“Warmer,” said Macros, inhaling the fragrance of the ocean. “It’s a lovely world, though no one lives upon it.” With a sad look in his eyes, he said, “Perhaps someday I’ll retire here.” He shook off the reflective mood. “Pug, we are close to our own era, but still slightly out of phase.” He glanced about. “I think it a year or so before your birth. We need a short burst of temporal acceleration.”
Pug closed his eyes and began a long spell, which had no discernible effect, save that shadows began moving rapidly across the ground as the sun hurried its course across the sky. They were quickly plunged into darkness as night descended, then dawn followed. The pace of time’s passage increased, as day and night flickered, then blurred into an odd grey light.
Pug paused and said, “We must wait.” They all settled in, for the first time apprehending the loveliness of the world about them. The mundane beauty provided a benchmark against which to measure all the strange and marvellous places they had visited. Tomas seemed deeply troubled. “All that I have witnessed makes me wonder at the scope of what we are confronting.” He was silent for a time. “The universes are . . . such imponderable, immense things.” He studied Macros. “What fate befalls this universe, if one little planet succumbs to the Valheru? Did my brethren not rule there before?”
Macros regarded Tomas with an expression of deep concern. “True, but you’ve grown either fearful or more cynical. Neither will serve us.” He looked hard at Tomas, seeing the deep doubt in the eyes of the human turned Valheru. At last he nodded and said, “The nature of the universe changed after the Chaos Wars; the coming of the gods heralded a new system of things - a complex, ordered system - where before only the prime rules of Order and Chaos had existed. The Valheru have no place in the present scheme of things. It would have been easier to bring Ashen-Shugar forward in time than to undertake what was required. I needed his power, but I also needed a mind behind that power that would serve our cause. Without the time link between him and Tomas, Ashen-Shugar would have been one with his brethren. Even with that link, Ashen-Shugar would have been beyond anyone’s control.”
Tomas remembered. “No one can imagine the depth of the madness I battled during the war with the Tsurani. It was a close thing.” His voice remained calm, but there was a note of pain in it as he spoke. “I became a murderer. I slaughtered the helpless. Martin was driven to the brink of killing me, so savage had I become.” Then he added, “And I had come to but a tenth part of my power then. On the day I regained my . . . sanity, Martin could have sent his cloth-yard shaft through my heart.” He pointed at a rock a few feet away and made a gripping motion with his hand. The rock crumbled to dust as if Tomas had squeezed it. “Had my powers then been as they are now I could have killed Martin before he could have released the arrow - by an act of will.”
Macros nodded. “You can see what the risks were, Pug. Even one Valheru alone would be almost as great a danger as the Dragon Host; he would be a power unrestrained in the cosmos.” His tone held no reassurance. “There is no single being, save the gods, who could oppose him.” Macros smiled slightly. “Except myself, of course, but even at my full powers, I could only survive a battle with them, not vanquish them. Without my powers . . .” He let the rest go unsaid.
“Then,” said Pug, “why haven’t the gods acted?”
Macros laughed, a bitter sound, and waved at all four of them. “They are. What do you think we’re doing here? That is the game. And we are the pieces.”
Pug closed his eyes and suddenly the odd grey light was replaced by normal daylight. “I think we’re back.”
Macros reached out and gripped Pug’s hand, closing his eyes as he felt the flow of time through the younger sorcerer’s perceptions. After a moment Macros said, “Pug, we are close enough to Midkemia that you may be able to send messages back home. I suggest you try.” Pug had told Macros of the child and his previously unsuccessful attempts at reaching her.
Pug shut his eyes and attempted to contact Gamina.
Katala looked up from her needlework. Gamina sat with eyes fixed, as if seeing something in the distance. Then her head tilted, as if listening. William had been reading an old, musty tome Kulgan had given him, and he put it down and looked hard at his foster sister.
Then softly the boy said, “Mama . . .”
Calmly Katala put down her sewing and said, “What William?”
The boy looked at his mother with eyes wide and said in a whisper, “It’s . . . Papa.”
Katala came to kneel beside her son and put her arm around his shoulders. “What about your father?”
“He’s talking to Gamina.”
Katala looked hard at the girl, who sat as if enraptured, all around her forgotten. Slowly Katala rose and crossed to the door to the family’s dining room and softly she pulled it open. Then she was through it at a run.