You don’t know, not really, how fast you’re going because the speedometer doesn’t work, and you can’t see very far because the headlamps only turn the sandstorm cloud a light shade of hell, and the dark rider ahead of you is only that much darker, a shifting rippling shimmering shape that’s only vaguely human.
And you can’t tell if you’re still on the street because the truck’s bouncing and slamming, and skidding and dropping and it’s all you can do just to keep in your seat.
All you can do just to follow that dark rider, who keeps looking back over her shoulder, probably wondering where it all went wrong, probably trying to figure out how something like this can happen to someone like her, especially when it’s someone like you riding hard on her tail.
Funny, but you know there isn’t a prayer you can kill her with; you knew that from the start, once you understood what the start was.
But that’s all right, because in the here and now, it doesn’t matter.
What matters is that John Harp is dead, because of her, because of you, and if you want to keep the others alive, then you do what you do, and hope it’s the right thing.
You hope that Jude will find that preacher, maybe he can do something for her; you hope that Beatrice will stick with them, maybe she’s stronger than she thinks; you hope with a laugh you didn’t think you had in you that this damn truck doesn’t run out of gas before . . . whatever . . . whenever . . . however it ends.
Keeping on her tail, swerving when she swerves, speeding up, slowing down, your head and spine aching, your eyes beginning to burn, the screech and howl outside the cab maddening until you turn it into familiar white noise.
Then it’s quiet.
Too quiet.
The engine’s muffled grumbling, and don’t ask how but the hoofbeats outside, an odd combination that somehow finds the same rhythm.
Funny, how it is sometimes
* * * *
but when the right front tire climbed and slid off a half-hidden rock the storm wouldn’t let him see, tilted and almost tipped the chariot over, he allowed himself a smile, not much humor there, but a smile.
He knew right where she was headed, and he didn’t think she did.
For a moment, grunting in exasperation as he wrestled the steering wheel over and swung a little wide to her left, he felt a minor eruption of hope that he might get out of this in one piece.
Or, if not in one piece, being alive would do as well.
All he had to do, all she had to was keep checking on him the way she did, no doubt not understanding why he wasn’t directly behind her now and ... he laughed aloud, slapped the wheel, slapped his thigh when she veered sharply to her left and placed herself directly in his figurative crosshairs.
Not long now, then.
No matter what the hell she was, it had been evident from the start that her vision in this cloud wasn’t much better than his. An advantage, because now he was leading her from behind.
All he needed was a little luck, and without thinking he touched his chest, and snatched his hand away when it found nothing there but flesh and bone. No big deal. He could do it anyway.
The problem was the timing.
With visibility like a man who refused to wear his thick glasses, he had to rely on memory and instinct to tell him when to make his move.
Soon, he-hoped; soon, before the regret he began to feel tainted his judgment and poked a hole in his resolve.
* * * *
There it was.
A darker patch of dark unmoved by the wind, its edges blurred by blowing sand.
She hadn’t spotted it yet, too busy checking on him, so he half rose from his seat and stomped on the accelerator and the chariot hesitated and charged, and he leaned forward as best he could so he could stare at her and hope she could see his eyes, see his taut mirthless smile, recognize his nod when she did finally see him.
Suddenly she whipped her head around, and he knew that she saw it, the boulder he had marked to mark the boundary of his haven, and he couldn’t resist a joyful laugh because it was too late for her to swerve around it, too high for her mount to jump it, but just far enough away that she could stop before she hit it.
She did, but it was too late when she realized she was trapped.
“Thank you, old buddy,” he whispered.
The chariot roared and left the ground, and the last thing he saw was Eula’s startled laughing face before the world turned white.
Red.
* * * *
Empty.
* * * *
5
S
tanding beside a car on the shoulder of a highway, two women waiting for someone to stop and help, two young girls who were women too soon.
They had heard the distant explosion, but none of them turned to look. And none of them wept; that would come later.
“Where are we going?” Jude asked, unable to keep her hand off the chip Trey had placed around her neck.
“I’m not quite sure,” Lady Beatrice answered. “Sir John . . .” She faltered, and Jude stroked her arm. “Sir John never really told me.” A shaky laugh. “Wouldn’t you know it. Something about the sea, though. I remember something about the sea.” A gesture east. “That way.”
Enforced silence as an eighteen-wheeler blasted past them.
“I’ve never seen the sea,” Moonbow said quietly.
“Me neither,” said Starshine.
“An adventure, then,” Beatrice told her. “We’ll make it an adventure.”
“No, thanks,” Starshine said. “I had enough of that.”
Beatrice grinned, and the girls grinned back.
While Jude finally allowed herself to look back toward Emerald City. The sandstorm had passed; there was no smoke in the sky. A flutter in her chest when a black pickup slowed but didn’t stop.
He was gone.
Face it, Jude, he’s gone, and it’s going to take a while.
Still, knowing it was fruitless, knowing the pain it would cause when she lay in her bed again and felt the dark around her, she couldn’t help wondering if Trey had known, really known, how she felt.
He had kissed her, so maybe he had.
Regret was foolish, she knew that, and knew it was inevitable as well.
And when she turned around and saw the towers of Excalibur rise above the interstate and the overpasses and the trucks and the warehouses, she couldn’t help thinking that a queen couldn’t do better than have a man like him.
* * * *
6
T
he dragon lay in the middle of the desert. Sleeping. Always sleeping.
Until tonight.
When the dragon stirred.
Chariot - [Millennium Quartet 03] Page 28
