“Win or lose? Live or dead?”

  “Exactly.”

  An owl dipped above them. “Who?” it asked.

  “Me,” she answered. Beangern growled, and birds fell dead from the sky. The earth shook and the wind grew stronger. At last they reached the chapel and Beangern let them in. The place was filled with candlelight, there was a low altar against the forward wall, and a circular skylight poured starshine and the glow of the rising moon down upon the pentagram drawn on the floor beneath. Against the chapel’s rear wall was a throne all of red stone, and to this Alice was led.

  “Pray, rest yourself!” cried Beangern, and the ground shook as he increased in stature. He moved forward then, motioning the others to seat themselves in pews. Lucer and the King and Queen he allowed to remain near Alice. He moved then to the front ofthe chapel, and, looking upward, addressed some unseen presence beyond the skylight:

  “You up there. This is Beangern,” he said. “I know you can hear me, tonight. All right. Tonight is the night, but I want you to know that I hold everything in the palm of my hand. You waste your time if you think that you can do much about it. I know you’ve been waiting to nail me, Yuleki, but it’s too damned late. I’ve been sucking power out of this land down the years. I’m too strong for you now. One touch more, and the world I have set up will endure forever.”

  “Alice,” Lucer said softly, “I am going to break these chains now and fight him. We are of about equal strength but I will lose because his technique is better. When I appear to be going down for the third time, cry out for Yuleki to come to you. And use your name.”

  “Why are you as strong as that thing he has become?” she asked.

  “I forget.”

  “…And why is his technique better?”

  “Not sure. No matter.”

  “Then why must you fight?”

  “I must hold him till the moon is higher.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t remember. But it will help us against him.”

  “…Now, on this night of all nights of the year,” Beangern intoned, “we are gathered together in the eyes of Yuleki and anyone else who cares to look, and we will join in matrimony the master and lady of this place.”

  “Lady?” Alice said. “Where is she?”

  “That’s you,” Lucer answered, raising his hands and spreading them. He drew them taut and beads of perspiration broke out upon his brow. Then the chains snapped and he bent to draw upon those which held his ankles.

  Beangern raised his shotgun. Alice moved to stand before Lucer.

  “Damn it, lady! Get out of the way!” Beangern cried.

  “No,” Alice replied. “Something’s wrong here and I want to see it right.”

  “You’re going about it wrong!” he roared.

  Lucer’s chains broke and he rose to his full height. Beangern sighed. “All right. We must settle this yet again,” he said.

  Lucer advanced to the center of the chapel and Beangern set aside the shotgun and moved to meet him.

  A flash of lightning crossed the sky as they met. Then the two were rolling about the pentagram.

  The door to the chapel was opened and the figute o fa White Rabbit entered. Alice thought that she heard him mutter, “Oh dear!” as he seated himself in a pew near the front. He watched the fray as the two combatants struck, their fists shattering brick, stone, or flagging when they missed each other.

  Finally, she felt the rabbit’s gaze upon her. He stared for a long while before his eves widened in recognition. She nodded then.

  The Rabbit rose and made his way slowly along the lefthand wall. When he came to the throne he said, “Alice.”

  “How’s the Dormouse?” she asked.

  “Still in the teapot. How are you?”

  “Oh, time has taken its ticket for the show,” she said. “And yourself?”

  “You freed me earlier with your singing.”

  “What? How?”

  “You’re magic. You must know that by now. I was with the Jabberwock after you sang him loose. He’s waiting outside to eat Beangern if he can.”

  The Rabbit’s eyes turned toward the combatants. “Tough pair, those two. Hard to tell which is master or man.”

  “Not for me. Beangern has ceased to be a man.”

  “He will always be a mere man-at-arms among the skiey hosts.”

  “What are you saying? He is a fallen star—a higher being whose contact with this world may have corrupted him.”

  The Queen of Hearts shrieked as the combatants rolled near to her, Beangern’s horns scoring the stone at her feet. Then the combatants rolled away again.

  “Lord Lucer is the fallen star,” replied the Rabbit, “who must be made this night to remember himself. Beangern was his servant, who usurped his place when the forgetfulness fell upon Lucer.”

  “What?” cried Alice. “Beangern an imposter?”

  “Indeed. Now that you’ve freed me, I hope to see him pass one way or the other this night.”

  There came a crash as the two men struck the wall and the building shook.

  “Why does Beangern outclass his boss?” Alice asked.

  “A man-at-arms has special combat training, for service against the dark legions,” replied the rabbit.

  It seemed that Beangern and Lucer hammered upon each other forever, as the moon rose higher and higher. Then Beangern’s blows began to appear more telling, and finally he knelt upon Lucer, and, catching hold of his head, began to bang it upon the stone floor. Seeing this, Alice cried out, “Yuleki, Yark Angel, help us now! This is Alice calling.” Then she moved toward them.

  With a flash, a ball ofwhite light appeared above the pentagram. Beangern rose and faced it, leaving a panting, bleeding figure upon the floor.

  “It is not fair that you should come for me now, Yuleki!” he cried. “I am tired and cannot face you properly!”

  “All the better then,” a musical voice rang out. “Transform! You lose no face by coming along with me without strife.”

  Beangern glanced at Lucer. “Do you remember?” he called out.

  “Remember what?” Lucer responded.

  Beangern looked back at Yuleki. “I maintain my battle mode and we fight,” he said.

  “Very well.”

  He plunged forward. When he made contact with the bright sphere, it raised him above the ground, spun him round like a whirlwind, then slammed him down upon the stone. It drifted into a position above his chest. He attempted to raise his arms and legs and could not.

  “You should have made it last longer,” he whispered, “for his sake. I have been trying to cure him for decades. I thought that this might do it. I wanted him whole, so that he could be returned.”

  “My plan was otherwise.”

  Beangern turned his head toward Lucer. “Master!” he cried. “Remember! Please!”

  “I do, faithful servant,” came the response; and Lucer took Alice’s hand in his own. A faint glow suddenly surrounded her.

  “Your job here is done,” Yuleki said to Beangern. “But his is not, though he is whole again. He will repair this land, which you sacrificed in the cause of his healing.”

  “I could help him!”

  “That would not be prudent. Their memories of you are bad.”

  There followed a crash of thunder and both Beangern and the light were gone.

  Alice felt the years fall away as her odd aura strengthened.

  “What is happening?” she asked.

  Lucer drew her to her feet.

  “I take you back along the years to your yourh, old friend,” he said. “By the way, there really should be a wedding tonight. Are you game?”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Indeed I am. I do want your help as well as your company. After all, you are the true goddess of this place.”

  “This is too much,” she said, staring at the back of her hand as the wrinkles faded. “I’ll never understand.”

  “Come with me.”

  He walked to the door of the chapel and flung it open. They were all there, Humpty and the grinning Cat, the Dormouse and the Hatter, the March Hare, the Walrus and the Jabberwock. The Choipery Girl passed overhead. A great cry rose up.

  “Lucer and Alice! Lucer and Alice!”

  “This seems as good a place as any,” he said. “Will you have me, AlIce?”

  She looked out over the multitude of creatures, many still arriving. Then the Queen said, “Do it, Alice. I know we need you. Beangern’s fief is yours now, of course. Do it.”

  Alice looked at Lucer, looked at the crowd, then back at Lucer.

  “You’re all mad,” she said. “But so am I.”

  Music fell from the skies. Looking up, she saw a small star rising through the spheres to the empyrean.

  Notes

  An epithalamium is a bridal song. Zelazny occasionally alluded to Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There; in this story he imagines what happens to Alice after she grew up.

  Characters from Alice’s adventures appear here, with Zelazny’s additions. The style with its frequent rhymes evokes Carroll’s. Axel J. Beangern and Lucer are not from Carroll. Lucer appears to be Lucifer, the archangel cast out from heaven; here he has forgotten his true identity until near the end. Beangern is a minor devil. Demons have corrupted the Alice story. Fields of Flanders refers to the terrible WWI battle at Ypres and the soldiers buried there; it also refers to the famous poem “In Flanders Fields,” by Canadian soldier John McCrae, anguished over lost comrades buried under the poppy fields (starting the tradition of wearing poppies to honor war dead). Incandesced means that his arm glowed and warmed. Whitcomb pie refers to the poem “Our Hired Girl” by James Whitcomb Riley: the working girl’s pies attract her beau with their aroma.

  Callooh Callay are nonsense words from Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky”; Zelazny also alluded to that poem in “Divine Madness.” The Queen of Hearts (a playing card) screams “off with his head!” in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland but the Red King and Queen (chess pieces) are different characters from Through the Looking-Glass.

  Coined word yuleki echoes Yuletide; other words made up in Carroll’s style include Kibling and Dars Dadisdada, Rottery Khan, Choipery Girl, Challkers Rose, Twittikins, Yark Angel. Kibling might be Rudyard Kipling, Dars Dadisdada suggests Addis Ababa (the capitol of Ethiopia), and Yark Angel could be Archangel. Decretal or decree is a formal statement that has the force of law. Scrivener is a scribe. Legend says that St. George fought dragons. Caterwauling is a loud, unpleasant wailing. Sacrosanct means sacred. Nietzsche was the German philosopher who declared, “God is dead.” Empyrean is heaven.

  Paranoid Game

  Alternities #6, Summer 1981.

  Paranoia is fun.

  I once thought of inventing a board game

  with that name.

  Roll the dice. Deuce.

  Go two.

  Draw a card

  Your cat has died

  after eating the dinner’s scraps.

  Go to hospital.

  Have your stomach pumped.

  Forfeit a turn.

  The possibilities are endless.

  Read the instructions:

  Watch out! They are all around you.

  I wouldn’t be too quick with those dice.

  Keep an eye on the other players.

  Listen.

  What you do not hear is also important.

  Or see, or feel, or taste,

  touch, smell or kinesthese;

  none of the above;

  or all of these.

  It is a good day.

  Sort of makes you wonder.

  Don’t be the first to move.

  Neither a borrower nor a lender be.

  One of the other players has instructions

  for a different game.

  It is called Manic-Depressive.

  He/She is watching too, just now,

  but the adrenalin is rising.

  When things get desperate,

  you could draw a card

  Or not.

  Nobody wins, of course,

  but the best loser

  is undefeated in a certain spiritual sense.

  The way out is to draw the black card,

  though it may only say “Taxes”.

  Something is rotten,

  but Dad’s ghost on the castle wall

  is not to be trusted either.

  (Remember the stories he used to tell?)

  Offhand, I’d say there’s something to do.

  But you never know.

  Keep your eyes open, your feet on the ground

  If it feels right, don’t do it.

  Watch the other players watching.

  Notes

  Kinesthesia is the sense that detects movement in the muscles, tendons and joints. Something is rotten but dad’s ghost on the castle wall recalls Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

  The God and Frustrate Shrine

  To Spin Is Miracle Cat, Underwood-Miller 1981.

  Written 1955-60 for Chisel in the Sky.

  Tower and weep,

  o steeple.

  The flashing phalanx

  waves

  its ton of fist.

  Notes

  Frustrate, as an adjective, means ineffectual. A phalanx is a finger bone, or a body of military troops in close formation.

  Forever After:

  Preludes and Postlude

  Forever After, ed. Roger Zelazny, Baen 1995.

  Prelude the First

  Prince Rango stepped out onto the balcony and regarded the pair of comets hung in the night sky.

  Pair?

  He squinted at the strange, low patch of light in the west which had not been present the previous evening. It looked pretty much the way the others had but a few nights ago. Therefore, a third comet was probably on its way. Things such as this were supposed to presage the deaths of monarchs, changes in administration, social upheavals, natural disasters, the loss of price supports in industries run by one’s relatives, bad weather, plagues, and losing lottery tickets. Rango smiled. He did not need signs in the heavens to tell him that change was in the air. He was part of it.

  Abruptly, an ear-tormenting squeal filled the night. It was the sound of a stringed instrument played at at least a hundred times the volume of any stringed instrument ever heard in the area. Since last night, anyway. It had been occurring in the middle of the night, on and off, for about a week, and once it fell into a regular rhythm other amplified instruments joined it. Yes. There came some sort of bass… And now a frantic drumbeat. Soon an invisible singer would begin shouting incomprehensible lyrics in an unknown language.

  A tall, darkly handsome man, Rango raised his wine goblet and sipped from it as a ground-shaking thudding began somewhere to the east.

  He sighed and turned his head in that direction. It had been strange enough, these past two months, living in a land that was not torn by civil war, a place that, for well over a decade, had been backdrop to assassinations, dark sorceries, skirmishes, quests, pursuits, escapes, vendettas, duels, betrayals, great acts of courage as well as treachery, all of them leading at last to a war in which the line was finally drawn and Good and Evil, Light and Dark, Order and Chaos, and all those other antonyms had faced off and had it out, steel against steel, spell against spell, dark gods and goddesses against their brighter relatives, toe to toe and hand to hand, the world red in tooth and claw and other combative appendages. When the dust settled, Good—in the person of himself and his followers—had just managed to squeak by.

  Rango lowered his goblet and smiled. It had been touch and go there at the end, and, ultimately, nothing had gone according to the book, but he stood now in the imperial palace in Caltus, capital of the Faltane, with less than two months before the day of his wedding and coronation. Finally, with all of the perils laid to rest, he would be wed to his betrothed, the tall, dark-haired Rissa.

  As the thudding sounds came more heavily out of the east—even the weird music could not completely smother them—he thought back over the years the respective adventures had taken, all rushing to culmination this past summer…

  Kalaran, demigod gone bad—Fallen Sunbird of high Vallada Ta-hana, home of the gods—had seemed to have everything going for him on the eve of the final battle. The four things which had tipped the balance against him had been the amulet, the ring, the sword, and the scroll—Anachron, Sombrisio, Mothganger, and Gwykander.

  Gar Quithnick, the turncoat hingu master, had succeeded in recovering the lost amulet. Its protective, magic-dampening effect had saved the defenders from Kalaran’s wrath. Sombrisio, the deadly ring of power, returned from the city of the dead, Anthurus, by Rissa and her big-boned blond companion, Jancy Gaine, had actually hurt Kalaran, reducing him to physical combat with the Prince. Even so, he would have faced no problem against a mortal hero no matter how well muscled, save that that muscular arm had wielded Mothganger—a godslayer of a weapon which he and his partner Spotty Gulick had brought back from their quest. And then there was the scroll of Gwykander—containing the words to the ancient rite of grand exorcism—delivered from the bottom of a monster-haunted lake, and rushed to the Faltane just in time. Along with the other magical tools, it was there when it was needed. Looking back, he reflected on all the coincidences, and just plain luck, involved in the four tools being conveyed to the proper place at the proper time within minutes of each other. The outcome had truly been balanced on the edge of a blade.

  A white line traced itself slowly through the heavens, expanding in the wake of whatever emitted it. Shortly, there came a distant, muffled boom from overhead, followed by a growling sound.

  He shook his head. While he could tell that it was neither meteor nor comet, he had no idea what the thing was. This disturbed him more than a little. He’d had enough of unknown variables tracking muddy footprints across his life’s trail these past few years.