Across the peaks of mountains capped with snow sprawled a city of incredible beauty. Crystal pillars held aloft roofs like giant diamonds, brilliant facets sparking with an inner fire. Pug said, ‘Below, thousands of feet below the clouds, rests the Necropolis. This is where I led you, and this resembles the illusion I created for you, but mine was a shadow to this.’
Miranda agreed. ‘This is solidity where your illusion was smoke and shadow, but it also feels less real.’
‘What I built was created to fool your physical senses. This is a thing of the mind. We are experiencing it through direct contact, without any instrument of perception intervening.’
‘I understand,’ she said, ‘yet I am disoriented.’
Pug suddenly shifted before her eyes, and he was as she knew him, a man of solid form, a body as familiar to her as her own. ‘Is this better?’ he asked, and the words seemed to issue from his mouth.
‘Yes,’ she answered.
‘You can do the same. You have only to will it so.’
She concentrated and suddenly felt herself become solid and, holding up her hand before her eyes, she saw it as she expected it to be, solid flesh.
‘It is but another illusion,’ said Pug, ‘but one that will give you a firmer foundation upon which to stand.’
The hall in which they stood was similar to the one of illusion Pug had created to deceive Miranda when they had first met. When she had first come searching for Pug, he had led her a merry chase, finally ending up, in the Ratn’gari Mountains, only a short distance from here. He had created an illusionary version of this place in which to hide from her.
Miranda said, ‘This is similar, but so much more!’ The ceilings above were vaults of heaven themselves; lights shone down that were stars. Miranda saw that where in Pug’s illusion small areas had been set aside for the worship of each of the gods, here the areas were the size of cities.
In the distance, the line of energy they had followed from the time of Macros’s departure to the present descended in a gentle arc, coming down from the ceiling, and disappearing beyond their perception.
As they moved toward it, they passed an intersection of two paths, and stood where the areas of four gods touched. Odd stirrings in the air caused Miranda to say, ‘Can you feel that?’
‘Again, shift your perception,’ Pug told her.
Miranda experimented, and suddenly the hall was filled with shadowy figures. Like the energy beings they had become in the groves of Elvandar, these beings lacked features and identifying marks. But where Pug and Miranda had been brilliant beings of light, these were shadowy figures, barely perceptible with a faint illumination.
‘What are they?’
‘Prayers,’ answered Pug. ‘Each person who prays to the gods is heard. We perceive that prayer as an icon of the person praying.’
Miranda moved down the path and looked upward. A huge statue, many times the size of a human, rested upon a throne of azure. The figure was of a man, still and white, with a faint blue tinge. His eyes were closed. Few of the shadow figures moved near this statue.
‘Who is this?’ she asked.
‘Eortis, dead God of the Sea. Killian tends his domain until he returns.’
‘He’s dead, but he’s returning?’
‘You’ll understand more, soon, but for now suffice it to say that if my suspicions are right, there is far more concerned with this war than merely defeating mad creatures bent on mindless destruction.’ He led her to another intersection. Pointing at a distant wall, he said, ‘Turn your mind’s eye toward that distant vista, and tell me what you see.’
She did as she was bid and at last a giant symbol appeared on the wall. It was incomprehensible to her for what seemed a very long time, then it resolved itself into a pattern. ‘I see a Seven Pointed Star of Ishap, above a field of twelve points in a circle.’
‘Look deeper,’ he instructed.
She did so and after a minute another pattern resolved itself. ‘I see another pattern, with four bright lights overlapping the top four points of the star. And there are many dim points between the twelve bright ones.’
‘Of the three points of the star below those that are brightly lit, tell me what you see.’
Miranda concentrated on them, and after a moment she saw what Pug meant. ‘One of them is dimly alight! The one in the center. The one to the right of it . . .’ She faltered.
‘What?’ he asked.
‘It’s not dim! It’s . . . blocked. Something is preventing it from being seen!’
Pug said, ‘That is what I perceive too. What of the remaining light?’
‘It is dead.’
‘Then I think I may be close to knowing the truth.’ The tone he projected into her mind led her to think he wasn’t pleased to learn this particular truth.
They continued along. They reached the farthest corner of the Hall of the Gods and found themselves between two statues. One was totally lifeless, and Pug said, ‘Wodar-Hospur, the dead God of Knowledge. So much we might know if he were to return.’
‘Does no one worship knowledge anymore?’
‘A few,’ said Pug, ‘but might and riches seem to occupy humankind’s time more than anything else. Of all the men I’ve met, only Nakor seems truly driven to know.’
‘Know what?’