The afternoon was golden, orange, yellow, red about us, with an autumn-damp smell behind the cool nips of the breezes. The sky was very blue, like certain stones…
Perhaps ten minutes later I asked her a more neutral question. “Could you show me the road to Amber?”
“You don’t know it?”
I shook my head. “I’ve never been this way before. All I know is that there are overland routes coming through here that lead to the Eastern Gate.”
“Yes,” she said. “A bit farther to the north, I believe. Let’s go find it.”
She headed back to a road we had followed for a time earlier and we turned right on it, which seemed logical. I did not remark on her vagueness, though I expected a comment from her before too long in that I had not elaborated on my plans and I’d a feeling she was hoping that I would.
Perhaps three quarters of a mile later we came to a crossroads. There was a low stone marker at the far left corner giving the distance to Amber, the distance back to Baylesport, the distance to Baylecrest in the east and to a place called Murn, straight ahead.
“What’s Murn?” I asked.
“A little dairy village.”
No way I could check that, without traveling six leagues.
“You plan on riding back to Amber?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Why not just use a Trump?”
“I want to get to know the area better. It’s my home. I like it here.”
“But I explained to you about the danger. The stones have marked you. You can be tracked.”
“That doesn’t mean I will be tracked. I doubt that whoever sent the ones I met last night would even be aware this soon that they’d found me and failed. They’d still be lurking about if I hadn’t decided to go out for dinner. I’m sure I have a few days’ grace in which to remove the markings you spoke of.”
She dismounted and let her horse nibble a few blades of grass. I did the same. Dismounted, that is.
“You’re probably right. I just don’t like to see you taking any chances,” she said. “When are you planning on heading back?”
“I don’t know. I suppose that the longer I wait the more likely it is that the person behind last night’s business will get restless and maybe send more muscle.”
She took hold of my arm and turned, so that she was suddenly pressed against me. I was somewhat surprised by the act, but my free arm automatically moved to hold the lady as it tends to on such occasions.
“You weren’t planning on leaving now, were you? Because if you are, I’m going with you.”
“No,” I answered truthfully. Actually, I’d been thinking of departing the following morning, following a good night’s sleep.
“When, then? We still have a lot of things to talk about.”
“I think we’ve pushed the question-and-answer business about as far as you’re willing to let it go.”
“There are some things —”
“I know.”
Awkward, this. Yes, she was desirable. And no, I didn’t care to have anything to do with her that way. Partly because I felt she wanted something else as well — what, I wasn’t sure — and partly because I was certain she possessed a peculiar power to which I did not wish to expose myself at intimate range. As my Uncle Suhuy used to say, speaking technically as a sorcerer, “If you don’t understand it, don’t screw around with it.” And I had a feeling that anything beyond a friendly acquaintanceship with Vinta could well turn into a duel of energies.
So I kissed her quickly to stay friendly and disengaged myself.
“Maybe I’ll head back tomorrow,” I told her.
“Good. I was hoping you’d spend the night. Perhaps several. I will protect you.”
“Yes, I’m still very tired,” I said.
“We’ll have to feed you a good meal and build up your strength.”
She brushed my cheek with her fingertips then, and I suddenly realized that I did know her from somewhere. Where? I couldn’t say. And that, too, frightened me. More than a little. As we mounted and headed back toward Arbor House I began making my plans for getting out of there that night.
So, sitting in my room, sipping a glass of my absent host’s wine (the red) and watching the candles flicker in the breeze from an opened window, I waited — first for the house to grow quiet (which it had), then for a goodly time to pass. My door was latched. I had mentioned how tired I felt several times during dinner, and then I had retired early. I am not so egotistically male that I feel myself constantly lusted after, but Vinta had given indication that she might stop by and I wanted the excuse of heavy sleeping. Least of all did I wish to offend her. I had problems enough without turning my strange ally against me.
I wished I still had a good book about, but I’d left my last one at Bill’s place, and if I were to summon it now I did not know but that Vinta might sense the sending, just as Fiona had once known I was creating a Trump, and come pounding on the door to see what the hell was going on.
But no one came pounding, and I listened to the creakings of a quiet house and the night sounds without. The candles shortened themselves and the shadows on the wall behind the bed ebbed and howed like a dark tide beyond their swaying light. I thought my thoughts and sipped my wine. Pretty soon…
An imagining? Or had I just heard my name whispered from some undetectable place?
“Merle…”
Again.
Real, but —
My vision seemed to swim for a moment, and then I realized it for what it was: a very weak Trump contact.
“Yes,” I said, opening and extending. “Who is it?”
“Merle, baby… Give me a hand or I’ve had it…”
Luke!
“Right here,” I said, reaching, reaching, as the image grew clear, solidified.
He was leaning, his back against a wall, shoulders slumped, head hanging.
“If this is a trick, Luke, I’m ready for it,” I told him. I rose quickly and, crossing to the table where I had laid my blade, I drew it and held it ready.
“No trick. Hurry! Get me out of here!”
He raised his left hand. I extended my left hand and caught hold of it. Immediately he slumped against me, and I staggered. For an instant I thought it was an attack, but he was dead weight and I saw that there was blood all over him. He still clutched a bloody blade in his right hand. “Over here. Come on.”
I steered him and supported him for several paces, then deposited him on the bed. I pried the blade from his grip, then placed it along with mine on a nearby chair.
“What the hell happened to you?”
He coughed and shook his head weakly. He drew several deep breaths, then, “Did I see a glass of wine,” he asked, “as we passed a table?”
“Yeah. Hold on.”
I fetched it, brought it back, propped him and held it to his lips. It was still over half full. He sipped it slowly, pausing for deep breaths.
“Thanks,” he said when he’d finished, then his head turned to the side.
He was out. I took his pulse. It was fast but kind of weak.
“Damn you, Luke!” I said. “You’ve got the worst timing…”
But he didn’t hear a word. He just lay there and bled all over the place.
Several curses later I had him undressed and was going over him with a wet towel to find out where, under all that blood, the injuries lay. There was a nasty chest wound on the right, which might have hit the lung. His breathing was very shallow, though, and I couldn’t tell. If so, I was hoping he’d inherited the regenerative abilities of Amber in full measure. I put a compress on it and laid his arm on top to hold it in place while I checked elsewhere. I suspected he had a couple of fractured ribs, also. His left arm was broken above the elbow and I set it and splinted it, using loose slats from a chair I’d noticed in the back of the closet earlier, and I strapped it to him. There were over a dozen lacerations and incisions of various degrees of severity on his thighs, right hip, right arm and shoulder, his back. None of them, fortunately, involved arterial bleeding. I cleaned all of these and bound them, which left him looking like an illustration in a firstaid handbook. Then I checked his chest wound again and covered him up.