Zelazny, Roger - Amber - 06 - Trumps of Doom

by Trumps of Doom [lit]

  I extended through Shadow, seeking a blade. I extended, I extended . . .

  Damn. I had come far from any metalworking culture of the appropriate anatomy and at the proper phase in its historical development.

  I continued to reach, sweat suddenly beading my brow. Far, very far. And the sounds came nearer, louder, faster. There came rattling,. stamping and spitting noises. A roar. Contact!

  I felt the haft of the weapon in my hand. Seize and summon! I called it to me, and I was thrown against the wall by the force of its delivery. I hung there a moment before I could draw it from the sheath in which it was still encased. In that moment, things grew silent outside.

  I waited ten seconds. Fifteen. Half a minute . . . Nothing now.

  I wiped my palms on my trousers. I continued to listen. Finally, I advanced.

  There was nothing immediately before the opening save a light fog, and as the peripheral lines of sight opened there was still nothing to behold.

  Another step . . . No.

  Another. I was right at the threshold now. I leaned forward and darted a quick glance in either direction.

  Yes. There was something off to the left-dark, low, unmoving, half masked by the fog. Crouched? Ready to spring at me?

  Whatever it was, it did not stir and it kept total silence. I did the same. After a time, I noticed another dark form of the same general outline beyond it-and possibly a third even farther away. None of them showed any inclination to raise the sort of hell I had ' been listening to but minutes before.

  I continued my vigil.

  Several minutes must have passed before I stepped outside. Nothing was roused by my movement. I took another step and waited. Then another.

  Finally, moving slowly, I approached the first form. An ugly brute, covered with scales the color of dried blood. A couple of hundred pounds' worth of creature, long and sinuous . . . Nasty teeth, too, I noted, when I opened its mouth with the point of my weapon. I knew it was safe to do this, because its head was almost completely severed from the rest of it. A very clean cut. A yellow-orange liquid still flowed from the wound.

  And I could see from where I stood that the other two forms were creatures of the same sort. In all ways. They were dead, too. The second one I examined had been run through several times and was missing one leg. The third had been hacked to pieces. All of them oozed, and they smelled faintly of cloves.

  I inspected the well-trampled area. Mixed in with that strange blood and the dew were what seemed to be the partial impressions of a boot, human-scale. I sought farther and I came across one intact footprint. It was pointed back in the direction from which I had come.

  My pursuer? S, perhaps? The one who had called off the dogs? Coming to my aid?

  I shook my head. I was tired of looking for sense where there wasn't any. I continued to search, but there were no more full tracks. I returned to the cleft then and picked up my blade's sheathe. I fitted the weapon into it and hung it from my belt. I fastened it over my shoulders so that it hung down my back. The hilt would protrude just above my backpack once I'd shouldered that item. I couldn't see how I could jog with it at my side.

  I ate some bread and the rest of the meat. Drank some water, too, and a mouthful of wine. I resumed my journey.

  I ran much of the next day - though "day" is something of a misnomer beneath unchanging stippled skies, checkered skies, skies lit by perpetual pinwheels and fountains of light. I ran until I was tired, and I rested and ate and ran some more. I rationed my food, for I'd a feeling I'd have to send far for more and such an act places its own energy demands upon the body. I eschewed shortcuts, for flashy shadows spanning hellruns also have their price and I did not want to be all whacked out when I arrived. I checked behind me often. Usually, I saw nothing suspicious. Occasionally, though, I thought that I glimpsed distant pursuit. Other explanations were possible, however; considering some of the tricks the shadows can play.

  I ran until I knew that.I was finally nearing my destination. There came no new disaster followed by an order to turn back. I wondered fleetingly whether this was a -good sign, or if the worst were yet to come. Either way, I knew that one more sleep and a little more journeying would put me where I wanted to be. Add a little caution and a few precautions and there might even be reason for optimism.

  I ran through a vast, forestlike stand of crystalline shapes. Whether they were truly living things or represented some geological phenomenon; I did not know. They distorted perspectives and made shifting difficult. However, I saw no signs of living things in that glossy, glassy place, which led me to consider making my final campsite there.

  I brake off a number of the limbs and drove them into the pink ground, which had the consistency of partly set putty. I constructed a circular palisade standing to about shoulder-height, myself at its center. I unwound Frakir from my wrist then voiced the necessary instructions as I paced her atop my rough and shining wall.

  Frakir elongated, stretching herself as thin as a thread and twining among the shardlike branches. I felt safe. I did not believe anything could cross that barrier without Frakir's springing loose and twining herself to deathly tightness about it.

  I spread my cloak, lay down, and slept. For how long, I am not certain. And I recall no dreams. There were no disturbances either.

  When I woke I moved my head to reorient it, but the view was the same. In every direction but down the view was filled with interwoven crystal branches. I climbed slowly to my feet and pressed against them. Solid. They had become a glass cage.

  Although I was able to break off some lesser branches, these were mainly from overhead, and it did nothing to work my release. Those which I had planted initially had thickened considerably, having apparently rooted themselves solidly. They would not yield to my strongest kicks.

  The damned thing infuriated me. I swung my blade and glassy chips flew all about. I muffled my face with my cloak then and swung several times more. Then I noticed that my hand felt wet. When I looked at it, I saw that it was running with blood. Some of those splinters were very sharp. I desisted with the blade and returned to kicking at my enclosure. The walls creaked occasionally aid made chiming noises, but they held.

  I am not normally claustrophobic and my life was not in imminent peril, but something about this shining prison annoyed me out of all proportion to the situation itself. I raged for perhaps ten minutes before I forced myself to sufficient calmness that I might think clearly.

  I studied the tangle until I discerned the uniform color and texture of Frakir running through it. I placed my fingertips upon her and spoke an order. Her brightness increased. and she ran through the spectrum and settled into a red glow The first creaking sound occurred a few seconds later.

  I quickly withdrew to the center of the enclosure and wrapped myself fully in my cloak. If I crouched, I decided; some of the overhead pieces would fall a greater distance, striking me with more force. So I stood upright, protecting my head and neck with my arms and hands as well as with the cloak.

  The creaking sounds became cracking sounds, followed by rattling, snapping, breaking. I was suddenly struck across the shoulder, but I maintained my footing.

  Ringing and crunching, the edifice began to fall about me. I held my ground, though I was struck several times more.

  When the sounds ceased and I looked again I saw that the roof had been removed, and I stood calf deep amid fallen branches of the hard, corallike material. Several of the side members had splintered off at near to ground level. Others now stood at unnatural angles, and this time a few wellplaced kicks brought them down.

  My cloak was torn in a number of places, and Frakir coiled now about my left ankle and began to migrate to my wrist. 'The stuff crunched underfoot as I departed.

  I shook out my cloak and brushed myself off. I traveled for perhaps half an hour then, leaving the place far behind me, before I halted and took my breakfast in a hot, bleak valley smelling faintly of sulfur.

  As I was finishing
, I heard a crashing noise. A horned and tusked purple thing went racing along the ridge to my right pursued by a hairless orange-skinned creature with long claws and a forked tail. Both were wailing in different keys.

  I nodded. It was just one damned thing after another.

  I made my way through frozen lands and burning lands, under skies both wild and placid. Then at last, hours later, I saw the low range of dark hills, and aurora streaming upward from behind them. That was it. I needed but approach and pass through and I would see my goal beyond the last and most difficult barrier of all.

  I moved ahead. It would be good to finish this job and get on with more important matters. I would trump back to Amber when I was finished there, rather than retracing my steps. I could not have trumped in to my destination, though, because the place could not be represented on a card.

  In that I was jogging, I first thought that the vibrations were my own. I was disabused of this notion when small pebbles began to roll aimlessly about the ground before me. Why not?

  I'd been hit with just about everything else. It was as if my strange nemesis were working down through a checklist and had just now come to "Earthquake." All right. At least there was nothing high near at hand to fall on me.

  "Enjoy yourself, you son of a bitch!" I called out. "One day real soon it won't be so funny!"

  As if in response the shaking grew more violent, and I had to halt or be thrown from my feet. As I watched; the ground began to subside in places, tilt in still others. I looked about quickly, trying to decide whether to advance, retreat, or stay put. Small fissures had begun to open, and now I could hear a growling, grinding sound.

  The earth dropped abruptly beneath me-perhaps six inches-and the nearest crevices widened. I turned and began sprinting back the way I had come. The ground seemed less disturbed there.

  A mistake perhaps. A particularly violent tremor followed, knocking me from my feet. Before I could rise a large crack appeared within reaching distance. It continued to widen even as I watched. I sprang to my feet, leapt across it, stumbled, rose again, and beheld another opening riftwidening more rapidly than the one I had been fleeing.

  I sprang once more, onto a tilting tabletop of land. The ground seemed torn everywhere now with the dark lightning strokes of rifts, heaving themselves open widely to the accompaniment of awful groans and screechings. Big sections of ground slipped from sight into abysses. My small island was already going.

  I leaped again, and again, trying to make it over to what appeared to be a more stable area.

  I didn't quite manage it. I missed my footing and fell. But I managed to catch hold of the edge. I dangled a moment then and began to draw myself upward. The edge began to crumble. I clawed at it and caught a fresh hold. Then I dangled again, coughing and cursing.

  I sought for footholds in the. clayey wall against which I -hung. It yielded somewhat beneath the thrusting of my boots and I dug in, blinking dirt from my eyes, trying for

  a firmer hold overhead. I could feel Frakir loosening, tightening into a small loop, one end free and flowing over my knuckles, hopefully to locate something sufficiently firmset to serve as an anchor.

  But no. My lefthand hold gave way again. I clung with my right and groped for another. Loose earth fell about me .as I failed, and my right hand was beginning to slip.

  Dark shadow above me, through dust and swimming eyes.

  My right hand fell loose. I thrust with my legs for another try.

  My right wrist was clasped as it sped upward and forward once again. A big hand with a powerful grip held me. Moments later, it was joined by another and I was drawn upward, quickly, smoothly. I was over the edge and seeking my footing in an instant. My wrist was released. I wiped my eyes.

  "Luke!"

  He was dressed in green, and blades must not have bothered him the way they do me, for a good-sized one hung at his right side. He seemed to be using a rolled cloak for a backpack, and he wore its clasp like a decoration upon his left breast-an elaborate thing, a golden bird of some son.

  "This way," he said, turning, and I followed him.

  He led me a course back and to the left, tangent to the route I had taken on entering the valley. The footing grew steadier as we hurried that way, mounting at last a low hill that seemed completely out of range in the disturbance. Here we paused to look back.

  "Come no farther!" a great voice boomed from that direction.

  "Thanks, Luke," I panted. "I don't know how you're here or why but-"

  He raised a hand.

  "Right now I just want to know one thing," he said, rubbing at a short beard he seemed to have grown in an amazingly brief time, and causing me to note that he was wearing the ring with the blue stone.

  "Name it," I told him.

  "How come whatever it was that just spoke has your voice?" he asked.

  "Uh-oh. I knew it sounded familiar."

  "Come on!" he said. "You must know. Every time you're threatened and it warns you back it's your voice that I hear doing it-echolike."

  "How long have you been following me, anyhow?"

  "Quite a distance."

  "Those dead creatures outside the cleft where I' d camped-'

  "I took them out for you. Where are you going, and what is that thing?"

  "Right now I have only suspicions as to exactly what's going on, and it's a long story. But the answer should lie beyond that next range of hills."

  I gestured toward the aurora.

  He stared off in that direction, then nodded.

  "Let's get going," he said.

  "There is an earthquake in progress," I observed,. . .

  "It seems pretty much confined to this valley," he stated. "We can cut around it and proceed."

  "And quite possibly encounter its continuance."

  He shook his head.

  "It seems to me," he said, "that whatever it is that's trying to bar your way exhausts itself after each effort and takes quite a while to recover sufficiently to make another attempt."

  "But the attempts are getting closer together," I noted, "and more spectacular each time."

  "Is it because we're getting closer to their source?" he asked.

  "Possibly."

  "Then let's hurry."

  We descended the far side of the hill, then went up and down another. The tremors, by that time, had already subsided to an occasional shuddering of the ground and shortly these, too, ceased.

  We made our way into and along another valley, which for a while headed us far to the right of our goal, then curved gently back in the proper direction, toward the final range of barren hills, lights flickering beyond them against the low, unmoving base of a cloudlike line of white under a mauve to violet sky. No fresh perils were presented.

  "Luke," I asked after a time, "what happened on the mountain, that night in New Mexico?"

  "I had to go away - fast," he answered.

  "What about Dan Martinez's body?"

  "Took it with me."

  "Why?"

  "I don't like leaving evidence lying about."

  "That doesn't really explain much."

  "I know," he said, and he broke into a jog. I paced him.

  "And you know who I am," I continued.

  "Yes."

  "How?"

  "Not now," he said. "Not now."

  He increased his pace. I matched it. "And why were you following me?"

  "I saved your ass, didn't I?"

  "Yeah, and I'm grateful. But it still doesn't answer the question."

  "Race you to that leaning stone," he said, and he put on a burst of speed.

  I did, too, and I caught him. Try as I could I couldn't pass him, though. And we were breathing too hard by then to ask or answer questions.

  I pushed myself, ran faster. He did, too, keeping up. The leaning stone was still a good distance off. We stayed side by side and I saved my reserve for the final sprint. It was crazy, but I'd run against him too.many times. It was almost a matter of habit by now. T
hat, and the old curiosity. Had he gotten a little faster? Had I? Or a little slower?

  My arms pumped, my feet thudded. I got control of my breathing, maintained it in an appropriate rhythm. I edged a little ahead of him and he did nothing about it. The stone was suddenly a lot nearer.

  We held our distance for perhaps half a minute, and then he cut loose. He was abreast of me, he was past me. Time to dig in.

  I drove my legs faster. The blood thudded in my ears. I sucked air and pushed with everything I had. The distance between us began to narrow again. The leaning rock was looking bigger and bigger . . .

  I caught him before we reached it, but try as I might I could not pull ahead. We raced past it side by side and collapsed together.

  "Photo finish," I gasped.

  "Got to call it a tie," he paused. "You always surprise me-right at the end."

  I groped out my water bottle and passed it to him. He took a swig and handed it back. We emptied it that way, a little at a time.

  "Damn," he said then, getting slowly to his feet. "Let's see what's over those hills."

  I got up and went along.

  When I finally recovered my breath the first thing I said was, "You seem to know a hell of a lot more about me than I do about you."

  "I think so," he said after a long pause, "and I wish I didn't."

  "What does that mean?"

  "Not now," he replied. "Later. You don't read War and Peace on your coffee break."

  "I don't understand."

  "Time," he said. "There's always either too much time or not enough. Right now there's not enough."

  "You've lost me."

  "Wish I could."

  The hills were nearer and the ground remained firm beneath our feet. We trudged steadily onward.

  I thought of Bill's guesswork, Random's suspicions, and Meg Devlin's warning. I also thought of that round of strange ammunition I'd found in Luke's jacket.

  "That thing we're heading toward," he said, before I could frame a fresh question of my own. "That's your Ghostwheel, isn't it?"

  "Yes."

  He laughed. Then: "So you were telling the truth back in Santa Fe when you told me it required a peculiar environment. What you didn't say was that you'd found that environment and built the thing there."