Prince of chaos

«At least one of them - Mandor or Dara - wants more than a balance, wants a total victory for the Logrus, for Chaos. I really believe that. It's not just that I don't want to be patty to it. I don't want it to happen. Now that I can visit Shadow I don't want to see it destroyed. I don't want a victory for either side. Total control by the Pattern would probably be just as bad.»

«How can you be sure one of them really wants this?»

«They tried it before with Brand, didn't they? He was out to destroy all order.»

«No,» I said. «He planned to destroy the old order, then replace it with his own. He was a revolutionary, not an anarchist. He was going to create a new Pattern within the Chaos he brought forth - his own, but still the real thing.»

«He was duped. He couldn't have managed a thing like that.»

«No way of knowing till he tried, and he didn't get the chance.»

«Either way, I'm afraid someone's going to pull the plug on reality. If this kidnapping takes place, it'll be a big step in that direction. If you can't manage something to cover our absence, I think we should just go anyway and take our chances.»

«Not yet,» I said. «Hang on. I'm working something out. How's this sound? I don't locate the guards and hallucinate them. Instead, I do a transformation. I cause a couple of other people to look like us. You trump us out as soon as I do. That won't be a hallucination for anyone. Everyone will see them as us; we can go about our business - and check back if we have to.»

«You do it and I'll get us out of here.»

«Okay, I'll do it to the two guys in front of us. As soon as I've finished I'll gesture like this,» I said, lowering my left hand from shoulder-height to waist-level, «and we both stoop as if one of us had dropped something. Then you take us away.»

«I'll be ready.»

The spikard made it easier than working out a transform spell. It was like a spell processor. I fed it the two end products, and it ran thousands of variations in a trice and handed me the finished products - a pair of spells it would have taken me a long while to work out along classical lines. I raised my hand as I hung them and accessed one of the many power sources the thing commanded off in Shadow. I fed juice into the constructs, watched the change commence, dropped my hand, and leaned forward.

There followed a moment's vertigo, and when I straightened we were back in Jurt's apartment. I laughed and he slapped my shoulder.

Immediately then, we were changing back into our human forms and garments. As soon as that was done, he caught hold of my arm again and trumped us to Fire Gate. A moment later, and he'd jumped us again, this time to a mountaintop overlooking a blue valley beneath a green sky. Then again, to the middle of a high bridge above a deep gorge, the sky putting away stars or taking them on.

«Okay, now,» he said, and we stood atop a gray stone wall damp with dew, possibly even the remains of a storm. Clouds were taking fire in the east. There was a light breeze out of the south.

This was the wall that surrounded the innermost zone of Jidrash, Luke's capital in Kashfa. There were four huge buildings below us - including the palace and the Temple of the Unicorn directly across the Plaza from it - as well as a number of smaller buildings. Diagonally across the way from where we stood was the wing of the palace from which Gryll had fetched me (how long ago?) from my rendezvous with the queen. I could even make out the broken shutter of our window amid an expanse of ivy.

«Over there,» I said, gesturing. «That's where I last saw her.»

An eyeblink later we stood within the chamber, its only inhabitants. The place had been straightened, the bed made up. I withdrew my Trumps and shuffled out Coral's. Staring then till it grew cold, I felt her presence and reached for it.

She was there yet she wasn't. It was the disjointed sense of presence one encounters in dream or stupor. I passed my hand over the card and ended our tenuous contact.

«What happened?» Jurt asked.

«I think she's drugged,» I replied.

«Then it would seem they've already got her,» he said. «Any way you can trace her in that state?»

«She could also be in the next building, on medication,» I said. «She wasn't well when I left.»

«What now?»

«Either way, we've got to talk to Luke,» I said, searching for his card.

I reached him in an instant on uncovering it. «Merlin! Where the hell are you?» he asked.

«If you're in the palace, I'm next door,» I said.

He rose to his feet from what I now realized to be the edge of a bedstead, and he picked up a long-sleeved green shirt and drew it on, covering his collection of scars. I thought that I glimpsed someone in the bed behind him. He muttered something in that direction, but I could not overhear it.

«We've got to talk,» he said, running his hand through his rusty hair. «Bring me through.»

«Okay,» I said. «But first, you'd better know that my brother Jurt is here.»

«Has he got my dad's sword?»

«Uh - No.»