Blood of Amber (25 page)

I racked my brains, but I could not figure what that threat might have been.
 
Was I following a completely false trail with this line of reasoning?

She certainly was not omniscient.
 
Her reason for spiriting me to Arbor House was as much to pump me for information as it was to remove me from the scene of the attack.
 
And some of the things she’d wanted to know were as interesting as some of the things she knew.

My mind did a backward flip.
 
What was the first question she had asked me?

Landing adroitly on my mental feet, back at Bill Roth’s place, I heard the question several times.
 
As George Hansen she had asked it casually and I had lied; as a voice on the telephone she had asked it and been denied; as Meg Devlin, in bed, she had finally gotten me to answer it honestly: What was your mother’s name?

When I’d told her that my mother was named Dara she had finally begun speaking freely.
 
She had warned me against Luke.
 
It seemed that she might have been willing to tell me more then, too, save that the arrival of the real Meg’s husband had cut short our conversation.

To what was this the key? It placed my origin in the Courts of Chaos, to which she had at no time referred.
 
Yet it had to be important, somehow.

I had a feeling that I already had the answer but that I would be unable to realize it until I had formulated the proper question.

Enough.
 
I could go no further.
 
Knowing that she was aware of my connection with the Courts still told me nothing.
 
She was also obviously aware of my connection with Amber, and I could not see how that figured in the pattern of events either.

So I would leave it at that point and come back to it later.
 
I had plenty of other things to think about.
 
At Least, I now had lots of new questions to ask her the next time we met, and I was certain that we would meet again.

Then something else occurred to me.
 
If she’d done any real protecting of me at all, it had taken place offstage.
 
She had given me a lot of information, which I thought was probably correct but which I had had no opportunity to verify, From her phoning and lurking back in New York to her killing of my one possible source of information in Death Alley, she had really been more a bother than a help.
 
It was conceivable that she could actually show up and encumber me with aid again, at exactly the wrong moment.

So instead of working on my opening argument for Random, I spent the next hour or so considering the nature of a being capable of moving into a person and taking over the controls.
 
There seemed only a certain number of ways it might be done, and I narrowed the field quickly, considering what I knew of her nature, by means of the technical exercises my uncle had taught me.
 
When I thought I had it worked out I backtracked and mused over the forces that would have to be involved.

From the forces I worked my way through the tonic vibrations of their aspects.
 
The use of raw power, while flashy, is wasteful and very fatiguing for the operator, not to mention aesthetically barbaric.
 
Better to be prepared.

I lined up the spoken signatures and edited them into a spell.
 
Suhuy would probably have gotten it down even shorter, but there is a point of diminishing returns on these things, and I had mine figured to where it should work if my main guesses were correct.
 
So I collated it and assembled it.
 
It was fairly long-too long to rattle off in its entirety if I were in the hurry I probably would be.
 
Studying it, I saw that three linchpins would probably hold it, though four would be better.

I summoned the Logrus and extended my tongue into its moving pattern.
 
Then I spoke the spell, slowly and clearly, leaving out the four key words I had chosen to omit.
 
The woods grew absolutely still about me as the words rang out.
 
The spell hung before me like a crippled butterfly of sound and color, trapped within the synesthetic web of my personal vision of the Logrus, to come again when I summoned it, to be released when I uttered the four omitted words.

I banished the vision and felt my tongue relax.
 
Now she was not the only one capable of troublesome surprises.

I halted for a drink of water.
 
The sky had grown darker and the small noises of the forest returned.
 
I wondered whether Fiona or Bleys had been in touch, and how Bill was doing back in town.
 
I listened to the rattling of branches.
 
Suddenly, I had the feeling I was being watched-not the cold scrutiny of a Trump touch, but simply the sensation that there was a pair of eyes fixed upon me.
 
I shivered.
 
All those thoughts about enemies.
 
.
 
.
 
.

I loosened my blade and rode on.
 
The night was young, and there were more miles ahead than behind.

Riding through the evening I kept alert, but I neither heard nor saw anything untoward.
 
Had I been wrong about Jasra, Sharu or even Luke? And was there a party of assassins at my back right now? Periodically, I drew rein and sat listening for a short while.
 
But I heard nothing unusual on these occasions, nothing that could be taken as sounds of pursuit.
 
I became acutely aware of the blue button in my pocket.
 
Was it acting as a beacon for some sinister sending of the wizard’s? I was loath to get rid of the thing because I could foresee a number of possible uses for it.
 
Besides, if it had already attuned me-which it probably had-I could see no benefit in disposing of it now.
 
I would secrete it someplace safe before I made my attempt to lose its vibes.
 
Until such a time, I could see no percentage in doing anything else with it.

The sky continued to darken, and a number of stars had put in hesitant appearances.
 
Smoke and I slowed even more in our course, but the road remained good and its pale surface stayed sufficiently visible to present no hazard.
 
I heard the call of an owl from off to the right and moments later saw its dark shape rush at middle height among the trees.
 
It would have been a pleasant night to be riding if I were not creating my own ghosts and haunting myself with them.
 
I love the smells of autumn and the forest, and I resolved to bum a few leaves in my campfire later on for that pungency unlike any other I know.

The air was clean and cool.
 
Hoof sounds, our breathing and the wind seemed to be the only noises in the neighborhood until we flushed a deer a bit later and heard the diminishing crashes of its retreat for some time afterward.
 
We crossed a small but sturdy wooden bridge a little later, but no trolls were taking tolls.
 
The road took a turn upward, and we wound our way slowly but steadily to a higher elevation.
 
Now there were numerous stars visible through the weave of the branches, but no clouds that I could see.
 
The deciduous trees grew barer as we gained a bit of altitude, and more evergreens began to occur.
 
I felt the breezes more strongly now.

I began pausing more frequently, to rest Smoke, to listen, to nibble at my supplies.
 
I resolved to keep going at least until moonrise-which I tried to calculate from its occurrence the other night, following my departure from Amber.
 
If I made it to that point before I camped, the rest of the ride into Amber tomorrow morning would be pretty easy.

Frakir pulsed once, lightly, upon my wrist.
 
But hell, that had often happened in traffic when I’d cut someone off.
 
A hungry fox could have just passed, regarded me and wished itself a bear.
 
Still, I waited there longer than I had intended, prepared for an attack and trying not to appear so.

But nothing happened, the warning was not repeated and after a time I rode on.
 
I returned to my idea for putting the screws to Luke-and, for that matter, Jasra.
 
I couldn’t call it a plan yet, because it was lacking in almost all particulars.
 
The more I thought of it, the crazier it seemed.
 
For one thing, it was extremely tempting, as it held the potential for resolving a lot of problems.
 
I wondered then why I had never created a Trump for Bill Roth.
 
I felt a sudden need to talk to a good attorney.
 
I might well want someone to argue my case before this was done.
 
Too dark now to do any drawing, though .
 
.
 
, and not really necessary yet.
 
Actually, I just wanted to talk with him, bring him up to date, get the views of someone not directly involved.

Frakir issued no further warnings during the next hour.
 
We commenced a slightly downward course then, soon passing into a somewhat more sheltered area where the smell of pines came heavy.
 
I mused on-about wizards and flowers, Ghostwheel and his problems, and the name of the entity who had recently occupied Vinta.
 
There were lots of other musings, too, some of which went a long way back.
 
.
 
.
 
.

Many stops later, with a bit of moonlight trickling through the branches behind me, I decided to call it quits and look for a place to bed down.
 
I gave Smoke a brief drink at the next stream.
 
About a quarter hour afterward, I thought I glimpsed what might be a promising spot off to the right, so I left the road and headed that way.

It turned out not to be as good a place as I’d thought, and I continued farther into the wood until I came across a small clear area that seemed adequate.
 
I dismounted, unsaddled Smoke and tethered him, rubbed him down with his blanket and gave him something to eat.
 
Then I scraped clear a small area of ground with my blade, dug a pit at its center and built a fire there.
 
I used a spell to ignite it because I was feeling lazy, and I threw on several clumps of leaves as I recalled my earlier reflections.

I seated myself on my cloak, my back against the bole of a middle-sized tree, and ate a cheese sandwich and sipped water while I worked up the ambition to pull my boots off.
 
My blade lay upon the ground at my side.

My muscles began to unkink.
 
The smell of the fire was a nostalgic thing.
 
I toasted my next sandwich over it.

I sat and thought of nothing for a long while.
 
Gradually, in barely perceptible stages, I felt the gentle disengagements lassitude brings to the extremities.
 
I had meant to gather firewood before I took my ease.
 
But I didn’t really need it.
 
It wasn’t all that cold.
 
I’d wanted the fire mainly for company.

However.
 
.
 
.
 
.
 
I dragged myself to my feet and moved off into the woods.
 
I did a long, slow reconnaissance about the area once I got moving.
 
Though to be honest, my main reason for getting up had been to go arid relieve myself.
 
I halted in my circuit when I thought that I detected a small flicker of light far off to the northeast.
 
Another campfire? Moonlight on water? A torch? There had been only a glimpse and I could not locate it again, though I moved my head about, retraced my most recent few paces and even struck off a small distance in that direction.

But I did not wish to chase after some will-o’-the-wisp and spend my night beating the bushes.
 
I checked various lines of sight back to my camp.
 
My small fire was barely visible even from this distance.
 
I circled my camp, entered and sprawled again.
 
The fire was already dying and I decided to let it burn out.
 
I wrapped my cloak about me and listened to the soft sounds of the wind.

I fell asleep quickly.
 
For how long I slept, I do not know.
 
There were no dreams that I can recall.

I was awakened by Frakir’s frantic pulsing.
 
I opened my eyes the barest slits and tossed, as if in sleep, so that my right hand fell near the haft of my blade.
 
I maintained my slow breathing pattern.
 
I heard and felt that the wind had risen, and I saw that it had fanned the embers to the point where my fire flared once again.
 
I saw no one before me, however.
 
I strained my hearing after any sounds, but all I heard was the wind and the popping of the fire.

It seemed as foolish to spring to my feet into a guard position when I did not know from which direction the danger was approaching as it did to remain a target.
 
On the other hand, I had intentionally cast my cloak so that I lay with a large, low-limbed pine at my back.
 
It would have been very difficult for someone to have approached me from the rear, let alone to have done so quietly.
 
So it did not seem I was in danger of an imminent attack from that direction.