A flash of a pate, of a pink pate, he thought: a pate, maybe not pallid, a pate, a flashing light off one, not a coupon so much as a – bald head, there was a bald head, a bald man, no sign of the wild eyes yet, but a flash of a pate of a bald-head – but -

An arced passageway, hewn from the granite itself - it had been through it; through there, indeed, that the flash of a pate, as of a bald pate – had - Art made out for it – flashed.

Immediately plunged into impenetrable tunnel darkness, Art was in a world of memories no less opaque, no less connected to events or circumstances that -

What tunnel was he in?

He had been in a tunnel.

He saw a turquoise mouth, he saw a passageway, a tunnel, like he'd said, a tunnel, and - it was a trapezoid, somehow also too, and he'd fought, almost died in fact – but was it him – and now he was dragging himself out and through it into the gnarled remains of a turquoise forest, a forest not just but of – it was memory – or even lies - and the trees were running, they weren't obviously running - circling him too -

- he threw an axe - but he hated axes, not here, he wasn't – other - himself – other – he was that man – a Prince – what? Something else, something else was happening now, too, no longer the forest, no longer even the – back the - back and he turned, slashing the axe against, whipped thrown pulling-cloth that threw – and he was- through:

Thrown like a being not even a man; through a tunnel, again, a, passageway and repeated.

oh how – oh how -

It repeated.

Out!

The passageway opened, he turned, he saw, a gate -

A bald man.

Yes.

Wild staring eyes.

Bald pate -

“Bit -”

Vast space. Chequerboard tiles. Black and white. On each black square a statue. Women. Beautiful, armless, women, no they had – some with more appendages than normal, than normally women were endowed with – three arms, three breasts – two heads, all beautiful, nevertheless the features. One turned, ran – no statue – direct into the corner faster than – faster than Art had seen anyone run – smack in the corner, absorbed by it; disappeared: the corners of the room, this revealed to him, were portals or passageways, this was the case and these statues - some of whom really women not formed in the usual fashion - they ran square into them, not annihilated out of space, out of time, out of existence in this space -

One of them -

He turned/he screamed. The black square, absent for a moment; unoccupied for a moment, still there, out the corner of his eye he saw her, transfixed, staring a corner, screaming in terrible, terrible agonies, but his eyes lit on her and she was, merely a garish blue and green painted statue with yellow lips.

Statues painted garish in colours: the dreamed apparitions fantasised out the Orach of Mending.

Art, among the statues now, a maze made from them, passageways the bodies of apparitions, flesh or stone he could not really tell. He'd stop, he'd test – but, he'd seen -

a bald man among them.

There – between two three-breasted women, crowns of antlers atop their skulls, giant breasts, and one little in the middle, spilling over silk togas, silk; an approximation.

Staring at him.

A little pokey bald fellow, togaed up himself, belted through at the waist, sandals. Hair round the sides painted green. Obviously merely a man pretending to be a statue he – ran square into the corner opposite, directly past Art, he snatched – something ran through his fingers that he wasn't – tuned in the Orach of Mending, nothing extra, just trailing colours behind, and decided, fuck it - he'd be warned, an organ, otherwise he'd be – warned - some appendage or other would warn if a corner was annihilation.

Art ran square in it, merely the stone corner of the room of a vast space in a weird palace of games and apparitions, but running he -

Smack/square into a new place, that on the surface; he didn't hope at all was annihilation.

He stared.

“- A quest, is it?”