I

I am not certain.

It sometimes seems as if I have always been here, yet I know that there must have been a time before my advent.

And sometimes it seems as if I have only just lately arrived. From where I might have come, I have no idea. Recently, I have found this vaguely troubling, but only recently.

For a long while, I drifted through these halls, across the battlements, up and down the towers, expanding or contracting as I chose, to fill a room--or a dozen--or to snake my way through the homes of mice, to trace the sparkling cables of the spider's web. Nothing moves in this place but that I am aware of it.

Yet I was not fully aware of myself until recently, and the acts I have just recited have the dust of dreams strewn over them, myself the partial self of the dreamer. Yet--

Yet I do not sleep. I do not dream. However, I seem now to know of many things which I have never experienced.

Perhaps it is that I am a slow learner, or perhaps something has recently stimulated my awareness to the point where all the echoes of thoughts have brought about something new within me--a sense of self which I did not formerly possess, a knowledge of separateness, of my apartness from those things which are not-me.

If this is the case, I would like to believe that it has to do with my reason for being. I have also recently begun feeling that I should have a reason for being, that it is important that I have a reason for being. I have no idea, however, as to what this could be.

It has been said--again, recently--that this place is haunted. But a ghost, as I understand it, is some non-physical survival of someone or something which once existed in a more solid form. I have never encountered such an entity in my travels through this place, though lately it has occurred to me that the reference could be to me in my more tangible moments. Still, I do not believe that I am a ghost, for I have no recollection of the requisite previous state. Of course, it is difficult to be certain in a matter such as this, for I lack knowledge concerning whatever laws might govern such situations.

And this is another area of existence of which I have but recently become aware: laws--restrictions, compulsions, areas of freedom... They seem to be everywhere, from the dance of the tiniest particles to the turning of the world, which may be the reason I had paid them such small heed before. That which is ubiquitous is almost unnoticed. It is so easy to flow in accordance with the usual without reflecting upon it. It may well be that it was the occurrence of the unusual which served to rouse this faculty within me, and along with it the realization of my own existence.

Then, too, in accordance with the laws with which I have become aware, I have observed a phenomenon which I refer to as the persistance of pattern. The two men who sit talking within the room where I hover like a slowly turning, totally transparent cloud an arm's distance out from the highest bookshelf nearest the window--these two men are both patterned upon similar lines of symmetry, though I become aware of many differences within these limits, and the wave disturbances which they cause within the air when communicating with one another are also patterned things possessing, or possessed by, rules of their own. And if I attend very closely, I can even become aware of their thoughts behind, and sometimes even before, these disturbances. These, too, seem to be patterned, but at a much higher level of complexity.

It would seem to follow that if I were a ghost something of my previous pattern might have persisted. But I am without particular form, capable of great expansions and contractions, able to permeate anything I have so for encountered. And there is no special resting state to which I feel constrained to return.

Along with my nascent sense of identity and my ignorance as to what it is that I am, I do feel something else: a certainty that I am incomplete. There is a thing lacking within me, which, if I were to discover it, might well provide me with that reason for being which I so desire. There are times when I feel as if I had been, in a way, sleeping for a long while and but recently been awakened by the commotions in this place--awakened to find myself robbed of some essential instruction. (I have only lately learned the concept "robbed" because one of the men I now regard is a thief.)

If I am to acquire a completeness, it would seem that I must pursue it myself, I suppose that, for now, I ought to make this pursuit my reason for being. Yes. Self-knowledge, the quest after identity... These would seem a good starting place. I wonder whether anyone else has ever had such a problem? I will pay close attention to what the men are saying.

I do not like being uncertain.

Pol Detson had arranged the seven figurines into a row on the desk before him, A young man, despite the white streak through his hair, he leaned forward and extended a hand in their direction. For a time he moved it slowly, passing his fingertips about the entire group, then in and out, encircling each gem-studded individual. Finally, he sighed and withdrew. He crossed the room to where the small, black-garbed man sat, left leg crooked over the arm of his chair, a wineglass in either hand, the contents of both aswirl. He accepted one from him and raised it to his lips.

"Well?" the smaller man, Mouseglove by name, the thief, asked him when he lowered it.

Pol shook his head, moved a chair so that his field of vision took in both Mouseglove and the statuettes, seated himself.

"Peculiar," he said at last. "Almost everything tosses off a thread, something to give you a hold over it, even if you have to fight for it, even if it only does it occasionally."

"Perhaps this is not the proper occasion."

Pol leaned forward, set his glass upon the desk. He flexed his fingers before him and placed their tips together. He began rubbing them against one another with small, circular movements. After perhaps half a minute, he drew them apart and reached toward the desk.

He chose the nearest figure--thin, female, crowned with a red stone, hands clasped beneath the breasts--and began making a wrapping motion about it, though Mouseglove could detect no substance to be engaged in the process. Finally, his fingers moved as if he were tying a series of knots in a nonexistent string. Then he moved away, seating himself again, drawing his hands slowly after him as if playing out a line with some tension on it.

He sat unmoving for a long while. Then the figure on the desk jerked slightly and he lowered his hands.

"No good," he said, rubbing his eyes and reaching to recover his wineglass. "I can't seem to get a handle on it. They are not like anything else I know about."

"They're special, all right," Mouseglove observed, "considering the dance they put me through. And from the glimpses they gave you at Anvil Mountain, I have the feeling they could talk to you right now--if they wanted to."

"Yes. They were helpful enough--in a way--at the time. I wonder why they won't communicate now?"

"Perhaps they have nothing to say."

I found myself puzzled by the manner in which these men spoke of those seven small statues on the desk, as if they were alive. I drew nearer and examined them. I had noted lines of force going from the man Pol's fingertips to them, shortly after he had spoken of "threads" and performed his manipulations. I had also detected a throbbing of power in the vicinity of his right forearm, where he bore the strangely troubling mark of the dragon--a thing about which I feel I should know more than I do--but I had seen no threads. Nor had I noted any sort of reaction from the figures, save for the small jerking movement of the one as the shell of force was repelled.

I settled down about them, contracting, feeling the textures of the various materials of which they had been formed. Cold, lifeless. It was only the words of the men which laid any mystery upon them.

Continuing this commerce of surfaces, I grew even smaller, concentrating my attention now upon that figure which Pol had momentarily bound. My action then was as prompt as my decision: I began to pour myself into it, flowing through the miniscule openings--

The burn! It was indescribable, the searing feeling that passed through my being. Expanding, filling the room, passing beyond it into the night, I knew that it must be that thing referred to as pain. I had never experienced it before and I wanted never to feel it again.

I continued to seek greater tenuosness, for in it lay a measure of alleviation.

Pol had been correct concerning the figure. It was, somehow, alive. It did not wish to be disturbed.

Beyond the walls of Rondoval, the pain began to ease. I felt a stirring within me ... something which had always been there but was just now beginning to creep into awareness....

"What was that?" Pol said. "It sounded like a scream, but--"

"I didn't hear anything," Mouseglove answered, straightening. "But I just felt a jolt--as if I'd been touched by someone who'd walked across a heavy rug, only stronger, longer ... I don't know. It gave me a chill. Maybe you stirred something up, playing with that statue."

"Maybe," Pol said. "For a moment, it felt as if there were something peculiar right here in the room with us."

"There must be a lot of unusual things about this old place--with both of your parents having been practicing sorcerers. Not to mention your grandparents, and theirs."

Pol nodded and sipped his wine.

"There are times when I feel acutely aware of my lack of formal training in the area."

He raised his right hand slightly above shoulder-level, extended his index finger and moved it rapidly through a series of small circles. A book bound in skin of an indeterminate origin appeared suddenly in his hand, a gray and white feather bookmark protruding from it.

"My father's diary," he announced, lowering the volume and opening it to the feather. "Now here," he said, running his finger down the righthand page, pausing and staring, "he tells how he defeated and destroyed an enemy sorcerer, capturing his spirit in the form of one of the figures. Elsewhere, he talks of some of the others. But all that he says at the end here is, 'It will prove useful in the task to come. If six will not do to force the wards I shall have seven, or even eight.' Obviously, he had something very specific in mind. Unfortunately, he did not commit it to paper."

"Further along perhaps?"

"I'll be up late again reading. I've taken my time with it these past months because it is not a pleasant document. He wasn't a very nice guy."

"I know that. It is good that you learn it from his own words, though."

"His words about forcing the wards--do they mean anything at all to you?"

"Not a thing."

"A good sorcerer would find some way to learn it from the materials at hand, I'm sure."

"I'm not. Those things seem extremely potent. As for your own abilities, you seem to have come pretty far without training. I'd give a lot to be able to pull that book trick--with, say, someone's jewelry. Where'd you get it from, anyway?"

Pol smiled.

"I didn't want to leave it lying around, so I bound it with a golden strand and ordered it to retreat into one of those placeless places between the worlds, as I saw them arrayed on my journey here. It vanished then, but whenever I wish to continue reading it I merely draw upon the thread and summon it."

"Gods! You could do that with a suit of armor, a rack of weapons, a year's supply of food, your entire library, for that matter! You can make yourself invincible!"

Pol shook his head.

"Afraid not," he said. "The book and the jumble-box are all I've been keeping there, because I wouldn't want either to fall into anyone else's hands. If I were traveling, I could add my guitar. Much more, though, and it would become too great a burden. Their mass somehow gets added to my own. It's as if I'm carrying around whatever I send through."

"So that's where the box has gotten to. I remember your locating it, that day we went back to Anvil Mountain ..."

"Yes. I almost wish I hadn't."

"You couldn't really hope to recover his body or your scepter from that crater."

"No, that's not what I meant. It was just seeing all that--waste--that bothered me. I--"

He slammed his fist against the arm of his chair.

"Damn those statues! It sometimes seems they were behind it all! If I could just get them to--Hell!"

He drained his glass and went to refill it.

The sensation ebbed. I did not like that experience. The room and its inhabitants were now tiny within the cloud of myself, and more uncertainties were now present: I did not know what it was that had caused me pain, nor how it produced that effect. I felt that I should learn these things, so as to avoid it in the future. I did not know how to proceed.

I also felt that it might be useful for me to learn how to produce this effect in others, so that I could cause them to leave me alone. How might I do this? If there were a means of contact it would seem that it could go either way, once the technique were mastered....

Again, the stirring of memory. But I was distracted. Someone approached the castle. It was a solitary human of male gender. I was aware of the distinction because of my familiarity with the girl Nora who had dwelled within for a time before returning to her own people. This man wore a brown cloak and dark clothing. He came drifting out of the northwest, mounted upon one of the lesser kin of the dragons who dwell below. His hair was yellow, and in places white. He wore a short blade. He circled. He could not miss the sign of the one lighted room. He began to descend, silent as a leaf or an ash across the air. I believed that he would land at the far end of the courtyard, out of sight of the library window.

Yes.

Within the room the men were talking, about the battle at the place called Anvil Mountain, where Pol destroyed his step-brother, Mark Marakson. Pol, I gather, is a sorcerer and Mark was something else, similar but opposite. A sorcerer is one who manipulates forces as I saw Pol do with the statue, and the book. Now, dimly, I recalled another sorcerer. His name was Det.

"...You've been brooding over those figures too long," Mouseglove was saying. "If there were an easy answer, you'd have found it by now."

"I know," Pol replied. "That's why I'm looking for something more complicated."

"I don't have any special knowledge of magic," Mouseglove said, "but it looks to me as if the problem does not lie completely in that area."

"What do you mean?"

"Facts, man. You haven't enough plain, old-fashioned information to be sure what you're up against here, what it is that you should be doing. You've had a couple of months to ransack this library, to play every magical game you can think of with the stiff dolls. If the answer were to be found that way, you'd have turned it up. It's just not here. You are going to have to look somewhere else."

"Where?'" Pol asked.

"If I knew that, I'd have told you before now. I've been away from the world I knew for over twenty years. It must have changed a bit in that time. So I'm hardly one to be giving directions. But you know I'd only intended to remain here until I'd recovered from my injury. I've been feeling fine for some time now. I've been loathe to leave, though, because of you. I don't like seeing you drive yourself against a crazy mystery day after day. There are enough half-mad wizards in the world, and I think that's where you may be heading--not to mention the possibility of your setting off something which may simply destroy you on the spot. I think you ought to get out, get away from the problem for a time. You'd said you wanted to see more of this world. Do it now. Come with me--tomorrow. Who knows? You may even come across some of the information you seek in your travels."

"I don't know ..." Pol began. "I do want to go, but--tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow."

"Where would we be heading?"

"Over to the coast, I was thinking, and then north along it. You can pick up a lot of news in port cities--"

Pol raised his hand and cocked his head. Mouseglove nodded and rose to his feet.

"Your warning system still working?" Mouseglove whispered.

Pol nodded and turned toward the door.

"Then it can't be any--"

The sound came again, and with it the form of a light-haired man appeared in the doorway, smiling.

"Good evening, Pol Detson," he stated, raising his left hand and jerking it through a series of quick movements, "and good-bye."

Pol fell to his knees, his face suddenly bright red. Mouseglove rounded the desk. Picking up one of the statuettes and raising it like a club, he moved toward the brown-cloaked stranger.

The man made a sudden movement with his right hand and the thief was halted, spun and slammed back against the wall to his left. The figurine fell from his grip as he slumped to the floor.

As this occurred, Pol raised his hands beside his cheeks and then gestured outward. His face began returning to its normal color as he climbed to his feet.

"I might ask, 'Why?' " he said, his own hands moving now, rotating in opposite directions.

The stranger continued to smile and made a sweeping movement with one hand, as if brushing away an insect.

"And I might answer you," said the other, "but it would take some coercion."

"Very well," said Pol. "I'm willing."

He felt his dragonmark throb and the air was alive with strands. Reaching out, he seized a fistful, shook them and snapped them like a lash toward the other's face.

The man reached out and caught them as they arrived. A numbing shock traveled up Pol's arm and it fell limply to his side. The density of the strands between them increased to a level he had never before witnessed, partly obscuring his view of his opponent.

Pol made a large sweeping motion with his left hand, gathering in a ball of them. Immediately, he willed it to fire and cast the blazing orb toward the other.

The man deflected it with the back of his right hand and then flung both arms upward and outward.

The light in the room began to throb. The air became so filled with the lines of power that they seemed to merge, becoming huge, swimming, varicolored patterns obscuring much of the prospect, including the stranger.

As the pulse in his dragonmark overcame the numbness in his right arm, Pol sent his will through it, seeking a clearer image of his adversary. Immediately, the form of the other man began to glow, as the rainbow-work wove itself to closure. The room disappeared, and Pol became aware that his form, too, had become luminiscent.

The two of them faced one another across a private universe built entirely of moving colors.

Pol saw the man raise his hands, cupping them before him. Immediately, a green serpent raised its head from within them and slithered forth, moving in Pol's direction.

Pol could feel a raw creation force moving all about him. He reached out and up, beginning a rapid series of shaping movements. A huge, gray bird came into being between his hands. He laid his will upon it and released it. It flashed forward and dove upon the snake, catching at it with its talons, striking with its beak. The serpent twisted its body and struck at the bird, missing.

Looking past this contest, Pol saw that the man was now juggling a number of balls of colored light. Even as the bird rose, bearing the struggling snake in its talons, to flap upward and merge with the kaleidescopic field which surrounded them, Pol saw the man cast the first blazing ball in his direction.

Smiling, Pol shaped a tennis raquet and saw a look of puzzlement cross his adversary's features as he regarded the unfamiliar instrument.

He slammed the first ball back at the man just as the second was released. The sorcerer dropped the remaining balls and dove to the side to avoid the return. Pol batted the second one out-of-court as the man rolled forward and came to his feet, his right hand snapping outward, something long and black moving with it.

He swung the raquet and missed as the whip caught him about the neck and jerked him forward. He felt himself falling. Dropping the raquet, he reached for the choking thing that held him, to seize it, unwind it--

It jerked again and the world began to spin and darken. It continued to tighten, and he heard the sound of laughter, coming nearer...

"Not much of a contest," he heard the other say.

Then there was an explosion and everything went black.

It was instructive to observe the exchange of forces between Pol and the visitor. Also, mildly unsettling, as it occurred to me that they might be inducing pain in each other. Yet, they had wanted to do it or they wouldn't have. I was more interested in the manipulations than I was in their progressive wearing down of each other, because I felt that I might be able to engage in that sort of activity myself and I wished to be further informed. Its abrupt ending came as a surprise to me. Save for small, less complex creatures, I had not seen one being end another's existence. Indeed, it had not occurred to me that these larger ones could be ended. I felt as if I should have taken a part in it, though on which side and in which direction, I could not say. I was also uncertain as to why I felt this way.

Where there had been three there were now two. I did not understand why they had done it, nor how the lance of force had come from the statuette to terminate the stranger before Mouseglove's projectile reached his head.

Pol shook his head. His neck was sore. He rubbed it and opened his eyes. He was lying on the floor beside the desk. Slowly, he pushed himself into a seated position.

The stranger lay upon his back near the door, right arm outflung, left across his breast. A piece of his forehead was missing and his right eye was a crimson pool.

To his left, leaning against a bookshelf, Mouseglove stood rubbing his eyes. His right arm hung at his side and in his hand was the pistol he had carried away from Anvil Mountain. When he saw Pol move he dropped his left hand and smiled weakly.

"Are you all right?" he asked.

"I guess so. Except for a stiff neck. What about yourself?"

"I don't know what he hit me with. It affected my sight for awhile. When I came around, the two of you seemed to be pulsing into and out of existence. I wasn't able to get a shot at him till the last time he came through." He replaced the weapon in a holster behind his belt and moved forward, extending his hand. "Everything seems normal enough now."

Pol accepted his hand and rose. They both crossed the room and looked down at the dead man. Mouseglove immediately knelt and began searching him. After several minutes, he shook his head, unfastened the brown cloak and covered the man with it.

"Nothing," he said, "to tell who he is or why he came. I take it you have no idea?"

"None."

They returned to their seats and the wine flask, Mouse-glove restoring the fallen figurine on the way.

"Either he had some reason for disliking you and came by to do something about it," Mouseglove said, "or somebody else who feels that way sent him. In the first case, some friend of his might come along later to continue the work. In the second, another may be sent as soon as it is known that this one failed. Either way, it would appear that more trouble will be forthcoming."

Pol nodded. He rose and removed a book from a shelf high on the lefthand wall. He returned to his seat and began paging through it.

"This one got through all of your alarm spells without giving warning," Mouseglove continued.

"He was better than I am," Pol said, without looking up from the book.

"So what is to be done?"

"Here," Pol said, locating the page he sought and reading silently for a time. "I had been wondering about this for some time," he went on. "Every four years there is a gathering of sorcerers at Belken, a mountain to the northwest. Ever hear of it?"

"Of course--as a good thing to stay away from."

"It will begin in about two weeks. I've decided to attend."

"If they're all like this fellow--" Mouseglove nodded toward the form upon the floor. "--I don't think it would be a very good idea."

Pol shook his head.

"The description makes it sound rather peaceful. Advanced practicioners discuss theory with one another, apprentices are initiated, rites involving more than one sorcerer get tried out, exotic articles are traded and sold, new effects demonstrated ..."

"The person behind this attempt on your life may be there."

"Exactly. I'd like to settle this quickly. It may all be some sort of misunderstanding. After all, I haven't been around long enough to have made any real enemies. And if the one I seek isn't there, I may learn something about him--if there is such a person. Either way, it makes it seem worthwhile."

"And that will be your only reason for going?"

"Well, no. I also feel the need for some formal training in the Art. Perhaps I can pick up a few pointers at something like that."

"I don't know, Pol ... It sounds kind of risky."

"Not going may prove even more dangerous in the long run."

They heard a scraping noise and a popping sound from the courtyard. Both rose and moved to the window. Looking downward, they saw nothing. Pol seemed to stroke the air with his fingertips.

"The man's mount," he said finally. "It's freed itself of whatever restraints he'd laid upon it and is preparing to depart." He moved his hand rapidly, raising the other one as well, "Maybe I can get a line on it, trace it back to where it came from."

The lesser kin of the dragon rose in the northeast and swept through a wide, rising arc, leftward.

"No good," Pol said, lowering his hands. "Missed him."

Mouseglove shrugged.

"I guess you won't be going with me," he said, "if you'll be heading for that convocation, in the other direction."

Pol nodded.

"I'll leave tomorrow, too, though. I'd rather be moving about than staying in one place between now and then. So we can take the trail for a little way together."

"You won't be riding Moonbird?"

"No, I want to see something of the countryside, too."

"Traveling alone also has its hazards."

"I'd imagine they are fewer for a sorcerer."

"Perhaps," Mouseglove replied.

The dark form of the dragon-mount dwindled against the northern sky, vanished within a mountain's shadow.