through the gate. It was night, another cold night that was just too late, but I had promises to keep. I needed shelter somewhere.

I rapped the knocker. I prayed Alfred was right, as I saw lights switched on and heard the creak of footsteps. Finally, the locks were snapped back and a very confused Lord Obermeyer was standing before me.

I forestalled his questions with a wave. "Ma'bad ibn Omar. Helios' man. I formally ask the Ninth Legate for Sanctuary according to the Protocols of the Four Winters."

Obermeyer blinked, smiled, and pulled me into a hug. "I never thought to meet another survivor of the trenches. Please, follow me."

His house was small but elegant; the kind belonging to a man who has lost his money but not his taste, or his breeding. He seemed born to the place. His books, neatly arranged but put back hurriedly, the kind of demented feng shui that comes with a harried and feverish mind. He held the lantern aloft and we moved through a dim hallway, a candlelit dining room, and then to a door. Obermeyer unlocked it, smiled, and gestured for me to go first.

And all at once I was sprawling on the ground. It was a sheer drop, some ten feet, which the dark had hidden. I was surrounded by hedgerows- no, a hedge maze. I looked up, and Obermeyer stared back, seeming to come from a long way below. His eyes were black, and pitying.

"Ma'bad al-Juhani believed that humans had complete free will, but Ibn Omar was a proponent of the orthodox view. I think, of your two namesakes, the latter had the better idea: that while we have free will, the results of our choices are already known and written. When I close my eyes, all I see is an ultimate purpose leading to a single goal, Mekhane. If you are truly a follower of ours, you will discern which path leads to that ultimate end and which are false paths, routes to other endings."

He smiled. "If you fail, I am sure you had your reasons for the choices you made." He closed the door on my interminable cursing, and the lights went out.

I spent several minutes trying to climb the wall; several more trying to break through the hedgerows. I eventually gave up; surely I could pass this test.

After a few impossible, Escher-like turns, I arrived in an octagonal clearing, a fountain flowing in the middle. The stars shone above, as they had done over the trenches. I thought of Johns, screaming as he saw Mekhane's glory. I wish I could have been less strong, less certain in my faith. His life seems to be happier, now.

I began to step into one of the paths, but all I could see was a well in a garden, folding over itself endlessly. The second was the Four Winters, over and over again, my friend screaming. A dimly-lit lighthouse coterie, a hundred pieces of paper gathered on a beach, a man staring at me from a snow-covered fireplace.

Which was the true path? I started down one, and found myself in another crossroads, each path leading to another truth. Snow that was beaten, snow that overcame. Mekhane's collapse or triumph. I didn't know these futures, these universes. I wondered if the maze had been built around them, or if they'd been made for the maze.

I looked up, but the stars had no answer. I'd seen through the Lens of Avicenna and the Blue Glass of the Nordic Prince, to the infinities beyond them, but I was still only human. The night sky still held that old mystery, that old fear. Was I walking down these paths? Were they even paths, or were they simply parts in a painting?

I kept wandering, not knowing where I went, not knowing from whence I came.