The Courts Of Chaos tcoa-5 Read online

  I sat up straight and squinted against the glare. I spoke a word to Star and shook the reins. We moved ahead.

  For a moment, it was like riding into a fog. Only it was enormously brighter, and there was absolutely no sound. Then we were falling.

  Falling, or drifting. After the initial shock, it was difficult to say. At first, there was a feeling of descent — perhaps intensified by the fact that Star panicked when it began. But there was nothing to kick against, and after a time Star ceased all movement save for shivering and heavy breathing.

  I held the reins with my right hand and clutched the Jewel with my left. I do not know what I willed or how I reached with it, exactly, but that I wanted passage through this place of bright nothingness, to find my way once more and move on to the journey’s end.

  I lost track of time. The feeling of descent had vanished. Was I moving, or merely hovering? No way to say. Was the brightness really brightness, still? And that deadly silence… I shuddered. Here was even greater sensory deprivation than in the days of my blindness, in my old cell. Here was nothing — not the sound of a scuttling rat nor the grinding of my spoon against the door, no dampness, no chill, no textures. I continued to reach…

  Flicker.

  It seemed there had been some momentary breaking of the visual field to my right, near subliminal in its brevity. I reached out and felt nothing.

  It had been so brief a thing that I was uncertain whether it had really occurred. It could easily have been an hallucination.

  But it seemed to happen again, this time to my left. How long the interval between, I could not say.

  Then I heard something like a groan, directionless. This, too, was very brief.

  Next — and for the first time, I was certain — there came a gray and white landscape like the surface of the moon. There and gone, perhaps a second’s worth, in a small area of my visual field, off to my left. Star snorted.

  To my right appeared a forest — gray and white — tumbling, as though we passed one another at some impossible angle. A small-screen fragment, less than two seconds’ worth.

  Then pieces of a burning building beneath me… Colorless…

  Snatches of wailing, from overhead…

  A ghostly mountain, a torchlit procession ascending a switchback trail up its nearest face…

  A woman hanging from a tree limb, taut rope about her neck, head twisted to the side, hands tied behind her back…

  Mountains, upside down, white, black clouds beneath…

  Click. A tiny thrill of vibration, as if we had momentarily touched something solid — Star’s hoof on stone, perhaps. Then gone…

  Flicker.

  Heads, rolling, dripping black gore… A chuckle from nowhere… A man nailed to a wall, upside down…

  The white light again, rolling and heaving, wavelike…

  Click. Flicker.

  For one pulsebeat, we trod a trail beneath a stippled sky. The moment it was gone, I reached for it again, through the Jewel.

  Click. Flicker. Click. Rumble.

  A rocky trail, approaching a high mountain pass… Still monochrome, the world… At my back, a crashing like thunder…

  I twisted the Jewel like a focus knob as the world began to fade. It came back again… Two, three, four… I counted hoofbeats, heartbeats against the growling background… Seven, eight, nine… The world grew brighter. I took a deep breath and sighed heavily. The air was cold.

  Between the thunder and its echoes, I heard the sound of rain. None fell upon me, though.

  I glanced back.

  A great wall of rain stood perhaps a hundred meters to the rear. I could distinguish only the dimmest of mountain outlines through it. I clucked to Star and we moved a little faster, climbing to an almost level stretch that led between a pair of peaks like turrets. The world ahead was still a study in black and white and gray, the sky before me divided by alternate bands of darkness and light. We entered the pass.

  I began to tremble. I wanted to draw rein, to rest, eat, smoke, dismount and walk around. Yet, I was still too close to that stormscreen to so indulge myself.

  Star’s hoofbeats echoed within the pass, where rock walls rose sheer on either hand beneath that zebra sky. I hoped these mountains would break this stormfront, though I felt that they could not. This was no ordinary storm, and I had a sick feeling that it stretched all the way back to Amber, and that I would have been trapped and lost forever within it but for the Jewel.

  As I watched that strange sky, a blizzard of pale flowers began to fall about me, brightening my way. A pleasant odor filled the air. The thunder at my back softened. The rocks at my sides were shot with silver streaks. The world was possessed of a twilight feeling to match the illumination, and as I emerged from the pass, I saw down into a valley of quirked perspective, distance impossible to gauge, filled with natural-seeming spires and minarets reflecting the moon-like light of the sky-streaks, reminiscent of a night in Tir-na Nog’th, interspersed with silvery trees, spotted with mirror-like pools, traversed by drifting wraiths, almost terraced-seeming in places, natural and rolling in others, cut by what appeared to be an extension of the line of trail I followed, rising and falling, hung over by an elegiac quality, sparked with inexplicable points of glitter and shine, devoid of any signs of habitation.

  I did not hesitate, but began my descent. The ground about me here was chalky and pale as bone — and was that the faintest line of a black road far off to my left? I could just about make it out.

  I did not hurry now, as I could see that Star was tiring. If the storm did not come on too quickly, I felt that we might take a rest beside one of the pools in the valley below. I was tired and hungry myself.

  I kept a lookout on the way down, but saw no people, no animals. The wind made a soft, sighing noise. White flowers stirred on vines beside the trail when I reached the lower levels where regular foliage began. Looking back, I saw that the stormfront still had not passed the mountain crest, though the clouds continued to pile behind it.

  I made my way on down into that strange place. The flowers had long before ceased to fall about me, but a delicate perfume hung in the air. There were no sounds other than our own and that of the constant breeze from my right. Oddly shaped rock formations stood all about me, seeming almost sculpted in their purity of line. The mists still drifted. The pale grasses sparkled damply.

  As I followed the trail toward the valley’s wooded center, the perspectives continued to shift about me, skewing distances, bending prospects. In fact, I turned off the trail to the left to approach what appeared to be a nearby lake and it seemed to recede as I advanced. When I finally came upon it, however, dismounted and dipped a finger to taste, the water was icy but sweet.

  Tired, I sprawled after drinking my fill, to watch Star graze while I began a cold meal from my bag. The storm was still fighting to cross the mountains. I looked for a long while, wondering about it. If Dad had failed, then those were the growls of Armageddon and this whole trip was meaningless. It did me no good to think that way, for I knew that I had to go on, whatever. But I could not help it. I might arrive at my destination, I might see the battle won, and then see it all swept away. Pointless… No. Not pointless. I would have tried, and I would keep on trying to the end. That was enough, even if everything was lost. Damn Brand, anyway! For starting —

  A footfall.

  I was into a crouch and I was turned in that direction with my hand on my blade in an instant.

  It was a woman that I faced, small, clad in white. She had long, dark hair and wild, dark eyes, and she was smiling. She carried a wicker basket, which she placed on the ground between us.

  “You must be hungry, Knight at arms,” she said in strangely accented Thari.

  “I saw you come. I brought you this.”

  I smiled and assumed a more normal stance.

  “Thank you,” I said. “I am. I am called Corwin. Yourself?”

  “Lady,” she said.

  I quirked an eyebrow
. “Thank you — Lady. You make your home in this place?”

  She nodded and knelt to uncover the basket.

  “Yes, my pavilion is farther back, along the lake.”

  She gestured with her head, eastward — in the direction of the black road.

  “I see,” I said.

  The food and the wine in the basket looked real, fresh, appetizing, better than my traveler’s fare. Suspicion was with me, of course.

  “You will share it with me?” I asked.

  “If you wish.”

  “I wish.”

  “Very well.”

  She spread a cloth, seated herself across from me, removed the food from the basket and arranged it between us. She served it then, and quickly sampled each item herself. I felt a trifle ignoble at this, but only a trifle. It was a peculiar location for a woman to be residing, apparently alone, just waiting around to succor the first stranger who happened along. Dara had fed me on our first meeting, also; and as I might be nearing the end of my journey, I was closer to the enemy’s places of power. The black road was too near at hand, and I caught Lady eying the Jewel on several occasions.

  But it was an enjoyable time, and we grew more familiar as we dined. She was an ideal audience, laughing at all my jokes, making me talk about myself. She maintained eye contact much of the time, and somehow our fingers met whenever anything was passed. If I were being taken in in some way, she was being very pleasant about it.

  As we had dined and talked, I had also kept an eye on the progress of that inexorable-seeming stormfront. It had finally breasted the mountain crest and crossed over. It had begun its slow descent of the high slope. As she cleared the cloth. Lady saw the direction of my gaze and nodded.

  “Yes, it is coming,” she said, placing the last of the utensils in the basket and seating herself beside me, bringing the bottle and our cups. “Shall we drink to it?”

  “I will drink with you, but not to that.”

  She poured.

  “It does not matter,” she said. “Not now,” and she placed her hand on my arm and passed me my cup.

  I held it and looked down at her. She smiled. She touched the rim of my cup with her own. We drank.

  “Come to my pavilion now,” she said, taking my hand, “where we will wile pleasurably the hours that remain.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Another time and that wiling would have been a fine dessert to a grand meal. Unfortunately, I must be on my way. Duty nags, time rushes. I’ve a mission.”

  “All right,” she said. “It is not that important. And I know all about your mission. It is not all that important either, now.”

  “Oh? I must confess that I fully expected you to invite me to a private party which would result in me alone and palely loitering on the cold side of some hill sometime hence if I were to accept.”

  She laughed.

  “And I must confess that it was my intention to so use you, Corwin. No longer, though.”

  “Why not?”

  She gestured toward the advancing line of disruption.

  “There is no need to delay you now. I see by this that the Courts have won. There is nothing anyone can do to halt the advance of the Chaos.”

  I shuddered briefly and she refilled our cups.

  “But I would rather you did not leave me at this time,” she went on. “It will reach us here in a matter of hours. What better way to spend this final time than in one another’s company? There is no need even to go as far as my pavilion.”

  I bowed my head, and she drew up close against me. What the hell. A woman and a bottle — that was how I had always said I wanted to end my days. I took a sip of the wine. She was probably right. Yet, I thought of the woman-thing which had trapped me on the black road as I was leaving Avalon. I had gone at first to aid her, succumbed quickly to her unnatural charms — then, when her mask was removed, saw that there was nothing at all behind it. Damned frightening, at the time. But, not to get too philosophical, everybody has a whole rack of masks for different occasions. I have heard pop psychologists inveigh against them for years. Still, I have met people who impressed me favorably at first, people whom I came to hate when I learned what they were like underneath. And sometimes they were like that woman-thing — with nothing much really there. I have found that the mask is often far more acceptable than its alternative. So… This girl I held to me might really be a monster inside. Probably was. Aren’t most of us? I could think of worse ways to go if I wanted to give up at this point. I liked her.

  I finished my wine. She moved to pour me more and I stayed her hand.

  She looked up at me. I smiled.

  “You almost persuaded me,” I said.

  Then I closed her eyes with kisses four, so as not to break the charm, and I went and mounted Star. The sedge was not withered, but he was right about the no birds. Hell of a way to run a railroad, though.

  “Good-bye, Lady.”

  I headed south as the storm boiled its way down into the valley. There were more mountains before me, and the trail led toward them. The sky was still streaked, black and white, and these lines seemed to move about a bit; the over-all effect was still that of twilight, though no stars shone within the black areas. Still the breeze, still the perfume about me — and the silence, and the twisted monoliths and the silvery foliage, still dew-damp and glistening. Rag ends of mist blew before me. I tried to work with the stuff of Shadow, but it was difficult and I was tired. Nothing happened. I drew strength from the Jewel, trying to transmit some of it to Star, also. We moved at a steady pace until finally the land tilled upward before us, and we were climbing toward another pass, a more jagged thing than the one by which we had entered. I halted to look back, and perhaps a third of the valley now lay behind the shimmering screen of that advancing stormthing. I wondered about Lady and her lake, her pavilion. I shook my head and continued.

  The way steepened as we neared the pass, and we were slowed. Overhead, the white rivers in the sky took on a reddish cast which deepened as we rode. By the time I reached the entrance, the whole world seemed tinged with blood. Passing within that wide, rocky avenue, I was struck by a heavy wind. Pushing on against it, the ground grew more level beneath us, though we continued to climb and I still could not see beyond the pass.

  As I rode, something rattled in the rocks to my left. I glanced that way, but saw nothing. I dismissed it as a falling stone. Half a minute later. Star jerked beneath me, let out a terrible neigh, turned sharply to the right, then began to topple, leftward.

  I leaped clear, and as we both fell I saw that an arrow protruded from behind Star’s right shoulder, low. I hit the ground rolling, and when I halted I looked up in the direction from which it must have come.

  A figure with a crossbow stood atop the ridge to my right, about ten meters above me. He was already cranking the weapon back to prepare for another shot.

  I knew that I could not reach him in time to stop him. So I cast about for a stone the size of a baseball, found one at the foot of the escarpment to my rear, hefted it and tried not to let my rage interfere with the accuracy of my throw. It did not, but it may have contributed some extra force.

  The blow caught him on the left arm, and he let out a cry, dropping the crossbow. The weapon clattered down the rocks and landed on the other side of the trail, almost directly across from me.

  “You son of a bitch!” I cried. “You killed my horse! I’m going to have your head for it!”

  As I crossed the trail, I looked for the fastest way up to him and saw it off to my left. I hurried to it and commenced climbing. An instant later, the light and the angle were proper and I had a better view of the man, bent nearly double, massaging his arm. It was Brand, his hair even redder in the sanguine light.

  “This is it, Brand,” I said. “I only wish someone had done it a long time ago.”

  He straightened and watched me climb for a moment. He did not reach for his blade. Just as I got to the top, perhaps seven meters away from him, he crossed his
arms on his breast and lowered his head.

  I drew Grayswandir and advanced. I admit that I was prepared to kill him in that or any other position. The red light had deepened until we seemed bathed in blood. The wind howled about us, and from the valley below came a rumble of thunder.

  He simply faded before me. His outline grew less distinct, and by the time I reached the place where he had been standing he had vanished entirely.

  I stood for a moment, cursing, remembering the story that he had somehow been transformed into a living Trump, capable of transporting himself anywhere in a very brief time.

  I heard a noise from below…

  I rushed to the edge and looked down. Star was still kicking and blowing blood, and it tore my heart to see it. But that was not the only distressing sight.

  Brand was below. He had picked up the crossbow and begun preparing it once more.

  I looked about for another stone, but there was nothing at hand. Then I spotted one farther back, in the direction from which I had come. I hurried to it, resheathed my blade and raised the thing. It was about the size of a watermelon. I returned with it to the edge and sought Brand. He was nowhere in sight.