The light before him was extinguished. Pol stood still in the semi-darkness, staring into the faintly luminous mist. He listened to his heartbeat and considered calling upon the dragonlight.

An instant later a blue leaf of flame appeared in the air before him, near to the place where the other had been.

Come now!

The tone was feminine, imperious.

"What became of my other guide?" he asked.

He talked too much. Come!

Pol wondered at this. Had he finally glimpsed a chink in their armor?

"Getting near something you don't want me to know, eh?"

There was no reply. The blue flame began drifting slowly away from him. Pol did not move to follow it.

"Do you know what I think?" he said. "I think that you've got to use me because I am my father's son and he created you. You have some special connection with Rondoval, and only I can serve your purpose."

The flame halted and hovered.

You are wrong.

"I do not believe that you like this," he went on, ignoring the response, "because, for all your talk of determinism, I was raised on another world about which you know little or nothing, and you cannot account for me as you might someone who'd spent his life in this land. I am more of a random factor than you would like me to be, but you have to deal with me anyway. Tonight you will attempt to impress me in some fashion so that I will be more amenable to your purposes. I tell you now that I have seen things beside which the display at Anvil Mountain was very small beer. I am prepared to be unimpressed by any efforts on your part."

You have finished?

"For now."

Then let us continue this journey.

The flame drifted on, slowly. Pol followed. It seemed to be bearing to the left, but there were no other objects in his field of vision against which he might track its motion. He plodded along, and the palely illuminated mist rolled and boiled about him. Unaccountable shadows began to move within it.

He kept changing direction. Echoes were muffled. Pol could not tell for certain whether he was moving through a long, twisting corridor or whether he was backtracking, turning, wandering within one large room. As he was unable to locate any walls, he suspected the latter. But there seemed no way to tell for certain.

The shadows which tracked him grew darker, their outlines becoming more distinct. Some were definitely human in form; others were not. The silhouette of a dragon flickered overhead as if passing at a great height. It seemed as if a great number of people were now moving, silently, at various distances, about him. He tried turning to the second seeing, but there was no change in the prospect.

Suddenly, a figure loomed directly before him--big, ruddy, balding, with large, capable hands. The flame darted past, and perhaps it took up a station somewhere nearby.

"Dad!" Pol said, halting.

His step-father's mouth twisted into a half-grin.

"What the hell do you think you're doing in this backward place?" he said. "I really need you at home, in the business, right now."

"You're not real ..." Pol said.

But Michael Chain looked solid. His facial expressions--his speech inflections--were exactly those of Michael Chain with a few drinks under his belt and a load of impatience about to break loose.

"You're a disappointment to me. Always were."

"Dad...?"

"Go on with your silly games then. Break your mother's heart."

A gesture of dismissal. The large man turned away.

"Dad! Wait!"

He vanished into the mist.

"It's a trick!" Pol said, glaring at the flame. "I don't know how you did that or what it's all about, but it's a trick!"

Life is full of tricks. Life itself may be a trick.

He turned away.

"Why are we standing here in the gloom? I thought you were taking me someplace important?"

You are the one who halted.

"Okay! Let's get going!"

He turned back.

Betty Lewis, wearing a tight, low-cut dress, stood frowning at him off to the left. The texture of her familiar flesh looked so real....

"You could have called," she said. "Maybe it wasn't that big a thing between us, but you might at least have said good-bye."

"I couldn't," he answered. "There was no way."

"Just like all the others," she said, and the mists moved between them and she was gone.

"I see what you are doing," Pol said to the flame. "But it won't work."

Is is the condition of this place. You are doing it to yourself.

Pol took a step forward.

"You brought me here!"

"Pol?" came a familiar voice from his right, sending a shiver along his arms.

"The hell with you!" he said, not turning. "Let's go, flame!"

Obediently, the bluish light moved away, and he followed it. The shadow remained to his right, drew nearer.

"Pol!"

He did not look. But an arm was extended into his field of vision--muscular, covered with heavy, rust-colored hair, a thick, wide bracelet at the wrist, studded with control buttons, indicators, lights--and even when he saw it, he did not believe that it was real.

Until the hand fell upon his arm, gripping it, halting him, turning him.

"I feel your hand," he said slowly.

"I felt your wrath," said the other.

Pol raised his eyes to regard the once handsome, rugged features of Mark Marakson, marred by the eyepiece to the left, its lens a deep, glittering blue.

"You gave me no choice," Pol replied.

"You had my name, my parents. You took my girl ..."

"This can't be!" Pol said.

"...my life," Mark finished, and then the lens went black and his flesh reddened and charred and began to peel away.

Pol screamed.

The hand, through which the bones were now visible, fell away from his arm. The figure backed off into the mist--the black-lensed prosthetic now affixed to a skull--and then it was gone.

Pol began to shake. He raised his hands to his face and lowered them again.

Nora now stood where Mark had been. Her face was expressionless.

"It is true," she said. "You killed the man I loved."

She turned and walked away.

"Wait!"

He ran, reaching for her, but her shadow was lost among others. Still he groped, turned, moving in one direction and then another.

"Come back!"

Pol! Stand still! Do not lose yourself in this place!

He turned again, and old Mor stood before him, leaning upon his staff.

"For that which I see before you, I wish that I had never brought you back," the sorcerer said. "Better Mark had prevailed than that you do the thing you would do."

"I don't know what you're talking about." Pol said. "Tell me, if there is something I should know!"

Mor vanished in a burst of fire.

Stay with me! came the words out of the flame. This could get out of control!

"Whose control?" Pol asked, turning away.

Stel, the centaur, stood looking into his eyes.

"You would break faith with us," she said, "though you swore by your scepter not to."

"I have not broken faith with you," he replied.

"...And the doom which walks always at your back will move forward."

"I have not broken faith," he repeated.

"Evil son of an evil father!"

Pol turned and strode away.

Come back!--almost, a pleading note now.

The giant dog-headed figure he had faced beneath the pyramid rose suddenly before him.

Thief! Breaker of the Triangle of Int! came its mental message.

"I stole nothing. I took what was mine," Pol said.

I've curses for thieves, to hound them to the ends of the earth!

"Piss on your curses!" Pol replied. "I beat you once. I'm not afraid of you now!"

He took a step toward the menacing figure.

Stop! They're gaining power! It really can hurt you! came the words out of the flame which had just appeared between them, sounding frantic now.