“I appreciate this.”
“My pleasure,” he said from behind me.
I took several more steps and something crunched beneath my feet and rattled when kicked aside. It was a sound one does not readily forget. The floor was strewn with bones.
There came a soft, quick sound from behind me, and I knew that I did not have time to draw Grayswandir. So I spun, raising my staff before me and thrusting with it.
This maneuver blocked the beast's leap, striking it on the shoulder. But it also knocked me over backward, to roll among the bones. The staff was torn from my hands by the impact, and in the split second of decision allowed me by my opponent's own fall I chose to draw Grayswandir rather than grope after it.
I managed to get my blade unsheathed, but that was all. I was still on my back with the point of my weapon to my left when the jackal recovered and leaped again. I swung the pommel with all of my strength into its face.
The shock ran down my arm and up into my shoulder. The jackal's head snapped back and its body twisted to my left. I brought the point into line immediately, gripping the hilt with both hands, and I was able to rise to my right knee before it snarled and lunged once more.
As soon as I saw that I had it on target, I threw my weight behind it, driving the blade deep into the jackal's body. I released it quickly and rolled away from those snapping jaws.
The jackal shrieked, struggled to rise, dropped back. I lay panting where I had fallen. I felt the staff beneath me and seized it. I brought it around to guard and drew myself back against the cave wall. The beast did not rise again, however, but lay there thrashing. In the dim light, I could see that it was vomiting. The smell was overpowering.
Then it turned its eyes in my direction and lay still.
“It would have been so fine,” it said softly, “to eat a Prince of Amber. I always wondered-about royal blood.”
Then the eyes closed and the breathing stopped and I was left with the stink.
I rose, back still against the wall, staff still before me, and regarded it. It was a long while before I could bring myself to retrieve my blade.
A quick exploration showed me that I was in no tunnel, but only a cave. When I made my way out, the fog had grown yellow, and it was stirred now by a breeze from the lower reaches of the valley.
I leaned against the rock and tried to decide which way to take. There was no real trail here.
Finally, I struck off to my left. That way seemed somewhat steeper, and I wanted to get above the fog and into the mountains as soon as I could. The staff continued to serve me well. I kept listening for the sound of running water, but there was none about.
I struggled along, always continuing upward, and the fogs thinned and changed color. Finally, I could see that I was climbing toward a wide plateau. Above it, I began to catch glimpses of the sky, many-colored and churning.
There were several sharp claps of thunder at my back, but I still could not see the disposition of the storm. I increased my pace then, but began to grow dizzy after a few minutes. I stopped and seated myself on the ground, panting. I was overwhelmed with a sense of failure. Even if I made it up to the plateau, I had a feeling that the storm would roar right across it. I rubbed my eyes with the heels of my hands. What was the use of going on if there was no way I could make it?
A shadow moved through the pistachio mists, dropped toward me. I raised my staff, then saw that it was only Hugi. He braked himself and landed at my feet.
“Corwin,” he said, “you have come a good distance.”
“But maybe not good enough,” I said. “The storm seems to be getting nearer.”
“I believe that it is. I have been meditating and would like to give you the benefit of-”
“If you want to benefit me at all,” I said, “I could tell you what to do.”
“What is that?”
“Fly back and see how far off the storm really is, and how fast it seems to be moving. Then come and tell me.” Hugi hopped from one foot to the other. Then, “All right,” he said, and leaped into the air and batted his way toward what I felt to be the northwest.
I leaned on the staff and rose. I might as well keep climbing at the best pace I could manage. I drew upon the Jewel again, and strength came into me like a red lightning flash.
As I mounted the slope, a damp breeze sprang up from the direction in which Hugi had departed. There came another thunderclap. No more growls and rumbles.
I made the most of the influx of energy, climbing quickly and efficiently for several hundred meters. If I were going to lose, I might as well make it to the top first. I might as well see where I was and learn whether there was anything at all left for me to try.
My view of the sky grew more and more clear as I climbed. It had changed considerably since last I had regarded it. Half of it was of uninterrupted blackness and the other half those masses of swimming colors. And the entire heavenly bowl seemed to be rotating about a point directly overhead. I began to grow excited. This was the sky I was seeking, the sky which had covered me that time I had journeyed to Chaos. I struggled higher. I wanted to utter something heartening, but my throat was too dry.
As I neared the rim of the plateau, I heard a flapping sound and Hugi was suddenly on my shoulder.
“The storm is about ready to crawl up your arse,” he said. “Be here any minute.”
I continued climbing, reached level ground and hauled myself up to it. I stood for a moment then, breathing heavily. The wind must have kept the area clear of fog, for it was a high, smooth plain, and I could see the sky for a great distance ahead. I advanced, to find a point from which I could see beyond the farther edge. As I moved, the sounds of the storm came to me more clearly.
“I do not believe you will make it across,” Hugi said, “without getting wet.”
“You know that is no ordinary storm,” I croaked. “If it were. I'd be thankful for the chance of getting a drink.”
“I know. I was speaking figuratively.”
I growled something vulgar and kept going.
Gradually, the vista before me enlarged. The sky still did its crazy veil dance, but the illumination was more than sufficient. When I reached a position where I was positive what lay before me, I halted and sagged against my staff.
“What is the matter?” Hugi asked.
But I could not speak. I simply gestured at the great wasteland which commenced somewhere below the farther lip of the plateau to sweep on for at least forty miles before butting up against another range of mountains. And far off to the left and still running strong went the black road.
“The waste?” he said. “I could have told you it was there. Why didn't you ask me?”
I made a noise halfway between a groan and a sob and sank slowly to the ground.
How long I remained so, I am not certain. I felt more than a little delirious. In the midst of it I seemed to see a possible answer, though something within me rebelled against it. I was finally roused by the noises of the storm and Hugi's chattering.
“I can't beat it across that place,” I whispered. “There is no way.”
“You say you have failed,” Hugi said. “But this is not so. There is neither failure nor victory in striving. It is all but an illusion of the ego.”
I rose slowly to my knees.
“I did not say that I had failed.”
“You said that you cannot go on to your destination.” I looked back, to where lightnings now flashed as the storm climbed toward me.
“That's right, I cannot do it that way. But if Dad failed, I have got to attempt something that Brand tried to convince me only he could do. I have to create a new Pattern, and I have to do it right, here.”
“You? Create a new Pattern? If Oberon failed, how could a man who can barely stay on his feet do it? No, Corwin. Resignation is the greatest virtue you might cultivate.”
I raised my head and lowered the staff to the ground. Hugi fluttered down to stand beside it and I regarded him.
“You do not want to believe any of the things that I said, do you?” I told him. “It does not matter, though. The conflict between our views is irreducible. I see desire as hidden identity and striving as its growth. You do not.” I moved my hands forward and rested them on my knees. “If for you the greatest good is union with the Absolute, then why do you not fly to join it now, in the form of the all-pervading Chaos which approaches? If I fail here, it will become Absolute. As for me, I must try, for so long as there is breath within me, to raise up a Pattern against it. I do this because I am what I am, and I am the man who could have been king in Amber.”
Hugi lowered his head.
“I'll see you eat crow first,” he said, and he chuckled.
I reached out quickly and twisted his head off, wishing that I had time to build a fire. Though he made it look like a sacrifice, it is difficult to say to whom the moral victory belonged, since I was planning on doing it anyway.
CHAPTER 9
...Cassis, and the smell of the chestnut blossoms. All along the Champs-Elysies the chestnuts were foaming white...
I remembered the play of the fountains in the Place de la Concorde... And down the Rue de la Seine and along the quais, the smell of the old books, the smell of the river... The smell of chestnut blossoms...
Why should I suddenly remember 1905 and Paris on the shadow Earth, save that I was very happy that year and I might, reflexively, have sought an antidote for the present? Yes...
White absinthe, Amer Picon, grenadine... Wild strawberries, with Creme d'Isigny... Chess at the Cafe de la Regence with actors from the Comedie Francaise, just across the way... The races at Chantilly... Evenings at the Boite a Fursy on the Rue Pigalle...
I placed my left foot firmly before my right, my right before my left. In my left hand, I held the chain from which the Jewel depended-and I carried it high, so that I could stare into the stone's depths, seeing and feeling there the emergence of the new Pattern which I described with each step. I had screwed my staff into the ground and left it to stand near the Pattern's beginning. Left...
The wind sang about me and there was thunder near at hand. I did not meet with the physical resistance that I did on the old Pattern. There was no resistance at all. Instead-and in many ways worse-a peculiar deliberation had come over all my movements, slowing them, ritualizing them. I seemed to expend more energy in preparing for each step-perceiving it, realizing it and ordering my mind for its execution-than I did in the physical performance of the act. Yet the slowness seemed to require itself, was exacted of me by some unknown agency which determined precision and an adagio tempo for all my movements. Right...
...And, as the Pattern in Rebma had helped to restore my faded memories, so this one I was now striving to create stirred and elicited the smell of the chestnut trees, of the wagonloads of vegetables moving through the dawn toward the Hallos... I was not in love with anyone in particular at the time, though there were many girls-Yvettes and Mimis and Simones, their faces merge-and it was spring in Paris, with Gipsy bands and cocktails at Louis'... I remembered, and my heart leaped with a kind of Proustian joy while Time tolled about me like a bell... And perhaps this was the reason for the recollection, for this joy seemed transmitted to my movements, informed my perceptions, empowered my will...
I saw the next step and I took it... I had been around once now, creating the perimeter of my Pattern. At my back, I could feel the storm. It must have mounted to the plateau's rim. The sky was darkening, the storm blotting the swinging, swimming, colored limits. Flashes of lightning splayed about, and I could not spare the energy and the attention to try to control things.
Having gone completely around, I could see that as much of the new Pattern as I had walked was now inscribed in the rock and glowing palely, bluely. Yet, there were no sparks, no tinges in my feet, no hair-raising currents-only the steady law of deliberation, upon me like a great weight... Left...
...Poppies, poppies and cornflowers and tall poplars along country roads, the taste of Normandy cider... And in town again, the smell of the chestnut blossoms... The Seine full of stars... The smell of the old brick houses in the Place des Vosges after a morning's rain... The bar under the Olympia Music Hall... A fight there... Bloodied knuckles, bandaged by a girl who took me home
...What was her name? Chestnut blossoms... A white rose...
I sniffed then. The odor was all but gone from the remains of the rose at my collar. Surprising that any of it had survived this far. It heartened me. I pushed ahead, curving gently to my right. From the corner of my eye, I saw the advancing wall of the storm, slick as glass, obliterating everything it passed. The roar of its thunder was deafening now.
Right, left...
The advance of the armies of the night... Would my Pattern hold against it? I wished that I might hurry, but if anything I was moving with increasing slowness as I went on. I felt a curious sense of bilocation, almost as if I were within the Jewel tracing the Pattern there myself while I moved out here, regarding it and mimicking its progress. Left... Turn... Right... The storm was indeed advancing. Soon it would reach old Hugi's bones. I smelled the moisture and the ozone and wondered about the strange dark bird who had said he'd been waiting for me since the beginning of Time. Waiting to argue with me or to be eaten by me in this place without history? Whatever, considering the exaggeration usual in moralists, it was fitting that, having failed to leave me with my heart all laden with rue over my spiritual condition, he be consumed to the accompaniment of theatrical thunder... There was distant thunder, near thunder and more thunder now. As I turned in that direction once more, the lightning flashes were nearly blinding. I clutched my chain and took another step...
The storm pushed right up to the edge of my Pattern, and then it parted. It began to creep around me. Not a drop fell upon me or the Pattern. But slowly, gradually, we came to be totally engulfed within it.
It seemed as if I were in a bubble at the bottom of a stormy sea. Walls of water encircled me and dark shapes darted by. It seemed as if the entire universe were pressing in to crush me. I concentrated on the red world of the Jewel. Left...
The chestnut blossoms... A cup of hot chocolate at a sidewalk cafe... A band concert in the Tuileries Gardens, the sounds climbing through the sunbright air... Berlin in the twenties, the Pacific in the thirties-there had been pleasures there, but of a different order. It may not be the true past, but images of the past that rush to comfort or torment us later, man or nation. No matter. Across the Pont Neuf and down the Rue Rivoli, buses and fiacres... Painters at their easels in the Luxembourg Gardens... If all were to fall well, I might seek a shadow like this again one day... It ranked with my Avalon. I had forgotten... The details... The touches that make for life... The smell of the chestnuts...
Walking... I completed another circuit. The wind screamed and the storm roared on, but I was untouched. So long as I did not permit it to distract me, so long as I kept moving and maintained my focus on the Jewel... I had to hold up, had to keep taking these slow, careful steps, never to stop, slower and slower but constantly moving... Faces... It seemed that rows of faces regarded me from beyond the Pattern's edge... Large, like the Head, but twisted-grinning. Jeering, mocking me, waiting for me to stop or step wrongly... Waiting for the whole thing to come apart around me... There was lightning behind their eyes and in their months, their laughter was the thunder... Shadows crawled among them... Now they spoke to me, with words like a gale from off a dark ocean... I would fail, they told me, fail and be swept away, this fragment of a Pattern dashed to pieces behind me and consumed... They cursed me, they spat and vomited toward me, though none of it reached... Perhaps they were not really there... Perhaps my mind had been broken by the strain... Then what good were my efforts? A new Pattern to be shaped by a madman? I wavered, and they took up the chorus, “Mad! Mad! Mad!” in the voices of the elements.
I drew a deep breath and smelled what was left of the rose and thought of chestnuts once again, and days f
illed with the joys of life and organic order. The voices seemed to soften as my mind raced back through the events of that happy year... And I took another step... And another... They had been playing on my weaknesses, they could feel my doubts, my anxiety, my fatigue... Whatever they were, they seized what they saw and tried to use it against me... Left... Right... Now let them feel my confidence and wither, I told myself. I have come this far. I will continue. Left...
They swirled and swelled about me, still mouthing discouragements. But some of the force seemed gone out of them. I made my way through another section of arc, seeing it grow before me in my mind's red eye.
I thought back to my escape from Greenwood, to my tricking Flora out of information, to my encounter with Random, our fight with his pursuers, our journey back to Amber... I thought of our flight to Rebma and my walking of the reversed Pattern there for a restoration of much of my memory... Of Random's shotgun wedding and my sojourn to Amber, where I fought with Eric and fled to Bleys... Of the battles that followed, my blinding, my recovery, my escape, my journey to Lorraine and then to Avalon...
Moving into even higher gear, my mind skimmed the surface of subsequent events... Ganelon and Lorraine... The creatures of the Black Circle... Benedict's arm... Dara... The return of Brand and his stabbing... My stabbing... Bill Roth... Hospital records... My accident...
...Now, from the very beginning at Greenwood, through it all, to this moment of my struggle to assure each perfect maneuver as it appeared to me, I felt the growing sense of anticipation I had known-whether my actions were directed toward the throne, vengeance, or my conception of duty-felt it, was aware of its continuous existence across those years up until this moment, when it was finally accompanied by something else... I felt that the waiting was just about over, that whatever I had been anticipating and struggling toward was soon to occur.
Left... Very, very slowly... Nothing else was important. I threw all of my will into the movements now. My concentration became total. Whatever lay beyond the Pattern, I was now oblivious to it. Lightnings, faces, winds... It did not matter. There was only the Jewel, the growing Pattern and myself-and I was barely aware of myself. Perhaps this was the closest I would ever come to Hugi's ideal of merging with the Absolute. Turn... Right foot.. . Turn again...
The Great Book of Amber Page 81