But why didn't she move on? Suddenly Blake knew. In treating a patient, Trevorite psychologists sometimes froze certain place-times in his past in order to study them in greater detail. The girl in Blake's mind had either frozen the Dubhe 4 place-time herself, then, or had hired a professional to do the job.
Clearly she had something up her sleeve about which Blake knew nothing.
He went on, not quite so confidently now. He had proceeded less than a dozen steps when he saw the brooch. It was lying in the dust just to the left of one of Sabrina's footprints, and it threw back the light of the torch in glittering shards that hurt his eyes. Disbelievingly, he picked it up. The Erinyes clustered around him to see what he had found. They were still wet and dishelved and reeked of the piercing odor of decayed algae. They looked anything but happy.
Blake turned the brooch over in the palm of his hand. The inscription on the back leaped up and smote him right between the eyes, and he staggered and nearly fell. To Deirdre Eldoria, he read, from Nathan Blake.
He stood there numbly for a long while, not thinking—unable to think. Finally he slipped the brooch into his pocket and moved on.
He was trembling when he reached the door of Eldoria's hut. The footprints led straight up to the threshold and came to an end. Diffidently he touched the primitive knob, turned it and pushed the door open. He stepped inside and closed the door in the faces of the three Erinyes. The remembered anteroom seemed smaller and more sordid than the original, but he knew that it was really no different. He had remembered it accurately enough. It was he who was different, not the room.
Opposite the door, Deirdre Yesterday sat immobile before the arras. Equally immobile, Blake Past sat facing her. Deirdre Yesterday's lips were parted in the midst of uttering a soundless word. The Anabasis lay open on her lap.
Blake Present found it difficult to breathe. The difficulty stemmed from a physical as well as an emotional source. Someone was burning incense.
He wiped his forehead. Then, bracing himself, he walked over to the arras, parted it and stepped into the inner room.