The Dark World | Page 6

power than any of us, but is
too old to use it. And you, Lord Ganelon, or Edward Bond, as you
name yourself. Five of us in all now. Once there were hundreds, but
even I cannot remember that time, though Ghast Rhymi can, if he
would."
I put my head in my hands.
"Good heavens, I don't know! Your words mean nothing to me. I don't
even know where I am!"

"Listen," she said, and I felt a soft touch on my shoulder. "You must
understand this. You have lost your memories."
"That's not true."
"It is true, Lord Ganelon. Your true memories were erased, and you
were given artificial ones. All you think you recall now, of your life on
the Earth-world -- all that is false. It did not happen. At least, not to
you."
"The Earth-world? I'm not on Earth?"
"This is a different world," she said. "But it is your own world. You
came from here originally. The Rebels, our enemies, exiled you and
changed your memories."
"That's impossible."
"Come here," Edeyrn said, and went to the window. She touched
something, and the pane grew transparent. I looked over her shrouded
head at a landscape I have never seen before.
Or had I?
Under a dull, crimson sun the rolling forest below lay bathed in bloody
light. I was looking down from a considerable height, and could not
make out details, but it seemed to me that the trees were oddly shaped
and that they were moving. A river ran toward distant hills. A few
white towers rose from the forest. That was all. Yet the scarlet, huge
sun had told me enough. This was not the Earth I knew.
"Another planet?"
"More than that," she said. "Few in the Dark World know this. But I
know -- and there are some others who have learned, unluckily for you.
There are worlds of probability, divergent in the stream of time, but
identical almost, until the branches diverge too far."
"I don't understand that."

"Worlds coexistent in time and space -- but separated by another
dimension, the variant of probability. This is the world that might have
been yours had something not happened, long ago. Originally the Dark
World and the Earth-world were one, in space and time. Then a
decision was made -- a very vital decision, though I am not sure what it
was. From that point the time-stream branched, and two variant worlds
existed where there had been only one before.
"They were utterly identical at first, except that in one of them the key
decision had not been made. The results were very different. It
happened hundreds of years ago, but the two variant worlds are still
close together in the time stream. Eventually they will drift farther apart,
and grow less like each other. Meanwhile, they are similar, so much so
that a man on the Earth-world may have his twin in the Dark World."
"His twin?"
"The man he might have been, had the key decision not been made ages
ago in his world. Yes, twins, Ganelon -- Edward Bond. Do you
understand now?"
I returned to the couch and sat there, frowning.
'Two worlds, coexistent. I can understand that, yes. But I think you
mean more -- that a double for me exists somewhere."
"You were born in the Dark World. Your double, the true Edward Bond,
was born on Earth. But we have enemies here, woods-runners, rebels,
and they have stolen enough knowledge to bridge the gulf between
time-variants. We ourselves learned the method only lately, though
once it was well-known here, among the Coven.
"The rebels reached out across the gulf and sent you -- sent Ganelon --
into the Earth-world so that Edward Bond could come here, among
them. They --"
"But why?" I interrupted. "What reason could they have for that?"

Edeyrn turned her hooded head toward me, and I felt, not for the first
time, remote chill as she fixed her unseen gaze upon my face.
"What reason?" she echoed in her sweet, cool voice. "Think, Ganelon.
See if you remember."
I thought, I closed my eyes and tried to submerge my conscious mind,
to let the memories of Ganelon rise up to the surface if they were there
at all. I could not yet accept this preposterous thought in its entirety, but
certainly it would explain a great deal if it were true. It would even
explain -- I realized suddenly -- that strange blanking out in the plane
over the Sumatra jungle, that moment from which everything had
seemed so wrong.
Perhaps that was the moment when Edward Bond left Earth, and
Ganelon took his place -- both twins too stunned and helpless at the
change to know what had happened, or to understand.
But