This time, I got to ride up front. The countryside was pretty, but the towns were as deserted as Mexican villages at siesta time. You could feel in the air that a storm was about to break, and the populace had taken cover. If the rebels were as strong as Roosevelt said, it didn't show. The roads were full of military traffic in the blue paint of the French king. I wondered how much my short-lived escape had to do with that. I tried to pump the man beside me, but he didn't answer.
When we rolled into the outskirts of Londres, the town was carrying on some semblance of business as usual. The shops were open, and big canvas-topped buses rumbled along the streets, half full. We passed a big market square, lined with stalls with bright-colored awnings and displays of flowers and vegetables. At one side a raised platform was roped off. Half a dozen downcast-looking men and women in drab gray stood there, under a sign above the platform that said bullman & windrow—chattels. It was a slave market.
We swung into a cobbled courtyard ringed in by high walls. I was hustled inside, along a corridor full of the smell of government offices.
An officer in shirt-sleeves stepped out of a door ahead, swiveled hard when he saw me. He rattled off a question in strange-sounding French that sounded like "Where are you taking him?"
"A la général, mon major."
"No, c'est la province du demiregent. Laissez les cordes!"
"J'ai les ordeurs direct—"
"A diable avec vos ordeurs! Fair que je dit, vite!"
The sergeant in charge of my detail put a hand on his holstered pistol. The major shouted to someone inside the room. Two sharp-looking lads in khaki with holstered side arms appeared behind him. That ended the argument. One of the new men cut the ropes off. Then they formed up a new procession and marched me off in a new direction.
We rode up in an elevator, went along a lushly carpeted hall, into a fancy outer office. A young fellow in a shiny blue uniform with aide's aglets ducked in through the inner door, came back and made an ushering motion to me. I walked through and was looking at Garonne, the French viceroy.
He was a pouch-eyed fellow in his late forties or early fifties, with thick gray hair, a large, rather soft-looking mouth with a quirk at one end registering benign intentions grown weary. He wore Ben Franklin glasses over a pair of sharp black eyes. His clothes were plain, his fingers lean and competent and without rings.
"I regret the discomfort you were forced to undergo, milord," he said, in straight New Norman without a trace of French accent. His voice was deep as a bullfrog's. "In view of the great importance of time just now, I asked that you be brought directly to me. A discussion between us might yet retrieve the unfortunate situation that now obtains."
"How does Baron General van Roosevelt feel about that?" I asked. It didn't mean anything. I was just probing.
"Some of my lieutenants are overzealous," he said cryptically. "It is a matter I must deal with. However, the business of the moment takes precedence. I am empowered, your Grace, by His Most Christian Majesty, to offer certain emoluments to loyal liegemen who support his efforts to calm the present unrest. Among them, greater internal autonomy for the island, with offices to deserving servants; various tax and import benefits, revised trade regulations, including issuance of import licenses to men of proven character. For yourself, a royal patent as Prince Imperial of the New Normandy provinces, together with the grant of estates and pensions appropriate to your station. And of course, full recognition of your status as inheritor of the ancient honors of your House."
"What do I do to earn all this?" I stalled.
"You will accept appointment, under his Majesty, as emergency peace marshal of New Normandy. You will appear on telescreen and wireless and instruct all loyal New Normans to return to their homes, and exhort all subjects of his Majesty to observe his laws regarding assembly and bearing of arms. In short, only those acts which I feel certain your own good judgment would dictate, once freed from the pressures placed on you by incendiary elements: the exercise of your influence toward the achievement of civil stability and order."
"In other words, just sell out the Britons."
Garrone narrowed his eyes at me. He leaned across the desk. "Don't waste my time. I'm sure you'll find my offer preferable to a miserable death in the interrogation section."
"You wouldn't murder me, Monsieur Garonne," I said, trying to sound as if I believed it. "I'm the people's hero, remember?"
"We can drop all that nonsense between us," Garonne said in a flat tone. "I'm aware of your masquerade. There was no Lady Edwinna, no secret hideaway in Scotland, no long-lost heir of the bastard honors of Plantagenet! Who are you? Where do you come from? Who sent you here?"
"Whoever I am," I said, "you need me all in one piece."
"Nonsense. Modern methods of persuasion don't rely on thumbscrews. In the end you'll babble whatever I choose for you to babble. But if you'll act as I command—now—lives will be saved. His Majesty's offer still stands. Now, again: Who are you? Who sent you?"
"If I'm a fake, what makes you think what I say will help you?"
"Rumors of your presence are abroad here—a Plantagenet of the Old Mark, as Duke Richard was, but without his shabby record of failure and compromise. If word spreads that you've been killed, the countryside will rise—and I'll have no choice but to crush the revolt."
"That might not be easy. The guerrillas—"
"There are no guerrillas, no irregulars, no rebel organization. These are fictions, fabricated by myself." He nodded. "Yes, myself. Consider the facts: New Normandy has been the scene of increasing unrest for decades now, most particularly since the Continental Wars of 1917-1919, with its Prussian dirigible raids, and the less than glorious peace that ended it. The old cries of Saxon unity were revived—idiotic nonsense, of course, based on imaginary blood-ties. I needed a force which would bring the provinces back under tight control. Duke Richard was the perfect foil. By his loose living, he had discredited himself with the islanders, of course—but a rousing call to ancient loyalties served to unite popular sentiment behind him. Then—with all New Normandy pledged to follow him—the final stroke would have been the 'compromise,' granting the hollow honors he craved—and placating the revolutionary spirit with fancied autonomy. His murder destroyed a scheme ten years in the building."
"You murdered him yourself."
"No. It was not I who killed him! He was a valuable tool—and unless you—whoever you are, whatever your original intentions—can be brought to see the wisdom of cooperation—I foresee tragedy!"
"You have proof of this?"
"I have Duke Richard's seal on the secret agreement between us. I have the records of payments to him, of subsidies to him and to various agents provocateurs working ostensibly for his underground organization. Of course, they might be counterfeit—how can I demonstrate otherwise? My best evidence is the inherent logic of my version of affairs, as opposed to the romantic nonsense you've been deluded into accepting! Face facts, man! You have the opportunity laid at your feet to spring from obscurity to princely rank overnight. Your best—your only interest lies in cooperation!"
"I don't believe you. The rebels can win."
"Nonsense." He pointed to a wall map, showing blue arrows aimed across the channel from Dunkirk to Brest.
"His Majesty's forces are overwhelmingly powerful. The only result of war would be a murderous guerrilla delaying action, profitable to no one."
"Why not give the Britons their independence and save all that?"
Garonne was wagging his head in a weary negative. "Milord, what you propose is, has always been, an economic and political fantasy. These islands, by their very nature, are incapable of pursuing an independent existence. Their size alone would preclude any role other than that of starveling dependent, incapable of self-support, at the mercy of any power which might choose to attempt annexation. A Free Briton, as the fanatics call it, is a pipe dream. No, milord: France will never give up her legitimate interests here. In conscience, she cannot. To discuss such fantasies is a waste of valuable time. You've heard His Majesty's most gracious offer. As we sit here, time is passing—time that takes us closer to the brink of tragedy with each instant. Accept His Majesty's generosity, and in an hour you'll be installed in your own apartments in the town, secure in your position as chief local magistrate of new Normandy, with all the honors and privileges appertaining thereunto; refuse your duty to your sovereign, and your end will be a miserable one! The choice is yours, milord!"
He was staring across the desk at me, waiting. The ormolu clock on the marble mantel behind him ticked loudly in the silence. Things were coming at me too fast; there was something I was missing, or forgetting. I needed time to think.
The door opened; a small, dried-up footman with a little white peruke and ribbons on his knees came into the room. He doddered across to the table beside the big desk, put a tray down on it. There was a squat brown bottle, a pair of long-stemmed glasses, a big white napkin folded into a peak. The old fellow lifted the napkin, and scooped a small, flat automatic pistol from under it. He turned and fired three shots into Garonne's chest from a distance of six feet.
I saw the stiff black brocade of the viceroy's coat jump as the bullets hit, saw splinters of pinkish mahogany fly from the chair back, heard the dull smack of the slugs as they lodged in the plaster. The pistol had made a soft unimportant sound as it fired: a silencer, or maybe compressed gas. Garonne jerked and threw his arms up and flopped forward with his face on the fancy leather-bound blotter. The old man pulled off the peruke and I saw it was Wilibald. He shrugged out of the long-skirted coat, all gold and blue with little pink flowers. He was wearing plain gray under it, not too clean. He grinned a toothless grin and said, "We'd best be off direct, m'lord?" He tucked the gun away and went past me, around the end of the desk where a brilliant scarlet stain was growing, and pulled back the drapes gathered at the end of the big window. There was a dark opening in the paneled wall behind them. His flashlight beam showed me rough brickwork and time-blackened timber, a narrow passage leading off into darkness.
"This way, y'r Grace. No time to waste!" There was a sharp note in his voice; an impatient note. I hadn't moved since the shots were fired.
"What's your hurry, Wili?" I said. "No one's going to burst in on the viceroy, in conference—except maybe a trusted servant with his ten o'clock tea."
"How's that? Beggin' y'r Grace' pardon—but that's a dead man lying there! The penalty for murder is hanging! If y'r caught here—"
I went to him and instead of going past him into the passage I caught his wrist.
"What if we're both caught here, Wili? Would that spoil the scheme?"
"We'd hang!" He tried to jerk free, but I held him.
"They all know I was with him. When he's found dead, it will be an open-and-shut case, eh, Wili?"
"What matter if it is? Ye'll be far away by then—"
"Who are you working for, Wili? Roosevelt? He let me escape last time, didn't he? Why? So I could stir up the populace? Why did he bomb Lackland's house? But it was a fake raid, wasn't it? Just a flock of near misses—with the machine guns to clean up the witnesses, including Lackland."
"It was Lackland called the attack down on the house!" Wili croaked. "He was a creeping spy and telltale for the Louis, hoping to see y'r Grace killed—but he paid for his crimes! Aye, he paid—"
"Don't kid me—he was working for Roosevelt. I guess he'd outlived his usefulness."
"Shameful times we've fell on," Wili babbled on. "But what was he but a Black Plantagenet, eh? But now it's needful we make our escape. I've a car waiting—"
"Very convenient, you and your cars. It hardly fits in what I've seen of the Organization here. I suppose we'll breeze right through the police lines, just like we did last time, thanks to Roosevelt."
"The Organization—"
"Is a lot of hot air, Wili. Roosevelt sent you here to kill Garonne, and arranged for it to look as though I'd done the job—just as he killed Duke Richard and spread the word Garonne was guilty. Why? The situation was already balanced on a knife-edge. Why did he tell me the rebels had the winning hand? That was another lie. They're evenly matched at best. But he wants them to make their try, wants to see the country cut to pieces in a civil war that won't end until both factions are ruined. Why, again?"
"Y'r daft!" Wili yelped. "Let go, you fool! They'll be here at any instant—"
"Who tipped them this time, you? Better start talking, Wili—and it had better be good—"
I was watching his free hand; it dipped to his pocket and I grabbed it as it came out with the automatic. He was strong, but I was lots stronger.
"I'm going to spoil the play, Wili," I told him. "I'm a little slow, but after awhile even I catch on. Your boss has been dancing me on the strings from the beginning, hasn't he? Every move has been planned: getting me here on my own initiative, the dramatic escape complete with voices coming out of the walls, then letting Garonne's men have me. What's planned for me next? Maybe I'm supposed to get on a horse and lead the peasants into battle, is that it? But I'm breaking the chain, Wili. The moves are too subtle for me, but that doesn't matter. A fancy knot cuts as easy as a simple one—"
His knee came up, almost fast enough. As I took it on the thigh, he put everything he had into twisting the gun around. It wasn't enough. The muzzle was pointing to his own chest when it coughed. He went slack, fell backward into the room. He tried, tried hard to speak, but I couldn't make out the words. Then his eyes went dull and blank. I dragged the body into the passage, felt over the wall until I found the lever that closed the panel behind me.
"Good-bye, Wili," I said. "You were loyal to something, even if it was the wrong thing." I left him there and started off in what I hoped was the right direction.
It was different, picking my way in the dark through the network of hidden passages that I had traced out once before in the shuttle, on half-phase. I made a wrong turning, bumped my head and barked my shins, retraced my steps and tried again. It took me hours—I don't know how many—to find the passage I was looking for: the one that led to Roosevelt's quarters.
I found the lever and eased the panel back and was looking down from over the fireplace into the quiet luxury of the spacious study. It was empty. Roosevelt would be fully occupied elsewhere for a while, working out an explanation of the locked-door murder of the viceroy.
It was a difficult room to search. Every door and drawer was locked, and there were a lot of them. I levered them open one by one, looked at books and papers and boxed records, and drew a blank.
The next room was the Baron's sleeping chamber. I started in the closet, worked my way through two large bureaus and a wardrobe, and in the last drawer, found a flat, paper-wrapped bundle. It was my broken sword. I wondered what it meant to Roosevelt that had made him squirrel it away here, but that was a problem I could solve later—maybe. I buckled it on, and the weight of it felt good at my hip. It wasn't much of a weapon, but it was better than nothing, if they walked in and found me here.
Ten minutes later, in a cubicle almost hidden in a shadowy corner, I found what I was looking for: the silver-mounted reliquary box that Roosevelt had destroyed a world to get.
There was a silver lock on the silver hasp that closed the lid. I hated to destroy such a handsome piece of workmanship, but I put the edge of the sword under it and levered and it shattered. The lid came up; inside, in a bed of yellowed satin, lay a rusted slab of steel, a foot long, three inches wide, beveled on both edges. It was another piece of the broken sword.
I picked it up, felt the same premonitory tingle in my hand that I'd felt that other time, in the underground room beneath the old chateau. Like that time, I brought the scrap of metal to the broken blade, saw the long, blue spark jump between them as they came together—
The world exploded in my face.
I sat astride a great war-horse, in the early morning. I felt the weight of the chain armor on my back, the drag of the new-forged sword at my side. Beside me, Trumpington turned in his saddle to look across at me. He spoke, but I gave him no answer. A strange vision was upon me. Though I was here, a part of me was elsewhere, observing. . .
My vision widened, and I seemed to see myself riding away from the field of Chaluz, my mind unbloodied. More ghostly images flocked in my mind. I saw the lean face of John my brother, hungry-eyed, silky-bearded, as he knelt before me, pleading for his life. And the sudden look of fear, as I, who had always before been merciful of his treacheries, hardened my heart.
I heard the thunk of the headsman's ax. . .
Then it seemed I sat in my pavilion on the island of Runnymede, summoned there by my rebellious barons. They stood before me in their arrogance, and presented to me, their sovereign lord, the perfidious writing of their demands. And again, I saw their looks of triumph change to the knowledge of death as my hidden bowmen stepped forth and loosed their clothyard shafts into the false hearts of my forsworn vassals. . .
Scenes of warfare passed before my eyes. I saw the walls of Paris go down before me, saw the fires that blazed up from the cathedrals of Madris, saw the head of him who once had been a king, impaled on a pike and borne before me. Faces crowded around me, fair women and ambitious men, praising me. There was revelry, and riding behind the baying hounds, and roasted venison before the roaring blaze; and tuns of wine broached, and the passing of days, years of gluttony and lechery and sloth, until the time when my hand no longer sought the sword. Swollen with excess, rotten with disease, I cowered in my palace while my picked retainers parleyed with the invaders at my gates. Parleyed, and sold their kingdom and its king for their own vile lives. But no viler than mine, when I knelt, weeping, at the feet of the stripling whose father I had hanged on his own gates, and swore to him on my sword the eternal servility of all my house. . .
I swam back from across a gulf wider than the Universe and was standing in the room I remembered from an eon—or a second—before. The sword burned hot in my hand—no longer an awkward stub, but a blade four feet long, ending in a blunt, broken tip. The cross-guard was different: longer, the quillons curving out above carved knuckle-bows. There were traces of gold on the grip, and a single jewel glinted in the pommel. It was the same magic I'd seen before, all the talk in the world about probability stresses and the reshaping of reality couldn't make it anything else for me. I groped after the dream that had filled my head a moment before: a panorama of faces and sounds and vain regrets; but it faded, as dreams do, and was gone. Then my reverie was shattered into small pieces as the door to the next room slammed open and feet came across the rug toward the bedroom.
"Milord Baron," a familiar voice called. "An emergency in the Net! The stasis has been broken! The probability storm will strike within hours!"
His rush had carried him past me where I had flattened myself to the wall beside the door. He halted when he saw the room was empty, spun, saw me, yelled.
"Thanks for the information, Renata," I said, and laid the flat of the sword against the side of his head with all the power in my arm. I didn't wait to see if I had broken his skull. I went across the study and was back inside my private tunnel before the first of his men had gotten up his nerve to enter without knocking.
An hour or two of exploring the tunnel system turned up plenty of side-branches, some secret rooms with tables and rotted bedding, a cramped stairway leading down to ground level; but there seemed to be no direct way into the other wing of the palace and the exit behind the rhododendrons. I thought about coming out and trying it in the open, but there were too many sounds of activity beyond the walls to make that seem really attractive. The whole building seemed to be in a state of uproar. That wasn't too hard to understand. With a dead viceroy to handle, and a probability storm coming on, it looked like a busy day.
My break came when I found a shaft with a rusty ladder bolted inside it.
The rungs were too close together, and scaled with rust, and the bore was barely big enough to give me operating space. It seemed to get smaller as I went down. It ended on a damp floor that I recognized as running behind the rank of cells where I'd once been a guest. I started along the two-foot-wide passage, in near pitch-dark. What light there was came from chinks in the mortar between the stones. If night fell while I was still here, the going would be rough.
I followed the passage fifty feet to a dead end. I turned back, and after thirty feet, encountered an intersection that I would have sworn hadn't been there two minutes before. The right-hand branch led to an uncovered pit that I discovered by almost falling in it. The other spiraled down, debouched into a circular room lined with dark openings. I turned my back, and when I looked again, everything had changed. This time I was sure; where the passage I had entered by had been there was a solid wall of stone. I knew now what Roosevelt meant by a probability storm. Subjective reality had turned as insubstantial as a dream.
The next passage I tried ended in a blank wall of wet clay. When I came back into the circular room it was square, and there were only two exits now. One led to a massive iron-bound door, locked and barred. I retraced my steps, but instead of a room I came into a cave with water trickling across its floor and a single dark opening on the far side. I went into it, and it widened and was a carpeted hall, faced with white doors, all locked. When I looked back, there was only a gray tunnel, cut through solid rock.
For a long time, I wandered through dark passages that closed behind me, looking for a way up. And then, in a tunnel so low that I had to duck my head, I heard the clank of chains, not far away.
I listened hard, heard heavy breathing, the rasp of feet on stone, another clank. It wasn't what would ordinarily be considered an inviting sound, but under the circumstances I was willing to take the risk. I pushed ahead ten feet and saw dim light coming through a crack in the wall. It was a loose stone slab, three feet on a side. I put my eye to the crack and looked into a cell with windowless walls, a candle on a table, a straw pallet. An old man stood in the center of the room. He was as tall as I was, wide through the shoulders, with big, gnarled hands, a weather-beaten complexion, pale blue eyes with a hunted look. He was dressed in tattered blue satin knee-pants, a wine and rose brocaded coat with wide fur lapels, a flowered vest, scuffed and worn shoes that had once been red. The chains were on his ankles. He looked around, scanning the walls as if he knew I was there.
"Geoffrey," he said, in a hoarse, old voice that I'd heard before, in a dream, "I feel you near me."
I got a grip on the stone and slid it aside and was looking through a barred opening. The old man turned slowly. His mouth opened and closed.
"Geoffrey," he said. "My boy. . . " He put out a hand, then drew it back. "But my boy is dead," he told himself. "Forever dead." A tear ran down the leathery cheek. "Who are you, then? His cousin, Henry? Or Edward? Name yourself, then!"
"Curlon is my name. I'm lost. Is there a way out of here?"
He ignored the question. "Who sent you here? The black-hearted rogues who slew Geoffrey?" He caught at the bars, and the sleeve of his coat fell back. There was a welted, two-inch-wide scar all the way around his wrist.
"No one sent me," I said. "I managed it on my own."
He stared at me and nodded. "Aye—you're of the blood—I see it in your face. Are you, too, caught in his traps?"
"It looks that way," I said. "Who are you? Why are you here?"
"Henry Planget is my name. I claim no other honor. But I'll not fall in with his schemes, though all the devils in hell come to haunt me!" He shook his fist at the wall. "Do your damnedest, rascals! But spare the boy!"
"Snap out of it, old man!" I said roughly. "I need your help! Is there a way out of here?"
He didn't answer. I drew the broken sword and levered at the bars. They were solid, an inch thick, set in barred sockets.
"My help?" His rheumy eyes held on mine. "A Planget never calls for help—and yet. . . and yet, perhaps it would have been better if we had, so long ago. . . "
"Listen to me, Henry. There's a man called Roosevelt—Baron General Pieter van Roosevelt. He's crazy enough to think he can remake the Universe according to a private set of specifications and I'm crazy enough to believe him. I'd like to stop him, if I can. But first, I have to break out of this maze. If you know the way—tell me!"
"The maze?" The old man looked at me vaguely; then as if he were shaking off a weight, he straightened his back; his eyes cleared and vitality came into them.
"The maze of life," he said. "The maze of fate. Yes, we must break out!" He stopped, staring at the broken sword. His hand went out to it, but stopped, not touching it.
"You bear Balingore?" his voice quavered. His eyes met mine, and now fire flashed in them. "A miracle passes before my eyes! For these same eyes saw Balingore broken and cast into the sea! And now. . . he lives again!"
"I'm afraid it's just a broken sword," I said, but he wasn't listening.
"Balingore lives again!" he quavered. "His strength runs in you, lad! I sense it! And still the powers draw at you across the veils of the worlds! I've seen them—yes, he showed me, long ago, when he plied me with fine words and talk of glories vanished. There are more worlds than one, and they call to me—and to you, too! Can you feel them, the voices that cry out of darkness, summoning you? Go! Go to them! Break the ring of fate that forever doomed our house!"
"How do I do that, Henry?"
He clung to the bars and I could see the fight he was having to hold to the glimmer of sanity that had come to him—if that was what it was.
"I must speak quickly, before the veils descend again," he said. His voice was steadier now. "This is the tale that he told me:
"Long ago, a king of our line bore Balingore into battle, and with him built a mighty empire across the world. But in the end, he turned aside from honor. Balingore passed to the hands of another, and for seven centuries, served the cause of evil. But at last the usurper's greed undid him. His wise men built a strange machine in which a man might leave his proper frame of fate and walk in worlds of might-have-been. He sought to use this wonder as a weapon, to spread his black dream of empire—but he failed. And in his failure, he brought down the very skies about him!"
"The machine was called a shuttle," I said. "It used the MC-drive to move across the alternate world-lines. I've heard that the Blight was caused by the drive running out of control."
"Nay—it was no accidental havoc! Van Roosevelt knew what he did when he unleashed its power on the world! And now his spawn seeks again to mold the cosmos to his liking! But this is a task too great for him alone! He needs the might of Angevin beside him. This much he told me when he snatched me from my manor house in the far world of my birth. But I defied him! As you must!"
"Who is he, Henry? What is he?"
"A fallen angel; a man so evil that the world cannot contain his malice! Even now it melts and flows—as I have seen it melt and flow before! Run, lad! Flee this pit of horrors before you find yourself forever lost. . . as I was lost, so long ago. . . "
"You were telling me about the sword," I reminded him.
"Many things have I learned, strange beyond belief," Henry mumbled. "And yet you must believe them!" The fire came back into his tone. "There are many worlds, many lines of fate that grow across the walls of time like so many vines of ivy! Once there were many Balingores, each holding some fraction of the power that was once welded into one. But in the disaster that overtook the world, all were lost, save two: One, in the hands of the devil, Roosevelt. And another, which hung on the high wall of my house, in a far land I shall never see again!" Knuckles whitened as he gripped the bars. "Once, this was my house, these chambers my cellars. Then he came. His talk beguiled me, in my ignorance. At his behest, I took down the ancient blade of my ancestors, and would have put it in his hand. But at his touch, it shattered.
"He raged, blamed me for the miracle. But I took new pride from the sign given me. I defied him, then! Too late, I defied him! He brought me here, told me his tale—and his lies. He swore I was the key to his greatness, that together we would rebuild his world—that other world, so like mine, and yet so different. I would not listen. I saw the sword he bore—the other Balingore, so long ago dishonored—but I sensed that the true power flowed not in it. He needed me, in truth—but what he did not know was that I had saved one fragment of the true sword. I hid it away from him, and when he scattered the shards in the salt sea, there to corrode to nothing, one piece was left behind. . . "
"There were more than two Balingores," I said. "I have part of one. And I found another part, in a ruined city in the Blight—"
"Listen to me!" Henry's voice shook. "I feel the red darkness returning! Time is short! Go to my world, Curlon! Find my house of the high stone walls and the red towers; and there, in the chapel dedicated to St. Richard, search beneath the altar-stone. But beware the False Balingore! Now go—before the world melts away into a tortured dream!"
"I'll try, Henry," I said. "But I can't leave you here. I'll try to find something—some way to release you." I went back along the passage, feeling the walls, with the vague idea I might find a ring of keys hanging there; but there was nothing.
When I came back to the barred window, the candle still burned on the table; but the room was empty. Only the rusted shackles lay on the floor among scattered bones.
For a long time, I stood in the dark, watching the candle burn down and gutter out. Then I went on. I don't know how many hours later it was that I came into a room where light filtered down from a heavy oak door, half-smashed from its hinges. I went up stone steps into late afternoon light in a kitchen that looked as though it had been fought through. There was shooting going on outside, not far away.
The door opened into a bricked alley under high walls. A dead man in a blue uniform lay on his back a few feet from it. I picked up his gun and moved up to cross the street without any unnecessary noise. In the distance, big guns rumbled and boomed, and flashes showed against the colors of early dusk. I knew where I was now. I had covered several city blocks, underground. The viceregal palace was in the next square, a hundred yards away.
A sudden burst of gunfire nearby made me flatten myself against the wall. I heard running feet, and three blue-uniformed Imperial guards dashed out of a doorway, heading across the street. There was more gunfire, from up high, and one of them fell. A shell shrieked, and a section of street blew up and blanketed the scene with dust. When it cleared, a dead civilian with a bandolier across his shoulders lay near the dead soldier. The revolution was in full swing, but somehow I had a feeling that in spite of that, things hadn't turned out the way Roosevelt had wanted them. The thought warmed me, and turned my mind to what I had to do next.
I left my cubbyhole, made it across the street, and into a narrow street that led to the delivery yard at the back of the palace. I went along it with the machine pistol ready; I didn't want to be gunned down, by either side. Near the gate, I heard feet coming up behind me. I threw the gun away and went over the wall and was in the viceregal gardens, fifty feet from the spot where I had left the shuttle on half-phase.
The shadowy trees and bushes looked different somehow; wild flowers of a kind I'd never seen before sprouted in the tended beds. Somewhere a nightingale was singing his heart out, ignoring the gunfire.
I was still wearing the ring Bayard had given me, the one with the miniaturized shuttle recall signaler set inside the synthetic ruby. I had left the shuttle in another world-line, with Imperial suppressor beams holding it pinned down like a butterfly on a board but this wasn't the time to pause and consider things like that. If the signaler worked, I was on the board for another round; if not, the game was finished now. I pressed the stone.
The bird sang. A breeze stirred the long grass. At the far side of the garden, a man stepped into view, capless, dressed in sweat-stained blues. He stopped when he saw me, shouted, and started for me at a run. He was halfway there when the shuttle shimmered and phased into solidity with a rush of displaced air. I stepped inside and flipped the half-phase switch. On the screens, the twilit garden faded to eerie blue. The man who had been running skidded to a stop, raised his gun and fired a full clip into the spot the shuttle occupied. The gun made a remote, flat sound. Then the man threw the gun down and laughed a wild laugh. He turned and wandered away. I could sympathize with him. I knew how he felt. The world had come apart around his ears, and there was no place to turn.
The telltale light on the panel was blinking on, off, on. It was the tracer that had been locked to Roosevelt's shuttle. It still was—and the target was moving.
Again, I didn't stop to calculate the odds. I threw in the drive lever and set off in pursuit.
I had seen it before, but it was a thing that could never lose its fascination. All around me, as the hours passed, the world changed and flowed. I knew now that what I was seeing was a simultaneous sequence of A-lines, each differing only slightly from the next, like the frames of a movie film. Nothing really moved; no normal time elapsed during a transdimensional crossing. But the eerie pseudo-activity of E-entropy went on; plants jostled each other for favorable positions; vines attacked trees; weeds swelled and crowded out other weeds. The ivy-covered walls of the palace shrank, broadened, became a fortress ringed with a moat. The walks shifted position, slid away, became footpaths. The trees moved back, gliding slowly through the turf that parted like water, until the shuttle was perched in an open field edged by an ancient forest. The fort had become a stone manor house, with mansard roofs and chimneys poking up into the unchanging sky; the chimneys drew together and merged, became towers of brick with castellated tops.
Suddenly, the hum of the drive whined down-scale and ceased. The scene stabilized. I was looking across a tilled field of grain toward the lone house occupying the top of a low rise among tall trees.
A high stone house with brick towers. Bricks would be red in normal light. Out of all the possible destinations in all the Universes, Roosevelt had led me to the house of Henry Planget.
I waited until full dark before I switched the shuttle back to full-phase and stepped out, then shifted it back. The soft boom! of imploding air had a lonely sound of finality.
For the past hour, a steady stream of men had come and gone around the big house. Couriers had galloped up on horseback, and others had ridden away down the unpaved road with full saddlebags slapping at their mounts' flanks. Lights burned in all the ground-floor windows. Sentries paced in front of the main door. Everything about the place spelled military headquarters. Somewhere inside, Roosevelt would be cooking up the last ingredients of his grand scheme for the world.
I skirted the house, came up in the shelter of a row of poplars until I could see through the nearest set of casement windows. A group of men in ornate green uniforms clustered around a table on which a map was spread, under a gas-burning chandelier. Roosevelt wasn't among them. It was the same in the next room, except that the men wore plain khaki and were working over what might have been manning documents or supply lists. I worked my way halfway around the house, using the hedges for concealment, before I found my man. He was sitting alone at a table, writing rapidly with a ball-point pen—a curious anomaly in the old-fashioned setting. He was smiling a little as he wrote. There was a small cut on his forehead. He was still wearing the fancy outfit he had donned for the ceremony back in New Normandy, now stained and powder-burned. It seemed the general had seen some close action before he had left the scene of battle.
He finished writing and left the room. I closed in and checked the windows. It was a mild evening, and they stood open half an inch. Ten seconds later, I was inside.
I listened at the door, heard nothing, opened it, and took a look along the papered hallway glowing softly in the light of a single gas jet. A sentry stood at the far end, all shiny leather and brass, with a musket over his shoulder. I tried to pretend I was a shadow moving along the hall, sliding into the recess of a stairwell. He never turned his head.
There was red carpeting on the stairs, a polished mahogany rail. On the landing, I gave a listen, then went on up into a dark corridor, door-lined. I was standing there, waiting for instinct to whisper instructions in my ear, when I felt a touch at the hip. I came around fast, and my hand went to the sword-hilt before I understood. The touch had been the sword, tugging gently at my side. I drew it, following the direction of the pull.
At the end of the corridor, three steps led up to double doors of carved oak. I pushed through them, stood in moonlight shining through a rose window. It wasn't a room that I had ever seen before—and yet it was. I knew, without knowing how I knew, that it was the analog of the chapel from which Roosevelt had stolen the reliquary box. This room was smaller, simpler, almost unadorned. But somehow, in the abstruse geography of the Net of alternate reality, it occupied the same position. The altar under the high window consisted of two heavy oak uprights with a flat slab of rough stone across them, but somehow, it was the same altar. In the dim light, it looked like a sacrificial block. I started forward and the door made a soft sound behind me. I turned, and Roosevelt stood there. His black eyes seemed to blaze across the darkness at me, as armed men spread out behind him.
"You see, Plantagenet?" he said softly. "Struggle as you will, your fate must deliver you into my hands."
"I misjudged you when we met," Roosevelt said. "And again, in New Normandy. You should have seized on the chance to escape, filled with the zeal to set a nation free. The countryside would have risen at your call; you'd have ridden into glory with your followers at your back and the bright sun overhead. Why didn't you?"
"You're a clever man, Roosevelt," I said. "But not clever enough to play God. Men aren't cardboard cutouts for you to arrange to suit yourself."
"Men are tools," Roosevelt said flatly. "As for you—you're a tool that turns in the hand, and your edges are surpassingly sharp." He shook his head. "You're supposed to be a man of emotion and action, Plantagenet, not thought!"
"Stop second-guessing me, Roosevelt. Your scheme's blown up in your face. You've failed—the way your father failed with Henry Planget." It was a shot in the dark, just something to say. For a moment, he looked startled. Then his teeth flashed in a smile.
"It was my grandfather," he said. "I wonder how you learned of that? But it doesn't matter now, does it? You've come here, to the one place you had to come to—and found me waiting and ready."
"Not so ready. I could have shot you while you were writing at your desk."
"I fail to see the weapon." He was still smiling an almost gentle smile. "No, Plantagenet, it's not your destiny to shoot me in the back. We'll have our meeting face to face—and the fateful time is now." He drew the heavy longsword slung at his side. The light winked on the jewels that crusted the pommel and grip and pas-d'âne. The men behind him stood silent, drawn guns in their hands.
"You like to talk about fate, Roosevelt," I said. "It's a lot of hot air. A man determines his own fate." I was watching the long blade, ready to ward off a blow with the broken weapon in my hand. Roosevelt looked at it and laughed, a low chuckle.
"Like your blade, Plantagenet, you're incomplete! You know a little—though even that little surprises me—but not enough. Don't you recognize the weapon you face?"
"It's a fancy piece of iron," I said. "But a weapon is as good as the man behind it."
"Look on Balingore!" Roosevelt held the sword out so that the blade caught the light. It was a slab of edged and polished steel, six feet long, as wide as my hand, and Roosevelt's brawny arm held it as though it were a stick of wood. "It was forged for your once-great ancestor, Richard of the lion-heart. It served him well—but he was a greedy man. He went too far, grew fat on gold and wine. Richard Bombast, they called him in the end. He lay drunk in his chamber while the French attacked the walls of London and his people opened the gates to them. He bought his life with this. He handed it, hilt-first, to the Dutch mercenary who led the forces of Louis Augustus, and swore the submission of himself and his house, to the end of time!"
"Fairy tales," I said.
"But a fairy tale you believe in." Roosevelt tilted the sword, made light wink in my eyes. "I know why you're here, Plantagenet."
"Do you?"
He nodded somberly. "Somehow—and later you'll tell me how—you learned that Balingore was the key object through which the lines of power run. You imagined you could steal it, and win back all that you lost, so long ago." He shook his head. "But the weapon is mine, now! Its touch would shrivel your hand. All the probability energies built up in seven hundred years of history flow through this steel, and every erg of that titanic charge denies your claim. I offer you your last chance for life and its riches. Plantagenet! Submit to me now, and you'll stand first below the throne in the new order. Refuse, and you'll die in an agony beyond your comprehension!"
"Dead is dead," I said. "The method doesn't matter much. Why don't you go ahead, do it now? You've got the weapon in your hand."
"I should have killed you," he said between his teeth. "I should have killed you long ago!"
"You kept me alive for a reason," I said raggedly. "But it wasn't your reason, Roosevelt. All along, you've thought you were in charge, but you weren't. Maybe fate isn't as easy to twist as you thought it was—"
One of the men behind Roosevelt gave a muffled yell; a rat as big as a tomcat scuttled out between his feet. Roosevelt cut at it with the sword—and I whirled and sprinted for the altar.
I expected gunfire to racket, a bullet in the spine, a wash of agony from a nerve-gun; but Roosevelt shouted an order to his men to hold their fire. I jumped up on the low platform, gripped the altar-stone, and heaved at it. I might as well have tried to lift the columns of the Parthenon. Roosevelt was coming toward me at a run. I jammed the broken sword in under the rock, felt it clash on metal—
The Universe turned to white fire that fountained round me, then dwindled away to misty gray. . .
"My lord, will you attack?" Trumpington's voice came from beside. I looked up at the sun, burning through the mist. I thought of England's green fields, and the sunny vineyards of Aquitaine, of the empire I might yet win. I looked across toward the place where the enemy waited, where I knew death waited with a message for me.
"I will attack," I said.
"My lord," Trumpington's voice was troubled. "Is all well with you?"
"As well as can be with mortal man," I said, and spurred forward toward the high gray walls of Chaluz.
The chapel of St. Richard swam back into solidity. Roosevelt was running toward me; behind him, his men were spreading out; one brought his gun up and there was a vivid flash and I felt a smashing blow in my shoulder that spun me back and down. . .
Roosevelt was standing over me, the bared sword in his hand.
"You can't die yet, Plantagenet," he said in a voice that seemed to ring and echo like a trumpet. "Get on your feet!"
I found my hands and knees, dragged them under me. My body was one pulsating agony. . . like the other time, when Renata had shot me with the nerve-gun. Remembering Renata helped. I stood.
"You're a strong man and a proud one," Roosevelt said; his voice swelled and faded. My hand burned and tingled. I remembered the sword, blinked the haze away, saw it still projecting from under the altar-stone where I had jammed it just before somebody shot me. I wished I could get my hands on it.
"You've run a long way, Plantagenet," Roosevelt was saying. "I think you knew how it would end, but still you fought. I admire you for that—and soon I'll let you rest. But first—make your submission to me!"
"You're still afraid. . . " I got the words out. "You can't swing it. . . on your own."
"Listen to me," Roosevelt said. "The storm is all around us; it will reach us here, soon. You've seen it, seen what the Blight is! Unless we resolve the probability flaw now, it will engulf this world-line along with all the rest! You're holding the fault-line open with your stubbornness! In the name of the future of humanity, give up your false pride!"
"There's another solution," I said. "You can submit to me."
"Not though the pit should open to swallow me alive," Roosevelt said, and brought the sword up, poised—
I used the last ounce of strength in my legs to lunge for his wrist, caught it, held him. I reached past him, toward the scarred hilt of my weapon. His hand closed on my wrist. We stood there, locked together, his black eyes inches from mine.
"Stand back!" Roosevelt shouted as his men came close. "I'll break him with my own hands!"
My fingers were six inches from the hilt of the sword. I could feel a current, not a physical pull, but a force as intangible as hate or love flowing from my hand to it.
"Strive, Plantagenet," Roosevelt hissed in my ear, and threw his weight against me. My hand was forced back, away from the sword. . .
"Balingore!" I shouted.
The sword moved, leaped across the intervening space to my hand.
There was a sensation as though fire poured through my arm, not burning, but scouring away the fatigue. I threw Roosevelt back, and swung six feet of scarred and rusted steel in my two hands. He backed away, his eyes fixed on the old sword, nicked and blunted, but complete now. An expression passed across his face like a man who's looked into the furnace doors of Hell. Then his eyes met mine.
"Again, I underestimated you," he said. "Now I begin to understand who you really are, Plantagenet, what you are. But it's far too late to turn back. We meet as we were doomed to meet, face to face, your destiny against mine!" He lunged, and the False Balingore leaped toward me, and the True Balingore flashed out to meet it. The two blades came together with a ring like a struck anvil and the sound filled the world. . .
. . . I saw the shaft leap toward me out of the dust, felt the hammer blow in my shoulder that almost struck me from the saddle.
"Sire—you're hit!" Trumpington shouted, and reined closer to me in the press of battle. For an instant weakness swept over me, but I kept my seat, spurred forward.
"My lord—you must retire and let me tend your wounds!" Trumpington's voice followed me; but I did not heed him. He galloped abreast, seeking to interpose himself between me and the enemy.
"Sire—turn back!" he shouted. "Even a king can die!"
For a moment we faced each other among the plunging mounts and struggling men.
"More than other men, a king knows how to die," I said. "And when, as well." Then the charge of the enemy host separated us, and I saw him no more. . .
I saw the change come into Roosevelt's eyes, locked on mine as we strained together, chest to chest. He staggered back, staring unbelievingly at his empty hands. Under my eyes, his face withered, his cheeks collapsed, his silks and brocades turned to gray rags that dropped away to expose gaunt ribs, the yellow skin of age. He fell, and his toothless mouth mumbled words, and his hands, like the claws of a bird, scrabbled for a moment at the stone floor. Then there were only bones that dwindled to dust.
The sword burned in my hands. I looked at it and saw how the light shone along the flawless length of the perfect blade, how the jeweled hilt glittered. I sheathed it and walked down the length of the empty chapel and out into the sunlight.