Looking up, the youth saw me. He became grave. He made a sign which I took to be one of comradeship and reassurance. The lad had charm, as had the aristocratic warrior at his side. Ayanawatta now offered me a faint, respectful bow.

Who were these aristocrats of the prairie? I had seen nothing like them in any of the wonderful historic documents I had studied about the early history of northern America. I did, however, recognize them as men of substance. Warriors and superbly fit, they were expensively dressed. The quality of workmanship in their beaded clothing, weaponry and ornaments was exquisite. Both men were clearly prominent among their own people. Their oiled and shaven heads; their scalp locks their only body hair, hanging just so at an angle to the glittering eagle feathers; the complicated tattoos and piercings of the older man; the workmanship of their buckskins and beading-all indicated unostentatious power. I wondered if, like the Kakatanawa, they too were the last of their tribes.

Again I was struck by the sense that, from within, the city seemed totally deserted. I looked back at tier upon tier fading into the clouds which hid the city's upper galleries.

Turning I could see beyond the great walls to the lake of ice and the ragged peaks of the mountains beyond. The whole world seemed abandoned of life. What had Sepiriz said about the inhabitants of this city? It must have housed millions of them.

I asked Lobkowitz about this phenomenon. He seemed unwilling to answer, exchanging looks with Lord Sepiriz, who shrugged. "I do not think it unsafe, any longer, " he said. "Here we have no control of events at all. Whatever we say, the consequences will not change. It is only our actions which will bring change now, and I fear ..." He dropped his great chin to his chest and closed his brooding eyes.

I turned from the window. "Where are the Kakatanawa, the people of this city?"

"You have met the only survivors. Do you know the other name for this city-the Kakatanawa name? I see you do not. It is Ikenipwanawa, which roughly means the Mountain of the Tree. Do you know of it? Just the tree itself, perhaps? So many mythologies speak of it."

"I do not know of it, sir. It is mainly my wife who concerns me now. You suggest she might live. Can time be reversed?"

"Oh, easily, but it would do you no good. The action has already taken place. And will take place again. Your memory cannot be changed so readily! "

"What has changed within these walls?" I asked him. "Nothing. At least, not in many hundreds of years. Perhaps thousands. What you saw from the ice was an illusion of an inhabited city. It is one which has been maintained by those who guard the source of life itself. The reflective walls of the city serve more than one purpose."

"Has no one ever come here and discovered the truth?"

"How could they? Until recently the lake was constantly boil' ing with viscous rock, the very life stuff of the planet. Nothing could cross it, and nothing cared to. But since then cold Law has worked its grim sorcery and made the lake as you see it now. This is what Klosterheim and his friends have been doing. In response the pathway was conjured by Ayanawatta and White Buffalo, but of course, it is now being used by our enemies. We make the paths, but we cannot control who uses them after us. It will not be long, no doubt, before they realize the trick and find a way of entering the city. So we must do all we have to as quickly as possible."

"I understood that time, as we know it, does not exist." I was becoming angry, beginning to think they tricked me. "Therefore there is no urgency."

Prince Lobkowitz allowed himself a small smile. "Some illusions are more powerful than others, " he said. He seemed about to leave it at that, then added, "This is the last place in the mul-tiverse you can find this fortress physically. Everywhere else it has transformed itself."

"Transformed? This was a fortress?"

"Transformed by what it contains. By what it must guard. At one stage in the multiversal story, this was a great and noble city, self-contained and yet able to help all who came to it seeking justice. Not unlike the city you call Tanelorn, it brought order and tranquillity to all who dwelled here.

"The human story is what changes so drastically. Passion and greed determine the course of nations, not their ideals. But without change we would die. So simple human emotions, those which have brought down a thousand other empires and destroyed a thousand Golden Ages, worked to bring about the destruction of this stability. It is a story of love and jealousy, but it will be familiar enough to you.

"This fortress-this great metropolis-was built to guard a symbol. First, a symbol was chiefly all that it was. Then, through human faith and creativity, the symbol took on more and more reality. Ultimately the symbol and the thing itself were one. They became the same, and this gave them strength. But it also gave them dangerous vulnerability. For once the symbol took physical shape, human action became far more involved in its destiny. Now symbol and reality are the same. We face the consequences of that marriage. Of what, in essence, we ourselves created."

"Are you speaking of a symbolic tree?" I asked. I could only think of old German tree worship, still recalled in our decorated Yule pines. "Or of the multiverse itself?"

He seemed relieved. "You understand the paradox? The multiverse and the tree are one, and each is encompassed by the other. That is the terrible dilemma of our human lives. We are capable of destroying the raw material of our own existence. Our imaginations can create actuality, and they can destroy it. But they are equally capable of creating illusion. The worst illusion, of course, is self-deception. From that fundamental illusion, all others spring. This is the great flaw which forever holds us back from redemption. It was what brought an end to the Golden Age this place represented."

"Do you say we can never be redeemed?" Lobkowitz brought his hand to my shoulder. "That is the fate of the Champion of Humanity. It is the fate of us all. Time and space are in perpetual flux. We work to achieve resolution in the multiverse, but we can never know true resolution ourselves. It is the burden we carry. The burden of our kind."

"And this dilemma is repeated throughout countless versions of the same lives, the same stories, the same struggles?"

"Repetition is the confirmation of life. It is what we love in music and in many forms of art and science. Repetition is how we survive. It is, after all, how we reproduce. But when something has been repeated so many times that it has lost all resonance, then something must be done to change the story. New sap must be forced into old wood, eh? That is what we try to do now. But first we must bring all elements together. Do you understand what we are hoping to achieve, Count Ulric?"

I had to admit that I was baffled. Such philosophies were beyond my simple soul to fathom. But I said, "I think so." All I really knew was that if I played out my role in this, I would be reunited with Oona. And nothing else much mattered to me.

"Come, " said Sepiriz, almost taking pity on me. "We will eat now."

We walked outside to a wide path curving around the city. "What is the exact nature of this place?" I asked. "Some center of the multiverse?"

Lobkowitz saw how mystified I was. "The multiverse has no center any more than a tree has a center, but this is where the natural and the supernatural meet, where branches of the multiverse twine together. These intersections produce unpredictable consequences and threaten everything. Size loses logic. That is why it is so important to retain the original sequences of events. To make a path and to stick to it. To choose the right numbers, as it were. It is how we have learned to order Chaos and navigate the Time Field. Have you not noticed that many people out there are of different dimensions? That is a sure sign how badly the Balance is under attack." Lobkowitz paused to look up. Tier after tier, the vast building disappeared into wisps of white cloud.