Wizard World 1: Changeling

II

He walked along the shining road. Miniature lightnings played constantly across its surface but did not shock him. To his right and his left there was a steady flickering as brief glimpses of alternate realities came and went. Directly overhead was a dark stillness filled with steady stars. In his right hand he bore his staff, in the crook of his left arm he carried the baby.

Occasionally, there was a branching, a sideroad, a crossroad. He passed many of these with only a glance. Later, however, he came to a forking of the way and he set his foot upon the lefthand branch. Immediately, the flickering slowed perceptibly.

He moved with increased deliberation, now scrutinizing the images. Finally, he concentrated all of his attention on those to the right. After a time, he halted and stood facing the panorama.

He moved his staff into a position before him and the progression of images slowed even more. He watched for several heartbeats, then leaned the tip of the staff forward.

A scene froze before him, grew, took on depth and coloration....

Evening... Autumn... Small street, small town... University complex...

He stepped forward.

Michael Chain--red-haired, ruddy and thirty pounds overweight--loosened his tie and lowered his six-foot-plus frame onto the stool before the drawing board. His left hand played games with the computer terminal and a figure took shape on the cathode display above it. He studied this for perhaps half a minute, rotated it, made adjustments, rotated it again.

Taking up a pencil and a T-square, he transferred several features from the display to the sheet on the board before him. He leaned back, regarding it, chewed his lip, began a small erasure.

"Mike!" said a small, dark-haired woman in a severe evening dress, opening the door to his office. "Can't you leave your work alone for a minute?"

"The sitter is not here yet," he replied, continuing the erasure, "and I'm ready to go. This beats twiddling my thumbs."

"Well, she is here now and your tie has to be retted and we're late."

He sighed, put down the pencil and switched off the terminal. "All right," he said, rising to his feet and fambling at his throat. "I'll be ready in a minute. Punctuality is no great virtue at a faculty party."

"It is if it's for the head of your department."

"Gloria," he replied, shaking his head, "the only thing you need to know about Jim is that he wouldn't last a week in the real world. Take him out of the university and drop him into a genuine industrial design slot and he'd--"

"Let's not get into that again," she said, retreating. "I know you're not happy here, but for the time being there's nothing else. You've got to be decent about it."

"My father had his own consulting firm," he recited. "It could have been mine--"

"But he drank it out of business. Come on. Let's go."

"That was near the end. He'd had some bad breaks. He was good. So was Granddad," he went on. "He founded it and--"

"I already know you come from a dynasty of geniuses," she said, "and that Dan will inherit the mantle. But right now--"

He shook himself and looked at her.

"How is he?" he asked in a softer voice.

"Asleep," she said. "He's okay."

He smiled.

"Okay. Let's get our coats. I'll be good."

She turned and he followed her out, the pale eye of the CRT looking over his shoulder.

Mor stood in the doorway of a building diagonally across the street from the house he was watching. The big man in the dark overcoat was on the doorstep, hands thrust into his pockets, gazing up the street. The smaller figure of the woman still faced the partly opened door. She was speaking with someone within.

Finally, the woman closed the door and turned. She joined the man and they began walking. Mor watched them head off up the street and turn the corner. He waited awhile longer, to be certain they would not be returning after some remembered trifle.

He departed the doorway and crossed the street. When he reached the proper door he rapped upon it with his staff. After several moments, the door opened slightly. He saw that there was a chain upon it on the inside. A young girl stared at him across it, dark eyes only slightly suspicious.

"I've come to pick something up," he said, the web of an earlier spell making his foreign words clear to her, "and to leave something."

"They are not in just now," she said. "I'm the sitter. ..."

"That is all right," he said, slowly lowering the point of his staff toward her eye level.

A faint pulsing began within the dark wood, giving it an opalescent hue and texture. Her eyes shifted. It held her attention for several pulsebeats, and then he raised it slowly toward his own face. Their eyes met and he held her gaze. His voice shifted into a lower register.

"Unchain the door now," he said.

There was a shadow of movement, a rattling within. The chain dropped.

"Step back," he commanded.

The face withdrew. He pushed the door open and entered.

"Go into the next room and sit down," he said, closing the door behind him. "When I depart this place, you will chain the door behind me and forget that I have been here. I will tell you when to do this."

The girl was already on her way into the living room.

He moved about slowly, opening doors. Finally, he paused upon the threshold of a small, darkened room, then entered softly. He regarded the tiny figure curled within the crib, then moved the staff to within inches of its head.

"Sleep," he said, the wood once again flickering beneath his hand. "Sleep."

Carefully then, he placed his own burden upon the floor, leaned his staff against the crib, uncovered and raised the child he had charmed. He lay it beside the other and considered them both. In the light that spilled through the opened door, he saw that this baby was lighter of complexion than the one he had brought, and its hair was somewhat thinner, paler. Still...

He proceeded to exchange their clothing and to wrap the baby from the crib in the blanket which had covered the other. Then he placed the last Lord of Rondoval within the crib and stared at him. His finger moved forward to touch the dragonmark....

Abruptly, he turned away, retrieved his staff and lifted young Daniel Chain from the floor.

As he passed along the hallway he called into the living room, "I am going now. Fix the door as it was after me--and forget."

Outside, he heard the chain fall into place as he walked away. Stars shone down through jagged openings among the clouds and a cold wind came out of the east at his back. A vehicle turned the corner, raking him with its lights, but it passed without slowing.

Tiny gleams began to play within the sidewalk, and the buildings at either hand lost something of their substantiality, became two-dimensional, began to flicker.

The sparkling of his path increased and it soon ceased to be a sidewalk, becoming a great bright way stretching illimitably before and behind him, with numerous sideways visible. The prospect to his right and left became a mosaic of tiny still-shots of innumerable times and places, flashing, brightening and shrinking, coming at last to resemble the shimmering scales of some exotic fish in passage by him. Overhead, a band of dark sky remained, but cloudless and pouring starlight in negative celestial image of the road below. Occasionally, Mor glimpsed other figures upon the sideways--not all of them of human form--bent on tasks as inscrutable as his own.

His staff came to blaze as he picked his way homeward, lightning-dew dripping from his heels, his toes.