Guns Of Avalon

She began cleaning the area and I assisted her, my earlier sense of urgency upon me once again.

“How long should I wait before I try to reach you?” she asked.

“Three months. Give me three months.”

“Where will you be then?”

“In Amber, I hope.”

“How long will you be staying here?”

“Not very. In fact, I have to take a little trip right now. I should be back tomorrow, though. I will probably only be staying for a few days after that.”

“I wish you would stay longer.”

“I wish that I could. I would like to, now that I have met you.”

She reddened and turned what seemed all of her attention to repacking the basket. I gathered up the fencing gear.

“Are you going back to the manor now?” she said.

“To the stables. I'll be leaving immediately.”

She picked up the basket.

“We will go together then. My horse is this way.” I nodded and followed her toward a footpath to our right.

“I suppose,” she said, “that it would be best for me not to mention any of this to anybody. Grandpa in particular?”

“That would be prudent.”

The splash and gurgle of the stream, as it flowed to the river, on its way to the sea, faded, faded, was gone, and only the creak of the land-locked wheel that cut it as it went, remained for a time in the air.

CHAPTER 6

Steady movement is more important than speed, much of the time. So long as there is a regular progression of stimuli to get your mental hooks into, there is room for lateral movement. Once this begins, its rate is a matter of discretion.

So I moved slowly, but steadily, using my discretion. No sense in tiring Star u

I crossed the stream at a small wooden bridge and moved parallel to it for a time. My intention was to skirt the town itself, but to follow the general direction of the watercourse until I reached the vicinity of the coast. It was midaftemoon. My way was shaded, cool. Grayswandir hung at my side.

I bore west, coming at length to the hills that rose there. I refrained from begi

The city bore the same name, and several thousand people lived there, worked there. Several of the silver towers were missing, and the stream cut the city at a somewhat different angle farther south, having widened or been widened eightfold by then. There was some smoke from the smithies and the public houses, stirred lightly by breezes from the south; people, mounted, afoot, driving wagons, driving coaches, moved through the narrow streets, entered and departed shops, hostels, residences; flocks of birds wheeled, descended, rose about the places where horses were tethered; a few bright pe

Seeing it from up there, a certain nostalgia came over me, a wistful rag-tail of a dream accompanied by a faint longing for the place that was this place's namesake to me in a vanished shadowland of long ago, where life had been just as simple and I happier than I was at that moment.

But one does not live as long as I have lived without achieving that quality of consciousness which strips naive feelings as they occur and is generally loathe to participate in the creation of sentimentality.

Those days were passed, that thing done with, and it was Amber now that held me completely. I turned and continued southward, confirmed in my desire to succeed. Amber, I do not forget...

The sun became a dazzling, bright blister above my head and the winds began to scream about me. The sky grew more and more yellow and glaring as I rode, until it was as if a desert stretched from horizon to horizon overhead. The hills grew rockier as I descended toward the lowlands, exhibiting wind-sculpted forms of grotesque shape and somber coloration. A dust storm struck me as I emerged from the foothills, so that I had to muffle my face with my cloak and narrow my eyes to slits. Star whi

Then long shadows, the dying of the wind, stillness... Only the click of hoof on rock and the sounds of breathing... Dimness, as they rushed together and the sun is foiled by clouds... The walls of the day shaken by thunder... An u

Now, a rippling, glassy curtain to my right as the rain advances... Blue fracture lines within the clouds... The temperature plummeting, our pace steady, the world a monochromatic backdrop now...

Gouging thunder, flashing white, the curtain flaring toward us now... Two hundred meters... One-fifty... Enough!

Its bottommost edge plowing, furrowing, frothing... The moist smell of the earth... Star's whi

Small rivulets of water creeping outward, sinking, staining the ground... Now bubbling muddily, now trickling... Now a steady flow... Streamlets all about us, splashing...

High ground ahead, and Star's muscles bunching and relaxing, bunching and relaxing beneath me, as he leaps the rills and freshets, plunges through a racing, roiling sheet, and strikes the slope, hoofs sparkling against stones as we mount higher, the voice of the gurgling, eddying flow beneath us deepening to a steady roar...

Higher, then, and dry, pausing to wring out the corners of my cloak... Below, behind, and to the right a gray, storm-tossed sea laps at the foot of the cliff we hold...

Inland now, toward clover fields and evening, the boom of the surf at my back...

Pursuing falling stars into the darkening east and eventual silence and night...

Clear the sky and bright the stars, but a few small wisps of cloud...

A howling pack of red-eyed things, twisting along our trail... Shadow... Green-eyed... Shadow... Yellow... Shadow... Gone...

But dark peaks with skirts of snow, jostling one another about me... Frozen snow, as dry as dust, lifted in waves by the icy blasts of the heights... Powdery snow, flour-like... Memory here, of the Italian Alps, of skiing... Waves of snow drifting across stone faces... A white fire within the night air... My feet rapidly numbing within my wet boots... Star bewildered and snorting, testing each step and shaking his head as if in disbelief...

So shadows beyond the rock, a gentler slope, a drying wind, less snow...

A twisting trail, a corkscrew trail, an adit into warmth... Down, down, down the night, beneath the changing stars...

Far the snows of an hour ago, now scrubby plants and level plain... Far, and the night birds stagger into the air, wheeling above the carrion feast, shedding hoarse notes of protest as we pass...

Slow again, to the place where the grasses wave, stirred by the less cold breeze... The cough of a hunting cat... The shadowy flight of a bounding, deerlike beast... Stars sliding into place and feelings in my feet once more...

Star rearing, neighing, racing ahead from some unseen thing... A long time in the soothing then, and longer still till the shivers go...

Now icicles of a partial moon falling on distant treetops... Moist earth exhaling a luminescent mist... Moths dancing in the night light...