“Oh,” she said. Then, “I’ll be along in a little while.”
“No hurry,” I answered.
Where shall wisdom be found, and where is the place of understanding? If I knew, I’d walk over and stand there. As it was, I felt as if I stood in the midst of a large map, surrounded by vague areas wherein were penned the visages of particularly nasty-looking random variables. A perfect place for a soliloquy, if one had anything to say.
I went back inside to use the john. All that coffee.
Chapter 6
Well, maybe.
With Julia, I mean.
I sat alone in my room, thinking by candlelight.
Vinta had stirred a few sunken memories to the surface.
It was later on, when we weren’t seeing much of each other…
I’d met Julia first in a Computer Science course I was taking. We’d started seeing each other occasionally, just coffee after class and like that, at first. Then more and more frequently, and pretty soon it was serious.
Now it was ending as it had started, a little more each time…
I felt her hand on my shoulder as I was leaving the supermarket with a bag of groceries. I knew it was her and I turned and there was no one there. Seconds later, she hailed me from across the parking lot. I went over and said hello, asked her if she were still working at the software place where she’d been. She said that she wasn’t. I recalled that she was wearing a small silver pentagram on a chain about her neck. It could easily — and more likely should — have been hanging down inside her blouse. But of course I wouldn’t have seen it then, and her body language indicated that she wanted me to see it. So I ignored it while we exchanged a few generalities, and she turned me down on dinner and a movie, though I asked after several nights.
“What are you doing now?” I inquired.
“I’m studying a lot.”
“What?”
“Oh, just — different things. I’ll surprise you one of these days.”
Again, I didn’t bite, though an over-friendly Irish setter approached us about then. She placed her hand on its head and said, “Sit!” and it did. It became still as a statue at her side, and remained when we left later. For all I know, there’s a dog skeleton still crouched there, near the cart return area, like a piece of modern sculpture.
It didn’t really seem that important at the time. But in retrospect, I wondered…
We had ridden that day, Vinta and I. Seeing my growing exasperation of the morning, she must have felt a break was in order. She was right. Following a light lunch, when she made the suggestion that we take a ride about the estate, I agreed readily. I had wanted a little more time in which to think before continuing our cross-examination and discourse game. And the weather was good, the countryside attractive.
We made our way along a curling hail through arbors, which led at length into the northern hills from where we were afforded long views across the rugged and cross-hatched land down to the sun-filled sea. The sky was full of winds and wisps of cloud, passing birds… Vinta seemed to have no special destination in mind, which was all right with me. As we rode, I recalled a visit to a Napa Valley winery, and the next time we drew rein to rest the horses I asked her, “Do you bottle the wine here at the estate? Or is that done in town? Or in Amber?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“I thought you grew up here.”
“I never paid attention.”
I bit back a remark about patrician attitudes. Unless she were joking, I couldn’t see how she’d fail to know something like that.
She caught my expression, though, and added immediately, “We’ve done it various ways at various times. I’ve been living in town for several years now. I’m not sure where the principal bottling has been done recently.”
Nice save, because I couldn’t fault it. I hadn’t intended my question as any sort of trap, but I felt as if I had just touched on something. Possibly from the fact that she didn’t let it go at that. She went on to say that they shipped large casks all over the place and often sold them in that fashion. On the other hand, there were smaller customers who wanted the product bottled… I stopped listening after a time. On the one hand, I could see it, coming horn a vintner’s daughter. On the other, it was all stuff I could have made up myself on the spot. There was no way for me to check on any of it. I got the feeling that she was trying to snow me, to cover something. But I couldn’t figure what.
“Thanks,” I said when she paused for breath, and she gave me a strange look but took the hint and did not continue.
“You have to speak English,” I said in that language, “if the things you told me earlier are true.”
“Everything I told you is true,” she replied, in unaccented English.
“Where’d you learn it?”
“On the shadow Earth where you went to school.”
“Would you care to tell me what you were doing there?”
“I was on a special mission.”
“For your father? For the Crown?”
“I’d rather not answer you at all than lie to you.”
“I appreciate that. Of course, I must speculate.”
She shrugged.
“You said you were in Berkeley?” I asked.
A hesitation, then, “Yes.”
“I don’t remember ever seeing you around.”
Another shrug. I wanted to grab her and shake her. Instead, I said, “You knew about Meg Devlin. You said you were in New York —”
“I believe you’re getting ahead of me on questions.”
“I didn’t know we were playing the game again. I thought we were just talking.”
“All right, then: Yes.”
“Tell me one more thing and perhaps I can help you.”
She smiled. “I don’t need any help. You’re the one with problems.”
“May I, anyway?”
“Go ahead and ask. Every time you question me you tell me things I wish to know.”
“You knew about Luke’s mercenaries. Did you visit New Mexico, too?”
“Yes, I’ve been there.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“That’s all?”
“That’s all.”
“You’ve come to some conclusion?”
“Perhaps.”
“Care to tell me what it is?”
I smiled and shook my head.
I left it at that. A few oblique queries on her part as we rode on led me to believe that I had her wondering what I might have guessed or suddenly seen. Good. I was determined to let it smolder. I needed something to balance her reticence on those points about which I was most curious, to lead hopefully to a full trade of information. Besides, I had reached a peculiar conclusion concerning her. It was not complete, but if it were correct I would require the rest of the answer sooner or later. So it was not exactly as if I were setting up a bluff.
The afternoon was golden, orange, yellow, red about us, with an autumn-damp smell behind the cool nips of the breezes. The sky was very blue, like certain stones…
Perhaps ten minutes later I asked her a more neutral question. “Could you show me the road to Amber?”
“You don’t know it?”
I shook my head. “I’ve never been this way before. All I know is that there are overland routes coming through here that lead to the Eastern Gate.”
“Yes,” she said. “A bit farther to the north, I believe. Let’s go find it.”
She headed back to a road we had followed for a time earlier and we turned right on it, which seemed logical. I did not remark on her vagueness, though I expected a comment from her before too long in that I had not elaborated on my plans and I’d a feeling she was hoping that I would.
Perhaps three quarters of a mile later we came to a crossroads. There was a low stone marker at the far left corner giving the distance to Amber, the distance back to Baylesport, the distance to Baylecrest in the east and to a place called Murn, straight ahead.
“W
hat’s Murn?” I asked.
“A little dairy village.”
No way I could check that, without traveling six leagues.
“You plan on riding back to Amber?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Why not just use a Trump?”
“I want to get to know the area better. It’s my home. I like it here.”
“But I explained to you about the danger. The stones have marked you. You can be tracked.”
“That doesn’t mean I will be tracked. I doubt that whoever sent the ones I met last night would even be aware this soon that they’d found me and failed. They’d still be lurking about if I hadn’t decided to go out for dinner. I’m sure I have a few days’ grace in which to remove the markings you spoke of.”
She dismounted and let her horse nibble a few blades of grass. I did the same. Dismounted, that is.
“You’re probably right. I just don’t like to see you taking any chances,” she said. “When are you planning on heading back?”
“I don’t know. I suppose that the longer I wait the more likely it is that the person behind last night’s business will get restless and maybe send more muscle.”
She took hold of my arm and turned, so that she was suddenly pressed against me. I was somewhat surprised by the act, but my free arm automatically moved to hold the lady as it tends to on such occasions.
“You weren’t planning on leaving now, were you? Because if you are, I’m going with you.”
“No,” I answered truthfully. Actually, I’d been thinking of departing the following morning, following a good night’s sleep.
“When, then? We still have a lot of things to talk about.”
“I think we’ve pushed the question-and-answer business about as far as you’re willing to let it go.”
“There are some things —”
“I know.”
Awkward, this. Yes, she was desirable. And no, I didn’t care to have anything to do with her that way. Partly because I felt she wanted something else as well — what, I wasn’t sure — and partly because I was certain she possessed a peculiar power to which I did not wish to expose myself at intimate range. As my Uncle Suhuy used to say, speaking technically as a sorcerer, “If you don’t understand it, don’t screw around with it.” And I had a feeling that anything beyond a friendly acquaintanceship with Vinta could well turn into a duel of energies.
So I kissed her quickly to stay friendly and disengaged myself.
“Maybe I’ll head back tomorrow,” I told her.
“Good. I was hoping you’d spend the night. Perhaps several. I will protect you.”
“Yes, I’m still very tired,” I said.
“We’ll have to feed you a good meal and build up your strength.”
She brushed my cheek with her fingertips then, and I suddenly realized that I did know her from somewhere. Where? I couldn’t say. And that, too, frightened me. More than a little. As we mounted and headed back toward Arbor House I began making my plans for getting out of there that night.
So, sitting in my room, sipping a glass of my absent host’s wine (the red) and watching the candles flicker in the breeze from an opened window, I waited — first for the house to grow quiet (which it had), then for a goodly time to pass. My door was latched. I had mentioned how tired I felt several times during dinner, and then I had retired early. I am not so egotistically male that I feel myself constantly lusted after, but Vinta had given indication that she might stop by and I wanted the excuse of heavy sleeping. Least of all did I wish to offend her. I had problems enough without turning my strange ally against me.
I wished I still had a good book about, but I’d left my last one at Bill’s place, and if I were to summon it now I did not know but that Vinta might sense the sending, just as Fiona had once known I was creating a Trump, and come pounding on the door to see what the hell was going on.
But no one came pounding, and I listened to the creakings of a quiet house and the night sounds without. The candles shortened themselves and the shadows on the wall behind the bed ebbed and howed like a dark tide beyond their swaying light. I thought my thoughts and sipped my wine. Pretty soon…
An imagining? Or had I just heard my name whispered from some undetectable place?
“Merle…”
Again.
Real, but —
My vision seemed to swim for a moment, and then I realized it for what it was: a very weak Trump contact.
“Yes,” I said, opening and extending. “Who is it?”
“Merle, baby… Give me a hand or I’ve had it…”
Luke!
“Right here,” I said, reaching, reaching, as the image grew clear, solidified.
He was leaning, his back against a wall, shoulders slumped, head hanging.
“If this is a trick, Luke, I’m ready for it,” I told him. I rose quickly and, crossing to the table where I had laid my blade, I drew it and held it ready.
“No trick. Hurry! Get me out of here!”
He raised his left hand. I extended my left hand and caught hold of it. Immediately he slumped against me, and I staggered. For an instant I thought it was an attack, but he was dead weight and I saw that there was blood all over him. He still clutched a bloody blade in his right hand. “Over here. Come on.”
I steered him and supported him for several paces, then deposited him on the bed. I pried the blade from his grip, then placed it along with mine on a nearby chair.
“What the hell happened to you?”
He coughed and shook his head weakly. He drew several deep breaths, then, “Did I see a glass of wine,” he asked, “as we passed a table?”
“Yeah. Hold on.”
I fetched it, brought it back, propped him and held it to his lips. It was still over half full. He sipped it slowly, pausing for deep breaths.
“Thanks,” he said when he’d finished, then his head turned to the side.
He was out. I took his pulse. It was fast but kind of weak.
“Damn you, Luke!” I said. “You’ve got the worst timing…”
But he didn’t hear a word. He just lay there and bled all over the place.
Several curses later I had him undressed and was going over him with a wet towel to find out where, under all that blood, the injuries lay. There was a nasty chest wound on the right, which might have hit the lung. His breathing was very shallow, though, and I couldn’t tell. If so, I was hoping he’d inherited the regenerative abilities of Amber in full measure. I put a compress on it and laid his arm on top to hold it in place while I checked elsewhere. I suspected he had a couple of fractured ribs, also. His left arm was broken above the elbow and I set it and splinted it, using loose slats from a chair I’d noticed in the back of the closet earlier, and I strapped it to him. There were over a dozen lacerations and incisions of various degrees of severity on his thighs, right hip, right arm and shoulder, his back. None of them, fortunately, involved arterial bleeding. I cleaned all of these and bound them, which left him looking like an illustration in a firstaid handbook. Then I checked his chest wound again and covered him up.
I wondered about some of the Logrus healing techniques I knew in theory but had never had a chance to practice. He was looking pretty pale, so I decided I had better try them. When I’d finished, some time later, it seemed as if his color had returned to his face. I added my cloak to the blanket which covered him. I took his pulse again and it felt stronger. I cursed again, just to stay in practice, removed our blades from the chair and sat down on it.
A little later my conversation with Ghostwheel returned to trouble me. Had Luke been trying to do a deal with my creation? He’d told me he wanted Ghost’s power, to prosecute his designs against Amber. Then Ghost had asked me earlier today whether Luke was to be trusted, and my answer had been emphatically negative.
Had Ghost terminated negotiations with Luke in the fashion I saw before me?
I fetched forth my Trumps and shuffled out the bright circle of the Ghostw
heel. I focused on it, setting my mind for contact, reaching out, calling, summoning.
Twice I felt near to something — agitated — during the several minutes I devoted to the effort. But it was as if we were separated by a sheet of glass. Was Ghost occupied? Or just not inclined to talk with me?
I put my cards away. But they had served to push my thoughts into another channel.
I gathered Luke’s gory clothing and did a quick search. I turned up a set of Trumps in a side pocket, along with several blank cards and a pencil and yes, they seemed to be rendered in the same style as the ones I had come to call the Trumps of Doom. I added to the packet the one depicting myself, which Luke had been holding in his hand when he had trumped in.
His were a fascinating lot. There was one of Jasra, and one of Victor Melman. There was also one of Julia, and a partly completed one of Bleys. There was one for the crystal cave, another for Luke’s old apartment. There were several duplicated from the Trumps of Doom themselves, one for a palace I did not recognize, one for one of my old pads, one for a rugged-looking blond guy in green and black, another of a slim, russethaired man in brown and black, and one of a woman who resembled this man so closely it would seem they must be related. These last two, strangely, were done in a different style; even by a different hand, I’d say. The only unknown one I felt relatively certain about was the blond fellow, who, from his colors, I would assume to be Luke’s old friend Dalt, the mercenary. There were also three separate attempts at something resembling Ghostwheel — none of them, I would guess, completely successful.
I heard Luke growl something, and I saw that his eyes were open and darting.
“Take it easy,” I said. “You’re safe.”
He nodded and closed his eyes. A few moments later, he opened them again.
“Hey! My cards,” he said weakly.
I smiled. “Nice work,” I remarked. “Who did them?”
“Me,” he answered. “Who else?”
“Where’d you learn?”
“My dad. He was real good at it.”
“If you can do them, you must have walked the Pattern.”
He nodded.
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