We rounded the hill.
Nothing.
The dark, miasmal prospect was unaltered.
I grew angry then. I drew the Pattern from memory and held it blazing before my mind‘s eye. I essayed the shift once more.
Immediately, my head began to ache. A pain shot from my forehead to the back of my skull and hung there like a hot wire. But this only fanned my anger and caused me to try even harder to shift the black road into nothingness.
Things wavered. The mists thickened, rolled across the road in billows. Outlines grew indistinct. I shook the reins. The horses moved faster. My head began to throb, felt as if it were about to come apart. Instead, momentarily, everything else did. . . .
The ground shook, cracking in places, but it was more than just that. Everything seemed to undergo a spasmodic shudder, and the cracking was more than mere fracture lines in the ground.
It was as though someone had suddenly kicked the leg of a table on which a loosely assembled jigsaw puzzle lay. Gaps appeared in the entire prospect: here, a green bough; there, a sparkle of water, a glimpse of blue sky, absolute blackness, white nothingness, the front of a brick building, faces behind a window, fire, a piece of star-filled sky . . .
The horses were galloping by then, and I had all I could do to keep from screaming for the pain.
A babble of mixed noises—animal, human, mechanical—washed over us. It seemed that I could hear Ganelon cursing, but I could not be certain.
I thought that I would pass out from the pain, but I determined, out of sheer stubbornness and anger, to persist until I did. I concentrated on the Pattern as a dying man might cry out to his God, and I threw my entire will against the existence of the black road.
Then the pressure was off and the horses were plunging wildly, dragging us into a green field. Ganelon snatched at the reins, but I drew on them myself and shouted to the horses until they halted. We had crossed the black road.
I turned immediately and looked back. The scene had the wavering quality of something seen through troubled waters. Our path through it stood clean and steady, however, like a bridge or a dam, and the grasses at its edge were green.
“That was worse,” Ganelon said, “than the ride you took me on when you exiled me.”
“I think so, too,” I said, and I spoke to the horses, gently, finally persuading them to return to the dirt road and continue on along it.
The world was brighter here, and the trees that we soon moved among were great pines. The air was fresh with their fragrance. Squirrels and birds moved within them. The soil was darker, richer. We seemed to be at a higher altitude than we had been before the crossing. It pleased me that we had indeed shifted—and in the direction I had desired.
Our way curved, ran back a bit, straightened. Every now and then we caught a glimpse of the black road. It was not too far off to our right. We were still running roughly parallel to it. The thing definitely cut through Shadow. From what we saw of it, it appeared to have settled back down to being its normal, sinister self once more.
My headache faded and my heart grew somewhat lighter. We achieved higher ground and a pleasant view over a large area of hills and forest, reminding me of parts of Pennsylvania I had enjoyed driving through years earlier.
I stretched; then, “How are your legs now?” I asked.
“All right,” Ganelon said, looking back along our trail. “I can see for a great distance, Corwin…”
“Yes?”
“I see a horseman, coming very fast.”
I stood and turned. I think I might have groaned as I dropped back into the seat and shook the reins.
He was still too far off to tell for certain—on the other side of the black road. But who else could it be, pushing along at that speed on our trail? I cursed then.
We were nearing the crest of the rise. I turned to Ganelon and said, “Get ready for another hellride.”