Ayanawatta drew his robe around him. "The weather grows chillier with the passing of the hours. This wind never ceases." We wrapped ourselves in the great folds of his wigwam hides and at night built a larger fire. The canoe now acted as a canopy over the saddle, held there by four staves, and protected us against rain. At night two of us could sleep under it and give the other the benefit of the fire.

I remained mystified by the size of the medicine shield and where it had been found. White Crow now wore it around his neck on a beautiful beaded thong. He said nothing else about his father. Etiquette did not allow me to ask. I could only hope coming events would illuminate me.

I was bound to discover more. This careful living of the details of a dreamed future or a granted vision was characteristic of Ayanawatta's people. I understood loyalty to a visionary destiny. I understood the grueling discipline of his chosen way. Every step was a figure in a formal dance. A masque which must be performed perfectly. By dancing the exact step, the achieved ambition was reached. It was not quite creativity. It was an act of reproduction or interpretation, a strengthening. Following this discipline took the most extraordinary qualities of character. Virtues which I did not possess. Crude folk renderings of this discipline had been discussed during my training in Marrakech, where we had also looked at the Egyptian and Mayan Books of the Dead.

That strict path had no appeal for me. The musram teaches that time is a field and that space could be a property of time, one of many dimensions. By subtle repetition we weave our common threads and give longevity to our particular story. I suppose it was my training to find new patterns. In this sense we represented a balance of the opposite forces of Law and Chaos. Certainly the animism and cosmology of White Crow and Ayanawatta were far more in harmony with the eternal realities than Klosterheim's grim disciplines. If their Law was modified by my Chaos, equally my Chaos was modified and strengthened by their Law.

Klosterheim, in rejecting Chaos completely, rejected any prospect of ever achieving his own particular dream of reconciliation and harmony. In some ways I found the ex-priest a more interesting and complex figure than our defeated enemy Gaynor. Ulric's cousin had been that rare thing, an adept entirely without loyalty to anything but himself. Such creatures achieved their power through means which by definition denied them the harmony of the Balance. Gaynor, or those avatars who played his role throughout the multi-verse, tended to come to a sticky end not because they were overwhelmed by the forces of virtue, but because their own flawed characters ultimately betrayed them. Had he, as Klosterheim suggested, drawn all his scattered bodies back into a single self?

I had been unprepared for this adventure. It was occasionally difficult to believe that it was happening at all. At any moment I might take control of my own dream and return to normality.

I found myself missing the advice of my old mentor, Prince Lobkowitz. A tower of strength, a fixed point in my emotional ocean, he understood more of the structure of the multiverse than anyone. He had helped me harness a little of the genetic talent which enabled me to roam the moonbeam roads at will. Some called the myriad worlds of the multiverse the Shadow Realm or the Dream Worlds. Some understood them to be real.

Others believed them an illusion, a symbol, a mere version of something too intense for our ordinary senses. Many believed them to be a little of both. Some suggested we were the vermin of the multiverse, living in the cracks and crannies of divine reality and mistaking a crumb of cheese for a banquet. Many cosmologies recognized only a small group of realms. Whatever the ultimate truth, some of us were able to wander between such worlds more or less at will, as I did, while others endured extraordinary training to be able to take a simple step between one version of their reality and another. The interconnection of human dreams formed its own nexus of reality, its own realm, where travelers wandered or searched for some specific goal. It was in this vast realm of realms, worlds of the soul's dread and the heart's desire, that the dreamthieves earned their dangerous living.

Each slight variance of one realm from another is marked by a change in scale so great that one is undetectable to another. For those of us who walk the moonbeam ways every step takes us through a further scale. Or perhaps we travel beyond scale, as over a rippling pond? Many say this could mean that the matter of our beings is forever forming and re-forming. Instantly re-created by an act of will? Dreaming dust? That said, the reality is almost impossible to describe in mere words. Some achieve their travel through what they call sorcery, others through dreams or some form of creativity. Whatever it is called, it involves a monstrous act of will.

One learns temperance with one's travels. One also learns to live and invite experience. Each twist of a moonbeam branch on the great, eternal tree takes one to fresh knowledge and self-revelation. It is a fascinating and endless life. However, for the likes of myself, who will not steal others' dreams as my mother did, it can become unsatisfying. What Ulric had given me back was a moral focus and a sense of purpose. I had learned to tackle the problems of one small sphere rather than engage in the great, eternal conflict between Chaos and Law.

I no longer felt a particular longing for the moonbeam roads. Sometimes I did yearn for the silver-and-scarlet light warping and sliding in the air around my cottage, that particular music which came when certain spheres intersected and produced their glorious harmonies. But chiefly I hoped my old life, with my husband and my children, would soon be restored.

The days grew shorter and still colder, but they brought some sort of promise. We must soon enter Kakatanawa lands. There, I knew, I would find Ulric. But how would I rescue him or bargain for his release?

The first sign that again we were being followed came during a flurry of sleet, when sheets of grey misery stretched across the plains and hid even the foothills. The curtain parted for a few seconds and revealed a hillock covered in spiky prairie grass and clover, glinting in the thin light. It was just behind us and to our right. Looking over my shoulder at it as we rode along, I thought I saw a figure standing there, its grey robes rising in the wind, its grey face the very personification of winter death. Klosterheim! The man was relentless.

Had he returned to his normal size? I had not seen him long enough to be able to tell. I continued to peer back over my shoulder as Bes strode stoically on through the icy rain but did not see Klosterheim again.

No doubt he had his pygmies with him and his ally, the Two Tongues. I warned the others of what I had seen. We agreed it would be wise to mount a guard again when we camped.

We rested Bes regularly. White Crow said normally she would have been put to pasture years before. Then he had talked about this dream, this destined scenario, with her. She had wanted to go, he said. "She believes this journey is good for her and prepares her for the afterlife."

We were lucky. That evening the rain disappeared and left us with a watery sunset brightening a stand of heavy, old oaks. Of the groves we had passed, these were the thickest and most ancient we had seen. The boles and branches were so dense they offered excellent cover. The smell of the ancient glade was intoxicating! "Good, " said Ayanawatta, striding around in what was virtually a cave of woven branches into which a single shaft of sunlight fell upon a slender sapling at the center. "This is the place to make our medicine. It is a world within the world, with a roof and four corners and the tree at the center. It will amplify our medicine and make it work as it has to do."