“That girl looks somewhat familiar,” said Gerard, who had moved forward and now stood at my side.

“You might have gotten a glimpse of her as she rode past us,” I told him, “the day Eric died. It’s Dara.”

I heard his sudden intake of breath.

“Dara!” he said. “Then you…” His voice faded.

“I was not lying,” I said. “She is real.”

“Martin!” cried Random, who had moved up on my right. “Martin! What’s going on!”

There was no response.

“I dont think he can hear you,” Gerard said. “This barrier seems to have cut us off completely.”

Random strained forward, his hands pushing against something unseen.

“Let’s all of us give it a shove,” he said.

So I tried again. Gerard also threw his weight against the invisible wall.

After half a minute without success, I eased back.

“No good,” I said. “We can’t move it.”

“What is the damned thing?” Random asked. “What is holding?”

I’d had a hunch — only that, though — as to what might be going on. And only because of the deja vu character of the entire piece. Now, though… Now I clasped my hand to my scabbard, to assure myself that Grayswandir still hung at my side. It did.

Then how could I explain the presence of my distinctive blade, its elaborate tracery gleaming for all to see, hanging where it had suddenly appeared, without support, in the air before the throne, its point barely touching Dara’s throat? I could not.

But it was too similar to what had happened that night in the dream city in the sky, Tir-na Nog’th, to be a coincidence. Here were none of the trappings — the darkness, the confusion, the heavy shadows, the tumultuous emotions I had known — and yet the piece was set much as it had been that night. It was very similar. But not precisely so. Benedict’s stance seemed somewhat off — farther back, his body angled differently. While I could not read her lips, I wondered whether Dara was asking the same strange questions, I doubted it. The tableau — like, yet unlike, that which I had experienced — had probably been colored at the other end — that is, if there were any connection at all — by the effects of Tir-na Nog’th’s powers upon my mind at that time.