“Of course. But it should not matter to you.”
“Why not?”
“The ring you wear is not the one of which I speak.”
“I do not understand.”
“But you will. Never fear.”
“Who are you, sir?”
“My name is Delwin, and we may never actually meet—unless certain ancient powers come loose.”
He raised his hand, and I saw that he, too, wore a spikard. He moved it toward me.
“Touch your ring to mine,” he commanded. “Then it can be ordered to bring you to me.”
I raised mine and moved it toward the glass. At the moment they seemed to touch, there was a flash of light and Delwin was gone.
I let my arm fall. I walked on. On an impulse, I stopped before a chest and opened its drawer.
I stared. There was no way to one-up this place, it seemed. The drawer contained a miniature, scaled-down representation of my father’s chapel—tiny colored tiles, diminutive burning tapers, even a doll-sized Grayswandir upon the altar.
“The answer lies before you, dear friend,” came a throaty voice I knew yet did not know.
I raised my gaze to a lavender-bordered mirror I had not realized hung above the chest. The lady within had long, coal-black hair and eyes so dark I could not tell where the pupils left off and the irises began. Her complexion was very pale, emphasized perhaps by her pink eye shadow and lip coloring. Those eyes. . . . “Rhanda!” I said.
“You remember! You do remember me!”
“ . . . And the days of our bonedance games,” I said.
“Grown and lovely. I thought of you but recently.”
“And I felt the touch of your regard as I slept, my Merlin. I am sorry we parted so, but my parents—”
“I understand,” I said. “They thought me demon or vampire.”
“Yes.” She extended her pale hand through the mirror, took hold of my own, drew it toward her. Within the looking glass, she pressed it to her lips. They were cold. “They would rather I cultivated the acquaintance of the sons and daughters of men and women, than of our own kind.”
When she smiled I beheld her fangs. They had not been apparent in her childhood.
“Gods! You look human!” she said. “Come visit me in Wildwood one day!”
Impulsively, I leaned forward. Our lips met within the mirror. Whatever she was, we had been friends.
“The answer,” she repeated, “lies before you. Come see me!”
The mirror turned red and she was gone. The chapel stood unchanged within the drawer. I closed it and turned away.
Walking. Mirrors to the left. Mirrors to the right. Only myself within them.
Then: “Well, well, nephew. Confused?”
“As usual.”
“Can’t say as I blame you.”
His eyes were mocking and wise, his hair red as his sister Fiona’s or his late brother Brand’s. Or Luke’s, for that matter.
“Bleys,” I said, “what the hell is going on?”
“I’ve the rest of Delwin’s message,” he said, reaching into his pocket and extending his hand. “Here.”
I reached into the mirror and accepted it. It was yet another spikard, like the one I wore.
“It is the one of which Delwin spoke,” he said. “You must never wear it.”
I studied it for several moments.
“What am I to do with it?” I asked.
“Put it in your pocket. A use may suggest itself at some point.”
“How did you come by it?”
“I switched it after Mandor left it, for the one you wear now.”
“How many are there, anyway?”
“Nine,” he replied.
“I suppose you know all about them.”
“More than most.”
“That wouldn’t be hard. I don’t suppose you know where my father is?”
“No. But you do. Your lady friend with the sanguinary tastes told you.”
“Riddles,” I said.
“Always preferable to no answer at all,” he responded.
Then he was gone and I walked again. After a while, this was gone, too.
Drifting. Black. Good. So good. . . .
A bit of light found its way through my eyelashes. I shut it out again. But the thunder rolled, and after a time the light leaked in once again.
Dark lines in brown, great horny ridges, ferny forests. . . .
A little later the faculty that evaluates perceptions awoke and pointed out that I was lying on my side staring at the cracked earth between a pair of roots from the tree, clumps of grass dotted here and there across the prospect.
. . . And I continued to stare, and there was a sudden brightness as of a lightning flash followed almost immediately by a crack of thunder. The earth seemed to shudder with it. I heard the pattering of drops upon the leaves of a tree, the hood of a car. I continued to stare at the largest crack that traversed the valley of my regard.
. . . And I realized that I knew.
It was the numb knowledge of awakening. The sources of emotion still dozed. In the distance, I could hear familiar voices in soft converse. I could also hear the sounds of cutlery against china. My stomach would awaken in a bit, I knew, and I would join them. For now, it was so very pleasant to lie here wrapped in my cloak, hearing the gentle rain and knowing. . . .
I returned to my micro-world and its dark canyon. . . . The ground shook again, this time without benefit of lightning or thunder. And it kept on shaking. This irritated me, for it disturbed my friends and relatives, causing them to raise their voices in something like alarm. Also, it stirred a dormant California reflex at a time when I just wanted to loll and savor my fresh-acquired knowledge.
“Merlin, are you awake?”
“Yes,” I said, sitting up suddenly, giving my eyes a quick rub, and running my hands through my hair.
It was the ghost of my father that knelt beside me, having just shaken my shoulder. “We seem to have a problem,” he said, “with rather extreme ramifications.”
Jurt, standing behind him, nodded several times. The ground shook once again, twigs and leaves fell about us, pebbles bounced, dust rose, the fogs were agitated. I heard a dish break in the vicinity of the heavy red and white cloth about which Luke, Dalt, Coral, and Nayda sat eating.
I untangled my cloak and rose to my feet, realizing then that someone had removed my boots while I slept. I drew them back on. There came another tremor, and I leaned against the tree for support.
“This is the problem?” I said. “Or is something bigger about to eat it?”
He gave me a puzzled look. Then, “Back when I drew the Pattern,” he said, “I’d no way of knowing that this area was faulted, or that something like this would one day occur. If these shocks should crack the Pattern, we’ve had it—in more ways than one. As I understand it, that spikard you wear can draw upon enormous sources of energy. Is there some way you could use it to defuse this thing?”
“I don’t know,” I told him. “I never tried anything like it.”
“Find out fast, okay?” he said.
But I was already spinning my mind about the circle of tines, touching each one to life. Then I seized upon the one possessed of the most juice, drew hard upon it, filled myself, body and mind, with its energy. Ignition completed and engine idling, with me in the driver’s seat, I shifted into gear then, extending a line of force from the spikard down into the ground.
I reached for a long while, seeking a conversion metaphor to the subjective for anything I might discover.
. . . Wading out from the beach into the oceanwaves tickling my stomach, my chest—feeling with my toes the rocks, the strands of sea-weed. . . . Sometimes a rock would turn, slip, bump against another, slide. . . .
I couldn’t see to the bottom with my eyes. But I saw the rocks, the wrack, in their disposition and movement, just the same, beheld them as clearly as if the bottom were fully illuminated.
Feeling, feeling my way now, do
wn through the strata, single toe soft as a flashlight’s beam running along rocky surfaces, testing the pressures of one upon another, isostatic kisses of mountains beneath the earth, orogenic erogenies of slow movement, flesh caressing mineral in the darkest of secret places
Slip! The rock slides off. My body follows. . . .
I dive for it, following the sliding passage. I race ahead, pouring forth heat, cracking rock, splintering new pathways, outward, outward. . . . It was coming this way. I broke through a wall of stone, another. Another. I was not certain this was the way to divert it, but it was the only one I knew to try. Go that way! Damn it! That way! I accessed two more channels, a third, a fourth—
There was a slight vibration within the ground. I opened another channel. Within my metaphor the rocks grew stable beneath the waters. Shortly thereafter, the ground ceased its vibration.
I returned to the place where I had first felt the slide begin, stable now, yet still stressed. Feel it, feel it carefully. Describe a vector. Follow. Follow it to the point of original pressure. But no. This point is but a confluence of vectors. Trace them.
Yet again. More junctions. Trace them. Access more channels. The entire pressure structure, intricate as a nervous system, must be described. I must hold its tree within my mind.
Another layer. It may not be possible. I may be courting infinity in my topographic branchings. Freeze frame. Simplify the problem. Ignore everything beyond the tertiary. Trace to the next junction. There are some loops. Good. And a plate is now involved. Better.
Try another jump. No good. Too big a picture to contain. Discard tertiaries.
Yes.
Thus general lines sketched. Vectors of transmission simply drawn—back to plate, almost. Pressure exerted less than full pressure extended. Why? Additional point of input along second vector, redirecting shear forces toward this valley.
“Merlin? Are you all right?”
“Let me be,” I hear my voice respond.
Extend then, input source, into, feeling, transmission signature. . . .
Is this a Logrus that I see before me?
I opened three more channels, focused on the area, began heating it.
Soon rocks were cracking, but a little later they melted. My newly created magma flowed down fault lines. A hollowed-out area occurred at the point whence the precipitating force had originated.
Back.
I withdrew my probes, shut down the spikard.
“What did you do?” he asked me.
“I found the place where the Logrus was messing with underground stresses,” I said, “and I removed the place. There’s a small grotto there now. If it collapses it may ease the pressure even more.”
“So you’ve stabilized it?”
“At least for now. I don’t know the limits of the Logrus, but it’s going to have to figure a new route to reach this place. Then it’s going to have to test it out. And if it’s doing a lot of Pattern watching just now, that may slow it.”
“So you’ve bought some time,” he said. “Of course, the Pattern may move against us next.”
“It could,” I said. “I’ve brought everyone here because I thought they’d be safe from both Powers.”
“Apparently you made the payoff worth the risk.”
“Okay,” I said. “I guess it’s time to give them some other things to worry about.”
“Such as?”
I looked at him, Pattern ghost of my father, guardian of this place.
“I know where your flesh-and-blood counterpart is,” I said, “and I’m about to set him free.”
There came a flash of lightning. A sudden gust of wind lofted the fallen leaves, stirred the fogs.
“I must accompany you,” he said.
“Why?
“I’ve a personal interest in him, of course.”
“All right.”
Thunder crashed about us, and the fogs were torn apart by a fresh onslaught of wind.
Jurt came up to us then.
“I think it’s begun,” he said.
“What?” I asked.
“The duel of Powers,” he said. “For a long time the Pattern had an edge. But when Luke damaged it and you snatched away the bride of the Jewel, it must have weakened it more, relative to the Logrus, than it’s been in ages. So the Logrus decided to attack, pausing only for a quick attempt to damage this Pattern.”
“Unless the Logrus was just testing us,” I said, “and this is simply a storm.”
A light rain had begun while he was speaking.
“I came here because I thought it was the one place neither of them would touch in the event of a contest,” he went on. “I’d assumed neither would care to divert energy from its own attack or defense for a swipe in this direction.”
“That reasoning may still hold,” I said.
“Just for once I’d like to be on the winning side,” he stated. “I’m not sure I care about right or wrong. They’re very arguable quantities. I’d just like to be in with the guys who win for a change. What do you think, Merle? What are you going to do?”
“Corwin here and I are going to head for the Courts, and we’re going to free my father,” I said. “Then we’re going to resolve whatever needs resolving and live happily ever after. You know how it goes.”
He shook his head.
“I can never decide whether you’re a fool or whether your confidence is warranted. Every time I decided you were a fool, though, it cost me.” He looked up at the dark sky, wiped rain from his brow. “I’m really torn,” he said, “but you could still be King of Chaos.”
“No,” I said.
“ . . . And you enjoy some special relationship with the Powers.”
“If I do, I don’t understand it myself.”
“No matter,” he said. “I’m still with you.” I crossed to the others, hugged Coral.
“I must return to the Courts,” I said. “Guard the Pattern. We’ll be back.”
The sky was illuminated by three brilliant flashes. The wind shook the tree.
I turned away and created a door in the middle of the air. Corwin’s ghost and I stepped through it.
Chapter 12
Thus did I return to the Courts of Chaos, coming through into Sawall’s space-warped sculpture garden.
“Where are we?” my ghost-father asked.
“A museum of sorts,” I replied, “in the house of my stepfather. I chose it because the lighting is tricky and there are many places to hide.”
He studied some of the pieces, as well as their disposition upon the walls and ceiling.
“This would be a hell of a place to fight a skirmish,” he observed.
“I suppose it would.”
“You grew up hereabout, huh?”
“Yes.”
“What was it like?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I don’t have anything to compare it to. I had some good times, alone, and with friends—and a few bad times. All a part of being a kid.”
“This place . . . ?”
“The Ways of Sawall. I wish I had time to show you the whole thing, take you through all of the ways.”
“One day, perhaps.”
“Yes.”
I began walking, hoping for the Ghostwheel or Kergma to appear. Neither did, however.
We finally passed into a corridor that took us to a hall of tapestries, whence there was a way to a room that I desired—for the room let upon the hallway that passed the gallery of metal trees. Before we could depart, however, I heard voices from that hallway. So we waited in the room—which contained the skeleton of a Jabberwock painted in orange, blue, and yellow, Early Psychedelic—as the speakers approached. One of them I recognized immediately as my brother Mandor; the other I could not identify by voice alone, but managing a glimpse as they passed, I saw it to be Lord Bances of Amblerash, High Priest of the Serpent Which Manifests the Logrus (to cite a full title just once). In a badly plotted story they’d have paused outside the doorway, and I’d have overheard
a conversation telling me everything I needed to know about anything.
They slowed as they passed.
“That’s the way it will be then?” Bances said.
“Yes,” Mandor replied. “Soon.”
And they were by, and I couldn’t make out another word. I listened to their receding footsteps till they were gone. Then I waited a little longer. I would have sworn I heard a small voice saying, “Follow. Follow.”
“Hear anything just then?” I whispered.
“Nope.”
So we stepped out into the hallway and turned right, moving in the opposite direction from that which Mandor and Bances had taken. As we did, I felt a sensation of heat at a point somewhat below my left hip. .
“You think he is somewhere near here?” the Corwin ghost asked. “Prisoner to Dara?”
“Yes and no,” I said. “Ow!”
It felt like a hot coal pressed against my upper leg. I jammed my hand into my pocket as I slid into the nearest display niche, which I shared with a mummified lady in an amber casket.
Even as my hand closed about it, I knew what it was, raising all manner of philosophical speculations I had neither time nor desire to address at the moment and so treated in the time-honored fashion of dealing with such things: I shelved them.
It was a spikard that I withdrew, that lay warmly upon my paten. Almost immediately a small spark leapt between it and the one that I wore upon my finger.
There followed a wordless communication, a sequence of images, ideas, feelings, urging me to find Mandor and place myself in his hands for the preparations for my crowning as the next King of the Courts. I could see why Bleys had told me not to put the thing on. Unmediated by my own spikard, its injunctions would probably have been overpowering. I used mine to shut it off, to build a tiny insulating wall about it.
“You have two of the damned things!” Corwin’s ghost observed.
I nodded.
“Know anything about them that I don’t?” I asked. “That would include almost anything.”
He shook his head.
“Only that they were said to be very early power objects, from the days when the universe was still a murky place and the Shadow realms less clearly defined. When the time came, their wielders slept or dissolved or whatever such figures do, and the spikards were withdrawn or stashed or transformed, or whatever becomes of such things when the story’s over. There are many versions, of course. There always are. But bringing two of them to the Courts could conceivably draw a lot of attention to yourself, not to mention adding to the general power of Chaos just by virtue of their presence at this pole of existence.”
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