The Great Book of Amber

by Roger Zelazny

  “As I understand it,” I replied.

  He frowned.

  “If you have any questions...”

  “No. I'll be thinking.”

  He rose. I got to my feet, also. With a gesture, he cleared the table. Then he turned away and I followed him out of the gazebo and across its yard to the trail.

  We emerged after a stroll in his external study cum receiving room. He squeezed my shoulder as we headed for the exit.

  “I'll see you at the funeral then,” he remarked.

  “Yes,” I said. “Thanks for the breakfast.”

  “By the way, how well do you like that lady, Coral?” he asked.

  “Oh, pretty well,” I said. “She's quite-nice.

  Why?”

  He shrugged.

  “Just curious. I was concerned about her, having been present at the time of her misadventure, and I wondered how much she meant to you.”

  “Enough that it bothers me a lot,” I said.

  “I see. Well, give her my good wishes if you should talk to her.”

  “Thanks, I will.”

  “We'll talk again later.”

  “Yes.”

  I strode into the way, making no haste. I still had considerable time before I was due by the Ways of Sawall.

  I paused when I came to a gibbet-shaped tree. A moment's reflection and I turned left, following an ascending trail among dark rocks. Near its top, I walked directly into a mossy boulder, emerging from a sandbank into a light rain. I ran across the field before me, till I came to the fairy circle beneath the ancient tree. I stepped to its middle, made up a couplet with my name for the rhyme, and sank into the ground. When I was halted and the moment's darkness went away, I found myself beside a damp stone wall, looking downhill across a prospect of headstones and monuments. The sky was fully overcast and a cool breeze wandered by. It felt to be one of the ends of a day, but whether morning or twilight lay near, I could not tell. The place looked exactly as I remembered it-cracked mausoleums hung with ivy, falling stone fences, wandering paths beneath high, dark trees. I moved down familiar trails.

  As a child, this had been a favored playground of mine, for a time. I met here almost daily, for dozens of cycles, with a little shadow girl named Rhanda. Kicking through boneheaps, brushing by damp shrubbery, I came at length to the damaged mausoleum where we had played house. Pushing aside the sagging gate, I entered.

  Nothing had changed, and I found myself chuckling. The cracked cups and saucers, tarnished utensils, were still stacked in the corner, heavy with dust, stained with seepage. I brushed off the catafalque we'd used as a table, seated myself upon it. One day Rhanda had simply stopped corning, and after a time I had, too. I'd often wondered what sari of woman she had become. I'd left her a note in our hiding place, beneath a loose floor stone, I recalled. I wondered whether she'd ever found it.

  I raised the stone. My filthy envelope still lay there, unsealed. I took it out, shook it off, slid out my folded sheet.

  I unfolded it, read my faded childish scrawl: What happened Rhanda? 1 waited and you didn't come. Beneath it, in a far neater hand, was written: I can't come anymore because my folks say you are a demon or a vampire. I'm sorry because you are the nicest demon or vampire I know. I'd never thought of that possibility. Amazing, the ways one can be misunderstood.

  I sat there for a time, remembering growing up. I'd taught Rhanda the bonedance game in here. I snapped my fingers then, and our old ensorcelled heap of them across the way made a sound like stirring leaves. My juvenile spell was still in place; the bones rolled forward, arranged themselves into a pair of manikins, began their small, awkward dance. They circled each other, barely holding their shapes, pieces flaking away, cobwebs trailing; loose ones-spares-began to bounce about them. They made tiny clicking sounds as they touched. I moved them faster.

  A shadow crossed the doorway, and I heard a chuckle. “I'll be damned! All you need's a tin roof. So this is how they spend their time in Chaos.”

  “Luke!” I exclaimed as he stepped inside, my manikins collapsing as my attention left them, into little gray, sticklike heaps. “What are you doing here?”

  “Could say I was selling cemetery lots,” he observed. “You interested in one?”

  He had on a red shirt and brown khakis tucked into his brown suede boots. A tan cloak hung about his shoulders. He was grinning.

  “Why aren't you off ruling?”

  His smile went away, to be replaced by a moment of puzzlement, returned almost instantly.

  “Oh, felt I needed a break. What about you? There's a funeral soon, isn't there?”

  I nodded.

  “Later on,” I said. “I'm just taking a break myself. How'd you get here, anyway?”

  “Followed my nose,” he said. “Needed some intelligent conversation.”

  “Be serious. Nobody knew I was coming here. I didn't even know it till the last minute. I—”

  I groped about in my pockets.

  “You didn't plant another of those blue stones on me, did you?”

  “No; nothing that simple,” he replied. “I seem to have some sort of message for you.”

  I got to my feet, approached him, studying his face.

  “Are you okay, Luke?”

  “Sure. As okay as I ever am, that is.”

  “It's no mean stunt, finding your way this near to the Courts. Especially if you've never been here before. How'd you manage it?”

  “Well, the Courts and I go back a long ways, old buddy. You might say it's in my-blood.”

  He moved aside from the doorway and I stepped outside. Almost automatically, we began walking.

  “I don't understand what you're saying,” I told him.

  “Well, my dad spent some time here, back in his plotting days,” he said. “It's where he met my mother.”

  “I didn't know that.”

  “It never came up. We never talked family, remember?”

  “Yeah,” I said, “and no one I asked seemed to know where Jasra came from. Still, the Courts... She's a long way from home.”

  “Actually, she was recruited from a nearby shadow,” he explained, “like this one.”

  “Recruited?”

  “Yes, she worked as a servant for a number of years-I think she was fairly young when she startedat the Ways of Helgram.”

  “Helgram? That's my mother's House!”

  “Right. She was a maid-companion to the lady Dara. That's where she learned the Arts.”

  “Jasra got her instruction in sorcery from my mother? And she met Brand at Helgram? That would make it seem Helgram had something to do with Brand's plot, the Black Road, the war—”

  “-and the Lady Dara going looking for your father? I guess so.”

  “Because she wanted to be a Pattern initiate as well as one of the Logrus?”

  “Maybe,” he said. “I wasn't present.”

  We moved down a gravelly trail, fumed at a huge cluster of dark shrubbery, passing through a forest of stone and over a bridge that crossed a slow black stream that reflected high branches and sky, monochrome. A few leaves rustled in a stray breeze.

  “How come you never mentioned any of this later?” I asked.

  “I intended to, but it never seemed urgent,” he said, “whereas a lot of other things did.”

  “True,” I said. “The pace did seem to keep picking up each time our trails crossed. But now– Are you saying it's urgent now, that I suddenly need to know this?”

  “Oh, not exactly.” He halted. He reached out and leaned upon a headstone. His hand began to grip it, growing white about the knuckles, across the back. The stone at his fingertips was ground to powder, fell snowlike to the earth. “Not exactly,” he repeated. “That part was my idea, just because I wanted you to know. Maybe it'll do you some good, maybe it won't. Information is like that. You never know.” With a crunching, cracking sound, the top of the headstone suddenly gave way. Luke hardly seemed to notice this, and his hand kept on squeezing. Small pieces fell
from the larger one he now held.

  “So you came all this way to tell me that?”

  “No,” he answered, as we turned and began walking back the way we had come. “I was sent to tell you something else, and it's been pretty hard holding off. But I figured if I talked about this first, it couldn't let me go, would keep feeding me till I got around to the message. “

  There came a huge crunch, and the stone he held turned to gravel, falling to mix with that on the trail. “Let me see your hand.”

  He brushed it off and held it out. A tiny flame flickered near the base of his index finger. He ran his thumb over it and it went out. I increased my pace, and he matched it.

  “Luke, you know what you are?”

  “Something in me seems to, but I don't, man. I just feel-I'm not right. I'd probably better tell you what I feel I should pretty quick now.”

  “No. Hold off,” I said, hurrying even more.

  Something dark passed overhead, too quick for me to make out its shape, vanishing among the trees. We were buffeted by a sudden gust of wind.

  “You know what's going on, Merle?” he asked.

  “I think so,” I said, “and I want you to do exactly what I tell you, no matter how weird it might seem. Okay?”

  “Sure thing. If I can't trust a Lord of Chaos, who can I trust, eh?”

  We hurried past the clump of shrubs. My mausoleum was just up ahead.

  “You know, there really is something I feel obliged to tell you right now, though,” he said.

  “Hold it. Please.”

  “It is important, though.”

  I ran on ahead of him. He began running, too, to keep up.

  “It's about your being here at the Courts, just now.”

  I extended my hands, used them to brake myself when I came up against the wall of the stone building. I swung myself through the doorway and inside. Three big steps, and I was kneeling in the corner, snatching up an old cup, using the corner of my cloak to wipe it out.

  “Merle, what the hell are you doing?” Luke asked, entering behind me.

  “Just a minute and I'll show you,” I told him, drawing my dagger.

  Placing the cup upon the stone where I had been seated earlier, I held my hand above it and used the dagger to cut my wrist.

  Instead of blood, flame came forth from the incision.

  “No! Damn it!” I cried.

  And I reached into the spikard, located the proper line, and found the flowing channel of a cooling spell that I laid upon the wound. Immediately, the flames died and it was blood that flowed from me. However, as it fell into the cup it began to smoke. Cursing, I extended the spell to control its liquidity there, also.

  “Yeah, it's weird, Merle. I'll give you that,” Luke observed.

  I laid the dagger aside and used my right hand to squeeze my arm above the wound. The blood flowed faster. The spikard throbbed. I glanced at Luke. There was a look of strain upon his face. I pumped my fist. The cup was more than half-full.

  “You said you trust me,” I stated.

  “Afraid so,” he answered.

  Three-quarters...

  “You've got to drink this, Luke,” I said. “I mean it.

  “Somehow, I suspected you were leading up to this,” he said, “and, really, it doesn't sound like such a bad idea. I've a feeling I need a lot of help just now.”

  He reached out and took the cup, raised it to his lips. I pressed the palm of my hand against the wound. Outside, the winds were gusting regularly.

  “When you've finished, put it back,” I said. “You're going to need more.”

  I could hear the sounds of his swallowing.

  “Better than a slug of Jameson,” he said then.

  “Don't know why.” He replaced the cup on the stone.

  “A little salty, though,” he added.

  I removed my hand from the incision, held the wrist above it again, pumped my fist.

  “Hey, man. You're losing a lot of blood there. I feel okay now. Was just a little dizzy, that's all. I don't need any more.”

  “Yes, you do,” I said. “Believe me. I gave a lot more than this in a blood drive once and ran in a meet the next day. It's okay.”

  The wind rose to a gale, moaning past us now.

  “Mind telling me what's going on?” he asked. “Luke, you're a Pattern ghost,” I told him.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The Pattern can duplicate anybody who ever walked it. You've got all the signs. I know them.”

  “Hey, I feel real. I didn't even do the Pattern in Amber. I did it in Tir-na Nog'th.”

  “Apparently, it controls the two images as well, since they're true copies. Do you remember your coronation in Kashfa?”

  “Coronation? Hell no! You mean I made it to the throne?”

  “Yep. Rinaldo the First.”

  “God damn! Bet Mom's happy.”

  “I'm sure.”

  “This is kind of awkward then, there being two of me. You seem familiar with the phenomenon. How does the Pattern handle it?”

  “You guys tend not to last very long. It seems the closer you are to the Pattern itself the stronger you are, too. It must have taken a lot of juice to project you this

  far. Here, drink this.” “Sure.”

  He tossed off a half cupful and handed the cup back.

  “So what's with the precious bodily fluids?” he asked.

  “The blood of Amber seems to have a sustaining ef-fect on Pattern ghosts.”

  “You mean I'm some kind of vampire?”

  “I suppose you could put it that way, in a sort of technical sense.”

  “I'm not sure I like that-especially such a specialized one.”

  “It does seem to have certain drawbacks. But one thing at a time. Let's get you stabilized before we start looking for angles.”

  “All right. You've got a captive audience.”

  There came a rattle, as of a rolled stone, from outside, followed by a small clanking noise.

  Luke turned his head.

  “I don't think that's just the wind,” he stated.

  “Take the last sip,” I said, moving away from the cup and groping after my handkerchief. “It'll have to hold you.”

  He tossed it off as I wrapped my wrist. He knotted it in place for me.

  “Let's get out of here,” I said. “The vibes are getting bad.”

  “Fine with me,” he replied as a figure appeared at the doorway. It was backlighted, its features lost in shadow.

  “You're not going anywhere, Pattern ghost,” came an almost-familiar voice.

  I willed the spikard to about 150 watts illumination. It was Borel, showing his teeth in an unfriendly fashion.

  “You are about to become a very large candle, Patterner,” he said to Luke.

  “You're wrong, Borel,” I said, raising the spikard.

  Suddenly, the Sign of the Logrus swam between us.

  “Borel? T'he master swordsman?” Luke inquired. “The same,” I answered.

  “Oh, shit!” Luke said.

  V

  As I probed forward with two of the more lethal energies of the spikard the Logrus image intercepted them and turned them off.

  “I didn't save him for you to take him out this easily,” I said, and just then something like the image of the Pattern but not really the same flashed into existence nearby.

  The Sign of the Logrus slid to my left. The new thing-whatever it was-kept pace with it, both of them passing silently through the wall. Almost immediately, there followed a thunderclap that shook the building. Even Borel, who was reaching for his blade, paused in mid-gesture, then moved his hand to catch hold of the doorway. As he did this, another figure appeared at his back and a familiar voice addressed him: “Please excuse me. You're blocking my way.”

  “Corwin!” I cried. “Dad!”

  Borel turned his head.

  “Corwin, Prince of Amber?” he said.

  “Indeed,” came the reply, “though I'm afraid I h
aven't had the pleasure.”

  “I am Borel, Duke of Hendrake, Master of Arms of the Ways of Hendrake.”

  “You speak with a lot of capitals, sir, and I'm pleased to make your acquaintance,” Corwin said. “Now, if you don't mind, I'd like to get through here to see my son.”

  Borel's hand moved to the hilt of his blade as he turned. I was already moving forward by then, and so was Luke. But there was a movement beyond Borel-a kick, it seemed, low-causing him to expel a lot of air and double forward. Then a fist descended upon the back of his neck and he fell.

  “Come on,” Corwin called, gesturing. “I think we'd better get out of here.”

  Luke and I emerged, stepping over the fallen Master of Arms of the Ways of Hendrake. The ground off to the left was blackened, as if from a recent brushfire, and a light rain had begun to fall. There were other human figures in the distance now, moving toward us.

  “I don't know whether the force that brought me here can get me out again,” Corwin said, looking about. “It may be otherwise occupied.” Several moments passed, then, “I guess it is,” he said. “Okay, it's up to you. How do we flee?”

  “This way,” I told him, turning and breaking into a run.

  They followed me up the trails that had brought me to this place. I looked back and saw that six dark figures pursued us.

  I headed uphill, past the markers and monuments, coming at last to the place beside the old stone wall. By then, there were shouts from behind us. Ignoring them, I drew my companions to me and came up with an impromptu couplet that described the situation and my desire in somewhat less than perfect meter. Still, the charm held, and a hurled cobble only missed me because we were already sinking into the earth.

  We emerged from the fairy ring, coming up like mushrooms, and I led my companions across the field, jogging; to the sandbank. As we entered there I heard another shout. We exited the boulder and descended the rocky trail to the gibbet tree. Turning left on the trail, I . began to run.

  “Hold up!” Corwin called. “I feel it around here somewhere. There!”

  He left the trail to the right and began running toward the base of a small hill. Luke and I followed. From be– . hind us came the sounds of our pursuers' emergence from the way at the boulder.