Then it entered, and I turned my body, swinging my blade. But the blade that looked like Grayswandir fell and rose again, in a tightening circle, drawing my own weapon’s point to the right and sliding straight in toward my breast. I did a simple parry in quarte, but he slipped under it and was still coming in from the outside. I parried sixte, but he wasn’t there. His movement had been only a feint. He was back inside and coming in low now. I reversed myself and parried again as he slid his entire body in to my right, dropping his blade’s point, reversing his grip, fanning my face with his left hand.
Too late I saw the right hand rising as the left slid behind my head. Grayswandir’s pommel was headed straight for my jaw.
“You’re really…” I began, and then it connected. The last thing I remember seeing was the silver rose.
That’s life. Trust and you’re betrayed; don’t trust and you betray yourself. Like most moral paradoxes, it places you in an untenable position. And it was too late for my normal solution. I couldn’t walk away from the game.
I woke in a place of darkness. I woke wondering and wary. As usual when wondering and wary, I lay perfectly still and let my breathing continue its natural rhythm. And I listened.
Not a sound.
I opened my eyes slightly.
Disconcerting patterns. I closed them again.
I felt with my body for vibrations within the rocky surface upon which I was sprawled.
No vibes.
I opened my eyes entirely, fought back an impulse to close them. I raised myself onto my elbows, then gathered my knees beneath me, straightened my back, turned my head. Fascinating. I hadn’t been this disoriented since I’d gone drinking with Luke and the Cheshire Cat.
There was no color anywhere about me. Everything was black, white, or some shade of gray. It was as if I had entered a photographic negative. What I presumed to be a sun hung like a black hole several diameters above the horizon to my right. The sky was a very dark gray, and ebon clouds moved slowly within it. My skin was the color of ink. The rocky ground beneath me and about me shone an almost translucent bone-white, however. I rose slowly to my feet, turning. Yes. The ground seemed to glow, the sky was dark, and I was a shadow between them. I did not like the feeling at all.
The air was dry, cool. I stood in the foothills to an albino mountain range, so stark in appearance as to rouse comparison with the Antarctic. These stretched off and up to my left. To the right-low and rolling-toward what I guessed to be a morning sun, lay a black plain. Desert? I had to raise my hand and ‘shade’ against its… what? Antiglow?
“Shit!” I tried saying, and I noticed two things immediately.
The first was that my word remained unvoiced. The second was that my jaw hurt where my father or his simulacrum had slugged me.
I repeated my silent observation and withdrew my Trumps. All bets were off when it came to messing with sendings. I shuffled out the Trump for the Ghostwheel and focused my attention upon it.
Nothing. It was completely dead to me. But, then, it was Ghost who’d told me to lie low, and maybe he was simply refusing to entertain my calf. I thumbed through the others. I paused at Flora’s. She was usually willing to help me out of a tight spot. I studied that lovely face, sent out my call to it…
Not a golden curl stirred. Not a degree’s drop in temperature. The card remained a card. I tried harder, even muttering an enhancement spell. But there was nobody home.
Mandor, then. I spent several minutes on his card with the same result. I tried Random’s. Ditto. Benedict’s, Julian’s. No and no. I tried for Fiona, Luke, and Bill Roth. Three more negatives. I even pulled a couple of the Trumps of Doom, but I couldn’t reach the Sphinx either, or a building of bones atop a green glass mountain.
I squared them, cased them, and put them away. It was the first time I had encountered a phenomenon of this sort since the Crystal Cave. Trumps can be blocked in any of a number of ways, however, and so far as I was concerned, the matter was, at the moment, academic. I was more concerned about removing myself to a more congenial environment. I could save the research for some future bit of leisure.
I began walking. My footsteps were soundless. When I kicked a pebble and it bounced along before me, I could detect nothing of sound to its passage.
White to the left of me, black to the right. Mountains or desert. I turned left, walking. Nothing else in motion that I could see except for the black, black clouds. To the lee side of every outcrop a near-blinding area of enhanced brightness: crazy shadows across a crazy land.
Turn left again. Three paces, then round the boulder. Upward. Over the ridge, turn downhill. Turn right, Soon a streak of red amid rocks to the left…
Nope. Next time then…
Brief twinge in the frontal sinus. No red. Move on.
Crevice to the right, next turn…
I massaged my temples when they began to ache as no crevice was delivered. My breath came heavy, and I felt moisture upon my brow.
Textures of gray to green and brittle flowers, slate-blue, low on the next talus slope…
A small pain in my neck. No flowers. No gray. No green.
Then let the clouds part and the darkness pour down from the sun…
Nothing…
…and a sound of running water from a small stream, next gully.
I had to halt. My head was throbbing; my hands were shaking. I reached out and touched the rock wall to my left. It felt solid enough. Rampant reality. Why was it treading all over me?
And how had I gotten here?
And where was here?
I relaxed. I slowed my breathing and adjusted my energies. The pains in my head subsided, ebbed, were gone.
Again I began walking.
Birdsong and gentle breeze… Flower in a crannied nook…
No. And the first twinge of returning resistance… What sort of spell might I be under, that I had lost my power to walk in Shadow? I had never understood it to be something that could be taken away.
“It’s not funny,” I tried saying. “Whoever you are, whatever you are, how did you do it? What do you want? Where are you?”
Again I heard nothing; least of all an answer.
“I don’t know how you did it. Or why,” I mouthed, and thought. “I don’t feel as if I’m under a spell. But I must be here for a reason. Get on with your business. Tell me what you want.”
Nada.
I walked on, continuing in a halfhearted fashion my attempts to shift away through Shadow. As I did, I pondered my situation. I’d a feeling there was something elementary that I was overlooking in this entire business.
… And a small red flower behind a rock, next turn.
I made the turn, and there was the small red flower I had half consciously conjured. I rushed toward it to touch it, to confirm that the universe was a benign, essentially Merlin-loving place.
I stumbled in my rush, kicking up a cloud of dust. I caught myself, raised myself, looked about. I must have searched for the next ten or fifteen minutes, but I could not locate the flower. Finally, I cursed and turned away. No one likes to be a butt of the universe’s jokes.
On a sudden inspiration I sought through all my packets, should I have even a chip of the blue stones upon my person. Its odd vibrational abilities might just somehow conduct me through Shadow back toward its source. But no. Not even a speck of blue dust remained. They all were in my father’s tomb, and that was it. It would have been too easy an out for me, I guess.
What was I missing?
A fake Dworkin, a fake Oberon, and a man who’d claimed to be my father all had wanted to conduct me to some strange place — to compete in some sort of struggle between the Powers, the Oberon figure had indicated, whatever that meant. The Corwin figure had apparently succeeded, I reflected as I rubbed my jaw. Only what sort of game was it? And what were the Powers?