I tossed on the third, held the liner in my left hand, and stood and faced the drawing.
The glow spread up the wall as the flames danced higher, and I concentrated on the tower and recalled it. I thought I heard the cry of a gull. I sniffed something like a salt breeze, and the place became more real as I stared.
I tossed the liner onto the fire. and the flames subsided for a moment, then sprang higher. I didn’t remove my eyes from the drawing as I did this.
The magic was still there, in Dworkin’s hand, for soon the lighthouse seemed as real to me as my cell. Then it seemed the only reality, and the cell but a Shadow at my back. I heard the splashing of the waves and felt something like the afternoon sun upon me.
I stepped forward, but my foot did not descend into the fire.
I stood upon the sandy, rock-strewn edge of the small island Cabra, which held the great gray lighthouse that lit a path for the ships of Amber by night. A flock of frightened gulls wheeled and screamed about me, and my laughter was one with the booming of the surf and the free song of the wind. Amber lay forty-three miles behind my left shoulder.
I had escaped.
Chapter 10
I made my way to the lighthouse and climbed the stone stair that led to the door on its western face. It was high, wide, heavy, and watertight. Also, it was locked. There was a small quay about three hundred yards behind me. Two boats were moored at it. One was a rowboat and the other was a sailboat with a cabin. They swayed gently, and beneath the sun and water was mica behind them. I paused for a moment to regard them. It had been so long since I had seen anything that for an instant they seemed more than real, and I caught a sob within my throat and swallowed it.
I turned and knocked on the door.
After what seemed too long a wait, I knocked again.
Finally, I heard a noise within and the door swung open, creaking on its three dark hinges.
Jopin, the keeper, regarded me through bloodshot eyes and I smelled whisky upon his breath. He was about five and a half feet tail and so stooped that he reminded me somewhat of Dworkin. His beard was as long as mine, so of course it seemed longer, and it was the color of smoke, save for a few yellow stains near his dry-looking lips. His skin was as porous as an orange rind and the elements had darkened it to resemble a fine old piece of furniture. His dark eyes squinted, focused. As with many people who are hard of hearing, he spoke rather loudly.
“Who are you? What do you want?” he asked.
If I was that unrecognizable in my emaciated, hairy condition, I decided that I might as well maintain my anonymity.
“I am a traveler from the south and I was shipwrecked recently,” I said. “I clung to a piece of wood for many days and was finally washed ashore here. I slept on the beach all morning. It was only recently that I recovered sufficient strength to walk to your lighthouse.”
He moved forward and took my arm. He threw his other arm around my shoulders.
“Come in, come in then,” he said. “Lean on me. Take it easy. Come this way.”
He led me to his quarters, which were extraordinarily messy, being strewn with many old books, charts, maps, and pieces of nautical equipment. He wasn’t any too steady himself, so I didn’t lean too hard, just enough to maintain the impression of weakness I had tried to convey as I’d leaned against his doorframe.
He led me to a daybed, suggested I lie down, and left to secure the door and fetch me something to eat.
I removed my boots, but my feet were so filthy that I put them back on again. If I’d been drifting about very long, I wouldn’t be dirty. I didn’t want to give away my story, so I drew a blanket that was there over me and leaned hack, really resting.
Jopin returned shortly with a pitcher of water, a pitcher of beer, a great slice of beef, and half a loaf of bread upon a square wooden tray. He swept clear the top of a small table, which he then kicked into a position beside the couch. Then he set the tray down on it and bade me eat and drink.
I did. I stuffed myself. I glutted myself. I ate everything in sight. I emptied both pitchers.
Then I felt tremendously tired. Jopin nodded when he saw it come over me, and he told me to go to sleep. Before I knew it, I had.
When I awakened, it was night time and I felt considerably better than I had in many weeks. I got to my feet and retraced my earlier route and departed the building. It was chilly out there, but the sky was crystal clear and there seemed to be a million stars. The lens at the top of the tower blazed at my back, then went dark, blazed, then went dark. The water was cold, but I just had to cleanse myself. I bathed and washed my clothing and wrung it out. I must have spent an hour doing that. Then I went back to the lighthouse, hung my clothes over the back of an old chair to dry out, crawled beneath the blanket, slept again.
In the morning, when I awoke, Jopin was already up. He prepared me a hearty breakfast, and I treated it the same way as I had the dinner of the previous evening. Then I borrowed a razor, a mirror, and a pair of scissors and gave myself a shave and a sort of haircut. I bathed again afterward, and when I donned my salty, stiff, clean garments I felt almost human again.
Jopin stared at me when I returned from the sea and said, “You look kinda familiar, fella,” and I shrugged.
“Now tell me about your wreck.”
So I did. Out of whole cloth. What a disaster I detailed! Down to the snapping of the mainmast, yet.
He patted me on the shoulder and poured me a drink. He lit the cigar he had given me.
“You just rest easy here,” he told me. “I’ll take you ashore any time you like, or I’ll signal you a passing ship if you see one you recognize.”
I took him up on his offered hospitality. It was too much of a lifesaver not to. I ate his food and drank his drinks and let him give me a clean shirt which was too big for him. It had belonged to a friend of his who’d drowned at sea.
I stayed with him for three months, as I recovered my strength. I helped him around the place—tending the light on nights when he felt like getting smashed, and cleaning up all the rooms in the house—even to the extent of painting two of them and replacing five cracked windowpanes—and watching the sea with him on stormy nights.
He was apolitical, I learned. He didn’t care who reigned in Amber. So far as he was concerned, the whole bloody crew of us were rotten. So long as he could tend his lighthouse and eat and drink of good food and brew, and consider his nautical charts in peace, he didn’t give half a damn what happened ashore. I came to be rather fond of him, and since I knew something of old charts and maps also, we spent many a good evening correcting a few. I had sailed far into the north many years ago, and I gave him a new chart based on my recollections of the voyage. This seemed to please him immensely, as did my description of those waters.
“Corey” (that was how I’d named myself), “I’d like to sail with you one day,” he said. “I hadn’t realized you were skipper of your own vessel one time.”
“Who knows?” I told him. “You were once a captain yourself, weren’t you?”
“How’d you know?” he asked.
Actually, I’d remembered, but I gestured about me in reply.
“All these things you’ve collected,” I said, “and your fondness for the charts, Also, you bear yourself like a man who once held a command.”
He smiled.
“Yes,” he told me, “that’s true. I had a command for over a hundred years. That seems long ago . . . Let’s have another drink.”
I sipped mine and sort of put it aside. I must have gained over forty pounds in the months I had spent with him. Any day now, I was expecting him to recognize me as a member of the family. Maybe he would turn me in to Eric if he did—and maybe not. Now that we’d established this much of camaraderie, I had a feeling that he might not do it. I didn’t want to take the chance and find out.
Sometimes as I sat tending the light I wondered, “How long should I stay here?”
Not too much longer, I decided, adding a drop
of grease to a swivel bearing. Not much longer at all. The time was drawing near when I should take to the road and walk among Shadows once again.
Then one day I felt the pressure, gentle and questing at first. I couldn’t tell for sure who it was.
I immediately stood stock still, closed my eyes and made my mind go blank. It was about five minutes before the questing presence withdrew.
I paced then and wondered, and I smiled when I realized the shortness of my course. Unconsciously, I had been pacing out the dimensions of my cell back in Amber.
Someone had just tried to reach me, via my Trump. Was it Eric? Had he finally become aware of my absence and decided to try locating me in this manner? I wasn’t sure. I felt that he might fear mental contact with me again. Julian, then? Or Gerard? Caine? Whoever it had been, I had closed him out completely, I knew that. And I would refuse such contact with any of my family. I might be missing some important news or a helpful call, but I couldn’t afford to take the chance. The attempted contact and my blocking efforts left me with a chill. I shuddered. I thought about the thing all the rest of the day and decided that the time had come for me to move on. It wouldn’t do for me to remain this close to Amber while I was so vulnerable. I had recovered sufficiently to make my way among Shadows, to seek for the place where I had to go if Amber were ever to be mine. I had been lulled into something close to peace by old Join’s ministrations. It would be a pain to leave him, for in the months of our association I had come to like the old guy. so that evening, after we’d finished a game of chess, I told him of my plans to depart.
He poured us two drinks then raised his and said, “Good luck to you, Corwin. I hope to see you again one day.”
I didn’t question the fact that he had called me by my proper name, and he smiled as he realized that I hadn’t let it slip by.
“You’ve been all right, Jopin,” I told him. “If I should succeed in what I’m about to try, I won’t forget what you did for me.”
He shook his head.
“I don’t want anything,” he said. “I’m happy right where I am, doing exactly what I’m doing. I enjoy running this damned tower. It’s my whole life. If you should succeed in whatever you’re about—no, don’t tell me about it, please! I don’t want to know!—I’ll be hoping you’ll stop around for a game of chess sometime.”
“I will,” I promised.
“You can take the Butterfly in the morning, if you’d like.”
“Thanks.”
The Butterfly was his sailboat.
“Before you go,” he said, “I suggest you take my spyglass, climb the tower, and look back on the Vale of Garnath.”
“What’s there to see?”
He shrugged.
“You’ll have to make up your own mind about that”
I nodded.
“Okay, I will.”
We then proceeded to get pleasantly high and turned in for the night. I’d miss old Jopin. With the exception of Rein, he was the only friend I’d found since my return. I wondered vaguely about the valley which had been a sheet of flame the last time I had crossed it. What could it be that was so unusual about it now, these four years later?
Troubled by dreams of werewolves and Sabbats, I slept, and the full moon rose above the world.
At the crack of dawn I did the same. Jopin was still sleeping, which was good, because I don’t really like to say good-by, and I had a funny feeling that I would never see him again.
I climbed the tower to the room that housed the big light, spyglass at my side. I moved to the window facing the shore and focused on the valley.
There was a mist hanging above the wood. It was a cold, gray, wet-looking thing that clung to the tops of the small, gnarly trees. The trees were dark, and their branches twisted together like the fingers of wrestling hands. Dark things darted among them, and from the patterns of their fight I knew they were not birds. Bats. probably. There was something evil present in that great wood, I knew, and then I recognized it. It was myself.
I had done this thing with my curse. I had transformed the peaceful Valley of Garnath into what it now represented: it was a symbol of my hate for Eric and for all those others who had stood by and let him get away with his power grab, let him blind me. I didn’t like the looks of that forest, and as I stared at it I realized how my hate had objectified itself. I knew it because it was a part of me.
I had created a new entranceway into the real world. Garnath was now a pathway through Shadows. Shadows dark and grim. Only the dangerous, the malicious might walk that pathway. This was the source of the things Rein had mentioned, the things that troubled Eric. Good—in a way—if they kept him occupied. But as I swung the glass, I couldn’t escape the feeling that I had done a very bad thing indeed. At the time, I’d had no idea that I’d ever see the light of day’s bright skies again. Now that I did, I realized that I’d unleashed a thing that would take an awful lot of undoing. Even now, strange shapes seemed to move within that place. I had done a thing which had never been done before, not during the whole of Oberon’s reign: I had opened a new way to Amber. And I had opened it only to the worst. A day would come when the liege of Amber—whoever he might be—would be faced with the problem of closing that dreadful way. I knew this as I stared, realizing the thing to be a product of my own pain, anger, and hate. If I won out in Amber one day, I might have to cope with my own handiwork, which is always a devilish thing to attempt. I lowered the glass and sighed.
So be it, I decided. In the meantime, it would give Eric something to have insomnia over.
I grabbed a quick bite to eat, outfitted the Butterfly as rapidly as I could, hoisted some canvas, cast off, and set sail. Jopin was usually up by that hour, but maybe he didn’t like good-byes either.
I headed her out to sea, knowing where I was going but not real certain how to get there. I’d be sailing through Shadow and strange waters, but it would be better than the overland route, what with my handiwork abroad in the realm.
I had set sail for a land near as sparkling as Amber itself, an almost immortal place, a place that did not really exist, not any longer. It was a place which had vanished into Chaos ages ago, but of which a Shadow must somewhere survive. All I had to do was find it, recognize it, and make it mine once again, as it had been in days long gone by. Then, with my own forces to back me up, I would do another thing Amber had never known. I didn’t know how yet, but I promised myself that guns would blaze within the immortal city on the day of my return.
As I sailed into Shadow, a white bird of my desire came and sat upon my right shoulder, and I wrote a note and tied It to its leg and sent It on Its way. The note said, “I am coming,” and it was signed by me.
I would never rest until I held vengeance and the throne within my hand, and good night sweet prince to anybody who stood between me and these things.
The sun hung low on my left and the winds bellied the sails and propelled me onward. I cursed once and then laughed.
I was free and I was running. but I had made it this far. I now had the chance I’d wanted all along.
A black bird of my desire came and sat on my left shoulder, and I wrote a note and tied it to its leg and sent it off into the west.
It said, “Eric—I’ll be back,” and it was signed: “Corwin, Lord of Amber.”
A demon wind propelled me east of the sun.
The Guns of Avalon
The First Amber Pentology - Corwin’s Story: Book 2
Chapter 1
I stood there on the beach and said, “Good-by, Butterfly,” and the ship slowly turned, then headed out toward deep water. It would make it back into port at the lighthouse of Cabra, I knew, for that place lay near to Shadow.
Turning away, I regarded the black line of trees near at hand, knowing that a long walk lay ahead of me. I moved in that direction, making the necessary adjustments as I advanced. A pre-dawn chill lay upon the silent forest, and this was good.
I was perhaps fifty pounds underweight and s
till occasionally experienced double vision, but I was improving. I had escaped the dungeons of Amber and recuperated somewhat, with the assistance of mad Dworkin and drunken Jopin, in that order. Now I had to find me a place, a place resembling another place—one which no longer existed. I located the path. I took it.
After a time, I stopped at a hollow tree that had to be there. I reached inside and drew forth my silvered blade and strapped it to my waist. It mattered not that it had been somewhere in Amber. It was here now, for the wood that I walked was in Shadow.
I continued for several hours, the unseen sun somewhere behind my left shoulder. Then I rested awhile, then moved on. It was good to see the leaves and the rocks and the dead tree trunks, the live ones, the grass, the dark earth. It was good to smell all the little smells of life, and to hear its buzzing/humming/chirping sounds. God! How I treasured my eyes! Having them back again after nearly four years of blackness was a thing for which I lacked words. And to be walking free . . .
I went on, my tattered cloak flapping in the morning breeze. I must have looked over fifty years old, my face creased, my form sparse, lean. Who would have known me for what I was?
As I walked, walked in Shadow, moved toward a place, I did not reach that place. It must be that I had grown somewhat soft. Here is what happened—
I came upon seven men by the side of the road, and six of them were dead, lying in various stages of red dismemberment. The seventh was in a semi-reclined position, his back against the mossy bole of an ancient oak. He held his blade across his lap and there was a large wet wound in his right side, from which the blood still flowed. He wore no armor, though some of the others did. His gray eyes were open, though glassy. His knuckles were skinned and his breathing was slow. From beneath shaggy brows, he watched the crows eat out the eyes of the dead. He did not seem to see me.
I raised my cowl and lowered my head to hide my face. I moved nearer.
The Chronicles of Amber Page 18