“You took advantage of what I had told you — about the Pattern’s resistance,” she continued. “You pretended it was preventing you from setting your foot upon it. But there was no visible sign of the resistance, such as there was when I tried stepping onto it.”

She looked at me, as if for confirmation. “So?” I said.

“So,” she replied, “it has become more important now than it was then, and I have to know: Were you faking it that day?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Why?”

“Once I took one step upon it,” I explained, “I’d have been committed to walking it. Who knows where it might have led me and what situation might have followed? I was near the end of my holiday and in a hurry to get back to school. I didn’t have time for what might have turned into a lengthy expedition. Telling you there were difficulties seemed the most graceful way of begging off.”

“I think there’s more to it than that,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“I think Corwin told you something about it that the rest of us do not know — or that he left you a message. I believe you know more than you let on concerning the thing.”

I shrugged.

“Sorry, Fiona. I have no control over your suspicions,” I said. “Wish I could be of more help.”

“You can,” she replied.

“Tell me how.”

“Come with me to the place of the new Pattern. I want you to walk it.”

I shook my head.

“I’ve got a lot more pressing business,” I told her, “than satisfying your curiosity about something my dad did years ago.”

“It’s more than just curiosity,” she said. “I told you once before that I think it’s what is behind the increased incidence of Shadow-storms.”

“And I gave you a perfectly good reason for something else being the cause. I believe it’s an adjustment to they partial destruction and recreation of the old Pattern.”

“Would you come this way?” she asked, and she turned from me and began to climb.