Sign of the unicorn (23 page)

Random halted again.

“Damn it, Corwin! This is ridiculous!” he said. “You are not playing games, are you?”

“I couldn’t if I would,” I said. “I have never been able to manipulate Shadow anywhere on Kolvir. There isn’t supposed to be any to work with here.”

“That has always been my understanding, too. Amber casts Shadow but is not of it. I don’t like this at all. What do you say we turn back?”

“I’ve a feeling we might not be able to retrace our way,” I said. “There has to be a reason for this, and I want to know it.”

“It occurs to me that it might be some sort of a trap.”

“Even so,” I said.

He nodded and we rode on, down that shaded way, under trees now grown more stately. The wood was silent about us. The ground remained level, the trail straight. Half consciously, we pushed the horses to a greater pace.

About five minutes passed before we spoke again. Then Random said, “Corwin, this can’t be Shadow.”

“Why not?”

“I have been trying to influence it and nothing happens. Have you tried?”

“No.”

“Why don’t you?”

“All right.”

A rock could jut beyond the coming tree, a morning glory twine and bell within that shrubby stand. . . . There ought a patch of sky come clear, a wispy cloud upon it. . . . Then let there be a fallen limb, a stair of fungus up its side. . . . A scummed-over puddle . . . A frog . . . Falling feather, drifting seed . . . A limb that twists just so . . . Another trail upon our way, fresh-cut, deep-marked, past the place the feather should have fallen...

“No good,” I said.

“If it is not Shadow, what is it?”

“Something else, of course.”

He shook his head and checked again to see that his blade was loose in its scabbard. Automatically, I did the same. Moments later, I heard Ganelon’s make a small clicking noise behind me.

Ahead, the trail began to narrow, and shortly thereafter it commenced to wander. We were forced to slow our pace once again, and the trees pressed nearer with branches sweeping lower than at any time before. The trail became a path. It jogged, it curved, it gave a final twist and then quit.

Random ducked a limb, then raised his hand and halted. We came up beside him. For as far as I could see ahead there was no indication of the trail’s picking up again. Looking back, I failed to locate any sign of it either.

“Suggestions,” he said, “are now in order. We do not know where we have been or where we are going, let alone where we are. My suggestion is the hell with curiosity. Let’s get out of here the fastest way we know how.”

“The Trumps?” Ganelon asked.

“Yes. What do you say, Corwin?”

“Okay. I don’t like it either, and I can’t think of anything better to try. Go ahead.”

“Who should I try for?” he asked, producing his deck and uncasing it.

“Gerard?”

“Yes.”

He shuffled through his cards, located Guard’s, stared at it. We stared at him. Time went its way.

“I can’t seem to reach him,” he finally announced.

“Try Benedict.”

“Okay.”

Repeat performance. No contact.

“Try Deirdre,” I said, drawing forth my own deck and searching out her Trump.

“I’ll join you. We will see whether it makes a difference with two of us trying.”

And again. And again.

“Nothing,” I said after a long effort.

Random shook his head.

“Did you notice anything unusual about your Trumps?” he asked.

“Yes, but I don’t know what it is. They do seem different.”

“Mine seem to have lost that quality of coldness they once possessed,” he said.

I shuffled mine slowly. I ran my fingertips across them.

“Yes, you are right,” I said. “That’s it. But let us try again. Say, Flora.”

“Okay.”

The results were the same. And with Llewella. And Brand.

“Any idea what could be wrong?” Random asked.

“Not the slightest. They couldn’t all be blocking us. They couldn’t all be dead. . . . Oh, I suppose they could. But it is highly unlikely. Something seems to have affected the Trumps themselves, is what it is. And I never knew of anything that could do that.”

“Well, they are not guaranteed one hundred percent,” Random said, “according to the manufacturer.”

“What do you know that I don’t?”

He chuckled.

“You never forget the day you come of age and walk the Pattern,” he said. “I remember it as though it were last year. When I had succeeded-all flushed with excitement, with glory-Dworkin presented me with my first set of Trumps and instructed me in their use. I distinctly recall asking him whether they worked everywhere. And I remember his answer: ‘No,’ he said. ‘But they should serve in any place you will ever be.’ He never much liked me, you know.”

“But did you ask him what be meant by that?”

“Yes, and he said, ‘I doubt that you will ever achieve a state where they will fail to serve you. Why don’t you run along now?’ And I did. I was anxious to go play with the Trumps all by myself.”

“ ‘Achieve a state?’ He didn’t say ‘reach a place’?”

“No. I have a very good memory for certain things.”

“Peculiar-though not much help that I can see. Smacks of the metaphysical.”

“I’d wager Brand would know.”

“I’ve a feeling you’re right, for all the good that does us.”

“We ought to do something other than discuss metaphysics,” Ganelon commented. “If you can’t manipulate Shadow and you can’t work the Trumps, it would seem that the next thing to do is determine Where we are. And then go looking for help.”

I nodded.

“Since we are not in Amber, I think it is safe to assume that we are in Shadow-a very special place, quite near to Amber, since the changeover was not abrupt. In that we were transported without active cooperation on our part, there had to be some agency and presumably some intent behind the maneuver. If it is going to attack us, now is as good a time as any. If there is something else it wants, then it is going to have to show us, because we aren’t even in a position to make a good guess.”

“So you propose we do nothing?”

“I propose we wait. I don’t see any value in wandering about, losing ourselves further.”

“I seem to remember your once telling me that adjacent shadows tend to be somewhat congruent,” Ganelon said.

“Yes, I probably did. So what?”

“Then, if we are as near to Amber as you suppose, we need but ride toward the rising sun to come to a spot that parallels the city itself.”

“It is not quite that simple. But supposing it were, what good would it do us?”

“Perhaps the Trumps would function again at the point of maximum congruity.”

Random looked at Ganelon, looked at me.

“That may be worth trying,” he said. “What have we got to lose?”

“Whatever small orientation we still possess,” I said. “Look, it is not a bad idea. If nothing develops here, we will try it. However, looking back, it seems that the road behind us closes in direct proportion to the distance we advance. We are not simply moving in space. Under these circumstances, I am loath to wander until I am satisfied that we have no other option. If someone desires our presence at a particular location, it is up to him now to phrase the invitation a little more legibly. We wait.”

They both nodded. Random began to dismount, then froze, one foot in the stirrup, one on the ground.

“After all these years,” he said, and, “I never really believed it.. .”

“What is it?” I whispered.

“The option,” he said, and he mounted again.

He persuaded his horse to move very slowly forward. I followed, and a moment later I glimpsed it, white as I had seen it in the grove, standing, half hidden, amid a clump of ferns: the unicorn.

It turned as we moved, and seconds later flashed ahead, to stand partly concealed once more by the trunks of several trees.

“I see it!” Ganelon whispered. “To think there really is such a beast . . . Your family’s emblem, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“A good sign, I’d say.”

I did not answer, but followed, keeping it in sight. That it was meant to be followed I did not doubt.

It had a way of remaining partly concealed the entire while-looking out from behind something, passing from cover to cover, moving with an incredible swiftness when it did move, avoiding open areas, favoring glade and shade. We followed, deeper and deeper into the wood which had given up all semblance of anything to be found on Kolvir’s slopes. It resembled Arden now, more than anything else near Amber, as the ground was relatively level and the trees grew more and more stately.

An hour had passed, I guessed, and another had followed it, before we came to a small, clear stream and the unicorn turned and headed up it. As we rode along the bank. Random comunented, “This is starting to look sort of familiar.”

“Yes,” I said, “but only sort of. I can’t quite say why.”

“Nor I.”

We entered upon a slope shortly thereafter, and it grew steeper before very long. The going became more difficult for the horses, but the unicorn adjusted its pace to accommodate them. The ground became rockier, the trees smaller. The stream curved in its splashing course. I lost track of its twists and turns, but we were finally nearing the top of the small mount up which we had been traveling.

We achieved a level area and continued along it toward the wood from which the stream issued. At this point I caught an oblique view-ahead and to the right, through a place where the land fell away-of an icy blue sea, quite far below us.

“We’re pretty high up,” Ganelon said. “It seemed like lowland, but-“

“The Grove of the Unicorn!” Random interrupted. “That’s what it looks like! See!”

Nor was he incorrect. Ahead lay an area strewn with boulders. Amid them a spring uttered the stream we followed. This place was larger and more lush, its situation incorrect in terms of my internal compass. Yet the similarity had to be more than coincidental. The unicorn mounted the rock nearest the spring, looked at us, then turned away. It might have been staring down at the ocean.

Then, as we continued, the grove, the unicorn, the trees about us, the stream beside us took on an unusual clarity, all, as though each were radiating some special illumination, causing it to quiver with the intensity of its color while at the same time wavering, slightly, just at the edges of perception. This produced in me an incipient feeling like the beginning of the emotional accompaniment to a hellride.

Then, then and then, with each stride of my mount, something went out of the world about us. An adjustment in the relationships of objects suddenly occurred, eroding, my sense of depth, destroying perspective, rearranging the display of articles within my field of vision, so that everything presented its entire outer surface without simultaneously appearing to occupy an increased area: angles predominated, and relative sizes seemed suddenly ridiculous. Random’s horse reared and neighed, massive, apocalyptic, instantly recalling Guernica to my mind. And to my distress I saw that we ourselves had not been untouched by the phenomenon-but that Random, struggling with his mount, and Ganelon, still managing to control Firedrake, had, like everything else, been transfigured by this cubist dream of space.

But Star was a veteran of many a hellride; Firedrake, also, had been through a lot. We clung to them and felt the movements that we could not accurately gauge. And Random succeeded, at last, in imposing his will upon his mount, though the prospect continued to alter as we advanced.

Light values shifted next. The sky grew black, not as night, but like a flat, nonreflecting surface. So did certain vacant areas between objects. The only light left in the world seemed to originate from things themselves, and all of it was gradually bleached. Various intensities of white emerged from the planes of existence, and brightest of all, immense, awful, the unicorn suddenly reared, pawing at the air, filling perhaps ninety percent of creation with what became a slowmotion gesture I feared would aiimhilate us if we advanced another pace.

Then there was only the light. Then absolute stillness.

Then the light was gone and there was nothing. Not even blackness. A gap in existence, which might have lasted an instant or an eternity . . .

Then the blackness returned, and the light. Only they were reversed. Light filled the interstices, outlining voids that must be objects. The first sound that I heard was the rushing of water, and I knew somehow that we were halted beside the spring. The first thing that I felt was Star’s quivering. Then I smelled the sea.

Then the Pattern came into view, or a distorted negative of it. . . .

I leaned forward and more light leaked around the edges of things. I leaned back; it went away. Forward again, this time farther than before.. .

The light spread, introduced various shades of gray into the scheme of things. With my knees then, gently, I suggested that Star advance.