Crokus looked away, in time to see Rallick Nom enter the bar. The assassin approached the table, seemingly unconscious of the locals moving from his path.
Coll intercepted him, before he reached the table. The burly man slapped Rallick's back and leaned drunkenly against him. “Nom, you old bastard!”
Rallick threw an arm around Coll's round shoulders and together they came to the table.
Kruppe looked up. “Ho, my dear comrades! Kruppe invites you to join our familiar gathering.” Waving his arms at the two empty chairs, he rocked back in his seat. “To bring you up to date on our dramatic doings, the lad Crokus has been staring dreamily into space while Murillio and Kruppe have discussed the latest natterings of the street rats.”
Coll remained standing, weaving unsteadily, a frown knitting his brows. Rallick sat down and reached for the pitcher of beer. “What natterings are those?” the assassin asked casually.
“The rurnour that we're now allied with Moon's Spawn,” Murillio said.
“Nonsense, of course,” Kruppe said. “Have you seen anything to suggest such a thing?”
Murillio grinned. “The Moon hasn't moved away, has it? Not only that, there's that Council tent stationed directly under it.”
Crokus spoke up. “I heard from Uncle Mammot that the councilmen haven't had any luck getting a message to whoever's in Moon's Spawn.”
“Typical,” Murillio commented, his eyes narrowing briefly on Rallick.
“Who lives in there?” Crokus asked.
Coll tottered and threw both hands down on the table to steady himself. He thrust his red face at Crokus and bellowed, “Five black dragons!”
Within the Warren of Chaos, Quick Ben knew of the innumerable shifting pathways that led to doors. Though he called them doors they were in fact barriers created where Warrens touched, an accretion of energy as solid as basalt. Chaos touched on all realms with gnarled fingertips bleeding power, the doors hardened wounds in the flesh of other worlds, other avenues of magic.
The wizard had focused his talents on such doors. While within the Warren of Chaos, he had learned the ways of shaping their energy. He'd found means of altering the barriers, of sensing what lay beyond them.
Each Warren of magic possessed a smell, each realm a texture, and though the pathways he took were never the same as those he'd taken before, he had mastered the means of finding those he sought.
He travelled now down one of those paths, a track of nothingness enclosed by the Warren's own accretions, twisting and fraught with contradictions. On one trail he'd will himself forward yet find himself moving back; he'd come to a sharp right turn, followed by another, then another, then yet another-all in the same direction.
He knew it was the power of his mind that opened the pathways, but they had their own laws-or perhaps they were his, yet unknown to him.
Whatever the source of the shaping, it was madness defined.
He came at last to the door he sought. The barrier showed as nothing more than a dull, slate-grey. stone. Hovering before it, Quick Ben whispered a command, and his spirit took the form of his own body. He stood a moment, mastering the disconnected tremble of his ghost-body, then stepped forward and laid hands on the door.
Its edges were hard and warm. Towards the centre it grew hot and soft to the touch. The surface slowly lost its opaqueness beneath the wizard's hands, becoming glassy like obsidian. Quick Ben closed his eyes.
He'd never before sought to pass through such a door. He was not even certain that it was possible. And if he survived into the beyond, was there any way to return? Past the mechanics of the one thing loomed his final, most difficult worry: he was about to attempt entry into a realm where he wasn't welcome.
Quick Ben opened his eyes. “I am direction,” he said quietly. He leaned against the barrier. “I am the power of will in a place that respects this, and only this.” He leaned harder. “I am the Warren's touch. To chaos nothing is immune, nowhere is immune.” He felt the door begin to yield.
He lashed out one hand behind him, fending off a growing pressure.
“Only I shall pass!” he hissed. Abruptly, with a strange thumping sound, he slipped through, energy flaring around his body.
The wizard staggered over rough, parched earth. He regained his balance and looked around. He stood on a barren plain, the horizon off to his left humped with low hills. Overhead spanned a sky the colour of quicksilver, a scatter of long, stringy clouds moving in unison and black as ink directly above.
Quick Ben sat down, folding his legs and clasping his hands in his lap.