Abruptly, the sound became a stutter. The dark apparition jerked about’ suddenly, shaking off bits of accumulated debris as it contracted. Soon it was restored to its former size, and it hit its earlier pitch and the sound grew steady once more.

“How did you do that?” I asked him.

“I didn’t,” he said. “It adjusted itself.”

“It shouldn’t have,” Fiona stated.

“Exactly,” he replied.

“You’ve lost me,” I said.

“It should have gone roaring right on, stronger than ever, after he’d augmented it that way,” Fiona said. “But whatever is controlling it had other plans. So it was readjusted.”

“…And it is a Chaos phenomenon,” Mandor continued. “You could see that in the way it drew upon Chaos when I provided the means. But that pushed it past some limit, and there was a correction. Someone is playing with the primal forces themselves out there. Who or what or why, I cannot say. But I think it’s strong testimony that the Pattern isn’t involved. Not with Chaos games. So Merlin is probably correct. I think that this business has its origin elsewhere.”

“All right,” Fiona conceded. “All right. What does that leave us with?”

“A mystery,” he said. “But hardly, I think, an imminent threat.”

A faint firefly of an idea flitted through my mind. It could easily be dead wrong, though that was not the reason I decided against sharing it. It led into an area of thought I could not explore in an instant, and I don’t like giving away pieces of things like that.

Fiona was glaring at me now, but I maintained a bland expression. Abruptly then, seeing that her cause was fruitless, she decided to change the subject:

“You said that you left Luke under somewhat unusual circumstances. Just where is he now?”

The last thing I wanted to do was to get her really mad at me. But I couldn’t see turning her loose on Luke in his present condition.