Linda said, "I wasn't in much danger. That Blueface was a strong magician, though. If we hadn't ducked out, I don't know." She shook her head ruefully.

"Sheila?"

Horror-struck, she was staring at Gene. "Gene, I ... Isaw you. You were -"

"Yeah, I know. It was pretty interesting."

Sheila's mouth hung open. She worked her jaws, trying to form words in reply.

Gene shrugged. "Well, philosophically speaking -"

Sheila burst into tears, and presently she found that Gene was holding her. She hugged him, pressing her face against the braided leather of his breastplate.

"It's okay, it's okay," Gene was saying, but she knew that nothing would ever be the same again.

"Oh, no!"

Blinking back tears, Sheila looked at Linda.

Linda's face was ashen. "The portal's gone," she said.

Seventeen.

East 64th and Lexington.

TRENT'S MERCEDES SWOOPED to the curb and halted beneath a sign that read NO STOPPING ANYTIME. Trent got out and opened the trunk. Incarnadine threw his luggage in; then they both got in the car.

It was about three-thirty on a Friday afternoon, and traffic was already congealing into a hopeless clot.

Trent drove south on Lexington to 58th Street and turned west.

"Think we can get through the Lincoln Tunnel in under an hour?" Incarnadine asked.

"Sure, no problem," Trent answered with the casual self-confidence that only a New Yorker can muster in the face of impending gridlock.

"I'd be willing to bet we never make it to the tunnel. This town was always bad, traffic-wise, but the situation seems to have reached absurd proportions."

"Come now, you're exaggerating."

Incarnadine laughed. "You really have become a native."

Trent shrugged. "Maybe." He dodged and weaved expertly through the taxi-thick rush, applying the car's horn in liberal doses. "Tell me again why I should help you."

Incarnadine sighed and leaned back in the leather seat. "I don't think I want to go through it again. If you can't marshal enough reasons on your own, your heart's probably not in it. If that's the case, let me off here, and we'll say no more about it."

"Hold your horses, I'm not backing out. I just want to hear again why I should take your side against Ferne. And Deems, though I don't hold a brief for him."

"I'm not asking you to take my side. I'm enlisting your aid in a campaign to save Perilous from the irresponsible machinations of our crazy sister. She's really gone off the deep end this time, Trent."

"You say she has something else in mind besides sharing power with you and Deems?"

"She wants to be nothing less than mistress of Perilous. She's wanted it for years, and has stated so to me on a number of occasions. Always with a laugh, mind you, and a pretty smile, as if she didn't mean it."

"Always. That's our Ferne. But who am I to thwart her ambitions? Look, Inky. I've lived in this culture long enough to have been influenced by certain so-called progressive ideas. In our world, as in this one, women traditionally get the short end of the stick when it comes to things like royal succession. She's older than you, but you are a male, and she was passed over. You inherited the Seat Perilous, the crown, and the castle. She's pissed about that, as rightly she should be."

"In the moral universe you're delineating, our sister Dorcas, as oldest sibling, should have taken the throne upon Dad's death."

"Dorcas is traditional-minded as hell, and you know it. She'd be on your side, for Christ's sake. Let's forget hypotheticals. It's Ferne who thinks she has a civil rights case."

"Ferne may have a case, but the way she's going about redressing her grievance is guaranteed to put more than Castle Perilous in jeopardy."

"Not if you gave in a little and let her share power."

"Can't be done, Trent. I mean, we're not talking about political power in the traditional sense here, are we?"

"Well, not exactly," Trent said. "As far as Perilous' local situation is concerned, the Pale is a Wasteland, and has been for centuries. Is there anyone at all living out there on the plains these days?"

"There are about two hundred tenant farmers and their families left, scraping by as always. They won't live in the castle for religious reasons."

"Only two hundred? Gods! Then the Pale is virtually deserted outside the castle. No, we're not speaking of governing a few hundred squarezeln of marginal farmland. It's a matter of controlling whole worlds - at least potentially."

"Trent, you know Perilous can't control worlds. Not very well, at any rate. For instance, take this one.

Could we rule Earth from Perilous?"

"Maybe not a complex, heavily populated world where magic is problematical. But other, simpler aspects where the ground rules are a trifle more liberal? Yes indeedy. We could run worlds like those."

"Why? To what purpose?"

Trent swerved to avoid a cab that had cut in front to pick up a fare. He chuckled. "Why? Something to do. Something different. A new kick. A little excitement to leaven the boredom that's inevitable in the lives of long-lived sorts such as we."

"You might take up batiking. Or beer can collecting. How about aerobics? Maybe holistic medicine?"

"Okay, okay. I was simply dying to see it from Ferne's point of view."

"I think I know what her point of view is," Incarnadine said. "She's nuts. Gone round the bend.

Crackers."

"What makes you think that?"

"I'm pretty sure she intends to make a deal with the Hosts of Hell."

Trent honked angrily at a brave pedestrian, a man in a trench coat and wool cap, who had stepped out in front of the car. The man jumped back to the curb in the nick of time as Trent roared by. Incarnadine heard shouted obscenities dwindling in the car's wake.

"How do you know?" Trent said.

"I don't, for sure," Incarnadine answered, "but I'm fairly sure she tried to have me killed, and that means she's not dealing squarely with Deems. I don't think Deems would go along with assassinating me."

"Unless he is as desperate as Ferne said he was."

"Possibly. But I don't think Ferne wants to share power with anyone, let alone Deems, let alone me. She needs allies to take and hold the castle, and I think she thinks that only supernatural allies will do. She's probably right. Alone, she'd have to face her subjects, to say nothing of the Guard. And there's always the Guests as a wild card. And all of them are magicians, to varying degrees. That's what makes Perilous a fun place and makes plotters toss and turn all night. I do myself, sometimes."

"This all sounds complicated," Trent said uneasily. "Why is she stringing Deems along? Why does she need him?"

"If she had simply summoned the Hosts of Hell to take over the castle, Deems would have thrown in with me to fight them off. So would Dorcas, and, I think, even you."

Trent seemed to be grinning in spite of himself. "But I was stranded here, remember? Still am, as a matter of fact."

"Bullshit, Trent. I never believed it for one minute."

Trent laughed. "Okay, I never was good at keeping secrets."

"You shouldn't have shown off at dinner, when you let me see how you do your aging act. Obviously you've learned to adapt to this universe. How long did it take you to learn how to summon the gateway?"

"Oh, about five years, as I said. But once I could do if, I had no interest in going back to Perilous, or in living in any other universe but this one. I simply had settled down here and wasn't about to move. I have friends here, you know. I've put down roots."

Incarnadine nodded, looking out the window. Traffic thickened up even more as they reached the West Side.

"I still don't quite understand it," Trent said. "Okay, she wouldn't have won any popularity contests by teaming up with a bunch of demons. But can any of us prevail against the Hosts of Hell, singly or combined?"

"I don't know. The Hosts of Hell are a troublesome bunch."

"That's putting it mildly. If Dad feared anything at all, it was those guys. He warned us about them more than once."

"Dad knew their power. It's not for nothing that the strongest containment spell in the castle is the one blocking their aspect." Incarnadine rubbed his dark beard. He was glad not to have to go about in makeup all the time. Only his C. Wainwright Smithton persona required his looking elderly. "As I said, I don't know exactly what Ferne's up to. But I'm sure I'll find out sooner or later. As I take my dying breath, maybe." He opened his coat and loosened the collar of his shin. "Tell me this. Whyare you helping me? Or are you?"

Trent took a long breath. "I guess it's occurred to you that I could be behind all this."

"Yes, it has. Forget it. That's a possibility I'll have to live with. I'm betting you aren't. Granted that you're not conspiring with Ferne or running her, why help me find the portal and get back to Perilous?"

"Because I don't want Perilous taken over by militaristic blue monsters," Trent said, "let alone demonic entities from some fever-dream universe who would rule Creation if they could get their claws on it."

"Makes sense. Another question. How sure are you about Ferne's having an estate in western Pennsylvania?"

"I thought you'd found out. You were the one who asked me about it."

"It was just a wild hunch. We've been getting a lot of Guests from that area lately."

"Well, it was a pretty good hunch. I've known about it for some time."

"How did you find out?"

"About ten years ago I woke up in the middle of the night with the strongest feeling that someone was doing major magic in this universe. I didn't have the vaguest notion of how to locate the source, so I worked on that problem awhile. Eventually I came up with a direction-finding technique, and the next time I got that same feeling, I went out in the car and got a triangulation fix on it. Over the years, I've managed to get a wider baseline and pinpointed it pretty accurately."

"What's the name of the town it's near, again?"

"Ligonier, Pennsylvania."

"That's where the portal ought to be nailed down."

"You would think. But the booby traps and fortifications around it are going to be a living nightmare."

Incarnadine nodded, smiling thinly. "Let's deal with the horrors as they come. First we have to survive the Lincoln Tunnel and the New Jersey Turnpike."

They ate at a Burger King on the Pennsylvania Turnpike near Reading. It was about eight o'clock, and the night was cold and dark.

"What's with the gadget?" Trent asked as he munched his Whopper.

"Checking some parameters," Incarnadine said as he tapped with one finger on the keys of a pocket computer. "Stresses, field strengths, other variables. I can't keep track of them by feel here."

"That's the first thing you've got to learn. You can't use technology as a crutch here. Otherwise your magic becomes a sort of pseudoscience."

Incarnadine smiled ruefully. "I know what you mean. But getting an intuitive grip on things is going to take a little more time. For me, at least."

"Don't worry, you'll get it eventually."

"I hope I get it before I get it, if you take my meaning."

"You haven't touched your french fries."

"I can't get used to this kind of food. Ring Lardner once told me that American culture could only get more bland and homogenized as time went on, and he was right."

"I like American food," Trent said. "It's fast, nice and greasy, and appeals to the kid in us all."

"Nothing wrong with hamburgers and fried potatoes. It's just that - uh, never mind. Can we go?"

"Of course."

They walked out into the brisk winter night. The parking lot was well lighted near the restaurant, but Trent had parked on the dim outskirts under a burnt-out light.

"Ring Lardner?" Trent said. "You were always one to hobnob with the literati."

"Forever courting the Muse's favored. I liked the old Algonquin Round Table crowd, back in the twenties and thirties. Those were the days."

"Who was that writer woman you had a fling with back then?"

"Dorothy Parker? Very briefly. She was fun, but she had a melancholy streak in her. You know, she once said to me -"

A windshield shattered in front of them, its sound almost masking the dull thud of a silenced gunshot that came from behind. Incarnadine dove over a hood, slid off the fender, hit concrete, and rolled to a crouch.

He listened, seeing nothing. He heard running footsteps recede. Then a car door slammed, and tires squealed. He peeked over the front end of an Audi and saw a dark nondescript sedan peeling out of the lot. It screeched onto the turnpike re-entry ramp and sped away.