And Grayswandir lay there before it, drawn a few inches from the scabbard. I’d a feeling this was the real thing, that the version worn by the Pattern ghost of my father was itself a reconstruction.
I reached forward, raised it, drew it.
There was a feeling of power as I held it, swung it, struck an en garde, lunged, advanced. The spikard came alive, center of a web of forces. I looked down, suddenly self-conscious.
“And this is my father’s blade,” I said, returning to the altar, where I sheathed it. Reluctantly, I left it there.
As I backed away, Glait asked, “Thiss iss important?”
“Very,” I said as the way caught hold of me and sent me back to the treetop.
“What now, Masster Merlin?”
“I must get on to lunch with my mother.”
“In that case, you’d besst drop me here.”
“I could return you to the vase.”
“No. I haven’t lurked in a tree for a time. Thiss will be fine.”
I extended my arm. She unwound herself and flowed away across gleaming branches.
“Good luck, Merlin. Vissit me.”
And I was down the tree, snagging my trousers only once, and off up the corridor at a quick pace.
Two turns later I came to a way to the main hall and decided I’d better take it. I popped through beside the massive fireplace — high flames braiding themselves within it — and turned slowly to survey the huge chamber, trying to seem as if I had been there a long while, waiting.
I seemed the only person present. Which, on reflection, struck me as a bit odd, with the fire roaring that way. I adjusted my shirtfront, brushed myself off, ran my comb through my hair. I was inspecting my fingernails when I became aware of a flash of movement at the head of the great staircase to my left.
She was a blizzard within a ten-foot tower. Lightnings danced at its center, crackling; particles of ice clicked and rattled upon the stair; the banister grew frosted where she passed. My mother. She seemed to see me at about the same time I saw her, for she halted. Then she made the turn onto the stair and began her descent.
As she descended, she shifted smoothly, her appearance changing almost from step to step. As soon as I realized what was occurring I relaxed my own efforts and reversed their small effects. I had commenced changing the moment I had seen her, and presumably she had done the same on viewing me. I hadn’t thought she’d go to that extent to humor me, a second time, here on her own turf.
The shift was completed just as she reached the bottommost stair, becoming a lovely woman in black trousers and red shirt with flared sleeves. She looked at me again and smiled, moved toward me, embraced me.
It would have been gauche to say that I’d intended shifting but had forgotten. Or any other remark on the matter.
She pushed me out to arm’s distance, lowered her gaze and raised it, shook her head.
“Do you sleep in your clothes before or after violent exercise?” she asked me.
“That’s unkind,” I said. “I stopped to sightsee on the way over and ran into a few problems.”
“That is why you are late?”
“No. I’m late because I stopped in our gallery and took longer than I’d intended. And I’m not very late.” She took hold of my arm and turned me.
“I will forgive you,” she said, steering me toward the rose and green and gold-flecked pillar of ways, set in the mirrored alcove across the room to the right.
I didn’t feel that called for a response, so I didn’t make one. I watched with interest as we entered the alcove, to see whether she would conduct me in a clockwise direction or its opposite about the pillar.
The opposite, it turned out. Interesting.
We were reflected and re-reflected from the three sides. So was the room we had quitted. And with each circuit we made of the pillar it became a different room.
I watched it change, kaleidoscopically, until she halted me before the crystal grotto beside the underground sea. “It’s been a long time since I thought of this place,” I said, stepping forth upon the pure white sand into the crystal-cast light, variously reminiscent of bonfires, solar reflections, candelabra, and LED displays, functions of size and distancing perhaps, laying occasional pieces of rainbow upon the shore, the walls, the black water.
She took my hand and led me toward a raised and railed platform some small distance off to the right. A table stood full set upon it. A collection of covered trays occupied a larger serving table inland of it. We mounted a small stair, and I seated her and moved to check out the goodies next door.
“Do sit down, Merlin,” she said. “I’ll serve you.”
“That’s all right,” I answered, raising a lid. “I’m already here. I’ll do the first round.”
She was on her feet.
“Buffet style then,” she said.
“Sure.”
We filled our plates and moved to the table. Seconds after we had seated ourselves a brilliant flash of light came to us across the water, illuminating the arching dome of the cavern vault like the ribbed interior of some massive beast that was digesting us.
“You needn’t look so apprehensive. You know they can’t come in this far.”
“Waiting for a thunderclap puts my appetite on hold,” I said.
She laughed just as a distant roll of thunder reached us.
“And that makes everything all right?” she asked.
“Yes,” I replied, raising my fork.
“Strange, the relatives life gives us,” she said.
I looked at her, tried to read her expression, couldn’t.
So, “Yes,” I said.
She studied me for a moment, but I wasn’t giving anything away either. So, “When you were a child you went monosyllabic as a sign of petulance,” she said.
“Yes,” I said.
We began eating. There were more flashes out over the still, dark sea. By light of the last one I thought I caught sight of a distant ship, black sails full-rigged and bellied.
“You kept your engagement with Mandor earlier?”
“Yes.”
“How is he?”
“Fine.”
“Something bothering you, Merlin?”
“Many things.”
“Tell Mother?”
“What if she’s a part of it?”
“I would be disappointed if I were not. Still, how long will you hold the business of the ty’iga against me? I did what I thought was right. I still think it was.”
I nodded and continued chewing. After a time, “You made that clear last cycle,” I said.
The waters gave a small sloshing sound. A spectrum drifted across our table, her face.
“Is there something else?” she asked.
“Why don’t you tell me?” I said.
I felt her gaze. I met it.
“I don’t know what you mean,” she answered.
“Are you aware that the Logrus is sentient? And the Pattern?” I said.
“Did Mandor tell you that?” she asked.
“Yes. But I already knew it before he did.”
“How?”
“We’ve been in touch.”
“You and the Pattern? You and the Logrus?”
“Both.”
“To what end?”
“Manipulation, I’d say. They’re engaged in a power struggle. They were asking me to choose sides.”
“Which did you choose?”
“Neither. Why?”
“You should have told me.”
“Why?”
“For counsel. Possibly for assistance.”
“Against the Powers of the universe? How well connected are you, Mother?”
She smiled.
“It is possible that one such as myself may possess special knowledge of their workings.”
“One such as yourself…?”
“A sorceress of my skills.”
“Just how good are you, Mother?”
“I don’t think they come mu
ch better, Merlin.”
“Family is always the last to know, I guess. So why didn’t you train me yourself, instead of sending me off to Suhuy?”
“I’m not a good teacher. I dislike training people.”
“You trained Jasra.”
She tilted her head to the right and narrowed her eyes.
“Did Mandor tell you that, also?” she asked.”
“No.”
“Who, then?”
“What difference does it make?”
“Considerable,” she replied. “Because I don’t believe you knew it the last time we met.”
I recalled suddenly that she had said something about Jasra back at Suhuy’s, something implying her familiarity with her, something to which I would ordinarily have risen save that I was driving a load of animus in a different direction at the time and heading downhill in a thunderstorm with the brakes making funny noises. I was about to ask her why it mattered when I learned it, when I realized that she was really asking from whom I’d learned it, because she was concerned with whom I might have been speaking on such matters since last we’d met. Mentioning Luke’s Pattern ghost did not seem politic, so, “Okay, Mandor let it slip,” I said, “and then asked me to forget it.”
“In other words,” she said, “he expected it to get back to me. Why did he do it just that way? I wonder. The man is damnably subtle.”
“Maybe he did just let it slip.”
“Mandor lets nothing slip. Never make him an enemy, son.”
“Are we talking about the same person?”
She snapped her fingers.
“Of course,” she said. “It was only as a child that you knew him. You went away after that. You have seen him but a few times since. Yes, he is subtle, insidious, dangerous.”
“We’ve always gotten along well.”
“Of course. He never antagonizes without a good reason.”
I shrugged and went on eating.
After a time she said, “I daresay he has made similar comments about me.”
“I am unable to recall any,” I answered.
“Has he been giving you lessons in circumspection, too?”
“No, though I’ve felt a need to teach myself, of late.”
“Surely, you obtained a few in Amber.”
“If I did, they were so subtle I didn’t notice.”
“Well, well. Can it be I need despair of you no more?”
“I doubt it.”
“So, what might the Pattern or the Logrus want of you?”
“I already told you — a choice of sides.”
“It is that difficult to decide which you prefer?”
“It is that difficult to decide which I dislike less.”
“Because they are, as you say, manipulative of people in their struggle for power?”
“Just so.”
She laughed. Then, “While it shows the gods as no better than the rest of us,” she said, “at least, it shows them as no worse. See here the sources of human morality. It is still better than none at all. If these grounds be insufficient for the choosing of sides, then let other considerations rule. You are, after all, a son of Chaos.”
“And Amber,” I said.
“You grew up in the Courts.”
“And I have dwelled in Amber. My relatives are as numerous there as they are here.”
“It is really that close, then?”
“If it were not, it might have simplified matters.”
“In that case,” she said, “you must turn it around.”
“What do you mean?”
“Ask not which appeals the most to you, but which can do the most for you,”
I sipped a fine green tea as the storm rolled nearer. Something splashed within the waters of our inlet.
“All right,” I said, “I’m asking.”
She leaned forward and smiled and her eyes darkened. She has always had perfect control of her face and form, shifting them to suit her moods. She is obviously the same person, but at times she may choose to appear as little more than a girl, at other times becoming a mature and handsome woman. Generally, she seems somewhere in between. But now, a certain timeless quality came into her features —not age so much as the essence of Time — and I realized suddenly that I had never known her true age. I watched as something like a veil of ancient power came across it.
“The Logrus,” she said, “will lead you to greatness.”
I continued to stare.
“What sort of greatness?” I asked.
“What sort do you desire?”
“I don’t know that I ever wanted greatness, on its own. It seems rather like wanting to be an engineer, rather than wanting to design something — or wanting to be a writer, rather than wanting to write. It should be a by-product, not a thing in itself. Otherwise, it’s just an ego trip.”
“But if you earn it — if you deserve it — shouldn’t you have it?”
“I suppose. But so far I’ve done nothing” — my eyes fell to a bright circle of light beneath the dark waters, moving as if running before a storm — “except perhaps for an odd piece of equipment, which might fall into that category.”
“You are young, of course,” she said, “and the times for which you were meant to be uniquely qualified have come sooner than I’d anticipated.”
If I were to use magic to summon a cup of coffee, would she resent that? Yes, I believed. She would. So I decided on a glass of wine. As I poured it and took a sip, I said, “I’m afraid I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”
She nodded.
“It is hardly something you could learn from introspection,” she said slowly, “and no one would be so rash as to mention the possibility to you.”
“What are you talking about, Mother?”
“The throne. To reign in the Courts of Chaos.”
“Mandor had sort of suggested I think about it,” I said.
“All right. No one, excepting Mandor, would be so rash as to mention it.”
“I gather mothers get a certain kick out of seeing their sons do well, but unfortunately you’ve named a job for which I lack not only skill, aptitude, and training but also any desire.”
She steepled her fingers and regarded me from just above them.
“You are better qualified than you think, and your desires have nothing to do with the matter.”
“As an interested party, I must beg to differ with you.”
“Even if it were the only way to protect friends and relatives both here and in Amber?”
I took another sip of wine.
“Protect them? Against what?”
“The Pattern is about to try redefining the middle regions of Shadow in its own image. It is probably strong enough to do it now.”
“You were talking of Amber and the Courts, not of Shadow.”
“The Logrus will have to resist this incursion. Since it would probably lose in a direct confrontation with its opposite, it will be forced to employ agents strategically, in a strike against Amber. The most effective agents would, of course, be champions of the Courts —”
“This is mad!” I said. “There must be a better way!”
“Possibly,” she replied. “Accept the throne and you’ll be giving the orders.”
“I don’t know enough.”
“You will be briefed, of course.”
“What about the proper order of succession?”
“That’s not your problem.”
“I rather think I’d have an interest in how it’s achieved — say, whether I’d owe you or Mandor for the majority of deaths.”
“In that we’re both Sawall, the question becomes academic.”
“You mean you’re cooperating on this?”
“We have our differences,” she said, “and I draw the line at any discussion of methods.”
I sighed and took another drink. The storm had grown worse over the dark waters. If that strange light effect beneath their surface were indeed Ghostwheel, I wonder
ed what he was up to. The lightnings were becoming a steady backdrop, the thunder a continuing soundtrack.
“What did you mean,” I said, “when you spoke of the times for which I was meant to be uniquely qualified?”
“The present and the immediate future,” she said, “with the conflict that will come.”
“No,” I responded. “I was referring to the business about my being ‘meant to be uniquely qualified.’ How so?”
It must have been the lightning, for I had never seen her blush before.
“You combine two great bloodlines,” she said. “Technically, your father was King of Amber briefly — between the reign of Oberon and that of Eric.”
“Since Oberon was still alive at the time and had not abdicated, neither reign should be considered valid,” I responded. “Random is Oberon’s proper successor.”
“A case can be made for an implied abdication,” she said.
“You prefer that reading, don’t you?”
“Of course.”
I watched the storm. I swallowed some wine.
“That is why you wished to bear Corwin’s child?” I asked.
“The Logrus assured me that such a child would be uniquely qualified to reign here.”
“But Dad never really meant that much to you, did he?”
She looked away, out to where the circle of light was now racing toward us, lightnings falling behind it. “You have no right to ask that question,” she said.
“I know that. But it’s true, isn’t it?”
“You are mistaken. He meant a great deal to me.”
“But not in any conventional sense.”
“I am not a conventional person.”
“I was the result of a breeding experiment. The Logrus selected the mate who would give you — what?”
The circle of light swam nearer. The storm followed it, coming closer in to the shore than I’d ever seen one reach here before.
“An ideal Lord of Chaos,” she said, “fit to rule.”
“Somehow I feel there’s more to it than that,” I said.
Dodging lightning bolts, the bright circle came up out of the water and flashed across the sand toward us. If she responded to my last remark, I couldn’t hear it. The ensuing thunders were deafening.
The light came onto the decking, paused near to my foot.
“Dad, can you protect me?” Ghost asked in a lull between thunderclaps.
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