…Golden bridges cross the void in great streamers, one of them flashing beneath us even now. We wind along its course, standing the while still as a statue… For an age, perhaps, this goes on. A phenomenon not unrelated to highway hypnosis enters through my eyes, lulls me dangerously. I can to accelerate our passage. Another age goes by. Finally, far ahead, a dusky, misty blotch, our terminus, growing very slowly despite our velocity.

By the time we reach it, it is gigantic — an island in the void forested over with golden, metallic trees…

I stop the motion which has borne us thus far and we move forward under our own power, entering that wood. Grass like aluminum foil crunches beneath us as we pass among those trees. Strange fruit, pale and shiny, hangs about me. There are no animal sounds immediately apparent. Working our way inward, we come to a small clearing through which a quicksilver stream flows. There, I dismount.

“Brother Corwin,” comes that voice again. “I have been waiting for you.”

Chapter 4

I faced the wood, watched him emerge from it. I did not draw my weapon, as he had not drawn his. I reached down into the Jewel with my mind, though. After the exercise I had just completed, I realized that I could do a lot more than control weather with it. Whatever Brand’s power, I felt I’d a weapon now with which to confront it directly. The Jewel pulsed more deeply as I did this.

“Truce,” Brand said. “Okay? May we talk?”

“I do not see that we have anything more to say to one another,” I told him.

“If you do not give me a chance you will never know for certain, will you?”

He came to a halt about seven meters away, flung his green cloak back over his left shoulder and smiled.

“All right. Say it, whatever it is,” I said.

“I tried to stop you,” he said, “back there, for the Jewel. It is obvious that you know what it is now, that you realize how important it is.”