Roger Zelazny – The Amber Chronicles Short Stories

by The Chronicles of Amber Short Stories; Prologue to Trumps of Doom (html)

  We came into a twisted, twilit place of towers and great residences, none of them familiar to me. The air bore clusters of wavy, crooked lines here and there. She approached one, inserted her free hand, and stepped through it, taking me with her. We emerged on a crooked street lined with twisted buildings.

  "Thank you," I said then, "for the warning and for the chance to strike."

  She squeezed my hand.

  "It is not just for you, but for my family, also, that I do it."

  "I know that," I said.

  "I would not be doing this if I did not believe that you have a chance against the thing. If I did not, I would simply have warned you and told you what I know. But I also remember one day...back in Wildwood...when you promised to be my champion. You seemed a real hero to me then."

  I smiled as I recalled that gloomy day. We had been reading tales of chivalry in the mausoleum. In a fit of nobility I led her outside as the thunder rolled, and I stood among the grave markers of unknown mortals—Dennis Colt, Remo Williams, John Gaunt—and swore to be her champion if ever she needed one. She had kissed me then, and I had hoped for some immediate evil circumstance against which to pit myself on her behalf. But none occurred.

  We moved ahead, and she counted doors, halting at the seventh. "That one," she said, "leads through the curves to the place behind the locked mirror in your room."

  I released her hand and moved past her.

  "All right," I said, "time to go a-guiseling," and I advanced. The guisel saved me the trouble of testing the curves by emerging before I got there.

  Ten or 12 feet in length, it was, and eyeless as near as I could tell, with rapid-beating cilia all over what I took to be its head. It was very pink, with a long, green stripe passing about its body in one direction, and a blue one in the other. It raised its cilia-end three or four feet above the ground and swayed. It made a squeaking sound. It turned in my direction.

  Underneath it had a large, angled mouth like that of a shark; it opened and closed it several times and I saw many teeth. A green, venomous-seeming liquid dripped from that orifice to steam upon the ground.

  I waited for it to come to me, and it did. I studied the way it moved—quickly, as it turned out—on the horde of small legs. I held my blade before me in an en garde position as I awaited its attack. I reviewed my spells.

  It came on, and I hit it with my Runaway Buick and my Blazing Outhouse spells. In each instance, it stopped dead and waited for the spell to run its course. The air grew frigid and steamed about its mouth and midsection. It was as if it were digesting the magic and rushing it down entropy lane.

  When the steaming stopped, it advanced again and I hit it with my Demented Power Tools spell. Again, it halted, remained motionless, and steamed. This time I rushed forward and struck it a great blow with my blade. It rang like a bell, but nothing else happened, and I drew back as it stirred.

  "It seems to eat my spells and excrete refrigeration," I said.

  "This has been noted by others," Rhanda responded.

  Even as we spoke, it torqued its body, moving that awful mouth to the top, and it lunged at me. I thrust my blade down its throat as its long legs clawed at or caught hold of me. I was driven over backwards as it closed its mouth, and I heard a shattering sound. I was left holding only a hilt. It had bitten off my blade. Frightened, I felt after my new power as the mouth opened again.

  The gates of the spikard were opened, and I struck the creature with a raw force from somewhere in Shadow. Again, the thing seemed frozen as the air about me grew chill. I tore myself away from it, bleeding from dozens of small wounds. I rolled away and rose to my feet, still lashing it with the spikard, holding it cold. I tried using the blade to dismember it, but all it did was eat the attack and remain a statue of pink ice.

  Reaching out through Shadow, I found myself another blade. With its tip, I traced a rectangle in the air, a bright circle at its center. I reached into it with my will and desire. After a moment, I felt contact.

  "Dad! I feel you but I can't see you!"

  "Ghostwheel," I said, "I am fighting for my life, and doubtless those of many others. Come to me if you can."

  "I am trying. But you have found your way into a strange space. I seem to be barred from entering there."

  "Damn!"

  "I agree. I have faced this problem before in my travels. It does not lend itself to ready resolution."

  The guisel began to move again. I tried to maintain the Trump contact but it was fading. "Father!" Ghostwheel cried as I lost hold. "Try—" Then he was gone. I backed away. I glanced at Rhanda. Dozens of other shroudlings now stood with her, all of them wearing black, white, or red garments. They began to sing a strange, dirgelike song, as if a dark soundtrack were required for our struggle. It did seem to slow the guisel, and it reminded me of something from long ago.

  I threw back my head and gave voice to that ululant cry I had heard once in a dream and never forgotten.

  My friend came.

  Kergma—the living equation—came sliding in from many angles at once.

  I watched and waited as he/she/it—I had never been certain—assembled itself. Kergma had been a childhood playmate, along with Glait and Gryll.

  Rhanda must have remembered the being who could go anywhere, for I heard her gasp. Kergma passed around and around her body in greeting, then came to me and did the same.

  "My friends! It has been so long since you called me to play! I have missed you!"

  The guisel dragged itself forward against the song of the shroudlings as if beginning to overcome its power. "This is not a game," I answered. "That beast will destroy us all unless we nail it first," I said.

  "Then I must solve it for us. Everything that lives is an equation, a complex quantum study. I told you that long ago."

  "Yes. Try. Please."

  I feared blasting the thing again with the spikard while Kergma worked on it, lest it interfere with his calculations. I kept my blade and spikard at ready as I continued to back away. The shroudlings retreated with me, slowly.

  "A deadly balance,"_ Kergma said at last. _"It has a wonderful life equation. Use your toy to stop it now."

  I froze it again with the spikard. The shroudling's song went on.

  At length Kergma said, "There is a weapon that can destroy it under the right circumstances. You must reach for it, however. It is a twisted blade you have wielded before. It hangs on the wall of a bar where once you drank with Luke."

  "The Vorpal Sword?" I said. "It can kill it?"

  "A piece at a time, under the proper circumstances."

  "You know these circumstances?"

  "I have solved for them."

  I clutched my weapon and struck the guisel again with a force from the spikard. It squeaked and grew still. Then I discarded the blade I held and reached—far, far out through Shadow. I was a long time in finding what I sought and I had a resistance to overcome, so I added the force of the spikard to my own and it came to me. Once again, I held the shining, twisted Vorpal Sword in my hands.

  I moved to strike at the guisel with it, but Kergma stopped me. So I hit it again with a lash of force from the spikard.

  "Not the way. Not the way."

  "What then?"

  "We require a Dyson variation on the mirror equation."

  "Show me."

  Walls of mirrors shot up on all sides about me, the guisel, and Kergma, but excluding Rhanda. We rose into the air and drifted toward the center of the sphere. Our reflections came at us from everywhere.

  "Now. But you must keep it from touching the walls."

  "Save your equation. I may want to do something with it by and by."

  I struck the dormant guisel with the Vorpal Sword. Again, it emitted a bell-like tone and remained quiescent.

  "No," Kergma said. "Let it thaw."

  So I waited until it began to stir, meaning that it would be able to attack me soon. Nothing is ever easy. From outside, I still heard the faint sounds of singing.
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  The guisel recovered more quickly than I had anticipated. But I swung and lopped off half its head, which seemed to divide itself into tissue-thin images which then flew away in every direction.

  "Caloo! Callay!" I cried, swinging again and removing a long section of tissue from its right side, which repeated the phenomenon of the ghosting and the flight. It came on again and I cut again. Another chunk departed from its twisting body in the same fashion. Whenever its writhing took it near a wall, I intervened with my body and sword, driving it back toward the center and hacking at or slicing it.

  Again and again it came on or flipped toward the wall. Each time my response was similar. But it did not die. I fought it 'til but a tip of its writhing tail moved before me.

  "Kergma," I said then, "we've sent most of it down infinite lines. Now, can you revise the equation? Then I'll find sufficient mass with the spikard to allow you to create another guisel for me—one that will return to the sender of this one and regard that person as prey."

  "I think so," Kergma said. "I take it you left that final piece for the new one to eat?"

  "Yes, that was my thinking."

  And so it was done. When the walls came down, the new guisel—black, its stripes red and yellow—was rubbing against my ankles like a cat. The singing stopped.

  "Go and seek the hidden one," I said, "and return the message."

  It raced off, passing a curve and vanishing.

  "What have you done?" Rhanda asked me. So I told her.

  "The hidden one will now consider you the most dangerous of his rivals," she said, "if he lives. Probably he will increase his efforts against you, in subtlety as well as violence."

  "Good," I said. "That is my hope. I'd like to force a confrontation. He will probably not feel safe in your world now either, never knowing when a new guisel might come a-hunting."

  "True," she said. "You have been my champion," and she kissed me.

  Just then, out of nowhere, a paw appeared and fell upon the blade I held. Its opposite waved two slips of paper before me. Then a soft voice spoke: "You keep borrowing that sword without signing for it. Kindly do that now, Merlin. The other slip is for last time." I found a ballpoint beneath my cloak and signed as the rest of the cat materialized. "That'll be $40," it said then. "It costs 20 bucks for each hour or portion of an hour, to vorp."

  I dug around in my pockets and came up with the fees. The cat grinned and began to fade. "Good doing business with you," it said through the smile. "Come back soon. The next drink's on the house. And bring Luke. He's a great baritone."

  I noticed as it faded that the shroudling family had also vanished.

  Kregma moved nearer. "Where are the others—Glait and Gryll?"

  "I left Grait in a wood," I replied, "though he may well be back in the Windmaster's vase in Gramble's museum in the Ways of Sawall by now. If you see him, tell him that the bigger thing has not eaten me—and he will drink warm milk with me one night and hear more tales yet. Gryll, I believe, is in the employ of my Uncle Suhuy."

  "Ah, the Windmaster...those were the days," he said. "Yes, we must get together and play again. Thank you for calling me for this one," and he slid off in many directions and was gone, like the others.

  "What now?" Rhanda asked.

  "I am going home and back to bed." I hesitated, then said, "Come with me?"

  She hesitated too, then nodded. "Let us finish the night as we began it," she said.

  We walked through the seventh door and she unlocked my mirror. I knew that she would be gone when I awoke.

  Roger Zelazny - Coming to a Cord

  Preface from Pirate Writings: This story takes up the second Amber series where "The Shroudling and the Guisel" (which appeared in the first issue of Realms of Fantasy) left off. It shows the continuing tale of Merlin's strangling cord, Frakir, while telling more about the leftover guisel and the sorcerer responsible for the affair behind the mirror. Flora and the visiting Luke are drawn into the action.

  I have been using an occasional short story of late to tie up loose ends I'd left hanging in previous Amber books and stories, as well as to continue the overall narrative. The first of these stories was "The Salesman's Tale," featuring Luke and Vialle, which appeared in the February 1994 (#6) issue of Amberzine, and the second was "Blue Horse, Dancing Mountains," which will appear this Summer in the AvoNova collection of gambling stories, Wheel of Fortune, edited by myself. "The Shroudling and the Guisel" was the third Amber story, and "coming to a Cord" is the fourth.

  So, if anyone has a burning Amber question, I suggest they send it to me c/o AvoNova and I may be able to straighten the matter out in one of these stories (I may not, also). And to all you Amber fans, thanks for hanging around for so long.

  —Roger Zelazny

  * * *

  It is no fun being tied to a bedpost when you are feeling under the weather. I phased back and forth between visibility and invisibility uncontrollably. On the other wrist, I felt my ability to communicate beginning to return. My increased sentience had remained with me ever since my strange journey with Merlin in the place between shadows. But there was a shock on my return to this reality. Slowly now, I was recovering from it, though some of the symptoms were slower in going than others. Consequently, it took me much longer than it normally would have to unknot myself.

  I am Frakir, strangling cord to Merlin—Lord of Amber and Prince of Chaos. Normally, too, he would never have abandoned me like this, in the blasted apartments of Brand, late Prince of Amber and would-be Lord of the Universe. But he was under a mild spell Brand had actually left about for his son Rinaldo. However, Merlin has such a strong affinity with Rinaldo—also known as Luke—by virtue of their long association, that the spell latched onto him. He must have shaken it by now, but that still left me in an awkward position, with him doubtless back in the Courts.

  I did not feel like waiting around with all the rebuilding and redecorating going on. They could decide to chuck the bed, with me attached, and go for all new stuff.

  I finished unknotting myself. At least Merlin had used no magic when he'd tied me there. On the other hand, it was a tight knot, and I squirmed for a long while to get myself unlooped. Finally, the thing was loosened and I was able to undo it. Once I had freed myself from its subtle geometries, I slithered down the bedpost to the ground. This left me in a position to slip away, should a gang of furniture movers suddenly appear. In fact, it suddenly seemed a good idea to get out of the fast traffic lane now.

  I moved away from the bed—out of Brand's room and into Merlin's—wondering what had been the secret of that ring he'd found and put on—the spikard thing.

  That it was extremely powerful and drew its energies from many sources was obvious to a being such as myself. That it seemed a thing of the same order as the sword Werewindle was also readily apparent, despite their varied forms to the eye of a human. Suddenly, it occurred to me that Merlin might not notice this, and I began to think that it might be necessary he should.

  I crossed his room. I can move like a snake when I would. I have no ability to transport myself magically like almost everyone else I know, so I figured it were best to find someone who did. My only problem was that, in keeping with the family's general policy of personal secrecy on everything from magic to souffle recipes, many of them did not even know I existed.

  ...And for that matter I didn't know the location of their apartments, save for Merlin's, Brand's, Random and Vialle's, and Martin's—which Merlin sometimes visited. Random and Vialle's would be hard to reach, with all the work that was going on. So I headed off in the direction of Martin's rooms and slithered under the door when I got there. He had rock posters on most of his walls, as well as the speakers for a magically powered CD player. He, alas, was absent, and I had no idea when he might return.

  I went back out into the hall and slithered along it, listening for a familiar voice, checking under doors, into rooms. This went on for some time before I heard Flora say, "Oh, bother!" from
behind a door up the hall. I headed in that direction. She was one of the ones privy to my existence.

  Her door was closed, but I was able to make my way beneath it into a highly decorated sitting room. She seemed in the process of mending a broken fingernail with some sort of goo.

  I crossed the room to her side, maintaining my invisibility, and wrapped myself about her right ankle.

  Hello, I said. This is Frakir, Merlin's friend and strangling cord. Can you help me?

  Following a moment of silence, she said, "Frakir! What's happened? What do you need?"

  I was inadvertently abandoned, I explained, while Merlin was under the influence of a peculiar spell. I need to get in touch with him. I've realized something he may need to know. Also, I want to get back on his wrist.

  "I'll give his Trump a try," she said, "though if he's in the Courts I'll probably not be able to reach him."

  I heard her open a drawer, and moments later I listened to her fumbling with cards. I tried to tune in on her thoughts as she manipulated them, but I could not.

  "Sorry," she said, after a time. "I can't seem to get through to him."

  Thanks for trying, I told her.

  "When did you get separated from Merlin?" she asked.

  It was the day the Powers met in the back hall, I said.

  "What sort of spell did Merlin get caught up in?"

  One that was hanging fairly free in Brand's quarters. You see, Merlin's and Brand's rooms being next door to each other, he'd entered out of curiosity when the wall fell during the confrontation.

  "Frakir, I don't think that was an accident," she said. "One Power or the other probably arranged for things to be so."

  Seems likely when one thinks about it, Princess.

  "What do you want to do now? I'll be glad to help," she said.

  I'd like to find a way to get back to Merlin, I said. He's had a general aura of danger about him for some time—to which I am particularly sensitive.

  "I understand," she said, "and I'll find a way. It may take a few days, but I'll figure something."