“She’ll do you no good, that one,” Mask said, as both our spells subsided and he prepared to strike again.
“Have a nice day, anyway,” I said, and I rotated my wrists, pointed my fingers to direct the flow and spoke the word that beat him to the punch. “An eye for an eye!” I called out, as the contents of an entire florist shop fell upon Mask, completely burying him in the biggest damned bouquet I’d ever seen. Smelled nice, too.
There was silence and a subsidence of forces as I regarded the Trump, reached through it. Just as the contact was achieved there was a disturbance in the floral display and Mask rose through it, like the Allegory of Spring.
I was probably already fading from his view as he said, “I’ll have you yet.”
“And sweets to the sweet,” I replied, then spoke the word that completed the spell, dropping a load of manure upon him.
I stepped through into the main hall of Amber, bearing Jasra with me. Martin stood near a sideboard, a glass of wine in his hand, talking with Bors, the falconer. He grew silent at Bors’s wide-eyed stare in my direction, then turned and stared himself.
I set Jasra on her feet beside the doorway. I was not about to screw around with the spell on her right now-and I was not at all sure what I’d do with her if I released her from it. So I hung my cloak on her, went over to the sideboard and poured myself a glass of wine, nodding to Bors and Martin as I passed.
I drained the glass, put it down, then said to them, “Whatever you do, don’t carve your initials on her.” Then I went and found a sofa in a room to the east, stretched out on it and closed my eyes. Like a bridge over troubled waters. Some days are diamonds. Where have all the flowers gone?
Something like that.
12
There was a lot of smoke, a giant worm and many flashes of colored light. Every sound was born into form, blazed to its peak, faded as it waned. Lightninglike stabs of existence, these-called from, returning to, Shadow. The worm went on forever. The dog-headed flowers snapped at me but later wagged their leaves. The flowing smoke halted before a skyhooked traffic light. The worm-no, caterpillar-smiled. A slow, blinding rain began, and all the drifting drops were faceted. . . .
What is wrong with this picture? something within me asked.
I gave up, because I couldn’t be sure. Though I’d a vague feeling the occasional landscape shouldn’t be Rowing the way that it did. . . .
“Oh, man! Merle. . . .”
What did Luke want now? Why wouldn’t he get off my case? Always a new problem.
“Look at that, will you?”
I watched where a series of bright bounding balls-or maybe they were comets-wove a tapestry of light. It fell upon the forest of umbrellas.
“Luke-“ I began, but one of the dog-headed flowers bit a hand I’d forgotten about, and everything nearby cracked as if it were painted on glass through which a shot had just passed. There was a rainbow beyond-
“Merle! Merle!”
It was Droppa shaking my shoulder, my suddenly opened eyes showed me.
And there was a damp place on the sofa where my head was resting. I propped myself on an elbow. I rubbed my eyes.
“Droppa. . . . What-?”
“I don’t know,” he told me.
“What don’t you know? I mean. . . . Hell! What happened?”
“I was sitting in that chair,” he said, with a gesture, “waiting for you to wake up. Martin had told me you were here. I was just going to tell you that Random wanted to see you when you got back.”
I nodded, then noticed that my hand was oozing blood-from the place where the flower had bitten me.
“How long was I out?”
“Twenty minutes, maybe.”
I swung my feet to the floor, sat up. “So why’d you decide to wake me?”
“You were trumping out,” he said.
“Trumping out? While I was asleep? It doesn’t work that way. Are you sure “