Free Nine princes in Amber by Roger Zelazny Page B

killed the engine, and began the long roll down.
    “I’ve been thinking,” said Random; “you’ve lost none of your old guile. I’d probably have killed him, myself, for what he tried. But I think you did the right thing. I think he will throw us his support, if we can get an edge on Eric. In the meantime, of course, he’ll report what happened to Eric.”
    “Of course,” I said.
    “And you have more reason to want him dead than any of us.”
    I smiled.
    “Personal feelings don’t make for good politics, legal decisions, or business deals.”
    Random lit two cigarettes and handed me one.
    Staring downward through the smoke, I caught my first glimpse of that sea. Beneath the deep blue, almost night-time sky, with that golden sun hanging up there in it, the sea was so rich-thick as paint, textured like a piece of cloth, of royal blue, almost purple-that it troubled me to look upon it. I found myself speaking in a language that I hadn’t realized I knew. I was reciting “The Ballad of the Water-Crossers,” and Random listened until I had finished and asked me, “It has often been said that you composed that. Is it true?”
    “It’s been so long,” I told him, “that I don’t really remember any more.”
    And as the cliff curved further and further to the left, and as we swung downward across its face, heading toward a wooded valley, more and more of the sea came within our range of vision.
    “The Lighthouse of Catba,” said Random, gesturing toward an enormous gray tower that rose from the waters, mucs Out to sea. “I had all but forgotten it.”
    “And I,” I replied. “It is a very strange feeling, coming back,” and I realized then that we were no longer speaking English, but the language called Thari.
    After almost half an hour, we reached the bottom. I kept coasting for as far as I could, then turned on the engine. At its sound, a flock of dark birds heat its way into the air from the shrubbery off to the left. Something gray and wolfish-looking broke from cover and dashed toward a nearby thicket; the deer it had been stalking, invisible till then, bounded away. We were in a lush valley, though not so thickly or massively wooded as the Forest of Arden, which sloped gently but steadily toward the distant sea.
    High, and climbing higher on the left, the mountains reared. The further we advanced into the valley, the better came our view of the nature and full extent of that massive height of rock down one of whose lesser slopes we had coasted. The mountains continued their march to the sea, growing larger as they did so, and taking upon their shoulders a shifting mantle tinged with green, mauve, purple, gold, and indigo. The face they turned to the sea was invisible to us from the valley, but about the back of that final, highest peak swirled the faintest veil of ghost clouds, and occasionally the golden sun touched it with fire. I judged we were about thirty-five miles from the place of light, and the fuel gauge read near empty. I knew that the final peak was our destination. and an eagerness began to grow up within me. Random was staring in the same direction.
    “lt’s still there,” I remarked.
    “I’d almost forgotten,” he said.
    And as I shifted gears, I noticed that my trousers had taken on a certain sheen which they had not possessed before. Also, they were tapered considerably as they reached toward my ankles, and I noted that my cuffs had vanished. Then I noticed my shirt.
    It was more like a jacket. and it was black and trimmed with silver; and my belt had widened considerably.
    On closer inspection, I saw that there was a silver line down the outer seams of my pants legs.
    “I find myself garbed effectively,” I observed, to see what that wrought.
    Random chuckled, and I saw then that he had some where acquired brown trousers streaked with red and a shirt of orange and brown. A brown cap with a yellow border rested on the Seat beside him.
    “I was wondering when you’d