The Chronicles of Amber

by Roger Zelazny

  “I have some friends with me,” he said.

  “Bring them in,” came her reply.

  He opened the door and did so.

  “Both of you know Nayda,” Luke announced. “Nayda, this is my double. Let’s call him Rinaldo and me Luke while we’re together. He’s going to run things for me here while Merle and I are off looking for your sister.”

  I changed Rinaldo back then, in response to her puzzled look.

  She had on black trousers and an emerald blouse, her hair bound back by a matching green scarf. She smiled as she greeted us, and when she regarded me she touched her lips lightly, almost casually, with a fingertip. I nodded immediately.

  “I trust you are recovered from any misadventures in Amber,” I said. “You were, of course, there at a bad time.”

  “Of course,” she responded. “Fully recovered, thank you. Kind of you to ask. Thanks, too, for the recent directions. It was you, I take it, who spirited Luke away these two days past?”

  “It’s really been that long?” I said.

  “It has, sir.”

  “Sorry about that, my dear,” Luke said, squeezing her hand and looking long into her eyes.

  “That explains why the trail’s faded,” I said.

  Rinaldo seized her hand and kissed it, while executing an elaborate bow.

  “Amazing how much you’ve changed from the girl I knew,” he stated.

  “Oh?”

  “I share Luke’s memories as well as his appearance,” he explained.

  “I could tell there was something not quite human about you,” she remarked. “I see you as a man whose very blood is fire.”

  “And how might you see that?” he inquired.

  “She has her means,” Luke said, “though I thought it only a psychic bond with her sister. Apparently it goes somewhat further.”

  She nodded.

  “Speaking of which, I hope you can use it to help us track her,” he continued. “With the trail gone and a drug or a spell barring a Trump call, we’ll be needing assistance.”

  “Yes,” she answered, “though she is in no danger at the moment.”

  “Good,” he said. “In that case, I’ll order us all food and set to briefing this good-looking fellow on what’s going on in Kashfa these days.”

  “Luke,” I said. “It sounds like an ideal time for me to head back to the Courts for the rest of the funeral.”

  “How long would you be gone, Merle?”

  “I don’t know,” I replied.

  “Back by morning, I trust?”

  “Me, too. What if I’m not, though?”

  “I’ve a feeling I should go looking without you.”

  “Try reaching me first, though.”

  “Sure. See you later.”

  I drew my cloak of space about me, shrugging Kashfa away. When I opened it again I was back in Jurt’s quarters at Sawall.

  I stretched, I yawned. I did a quick turn about the room, making certain I was alone. I unfastened my cloak and tossed it upon the bed. I paced as I unbuttoned my shirt.

  Halt. What was it? Also, where?

  I retraced a few paces. I had never spent a great deal of time in my younger brother’s rooms, but I would have recalled what I was feeling.

  There was a chair and table in the corner formed by the wall and an armoire of dark, almost black wood. Kneeling on the chair and reaching over the table, I could feel it—the presence of a way, not quite strong enough for transport, though. Ergo. . . .

  I moved off to my right, opened the armoire. It had to be inside, of course. I wondered how recently he had installed it. I also felt slightly funny about poking about in his quarters this way. Still, he owed me for a lot of misery and inconvenience. A few confidences and a little cooperation hardly cleaned the slate. I hadn’t learned to trust him yet, and it was possible he was setting me up for something. Good manners, I decided, would have to be sacrificed to prudence.

  I pushed garments aside, making a way clear to the back of the thing. I could feel it strongly. A final shove at the garments, a quick shuffle to the rear, and I was at the focus. I let it take me away.

  Once there was a forward yielding, the pressure of the garments at my back gave me a small push. That, plus the fact that someone (Jurt, himself?) had done a sloppy shadowmastering job resulting in mismatched floor levels, sent me sprawling as I achieved destination.

  At least, I didn’t land in a pit full of sharpened stakes or acid. Or the lair of some half-starved beast. No, it was a green-tiled floor, and I caught myself as I fell. And from the flickering light all about me I guessed there was a mess of candles burning.

  Even before I looked up I was sure they’d all be green.

  Nor was I incorrect. About that or anything else. The setup was similar to that of my father, with a groined vault containing a light source superior to the candles. Only there was no painting above this altar. This one featured a stained-glass window, lots of green in it, and a little red.

  Its principal was Brand.

  I rose and crossed to it. Lying upon it, drawn a few inches from its sheath, was Werewindle.

  I reached out and took hold of it, my first impulse being to bear it away with me for eventual restoration to Luke. Then I hesitated. It wasn’t something I could wear to a funeral. If I took it now I’d have to hide it somewhere, and it was already well-hidden right here. I let my hand rest upon it, though, as I thought. It contained a similar feeling of power to that which Grayswandir bore, only somehow brighter, less tragedy-touched and brooding. Ironic. It seemed an ideal blade for a hero.

  I looked about. There was a book on a reading stand off to my left, a pentagram upon the floor behind me, worked in different shades of green, a smell—as of a recent wood fire—hung in the air. Idly, I wondered what I might find if I were to knock a hole in the wall. Was this chapel located upon a mountaintop? Beneath a lake? Underground? Was it drifting somewhere in the heavens?

  What did it represent? It looked to be religious in nature. And Benedict, Corwin, and Brand were the three I knew about. Were they admired, respected—venerated—by certain of my countrymen and relatives? Or were these hidden chapels somehow more sinister?

  I removed my hand from Werewindle, stepped to the vicinity of the pentagram.

  My Logrus vision revealed nothing untoward, but an intense scan with the spikard detected the residue of a long-removed magical operation. The traces were too faint to tell me anything of its nature, however. While it seemed possible I might probe further after this and come up with a clearer picture, I also realized I hadn’t the time such an operation would require.

  Reluctantly, I retreated to the vicinity of the way. Could these places have been used to try to influence the individuals involved?

  I shook my head. This was something I would have to save for another day. I located the way and gave myself to it.

  I stumbled on my return, also.

  Catching hold of the frame with one hand, I seized a garment with another, kept myself upright, straightened, and stepped out. Then I shifted the clothing back into place and shut the doors.

  I stripped quickly, altering my form as I was about it, and I donned my mourning garb once again. I felt some activity in the vicinity of the spikard, and for the first time I caught it drawing upon one of the many sources it commanded to alter its shape, accommodating the changing size of my finger. It had obviously done this several times before, though this was the first time I had noted the process. This was interesting, in that it showed the device capable of acting independent of my will.

  I didn’t really know what the thing was, what its origin might have been. I kept it because it represented a considerable source of power, an acceptable substitute for the use of the Logrus, which I now feared. But as I watched it change shape to remain snug upon my changing finger, I wondered. What if it were somehow booby-trapped to turn upon me at exactly the wrong moment?

  I turned it a couple of times upon my finger. I moved into it with m
y mind, knowing this to be an exercise in futility. It would take ages for me to run down each line to its source, to check out hidden spells along the way. It was like taking a trip through a Swiss watch—custom-made. I was impressed both with the beauty of its design, and with the enormous amount of work that had gone into its creation. It could easily possess hidden imperatives that would only respond to special sets of circumstances. Yet it had done nothing untoward, yet. And the alternative was the Logrus. It struck me as a genuine instance of the preferability of the devil one didn’t know.

  Growling, I adjusted my apparel, focused my attention on the Temple of the Serpent, and bade the spikard deliver me near its entrance. It performed as smoothly and gently as if I had never doubted it, as if I had not discovered in it yet another cause for paranoia.

  And for a time, I simply stood outside the doors of frozen flame, there at the great Cathedral of the Serpent at the outer edge of the Plaza at the End of the World, situated exactly at the Rim, opened to the Pit itself—where, on a good day, one can view the creation of the universe, or its ending—and I watched the stars swarm through space that folded and unfolded like the petals of flowers; and as if my life were about to change, my thoughts returned to California and school, of sailing the Sunburst with Luke and Gail and Julia, of sitting with my father near the end of the war, of riding with Vinta Bayle through the wine country to the east of Amber, of a long, brisk afternoon spent showing Coral about the town, of the strange encounters of that day; and I turned and raised my scaly hand, stared past it at the spire of Thelbane, and “they cease not fighting, east and west, on the marches of my breast,” I thought. How long, how long . . . ? Irony, as usual, a three-to-one favorite whenever sentimentality makes its move.

  Turning again, I went in to see the last of the King of Chaos.

  Chapter 9

  Down, down into the pile, into the great slag heap, window onto the ends of time and space, where nothing is to be seen at the end, I went, between walls forever afire, never burnt down, walking in one of my bodies toward the sound of a voice reading from the Book of the Serpent Hung upon the Tree of Matter, and at length came into the grotto that backed upon blackness, widening semicircles of red-clad mourners facing the reader and the grand catafalque beside which he stood, Swayvill clearly in view within it, half-covered with red flowers dropped by mourners, red tapers flickering against the Pit, but a few paces behind them; across the rear of the chamber then, listening to Bances of Amblerash, High Priest of the Serpent, his words sounding as if spoken beside me, for the acoustics of Chaos are good; finding a seat in an otherwise empty arc, where anyone looking back would be certain to notice me; seeking familiar faces, finding Dara, Tubble, and Mandor seated in frontal positions that indicated they were to assist Bances in sliding the casket past the edge into forever when the time came; and in my divided heart I recalled the last funeral I had attended before this: Caine’s, back in Amber, beside the sea, and I thought again of Bloom and the way the mind wanders on these occasions.

  I sought about me. Jurt was nowhere in sight. Gilva of Hendrake was only a couple of rows below me. I shifted my gaze to the deep blackness beyond the Rim. It was almost as if I were looking down, rather than out—if such terms had any real meaning in that place. Occasionally, I would perceive darting points of light or rolling masses. It served me as a kind of Rorschach for a time, and I half-dozed before the prospect of dark butterflies, clouds, pairs of faces. . . .

  I sat upright with a small start, wondering what had broken my reverie.

  The silence, it was. Bances had stopped reading.

  I was about to lean forward and whisper something to Gilva when Bances began the Consignment. I was startled to discover that I recalled all of the appropriate responses.

  As the chanting swelled and focused, I saw Mandor get to his feet, and Dara, and Tubble. They moved forward, joining Bances about the casket—Dara and Mandor at its foot, Tubble and Bances at its head. Service assistants rose from their section and began snuffing candles, until only the large one, at the Rim, behind Bances, still flickered. At this point we all stood.

  The ever-eerie light of flame mosaics, worked into the walls at either hand, granted additional illumination to the extent that I could detect the movement below when the chanting ceased.

  The four figures stooped slightly, presumably taking hold of the casket’s handles. They straightened then and moved toward the Rim. An assistant advanced and stood beside the candle just as they passed it, ready to snuff the final flame as Swayvill’s remains were consigned to Chaos.

  A half dozen paces remained. . . . Three. Two. . . . Bances and Tubble knelt at the verge, positioning the casket within a groove in the stone floor, Bances intoning a final bit of ritual the while, Dara and Mandor remaining standing.

  The prayer finished, I heard a curse. Mandor seemed jerked forward. Dara stumbled away to the side. I heard a clank as the casket hit the floor. The assistant’s hand had already been moving, and the candle went out at that moment. There followed a skidding sound as the casket moved forward, more curses, a shadowy figure retreating from the Rim. . . .

  Then came a wail. A bulky outline fell and was gone. The wail diminished, diminished, diminished. . . .

  I raised my left fist, caused the spikard to create a globe of white light as a bubble pipe does a bubble. It was about three feet in diameter when I released it to drift overhead. Suddenly, the place was filled with babbling. Others of sorcerous background having exercised their favorite illumination spells at about the same time I had, the temple was now over-illuminated from dozens of point-sources.

  Squinting, I saw Bances, Mandor, and Dara in converse near the Rim. Tubble and the remains of Swayvill were no longer with us.

  My fellow mourners were already moving. I did, too, realizing that my time here was now extremely limited. I stepped down over the empty row, moved to the right, touched Gilva’s still humanized shoulder. “Merlin!” she said, turning quickly. “Tubble—went over—didn’t he?”

  “Sure looked that way,” I said.

  “What will happen now?”

  “I’ve got to leave,” I said, “fast!”

  “Why?”

  “Somebody’s going to start thinking about the succession in a few moments, and I’m going to be smothered with protection,” I told her. “I can’t have that, not just now.”

  “Why not?”

  “No time to go into that. But I’d wanted to talk to you. May I borrow you now?”

  There were milling bodies all about us.

  “Of course—sir,” she said, apparently having just thought about the succession.

  “Cut that out,” I said, spikard spiraling the energies that caught us and took us away.

  I brought us to the forest of metal trees, and Gilva kept hold of my arm and looked about her.

  “Lord, what is this place?” she asked.

  “I’d rather not say,” I replied, “for reasons that will become apparent in a moment. I only had one question for you the last time I spoke with you. But now I have two, and this place figures in one of them, in a way, besides being fairly deserted most of the time.”

  “Ask,” she said, moving to face me. “I’ll try to help. If it’s important, though, I may not be the best person—”

  “Yes, it’s important. But I haven’t time to make an appointment with Belissa. It concerns my father, Corwin.”

  “Yes?”

  “It was he who slew Borel of Hendrake in the war at Patternfall.”

  “So I understand,” she said.

  “After the war, he joined the royal party that came here to the Courts to work out the Treaty.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I know that.”

  “He disappeared shortly thereafter, and no one seemed to know where he’d gotten off to. For a time, I thought he might be dead. Later, however, I received indications that he was not, but rather was imprisoned somewhere. Can you tell me anything about this?”

  She tu
rned away suddenly.

  “I am offended,” she said, “by what I believe you imply.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, “but I had to ask.”

  “Ours is an honorable House,” she said. “We accept the fortunes of war. When the fighting is ended, we put it all behind us.”

  “I apologize,” I said. “We’re even related, you know, on my mother’s side.”

  “Yes, I know,” she said, turning away. “Will that be all, Prince Merlin?”

  “Yes,” I answered. “Where shall I send you?”

  She was silent for a moment, then, “You said there were two questions,” she stated.

  “Forget it. I changed my mind about the second one.”

  She turned back.

  “Why? Why should I forget it? Because I maintain my family’s honor?”

  “No, because I believe you.”

  “And?”

  “I’ll trouble someone else for an opinion.”

  “Do you mean it’s dangerous, and you’ve decided against asking me?”

  “I don’t understand it, so it could be dangerous.”

  “Do you want to offend me again?”

  “Heaven forbid!”

  “Ask me your question.”

  “I’ll have to show you.”

  “Do it.”

  “Even if it means climbing a tree?”

  “Whatever it means.”

  “Follow me.”

  So I led her to the tree and climbed it, an enormously simple feat in my present form. She was right behind me.

  “There’s a way up here,” I said. “I’m about to let it take me. Give me a few seconds to move aside.”

  I moved a little farther upward and was transported. Stepping aside, I surveyed the chapel quickly. Nothing seemed changed.

  Then Gilva was at my side. I heard a sharp intake of breath.

  “Oh, my! ” she said.

  “I know what I’m looking at,” I said, “but I don’t know what I’m seeing, if you follow me.”

  “It is a shrine,” she said, “dedicated to the spirit of a member of the royal house of Amber.”

  “Yes, it’s my father Corwin,” I agreed. “That’s what I’m looking at. But what am I seeing? Why should there be such a thing here in the Courts, anyway?”