Amirantha smiled. ‘Well, then, we’ll leave you to your studies and convey all we’ve seen to your father.’ He glanced at Sandreena who moved to stand next to her former lover, putting a hand upon his arm. With a final nod to the Pantathians and Magnus, Amirantha activated the orb and they were gone.
Magnus turned his attention to the oval of light. He was so focused that when he was brought a cushion he barely registered it as he studied the ripples of light, their intensities and colours, subtle within the larger oval of white. When his tea arrived he did not acknowledge it, and hours later as he studied the oval, it remained untouched.
Magnus found his senses being challenged by a cascade of images. He discovered subtle patterns beginning to emerge as he felt the presence of the Sven-ga’ri, almost a tactile music in his mind, and let his eyes relax, letting the subtle images on the surface of the oval of light play out. After first becoming attuned to the interplay of emotion — mental music as he thought of it — and the faint patterns within the white light, he began to bring his magic to bear.
More than any magician in the history of this world, including even his father Pug, Magnus could unleash torrents of destructive energies that could shatter mountain tops, turn back the tides, or call up winds to topple city towers, but he also could manipulate the finest threads of a tapestry, capture one raindrop in a storm, or move a sleeping kitten across the room without waking it using his mind alone.
As deftly as a seamstress threading the smallest needle with the tiniest thread, he reached out and caressed the energies. Gently he pushed into the matrix and his mind expanded his exploration carefully.
Wonder overcame Magnus as a crystal-like, three-dimensional network of forces revealed itself. He knew he was barely below the surface of the shimmering white oval, yet at this scale the energies appeared monstrously large and complex. It was like floating through a city of ice, but without streets, with buildings arrayed like massive boxes, and in each of those boxes a million pulses of light per second flickered.
Somewhere in all of this was a pattern that would reveal its purpose, and Magnus was prepared to search as long as it took.
He pressed on.
Perceptions shifted and scales expanded and contracted and Magnus felt as if he floating through a vast universe composed of energy. His body sat motionless in the garden created by the Pantathians for the Sven-ga’ri, but he saw himself as physically in this universe. It was as if he flew by will alone through vast spaces, yet he knew those spaces were in reality as small as the space between the tiniest grains of sand on the beach, as small as the space between drops of rain. He reached out with his mind and felt the coursing of energies as they made their way, in this direction or that, up or down, right or left, in a pattern that was always just beyond the edge of his apprehension.
By Magnus’s estimation he had explored only the tiniest portion of the energy field, yet a pattern was slowly beginning to present itself. At first he rejected the idea, believing he was misinterpreting what he was seeing but as time wore on he began to see his comprehension ratified and before long he became certain his theory was borne out.
A deep fatigue overtook him suddenly and a sense of cold and he realized he had no sense of how long he had been exploring inside the energy matrix. To facilitate his exploration, he had created the illusion of a city, with endless basements and sub-levels, buildings that rose to impossible heights, streets without boundaries. He overlaid it on the matrix, giving him a sense of where to start and where he had ended his last probe. In a concession to whim, he even made tiny signs like those hung on taverns, with icons that made it easy for him to know where he was relative to every other part of the matrix he had explored. Behind the ‘entrance’ he had fashioned a market, a place to which he could return and renew his exploration and then deftly withdraw his consciousness. It was as close as he could get to understanding what it was he confronted, this virtual city of energy.
Suddenly he was chilled and wet and shivering. He blinked and realized it was dark. A Pantathian stood above him holding a large canvas cover, protecting him as much as possible from the punishingly cold rain.
Magnus raised his hand to his face and wiped away wetness and felt stubble on his cheek. He looked at the Pantathian and said, ‘How long have I been here?’
The creature apparently didn’t speak the Keshian tongue, but from behind him another voice said, ‘All day, the night, the next day, and this night, without moving.’
Magnus turned and found his body stiff and unresponsive. He saw Tak’ka standing in the rain. The Senior President of the Pantathian nation said, ‘We feared you might have been trapped within by some magic, but were uncertain of how to reach you.’
Groaning a little as he unfolded his legs, Magnus said, ‘You did the right thing, in waiting. My sense of time becomes lost in there, apparently. If felt as if I were there for minutes, perhaps an hour.’ As he stood up his head began to throb. ‘I must be careful when next I venture in.’
‘You discovered something?’
‘I’m not certain. I see a pattern and I have deduced one possible explanation for its existence, yet I am unwilling to declare that judgment sound. More exploration is called for.’
‘Come, rest. You’re obviously chilled and in need of warmth and food.’
‘You are very kind,’ said Magnus. ‘Given so many things, your generosity is unexpected.’
‘We are the caretakers of the Sven-ga’ri, and I fear that whatever is moving out there in the darkness, our charges are at risk. I welcome your strength and knowledge in preserving them.’
Magnus nodded as if agreeing, but already he was beginning to suspect that before this exploration was over, preserving the Sven-ga’ri was the last thing he and his father would wish.
He followed his host inside to warmth and food.
Magnus enjoyed a hot meal and dried his clothing over a small brazier while he bathed. By the time he had donned his now-warm robe, he was already half-asleep. He lay on the sleeping pallet provided and within moments fell into an exhausted sleep.
After resting through most of the night, in the hours before dawn he began to dream.
He floated through the matrix, again, only this time rather than energy he saw solid objects in bright and muted colours, some flickering between the two states, alight from within one moment, dimmed the next. Lines of silver-white, like endless cords, stretched down the broad expanses that intersected between the structures. ‘A city,’ he whispered.
‘An illusion,’ said a voice from behind him.
He turned to see a figure both strange and familiar, a black-bearded man in a black robe, holding a wooden staff. His feet were clad in sandals and around his waist was a simple whipcord rope.
‘Macros,’ he whispered.
‘In a manner of speaking,’ said the phantasm.
Magnus had never met his grandfather, for he had died before Magnus was born, but he had encountered a Dasati upon whom the memories of the dead sorcerer had been bestowed. But the Dasati Macros had been ill, in advanced years, and dying.
Before Magnus now stood Macros in his prime, looking no more than perhaps forty years of age, his manner calm and relaxed, yet he could sense hidden power just below the surface.
‘I’m dreaming,’ said Magnus.
‘Yes,’ answered Macros, ‘but like all dreams, there are avenues into thoughts unexplored open to you. It’s the perfect state in which you are receptive to contact you otherwise might not recognize; and besides, you are impervious to spying now.’
‘Spying?’
The shade of Macros smiled. ‘You have some inkling of those who oppose you, at least in one sense, while in another you have no idea whatsoever what forces are arrayed to destroy you and your father. Time is essential, yet here time is as much an illusion as sight and sound, for we are in the dream.’
He stepped forward until he was next to Magnus, then he reached out, gripped him by the elbow and gently but firmly turned him. ‘Walk with me and we shall discover much, but you will only know what you already know.’
Magnus allowed himself to be compelled in this fashion, but said, ‘I do not understand.’
‘I am not Macros, as I’m sure you’ve already assumed. I am his image, a memory of him made solid and able to converse.’
