Sny was a town he had a lot of memories of, but entering it almost out of the blue, even though he knew he was close, felt like something closer to a dream than a reality. Everything looked much the same as the st time he’d left it, but in the half-light of su, it seemed that muagical, and he basked in it. The fact that the little town was still here despite all the strange pces he’d been to was a fort.

  There on the hill were the lights of Baron Corwin’s manor, and all the other homes were just as he remembered them. There was no evidence of resurgent goblins or ret strife, either, and Simon smiled at that. Sometimes, it felt like he wasn’t really making a difference, but having seen what this pce looked like orip where Gregor only had one arm, he knew he’d really moved the needle.

  This pce very easily could have turned into another Crowvar, he thought to himself.

  For a sed, he sidered whether or not he could go ba time far enough to undo all the damage the Raithewaits caused, but he really couldn’t. While he wasn’t sure exactly how much time passed between level zero and level seven, which is where he spent the most time in the pce, he was fairly sure it was a decade or less, and Varten would already be an awful snot-nosed brat by then.

  As he walked to the inn and tied Daisy up outside, he ughed at the image. Finally, a version of the man I’d feel bad about killing, he thought to himself.

  Simo iill trying to puzzle out the exact timeline involved here, so he reacted a little slowly when the owner and two of the patrons looked at him like they’d seen a ghost. He stood there a moment, trying to decide what the problem was. Old man Wonick had never been able to see his aura before, so that shouldn’t cause a problem now. “Is there a problem?” he asked finally.

  “Oh, no, nothing,” the man said, breathing an obvious sigh of relief. “I just thought you was a ghost, is all. Had a good man die retly, and you’re well - you could say that the two of you had more than a passing resembnce.”

  “You say that again,” Norm said. He was one of the regurs who pretty much lived on his bar stool when he wasn’t w the silver mine for the Baron. Simon had spent plenty of nights gambling with him over dice with rge beers and small stakes.

  “Oh, well, I’m sorry to hear that,” Simon said dumbly as he put the pieces together. “I’m just a peddler traveling south. Nothing more than that.”

  “Gd to hear it,” the innkeeper said, spping the bar with both hands in an effort to seem more lively and shake off his shock. “What I get you, Mister…”

  “Uhhhm, you call me Jake,” he said, quickly trung his st wasn’t the most creative decision, but then he was still struggling to take in the news.

  I was only days or weeks away from running into myself? Simon was pletely stunned.

  Still, he ordered a beer and a pte of whatever was hot and made small talk with the other men. His mouth moved, but it was on autopilot while his mind raced. He was on level six now, and the goblin level he usually traveled from was level three, so they had to be at least two or three years apart, right? Had he beehat long? He hadn’t thought so at the time, but he’d been through at least one winter, and then he’d started building his house, so maybe…

  While Simon was struggling to put the pieces together, he was jarred off his train of thought when Norm said, “Well, isn’t that a small world! Simon… I mean, the dead man said he was from up north, too. Maybe the two of you really are reted.”

  Simon tried not te as he realized he’d probably just told the three of them much the same backstory as the other version of himself had years before. “Maybe,” he nodded, “Taking a sip of beer. “Maybe so.”

  Wheried to follow up further, Simon gave fake and misleading ao avoid repeating his mistake. The men at the bar soon lost i in him, though. Instead, they began to reminisce about the Simon they’d lost so retly. That versation intensified as others came in and had a simir rea.

  To Simon, the whole situation was very stra felt almost like he was sitting in his own wake as the people of Sny talked about all the good he’d done over the years. There was nothing he could do, though. It would have been weird to try to ge the topic. So, instead, he just listeo old stories about himself that he only vaguely remembered doing because they’d been such minor things at the time.

  No matter how oftealked about barn raisings or the extra hours that he put in around harvest time, they talked about the goblins more, though. Eveions of Trinna and how hard the pirl had taken his passing were less numerous than the greenskins, and the versation always returo the silver mines.

  “You know, Simon never said anything about it, and I didn’t want to say while the guy was alive because I didn’t eople to be afraid of him,” Norm volunteered finally, “But I was the ohat had t all those corpses out, and well… let’s just say the man downpyed what he had to do to save Gregor Corwin that day. The man didn’t just put down a couple of goblins and drag the kid to safety. There were a lot more dead dowhan all that.”

  “You’re painting Simon as a killer!” one of the newers said. He was a farmer that Simon remembered, but not so well that he remembered the man’s name. “I find that difficult to believe. The man was a gentle soul.”

  “He was,” Nreed, “But he had to be a merary or worse when he north. No ohat good at killing goblins in a day. Remember, he didn’t even have a scrat him when he came back to town with Gregor and that coward in tow.”

  Simon smiled and ughed where appropriate, but when he finally paid the innkeeper for a room a upstairs for the night, his mind inning from more than just the booze, and he had trouble falling asleep. He felt kind of bad that he’d abandoned everyone so uedly, but it wasly his fault. The mule’s kick had hardly been pnned.

  The real surprise was that he’d almost recovered. In his mind, it had been lights out, and he’d woken up ba the . Apparently, in the real world, things were quite so . What had actually happened was that he’d had a skull fracture or worse and y in a a for several weeks before he’d finally succumbed. It was an ugly way to go, and he was gd he didn’t remember it.

  Really, I should have timed my arrival better. I could have picked up right where I left off, he thought with a smile.

  It was fun to think about, but that, of course, was impossible. He might love Sny, but he no longer remembered it the way he once had. Even Trina, who he’d briefly sidered asking to marry him, was nothing but a distant memory. He might remember her as a pretty baker, but there was ion there anymore, let alone love. The most he could summon whehought about her flour-streaked fad pretty white smile was nostalgia or fondness. Too much had happened between here and there.

  In the m, Simo out early, seeking to avoid any other run-ins. On his way out, he made sure to take the long way around rather than gh the ter of the vilge so that Trinna wouldn’t see him. Along the way, he took advantage of that route to check out the house he’d been building on a hill at the edge of town. No one had yet decided to put a roof on it, which made him a little sad. It had only been a couple weeks since all of this had happehough, so he hoped whehing blew over, someone would finish it. He’d hate to see all his wo to waste.

  Simo Sny with mixed feelings and tinued south, one day at a time. He was surprised to find that those feelings hadn’t cost him any experience points, though. He’d worried the ivity might have, but when he checked his mirror, he almost a hundred points day over day, which was more than the average.

  Now that he was ba the road, and looking more carefully, this was nd he’d defiraveled through more than on various errands for Lord Corwin. If he went southeast far enough, he’d eventually reach Crowvar. That was another pce he wao avoid for a variety of reasons. He already had that area handled pretty much like he wa, and killing Varten again, as he would iably do, would only screw everything up.

  Instead, after asking around at a couple of vilges, he found the right trad struck to the southwest, into territory he’d never been in before. It was closer to the coast and, therefore, the mountainion of Ionia. Near as he could tell, he erhaps a hundred miles due north of Fia and perhaps a hundred and fifty to the northwest of Ionar.

  That still put him several hundred miles to the south-south-east of Schwarzenbruck, of course, but then, the world was a big pce, and one jour a time, it was all ing together in the map he had in his mirror. The py area, as he sometimes thought about it, seemed to be made up of four or five tries, not ting the Aztec ruins. He still had no idea where those were.

  The Kingdom of Brin was the most tral and was ringed by mountains to the east a. It was also bounded by water to the north a to the south. To its north were the uively he Northnds, which Simon had only brushed up against in Schwarzenbrubsp;

  To the east of Brin stood the mountainous Charia. That was where he’d entered the werewolf, the owl bear, and a certain masquerade ball that had gone horribly wrong. Other than Ionia, he was sure he’d beehe least.

  To the south of Brin was Montain. Simon retty sure that was the try that trolled the deserts, along with almost all the territory up to Abresse. He was less sure about that. Other than Darendelle, he hadn’t spent a lot of time there, but he would probably have to.

  Finally, to the west was his current goal, Ionia. It seemed much smaller than its neighbors and climbed the marginal nds of the mountains where they hugged the sea. Givee of Ionar, it didn’t seem very important in most of Simon’s adveo date, and he wondered if that would ge.

  Apparently, in the past, the rge trading city of Abresse had been part of Montain but currently styled itself as an indepe city-state. That was why Simon wasn’t sure if the entire world map he was building sisted of four tries or five.

  Individually, each location was fusing, but very slowly, he was building them into a web in his head that was actually starting to make sehat, as much as anything, was enough to put a spring in his step as he started the uphill portion of his journey. No matter how exhausting it might be, he was getting close to his destination.