Trumps of doom

A cloud of smoke blew across her face. I held my breath and shut my eyes as a larger billow followed, engulfing us. When the air finally cleared again, I studied her. Her breathing had ceased and there was no pulse, no heartbeat. There was no nonburning, nonmarshy area available for even an attempt at CPR. She was gone. She'd known she was going.

I wrapped my cloak about her carefully, turning it into a shroud. Last of all, I folded a flap over her face. I fixed everything into place with the clasp I'd used to close it at my neck when I'd worn it. Then I waded out into deeper water.

«Just let me sink here.» Sometimes the dead sink quickly, sometimes they float…

«Good-bye, lady,» I said. «Wish I knew your name. Thanks again.»

I released my hold upon her. The waters swirled. She was gone. After a time, I looked away then moved away. Too many questions and no answers.

Somewhere, a maddened horse was screaming…

CHAPTER 9

Several hours and many shadows later I rested again, in a place with a clear sky and not much tinder about. I bathed in a shallow stream and afterward summoned fresh clothing out of Shadow. Clean and dry then, I rested on the bank and made myself a meal.

It seemed as if every day were now an April 30. It seemed as if everyone I met knew me, and as if everyone were playing an elaborate double-game. People were dying all about me and disasters were becoming a common occurrence. I was beginning to feel like a figure in a video game. What would be next? I wondered. A meteor shower?

There had to be a key. The nameless lady who had given her life to pull me out of the fire had said that someone was following me and that there was someone ahead of me, also. What did that mean? Should I wait for my pursuer to catch up and simply ask him, her, or it what the hell was going on? Or should I push on fast, hopefully catch the other party and make inquiry there? Would either give me the same answer? Or were there two different answers involved? Would a duel satisfy someone's honor? I'd fight it, then. Or a bribe.

I'd pay it. All I wanted was an answer followed by a little peace and quiet. I chuckled. That sounded like a description of death-though I wasn't that sure about the answer part.

«Shit!» I commented, to no one in particular, and I tossed a stone into the stream.

I got to my feet and crossed the water. Written in the sand on its opposite shore were the words GO BACK. I stepped on them and broke into a run.

The world spun about me as I touched the shadows. Vegetation fell away. The rocks grew into boulders, lightening, taking on a sparkle…

I ran through a valley of prisms beneath an awesome purple sky… Wind among rainbow stones, singing, Aeolian music…

Garments lashed by gales… Purple to lavender above… Sharp cries within the strains of sound… Earth cracking…

Faster. I am giant. Same landscape; infinitesimal now… Cyclopean, I grind the glowing stones beneath my feet… Dust of rainbows upon my boots, puffs of cloud about my shoutders…

Atmosphere thickening, thickening; almost to liquid, and green… Swirling… Slow motion, my best efforts… Swimming in it… Castles fit for aquaria drift by… Bright missiles like fireflies assail me… I feel nothing…

Green to blue… Thinning, thinning… Blue smoke and air like incense… The reverberation of a million invisible gongs, incessant… -. I clench my teeth.

Faster. Blue to pink, spark-shot… A catlick of fire… Another… Heatless flames dance like sea plants:… Higher, rising higher… Walls of fire buckle and crackle…

Footfalls at my back.

Don't look. Shift.

Sky split down the middle, by sun a comet streaking… Here and gone… Again: Again. Three days in as many heartbeats… I breathe the air spicy… Swirl the fires, descend to purple earth… Prism in the sky… I race the course of a glowing river across a field of fungus color of blood, spongy… Spores that turn to jewels, fall like bullets…

Night on a plain of brass, footfalls echoing to eternity… Knobbed machinelike plants clanking, metal flowers retracting back to metal stalks, stalks to consoles… Clank, clank, sigh… Echoes only, at my back?

I spin once.

Was that a dark figure ducking behind a windmill tree? Or only the dance of shadows in my shadow-shifting eyes? Forward. Through glass and sandpaper, orange ice, landscape of pale flesh…

There is no sun, only pale light… There is no earth… Only thin bridges and islands in the air… The world is crystal matrix…

Up, down, around. Through a hole in the air and down a chute…

Sliding… To a cobalt beach beside a still copper sea… Twilight without stars… Faint glow everywhere… Dead, dead this place… Blue rocks… Broken statues of inhuman beings… Nothing stirring…