“I don’t know whether I can get hold of it,” I said, “but I’ll remember that.”
“Give it to me,” the Logrus said to Ghost, “and I will take you with me as First Servant.”
“You are a processor of data,” said the Pattern. “I will give you knowledge such as none in all of Shadow possess.”
“I will give you power,” said the Logrus.
“Not interested,” said Ghost, and the cylinder spun and vanished.
The girl, the Jewel, and everything were gone.
The Logrus wailed, the Pattern growled, and the Signs of both Powers rushed to meet, somewhere near Bleys’s nearer room.
I raised every protective spell that I could. Behind me I could feel Mandor doing the same. I covered my head, I drew up my knees, I—
I was falling. Through a bright, soundless concussion. Bits of debris struck me. From several directions. I’d a hunch that I had just bought the farm and that I was about to die without opportunity to reveal my insight into the nature of reality: The Pattern did not care about the children of Amber any more than the Logrus did about those of the Courts of Chaos. The Powers cared, perhaps, about themselves, about each other, about heavy cosmic principles, about the Unicorn and the Serpent, of which they were very probably but geometric manifestations They did not care about me, about Coral, about Mandor, probably not even about Oberon or Dworkin himself. We were totally insignificant or at most tools or sometimes annoyances, to be employed or destroyed as the occasion warranted—
“Give me your hand,” Dworkin said, and I saw him, as in a Trump contact. I reached and—
—fell hard at his feet upon a colorful rug spread over a stone floor, in a windowless chamber my father had once described to me, filled with books and exotic artifacts, lit by bowls of light which hung without visible means of support high in the air.
“Thanks,” I said, rising slowly, brushing myself off, massaging a sore spot in my left thigh.
“Caught a whiff of your thoughts,” he said. “There’s more to it.”
“I’m sure. But sometimes I enjoy being bleak-minded. How much of that crap the Powers were arguing about was true?”
“Oh, all of it,” Dworkin said, “by their lights the biggest bar to understanding is the interpretation they put on each other’s doings. That, and the fact that everything can always be pushed another step backward—such as the break in the Pattern having strengthened the Logrus and the possibility that the Logrus actively influenced Brand into doing it. But then the Logrus might claim this was in retaliation for the Day of the Broken Branches several centuries ago.”
“I haven’t heard about that one,” I said.
He shrugged.
“I’m not surprised. It wasn’t all that important a matter, except to them. What I’m saying is that to argue as they do is to head into an infinite regression—back to first causes, which are always untrustworthy.”
“So what’s the answer?”
“Answer? This isn’t a classroom. There are no answers that would matter, except to a philosopher—that is, none with any practical applications.”
He poured a small cup of green liquid from a silver flask and passed it to me.
“Drink this,” he said.
“It’s a little early in the day for me.”
“It’s not refreshment. It’s medication,” he explained. “You’re in a state of near shock, whether you’ve noticed or not.”
I tossed the thing off, and it burned like a liquor but didn’t seem to be one. I did feet myself beginning to relax during the next few minutes, in places I had not even realized I was tense.
“Coral, Mandor . . . ” I said.
He gestured, and a glowing globe descended, drew nearer. He signed the air with a half familiar gesture, and something like the Logrus Sign without the Logrus came over me. A picture formed within the globe.
That long section of hallway where the encounter had occurred had been destroyed, along with the stairs, Benedict’s apartment, and possibly Gerard’s as well. Also, Bleys’s rooms, portions of my own, the sitting room I had been occupying but a short time before, and the northeast corner of the library were missing, as were the floor and ceiling. Below, I could see that sections of the kitchen and armory had been hit, and possibly more across the way. Looking upward—magic globes being wondrous accommodating—I could see sky, which meant that the blast had gone through the third and fourth floors, possibly damaging the royal suite along with the upper stairways and maybe the laboratory—and who knew what all else.
Standing on the edge of the abyss near what had been a section of Bleys’s or Gerard’s quarters was Mandor, his right arm apparently broken, hand tucked in behind his wide black belt. Coral leaned heavily upon his left shoulder, and there was blood on her face. I am not sure that she was fully conscious. Mandor held her about the waist with his left arm, and a metal ball circled the two of them. Diagonally across the abyss, Random stood on a heavy crossbeam near the opening to the library. I believe Martin was standing atop a short stack, below and to the rear. He was still holding his sax. Random appeared more than a little agitated and seemed to be shouting.
“Voice! Voice!” I said. Dworkin waved.
“—ucking Lord of Chaos blowing up my palace!” Random was saying.
“The lady is injured, Your Highness,” Mandor said. Random passed a hand across his face. Then he looked upward.
“If there’s an easy way to get her to my quarters, Vialle is very skilled in certain areas of medicine,” he said in a softer voice. “So am I, for that matter.”
“Just where is that, Your Highness?”
Random leaned to his side and pointed upward. “Looks as if you won’t need the door to get in, but I can’t tell whether there’s enough stairway left to get up there or where you might cross to it if there is.”
“I’ll make it,” Mandor said, and two more of the balls came rushing to him and set themselves into eccentric orbits about him and Coral. Shortly thereafter they were levitated and drifted slowly toward the opening Random had indicated.
“I’ll be along shortly,” Random called after them. He looked as if he were about to add something, but then regarded the devastation, lowered his head, and turned away. I did the same thing.
Dworkin was offering me another dose of the green medicine, and I took it. Some sort of trank, it seemed, in addition to whatever else it did.
“I have to go to her,” I told him. “I like that lady, and I want to be sure she’s all right.”
“I can certainly send you there,” Dworkin said, “though I cannot think of anything you could do for her which will not be done well by others. Perhaps the time were more profitably spent in pursuit of that errant construct of yours—the Ghostwheel. It must be persuaded to return the Jewel of Judgment.”
“Very well,” I acknowledged. “But I want to see Coral first.”
“Your appearance could cause considerable delay,” he said, “because of explanations which may be required of you.”
“I don’t care,” I told him.
“All right. A moment then.”
He moved away and took down what appeared to be a sheathed wand from the wall, where it had hung suspended from a peg. He hung the sheath upon his belt, then crossed to a small cabinet and removed a flat leather-bound case from one of its drawers. It rattled with a faint metallic sound as he slipped it into a pocket. A small jewelry box vanished up a sleeve without any sound.
“Come this way,” he told me, approaching and taking my hand.
He turned me and led me toward the room’s darkest corner, where I had not noted that a tall, curiously framed mirror hung. It exhibited an odd reflective capacity in that it showed us and the room behind us with perfect clarity from a distance, but the closer we approached to its surface, the more indistinct all of its images became. I could see what was coming, coming. But I still tensed as Dworkin, a pace in advance of me by then, stepped through its foggy surface and jerked me af
ter him.
I stumbled and regained my footing, coming to myself in the good half of the blasted royal suite in front of a decorative mirror. I reached back quickly and tapped it with my fingertips, but its surface remain solid. The short, stooped figure of Dworkin stood before me, and he still had hold of my right hand. Looking past that profile, which in some ways caricatured my own, I saw that the bed had been moved eastward, away from the broken corner and a large opening formerly occupied by a section of flooring. Random and Vialle stood on the near side of the bed, their backs to us. They were studying Coral, who was stretched out upon the counterpane and appeared to be unconscious. Mandor, seated in a heavy chair at they bed’s foot, observing operations, was the first to notice our presence, which he acknowledged with a nod.
“How . . . is she?” I asked.
“Concussion,” Mandor replied, “and damage to the right eye.”
Random turned. Whatever he was about to say to me died on his lips when he realized who stood beside me.
“Dworkin!” he said. “It’s been so long. I didn’t know whether you were still alive. Are you . . . all right?”
The dwarf chuckled.
“I read your meaning, and I’m rational,” he replied. “I would like to examine the lady now.”
“Of course,” Random answered, moving aside.
“Merlin,” Dworkin said, “see whether you can locate that Ghostwheel device of yours, and ask it to return the artifact it borrowed.”
“I understand,” I said, reaching for my Trumps.
Moments later I was reaching, reaching . . .
“I felt your intent several moments ago, Dad.”
“Well, do you have the Jewel or don’t you?”
“Yes, I just finished with it.”
“’Finished’?”
“Finished utilizing it.”
“In what fashion did you . . . utilize it?”
“As I understood from you that passing one’s awareness through it would give some protection against the Pattern, I wondered whether it might work for an ideally synthesized being such as myself.”
“That’s a nice term, ’ideally synthesized.’ Where’d it come from?”
“I coined it myself when seeking the most appropriate designation.”
“I’ve a hunch it’ll reject you.”
“It didn’t.”
“Oh. You actually got all the way through the thing?”
“I did.”
“What effect did it have upon you?”
“That’s a hard thing to assess. My perceptions are altered. It’s difficult to explain. . . . It’s subtle, whatever it is.”
“Fascinating. Can you move your awareness into the stone from a distance now?”
“Yes.”
“When all of our present troubles have passed, I’m going to want to test you again.”
“I’m curious myself to know what’s changed.”
“In the meantime, there is a need for the Jewel here.”
“Coming through.”
The air shimmered before me.
Ghostwheel appeared as a silver circlet, the Jewel of Judgment at its center. I cupped my hand and collected it. I took it to Dworkin, who did not even glance at me as he received it. I looked down at Coral’s face and looked away quickly, wishing I hadn’t.
I moved back near Ghost.
“Where’s Nayda?” I asked.
“I’m not sure,” he replied. “She asked me to leave her—there near the crystal cave—after I took the Jewel away from her.”
“What was she doing?”
“Crying.”
“Why?”
“I suppose because both of her missions in life have been frustrated. She was charged to guard you unless some wild chance brought her the opportunity of obtaining the Jewel, in which instance she was released from the first directive. This actually occurred, only I deprived her of the stone. Now she is bound to neither course.”
“You’d think she’d be happy to be free at last. She wasn’t on either job as a matter of choice. She can go back to doing whatever carefree demons do beyond the Rimwall.”
“Not exactly, Dad.”
“What do you mean?”
“She seems to be stuck in that body. Apparently she can’t simply abandon it the way she could others she’s used. It has something to do with there being no primary occupant.”
“Oh. I suppose she could, uh, terminate and get loose that way.”
“I suggested that, but she’s not sure it would work that way. It might just kill her along with the body, now that she’s bound to it the way she is.”
“So she’s still somewhere near the cave?”
“No. She retains her ty’iga powers, which make her something of a magical being. I believe she must simply have wandered off through Shadow while I was in the cave experimenting with the Jewel.”
“Why the cave?”
“That’s where you go to do clandestine things, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. So how come I could reach you there with the Trump?”
“I’d already finished the experiment and departed. In fact, I was looking for her when you called.”
“I think you’d better go and look some more.”
“Why?”
“Because I owe her for favors past—even if my mother did sic her on me.”
“Certainly. I’m not sure how successful I’ll be, though. Magical beings don’t track as readily as the more mundane sort.”
“Give it a shot anyway. I’d like to know where she’s gotten to and whether there’s anything I can do for her. Maybe your new orientation will be of help somehow.”
“We’ll see,” he said, and he winked out.
I sagged. How was Orkuz going to take it? I wondered. One daughter injured and the other possessed of a demon and wandering, off in Shadow. I moved to the foot of the bed and leaned against Mandor’s chair. He reached up with his left hand and squeezed my arm.
“I don’t suppose you learned anything about bone-setting off on that shadow-world, did you?” he inquired.
“Afraid not,” I answered.
“Pity,” he replied. “I’ll just have to wait my turn.”
“We can Trump you somewhere and get it taken care of right away,” I said, reaching for my cards.
“No,” he said. “I want to see things played out here.”
While he was speaking, I noticed that Random seemed engaged in an intense Trump communication. Vialle stood nearby, as if shielding him from the opening in the wall and whatever might emerge there-from. Dworkin continued to work upon Coral’s face, his body blocking sight of exactly what he was doing.
“Mandor,” I said, “did you know that my mother sent the ty’iga to take care of me?”
“Yes,” he replied. “It told me that when you stepped out of the room. A part of the spell would not permit it to tell you this.”
“Was she just there to protect me, or was she spying on me, too?”
“That I couldn’t tell you. The matter didn’t come up. But it does seem her fears were warranted. You were in danger.”
“You think Dara knew about Jasra and Luke?”
He began to shrug, winced, thought better of it.
“Again, I don’t know for certain. If she did, I can’t answer the next one either: How did she know? Okay?”
“Okay.”
Random completed a conversation, covering a Trump: Then he turned and stared at Vialle for some time. He looked as if he were about to say something, thought better of it, looked away. He looked at me. About then I heard Coral moan, and I looked away, rising.
“A moment, Merlin,” Random said, “before you go rushing off.”
I met his gaze. Whether it was angry or merely curious, I could not tell. The tightening of the brows, the narrowing of the eyes could indicate either.
“Sir?” I said.
He approached, took me by the elbow, and turned me away from the bed, leading me off toward the doorway to the
next room.
“Vialle, I’m borrowing your studio for a few moments,” he said.
“Surely,” she replied.
He led me inside and closed the door behind us. Across the room a bust of Gerard had fallen and broken. What appeared to be her current project—a multi-limbed sea creature of a sort I’d never seen—occupied a work area at the studio’s far end.
Random turned on me suddenly and searched my face.
“Have you been following the Begma-Kashfa situation?” he asked.
“More or less,” I replied. “Bill briefed me on it the other night. Eregnor and all that.”
“Did he tell you that we were going to bring Kashfa into the Golden Circle and solve the Eregnor problem by recognizing Kashfa’s right to that piece of real estate?”
I didn’t like the way he’d asked that one, and I didn’t want to get Bill in trouble. It had seemed that that matter was still under wraps when we’d spoken. So, “I’m afraid I don’t recall all the details on this stuff,” I said.
“Well, that’s what I planned on doing,” Random told me. “We don’t usually make guarantees like that—the kind that will favor one treaty country at the expense of another—but Arkans, the Duke of Shadburne, kind of had us over a barrel. He was the best possible head of state for our purposes, and I’d paved the way for his taking the throne now that that red-haired bitch is out of the picture. He knew he could lean on me a bit, though—since he’d be taking a chance accepting the throne following a double break in the succession—and he asked for Eregnor, so I gave it to him.”
“I see,” I said, “everything except how this affects me.”
He turned his head and studied me through his left eye.
“The coronation was to be today. In fact, I was going to dress and Trump back for it in a little while . . . ”
“You use the past tense,” I observed, to fill the silence he had left before me.
“So I do. So I do,” he muttered, turning away, pacing a few steps, resting his foot on a piece of broken statuary, turning back. “The good Duke is now either dead or imprisoned.”
“And there will be no coronation?” I said.
“Au contraire,” Random replied, still studying my face.
“I give up,” I said. “Tell me what’s going on.”
The Chronicles of Amber Page 164