“A pox on both their houses. For some reason I don’t understand, they need me for this game. They’ll put up with lt.”
From somewhere up ahead I heard a roll of thunder.
See what I mean?
“It’s a bluff,” I replied.
Whose?
“The Pattern’s, I believe. Its ghosts seem in charge of reality in this sector.”
You know, we could be wrong on all of this. Just shooting in the dark.
“I also feel shot at out of the dark. That’s why I refuse to play by anybody else’s rules.”
Have you got a plan?
“Hang loose. And if I say ‘kill,’ do it. Let’s get to where we’re going.”
I began to run again, leaving the fog, leaving the ghosts to play at being ghosts in their ghost city. Bright road through dark country, me running, reverse shadow, shifting, as the land tried to change me. And there ahead a flare and more thunder, virtual street scene flashing into and out of existence beside me.
And then it was as if I raced myself, dark figure darting along a bright way — till I realized it was indeed, somehow, a mirror effect. The movements of the figure to my right which paralleled my own mimicked mine; fleeting scenes to my left were imaged to the other’s right.
What’s going on, Merle?
“Don’t know,” I said. “But I’m not in the mood for symbolism, allegory, and assorted metaphorical crap. If it’s supposed to mean that life is a race with yourself, then it sucks — unless they’re real platitudinizing Powers that are running this show. Then I guess it would be in character. What do you think?”
I think you might still be in danger of being struck by lightning.
The lightning did not follow, but my reflection did. The imaging effect continued for much longer than any of the previous beside-the-road sequences I’d witnessed. I was about to dismiss it, to ignore it completely, when my reflection put on a burst of speed and shot ahead of me.
Uh-oh.
“Yeah,” I agreed, stepping up my own pace to close the gap with and match the stride of that dark other.
We were parallel for no more than a few meters after I caught up. Then it began to pull ahead again. I stepped up my pace and caught up once more. Then, on an impulse I sucked air, bore down, and moved ahead.
My double noted it after a time, moved faster, began to gain. I pushed harder, held my lead. What the hell were we racing for anyway?
I looked ahead. In the distance I could see an area where the trail widened. There appeared to be a tape stretched across it at that point. Okay. Whatever the significance, I decided to go for it.
I held my lead for perhaps a hundred meters before my shadow began to gain on me again. I leaned into it and was able to hold that shortened distance for a time. Then it moved again, coming up on me at a pace I suspected might be hard to hold the rest of the way to the tape. Still, it was not the sort of thing one waited around to find out. I poured it on. I ran all out.
The son of a bitch gained on me, kept gaining, caught me, drew ahead, faltered for an instant. I was back beside it in that instant. But the thing did not flag again. It held the terrible pace at which we were now moving, and I had no intention of stopping unless my heart exploded.
We ran on, damn near side by side. I didn’t know whether I had a finishing spurt in me or not. I couldn’t tell whether I was slightly ahead, just abreast, or slightly to the rear of the other. We pounded our parallel gleaming trails toward the line of brightness when abruptly the sensation of a glass interface vanished. The two narrowseeming trails became one wide one. The other’s arms and legs were moving differently from my own.
We drew closer and closer together as we entered the final stretch — close enough, finally, for recognition. It was not an image of myself that I was running against, for its hair streamed back and I saw that its left ear was missing.
I found a final burst of speed. So did the other. We were awfully close together when we came to the tape. I think that I hit it first, but I could not be certain.
We went on through and collapsed, gasping. I rolled quickly, to keep him under surveillance, but he just lay there, panting. I rested my right hand on the hilt of my weapon and listened to the sound of my blood in my ears.
When I’d caught my breath somewhat, I remarked, “Didn’t know you could run a race like that, Jurt.”
He gave a brief laugh.
“There’re a lot of things you don’t know about me, brother.”
“I’m sure,” I said.
Then he wiped his brow with the back of his hand, and I noted that the finger he’d lost in the caves of Kolvir was back in place. Either this was the Jurt of a different time line or —
“So how’s Julia?” I asked him. “Is she going to be all right?”
“Julia?” he said. “Who’s that?”
“Sorry,” I said. “You’re the wrong Jurt.”
“Now what else does that mean?” he asked, propping himself on an elbow and glaring at me with his good eye.
“The real Jurt was never anywhere near the Pattern of Amber — ”
“I am the real Jurt!”
“You’ve got all your fingers. He lost one very recently. I was there.”
He looked away suddenly.
“You must be a Logrus-ghost,” I continued. “It must pull the same stunt the Pattern does — recording those who make it through it.”
“Is that… what happened?” he asked. “I couldn’t quite recall… why I was here — except to race with you.”
“I’ll bet your most recent memories before this place involve negotiating the Logrus.”
He looked back. He nodded.
“You’re right. What does it all mean?” he asked.
“I’m not sure,” I said. “But I’ve got some ideas about it. This place is a kind of eternal underside to Shadow. It’s damn near off limits for both the Pattern and the Logrus. But both can apparently penetrate here by means of their ghosts — artificial constructs from the recordings they made of us back when we passed through them — ”
“You mean that all I am is some sort of recording?” He looked as if he were about to cry. “Everything seemed so glorious just a little while ago. I’d made it through the Logrus. All of Shadow lay at my feet.” He massaged his temples. Then, “You!” he spat. “I was somehow brought here because of you — to compete with you, to show you up in this race.”
“You did a pretty good job, too. I didn’t know you could run like that.”
“I started practicing when I learned you were doing it in college. Wanted to get good enough to take you on.”
“You got good,” I acknowledged.
“But I wouldn’t be in this damned place if it weren’t for you. Or —” He gnawed his lip. “That’s not exactly right, is it?” he asked. “I wouldn’t be anywhere. I’m just a recording…” Then he stared directly at me. “How long do we last?” he said. “How long is a Logrus-ghost good for?”
“I’ve no idea,” I said, “what goes into creating one or how it’s maintained. But I’ve met a number of Pattern-ghosts, and they gave me the impression that my blood would somehow sustain them, give them some sort of autonomy, some independence of the Pattern. Only one of them — Brand — got the fire instead of the blood, and it dissolved. Deirdre got the blood but was taken away then. I don’t know whether she got enough.”
He shook his head.
“I’ve a feeling — I don’t know where it comes from — that something like that would work for me, too, and that it’s blood for the Pattern, fire for the Logrus.”
“I don’t know how to tell in what regions my blood is volatile,” I said.
“It’d flame here,” he answered. “Depends on who’s is control. I just seem to know it. I don’t know how.”
“Then why did Brand show up in Logrus territory?” He grinned.
“Maybe the Pattern sought to use a traitor for some sort of subversion. Or maybe Brand was trying to pull somethin
g on his own — like double-crossing the Pattern.”
“That would be in character,” I agreed, my breath finally slowing.
I whipped the Chaos blade out of my boot, slashed my left forearm, saw that it spouted fire, and held it toward him.
“Quick! Take it if you can!” I cried. “Before the Logrus calls you back!”
He seized my arm and seemed almost to inhale the fire that fountained from me. Looking down, I saw his feet become transparent, then his legs. The Logrus seemed anxious to reclaim him, just as the Pattern had Deirdre. I saw the fiery swirls begin within the haze that had been his legs. Then, suddenly, they flickered out, and the outline of those limbs became visible once again. He continued to draw my volatile blood from me, though I could no longer see flames as he was drinking now as Deirdre had, directly from the wound. His legs began to solidify.
“You seem to be stabilizing,” I said. “Take more.”
Something struck me in the right kidney, and I jerked away, turning as I fell. A tall dark man stood beside me, withdrawing his boot from having kicked me. He had on green trousers and a black shirt, a green bandanna tied about his head.
“Now what perverse carrying-on is this?” he asked. “And in a sacred spot?”
I rolled to my knees and continued on up to my feet, my right arm bending, its wrist turning over, coming in to hold the dagger beside my hip. I raised my left arm, extended it before me. Blood rather than fire now fell from my latest wound.
“None of your damn business,” I said, then added his name, having grown certain on the way up, “Caine.”
He smiled and bowed, and his hands crossed and came apart. They’d been empty going in, but the right one held a dagger coming out. It must have come from a sheath strapped to his left forearm, inside the billowy sleeve. He had to have practiced the move a lot, too, to be that fast at it. I tried to remember things I’d heard about Caine and knives, and then I did and wished I hadn’t. He was supposed to have been a master knife fighter. Shit.
“You have the advantage of me,” he stated. “You look very familiar, but I do not believe I know you.”
“Merlin,” I said. “Corwin’s son.”
He had begun circling me slowly, but he halted. “Excuse me if I find that difficult to believe.”
“Believe as you wish. It is true.”
“And this other one — his name is Jurt, isn’t it?”
He gestured toward my brother, who had just gotten to his feet.
“How do you know that?” I asked.
He halted, furrowing his brow, narrowing his eyes. “I — I’m not certain,” he said then.
“I am,” I told him. “Try to remember where you are and how you got here.”
He backed away, two paces. Then he cried, “He’s the one!” just as I saw it coming and shouted, “Jurt! Watch out!”
Jurt turned and bolted. I threw the dagger — always a bad thing to do, save that I was wearing a sword with which I could reach Caine before Caine could reach me now.
Jurt’s speed was still with him, and he was out of range in an instant. The dagger, surprisingly, struck at the side of Caine’s right shoulder point first, penetrating perhaps an inch or so into muscle. Then, even before he could turn back toward me, his body erupted in a dozen directions, emitting a series of vortices which sucked away all semblance of humanity in an instant, producing high-pitched whistling sounds as they orbited one another, two of them merging into a larger entity, which quickly absorbed the others then, its sound falling lower with each such acquisition. Finally there was but the one. For a moment it swayed toward me, then shot skyward and blew apart. The dagger was blown back in my direction, landing a pace to my right. When I recovered it, I found it to be warm, and it hummed faintly for several seconds before I sheathed it in my boot.
“What happened?” Jurt asked, turning back, approaching.
“Apparently Pattern-ghosts react violently to weapons from the Courts,” I said.
“Good thing you had it handy. But why did he turn on me like that?”
“I believe that the Pattern sent him to stop you from gaining autonomy — or to destroy you if you already had. I’ve a feeling it doesn’t want agents of the other side gaining strength and stability in this place.”
“But I’m no threat. I’m not on anybody’s side but my own. I just want to get the hell out of here and be about my own business.”
“Perhaps that of itself constitutes a threat.”
“How so?” he asked.
“Who knows what your unusual background may fit you for as an independent agent — in light of what’s going on? You may disturb the balance of the Powers. You may possess or have access to information which the principals do not wish to see bruited about the streets. You may be like the gipsy moth. Nobody could see what its effect on the environment would be when it escaped from the lab. You may —”
“Enough!” He raised a hand to silence me. “I don’t care about any of those things. If they let me go and leave me alone, I’ll stay out of their way.”
“I’m not the one you have to convince,” I told him.
He stared at me for a moment, then turned, describing a full circle. Darkness was all that I could see beyond the light of the roadway, but he called out in a large voice to anything, I suppose, “Do you hear me? I don’t want to be involved in all this. I just want to go away. Live and let live, you know? Is that okay with you?”
I reached forward, caught hold of his wrist, and jerked him toward me. I did this because I had seen a small, ghostly replica of the Sign of the Logrus begin to take form in the air above his head. An instant later it fell, flashing like a lightning stroke, to the accompaniment of a sound like the cracking of a whip, passing through the space he had been occupying; opening a gap in the trail as it vanished.
“I guess it’s not that easy to resign,” he said. He glanced overhead. “It could be readying another of those right now. It could strike again anytime, when I least expect it.”
“Just like real life,” I agreed. “But I think you may take it as a warning shot and let it go at that. They have a hard time reaching here. More important, since I was led to believe that this is my quest, do you know offhand whether you’re supposed to be helping me or hindering me?”
“Now that you mention it,” he said, “I remember suddenly being where I was with a chance to race you and feeling that we’d fight or something afterward.”
“What’re your feelings on that now?”
“We’ve never gotten along all that well. But I don’t like the idea of being used like this either.”
“You willing to call a truce till I can see my way through this game and out of here?”
“What’s in it for me?” he asked.
“I will find a way out of this damned place, Jurt. Come along and give me a hand — or at least don’t get in the way — and I’ll take you with me when I go.”
He laughed.
“I’m not sure there is a way out of here,” he said, “unless the Powers release us.”
“Then you’ve nothing to lose,” I told him, “and you’ll probably even get to see me die trying.”
“Do you really know both kinds of magic — Pattern and Logrus?” he asked.
“Yeah. But I’m a lot better at Logrus.”
“Can you use either against its source?”
“That’s a very intriguing metaphysical point, and I don’t know the answer,” I said, “and I’m not sure I’ll find out. It’s dangerous to invoke the Powers here. So all I’m left with is a few hung spells. I don’t think it’s magic that’ll get us out of here.”
“What, then?”
“I’m not certain. I am sure that I won’t see the full picture till I get to the end of this trail, though.”
“Well, hell — I don’t know. This doesn’t seem the healthiest place for me to spend my time. On the other hand, what if it’s the only place something like me can have an existence? What if you find me a door an
d I step through it and melt?”
“If the Pattern-ghosts can manifest in Shadow, I’d guess you can, too. Those of Dworkin and Oberon came to me on the outside before I came to this place.”
“That’s encouraging. Would you try it if it were you?”
“You bet your life,” I said.
He snorted.
“I get the point. I’ll go a ways with you and see what happens. I’m not promising to help, but I won’t sabotage you.”
I held out my hand, and he shook his head.
“Let’s not get carried away,” he told me. “If my word’s no good without a handshake, it’s no good with one, is it?”
“I guess not.”
“And I’ve never had a great desire to shake hands with you.”
“Sorry I asked,” I said. “Would you mind telling me why, though? I’ve always wondered.”
He shrugged.
“Why does there always have to be a reason?” he said.
“The alternative is irrationality,” I replied.
“Or privacy,” he responded, turning away.
I commenced walking the trail once more. Shortly Jurt fell into step beside me. We walked for a long while in silence. One day I may learn when to keep my mouth shut or to quit when I’m ahead. Same thing.
The trail ran straight for a time but seemed to vanish not too far ahead. When we neared the point of vanishment, I saw why: The trail curved behind a low prominence. We followed this turning and met with another, shortly thereafter. Soon we had entered upon a regular; series of switchbacks, realizing quickly that they were mitigating a fairly steep descent. As we proceeded down this turning way, I suddenly became aware of a bright squiggle, hanging in the middle distance. Jurt raised his hand, pointing at it, and began, “What…?” just as it became apparent that it was the continuation of our trail, rising. At this, an instant reorientation occurred, and I realized that we were descending into what seemed a massive pit. And the air seemed to have grown somewhat cooler.
We continued our descent, and after a time something cold and moist touched the back of my right hand. I looked down in time to see a snowflake melting in the twilight glow which surrounded us. Moments later several more breezed by. A little after that we became aware of a larger brightness, far below.
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