Knight of Shadows tcoa-9

by Roger Joseph Zelazny

  “I wish you would,” I said. “In fact, I wish you’d done it a bit sooner.”

  “Maybe the story you heard about her being dead and her body the host for a demon is true,” she said. “But she’s been good to me recently. She’s finally become the sister I’d always wished she’d been. Then you brought me back here and I saw her like that, not knowing what you really planned to do with her —”

  “I want you to know that I wouldn’t hurt her, Coral,” I interrupted. “I owe her — it — for favors past. When I was young and naive on the shadow Earth, she probably saved my neck, several times. You have no reason to fear for her here.”

  She cocked her head to the right and narrowed one eye. “I’d no way of knowing that,” she said, “from what you told me I came back, hoping to get in, hoping you were deeply asleep, hoping I could break the spell or at least lift it enough to talk with her. I wanted to find out for myself whether she was really my sister — or something else.”

  I sighed. I reached out to squeeze her shoulder and realized I was still clutching the Jewel of Judgment in my left hand. I squeezed her arm with my right hand instead and said, “Look, I understand. It was boorish of me to show you your sister laid out that way and not to have gone into a little more detail. I can only plead industrial fatigue and apologize. I promise you she’s in no pain. But I really don’t want to mess with this spell right now because it’s not one of mine — ”

  Just then Nayda moaned softly. I studied her for several minutes, but nothing more followed.

  “Did you pluck that metal ball out of the air?” I asked. “I don’t recall seeing one for the final spell.”

  Coral shook her head.

  “It was lying on her breast. One of her hands was over it,” she said.

  “What prompted you to check there?”

  “The position looked unnatural, that’s all. Here.”

  She handed me the ball. I took it and weighed it in the palm of my right hand. I had no idea how the things functioned. The metal balls were to Mandor what Frakir was to me — a piece of idiosyncratic personal magic, forged out of his unconscious in the heart of the Logrus.

  “Are you going to put it back?” she asked.

  “No,” I told her. “Like I said, it wasn’t one of my spells. I don’t know how it works, and I don’t want to fool around with it.”

  “Merlin…?” — whispered, from Nayda, her eyes still closed.

  “We’d better go talk in the next room,” I said to Coral. “I’ll lay a spell of my own on her first, though. Just a simple soporific —”

  The air sparkled and spun behind Coral, and she must have guessed from my stare that something was going on, for she turned.

  “Merle, what is it?” she asked, retreating toward me as a golden archway took form.

  “Ghost?” I said.

  “Right,” came the reply. “Jasra was not where I left her. But I brought your brother.”

  Mandor, still clad mainly in black, his hair a great mass of silver-white, appeared suddenly, glancing at Coral and Nayda, focusing on me, beginning to smile, stepping forward. Then his gaze shifted, and he halted. He stared. I had never seen that frightened expression on his face before.

  “Bloody Eye of Chaos!” he exclaimed, summoning up a protective screen with a gesture. “How did you come by it?”

  He took a step backward. The arch immediately collapsed into a gold-leaf calligraphed letter O, and Ghost slid around the room to hover at my right side.

  Suddenly Nayda sat up on my bed, darting wild glances.

  “Merlin!” she cried. “Are you all right?”

  “So far so good,” I answered. “Not to worry. Take it easy. All’s well.”

  “Who’s been tampering with my spell?” Mandor asked as Nayda swung her legs over the side of the bed and Coral cringed.

  “It was a sort of accident,” I said.

  I opened my right hand. The metal sphere immediately levitated and shot off in his direction, narrowly missing Coral, whose hands were now extended in a general martial arts defense pattern, though she seemed uncertain what or whom she should be defending against. So she kept turning — Mandor, Nayda, Ghost, repeat…

  “Cool it, Coral,” I said. “You’re in no danger.”

  “The left eye of the Serpent!” Nayda cried. “Free me, oh, Formless One, and I will pledge with mine!” Frakir in the meantime was warning me that all was not well, in case I hadn’t noticed.

  “Just what the hell is going on?” I yelled.

  Nayda sprang to her feet, lunged forward, and with that unnatural demon strength snatched the Jewel of Judgment from my hand, pushed me aside, and tore into the hallway.

  I stumbled, recovered.

  “Hold that ty’iga!” I cried, and the Ghostwheel sailed past me followed by Mandor’s balls.

  Chapter 10

  I was the next thing out into the hallway. I turned left and started running. A ty’iga may be fast, but so am I.

  “I thought you were supposed to be protecting me!” I shouted after her.

  “This takes precedence,” she answered, “over your mother’s binding.”

  “What?” I said. “My mother?”

  “She placed me under a geas to take care of you when you went off to school,” she replied. “This breaks it! Free at last!”

  “Damn!” I observed.

  Then, as she neared the stairway, the Sign of the Logrus appeared before her, larger than any I’d ever summoned, filling the corridor from wall to wall, rolling, sprawling, fire-shot, tentacular, a reddish haze of menace drifting about it. It took a certain measure of chutzpah for it to manifest like that here in Amber on the Pattern’s turf, so I knew the stakes were high.

  “Receive me, oh, Logrus,” she cried, “for I bear the Eye of the Serpent,” and the Logrus opened, creating a fiery tunnel at its center. I could somehow tell that its other end was not a place further along my hallway.

  But then Nayda was halted, as if she had suddenly encountered a glass partition, and she stiffened into a position of attention. Three of Mandor’s gleaming spheres were suddenly orbiting her cataleptic form.

  I was thrown from my feet and pressed back against the wall. I raised my right arm to block whatever might be coming down on me, as I looked backward.

  An image of the Pattern itself, as large as the Logrus Sign, had just put in an appearance only a few feet behind me, manifesting about as far in that direction from Nayda as the Logrus was before her, parenthesizing the lady or the ty’iga between the poles of existence, so to speak, and incidentally enclosing me along with her. The area about me near the Pattern grew bright as a sunny morning while that at the other end took on the aspect of a baleful twilight. Were they about to reenact the Big Bang/Crunch, I wondered, with me as an unwilling momentary witness?

  “Uh, Your Honors,” I began, feeling obliged to try talking them out of it and wishing I were Luke, who just might be able to swing such a feat. “This is a perfect time to employ an impartial arbitrator, and I just happen to be uniquely qualified if you will but reflect —”

  The golden circlet that I knew to be Ghostwheel suddenly dropped over Nayda’s head, lengthening itself downward into a tube. Ghost had fitted himself within the orbits of Mandor’s spheres and must somehow have insulated himself against whatever forces they were exerting, for they slowed, wobbled, and finally dropped to the floor, two striking the wall ahead of me and one rolling down the stairway ahead and to the right.

  The Signs of the Pattern and the Logrus began to advance then, and I crawled quickly to keep ahead of the Pattern.

  “Don’t come any closer, fellows,” Ghostwheel suddenly announced. “There’s no telling what I might do if you make me even more nervous than I already am.”

  Both Power Signs halted in their advances. From around the corner to the left, up ahead, I heard Droppa’s drunken voice, raised in some bawdy ballad, coming this way. Then it grew silent. Several moments passed, and he began singing “Rock of
Ages” in a far, far weaker voice. Then this, too, was cut off, followed by a heavy thud and the sound of breaking glass.

  It occurred to me that I should be able, from a distance such as this, to extend my awareness into the Jewel. But I was uncertain what effects I might then be able to produce with the thing, considering the fact that none of the four principals involved in the confrontation was human.

  I felt the beginnings of a Trump contact. “Yes?” I whispered.

  Dworkin’s voice came to me then.

  “Whatever control you may have over the thing,” he said, “use it to keep the Jewel away from the Logrus.”

  Just then a crackly voice, shifting in pitch and gender from syllable to syllable, emerged from the red tunnel. “Return the Eye of Chaos,” it said. “The Unicorn took it from the Serpent when they fought, in the beginning. It was stolen. Return it. Return it.”

  The blue face I had seen above the Pattern did not materialize, but the voice I’d heard at that time responded, “It was paid for with blood and pain. Title passed.”

  “The Jewel of Judgment and the Eye of Chaos or Eye of the Serpent are different names for the same stone?” I said.

  “Yes,” Dworkin replied.

  “What happens if the Serpent gets its eye back?” I inquired.

  “The universe will probably come to an end.”

  “Oh,” I observed.

  “What am I bid for the thing?” Ghost asked.

  “Impetuous construct,” the voice of the Pattern intoned.

  “Rash artifact,” wailed the Logrus.

  “Save the compliments,” Ghost said, “and give me something I want.”

  “I could tear it from you,” the Pattern responded.

  “I could have you apart and it away in an instant,” stated the Logrus.

  “But neither of you will do it,” Ghost answered, “because such a focusing of your attention and energies would leave either of you vulnerable to the other.”

  In my mind, I heard Dworkin chuckle.

  “Tell me why this confrontation need take place at all,” Ghost went on, “after all this time.”

  “The balance was tipped against me by recent actions of this turncoat,” the Logrus replied — a burst of fire occurring above my head, presumably to demonstrate the identity of the turncoat in question.

  I smelled burning hair, and I warded the flame.

  “Just a minute!” I cried. “I wasn’t given much choice in the matter!”

  “But there was a choice,” wailed the Logrus, “and you made it.”

  “Indeed, he did,” responded the Pattern. “But it served only to redress the balance you’d tipped in your own favor.”

  “Redress? You overcompensated! Now it’s tipped in your favor! Besides, it was accidentally tipped my way, by the traitor’s father.” Another fireball followed, and I warded again. “It was not my doing.”

  “You probably inspired it.”

  “If you can get the Jewel to me,” Dworkin said, “I can put it out of reach of both of them until this matter is settled.”

  “I don’t know whether I can get hold of it,” I said, “but I’ll remember that.”

  “Give it to me,” the Logrus said to Ghost, “and I will take you with me as First Servant.”

  “You are a processor of data,” said the Pattern. “I will give you knowledge such as none in all of Shadow possess.”

  “I will give you power,” said the Logrus.

  “Not interested,” said Ghost, and the cylinder spun and vanished.

  The girl, the Jewel, and everything were gone.

  The Logrus wailed, the Pattern growled, and the Signs of both Powers rushed to meet, somewhere near Bleys’s nearer room.

  I raised every protective spell that I could. Behind me I could feel Mandor doing the same. I covered my head, I drew up my knees, I —

  I was falling. Through a bright, soundless concussion. Bits of debris struck me. From several directions. I’d a hunch that I had just bought the farm and that I was about to die without opportunity to reveal my insight into the nature of reality: The Pattern did not care about the children of Amber any more than the Logrus did about those of the Courts of Chaos. The Powers cared, perhaps, about themselves, about each other, about heavy cosmic principles, about the Unicorn and the Serpent, of which they were very probably but geometric manifestations. They did not care about me, about Coral, about Mandor, probably not even about Oberon or Dworkin himself. We were totally insignificant or at most tools or sometimes annoyances, to be employed or destroyed as the occasion warranted —

  “Give me your hand,” Dworkin said, and I saw him, as in a Trump contact. I reached and —

  — fell hard at his feet upon a colorful rug spread over a stone floor, in a windowless chamber my father had once described to me, filled with books and exotic artifacts, lit by bowls of light which hung without visible means of support high in the air.

  “Thanks,” I said, rising slowly, brushing myself off, massaging a sore spot in my left thigh.

  “Caught a whiff of your thoughts,” he said “There’s more to it.”

  “I’m sure. But sometimes I enjoy being bleak-minded. How much of that crap the Powers were arguing about was true?”

  “Oh, all of it,” Dworkin said, “by their lights. The biggest bar to understanding is the interpretation they put on each other’s doings. That, and the fact that everything can always be pushed another step backward — such as the break in the Pattern having strengthened the Logrus and the possibility that the Logrus actively influenced Brand into doing it. But then the Logrus might claim this was in retaliation for the Day of the Broken Branches several centuries ago.”

  “I haven’t heard about that one,” I said.

  He shrugged.

  “I’m not surprised. It wasn’t all that important a matter, except to them. What I’m saying is that to argue as they do is to head into an infinite regression — back to first causes, which are always untrustworthy.”

  “So what’s the answer?”

  “Answer? This isn’t a classroom. There are no answers that would matter, except to a philosopher — that is, none with any practical applications.”

  He poured a small cup of green liquid from a silver flask and passed it to me.

  “Drink this,” he said.

  “It’s a little early in the day for me.”

  “It’s not refreshment. It’s medication,” he explained. “You’re in a state of near shock, whether you’ve noticed or not.”

  I tossed the thing off, and it burned like a liquor but didn’t seem to be one. I did feel myself beginning to relax during the next few minutes, in places I had not even realized I was tense.

  “Coral, Mandor…” I said.

  He gestured, and a glowing globe descended, drew nearer. He signed the air with a half familiar gesture, and something like the Logrus Sign without the Logrus came over me. A picture formed within the globe.

  That long section of hallway where the encounter had occurred had been destroyed, along with the stairs, Benedict’s apartment, and possibly Gerard’s as well. Also, Bleys’s rooms, portions of my own, the sitting room I had been occupying but a short time before, and the northeast corner of the library were missing, as were the floor and ceiling. Below, I could see that sections of the kitchen and armory had been hit, and possibly more across the way. Looking upward — magic globes being wondrous accommodating — I could see sky, which meant that the blast had gone through the third and fourth floors, possibly damaging the royal suite along with the upper stairways and maybe the laboratory — and who knew what all else.

  Standing on the edge of the abyss near what had been a section of Bleys’s or Gerard’s quarters was Mandor, his right arm apparently broken, hand tucked in behind his wide black belt. Coral leaned heavily upon his left shoulder, and there was blood on her face. I am not sure that she was fully conscious. Mandor held her about the waist with his left arm, and a metal ball circled the two of them. D
iagonally across the abyss, Random stood on a heavy crossbeam near the opening to the library. I believe Martin was standing atop a short stack, below and to the rear. He was still holding his sax. Random appeared more than a little agitated and seemed to be shouting.

  “Voice! Voice!” I said. Dworkin waved.

  “— ucking Lord of Chaos blowing up my palace!” Random was saying.

  “The lady is injured, Your Highness,” Mandor said. Random passed a hand across his face. Then he looked upward.

  “If there’s an easy way to get her to my quarters, Vialle is very skilled in certain areas of medicine,” he said in a softer voice. “So am I, for that matter.”

  “Just where is that, Your Highness?”

  Random leaned to his side and pointed upward. “Looks as if you won’t need the door to get in, but I can’t tell whether there’s enough stairway left to get up there or where you might cross to it if there is.”

  “I’ll make it,” Mandor said, and two more of the balls came rushing to him and set themselves into eccentric orbits about him and Coral. Shortly thereafter they were levitated and drifted slowly toward the opening Random had indicated.

  “I’ll be along shortly,” Random called after them. He looked as if he were about to add something, but then regarded the devastation, lowered his head, and turned away. I did the same thing.

  Dworkin was offering me another dose of the green medicine, and I took it. Some sort of trank, it seemed, in addition to whatever else it did.

  “I have to go to her,” I told him. “I like that lady, and I want to be sure she’s all right.

  “I can certainly send you there,” Dworkin said, “though I cannot think of anything you could do for her which will not be done well by others. Perhaps the time were more profitably spent in pursuit of that errant construct of yours the Ghostwheel. It must be persuaded to return the Jewel of Judgment.”