What is wrong with this picture? something within me asked.
I gave up, because I couldn't be sure. Though I'd a vague feeling the occasional landscape shouldn't be Rowing the way that it did...
“Oh, man! Merle...”
What did Luke want now? Why wouldn't he get off my case? Always a new problem.
“Look at that, will you?”
I watched where a series of bright bounding balls-or maybe they were comets-wove a tapestry of light. It fell upon the forest of umbrellas.
“Luke—” I began, but one of the dog-headed flowers bit a hand I'd
forgotten about, and everything nearby cracked as if it were painted on glass through which a shot had just passed. There was a rainbow beyond—
“Merle! Merle!”
It was Droppa shaking my shoulder, my suddenly opened eyes showed me. And there was a damp place on the sofa where my head was resting. I propped myself on an elbow. I rubbed my eyes.
“Droppa... What-?”
“I don't know,” he told me.
“What don't you know? I mean... Hell! What happened?”
“I was sitting in that chair,” he said, with a gesture, “waiting for you to wake up. Martin had told me you were here. I was just going to tell you that Random wanted to see you when you got back.”
I nodded, then noticed that my hand was oozing blood-from the place where the flower had bitten me.
“How long was I out?”
“Twenty minutes, maybe.”
I swung my feet to the floor, sat up. “So why'd you decide to wake me?”
“You were trumping out,” he said.
“Trumping out? While I was asleep? It doesn't work that way. Are you sure “
“I am, unfortunately, sober at the moment,” he said. “You got that rainbow glow and you started to soften around the edges and fade. Thought I'd better wake you then and ask if that's what you really had in mind. What've you been drinking, spot remover?”
“No,” I said.
“I tried it on my dog once...”
“Dreams,” I said, massaging my temples, which had begun throbbing. “That's all. Dreams.”
“The kind other people can see, too? Like DTs b deux?”
“That's not what I meant.”
“We'd better go see Random.” He started to turn toward the doorway.
I shook my head. “Not yet. I'm just going to sit here and collect myself. Something's wrong.”
When I glanced at him I saw that his eyes were wide, and he was staring past me. I turned.
The wall at my back seemed to be melting, as if it were cast of wax and had been set too near a fire.
“It appears to be alarums and excursions time,” Droppa remarked. “Help!” And he was across the room and out of the door, screaming.
Three eyeblinks later the wall was normal again in every way, but I was trembling. What the hell was going on? Had Mask managed to lay a spell on me before I'd cut out? If so, where was it headed?
I rose to my feet and turned in a slow circle. Everything seemed to be in place now. I knew that it could not have been anything as simple as hallucination born of all my recent stresses, since Droppa had seen it too. So I was not cracking up. 'This was something else-and whatever it was, I felt that it was still lurking nearby. There was a certain unnatural clarity to the air now, and every object seemed unusually vivid within it.
I made a quick circuit of the room, not knowing what I was really seeking. Not surprisingly, therefore, I did not End it. I stepped outside then. Whatever the problem, could it spring from something I had brought back with me? Might Jasra, stiff and gaudy, have been a Trojan horse?
I headed for the main hall. A dozen steps along the way, a lopsided gridwork of light appeared before me. I forced myself to continue, and it receded as I advanced, changing shape as it did so.
“Merle, come on!” Luke's voice, Luke himself nowhere in sight.
“Where?” I called out, not slowing.
No answer, but the gridwork split down the middle and its two halves swung away from me like a pair of shutters. They opened onto a nearblinding light; within it, I thought I glimpsed a rabbit. Then, abruptly, the vision was gone, and the only thing that saved me from believing everything was normal again was several seconds' worth of Luke's sourceless laughter.
I ran. Was it really Luke who was the enemy, as I had been warned repeatedly? Had I somehow been manipulated through everything which had happened recently, solely for the purpose of freeing his mother from the Keep of the Four Worlds? And now that she was safe had he the temerity to invade Amber herself and summon me to a sorcerous duel the terms of which I did not even understand?
No, I could not believe it. I was certain he did not possess that sort of power. But even if he did, he wouldn't dare try it-not with Jasra my hostage.
As I rushed along I heard him again-from everywhere, from nowhere. This time he was singing. He had a powerful baritone voice, and the song was “Auld Lang Syne.” What sort of irony did this represent?
I burst into the main hall. Martin and Bors had departed. I saw their empty glasses on the sideboard near which they had been standing. And near the other door-? Yes, near the other door Jasra remained, erect, unchanged, still holding my cloak.
“Okay, Luke! Let's have it out!” I cried. “Cut the crap and let's settle this business!”
“Huh?”
The singing stopped abruptly.
I crossed slowly to Jasra, studying her as I went. Completely unchanged, save for a hat someone had added to her other hand. From somewhere else in the palace, I heard a shout. Maybe it was Droppa still alaruming.
“Luke, wherever you are,” I said, “if you can hear me, if you can see me, take a good look and listen: I've got her here. See? Whatever you're planning, bear that in mind.”
The room rippled violently, as if I were standing in the midst of an unframed painting someone had just decided to give a shake, to crinkle and then draw taut.
“Well?”
Nothing.
Then, a chuckle.
“My mother the hat rack... Well, well. Hey, thanks, buddy. Good show. Couldn't reach you earlier. Didn't know you'd gone in. They slaughtered us. Took some mercs in on hang gliders, rode the thermals. They were ready, though. Took us out. Don't remember exactly then... Hurts!”
“You okay?”
There came something like a sob, just as Random and Droppa entered the hall, the lank form of Benedict silent as death at their back.
“Merle!” Random called to me. “What's going on?”
I shook my head. “Don't know,” I said.
“Sure, I'll buy you a drink,” Luke's voice came very faintly.
A fiery blizzard swept through the center of the hall. It lasted only a moment, and then a large rectangle appeared in its place.
“You're the sorcerer,” Random said. “Do something!”
“I don't know what the hell it is,” I replied. “I've never seen anything like it. It's like magic gone wild.”
An outline began to appear within the rectangle, human. Its form settled and took on features, garments... It was a Trump a giant Trump -hanging in the middle of the air, solidifying. It was
Me. I regarded my own features and they looked back at me. I noted that I was smiling.
“C'mon, Merle. Join the party,” I heard Luke say, and the Trump began to rotate slowly upon its vertical axis.
Sounds, as of glass bells, filled the hall.
The huge card turned until I viewed it edge-on, a black slash. Then the dark line widened with a ripple, like parting curtains, and I saw colored patches of intense light sliding beyond it. I also saw the caterpillar, puffing on a hookah, and fat umbrellas and a bright, shiny rail
A hand emerged from the slit. “Right this way.”
I heard a sharp intake of breath from Random.
Benedict's blade was suddenly pointed at the tableau. But Random laid his hand on his shoulder and said, “No.”
There was a strange, disconnected sort of music hanging in the air now; it seemed somehow appropriate.
“C'mon, Merle.”
“You coming or going?” I asked.
“Both.”
“You made me a promise, Luke: a piece of information for your mother's rescue,” I said. “Well, I've got her here. What's the secret?”
“Something vital to your well-being?” he asked slowly.
“Vital to the safety of Amber is what you'd said.”
“Oh, that secret.”
“I'd be glad to have the other one too.”
“Sorry. One secret is all I'm selling. Which will it be?”
“The safety of Amber,” I answered.
“Dalt,” he replied.
“What of him?”
“Deela the Desacratrix was his mother—”
“I already know that.”
“-and she'd been Oberon's prisoner nine months before he was born. He raped her. That's why Dalt's got it in for you guys.”
“Bullshit!” I said.
“That's what I told him when I'd heard the story one time too many. I dared him to walk the Pattern in the sky then.”
“And?”
“He did.”
“Oh.”
“I just learned that story recently,” Random said, “from an emissary I'd
sent to Kashfa. I didn't know about his taking the Pattern, though.”
“If you knew, I still owe you,” Luke said slowly, almost distractedly.
“Okay, here's more: Dalt visited me on the shadow Earth after that. He's the one who raided my warehouse, stole a stock of weapons and special ammo. Burnt the place after that to cover the theft. I found witnesses, though. He'll be along-any time. Who knows when?”
“Another relative coming to visit,” Random said. “Why couldn't I have been an only child?”
“Make what you will of it,” Luke added. “We're square now. Give me a hand!”
“You coming through?”
He laughed, and the whole hall seemed to lurch. The opening in the air hung before me and the hand clasped my own. Something felt very wrong.
I tried to draw him to me, but felt myself drawn toward him instead.
There was a mad power I could not fight, and the universe seemed to twist as it took hold of me. Constellations parted before me and I saw the bright railing again. Luke's booted foot rested upon it.
From some distant point to the rear I heard Random shouting, “B-twelve! B-twelve! And out!”
...And then I couldn't recall what the problem had been. It seemed a wonderful place. Silly of me to have mistaken the mushrooms for umbrellas, though...
I put my own foot up on the rail as the Hatter poured me a drink and topped off Luke's. Luke gestured to his left and the March Hare got a refill too. Humpty was fine, balanced there near the end of things. Tweedledum, Tweedledee, the Dodo and the Frog Footman kept the music moving. And the Caterpillar just kept puffing away.
Luke clapped me on the shoulder, and there was something I wanted to remember but it kept slipping out of sight.
“I'm okay now,” Luke said. “Everything's okay.”
“No, there's something... I can't recall...”
He raised his tankard, clanked it against my own. “Enjoy!” he said. “Life is a cabaret, old chum!”
The cat on the stool beside me just kept grinning.
Sign of chaos
CHAPTER 1
I felt vaguely uneasy, though I couldn't say why. It did not seem all that unusual to be drinking with a White Rabbit, a short guy who resembled Bertrand Russell, a grinning Cat, and my old friend Luke Raynard, who was singing Irish ballads while a peculiar landscape shifted from mural to reality at his back. Well, I was impressed by the huge blue Caterpillar smoking the hookah atop the giant mushroom because I know how hard it is to keep a water pipe lit. Still, that wasn't it. It was a convivial scene, and Luke was known to keep pretty strange company on occasion. So why should I feel uneasy?
The beer was good and there was even a free lunch. The demons tormenting the red-haired woman tied to the stake had been so shiny they'd. hurt to look at. Gone now, but the whole thing had, been beautiful. Everything was beautiful. When Luke sang of Galway Bay it had been so sparkling and lovely that I'd wanted to dive in and lose myself there. Sad, too.
Something to do with the feeling... Yes. Funny thought. When Luke sang a sad song I felt melancholy. When it was a happy one I was greatly cheered. There seemed an unusual amount of empathy in the air. No matter, I guess. The light. show was superb...
I sipped my drink and watched Humpty teeter, there at the end of the bar. For a moment I tried to remember when I'd come into this place, but that cylinder wasn't hitting. It would come to me, eventually. Nice party....
I watched and listens and tasted and felt, and it was all great. Anything that caught my attention was fascinating. Was there something I'd wanted to ask Luke? It seemed there was, but he was busy singing and I couldn't think of it now, anyway.
What had I been doing before I'd come into this place? Trying to recall just didn't seem worth the effort either. Not when everything was so interesting right here and now.
It seemed that it might have been something important, though. Could that be why I felt uneasy? Might it be there was business I had left unfinished and should be getting back to?
I turned to ask the Cat but he was fading again, still seeming vastly amused. It occurred to me then that I, too, could do that. Fade, I mean; and go someplace else. Was that how I had come here and how I might depart? Possibly. I put down my drink and rubbed my eyes and my temples. Things seemed to be swimming inside my head, too.
I suddenly recalled a picture of me. On a giant card. A Trump. Yes. That was how I'd gotten here. Through the card...
A hand fell upon my shoulder and I turned. It belonged to Luke, who grinned at me as he edged up to the bar for a refill.
“Great party, huh?” he said.
“Yeah, great. How'd you find this place?” I asked him.
He shrugged. “I forget. Who cares?”
He fumed away, a brief blizzard of . crystals swirling between us. The Caterpillar exhaled a purple cloud. A blue moon was rising.
What is wrong with this picture? I asked myself.
I had a sudden feeling that my critical faculty had been shot off in the war, because I couldn't focus on the anomalies I felt must be present. I knew that I was caught up in the moment, but I couldn't see my way clear.
I was caught up.. .
I was caught...
How?
Well... It had all started when I'd shaken my own hand. No. Wrong. That sounds like Zen and that's not how it was. The hand I shook emerged from the space occupied by the image of myself on the card that went away. Yes, that was it... After a fashion.
I clenched my teeth. The music began again. There came a soft scraping sound near to my hand on the bar. When I looked I saw that my tankard had been refilled. Maybe I'd had too much already. Maybe that's what kept getting in the way of my thinking. I fumed away. I looked off to my left, past the place where the mural on the wall became the real landscape. Did that make me a part of the mural? I wondered suddenly.
No matter. If I couldn't think here... I began running... to the left. Something about this place was messing with my head, and it seemed impossible to consider the process while I was a part of it. I had to get away in order to think straight, to determine what was going on.
I was across the bar and into that interface area where the painted rocks and trees became three-dimensional. I pumped my arms as I dug in. I head the wind without feeling it.
Nothing that lay before me seemed any nearer. I was moving, but Luke began singing again.
I halted. I turned, slowly, because it sounded as if he were standing practically beside me. He was. I was only a few paces removed from the bar. Luke smiled and kept singing.
“What's going on?” I asked the Caterpillar. “You
're looped in Luke's loop,” it replied. “Come again?” I said.
It blew a blue smoke ring, sighed softly, and said, “Luke's locked in a loop and you're lost in the lyrics. 'That's all.”
“How'd it happen?” I asked.
“I have no idea,” it replied.
“Uh, how does one get unlooped?”
“Couldn't tell you that either.”
I turned to the Cat, who was coalescing about his grin once again.
“I don't suppose you'd know—” I began.
“I saw him come in anD I saw you come in later,” said the Cat, smirking. “And even for this place your arrivals were somewhat... unusual-leading me to conclude that at least one of you is associated with magic.”
I nodded.
“Your own comings and goings might give one pause,” I observed.
“I keep my paws to myself,” he replied. “Which is more than Luke can say.”
“What do you mean?”
“He's caught in a contagious trap.”
“How does it work?” I asked.
But he was gone again, and this time the grin went too.
Contagious trap? That seemed to indicate that the problem was Luke's, and that I had been sucked into it in some fashion. This felt right, though it still gave me no idea as to what the problem was or what I might do about it.
I reached for my tankard. If I couldn't solve my problem, I might as well enjoy it. As I took a slow sip I became aware of a strange pair of pale, burning eyes
gazing into my own. I hadn't noticed them before, and the thing that made them strange was that they occupied a shadowy comer of the mural across the room from me
that, and the fact that they were ,moving, drifting slowly to my left.
It was kind of fascinating, when I lost sight of the eyes but was still able to follow whatever it was from the swaying of grasses as it passed into the area toward which I had been headed earlier. And far, far off to my rightbeyond Luke-I now detected a slim gentleman in a dark jacket, palette and brush in hand, who was slowly extending the mural. I took another sip and returned my attention to the progress of whatever it was that had moved from flat reality to 3-D. A gunmetal snout protruded from between a rock and a shrub; the pale eyes blazed above it; blue saliva dripped from the dark muzzle and steamed upon the ground. It was either quite short or very crouched, and I couldn't make up my mind whether it was the entire crowd of us that it was studying or me in particular. I leaned to one side and caught Humpty by the belt or the necktie, whichever it was, just as he was about to slump to the side..
The Great Book of Amber Page 125