The smoke of a forest afire… A wall of flame… Gone…
Yellow sky, blue clouds… An armada of dirigibles crossing…
Faster…
The sun drops like a piece of hot iron into a bucket of water, stars become streaks… A pale light upon a straight trail… Sounds dopplered from dark smears, the wailing… Brighter the light, fainter the prospect… Gray, to my right, my left… Brighter now… Nothing but the trail my eyes to ride… The wailing heightens to a shriek… Forms run together… We race through a tunnel of Shadow… It begins to revolve…
Turning, turning… Only the road is real… The worlds go by… I have released my control of the sets and ride now the thrust of the power itself, aimed only to remove me from Amber and hurl me toward Chaos… There is wind upon me and the cry in my ears… Never before have I pushed my power over Shadow to its limit… The tunnel grows as slick and seamless as glass… I feel I am riding down a vortex, a maelstrom, the heart of a tornado… Star and I are drenched with sweat… There is a wild feeling of flight upon me, as though I am pursued… The road is become an abstraction… My eyes sting as I try to blink away the perspiration… I cannot hold this ride much longer… There comes a throbbing at the base of my skull…
I draw back gently upon the reins and Star begins to slow…
The walls of my tunnel of light grow grainy… Blotches of gray, black, white, rather than a uniformity of shading… Brown… A hint of blue… Green… The wailing descends to a hum, a rumble, fading… Gentler the wind… Shapes come and go… Slowing, slowing…
There is no path. I ride on mossy earth. The sky is blue, the clouds are white. I am very light-headed. I draw rein. I —
Tiny.
I was shocked as I lowered my eyes. I stood at the outskirts of a toy village. Houses I could hold in the palm of my hand, miniscule roads, tiny vehicles crawling along them…
I looked back. We had crushed a number of these diminutive residences. I looked all around. There were fewer to the left. I guided Star carefully in that direction, kept moving until we had left that place. I felt bad about it — whatever it was — whoever dwelled there. But there was not a thing that I could do.