LD Sledge

CHAPTER 1

Nimrod Woodbine slept beside a smoldering campfire as morning began to light the sky. Musette, his traveling companion, was rolled in a ball. Her light fur, jerkin and leather pants kept away the morning chill.

Dozens of ruby cheepers flitted through the web of branches above them, welcoming the dawn with their bell-like peeps. A chortler gargled in the nearby stream, and the huge blossoms of a burp bush suffused the encampment with a spicy fragrance. Nimrod rolled over, drew his cloak more tightly around him, and slipped into deeper sleep.

He was startled awake by a loud rustle that sent an eddy of leaves and dust swirling around the dying campfire. A winged man-like creature struggled into flight, its ragged wings so broad and near they almost blotted out the morning light. As it labored toward the treetops, Nim gasped to see Musette’s limp form lying in its arms.

Nim raced frantically through the woods screaming Musette’s name. He tripped and crashed over a boulder. The last thing he saw before smacking his head was the creature disappearing over the treetops.

He was awakened by the gibbering of three blue farkles standing on his chest trying to give him lightwater from his waterskin. For a time he seemed to peer through a veil of gauze, until finally his eyes rested clearly on the jabbering farkles perched just inches from his nose. Bickering noisily among themselves, they pulled and poked at his waterskin. In their bustle and excitement, one of them tumbled backwards off his chest. The raucous way it scolded the others for knocking it from its perch drew a grunt from Nim and made the quarrelsome farkles aware he had regained consciousness. As they boisterously commended themselves for this development, the memory of the strange creature and Musette’s limp form suddenly brought Nim to his feet. “The thing must have cast some spell on her,” he cried. They looked quizzical and puzzled. “It’s impossible to catch her napping, she sleeps with one eye open.”

The farkles broke into a pandemonium of excited jabbering. Nim learned from them that an emaciated, tortured‑looking winged man had badgered them to tell where Nimrod was. When they refused, he had wheedled the information from Jugbutt Longtail, a grizzled old possum still furious with Nim for chasing him away from Musette’s warren two revolutions past.

The question was where to search for her. The farkles fluttered onto his shoulders and tugged at his earlobes. “To the east, to the east!” they harmonized, pointing toward the sky. Nim thanked them, hurriedly gathered his belongings from around the campsite, and set out eastward at a run.

Many friends shared their fare with him and wished him well as he hurried along the roads and paths to the east. Prissy Lightfoot supplied him with waybread and lightwater before sending him on with a passionate kiss. Never before had she demonstrated her affection for him so clearly. Later his wandering cousin, Trotter Woodbine, gave him a fat, stuffed turnip baked with currents dulcetto as Nim hurried past his campfire in Wonderweald.

An Eldermeister Wanderer stopped him to admonish him against hastening east. “Haste makes waste,” the old one said gravely, “and the waste of your time and training can scarcely produce the greatest good for our culture.” Agonized by the loss of his best friend, he politely ignored the Eldermeister’s warning and raced onward.

Although he was just sixteen revolutions old, Nim was already tall, leg long, and strong. To his youthful stamina and vitality was now added the power of his compelling determination to find Musette.

His journey through the dismal forest known as Dreadweald robbed him of sunlight for three turns and forced him to camp twice in the grip of the forest’s deep gloom. By the time he spied the sun glinting through a break in the trees ahead, the weald had secured a fearful grip on his soul and had nearly exhausted his ability to fend off the portending doom hanging over the place. But now, rejuvenated by the sunshine and the open landscape before him, he continued onward more cheerfully.

Just beyond a grassy knoll, an old stinkwadd squatted absently in the middle of the path. The beast picked its nose and belched as its leathery wings rasped in the morning breeze.

“A stinkwadd." That’s all I need right now!” Nim grumbled as he approached the repulsive creature. Its foul odor forced him to stop an arm’s length from it.

“I must pass!” he said, almost reeling with nausea. The stinkwadd grunted and glowered at him from under its sloping brow, but it remained motionless. They glared at each other.

The stinkwadd dug deeper in his nose. “You may not pass,” it grunted.

“But I must. I have to reach the rim before stepshadow.”

“Nobody crosses and lives. You’re just a kid,” it said, eyeing Nim from head to foot.

It shut its eyes, ignored Nim, straddled the path, and as if to punctuate the finality of his refusal, let go particularly musical flatulence that made Nim gag.

Nimrod knew what to do; stinkwadds were utterly defenseless to the weapon in his rucksack. Nonchalantly he took a peanut butter sandwich from his rucksack and began eating it with an exaggerated display of pleasure. He smacked his lips, moaned with rapturous delight, and rolled his eyes ecstatically toward the lavender clouds scudding overhead. When the aroma of the peanut butter reached it, the stinkwadd’s bushy brows quivered and its tail began to twitch. A tear of intense longing welled up in the depths of one of its smoky eye sockets. The beast sniffed the air noisily and eyed Nim sidelong, first with one eye and then the other, all the while clawing at an itch on its scrawny backside.

Staring contemptuously at him, Nim took another slow, deliberate bite from the sandwich, then held it well away, as if to prevent the reeking creature from snatching it out of his hand. But he was wise to the heart of the stinkwadd. He was certain that even the mere prospect of peanut butter would reduce this one to helplessness.

Overcome with unbearable desire and anticipation, the stinkwadd collapsed tearfully. “I’ll let you pass. Just a little taste. Please!” The words spilled shamelessly in a miasma of foul breath. Tremulous blue bubbles drifted out of its mouth and settled like grapes in the gruttle bushes along the path.

“Oh, all right!” Nim muttered with deliberate disdain. “The rest is yours.” Nim tossed the remainder of the peanut butter sandwich into a nearby cackle of prickly myna frinkles. With rasping wings and clattering claws, the stinkwadd scuttled over and fell awkwardly upon the sandwich with feverish intensity.

Nim seized the moment to resume his journey. Glancing over his shoulder a few moments later, he saw the beast lolling in ecstasy as its long, purple tongue snaked out of its mouth to lick his mustaches. “The afterglow of peanut butter, I suppose,” Nim muttered as he continued on his way.

As Nim raced on toward the lightbrink, the stillness gave way to little zephyrs that tugged at his cape, bearing sweet fragrances and birdsong. His heart lifted in the open spaces, freed from the pall of Dreadwood. He couldn’t linger. He had to reach the edge before moonflicker; otherwise it would be impossible to cross the lightbrink today.

He had crossed a lightbridge once before. But it had been a different one in a different place. Besides, Musette had been with him and had helped him negotiate the tenuous steps of the air stair. He recalled how she had bounded repeatedly a few steps ahead to extend a helping hand to him. Still, their journey across that lightbridge had been perilous and terrifying. Now anxiety welled up in him as he hurried toward another one, for this one he would have to cross alone.

The image of Musette suddenly loomed in his mind and stung his heart. She wore snug, gray leather pants, a dark jerkin, and a cocked hat sporting a little firefeather. She was a mouse, of course, and she was shorter than him by a head. Nimble and trim, with fine gray down on her face, and soft brown eyes set above an upturned nose and full pouty lips, she was as pretty as any girl in his eyes.

“If only she was human,” he sighed. He quickly pinched off the thought for she was a mouse and they could only be friends.

Although Wanderers travel alone and need no one, Nim and Musette had wandered together for nearly two revolutions. She was good company, she made him laugh, and no better hunter or dodger could be found anywhere under the suns. She was missing for four sleeps. He missed her and was worried sick about her, but he suppressed his fears and continued eastward.

He had been running fast for some time. The land rose and became rocky when suddenly he came to the meandering ridge that formed the lip of the Void, a vast, deep chasm across which he knew a lightbridge had been thrown. Although no sign of the bridge could yet be seen, he knew it was the only way across the chasm to Eastover and Highharbor. And he knew that the bridge materialized only when the twinsuns touched the opposing horizons in their trajectories across the sky. Only then would the steps of the lightbridge be shadowed on the near and farside and then become visible.

It was legend that ancient dreambuilders had built the lightbridges out of dreams. That was why they existed only in the brief period of the day known as stepshadow. At the first instant of moonflicker and throughout the day, they not only disappeared from view; they became nonexistent. Only in stepshadow were they solid and real. Only then could one cross a lightbridge, and then only by racing madly across it before its steps evaporated in the descending night. Those ancient builders must have been fleet indeed.

As he started toward the top of the ridge, Nim braced for the shock he knew he would experience when he gazed across the Void. Yet the immense, silent panorama he saw from the top drew a cry of alarm from him. The breadth of the chasm was so great that even in the pristine sunlight he could make out only dimly the high, distant landfall he would have to reach before dark. Bordered by a broad sidewalk of velvety smoothstone, the Void meandered snakelike across the landscape as far as the eye could see. It seemed to cut the world in half.

Momentarily overwhelmed by the sight, Nim sat down abruptly on the sidewalk away from the lip of the brink. Like a child who drops a rock into a well to see how deep it is, he absently lifted a fist sized stone and pushed it toward the Void’s edge.

The rock rolled across the smoothstone sidewalk and dropped over. He listened intently, but didn’t hear it strike bottom. It vanished silently into the clouds below. His heart thudded at what he had to do.

Nim struggled to overcome the fear of crossing the immense chasm on a bridge of unconnected steps that might ultimately evaporate beneath his feet like shreds of fog fleeing the morning sun. He could plunge like that rock into the unfathomable depths of the Void, his arms flailing the air and his screams of terror echoing down behind him. How long would he fall before he was dashed on the floor of the Void? How many broken skeletons already lay there?

He dared not linger on the lip of the Void for even one full turn. Nocturnal flying raptors called Void kytes nested in the cliff walls and dined on those who were foolish enough to spend the night on the rim. He simply had to find Musette. She was somewhere on the other side of the Void. Faced with little choice but to cross the lightbridge immediately, Nim heaved himself up and carefully walked the dozen steps down the ridge to the smoothstone sidewalk.

He stepped gingerly across the sidewalk and reeled slightly when he peered over the cold lip of the Void. “One thousand long strides an ell does make,” he murmured, recalling a verse from a didactic poem he had learned verbatim under a stern tutor when he was hardly more than a toddler. A wall sheer as red as blood plunged many ells straight down from the toe of his boot to an immense blanket of thick clouds roiling in the cold jaws of the Void below. Looking across the Void, Nim could see nothing except the sea of silent, restless clouds and the hazy image of the promontory projecting over the Void far to the east.

Nim sucked in his breath suddenly when he saw two Void kytes circling lazily far away to his left. If they see me, they can pick me right off the lightbridge for dinner. Oh my!”

Stepshadow was drawing near. The twinsuns, Mere and Pere, each was about to set where the other had risen that morning. At midday Nim had seen them appear to merge at the zenith, where it was believed that they kissed before beginning their descent to opposite horizons. The great, orange orbs approached horizontal equilibrium. Nim sprinted along the crimson rim, searching for a sign.

A deep grove in the stone led from a long disappeared path to the edge. It was set about on each side with circles symbolizing the twinsuns. This is it! Nim sat down quietly to prepare himself to spring onto the lightbridge the moment its first steps shimmered into existence.

He closed his eyes, summoned his developing powers of farsight and farhear, and imagined the bridge and the whereabouts of Musette.

He heard Musette’s soft voice cry, “Be Careful!” The warmth of her unmistakable voice overwhelmed him with sudden sorrow. Within a few moments, he surrendered days of suppressed tension, grief and fatigue in a flood of hot tears. Then he settled quietly once more to await the appearance of the lightbridge. Exhausted from the days and nights on the road, and the overbearing life-sucking dreadweald, he dozed.

Moments later, Nim physically jumped as he snapped awake. For a few moments he had forgotten where he was and what he had to do. Did I miss it? Noting that the twinsuns were fearfully close to their horizons, he breathed a sigh of relief.

His question was answered when an obsidian cube the width of a span of arms shuddered into view just a step out from the edge of the sidewalk before him. He leaped to his feet and watched the pulsing cube waver feebly as it gained substance in the gathering twilight. Then step after step began to appear, the higher and more distant ones materializing as the twinsuns descended closer to the horizon. Finally an entire stairway materialized, extending upward and outward to the east as far as the eye could see.

Nim walked tentatively up the first cube. Persuading himself that he would remain safe so long as he concentrated on the next cube and ignored the chilling space around them, he summoned deeper courage and stepped out. Terrified at first, he nearly lost his balance as he stepped to next higher cube. Then he started a rhythmic pace, and soon was sprinting cube to cube. Racing against time, he gathered speed until his stride had lengthened into a hard run.

He had no idea how the lightbridge would disappear when darkness arrived. After all, no luckless soul ever caught upon it at that moment had returned to tell. Would the bridge simply vanish like a pricked soap bubble?

His mouth burned with thirst, his lungs heaved for oxygen, and every sinew of his legs seemed to scream in protest. But it was too late to turn back or even to pause on one of the treacherous cubes for a little rest or food. The precipitous rim from which he had departed receded steadily behind him, while nothing but emptiness and the throbbing cubes lay shimmering ahead. He dared not glance down except to rivet his line of sight on the next several cubes he must scale as he pursued the fleeing daylight ever faster toward a destination as yet unknown to him.

Almost an hour later, after climbing ceaselessly to keep pace with the setting suns, he saw that the steps led to a rocky ledge shaped like a huge hand, its palm and fingers jutting over the Void at a distance still far above him.

With the flaming crests of the twin suns about to slide behind the Edge and darkness rising fast from the ebony maw beneath him, Nim could no longer resist the compulsion to glance over his shoulder. He was horrified to see that the steps behind him were now melting into the encroaching dusk faster than he was scaling the ones still ahead of him. The great emptiness produced by the disappearing steps was catching up to him with terrifying speed.

Time and light was running out. Instead of receding behind him before disappearing, each step from which he leaped evaporated just as his foot sprang away from it. He was two strides from the rocky ledge when the final step before him suddenly trembled like a stone seen beneath a ripple of water.

With an anguished cry, Nim lunged toward the ledge, catapulting himself high over the shuddering last step just as it faded and vanished. He plunged to a jarring stop between the index and middle fingers of the stony hand extending from the ledge.

For several minutes he lay exhausted and immobile in the huge palm. He heaved for breath as perspiration stung his eyes and his heart thudded wildly. Not until he had recovered his breath and became aware of the refreshing coolness of the stone on which he lay did he sit up and look behind him.

He sat with his back against the stone, panting, staring at the route he had taken from the west rim. Below him yawned the vast emptiness he had just crossed, its billowing clouds far below, umber smudges in the profound darkness. Both horizons were aflame as Mere and Pere’s blushing rims dropped from view. Darkness advanced from the northeast, where the distant Nimbus began shooting its radiant shafts of swirling silver and gold across heavens dotted with skydiamonds and streaked with meteor showers.

Soon the lavender moonlight of the quadmoons, the four purple moons now clustered to the west, shone brightly enough for Nim to continue his journey. He ate a meager meal from the store of waybread, vigorsnaps, lipsweets, and assorted nuts, berries, and grains in his rucksack. Tiny sparkles of lightwater flickered through his waterskin when he lifted it to his mouth, and he was glad to find it still comfortably full.

It suddenly became very cold. Nim drew his cloak closer about his neck, and buried his head under its cowl. Turning to the alien, sinister land lying ahead of him, he set off through the soft lavender moonlight, his breath ghostly shreds of white vapor trailing aimlessly in the frigid night air.

CHAPTER 2

In the glow of the quadmoons, the landscape spread before him in soft, lavender light slashed by streaks and swaths of deep purple and black where gullies and canyons plunged down the shoulders of barren buttes to cut serpentine ravines across the land.

The lavender, purple and black fled away to a horizon etched by the jagged pattern of a rocky range of saw‑toothed peaks. Here and there stood stunted trees formed of twisted and contorted branches barren of foliage. Huge boulders lay scattered across the land.

Nim was chilled by the bleak, inhospitable landscape, mesmerized by its savage beauty and unnerved by the deep silence in which it lay, a silence belied by the meandering ravines, the deformed trees, and the smooth contours of the massive boulders. It was clear that the region had long been buffeted by violent winds, hammered by furious rain, scorched by cruel sun and frozen by bitter cold.

The desolate silence gripping the place was rent by the mournful howl of a beast somewhere in the wasteland. Before its sound died fully away, it was answered by the wail of a distant companion. In the oppressive silence following this baleful exchange, Nim’s heartbeat seemed to thunder in his ears. He sat down shakily to take stock of himself.

With a wry smile he realized that his present circumstances would prompt a mome mindmender to intone a litany of self‑limiting fallacies intended to send him hurrying back to Westover and Farhaven. But momes were so frightened of everything they would never think of crossing the Void. Long ago, momes became mired in ignorance which they concealed artfully behind a masquerade of self‑important certainty. Yet despite their benighted condition, their healers and mindmenders loudly claimed to possess the only true means of healing and mindknow. They considered Wanderers to be subversives or even criminals.

Nim reminded himself that Wanderers were once momes, too. What distinguished Wanderers so remarkably from the momes was their study and application of the ancient wisdom recorded in the crystal scrolls discovered in the caves under the Hatchetlatch Hills. From the scrolls the Wanderers had learned how to free themselves by lifting the burden of forgotten experience which fettered their native abilities and compelled them into deepening ignorance.

He recalled sitting at the knee of one of his teachers who shook his old gray head and described how he had tried to explain the priceless teachings of the scrolls to momes, and how the wisdom could be used by all people. Sadly, the insidious stupor which had long since overtaken the momes denied most of them even an inkling of the value of the teachings. A small group of the most perceptive of them had welcomed the teachings, used them to break the shackles of their mindzanes and recover lost abilities like nightsight, farhear and clearview. Those few adventurers had become the first Wanderers.

With time the Wanderers increased in number and, by tireless study and exact application of the teachings, developed a culture uniquely possessed of a rich fund of collective knowledge and abilities which they called simply “knowingness.” Not only were they learning to recover even more abilities once native to momes, but they were teaching others how to awaken their own knowingness and how to hand it down fully to their children, so that it might never again be lost to their people.

Nim reflected on how his study and use of the teachings was awakening his own knowingness in the ascending progression of steps leading to the rank of MeisterWanderer. Upon those who attained that title the Wanderers bestowed the “full mindmix,” by which they granted their full collective knowledge and ability to the most accomplished members of their culture. “Then,” Nim thought proudly, “I’ll be the equal of the greatest masters of our mindcraft!”

Far below in the creeping darkness, a predatory bird took wing from a gnarled tree, flew up to the rim and swept down silently on a thicket of scrub, from which it rose with a long snake writhing in its claws. The grim sight warned Nim to get away from the rim before making camp for the night.

Refreshed by rest and heartened by reflections on the Wanderers, he surveyed the desolate terrain ahead with renewed confidence. Rising stiffly, he shouldered his rucksack and set off at a rapid pace to ward off the biting cold.

Almost obliterated by disuse and the ravages of harsh climate, the path worked its way gradually eastward as it wended through a labyrinth of shallow washes and deep ravines running north and south. At times its course opened into broad stream beds choked with sand and gravel. At others it plunged into deep, narrow channels in which thickets of bristling stickubushes forced him to run a gauntlet of saber‑like leaves. Yet on he ran relentlessly, his dark shadow sometimes catching his eye as it rippled over expanses of barren rock or sand.

Presently the path began to angle up the shoulder of a long escarpment, and Nim was glad to see it rising out of the eroded basin he had just crossed. Desert scrub gradually gave way to gnarled pines and wind stunted junipers. Scrambling across expanses of barren rock to the top of the escarpment, the terrain smoothed out to a broad tableland stretching gently away to distant peaks.

Grateful to have reached a more hospitable area to spend the night, he began to look around for a suitable camp site when he spied what appeared to be a tall sapling destroyed by a bolt of lightning. Its slender trunk was still erect, but from a distance it looked charred and denuded of limbs.

Just as he was about to turn away from it he noticed that, unlike the other trees near it, this one was enveloped in a silvery cloak of hoarfrost. “Maybe it’s not a tree at all. See there! Didn’t it move just then? Impossible! The night is totally still. Yet, maybe. “N’aa’man?” He asked, the strange word slipping from his mouth on a puff of condensed breath.

When at length his question had vanished into silence and he was chiding himself for having been deceived by a tree, a voice sounded from it like the crushing of dry leaves.

“I am,” it said.

Moving closer, Nim looked up at an ebony‑skinned being three times taller than he, yet so slight he stood like a black relief sculpted from the silvery background of his hair, so long and luxuriant that it seemed to cloak him in a shimmering cape and swathe his feet in glowing white satin. His arms, suspended like delicate reeds from his narrow shoulders, tapered to long, unjointed fingers. Its features were neither male nor female, yet Nimrod thought were beautiful. The eyes were singularly breathtaking, for they were illuminated by a field of stars brighter and more numerous than shone in the heavens above him.

Nim stared, for here was a N’aa’man, a legendary being Nim had thought was a thing of stories told to children at moonflicker. A N’aa’man might well appear anywhere. They were rarely seen, preferring to materialize in remote places like this one. Finding such a place, they might stand motionless for many seasons, then disappear in the twinkling of an eye.

They were said to be immortals who were once freeing themselves successfully from the prison of the flesh when their hunger for knowledge led them into the mistaken belief that facts alone constitute knowledge. Failing to understand that knowledge is comprised not just of facts, but of certainty and wisdom, they became ensnared in a compulsion to obtain facts‑‑any facts, regardless of their magnitude or uselessness.

Under the sway of this compulsion, they had long since become information addicts who fed on data of any kind. But of their acquired data they made no practical use; after ruminating on it like goats chewing their cud, they merely sent it by farthought to another N’aa’man who, in his turn, did exactly the same with it. Their acquired data, albeit vast, merely circulated endlessly through the loop formed by their planetary mindnet, in which every N’aa’man was both a receiver of new data and a transmitter of acquired data.

Nim wondered whether this one’s hodgepodge of received data included any that might help him find Musette. His journey since her abduction had been guided solely by the blue farkles’ insistence that he would find her “to the east, to the east.” Had the N’aa’man received information about her? And would he share it? That question would be answered only if Nim could induce the ebony being to talk with him.

Although he knew the N’aa’man’s hunger for data was great and indiscriminate, it may not even respond unless offered some data in exchange. Nim proffered a gambit calculated to intrigue the being so deeply that he could not bear to remain silent.

“A being is the sum of his beliefs,” Nim intoned. “He is limited only by his belief that he is limited.” Riveted by eager anticipation of a reply, Nim stood as immobile as the being to whom he had just spoken. In the wake of his words was only a disconcerting silence in which the N’aa’man betrayed not the slightest interest in what he had said. As if drawing a veil of dark clouds across a starry sky, the being simply closed his luminous eyes and appeared to sink into a deep meditation. Stung by this indifference, Nim slung his rucksack over his shoulder and turned away with a shrug of disgust.

“The sum of his beliefs?” The words seemed to echo up from the bottom of a well. Turning with a start, Nim saw the N’aa’man’s huge eyes slowly open to reveal the marvelous field of dazzling stars in them. Then the stars began to wheel, slowly and gracefully at first, then faster and faster, until finally they had coalesced into two golden pupils focused upon Nim with an intensity that transfixed him.

“The sum of his beliefs?” the N’aa’man repeated quizzically.

“Yes,” Nim replied softly.

“Limited only by his belief that he is limited?”

“That’s right.”

“And where did you learn this intriguing datum, young fellow?”

“From the teachings of the crystal scrolls,” Nim replied cautiously.

“Ah, yes, the crystal scrolls!” the Na’aa’man said quietly, as though thinking aloud. “A remarkable discovery. The legacy of the old ones who so successfully conquered their need for the prison of flesh that they abandoned this sphere to a higher plane.”

After a few moments of reflection, he looked appreciatively at Nim and asked, “Do I assume correctly, then, that you are what is called a Wanderer?”

“Yes.”

Nodding thoughtfully, the N’aa’man asked, “And what do you wish of me?”

“A man-like winged creature carried off my friend Musette, and I must find her” Nim replied. “I fear she is somewhere to east. Do you know where she is?”

To Nim’s surprise, the question appeared to disconcert the being. For a moment the N’aa’man shuddered like a mirage and turned diaphanous in the lavender moonlight. Presently he recovered his tangible form, but only to draw a dark veil over his starry eyes again and sank once more into his solitary thoughts. After a long silence in which the chill of the night seemed finally to penetrate into every fiber of Nim’s being, the N’aa’man slowly opened his huge eyes. But the field of stars in them lay behind a film of clouds that dulled their brilliance.

His words were measured and deliberate. “Musette has been abducted by a troubled Seraphim and carried to someone far to the east,” he said slowly.

“By whom?” Nim demanded.

“In her present form and condition, her name is Nymphae,” he replied.

“What does she want?”

“She does not want your friend.”

“What, then?”

“She wants you. She wants for you to attempt to rescue your friend, and for you to go to her of your own free will just as you are doing now.”

“But you speak in riddles!” Nim replied hotly. “Why would she take someone she doesn’t want, only to have me rescue her? Besides, she doesn’t even know of me!”

“But she does,” the Na’aa’man said quietly. “She knows much of you. And she watches you. Even now she watches you, Nimrod Woodbine.”

Taken aback by this revelation and momentarily overcome with anger and alarm, Nim spun about prepared to find a spy or an eavesdropper lurking in the darkness behind him. Bewildered, he turned again to the impassive N’aa’man, who merely gazed at him with serene detachment.

“How does she know of me?” he asked with ill‑concealed impatience.

“She has her means.”

“She has her means!” he groaned, mocking the N’aa’man’s cryptic reply. “And how, pray tell, does she watch me?”

“She has sown something on you.”

The N’aa’man’s reply seemed preposterous to Nim. His hands wentimpulsively to his chest and his eyes widened with alarm. “Something on me, you say! And what might that be?”

The ebony being gazed at him with sudden compassion. “Some thing,” he emphasized carefully.

Nim sighed and dropped his hands helplessly to his sides. He remained silent until he had overcome the frustration provoked in him by the N’aa’man’s enigmatic answers to his questions. “All right,” he finally declared. “Where will I find her?”

“To the east,” the N’aa’man responded laconically.

“To the east I journey now,” Nim cried, encompassing with a sweep of his arm the vast, empty land sprawling in that direction. “But where will I find her?”

“You will have no trouble finding her.”

“How far must I yet travel, then?” Nim urged.

“Far. Beyond Pandora you must go. Then across the Eastern Pan and over the Dryspike Mountains. When finally you have traveled beyond even Dankfen, you will find the island of Eros in inland Sea of Sorrowmer. There you will find her. Even now, she awaits you with mounting impatience.”

“And Musette? Will I find her there, too?”

“Yes, you will.”

“Wonderful!” Nim exclaimed with relief and elation. “So I must simply continue due east until I reach the Sea of Sorrowmer! I am most grateful to you, N’aa . . .”

“Wait!” the N’aa’man thundered suddenly, speaking the word so forcefully that it riveted Nim in place. He stared at the being aghast.

“You know nothing of Queen Nymphae herself, yet you stand ready to run to her with the abandon of a giddy child! Before you depart, heed well what more I shall tell you about her.”

“What is it?” Nim asked attentively.

“She is compellingly beautiful and provocative,” the N’aa’man replied with quiet reflection.

“Really? Is that a problem?” Nim asked with a smile.

“It is,” the Na’aa’man said flatly. “The mindbenders enslaved her more than 300 revolutions ago. They cursed her with insatiable cravings of the lowest order, then cursed her again with a ceaseless compulsion to gratify them. So beware of her! She is incomparably desirable, but cruel, vile and depraved. She is ruthless, sadistic, and craven! Hurry to her you must, Nimrod Woodbine, but do not fall to her!”

“Do not fall to her?” Nim echoed with stupefaction.

“Do not!” the N’aa’man repeated. “If you do, you will join the living dead and know a horror far greater than death itself.”

“But why is this tortured being, this Nymphae, so utterly dangerous to me?” Nim asked with alarm.

“Soon enough you will discover why,” the N’aa’man replied mysteriously. For now, you need only know that you are in grave peril. But hurry to her nevertheless, for she awaits you with reckless impatience. If you do not reach her soon, she will wreak her evil frustrations upon your friend and other innocents. Even now she toys with that pitiful seraph who carried Musette away to her.”

“But . . .” Nim began.

“Go!” the N’aa’man commanded. “Tarry with me no longer!” Then he closed his eyes and shuddered like a reflection in still water ruffled suddenly by a gentle breeze.

“Wait!” Nim cried impulsively. “Just one more question. Please!”

The shuddering image gradually grew still as the slender, dark being assumed his material form again. His eyes were empty of clouds now, and they bathed the young Wanderer in a pool of clear, bright starlight. “Just one,” the N’aa’man warned gently.

“What can you tell me about the Nimbus?” Nim ventured.

“Why do you ask about it?” the N’aa’man inquired.

“Because I am drawn to it!” Nim replied enthusiastically. “I want to go to it, I must!”

The N’aa’man smiled faintly. “Go, then,” he replied. “The Nimbus holds the answers to the questions you have always asked. If you are true, my friend, it may speak to you. If you are worthy, you may meld with it. But go now! Leave me!” As if to underscore his demand, the being simply vanished, leaving Nim in sudden, silent darkness.

Looking east to the arduous journey that remained before him, he realized that he was exhausted by his race across the Void and through the empty desert to the terrain on which he stood now.

He found a gnarled pine under which lay a deep blanket of needles and drew from a tiny pocket of his rucksack the gossamer cloakblind prized by all journeying Wanderers. Spun of lightningspoor by the avarbees who nest on the loftiest rims of the Steepcragghe, it produced a fast, perfect camouflage by blending completely with any environment into which it was cast. The lavender moonlight glanced dully off the filmy cloakblind as Nim drew it forth, hand over hand, and fashioned it into a low tent beneath the pine tree. When he had finished, he stepped back to survey his handiwork.

Already the tent had assumed perfectly the appearance and the tortured form of the pine; it looked like nothing more than a canopy of low, barren branches sagging toward a low mound of needles beneath the tree. Stepping inside the tent, he shrugged off his rucksack, sat down with a grateful sigh, and ate a simple meal of waybread, lipsweet, and lightwater.

After dinner Nim lay down at last and contemplated the virtual invisibility afforded him by his ingenious cloakblind when suddenly he recalled the ominous words of the N’aa’man. “Even now,” he had warned, “she watches you, Nimrod Woodbine.” Bolting upright, he seized his rucksack. He shook and slapped it furiously, until everything in it had tumbled into his lap. “She has sown something on you!” he muttered, repeating the words of the N’aa’man

He examined the things heaped in his lap. There were only the familiar old items, his knife and a length of rope, some potions and runestones he had collected during his earlier wanderings. Nothing was revealed by his search, nor by a careful examination of his clothing.

Finally Nim lay down again in a turmoil of anger and frustration. “How does Nymphae watch me?” he wondered. “How dangerous is she? How evil? Why does a Seraphim, one of the highest order of angels, serve such a dark being?” Unable at last to do anything else, he fell into exhausted sleep as the lavender quadmoons continued their own solitary journey across the cold heavens.