Zelazny, Roger - Amber - 07 - Blood of Amber

by Blood of Amber [lit]

  She smiled. "I always carry them in this shadow. They sometimes come in handy. But okay, I'll go wait."

  She kissed me lightly on the cheek and turned away.

  "And try to get hold of Fiona," I said, "if I don't show. Tell her the whole story, too. She might have a different angle on this."

  She nodded and departed. I waited until I heard the door close, then focused my attention fully upon the bright rectangle. Its outline seemed fairly uniform, with only a few slightly thicker, brighter areas and a few finer, dimmer ones. I traced the lines slowly with the palm of my right hand at a height of about an inch above the wall's surface. I felt a small prickling, a heatlike sensation as I did this. Predictably, it was greater above the brighter areas. I took this as an indication that the seal was slightly less perfect in these spots. Very well. I would soon discover whether the thing could be forced, and these would be my points of attack.

  I twisted my hands deeper into the Logrus until I wore the limbs I desired as fine-fingered gauntlets, stronger than metals, more sensitive than tongues in the places of their power. I moved my right hand to the point nearest it, on a level with my hip. I felt the pulse of an old spell when I touched that spot of greater brightness. I narrowed my extension as I pushed, making it finer and finer until it slipped through. The pulsing then became a steady thing. I repeated the exercise on a higher area to my left.

  I stood there, feeling the force that had sealed it, my fine filament extensions throbbing within its matrix. I tried moving them, first upward, then down. The right one slid a little farther than the left, in both directions, before a tightness and resistance halted it. I summoned more force from the body of the Logrus, which swam specterlike within and before me, and I poured this energy into the gauntlets, the pattern of the Logrus changing form again as I did so. When I tried once more to move it, the right one slid downward for perhaps a foot before the throbbing trapped it; when I pushed it upward it rose nearly to the top. I tried again on the left. It moved all the way to the top, but it only passed perhaps six inches below the starting point when I drew it downward.

  I breathed deeply and felt myself beginning to perspire. I pumped more power into the gauntlets and forced their extensions farther downward. The resistance was even greater there, and the throbbing passed up my arms and into the very center of my being. I paused and rested, then raised the force to an even higher level of intensity. The Logrus writhed again and I pushed both hands all the way to the floor, then knelt there panting before I began working my way along the bottom. The portal was obviously meant never to be opened again. There was no artistry for this, only brute force.

  When my forces met in the middle, I withdrew and regarded the work. To the right, to the left and along the bottom, the fine red lines had now become broad fiery ribbons. I could feel their pulsation across the distance that separated us.

  I stood and raised my arms. I began to work along the top, starting at the corners, moving inward. It was easier than it had been earlier. The forces from the opened areas seemed to add a certain pressure, and my hands just flowed to the middle. When they met I seemed to hear something like a soft sighing sound. I dropped them and considered my work. The entire outline flared now. But more than that. It seemed almost as if the bright line were flowing, around and around. . . .

  I stood there for several minutes, regrouping, relaxing, settling. Working up my nerve. All I knew was that the door would lead to a different shadow. That could mean anything. When I opened it something could, I suppose, leap out and attack me. But then, it had been sealed for some time. More probably any trap would be of a different sort. Most likely, I would open it and nothing would happen. I would then have a choice of merely looking around from where I stood or entering. And there probably wouldn't be very much to see, just standing there, looking. . . .

  So I extended my Logus members once again, taking hold of the door at either side, and I pushed. A yielding occurred on the side to my right, so I released my hold on the left. I continued my pressure on the right and the whole thing suddenly swung inward and away. . . .

  I was looking down a pearly tunnel, which appeared to widen after a few paces. Beyond that was a ripple effect, as of distant heat patterns above the road on a hot summer day. Patches of redness and indeterminate dark shapes swam within it. I waited for perhaps half a minute, but nothing approached.

  I prepared Frakir for trouble. I maintained my Logrus connection. I advanced, extending probes before me. I passed within.

  A sudden change in the pressure gradient at my back caused me to cast a quick glance in that direction. The doorway had closed and dwindled, now appearing to me in the distance as a tiny red cube. My several steps could, of course, have borne me a great distance also, should the rules of this space so operate.

  I continued, and a hot wind flowed toward me, engulfed me, stayed with me. The sides of my passageway receded, the prospect before me continued to shimmer and dance, and my pace became more labored, as if I were suddenly walking uphill. I heard something like a grunt from beyond the place where my vision misbehaved, and my left Logrus probe encountered something that it jolted slightly. Frakir began to throb simultaneous with my sensing an aura of menace through the probe. I sighed. I hadn't expected this was going to be easy. If I'd been running the show I wouldn't have let things go with just sealing the door.

  "All right, asshole! Hold it right there!" a voice boomed from ahead. I continued to trudge forward.

  It came again. "I said halt!"

  Things began to swim into place as I advanced, and suddenly there were rough walls to my right and left and a roof overhead, narrowing, converging

  A huge rotund figure barred my way, looking like a purple Buddha with bat ears. Details resolved themselves as I drew nearer: protruding fangs, yellow eyes that seemed to be lidless, long red claws on its great hands and feet. It was seated in the middle of the tunnel and made no effort to rise. It wore no clothing, but its great swollen belly rested upon its knees, concealing its sex. Its voice had been gruffly masculine, however, and its odor generically foul.

  "Hi," I said. "Nice day, wasn't it?"

  It growled and the temperature seemed to rise slightly. Frakir had grown frantic and I calmed her mentally.

  The creature leaned forward and with one bright nail inscribed a smoking line in the stone of the floor. I halted before it.

  "Cross that line, sorcerer, and you've had it," it said.

  "Why?" I asked.

  "Because I said so."

  "If you're collecting tolls," I suggested, "name the price."

  It shook its head. "You can't buy your way past me."

  "Uh-what makes you think I'm a sorcerer?"

  It opened the dingy cavern of its face, displaying even more lurking teeth than I'd suspected, and it did something like the rattling of a tin sheet way down deep in back.

  "I felt that little probe of yours," it said. "It's a sorcerer's trick. Besides, nobody but a sorcerer could have gotten to the place where you're standing."

  "You do not seem to possess a great deal of respect for the profession."

  "I eat sorcerers," it told me.

  I made a face, thinking back over some of the old farts I've known in the business.

  "To each, his, her or its own, I guess," I told it. "So what's the deal? A passage is no good unless you can get through it. How do I get by here?"

  "You don't."

  "Not even if I answer a riddle?"

  "That won't do it for me," it said. But a small gleam came into its eye. "Just for the hell of it, though, what's green and red and goes round and round and round?" it asked.

  "You know the sphinx!"

  "Shit!" it said. "You've heard it."

  I shrugged. "I get around."

  "Not here you don't."

  I studied it. It had to have some special defense against magical attacks if it were set to stop sorcerers. As for physical defense it was fairly imposing. I wondered how fast it was.
Could I just dive past and start running? I decided that I did not wish to experiment along that line.

  "I really do have to get through," I tried. "It's an emergency."

  "Tough."

  "Look, what do you get out of this, anyway? It seems like a pretty crummy job, sitting here in the middle of a tunnel."

  "I love my work. I was created for it."

  "How come you let the sphinx come and go?"

  "Magical beings don't count."

  "Hm."

  "And don't try to tell me you're really a magical being, and then pull some sorcerous illusion. I can see right through that stuff."

  "I believe you. What's your name, anyhow?"

  It snorted. "You can call me Scrof, for conversational purposes. Yourself?"

  "Call me Corey."

  "Okay, Corey. I don't mind sitting here bullshitting with you, because that's covered by the rules. It's allowed. You've got three choices and one of them would be real stupid. You can turn around and go back the way you came and be none the worse for wear. You can also camp right where you are for as long as you like and I won't lift a finger so long as you behave. The dumb thing to do would be to cross this line I've drawn. Then I'd terminate you. This is the Threshold and I am the Dweller on it. I don't let anybody get by."

  "I appreciate your making it clear."

  "It's part of the job. So what'll it be?"

  I raised my hands and the lines of force twisted like knives at each fingertip. Frakir dangled from my wrist and began to swing in an elaborate pattern.

  Scrof smiled. "I not only eat sorcerers, I eat their magic, too. Only a being torn from the primal Chaos can make that claim. So come ahead, if you think you can face that."

  "Chaos, eh? Torn from the primal Chaos?"

  "Yep. There's not much can stand against it."

  "Except maybe a Lord of Chaos," I replied, as I shifted my awareness to various points within my body. Rough work. The faster you do it the more painful it is.

  Again, the rattling of the tin sheet.

  "You know what the odds arE against a Chaos Lord coming this far to go two out of three with a Dweller?" Scrof said.

  My arms began to lengthen and I felt my shirt tear across my back as I leaned forward. The bones in my face shifted about and my chest expanded and expanded. . . .

  "One out of one should be enough," I replied, when the transformation was complete.

  "Shit," Scrof said as I crossed the line.

  3

  I stood just within the mouth of the cave for some time, my left shoulder hinting and my right leg sore also. If I could get the pain under control before I retransformed myself there was a chance that much of it would fade during the anatomical reshuffling. The process itself would probably leave me pretty tired, however. It takes a lot of energy, and switching twice this close together could be somewhat prostrating, following my bout with the Dweller. So I rested within the cave into which the pearly tunnel had eventually debouched, and I regarded the prospect before me.

  Far down and to my left was a bright blue and very troubled body of water. White-crested waves expired in kamikaze attacks on the gray rocks of the shore; a strong wind scattered their spray and a piece of rainbow hung within the mist.

  Before me and below me was a pocked, cracked and steaming land which trembled periodically, as it swept for well over a mile toward the high dark walls of an amazingly huge and complex structure, which I immediately christened Gormenghast. It was a hodgepodge of architectural styles, bigger even than the palace at Amber and somber as all hell. Also, it was under attack.

  There were quite a few troops in the field before the walls, most of them in a distant nonscorched area of more normal terrain and some vegetation, though the grasses were well trampled and many trees shattered. The besiegers were equipped with scaling ladders and a battering ram; but the ram was idle at the moment and the ladders were on the ground. What appeared to have been an entire village of outbuildings smoldered darkly at the wall's base. Numerous sprawled figures were, I assumed, casualties.

  Moving my gaze even farther to the right, I encountered an area of brilliant whiteness beyond that great citadel. It looked to be the projecting edge of a massive glacier, and gusts of snow or ice crystals were whipped about it in a fashion similar to the sea mists far to my left.

  The wind seemed a constant traveler through these parts. I heard it cry out high above me. When I finally stepped outside to look upward, I found that I was only about halfway up a massive stony hillside- or low mountainside, depending on how one regards such matters-and the whining note of the wind came down even more loudly from those broken heights. There was also a thump at my back, and when I turned I could no longer locate the cave mouth. My journey along the route from the fiery door had been completed once I exited the cave, and its spell had apparently clamped down and closed the way immediately. I supposed that I could locate the outline upon the steep wall if I wanted to, but at the moment I had no such desire. I made a little pile of stones before it, and then I looked about again, studying details.

  A narrow trail curved off to my right and back among some standing stones. I headed in that direction. I smelled smoke. Whether it was from the battle site or the area of vullcanism below I could not tell. The sky was a patchwork of cloud and light above me. When I halted between two of the stones and fumed to regard the scene below once again, I saw that the attackers had formed themselves into new groups and that the ladders were being home toward the walls. I also saw what looked like a tornado rise on the far side of the citadel and begin a slow counterclockwise movement about the walls. If it continued on its route it would eventually reach the attackers. Neat trick. Fortunately it was their problem and not mine.

  I worked my way back into a stony declivity and settled myself upon a low ledge. I began the troublesome shapeshifting work, which I paced to take me half an hour or so. Changing from something nominally human to something rare and strange-perhaps monstrous to some, perhaps frightening-and then back again is a concept some may find repugnant. They shouldn't. We all of us do it every day in many different ways, don't we?

  When the transformation was completed I lay back, breathing deeply, and listened to the wind. I was sheltered from its force by the stones and only its song came down to me. I felt vibrations from distant tremors of the earth and chose to take them as a gentle massage, soothing. . . . My clothes were in tatters, and for the moment I was too tired to summon a fresh outfit. My shoulder seemed to have lost its pain, and there was only the slightest twinge in my leg, fading, fading. . . .I closed my eyes for a few moments.

  Okay, I'd made it through, and I'd a strong feeling that the answer to the matter of Julia's killer lay in the besieged citadel below. Offhand, I didn't see any easy way into the place at the moment, to make inquiry. But that was not the only way I might proceed. I decided to wait where I was, resting, until it grew dark-that is, if things here proceeded in a normal dark-light fashion. Then I'd slip downstairs, kidnap one of the besiegers and question him. Yes. And if it didn't get dark? Then I'd think of something else. Right now, though, just drifting felt best. . . .

  For how long I dozed, I was uncertain. What roused me was the clicking of pebbles, from somewhere off to the right. I was instantly alert, though I didn't stir. There was no effort at stealth, and the pattern of approaching sounds-mainly slapping footfalls, as of someone wearing loose sandals-convinced me that only a single individual was moving in this direction. I tensed and relaxed my muscles and drew a few deep breaths.

  A very hairy man emerged from between two of the stones to my right. He was about five and a half feet in height, very dirty, and he wore a dark animal skin about his loins; also, he had on a pair of sandals. He stared at me for several seconds before displaying the yellow irregularities of his smile.

  "Hello. Are you injured?" he asked, in a debased form of Thari that I did not recall ever having heard before.

  I stretched to make sure and then stood. "No,
" I replied. "Why do you ask that?"

  The smile persisted. "I thought maybe you'd had enough of the fighting below and decided to call it quits."

  "Oh, I see. No, it's not exactly like that. . . ."

  He nodded and stepped forward. "Dave's my name. What's yours?" "Merle," I said, clasping his grimy hand.

  "Not to worry, Merle," he told me. "I wouldn't turn in anybody who decided to take a walk from a war, unless maybe there was a reward and there ain't on this one. Did it myself years ago and never regretted it.

  Mine was goin' the same way this one seems to be goin', and I had sense enough to get out. No army's ever taken that place down there, and I don't think one ever will."

  "What place is it?"

  He cocked his head and squinted, then shrugged. "Keep of the Four Worlds," he said. "Didn't the recruiter tell you anything?"

  I sighed. "Nope," I said.

  "Wouldn't have any smokin' stuff on you, would you?"

  "No," I answered, having used alI my pipe tobacco back in the crystal cave. "Sorry."

  I moved past him to a point where I could Iook downward from between the stones. I wanted another Look at the Keep of the Four Worlds. After all, it was the answer to a riddle as well as the subject of numerous cryptic references in Melman's diary. Fresh bodies were scattered all over before its walls, as if cast about by the whirlwind, which was now circling back toward the point whence it had risen. But a small party of besiegers had apparently made it to the top of the wall despite this. And a fresh party had formed below and was headed for the ladders. One of its members bore a banner I could not place, but which seemed vaguely familiarblack and green, with what might be a couple of heraldic beasts having a go at each other. Two ladders were still in place, and I could see some tierce fighting going on behind the battlements.

  "Some of the attackers seem to have gotten in," I said.

  Dave hurried up beside me and stared. I immediately moved upwind.

  "You're right;' he acknowledged. "Now, that's a first. If they can get that damn gate open and let the others in they might even have a chance. Never thought I'd live to see it."