They walked the Hall.
It seemed a straight thoroughfare, a yellowish white roadway with more glowing silver doors at about fifty-foot intervals. Macros made a sweeping motion with his arm. “You walk in the midst of a mystery to match the City Forever, the Hall of Worlds. Here you may walk from world to world, if you but know the way.” He indicated a silver rectangle. “A portal, giving passage to and from a world. Only a select few among the multitudes may discern them. Some learn the knack through study, others stumble upon them by chance. By altering your perceptions, you may see them wherever they lie. Here” - he waved at a door as they passed - “is a burned-out world circling a forgotten sun.” Then he pointed to the door on the other side of the Hall. “But there is a world teeming with life, a hodgepodge of cultures and societies, but with only one intelligent race.” He halted a moment. “At least, that is what they will be in our own time.” He continued walking. “At present, I expect these doors empty into swirls of hot gases only slightly more dense than nothing.
“In the future, a complete society exists who travel the Hall, conducting commerce between worlds, yet there are worlds whose entire populations have no knowledge of this place.”
Tomas said, “I knew nothing of this place.”
“The Valheru had other means to travel,” Macros answered, inclining his head in Ryath’s direction. “Without the need, they never paused to apprehend the existence of the Hall, for surely they had the ability. Luck? I don’t know, but much destruction was avoided by their remaining ignorant.”
“How far does the Hall extend?” said Pug.
“Endlessly. No one knows. The Hall appears straight, but it curves, and should I walk a short distance, I would vanish from your sight. Distances and time have little meaning between the worlds.”
He began leading them down the hall.
Following Macros’s instructions, Pug had managed to bring them forward in time, to what Macros judged was near their own era. After having accelerated the Dragon Lord time trap, Pug had no difficulty following Macros’s direction. The mechanics of the spells used were but logical extensions of what Pug had used to speed up the trap. Pug could only guess if the proper amount of time had passed, but Macros had reassured him that when they started to approach Midkemia, he would know how much adjustment Pug would have to make.
They had been walking and Pug had studied each door in passing. After a while he discovered there was a faint difference between each door, a slight spectral oddity in the shimmering silver light, which provided the clue to which world the door led to. “Macros, what would occur if one were to step off between doors?” asked Pug.
The sorcerer said, “I suspect you’d be quickly dead if you did so unprepared. You would float in rift-space without the benefit of Ryath’s ability to navigate.”
He halted before a door. “This is a necessary shortcut, across a planet, which will more than halve our travel time to Midkemia. The distance between here and the next gate is less than a hundred yards, but be advised: this world’s atmosphere is deadly. Hold your breath for here magic has no meaning and you may not protect yourself with arts.” He breathed heavily for a moment, then with a great intake of breath, dashed through the door.
Tomas came next, then Pug, then Ryath. Pug squinted and almost exhaled as burning fumes assaulted his eyes and sudden, unexpected weight seemed to pull him down. They were sprinting across a barren plain of purple and red rocks, while overhead the air hung heavy with grey haze in orange skies. The earth trembled, and giant clouds of black smoke and gases were spewed heavenward by the bleeding mountains, glowing with reflecting orange light from volcanoes. The stuff of the world flowed down the sides of those peaks and the air hung heavy with oppressive heat. Macros pointed and they ran into a rock face, which returned them to the Hall.
Macros had been silent for hours, lost in thought. He pulled up short, coming out of his reverie, as he halted before a portal. “We must cut across this world. It should be pleasant.”
He led them through a gate into a lovely green glade. Through trees they could hear the pounding of waves on the rocks and smell the tang of sea salt. Macros led them along a bluff overlooking a magnificent view of an ocean.
Pug studied the trees about them, finding them similar to those upon Midkemia. “This is much like Crydee.”