I know you are supposed to follow the trail. I've nothing specific concerning the consequences of leaving it, though.

Hm.

The way curved to the right, and I followed it. It ran directly into the massive circle of stones, and though I' slowed my pace, I did not deviate. I studied it as I drew near, however, and noted that while the trail entered; there, it did not emerge again.

You're right, Frakir observed. Like the den of the dragon.

But we're supposed to go this way.

Yes.

Then we will.

I'd slows to a walk by then, and I followed the shining way between two gray plinths.

The lighting was different within the circle from without. There was more of it, though the place was still a study in black and white, with a fairyland sparkle to it. For the first time here I saw something that appeared to be living. There was something like grass underfoot; it. was silver and seemed to be studded with dewdrops.

I halted, and Frakir constricted in a very odd fashion-less a warning, it seemed, than a statement of interest. Off to my right was an altar-not at all like the one over which I had vaulted back in the chapel. This one was a rude slab of stone set atop a couple of boulders. No candles, linens, or other ecclesiastical niceties kept company with the lady who lay atop it, her wrists and ankles bound. Because I recalled a similar bothersome situation in which I had once found myself, my sympathies were all with the lady-white-haired, blackskinned, and somehow familiar-my animus with the peculiar individual who stood behind the altar, faced in my direction, blade upraised in his left hand. The right half of his body was totally black; the left, blindingly white. Immediately galvanized by the tableau, I moved forward. My Concerto for Cuisinart and Microwave spell would have minced him and parboiled him in an instant, but it was useless to me when I could not speak the guide words.

I seemed to feel his gaze upon me as I raced toward him, though one side of him was too dark and the other too bright for me to know for certain. And then the knife hand descended and the blade entered her breast beneath the sternum with an arcing movement. At that instant she screamed, and the blood spurted and it was red against all those blacks and whites, and I realized as it covered the man's hand that had I tried, I might have uttered my spell and saved her.

Then the altar collapsed, and a gray whirlwind obliterated my view of the entire tableau. The blood swirled through it to a barber pole-like effect, gradually spreading and attenuating to turn the funnel rosy, then pink, then faded to silver, then gone. When I reached the spot, the grasses sparkled, sans altar, sans priest, sans sacrifice.

I drew up short, staring.

“Are we dreaming?” I asked aloud.

I do not believe I am capable of dreaming, Frakir replied.

“Then tell me what you saw.”

I saw a guy stab a lady who wus tied up on a stone surface, Then the whole thing collapsed and blew away. The guy was black and white, the blood was red, the lady was Deirdre—

“What? By God, you're right! It did look like her-in negative. But she's already dead-”

I must remind you that I saw whatever you thought you saw. I don't know what the raw data were, just the mixing job your nervous system did on them. My own special perceptions told me that there were not normal people but were beings on the order of the Dworkin and Oberon figures that visited you back in the cave.

An absolutely terrifying thought occurred to me just then. The Dworkin and Oberon figures had had me thinking briefly of three-dimensional computer simulations. And the Ghostwheel's shadow-scanning ability was based on digitized abstractions of portions of Pattern I believed to be particularly concerned with this quality. And Ghost had been wondering-almost wistfully, it now seemed-concerning the qualifications for godhood.

Could my own creation be playing games with me? Might Ghost have imprisoned me in a stark and distant shadow, blocked all my efforts at communication, and set about playing an elaborate game with me? If he could beat his own creator, for whom he seemed to feel something of awe, might he not feel he had achieved personal elevation-to a level beyond my status in his private cosmos? Maybe. If one keeps encountering computer simulations, cherchez le deus ex machina.

It made me wonder just how strong Ghost really was. Though his power was, in part, an analogue of the Pattern, . I was certain it did not match that of the Pattern – or the Logrus. I couldn't see him blocking this place off from either.

On the other hand, all that would really be necessary would be to block me. I suppose he could have impersonated the Logrus in our flash encounter on my arrival. But that would have required Ghost's actually enhancing Frakir, and I didn't believe he could do it. And what about the Unicorn and the Serpent?

“Frakir,” I asked, “are you sure it was really the Logrus that enhanced you this time and programmed you with all the instructions you're carrying?”

Yes.

“What makes you certain?”

It had the same feeling as our first encounter back within the Logrus, when I was enhanced initially.

“I see. Next question: Could the Unicorn and the Serpent we saw back in the chapel have been the same sort of things as the Oberon or Dworkin figures back at the cave?”

No. I'd have known. They weren't like them at all. They were terrible and powerful and very much what they seemed.

“Good,” I said. “I was worried this might be some elaborate charade on the part of the Ghostwheel.”

I see that in your mind. Though I fail to see why the reality of the Unicorn and the Serpent defeats the thesis. They could simply have entered the Gbost's construct to tell you to stop horsing around because they want to see this thing played out.

“I hadn't thought of that.”

And maybe the Ghost was able to locate and penetrate a place that is pretty much inaccessible to the Pattern and the Logrus.

“I suppose you've a point there. Unfortunately this pretty much puts me back where I started.”

No, because this place is not something Ghost put together. It's always been around. I learned that much from the Logrus.

“I suppose there's some small comfort in knowing that, but-”

I never completed the thought because a sudden movement called my attention to the opposite quadrant of the circle. There I beheld an altar I had not noted before, a female figure standing behind it, a man dappled in shadow and light lying, fund, upon it. They looked very similar to the first pair..

“No!” I cried. “Let it end!”

But the blade descended even as I moved in that direction. The ritual was repeated, and the altar collapsed, and everything again swirled away. When I reached t site, there was no indication that anything unusual had occurred upon it.

“What do you make of that one?” I asked Frakir.

Sarne forces as before, but somehow reversed.

“Why? What's going on?”

It is a gatbering of powers. The Pattern and the Logrus both attempting to force their way into this place, for a little while. Sacrifices, such as those you just witnessed, belp provide the openings they need.

“Why do they wish to manifest here?”

Neutral ground. Their ancient tension is shifting in subtle ways. You are expected in some fashion to tip the balance of power one way or another.

“I haven t the faintest idea how to go about such thing.”

When the time comes, you will.

I returned to the trail and walked on.

“Did I pass by just as the sacrifices were due?” I said: “Or were the sacrifices due because I was passing by?”

They were marked to occur in your vicinity. You are a nexus.

“Then do you think I can expect-”

A figure stepped out from behind a stone to my left and chuckled softly. My hand went to my sword, but his hands were empty, and he moved slowly.