On A Pale Horse Read Online Free PDF Page B

pose if she happened to perceive the camera. She could even be heard on occasion, singing her traditional song, especially the line, “Where the girls are so pretty.” But she was not as popular a subject as she might have been, owing to her special property.
    Zane had discovered a photographic variant, however, that had enabled him to eke out a living for a while. This was the Kirlian technique, magically augmented. But certain problems in the market had turned him off this, and recently his luck had expired. Without expensive new equipment, he was out of business. That was part of what had sent him aloft to the cloud-mall, using his last dollar to rent the flying carpet. One had to visit these floaters when they anchored near, because they were liable to drift away without notice if the local police got too snoopy.
    Now he was hungry, without food in the apartment, and required to move out within a day. He had nowhere to go. He had to have money—and he greatly feared he couldn't get enough.
    He tried the Wealth stone again. “Go!” he urged it. “Find me wealth beyond my fondest dreams!”
    The star heaved itself up, faltered, and collapsed back onto the stone. It was too pooped to perform.
    And what would it find if it did get moving? Probably more pennies. Zane faced the fact that he had thrown away the chance of a lifetime, for wonderful and rich romance, for this mess o' pottage. He had in fact been cheated, though the gem had not technically been misrepresented, so he had no recourse. The shop's proprietor had used him for his own profit, taking Zane's one chance away forever. After all, even without the Love stone, he might have encountered Angelica...
    Fool! Fool! he chided himself savagely.
    He paced around the room, tasting ashes, seeking some way out of his situation. He found none. Once he had made his deep blunder of passing up the Love stone, his ruinous course had been fixed. If only he hadn't been so set on wealth, to the exclusion of all else. But he had always been an impulsive, wrongheaded idiot, doing what he thought was right at the time and regretting it too late. His whole life had been grinding inexorably to this dead end; he saw that now. If he somehow found enough loose change to pay his back rent, he still would lack the resources to make a decent living and still would not have a lovely girl to love.
    That was the crux of it! Angelica—slated for him, but squandered away. In retrospect he found himself scrambling into love with her, his emotion based on wrongheaded hopes and wishes—and knew she was the type who only loved once, and that her gift had been bestowed irrevocably on another man. Zane might live on, but he would never have Angelica, not even if the conniving shop proprietor were to drop dead this moment. So what point was there in going on?
    He looked at the defunct stone again. Now it seemed drab indeed, its colors muddy, its imperfections gross. It was, he realized abruptly, as ugly as his conscience. It was virtually worthless—and so was he.
    Zane slapped his open hand against his thigh as if trying to punish himself—and felt the pistol in his pocket, the one he had taken from the robber.
    He drew it out. He was not conversant with firearms, but this one seemed simple enough. It had a clip of several bullets in the handle, and one of them had been fired from the chamber. An automatic mechanism had set a new bullet in the chamber; he had no doubt that a pull on the trigger would make the weapon fire again. He could put the muzzle to his head, and—
    Now he remembered the first gem he had considered—the Deathstone. It had signaled his demise in a few hours. Those hours had passed. The Love stone had proved itself, so he had no further reason to doubt the Deathstone. Even the Wealth stone worked, in its fashion. He was fated soon to depart this life.
    Zane lifted the gun. Why not? His life might as well end efficiently, instead of being dragged out in the gutters of the