Roger Zelazny - Wizard World 1 - Changeling

He repeated the process which had summoned the guide, and it came again, paler in this greater light, but sufficiently distinct to direct his course. As he followed it, he wondered whether it would be visible to another person.

It led him downhill for a time, and a little after sunset he found himself in the midst of a large orchard. He gorged himself and filled his pockets and all the odd nooks in the guitar case.

The guide led him uphill after that, and sometime during the middle of the night the trees grew smaller and he realized--looking back by moonlight--that had it been daytime, he could have seen for a great distance.

Before much longer, the way steepened, but not before he had caught a glimpse of a large building on a crest ahead. It was not illuminated and it appeared to be partly in ruin, but he had a premonition the moment that he saw it, reinforced by the behavior of the dragon-light. For the first time, the light appeared as if it were trying to hurry him along the trail.

He allowed himself to be hurried. An excitement was rising in his breast, accompanied by an unexplainable feeling that ahead lay safety--as well as shelter, food, warmth--and something else, something undefined and possibly more important than any of the others. He shifted his guitar case to his other hand, squared his shoulders and ignored his aching feet. He even forgot to wish again for the coat he had left behind, when a chill wind came down from the height and embraced him.

He would have liked to wander about the wrecked hall, surveying some of the more picturesque destruction, but the light pressed steadily ahead, leading him along a back corridor and into what could only be a pantry. The food stored all about him looked as fresh as if it had just been brought in. He reached immediately toward a loaf of bread and stopped, puzzled, his hand blocked by an invisible barrier.

No ... Not quite invisible. For as he stared, he slowly became aware of a mesh of softly pulsing blue strands which covered everything edible.

A preservation spell, came into his mind, as though he had activated a mental recording. Use the guide to solve it--selectively.

He tried mentally calling upon the hovering image of his mark for assistance. It drifted back and merged with the original one upon his wrist, the light flowing outward, into his hand. Suddenly, he felt a gentle tugging at it and relaxed and let it move through a series of gestures which finally bore it forward into a gap now apparent in the meshing.

He seized the bread; also, some meat and cheese that were within reach. After he had withdrawn his hand for the final time, he felt the tugging again. Again, he let himself be guided, and this time he saw the gap close, returning to its initial state of taut webwork.

On another shelf, he located some wine bottles and repeated the performance to obtain one.

As he gathered together the meal, he felt a strong urge to depart. He released the light and was pleased to see that it had a route mapped out for him. It led him up a flight of stairs and into a chaotic room which once might have been a library.

He cleared a place on the writing desk and set down his supplies. Then, by dint of intense concentration, he was able to cause his drifting light to hover, successively, over the end of each taper in a heavy candelabrum which he had uprighted and repaired, causing each to spring into flame. He seemed to grow better at such heat-thinking with each effort.

When the room was thus more fully illuminated, he retired his pale guide and seated himself to dine. He noted that the chamber had indeed been a library, many of its books now in disarray upon the floor, As he ate, he wondered whether Mor's language-treatment had extended to the written word.

Finally, unable to contain himself any longer, he rose and retrieved a volume from the clutter, When he got it into the light, he smiled. Yes, he could decipher the runic lettering. This one appeared to be a travel book--though in his world it would have passed for some sort of mythology text. It described the dwellings of harpies and centaurs, salamanders and feathered serpents, it showed pyramids and labyrinths and undersea caverns, accompanied by cautionary notes as to their denizens, natural and otherwise. In the margins were penned an occasional "Very true" or "Hogwash!"

As he read, Dan--Should he begin thinking of himself as "Pol" now? he had wondered earlier. Why not? he had finally decided. A new name for a new life....

As he read, Pol felt his attention being constantly drawn toward the middle shelf across the room to his left. At one point, he put down his book and stared at it. There was almost something there....

Finally, when he had finished eating, he rose and moved to inspect the shadowy section of shelving. As he did, three feint, red threads seemed to be fluttering at its rear. They were possessed of the same insubstantial quality as the blue ones in the pantry. Was this land--or this place, in particular--causing him to develop a land of second sight?

He cleared the remaining books from the shelf and stacked them near his feet. Then, slowly, he extended his hand, waiting for a guiding impulse. His left hand trembled at his side. Two hands seemed required then, or just the left. Very well...He raised it and advanced it. Then the middle fingers of his left hand caught the lower thread between them and raised it. The index finger hooked the upper strand and drew it downward, twining the two. His right hand was then drawn forward, all fingers and the thumb bunching to seize the tip of the third thread, to wrap it three times counterclockwise about the twisted pair...

He drew the bunch down, released it and struck it twice with his left fist.

"Open. Open," he said.

The panel at the rear dropped forward, revealing a hidden compartment. He began to reach and recoiled instantly. There lay another spell, hidden, coiled like a smoky snake, an interesting knot at its tail, designed to trap the unwary. He smiled faintly. It was going to be an intriguing problem. The working out of the previous one had become something of a conscious process as he had labored over it, gaining some small understanding of the thought and effort that had gone into its casting. Moving his left hand cautiously crossbody, two fingers extended, he reached forward....

Later, he sat back at the desk, reading a history of the Castle Rondoval and its illustrious if somewhat eccentric inhabitants. Several volumes of personal observations on the Art were stacked before him, along with his father's journals and notebooks on sundry matters. He read through the entire night, however, before he realized his own connection with the inhabitants of the place. Light had already spilled into the world when he came across a reference to the dragon-shaped birthmark inside the right wrists of the children of Rondoval.

But this excitement spent the balance of his energy. Shortly, he began to yawn and could not stop. His garments became a heavy weight upon him. He cleared a couch at the room's far end, curled up upon it and was soon asleep, to dream that he wandered these halls in a state of full repair and more than a little glory.

During the next afternoon, he ate a large meal and later solved the spell for a sunken tub on the ground floor, bringing him water for a bath (diverted, it seemed, from a nearby river, though he could not understand the twistings of the yellow and orange threads which appeared to govern its temperature). He committed these things to memory as he filled and drained the pool repeatedly, scouring it for his use. Then he luxuriated for a long while, wondering how Rondoval had come to achieve its present state of decay, and what had become of the rest of the family.

As he wandered later, uprighting furniture, tossing trash out of windows, unscrambling and memorizing a number of minor spells, he decided to return to the library for one of the secret books he had thumbed, which had partly mapped the place.