brought out his personal icon. He squatted and drew the crude likeness of the dais of the Castle of Hlahtar. He activated the icon and jumped it to that likeness.
He made it, but it was a gut-wrenching experience. Evidently his sympathetic magic was not well attuned to this Mode.
He gazed at the castle. It looked the same, but now he doubted that it had the same personnel. If it did, could he meet himself? That promised only complication! So he decided not to approach it; he would get well away from anything similar to what he knew. In fact, he should get away from the dais region too, because if his magic stopped working, he would be stranded on a dais.
He knew where there was a lowland region that was almost level. It was almost uninhabited; an assortment of wild animals roamed there, and that was about all. His sword should protect him from any predators, if he remained alert.
He stepped his icon there, and immediately arrived, his gut further wrenched. But now he had another problem: he did not know where to go. Pwer had told him that there should be a feel to the right direction, and he had felt it at first. Now he did not. He had gone off the path.
But he should be able to pick it up again. He turned slowly around, concentrating, and felt a faint tingle in one direction. That should be the way to go.
He stepped in that direction. Nothing seemed to change. He continued, and saw an animaclass="underline" a big reptile, one of the dragons that roamed this region. Some of them could do enough magic to blow fire, but they were no threat to a man who could do magic to douse fire, or simply conjure the creatures elsewhere.
He continued walking, and the feeling of rightness grew stronger. Good enough; he could reach the proper path without having to struggle with the impassable terrain in the vicinity of the daises.
Could he conjure himself along the path across Modes? A moment’s thought made him decide not to try. Probably he had done that when he conjured himself before, which was why he had the gut wrenches. The Modes were close together; Pwer had indicated that about three paces should take him from one to another. He had conjured himself many leagues, so must have crossed hundreds of Modes. In so doing, he had almost lost the path. As he progressed on the path, his magic would fade, so it was best not to depend on it.
Were it otherwise, he might have conjured himself all the way to Colene’s Mode, and fetched her back immediately. But he knew he could do no magic there. He needed to forge a path by foot, so he could bring her back the same way.
He continued until he reached the strongest sense of the path. As he did, the terrain changed around him. The plain became a ragged slope, but not as rough as in his home Mode. He could manage.
He had been traveling slantwise, as it were, across Modes. Now he crossed them directly, following the path, and Pwer was right: about three paces took him across. He could tell because though the terrain did not change much if at all, the vegetation changed somewhat and the animal life could shift abruptly, as the first plume-bird had shown.
He passed a pair of ridges between which nestled a small clear lake. He approached it cautiously, alert for danger, because such water was apt to be a drinking hole for animals. Indeed, odd creatures did appear and disappear as he crossed Modes, while the lake remained constant. This brought home to him the fact that though for him each Mode was only three paces wide, he saw the whole of it while he was in it. The lake was in each Mode, so appeared constant, but every three paces it was actually a different lake he saw. He was not approaching the lake he saw, but the lake in the Mode he would stand in when he got there.
He did get there, and there were no animals. There were fish in the water, however, so it was probably clean. He lay down and drank deeply, then filled his water bag. Water was precious!
He stepped into the next Mode. There was a wrenching in his stomach and a lightening of his water bag. What had happened?
He stepped back. There were two wet places on the ground beside the lake where water had evidently been recently spilled. And his bag was low, and he was thirsty.
Then he remembered Pwer’s warning: he could not assimilate the stuff of other Modes. Not rapidly. He could not carry anything with him across Modes except what was of his own Mode or the Mode of one of the other anchors. He could eat or drink the substance of another Mode, but it would not remain with him when he departed it, unless he gave it time to be assimilated by his body. It seemed that it was the isolation of the molecules amidst many more of his own molecules that caused them to become detached from their Mode and to join his. This could happen fairly rapidly with water, and more slowly with food.
He drank again, more moderately, and waited an hour. Then he resumed his journey, and the water did not disappear from his stomach. It had already done that, to be distributed elsewhere in his body, and was captive.
Suppose he ran out of water? Then he would have to remain in a single Mode long enough to drink a lot of it, urinate it out, and filter it through sand to make it pure. That pure water would be of his system, and could travel with him in his bag. It was not the most pleasant mechanism, but necessary. Food was harder; he would not have time to excrete it and grow new plants from it, so he carried what he needed with him. He could mix it with water, expanding its mass, and it would last a good length of time.
He moved on, and now the lake was left behind him, as constant as before, while plants and animals flickered in and out of sight with each change of Modes. The animals he understood, but why the variation in plants? Probably because the animals grazed on them, so changes in animal life meant changes in plant life. Since adjacent Modes tended to be similar, if he saw a dramatic shift in plant life, he would have to be extremely cautious about the animal life, even if he didn’t see it. Because it was probably nearby and the next Mode might put him abruptly face to face with it.
The glimpses he got of animals were not reassuring. There seemed to be an increasing number of dragons, and they were getting larger. They seemed to be squeezing other animals out, almost as if—
Suddenly he was caught in a net. He struggled to get free of it, but it hauled him into the air and held him. It was an animal trap, triggered by touching. He hadn’t seen it because it had not existed until he stepped into its Mode, moving swiftly.
He drew his sword and started cutting the threads of it. Who could have set up this trap, and why? The second question was readily answered: it was to snare wildlife alive, probably for domestication or later slaughter. The setters of the snare had not figured on a Mode traveler passing through.
He completed his cuts, sheathed the sword, and let himself down through the hole he had made. He landed on the ground—and discovered himself facing a dragon. A big one. A maneater.
The creature had evidently come up while Darius was cutting himself free. He decided to risk a conjuration, because this one was big enough to eat him. He activated his icon and moved it back away.
There was a bit of wrenching in the gut, but his body did not move. He had passed beyond the range of magic already.
Well, he could escape the monster simply by stepping into the next Mode; that was what he should have done first. He started to move—and the dragon leaped.