I tossed the dagger into my left hand and drew Grayswandir with my right.
“The hell with you then!” I said. “Come and get it!”
A hand fell upon my shoulder. And it kept right on falling with a sort of twist to it, spinning me into a downward spiral which threw me off to the left of the trail. From the corner of my eye, I saw that Borel had taken a step backward.
“You’ve a resemblance to Eric or to Corwin,” came a soft, familiar voice, “though I know you not. But you wear the Jewel, which makes your person too important to risk in a petty squabble.”
I came to a stop and turned my head. It was Benedict whom I beheld—a Benedict with two normal hands.
“My name is Merlin and I’m Corwin’s son,” I said, “and this is a master duelist from the Courts of Chaos.”
“You appear to be on a mission, Merlin. Be about it then,” Benedict said.
The point of Borel’s blade flicked into a position about ten inches from my throat. “You are going nowhere,” he stated, “not with that jewel.”
There was no sound as Benedict’s blade was drawn and moved to beat Borel’s off its line.
“As I said, be on your way, Merlin,” Benedict told me.
I got to my feet, moved quickly out of range, passed them both cautiously.
“If you kill him,” Jurt said, “he can rematerialize after a period of time.”
“How interesting,” Benedict remarked, flicking off an attack and retreating slightly. “How long a time?”
“Several hours.”
“And how much time will you need to complete whatever you’re about?”
Jurt looked at me.
“I’m not certain,” I answered.
Benedict executed an odd little parry, followed by a strange shuffling step and a brief slashing attack. A button flew from Borel’s shirt front.
“In that case I’ll make this last for a time,” Benedict said. “Good luck, lad.”
He gave me a quick salute with the weapon, at which moment Borel attacked. Benedict used an Italianate sixte which threw both their points off to the side, advancing as he did so. He reached forward quickly then with his left hand and pulled the other’s nose. Then he pushed him away, stepped back a pace, and smiled.
“What do you usually charge for lessons?” I overheard him asking as Jurt and I hurried down the path.
* * *
“I wonder how long it does take for one of the Powers to materialize a ghost,” Jurt said as we jogged toward the mountainous mass the trail entered.
“Several hours for Borel alone,” I said, “and if the Logrus wants the Jewel as badly as I’d guess, I’d think it would have summoned an army of ghosts if it could. I’m certain now that this place is very difficult for both Powers to reach. I get the feeling they can only manifest via the barest trickles of energy. If that weren’t the case, I’d never have gotten this far.”
Jurt reached out as if to touch the Jewel, apparently thought better of it, withdrew his hand.
“It seems you’ve definitely aligned yourself with the Pattern now,” he observed.
“Looks as if you have, too. Unless you’re planning on stabbing me in the back at the last moment,” I said.
He chuckled. Then, “Not funny,” he said. “I’ve got to be on your side. I can see that the Logrus just created me as a disposable tool. I’d wind up on the scrap heap when the job’s done. I’ve a feeling I might have dissipated already had it not been for the transfusion. So I’m with you, like it or not, and your back is safe.”
We ran on along the now-straight way, its terminus finally grown near. Jurt finally asked, “What is the significance of that pendant? The Logrus seems to want it badly.”
“lt’s called the Jewel of Judgment,” I answered. “It is said to be older than the Pattern itself and to have been instrumental in its creation.”
“Why do you think you were led to it and obtained it with such ease?”
“I have no idea whatsoever,” I said. “If you get one before I do, I’ll be glad to hear it.”
Soon we reached the place where the trail plunged into the greater darkness. We halted and regarded it.
“No signs posted,” I said, checking above and to either side of that entranceway.
Jurt gave me an odd look.
“You’ve always had a weird sense of humor, Merlin.” he said. “Who’d put up a sign in a place like this?”
“Someone else with a weird sense of humor,” I replied.
“Might as well go on,” he said, turning back toward the entrance.
A bright red exit sign had appeared above the opening. Jurt stared for a moment, then shook his head slowly. We entered.
We took our way down a wandering tunnel—a thing which puzzled me a bit. The artificial quality of most of the rest of this place had led me to expect a ruler-straight trail through a smooth-walled shaft, geometrically precise in all its features. Instead, it seemed as if we were traversing a series of natural caverns—stalactites, stalagmites, pillars, and pools displayed at either hand.
The Jewel cast a baleful light over any features I turned to scrutinize.
“Do you know how to use that stone?” Jurt asked me.
I thought back over my father’s story.
“When the time comes, I believe that I will,” I said, raising the Jewel and studying it for a moment, then letting it fall again. I was less concerned with it than with the route we were following.
I kept turning my head as we made our way from damp grotto to high cathedral chamber, along narrow passages, down stony waterfalls. There was something familiar here, though I couldn’t put my finger on it.
“Anything about this place bring back memories?” I asked him.
“Not for me,” Jurt replied.
We kept going, at one point passing a side cave containing three human skeletons. These being, in their fashion, the first real signs of life I had seen since the onset of this journey, I remarked on it.
Jurt nodded slowly.
“I am beginning to wonder whether we are still walking between shadows,” he said, “or whether we might actually have departed that place and entered Shadow—perhaps when we came into these caves.”
“I could find out by trying to summon the Logrus,” I said, causing Frakir immediately to pulse sharply upon my wrist. “But considering the metaphysical politics of the situation, I’d rather not.”
“I was just going by the colors of all the minerals in the walls,” he said. “The place we left behind kind of favored monochrome. Not that I give a shit about the scenery. What I’m saying is that if we have, it’s a kind of victory.”
I pointed at the ground.
“So long as that glowing trail is there, we’re not off the hook.”
“What if we simply walked away from it now?” he asked, turning to the right and taking a single step in that direction.
A stalactite vibrated and crashed to the ground before him. It missed him by about a foot. He was back beside me in an instant.
“Of course, it would be a real shame not to find out where we’re headed,” he said.
“Quests are that way. It’d be bad form to miss the fun.”
We hiked on. Nothing allegorical happened around us. Our voices and our footfalls echoed. Water dripped in some of the danker grots. Minerals flashed. Our way seemed a gradual descent.
For how long we walked I could not tell. After a time stony chambers took on a generic appearance—as if we passed regularly through a teleportation device which rerouted us back through the same caves and corridors. This had the effect of blurring my sense of time. Repetitious actions have a lulling effect and—
Suddenly our trail debouched into a larger passage, turned left. Finally, some variation. Only this way, too, looked familiar. We followed our line of light through the darkness. After a time we went by a side passage to the left. Jurt glanced up it and hurried past.
“Any damned thing might be lurking around here,”
he observed.
“True,” I acknowledged. “But I wouldn’t worry about it.”
“Why not?”
“I think I’m beginning to understand.”
“Mind telling me what’s going on?”
“It’d take too long. Just wait. We’ll be finding out pretty soon.”
We went by another side passage. Similar, yet different. 0f course.
I increased my pace, anxious to learn the truth. Another sideway. I broke into a run . . .
Another . . .
Jurt pounded along beside me, the echoes falling about us. Up ahead. Soon.
Another turning.
And then I slowed, for the passage continued ahead but our trail didn’t. It curved to the left, vanishing beneath a big metal-bound door. I reached out to my right to where the hook was supposed to be, located it, removed the key that hung there. I inserted it, turned it, withdrew it, rehung it.
I don’t like this place, boss, Frakir noted.
I know.
“Seems as if you know what you’re doing,” Jurt remarked.
“Yep,” I said, then added, “Up to a point,” as I realized that this door opened outward rather than inward.
I caught hold of the large handle to the left and began to pull upon it.
“Mind telling me where we’ve wound up?” he asked.
The big door creaked, commenced a slow movement as I walked backward.
“These are amazingly like a section of caverns in Kolvir beneath Amber Castle,” I replied.
“Great,” he said. “And what’s behind the door?”
“This is much like the entrance to the chamber which houses the Pattern in Amber.”
“Wonderful,” he said. “I’ll probably go up in a puff of smoke if I set foot inside.”
“But it is not quite the same,” I continued. “We had Suhuy come and look at the Pattern itself before I walked it. He didn’t suffer any ill effects from the proximity.”
“Our mother walked the Pattern.”
“Yes, that’s true.”
“Frankly, I think anyone of proper consanguinity in the Courts could walk the Pattern—and vice versa for my relatives in Amber with the Logrus. Tradition has it we’re all related from back somewhere in the dim and misty. Okay I’ll go in with you. There’s room to move around inside without touching the thing, isn’t there?”
“Yes.” I drew the door the rest of the way open, braced my shoulder against it, and stared. This was it. I saw that our glowing trail ended a few inches beyond the threshold.
I drew a deep breath and muttered some expletive as I let it go.
“What is it?” Jurt asked, trying to see past me.
“Not what I expected,” I told him.
I moved aside and let him have a look.
He stared for several seconds, then said, “I don’t understand.”
“I am not certain that I do either,” I said, “but I intend to find out.”
I entered the chamber, and he followed me. This was not the Pattern that I knew. Or rather, it was and wasn’t. It conformed to the same general configuration as the Pattern in Amber, only it was broken. There were several places where the lines had been erased, destroyed, removed in some fashion—or perhaps never properly executed in the first place. The ordinarily dark interline areas were bright, bluewhite, the lines themselves black. It was as if some essence had drained from the diagram to permeate the field. The lighted area seemd to ripple slowly as I viewed it.
And beyond all of this was the big difference: The Pattern in Amber did not contain a circle of fire at its center, a woman dead, unconscious, or under a spell within it.
And the woman, of course, had to be Coral. I knew that immediately, though I had to wait for more than a minute before I got a glimpse of her face beyond the flames.
The big door shut itself behind us while I stood staring. Jurt stood unmoving for a long time also before he said, “That Jewel is certainly busy at something. You should see your face in its light right now.”
I glanced downward and observed its ruddy pulsations. Between the blue-white flux in which the Pattern was grounded and the flickering of that circle of flame I had not noted the sudden activity on the part of the stone.
I moved a step nearer, feeling a wave of coldness similar to that of an activated Trump. This had to be one of the Broken Patterns of which Jasra had been speaking—representative of one of the Ways in which she and Julia were initiates. This placed me in one of the early shadows, near Amber herself. Thoughts began to race through my mind at a ferocious pace.
I had only recently become aware of the possibility that the Pattern might actually be sentient. Its corollary, that the Logrus was sentient, seemed likely also. The notion of its sentiency had been presented to me when Coral had succeeded in negotiating the Pattern and then had asked it to send her where she should go. It had done so, and this was the place to which she had been transported, and her condition was obviously the reason I couldn’t reach her by means of her Trump. When I had addressed the Pattern following her disappearance, it had—almost playfully, it seemed at the time—shifted me from one end of its chamber to the other, apparently to satisfy me on the matter of its sentience.
And it wasn’t merely sentient, I decided, as I raised the jewel of Judgment and stared into its depths. It was clever. For the images that I saw within the stone, showing me what it was that was desired of me, represented something I would not have been willing to do under other circumstances. Having come away from that strange realm through which I had been led on this quest, I would have shuffled out a Trump and called someone for a fast exit—or even summoned the image of the Logrus and let the two of them slug it out while I slipped away through Shadow. But Coral slept in a circle of flame at the heart of the Broken Pattern. . . . She was the authentic Pattern’s hold over me. It had to have understood something back when she was walking it, laid its plan, and set me up at that time.
It wanted me to repair this particular image of itself, to mend this Broken Pattern, by walking it, bearing the Jewel of Judgment with me. This was how Oberon had repaired the damage to the original. Of course, the act had been sufficiently traumatic to kill him . . .
On the other hand, the King had been dealing with the real thing, and this was only one of its images. Also, my father had survived the creation of his own ersatz Pattern from scratch.
Why me? I wondered then. Was it because I was the son of the man who had succeeded in creating another Pattern? Did it involve the fact that I bore the image of the Logrus within me as well as that of the Pattern? Was it simply because I was handy and coercible? All of the above? None of them?
“How about it?” I called out. “Have you got an answer for me?”
There was a quick pang in my stomach and a wave of dizziness as the chamber spun, faded, stood still, and I regarded Jurt across the expanse of the Pattern, the big door at his back.
“How’d you do that?” he hollered.
“I didn’t,” I replied.
“Oh.”
He edged his way to his right till he came to the wall. Maintaining contact with it, he began moving about the Pattern’s periphery, as if afraid to approach any nearer to it than he had to or to remove his gaze from it.
From this side I could see Coral a bit more clearly, within the fiery hedge. Funny. It was not as if there were a large emotional investment here. We were not lovers, not even terrifically close friends. We had become acquainted only the other day, shared a long walk about, around, and under the town and palace, had a meal together, a couple of drinks, a few laughs. If we became better acquainted, perhaps we would discover that we couldn’t stand each other. Still, I had enjoyed her company, and I realized that I did want to take the time to get to know her better. And in some ways I felt responsible for her present condition, through a kind of contributory negligence. In other words, the Pattern had me by the balls. If I wanted to free her, I had to repair it.
The flames nodded
in my direction.
“It’s a dirty trick,” I said aloud.
The flames nodded again.
I continued to study the Broken Pattern. Almost everything I knew about the phenomenon had come to me by way of my conversation with Jasra. But I recalled her telling me that initiates of the Broken Pattern walked it in the areas between the lines, whereas the image in the Jewel was instructing me to walk the lines, as one normally would the Pattern itself. Which made sense, as I recalled my father’s story. It should serve to inscribe the proper path across the breaks. I wasn’t looking for any half-assed between-the-lines initiation.
Jurt made his way about the far end of the Pattern, turned, and began to move toward me. When he came abreast of a break in the outer line, the light flowed from it across the floor. The look on his face was ghastly as it touched his foot. He screamed and began to melt.
“Stop!” I cried. “Or you can find another Pattern repairman! Restore him and leave him alone or I won’t do it! I mean it!”
Jurt’s collapsing legs lengthened again. The rush of blue-white incandescence which had fled upward through his body was withdrawn as the light retreated from him. The expression of pain left his face.
“I know he’s a Logrus-ghost,” I said, “and he’s patterned on my least favorite relative, but you leave him alone, you son of a bitch, or I won’t walk you! You can keep Coral and you can stay broken!”
The light flowed back through the imperfection, and things stood as they had moments before.
“I want a promise,” I said.
A gigantic sheet of flame rose from the Broken Pattern to the top of the chamber, then fell again.
“I take it that is an affirmative,” I said.
The flames nodded.
“Thanks,” I heard Jurt whisper.
Chapter 8
And so I commenced my walk. The black line did not have the same feeling to it as the blazing ones back under Amber. My feet came down as if on dead ground, though there was a tug and a crackle when I raised them.
“Merlin!” Jurt called out. “What should I do?”
“What do you mean?” I shouted back.
“How do I get out of here?”
“Go out the door and start shadow-shifting,” I said, “or follow me through this Pattern and have it send you wherever you want.”
The Chronicles of Amber Page 159