Prince of chaos

«So why the secret?» I interrupted. «Why not just tell him you were Gail? Surprise the hell out of him pleasantly.»

«You don't understand,» she said. «He broke up with me, remember? Now I've another chance. It's like it was, all over again. He - likes me a lot. I'm afraid to say, `I'm really the girl you once broke up with. ' It might get him to thinking of all the reasons why, and make him decide he was right the first time.»

«That's silly,» I said. «I don't know what reasons he gave. He never told me about it. Just said there'd been an argument. But I'm sure they were specious. I know he liked you. I'm sure he really broke up with you because he was a son of Amber about to come home on some very nasty business, and there was no room for what he thought was a normal shadow girl in the picture. You'd played your part too well.»

«Is that why you broke up with Julia?» she asked.

«No,» I said.

«Sorry.»

I noticed the black trail had widened about a foot since we'd begun talking. I was in the market for a mathematical problem just then.

X

And so we rode - six paces along a city street, amid the blare of horns, our black way edged by skid marks; a quarter mile along a black sand beach, beside a soft green sea, stirring palms to our left; across a tarnished snowfield; beneath a bridge of stone, our way a dead and blackened streambed; then to prairie; back to wooded way - and Tiger never flinched, even when Dalt put a booted foot through a windshield and broke off an antenna.

The way continued to widen, to perhaps twice its width when I had first come upon it. Stark trees were more common within it now, standing like photographic negatives of their bright mates but a few feet off the trail. While the leaves and branches of these latter were regularly stirred, we felt no wind at all. The sounds of our voices, of our mounts' hooves - came somehow muted now, also. Our entire course had a constant, wavery twilight atmosphere to it, no matter that a few paces away - which brief excursion we essayed many times it might be high noon or midnight. Dead-looking birds were perched within the blackened trees, though they seemed on occasion to move, and the raspy, croaking sounds that sometimes came to us may well have been theirs.

At one time, a fire raged to our right; at another, we seemed to be passing near the foot of a glacier on the left. Our trail continued to widen-nothing like the great Black Road Corwin had described to me from the days of the war, but big enough now for us all to ride abreast.

«Luke,» I said, after a time.

«Yeah?» he answered, from my left. Nayda rode to my right now, and Dalt to her right. «What's up?»

«I don't want to be king.»

«Me neither,» he said. «How hard they pushing you?»

«I'm afraid they're going to grab me and crown me if I go back. Everybody in my way died suddenly. They really plan to stick me on the throne, to marry me to Coral-»

«Uh-huh,» he said, «and I've two questions about it. First, will it work?»

«The Logrus seems to think it will, at least for a time - which is all politics is about, anyhow.»

«Second,» he said, «if you feel about the place the way I feel about Kashfa, you're not going to let it go to hell if you can help it - even if it means some personal misery. You don't want to take the throne, though, so you must have worked out some alternative remedy. What is it?»

I nodded as the trail turned sharply to the left and headed uphill. Something small and dark scuttled across our path.

«I've a notion - not even a full idea,» I said, «which I want to discuss with my father.»

«Tall order,» he said. «You know for sure that he's even alive?»

«I talked to him not all that long ago - very briefly. He's a prisoner, somewhere. All I know for sure is that it's somewhere in the vicinity of the Courts-because I can reach him by Trump from there, but nowhere else.»

«Tell me about this communication,» he said.

And so I did, black bird and all.

«Sounds like busting him out's going to be tricky,» he said. «And you think your mom's behind it?»

«Yep.»

«I thought I was the only one with these maternal problems. But it figures, seeing as yours trained mine.»

«How come we turned out so normal?» I said.

He just stared at me for several seconds. Then he started to laugh.

«Well, I feel normal,» I said.

«Of course,» he said quickly then, «and that's what counts. Tell me, if it came to an out-and-out crossing of powers, do you think you could beat Dara?»

«Hard to say,» I told him. «I'm stronger now than I ever was before, because of the spikard. But I'm beginning to believe she's very good.»

«What the hell's a spikard?» So I told him that story, too.

«That's why you were so flashy back in the church when you were fighting with Jurt?» he said.

«That's right.»

«Let's see it.»

I tried to pull it off, but it wouldn't pass the knuckle.

So I simply extended my hand. Luke reached for it. His fingers halted a couple of inches above it.

«It's holding me off, Merle. Protective little devil.»