The Summer Tree Read Free Page A

unsettled me as well.”
    Paul’s eyes, more blue than grey in the lamplight, were astonishingly unsurprised. “I’ll need to talk about what we saw,” he said to Lorenzo Marcus, “but the thing is, why did you do it in the first place?”
    And so they were there. Kevin, leaning forward, every sense sharpened, saw Lorenzo Marcus draw a deep breath, and he had a flash image in that instant of his own life poised on the edge of an abyss.
    “Because,” Lorenzo Marcus said, “you were quite right, Paul Schafer—I didn’t just want to escape a boring reception tonight. I need you. The five of you.”
    “We’re not five.” Dave’s heavy voice crashed in. “I’ve got nothing to do with these people.”
    “You are too quick to renounce friendship, Dave Martyniuk,” Marcus snapped back. “But,” he went on, more gently, after a frozen instant, “it doesn’t matter here—and to make you see why,I must try to explain. Which is harder than it would have been once.” He hesitated, hand at his beard again.
    “You aren’t Lorenzo Marcus, are you?” Paul said, very quietly.
    In the stillness, the tall man turned to him again. “Why do you say that?”
    Paul shrugged. “Am I right?”
    “That searching truly was a mistake. Yes,” said their host, “you are right.” Dave was looking from Paul to the speaker with hostile incredulity. “Although I am Marcus, in a way—as much as anyone is. There is no one else. But Marcus is not who I am.”
    “And who are you?” It was Kim who asked. And was answered in a voice suddenly deep as a spell.
    “My name is Loren. Men call me Silvercloak. I am a mage. My friend is Matt Sören, who was once King of the Dwarves. We come from Paras Derval, where Ailell reigns, in a world that is not your own.”
    In the stone silence that followed this, Kevin Laine, who had chased an elusive image down all the nights of his life, felt an astonishing turbulence rising in his heart. There was a power woven into the old man’s voice, and that, as much as the words, reached through to him.
    “Almighty God,” he whispered. “Paul, how did you know?”
    “Wait a second! You
believe
this?” It was Dave Martyniuk, all bristling belligerence. “I’ve never heard anything so crackbrained in my life!” He put his drink down and was halfway to the door in two long strides.
    “Dave, please!”
    It stopped him. Dave turned slowly in the middle of the room to face Jennifer Lowell. “Don’t go,” she pleaded. “He said he needed us.”
    Her eyes, he noticed for the first time, were green. He shook his head. “Why do you care?”
    “Didn’t you hear it?” she replied. “Didn’t you feel anything?”
    He wasn’t about to tell these people what he had or hadn’t heard in the old man’s voice, but before he could make that clear, Kevin Laine spoke.
    “Dave, we can afford to hear him out. If there’s danger or it’s really wild, we can run away after.”
    He heard the goad in the words, and the implication. He didn’t rise to it, though. Never turning from Jennifer, he walked over and sat beside her on the couch. Didn’t even look at Kevin Laine.
    There was a silence, and she was the one who broke it. “Now, Dr. Marcus, or whatever you prefer to be called, we’ll listen. But please explain. Because I’m frightened now.”
    It is not known whether Loren Silvercloak had a vision then of what the future held for Jennifer, but he bestowed upon her a look as tender as he could give, from a nature storm-tossed, but still more giving, perhaps, than anything else. And then he began the tale.
    “There are many worlds,” he said, “caught in the loops and whorls of time. Seldom do they intersect, and so for the most part they are unknown to each other. Only in Fionavar, the prime creation,which all the others imperfectly reflect, is the lore gathered and preserved that tells of how to bridge the worlds—and even there the years have not dealt kindly with ancient wisdom. We have