Extracts from the Journal of

Chapter IV
General Hospital, date unknown - Amber, 113 PPF

Dux femina facti (The leader of the enterprise was a woman)

- Virgil

was in a hospital bed, wired up to a battery of beeping machines, an intravenous drip stuck in one arm. My head appeared to be bandaged. I had a private room, and was currently unattended. This was presumably the establishment where mild cases of death were treated. I sat up, tearing away the electrodes. The most vocal of the machines chirruped and then began to emit a mournful whine in response to my ingratitude. The others went silent. I removed the drip. My arm bled, a good sign. Reaching under the bed on one side, I entreated the local Shadow, and found Wilkes exactly were I expected it to be. Then I reached down the other side, and extracted Dashwood. Thus armed, I kicked back the bedclothes and headed for the door. Four men burst in with guns. They were obviously just thugs, so I killed them all. Shoot, thrust, cock pistol, shoot, thrust. First order of business, I decided, would be to locate their superiors. I wanted to be able to confirm or deny that Bleys was behind this. I couldn't hear any sounds of mayhem in the rest of the building, which suggested that wherever the others had ended up, it probably wasn't here. Well, they were grown-ups themselves, and I could always contact them later. There was a clipboard dangling from the foot of the bed, so I purloined it. "Damien Barimen," I read, "arrested for cultural vandalism; being held under observation pending treatment for brain-damage." Plus an illegible signature. I scowled, took the attached pen, crossed out "Barimen" and substituted "Mortlake". Then I stepped over the bodies and out into the corridor. The corridor was empty, which was really just as well, as I suddenly realised with some embarrassment that I was clad only in a hideous green hospital gown loosely laced up the back. "Forget my own head next," I muttered. I turned and went back into my room in order to do something about this sartorial nightmare before I proceeded any further. Another four armed goons arrived while I was hopping about on one foot, trying to struggle into my breeches. I killed them as well. Once I had finished dressing, I checked my pockets. Brand's little trinket for talking to the dead was there - it felt colder than ever, its obtuse angles unexpectedly sharp - as well as my Trumps. I decided that my signet ring would be useful as well, and found it lurking in the lining of my coat. I had a single instance of The Art Of Discretion hung, so I checked the local magickal ambience and then cast it. Invisible, I wandered off in search of the person who had brought me here. The problem with being invisible is that people tend not to get out of your way. I found myself side-stepping a variety of individuals who were heading cautiously in the opposite direction, the gunfire having alerted them to the fact that something was amiss. Most of them were either hospital staff or patients shuffling about in dressing gowns, and none looked either familiar or in a position to aid my quest. I invented a new and complex dance in order to get past them undetected, and located a doctor's office at the end of a side-passage. It was empty, so I shut myself in and helped myself to the contents of the filing cabinets. There was nothing under "M", so reluctantly I tried under "B". There it was - Barimen, Damien. Date of birth unknown. Undergoing treatment for severe cranial trauma. Highly dangerous international criminal arrested for vandalism of protected heritage sites, theft of national treasures, smuggling etc. etc. Huh. Someone evidently fancied themselves as a comedian. Ah, this was what I was looking for. Being treated by Dr William Melgar. Arresting officer Chief Inspector Elspeth Carpen of the Antiquities Police. I decided to find the doctor first, this being his hospital, although I suspected that the inspector would probably be the person I really needed to talk to. I resumed the dance through the corridors. Someone seemed to have taken charge of things, and nurses and orderlies were shooing patients back into their rooms. I checked the name badges of the staff members as I waltzed past. The corridor containing my former room was now clear again, except for a tall, bespectacled man in a white coat, who was engaged in animated discussion with three more thugs. I wandered up and peered over their shoulders at the doctor. Melgar, said his name tag. I ran the other three through, and then grabbed the good doctor by the throat while he was still looking open-mouthed at the thoracic trauma cases collapsing around his feet. "Who brought me here?" I demanded, pushing him up against the wall. Melgar looked around wildly. "I'm right here," I reassured him, "Now, you were saying?" "The Antiquities Police," he gurgled, putting two and two together and evidently wishing he hadn't, "They brought you in about a day and a half ago." "Who was in charge of them?" I asked, "The name Bleys doesn't ring any bells, does it?" I could hear a vague polyrhythmic thumping sound from outside the building, as if someone was bouncing cannon balls off the pavements. I thought I could also make out screams and the blaring of car horns. Reinforcements? "I haven't got all day," I informed Melgar. He managed to shake his head. "No," he said, "It was Inspector Carpen who brought you in, she was in charge ..." At that point the far end of the corridor erupted in flames. Walls started collapsing and a vast metal leg suddenly descended through the ceiling, punching its way through the floor and into the storey below. There was a whoosh and the doors on the right hand side of the corridor began to blow open one by one, fire and smoke boiling out after them. I had obviously outstayed my welcome. Since it didn't look as if the hospital was going to be in any position to settle a malpractice suit in the immediate future, I decided to redirect any litigation towards the police. I released Melgar. "Thank you," I said, "You've been helpful." I turned and headed for the stairs. I glanced back as I picked my way through a pair of shattered and ineffectual fire-doors. Melgar had run off in the opposite direction, but as I watched, the floor suddenly swapped positions with a wall, tipping him into a maelstrom of fire and falling masonry, and he was lost to sight. I emerged into daylight, in a city vaguely reminiscent of Shadow Earth in its level of technological attainment and general architectural style. The wing of the hospital in which I had been held was rapidly being levelled by about half a dozen tripod-like machines the better part of a hundred feet high. They did not look native to this Shadow. One of them was standing amidst the rubble, flaying the collapsing building with some kind of heat ray emanating from a bulky arm-mounted device not unlike a box camera. Long metal cables whipped about like tentacles, occasionally snatching up survivors from the exposed rooms within. The other five machines were arrayed in a rough circle around the hospital, directing their fire at the main exits. Someone had apparently decided that keeping me contained was worth a few hundred civilian casualties. I wandered over the base of the nearest war machine and peered up at it. There appeared to be a hatch on the underside of the surmounting capsule. Still invisible, I shinned up one of the legs and, dangling eighty odd feet above the ground, managed to lever the hatch open. A flabby, tentacled creature about the size of a large bear turned round as I hauled myself into its lair. Three eyes protruded on stalks as it beheld the hatch open seemingly by itself. Unceremoniously I kicked it out via the self same aperture, and a couple of seconds later there was a loud squelch from below. I closed the hatch and settled myself into the uncomfortable, vaguely bucket-shaped seat it had occupied. The controls arrayed in front of me had been designed for a being with more limbs and fewer digits per appendage than myself, but after a couple of false starts we managed to lurch off down the road and into the city. The others continued razing what was left of the hospital. I suppose I could have experimented with the three-legged alien assault vehicle as a duelling weapon, but I doubted that by this stage there were many survivors left to protect. In any case, I wanted to find my real captors before they escaped. The machine's mode of locomotion was a curious one, its legs rotating beneath the body in a spinning motion, at least one leg always resting on the ground, the other two pivoting around it. Like a gyroscope, it seemed more stable the faster it moved, so I ignored any local speed restrictions and just ploughed straight ahead into the city centre. Fortunately, possession of a thirty ton behemoth with steel tentacles and a heat ray apparently gave me the right of way, so after a few near misses, the local commuters quickly learned to avoid me. The cockpit had no windows, but a battery of oddly warped screens displaying distorted visions of the world outside permitted me to navigate. I was looking for the Antiquities Police, and presently, I found them. I parked the war machine outside an imposing brownstone building with the legend "To Protect And Preserve" inscribed over the door. I assumed that somewhere there was a control either for telescoping the legs or for letting down some kind of ladder, but I couldn't be bothered to look for it, so I just climbed down one of the legs again. A small crowd was gathering to observe this prodigy towering over the street, including a traffic warden fumbling with his notebook. I slipped past them and into the building. No-one paid me any attention, but then I'd have been upset if they had. The metal detectors set into the arch that led into the interior of the edifice remained silent as I strolled through them. Some helpful soul had emblazoned the names of the occupants on the doors of the offices that lined the corridors, so I set out in search of the one labelled "Chief Inspector Carpen". That was the point when someone Trumped me. I held the contact off for a moment, reluctant to lose the advantage of remaining unseen, especially since I had no other invisibility spells prepared. The corridor was empty, but even so ... Then I decided that the balance of probabilities meant that it was one of the others, checking up on me. I opened up. The Art of Discretion fizzled away under the onslaught of the power of the Trumps, and I could see myself reappear, mirrored in the glass of the nearest doorway. The person at the other end of the link was Tamarind, in colour, head bandaged like mine. He looked as if he was somewhere in Amber. "This will only take a minute," I told him. He didn't ask what "it" might be, but merely enquired "Do you want me to keep the link open?" I nodded, and stepped into the office of my quarry. The handsome thirty-something woman behind the desk wasn't anybody I recognised, but from the expression on her face she evidently knew me. "Hello," I said. She half-rose, reaching for a drawer, so I knocked her out with a right cross and threw her over my shoulder. We'd have plenty of time to reminisce in Amber. I came through to Tamarind. "And she is ...?" he asked, apparently willing to give me some benefit of the doubt despite having just witnessed me abduct an apparently unarmed woman. "My jailer," I told him. Further explanations were forestalled by the arrival of a servant, with the message that the King wanted to see Tamarind and, by extension, myself. Tamarind had apparently also awoken in a hospital bed, and had paused long enough to inconvenience his guards before Trumping directly to Amber. He had checked to see who was in residence, and early indications seemed to be that we were the only ones who had disappeared, although we had only been gone a couple of days at most, and there were odd, contradictory reports that myself and Tristan had been seen recently. He had tried Trumping Tristan, but had been unable to get through. He had yet to try contacting Ibrahim, and of course lacked any means of getting in touch with Altair. I informed him in turn that I had been tracking down those responsible for my own hospitalisation, and that Ms Carpen was as far up the hierarchy as I had got. We arrived at Random's office. The guards outside looked at the Chief Inspector slung over my shoulder, looked at me and then looked at each other. Maybe they got points every time they spotted me in the company of a swooning female. Altair and Gerard were with Random when we entered. Good - that was three of us accounted for. "We're back," I said, depositing the unconscious policewoman in a chair. "I'd only just been informed that you were away," said Random. "Before we explain," I told him, "there's someone I promised to talk to first." I thumbed out a Trump of Fiona, and began concentrating. Tamarind also was drawing a Trump from his deck. Random sat back with an air of peeved patience, that "Don't mind me, I'm only the King" demeanour that he and he alone can carry off so well. Altair offered him an apologetic shrug, and then offered to assist me. I wasn't getting anywhere, and since I had by now worked out that she was a lot better at this sort of thing than I was, I accepted. Tamarind seemed to be having better luck, producing Caine in a rainbow swirl. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the door open again, and Ibrahim arrived, carrying a blank-faced and drooling but at least rather more youthful-looking Eric, wrapped in a rug. Alive, but no-one home to enjoy the fact. Oh dear. The same was doubtless true of Isabel. There are times, admittedly few and far between, when I hate being right. Fiona, on the other hand, should have survived the transition at least as well as the rest of us. Unfortunately, she wasn't taking any calls. Either that, or she was out of range, or Bleys had been keeping her somewhere barred to Trumps. Or some combination of the three. I shook my head and gave up. I was going to have to contact her some other way. Random, Gerard and Caine were peering at Eric. Tamarind was making another Trump call, which this time resulted in the arrival of a red-eyed and bleak-faced Tristan, bearing - as I had feared - a vacant and mindless Isabel lolling in his arms like a rag doll, restored to youth, beauty and a vague semblance of life, but nothing more. I sighed. "I'm sorry," I said. It sounded better than "I told you so". Tristan nodded stiffly. Ibrahim was more phlegmatic. "You did warn us, it's true," he murmured. We left it at that. Random wanted an explanation. So we explained, and somehow managed to keep it brief and reasonably to the point. Caine examined the wallpaper thoughtfully when Brand was mentioned, Gerard looked pleased when Deirdre was mentioned, and Random pursed his lips when the deal that we had hammered out was explained. "I gave them my word, of course," I informed him blithely. I also thought anybody could get an amnesty just by filling in the form, I didn't add. "And by the way," I said, turning to Caine, "we also met your Shadow in the Land of the Dead, the one that you killed." This was something I wanted to get settled, not that the Shadow Caine in question was likely to be much exercised over the outcome, given that by now he was probably several hours dead again. The real Caine seemed unsurprised. "It must have been a very real Shadow," said Tamarind, not so much sceptically than as if an idea was starting to occur to him. "As real as they come," said Caine cheerfully. "Tell me the rest," said Random, metaphorically sliding the paper marked "Imminent Return of Brand" back into the bottom of his in-tray and piling a dozen other reports and files on top of it. We told him the rest. "And this," I concluded, gesturing to my prisoner, "is Chief Inspector Elspeth Carpen, who works for the people who did this to us." No-one else had apparently thought to pick up a souvenir, although Tristan and Ibrahim at least had had more pressing concerns. "We have a problem," said Random, "You say you must have been taken two days ago?" We nodded. That was how it seemed to work out. "However," he continued, getting to his feet, "I spoke to Tristan and Ibrahim only this morning." So - our abductors had taken the opportunity to replace at least two of us with impostors. "Then I request that I be placed under arrest immediately," said Ibrahim, "That way any sightings of me will definitely be of the impostor." Terrific idea. Remove one of our highest ranking military officials from circulation just when we were most likely to need him. Full marks for decisiveness if nothing else. Random went over to the door, presumably to alert the guards to the existence of two or more intruders impersonating Family members, rather than to accommodate Ibrahim's otiose suggestion. The door, however, opened onto nothing more than a blank stone wall. The wall felt magickal, but otherwise appeared to be of the same gold stone out of which most of the palace was constructed. This looked annoyingly like the preamble to some kind of attack. Ibrahim pressed Eric's Pattern blade into Random's hand, although whether this was in deference to the latter's kingly authority or part of a determined attempt to disarm himself I couldn't tell. I stepped over to the window and looked out. There were no assassins abseiling down from above or clambering up from below, and there was neither sight nor sound of any assault on the castle itself. Then I had it. I could make out a tiny figure silhouetted against the sky on the very peak of Kolvir, high above us. It appeared to be waving its arms. Either someone was conducting a ritual beside the steps to Tir-na Nog'th, or they were about to try and find out if they could fly. As I watched, the figure seemed to throw something up into the air, something that ignited with a flash and then began rising into the sky, accelerating rapidly. "I think you'd better look at this," I told the others. Most of them joined me. Tamarind and Altair started flicking through their Trump decks, searching for signs of activity. The tiny, distant ball of fire rose higher. It seemed to be heading in the general direction of the sun. "Evander," said Tamarind suddenly, "Evander's Trump is active." This tended to bode ill for Evander when we next met, but the fiery speck streaking towards the sun, growing brighter as it did so, didn't seem to bode much better for us. Then it vanished into the solar glare, and for a moment, nothing happened.

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