Prince of chaos tcoa-10

by Roger Joseph Zelazny

  Yet again. More junctions. Trace them. Access more channels. The entire pressure structure, intricate as a nervous system, must be described. I must hold its tree within my mind.

  Another layer. It may not be possible. I may courting infinity in my topographic branchings. Freeze frame. Simplify the problem. Ignore everything beyond the tertiary. Trace to the next junction. There are some loops. Good. And a plate is now involved. Better.

  Try another jump. No good. Too big a picture to contain. Discard tertiaries.

  Yes.

  Thus general lines sketched. Vectors of transmission simply drawn — back to plate, almost. Pressure exerted less than full pressure extended. Why? Additional point of input along second vector, redirecting shear forces this valley.

  “Merlin? Are you all right?”

  “Let me be,” I hear my voice respond.

  Extend then, input source, into, feeling, transmission signature…

  Is this a Logrus that I see before me?

  I opened three more channels, focused on the area, began heating it.

  Soon rocks were cracking, but a little later they melted. My newly created magma flowed down fault lines. A hollowed-out area occurred at the point whence the precipitating force had originated.

  Back.

  I withdrew my probes, shut down the spikard.

  “What did you do?” he asked me.

  “I found the place where the Logrus was messing with underground stresses,” I said, “and I removed the place. There’s a small grotto there now. If it collapses it may ease the pressure even more.”

  “So you’ve stabilized it?”

  “At least for now. I don’t know the limits of the Logrus, but it’s going to have to figure a new route to reach this place. Then it’s going to have to test it out. And if it’s doing a lot of Pattern watching just now, that may slow it.”

  “So you’ve bought some time,” he said. “Of course, the Pattern may move against us next.”

  “It could,” I said. “I’ve brought everyone here because I thought they’d be safe from both Powers.”

  “Apparently you made the payoff worth the risk.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I guess it’s time to give them some other things to worry about.”

  “Such as?”

  I looked at him, Pattern ghost of my father, guardian of this place.

  “I know where your flesh-and-blood counterpart is,” I said, “and I’m about to set him free.”

  There came a flash of lightning. A sudden gust of wind lofted the fallen leaves, stirred the fogs.

  “I must accompany you,” he said.

  “Why?

  “I’ve a personal interest in him, of course.”

  “All right.”

  Thunder crashed about us, and the fogs were torn apart by a fresh onslaught of wind.

  Jurt came up to us then.

  “I think it’s begun,” he said.

  “What?” I asked.

  “The duel of Powers,” he said. “For a long time the Pattern had an edge. But when Luke damaged it and you snatched away the bride of the Jewel, it must have weakened it more, relative to the Logrus, than it’s been in ages. So the Logrus decided to attack, pausing only for a quick attempt to damage this Pattern.”

  “Unless the Logrus was just testing us,” I said, “and this is simply a storm.”

  A light rain had begun while he was speaking.

  “I came here because I thought it was the one place neither of them would touch in the event of a contest,” he went on. “I’d assumed neither would care to divert energy from its own attack or defense for a swipe in this direction.”

  “That reasoning may still hold,” I said.

  “Just for once I’d like to be on the winning side,” he stated. “I’m not sure I care about right or wrong. They’re very arguable quantities. I’d just like to be in with the guys who win for a change. What do you think, Merle? What are you going to do?”

  “Corwin here and I are going to head for the Courts, and we’re going to free my father,” I said. “Then we’re going to resolve whatever needs resolving and live happily ever after. You know how it goes.”

  He shook his head.

  “I can never decide whether you’re a fool or whether your confidence is warranted. Every time I decided you were a fool, though, it cost me.” He looked up at the dark sky, wiped rain from his brow. “I’m really torn,” he said, “but you could still be King of Chaos.”

  “No,” I said.

  “…And you enjoy some special relationship with the Powers.”

  “If I do, I don’t understand it myself.”

  “No matter,” he said. “I’m still with you.” I crossed to the others, hugged Coral.

  “I must return to the Courts,” I said. “Guard the Pattern. We’ll be back.”

  The sky was illuminated by three brilliant flashes. The wind shook the tree.

  I turned away and created a door in the middle of the air. Corwin’s ghost and I stepped through it.

  Chapter 12

  Thus did I return to the Courts of Chaos, coming through into Sawall’s space-warped sculpture garden.

  “Where are we?” my ghost-father asked.

  “A museum of sorts,” I replied, “in the house of my stepfather. I chose it because the lighting is tricky and there are many places to hide.”

  He studied some of the pieces, as well as their disposition upon the walls and ceiling.

  “This would be a hell of a place to fight a skirmish,” he observed.

  “I suppose it would.”

  “You grew up hereabout, huh?”

  “Yes.”

  “What was it like?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I don’t have anything to compare it to. I had some good times, alone, and with friends and a few bad times. All a part of being a kid.”

  “This place…?”

  “The Ways of Sawall. I wish I had time to show you the whole thing, take you through all of the ways.”

  “One day, perhaps.”

  “Yes.”

  I began walking, hoping for the Ghostwheel or Kergma to appear. Neither did, however.

  We finally passed into a corridor that took us to a hall of tapestries, whence there was a way to a room that I desired — for the room let upon the hallway that passed the gallery of metal trees. Before we could depart, however, I heard voices from that hallway. So we waited in the room — which contained the skeleton of a Jabberwock painted in orange, blue, and yellow, Early Psychedelic — as the speakers approached. One of them I recognized immediately as my brother Mandor; the other I could not identify by voice alone, but managing a glimpse as they passed, I saw it to be Lord Bances of Amblerash, High Priest of the Serpent Which Manifests the Logrus (to cite a full title just once). In a badly plotted story they’d have paused outside the doorway, and I’d have overheard a conversation telling me everything I needed to know about anything.

  They slowed as they passed.

  “That’s the way it will be then?” Bances said.

  “Yes,” Mandor replied. “Soon.”

  And they were by, and I couldn’t make out another word. I listened to their receding footsteps till they were gone. Then I waited a little longer. I would have sworn I heard a small voice saying, “Follow. Follow.”

  “Hear anything just then?” I whispered.

  “Nope.”

  So we stepped out into the hallway and turned right, moving in the opposite direction from that which Mandor and Bances had taken. As we did, I felt a sensation of heat at a point somewhat below my left hip…

  “You think he is somewhere near here?” the Corwin ghost asked. “Prisoner to Dara?”

  “Yes and no,” I said. “Ow!”

  It felt like a hot coal pressed against my upper leg. I jammed my hand into my pocket as I slid into the nearest display niche, which I shared with a mummified lady in an amber casket.

  Even as my hand closed about it, I knew what it was, raising
all manner of philosophical speculations I had neither time nor desire to address at the moment and so treated in the time-honored fashion of dealing with such things: I shelved them.

  It was a spikard that I withdrew, that lay warmly upon my paten. Almost immediately a small spark leapt between it and the one that I wore upon my finger.

  There followed a wordless communication, a sequence of images, ideas, feelings, urging me to find Mandor and place myself in his hands for the preparations for my crowning as the next King of the Courts. I could see why Bleys had told me not to put the thing on. Unmediated by my own spikard, its injunctions would probably have been overpowering. I used mine to shut it off, to build a tiny insulating wall about it.

  “You have two of the damned things!” Corwin’s ghost observed.

  I nodded.

  “Know anything about them that I don’t?” I asked. “That would include almost anything.”

  He shook his head.

  “Only that they were said to be very early power objects, from the days when the universe was still a murky place and the Shadow realms less clearly defined. When the time came, their wielders slept or dissolved or whatever such figures do, and the spikards were withdrawn or stashed or transformed, or whatever becomes of such things when the story’s over. There are many versions, of course. There always are. But bringing two of them to the Courts could conceivably draw a lot of attention to yourself, not to mention adding to the general power of Chaos just by virtue of their presence at this pole of existence.”

  “Oh, my,” I said. “I’ll order the one I’m wearing to conceal itself, also.”

  “I don’t think that’ll work,” he said, “though I’m not certain. I’d think they must maintain a constant fluxpin with each source of power, and that would give some indication of the thing’s presence because of its broadcast nature.”

  “I’ll tell it to tune itself as low as it can then.”

  He nodded.

  “It can’t hurt to make it specific,” he said, “though I’d guess it probably does that anyhow, automatically.”

  I placed the other ring back in my pocket, departed the niche, and hurried on up the hallway.

  I slowed when we neared what I thought to be the area. But I seemed mistaken. The metal forest was not there. We passed that section. Shortly, we came to a familiar display — the one that had preceded the metal forest, on approaching it from that direction.

  Even as I turned back, I knew. I knew what had happened. When we reached what had been the area, I stopped and studied it.

  “What is it?” my ghostly father asked.

  “It seems a display of every conceivable variety of edged weapon and tool that Chaos has ever spewed forth,” I said, “all of them exhibited point up, you’ll note.”

  “So?” he asked.

  “This is the place,” I answered, “the place where we were going to climb a metal tree.”

  “Merle,” he said, “maybe this place does something to my thought processes, or yours. I just don’t understand.”

  “It’s up near the ceiling,” I explained, gesturing. “I know the approximate area — I think. Looks a little different now…”

  “What’s there, son?”

  “A way — a transport area, like the one we passed through to the place of the Jabberwock skeleton. Only this one would take us to your chapel.”

  “And that’s where we’re headed?”

  “Right.”

  He rubbed his chin.

  “Well, there were some fairly tall items in some of the displays we passed,” he observed, “and not all of them were metal or stone. We could wrestle over that totem pole or whatever the hell it is, from back up the hall, clear away some of the sharp displays below that place, set the thing up —”

  “No,” I said. “Dara obviously caught on to the fact that someone had visited it — probably this last time around, when she almost surprised me. The display was changed because of this. There are only two obvious ways to get up there — transport something unwieldy, as you suggest, and clear away a lot of cutlery before we climb. Or rev up the spikard and levitate ourselves to the spot. The first would take too long and probably get us discovered. The second would employ so much power that it would doubtless set off any magical wards she’s installed about the area.”

  He took hold of my arm and drew me on past the display.

  “We’ve got to talk,” he said, leading me into an alcove containing a small bench.

  He seated himself and folded his arms.

  “I’ve got to know what the hell’s going on,” he said. “I can’t help properly unless I’m briefed. What’s the connection between the man and the chapel?”

  “I figured out something I think my mother really meant when she told me, ‘Seek him in the Pit,’” I explained. “The floor of the chapel bears stylized representations of the Courts and of Amber worked out in tiles. At the extreme of the Courts’ end is a representation of the Pit. I never set foot in that area when I visited the chapel. I’m willing to bet there’s a way located there, and at the other end is the place of his imprisonment.”

  He’d begun nodding as I spoke, then, “So you were going to pass through and free him?” he asked.

  “Right.”

  “Tell me, do these ways have to work both ways?” he said.

  “Well, no… Oh, I see what you’re getting at.”

  “Give me a more complete description of the chapel,” he said.

  I proceeded to do so.

  “That magic circle on the floor intrigues me,” he said. “It might be a means of communicating with him without risking the dangers of presence. Some sort of image-exchange, perhaps.”

  “I might have to fool with it a long while to figure it out,” I said, “unless I got lucky. What I propose doing is to levitate, enter, use the way at the Pit to reach him, free him, and get the hell out. No subtlety. No finesse. If anything fails to do what we expect, we force our way through it with the spikard. We’ll have to move fast because they’ll be after us once we start.”

  He stared past me for a long while, as if thinking hard. At length, he asked, “Is there any way her wards might be set off accidentally?”

  “Hm. The passage of a stray magical current from the real Pit, I suppose. It sometimes spews them forth.”

  “What would characterize its passage?”

  “A magical deposit or transformation,” I said.

  “Could you fake such a phenomenon?”

  “I suppose. But what would be the point? They’d still investigate, and with Corwin gone they’d realize it was just a trick. The effort would be wasted.”

  He chuckled.

  “But he won’t be missing,” he said. “I’m going to take his place.”

  “I can’t let you do that!”

  “My choice,” he said. “But he’s going to need the time if he’s going to help stop Dara and Mandor from advancing the conflict between the Powers beyond anything at Patternfall.”

  I sighed.

  “It’s the only way,” he said.

  “I guess you’re right.”

  He unfolded his arms, stretched, and rose to his feet.

  “Let’s go do it,” he said.

  I had to work out a spell, a thing I hadn’t done recently — well, half of a spell, the effects half, as I had the spikard to juice it. Then I lay it in a swathe across the display, turning portions of blades into flowers, joined at the molecular level. As I did, I felt a tingling I was certain was the psychic alarm taking note of the enterprise and reporting it to central.

  Then I summoned a lot of juice and lofted us. I felt the tug of the way as we nears it. I had been almost dead-on. I let it take us through.

  He whistled softly on regarding the chapel.

  “Enjoy,” I said. “It’s the treatment a god gets.”

  “Yeah. Prisoner in his own church.”

  He stalked across the room, unbuckling his belt as he went. He substituted it for the one up
on the altar.

  “Good copy,” he said, “but not even the Pattern can duplicate Grayswandir.”

  “I thought a section of the Pattern was reproduced on the blade.”

  “Maybe it’s the other way around,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Ask the other Corwin sometime,” he said. “It has to do with something we were talking about recently.”

  He approached and passed the lethal package to me — weapon, sheath, belt.

  “Be nice if you take it to him,” he said.

  I buckled it and hung it over my head and shoulder.

  “Okay,” I told him. “We’d better move.”

  I headed toward the far corner of the chapel. As I neared the area where the Pit was represented I felt the unmistakable tug of a way.

  “Eureka!” I said, activating channels on the spikard. “Follow me.”

  I stepped forward and it took me away.

  We arrived in a chamber of perhaps fifteen feet square. There was a wooden post at its center and the floor was of stone with some straw strewn upon it. Several of the big candles, as from the chapel, were spotted about. The walls were of stone on two sides, wood on the others. The wooden walls contained unlatched wooden doors. One of the stone walls contained a windowless metal door, a keyhole at its left side. A key, which looked about the right size, hung from a nail in the post.

  I took down the key and checked quickly beyond the wooden door to my right, discovering a large barrel of water, a dipper, and a variety of dishes, cups, utensils. Behind the other door were a few blankets and stacks of what were probably toilet tissues.

  I crossed to the metal door then and knocked upon it with the key. There was no response. I inserted the key in the lock and felt my companion take hold of my arm.

  “Better let me do that,” he said. “I think like him, and I think I’ll be safer.”

  I had to agree with the wisdom of this, and I stepped aside.

  “Corwin!” he called out. “We’re springing you! It’s your son Merlin and me, your double. Don’t jump me when I open the door, okay? We’ll stand still and you can take a look.”