“No trick. Hurry! Get me out of here!”
He raised his left hand. I extended my left hand and caught hold of it.
Immediately he slumped against me, and I staggered. For an instant I thought it was an attack, but he was dead weight and I saw that there was blood all over him. He still clutched a bloody blade in his right hand. “Over here. Come on.”
I steered him and supported him for several paces, then deposited him on the bed. I pried the blade from his grip, then placed it along with mine on a nearby chair.
“What the hell happened to you?”
He coughed and shook his head weakly. He drew several deep breaths, then, “Did I see a glass of wine,” he asked, “as we passed a table?”
“Yeah. Hold on.”
I fetched it, brought it back, propped him and held it to his lips. It was still over half full. He sipped it slowly, pausing for deep breaths.
“Thanks,” he said when he’d finished, then his head turned to the side.
He was out. I took his pulse. It was fast but kind of weak.
“Damn you, Luke!” I said. “You’ve got the worst timing. . . .”
But he didn’t hear a word. He just lay there and bled all over the place.
Several curses later I had him undressed and was going over him with a wet towel to find out where, under all that blood, the injuries lay. There was a nasty chest wound on the right, which might have hit the lung. His breathing was very shallow, though, and I couldn’t tell. If so, I was hoping he’d inherited the regenerative abilities of Amber in full measure. I put a compress on it and laid his arm on top to hold it in place while I checked elsewhere. I suspected he had a couple of fractured ribs, also. His left arm was broken above the elbow and I set it and splinted it, using loose slats from a chair I’d noticed in the back of the closet earlier, and I strapped it to him. There were over a dozen lacerations and incisions of various degrees of severity on his thighs, right hip, right arm and shoulder, his back. None of them, fortunately, involved arterial bleeding. I cleaned all of these and bound them, which left him looking like an illustration in a firstaid handbook. Then I checked his chest wound again and covered him up.
I wondered about some of the Logrus healing techniques I knew in theory but had never had a chance to practice. He was looking pretty pale, so I decided I had better try them. When I’d finished, some time later, it seemed as if his color had returned to his face. I added my cloak to the blanket which covered him. I took his pulse again and it felt stronger. I cursed again, just to stay in practice, removed our blades from the chair and sat down on it.
A little later my conversation with Ghostwheel returned to trouble me. Had Luke been trying to do a deal with my creation? He’d told me he wanted Ghost’s power, to prosecute his designs against Amber. Then Ghost had asked me earlier today whether Luke was to be trusted, and my answer had been emphatically negative.
Had Ghost terminated negotiations with Luke in the fashion I saw before me?
I fetched forth my Trumps and shuffled out the bright circle of the Ghostwheel. I focused on it, setting my mind for contact, reaching out, calling, summoning.
Twice I felt near to something-agitated-during the several minutes I devoted to the effort. But it was as if we were separated by a sheet of glass. Was Ghost occupied? Or just not inclined to talk with me?
I put my cards away. But they had served to push my thoughts into another channel.
I gathered Luke’s gory clothing and did a quick search. I turned up a set of Trumps in a side pocket, along with several blank cards and a penciland yes, they seemed to be rendered in the same style as the ones I had come to call the Trumps of Doom. I added to the packet the one depicting myself, which Luke had been holding in his hand when he had trumped in.