We stood there at the center, silent for a long while, breathing deeply. Exactly what I had achieved, I was uncertain. I did feel, though, that, in some way, I knew my father better as a result. Strands of mist still drifted, across the Pattern, across the valley.
“I feel stronger,” Luke announced later. “Yes, I’ll help guard this place. It seems a good way to spend some time.”
“By the way, Luke, what was your message for me?” I asked.
“Oh, to tell you to clear out of the Courts,” he replied, “that things were getting dangerous.”
“I already knew the danger part,” I said. “But there are still things I must do.”
He shrugged. “Well, that’s the message,” he said. “No place really seems safe just now.”
“There won’t be any problems here yet,” Corwin said. “Neither Power knows exactly how to approach this place or what to do with it. It’s too strong for Amber’s Pattern to absorb, and the Logrus doesn’t know how to destroy it.”
“Sounds pretty easy, then.”
“There will probably come a time later, though, when they will try to move against it.”
“Until then, we wait and watch. Okay. If some things do come, what might they be?”
“Probably ghosts — like ourselves — seeking to learn more about it, to test. You any good with that blade?”
“In all modesty, yes. If that’s not good enough, I’ve studied the Arts, as well.”
“They’ll fall to steel, though it’s fire they’ll bleed not blood. You can have the Pattern transport you outside now, if you wish. I’ll join you in a few moments to show you where the weapons are cached, and the other supplies. I’d like to take a little trip and leave you in charge for a while.”
“Sure thing,” Luke said. “What about you, Merle?”
“I’ve got to get back to the Courts. I’ve a luncheon engagement with my mother, and then Swayvill’s funeral to attend.”
“It may not be able to send you all the way to the Courts,” Corwin said. “That’s getting awfully near the Logrus. But you’ll work something out with it, or vice versa. How is Dara?”
“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen her for more than a few moments,” I answered. “She is still peremptory, arrogant, and over-solicitous when it comes to me. I get the impression, too, that she may be involved in local political scheming as well as aspects of the larger relationship between the Courts and Amber.”
Luke closed his eyes for a moment and vanished. Shortly afterward, I saw him beside the Polly Jackson car. He opened the door, slid onto the passenger seat, leaned and fiddled with something inside. A little later I could hear the radio playing music across the distance.
“It’s likely,” Corwin said. “I never understood her, you know. She came to me out of nowhere at a strange time in my life, she lied to me, we became lovers, she walked the Pattern in Amber, and she vanished. It was like a bizarre dream. It was obvious that she used me. For years I thought that it was only to get knowledge of the Pattern and access to it. But I’ve had a lot of time for reflection recently, and I’m no longer certain that that was the case.”
“Oh?” I said. “What, then?”
“You,” he replied. “More and more I’m coming to think, what she really wanted was to bear a son or daughter of Amber.”
I felt myself grow cold. Could the reason for my own existence have been such a calculated thing? Had there been no affection there at all? Had I been intentionally conceived to serve some special purpose? I did not at all like the notion. It made me feel the way Ghostwheel must; carefully structured product of my imagination and intellect, built to test design ideas only an Amberite could have come up with. Yet he called me “Dad.” He actually seemed to care about me. Oddly, I had begun feeling an irrational affection for him myself. Was it partly because we were even more alike than I had consciously realized?
“Why?” I asked. “Why would it have been so important to her that I be born?”
“I can only remember her final words when she had completed the Pattern, turning into a demon in the process. ‘Amber,’ she said, ‘will be destroyed.’ Then she was gone.”
I was shaking now. The implications were so unsettling that I wanted to cry, sleep, or get drunk. Anything, for a moment’s respite.
“You think that my existence might be part of a longterm plan for the destruction of Amber?” I asked.
“‘Might,’” he said. “I could be wrong, kid. I could be very wrong, and if that’s the case I apologize for troubling you this much. On the other hand, it would also be wrong of me not to let you know what the possibility is.”
I massaged my temples, my brow, my eyes.
“What should I do?” I said then. “I don’t want to help destroy Amber.”
He clasped me to his breast for a moment and said, “No matter what you are and no matter what’s been done to you, there will have to be some element of choice for you, sooner or later. You are greater than the sum of your parts, Merlin. No matter what went into your birth and your life up to now, you’ve got eyes and a brain and a set of values. Don’t let anybody bullshit you, not even me. And when the time comes, if it comes, make damn sure the choice is your own. Nothing that’s gone before will matter then.”
His words, general as they had to be, drew me back from the place in my spirit where I had retreated. “Thanks,” I said.
He nodded. Then, “While your first impulse may be to force a confrontation on this matter,” he said, “I would advise against it. It would achieve nothing other than making her aware of your suspicions. It would be prudent to play a more careful game and see what you can learn.”
I sighed.
“You’re right, of course,” I said. “You came after me as much to tell me this as to help me escape, didn’t you?”
He smiled.
“Only worry about important things,” he said. “We’ll meet again.” And then he was gone.
I saw him, suddenly, over near the car, talking to Luke. I watched as he showed him where the caches were located. I wondered what time it was back in the Courts. After a while, they both waved to me. Then Corwin shook hands with Luke and turned and walked off into the fog. I could hear the radio playing “Lili Marlene.”
I focused my mind on the Pattern’s transporting me to the Ways of Sawall. There was a momentary swirling of blackness. When it cleared I was still standing at the center of the Pattern. I tried again, this time for Suhuy’s castle. Again, it refused to punch my ticket.
“How close can you send me?” I finally asked.
There was another swirling, but this one was bright. It delivered me to a high promontory of white stone beneath a black sky, beside a black sea. Two semicircles of pale flame parenthesized my position. Okay, I could live with that. I was at Fire Gate, a way-exchange in Shadow near to the Courts. I faced the sea and counted. When I’d located the fourteenth flickering tower on my left, I walked toward it.
I emerged before a fallen tower beneath a pink sky. Walking toward it, I was transported to a glassy cavern through which a green river flowed. I paced beside the river till I found the stepping-stones that took me to a trail through an autumn wood. I followed this for almost a mile till I felt the presence of a way near the base of an evergreen. This took me to the side of a mountain, whence three more ways and two filmies had me on the nail to lunch with my mother. According to the sky, I had no time to change clothes.
I halted near a crossroads to dust myself off, straighten my apparel, comb my hair. I wondered, as I was about the business, who might receive my calling were I to try to reach Luke via his Trump — Luke himself, his ghost, both? Could the ghosts receive Trump calls? I found myself wondering what was going on back in Amber, too. And I thought of Coral, and Nayda… Hell.
I wanted to be somewhere else. I wanted to be far away. The Pattern’s warning, via Luke, was well taken. Corwin had given me too much to think about, and I hadn’t had time to sort it through properly. I
did not want to be involved in whatever was going on here in the Courts. I did not like all of the implications involving my mother. I did not feel like attending a funeral. I felt somehow, also, uninformed. You’d think that if somebody wanted something from me — something very important — they’d at least take the time to explain the situation and ask for my cooperation. If it were a relative, there was a strong possibility I’d go along with it. Getting my cooperation would seem a lot less dicey than any trickery intended to control my actions. I wanted to be away from those who would control me, as well as the games they were playing.
I could turn and head back into Shadow, probably lose myself there. I could head back to Amber, tell Random everything I knew, everything I suspected, and he would protect me against the Courts. I could go back to the Shadow Earth, come up with a new identity, get back into computer design…
Then, of course, I would never know what was going on and what had gone before. As for my father’s real whereabouts — I’d been able to reach him from the Courts, never from anywhere else. In this sense, he was nearby. And there was no one else around here likely to help him.
I walked ahead and turned right. I made my way toward a purpling sky. I would be on time.
And so I came, again, into the Ways of Sawall. I had emerged from the red and yellow starburst design painted high upon the gateside wall of the front courtyard, descended the Invisible Stair, and peered for long moments down into the great central pit, with its view of black turbulence beyond the Rim. A falling star burned its way down the purple sky as I turned away, headed for the copper-chased door and the low Maze of Art beyond it.
Within, I recalled the many times I had been lost in that maze as a child. The House of Sawall had been a serious collector of art for ages, and the collection was so vast that there were several ways into which one was cast within the maze itself, leading one through tunnels, a huge spiral, and what seemed an old train station before being shunted back to miss the next turn. I had been lost in it for days on one occasion, and was finally found crying before an assemblage of blue shoes nailed to a board. I walked it now, slowly, looking at old monstrosities, and some newer ones. There were also strikingly lovely pieces mixed in, such as the huge vase that looked as if it had been carved from a single fire opal, and a set of odd enameled tablets from a distant shadow whose meaning and function no one in the family could be found to recall. I had to stop and see both again, rather than shortcutting the gallery, the tablets being a particular favorite of mine.
I was humming an old tune Gryll had taught me as I came up to the fiery vase and regarded it. I seemed to hear a small chafing noise, but glances up and down the corridor revealed no one else in the vicinity. The almost sensual curves of the vase begged to be touched. I could remember all of the times I had been forbidden to do so as a child. I put my left hand forward slowly, rested it upon it. It was warmer than I’d thought it might be. I slid my hand along its side. It was like a frozen flame.
“Hello,” I muttered, remembering an adventure we’d shared. “It’s been a long time…”
“Merlin?” came a small voice.
I withdrew my hand immediately. It was as if the vase had spoken.
“Yes,” I said then. “Yes.”
Again, the chafing sound, and a bit of shadow stirred within the creamy opening, above the fire.
“Ss,” said the shadow, rising.
“Glait?” I asked.
“Yess.”
“It can’t be. You’ve been dead for years.”
“Not dead. Ssleeping.”
“I haven’t seen you since I was a kid. You were injured. You disappeared. I thought you’d died.”
“I ssleep. I ssleep to heal. I ssleep to forget. I ssleep to renew mysself.”
I extended my arm. The shaggy snake head rose higher, extended itself, fell upon my forearm, climbed, wrapped itself.
“You certainly chose elegant sleeping quarters.”
“I knew the jug to be a favorite of yourss. If I waited long enough I knew you would come by again, sstop to admire it. And I would know and rise up in my ssplendor to greet you. My, you have grown!”
“You look pretty much the same. A little thin, perhaps…”
I stroked her head gently.
“It is good to know you are with us still, like some honored family spirit. You and Gryll and Kergma made my childhood a better thing than it might have been.”
She raised her head high, stroked my cheek with her nose.
“It warmss my cold blood to ssee you again, dear boy. You’ve traveled far?”
“I have. Very.”
“One night we shall eat mice and lie besside a fire. You will warm me a ssaucer of milk and tell me of your adventuress ssince you left the Wayss of Ssawall. We will find ssome marrow boness for Gryll, if he be sstill about —”
“He seems to serve my uncle Suhuy these days. What of Kergma?”
“I do not know. It hass been sso long.”
I held her close to warm her.
“Thank you for waiting here for me in your great drowse, to greet me —”
“Iss more than friendliess, helloss.”
“More? What then, Glait? What is it?”
“A thing to show. Walk that way.”
She gestured with her head. I moved in the direction she indicated — the way I had been heading anyhow, to where the corridors widened. I could feel her vibrating against my arm with the barely audible purring sound she sometimes made.
Suddenly, she stiffened and her head rose, swaying slightly.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Mi-ice,” she said. “Mi-ice nearby. I musst go hunting — after I show you — the thing. Breakfasst…”
“If you would dine first, I will wait.”
“No, Merlin. You musst not be late for whatever brought you here. There is importance in the air. Later feast — vermin…”
We came into a wide, high, skylighted section of the gallery. Four large pieces of metal statuary — bronze and copper, mostly — stood in an asymmetrical arrangement about us.
“Onward,” Glait said. “Not here.”
I turned right at the next corner and plunged ahead. Shortly, we came to another display — this one resembling a metal forest.
“Sslow now. Sslow, dear demon child.”
I halted and studied the trees, bright, dark, shiny, dull. Iron, aluminum, brass, it was most impressive. It was also a display that had not been present the last time I had passed this way, years before. Nothing odd about that, of course. There had also been changes in other areas I had passed through.
“Now. Here. Turn in. Go back.”
I moved on into the forest.
“Bear right. The tall one.”
I halted when I came to the curved trunk of the tallest tree to my right.
“This one?”
“Yess. Negotiate it — upward — pleasse.”
“You mean climb it?”
“Yess.”
“Right.”
One nice thing about a stylized tree — or, at least, this stylized tree — was that it spiraled, swelled, and twisted in such a fashion as to provide better handholds and footholds than at first seemed apparent. I caught hold, drew myself up, found a place for my foot, pulled again, pushed.
Higher. Higher, still. When I was perhaps ten feet above the floor I halted.
“Uh, what do I do now that I’m here?” I asked.
“Climb higher.”
“Why?”
“Ssoon. Ssoon. You’ll know.”
I drew myself about a foot higher, and then I felt it.
It is not so much a tingling as it is a kind of pressure… only feel a tingling, too, sometimes, if they lead someplace risky.
“There’s a way up there,” I said.
“Yess. I wass coiled about a branch of the blue tree when a shadowmasster opened it. They sslew him afterwardss.”
“It must lead to something very important.”
“You have been through?”
“Yess.”
“Then it is safe?”
“Yess.”
“All right.”
I climbed higher, resisting the force of the way until I’d brought both feet to the same level. Then I relaxed into the tugging and let it take me through.
I extended both hands, too, in case the surface was uneven. But it wasn’t. The floor was beautifully tiled in black, silver, gray, and white. To the right was a geometric design, to the left a representation of the Pit of Chaos.
My eyes were directed downward for only a few moments, though.
“Good Lord!” I said.
“Wass I right? It iss important?” Glait said.
“It is important,” I replied.
Chapter 6
There were candles all about the chapel, many of them as tall as I am, and nearly as big around. Some were silver, some were gray; a few were white, a few black. They stood at various heights, in artful disposition, on banks, ledges, pattern points on the floor. They did not provide the main illumination, however. This obtained from overhead, and I first assumed it to proceed from a skylight. When I glanced upward to gauge the height of the vault, though, I saw that the light emanated from a large blue-white globe confined behind a dark metal grate.
I took a step forward. The nearest candle flame flickered.
I faced a stone altar that filled a niche across the way. Black candles burned at either hand before it, smaller silver ones upon it. For a moment, I simply regarded it.
“Lookss like you,” Glait remarked.
“I thought your eyes didn’t register two-dimensional representations.”
“I’ve lived a long time in a musseum. Why hide your picture up a ssecret way?”
I moved forward, my gaze on the painting.
“It’s not me,” I said. “It’s my father, Corwin of Amber.”
A silver rose stood within a bud vase before the portrait. Whether it was a real rose or the product of art or magic, I could not tell.
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