“I don’t believe you can shadow-shift this close to Amber, can you?”
“Maybe we are too close. So get away physically and then do it.”
I kept moving. There came small crackling sounds whenever I raised my feet now.
“I’d get lost in the caves if I tried that.”
“Then follow me.”
“The Pattern will destroy me.”
“It’s promised not to.”
He laughed harshly.
“And you believe it?”
“If it wants this job done properly, it has no choice.”
I came to the first break in the Pattern. A quick consultation of the Jewel showed me where the line should lie. With some trepidation I took my first step beyond the visible marking. Then another. And another. I wanted to look back when I finally crossed the gap. Instead, I waited until the natural curving of my route granted me that view. I saw then that the entire line I had walked thus far had begun to glow, just like the real thing. The spilled luminescence seemed to have been absorbed within it, darkening the interstitial ground area. Jurt had moved to a position near that beginning. He caught my gaze.
“I don’t know, Merlin,” he said. “I just don’t know.”
“The Jurt I knew wouldn’t have had guts enough to try it,” I told him.
“Neither do I.”
“As you pointed out, our mother did it. Odds are you’ve got the genes. What the hell. If I’m wrong, it’ll be over before you know it.”
I took another step. He gave a mirthless laugh.
Then, “What the hell,” he said, and he set his foot upon it.
“Hey, I’m still alive,” he called out. “What now?”
“Keep coming,” I said. “Follow me. Don’t stop. And don’t leave the line or all bets are off:”
There followed another turning of the way, and I followed it and lost sight of him. As I continued along, I became aware of a pain in my right ankle—product of all the hiking and climbing I had done, I supposed. It began increasing with each step. It was hot and soon grew to be quite terrible. Had I somehow torn a ligament? Had I—
Of course. I could smell the burning leather now.
I plunged my hand into the sheath area of my boot and withdrew the Chaos dagger. It was radiating heat. This proximity to the Pattern was affecting it. I couldn’t keep it about me any longer.
I drew my arm back and cast the weapon across the Pattern in the direction I was facing, toward the end of the room where the doorway was situated. Automatically my gaze followed its passage. There was a small movement in the shadows toward which it flew. A man was standing there, watching me. The dagger struck the wall and fell to the floor. He leaned over and picked it up. I heard a chuckle. He made a sudden movement, and the dagger came arcing back across the Pattern in my direction.
It landed ahead and to the right of me. As soon as it made contact with the Pattern, a fountain of blue flame engulfed it, rising well above the level of my head, splattering, sizzling. I flinched and I slowed, though I knew it would do me no permanent harm, and I kept walking. I had reached the long frontal arc where the going was slow.
“Stay on the line,” I yelled to Jurt. “Don’t worry about things like that.”
“I understand,” he said. “Who’s that guy?”
“Damned if I know.”
I pushed ahead. I was nearer to the circle of flame now. I wondered what the ty’iga would think of my present predicament. I made my way around another turn and was able to see back over a considerable section of my trail. It was glowing evenly, and Jurt was coming on strongly, moving as I had, the flames rising above his ankles now. They were almost up to my knees. From the corner of my eye I saw a movement from that area of the chamber where the stranger stood.
The man moved forth from his shadowy alcove, slowly, carefully, flowing along the far wall. At least he did not seem interested in walking the Pattern. He moved to a point almost directly opposite its beginning.
I had no choice but to continue my course, which took me through curves and turns that removed him from my sight. I came to another break in the Pattern and felt it knit as I crossed it. A barely audible music seemed to occur as I did so. The tempo of the flux within the lighted area seemed to increase also, as it flowed into the lines, etching a sharp, bright trail behind me. I called an occasional piece of advice to Jurt, who was several laps back, though his course sometimes brought him abreast of me and close enough to touch had there been any reason to.
The blue fires were higher now, reaching up to mid-thigh, and my hair was rising. I began a slow series of turns. Above the crackling and the music, I asked, How’re you doing, Frakir? There was no reply.
I turned, kept moving through an area of high impedance, emerged from it, beholding the fiery wall of Coral’s prison there at the Pattern’s center. As I took my way around it, the opposite side of the Pattern slowly came into view.
The stranger stood waiting, the collar of his cloak turned high. Within the shadows which lay upon his face, I could see that his teeth were bared in a grin. I was startled by the fact that he stood in the midst of the Pattern itself—watching my advance, apparently waiting for me—until I realized that he had entered by way of a break in the design which I was headed to repair.
“You are going to have to get out of my way,” I called out. “I can’t stop, and I can’t let you stop me!”
He didn’t stir, and I recalled my father’s telling me of a fight which had occurred on the primal Pattern. I slapped the hilt of Grayswandir.
“I’m coming through,” I said.
The blue-white fires came up even higher with my next step, and in their light I saw his face. It was my own.
“No,” I said.
“Yes,” he said.
“You are the last of the Logrus-ghosts to confront me.”
“Indeed,” he replied.
I took another step.
“Yet,” I observed, “if you are a reconstruction of myself from the time I made it through the Logrus, why should you oppose me here? The self I recall being in those days wouldn’t have taken a job like this.”
His grin went away.
“I am not you in that sense,” he stated. “The only way to make this happen as it must, as I understand it, was to synthesize my personality in some fashion.”
“So you’re me with a lobotomy and orders to kill.”
“Don’t say that,” he replied. “It makes it sound wrong, and what I’m doing is right. We even have many of the same memories.”
“Let me through and I’ll talk to you afterward. I think the Logrus may have screwed itself by trying this stunt. You don’t want to kill yourself, and neither do I. Together we could win this game, and there’s room in Shadow for more than one Merlin.”
I’d slowed, but I had to take another step then. I couldn’t afford to lose momentum at this point.
His lips tightened to a thin line, and he shook his head.
“Sorry,” he said. “I was born to live one hour—unless I kill you. If I do, your life will be given to me.”
He drew his blade.
“I know you better than you think I do,” I said, “whether you’ve been restructured or not. I don’t think you’ll do it. Furthermore, I might be able to lift that death sentence. I’ve learned some things about how it works for you ghosts.”
He extended his blade, which resembled one I’d had years ago, and its point almost reached me.
“Sorry,” he repeated.
I drew Grayswandir for purposes of parrying it. I’d have been a fool not to. I didn’t know what sort of job the Logrus had done on his head. I racked my memories for fencing techniques I’d studied since I’d become an initiate of the Logrus.
Yes. Benedict’s game with Borel had reminded me. I’d taken some lessons in Italian-style fencing since then. It gave one wider, more careless-seeming parries, compensated by greater extension. Grayswandir went forth, beat his blade to the outside, and e
xtended. His wrist bent into a French four, but I was already under it, arm still extended, wrist straight, sliding my right foot forward along the line as the forte of my blade beat heavily against the forte of his from the outside, and I immediately stepped forward with my left foot, driving the weapon across his body till the guards locked and continuing its drop in that direction.
And then my left hand fell upon the inside of his right elbow, in a maneuver a martial artist friend had taught me back in college-zenponage, I think he called it. I lowered my hips as I pressed downward. I turned my hips then, counterclockwise. His balance broke, and he fell toward my left. Only I could not permit that. If he landed on the Pattern proper, I’d a funny feeling he’d go off like a fireworks display. So I continued the drop for several more inches, shifted my hand to his shoulder, and pushed him, so that he fell back into the broken area. Then I heard a scream, and a blazing form passed on my left side.
“No!” I cried, reaching for it.
But I was too late. Jurt had stepped off the line, springing past me, driving his blade into my double even as his own body swirled and blazed. Fire also poured from my double’s wound. He tried unsuccessfully to rise and fell back.
“Don’t say that I never served you, brother,” Jurt stated, before he was transformed into a whirlwind, which rose to the chamber’s roof, where it dissipated.
I could not reach far enough to touch my doppelganger, and moments later I did not wish to, for he was quickly transformed into a human torch.
His gaze was directed upward, following Jurt’s spectacular passing. He looked at me then and smiled crookedly.
“He was right, you know,” he said, and then he, too, was engulfed.
It took awhile to overcome my inertia, but after a time I did, continuing my ritual dance about the fire. The next time around there was no trace of either of their persons, though their blades remained where they had fallen, crossed, across my path. I kicked them off the Pattern as I went by. The flames were up to my waist by then.
Around, back, over. I glanced into the Jewel periodically, to avoid missteps, and piece by piece I stitched the Pattern together. The light was drawn into the lines, and save for the central blaze, it came more and more to resemble the thing we kept in the basement back home.
The First Veil brought painful memories of the Courts and of Amber. I stayed aloof, shivering, and these things passed. The Second Veil mixed memory and desire in San Francisco. I controlled my breathing and pretended I was only a spectator. The flames danced about my shoulders, and I thought of a series of half moons as I traversed arc after arc, curve upon reverse curve. The resistance grew till I was drenched with sweat as I struggled against it. But I had been this way before. The Pattern was not just around me but inside me as well.
I moved, and I reached the point of diminishing returns, of less and less distance gained for the effort expended. I kept seeing dissolving Jurt and my own dying face amid flames, and it didn’t matter a bit that I knew the memory rush was Pattern-induced. It still bothered me as I drove myself forward.
I swept my gaze around me once as I neared the Great Curve, and I saw that this Pattern had now been full repaired. I had bridged all of the breaks with connecting lines, and it burned now like a frozen Catherine wheel against a black and starless sky. Another step . . .
I patted the warm Jewel that I wore. Its ruddy glow came up to me even more strongly now than it had earlier. I wondered whether there was an easy way to get it back where it belonged. Another step . . .
I raised the Jewel and stared into it. There was an image of me completing the walking of the Grand Curve and continuing right on through the wall of flames as if this represented no problem whatsoever. While I took the vision as a piece of advice, I was reminded of a David Steinberg routine which Droppa had once appropriated. I hoped that the Pattern was not into practical jokes.
The flames enveloped me fully as I commenced the Curve. I continued to slow as my efforts mounted. Step after painful step I drew nearer to the Final Veil. I could feel myself being transformed into an expression of pure will, as everything that I was became focused upon a single end. Another step . . . It felt as if I were weighted down with heavy armor. It was the final three steps that pushed one near despair’s edge.
Again . . .
Then came the point where even movement became less important than the effort. It was no longer the results but the attempt that mattered. My will was the flame, my body, smoke or shadow. . . .
And again . . .
Seen through my risen blue light, the orange flames which surrounded Coral became silver-gray spikes of incandescence. Within the crackling and the popping I heard something like music once again—low, adagio, a deep, vibrant thing, like Michael Moore playing bass. I tried to accept the rhythm, to move with it. Somehow, then, it seemed that I succeeded—that, or my time sense became distorted—as I moved with a feeling of something like fluidity through the next steps.
Or maybe the Pattern felt it owed me a favor and had eased up for a few beats. I’ll never know.
I passed through the Final Veil, faced the wall of flame, suddenly orange again, and kept going. I drew my next breath in the heart of fire.
Coral lay there at the Pattern’s center, looking pretty much as she had when last I had seen her—in a copper shirt and dark green breeches—save that she appeared to be sleeping, sprawled there upon her heavy brown cloak. I dropped to my right knee beside her and laid my hand upon her shoulder. She did not stir. I brushed a strand of her reddish hair off her cheek, stroked that cheek a few times.
“Coral?” I said.
No response.
I returned my hand to her shoulder, shook her gently.
“Coral?”
She drew a deep breath and sighed it out, but she did not awaken.
I shook her a bit harder. “Wake up, Coral.”
I slipped my arm beneath her shoulders, raised her partway. Her eyes did not open. Obviously she was under some sort of spell. The middle of the Pattern was hardly the place to summon the Sign of the Logrus if one wished to remain unincinerated. So I tried the storybook remedy. I leaned forward and kiss her. She made a small, deep noise, and her eyelids fluttered. But she did not come around. I tried again. Same result.
“Shit!” I remarked. I wanted a little elbow-room for working on a spell like this, a place where I had access to some of the tools of my trade and could call upon the source of my powers with impunity.
I raised her higher and commanded the Pattern to transport us back to my apartment in Amber, where her ty’iga-possessed sister lay in a trance of her own-one of my brother’s doing, for purposes of protecting me from her.
“Take us home,” I said aloud, for emphasis.
Nothing happened.
I employed a strong visualization then and backed once more with the mental command.
We didn’t stir.
I lowered Coral gently, rose, and looked out across the Pattern through the faintest area of the flames.
“Look,” I said, “I just did you a big favor, involving a lot of exertion and considerable risk. Now I want to go the hell out of here and take the lady with me. Will you please oblige?”
The flames died down, were gone, for several beats. In the diminished light which followed I became aware that the Jewel was pulsing, like the message light on a hotel phone. I raised it and stared into it.
I hardly expected an X-rated short feature, but that’s what was playing.
“I believe I’m receiving the wrong channel,” I said. “If you’ve got a message, let’s have it. Otherwise, I just want to go home.”
Nothing changed, save that I became aware of a strong resemblance between the two figures in the Jewel and Coral and myself. They were going at it on a cloak at what appeared to be the center of a Pattern, flagrante ad infinitum—rather like a spicier version of the old salt box label, it seemed, if they could be seeing into the jewel the guy was wearing and watching. . . .
/> “Enough!” I cried. “This is fucking ridiculous! You want a Tantric ritual I’ll send you some professionals! The lady isn’t even awake—”
The Jewel pulsed again, with such intensity that it hurt my eyes. I let it fall. I knelt then, scooped Coral up, and stood.
“I don’t know whether anyone’s ever walked you backwards before,” I said, “but I don’t see why it shouldn’t work.”
I took a step in the direction of the Final Veil. Immediately the wall of flame sprang up before me. I stumbled in drawing away from it, fell back upon the outspread cloak. I held Coral to me that she not be cast into the fire. She came down on top of me. She seemed almost awake. . . .
Her arms went around my neck, and she sort of nuzzled my cheek. She seemed more drowsy than comatose now. I held her tightly and thought about it.
“Coral?” I tried again.
“Mm,” she said.
“Seems the only way we can get out of here is by making love.”
“Thought you’d never ask,” she mumbled, eyes still closed.
That made it seem somewhat less like necrophilia, I told myself as I turned us onto our sides so I could get at those coppery buttons. She muttered a little more while I was about things, but it didn’t exactly turn into a conversation. Still, her body was not unresponsive to my attentions, and the encounter quickly took on all the usual features, too commonplace to be of much concern to the sophisticated. It seemed an interesting way to break a spell. Maybe the Pattern did have a sense of humor. I don’t know.
The fires died down at about the same time that the fires died down, so to speak. Coral’s eyes finally opened.
“That seems to have taken care of the circle of flames,” I said.
“When did this cease being a dream?” she asked.
“Good question,” I replied, “and only you can answer it.”
“Did you just rescue me from something?”
“That seems the easiest way to put it,” I answered as she drew away somewhat and cast her gaze about the chamber. “See where it got you when you asked the Pattern to send you where you should go?” I said.
The Chronicles of Amber Page 160