I’d slowed, but I had to take another step then. I couldn’t afford to lose momentum at this point.
His lips tightened to a thin line, and he shook his head.
“Sorry,” he said. “I was born to live one hour — unless I kill you. If I do, your life will be given to me.”
He drew his blade.
“I know you better than you think I do,” I said, “whether you’ve been restructured or not. I don’t think you’ll do it. Furthermore, I might be able to lift that death sentence. I’ve learned some things about how it works for you ghosts.”
He extended his blade, which resembled one I’d had years ago, and its point almost reached me.
“Sorry,” he repeated.
I drew Grayswandir for purposes of parrying it. I’d have been a fool not to. I didn’t know what sort of job the Logrus had done on his head. I racked my memories for fencing techniques I’d studied since I’d become an initiate of the Logrus.
Yes. Benedict’s game with Borel had reminded me. I’d taken some lessons in Italian-style fencing since then. It gave one wider, more careless-seeming parries, compensated by greater extension. Grayswandir went forth, beat his blade to the outside, and extended. His wrist bent into a French four, but I was already under it, arm still extended, wrist straight, sliding my right foot forward along the line as the forte of my blade beat heavily against the forte of his from the outside, and I immediately stepped forward with my left foot, driving the weapon across his body till the guards locked and continuing its drop in that direction.
And then my left hand fell upon the inside of his right elbow, in a maneuver a martial artist friend had taught me back in college — zenponage, I think he called it. I lowered my hips as I pressed downward. I turned my hips then, counterclockwise. His balance broke, and he fell toward my left. Only I could not permit that. If he landed on the Pattern proper, I’d a funny feeling he’d go off like a fireworks display. So I continued the drop for several more inches, shifted my hand to his shoulder, and pushed him, so that he fell back into the broken area. Then I heard a scream, and a blazing form passed on my left side.
“No!” I cried, reaching for it.
But I was too late. Jurt had stepped off the line, springing past me, driving his blade into my double even as his own body swirled and blazed. Fire also poured from my double’s wound. He tried unsuccessfully to rise and fell back.
“Don’t say that I never served you, brother,” Jurt stated, before he was transformed into a whirlwind, which rose to the chamber’s roof, where it dissipated.
I could not reach far enough to touch my doppelganger, and moments later I did not wish to, for he was quickly transformed into a human torch.
His gaze was directed upward, following Jurt’s spectacular passing. He looked at me then and smiled crookedly.
“He was right, you know,” he said, and then he, too, was engulfed.
It took awhile to overcome my inertia, but after a time I did, continuing my ritual dance about the fire. The next time around there was no trace of either of their persons, though their blades remained where they had fallen, crossed, across my path. I kicked them off the Pattern as I went by. The flames were up to my waist by then.
Around, back, over. I glanced into the Jewel periodically, to avoid missteps, and piece by piece I stitched the Pattern together. The light was drawn into the lines, and save for the central blaze, it came more and more to resemble the thing we kept in the basement back home.
The First Veil brought painful memories of the Courts and of Amber. I stayed aloof, shivering, and these things passed. The Second Veil mixed memory and desire in San Francisco. I controlled my breathing and pretended I was only a spectator. The flames danced about my shoulders, and I thought of a series of half moons as I traversed arc after arc, curve upon reverse curve. The resistance grew till I was drenched with sweat as I struggled against it. But I had been this way before. The Pattern was not just around me but inside me as well.
I moved, and I reached the point of diminishing returns, of less and less distance gained for the effort expended. I kept seeing dissolving Jurt and my own dying face amid flames, and it didn’t matter a bit that I knew the memory rush was Pattern-induced. It still bothered me as I drove myself forward.
I swept my gaze around me once as I neared the Grand Curve, and I saw that this Pattern had now been full repaired. I had bridged all of the breaks with connecting lines, and it burned now like a frozen Catherine wheel against a black and starless sky. Another step…
I patted the warm Jewel that I wore. Its ruddy glow came up to me even more strongly now than it had earlier. I wondered whether there was an easy way to get it back where it belonged. Another step…
I raised the Jewel and stared into it. There was an image of me completing the walking of the Grand Curve and continuing right on through the wall of flames as if this represented no problem whatsoever. While I took the vision as a piece of advice, I was reminded of a David Steinberg routine which Droppa had once appropriated. I hoped that the Pattern was not into practical jokes.
The flames enveloped me fully as I commenced the Curve. I continued to slow as my efforts mounted. Step after painful step I drew nearer to the Final Veil. I could feel myself being transformed into an expression of pure will, as everything that I was became focused upon a single end. Another step… It felt as if I were weighted down with heavy armor. It was the final three steps that pushed one near despair’s edge.
Again…
Then came the point where even movement became less important than the effort. It was no longer the results but the attempt that mattered. My will was the flame; my body, smoke or shadow…
And again…
Seen through my risen blue light, the orange flames which surrounded Coral became silver-gray spikes of incandescence. Within the crackling and the popping I heard something like music once again — low, adagio, a deep, vibrant thing, like Michael Moore playing bass. I tried to accept the rhythm, to move with it. Somehow, then, it seemed that I succeeded — that, or my time sense became distorted — as I moved with a feeling of something like fluidity through the next steps.
Or maybe the Pattern felt it owed me a favor and had eased up for a few beats. I’ll never know.
I passed through the Final Veil, faced the wall of flame, suddenly orange again, and kept going. I drew my next breath in the heart of fire.
Coral lay there at the Pattern’s center, looking pretty much as she had when last I had seen her — in a copper shirt and dark green breeches — save that she appeared to be sleeping, sprawled there upon her heavy brown cloak. I dropped to my right knee beside her and laid my hand upon her shoulder. She did not stir. I brushed a strand of her reddish hair off her cheek, stroked that cheek a few times.
“Coral?” I said.
No response.
I returned my hand to her shoulder, shook her gently.
“Coral?”
She drew a deep breath and sighed it out, but she did not awaken.
I shook her a bit harder. “Wake up, Coral.”
I slipped my arm beneath her shoulders, raised her partway. Her eyes did not open. Obviously she was under some sort of spell. The middle of the Pattern was hardly the place to summon the Sign of the Logrus if one wished to remain unincinerated. So I tried the storybook remedy. I leaned forward and kiss her. She made a small, deep noise, and her eyelids fluttered. But she did not come around. I tried again. Same result.
“Shit!” I remarked. I wanted a little elbowroom for working on a spell like this, a place where I had access to some of the tools of my trade and could call upon the source of my powers with impunity.
I raised her higher and commanded the Pattern to transport us back to my apartment in Amber, where her ty’iga-possessed sister lay in a trance of her own — one of my brother’s doing, for purposes of protecting me from her.
“Take us home,” I said aloud, for emphasis.
Nothing happened.
&nb
sp; I employed a strong visualization then and backed once more with the mental command.
We didn’t stir.
I lowered Coral gently, rose, and looked out across the Pattern through the faintest area of the flames.
“Look,” I said, “I just did you a big favor, involving lot of exertion and considerable risk. Now I want to go the hell out of here and take the lady with me. Will you please oblige?”
The flames died down, were gone, for several beats. In the diminished light which followed I became aware that the Jewel was pulsing, like the message light on a hotel phone. I raised it and stared into it.
I hardly expected an X-rated short feature, but that’s what was playing.
“I believe I’m receiving the wrong channel,” I said. “If you’ve got a message, let’s have it. Otherwise, I just want to go home.”
Nothing changed, save that I became aware of a strong resemblance between the two figures in the Jewel and Coral and myself. They were going at it on a cloak at what appeared to be the center of a Pattern, flagrante ad infinitum — rather like a spicier version of the old salt box label, it seemed, if they could be seeing into the jewel the guy was wearing and watching…
“Enough!” I cried. “This is fucking ridiculous! You want a Tantric ritual I’ll send you some professionals! The lady isn’t even awake —”
The Jewel pulsed again, with such intensity that it hurt my eyes. I let it fall. I knelt then, scooped Coral up, and stood.
“I don’t know whether anyone’s ever walked you backwards before,” I said, “but I don’t see why it shouldn’t work.”
I took a step in the direction of the Final Veil. Immediately the wall of flame sprang up before me. I stumbled in drawing away from it, fell back upon the outspread cloak. I held Coral to me that she not be cast into the fire. She came down on top of me. She seemed almost awake…
Her arms went around my neck, and she sort of nuzzled my cheek. She seemed more drowsy than comatose now. I held her tightly and thought about it.
“Coral?” I tried again.
“Mm,” she said.
“Seems the only way we can get out of here is by making love.”
“Thought you’d never ask,” she mumbled, eyes still closed.
That made it seem somewhat less like necrophilia, I told myself as I turned us onto our sides so I could get at those coppery buttons. She muttered a little more while I was about things, but it didn’t exactly turn into a conversation. Still, her body was not unresponsive to my attentions, and the encounter quickly took on all the usual features, too commonplace to be of much concern to the sophisticated. It seemed an interesting way to break a spell. Maybe the Pattern did have a sense of humor. I don’t know.
The fires died down at about the same time that the fires died down, so to speak. Coral’s eyes finally opened.
“That seems to have taken care of the circle of flames,” I said.
“When did this cease being a dream?” she asked.
“Good question,” I replied, “and only you can answer it.”
“Did you just rescue me from something?”
“That seems the easiest way to put it,” I answered as she drew away somewhat and cast her gaze about the chamber. “See where it got you when you asked the Pattern to send you where you should go?” I said.
“Screwed,” she replied.
“Precisely.”
We drew apart. We adjusted our apparel.
“It’s a good way to get to know each other better…” I had begun when the cavern was shaken by a powerful earth tremor.
“The timing is really off here,” I observed as we were rocked together and clung to each other for comfort, if not support.
It was over in an instant, and the Pattern was suddenly blazing more brilliantly than I’d ever seen it before. I shook my head. I rubbed my eyes. Something was wrong, even though it felt very right. Then the great metal-bound door opened — inward! — and I realized that we had come back to Amber, the real timber. My glowing trail still led up to the threshold, though it was fading fast, and a small figure stood upon it. Before I could even squint against the corridor’s gloom, I felt a familiar disorientation, and we were in my bedroom.
“Nayda!” Coral exclaimed when she viewed the figure reclined upon my bed.
“Not exactly,” I said. “I mean, it’s her body. But the spirit that moves it is of a different order.”
“I don’t understand.”
I was busy thinking of the person who had been about to invade the precincts of the Pattern. I was also a mass of aching muscles, screaming nerves, and assorted fatigue poisons. I crossed to the table where the wine bottle I’d opened for Jasra — how long ago? — still stood. I found us two clean glasses. I filled them. I passed one to Coral.
“Your sister was very ill awhile back, wasn’t she?”
“Yes,” she replied.
I took a big swallow.
“She was near death. At that time her body was possessed by a ty’iga spirit — a kind of demon — as Nayda no longer had any use for it.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I understand that she actually died.”
Coral stared into my eyes. She didn’t find whatever she sought, and she took a drink instead.
“I’d known something was wrong,” she said. “She hasn’t really been herself since the illness.”
“She became nasty? Sneaky?”
“No, a lot nicer. Nayda was always a bitch.”
“You didn’t get along?”
“Not till recently. She’s not in any pain, is she?”
“No, she’s just sleeping. She’s under a spell.”
“Why don’t you release her? She doesn’t look like much of a danger.”
“I don’t think she is now. Just the opposite, in fact,” I said. “And we will release her, soon. My brother Mandor will have to undo it, though. It’s his spell.”
“Mandor? I don’t really know much about you — or your family — do I?”
“Nope,” I said, “and vice versa. Listen, I don’t even know what day it is.” I crossed the room and peered out the window. There was daylight. It was cloudy though, and I couldn’t guess the time. “There’s something you should do right away. Go see your father and let him know you’re all right. Tell him you got lost in the caverns or took a wrong turn into the Corridor Mirrors and wound up on some other plane of existence or something. Anything. To avoid a diplomatic incident. Okay?”
She finished her drink and nodded. Then she looked at me and blushed and looked away.
“We’ll get together again before I leave, won’t we?”
I reached out and patted her shoulder, not really knowing what my feelings were. Then I realized that wouldn’t do, and I stepped forward and embraced her.
“You know it,” I said as I stroked her hair.
“Thanks for showing me around town.”
“We’ll have to do it again,” I told her, “as soon as the pace slackens.”
“Uh-huh.”
We walked to the door.
“I want to see you soon,” she said.
“I’m fading fast,” I told her, as I opened it. “I’ve been through hell and back.”
She touched my cheek.
“Poor Merlin,” she said. “Sleep tight.”
I gulped the rest of my wine and withdrew my Trumps. I wanted to do just what she said, but certain unavoidables came first. I riffled my way to the Ghostwheel’s card, removed it, and regarded it.
Almost immediately, following the faintest drop in temperature and the barest formation of desire on my part, Ghostwheel appeared before me — a red circle turning in the middle of the air.
“Uh, hello, Dad,” it stated. “I was wondering where you’d gotten to. When I checked back at the cave, you were gone, and none of my shadow-indexing procedures could turn you up. It never even occurred to me that you might simply have come home. I —”
“Later,” I said. “I’m i
n a hurry. Get me down to the chamber of the Pattern fast.”
“There’s something I’d better tell you first.”
“What?”
“That force that followed you to the Keep — the one I hid you from in the cave…?”
“Yes.”
“It was the Pattern itself that was seeking you.”
“I guessed that,” I said, “later. We’ve had our encounter and sort of come to terms for now. Get me down there right away. It’s important.”
“Sir, I am afraid of that thing.”
“Then take me as close as you dare and step aside. I have to check something out.”
“Very well. Come this way.”
I took a step forward. Ghost rose into the air, rotated ninety degrees toward me, and dropped quickly, passing my head, shoulders, torso and vanishing beneath my feet. The lights went out as he did so, and I called up my Logrus vision immediately. It showed me that I stood in the passageway outside the big door to the chamber of the Pattern.
“Ghost?” I said softly.
There was no reply.
I moved forward, turned the corner, advanced to the door, and leaned upon it. It was still unlocked, and it yielded to my pushing. Frakir pulsed once upon my wrist.
Frakir? I inquired.
There came no answer from that quarter either.
Lose your voice, lady?
She pulsed twice. I stroked her.
As the door opened before me, I was certain that the Pattern had grown brighter. The observation was quickly pushed aside, however. A dark-haired woman stood at the Pattern’s center, her back to me, her arms upraised. I almost shouted the name I thought she might answer to, but she was gone before my vocal mechanism responded. I slumped against the wall.
“I really feel used,” I said aloud. “You’ve run my ass ragged, you placed my life in jeopardy more than once, you got me to perform to satisfy your metaphysical voyeurism, then you kicked me out after you got the last thing you wanted — a slightly brighter glow. I guess that gods or powers or whatever the hell you are don’t have to say ‘Thank you’ or ‘I’m sorry’ or ‘Go to hell’ when they’ve finished using someone. And obviously you feel no need to justify yourself to me. Well, I’m not a baby carriage. I resent being pushed around by you and the Logrus in whatever game you’re playing. How’d you like it if I opened a vein and bled all over you?”
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