While I had been dealing with him, though, three more had arisen, simultaneously, at three different points.
I rushed the nearest and dispatched him, but the other two made it over and were upon me while I was about it. As I defended myself from their attack, the final one came up and joined them.
They were not all that good, but it was getting crowded and there were a lot of points and sharp edges straying about me. I kept parrying and moving, trying to get them to block one another, get in each other’s way. I was partly successful, and when I had the best lineup I thought I was going to get, I rushed them, taking a couple of cuts — I had to lay myself open a bit to do it — but splitting one skull for my pains. He went over the edge and took the second one with him in a tangle of limbs and gear.
Unfortunately, the inconsiderate lout had carried off my blade, snagged in some bony cleft or other he had chosen to interpose when I swung. It was obviously my day for losing blades, and I wondered if my horoscope would have mentioned it if I had thought to look before I’d set out.
Anyhow, I moved quickly to avoid the final guy’s swing. In doing so, I slipped on some blood and went skidding toward the front of the rock. If I went down that way, it would plow right over me, leaving a very flat Random there, like an exotic rug, to puzzle and delight future wayfarers.
I clawed for handholds as I slid, and the guy took a couple of quick steps toward me, raising his blade to do unto me as I had his buddy.
I caught hold of his ankle, though, and it did the trick of breaking me very nicely — and damned if someone shouldn’t choose that moment to try to get hold of me via the Trumps.
“I’m busy!” I shouted. “Call back later!” and my own motion was arrested as the guy toppled, clattered, and went sliding by.
I tried to reach him before he fell to rugdom, but I was not quite quick enough. I had wanted to save him for questioning. Still, my unegged beer was more than satisfactory. I headed back top and center to observe and muse.
The survivors were still following me, but I had a sufficient lead. I did not at the moment have to worry about another boarding party. Good enough. I was headed toward the mountains once again. The sun I had conjured was beginning to bake me. I was soaked with sweat and blood. My wounds were giving me trouble. I was thirsty. Soon, soon, I decided, it would have to rain. Take care of that before anything else.
So I began the preliminaries to a shift in that direction: clouds massing, building, darkening…
I drifted off somewhere along the line, had a disjointed dream of someone trying to reach me again but not making it. Sweet darkness.
I awakened to the rain, sudden and hard-driving. I could not tell whether the darkness in the sky was from storm, evening, or both. It was cooler, though, and I spread my cloak and just lay there with my mouth open. Periodically I wrung moisture from the cloak. My thirst was eventually slaked and I began feeling clean again. The rock had also become so slick-looking that I was afraid to move about on it. The mountains were much nearer, their peaks limned by frequent lightnings. Things were too dark in the opposite direction for me to tell whether my pursuers were still with me. It would have been pretty rough trekking for them to have kept up, but then it is seldom good policy to rely on assumptions when traveling through strange shadows. I was a bit irritated with myself for going to sleep, but since no harm had come of it I drew my soggy cloak about me and decided to forgive myself. I felt around for some cigarettes I had brought along and found that about half of them had survived. After the eighth try, I juggled shadows enough to get a light. Then I just sat there, smoking and being rained on. It was a good feeling and I didn’t move to change anything else, not for hours.
When the storm finally let up and the sky came clear, it was a night full of strange constellations. Beautiful though, the way nights can be on the desert. Much later, I detected a gentle upward sloping and my rock started to slow. Something began happening in terms of whatever physical rules controlled the situation. I mean, the slope itself did not seem so pronounced that it would affect our velocity as radically as it had. I did not want to tamper with Shadow in a direction that would probably take me out of my way. I wanted to get back onto more familiar turf as soon as possible — find my way to a place where my gut anticipations of physical events had more of a chance of being correct.
So I let the rock grind to a halt, climbed down when it did, and continued on up the slope, hiking. As I went, I played the Shadow game we all learned as children. Pass some obstruction — a scrawny tree, a stand of stone — and have the sky be different from one side to the other. Gradually I restored familiar constellations. I knew that I would be climbing down a different mountain from the one I ascended. My wounds still throbbed dully, but my ankle had stopped bothering me except for a little stiffness. I was rested. I knew that I could go for a long while. Everything seemed to be all right again.
It was a long hike, up the gradually steepening way. But I hit a trail eventually, and that made things easier. I trudged steadily upward under the now familiar skies, determined to keep moving and make it across by morning. As I went, my garments altered to fit the shadow — denim trousers and jacket now, my wet cloak a dry scrape. I heard an owl nearby, and from a great distance below and behind came what might have been the yipyip-howl of a coyote. These signs of a more familiar place made me feel somewhat secure, exorcised any vestiges of desperation that remained with my flight. An hour or so later, I yielded to the temptation to play with Shadow just a bit. It was not all that improbable for a stray horse to be wandering in these hills, and of course I found him. After ten or so minutes of becoming friendly, I was mounted bareback and moving toward the top in a more congenial fashion. The wind sowed frost in our path. The moon came and sparked it to life.
To be brief, I rode all night, passing over the crest and commencing my downward passage well before dawn. As I descended, the mountain grew even more vast above me, which of course was the best time for this to occur. Things were green on this side of the range, and divided by neat highways, punctuated by occasional dwellings. Everything therefore was proceeding in accordance with my desire.
Early morning, I was into the foothills and my denim had turned to khaki and a bright shirt. I had a light sport jacket slung before me. At a great height, a jetliner poked holes in the air, moving from horizon to horizon. There were birdsongs about me, and the day was mild, sunny.
It was about then that I heard my name spoken and felt the touch of the Trump once more. I drew up short and responded.
“Yes?”
It was Julian.
“Random, where are you?” he asked.
“Pretty far from Amber,” I replied. “Why?”
“Have any of the others been in touch with you?”
“Not recently,” I said. “But someone did try to get hold of me yesterday. I was busy though, and couldn’t talk.”
“That was me,” he said. “We have a situation here that you had better know about.”
“Where are you?” I asked.
“In Amber. A number of things have happened recently.”
“Like what?”
“Dad has been gone for an unusually long time. No one knows where.”
“He’s done that before.”
“But not without leaving instructions and making delegations. He always provided them in the past.”
“True,” I said. “But how long is long?”
“Well over a year. You weren’t aware of this at all?”
“I knew that he was gone. Gerard mentioned it some time back.”