The Starfollowers of Coramonde by Brian Daley Read Free Book Online

Ace of
Swords. Hmm.” She laid it before him. On it, a hand emerging from a cloud held
a greatsword encircled by a crown. In the background, tongues of flame blazed
in the sky like a firmament. Every feature screamed possible interpretations at
him. He sensed an outpouring from himself toward the tarot. A small part of him
saw its resemblance to the regimental crest of his old outfit, the 32d.
    Gabrielle
whispered piercingly, “Your card—it is yours now—says ‘All power to the
extremes!’ Dare to seize your moment, the prize, the victory. Card of conquest,
of excess in love and hatred, love of haunting intensity, but also hatred of
terrible immutability.
    “Reversed, it
takes on other connotations, proliferation and increase, variety and, perhaps,
tragedy. But you pulled this tarot yourself and I cannot tell which message is
intended. You are not meant to know yet, Gil MacDonald. There are things
especially pertinent to the Ace of Swords; the glow on a lover’s face, and
blood on a steel blade.”
    The tarot
rose through his senses. Gabrielle’s voice was a narrative faculty for it. He
opened himself to it. It enveloped him.
    Then there
were quick images, like a slide show. An enormous fortification spread before
him on a level plain facing a gray, wind-chased sea. It stretched in grim
angles and martial tessellations. It was, he intuited, a repository of fear.
    From far
away, words drifted to him. Forget the fear. There is no fear.
    And the fear
was gone. The American almost identified the voice, but the scene shifted. Another
view, of a dark, vaulted ceiling in a dank, subterranean room. It was lit by
banked fires. There was the creak and clash of equipment of torture. In a
white-hot universe of agony, the voice returned. Reject the pain. There is
no pain.
    The anguish retreated.
Gil knew it as Dunstan’s voice, and tried to call, but had no voice of his own
in the eerie pseudo-world of the Ace. He sensed cruel bindings against wronged
flesh. The words persisted. Banish restraint. There is no restraint.
    But there was
a note of doubt to it. The restraint didn’t disappear.
    A last vision
came, of a fluttering banner. Its device was a flaming wheel, half black, half
white, on a black-and-white field, so that each half of the wheel was against
the opposite color. Then the world faded before his eyes.
    He was at
Gabrielle’s table, had never left it. She watched him with an attitude very
much like pity. From stellar distances he heard her say, “You are no
thaumaturge, yet rarely, rarely have I seen the Cards do that for anyone. The
Sudden Enlightenment, it was. We are very much alike, you and I.”
    His eyes were
still drifting. His brain overloaded with speculation, mystical synapses,
cognitive spasm-shocks. Ideas strobing in his head left tantalizing residues of
after-image.
    But one fact
was manifest. He knew whose banner he’d seen through Dunstan’s eyes, without
himself ever having seen or heard of it before. Gabrielle watched the lips form
a single word under vacant, murderous eyes. Bey.
     
    Springbuck
was alone in his cavernous throne room, without crown or pageantry, steps
clacking hollowly.
    It was the
first time he’d ever been in the chamber without anyone else. He could feel
echoes of the past pressing in; it was for that reason he’d come. He saw the
darker spot on the floor where, months before, the younger Hightower, the old
hero’s son, had been beheaded by the ogre Archog. Peering hard to accommodate
weak vision, he could see places where Gil’s and Van Duyn’s shots had blasted
chips of stone from the walls.
    He climbed
the dais where he and Strongblade had fought. In the ornate wood of the throne
was a deep penetration where the Ku-Mor-Mai had left his knife when he’d
chosen to face the usurper with only his sword Bar.
    There was a
bare spot where Strongblade’s portrait had been. Throughout Earthfast and the
city, statues, paintings, busts and plaques of him had, in fear or anger,