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importance attached to them, so that I could use them properly without knowing what they meant. But
they felt right, so very right. . . .
Suddenly, she was kissing me.
"I won't tell him. Really, I won't, Corwin! I think you can do it. Bleys will be difficult, but Gerard
would probably help you, and maybe Benedict. Then Caine would swing over, when he saw what was
happening--"
"I can do my own planning," I said.
Then she drew away. She poured two glasses of wine and handed one to me.
"To the future," she said.
"I'll always drink to that."
And we did.
Then she refilled mine and studied me.
"It had to be Eric, Bleys, or you," she said. "You're the only ones with any guts or brains. But you'd
removed yourself from the picture for so long that I'd counted you out of the running."
"It just goes to show you never can tell."
I sipped my drink and hoped she'd shut up for just a minute. It seemed to me she was being a bit too
obvious in trying to play on every side available. There was something bothering me, and I wanted to
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think about it.
How old was I?
That question, I knew, was a part of the answer to the terrible sense of distance and removal that I felt
from all the persons depicted on the playing cards. I was older than I appeared to be. (Thirtyish, I'd
seemed when I looked at me in the mirror--but now I knew that it was because the shadows would lie
for me.) I was far, far older, and it had been a very long time since I had seen my brothers and my
sisters, all together and friendly, existing side by side as they did on the cards, with no tension, no friction
among them.
We heard the sound of the bell, and Carmella moving to answer the door.
"That would be brother Random," I said, knowing I was right. "He's under my protection."
Her eyes widened, then she smiled, as though she appreciated some clever thing I had done.
I hadn't, of course. but I was glad to let her think so.
It made me feel safer.
Chapter 4
I felt safe for perhaps all of three minutes. I beat Carmella to the door and flung It open.
He staggered in and immediately pushed the door shut behind himself and shot the bolt. There were
lines under those light eyes and he wasn't wearing a bright doublet and long hose. He needed a shave and
he had on a brown wool suit. He carried a gabardine overcoat over one arm and wore dark suede
shoes. But he was Random, all right-the Random I had seen on the card-only the laughing mouth looked
tired and there was dirt beneath his fingernails.
"Corwin!" he said, and embraced me.
I squeezed his shouder. "You look as if you could use a drink," I said.
"Yes. Yes. Yes...." he agreed, and I steered him toward the library.
Ahout three minutes later. after he had seated himself, with a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the
other, he
said to me, "They're after me. They'll be here soon."
Flora let out a little shriek, which we both ignored.
"Who?" I asked.
"People out of the shadows," he said. "I don't know who they are, or who sent them. There are four or
five though, maybe even six. They were on the plane with me. I took a jet. They occurred around
Denver. I moved the
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plane several times to subtract them. but it didn't work-and I didn't want to get too far off the track. I
shook them
in Manhattan, but it's only a matter of time. I think they'll be here soon."
"And you've no idea at all who sent them?"
He stalled for an instant.
"Well, I guess we'd he safe in limiting it to the family. Maybe Bleys, maybe Julian, maybe Caine.
Maybe even you, to get me here. Hope not, though. You didn't, did you?"
"'Fraid not," I said. "How tough do they look?"
He shrugged. "If it were only two or three, I'd have tried to pull an ambush. But not with that whole
crowd."
He was a little guy, maybe five-six in height, weighing perhaps one thirty-five. But he sounded as if he
meant it when he said he'd take on two or three bruisers, single-handed. I wondered suddenly about my [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]