“How does it feel?” I asked her.

“Very strange,” she replied. “Not pain — exactly. More like the way a Trump contact feels. Only it’s with me all the time, and I’m not going anywhere or talking to anyone. It’s as if I’m standing in some sort of gateway. Forces are moving about me, through me.”

In an instant I was at the center that was the gay ring with its wheel of many-spoked reddish metal. From the inside, here, it was like a great web. A bright strand pulsed for my attention. Yes, it was a line to a very potent force in distant Shadow, one that might be used for probing. Carefully, I extended it toward the covered jewel she wore in her eye socket.

There was no immediate resistance. In fact, I felt nothing as I extended the line of power. An image came to me of a curtain of flame, however. Pushing through the fiery veil, I felt my extension of inquiry slowing, slowing, halted. And there I hovered, as it were, at the edge of a void. This was not the way of attunement, as I understood it, and I was loath to invoke the Pattern, which I understood to be a part of it, when employing other forces. I pushed forward and felt a terrible coldness, draining the energies I had called upon.

Still, it was not draining the energy directly from me, only from one of the forces I commanded. I pushed it farther, and I beheld a faint patch of light like some distant nebula. It hung against a background the deep red of port wine. Closer still, and it resolved itself into a form — a complex, three dimensional construct, half familiar — which must be the pathway one takes in attuning oneself to the Jewel, from my father’s description. All right, I was inside the Jewel. Should I essay the initiation?

“Go no further,” came an unfamiliar voice, though I realized it to be Coral who was making the sounds. She seemed to have slipped into a trance state. “You are denied the higher initiation.”