They were everywhere, and all on the move. Men and women of all ages, even children-everyone seemed to have a destination and strode purposefully toward it. They all wore unfamiliar clothing, mostly tight-fitting pants and shirts made of smooth, brightly dyed cloth, and none of them paid the slightest attention to each other. Jedra stood a foot taller than most of them, and though he was the only one not hurrying anywhere, they ignored him, too.

The place smelled like too many unwashed bodies. A constant, low-level rushing sound of voices and footsteps masked a deeper rumble that was more felt than heard. Jedra watched people come and go from stairways leading down into subterranean catacombs, but he didn't feel like seeing what was down there. He felt too closed in already. He had to get out. Wide stairs led up from the main floor to doors on all sides; Jedra fell in behind a large bearded man in a dark overcoat, letting him clear a path through the throng until they made it outside.

It was brighter than Jedra had expected. From inside, under that glaring blue light, it had seemed dark out- and it was indeed night-but he could still see clearly. Bright glowing lanterns atop poles provided plenty of light, and more light spilled from buildings lining the street.

And what a street! The rushing noise here was even louder than inside. Just a few feet from the narrow walkway on which Jedra and a thousand other people stood, hundreds of multicolored beasts careened past, following one another in a dizzying stampede from right to left. Their eyes glowed too brightly to look at, and they growled as they passed.

Jedra stepped back, but he bumped into one of the people streaming by. "Wal finida graben!" the man growled at him, hardly breaking stride. More people shoved past, jostling Jedra aside until he stood by the edge of the street again. Even that was no refuge, however; a man and a woman stepped up beside him, almost into the path of the rushing beasts, and the man raised his arm in a casual wave. He called out, "Gimpel!" and one of the creatures-a yellow one-stopped for him, eliciting angry outcries from the ones behind it. Only when the man reached out and opened a door in its side did Jedra look closer and realize it was a chariot. It had no draft animals or slaves pulling it, so it must have been magically powered. The man and his woman climbed inside, and the chariot roared away with them both inside, leaving Jedra in the throng.

Jedra had thought that Athas was depressing, and that Yoncalla was mad, but this was the insane world. There were too many people, and there was too much activity for anyone to follow. Jedra felt panic closing in on him. He had grown up in a city, but even on market days Urik had never been like this. He needed to get out of this mob. He considered going back home, but he'd only been here a few minutes, and he hadn't really learned anything about the place yet. If he could just find someplace quiet to observe it all from, he could at least try to figure out what was going on.

A woman laughed when she saw the expression on his face. Jedra blushed and turned away. All right, so the buildings were tall. They would still make a good refuge. He raised his arms and gave a little leap, expecting to fly the way he had in Yoncalla's world, but he just plopped back to the gray stone walkway. He heard laughter around him, and for the first time the people nearby stepped aside to give him room.

"Thanks," he said, and tried again, directing his thoughts in a concentrated wish: fly. He didn't have any better luck this time, though, and now the people around him laughed outright. A few pointed at him and spoke more unfamiliar words, but Jedra didn't have to know the language to know what they were saying. They thought he was crazy.

Well, that was one piece of information, then. People couldn't fly in this world. That would explain all the chariots. Blushing furiously now, Jedra began walking through the crowd. The first few people gave way before him, but the ones behind them didn't know that he was the source of the commotion, or even that any commotion had gone on, so he had to jostle his way along with the rest of them.

He'd gone less than a hundred paces before someone shouldered him aside and he lost his balance. Without thinking, he stepped out into the street to keep from falling over. One of the yellow chariots brushed by him, its hard flank banging painfully into his thigh and knocking him back. The chariot blared angrily as it continued past, and Jedra fell against one of the metal light posts. He clutched it for dear life, which brought forth more laughter from the people on the walkway, but he didn't care. Better safe and embarrassed than dead beneath a chariot.

His leg hurt. His heart was pounding, and his breath was coming in tight little gasps. It was time to leave. Jedra imagined a hole in the gray stone walkway through which he could fall out of this mad world...

... but no hole appeared.

I wish to be out of here, he thought, but nothing happened.

Hmm. This place obviously followed different rules. He closed his eyes and tried to concentrate on finding a pathway out of it, but when he opened them he was still in the throng of people and chariots. And nobody spoke his language, so he couldn't even ask for help.

Suddenly he realized he was being an idiot. He had a perfectly good method of communication he hadn't even tried. Do you understand me this way? he mindsent to a man passing by, but the moment he tried it he realized that wouldn't work. He couldn't sense the man's mind at all.

Confused, he turned his attention to another person on the walkway beside him, but he felt no mind there either. He tried to contact another and another, but he got nothing from any of them. Were they all zombies? Magically animated corpses? Or were they something else entirely?

Jedra closed his eyes tight against his mounting anxiety, but the city's noise still crashed in on him. He held his hands over his ears, but that barely muted it. How could people live in such a place? It would drive him crazy to be in such a hectic environment all the time.

Maybe that was why nobody here seemed to have a mind. To escape the insanity around them, they had all retreated into some inner world, leaving their bodies behind to carry on without them.

Worlds within worlds within worlds... the possibility frightened him more than anything else he had seen here.

He had to get out of this place. Now. If he couldn't leave the entire world, he could at least leave the city.

With renewed determination, he stepped into the flowing river of people again and began to walk.

He lost track of how many streets he crossed, how many thousands of people he passed on the walkways, how many chariots roared past him. His leg flashed with pain at every step, but the rest of him felt numb. He tried dozens of times to escape back into the real world-his world-but remained trapped within the frantic city. At last he stepped from a canyon of giant buildings to see a line of darkness before him. All he had to do was cross one more busy street, and beyond it waited an expanse of unnaturally even grass stretching off toward a copse of trees. He waited for a gap between the chariots and sprinted across, ignoring their angry bleats, then he hopped the low stone wall separating the street from the grass and continued to run past the few startled people walking beside a pond until he reached the edge of the trees. Beneath the trees' protective cover he found a rock to sit on, and he closed his eyes and breathed deeply.

His tension began to drain away. There had to be a way out of here; he just hadn't tried the right thing yet. If psionics didn't work, then maybe magic would. He probably just needed to find a mage who could work the spell for him. He would search for one soon, but for now he would just relax. When his heart quit pounding, he would go on.