or train of thought.
And Harry was quick to grab hold of something - anything solid - that might steady him up and give him a focal point to revolve around, instead of al this dizzy spinning he was doing now. And he remembered an idea that had flashed across his mind on discovering that he had Le Manse's co-ordinates without ever having been there in the flesh: that if it could work for that place, maybe it would work for those other places, too.
Why not? Alec Kyle's power had been to look into the future, but without ever knowing just exactly what the things he saw meant. And something of that power had come down to Harry in the contours of Kyle's brain. He'd 'seen' Le Manse Madonie as part of his future, but his own weird talent had complemented Alec's; his metaphysical mind had instinctively recorded the co-ordinates!
And there were other places. The stone-faced - what, temple? - in the mountains was one of them. And the other: Was or might be where Brenda was!
High passes and fang-like mountain peaks, and stars like chips of ice glinting with a frozen blue sheen in an alien sky. And down below, a barren plain of boulders reaching to a shimmering horizon under the weave of ghostly auroras ...
Harry gave himself a shake. Brenda and the baby could be there? Yes, they could be - ;/ it was a scene from his future and not just the leftover of some fanciful dream.
Well, he'd already proved the theory by going to Le Manse Madonie, and so would feel safer using it to visit these other places, too -wouldn't he? Only one way to find out.
First the temple or monastery, or whatever it was ... but not before he felt a little better.
He took two Alka Seltzers, let them go down, and waited a few minutes until his stomach felt settled. Then he threw cold water in his face over his wash basin, patted himself dry with a fresh towel. And after lying on his back on his bed with his hands behind his head for half an hour, just thinking it over, finally he was ready.
He pictured the place in the frozen wastelands, the location from which he'd viewed the temple, and tried to remember the co-odinates. No problem: they were waiting right there in his mind. This was it. He got up from his bed, conjured a Mobius door, and went there:
- And again it worked!
A little after twelve noon in Paterno, Sicily - five in the afternoon at the Drakesh Monastery on the Tibetan Plateau.
And there the place was, exactly as Harry had seen it in that previous visitation. Indeed this was that visitation; it was his future caught up with him, or him with a precognitive glimpse out of the configurations of a brain not yet conforming to his paterns:
The unseasonal blizzard had falen off; fresh snow glistened softly in sunlight glancing through a grey cloud blanket; and out there on the white waste ...
movement? Of course: ant-like figures at this range, making their way across the snows. They were robotic in their movements, like some physicaly punishing military drill routine - left, right, left, right, left - rapid and shuffling. The three in front were dressed in red hooded robes, also the three bringing up the rear. But the one in the middle was clad in pure white. And coming to the Necroscope across a half-mile of gradualy melting snow, the chiming of tiny golden bels ...
Harry wasn't dressed for this. 'Summer' it was, even here, but the elevation more than compensated. The Roof of the World, yes. And shivering again - this time from the cold - he conjured a door and returned to Paterno.
The heat struck him an almost physical blow as he stepped from nowhere into his room. And a maid was banging on the door, the real door, asking if she could
'makes it da-cleanings.'
He let her in, showed her the stained carpet and said he'd spilled coffee, let her get on with her tut-tutting and frantic cleaning.
And sitting in a corner out of the way, watching her, he wondered what the stone-faced temple on the cold plateau was all about, and how it featured in his future. One thing seemed certain: Brenda wasn't there. There had been no 'sense' of her presence, and there'd be no sense to it. Not in that place.
But mainly he wondered about the next place, and how that featured.