Sign of the unicorn (4 page)

Anyhow, I moved quickly to avoid the final guy’s swing. In doing so, I slipped on some blood and went skidding toward the front of the rock. If I went down that way, it would plow right over me, leaving a very flat Random there, like an exotic rug, to puzzle and delight future wayfarers.

I clawed for handholds as I slid, and the guy took a couple of quick steps toward me, raising his blade to do unto me as I had his buddy.

I caught hold of his ankle, though, and it did the trick of braking me very nicely-and damned if someone shouldn’t choose that moment to try to get hold of me via the Trumps.

“I’m busyl” I shouted. “Call back later!” and my own motion was arrested as the guy toppled, clattered, and went sliding by.

I tried to reach him before he fell to rugdom, but I was not quite quick enough. I had wanted to save him for questioning. Still, my

•

unegged beer was more than satisfactory. I headed back top and center to observe and muse.

The survivors were still following me, but I had a sufficient lead. I did not at the moment have to worry about another boarding party. Good enough. I was headed toward the mountains once again. The sun I had conjured was beginning to bake me. I was soaked with sweat and blood. My wounds were giving me trouble. I was thirsty. Soon, soon, I decided, it would have to rain. Take care of that before anything else.

So I began the preliminaries to a shift in that direction: clouds massing, building, darkening. . . .

I drifted off somewhere along the line, had a disjointed dream of someone trying to reach me again but not making it. Sweet darkness.

I awakened to the rain, sudden and hard-driving. I could not tell whether the darkness in the sky was from storm, evening, or both. It was cooler, though, and I spread my cloak and just lay there with my mouth open. Periodically I wrung moisture from the cloak. My thirst was eventually slaked and I began feeling clean again. The rock had also become so slick-looking that I was afraid to move about on it. The mountains were much nearer, their peaks limned by frequent lightnings. Things were too dark in the opposite direction for me to tell whether my pursuers were still with me. It would have been pretty rough trekking for them to have kept up, but then it is seldom good policy to rely on assumptions when traveling through strange shadows. I was a bit irritated with myself for going to sleep, but since no harm had come of it I drew my soggy cloak about me and decided to forgive myself. I felt around for some cigarettes I had brought along and found that about half of them had survived. After the eighth try, I juggled shadows enough to get a light. Then I just sat there, smoking and being rained on. It was a good feeling and I didn’t move to change anything else, not for hours.

When the storm finally let up and the sky came clear, it was a night full of strange constellations. Beautiful though, the way nights can be on the desert. Much later, I detected a gentle upward sloping and my rock started to slow. Something began happening in terms of whatever physical rules controlled the situation. I mean, the slope itself did not seem so pronounced that it would affect our velocity as radically as it had. I did not want to tamper with Shadow in a direction that would probably take me out of my way. I wanted to get back onto more familiar turf as soon as possible-find my way to a place where my gut anticipations of physical events had more of a chance of being correct.

So I let the rock grind to a halt, climbed down when it did, and continued on up the slope, hiking. As I went, I played the Shadow game we all learned as children. Pass some obstruction-a scrawny tree, a stand of stone-and have the sky be different from one side to the other. Gradually I restored familiar constellations. I knew that I would be climbing down a different mountain from the one I ascended. My wounds still throbbed dully, but my ankle had stopped bothering me except for a little stiffness. I was rested. I knew that I could go for a long while. Everything seemed to be all right again.

It was a long hike, up the gradually steepening way. But I hit a trail eventually, and that made things easier. I trudged steadily upward under the now familiar skies, determined to keep moving and make it across by morning. As I went, my garments altered to fit the shadow-denim trousers and jacket now, my wet cloak a dry scrape. I heard an owl nearby, and from a great distance below and behind came what might have been the yipyip-howl of a coyote. These signs of a more familiar place made me feel somewhat secure, exorcised any vestiges of desperation that remained with my flight an hour or so later, I yielded to the temptation to play with Shadow just a bit. It was not all that improbable for a stray horse to be wandering in these hills, and of course I found him. After ten or so minutes of becoming friendly, I was mounted bareback and moving toward the top in a more congenial fashion. The wind sowed frost in our path. The moon came and sparked it to life.

To be brief, I rode all night, passing over the crest and commencing my downward passage well before dawn. As I descended, the mountain grew even more vast above me, which of course was the best time for this to occur. Things were green on this side of the range, and divided by neat highways, punctuated by occasional dwellings. Everything therefore was proceeding in accordance with my desire.

Early morning. I was into the foothills and my denim had turned to khaki and a bright shirt. I had a light sport jacket slung before me. At a great height, a jetliner poked holes in the air, moving from horizon to horizon. There were birdsongs about me, and the day was mild, sunny.

It was about then that I heard my name spoken and felt the touch of the Trump once more. I drew up short and responded.

“Yes?”

It was Julian.

“Random, where are you?” he asked.

“Pretty far from Amber,” I replied. “Why?”

“Have any of the others been in touch with you?”

“Not recently,” I said. “But someone did try to get hold of me yesterday. I was busy though, and couldn’t talk”

“That was me,” he said. “We have a situation here that you had better know about.”

“Where are you?” I asked.

“In Amber. A number of things have happened recently.”

“Like what?”

“Dad has been gone for an unusually long time. No one blows where.”

“He’s done that before.”

“But not without leaving instructions and making delegations. He always provided them in the past.”

“True,” I said. “But how long is long?”

“Well over a year. You weren’t aware of this at all?”

“I knew that he was gone. Gerard mentioned it some time back.”

“Then add more time to that.”

“I get the idea. How have you been operating?”

“That is the problem. We have simply been dealing with affairs as they arise. Gerard and Caine had been running the navy anyway, on Dad’s orders. Without him, they have been making all their own decisions. I took charge of the patrols in Arden again. There is no central authority though, to arbitrate, to make policy decisions, to speak for all of Amber.”

“So we need a regent. We can cut cards for it, I suppose.”

“It is not that simple. We think Dad is dead.”

“Dead? Why? How?”

“We have tried to raise him on his Trump. We have been trying every day for over half a year now. Nothing. What do you think?”

I nodded.

“He may be dead,” I said. “You’d think he would have come across with something. Still, the possibility of his being in some trouble-say, a prisoner somewhere-is not precluded.”

“A cell can’t stop the Trumps. Nothing can. He would call for help the minute we made contact.”

“I can’t argue with that,” I said. But I thought of Brand as I said it. “Perhaps he is deliberately resisting contact, though.”

“What for?”

“I have no idea, but it is possible. You know how secretive he is about some things.”

“No,” Julian said, “it doesn’t hold up. He would have given some operating instructions, somewhere along the line.”

“Well, whatever the reasons, whatever the situation, what do you propose doing now?”

“Someone has to occupy the throne,” he said.

I had seen it coming throughout the entire dialogue, of course-the opportunity it had long seemed would never come to pass.

“Who?” I asked.

“Eric seems the best choice,” he replied. “Actually, he has been acting in that capacity for months now. It simply becomes a matter of formalizing it.”

“Not Just as regent?”

“Not just as regent.”

“I see. . . Yes, I guess that things have been happening in my absence. What about Benedict as a choice?”

“He seems to be happy where he is, off somewhere in Shadow.”

“What does he think of the whole idea?”

“He is not entirely in favor of it. But we do not believe he will offer resistance. It would disrupt things too much.”

“I see,” I said again. “And Bleys?”

“He and Eric had some rather heated discussions of the issue, but the troops do not take their orders from Bleys. He left Amber about three months ago. He could cause some trouble later. But then, we are forewarned.”

“Gerard? Caine?”

“They will go along with Eric. I was wondering about yourself.”

“What about the girls?” He shrugged.

“They tend to take things lying down. No problem.”

“I don’t suppose Corwin. . .”

“Nothing new. He’s dead. We all know it. His monument has been gathering dust and ivy for centuries. If not, then he has intentionally divorced himself from Amber forever. Nothing there. Now I am wondering where you stand.”

I chuckled.

“I am hardly in a position to possess forceful opinions,” I said.

“We need to know now.”

I nodded.

“I have always been able to detect the quarter of the wind,” I said. “I do not sail against it.”

He smiled and returned my nod.

“Very good,” he said.

“When is the coronation? I assume that I am invited.”

“Of course, of course. But the date has not yet been set. There are still a few minor matters to be dealt with. As soon as the affair is calendared, one of us will contact you again.”

“Thank you, Julian.”

“Good-bye for now. Random.”

And I sat there being troubled for a long while before I started on downward again. How long had Eric spent engineering it? I wondered. Much of the politicking back in Amber could have been done pretty quickly, but the setting up of the situation in the first place seemed the product of long-term thinking and planning. I was naturally suspicious as to his involvement in Brand’s predicament. I also could not help but give some thought to the possibility of his having a hand in Dad’s disappearance. That would have taken some doing and have required a really foolproof trap. But the more I thought of it, the less I was willing to put it past him. I even dredged up some old speculations as to his part in your own passing, Corwin. But, offhand, I could not think of a single thing to do about any of it. Go along with it, I figured, if that’s where the power was. Stay in his good graces.

Still . . . One should always get more than one angle on a story. I tried to make up my mind as to who would give me a good one. While I was thinking along these lines, something caught my eye as I glanced back and up, appreciating anew the heights from which I had not quite descended.

There were a number of riders up near the top. They had apparently traversed the same trail I had taken. I could not get an exact nose count, but it seemed suspiciously close to a dozen-a fairly sizable group to be out riding at just that place and time. As I saw that they were proceeding on down the same way that I had come, I had a prickly feeling along the base of my neck. What if . . . ? What if they were the same guys? Because I felt that they were.

Individually, they were no match for me. Even a couple of them together had not made that great a showing. That was not it. The real chiller was that if that’s who it was, then we were not alone in our ability to manipulate Shadow in a very sophisticated fashion. It meant that someone else was capable of a stunt that for all my life I had thought to be the sole property of our family. Add to this the fact that they were Brand’s wardens, and their designs on the family-at least part of it-did not look all that clement. I perspired suddenly at the notion of enemies who could match our greatest power.

Of course, they were too far off for me to really know just then whether that was truly who it was. But you have to explore every contingency if you want to keep winning the survival game. Could Eric have found or trained or created some special beings to serve him in this particular capacity? Along with you and Eric, Brand had one of the firmest claims on the succession. . . . not to take anything away from your case, damn it! Hell! You know what I mean. I have to talk about it to show you how I was thinking at the time. That’s all. So, Brand had had the basis for a pretty good claim if he had been in a position to press it. You being out of the picture, he was Eric’s chief rival when it came to adding a legal touch to things. Putting that together with his plight and the ability of those guys to traverse Shadow, Eric came to look a lot more sinister to me. I was more scared by that thought than I was by the riders themselves, though they did not exactly fill me with delight. I decided that I had better do several things quickly: talk to someone else in Amber, and have him take me through the Trump.