The Chronicles of Amber

by Roger Zelazny

  Stillness on the second floor. A few noises from below. Sleep well, lady. Around, and down again. I wondered whether Random had uncovered anything of great moment. Probably not, or he or Benedict should have contacted me by now. Unless there was trouble. But no. It is ridiculous to shop for worries. The real thing makes itself felt in due course, and I’d more than enough to go around. The ground floor.

  “Will,” I said, and, “Rolf.”

  “Lord Corwin.”

  The two guards had assumed professional stances on hearing my footsteps. Their faces told me that all was well, but I asked for the sake of form.

  “Quiet, Lord. Quiet,” replied the senior.

  “Very good,” I said, and I continued on, entering and crossing the marble dining hall.

  It would work, I was sure of that, if time and moisture had not totally effaced it. And then . . .

  I entered the long corridor, where the dusty walls pressed close on either side. Darkness, shadows, my footsteps . . .

  I came to the door at the end, opened it, stepped out onto the platform. Then down once more, that spiraling way, a light here, a light there, into the caverns of Kolvir. Random had been right, I decided then. If you had gouged out everything, down to the level of that distant floor, there would be a close correspondence between what was left and the place of that primal Pattern we had visited this morning.

  . . . On down. Twisting and winding through the gloom. The torch and lantern-lit guard station was theatrically stark within it. I reached the floor and headed that way.

  “Good evening. Lord Corwin,” said the lean, cadaverous figure who rested against a storage rack, smoking his pipe, grinning around it.

  “Good evening, Roger. How are things in the nether world?”

  “A rat, a bat, a spider. Nothing much else astir. Peaceful.”

  “You enjoy this duty?”

  He nodded.

  “I am writing a philosophical romance shot through with elements of horror and morbidity. I work on those parts down here.”

  “Fitting, fitting,” I said.

  “I’ll be needing a lantern.”

  He took one from the rack, brought it to flame from his candle.

  “Will it have a happy ending?” I inquired.

  He shrugged.

  “I’ll be happy.”

  “I mean, does good triumph and hero bed heroine? Or do you kill everybody off?”

  “That’s hardly fair,” he said.

  “Never mind. Maybe I’ll read it one day.”

  “Maybe,” he said.

  I took the lantern and turned away, heading in a direction I had not taken in a long while. I discovered that I could still measure the echoes in my mind.

  Before too long, I neared the wall, sighted the proper corridor, entered it. It was simply a matter of counting my paces then. My feet knew the way.

  The door to my old cell stood partly ajar. I set down the lantern and used both hands to open it fully. It gave way grudgingly, moaning as it moved. Then I raised the lantern, held it high, and entered.

  My flesh tingled and my stomach clenched itself within me. I began to shiver. I had to fight down a strong impulse to bolt and run. I had not anticipated such a reaction. I did not want to step away from that heavy brassbound door for fear that it would be slammed and bolted behind me. It was an instant close to pure terror that the small dirty cell had aroused in me. I forced myself to dwell on particulars—the hole which had been my latrine, the blackened spot where I had built my fire on that final day. I ran my left hand over the inner surface of the door, finding and tracing there the grooves I had worn while scraping away with my spoon. I remembered what the activity had done to my hands. I stooped to examine the gouging. Not nearly so deep as it had seemed at the time, not when compared to the total thickness of the door. I realized how much I had exaggerated the effects of that feeble effort toward freedom. I stepped past it and regarded the wall.

  Faint. Dust and moisture had worked to undo it. But I could still discern the outlines of the lighthouse of Cobra, bordered by four slashes of my old spoon handle. The magic was still there, that force which had finally transported me to freedom. I felt it without calling upon it.

  I turned and faced the other wall.

  The sketch which I now regarded had fared less well than that of the lighthouse, but then it had been executed with extreme haste by the light of my last few matches. I could not even make out all of the details, though my memory furnished a few of those which were hidden: It was a view of a den or library, bookshelves lining the walls, a desk in the foreground, a globe beside the desk. I wondered whether I should risk wiping it clean.

  I set my lantern on the floor, returned to the sketch on the other wall. With a corner of my blanket, I gently wiped some dust from a point near the base of the lighthouse. The line grew clearer. I wiped it again, exerting a little more pressure. Unfortunate. I destroyed an inch or so of outline.

  I stepped back and tore a wide strip from the edge of the blanket. I folded what remained into a pad and seated myself on it. Slowly, carefully then, I set to work on the lighthouse. I had to get an exact feeling for the work before I tried cleaning the other one.

  Half an hour later I stood up and stretched, bent and massaged life back into my legs. What remained of the lighthouse was clean. Unfortunately, I had destroyed about 20 per cent of the sketch before I developed a sense of the wall’s texture and an appropriate stroke across it. I doubted that I was going to improve any further.

  The lantern sputtered as I moved it. I unfolded the blanket, shook it out, tore off a fresh strip. Making up a new pad, I knelt before the other sketch and set to work.

  A while later I had uncovered what remained of it. I had forgotten the skull on the desk until a careful stroke revealed it once again—and the angle of the far wall, and a tall candlestick. . . . I drew back. It would be risky to do any more rubbing. Probably unnecessary, also. It seemed about as entire as it had been.

  The lantern was flickering once again. Cursing Roger for not checking the kerosene level, I stood and held the light at shoulder level off to my left. I put everything from my mind but the scene before me.

  It gained something of perspective as I stared. A moment later and it was totally three-dimensional and had expanded to fill my entire field of vision. I stepped forward then and rested the lantern on the edge of the desk.

  I cast my eyes about the place. There were bookshelves on all four walls. No windows. Two doors at the far end of the room, right and left, across from one another, one closed, the other partly ajar. There was a long, low table covered with books and papers beside the opened door. Bizarre curios occupied open spaces on the shelves and odd niches and recesses in the walls—bones, stones, pottery, inscribed tablets, lenses, wands, instruments of unknown function. The huge rug resembled an Ardebil. I took a step toward that end of the room and the lantern sputtered again. I turned and reached for it. At that moment, it failed.

  I growled an obscenity and lowered my hand. Then I turned, slowly, to check for any possible light sources. Something resembling a branch of coral shone faintly on a shelf across the room and a pale line of illumination occurred at the base of the closed door. I abandoned the lantern and crossed the room.

  I opened the door as quietly as I could. The room it let upon was deserted, a small, windowless living place faintly lit by the still smoldering embers in its single, recessed hearth. The room’s walls were of stone and they arched above me. The fireplace was a possibly natural niche in the wall to my left. A large, armored door was set in the far wall, a big key partly turned in its lock.

  I entered, taking a candle from a nearby table, and moved toward the fireplace to give it a light. As I knelt and sought a flame among the embers, I heard a soft footfall in the vicinity of the doorway.

  Turning, I saw him just beyond the threshold. About five feet in height, hunchbacked. His hair and beard were even longer than I remembered. Dworkin wore a nightshirt which
reached to his ankles. He carried an oil lamp, his dark eyes peering across its sooty chimney.

  “Oberon” he said, “is it finally time?”

  “What time is that?” I asked softly.

  He chuckled.

  “What other? Time to destroy the world, of course!”

  Chapter 5

  I kept the light away from my face, kept my voice low.

  “Not quite,” I said. “Not quite.”

  He sighed.

  “You remain unconvinced.”

  He looked forward and cocked his head, peering down at me.

  “Why must you spoil things?” he said.

  “I’ve spoiled nothing.”

  He lowered the lamp. I turned my head again, but he finally got a good look at my face. He laughed.

  “Funny. Funny, funny, funny,” he said. “you come as the young Lord Corwin, thinking to sway me with family sentiment. Why did you not choose Brand or Bleys? It was Clarissa’s lot served us best.”

  I shrugged and stood.

  “Yes and no,” I said, determined now to feed him ambiguities for so long as he’d accept them and respond. Something of value might emerge, and it seemed an easy way to keep him in a good humor.

  “And yourself?” I continued. “What face would you put on things?”

  “Why, to win your good will I’ll match you,” he said, and then he began to laugh.

  He threw his head back, and as his laughter rang about me a change came over him. His stature seemed to increase, and his face luffed like a sail cut too close to the wind. The hump on his back was diminished as he straightened and stood taller. His features rearranged themselves and his beard darkened. By then it was obvious that he was somehow redistributing his body mass, for the nightshirt which had reached his ankles was now midway up his shins. He breathed deeply and his shoulders widened. His arms lengthened, his bulging abdomen narrowed, tapered. He reached shoulder height on me, then higher. He looked me in the eye. His garment reached only to his knees. His hump was totally resorbed. His face gave a final twist, his features steadied, were reset. His laughter fell to a chuckle, faded, closed with a smirk.

  I regarded a slightly slimmer version of myself.

  “Sufficient?” he inquired.

  “Not half bad,” I said.

  “Wait till I toss a couple logs on the fire.”

  “I will help you.”

  “That’s all right.”

  I drew some wood from a rack to the right. Any stall served me somewhat, buying reactions for my study. As I was about the work, he crossed to a chair and seated himself. When I glanced at him I saw that he was not looking at me, but staring into the shadows. I drew out the fire-building, hoping that he would say something, anything. Eventually, he did.

  “Whatever became of the grand design?” he asked.

  I did not know whether he was speaking of the Pattern or of some master plan of Dad’s to which he had been privy. So, “You tell me,” I said. He chuckled again.

  “Why not? You changed your mind, that is what happened,” he said.

  “From what to what—as you see it?”

  “Don’t mock me. Even you have no right to mock me,” he said. “Least of all, you.”

  I got to my feet.

  “I was not mocking you,” I said.

  I crossed the room to another chair and carried it over to a position near the fire, across from Dworkin. I seated myself.

  “How did you recognize me?” I asked.

  “My whereabouts are hardly common knowledge.”

  “That is true.”

  “Do many in Amber think me dead?”

  “Yes, and others suppose you might be traveling off in Shadow.”

  “I see.”

  “How have you been feeling?”

  He gave me an evil grin.

  “Do you mean am I still mad?”

  “You put it more bluntly than I care to.”

  “There is a fading, there is an intensifying,” he said. “It comes to me and it departs again. For the moment I am almost myself—almost, I say. The shock of your visit, perhaps . . . Something is broken in my mind. You know that. It cannot be otherwise, though. You know that, too.”

  “I suppose that I do,” I said. “Why don’t you tell me all about it, all over again? Just the business of talking might make you feel better, might give me something I’ve missed. Tell me a story.”

  Another laugh.

  “Anything you like. Have you any preferences? My flight from Chaos to this small sudden island in the sea of night? My meditations upon the abyss? The revelation of the Pattern in a jewel hung round the neck of a unicorn? My transcription of the design by lightning, blood, and lyre while our fathers raged baffled, too late come to call me back while the poem of fire ran that first route in my brain, infecting me with the will to form? Too late! Too late . . . Possessed of the abominations born of the disease, beyond their aid, their power, I planned and built, captive of my new self. Is that the tale you’d hear again? Or rather I tell you of its cure?”

  My mind spun at the implications he had just scattered by the fistful. I could not tell whether he spoke literally or metaphorically or was simply sharing paranoid delusions, but the things that I wanted to hear, had to hear, were things closer to the moment. So, regarding the shadowy image of myself from which that ancient voice emerged, “Tell me of its cure,” I said.

  He braced his finger tips together and spoke through them.

  “I am the Pattern,” he said, “in a very real sense. In passing through my mind to achieve the form it now holds, the foundation of Amber, it marked me as surely as I marked it. I realized one day that I am both the Pattern and myself, and it was forced to become Dworkin in the process of becoming itself. There were mutual modifications in the birthing of this place and this time, and therein lay our weakness as well as our strength. For it occurred to me that damage to the Pattern would be damage to myself, and damage to myself would be reflected within the Pattern. Yet I could not be truly banned because the Pattern protects me, and who but I could harm the Pattern? A beautiful closed system, it seemed, its weakness totally shielded by its strength.”

  He fell silent. I listened to the fire. I do not know what he listened to.

  Then, “I was wrong,” he said. “Such a simple matter, too . . . My blood, with which I drew it, could deface it. But it took me ages to realize that the blood of my blood could also do this thing. You could use it, you could also change it—yea, unto the third generation.”

  It did not come to me as a surprise, learning that he was grandsire to us all. Somehow, it seemed that I had known all along, had known but never voiced it. Yet . . . if anything, this raised more questions than it answered. Collect one generation of ancestry. Proceed to confusion. I had less idea now than ever before as to what Dworkin really was. Add to this the fact which even he acknowledged: It was a tale told by a madman.

  “But to repair it. . . ?” I said.

  He smirked, my own face twisting before me.

  “Have you lost your taste to be a lord of the living void, a king of chaos?” he asked.

  “Mayhap,” I replied.

  “By the Unicorn, thy mother, I knew it would come to this! The Pattern is as strong in you as is the greater realm. What then is your desire?”

  “To preserve the realm.”

  He shook his/my head.

  “ ‘Twould be simpler to destroy everything and try a new start—as I have told you so often before.”

  “I’m stubborn. So tell me again,” I said, attempting to simulate Dad’s gruffness.

  He shrugged.

  “Destroy the Pattern and we destroy Amber—and all of the shadows in polar array about it. Give me leave to destroy myself in the midst of the Pattern and we will obliterate it. Give me leave by giving me your word that you will then take the Jewel which contains the essence of order and use it to create a new Pattern, bright and pure, untainted, drawing upon the stuff of your own being while th
e legions of chaos attempt to distract you on every side. Promise me that and let me end it, for broken as I am, I would rather die for order than live for it. What say you now?”

  “Would it not be better to try mending the one we’ve got than to undo the work of eons?”

  “Coward!” he cried, leaping to his feet. “I knew you would say that again!”

  “Well, wouldn’t it?”

  He began to pace.

  “How many times have we been through this?” he asked. “Nothing has changed! You are afraid to try it!”

  “Perhaps,” I said. “But do you not feel that something for which you have given so much is worth some effort—some additional sacrifice—if there is even a possibility of saving it?”

  “You still do not understand,” he said. “I cannot but think that a damaged thing should be destroyed—and hopefully replaced. The nature of my personal injury is such that I cannot envision repair. I am damaged in just this fashion. My feelings are foreordained.”

  “If the Jewel can create a new Pattern, why will it not serve to repair the old one, end our troubles, heal your spirit?”

  He approached and stood before me.

  “Where is your memory?” he said. “You know that it would be infinitely more difficult to repair the damage than it would be to start over again. Even the Jewel could more easily destroy it than repair it. Have your forgotten what it is like out there?” He gestured toward the wall behind him. “Do you want to go and look at it again?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I would like that. Let’s go.”

  I rose and looked down at him. His control over his form had begun slipping when he had grown angry. He had already lost three or four inches in height, the image of my face was melting back into his gnomelike features, and a noticeable bulge was growing between his shoulders, had already been visible when he had gestured.

  His eyes widened and he studied my face.

  “You really mean it,” he said after a moment. “All right, then. Let us go.”