The Great Book of Amber

by Roger Zelazny

  “Queen Jasra!” she said.

  “Yep. She had a disagreement with a sorcerer named Mask,” I explained. “Guess who won?”

  Nayda raised her left hand and moved it in a slow pattern-behind Jasra's neck and down her back, across her chest, then downward again. I did not recognize any of the movements she was performing.

  “Don't tell me that you're a sorceress, too,” I said. “It seems that everyone I run into these days has had some training in the Art.”

  “I am not a sorceress,” she answered, “and I've had no such training. I have only one trick and it is not sorcery, but I use it for everything.”

  “And what is that trick?” I asked.

  She ignored the question, then said, “My, she's certainly tightly bound. The key lies somewhere in the region of her solar plexus. Did you know that?”

  “Yes,” I replied. “I understand the spell fully.”

  “Why is she here?”

  “Partly because I promised her son Rinaldo I'd rescue her from Mask, and partly as an assurance against his good behavior.”

  I pushed the door shut and secured it. When I turned back, she was facing me.

  “Have you seen him recently?” she said in a conversational tone.

  “Yes. Why?”

  “Oh, no special reason.”

  “I thought we were trying to help each other, “ I said.

  “I thought we were looking for my sister.”

  “It can wait another minute if you know something special about Rinaldo.”

  “I was just curious where he might be right now.”

  I turned away and moved to the chest where I keep art supplies. I removed the necessary items and took them to my drawing board. While I was about it, I said, “I don't know where he is.”

  I set up the piece of pasteboard, seated myself and closed my eyes, summoning a mental image of Coral, preliminary to beginning her sketch. Again, I half wondered whether the picture in my mind, along with the appropriate magical endorsement, would be sufficient for contact. But now was not the time to mess around being experimental. I opened my eyes and began to draw. I used the techniques I'd learned in the Courts, which are different yet similar to those employed in Amber. I was qualified to execute them in either fashion, but I'm faster with the style I learned first.

  Nayda came over and stood near, watching, not asking whether I minded. As it was, I did not.

  “When did you see him last?” she asked.

  “Who?”

  “Luke.”

  “This evening,” I answered.

  “Where?”

  “He was here earlier.”

  “Is he here now?”.

  “ No.”

  “Where did you last see him?”

  “In the forest of Arden. Why?”

  “It seams a strange place to part.”

  I was working on Coral's eyebrows.

  “We parted under strange circumstances,” I said.

  A little more work about the eyes, a bit on the her....

  “Strange? In what way?” she asked.

  More color to the cheeks...

  “Never mind,” I told her.

  “All right,” she said. “It's probably not that important.”

  I decided against rising to that bait, because I was suddenly getting something. As had occasionally happened in the past, my concentration on the Trump as I put the final touches to it was sufficiently intense to reach through and....

  “Coral!” I said, as the features moved, perspectives shifted.

  “Merlin..?” she answered. “I... I'm in trouble.”

  Oddly, there was no background whatever. Just blackness. I felt Nayda's hand upon my shoulder.

  “Are you all right?” I asked.

  “Yes... It's dark here,” she said. “Very dark.”

  Of course. One cannot manipulate Shadow in the absence of light. Or even see to use a Trump.

  “That's where the Pattern sent you?” I asked.

  “No,” she answered.

  “Take my hand,” I said. “You can tell me about it afterward.”.

  I extended my hand and she reached toward it.

  “They—” she began.

  And with a stinging flash the contact was broken. I felt Nayda stiffen beside me.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “I don't know. We were suddenly blocked. I can't tell what forces were involved.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Try again in a little bit,” I said. “If it were a reaction thing, resistance will probably be high just now, and it may ease up later. At least she says she's all right.”

  I withdrew the packet of Trumps I normally carry, shufflied out Luke's. Now seemed as good a time as any to see how he was faring. Nayda glanced at the card and smiled.

  “I thought you just saw him a little while ago,” she said.

  “A lot can happen in a little while.”

  “I'm certain a lot has happened.”

  “You think you know something about what's going on with him?” I asked.

  “Yes. I do.”

  I raised the Trump. “What?” I said.

  “I'd be willing to wager, you won't get through to him.”

  “We'll see.”

  I concentrated and I reached. I reached again. A minute or so later I wiped my brow.

  “How'd you know?” I asked.

  “Luke's blocking you. I would, too... under the circumstances.”

  “What circumstances?”

  She gave me a quirked smile, crossed to a chair, and sat down.

  “Now I have something to trade with you again,” she said.

  “Again?”

  I studied her. Something jiggled and fell into place. “You've been calling him `Luke' rather than `Rinaldo,' “ I said.

  “So I have.”

  “I'd been wondering when you'd show up again.”

  She continued to smile.

  “I went and shot my eviction-notice spell,” I observed. “Can't complain, though. It probably saved my life. Do I owe you that one, in some roundabout fashion?”

  “I'm not proud. I'll take it.”

  “I'm going to ask you again what you want, and if you say it's to help me or to protect me, I'm going to turn you into a coatrack.”

  She laughed.

  “I'd have guessed you'd take whatever help you could get right now,” she said.

  “A lot depends on what you mean by `help' .”

  “If you'll tell me what you have in mind, I'll tell you whether I can be of any assistance.”

  “All right,” I said. “I'm going to change clothes while I talk, though. I don't feel like storming a citadel dressed like this. May I lend you something tougher than a sweat suit?”

  “I'm fine. Start at Arbor House, okay?”

  “Okay,” I said, and I proceeded to fill her in while I garbed myself in tougher fare. She was no longer a pretty lady to me, but rather a nebulous entity in human form. She seated herself while I was talking and stared at the wall, or through it, over steepled fingers. When I was finished, she kept staring, and I went over to my drawing board, took up Coral's Trump, tried again, but couldn't get through. I tried Luke's card, also, with the same results.

  As I was about to replace Luke's Trump, square the deck, and case it, I glimpsed the next lower card and a lightning chain of recollections and speculations flashed through my mind. I removed the card and focused on it. I reached...

  “Yes, Merlin?” he said moments later, seated at a small table on a terrace-evening skyline of a city behind him-lowering what appeared to be a cup of espresso to a tiny white saucer.

  “Right now. Hurry,” I said. “Come to me.”

  Nayda had begun to make a low growling sound just as the contact occurred, and she was on her feet and moving toward me, her eyes fixed upon the Trump, just as Mandor took my hand and stepped through. She halted when the tall, black-garbed figure appeared before her. They regarded each
other without expression for a moment, and then she took a long sliding step toward him, her hands beginning to rise. Immediately, from the depth of some inner cloak pocket where his right hand was thrust, there came a single, sharp, metallic click.

  Nayda froze.

  “Interesting,” Mandor said, raising his left hand and passing it in front of her face. Her eyes did not follow it. “This is the one you told me about earlier-Vinta; I believe, you called her?”

  “Yes, only now she's Nayda.”

  He produced a small, dark metal ball from somewhere and held it upon the palm of his left hand, which he extended before her. Slowly, the ball began to move, describing a counterclockwise circle. Nayda emitted a single sound, something halfway between a cry and a gasp, and she dropped forward to her hands and knees, head lowered. From where I stood I could see saliva dripping from her mouth.

  He said something very fast, in an archaic form of Thari which I could not follow. She responded in the affirmative.

  “I believe I've solved your mystery,” he said then. “Do you recall your lessons on Respondances and High Compellings?”

  “Sort of,” I said. “Academically. I was never exactly swept away by the subject.”

  “Unfortunate,” he stated. “You should report back to Suhuy for a postgraduate course sometime.”

  “Are you trying to tell me..?”

  “The creature you see before you, inhabiting a not unattractive human form, is a ty'iga, “ he explained.

  I stared. The ty'iga were a nornially bodiless race of demons that dwelled in the blackness beyond the Rim. I recalled being told that they were very powerful and very difficult to control.

  “Uh .., can you make this one stop slobbering on my carpet?” I said.

  “Of course,” he replied, and he released the sphere, which fell to the floor before her. It did not bounce, but began immediately to roll, describing a rapid circuit about her.

  “Stand up,” he said, “and stop releasing bodily fluids upon the floor.”

  She did as he ordered, climbing to her feet, her expression vacant.

  “Seat yourself in that chair,” he directed, indicating the one she had occupied but minutes earlier.

  She complied, and the rolling ball adjusted itself to her progress and continued its circle, about the chair now.

  “It cannot vacate that body,” he said then, “unless I release it. And I can cause it any amount of torment within my sphere of power. I can get you your answers now. Tell me what the questions are.”

  “Can she hear us right now?”

  “Yes, but it cannot speak unless I permit it.”

  “Well, there's no point to causing unnecessary pain. T'he threat itself may be sufficient. I want to know why she's been following me about.”

  “Very well,” he said. “That is the question, ty'iga. Answer it!”

  “I follow him to protect him,” she said, her voice flat.

  “I've already heard that one,” I said. “I want to know why.”

  “Why?” Mandor repeated.

  “I must,” she answered.

  “Why must you?” he asked.

  “I...” Her teeth raked her lower lip and the blood began to flow again.

  “Why?”

  Her face grew flushed and beads of perspiration appeared upon her brow. Her eyes were still unfocused, but they brimmed with tears. A thin line of blood trickled down her chin. Mandor extended a clenched fist and pened it, revealing another metal ball. He held this one about ten inches before her brow, then released it. It hung in the air.

  “Let the doors of pain be opened,” he said, and he flicked it lightly with a fingertip.

  Immediately, the small sphere began to move. It passed about her head in a slow ellipse, coming close to her temples on each orbit. She began to wail.

  “Silence!” he said. “Suffer in silence!”

  The tears ran down her cheeks, the blood ran down her chin...

  “Stop it!” I said.

  “Very well.” He reached over and squeezed the ball for a moment between the thumb and middle finger of his left hand. When he released it, it remained stationary, a small distance before her right ear. “Now you may answer the question,” he said. “That was but the smallest sample of what I can do to you. I can push this to your total destruction.”

  She opened her mouth but no words came forth. Only a gagging sound.

  “I think we may be going about this wrong,” I said. “Can you just have her speak normally, rather than this question-and-answer business?”

  “You heard him,” Mandor said. “It is my will, also.”

  She gasped, then said, “My hands... Please free them.”

  “Go ahead,” I said.

  “They are freed,” Mandor stated.

  She flexed her fingers.

  “A handkerchief, a towel...,” she said softly.

  I drew open a drawer in a nearby dresser, took out a handkerchief. As I moved to pass it to her, Mandor seized my wrist and took it from me. He tossed it to her and she caught it.

  “Don't reach within my sphere,” he told me.

  “I wouldn't hurt him,” she said, as she wiped her eyes, her cheeks, her chin. “I told you, I mean only to protect him.”

  “We require more information than that,” Mandor said, as he reached for the sphere again.

  “Wait,” I said. Then, to her, “Can you at least tell me why you can't tell me?”

  “No,” she answered. “It would amount to the same thing.”

  Suddenly I saw it as a strange sort of programming problem; and I decided to try a different tack.

  “You must protect me at all costs?” I said. “That is ;your primary function?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you are not supposed to tell me who set you this task, or why?”

  “Yes.”

  “Supposing the only way you could protect me would be by telling me these things?”

  Her brow furrowed.

  “I...,” she said. “I don't., .. The only way?”

  She closed her eyes and raised her hands to her face. “I... Then I would have to tell you.”

  “Now we're getting somewhere,” I said. “You would be willing to violate the secondary order in order to carry out the primary one?”

  “Yes, but what you have described is not a real situation,” she said.

  “I see one that is,” Mandor said suddenly. “You cannot follow that order if you cease to exist. Therefore, you would be violating it if you permit yourself to be destroyed. I will destroy you unless you answer those questions.”

  She smiled.

  “I don't think so,” she said.

  “Why not?”

  “Ask Merlin what the diplomatic situation would be if a daughter of the Begman prime minister were found dead in his room under mysterious circumstances-especially when he's already responsible for the disappearance of her sister.”

  Mandor frowned and looked at me.

  “I don't understand what that's all about,” he said.

  “It doesn't matter,” I told him. “She's lying. If something happens to her, the real Nayda simply returns. I saw it happen with George Hansen, Meg Devlin, and Vinta Bayle.”

  “That is what would normally occur,” she said, “except for one thing. They were all alive when I took possession of their bodies. But Nayda had just died, following a severe illness. She was exactly what I needed, though, so I took possession and healed the body. She is not here anymore. If I depart, you'll be left either with a corpse or a human vegetable.”

  “You're bluffing,” I said, but I remembered Vialle's saying that Nayda had been ill.

  “No,” she said. “I'm not.”

  “It doesn't matter,” I told her.

  “Mandor,” I said, turning to him, “you said you can keep her from vacating that body and following me?”

  “Yes,” he replied.

  “Okay, Nayda,” I said. “I am going somewhere and I am going to be in extreme d
anger there. I am not going to permit you to follow me and carry out your orders.”

  “Don't,” she answered.

  “You give me no choice but to keep you pent while I go about my business.”

  She sighed.

  “So you've found a way to get me to violate one order in order to get me to carry out the other. Very clever.”

  “Then you'll tell me what I want to know?”

  She shook her head.

  “I am physically unable to tell you,” she said. “It is not a matter of will. But... I think I've found a way around it.”

  “What is that?”

  “I believe I could confide in a third party who alstt desires your safety.”

  “You mean—”

  “If you will leave the room for a time, I will try to tell your brother those things I may not explain to you.”

  My eyes met Mandor's. Then, “I'll step out in the hall for a bit,” I said.

  And I did. A lot of things bothered me as I studied a tapestry on the wall, not the least being that I had never told her that Mandor was my brother.

  When my door opened after a long while, Mandor looked in both directions. He raised his hand when I began to move toward him. I halted, and he stepped outside and came toward me. He continued to glance about as he advanced.

  “This is Amber palace?” he inquired.

  “Yes. Not the most fashionable wing, perhaps, but I call it home.”

  “I'd like to see it under more relaxed circumstances,” he said.

  I nodded. “It's a date. So tell me, what happened in there?”

  He looked away, discovered the tapestry, studied it.

  “It's very peculiar,” he said. “I can't.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You still trust me, don't you?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then trust me in this. I've a good reason for not telling you what I learned.”

  “Come on, Mandor! What the hell's going on?”

  “The ty'iga is not a danger to you. It really does care about your welfare.”

  “So what else is new? I want to know why.”

  “Leave it,” he said, “for now. It's better that way.”

  I shook my head. I made a fist and looked around for something to hit.

  “I know how you feel, but I'm asking you to drop it,” he said.