Deathstalker 05 - Deathstalker Destiny

the walls from both sides; barbed spears that would have skewered him if he'd been an instant slower. Random smiled and shook his head, and padded on. Kids' stuff.
    In swift succession, he encountered several more such: Trapdoors that opened onto deep pits with spiked floors waiting at the bottom. Guns and gasses from concealed vents in the walls. Even a few old-fashioned bear traps with vicious metal jaws. Lionstone warned him about some, but not about others. Probably just to see him go through his paces. Make sure he hadn't got soft. At least the exercise warmed him up a bit. Next came the ultrasonics, the subsonics, and various nasty light shows that would have disorientated, brainwashed, or brainburned any normal burglar into a drooling idiot. Random just walked right through them. By the time he finally got to the stasis field, he was actually starting to feel a little bored, but the sight of the opaque gray energy field blocking off the end of the corridor jolted him out of that mood in a hurry.
    Stasis fields were trouble.
    Inside a stasis field, time does not move. Whatever lay within was preserved for as long as the field continued, like an insect in a drop of amber. You couldn't affect the field by any physical means because, strictly speaking, the field wasn't really there. It just marked the real world interface between the two time periods, within and without. Random once asked a renowned scientist to
    explain that, and the best part of an hour and one serious headache later, Random was still none the wiser. Which was a pity, because it meant he had no idea whatsoever on how to get through the field before him. Particularly if, as he suspected, the field was the result of old Empire technology. Random stared at the field, frowning, for some time.
    Do we have a problem? said Lionstone, finally.
    "Possibly," said Random. "How did you get in, when you needed to?"
    Handprint and retina scan, along with a voice code, via the security panel to your right. Dram set it up for me. The original Dram. But since I no longer have access to my body… Need I add that the system is designed to crash and scramble itself if tampered with?
    "Handprint. Retina scan. Voice code." Random glared at the security panel. He could do a lot of things, but shapechanging wasn't one of them. And Lionstone's late departed body had been destroyed long ago. Ritually cremated, while the crowds cheered themselves hoarse, just in case anyone got any smart ideas about cloning. The security panel itself looked to be state of the art and then some.
    Random was pretty sure even Hazel would have had real trouble with it. He thought hard, scowling fiercely till his brow ached. Something was stirring at the back of his thoughts; something someone had said earlier… in the sea of dreams.
    Hazel had said that all Time could be accessed through the undermind. Past, present, and future. So if he sent his mind back into the sea of dreams, and chose when to come out… He shivered abruptly, and it wasn't from the cold. Get this wrong, lose control, and he could become unstuck in Time, drifting helplessly back and forth for all eternity… He'd taken risks before when he needed to, but nothing like this. But then, it wasn't as if he had a choice. So
    he took a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and dived down into his own mind, through the backbrain and into the undermind.
    He stayed just long enough to orientate himself (the endless sea, the brooding presence of Shub, the huge black sun of the Recreated), and then he concentrated on defining his position in Time. Many times before he'd felt his thoughts moving in strange directions, when he used his Maze powers, but this was something new, and altogether terrifying. Past, present, and future all howling at once, flashing past, stuttering and repeating, branching endlessly into varied possibilities. He saw old friends, long dead, and familiar faces, wars on Mistworld and Golgotha, saw himself fighting in crowded streets, fighting and bleeding, winning and dying, over and over again. Owen Deathstalker came to him and tried to tell him something important, and then was gone away, swept away by the relentless pressure of Time.
    Random screamed. He could feel himself unraveling, torn in an infinite number of directions at once. Random made himself concentrate on the crypt, that bubble held in Time by ancient energies, focusing all his will and need into a single implacable thrust. Time roared and threw