The Starfollowers of Coramonde (5 page)

Gil managed
to thrust his useless right hand into his shirtfront, crouching to hold it
there, then slid from the booth. A thought occurred to him, and he groped
around the darkened space, searching.

Brodur, in
shock, was being helped to his feet by their benefactor, whose hood had fallen
back. A dark beard of oiled ringlets glistened. It was Gale-Baiter, envoy of
the Mariners. He supported the captain as Gil stumbled after. None of the other
attackers remained. The door swung lazily on rawhide hinges.

The front
room of the White Tern was empty. Gil thought dazedly that he’d never gotten
more mileage out of two rounds. Gale-Baiter’s coach was waiting outside. The
driver and footman had gotten down to help. Gil recognized them from the drill
field, the towering red-beard and the little guy, the envoy’s attendants. They
hoisted Brodur into the coach; all boarded and clattered away quickly.

Gale-Baiter
banged the roof of the carriage with the basket hilt of his cutlass.
“Skewerskean, rot you, don’t jostle this biscuit box around! This is a wounded
man in here!” The ride steadied. Gil had scarcely been able to hear the
command, his ears pounded so.

“Wound’s not
too serious,” Gale-Baiter decided, which, Gil supposed, only meant Brodur
wouldn’t die right away.

“You want to
tell me about your being here just now?” the American hollered over the rumble
of the coach and his own deafness. The automatic was still in his hand.

“I was
trailing this fella here. I thought I had a right to call him out, after the
way he did me this morning, but the
Ku-Mor-Mai
frowns on dueling inside
the city anymore. I reckoned it that we could re-examine the outcome of the
match, him and me. Still, I could not very well watch the pair of you laid by
the heels and carved up, could I now?”

Gil reflected
that Gale-Baiter could very well have done just that; lots of people would
have. The envoy brought a liquor flask from beneath his seat cushion. He gave
Brodur a sip, then he and Gil each took a swig. It was thick, cordial-tasting
stuff Gil wouldn’t ordinarily have liked, but welcomed now.

Gilbert
A., old son,
he told himself,
Brodur was right. Bey sure hasn’t lost his
touch.

Brodur was
holding his wound, teeth gritted, clinging to consciousness. Gale-Baiter
slipped his scarf off, helping stop the seeping blood. It was decided the aide
must go to Earthfast, where Springbuck’s physicians could treat him.

“Sorry am I,”
husked Brodur, “that Yardiff Bey’s control still extends so far. We wasted your
silver and you are no farther toward the Hand of Salamá.”

“Don’t bet on
that.” Gil tucked the pistol away, carefully retaining the pellet of Earnai
he’d snatched from the booth with two fingers, just before leaving the snug. He
held the Dreamdrowse up to the fitful light of torches and cressets as the
coach tore along.

“No, don’t be
too sure of that at all.”

So much the rather thou
celestial light Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers Irradiate,
there plant eyes, all mist from thence Purge and disperse, that I may see and
tell Of things invisible to mortal sight.

John Milton

Paradise Lost,
Book III

GABRIELLE deCourteney had been
installed in lush rooms, luxury appropriate to the sovereign’s mistress and a
pre-eminent sorceress.

The knock
surprised her. Springbuck had said he’d be occupied with counsels, and would
see her at breakfast. Her handmaiden opened the door and Gil MacDonald stepped
in, right arm in a sling, a limp in his stride. Gabrielle inspected him coldly;
there’d never been much liking between them.

“Can I talk
to you alone? Please.”

Dismissing
the handmaiden, she curtly invited him to sit. “Have you had an accident? You
have seen the chirurgeons?”

He skirted
her questions. “I’ll be okay. The arm’s numb, and my hook shot’s ruined, but
I’m bound up tight, and it’ll do.”

Gabrielle
wore a gown of softest white kid, embroidered in the flowery, intricate Teebran
style. Masses of red curls tumbled around her shoulders, and the deep, green
eyes held him. He’d always felt jumpy around her. Her aloofness knocked him off
stride; she was too good at manipulating people.

He told her
what had happened, words tumbling over each other, up to where he’d left Brodur
sitting propped up in bed, wound sutured closed, puffing on an old, deep-bowled
pipe, out of danger. Gil finished by holding up the waxy bead of Earnai.
Soliciting his permission with a lift of an eyebrow, she took the Dream-drowse,
and held it up to a candle.

“Why me? Why
not Springbuck or Andre?”

“Springbuck’s
preoccupied and—no offense—your brother’s too cautious. He might not go for
what I’ve got in mind.”

“And I?”

He hesitated.
“I figure you’ll try anything that sounds interesting. That’s the way you
strike me.” She didn’t reply. He knew he’d have to say it all without
prompting; that much she would demand.

“I was sitting
in the White Tern, thinking about what Wintereye was saying. I’m running around
Coramonde like a monkey in a hardware store. You have to understand, I was
brought up to go from ‘one’ to ‘two’ to ‘and so on.’ You’ve got necromancy and
tiromancy and all, those other ’mancies, but I always steered clear of ’em. But
this Earnai, it was like
it
found
me.
I thought maybe I could tap
in on whatever, uh, insights I can unlock.” He made a vague gesture, hand
dropping to the chair arm. “I want in on those Doors Between and Beyond. I need
the mystical connection. I want to perceive things a different way.”

She
scrutinized him coolly. It was, she thought, a decision that could as easily
have come from desperation as from reason. “Do you think you would find Dunstan?
Or Yardiff Bey?”

He shrugged.
“I’ve seen you do things a million times weirder. At one time or another, I’ve
believed in nuclear fusion and Virgin Birth, but I never saw either one. I
admit possibilities. Look, we’ve never been great pals, but I thought it might
intrigue you.”

She rose and
glided from the room. He waited. In a moment she returned with a tarot deck.
She held the Earnai up to the candle again and smiled. “And I thought this
would be an idle evening. Come.”

She led him
to an inner chamber, furbished to suit her, not a sanctum, but a personal place
of solitude. The carpet was deep; the door seemed to shut airtight. She’d
arranged lamps, shades and mirrors to decorate with illuminated and shadowed
spaces. Gil found himself studying unidentifiable knickknacks, paintings, and
objects that might be musical instruments or, equally likely, rococo mobile
sculptures. Or something utterly else. Nobody really knew how old she was. What
might a finely alert mind, living for centuries, light upon as curious?

“There are
many forms of Earnai.” She brought out a tiny brazier carved from a block of
onyx, its basin no larger than a teacup. She lit a flame beneath it. “It comes
from the heart of a plant found throughout the southern reaches, did you know
that? Some Southwastelanders call it ‘mahonn,’ which means ‘rescue.’ Among
others it is ‘k’nual, the visitor.’ It is, in different places and climes,
‘Vision Flower,’ ‘God-call,’ and ‘the Passageway.’ But it takes a measure of
art to use it safely. A single mote of the pure substance would slay you, me,
and anyone else in the room. It must be diluted, it must be handled carefully,
like a cunning beast. It is used in countless ways, you see. Effects depend on
concentration and combination.”

She dropped
the pellet into the brazier. Thin ribbons of smoke curled up into the air. “It
can be a euphoric, or make you giddy. It can banish pain or render the
strongest man unconscious. It has been used in aphrodisiacs, and inquisitor’s
compounds.”

At her
invitation, they arranged themselves on thick pillows on opposite sides of a
low table of old, pleasant-feeling mahogany. “That pellet, that is a thing of
the south, but the Horseblooded sometimes use it. Did Wintereye wear thimbles
or coverings on his fingertips? Ah, then he worked it from the pure himself.
The Dream-drowse is mingled with one of the noropianics. Its color and inner
striations are good, its odor untainted, perfect for what you have in mind.
Have you ever experienced the Other Sides?”

Not certain
what she meant, he kept it to the issue at hand. “Guess not. Do we stick our
heads over it, catch it in a bag, or what?”

“What do you
taste?”

He rolled his
tongue experimentally. “Musk. A little tartlike, I think.”

“Dreamdrowse.
It entered your pores, and your blood has carried it to your tongue already.”
She put the tarot deck down precisely between them. Her fingers stroked and
patted the deck slowly, renewing old ties.

Perhaps the
Dreamdrowse was working, or the events of the night had exhausted his
restraint. On impulse, he clapped his hand down on the deck before she could
take it up. She withheld her objections, recognizing inspiration. Gabrielle had
no qualms about subordinating ceremony to revelation.

In a motion
he never questioned, he fanned the cards out, faces down, an arc from one side
of the table to the other. She said nothing, but her green eyes flashed at him
again.

He let his
hand rove the deck. He felt warmth rising against his palm, and picked up the
card from which it radiated. She took it gently.

“The Ace of
Swords. Hmm.” She laid it before him. On it, a hand emerging from a cloud held
a greatsword encircled by a crown. In the background, tongues of flame blazed
in the sky like a firmament. Every feature screamed possible interpretations at
him. He sensed an outpouring from himself toward the tarot. A small part of him
saw its resemblance to the regimental crest of his old outfit, the 32d.

Gabrielle
whispered piercingly, “Your card—it is yours now—says ‘All power to the
extremes!’ Dare to seize your moment, the prize, the victory. Card of conquest,
of excess in love and hatred, love of haunting intensity, but also hatred of
terrible immutability.

“Reversed, it
takes on other connotations, proliferation and increase, variety and, perhaps,
tragedy. But you pulled this tarot yourself and I cannot tell which message is
intended. You are not meant to know yet, Gil MacDonald. There are things
especially pertinent to the Ace of Swords; the glow on a lover’s face, and
blood on a steel blade.”

The tarot
rose through his senses. Gabrielle’s voice was a narrative faculty for it. He
opened himself to it. It enveloped him.

Then there
were quick images, like a slide show. An enormous fortification spread before
him on a level plain facing a gray, wind-chased sea. It stretched in grim
angles and martial tessellations. It was, he intuited, a repository of fear.

From far
away, words drifted to him.
Forget the fear. There is no fear.

And the fear
was gone. The American almost identified the voice, but the scene shifted. Another
view, of a dark, vaulted ceiling in a dank, subterranean room. It was lit by
banked fires. There was the creak and clash of equipment of torture. In a
white-hot universe of agony, the voice returned.
Reject the pain. There is
no pain.

The anguish retreated.
Gil knew it as Dunstan’s voice, and tried to call, but had no voice of his own
in the eerie pseudo-world of the Ace. He sensed cruel bindings against wronged
flesh. The words persisted.
Banish restraint. There is no restraint.

But there was
a note of doubt to it. The restraint didn’t disappear.

A last vision
came, of a fluttering banner. Its device was a flaming wheel, half black, half
white, on a black-and-white field, so that each half of the wheel was against
the opposite color. Then the world faded before his eyes.

He was at
Gabrielle’s table, had never left it. She watched him with an attitude very
much like pity. From stellar distances he heard her say, “You are no
thaumaturge, yet rarely, rarely have I seen the Cards do that for anyone. The
Sudden Enlightenment, it was. We are very much alike, you and I.”

His eyes were
still drifting. His brain overloaded with speculation, mystical synapses,
cognitive spasm-shocks. Ideas strobing in his head left tantalizing residues of
after-image.

But one fact
was manifest. He knew whose banner he’d seen through Dunstan’s eyes, without
himself ever having seen or heard of it before. Gabrielle watched the lips form
a single word under vacant, murderous eyes.
Bey.

Springbuck
was alone in his cavernous throne room, without crown or pageantry, steps
clacking hollowly.

It was the
first time he’d ever been in the chamber without anyone else. He could feel
echoes of the past pressing in; it was for that reason he’d come. He saw the
darker spot on the floor where, months before, the younger Hightower, the old
hero’s son, had been beheaded by the ogre Archog. Peering hard to accommodate
weak vision, he could see places where Gil’s and Van Duyn’s shots had blasted
chips of stone from the walls.

He climbed
the dais where he and Strongblade had fought. In the ornate wood of the throne
was a deep penetration where the
Ku-Mor-Mai
had left his knife when he’d
chosen to face the usurper with only his sword Bar.

There was a
bare spot where Strongblade’s portrait had been. Throughout Earthfast and the
city, statues, paintings, busts and plaques of him had, in fear or anger, been
unceremoniously removed. Traditionalists had wanted to strike the name from
history; Springbuck had forbidden that. Strongblade’s name, deeds and fate
would be an infamous lesson for posterity.

Gil entered,
the only person besides Gabrielle and Hightower whom the door warders would let
interrupt the
Ku-Mor-Mai’s
musings. He saw that the young monarch was
lost in introspection. “Hey, I could catch you later.”