It plunged for over a thousand feet: a mighty cataract that smote the gray river like an anvil. The currents were rapid and strong, bearing bubbles and flecks of foam a great distance before they finally dissolved. Across from us, perhaps half a mile distant, partly screened by rainbow and mist, like an island slapped by a Titan, a gigantic wheel slowly rotated, ponderous and gleaming. High overhead, enormous birds rode like drifting crucifixes the currents of the air.
We stood there for a fairly long while. Conversation was impossible, which was just as well. After a time, when she turned from it to look at me, narrow-eyed, speculative, I nodded and gestured with my eyes toward the wood. Turning then, we made our way back in the direction from which we had come.
Our return was the same process in reverse, and I managed it with greater ease. When conversation became possible once more, Dara still kept her silence, apparently realizing by then that I was a part of the process of change going on around us.
It was not until we stood beside our own stream once more, watching the small mill wheel in its turning, that she spoke.
“Was that place like the village?”
“Yes. A shadow.”
“And like Amber?”
“No. Amber casts Shadow. It can be sliced to any shape, if you know how. That place was a shadow, your village was a shadow—and this place is a shadow. Any place that you can imagine exists somewhere in Shadow.”
“. . . And you and Grandpa and the others can go about in these shadows, picking and choosing what you desire?”
“Yes.”
“That is what I did, then, coming back from the village?”
“Yes.”
Her face became a study in realization. Her almost black eyebrows dropped half an inch and her nostrils flared with a quick inhalation.
“I can do it, too . . .” she said. “Go anywhere, do anything I want!”
“The ability lies within you,” I said.
She kissed me then, a sudden, impulsive thing, then rotated away, her hair bobbing on her slim neck as she tried to look at everything at once.
“Then I can do anything,” she said, coming to a standstill.
“There are limitations, dangers . . .”
“That is life,” she said. “How do I learn to control it?”
“The Great Pattern of Amber is the key. You must walk it in order to gain the ability. It is inscribed on the floor in a chamber beneath the palace in Amber. It is quite large. You must begin on the outside and walk it to its center without stopping. There is considerable resistance and the feat is quite an ordeal. If you stop, if you attempt to depart the Pattern before completing it, it will destroy you. Complete it, though, and your power over Shadow will be subject to your conscious control.”
She raced to our picnic site and studied the pattern we had drawn on the ground there.
I followed more slowly. As I drew near, she said, “I must go to Amber and walk it!”
“I am certain that Benedict plans for you to do so, eventually,” I said.
“Eventually?” she said. “Now! I must walk it now! Why did he never tell me of these things?”
“Because you cannot do it yet. Conditions in Amber are such that it would be dangerous to both of you to allow your existence to become known there. Amber is barred to you, temporarily.”
“It is not fair!” she said, turning to glare at me.
“Of course not,” I said. “But that is the way things stand just now. Don‘t blame me.”
The words came somewhat stickily to my lips. Part of the blame, of course, was mine.
“It would almost be better if you had not told me of these things,” she said, “if I cannot have them.”
“It is not as bad as all that,” I said. “The situation in Amber will become stable again-before too very long.”
“How will I learn of it?”
“Benedict will know. He will tell you then.”
“He has not seen fit to tell me much of anything!”
“To what end? Just to make you feel bad? You know that he has been good to you, that he cares for you. When the time is ready, he will move on your behalf.”