Count Arcturus' little army left the fortress late in the morning when the collective hangovers of the soldiers had subsided to a dull throbbing at the back of their heads. The Count was dressed in his finest military uniform with his three leafed shield polished, his sword hilt gleaming and the beads in his hair now changed to military silver and gold. He dominated the small force with the casual accomplishment of a long time commander.

The pseudo Rastefarian militia were almost as extravagantly dressed as their leader. They were armed with a menacing range of weapons; crossbows, swords and pikes plus a variety of stranger looking implements. Each soldier had a small golden skull cap and they all wore elaborate gilded face guards like the one the travellers had first seen on the sentry. Some of the men had yellow, green and red scarves and all of them had a uniform consisting of a grey velvet waistcoat, scarlet britches and thick leather boots.

Peter had elected to wear the same swashbuckling clothes which the Count had loaned to him on the previous evening. In this martial company he looked relatively dowdy. Cerylia too, was dressed in a plain white woollen gown slit at the side to let her ride easily and with a new black cloak, both of which she had borrowed from the extensive wardrobe of Azbyc Vewdx. The turquoise badge of the Stability Council was pinned firmly above her left breast.

When it came to the question of weapons Peter was at something of a loss. He wasn't a fighting man and he could only think of one occasion in his adult life where he'd even raised his fists in anger – and that had been a drunken debacle at a party many years ago of which he was far more ashamed than proud. In this place, he had a nasty feeling that he might have to fight and he had no idea how to handle a weapon or how he would react if confronted with a murderous enemy.

"I'm not a soldier," he said to Cerylia.

"I know. I could tell that from your reactions when you came into the Autumn Country" she said with a smile. "Take this, with the complements of the Count."

She gave him a short blade in a plain leather scabbard. It was a workmanlike instrument – a no nonsense sort of a sword. On inspection Peter was intrigued to find the words "Made In Sheffield" etched on the side, and wondered if it was the same Sheffield he knew. He tested its balance gingerly.

"I'll call it Wilkinson," he said in whimsical mood. "As in Wilkinson's sword."

The reference was obviously lost on Cerylia who ignored his remark completely.

"It doesn’t have much reach but then again you don’t need lots of training to use it and it'll cut an unwary enemy to pieces right enough. Better to have this in your hands than nothing."

"Then it is very like its name sake! Wilkinson's sword can make a bloody mess of the unwary as I have found to my cost on more than one occasion," he joked. "What if I come across a wary enemy?"

"Try not to," she said shortly.

The force consisted of twenty five troops; roughly half of the castle's soldiers. Tarragon and A'lekim had joined the expedition on the Count's orders. The remaining men were left behind to guard the fortress under the supervision of Desmond the seneschal.

It took half an hour of bustling and shouting to assemble the soldiers and ready them for travel. The Count had a snow white gelding called Sirius, Tarragon a temperamental coal black stallion by the name of Nebula. The rest of the company and their baggage was mounted on one of twelve Kestervaals which snorted and stamped impatiently as they waited for the journey to begin. Peter and Cerylia were to ride on the same beast, Peter at the back and Cerylia in the middle. They were amused to recognise the man holding he reins. It was the sentry who had greeted their arrival at the castle.

"Lady and Gentlemaan," he said. "Might I introdoose myself properly? My name is Harry Harmond. I aam to be your Droover today. Welcome aboard."

He gave a courtly bow tinged with a hint of irony and mounted the fierce looking animal with ease. It was rather more difficult for Peter and Cerylia but Peter was pleased that he managed to climb up without making too much of a fool of himself. He'd never even ridden a horse before, much less one of these monstrosities. Fortunately the Kestervaals were well trained and docile under the easy guidance of the Drovers. Their bulky bodies gave off a pungent smell of animal heat and their rank breath clouded the air, but they were reassuringly strong and Peter felt quite secure in the saddle, even when Harry urged their mount to follow the train out over the drawbridge.

They turned left to circle the castle green then picked up an asphalt track which soon began to zigzag down a gentle slope towards a silver and blue river in the valley bottom. The hillside leading down to the river was cultivated land; a vast orchard of crooked pear trees, with sweet and pulpy bulbs of delicious golden fruit hanging from every branch.

"You know the beauty of this place?" the Count shouted to them. "All the hard work is done in the Elsewhere and we just reap the rewards. The don’t call me Patron of the Final Harvest for nothing!"

It was a glorious day - clear sunshine of the type, which can only be found in Autumn; crisp and cool and very, very clean, picking out the reds, browns and golden colours of the leaves with sharply delineated little shadows. The sky had that characteristic bright blue solidity which made it seem as though it were really just a bowl above their heads, painted perfectly smooth by some artistic god of Ikea. A mountain ash laden with bright red rowan berries was playing host to a flock of redwings which were feasting in the branches. It felt good to be out in the open, riding on the powerful Kestervaals and savouring the unfolding views of the mellow countryside below the castle.

Tarragon galloped from the back of the file to the front as they unwound down the hill, Nebula tossing his head and exuding a half controlled excess of energy as the councillor handled his reins with a deft touch.

"Horses!" Harry said with a snort of disgust as the wild beat of Nebula's hooves broke on the road ahead. "I doon't like em and noo mistake! Caan't beat a Kestervaal. Now Sirius may be alright but thaat Neboola woon't let no-one 'cept old Taarragon ride 'im. Now whaat's the use in thaat?"

When they reached the river it proved shallow enough to ford and the party splashed through between a scattering of rocks that broke the flow where it meandered round a broad bend. Soon they were climbing a steep little rise on the opposite bank between larches and pines. Peter turned round for a last glimpse of the castle before the road levelled off and plunged into the heart of the forest. It was mixed woodland. Sometimes they were travelling through conifers and evergreens and at other times, oak, beech and hornbeam predominated. Peter also recognised sweet and horse chestnut trees but there were other varieties which he had never seen before. Blackberry bushes grew in profusion at the edge of the trees, some still in flower but most laden with shiny sweet fruit. Wild garlic had colonised some of the shady banks at the side of the road. Occasionally they broke into sunny clearings filled with dogs mercury, bright yellow mouse-ear hawkweed, tatty willowherb shedding fluffy seeds, abandoned raspberry canes and sprawling elderberry bushes.

The road was wide enough for two Kestervaals to walk side by side and they proceeded in this double formation making steady progress as the afternoon wore on. The soldiers were a cheerful lot, and in between bouts of loud chit-chat and banter they ran though a variety of marching songs to entertain themselves, at times led by A'lekim but mostly erupting in a spontaneous anarchic chorus. Some songs glorified their achievements in battle, full of bluster and pride, others were extravagantly inventive insults heaped on their enemies and a third category were bawdy little ditties of dubious taste and unlikely humour.

"What's that?" Peter asked one of the soldiers riding next to him, as the road crested a small ridge deep in the forest. He indicated a heavy weapon slung over the man's back. It was a good meter long, a black and wicked looking device with a barrel as thick as a sapling for half its length, reduced to the diameter of a conventional rifle in a series of three shallow cones before it reached the business end. Behind the trigger, were two fat cylinders, slung either side of the axis so that they could rest against the forearm of the weapon's owner and provide some stability when it was fired. Ornate carvings covered the shaft - black serpents and lizards fighting or mating - it was hard to tell which.

The soldier gave Peter a grin, freed the weapon from its holster, strapped it on his arm and fingered the trigger suggestively before suddenly pointing the thing at the sky and firing.

"Yeee hah!"

It was a bright yell of primitive exhilaration, as a hot spout of orange flame shot ten metres into the air on a stream of finely misted gasoline propelled from the reservoirs at the back of the gun. The roar of combustion disturbed their mounts and the ponderous creature carrying Peter and Cerylia reared nervously underneath them. It was like some slow motion earthquake. For an anxious moment, Peter thought the Kestervaal might throw them but then Harry brought it under control with a sharp tug of the reins.

"Dragon gun!" the Count shouted proudly. "Very handy in a tight spot!"

They had been travelling for five hours when the sun began to sink behind them and the Count declared that it was time to call a halt for the day. A stream ran over the path just before the next forest glade and they stopped and dismounted, Peter finding himself more than a little saddle sore.

"We'll be at the Cross Roads before nightfall tomorrow," the Count said as the troops pitched tents and busied themselves setting up the camp. Soon the Kestervaals were tethered to a row of copper beech trees on the fringe of the wood and five men were looking after them – grooming the massive animals with giant bone combs and feeding them a mixture of oatmeal mash and sour apples.

"Fire sign!"

It was Harry Hammond who was the first to spot it.  A languid column of blue smoke had slipped above the treetops a few miles to the south and was casting about for somewhere to go in the evening breeze. It must have been a small blaze but Cerylia was instinctively wary of anyone or anything that dared to inhabit the forest at night. She looked at Azbyc, an unspoken question in her quick glance.

The Count seemed vaguely troubled but it was A'lekim who spoke.

"A gnome fire, I would hazard," he said. "They'll be dancing round the flames all night I shouldn’t wonder, the cheeky devils."

The Count spat.

"I blame it all on that Rumplestiltskin. Time was when the gnomes knew their place round here. Now they're on every trail and they seem to think they own the woods. And they don't. I do!"

His irritation was plain for all to see.

"Who's this Rumplestiltskin then?" Peter asked.

"R'eskyl'ah'in is his proper name," Tarragon answered, primly correct. "He's a sort of tribal leader or shaman of some type. They claim he comes from beyond the Great Elsewhere. They claim he can walk under the Old Roots and climb on moonbeams. They claim all sorts of wild things, but then our gnomes have always had a head for extravagant fancy. I'm afraid we don’t really know a lot about him, but he certainly seems to have agitated the local Rings."

"I'm Count Arcturus," Azbyc said in a low and, Peter thought, rather a sulky tone. "They owe me a proper measure of respect. Who's the Master of the Autumn Fire, eh? Who's the Guardian of the Cross Roads? A fat lot of notice they take of that these days…"

Cerylia smothered a laugh and managed a straight-faced bit of teasing.

"And what exactly is the proper place of these gnome 'Rings' then?" she asked in apparent innocence.

"The same as everything else in the Realm!" came the heated reply. "They're here to be decorative. They're here to liven up the woods. But this is too much of a good thing. I tell you, if that Rumplestiltskin doesn’t calm 'em down a bit, I'm gonna organise a little gnome hunt and see if we can’t make the Ring masters keep their dances off my paths!"

"All is not well in the Realm of the Gatekeeper of the Seven Ways," A'lekim intoned slowly and with mock solemnity.

It was too much for Cerylia and she couldn't stop herself from laughing aloud now. In all her travels she'd never heard of anyone having any trouble with gnomes. It was absurdly funny for some reason. Maybe she was slightly hysterical but she couldn’t control herself…

Peter liked it when she laughed. He noticed how the curve of her smile created cute little dimples at the top of her cheeks and her face blushed a delightful shade of pink. Under happier circumstances he guessed that she laughed a lot. His own nature was somewhat serious and even melancholy. He was powerfully attracted to this unaffected good humour which felt like a force of nature. It was, he thought, like the gentle warmth of early morning summer sunshine opening a host of daisies on a storm wet lawn; or a drug spreading benignly into the bloodstream like alcohol or a pain killer which made all the muscles he hadn’t even known were held in spasm, relax as if they were stepping into a bath of soothing foam.

Count Arcturus had rather a different reaction. 

"If you've quite finished," he managed at last, his dignity in tatters. "I suggest we finish our preparations for the night. You may find it all very comical I'm sure, but if the gnome Rings make you laugh there are other things in these woods which you wouldn’t find at all amusing, I can assure you! I shall post the guards!"

He left them in something of a huff and busied himself organising the camp. Cerylia was still smiling as she helped Peter to pitch their tent. It was the best joke she'd heard since she left the Stability Council to begin her anxious hunt. Trouble with gnomes indeed!

A large fire was lit at the centre of the clearing whilst Tarragon patrolled the edges of the forest casting a thin stream of yellow powder from a pouch at his waist. He waited until a group of men had returned from the stream with a plentiful supply of water before he completed the loop with a final few muttered words.

"Camp closed!" the Count shouted to his men.

"Just a precaution," Tarragon assured Peter and Cerylia. "We don’t want any nasty surprises in the night. Some of the residents here are more active in the dark. Don't step outside the circle, please."

 They fed on a stew of rabbit and carrots with brown bread and butter – simple fare but nourishing and Peter found it more enjoyable than the great feast of the previous night.

"We'll make time to hunt tomorrow," the Count said, "but for now we've got plenty of provisions."

After the meal A'lekim entertained the party with a selection of quiet ballads, plucked on a harp which had been carried from the castle slung on the back of his Kestervaal and accompanied by some sort of electronic sequencer. Most were unfamiliar but Peter recognised a spare version of the Strangler's song "Golden Brown". He took the opportunity for a few words with Cerylia guessing that they would not be overheard. There were so many questions in his mind he felt compelled to find some answers. He began with a simple one.

"How do you know where Kark and Eryndra have got to? I mean, how do you know we're even going in the right direction?"

"I don't," Cerylia said with disconcerting frankness. "At least I don’t know for certain but I'm reasonably confident I'm still on the trail. I have their Token and because Eryndra used it once and I have used it recently I can sense her presence even across Realms. That's one of the side effects of a Recorder Token. She's still in this Realm. I can tell that for certain. The way we are travelling the imprint seems to be getting stronger. I have to go on that.

"Unfortunately, I'll need to use the Token again soon. The imprint may be getting stronger but the effect is fading away. The best way to explain it, is that it's something like a musical tone getting louder whilst I'm gradually going deaf. If I don’t renew my contact I'll lose the effect altogether and then I'll lose her."

"Why do you say unfortunately?"

"Because you can only use a Recorder Token so many times and it gets harder each time. I'm not sure I can manage another session."

"What are you going to do when we catch them?"

"I don’t know that either. I'll think of something."

"Oh…"

"The thing is," she continued, "I have a feeling that the Count and I might be starting to share a common objective. To be honest I don’t really understand why the Agents haven’t already left the Autumn Country and moved on to the Proton King's Realms. I don’t think it's a co-incidence that the Count has decided to mount this expedition. If the Agents are still loitering here then they're up to no good."

"So the Count and his men might help us anyway."

"That's what I'm hoping."

"And what about…"

"Shhh"

Tarragon had come to join them and that put an end to his questions for the night. In the darkness of the tent he had to be content with his own speculations before he dropped into a deep sleep.

Next morning, the party broke camp at first light. Tarragon did something to reverse his ritual of the previous evening and then announced that it was safe to step beyond the circle. It was cooler than the day before; a thin mist was haunting the forest and had anointed the dying leaves with tear drops which spattered onto the traveller's heads as they passed under the eves of the trees again. Within the hour, however, the sun had burned the mist away and the air warmed up again. They were climbing gradually, the road describing curves through the forest which kept the gradient to a gentle ascent.

Peter and Cerylia found themselves riding next to the Kestervaal on which A'lekim sat. The minstrel rode with a Drover but where most animals carried a third person, his beast was laden only with additional musical equipment and one or two sinister looking weapons of his own.

Peter struck up a conversation with the half-breed and it was then that he learned some of the secrets of the insect sinukas and a little about the technical details of A'lekim's elaborate electronic equipment.

"Do you borrow lots of material from Earth?" he asked, thinking of the music he'd recognised.

A'lekim shrugged. "Some. It isn't all one way traffic, though. Songs travels freely and widely though the Realms - much more freely and widely than people when it comes to the Stable Worlds. You might be surprised to find how much of the music you imagine originated in your Realm has in fact drifted over from another reality. Perhaps even the songs I play."

"You know I still find all this hard to believe," Peter said at last.

"I'm not used to travelling between Realms," he continued knowing that he wasn't giving much away. "This place is just so completely alien. I'm taking it on trust but it's only provisional. How do I know it's not a dream? How do I know I'm not imagining it? How do I know it's real?"

A'lekim was silent for a moment and Peter thought he wasn't going to reply.

"This may be worth considering," he said at last.

"I learnt my trade at the Travelling Fair on Ussarack II. The Travelling Fair circles the towns and ports of the Inner Sea once a year spending no more than ten days in any one place. It's not everyone that's good enough to join the Fair. There's an entrance exam and you have to pay membership dues as well. They run it like a guild – artists specialise but as an apprentice you're expected to do your time helping out with all the other attractions. You get to do all kinds of things if you join the Fair.

"Anyway, when we were pitched at the desert city of Quantamazoo I was working in the fortune teller's tent. Quantamazoo is a good place for fortune telling. They like it there. They're a credulous lot. You do get the same questions, time after time though. I had queues of young men and women all agog for some sort of mystical revelation. And really all they wanted to know was the same thing. Does he/she love me? How do I know it's real? The same sort of mumbo jumbo question you're asking me.

"The Wise Witch Woman told me what to say. She'd been doing the job a long time. So do you know what I used to tell them Pendramon?"

"What?"

Peter felt something move on his left hand and glanced down. Suddenly an acute little pain shot through his skin slicing into the nerves and making him gasp. He'd been stung. He caught sight of one of the sinukas and instinctively his right hand reached out to swat it but the vicious little insect was too quick and swooped away before he could get to it.

"I used to tell them that if it hurts, it's real," A'lekim said. He was grinning broadly.

Just before midday they started to sink into a narrow ravine in order to cross a rugged little stream. Below the skyline, there was an outcrop of grey rock, which formed a sort of natural watchtower at the side of the path.

“Halt!”

The Counts booming voice already carried a faint echo from the valley although they had yet to descend very far. He wheeled his horse around and rode back down the column to Peter and Cerylia.

"We are only half an hour's ride from the Cross Roads my lady," he said. "If you wish to use your Token this might be a suitable location. The Cross Roads can be, shall we say,  polluted with interference from previous antisocial travellers. I wouldn’t recommend employing any Token close to the junction of the Roads. Personally, I stick to guarding the Cross Roads. I don't try anything clever there."

"Thank you for your consideration Count. I'll take your advice, if we have time. I'll need a place I can concentrate – somewhere safe for meditation and just a little way from the troops. I won't be going too far. Pendramon can stand watch for me whilst I am working."

About time I did something useful, Peter thought ruefully but he was pleased.

"May I witness the employment of the Token?" the Count said cautiously. "You might like to consider it as something of a favour in return for the hospitality you have enjoyed at my castle and the escort services you are now receiving. I'm curious you see. And perhaps you may even be able to help me?"

Cerylia frowned, obviously a little bit unhappy but unable to refuse graciously.

"You seem to have guessed my plans rather well, Count, and perhaps the time has passed for keeping unnecessary secrets between us. You're welcome."

"Good," the Count said. "Tarragon will accompany us. The men can begin hunting for our supper whilst we are away."

Peter noticed Cerylia's frown deepen when the Count invited Tarragon but she choose not to make an issue of it, although she'd clearly been manoeuvred into a situation she didn’t like.

Cerylia chose a large flat rock for the consultation. They had to scramble over three intervening boulders to reach it, but once on top, there was room for four people to sit cross-legged with comfort, commanding a good view of the track and the surrounding trees. It was hot under the noon day sun, as warm as Peter had ever felt in the Autumn Country.

Cerylia brushed the surface of the rock clean of dead leaves, but left a thin layer of hard green lichen mining its slow way into the uncompromising stone. Across the bare surface the lichen had yet to colonise, small circular fossils patterned the pale grey rock with the fragile white designs of ancient skeletons. Cerylia seemed pleased when she noticed them.

“They may help just a little,” she muttered under her breath. "A Recorder Token likes things like this."

She reached into her pack and drew forth the Token. The object was the size of a child’s head; a pure flawless dodecahedron in polished crystal planes which cut sharp shards out of the Autumn light.

"Ah, that's what I thought," the Count said reverently. "It's been a long time since I've seen one of these."

"They're not exactly common," Cerylia said dryly.

"And are they as interesting as they say?" asked Tarragon. He was leaning forward almost hungrily.

"Oh yes, fascinating. But I haven't got time for any of that. I need the thing to find Eryndra and Sunanon – that's all."

"What a shame," Tarragon breathed regretfully. "An opportunity of this nature shouldn’t be squandered lightly. If you waste your chance with a Recorder Token you may never get another one."

"I may never get another one anyway," said Cerylia. "I've used the thing twice already and I'm not so sure it's going to give me a third go."

She placed the Token carefully on the rock.

"You'll have to look after me," she said to the other three. "If it all works I'll be in a trance for a while. Maybe an hour or so. It takes that long to transcribe the fee. Once the fee's been accepted I only need to reconnect briefly with the source of the signal because I already know the basic pattern of the imprint. I should be able to come out within another few minutes and then we can continue."

"OK," said the Count dubiously. "I didn’t realise it took that long. It had better not be much longer. I want to be past the Cross Roads before nightfall."

"Is it dangerous?" Peter asked anxiously.

"Not really, so long as you're careful. Now I've waited long enough. Let's give this thing a try."

Cerylia touched two opposite planes of the Token with the flat of her hands and closed her eyes. The crystal began to glow with a deep blue radiance which flowed up her fingers and sparked somewhat alarmingly round her head, making long strands of her ash blonde hair wave out behind her as though it were caught in an unseen wind.

A spasm of concentration crossed her features and for two minutes the men watched in anxious silence as a variety of expressions struggled across her face. Slow beads of moisture began to run down her cheeks. Peter couldn’t tell if they were tears or sweat. Then it was over. With a gasp of disappointment she broke free, her hands peeling away from the crystal which cleared once again to a simple transparent shape.

"It's no good," she sighed. "I couldn’t negotiate a fee which the Token would accept."

She reached out blindly, taking hold of Peter's right hand and the Count's left. She seemed to draw strength from the contact. Peter felt a small nerve shock from her pulse and he locked his fingers round her own in a gesture of reassurance.

"I don’t understand," he said. "What is this fee all about then?"

Cerylia was exhausted and the Count remained silent. It was Tarragon who answered.

"Recorder Token's have their own agenda and you don't get their services for free. They store memories; sight, sound, smell, taste, touch and emotion in complete and utterly faithful detail. You can play them back – pick almost any individual from the archive and sample their life. And the Token's are old – very old – maybe even as old as the Original Architects. Certainly no one knows who created them. Accepted wisdom says that there are extracts in the crystals from times so long forgotten, even the Old Powers hadn't settled their territories. I'm not sure about that. In any case the ancient lives are locked away and there's nothing much accessible before the Second Coalescence of the Stable Worlds. Even so, you can imagine how fascinating this material is to a historian – not to mention to the casual voyeur. Replaying the memories inside is said to be as vivid as experiencing them the first time around, probably more so in fact, because in the trance state of connection to the Token they can be recalled at high rates and the mind is rendered capable of absorbing long samples in a short space of time.

"But there is the fee. That's why a Token can't be used time and again by the same person.

"You see, the Token does a trade. It will let you access its contents provided you will let it copy up a portion of your own memories in payment. Generally speaking it wants a generous slice too – several years at a gulp - and it won't necessarily settle for any old thing. They say that the Tokens can be very picky. So to begin with you have to negotiate the terms. The Token rifles through your brain and decides if it wants anything, and if so, how much. Provided you accept, it will transcribe the agreed memories and provide you with access to an equal length of memory from the archive. And naturally it won't take the same memories twice so unless you've lived a long, full and active life you won't get more than three or four goes. It seems that Cerylia has had her final chance - at least until she's old enough to have added sufficient new memories for another attempt. It would appear that the Token isn’t interested in what's left that it hasn't already taken."

"So what's to be done?"

"We may have to make some educated guesses," Cerylia said. She seemed to be recovering from her ordeal now. "And I have to hope we are right."

"Couldn't I try the Token?"

The words had slipped out of his mouth so quickly Peter was almost surprised to find that he had said them.

Cerylia looked at him sharply, an unspoken question waiting to be asked.

"Or perhaps I could assist you?" Tarragon said smoothly. "It would provide you with the confirmation you need."

Peter felt Cerylia's grip tighten on his hand.

"Pendramon will try," she said.

Peter felt his heart squeeze out a thick beat.

Now I've done it, he thought. If only I knew what I'd done!

"But my lady, surely it would be advisable for an expert to work with the Token!" Tarragon protested. He was clearly very annoyed.

"Although I have never used a Recorder before, I have studied the lore of such things and I am experienced in the intricacies of the Laws of Form that apply to this Realm. With due respect to Pendramon, I do not believe that he can match my skills. You may need them in interpreting the Token…."

Cerylia sighed again.

"No. I won't need any 'interpretations' from the Token. I thought I'd explained. I'm just using it as a tracking device, that's all. I'm sorry if that offends your sensibilities but that's what I need at the moment – just a tracking device. And Pendramon can use the Token for tracking quite as well as anyone else.

"Look, I know how much you want to get your hands on the Token, Tarragon. And you too Count. I'm surprised you aren't making a case for using it yourself."

"Well, since you mention it…"

"Enough. It's my Token by forfeit right from the Moot and I've decided. Pendramon is my companion on this quest and Pendramon will attempt to use the Token. Now I take it neither of you actually want to try to take the Token from me by force? Good. That would be unwise as you must know if you have studied the lore of Recorder Tokens."

"Alright.. alright," the Count laughed. "No need to be so sensitive. I wouldn’t even dream of touching your precious Token without your permission. Of course, later we can always hope you might be gracious enough to grant us the honour? For now, it will be as you say. Pendramon will try the Token."

There had been fifteen more minutes of preparation; fifteen minutes in which Cerylia was able to give him only a few additional details about the use of the Token from her own experience. Then the brief interval was over.

Peter's mouth was dry. There might be no danger but there was a cost. Surprisingly, when she had finished all her instructions Cerylia bent over to brush his hair from his eyes and gave him a quick little kiss on the forehead.

Time to begin.

He touched the crystal in the way which Cerylia had shown him, feeling the smooth coolness of it and the precise way that each face gave way to another. For an instant nothing happened. He began to review the things she had told him to expect, remembering her descriptions and her cautions. He was acutely conscious of his surroundings – the three others on the rock – the silent witness of the mute fossils  - the slow life of moss and lichen – the dry rustling of leaves in the hot sunshine.

Now, Peter thought. It will be now.

And it was.

At first, it felt as though he were standing under an enormous hot waterfall, the force of it pounding in his ears, drumming on his skull and drowning out the noises all around him. He was cooking slowly, as though the water had bludgeoned its way inside his head and now sought to flood every cavity of his being with scalding liquid. He was dimly aware of the bright blue arc light of the crystal shining in front of him and of an electric glow which was shuttling over his arms and his head.

There was a ringing in his ears and after a while it started to get painful. Just before he was thinking of pulling his hands away from the crystal the sensation stopped with a final rushing which left all his cells feeling as if they had been scoured raw by the draining of some enormous invading flood.

The Token had completed its initial invasion and now moved on to a second phase. Unfortunately, this phase was no more pleasant than the last. Peter felt as through grubby fingers and thumbs were pushing index cards around inside his mind. Something was sorting though his memories with the habit and casual disinterest of a librarian cataloguing the contents. The Token seemed to have little respect for the feelings of its subject. Peter was starting to get a headache.

"Careful!" he wanted to shout. "That's my mind you're messing about with!"

But he was unable to speak aloud and the remorseless investigation continued for what seemed like hours though it could only have been a few minutes in reality.

Two perfect recollections in split screen.

He was balanced precariously on the bright blue bicycle at the end of the old driveway.

 "If you peddle harder it will be easier," his Dad was saying. But how could it be easier? It took all his effort to keep the bike from wobbling wildly even at this slow speed. What would it be like if the bike were going faster? He'd crash, he knew he would. At this speed he could stick his leg out and stop himself from falling when the bike toppled over but if it were any faster he'd be bound to hurt himself. He hadn't even wanted a bike – not really. But he didn’t want to disappoint his Dad! It was unfair. He just couldn’t do it. He pushed hard on the pedal – a gesture which was more frustration than anything else. The bike leapt forward and he instinctively corrected the handlebar That was almost fun and just for a moment there…

"That's it. Like that," his Dad said.

 He pushed again on the pedal; again and again and again, harder and harder… He was doing it! He was riding a bike! He was riding a bike properly! And his Dad was right. It was so easy when you knew how.

The shot hit the crossbar and bounced down on to the line. For a second or two there were defenders flailing all around. One of them managed to make contact but it was only a half contact and the ball sliced into the path of the on coming striker who gleefully stuck it into the roof of the net.

The silence  from the home fans was worse than the shouts of protest he'd become accustomed to.

"That's it then, mate. They're relegated again!"

Tony was sitting next to him and he had a look of grim satisfaction. It was a rotten end to a rotten season and Peter knew just how he felt. Somehow it wouldn’t have been right if the team had escaped the punishment they deserved. Relegation was the perverse icing on an upside down cake.

"I'm not even staying to the end of this. Let's get a pint. There's always next season."

"Yeah – there's always next season, mores the pity…"

"Will you trade between these moments?"

The voice inside his head was passionless, just as Cerylia had said. Peter felt a fierce blast of exultation. He had passed the first hurdle. The Recorder Token wanted his memories. He could close the deal.

"Let's trade"

He only had to think his acceptance for the Token to begin uploading.  It was a long segment of time and Peter knew that if he ever got another chance to use the crystal it would not be until he was an old man. The Recorder Token was taking a slice which was close to thirty years of his life, from that first bike when he was only seven years old, to the end of Town's last relegation season only a few short months ago.

Peter had expected the uploading process to be a profound experience and it was. The Token had the facility to wring out remarkably obscure memories which Peter hadn’t even known he possessed. It could get into the back corners of his brain and pull out little used archives of under recalled events, pushing them through his mind to purify them against cross referenced images. There were people from school he hadn’t thought about in twenty years but suddenly his mind's eye was presenting them as sharply as if he'd only seen them yesterday.  The most remarkable thing about the process was that the Token seemed able to get at a primary source layer of detail which went below the conscious level and it could perform some remarkable corrections for the inevitable aberrations produced by time. At first this was fascinating, on a trivial and mundane level.

I'd forgotten it was Uncle Matthew who bought me that compass! And I'd forgotten that domino set altogether.

I could have sworn that that kite was thrown away  at the seaside after the strings got tangled and sandy,  but now that I think of it, it did get ripped on the beech tree in the park.

Did I really wear that horrible school tie on the first day of my summer holidays? I hated it.

There were many more of these harmless little revelations which were of absolutely no interest to anyone else but inevitably compelling for Peter.

After a while, however, his reaction to the cleaning up process changed slowly from enthralment into distaste. Cerylia had warned him about this.

"You might not like the upload process," she said. "It can be uncomfortable. Not physically uncomfortable in the way that the initial contact with the crystal is, but mentally uncomfortable.

"We all create a fiction out of our lives;  a story to give us the feeling of progress and to make sense of where we're going. Everyone does it. It's what it is to be human.

"The Token understands that, but it trades for the raw material and it mines the deepest veins of memory where you've locked things up you don’t necessarily want to recall. And the Token is only peripherally interested in the selective amnesia and down right falsities which we all insert into our memories. Sometimes you're aware of these things and at other times not so aware but when confronted by the Token it's said that every single person is surprised at how much they've modified their past in order to suit their own internal story lines."

Cerylia was right. It wasn't just the horrible events he'd suppressed – the day the family dog Patch was run over by a lorry outside his house  - a period when he'd been bullied at school in his early teens – the real terror that he'd felt on  learning to swim when he'd been sure he'd drown every week for two terms – the pains of early romantic rejections. It wasn't just that these came back with all their vivid details it was also that some of the good things he'd inflated into significant highlights now seemed to have lot their lustre. In some cases he was horrified to find that they were built on outright falsehoods. This was hard to take.

After a while Peter was tempted to stop watching. He knew that it was possible to enter a period of mindless mediation whilst the upload was proceeding. Part of him was even now saying,

"I don’t have to watch this. After all, I was there in the first place."

This part of him even managed to crack a joke in the voice of 'disgusted of Tunbridge Wells'.

"This has got to be the world's worst repeat. I mean, what do we pay our licence fee for? You get your life once, and then you get it all again. And it's not even as if it was much good the first time round! I blame cutbacks at the BBC. This would never have happened under the old governors."

Once he'd managed this stupid joke, Peter cheered up and the temptation to abort the playback receded. There was no way he was going to meditate his way out of this. It was his responsibility to face the truth and look it in the eye and that was all there was to it. And of course it wasn't all bad. There were some nice little bonus memories of good things he'd not thought about for ages. The frequency of these actually increased over time and Peter did wonder if this was significant. Perhaps over recent years he'd concentrated on the down side of things a bit too much. Perhaps he'd become too much of a pessimist even. If so, then the Token was providing him with a string of salutary reminders to rebalance his outlook.

Then the upload was finished and it was time for the real work to begin.

He was standing in a lobby, the cavernous entrance hall to some huge library. This was his reward. In front of him stretched long corridors of stacked shelves, whilst high above, dark green lamps cast only a faint light onto the ruby red wooden floor.

A small part of his awareness was back in the Autumn Country with Cerylia, the Count and Tarragon as the three travellers waited impatiently for him to emerge from his trance. The crystal was glowing a deep green now and his guardians would be aware that he had successfully paid his fee to the Token.

The larger part of his awareness was in thrall to that Token now.

"How may I help you?"

It was the voice of the Token – the same even and pleasant tone which had negotiated the upload. But now the Token was acting in the role of librarian, and there was so much to read…

"Id like to see the hall of the living, please."

This was what Cerylia had told him to say.

"Very well. Follow the pattern of lights on the floor please."

When Peter looked down he could see a thin white line which had come into being at the librarian's biding. It led him into a reading room illuminated by bright yellow lanterns. There was the faintest of hissing and popping, as if from hidden gas pipes.

"There are records from individuals who have uploaded memory segments which are still in use in the form of the original master copy.  In your terms, they are still alive."

Peter didn’t have time to consider the curious phrasing of this speech.

The memories were stored in crystals which mirrored the shape of the Token itself. They were laid out on a central table. Illusory crystals within crystals, Peter thought, shaking his head as though it could clear his confusion.

"These records are awaiting archiving. They are arranged in chronological order. Your own contribution is not here yet.  The records are still undergoing processing."

A strange thought came over Peter which for some reason, simply hadn’t occurred to him before. He'd been so busy thinking about Cerylia's instructions and finding Eryndra that he'd forgotten something. Cerylia's own memories must be held in this very room – the ones she'd used to pay for her earlier tracking ability.

"If a person makes two records, do you keep two crystals?" Peter asked.

"They are integrated into a single copy."

Peter walked over to the last crystal on the table. So this must be it.

"This record", he said. "Is this the record for someone called Cerylia?"

"No. The primary name of the author of this record is Kamnisa Nadjen"

"Oh."

Peter wondered why he was disappointed but then he remembered something. Kamnisa was the name the Count had called Cerylia when they'd first met him. At that moment Peter felt an incredibly powerful urge to look at this record, rather than the one he had been sent to locate. It was a voyeuristic desire which shook him to the core.

And perhaps after all he should look at her life for his own security? Here he was, in a very weird world, trusting his survival to this woman he knew so little about. Surely, it would only be prudent to find out more about her?

But even as he thought this, he knew in his heart that it was a rationalisation of the worst sort. Of course he wanted to look at Cerylia's life. That was only natural. He was more than a little in love with her already.

But he couldn't. To taste her memories without permission would be a terrible violation – almost a form of rape, he realised. It would be a sin, and if he gave in to his desire, he'd be unable to face Cerylia again without a permanent knowledge of his shame.

Something else was suddenly clear to him. Cerylia must have known that he'd come to this juncture. Of course! It was obvious now. That was presumably why she hadn't wanted Tarragon or the Count to enter this library. If she was keeping secrets from them, then apart from any ethical or moral issues, if they chose to read her like a book they might find out all sorts of things which could jeopardise her mission and her life. She hadn't wanted to take the chance that they might exercise political as well as academic interests in this library.

So it had to be Peter. And she'd trusted him! Peter felt suddenly weak as he understood the unspoken question she'd been asking when he offered to make this mental journey. It was a little breathtaking. He'd been flattered just to be asked to guard her whilst she used the Token. This was something of a different order altogether. He wasn't sure he'd ever been trusted with anything so precious before; or so vulnerable. All he had to do was to reach out and ask the librarian to play the crystal back to him…

Time to prove her trust. Time to work.

"I'd like to see the records for Lacheema," Peter said, giving the librarian the name under which Eryndra's memories had been archived.

Peter didn’t feel quite the same about perusing the memories of someone he had never met. Morally, perhaps there wasn't any difference between reading Cerylia's memories and reading the memories of any other living person. Perhaps he was just being squeamish with Cerylia? No. There was a difference and it was a basic kind of survival justification, thing. If he trusted Cerylia, Eryndra was the enemy. They needed to find her before Cerylia could save Sunanon and he could return to Earth. If this was voyeurism, it was necessary voyeurism.

Inside the dream library in the reading room that was the hall of the living, Peter touched the crystal the librarian had indicated. It was exactly the same action which he had used in the real world to trigger the Token in the Autumn Country. But this time, instead of the painful waterfall, the experience was much more soothing. In the real world, the colour of the crystal changed to red and the onlookers knew that Peter was replaying a memory chain.

Peter had just taken another step into a different awareness.

He was waking to bright sunlight – white desert sunlight streaming through thin lancelet windows. He stretched feeling comfortable and warm - and very female.  That was extremely disconcerting!  His body weight was distributed in all the wrong places. Or should he say her body weight? Best not to think about it too much.

Eryndra reached out and took a cup of white wine from the table by the bed. A tall man with long black hair tied back in a pony tail entered the room through some scented yellow curtain hangings

"Good morning, darling," Eryndra said ."Are you ready for the trial today?"

And so for a little more than seven subjective years, Peter occupied the memories of a woman whose scheming cruelty continuously amazed him, even from the inside. After a while he managed to adapt to the sexual differences – it was best when he didn't think about it, but sometimes a little reflection was unavoidable and he didn’t want to adapt too readily. He found Eryndra's voracious sexual appetite disturbing and had to fast forward over several segments reminding himself that he had his own body to get back to after this was over.

But it was the nature of Eryndra's power plays that were the really disturbing thing. She used people as instruments in her games, moving them round the Court of the Kitaxian King like chess pieces, insinuating herself into the councils of princes and rebels alike and betraying both sides with equal ease and lack of conscience.

By the time the memory segment came to an end, Eryndra had been declared as Empress of the Kitaxian Ocean. She had built up a large network of Agents spying for her in many Realms and was planning a raid on some hapless world called Hexapon IV. Peter was quite glad not to witness it. He'd seen more than enough of Eryndra and if he ever met her in the flesh he would be very, very careful.

"You have used only a quarter of your allotment," the librarian said. "Is there anything else which you would like to see?"

Despite the unpleasant nature of much of the Eryndra recording, there was an addictive quality to reading these records. If he left the crystal now he would probably never get another chance to absorb such perfectly preserved experiences in this unique way.  He had to stay but perhaps he should look somewhere less morally questionable. The dead could have no objection to being replayed inside his head. It was, after all, a strange kind of immortality. And Peter understood that everyone in this archive had given their memories voluntarily and had received the same payment as himself. So he had no real qualms about continuing to look through the available lives.

"I will confine myself to the dead now," he said. "And I think I'll stick to men from now on."

It was difficult enough, being immersed in someone else's memory. It was better not to add to the problems unnecessarily.

Then he said something which the librarian rarely heard.

"What do you recommend?"

When Peter finally broke with the Token it was late in the afternoon. The first thing he saw when he emerged  from the groggy haze of post hypnotic reaction was Cerylia's face looking up at him with concern. He managed a smile of reassurance and squeezed her hand, hoping that she would understand from this that he had not invaded the privacy of her soul whilst he was communing with the Token.

"Where the hell have you been!" the Count complained. "You were only supposed to go in and find a signature. It shouldn’t have taken that long?"

"Come on," Cerylia said, defending Peter. "Using a Token might be a 'once in a life time' experience. You said yourself that it was a shame to waste it."

"It bloody well will be a 'once in a life time' experience if we don’t get past the Cross Roads before night fall!" the Count grumbled.

"This isn’t the reading room of the British Museum you know! This is a military expedition and until or unless you decide you're going somewhere else, I'm responsible for your safety. So if you can try and refrain from popping off on any more long winded mental jaunts we might get somewhere in time to take the necessary action

"Come on! We've wasted enough time, let's get moving."

It took rather longer than the Count's estimate of half an hour's travel to gather the men and complete the remaining distance to the Cross Roads and the sun was already setting by the time the party reached the infamous nexus at the centre of the Autumn Country. The Count wasn't happy. He had no intention of camping at a site of such ill omen and before darkness fell he wanted to be at least another half an hour further on.

The Cross Roads was indeed a desolate location. For a mile on all sides the forest had been burnt back to leave a sort of withered heath, colonised by bilbery and heather near the trees but rapidly growing wetter towards the centre where boggy pools sprouted spindly brown rushes and livid green sphagnum mosses sprawled over the spongy peat. A few dead birch stumps stuck up into the growing gloom like ragged palisades. This was the place where the North-South road met the West-East highway on which they had been travelling.

A full harvest moon had risen into the anaemic twilit sky and washed both Roads with silver, tainted by a sickly yellow pallor. Peter was sure that there had been no moon at all on the night before and he said as much to Tarragon.

"Very true," the sage answered. "Sidereal time has little meaning here. I am something of an astronomer myself but I do not expect to count the days by the passage of the stars. Not in the Autumn Country. You see, one of the many strange things about the Autumn Country is that the Laws of Form are somewhat loosely cast. I'm afraid the Autumn Country doesn’t really have a very good grasp of the discipline of linear time. You could say it's altogether hazy about the concept. Sometimes everything slips forward by ten days and sometimes it bounces back again by a couple. All rather slapdash really, although you usually don’t notice it because it mostly happens at night.

"Oh, I believe in the end all the missing pieces get filled in sooner or later but not necessarily in the 'right' order if you see what I mean. It's just one of those things you have to get used to I'm afraid."

Three sinister shapes had grown long shadows as the party rode up to the meeting of the ways. Cerylia shivered and not just from the growing cold.

The largest shape looked like a giant frog squatting on its haunches, nearly twice as tall as the Kestervaals and their riders. On first catching sight of it, Peter felt a shock of revulsion and fear, convinced that it was some monstrous beast, but as they drew closer he picked up a dull metallic shine reflecting the sinking sunlight and rising moonlight in red and yellow and he realised from the thing's complete lack of motion and the indifference of his fellow travellers that it was only a sculpture of some sort. 

The other two shapes were more readily identifiable but no less unpleasant. Two gibbets occupied the opposite diagonal of the Cross Roads and a long lean raggedy skeleton twisted slowly in the wind below each cross bar.

"The Owner insisted that I make an example of the previous incumbents," the Count said. "There's not much left of the brothers now…"

It was true. The bones had been picked almost white by insects and carrion birds. Even so, they were still a stomach churning sight.

"There's no need to look at me in quite such horror, Cerylia! By the time these two were strung up, the occupants of the bodies had realised it wasn't wise to stick around and been Spirit Lifted out of the Realm. They're still on the run from the Owner and they left me these bodies in a vegetative coma  - just empty shells."

"So what was the point of hanging them?" Cerylia asked, her continued disapproval clear from the tone of her voice.

The Count shrugged. "Like I said, there are certain ritual courtesies which keep the Owner happy. It was just a formality, that's all, but we all know the importance of the Laws of Form don’t we?

"Well, except perhaps for Pendramon and I'm not sure how much he knows of anything."

"I know a lot more now I've used the Token, thank you," Peter said. He was getting just a tiny bit fed up of being treated like a complete idiot and he enjoyed the minor jealous irritation he guessed his remark would provoke in the Count and Tarragon.

"Good," said the Count with some asperity. "Then perhaps you may have realised that this is not a good place to camp for the night.  I intend to move my troops away from here in the very near future. Since Cerylia has trusted you with the Token, it's up to you to find out if the two of you will be coming with us. I suggest you get on with it!"

Peter got down from the Kestervaal and walked into the centre of the crossroads. His efforts with the Token had sensitised him to Eryndra. He could feel her presence in the Autumn Country like a stain spreading through water. But where was she exactly. That was impossible to tell.

"Concentrate on the signal from Eryndra. Take a while to really focus in at the centre, then walk a little way down each road," Cerylia said.

"And what's supposed to happen?"

"Normally minor differences in the distance between the two of you wouldn't be noticeable, but the Cross Roads is a special place. Any cross roads is a special place and this one more than most. All decisions are sharpened here."

Cerylia was searching for a way to explain it.

 "On your world they might describe this place as a locus where the quantum wave function collapses under observation. The Laws of Form always amplify directional effects at junctions. I'm counting on that to help you track her."

Peter crouched down on his haunches to give his full attention to the task. There was a sudden loud metallic click. Startled, he jumped to his feet again and turned round, to see that a pair of square metal shutters had rolled up high in the face of the giant frog statue. It was as if two eyelids had been flicked back so that the beast could stare full at him. Behind the lids a green fire glowed malevolently and a dull groaning rasp coughed out of the statue, rumbling incomprehensibly, like broken words which had been left to rust at the bottom of a cavernous sore throat.

The Count spurred his horse and rode over to the statue. To Peter's amazement he began to kick it furiously, even going so far as to draw his sword and beat the thing with the flat of the blade, the sound of metal on metal clanging loudly.

"Keep your fat trap shut, you useless heap of junk!" he shouted. "You've had your chance! You're scrap metal and you know you are! Go back to sleep and don’t bother to wake up again or I swear I'll have you broken into pieces here and now."

After a short while of this extraordinary display accompanied by a few more choice words, the eyelids suddenly clicked shut and the rumbling stopped.

The Count was breathing hard.

"Sorry about that," he said, sounding curiously contrite. "I really must get that thing moved and melted down. It's one of the Watchers  I had installed for the Brothers. Needless to say, I don’t use it myself! I prefer to rely on more traditional methods."

He waved his hand vaguely over towards the gibbets. Peter noticed a couple of crows perched on the top of the wooden frames and wondered if either of them were the same bird which had interrupted their feast at the castle.

It took another five minutes for him to settle down again so that he could properly appreciate the balance of the signal. He walked straight over the Cross Roads for a hundred paces. No obvious change. He went back to the centre and turned round. Then he tried the right hand fork. Within a dozen steps he could feel the difference. The signal was definitely getting fainter! Which meant that if he turned in the opposite direction… Yes! Eryndra was there, down that road!

"This way," Peter said confidently, looking up at Cerylia and the Count.

"Ah."

The Count smiled widely, his suspicions confirmed.

"We are to be travelling together for a little longer then, my friends. And unless I miss my guess our destination will be the same, although you do not know where it is yet. Well, well, well. Let us team up then and ally ourselves.

"We go North!"

He waved his sword for dramatic effect and pointed up the road.

"Onwards to the borders of the Autumn Country. Onwards to defend the Barriers. Onwards to the Temple Of November!"