“Of course, it would be a real shame not to find out where we’re headed,” he said.
“Quests are that way. It’d be bad form to miss the fun.”
We hiked on. Nothing allegorical happened around us. Our voices and our footfalls echoed. Water dripped in some of the danker grots. Minerals flashed. Our way seemed a gradual descent.
For how long we walked I could not tell. After a time stony chambers took on a generic appearance — as if we passed regularly through a teleportation device which rerouted us back through the same caves and corridors. This had the effect of blurring my sense of time. Repetitious actions have a lulling effect and —
Suddenly our trail debouched into a larger passage, turned left. Finally, some variation. Only this way, too, looked familiar. We followed our line of light through the darkness. After a time we went by a side passage to the left. Jurt glanced up it and hurried past.
“Any damned thing might be lurking around here,” observed.
“True,” I acknowledged. “But I wouldn’t worry about it.”
“Why not?”
“I think I’m beginning to understand.”
“Mind telling me what’s going on?”
“It’d take too long. Just wait. We’ll be finding out pretty soon.”
We went by another side passage. Similar, yet different. Of course.
I increased my pace, anxious to learn the truth. Another sideway. I broke into a run…
Another…
Jurt pounded along beside me, the echoes falling about us. Up ahead. Soon.
Another turning.
And then I slowed, for the passage continued ahead but our trail didn’t. It curved to the left, vanishing beneath a big metal-bound door. I reached out to my right to where the hook was supposed to be, located it, removed the key that hung there. I inserted it, turned it, withdrew it, rehung it.
I don’t like this place, boss, Frakir noted.
I know.
“Seems as if you know what you’re doing,” Jurt remarked.
“Yep,” I said, then added, “Up to a point,” as I realized that this door opened outward rather than inward.
I caught hold of the large handle to the left and began to pull upon it.
“Mind telling me where we’ve wound up?” he asked.
The big door creaked, commenced a slow movement as I walked backward.
“These are amazingly like a section of caverns in Kolvir beneath Amber Castle,” I replied.
“Great,” he said. “And what’s behind the door?”
“This is much like the entrance to the chamber which houses the Pattern in Amber.”
“Wonderful,” he said. “I’ll probably go up in a puff of smoke if I set foot inside.”
“But it is not quite the same,” I continued. “We had Suhuy come and look at the Pattern itself before I walked it. He didn’t suffer any ill effects from the proximity.”
“Our mother walked the Pattern.”
“Yes, that’s true.”
“Frankly, I think anyone of proper consanguinity in the Courts could walk the Pattern — and vice versa for my relatives in Amber with the Logrus. Tradition has it we’re all related from back somewhere in the dim and misty.”
“Okay I’ll go in with you. There’s room to move around inside without touching the thing, isn’t there?”
“Yes.” I drew the door the rest of the way open, braced my shoulder against it, and stared. This was it. I saw that our glowing trail ended a few inches beyond the threshold.
I drew a deep breath and muttered some expletive as I let it go.
“What is it?” Jurt asked, trying to see past me.
“Not what I expected,” I told him.
I moved aside and let him have a look.
He stared for several seconds, then said, “I don’t understand.”
“I am not certain that I do either,” I said, “but I intend to find out.”
I entered the chamber, and he followed me. This was not the Pattern that I knew. Or rather, it was and wasn’t. It conformed to the same general configuration as the Pattern in Amber, only it was broken. There were several places where the lines had been erased, destroyed, removed in some fashion — or perhaps never properly executed in the first place. The ordinarily dark interline areas were bright, blue-white, the lines themselves black. It was as if some essence had drained from the diagram to permeate the field. The lighted area seemed to ripple slowly as I viewed it.
And beyond all of this was the big difference. The Pattern in Amber did not contain a circle of fire at its center, a woman dead, unconscious, or under a spell within it.
And the woman, of course, had to be Coral. I knew that immediately, though I had to wait for more than a minute before I got a glimpse of her face beyond the flames.
The big door shut itself behind us while I stood staring. Jurt stood unmoving for a long time also before he said, “That Jewel is certainly busy at something. You should see your face in its light right now.”
I glanced downward and observed its ruddy pulsations. Between the blue-white flux in which the Pattern was grounded and the flickering of that circle of flame had not noted the sudden activity on the part of the stone.
I moved a step nearer, feeling a wave of coldness similar to that of an activated Trump. This had to be one of the Broken Patterns of which Jasra had been speaking — representative of one of the Ways in which she and Julia were initiates. This placed me in one of the early shadows, near Amber herself. Thoughts began to race through my mind at a ferocious pace.
I had only recently become aware of the possibility that the Pattern might actually be sentient. Its corollary, that the Logrus was sentient, seemed likely also. The notion of its sentiency had been presented to me when Coral had succeeded in negotiating the Pattern and then had asked it to send her where she should go. It had done so, and this was the place to which she had been transported, and her condition was obviously the reason I couldn’t reach her by means of her Trump. When I had addressed the Pattern following her disappearance, it had — almost playfully, it seemed at the time — shifted me from one end of its chamber to the other, apparently to satisfy me on the matter of its sentience.
And it wasn’t merely sentient, I decided, as I raised the jewel of Judgment and stared into its depths. It was clever. For the images that I saw within the stone, showing me what it was that was desired of me, represented something I would not have been willing to do under other circumstances. Having come away from that strange realm through which I had been led on this quest, I would have shuffled out a Tramp and called someone for a fast exit — or even summoned the image of the Logrus and let the two of them slug it out while I slipped away through Shadow. But Coral slept in a circle of flame at the heart of the Broken Pattern… She was the authentic Pattern’s hold over me. It had to have understood something back when she was walking it, laid its plan, and set me up at that time.
It wanted me to repair this particular image of itself, to mend this Broken Pattern, by walking it, bearing the Jewel of Judgment with me. This was how Oberon had repaired the damage to the original. Of course, the act had been sufficiently traumatic to kill him…
On the other hand, the King had been dealing with the real thing, and this was only one of its images. Also, my father had survived the creation of his own ersatz Pattern from scratch.
Why me? I wondered then. Was it because I was the son of the man who had succeeded in creating another Pattern? Did it involve the fact that I bore the image of the Logrus within me as well as that of the Pattern? Was it simply because I was handy and coercible? All of the above? None of them?
“How about it?” I called out. “Have you got an answer for me?”
There was a quick pang in my stomach and a wave of dizziness as the chamber spun, faded, stood still, and I regarded Jurt across the expanse of the Pattern, the big door at his back.
“How’d you do that?” he hollered.
“I didn’t,
” I replied.
“Oh.”
He edged his way to his right till he came to the wall. Maintaining contact with it, he began moving about the Pattern’s periphery, as if afraid to approach any nearer to it than he had to or to remove his gaze from it.
From this side I could see Coral a bit more clearly, within the fiery hedge. Funny. It was not as if there were a large emotional investment here. We were not lovers, not even terrifically close friends. We had become acquainted only the other day, shared a long walk about, around, and under the town and palace, had a meal together, a couple of drinks, a few laughs. If we became better acquainted, perhaps we would discover that we couldn’t stand each other. Still, I had enjoyed her company, and I realized that I did want to take the time to get to know her better. And in some ways I felt responsible for her present condition, through a kind of contributory negligence. In other words, the Pattern had me by the balls. If I wanted to free her, I had to repair it.
The flames nodded in my direction.
“It’s a dirty trick,” I said aloud.
The flames nodded again.
I continued to study the Broken Pattern. Almost everything I knew about the phenomenon had come to me by way of my conversation with Jasra. But I recalled her telling me that initiates of the Broken Pattern walked it in the areas between the lines, whereas the image in the Jewel was instructing me to walk the lines, as one normally would the Pattern itself. Which made sense, as I recalled my father’s story. It should serve to inscribe the proper path across the breaks. I wasn’t looking for any half-assed between-the-lines initiation.
Jurt made his way about the far end of the Pattern, turned, and began to move toward me. When he came abreast of a break in the outer line, the light flowed from it across the floor. The look on his face was ghastly as it touched his foot. He screamed and began to melt.
“Stop!” I cried. “Or you can find another Pattern repairman! Restore him and leave him alone or I won’t do it! I mean it!”
Jurt’s collapsing legs lengthened again. The rush of blue-white incandescence which had fled upward through his body was withdrawn as the light retreated from him. The expression of pain left his face.
“I know he’s a Logrus-ghost,” I said, “and he’s patterned on my least favorite relative, but you leave him alone, you son of a bitch, or I won’t walk you! You can keep Coral and you can stay broken!”
The light flowed back through the imperfection, and things stood as they had moments before.
“I want a promise,” I said.
A gigantic sheet of flame rose from the Broken Pattern to the top of the chamber, then fell again.
“I take it that is an affirmative,” I said.
The flames nodded.
“Thanks,” I heard Jurt whisper.
Chapter 8
And so I commenced my walk. The black line did not have the same feeling to it as the blazing ones back under Amber. My feet came down as if on dead ground, though there was a tug and a crackle when I raised them.
“Merlin!” Jurt called out. “What should I do?”
“What do you mean?” I shouted back.
“How do I get out of here?”
“Go out the door and start shadow-shifting,” I said, “or follow me through this Pattern and have it send you wherever you want.”
“I don’t believe you can shadow-shift this close to Amber, can you?”
“Maybe we are too close. So get away physically and then do it.”
I kept moving. There came small crackling sounds whenever I raised my feet now.
“I’d get lost in the caves if I tried that.”
“Then follow me.”
“The Pattern will destroy me.”
“It’s promised not to.”
He laughed harshly.
“And you believe it?”
“If it wants this job done properly, it has no choice.”
I came to the first break in the Pattern. A quick consultation of the Jewel showed me where the line should lie. With some trepidation I took my first step beyond the visible marking. Then another. And another. I wanted to look back when I finally crossed the gap. Instead, I waited until the natural curving of my route granted me that view. I saw then that the entire line I had walked thus far had begun to glow, just like the real thing. The spilled luminescence seemed to have been absorbed within it, darkening the interstitial ground area. Jurt had moved to a position near that beginning. He caught my gaze.
“I don’t know, Merlin,” he said. “I just don’t know.”
“The Jurt I knew wouldn’t have had guts enough to try it,” I told him.
“Neither do I.”
“As you pointed out, our mother did it. Odds are you’ve got the genes. What the hell. If I’m wrong, it’ll be over before you know it.”
I took another step. He gave a mirthless laugh.
Then, “What the hell,” he said, and he set his foot upon it.
“Hey, I’m still alive,” he called out. “What now?”
“Keep coming,” I said. “Follow me. Don’t stop. And don’t leave the line or all bets are off.”
There followed another turning of the way, and I followed it and lost sight of him. As I continued along, I became aware of a pain in my right ankle — product of all the hiking and climbing I had done, I supposed. It began increasing with each step. It was hot and soon grew to be quite terrible. Had I somehow torn a ligament? Had I —
Of course. I could smell the burning leather now.
I plunged my hand into the sheath area of my boot and withdrew the Chaos dagger. It was radiating heat. This proximity to the Pattern was affecting it. I couldn’t keep it about me any longer.
I drew my arm back and cast the weapon across the Pattern in the direction I was facing, toward the end of the room where the doorway was situated. Automatically my gaze followed its passage. There was a small movement in the shadows toward which it flew. A man was standing there, watching me. The dagger struck the wall and fell to the floor. He leaned over and picked it up. I heard a chuckle. He made a sudden movement, and the dagger came arcing back across the Pattern in my direction.
It landed ahead and to the right of me. As soon as it made contact with the Pattern, a fountain of blue flame engulfed it, rising well above the level of my head, splattering, sizzling. I flinched and I slowed, though I knew it would do me no permanent harm, and I kept walking. I had reached the long frontal arc where the going was slow.
“Stay on the line,” I yelled to Jurt. “Don’t worry about things like that.”
“I understand,” he said. “Who’s that guy?”
“Damned if I know.”
I pushed ahead. I was nearer to the circle of flame now. I wondered what the ty’iga would think of my present predicament. I made my way around another turn and was able to see back over a considerable section of my trail. It was glowing evenly, and Jurt was coming on strongly, moving as I had, the flames rising above his ankles now. They were almost up to my knees. From the corner of my eye I saw a movement from that area of the chamber where the stranger stood.
The man moved forth from his shadowy alcove, slowly carefully, flowing along the far wall. At least he did not seem interested in walking the Pattern. He moved to a point almost directly opposite its beginning.
I had no choice but to continue my course, which took me through curves and turns that removed him from my sight. I came to another break in the Pattern and felt it knit as I crossed it. A barely audible music seemed to occur as I did so. The tempo of the flux within the lighted area seemed to increase also, as it flowed into the lines, etching a sharp, bright trail behind me. I called an occasional piece of advice to Jurt, who was several laps back, though his course sometimes brought him abreast of me and close enough to touch had there been any reason to.
The blue fires were higher now, reaching up to midthigh, and my hair was rising. I began a slow series of turns. Above the crackling and the music, I asked, How’re you doin
g, Frakir? There was no reply.
I turned, kept moving through an area of high impedance, emerged from it, beholding the fiery wall of Coral’s prison there at the Pattern’s center. As I took my way around it, the opposite side of the Pattern slowly came into view.
The stranger stood waiting, the collar of his cloak turned high. Within the shadows which lay upon his face, I could see that his teeth were bared in a grin. I was startled by the fact that he stood in the midst of the Pattern itself — watching my advance, apparently waiting for me — until I realized that he had entered by way of a break in the design which I was headed to repair.
“You are going to have to get out of my way,” I called out. “I can’t stop, and I can’t let you stop me!”
He didn’t stir, and I recalled my father’s telling me of a fight which had occurred on the primal Pattern. I slapped the hilt of Grayswandir.
“I’m coming through,” I said.
The blue-white fires came up even higher with my next step, and in their light I saw his face. It was my own.
“No,” I said.
“Yes,” he said.
“You are the last of the Logrus-ghosts to confront me.”
“Indeed,” he replied.
I took another step.
“Yet,” I observed, “if you are a reconstruction of myself from the time I made it through the Logrus, why should you oppose me here? The self I recall being in those days wouldn’t have taken a job like this.”
His grin went away.
“I am not you in that sense,” he stated. “The only way to make this happen as it must, as I understand it, was to synthesize my personality in some fashion.”
“So you’re me with a lobotomy and orders to kill.”
“Don’t say that,” he replied. “It makes it sound wrong, and what I’m doing is right. We even have many of the same memories.”
“Let me through and I’ll talk to you afterward. I think the Logrus may have screwed itself by trying this stunt. You don’t want to kill yourself, and neither do I. Together we could win this game, and there’s room in Shadow for more than one Merlin.”
Knight of Shadows tcoa-9 Page 13
