“…Impossible.”

Atrus stepped out of the air into a huge, conical bowl of darkness. And in the middle of that bowl, at the precise center of the massive, mile-wide hole that pierced it, a powerful column of water—as broad as a river—thundered straight up into the darkness until it was lost from sight, a great spike of brilliant, crystalline light glowing like a fierce flame at its center where it emerged from the glowing depths.

Atrus stared, dumbstruck.

A group of large, fireflylike insects glided past, their translucent bodies glowing gold and red, their movements more like the movements of fish than the darting flight of insects. Atrus looked down, meaning to brush one away and was shocked to see it pass right through his legs, reforming like a soap bubble on the other side. Other creatures, their forms no less fantastic—sporting long sparkling quills and fans, extravagant crests or tails like golden chains—fluttered and weaved across that midnight landscape, their forms merging and re-forming, constantly in movement, constantly, it seemed, in transformation.

“It must be a dream, don’t you think?” Catherine said, stepping up alongside him.

There was the scent of lemon in the air, the faintest trace of pine and cinnamon.

Atrus nodded absently, his eyes following the course of one of the fireflies, drawn to it, seeing how it seemed to merge and then detach itself from a rocky crag nearby, traces of its bright color left behind in the sparkling black surface of the rock, which pulsed momentarily then was still again.

Not that the rock was like real rock. It had a glassy look to it, as if it were made of gelatin, yet it had the warm, textured feel of wood. Most surprising of all, it smelled…Atrus sniffed, then shook his head, amazed…of roses and camphor.

Everywhere he looked, forms met and merged, the barriers that normally existed between things dissolved away here, as in a dream.

He shivered then looked up, pointing out toward the great chute of water that cascaded endlessly into the night sky.

“Where does it go?”

She laughed; the softest, gentlest laugh he’d ever heard. “Did you ever wonder what it would be like to go swimming out among the stars?”

“Swimming?” For a moment he thought of Anna and the cleft, that evening after the desert rain.

“Yes,” she said wistfully. “If it is my dream, we could fall into the night and be cradled by stars and still return to the place where we began.”

Atrus stared at her, wondering what she meant. Sometimes she was like her book—beautiful and poetic, yes, and incomprehensible, too.

“I’m not very lucky with water,” he said, making her laugh. “But this…” He turned, raising his arms to indicate the Age she’d made. “I can’t understand it.” He looked to her, shaking his head in amazement. “I just can’t see how it works.”

He looked about him, disconcerted by the way a bright blue snakelike creature split in two as it brushed against his arm, then split again and again, until there was a whole school of tiny snakes, swimming with identical motions in a tight formation.

“Did you imagine all of this?”

“Most of it,” she answered, walking past him, then stooping to pluck something from the ground close by. “Some of it I can’t remember writing. It’s almost like I stop thinking and just… write .”

She turned back, offering something to him. It was a flower. But not just a flower. As he went to take it from her, it seemed to flow toward his hand and rub against him, like a kitten brushing against its owner’s legs.

Atrus moved back.

“What is it?” she asked.

“I don’t know.” He smiled. “It’s just strange, that’s all.”

Catherine bent down and put the flower down carefully, then looked at him and smiled. “There’s nothing here that’s harmful. You’re safe here, Atrus. I promise you.”

Maybe so. But he still felt ill at ease. Nothing here behaved as it ought to behave. Wherever he looked the rules of normality were broken. This was an Age where he laws had been stood on their head. By rights it ought not to exist, and yet it did. So what did that mean? Was it as Catherine had said? Did some other set of laws—laws not discovered by the D’ni—prevail here? Or was this simply an anomaly?

Catherine straightened up, then put out her hand to him. “Come. Let me show you something.”

He walked down the slope with her until he stood only a few yards from the edge. Beyond it there was nothing. Nothing but the glow far below them, and the water, spewing up out of the center of that brightness.

“Here,” she said, handing him something small, smooth, and flat.

Atrus looked at it. It was a polished piece of stone, small enough to fit into his hand.

“Well?” she said. “Have you never skimmed a stone before?”

He looked to her, then swung his arm back and cast the stone across the darkness, imagining he was skimming it across the surface of a pond.

The stone skimmed rapidly across the vacant air, and then, as if it had suddenly hit a rock, soared in a steep curve upward, finally disappearing into that mighty rush of water.

Atrus stared, openmouthed, as he lost it in that mighty torrent, then turned, to find that Catherine was laughing softly.

“Your face!”

Atrus snapped his mouth shut, then looked back. He found that he wanted to do it again—to see the stone skim across the imptiness then soar.

“Where does it go?”

“Come,” she said, taking his hand again. “I’ll show you.”

§

The tunnel through which they walked was small—just big enough for them to walk upright—and perfectly round, like a wormhole through a giant apple, the passage unevenly lit by some property within the rock itself. It led down, continually curving, until it seemed as though they must be walking on the ceiling. And then they came out. Out into brilliant daylight. Out into a landscape as amazing as the one they had left at the far end of the tunnel.

Atrus winced, his eyes pained by the sudden light, and pulled his glasses on, then straightened, looking out.

Just as the dark side had been strange, so this—the bright side of Catherine’s nature, as he saw it—was wonderful. They stood at the top of a great slope—a large rocky hill in the midst of an ocean, one of several set in a rough circle—each hill carpeted with bright, gorgeously scented flowers over which a million butterflied danced and fluttered.

And at the very center of that circle of rocklike hills, a great ringshaped waterfall rushed inward at an angle, toward a single central point far below. Directly over that huge vortex, flickering in and out of visibility, were twisting, vertical ribbons of fast-moving cloud that appeared high up in the air then vanished quickly into the mouth of that great circular falls.

With a shock of recognition, Atrus understood. “We’re on the other side! It’s the source of the great torrent…it falls through …”

And even as he said it, his mouth fell open with wonder.

But how? What physical mechanism was involved? For he knew— knew, with a sudden, absolute certainty—that if this existed, then there was a physical reason why it existed. This did not break the D’ni laws, it merely twisted them; pushed them to their limits.

He looked to Catherine, a sudden admiration in his eyes.

“This is beautiful. I never guessed…”

She took his hand. “There’s more. Would you like to see?”

“Yes.”

“Out there,” she said, pointing, directing his eyes toward the horizon.

Atrus stared. Huge thunderclouds massed at the horizon, rising up into the sky like steam from a boiling pot. Incredible thunderstorms, their noise muted by distance, filled the air out there, the whole of the horizon, as far as he could see to left and right, filled with flickering lightning.

It completely surrounds the torus , he realized, turning, looking back at the great hole in the ocean, remembering the great jet of water on the far side of that massive hole. There seemed to be two separate forces at work here—one a jet stream force and the other a ring force to which the water was attracted.

Atrus blinked, then looked to Catherine. “You put most of the mass of the torus at its outer edge, didn’t you?”

She simply smiled at him.

“So the gravity…” Atrus paused, his right fist clenched intently, frown lines etched deep in his brow. “That circle of gravity… forces the water through the central hole…then some other force sucks it up into the sky, where it fans out…still captured by the gravitational field of the torus, and falls down the outer edges of that field… right? ”

She simply smiled at him.

“And as it slowly falls, it forms clouds and the clouds cause the storms and…”

It was impressive. In fact, now that he partly understood it, it was even more impressive than he’d first thought.

He turned, standing, looking about him, then stopped dead. Just across from him was a patch of flowers, nestled in among the lush grass. He walked across, climbing the slope until he stood among them.

Flowers. Blue flowers. Thousands of tiny, delicate blue flowers with tiny, starlike petals and velvet dark stamen.

Moved by the sight, he stooped and plucked one, holding it to his nose, then looked to her.

“How did you know?”

“Know?” Catherine’s brow wrinkled in puzzlement. “Know what?”

“I thought…No, it doesn’t matter.” Then, changing the subject, “What are you to my father?”

She looked down. “I am his servant. One of his Guild members…”

He looked at her, knowing there was more, but afraid to ask.

After a moment, she spoke again. “I am to be married to him.”

“Married?”

She nodded, unable to look at him.

Atrus sat heavily, the flowers all around him. He closed his fingers, squeezing the tiny, delicate bloom, then let it fall.

His head hung now and his eyes seemed desolate.

“He has commanded me,” she said, stepping closer. “Thirty days, Gehn said. There is to be a great ceremony on Riven…Age Five.”

He looked up, a bitter disappointment in his eyes.

She met his eyes clearly. “I’d rather die.”

Slowly, very slowly, understanding of what she’d said came to his face. “Then…”

“Then you must help me, Atrus. We have thirty days. Thirty days to change things.”

“And if we can’t?”

Catherine turned her head, looking about her at the Age she had written, then looked back at Atrus, her green eyes burning. Burning with such an intensity that he felt transfixed, frozen, utterly overwhelmed by this strange woman and the odd powers she possessed. And as she held his gaze, she reached out for his hand, clenching it tightly in her own, and spoke; her voice filling him with a sudden, almost impulsive confience. “We can do wonders, you and I. Wonders.”

21