To Bredon, it looked as if the egg were spilling blood, pouring it in a steady stream into a circular puddle, a pool spreading across an invisible barrier three centimeters above the terrace.
When the red disk was almost three meters in diameter the expansion abruptly stopped. Imp and Geste stepped forward, and up onto the disk.
Bredon was more hesitant; he had trouble believing that the disk could actually hold him. The egg had seemingly created it from thin air, and although he knew from his crash course in modern technology that the necessary material might have been retrieved from bent-space storage, or synthesized out of the air itself, his years of experience in his own society left him emotionally convinced that it had to be an illusion.
Cautiously, he forced himself to put a foot on the disk.
It seemed as firm and solid as the terrace itself. Reluctantly, Bredon lifted his other foot and stepped forward.
Immediately, the disk material began spreading again, but this time the outer edge grew vertically instead of horizontally, rising up to form a cylinder around the three humans. At a height of about a meter and a half it curved inward, forming a dome.
Even as it grew, the floater was moving; as the Skyler's home vanished behind the rising walls it was already receding. By the time the dome had closed overhead, Bredon knew they were off the Skyland entirely.
As with all the tranportation the immortals used, however, there was no sensation of movement. It was as if the three of them had stood on the motionless disk while the Skyland sped away from them.
When the dome was complete, the last circle of blue sky closed away, they were left without any point of reference at all. The original egg glowed warmly, providing them with light, and a soft, musical hum emanated from floor, but they had nothing to see except the egg, the blank red walls, and each other. They stood in uneasy silence.
Bredon wanted to ask what plans Geste had come up with, but he knew Thaddeus was listening, so he carefully said nothing. He turned his eyes away from Geste to avoid temptation.
After roaming aimlessly along the featureless red dome for a time, his eyes seemed to settle somewhere of their own volition. He found himself staring at Imp, and once again felt his body responding involuntarily to the extravagant sexual advertisement of her clothing. He forced himself to look away.
Geste's gaze wandered from the egg to Imp to Bredon, then around the dome and back to the egg, and Bredon had the impression that he was thinking hard about something while trying to look casual.
Imp simply stared blindly into space, oblivious to the others.
Bredon finally settled on staring at the egg, trying to guess just what it was capable of. This was ultimately pointless, since he could not tell, by visual inspection, whether it had a bent-space extension, and if it did have one, then it could be capable of anything. Studying the floater did, however, keep his eyes and mind off his companions.
Time passed-perhaps only a minute or two, possibly as much as an hour. Bredon had lost all sense of time in the absence of both conversation and the outside world. The only interruption of the silence came when Geste remarked, apropos of nothing, “Judging by this floater, Thaddeus is using a better grade of technology now than he has in the past-no wheels, no wings, no lenses or levers or dials. This is as modern as most of my own stuff. Maybe he's trying to impress us; he never trusted the slick stuff before."
Imp glanced at the egg, but no one spoke, and the silence returned, longer and stronger than before. Geste shrugged, started to say something more, then thought better of it.
At last, however, the dome began to fade, turning from red to pink, then to ever-greater transparency until it vanished completely, revealing that they had been delivered into a large chamber of dark stone, presumably somewhere in Fortress Holding.
When the dome had vanished the disk on which they stood sank down, merging seamlessly into the gray stone floor, its red color fading gradually into the gray.
When the disk was gone the egg-shaped floater retracted the rod that had become their craft. The egg itself hung in their midst for a moment, then whirred softly and sped away, leaving the three humans momentarily unattended.
They stood in the center of an octagonal room, with a door in the center of every second wall. The ceiling above them was white glass, glowing softly. A faint scent of dampness and ozone reached them. No music played.
“Where's the Skyler?” Thaddeus's voice asked from somewhere overhead.
The three of them glanced at one another. “She changed her mind, decided not to come,” Imp explained.
“What's that savage doing here?"
“You told the transport that you wanted three humans, so we brought three humans. Bredon wanted to come, so we brought him,” Geste said.
“If he gets in the way, I'll kill him."
“I'm sure Bredon understands that,” Geste answered.
Bredon nodded.
“Have it your way,” Thaddeus said. “I don't suppose it matters, and I don't really give a damn. Take off your clothes."
Bredon glanced at his companions. Imp glanced at Geste. Geste looked up and demanded, “Why?"
“You know why,” Thaddeus's voice replied. “You could have whole arsenals tucked away."
“What if we refuse?"
“Then you don't see Aulden and the rest."
Geste looked at the others, shrugged, and began peeling off his tunic.
Imp did something to the waistline of her dress with her fingertips, and the entire garment slipped free and fell to the floor. She wore nothing else. Bredon blushed, and looked to his own clothing.
When they were all naked, the loud voice overhead said, “Step through the door beneath the red light."
Bredon turned, and saw a tall doorway with a small red spot glowing above it. The door that had filled that doorway was gone, perhaps slid aside, perhaps dissolved, he had no way of telling. He followed the others through the opening, trying to be as calm about his nudity as they were. He knew, from references the others had made and things he had seen back in Arcade, and even from the childhood tales he remembered, that the Powers did not worry about sexual propriety much, but his own upbringing had been fairly traditional, and he was not accustomed to walking about naked in the company of a woman he was not about to take to his bed. He had not seen Kittisha the Weaver naked until his second night with her, and then only by dim firelight, yet here Imp was parading before him in full view.
The doorway led into a short corridor with gleaming metal walls, and as Bredon stepped into it he felt an odd sensation, as if his skin were buzzing silently. A sudden flash, so brief that he was not sure he had actually seen it, turned the tingling to an uncomfortable warmth, like the bad sunburn he had once gotten as a child. He looked, and saw that his skin was reddening slightly.
That old burn had resulted from a full light of carelessly lying in bright sunlight, after a long spell of convalescence from prickle-fever had left him pale and weak; it did not seem credible that a near-instantaneous flash could have caused the same thing, but his skin certainly felt burned. He marched on, ignoring the discomfort.
Then he was through the corridor and in a small room panelled in white. Three simple white robes hung in the air.
Geste took one, and Bredon another; Imp hesitated before donning the third. “Where is Aulden?” she demanded.
She received no reply. For a long moment the three of them stood there, waiting for whatever was to happen next. Bredon took the moment to notice that Imp's robe reached almost to her ankles, and Geste's to mid-calf, while his own came only to his knee.