The Chronicles of Amber

by Roger Zelazny

  Then came a bright flash, even as I flexed my legs, stabilizing, parried a head cut, and began rising. I saw then that I had succeeded in cutting Borel’s forearm, and fire spurted fountainlike from the wound. His body began to glow, his lower outline to blur.

  “It was by no skill you bested me!” he cried.

  I shrugged.

  “It isn’t the Winter Olympics either,” I told him.

  He changed his grip on his blade, drew back his arm, and hurled the weapon at me—right before he dissolved into a tower of sparks and was drawn upward and vanished above.

  I parried the blade, and it passed me to the left, buried itself partway in the ice and stood vibrating there, like something in a Scandinavian’s version of Arthurian legend. Jurt rushed toward me, kicked at the hands which held my ankles until they released me, and squinted at my brow.

  I felt something fall upon me.

  Sorry, boss. I hit around his knee, By the time I reached his throat he was already on fire, Frakir said.

  All’s well that ends well, I replied. You weren’t singed, were you?

  Didn’t even feel the heat.

  “Sorry I hit you with that piece of ice,” Jurt said. “I was aiming at Borel.”

  I moved away from the plain of hands, heading toward the trail.

  “Indirectly it helped,” I said, but I didn’t feel like thanking him. How could I know where he’d really been aiming? I glanced back once, and several of the hands Jurt had kicked were giving us the finger.

  Why had I been wearing Grayswandir? Would another weapon have affected a Logrus-ghost as strongly? Had it really been my father, then, who had brought me here? And had he felt I might need the extra edge his weapon could provide? I wanted to think so, to believe that he had been more than a Pattern-ghost. And if he was, I wondered at his part in the entire affair. What might he know about all this? And which side might he be on?

  The winds died down as we moved along the trail, and the only arms we saw extended above the ice bore torches which brightened our way for a great distance—to the foot of the far escarpment, actually. Nothing untoward occurred as we crossed that frozen place.

  “From what you’ve told me and what I’ve seen,” Jurt said, “I get the impression it’s the Pattern that’s sponsoring this trip and the Logrus that’s trying to punch your ticket.”

  Just then the ice cracked in a number of places. Fracture lines rushed toward us from several directions, both sides. They slowed, however, as they neared our trail, causing me to notice for the first time that it had risen above the general level of the plain. We now occupied something of a causeway, and the ice shattered itself harmlessly along its sides.

  “Like that,” Jurt observed with a gesture. “How’d you get into this mess anyway?”

  “It all started on April thirtieth,” I began.

  Chapter 7

  Some of the arms seemed to be waving good-bye to us as we commenced our climb after reaching the wall. Jurt thumbed his nose at them.

  “Can you blame me for wanting to escape this place?” he asked.

  “Not in the least,” I replied.

  “If that transfusion you gave me really placed me beyond control of the Logrus, then I might dwell here for some indefinite period of time.”

  “Sounds possible.”

  “That’s why you must realize I threw the ice at Borel, not you. Besides the fact that you’re smarter than he was and might be able to find a way out of here, he was a creature of the Logrus, too, and wouldn’t have had enough fire if the need arose.”

  “That had occurred to me also,” I said, withholding a possible out I’d guessed at, to keep myself indispensable. “But what are you getting at?”

  “I’m trying to say that I’ll give you any kind of help you need, just so you don’t leave me behind when you go. I know we never got along before, but I’m willing to put that aside if you are.”

  “I always was,” I said. “You were the one who started all our fights and kept me in trouble.”

  He smiled.

  “I never did, and I won’t do it again,” he said. “Yeah, okay, you’re right. I didn’t like you, and maybe I still don’t. But I won’t mess you up when we need each other this way.”

  “The way I see it, you need me a hell of a lot more than I need you.”

  “I can’t argue with that, and I can’t make you trust me,” he said. “Wish I could.” We climbed a little more before he continued, and I fancied the air had already grown a trifle warmer. Then, “But look at it this way,” he finally continued, “I resemble your brother Jurt, and I come close to representing something he once was—close, but not a perfect fit. I began diverging from his model beginning with our race. My circumstances are uniquely my own, and I’ve been thinking steadily since I gained my autonomy. The real Jurt knows things I do not and has powers I don’t possess. But I have his memories up through his taking the Logrus, and I’m the second greatest authority there is on the way he thinks. Now, if he’s become such a threat as you’ve indicated, you might find me more than a little useful when it comes to second-guessing him.”

  “You have a point,” I acknowledged. “Unless, of course, the two of you were to throw in together.”

  He shook his head.

  “He wouldn’t trust me,” he said, “and I wouldn’t trust him. We’d both know better. A matter of introspection. See what I mean?”

  “It means neither one of you is trustworthy.”

  His brow furrowed, then he nodded. “Yeah, I guess so,” he said.

  “So why should I trust you?”

  “Right now because you’ve got me by the balls. Later on because I’ll be so damn useful.”

  After several more minutes ascending, I told him: “The thing that bothers me the most about you is that it was not all that long ago that Jurt took the Logrus. You are not an older, milder version of my least favorite relative. You are a very recent model. As for your divergence from the original, I can’t see this short while as making that much difference.”

  He shrugged.

  “What can I say that I haven’t said already?” he asked. “Let’s just deal in terms of power and self interest then.”

  I smiled. We both knew that that was the way it was anyway. The conversation helped pass the time, though. A thought came to me as we climbed.

  “Do you think you could walk through Shadow?” I asked him.

  “I don’t know,” he answered after a time. “My last memory from before I came to this place was of completing the Logrus. I guess the recording was completed at that time, too. So I have no recollection of Suhuy instructing me in shadow-walking, no memory of trying it. I’d guess I could do it, wouldn’t you think?”

  I paused to catch my breath.

  “It’s such an arcane matter that I don’t even feel qualified to speculate on it. I thought maybe you’d come equipped with ready-made answers for things like that—some sort of preternatural awareness of your limits and abilities.”

  “Afraid not. Unless you’d call a hunch preternatural.”

  “I suppose I would if you were right often enough.”

  “Shit. It’s too soon to tell.”

  “Shit. You’re right.”

  Soon we’d climbed above the line of haze from which the flakes seemed to fall. A little farther, and the winds died to breezes. Farther still, and these subsided to nothing. The rim was in sight by then, and shortly thereafter we achieved it.

  I turned and looked back down. All I could see was a bit of glitter through the mist. In the other direction our trail ran on in a zigzag fashion, here and there looking like a series of Morse dashes—regular interruptions, possibly rock formations. We followed it to the right until it turned left.

  I reserved some attention for Jurt, looking for signs of recognition at any feature of the terrain. A talk is only words, and he was still some version of the Jurt I’d grown up with. And if he became responsible for my falling into any sort of trap, I was going
to pass Grayswandir through his personal space as soon as I became aware of it.

  Flicker . . .

  Formation to the left, cave-like, as if the hole in the rock opened into another reality. An oddly shaped car driving up a steep city street . . .

  “What . . . ?” Jurt began.

  “I still don’t know their significance. A whole mess of sequences like this were with me earlier, though. In fact, at first I thought you were one of them.”

  “Looks real enough to walk into.”

  “Maybe it is.”

  “It might be our way out of here.”

  “Somehow that just seems a little too easy.”

  “Well, let’s give it a try,”

  “Go ahead,” I told him.

  We departed the trail, advanced upon the reality window, and kept going. In a moment he was on the side walk next to the street up which the car was passing. He turned and waved. I saw his mouth working, but no words came to me.

  If I could brush snow off the red Chevy, why couldn’t I enter entirely into one of these sequences? And if I could do that, mightn’t it be possible that I could shadow-walk from there, wending my way to some more congenial spot, leaving this dark world behind? I moved forward.

  Suddenly I was there, and the sound had been turned on for me. I looked about at the buildings, at the sharply inclined street. I listened to the traffic sounds, and I sniffed the air. This place could almost be one of San Francisco’s shadows. I hurried to catch up with Jurt, who was moving toward the corner.

  I reached him quickly, fell into step beside him. We came to the corner. We turned. We froze.

  There was nothing there. We faced a wall of blackness. That is, not just darkness but an absolute emptiness, from which we immediately drew back.

  I put my hand forth slowly. A tingling began as it neared the blackness, then a chill, followed by a fear. I drew back. Jurt reached for it, did the same. Abruptly he stopped, picked up the bottom of a broken bottle from the gutter, turned, and hurled it through a nearby window. Immediately he began running in that direction.

  I followed. I joined him before the broken pane, stared within.

  Again the blackness. There was nothing at all on the other side of the window.

  “Kind of spooky,” I remarked.

  “Uh-huh,” Jurt said. “It’s as if we’re being granted extremely limited access to various shadows. What do you make of it?”

  “I’m beginning to wonder whether there isn’t something we’re supposed to be looking for in one of these places,” I said.

  Suddenly the blackness beyond the window was gone, and a candle flickered on a small table beyond it. I began to reach through the broken glass toward it. Immediately it vanished. Again there was only blackness.

  “I’d take that as an affirmative response to your question,” Jurt said.

  “I believe you’re right. But we can’t be looking for something in every one of these things we pass.”

  “I think maybe something’s just been trying to get your attention, to get you to realize that you should be watching what appears, that something probably will be presented once you begin noticing.°

  Brightness. A whole tableful of candles now blazed beyond the window.

  “Okay,” I hollered. “If that’s all you want, I’ll do it. Is there anything else I should be looking for here?”

  The darkness came. It crept around the corner and moved slowly toward us. The candles vanished, and it flowed from the window. The buildings across the street disappeared behind an ebon wall.

  “I take it the answer is no,” I cried. Then I turned and beat it back along our narrowing black tunnel toward the trail. Jurt was right behind me.

  “Good thinking,” I told him when we stood back on the glowing way, watching that rising street get squeezed out of existence beside us. “Do you think it was just pulling these sequences at random till I finally entered one?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I think it has more control in those places and could respond to your questions more readily in one of them.”

  “`It’ being the Pattern?”

  “Probably.”

  “Okay. The next one it opens to me, I’m going in. I’ll do whatever it wants there if it means I get out of here sooner.”

  “We, brother. We.”

  “Of course,” I answered.

  We commenced walking again. Nothing new and intriguing appeared beside us, though. The road zigged and zagged, and we walked along it, and I got to wondering whom we might meet next. If I were indeed on the Pattern’s turf and on the verge of doing something it wanted, then it seemed that the Logrus might send along someone I knew to attempt to dissuade me. No one appeared at all, though, and we took the final turn, followed a trail suddenly grown straight for some time, then saw it end abruptly within a dark mass far ahead.

  Continuing, I saw that it plunged on into a great, dark, mountainous mass. I felt vaguely claustrophobic just considering the implications, and I heard Jurt mutter an obscenity as we trudged toward it. Before we reached it, there came a flickering to my right. Turning, I beheld Random and Vialle’s bedroom, back in Amber. I was looking from the southern side of the room, between the sofa and a bedside table, past a chair, across the rug and the cushions toward the fireplace, the windows which flanked it admitting a soft daylight. No one was present in the bed or occupying any other piece of furniture, and the logs on the grate had burned themselves down to red embers, smoking fitfully.

  “What now?” Jurt asked.

  “This is it,” I replied “It has to be, don’t you see? Once I got the message as to what was going on, it presented the real thing. I’ve got to act fast, too, I think—as soon as I figure just what—”

  One of the stones beside the fireplace began to glow redly. It increased in intensity as I watched. There was no way that those embers could be doing it. Therefore . . .

  I rushed forward under the influence of a powerful imperative. I heard Jurt shout something behind me, but his voice was cut off as I entered the room. I caught a whiff of Vialle’s favorite perfume as I passed beside the bed. This was really Amber, I was certain, not just some shadowy facsimile thereof. I moved quickly to the right of the fireplace.

  Jurt burst into the room behind me.

  “Better come out fighting!” he cried.

  I whirled to face him, shouted, “Shut up!” then raised a finger to my lips.

  He crossed to my side, caught hold of my arm, and whispered hoarsely, “Borel’s trying to materialize again! He might be solid and waiting by the time you leave!”

  From the sitting room I heard Vialle’s voice. “Is someone there?” she called.

  I jerked my arm free of Jurt’s grasp, knelt upon the hearth, and seized hold of the glowing stone. It appeared to be mortared in place but came loose easily when I drew upon it.

  “How’d you know that one came free?” Jurt whispered.

  “The glow,” I replied.

  “What glow?” he asked.

  I did not answer him but thrust my right hand into the opened area, hoping offhandedly there were no booby traps. The opening extended back for a good distance beyond the length of the stone. And there I felt it, suspended from peg or hook: a length of chain. I caught hold of it and drew it forth. I heard Jurt catch his breath beside me.

  The last time I had seen it was when Random had worn it at Caine’s funeral. It was the Jewel of Judgment that I held in my hand. I raised it quickly and slipped the chain over my head, letting that red stone fall upon my breast, just as the door to the sitting room was opened.

  Placing my finger to my lips, once more I reached forward, caught hold of Jurt’s shoulders, and turned him back toward the opened wall which let upon our trail. He began to protest, but I propelled him with a sharp push, and he moved off in that direction.

  “Who’s there?” I heard Vialle ask, and Jurt glanced back at me, looking puzzled.

  I did not feel we
could afford the time for my explaining by sign language or whisper that she was blind. So I gave him another push. Only this time he stepped to the side, extended his leg, slipped a hand behind my back, and pushed me forward. A brief expletive escaped my lips, and then I was falling. From behind me, I heard Vialle’s “Who—” before her voice was cut off.

  I tumbled onto the trail, managing to draw the dagger from my right boot as I fell. I rolled and came up with the point extended toward the figure of Borel, which seemed to have found its form once more.

  He was smiling, his weapon yet undrawn, as he regarded me.

  “There is no field of arms here,” he stated, “to provide you with a lucky accident such as you enjoyed when last we met. ”

  “Too bad,” I said.

  “If I but gain that bauble you wear about your neck and deliver it to the place of the Logrus, I will be granted a normal existence, to replace my living counterpart—he who was treacherously slain by your father, as you pointed out.”

  The vision of Amber’s royal apartments had vanished. Jurt stood off the trail, near what had been its interface with this odd realm. “I knew I couldn’t beat him,” he called out when he felt my glance, “but you took him once.”

  I shrugged.

  At this Borel turned toward Jurt.

  “You would betray the Courts and the Logrus?” he asked him.

  “On the contrary,” Jurt responded. “I may be saving them from a serious mistake.”

  “What mistake might that be?”

  “Tell him, Merlin. Tell him what you told me while we were climbing out of the deep freeze,” he said.

  Borel glanced back at me.

  “There’s something funny about this entire setup,” I said. “I’ve a feeling it’s all a duel between the Powers—the Logrus and the Pattern. Amber and the Courts may be secondary to the entire affair. You see—”

  “Ridiculous!” he interrupted, drawing his weapon. “This is just made-up nonsense to avoid our duel.”