PRINCE OF CHAOS

THE AMBER SERIES - BOOK TEN

Roger Zelazny

 

 

I

See one coronation and you’ve seen them all.  Sounds cynical and probably is, especially when the principal is your best friend and his queen’s your inadvertent lover.  But there’s generally a procession, with a lot of slow music, and uncomfortable, colorful garb, incense, speeches, prayers, the ringing of bells.  They are tedious, generally hot, and requiring of one an insincere attention, as at weddings, commencements, and secret initiations.

And so Luke and Coral became the sovereigns of Kashfa, in the same church where we’d fought almost-but, unfortunately, not quite-to the death with my mad brother Jurt but a few hours before.  As Amber’s only representative at the event-albeit of, technically, unofficial status-I was accorded a ringside standing place, and eyes were often drifting my way.  So I had to keep alert and mouth appropriate responses.  While Random would not permit formal status to my presence at the ceremony, I knew he’d be irritated if he heard that my behavior was less than diplomatically sound.

So I wound up with hurting feet, a stiff neck, and colorful garments soaked with sweat.  That’s show biz.  Still, I wouldn’t have had it any other way.  Luke and I go back through some of the damnedest times, and I couldn’t help but think of them-from sword’s point to track meets, from art galleries and into Shadow-as I stood there sweltering and wondering what would become of him now he wore a crown.  Such an occurrence had changed my uncle Random from a happy-go-lucky musician, footloose and degenerate, into a sage and responsible monarch-though I’ve only my relatives’ reports when it comes to knowing about the first.  I found myself hoping it wouldn’t mellow Luke out all that much.  Still-again-Luke was a very different person than Random, not to mention ages younger.  Amazing what years can do, though-or is it just the nature of events? I realized myself to be a lot different than I had been not so very long ago, from all that had happened to me recently.  A lot different than I’d been yesterday, come to think of it.

During the recessional Coral managed to pass me a note, saying that she had to see me, giving a time and a place, even including a small map.  It proved an apartment to the rear of the palace.  We met there that evening and wound up spending the night.  She and Luke had been married as kids, by proxy, I learned then, part of the diplomatic arrangement between Jasra and the Begmans.  It didn’t work out, though-the diplomatic part, that is-and the rest kind of fell by the wayside.  The principals had sort of forgotten about the marriage, too, till recent events served as a reminder.  Neither had seen the other in years.  Still, the record showed that the prince had been married.  While it was an annullable thing, she could also be crowned with him.  If there were anything in it for Kashfa.

And there was: Eregnor.  A Begman queen on the Kashfan throne might help smooth over that particular real estate gab.  At least, that had been Jasra’s thinking, Coral told me.  And Luke had been swayed by this, particularly in the absence of the guarantees from Amber and the now-defunct Golden Circle Treaty.

I held her.  She was not well, despite what seemed an amazing postoperative recovery.  She wore a black patch over her right eye and was more than a little reactive should my hand stray near it-or even if I looked at it for too long.  What might have led Dworkin to replace the damaged eye with the Jewel of Judgment, I could not even guess.  Unless he somehow considered her proof against the forces of the Pattern and the Logrus in their attempts to recover it.  My expertise in this area, though, was nonexistent.  Having finally met the diminutive mage, I had become convinced of his sanity-though this feeling in no way served to penetrate those enigmatic qualities that ancient wise men tend to possess.

“How does it feel?” I asked her.

“Very strange,” she replied.  “Not pain-exactly.  More like the way a Trump contact feels.  Only it’s with me all the time, and I’m not going anywhere or talking to anyone.  It’s as if I’m standing in some sort of gateway.  Forces are moving about me, through me.”

In an instant I was at the center that was the gay ring with its wheel of many-spoked reddish metal.  From the inside, here, it was like a great web.  A bright strand pulsed for my attention.  Yes, it was a line to a very potent force in distant Shadow, one that might be used for probing.  Carefully, I extended it toward the covered jewel she wore in her eye socket.

There was no immediate resistance.  In fact, I felt nothing as I extended the line of power.  An image came to me of a curtain of flame, however.  Pushing through the fiery veil, I felt my extension of inquiry slowing, slowing, halted.  And there I hovered, as It were, at the edge of a void.  This was not the way of attunement, as I understood it, and I was loath to invoke the Pattern, which I understood to be a part of it, when employing other forces.  I pushed forward and felt a terrible coldness, draining the energies I had called upon.

Still, it was not draining the energy directly from me, only from one of the forces I commanded.  I pushed it farther, and I beheld a faint patch of light like some distant nebula.  It hung against a background the deep red of port wine.  Closer still, and it resolved itself into a form-a complex, three dimensional construct, half familiar-which must be the pathway one takes in attuning oneself to the Jewel, from my father’s description.  All right, I was inside the Jewel.  Should I essay the initiation?

“Go no further,” came an unfamiliar voice, though I realized it to be Coral who was making the sounds.  She seemed to have slipped into a trance state.  “You are denied the higher initiation.”

I drew back on my probe, not eager for any demonstrations that might come my way along it.  My Logrus sight, which had remained with me constantly since recent events in Amber, gave me a vision of Coral now fully enfolded and penetrated by the higher version of the Pattern.

“Why?” I asked it.

But I was riot vouchsafed a reply.  Coral gave a little jerk, shook herself, and stared at me.

“What happened?” she asked.

“You dozed off,” I replied.  “No wonder.  Whatever Dworkin did, plus the day’s stress ...”

She yawned and collapsed back on the bed.

“Yes,” she breathed, and then she was really asleep.  I pulled off my boots and discarded my heavier garments.  I stretched out beside her and drew a quilt over us.  I was tired, too, and I just wanted someone to hold.

How long I slept I do not know.  I was troubled by dark, swirling dreams.  Faces-human, animal, demonic, moved about me, none of them bearing particularly cheerful expressions.  Forests fell and burst into flame, the ground shook and split, the waters of the sea rose in gigantic waves and assailed the land, the moon dripped blood and there came up a great wailing.  Something called my name....

A great wind rattled the shutters till they burst inward, dapping and banging.  In my dream, a creature entered then and came to crouch at the foot of the bed, calling softly to me, over and over.  The room seemed to be shaking, and my mind went back to California.  It seemed that an earthquake was in progress.  The wind rose from a shriek to a roar, and I heard crashing sounds from without, as of trees falling, towers toppling....

“Merlin, Prince of the House of Sawall, Prince of Chaos, rise up,” it seemed to say.  Then it gnashed its fangs and began again.

At the fourth or fifth repetition it struck me that I might not be dreaming.  There were screams from somewhere outside, and steady pulses of lightning came and went against almost musical rolls of thunder.

I raised a protective shell before I moved, before I opened my eyes.  The sounds were real, as was the broken shutter.  So was the creature at the foot of the bed.

 “Merlin, Merlin.  Rise up, Merlin,” it said to me-it being a long-snouted, pointed-eared individual, wellfanged and clawed, of a greenish-silver cast of complexion, eyes large and shining, damp leathery wings folded against its lean sides.  From its expression, I couldn’t tell whether it was smiling or in pain.  “Awaken, Lord of Chaos.”

“Gryll,” I said, naming an old family servant from the Courts.

“Aye, Lord,” it replied.  “The same as taught you the bonedance game.”

“I’ll be damned.”

“Business before pleasure, Lord.  I’ve followed the black thread a long and horrid way to come calling.”

“The threads didn’t reach this far,” I said, “without an awful lot of push.  Maybe even not then.  Do they now?”

“It’s easier now,” he replied.

“How so?”

“His Majesty Swayvill, King of Chaos, sleeps this night with the ancestors of darkness.  I was sent to fetch you back for the ceremonies.”

“Now?”

“Now.”

“Yeah.  Well, okay.  Sure.  Just let me get my stuff together.  How’d it happen, anyhow?”

I pulled on my boots, donned the rest of my garments, buckled on my blade.

“I am not privy to any details.  Of course, it is common knowledge that his health was poor.”

“I want to leave a note,” I said.

He nodded.

“A brief one, I trust.”

“Yes.”

I scrawled on a piece of parchment from the writing table, Coral, Called away on family business.  I’ll be in touch, and I laid it beside her hand.

“All right,” I said.  “How do we do this?”

“I will bear you upon my back, Prince Merlin, as I did long ago.”

I nodded as a flood of childhood memories returned to me.  Gryll was immensely strong, as are most demons.  But I recalled our games, at Pit’s-edge and out over the darkness, in burial chambers, caves, still-smoking battlefields, ruined temples, chambers of dead sorcerers, private hells.  I always seemed to have more fun playing with demons than with my mother’s relatives by blood or marriage.  I even based my main Chaos form upon one of their kind.

He absorbed a chair from the room’s corner for extra mass, changing shape to accommodate my adult size.  As I climbed upon his elongated torso, catching a firm hold, he exclaimed, “Ah, Merlin! What magics do you bear these days?”

“I’ve their control, but not full knowledge of their essence,” I answered.  “They’re a very recent acquisition.  What is it that you feel?”

“Heat, cold, strange music,” he replied.  “From all directions.  You have changed.”

“Everyone changes,” I said as he moved toward the window.  “That’s life.”

A dark thread lay upon the wide sill.  He reached out and touched it as he launched himself.

There came a great rushing of wind as we fell downward, moved forward, rose.  Towers flashed past, wavering.  The stars were bright, a quarter moon just risen, illuminating the bellies of a low line of clouds.  We soared, the castle and the town dwindling in an eyeblink.  The stars danced, became streaks of light.  A band of sheer, rippling blackness spread about us, widening.  The Black Road, I suddenly thought.  It is like a temporary version of the Black Road, in the sky.  I glanced back.  It was not there.  It was as if it were somehow reeling in as we rode.  Or was it reeling us in?

The countryside passed beneath us like a film played at triple speed.  Forest, hill, and mountain peak fled by.  Our black way was a great ribbon heaving before us, patches of light and dark like daytime cloud shadows sliding past.  And then the tempo increased, staccato.  I noted of a sudden that there was no longer any wind.  Abruptly, the moon was high overhead, and a crooked mountain range snaked beneath us.  The stillness had a dreamlike quality to it, and in an instant the moon had fallen lower.  A line of light cracked the world to my right and stars began to go out.  There was no feeling of exertion in Gryll’s body as we plunged along that black way; and the moon vanished and light grew buttery yellow along a line of clouds, acquiring a pink cast even as I watched.

“The power of Chaos rises,” I remarked.

“The energy of disorder,” he replied.

“There is more to this than you’ve told me,” I said.

“I am but a servant,” Gryll responded, “and not privy to the councils of the mighty.”

The world continued to brighten, and for as far ahead as I could see our black ribbon rippled.  We were passing high over mountainous terrain.  And clouds blew apart and new ones formed at a rapid rate.  We had obviously begun our passage through Shadow.  After a time, the mountains wore down and rolling plains slid by.  Suddenly the sun was in the middle of the sky.  We seemed to be passing just above our black way, Gryll’s toes barely grazing it as we moved.  At times his wings hardly fluttered before me, at other times they thrummed like those of a hummingbird, into invisibility.

The sun grew cherry-red far to my left.  A pink desert spread beneath us...

Then it was dark again and the stars turned like a great wheel.

Then we were low, barely passing above the tops of the trees...

We burst into the air over a busy downtown street, lights on poles and the fronts of vehicles, neon in windows.  The warm, stuffy, dusty, gassy smell of city rose up about us.  A few pedestrians glanced upward, barely seeming to note our passage.

Even as we flashed across a river, cresting the house tops of suburbia, the prospect wavered and we passed over a primordial landscape of rock, lava, avalanche, and shuddering ground, two active volcanoes-one near, one far-spewing smoke against a blue-green sky.

“This, I take it, is a shortcut?” I said.

“It is the shortest cut,” Gryll replied.

We entered a long night, and at some point it seemed that our way took us beneath deep waters, bright sea creatures hovering and darting both near at hand and in the middle distance.  Dry and uncrushed, the black way protected us.

“It is as major an upheaval as the death of Oberon,” Gryll volunteered.

“Its effects are rippling across Shadow.”

“But Oberon’s death coincided with the re-creation of the Pattern,” I said.  “There was more to it than the death of a monarch of one of the extremes.”

“True,” Gryll replied, “but now is a time of imbalance among the forces.  This adds to it.  It will be even more severe.”

We plunged into an opening in a dark mass of stone.  Lines of light streaked past us.  Irrregularities were limned in a pale blue.  Later-how long, I do not know-we were in a purple sky, with no transition that I can recall from the dark sea bottom.  A single star gleamed far ahead.  We sped toward it.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because the Pattern has grown stronger than the Logrus,” he replied.

“How did that happen?”

“Prince Corwin drew a second Pattern at the time of the confrontation between the Courts and Amber.”

“Yes, he told me about it.  I’ve even seen it.  He feared Oberon might not be able to repair the original.”

“But he did, and so now there are two.”

“Yes?”

“Your father’s Pattern is also an artifact of order.  It served to tip the ancient balance in the favor of Amber.”

“How is it you are aware of this, Gryll, when no one back in Amber seems to know it or saw fit to tell me?”

“Your brother Prince Mandor and the Princess Fiona suspected this and sought evidence.  They presented their findings to your uncle, Lord Suhuy.  He made several journeys into Shadow and became persuaded that this is the case.  He was preparing his findings for presentation to the king when Swayvill suffered his final illness.  I know these things because it was Suhuy who sent me for you, and he charged me to tell them to you.”

“I just assumed it was my mother who’d sent for me.”

“Suhuy was certain she would-which is why he wanted to reach you first.  What I have told you concerning your father’s Pattern is not yet common knowledge.”

“What am I supposed to do about it?”

“He did not entrust me with that information.”

The star grew brighter.  The sky was filled with splashes of orange and pink.  Shortly, lines of green light joined them, and they swirled like streamers about us.

We raced on, and the configurations came to dominate the sky fully, like a psychedelic parasol rotating slowly.  The landscape became a total blur.  I felt as if a part of me dozed, though I am certain I did not lose consciousness.  Time seemed to be playing games with my metabolism.  I grew enormously hungry and my eyes ached.

The star brightened.  Gryll’s wings took on a prismatic shimmer.  We seemed to be moving at an incredible pace now.

Our strand curved upward at its outer edges.  The process continued as we advanced until it seemed we were moving in a trough.  Then they met overhead, and it was as if we sped down a gun barrel, aimed at the blue-white star.

“Anything else you’re supposed to tell me?”

“Not so far as I know.”

I rubbed my left wrist, feeling as if something should have been pulsing there.  Oh, yes.  Frakir.  Where was Frakir, anyway? Then I recalled leaving her behind in Brand’s apartment.  Why had I done that? I-my mind felt cloudy, the memory dreamlike.

This was the first time since the event that I had examined that memory.  Had I looked earlier I would have known sooner what it meant.  It was the clouding effect of glamor.  I had walked into a spell back in Brand’s apartment.  I’d no way of knowing whether it had been specific to me or merely something I’d activated in poking about.  It could, I supposed, even have been something more general, enlivened by the disaster-possibly even an unintentional side effect of something that had been disturbed.  Somehow I doubted the latter, however.

For that matter, I doubted any generality about the business.  It was just too right to have been a booby-trap Brand had left lying about.  It had confounded a trained sorcerer, me.  Perhaps it was only my present distancing from the vicinity of its occurrence that had helped to clear my mind.  As I reviewed my actions from the time of exposure I could see that I had been moving in something of a haze since then.  And the more I reviewed the more I felt the spell to have been specifically tailored to enfold me.  Not understanding it, I could not consider myself free of it with this knowledge either.

Whatever it was, it had caused me to abandon Frakir without thinking twice about it, and it had caused me to feel-well-strange.  I could not tell exactly how it might have influenced, might still be influencing, my thoughts and my feelings, the usual problem when one is caught up inside a spell.  But I didn’t see how it could possibly have been the late Brand himself who had set the thing up against such an unpredictable occurrence as my having rooms next to his old ones years after his death, from which I would be prompted to enter his quarters in the disastrous aftermath of an improbable confrontation between the Logrus and the Pattern in an upper hall of Amber Castle.  No, it seemed that someone else had to be behind it.  Jurt? Julia? It didn’t seem too likely that they’d be able to operate undetected in the heart of Amber Castle.  Who then? And could it have had anything to do with that episode in the Hall of Mirrors? I drew blanks.  Were I back there now I might be able to come up with a spell of my own to ferret out the one responsible.  But I wasn’t, and any investigation at that end of things would have to wait.

The light ahead flashed more brightly now, winking from heavenly blue to baleful red.

“Gryll,” I said.  “Do you detect a spell upon me?”

“Aye, m’Iord,” he replied.

“Why didn’t you mention it?”

“I thought it one of your own-for defense, perhaps.”

“Can you lift it? I’m at a disadvantage, here on the inside.”

“’Tis too tangled in your person.  I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

“Can you tell me anything about it?”

“Only that it’s there, m’lord.  Does seem rather heavy about the head, though.”

“Could be coloring my thoughts a certain way, then?”

“Aye, a pale blue.”

“I wasn’t referring to your manner of perceiving it.  Only to the possibility that it could be influencing my thinking.”

His wings flashed blue, then red.  Our tunnel expanded suddenly and the sky grew bright with the crazy colors of Chaos.  The star we followed now took on the proportions of a small light-magically enhanced, of course-within a high tower of a sepulchral castle, all gray and olive, atop a mountain the bottom and middle of which had been removed The island of stone floated above a petrified forest.  The trees burned with opal fires-orange, purple, green.

“I’d imagine it could be disentangled,” Gryll observed.  “But its unraveling be a bafflement to this poor demon.”

I grunted.  I watched the streaking scenery for a few moments.  Then, “Speaking of demons ...” I said.

“Yes?”

“What can you tell me about the sort known as a ty’iga?” I asked.

“They dwell far out beyond the Rim,” he replied, “and may be the closest of all creatures to the primal Chaos.  I do not believe they even possess true bodies of the material sort.  They have little to do with other demons, let alone anyone else.”

“Ever know any of them-uh-personally?”

“I have encountered a few-now and then,” he replied.

We rose higher.  The castle had been doing the same.  A fall of meteors burned its way, brightly, silently, behind it.

“They can inhabit a human body, take it over.”

“That doesn’t surprise me.”

“I know of one who has done this thing, several times.  But an unusual problem has come up.  It apparently took control of one on the human’s deathbed.  The passing of the human seemed to lock the ty’iga in place.  It cannot vacate the body now.  Do you know of any way it might escape?”

Gryll chuckled.

“Jump off a cliff, I suppose.  Or fall on a sword.”

“But what if it’s tied to its host so closely now that this doesn’t free it?”

He chuckled again.

“That’s the breaks of the game, in the body-stealing business.”

“I owe this one something,” I said.  “I’d like to help her-it.”

He was silent for a time, then replied, “An older, wiser ty’iga might know something about these matters.  And you know where they are.”

“Yeah.”

“Sorry I can’t be more help.  They’re an old breed, ty’iga.”

And now we bore down upon that tower.  Our roadway under the shifting

kaleidoscope that was the sky dwindled before us to but the tiniest of streaks.  Gryll beat his way toward the light in the window and I peered past him.

I glanced downward.  The prospect was dizzying.  From some distant place a growling sound came up, as if portions of the earth itself were moving slowly against each other-a common enough occurrence in this vicinity.  The winds beat at my garments.  A strand of tangerine clouds beaded the sky to my left.  I could make out detail work in the castle walls.  I caught sight of a figure within the room of the light.

Then we were very near, and then through the window and inside.  A large, stooped, gray and red demonic form, horned and half-scaled, regarded me with elliptically pupiled yellow eyes.  Its fangs were bared in a smile.

“Uncle!” I cried as I dismounted.  “Greetings!”

Gryll stretched and shook himself as Suhuy rushed forward and embraced me-carefully.

“Merlin,” he said at last, “welcome home.  I regret the occasion but rejoice in your presence.  Gryll has told you...?”

“Of the passing of His Highness? Yes.  I’m sorry.”

He released me and stepped back a pace.

“It is not as if it were unanticipated,” he said.  “Just the opposite.  Too much so, in fact.  Yet there is no proper time for such an event.”

“True,” I replied, massaging a certain stiffness out of my left shoulder and groping in my hip pocket after a comb.

“And he had been ailing for so long that I had grown used to it,” I said.  “It was almost as if he’d come to terms with the weakness.”

Suhuy nodded.  Then, “Are you going to transform?” he asked.

“It’s been a rough day,” I told him.  “I’d as soon save my energy, unless there’s some demand of protocol.”

“None at all, just now,” he replied.  “Have you eaten?”

“Not recently.”

“Come then,” he said.  “Let’s find you some nourishment.”

He turned and walked toward the far wall.  I followed him.  There were no doors in the room, and he had to know all the local Shadow stress points, the Courts being opposite to Amber in this regard.  While it’s awfully hard to pass through Shadow in Amber, the shadows are like frayed curtains in the Courts-often, you can look right through into another reality without even trying.  And, sometimes, something in the other reality may be looking at you.  Care must be taken, too, not to step through into a place where you will find yourself in the middle of the air, underwater, or in the path of a raging torrent.  The Courts were never big on tourism.

Fortunately, the stuff of Shadow is so docile at this end of reality that it can be easily manipulated by a shadowmaster-who can stitch together their fabrics to create a way.  Shadowmasters are technicians of locally potent skill, whose ability derives from the Logrus, though they need not be initiates.  Very few are, although all initiates are automatically members of the Shadowmaster Guild.  They’re like plumbers or electricians about the Courts, and their skills vary as much as their counterparts on the Shadow Earth-a combination of aptitude and experience.  While I’m a guild member I’d much rather follow someone who knows the ways than feel them out for myself.  I suppose I should say more about this matter.  Maybe I will sometime.

When we reached the wall, of course, it wasn’t there.  It just sort of grew misty and faded away; and we passed through the space where it had been-or, rather, a different analogous space-and we were passing down a green stairway.  Well, it wasn’t exactly a stairway.  It was a series of unconnected green discs, descending in spiral fashion, proper riser and tread distance apart, sort of floating there in the night air.  They passed about the exterior of the castle, finally stopping before a blank wall.  Before we reached that wall we passed through several moments of bright daylight, a brief flurry of blue snow, and the apse of something like a cathedral without an altar, skeletons occupying pews at either hand.  When we finally came to the wall we passed through it, emerging in a large kitchen.  Suhuy led me to the larder and indicated I should help myself.  I found some cold meat and bread and made myself a sandwich, washing it down with tepid beer.  He nibbled at a piece of bread himself and sipped at a flagon of the same brew.  A bird appeared overhead in full flight, cawing raucously, vanishing again before it had passed the entire length of the room.

“When are the services?” I asked.

“Redsky next, almost a whole turning off,” he replied.  “So you’ve a chance to sleep and collect yourself before then-perhaps.”

“What do you mean, ‘perhaps’?”

“As one of the three, you’re under black watch.  That’s why I summoned you here, to one of my places of solitude.” He turned and walked through the wall.  I followed him, still bearing my flagon, and we seated ourselves beside a still, green pool beneath a rocky overhang, umber sky above.  His castle contained places from all over Chaos and Shadow, stitched together into a crazy-quilt pattern of ways within ways.  “And since you wear the spikard you’ve added resources for safety,” he observed.

He reached out and touched the many-spoked wheel of my ring.  A faint tingling followed in my finger, hand, and arm.

“Uncle, you were often given to cryptic utterances when you were my teacher,” I said.  “But I’ve graduated now, and I guess that gives me the right to say I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

He chuckled and sipped his beer.

“On reflection, it always became clear,” he said.

“Reflection ...” I said, and I looked into the pool.  Images swam amid the black ribbons beneath its surface-Swayvill lying in state, yellow and black robes muffling his shrunken form, my mother, my father, demonic forms, all passing and fading, Jurt, myself, Jasra and Julia, Random and Fiona, Mandor and Dworkin, Bill Roth and many faces I did not know ...

I shook my head.

“Reflection does not clarify,” I said.

“It is not the function of an instant,” he replied.

So I returned my attention to the chaos of faces and forms.  Jurt returned and remained for a long time.  He was dressing himself, in very good taste, and he appeared to be relatively intact.  When he finally faded there returned one of the half familiar faces I had seen earlier.  I knew he was a noble of the Courts, and I searched my memory.  Of course.  It had been a long while, but now I recognized him.  It was Tmer, of the House of Jesby, eldest son of the late Prince Rolovians, and now lord himself of the Ways of Jesby-spade beard, heavy brow, sturdily built, not unhandsome, in a rugged sort of way; by all report a brave and possibly even sensitive fellow.

Then there was Prince TubbIe of the Ways of Chanicut, phasing back and forth between human and swirling demonic forms.  Placid, heavy, subtle; centuries old and very shrewd; he wore a fringed beard, had wide, innocent, pale eyes, was master of many games.

I waited, and Tmer followed Jurt followed Tubble into vanishment amid the coiling ribbons.  I waited longer, and nothing new occurred.

“End of reflection,” I announced at last.  “But I still don’t know what it means.”

“What did you see?”

“My brother Jurt,” I replied, “and Prince Tmer of Jesby.  And Tubble of Chanicut, among other attractions.”

“Most appropriate,” he responded.  “Entirely appropriate.”

“And so?”

“Like you, Tmer and Tubble are both under black watch.  I understand Tmer is at Jesby, though I believe Jurt has gone to earth somewhere other than Dalgarry.”

“Jurt’s come back?”

He nodded.

“He could be at my mother’s Fortress Gantu,” I mused.  “Or, Sawall did have a second stead-the Ways of Anch, at the very Rim.”

Suhuy shrugged.

“I do not know,” he said.

“But why the black watch-for any of us?”

“You went off into Shadow to a fine university,” he said, “and you have dwelled in the Court of Amber, which I would deem highly educational.  Therefore, I bid you take thought.  Surely, a mind so well honed-“

“I realize the black watch means we face some sort of danger...  “

“Of course.”

“...  But its nature eludes me.  Unless ...  “

“Yes.”

“It has to do with Swayvill’s death.  So it must involve some sort of political settlement.  But I’ve been away.  I don’t know what matters are hot just now.”

He showed me row upon row of worn but still nasty fangs.

“Try the matter of the succession,” he said.

“Okay.  Say the Ways of Sawall are supporting one possible successor, Jesby the other, Chanicut the other.  Say we’re at each other’s throats over the matter.  Say I’ve come back into the middle of a vendetta.  So whoever’s giving the orders right now has declared us under watch as a matter of keeping things from getting messy.  I appreciate it.”

“Close,” he said, “but it’s already gone further than that.”

I shook my head.

“I give up,” I said.

From somewhere there came up a wailing sound.  “Think about it,” he replied, “while I welcome a guest.”

He rose and stepped into the pool, vanishing immediately.

I finished my beer.

 

 

II

It seemed but moments later that a rock to my left shimmered and emitted a bell-like tone.  Without conscious intent my attention gathered itself at my ring, which Suhuy had referred to as a spikard.  I realized in that instant that I was preparing to use it to defend myself.  Interesting, how familiar I felt with it now, how adapted I seemed to have become to it in so short a time.  I was on my feet, facing the stone, left hand extended in its direction when Suhuy stepped through the shining place, a taller, darker figure at his rear.  A moment later and that figure followed him, emerging into substantiality and shifting from an octopal ape form to that of my brother Mandor, humanized, wearing black as when last I had seen him, though the garments were fresh and of a slightly different cut, his white hair less tousled.  He quickly scanned the area about us and gave me a smile.

“I see that all is well,” he stated.

I chuckled as I nodded toward his arm in its sling.

“As well as might be expected,” I replied.  “What happened in Amber after I left?”

“No fresh disasters,” he answered.  “I stayed only long enough to see whether there was anything I could do to be of assistance.  This amounted to a little magical clearing of the vicinity and the summoning of a few planks to lay over holes.  Then I begged leave of Random to depart, he granted it, and I came home.”

“A disaster? At Amber?” Suhuy asked.

I nodded.

“There was a confrontation between the Unicorn and the Serpent in the halls of Amber Palace, resulting in considerable damage.”

“What could have occasioned the Serpent’s venturing that far into the realm of Order?”

“It involved what Amber refers to as the Jewel of Judgment, which the Serpent considers its missing eye.”

“I must hear the entire tale.”

I proceeded to tell him of the complicated encounter, leaving out my own later experiences in the Corridor of Mirrors and Brand’s apartments.

While I spoke, Mandor’s gaze drifted to the spikard, to Suhuy, and back.

When he saw that I noted this he smiled.

“So Dworkin is himself once more ...?” Suhuy said.

“I didn’t know him before,” I replied.  “But he seemed to know what he was about.”

“...  And the Queen of Kashfa sees with the Eye of the Serpent.”

“I don’t know that she sees with it,” I said.  “She’s still recovering from the operation.  But that’s an interesting thought.  If she could see with it, what might she behold?”

“The clear, cold lines of eternity, I daresay.  Beneath all Shadow.  No mortal could bear it for too long.”

“She is of the blood of Amber,” I said.

“Really? Oberon’s?”

I nodded.

“Your late liege was a very active man,” he observed.  “Still, it would be quite a burden of seeing, though I speak only from guesswork-and a certain knowledge of principles.  I’ve no idea what may come of this.  Only Dworkin could say.  Be he sane, there is a reason for it.  I acknowledge his mastery, though I’ve never been able to anticipate him.”

“You know him, personally?” I asked.

“I knew him,” he said, “long ago, before his troubles.  And I do not know whether to rejoice or despair in this.  Recovered; he may be working for the greater good.  Then again, his interests may be totally partisan.”

“Sorry I can’t enlighten you,” I said.  “I find his actions cryptic, too.”

“I’m baffled also,” Mandor said, “by the disposition of the Eye.  But it still sounds pretty much a local matter, involving Amber’s relations with Kashfa and Begma.  I don’t see that there is anything to be gained at this point by speculation.  It’s better keeping most of our attention for more pressing local matters.”

I felt myself sigh.

“Such as the succession?” I suggested.  Mandor quirked an eyebrow.

“Oh, Lord Suhuy has briefed you already?”

“No,” I replied.  “No, but I heard so much from my father of the succession in Amber, with all its cabals, intrigues, and double crosses, that I almost feel an authority on the subject.  I imagine it could be that way here, too, among the Houses of Swayvill’s descendants, there being many more generations involved.”

“You have the right idea,” he said, “though I think the picture might be a bit more orderly here than it was there.”

“That’s something, anyway,” I said.  “For me, I intend to pay my respects and get the hell out.  Send me a postcard telling me how it gets settled.”

He laughed.  He seldom laughs.  I felt my wrist prickle where Frakir usually rides.

“He really doesn’t know,” he said, glancing at Suhuy.

“He’s just arrived,” Suhuy answered.  “I hadn’t the time to tell him anything.”

I groped in my pocket, located a coin, withdrew it, and flipped it.

“Heads,” I announced, on inspection.  “You tell me, Mandor.  What’s going on?”

“You’re not next in line for the throne,” he said.  It being my turn to laugh, I did.

“I already knew that,” I said.  “You told me not that long ago, over dinner, how long the line was before me-if someone of my mixed blood could be considered at all.”

“Two,” he said.  “Two stand before you.”

“I don’t understand,” I said.  “What happened to all the others?”

“Dead,” he replied.

“Bad year for the flu?”

He gave me a nasty smile.

“There has been an unprecedented number of fatal duels and political assassinations recently.”

“Which sort dominated the field?”

“The assassinations.”

“Fascinating.”

“...  And so you three are under black watch protection of the Crown, and were given into the care of your respective Houses’ security.”

“You’re serious.”

“Indeed.”

“Was this sudden thinning of the ranks a matter of many people simultaneously seeking advancement? Or was it a smaller number, removing roadblocks?”

“The Crown is uncertain.”

“When you say ‘the Crown,’ who, exactly, are you referring to, right now? Who’s making decisions in the interim?”

“Lord Bances of Amblerash,” he replied, “a distant relative and longtime friend of our late monarch.”

“I sort of recall him.  Could he have an eye on the throne himself, and be behind any of the-removals?”

“The man’s a priest of the Serpent.  Their vows bar them from reigning anywhere.”

“There are usually ways around vows.”

“True, but the man seems genuinely uninterested in such a thing.”

“That needn’t preclude his having a favorite, and maybe helping him along a bit.  Is anybody near the throne particularly fond of his Order?”

“To my knowledge, no.”

“Which doesn’t mean someone mightn’t have cut a deal.”

“No, though Bances isn’t the sort of man one would approach easily with a proposition.”

“In other words, you believe he’s above whatever’s going on?”

“In the absence of evidence to the contrary.”

“Who is next in line?”

“Tubble of Chanicut.”

“Who’s second?”

“Tmer of Jesby.”

“Top of the line, your pool,” I said to Suhuy.

He showed me his teeth again.  They seemed to rotate.  “Are we at vendetta with either Chanicut or Jesby?” I asked.

“Not really.”

“We’re all just taking care then, huh?”

“Yes.”

“How did it all come to this? I mean, there were a lot of people involved, as I recall.  Was it a night of the long knives, or what?”

“No, the deaths have been occurring steadily for some time.  There wasn’t a sudden bloodbath when Swayvill took his turn for the worse-though a few did occur just recently.”

“Well, there must have been some investigation.  Do we have any of the perps in custody?”

“No, they either escaped or were killed.”

“What of those who were killed? Their identities might indicate their political affiliations.”

“Not really.  Several were professionals.  A couple of others were general malcontents, arguably among the mentally ill.”

“You’re saying there are no clues as to who might be behind it all?”

“That’s right.”

“What about suspicions then?”

“Tubble himself is of course suspect, though it is not a good idea to say it aloud.  He stood to benefit the most, and now he’s in a position to do so.  Also, there is much in his career of political connivance, double-dealing, assassination.  But that was long ago.  Everyone has a few skeletons in the cellar.  He has been a quiet and conservative man for many years.”

“Tmer, then-he’s close enough to generate suspicion.  Is there anything to connect him with the bloody business?”

“Not really.  His affairs are hardly open.  He’s a very private man.  But he was never associated with such extremes in the past.  I do not know him all that well, but he has always struck me as a simpler, more direct person than Tubble.  He seems the sort who’d simply attempt a coup if he wanted the throne badly enough, rather than spend a lot of time intriguing.”

“There could, of course, be a number of people involved, each acting in his own interest-“

“And now that the matter is imminent they’ll have to surface soon?”

“It would seem so, wouldn’t it?”

A smile.  A shrug.

“No reason for a coronation to end it all,” he said.

“A crown does not automatically make a person daggerproof.”

“But the successor would come to power with a lot of bad baggage.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time in history.  And if you stop to think about it, some very good monarchs have come to power under such a cloud.  By the way, has it occurred to you that the others might be speculating along these lines about you?”

“Yes, and it makes me uncomfortable.  My father wanted the throne of Amber for a long time, and it really messed up his life.  He was only happy when he said the hell with it.  If I learned anything from his story, that’s it.  I have no such ambition.”

But for a moment, I wondered.  What would it feel like to control a massive state? Every time I complained about politics, here, in Amber, back in the States on the Shadow Earth, there was the automatic corollary of considering the way I’d manage situations if I were in charge.

“I wonder?” Mandor repeated.

I glanced downward.

“Perhaps the others are looking into their own saying pools just now,” I said, “hoping for clues.”

“Doubtless,” he responded.  “What if Tubble and Tmer did meet untimely ends? What would you do?”

“Don’t even think about it,” I said.  “It won’t happen.

“Suppose.”

“I don’t know.”

“You really should make some sort of decision, just to have it out of the way.  You’re never at a loss for words when you know your own mind.”

“Thanks.  I’ll remember that.”

“Tell me more of your story, since last we met.”

And so I did, Pattern ghosts and all.

Somewhere near the end the wailing sound began again.  Suhuy moved toward the rock.

“Excuse me,” he said, and the rock parted and he passed within.

Immediately, I felt Mandor’s gaze heavy upon me.  “We probably only have a moment,” he said.  “Not enough time, really, to go into everything I wanted to cover with you.”

“Very private, huh?”

“Yes.  So you must arrange to dine with me before the funeral.  Say, a quarter-turning hence, bluesky.”

“All right.  Your place, or the Ways of Sawall?”

“Come to me at Mandorways.”

The rock phased again as I nodded, and a lithe demonic figure entered, shimmering bluely within a veil of cloud.  I was on my feet in an instant, then bowing to kiss the hand she extended.

“Mother,” I said.  “I hadn’t anticipated the pleasure-this soon.”

She smiled, and then it went away in a swirl.  The scales faded, the contours of her face and form flowed.  The blue went away into a normal though pale flesh color.  Her hips and shoulders widened as she lost something of height, though still remained tall.  Her brown eyes grew more attractive as the heavy brow ridges receded.  A few freckles became visible across her now-human, slightly upturned nose.  Her brown hair was longer than when last I had seen her in this form.  And she was still smiling.  Her red tunic became her, simply belted; a rapier hung at her left hip.

“My dear Merlin,” she said, taking my head between her hands and kissing me upon the lips.  “I am pleased to see you looking so well.  It has been quite a while since last you visited.”

“I’ve had a very active existence of late.”

“To be sure,” she said.  “I’ve heard some report of your various misadventures.”

“I’d imagine you would have.  It’s not everyone has a ty’iga following him about, periodically seducing him in various forms, and making life, in general, very complicated with unwanted efforts at protection.”

“It shows that I care, dear.”

“It also shows that you have no respect for my privacy nor trust in my judgment.”

Mandor cleared his throat.

“Hello, Dara,” he said then.

“I suppose it must seem that way to you,” she stated.  Then, “Hello, Mandor,” she went on.  “What happened to your arm?”

“A misunderstanding involving some architecture,” he replied.  “You’ve been out of sight, though hardly out of mind, for some time.”

“Thank you, if that’s a compliment,” she said.  “Yes, I go a bit reclusive every now and then, when the weight of society becomes troublesome.  Though you’re hardly the one to talk, sir, vanishing far long stretches as you do in the labyrinths of Mandorways-if that be indeed where you take yourself.”

He bowed.

“As you say, lady, we appear to be creatures of a kind.”

Her eyes narrowed, though her voice was unchanged, as she said, “I wonder.  Yes, I can sometimes see us as kindred spirits, perhaps even more than in our simplest cycles of activity.  We’ve both been out and about a lot of late, though, haven’t we?”

“But I’ve been careless,” said Mandor, indicating his injured arm.  “You, obviously, have not.”

“I never argue with architecture,” she said. 

“Or other imponderables?” he asked.

“I try to work with what is in place,” she told him. 

“Generally, I do, too.”

“And if you cannot?” she asked.  He shrugged.

“Sometimes there are collisions.”

“You’ve survived many in your time, haven’t you?”

“I can’t deny it, but then it has been a long while.  You seem made of very survivable stuff yourself.”

“So far,” she responded.  “We really must compare notes on imponderables and collisions one day.  Wouldn’t it be strange if we were similar in all respects?”

“I should be very much surprised,” he answered.

I was fascinated and slightly frightened by the exchange, though I could go only by feeling and had no notion of specifics.  They were somehow similar, and I’d never heard generalities delivered with quite that precision and emphasis outside of Amber, where they often make a game of talking that way.

“Forgive me,” Mandor said then, to the company in general, “but I must absent myself to recuperation.  Thank you for your hospitality, sir.” He bowed to Suhuy.  “And for the pleasure of crossing-paths with you”-this to Dara.

“You’ve barely arrived,” Suhuy said, “and you’ve taken no refreshment.  You make me a poor host.”

“Rest assured, old friend, there is none could perform such a transformation,” he stated.  He looked at me as he backed toward the opening way.  “Till later,” he said, and I nodded.

He passed into the way, and the rock solidified with his vanishment.

“One wonders at his deliveries,” my mother said, “without apparent rehearsal.”

“Grace,” Suhuy commented.  “He was born with an abundance.”

“I wonder who will die today?” she said.

“I am not certain the implication is warranted,” Suhuy replied.

She laughed.

“And if it is,” she said, “they will certainly expire in good taste.”

“Do you speak in condemnation or envy?” he asked.

“Neither,” she said.  “For I, too, am an admirer of grace-and a good jest.”

“Mother,” I said, “just what’s going on?”

“Whatever do you mean, Merlin?” she replied.

“I left this place a long time ago.  You sent a demon to find me and take care of me.  Presumably, it could detect someone of the blood of Amber.  So there was some confusion between myself and Luke.  So it settled by taking care of both of us-until Luke began his periodic attempts to kill me.  Then it protected me from Luke and tried to determine which of us was the proper party.  It even lived with Luke for a time, and later pursued me.  I should have guessed at something of this because it was so eager to learn my mother’s name.  Apparently, Luke was just as closemouthed about his parentage.”

She laughed.

“It makes a beautiful picture,” she began.  “Little Jasra and the Prince of Darkness-“

“Don’t try to change the subject.  Think how embarrassing that is for a grown man-his mother sending demons to look after him.”

“The singular.  It was just one demon, dear.”

“Who cares? The principle’s the same.  Where do you get off with this protective business? I resent-“

“The ty’iga probably saved your life on more than one occasion, Merlin.”

“Well, yes.  But-“

“You’d rather be dead than protected? Just because it was coming from me?”

“That’s not the point!”

“Then what is the point?”

“It seems you just assumed I couldn’t take care of myself, and-”

“Well, you couldn’t.”

“But you had no way of knowing that.  I resented your starting with the assumption that I needed chaperoning in Shadow, that I was naive, gullible, careless-“

“I suppose it would hurt your flings if I said that you were going to a place as different from the Courts as that Shadow is.”

“Yes, I can take care of myself!”

“You weren’t doing that great a job of it.  But you are making a number of unwarranted assumptions yourself.  What makes you think that the reasons you gave are the only possible ones for my taking such an action?”

“Okay.  Tell me that you knew that Luke was going to try to kill me every April thirtieth.  And if the answer is yes, why didn’t you just tell me?”

“I did not know that Luke was going to try to kill you every April thirtieth.”

I turned away.  I clenched my fists and relaxed them.  “So you just did it for the hell of it?”

“Merlin, why do you find it so difficult to admit that other people might sometimes know things you don’t?”

“Start with their unwillingness to tell me these things.”

She was silent a long moment.  Then, “I’m afraid there is something to what you say,” she replied.  “But there were strong reasons for not talking of such matters.”

“Then start with the inability to tell me.  Tell me now why you didn’t trust me then.”

“It wasn’t a matter of trust.”

“Is it okay to tell me now what it was?” Another, longer silence followed.

“No,” she finally said “Not yet.”

I turned toward her, keeping my features composed and my voice level.

“Then nothing has changed,” I said, “nor ever shall.  You still do not trust me.”

“That is not true,” she answered, glancing at Suhuy.  “It is just that this is not the proper time or the proper place to go into these matters.”

“Might I fetch you a drink or something to eat, Dara?” Suhuy said immediately.

“Thank you no,” she replied.  “I cannot stay much longer.”

“Mother, tell me, then, something about the ty’iga.”

“What do you wish to know?”

“You conjured it from someplace beyond the Rim.”

“That is cornect.”

“Such beings are bodiless themselves, but capable of taking over a living host for their own purposes.”

“Yes.”

“Supposing such a being took over the body of a person at or near the moment of death, making it the sole animating spirit and controlling intelligence?”

“Interesting.  Is this a hypothetical question?”

“No.  It’s really happened with the one you sent after me.  It doesn’t seem able to quit that body now.  Why not?”

“I am not really certain,” she said.

“It is trapped now,” Suhuy offered.  “It can only come and go by reacting with a resident intelligence.”

“The body, with the ty’ iga in control, recovered from the illness that killed its consciousness,” I said.  “You mean it’s stuck there now for life?”

“Yes.  So far as I know.”

“Then tell me this: Will it be released when that body dies, or will it die with it?”

“It could go either way,” he replied.  “But the longer it remains in the body, the more likely it is that it will perish along with it.”

I looked back at my mother.

“There you have the end of its story,” I stated.  She shrugged.

“I’ve done with this one and released it,” she said, “and one can always conjure another should the need arise.”

“Don’t do it,” I told her.

“I shan’t,” she said.  “There is no need to, now.”

“But if you thought there were, you would?”

“A mother tends to value her son’s safety, whether the son likes it or not.”

I raised my left hand, extending the forefinger in an angry gesture, when I noticed that I was wearing a bright bracelet-it seemed an almost-hologramatic representation of a woven cord.  I lowered my hand, bit back my first response, and said, “You know my feelings now.”

“I knew them a long time ago,” she said.  “Let us dine at the Ways of Sawall, half a turning hence, purplesky.  Agreed?”

“Agreed,” I said.

“Till then.  Good turning, Suhuy.”

“Good turning, Dara.”

She took three paces and was gone, as etiquette prescribed, out the same way by which she had entered.

I turned and strode to the pool’s edge, stared into its depths, felt the muscles in my shoulders slowly unknot.  Jasra and Julia were down there now, back in the citadel of the Keep, doing something arcane in the lab.  And then the strands were flowing over them, some cruel truth beyond all order and beauty, beginning to form themselves into a mask of fascinating, frightening proportion.

I felt a hand on my shoulder.

“Family,” Suhuy said, “intrigues and maddens.  You are feeling the tyranny of affection at the moment, are you not?”

I nodded.

“Something Mark Twain said about being able to choose your friends but not your relatives,” I answered.

“I do not know what they are up to, though I have my suspicions,” he said.  “There is nothing to do now but rest and wait.  I would like to hear more of your story.”

“Thanks, Uncle.  Yeah,” I said.  “Why not?”

So I gave him all the rest of my tale.  Partway through it, we adjourned to the kitchen for further sustenance, then took another way to a floating balcony above a lime-colored ocean breaking upon pink rocks and beaches under a twilit or otherwise indigo sky without stars.  There, I finished my telling.

“This is more than a little interesting,” he said, at last.

“Oh? Do you see something in it all that I don’t?” I asked.

“You’ve given me too much to consider for me to give you a hasty judgment,” he said.  “Let us leave it at that for now.”

“Very well.”

I leaned on the rail, looked down at the waters.

“You need rest,” he said after a time.

“I guess I do.”

“Come, I’ll show you to your room.”

He extended a hand and I took hold of it.  Together, we sank through the floor.

And so I slept, surrounded by tapestries and heavy drapes, in a doorless chamber in the Ways of Suhuy.  It might have been in a tower, as I could hear the winds passing beyond the walls.  Sleeping, I dreamt...

I was back in the castle Amber, walking the sparkling length of the Corridor of Mirrors.  Tapers flickered in tall holders.  My footsteps made no sound.  The mirrors came in all manner of shapes.  They covered the walls at either hand, big ones, little ones.  I passed myself within their depths, reflected, distorted, sometimes re-reflected...

I was halted before a tall, cracked mirror to my left, framed in tin.  Even as I turned toward it I knew that it would not be me whom I regarded this time.

Nor was I mistaken.  Coral was looking at me from out of the mirror.  She had on a peach-colored blouse and was not wearing her eyepatch.  The crack in the mirror divided her face down the middle.  Her left eye was the green I remembered, her right was the Jewel of Judgment.  Both seemed to be focused upon me.

“Merlin,” she said.  “Help me.  This is too strange.  Give me back my eye.”

“I don’t know how,” I said.  “I don’t understand what was done.”

“My eye,” she went on, as if she had not heard.  “The world is all swarming forces in the Eye of Judgment, cold-so cold!-and not a friendly place.  Help me!”

“I’ll find a way,” I said.

“My eye ...” she continued.

I hurried by.

From a rectangular mirror in a wooden frame carved at its base in the form of a phoenix, Luke regarded me.  “Hey, old buddy,” he said, looking slightly forlorn, “I’d sure like to have my dad’s sword back.  You haven’t come across it again, have you?”

“ ‘Fraid not,” I muttered.

“It’s a shame to get to hold your present for such a short period of time.  Watch for it, will you? I’ve a feeling it might come in handy.”

“I’ll do that,” I said.

“After all, you’re kind of responsible for what happened,” he continued.

“Right,” I agreed.

“...  And I’d sure like to have it back.”

“Yeah,” I said, moving away.

A nasty chuckle emerged from a maroon-framed ellipse to my right.

Turning, I beheld the face of Victor Melman, the shadow Earth sorcerer I had confronted back when my troubles were beginning.

“Son of perdition!” he hissed.  “ ‘Tis good to see you wander lost in Limbo.  May my blood lie burning on your hands.”

“Your blood is on your own hands,” I said.  “I count you as a suicide.”

“Not so!” he snapped back.  “You slew me most unfairly.”

“Bullshit,” I answered.  “I may be guilty of a lot of things, but your death is not one of them.”

I began to walk away, and his hand emerged from the mirror and clutched at my shoulder.

“Murderer!” he cried.

I brushed his hand away.

“Bugger off!” I said, and I kept going.

Then, from a wide, green-framed mirror with a greenish haze to the glass, Random hailed me from my left, shaking his head.

“Merlin! Merlin! What are you up to, anyway?” he asked.  “I’ve known for some time that you haven’t been keeping me abreast of everything that’s afoot.”

“Well,” I replied, regarding him in an orange T-shirt and Levi’s; “that’s true, sir.  Some things I just haven’t had time to go into.”

“Things that involve the safety of the realm-and you haven’t had time?”

“Well, I guess there’s something of a judgmental factor involved.”

“If it involves our safety, I am the one to do the judging.”

“Yes, sir.  I realize that-“

“We have to have a talk, Merlin.  Is it that your personal life is mixed with this in some way?”

“I guess that’s true-“

“It doesn’t matter.  The kingdom is more important.  We must talk.”

“Yes, sir.  We will as soon as-“

“ ‘As soon as,’ hell! Now! Stop screwing around at whatever you’re up to and get your ass back here! We have to talk!”

“I will, as soon as-“

“Don’t give me that! It verges on the traitorous if you’re withholding important information! I need to see you now! Come home!”

“I will,” I said, and I hurried away, his voice joining a continuing chorus of the others, repeating their demands, their pleas, their accusations.

Out of the next one-circular, with a blue braided frame-Julia regarded me.

“And there you go,” she said, almost wistfully.  “You knew I loved you.”

“I loved you, too,” I admitted.  “It took me a long time to realize it.  I guess I messed up, though.”

“You didn’t love me enough,” she said.  “Not enough to trust me.  And so you lost my trust.”

I looked away.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Not good enough,” she responded.  “Thus, we are become enemies.”

“It doesn’t have to be that way.”

“Too late,” she said.  “Too late.”

“I’m sorry,” I repeated, and I hurried away.

Thus, I came to Jasra, in a red, diamond frame.  Her bright-nailed hand reached out and caressed my cheek.  “Going somewhere, dear boy?” she asked.

“I hope so,” I said.

She smiled crookedly and pursed her lips.

“I’ve decided you were a bad influence on my son,” she said.  “He lost his edge when he became friends with you.”

“Sony about that,” I said.

“...  Which may make him unfit to rule.”

“Unfit or unwilling?” I asked.

“Whichever, it will be your fault.”

“He’s a big boy now, Jasra.  He makes his own decisions.”

“I fear you’ve taught him to make the wrong ones.”

“He’s his own man, lady.  Don’t blame me if he does things you don’t like.”

“And if Kashfa crumbles because you’ve softened him?”

“I decline the nomination,” I said, taking a step forward.  It was good that I was moving, for her hand shot out, nails raking at my face, barely missing.  She threw expletives after me as I walked away.  Fortunately, they were drowned amid the cries of the others.

“Merlin?”

Turning to my right again I beheld the face of Nayda within a silver mirror, its surface and curled frame of a single piece.

“Nayda! What are you down on me for?”

“Nothing,” the ty’iga lady replied.  “I’m just passing through, and I need directions.”

“You don’t hate me? How refreshing!”

“Hate you? Don’t be silly.  I could never do that.”

“Everyone else in this gallery seems irritated with me.”

“It’s only a dream, Merlin.  You’re real, I’m real, and I don’t know about the others.”

“I’m sorry my mother put you under that spell to protect me-all those years ago.  Are you really free of it now? If you’re not, perhaps I can-“

“I’m free of it.”

“I’m sorry you had so much trouble fulfilling its terms-not knowing whether it was Luke or me you were supposed to be guarding.  Who’d have known there’d be two Amberites in the same neighborhood in Berkeley?”

“I’m not sorry.”

“What do you mean?”

“I came for directions.  I want to know how I can find Luke.”

“Why, in Kashfa.  He was just crowned king the other day.  What do you need him for?”

“Hadn’t you guessed?”

“No.”

“I’m in love with him.  Always was.  Now that I’m free of the geas and have a body of my own, I want him to know that I was Gail-and how I feel.  Thanks, Merlin.  Good-bye.”

“Wait! “

“Yes?”

“I never said thanks for your protecting me all those years-even if it was only a compulsion for you, even if it got to be a big bother for me.  Thanks, and good luck.”

She smiled and faded away.  I reached out and touched the mirror.

“Luck,” I thought I heard her say.

Strange.  It was a dream.  Still-I couldn’t awaken, and: it felt real.  I …

“You made it back to the Courts in time for all the scheming, I see”-this from a mirror three paces ahead, black-bound and narrow.

I moved to it.  My brother Jurt glared out at me.

“What do you want?” I asked.

His face was an angry parody of my own.

“I want you never to have been,” he said.  “Failing that, I’d like to see you dead.”

“What’s your third choice?” I asked.

“Your confinement to a private hell, I guess.”

“Why?”

“You stand between me and everything I want.”

“I’ll be glad to step aside.  Tell me how.”

“There’s no way you can or will, on your own.”

“So you hate me?”

“Yes.”

“I thought your bath in the Fountain destroyed your emotions.”

“I didn’t get the full treatment, and it only made them stronger.”

“Any way we can forget the whole thing and start over again, be friends?”

“Never.”

“Didn’t think so.”

“She always cared more about you than me, and now you’re going to have the throne.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.  I don’t want it.”

“Your desires have nothing to do with the matter.”

“I won’t have it:”

“Yes, you will-unless I kill you first.”

“Don’t be stupid.  It’s not worth this.”

“One day soon, when you least expect it, you will turn and see me.  It will be too late.”

The mirror grew entirely black.

“Jurt!”

Nothing.  Aggravating, having to put up with him in dream as well as waking.

I turned my head toward a fire-framed minor several paces ahead and to my left, knowing-somehow-it was next on my route.  I moved toward it.

She was smiling.

“And there you have it,” she said.

“Aunty, what’s going on?”

“It seems to be the sort of conflict generally referred to as ‘irreducible,’ “ Fiona replied.

“That’s not the sort of answer I need.”

“Too much is afoot to give you a better one.”

“And you’re a part of it?”

“A very small one.  Not one who can do you much good just now.”

“What am I to do?”

“Learn your options and choose the best one.”

“Best for whom? Best for what?”

“Only you can say.”

“Can you give me a hint?”

“Could you have walked Corwin’s Pattern that day I took you to it?”

“Yes.”

“I thought so.  It was drawn under unusual circumstances.  It can never be duplicated.  Our Pattern would never have permitted its construction had it not been damaged itself and too weak to prevent its coming into being.”

“So?”

“Our Pattern is trying to absorb it, incorporate it.  If it succeeds, it will be as disastrous as it would have been were the Pattern of Amber destroyed at the time of the war.  The balance with Chaos will be totally upset.”

“Isn’t Chaos strong enough to prevent this? I’d thought they were equally potent.”

 

 

“They were until you repaired the Shadow Pattern and Amber’s was able to absorb it.  This increased its strength beyond that of Chaos.  Now it is able to reach for your father’s against the power of the Logrus.”

“I don’t understand what is to be done.”

“Neither do I, yet.  But I charge you to remember what I have said.  When the time comes you must make a decision.  I’ve no idea what it will involve, but it will be very important.”

“She’s right,” came a voice from behind my back.  Turning, I saw my father within a shining black frame, a silver rose set at its top.

“Corwin!” I heard Fiona say.  “Where are you?”

“In a place where there is no light,” he said.

“I thought you somehow in Amber, Father, with Deirdre,” I said.

“The ghosts play at being ghosts,” he answered.  “I have not much time, for my strength is low.  I can tell you only this: Trust not the Pattern, nor the Logrus either, nor any of their spawn, till this matter be settled.”

He began to fade.

“How can I help you?” I asked.

The words “...  in the Courts” came to me before he vanished.

I turned again.

“Fi, what did he mean by that?” I asked her.

She was frowning.

“I get the impression that the answer lies somewhere in the Courts,” she replied slowly.

“Where? Where should I look?”

She shook her head and began to turn away.

“Who would know best?” she said.

Then she, too, was gone.

Voices were still calling to me, from behind, from ahead.  There was weeping and laughter, and my name being repeated.  I rushed ahead.

“Whatever happens,” Bill Roth said, “if you need a good lawyer, I’ll handle it-even in Chaos.”

And then there was Dworkin, squinting at me from out of a tiny mirror with a twisted frame.

“Nothing to be alarmed about,” he remarked, “but all sorts of imponderables are hovering about you.”

“What am I to do?” I cried.

“You must become something greater than yourself.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Escape the cage that is your life.”

“What cage?”

He was gone.

I ran, and their words rang around me.

Near the end of the hall was a mirror like a piece of yellow silk stretched upon a frame.  The Cheshire Cat grinned at me from within.

“It’s not worth it.  The hell with them all,” he said.  “Come to the cabaret, old chum.  We’ll tip a few brews and watch the man paint.”

“No!” I cried.  “No!”

And then there was only a grin.  This time I faded, too.  Merciful, black oblivion and the sound of the wind, somewhere, passing.

 

 

III

How long I slept, I do not know.  I was awakened by Suhuy’s repeating my name.

“Merlin, Merlin,” he said.  “The sky is white.”

“And I’ve a busy day,” I answered.  “I know.  I’d a busy night, too.”

“It reached you, then.”

“What?”

“A small spell I sent, to open your mind to some enlightenment.  I hoped to lead you to answers from within, rather than burden you with my guesswork and suspicions.”

“I was back in the Corridor of Mirrors.”

“I knew not what form it might take.”

“Was it real?”

“As such things go, it should have been.”

“Well, thanks-I guess.  It reminds me that Gryll said something about your wanting to see me before my mother did.”

“I wanted to see how much you knew before you faced her.  I wanted to protect your freedom of choice.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m sure she wants to see you on the throne.”

I sat up and rubbed my eyes.

“I suppose that’s possible,” I said

“I don’t know how far she’s willing to go to effect this.  I wanted to give you a chance to know your own mind before you’re exposed to her plans.  Would you care for a cup of tea?”

“Yes, thanks.”

I accepted a mug he proffered and raised it to my lips.  “What are you saying about her beyond a guess at her wishes?” I asked.

He shook his head.

“I don’t know how active her program might be,” he said, “if that is what you mean.  And whether she was connected with it or another, the spell you came wearing has faded now.”

“Your doing?”

He nodded.

I took another swallow.

“I never realized how close I’d gotten to the head of the line,” I added.  “Jurt is number four or five in the succession, isn’t he?”

He nodded.

“I’ve a feeling it’s going to be a very busy day,” I said.

“Finish your tea,” he told me, “and follow me when you would.”

He walked away through a dragon tapestry on the far wall.

As I raised the mug again, the bright bracelet on my left wrist came free and drifted before me, losing its braided outline, becoming a circle of pure light.  It hovered above the steaming brew, as if enjoying its cinnamony aroma.

“Hi, Ghost,” I said.  “Why’d you weave yourself about my wrist that way?”

“To look like that piece of rope you usually wear,” came the reply.  “I thought you must be fond of the effect.”

“I mean, what were you up to the whole time?”

“Just listening, Dad.  Seeing how I might be of help.  These people are all your relatives, too?”

“The ones we’ve met so far, yes.”

“Is it necessary to go back to Amber to speak ill of them?”

“No, it works here in the Courts, too.” I took another sip of tea.  “Any special ill you have in mind? Or was that a general question?”

“I don’t trust your mother or your brother Mandor, even if they are my grandmother and uncle.  I think they’re setting you up for something.”

“Mandor’s always been good to me.”

“... And your uncle Suhuy-he seems eminently stable, but he reminds me a lot of Dworkin.  Might he be sitting on all sorts of internal turmoils and ready to flip out anytime?”

“I hope not,” I said.  “He never has.”

“Oh-oh, it’s been building, and this is a time of stress.”

“Where are you getting all this pop psychology, anyway?’

“I’ve been studying the great psychologists of the Shadow Earth.  It’s part of my ongoing attempt to understand the human condition.  I realized it was time I learned more about the irrational parts.”

“What brought all this on?”

“The higher order edition of the Pattern I encountered in the Jewel, actually.  There were aspects of it I simply could not understand.  This led to considerations of chaos theory, then to Menninger and all the others for its manifestations in consciousness.”

“Any conclusions?”

“I am wiser therefor.”

“I mean, concerning the Pattern.”

“Yes.  Either it possesses an element of irrationality itself, like living things, or it is an intelligence of such an order that some of its processes only seem irrational to lesser beings.  Either explanation amounts to the same thing from a practical standpoint.”

“I never had the opportunity to apply some of the tests I’d designed, but can you say from self-knowledge whether you fall into such a category yourself?”

“Me? Irrational? The notion never occurred to me.  I can’t see how it could be.”

I finished my tea and swung my legs over the side of the bed.

“Too bad,” I said.  “I think some measure of it is what makes us truly human-that, and recognizing it in ourselves, of course.”

“Really?”

I rose and began dressing myself.

“Yes, and controlling it within oneself may have something to do with intelligence and creativity.”

“I’m going to have to study this very closely.”

“Do that,” I said, pulling on my boots, “and let me know your findings.”

As I continued dressing, he asked, “When the sky turns blue you will breakfast with your brother Mandor?”

“Yes,” I said.

“And later you will take lunch with your mother?”

“That’s right.”

“Later still, you will attend the late monarch’s funeral?”

“I will.”

“Will you need me to protect you?”

 

 

“I’ll be safe with my relatives, Ghost.  Even if you don’t trust them.”

“The last funeral you attended got bombed.”

“That’s true.  But it was Luke, and he’s sworn off.  I’ll be okay.  You want to sightsee, go ahead.”

“All right,” he said.  “I do.”

I rose and crossed the chamber, to stand before the dragon.

“Can you tell me the way to the Logrus?” Ghost asked.

“Are you joking?”

“No,” he stated.  “I’ve seen the Pattern, but I’ve never seen the place of the Logrus.  Where do they keep it?”

“I thought I gave you better memory functions than that.  In your last encounter with the thing, you pissed it off in the max.”

“I suppose I did.  Do you think it would hold a grudge?”

“Offhand, yes.  Upon consideration, yes.  Stay away from it.”

“You just advised me to study the chaos factor, the irrational.”

“I didn’t advise you to commit suicide.  I put a lot of work into you.”

“I value myself, too.  And you know I have a survival imperative, the same as organic beings.”

“It’s your judgment I wonder about.”

“You know a lot about my abilities.”

“It’s true you’re good at getting the hell out of places.”

“And you owe me a decent education.”

“Let me think about it.”

“That’s just stalling.  I suppose I can find it myself.”

“Fine.  Go ahead.”

“It’s that hard to locate?”

“You gave up on omniscience, remember?”

“Dad, I think I need to see it.”

“I haven’t the time to take you there.”

“Just show me the way.  I’m good at concealing myself.”

“I’ll give you that.  All right.  Suhuy is Keeper of the Logrus.  It lies in a cavern-somewhere.  The only way I know to it begins in this place.”

“Where?”

“There are something like nine turnings involved.  I’ll lay a seeing upon you, to lead you.”

“I don’t know whether your spells would work on something like me-“

I reached out through the ring-pardon me, spikard-superimposed a series of black asterisks upon a map of the ways he must follow, hung it in the space of my Logrus vision before him, and I said, “I designed you, and I designed this spell.”

“Uh, yes,” Ghost replied.  “I feel as if I suddenly possess data that I can’t access.”

“It will be presented to you at the appropriate times.  Form yourself into the likeness of a ring upon my left index finger.  We will quit this room in a moment and pass through others.  When we are near the proper way I will indicate it by pointing.  Proceed in that direction and you will pass through something along your route which will conduct you into another place.  Somewhere in that vicinity you will find a black star indicating the next direction you must take-to another place and another star and so on.  Eventually, you will emerge in a cavern that houses the Logrus.  Conceal yourself as completely as you can and make your observations.  When you wish to retreat, reverse the process.”

He shrank himself and flew to my finger.

“Look me up later and let me know your experiences.”

“I was planning to,” came his tiny voice.  “I would not wish to add to your probable present paranoia.”

“Keep it up,” I said.

I crossed the room and entered the dragon.

I emerged in a small sitting room, one window looking out over mountains; the other, a desert.  There was no one about, and I stepped out into a long hallway.  Yes, just as I recalled.

I moved along it, passing a number of other rooms, till I came to a door on my left, which I opened to discover a collection of mops, brooms, buckets, brushes, a heap of cleaning cloths, a basin.  Yes, as I remembered.  I pointed to the shelves on my right.

“Find the black star,” I said.

“You’re serious?” came the small voice.

“Go and see.”

A streak of light proceeded from my index finger, grew distorted as it neared the shelves, folded itself into a line so thin it was no longer present.

“Good luck,” I breathed, and then I turned away.

I closed the door, wondering whether I had done the right thing, consoling myself with the thought that he would have gone looking and doubtless located the Logrus eventually, anyway.  Whatever was to be on this front, would be.

And I was curious as to what he might learn.

I turned and took myself back up the hallway to the little sitting room.  It might be my last opportunity at being alone for a time, and I was determined to take advantage of it.  I seated myself on a pile of cushions and withdrew my Trumps.  A quick run through the deck turned up the one I had hastily sketched of Coral on that recent hectic day back in Amber.  I studied her features till the card grew cold.

The image became three-dimensional, and then she slipped away and I saw myself, walking the streets of Amber on a bright afternoon, holding her hand as I led her around a knot of merchants.  Then we were descending the face of Kolvir, sea bright before us, gulls passing.  Then back in the cafe, table flying against the wall....

I covered the card with my hand.  She was asleep, dreaming.  Odd, to enter another’s dreams that way.  Odder, to find myself there-unless, of course, the touch of my mind had prompted unconscious reminiscence...  One of life’s smaller puzzles.  No need to awaken the poor lady, just to ask her how she was feeling.  I supposed I could call Luke and ask him how she was doing.  I began searching for his card, then hesitated.  He must be pretty busy, his first few days on the job as monarch.  And I already knew she was resting.  As I toyed with Luke’s card, though, finally pushing it aside, the one beneath it was revealed.

Gray and silver and black...  His face was an older, somewhat harder version of my own.  Corwin, my father, looked back at me.  How many times had I sweated over that card, trying to reach him, till my mind tied itself into aching knots, with no result? The others had told me that it could mean he was dead, or that he was blocking the contact.  And then a funny feeling came over me.  I recalled his own story, in particular when he’d spoken of the times they had tried to reach Brand through his Trump, being at first unable to because he had been imprisoned in such a distant shadow.  Then I remembered his own attempts to reach through to the Courts, and the difficulty imposed by the great distance.  Supposing that, rather than being dead or blocking me, he was greatly removed from the places I had been when I had made the efforts?

But then, who was it had come to my aid that night in Shadow, bearing me to that peculiar place between shadows and the bizarre adventures that befell me there?’ And though I was totally uncertain as to the nature of his appearance to me in the Corridor of Mirrors, I had later encountered indications of his presence in Amber Castle itself.  If he’d been in any of those places, it would seem he hadn’t really been too far off.  And that would mean he’d simply been blocking me, and another attempt to reach him would probably prove equally fruitless.  Still, what if there were some other explanation for all these occurrences and ...

The card seemed to grow cold beneath my touch.  Was it just my imagination, or was the strength of my regard beginning to activate it? I moved forward in my mind, focusing.  It seemed to grow even colder as I did so.

“Dad?” I said.  “Corwin?”

Colder still, and a tingling feeling in my fingertips that touched it.

It seemed the beginning of a Trump contact.  It could be that he was much nearer to the Courts than to Amber, within a more reachable range now...

“Corwin,” I repeated.  “It’s me, Merlin.  Hello.”

His image shifted, seemed to move.  And then the card went totally black.

Yet, it remained cold, and a sensation like a silent version of contact was present, like a telephone connection during a long pause.

“Dad? Are you there?”

The blackness of the card took on the aspect of depth.  And deep within it, something seemed to be stirring.

“Merlin?” The word was faint, yet I was certain it was his voice, speaking my name.  “Merlin?”

The movement within the depth was real.  Something was rushing toward me.

It erupted from the card into my face, with a beating of black wings, cawing, crow or raven, black, black.  “Forbidden!” it cried.  “Forbidden! Go back! Withdraw!”

It flapped about my head as the cards spilled from my hand.

“Stay away!” it screeched, circling the room.  “Forbidden place!”

It passed out the doorway and I pursued it.  It seemed to have vanished, though, in the moments it was lost to my sight.

“Bird!” I cried.  “Come back!”

But there was no reply, no further sounds of beating wings.  I peered into the other rooms and there was no sign of the creature in any of them.

“Bird ...?”

“Merlin! What’s the matter?”-this from high overhead.

I looked up to behold Suhuy, descending a crystal stair behind a quivering veil of light, a sky full of stars at his back.

“Just looking for a bird,” I replied.

“Oh,” he said, reaching the landing and stepping through the veil which then shook itself out of existence, taking the stair along with it.  “Any particular bird?”

“A big black one,” I said.  “Of the talking sort.” He shook his head.

“I can send for one,” he said.

“This was a special bird,” I said.

“Sorry you lost it.”

We walked out into the hallway and I turned left and headed back to the itting room.

“Trumps all over the place,” my uncle remarked.

“I was attempting to use one and it went black and the bird flew out of it, shouting, ‘Forbidden’! I dropped them at that point.”

“Sounds as if your correspondent is a practical joker,” he said, “or under a spell.”

We knelt and he helped me to gather them.

“The latter seems more likely,” I said.  “It was my father’s card, I’ve been trying to locate him for a long while now, and this was the closest I’ve come.  I actually heard his voice, within the blackout, before the bird interrupted and cut us off.”

“Sounds as if he is confined to a dark place, perhaps magically guarded as well.”

“Of course! “ I said, squaring up the edges of my deck and recasing it.

One cannot shift the stuff of Shadow in a place of absolute darkness.

It is as effective as blindness in stopping one of our blood from escaping confinement.  It added an element of rationality to my recent experience.  Someone wanting Corwin out of commission would have to keep him in a very dark place.

“Did you ever meet my father?” I asked.

“No,” Suhuy replied.  “I understand that he did visit the Courts briefly, at the end of the war.  But I never had the pleasure.”

“Did you hear anything of his doings here?”

“I believe he attended a meeting with Swayvill and his counselors, along with Random and the other Amberites, preliminary to the peace treaty.  After that, I understand he went his own ways, and I never heard where they might have led him.”

“I’d heard as much in Amber,” I said.  “I wonder...  He’d killed a noble-a Lord Borel-near the end of the final battle.  Any chance Borel’s relatives might have gone after him?”

He clicked his fangs twice, then pursed his lips.

“The House of Hendrake .  , .” he mused.  “I think not.  Your grandmother was Hendrake...”

“I know,” I said.  “But I didn’t have much to do with them.  Some disagreement with Helgram...  ,”

“Hendrake Ways is very much of the military sort,” he went on.  “Glory of battle.  Martial honor, you know.  I can’t see them as holding a peacetime grudge for a wartime happening.”

Recalling my father’s story, I said, “Even if they considered the killing less than honorable?”

“I don’t know,” he said to that.  “It’s hard to guess attitudes on specific questions.”

“Who is head of the House of Hendrake now?”

“The Duchess Belissa Minobee.”

“The duke, her husband-Larsus...  What happened to him?”

“He died at Patternfall.  I believe Prince Julian of Amber slew him.”

“And Borel was their son?”

“Yes.”

“Ouch.  Two of them.  I didn’t realize.”

“Borel had two brothers, a half brother and a half sister, many uncles, aunts, cousins.  Yes, it’s a big House.  And the women of Hendrake are as doughty as the men.”

“Yes, of course.  There are songs, such as ‘Never Wed a Hendrake Lass.’ Any way of finding out whether Corwin had any doings with Hendrake while he was here?”

“One could ask about a bit, though it’s been a long while.  Memories fade, trails grow cold.  Not easy.”

He shook his head.

“How long till bluesky?” I asked him.

“Fairly soon,” he said.

“I’d better be heading for Mandorways then.  I promised my brother I’d breakfast with him.”

“I’ll see you later,” he said.  “At the funeral, if not before.”

“Yes,” I said.  “I guess I’d better clean up and change clothes.”

I headed back through the way to my room, where I summoned a basin of water, soap, toothbrush, razor; also, gray trousers, black boots and belt, purple shirt and gloves, charcoal cloak, fresh blade and scabbard.  When I had made myself presentable, I took a way through a forested glade to the receiving room.  From there, I exited onto a thruway.  A quarter mile of mountain trail later, ending abruptly at a chasm, I summoned a filmy and crossed upon it.  Then I bore right to Mandorways, traveling a blue beach beneath a double sun for perhaps a hundred yards.  I turned right, passing through a remembered archway of stone, moving briefly past a bubbling lava field and through a black obsidian wall, which took me to a pleasant cavern, over a small bridge, through a corner of a graveyard, a few steps along the Rim and into the receiving area of his Ways.

The entire wall to my left was composed of slow flame; that to my right, a non-returnable way, save for light, giving sight of some sea-bottom trench where bright things moved about and ate one another.  Mandor was seated human-formed before a bookcase directly ahead, wearing black and white, feet propped on a black ottoman, a copy of Robert Hass’s Praise, which I had given him, in his hand.

He smiled as he looked up.

“ ‘Death’s hounds feared me,’ “ he said.  “Nice line, that.  How are you this cycle?”

“Rested, finally,” I said.  “Yourself?”

He placed the book upon a small, legless table that floated near just then, and rose to his feet.  The fact that he had obviously been reading it because I was coming in no way detracted from the compliment.  He had always been that way.

“Quite well, thank you,” he replied.  “Come, let me feed you.”

He took my arm and steered me toward the wall of fire.  It fell away as we drew near and our footsteps sounded in a place of momentary darkness, succeeded almost immediately by a small lane, sunlight filtered through arching branches overhead, violets blooming at either hand.  The lane took us to a flagged patio, a green and white gazebo at its farther end.  We mounted a few stairs to a well-set table within, frosted pitchers of juice and baskets of warm rolls near at hand.  He gestured and I seated myself.  At his gesture a carafe of coffee appeared beside my setting.

“I see you recall my morning predeliction,” I said, “from the Shadow Earth.  Thank you.”

He smiled faintly as he nodded, seating himself across from me.  Birdsongs I could not identify sounded from the trees.  A gentle breeze caused leaves to rustle.

“What are you up to these days?” I asked him as I poured a cup of coffee and broke a roll.

“Observing the scene, mainly,” he replied.

“Political scene?”

“As always.  Though my recent experience in Amber has led me to regard it as part of an even larger picture.”

I nodded.

“And your investigations with Fiona?”

“Those, too,” he answered.  “These are shaping up into very unusual times.”

“I’ve noticed.”

“It seems almost as if the Pattern-Logrus conflict were making itself manifest in mundane affairs, as well as on the cosmic scale.”

“I feel that way, too.  But then I’m prejudiced.  I got caught up in the cosmic part early, and without a scorecard.  I’ve been run all over the place and manipulated every which way recently-to the point where all of my affairs seemed part of their bigger picture.  I don’t like it a bit, and if I had some way to make them back off I’d use it.”

“Hm,” he said.  “And what if your whole life were a study in manipulation?”

“I wouldn’t feel good about it,” I said.  “I guess I’d feel just the way I do now, only perhaps more intensely.”

He gestured and an amazing omelet appeared before me, followed, moments later, by a side dish of fried potatoes, mixed with what appeared to be green chilies and onions.

“All of this is hypothetical,” I said as I began eating, “isn’t it?”

There followed a long pause as he took his first mouthful, then, “I think not,” he said.

“I think the Powers have been moving madly for a long while now,” he went on, “and we’re finally nearing endgame.”

“What makes you privy to these matters?”

“It began with a careful consideration of events,” he said.  “Then followed the formulation and testing of hypotheses.”

“Spare me a lecture on the use of the scientific method in theology and human politics,” I said.

“You asked.”

“True.  Go ahead.”

“Do you not feel it somewhat odd that Swayvill expired just when he did, when so many things are coming to fruition simultaneously, after having hung on for so long?”

“He had to go sometime,” I said, “and all the recent stresses probably proved too much.”

“Timing,” Mandor said.  “Strategic placement.  Timing.”

“For what?”

“To place you on the throne of Chaos, of course,” he replied.