Roger Zelazny - The Hand Of Oberon

«Neither do I. But I hope it means someone has done the job properly this time.»

«Lord,» I said, «it's tangled. I wish I had known all of these things before.»

«There was never a proper time to tell you,» he said, «until now. Certainly not when you were a prisoner and could still be reached, and after that you were gone for a long while. When you returned with your troops and your new weapons, I was uncertain as to your full intentions. Then things happened quickly and Brand was back again. It was too late. I had to get out to save my skin. I am strong here in Arden. Here, I can take anything he can throw at me. I have been maintaining the patrols at full battle force and awaiting word of Brand's death. I wanted to inquire of one of you whether he was still around. But I could not decide whom to ask, thinking myself still suspect should he have died. As soon as I did get word, though, should it prove he was still living, I was resolved to have a try at him myself. Now this…state of affairs…What are you going to do now, Corwin?»

«I am off to fetch the Jewel of Judgment from a place where I cached it in Shadow. There is a way it can be used to destory the black road. I intend to try it.»

«How can this be done?»

«That is too long a story, for a horrible thought has just occurred to me.»

«What is that?»

«Brand wants the Jewel. He was asking about it, and now - This power of his to find things in Shadow and fetch them back. How good is it?»

Julian looked thoughtful.

«He is hardly omniscient, if that is what you mean. You can find anything you want in Shadow the normal way we go about it - by traveling to it. According to Fiona, he just cuts out the footwork. It is therefore an object, not a particular object that he summons. Besides, that Jewel is a very strange item from everything Eric told me about it. I think Brand would have to go after it in person, once he finds out where it is.»

«Then I must get on with my hellride. I have to beat him to it.»

«I see you are riding Drum,» Julian observed. «He is a good beast, a sturdy fellow. Been through many a hellride.»

«Glad to hear that,» I said. «What are you going to do now?»

«Get in touch with someone in Amber and get up to date on everything we haven't had a chance to talk about - Benedict, probably.»

«No good,» I said. «You will not be able to reach him. He is off to the Courts of Chaos. Try Gerard, and convince him I am an honorable man while you are about it.»

«The redheads are the only magicians in this family, but I will try… You did say the Courts of Chaos?»

«Yes, but again, the time is too valuable now.»

«Of course. Get you gone. We will have our leisure later - I trust.»

He reached out and clasped my arm. I glanced at the manticora, at the dogs seated in a circle about it.

«Thanks, Julian. I - You are a difficult man to understand.»

«Not so. I think the Corwin I hated must have died centuries ago. Ride now, man! If Brand shows up around here, I'll nail his hide to a tree!»

He shouted an order to his dogs as I mounted, and they fell upon the carcass of the manticora, lapping at its blood and tearing out huge chunks and strips of flesh. As I rode past that strange, massive, manlike face, I saw that its eyes were still open, though glazed. They were blue, and death had not robbed them of a certain preternatural innocence. Either that, or the look was death's final gift - a senseless way of passing out ironies, if it was.

I took Drum back to the trail and began my hellride.

Moving along the trail at a gentle pace, clouds darkening the sky and Drum's whinny of memory or anticipation… A turn to the left, and uphill… The ground is brown, yellow, back to brown again… The trees squat down, draw apart… Grasses wave between them in the cool and rising breeze… A quick fire in the sky… A rumble shakes loose raindrops…

Steep and rocky now… The wind tugs at my cloak… Up… Up to where the rocks are streaked with silver and the trees have drawn their line… The grasses, green fires, die down in the rain… Up, to the craggy, sparkling, rain-washed heights, where the clouds rush and boil like a mud-gorged river at flood crest… The rain stings like buckshot and the wind clears its throat to sing… We rise and rise and the crest comes into view, like the head of a startled bull, horns guarding the trail… Lightnings twist about their tips, dance between them… The smell of ozone as we reach that place and rush on through, the rain suddenly blocked, the wind shunted away…

Emerging on the farther side… There is no rain, the air is still, the sky smoothed and darkened to a proper star-filled black… Meteors cut and burn, cut and burn, cauterizing to afterimage scars, fading, fading… Moons, cast like a handful of coins… Three bright dimes, a dull quarter, a pair of pennies, one of them tarnished and scarred… Down then, that long, winding way… Hoof clops clear and metallic in the night air… Somewhere, a catlike cough… A dark shape crossing a lesser moon, ragged and swift…

Downward… The land drops away at either hand… Darkness below… Moving along the top of an infinitely high, curved wall, the way itself bright with moonlight… The trail buckles, folds, grows transparent… Soon it drifts, gauzy, filamentous, stars beneath as well as above… Stars below on either side… There is no land… There is only the night, night and the thin, translucent trail I had to try to ride, to learn how it felt, against some future use…

It is absolutely silent now, and the illusion of slowness attaches to every movement… Shortly, the trail falls away, and we move as if swimming underwater at some enormous depth, the stars bright fish… It is freedom, it is the power of the hellride that brings an elation, like yet unlike the recklessness that sometimes comes in battle, the boldness of a risky feat well learned, the rush of rightness following the finding of the poem's proper word… It is these and the prospect itself, riding, riding, riding, from nowhere to nowhere perhaps, across and among the minerals and fires of the void, free of earth and air and water…

We race a great meteor, we touch upon its bulk… Speeding across its pitted surface, down, around, then up again… It stretches into a great plain, it lightens, it yellows…

It is sand, sand now beneath our movement… The stars fade out as the darkness is diluted to a morning full of sunrise… Swaths of shade ahead, desert trees within them… Ride for the dark… Crashing through… Bright birds burst forth, complain, resettle…

Among the thickening trees… Darker the ground, narrower the way… Palm fronds shrink to hand size, barks darken… A twist to the right, a widening of the way… Our hoofs striking sparks from cobblestones… The lane enlarges, becomes a tree-lined street… Tiny row houses flash by… Bright shutters, marble steps, painted screens, set back beyond flagged walks… Passing, a horse-drawn cart, loaded with fresh vegetables… Human pedestrians turning to stare… A small buzz of voices…

On… Passing beneath a bridge… Coursing the stream till it widens to river, taking it down to the sea…

Thudding along the beach beneath a lemon sky, blue clouds scudding… The salt, the wrack, the shells, the smooth anatomy of driftwood… White spray off the lime-colored sea…

Racing, to where the place of waters ends at a terrace… Mounting, each step crumbling and roaring down behind, losing its identity, joined with the boom of the surf… Up, up to the flattopped, tree-grown plain, a golden city shimmering, miragelike, at its end…

The city grows, darkens beneath a shadowy umbrella, its gray towers stretch upward, glass and metal flashing light through the murk… The towers begin to sway…