Knight of Shadows tcoa-9 Read online

  We were set up somehow, I said. Now I know why the dwarf was laughing. He planted this on me while we were passed out.

  But you still had a choice — between this and the dark corridor.

  True.

  So why’d you pick this one?

  The light was better.

  Chapter 5

  A half dozen steps later even the impression of walls had vanished. Ditto the roof, for that matter. Looking back, I saw no sign of the corridor or its entrance. There was only a vast dismal area. Fortunately the floor or ground remained firm underfoot. The only manner in which I could distinguish the way I traveled from the surrounding gloom had to do with visibility. I walked a pearl-gray trail through a valley of shadow, though, technically, I supposed, I walked between shadows. Picky-picky. Someone or something had grudgingly spilled a minimum of light to mark my way.

  I trudged through the eerie silence, wondering how many shadows I passed among, then wondering whether that was too linear a way of considering the phenomenon. Probably.

  At that moment, before I could invoke mathematics, I thought I saw something move off to my right. I halted. A tall ebon pillar had come into view, barely, at the edge of vision. But it was not moving. I concluded that it was my own movement which had given it appearance of motion. Thick, still, smooth — I ran my gaze up that dark shaft until I lost sight of it. There seemed no way of telling how high the thing stood.

  I turned away I took a few more paces. I noted another pillar then — ahead of me, to the left. I gave this one only a glance as I continued. Shortly more came into view at either hand. The darkness into which they ascended held nothing resembling stars, positive or negative; my world’s canopy was a simple, uniform blackness. A little later, the pillars occurred in odd groupings, some very near at hand, and their respective sizes no longer seemed uniform.

  I halted, reached toward a stand of them to my left which seemed almost within touching range. It wasn’t though. I took a step in that direction.

  There came a quick squeeze at my wrist.

  I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Frakir observed.

  Why not? I inquired.

  It might be easy to get lost and into a lot of trouble.

  Maybe you’re right.

  I broke into a jog. Whatever was going on, my only real desire concerning it was to have it over with as soon as possible, so that I could get back to matters I considered important — like locating Coral, springing Luke, finding a way to deal with Jurt and Julia, looking for my father…

  The pillars, at varying distances, slid by, and items which were not pillars began occurring among them. Some were squat, asymmetrical; others were tall, tapered; some leaned upon neighbors, bridged them, or lay broken at their bases. It was something of a relief to see that monotonous regularity destroyed, in a way that showed that forces played upon forms.

  The ground lost its flatness then, though it retained a stylized geometric quality in the stacked, step, and shelflike appearance of its various levels. My own way remained flat and vaguely lighted as I jogged amid the ruins of a thousand Stonehenges.

  I increased my pace, and soon I was running past galleries, amphitheaters, forestlike stands of stone. I seemed to glimpse movement within several of these, but again it could easily have been a function of velocity and poor lighting.

  Sense anything alive in the neighborhood? I asked Frakir.

  No, came the answer.

  Thought I saw something move.

  Maybe you did. Doesn’t mean it’s there.

  Talking for less than a day, and you’ve already learned sarcasm.

  I hate to say it, boss, but anything I learn I pick up from your vibes. Ain’t no one else around to teach me manners and like that.

  Touché, I said. Maybe I’d better warn you if there’s trouble.

  Touché, boss. Hey, I like these combat metaphors.

  Moments later I slowed my pace. Ahead something was flickering off to the right. There were moments of blue and red within the changing light intensities. I halted. These glimpses lasted only a few moments but were more than sufficient to make me wary. I regarded their apparent source for a long while.

  Yes, Frakir said after a time. Caution is in order, but don’t ask me what to expect. It’s only a general feeling of menace that I have.

  Perhaps there’s some way I could just sneak by whatever it is.

  You’d have to leave the trail to do that, Frakir replied, and since the trail does run through the circle of stones where it’s coming from, I’d say no.

  Nobody told me I couldn’t leave the trail. Do you have any instructions to that effect?

  I know you are supposed to follow the trail. I’ve nothing specific concerning the consequences of leaving it, though.

  Hm.

  The way curved to the right, and I followed it. It ran directly into the massive circle of stones, and though I slowed my pace, I did not deviate. I studied it as I drew near, however, and noted that while the trail entered; there, it did not emerge again.

  You’re right, Frakir observed. Like the den of the dragon.

  But we’re supposed to go this way.

  Yes.

  Then we will.

  I’d slows to a walk by then, and I followed the shining way between two gray plinths.

  The lighting was different within the circle from without. There was more of it, though the place was still a study in black and white, with a fairyland sparkle to it. For the first time here I saw something that appeared to be living. There was something like grass underfoot; it was silver and seemed to be studded with dewdrops.

  I halted, and Frakir constricted in a very odd fashion — less a warning, it seemed, than a statement of interest. Off to my right was an altar — not at all like the one over which I had vaulted back in the chapel. This one was a rude slab of stone set atop a couple of boulders. No candles, linens, or other ecclesiastical niceties kept company with the lady who lay atop it, her wrists and ankles bound. Because I recalled a similar bothersome situation in which I had once found myself, my sympathies were all with the lady — white-haired, blackskinned, and somehow familiar — my animus with the peculiar individual who stood behind the altar, faced in my direction, blade upraised in his left hand. The right half of his body was totally black; the left, blindingly white. Immediately galvanized by the tableau, I moved forward. My Concerto for Cuisinart and Microwave spell would have minced him and parboiled him in an instant, but it was useless to me when I could not speak the guide words.

  I seemed to feel his gaze upon me as I raced toward him, though one side of him was too dark and the other too bright for me to know for certain. And then the knife hand descended and the blade entered her breast beneath the sternum with an arcing movement. At that instant she screamed, and the blood spurted and it was red against all those blacks and whites, and I realized as it covered the man’s hand that had I tried, I might have uttered my spell and saved her.

  Then the altar collapsed, and a gray whirlwind obliterated my view of the entire tableau. The blood swirled through it to a barber pole-like effect, gradually spreading and attenuating to turn the funnel rosy, then pink, then faded to silver, then gone. When I reached the spot, the grasses sparkled, sans altar, sans priest, sans sacrifice.

  I drew up short, staring.

  “Are we dreaming?” I asked aloud.

  I do not believe I am capable of dreaming, Frakir replied.

  “Then tell me what you saw.”

  I saw a guy stab a lady who was tied up on a stone surface, Then the whole thing collapsed and blew away. The guy was black and white, the blood was red, the lady was Deirdre —

  “What? By God, you’re right! It did look like her — in negative. But she’s already dead —”

  I must remind you that I saw whatever you thought you saw. I don’t know what the raw data were, just the mixing job your nervous system did on them. My own special perceptions told me that there were not normal people but were beings on
the order of the Dworkin and Oberon figures that visited you back in the cave.

  An absolutely terrifying thought occurred to me just then. The Dworkin and Oberon figures had had me thinking briefly of three-dimensional computer simulations. And the Ghostwheel’s shadow-scanning ability was based on digitized abstractions of portions of Pattern I believed to be particularly concerned with this quality. And Ghost had been wondering — almost wistfully, it now seemed — concerning the qualifications for godhood.

  Could my own creation be playing games with me? Might Ghost have imprisoned me in a stark and distant shadow, blocked all my efforts at communication, and set about playing an elaborate game with me? If he could beat his own creator, for whom he seemed to feel something of awe, might he not feel he had achieved personal elevation — to a level beyond my status in his private cosmos? Maybe. If one keeps encountering computer simulations, cherchez le deus ex machina.

  It made me wonder just how strong Ghost really was. Though his power was, in part, an analogue of the Pattern, I was certain it did not match that of the Pattern — or the Logrus. I couldn’t see him blocking this place off from either.

  On the other hand, all that would really be necessary would be to block me. I suppose he could have impersonated the Logrus in our flash encounter on my arrival. But that would have required Ghost’s actually enhancing Frakir, and I didn’t believe he could do it. And what about the Unicorn and the Serpent?

  “Frakir,” I asked, “are you sure it was really the Logrus that enhanced you this time and programmed you with all the instructions you’re carrying?”

  Yes.

  “What makes you certain?”

  It had the same feeling as our first encounter back within the Logrus, when I was enhanced initially.

  “I see. Next question: Could the Unicorn and the Serpent we saw back in the chapel have been the same sort of things as the Oberon or Dworkin figures back at the cave?”

  No. I’d have known. They weren’t like them at all. They were terrible and powerful and very much what they seemed.

  “Good,” I said. “I was worried this might be some elaborate charade on the part of the Ghostwheel.”

  I see that in your mind. Though I fail to see why the reality of the Unicorn and the Serpent defeats the thesis. They could simply have entered the Ghost’s construct to tell you to stop horsing around because they want to see this thing played out.

  “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  And maybe the Ghost was able to locate and penetrate a place that is pretty much inaccessible to the Pattern and the Logrus.

  “I suppose you’ve a point there. Unfortunately this pretty much puts me back where I started.”

  No, because this place is not something Ghost put together. It’s always been around. I learned that much from the Logrus.

  “I suppose there’s some small comfort in knowing that, but —”

  I never completed the thought because a sudden movement called my attention to the opposite quadrant of the circle. There I beheld an altar I had not noted before, a female figure standing behind it, a man dappled in shadow and light lying, fund, upon it. They looked very similar to the first pair…

  “No!” I cried. “Let it end!”

  But the blade descended even as I moved in that direction. The ritual was repeated, and the altar collapsed, and everything again swirled away. When I reached the site, there was no indication that anything unusual had occurred upon it.

  “What do you make of that one?” I asked Frakir.

  Same forces as before, but somehow reversed.

  “Why? What’s going on?”

  It is a gathering of powers. The Pattern and the Logrus both attempting to force their way into this place, for a little while. Sacrifices, such as those you just witnessed, help provide the openings they need.

  “Why do they wish to manifest here?”

  Neutral ground. Their ancient tension is shifting in subtle ways. You are expected in some fashion to tip the balance of power one way or another.

  “I haven’t the faintest idea how to go about such thing.”

  When the time comes, you will.

  I returned to the trail and walked on.

  “Did I pass by just as the sacrifices were due?” I said: “Or were the sacrifices due because I was passing by?”

  They were marked to occur in your vicinity. You are a nexus.

  “Then do you think I can expect —”

  A figure stepped out from behind a stone to my left and chuckled softly. My hand went to my sword, but his hands were empty, and he moved slowly.

  “Talking to yourself. Not a good sign,” he remarked.”

  The man was a study in black, white, and gray. In fact, from the cast of the darkness upon his right-hand side and the lay of the light on his left, he might have been the first wielder of the sacrificial dagger. I’d no real way of telling. Whoever or whatever he or it was, I’d no desire to become acquainted.

  So I shrugged.

  “The only sign I care about here has ‘exit’ written on it,” I told him as I brushed past him.

  His hand fell upon my shoulder and turned me back easily in his direction.

  Again the chuckle.

  “You must be careful what you wish for in this place,” he told me in low and measured tones, “for wishes are sometimes granted here, and if the granter be depraved and read ‘quietus’ for your ‘exit’ — why, then, poof! You may cease to be. Up in smoke. Downward to the earth. Sideways to hell and gone.”

  “I’ve already been there,” I answered, “and lots of points along the way.”

  “What ho! Look! Your wish has been granted,” he remarked, his left eye catching a flash of light and reflecting it, tapetumlike, in my direction. No matter how I turned or squinted, however, could I find sight of his right eye. “Over there,” he finished, pointing.

  I turned my head in the direction he indicated, and there upon the top stone of a dolmen shone an exit sign exactly like the one above the emergency door at a theater I used to frequent near campus.

  “You’re right,” I said.

  “Will you go through it?”

  “Will you?”

  “No need,” he replied. “I already know what’s there.”

  “What?” I inquired.

  “The other side.”

  “How droll,” I answered.

  “If one gets one’s wish and spurns it, one might piss off the Powers,” he said then.

  “You have firsthand knowledge of this?”

  I heard a grinding, clicking noise then, and it was several moments before I realized he was gnashing his teeth. I walked away then toward the exit sign, wanting to inspect whatever it represented at nearer range.

  There were two standing stones with a flat slab across the top. The gateway thus formed was large enough to walk through. It was shadowy, though…

  You going through it, boss?

  “Why not? This is one of the few times in my life that I feel indispensable to whoever is running the show.”

  I wouldn’t get too cocky… Frakir began, but I was already moving.

  Three quick paces were all that it took, and I was looking outward across a circle of stones and sparkling grass past a black-and-white man toward another dolmen bearing an exit sign, a shadowy form within it. Halting, I took a step backward and turned. There was a black-and-white man regarding me, a dolmen to his rear, dark Form within it. I raised my right hand above my head. So did the shadowy figure. I turned back in the direction I had initially been headed. The shadowy figure across from me also had his hand upraised. I stepped on through.

  “Small world,” I observed, “but I’d hate to paint it.”

  The man laughed.

  “Now you are reminded that your every exit is also an entrance,” he said.

  “Seeing you here, I am reminded even more of a play by Sartre,” I responded.

  “Unkind,” he answered, “but philosophically cogent. I have always found t
hat hell is other people. Only I have done nothing to rouse your distrust, have I?”

  “Were you or were you not the person I saw sacrifice a woman in this vicinity?” I asked.

  “Even if I were, what is that to you? You were not involved.”

  “I guess I have peculiar feelings about little things — like the value of life.”

  “Indignation is cheap. Even Albert Schweitzer’s reverence for life didn’t include the tapeworm, the tsetse fly, the cancer cell.”

  “You know what I mean. Did you or did you not sacrifice a woman on a stone altar a little while ago?”

  “Show me the altar.”

  “I can’t. It’s gone.”

  “Show me the woman.”

  “She is, too.”

  “Then you haven’t much of a case.”

  “This isn’t a court, damn it! If you want to converse, answer my question. If you don’t, let’s stop making noises at each other.”

  “I have answered you.”

  I shrugged.

  “All right,” I said. “I don’t know you, and I’m very happy that way. Good day.”

  I took a step away from him, back in the direction of the trail. As I did, he said, “Deirdre. Her name was Deirdre, and I did indeed kill her,” and he stepped into the dolmen from which I had just emerged, and there he disappeared. Immediately I looked across the way, but he did not exit beneath the exit sign. I did an about-face and stepped into the dolmen myself. I did emerge from the other side, across the way, catching sight of myself entering the opposite one as I did so. I did not see the stranger anywhere along the way.

  “What do you make of that?” I asked Frakir as I moved back toward the trail.

  A spirit of place, perhaps? A nasty spirit for a nasty place? she ventured. I don’t know, but I think he was one of those damned constructs, too — and they’re stronger here.

  I headed down to the trail, set foot upon it, and commenced following it once again.

  “Your speech patterns have altered enormously since your enhancement,” I remarked.

  Your nervous system’s a good teacher.