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And below, more than a hundred yards across, and tended by senior monks who walked above it on delicate wire walkways, was... 

Lobsang had heard about the Mandala. It was as if someone had taken tons of coloured sands and thrown them across the floor in a great swirl of coloured chaos. But there was order fighting for survival in the chaos, rising and falling and spreading. Millions of randomly tumbling sand grains would nevertheless make a piece of pattern, which would replicate and spread across the circle, rebounding or merging with other patterns and eventually dissolving into the general disorder. It happened again and again, turning the Mandala into a silent raging war of colour. Lu-Tze stepped out onto a frail-looking wood and rope bridge. 

'Well?' he said. 'What d'you think?' 

Lobsang took a deep breath. He felt that if he fell off the bridge he'd drop into the surging colours and never, ever hit the floor. He blinked and rubbed his forehead. 

'It's... evil,' he said. 

'Really?' said Lu-Tze. 'Not many people say that the first time. They use words like “wonderful”.'

'It's going wrong!'

'What?' Lobsang clutched the rope railing. 'The patterns-' he began.

'History repeating,' said Lu-Tze. 'They're always there.'

'No, they're-' Lobsang tried to take it all in. There were patterns under the patterns, disguised as part of the chaos. 'I mean... the other patterns...' 

He slumped forward. The air was cold, the world was spinning, and the ground rushed up to enfold him. And stopped, a few inches away. The air around him sizzled, as though it was being gently fried. 

'Newgate Ludd?'

'Lu-Tze?' he said. The Mandala is...' 

But where were the colours? Why was the air wet and smelling of the city? And then the ghost memories faded away. As they disappeared, they said: How can we be memories, when we have yet to happen? Surely what you remember is climbing all the way up onto the roof of the Bakers' Guild and finding that someone had loosened all the capping stones, because that just happened? And a last dying memory said, Hey, that happened months ago …

***

The Thief of Time - p60-61