Knight of Shadows tcoa-9

by Roger Joseph Zelazny

  Immediately there was a great coalescence of energy at my side of the Pattern. With a heavy whooshing sound a tower of blue flame built itself before me, widened, assumed genderless features of an enormous inhuman beauty. I had to shade my eyes against it.

  “You do not understand,” came a voice modulated of the roaring of flames.

  “I know. That’s why I’m here.”

  “Your efforts are not unappreciated.”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  “There was no other way to conduct matters.”

  “Well, were they conducted to your satisfaction?”

  “They were.”

  “Then you are welcome, I guess.”

  “You are insolent, Merlin.”

  “The way I feel right now I’ve nothing to lose. I’m just too damned tired to care what you do to me. So I came down here to tell you that I think you owe me a big one. That’s all.”

  I turned my back on it then.

  “Not even Oberon dared address me so,” it said.

  I shrugged and took a step toward the door. When I set my foot down, I was back in my apartment.

  I shrugged again, then went and splashed water in my face.

  “You still okay, Dad?”

  There was a ring around the bowl. It rose into the air and followed me about the room.

  “I’m all right,” I acknowledged. “How about yourself?”

  “Fine. It ignored me completely.”

  “Do you know what it’s up to?” I asked.

  “It seems to be dueling with the Logrus for control of Shadow. And it just won a round. Whatever happened seems to have strengthened it. You were involved, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Where were you after you left the cave I’d put you in?”

  “You know of a land that lies between the shadows?”

  “Between? No. That doesn’t make sense.”

  “Well, that’s where I was.”

  “How’d you get there?”

  “I don’t know. With considerable difficulty, I’d guess. Are Mandor and Jasra all right?”

  “The last time I looked they were.”

  “How about Luke?”

  “I’d no reason to seek him out. Do you want me to?”

  “Not just now. Right now I want you to go upstairs and look in on the royal suite. I want to know whether it is, at the moment, occupied. And if so, by whom. I also want you to check the fireplace in the bedroom. See whether loose stone which was removed from an area to the right of it has been replaced or is still lying upon the hearth.”

  He vanished, and I paced. I was afraid to sit down or to lie down. I’d a feeling that I’d go to sleep instantly if I did and that I’d be difficult to awaken. But Ghost spun back into existence before I chalked up much mileage.

  “The Queen, Vialle, is present,” he said, “in her studio, the loose stone has been replaced, and there is a dwarf in the hall knocking on doors.”

  “Damn,” I said. “Then they know it’s missing. A dwarf?”

  “A dwarf.”

  I sighed.

  “I guess I’d better walk on upstairs, return the Jewel, and try to explain what happened. If Vialle likes my story, she might just forget to mention it to Random.”

  “I’ll transfer you up there.”

  “No, that would not be too politic. Or polite either. I’d better go knock on the door and get admitted properly this time.”

  “How do people know when to knock and when to go on in?”

  “In general, if it’s closed, you knock on it.”

  “As the dwarf is doing?”

  I heard a faint knocking from somewhere outside.

  “He’s just going along, indiscriminately banging on doors?” I asked.

  “Well, he’s trying them in sequence, so I don’t know that you could say it’s indiscriminate. So far all of the doors he’s tried have been to rooms which are empty. He should reach yours in another minute or so.”

  I crossed to my door, unlocked it, opened it, and stepped out into the hallway.

  Sure enough, there was a short guy moving along the hallway. He looked in my direction at the opening of my door, and his teeth showed within his beard as he smiled and headed toward me.

  It quickly became apparent that he was a hunchback.

  “My God!” I said. “You’re Dworkin, aren’t you? The real Dworkin!”

  “I believe so,” he replied in a not unpleasant voice. “And I do hope that you are Corwin’s son, Merlin.”

  “I am,” I said. “This is an unusual pleasure, coming at an unusual time.”

  “It is not a social call,” he stated, drawing near and clasping my hand and shoulder. “Ah! These are your quarters!”

  “Yes. Won’t you come in?”

  “Thank you.”

  I led him in. Ghost did a fly-on-the-wall imitation, became about a half inch in diameter, and took up residence on the armoire as if the result of a stray sunbeam. Dworkin did a quick turn about the sitting room, glanced into the bedroom, stared at Nayda for a time, muttered, “Always let sleeping demons lie,” touched the Jewel as he passed me on his return, shook his head forebodingly, and sank into the chair I’d been afraid I’d go to sleep in.

  “Would you care for a glass of wine?” I asked him. He shook his head.

  “No, thank you,” he replied. “It was you who repaired the nearest Broken Pattern in Shadow, was it not?”

  “Yes, it was.”

  “Why did you do it?”

  “I didn’t have much choice in the matter.”

  “You had better tell me all about it,” the old man said, tugging at his grisly, irregular beard. His hair was long and could have used a trim also. Still, there seemed nothing of madness in his gaze or his words.

  “It is not a simple story, and if I am to stay awake long enough to tell it, I am going to need some coffee,” I said.

  He spread his hands, and a small, white-clothed table appeared between us, bearing service for two and a steaming silvery carafe set above a squat candle. There was also a tray of biscuits. I couldn’t have summoned it all that fast. I wondered whether Mandor could.

  “In that case, I will join you,” Dworkin said.

  I sighed and poured. I raised the Jewel of Judgment.

  “Perhaps I’d better return this thing before I start,” I told him. “It may save me a lot of trouble later.”

  He shook his head as I began to rise.

  “I think not,” he stated. “If you take is off now, you will probably die.”

  I sat down again.

  “Cream and sugar?” I asked him.

  Chapter 9

  I came around slowly. That familiar blueness was a lake of prebeing in which I drifted. Oh, yes, I was here because… I was here, as the song said. I turned over onto my other side within my sleeping bag, drew my knees up to my chest, and went back to sleep.

  The next time I came around and gave it a quick glance the world was still a blue place. Fine. There is much to be said for the tried, the true. Then I recalled that Luke might be by at any time to kill me, and my fingers wrapped themselves around the hilt of the weapon beside me, and I strained my hearing after signs of anything’s approach.

  Would I spend the day chipping at the wall of my crystal cave? I wondered. Or would Jasra come and try again to kill me?

  Again? Something was wrong. There’d bees an awful lot of business involving Jurt and Coral and Luke and Mandor, and even Julia. Had it all been a dream?

  The moment of panic came and went, and then my wandering spirit returned, bringing along the rest of my memories, and I yawned and everything was all right again.

  I stretched. I sat up. I knuckled my eyes.

  Yes, I was back in the crystal cave. No, everything that had happened since Luke imprisoned me had not been a dream. I had returned here by choice (a) because a good night’s sleep in this time line amounted to only a brief span back in Amber, (b) because nobody could bother me here with a Tru
mp contact, and (c) because it was possible that even the Pattern and the Logrus couldn’t track me down here.

  I brushed my hair out of my eyes, rose, and headed back to the john. It had been a good idea, having Ghost‘ transport me here following my colloquy with Dworkin. I was certain I had slept for something like twelve hours — deep, undisturbed stuff, the best kind. I drained a quart water bottle. I washed my face with more of the stuff.

  Later, after I had dressed and stowed the bedclothes in the storeroom, I walked to the entrance chamber and stood in the light beneath the overhead adit. What I could see of the sky through it was clear. I could still hear Luke’s words the day he had imprisoned me here and I’d learned we were related.

  I drew the Jewel of Judgment up from within my shirt, removed it, held it high so that the light shone from behind it, stared into its depths. No messages this time.

  Just as well. I wasn’t in the mood for two-way traffic. I lowered myself into a comfortable cross-legged position, still regarding the stone. Time to do it and be done with it, now that I felt rested and somewhat alert. As Dworkin had suggested, I sought the Pattern within that red pool.

  After a time it began to take shape. It did not appear as I had been visualizing it, but this was not an exercise in visualization. I watched the structure come clear. It was not as if it were suddenly coming into existence, however, but rather as if it had been there all along and my eyes were just now adjusting to perceive it properly. Likely this was actually the case, too.

  I took a deep breath and released it. I repeated the process. Then I began a careful survey of the design. I couldn’t recall everything my father had said about attuning oneself to the Jewel. When I had mentioned this to Dworkin, he had told me not to worry about it, that I needed but to locate the three-dimensional edition of the Pattern within the stone, find its point of entry, and traverse it. When I pressed him for details, he had simply chuckled and told me not to worry.

  All right.

  Slowly I turned it, drawing it nearer. A small break appeared, high, to the right. As I focused upon it, it seemed to rush toward me.

  I went to that place, and I went in there. It was a strange roller coaster of an experience, moving along Pattern-like lines within the gemstone. I went where it drew me, sometimes with a near-eviscerating feeling of vertigo, other times pushing with my will against the ruby barriers till they yielded and I climbed, fell, slid, or pushed my way onward. I lost most of the awareness of my body, hand holding the chain high, save that I knew I was sweating profusely, as it stung my eyes with some regularity.

  I’ve no idea how much time passed in my attunement to the Jewel of Judgment, the higher octave of the Pattern. Dworkin felt that there were reasons other than my having pissed off the Pattern for its wanting me dead immediately following my completion of my bizarre quest and repairing of the nearest of the Broken Patterns. But Dworkin refused to elaborate, feeling that my knowing the reason could influence a possible future choice which should be made freely. All of which sounded like gibberish to me, save that everything else he said struck me as eminently sane, in contrast with the Dworkin I knew of from legend and hearsay.

  My mind plunged and reared through the pool of blood that was the Jewel’s interior. The Pattern segments I had traversed and those I had yet to travel moved about me, flashing like lightning. I’d a feeling my mind was going to crash against some invisible Veil and shatter. My movement was out of control now, accelerating. There was no way, I knew, for me to withdraw from this thing until I had run its course.

  Dworkin felt that I had been protected from the Pattern during our confrontation, when I had gone back to check on the figure I had seen, because I was wearing the Jewel. I could not keep wearing it for too long, though, because this also had a tendency to prove fatal. He decided that I must become attuned to the Jewel — as were my father and Random — before I let it out of my possession. I would thereafter bear the higher-order image within me, which should function as well as the Jewel in defending me against the Pattern. I could hardly argue with the man who had supposedly created the Pattern, using the Jewel. So I agreed with him. Only I was too tired to do what he suggested. That was why I had had Ghost return me to my crystal cave, my sanctuary, to rest first.

  Now, now… I flowed. I spun. Occasionally I stalled. The Jewel’s equivalents of the Veils were no less formidable because I had left my body behind. Each such passage left me as wrung out as running a mile in Olympic time. Though I knew at one level that I stood holding the Jewel through which I took my initiatory way, at another I could feel my heart pounding, and at another I recalled parts of a guest lecture by Joan Halifax for an anthropology course I was taking, years before. The medium swirled like Geyser Peak Merlot 1985 in a goblet — and whom was I looking across the table at that night? No matter. Onward, down and around. The blood-brightened tide was loosed. A message was being inscribed upon my spirit. In the beginning was a word I cannot spell… Brighter, brighter. Faster, faster. Collision with a ruby wall, I a smear upon it. Come now, Schopenhauer, to the final game of will. An age or two came and went; then, suddenly, the way was opened. I was spilled forth into the light of an exploding star. Red, red, red, shifting me onward, away, like my little boat Starburst, driven, expanding, coming home…

  I collapsed. Though I did not lose consciousness, my state of mind was not normal either. There was a hypnagogia I could have passed through at any time I chose, in either direction. But why? I am seldom the recipient of such a delivery of euphoria. I felt I’d earned it, so I drifted, right there, for a long, long time.

  When it finally subsided below the level that made indulgence worthwhile, I climbed to my feet, swayed, leaned against the wall, made my way to the storeroom for another drink of water. I was also ravenous, but none of the tinned or freeze-dried foods appealed to me that greatly. Especially when fresher things were not that hard to come by.

  I walked back through those familiar chambers. So I had followed Dworkin’s advice. It was a pity I’d turned my back before I recalled a long list of questions I wished to ask him. When I turned back again, he was gone.

  I climbed. Coming up out of my cave, I stood atop the blue prominence which held the only entranceway I knew of. It was a breezy, balmy, springlike morning with only a few small puffs of cloud to the east. I drew a deep breath for pleasure and expelled it. Then I stooped and moved the blue boulder to block the opening. I’d hate to be surprised by a predator should I come this way again in need of sanctuary.

  I took off the Jewel of Judgment and hung it on a spur of the boulder. Then I moved off about ten paces.

  “Hi, Dad.”

  The Ghostwheel was a golden Frisbee, come sailing out of the west.

  “Good morning, Ghost.”

  “Why are you abandoning that device? It’s one of the most powerful tools I’ve ever seen.”

  “I’m not abandoning it, but I’m about to summon the Sign of the Logrus, and I don’t think they’d get on too well. I’m even a little leery over how the Logrus will take to me with this higher-order Pattern attunement I’m wearing.”

  “Perhaps I’d better move along and check back with you later.”

  “Stick around,” I said. “Maybe you can bail me out if this turns into a problem.”

  I summoned the Sign of the Logrus then, and it came and hovered before me, and nothing happened. I shifted a part of my awareness into the jewel, there on the side of the boulder, and through it I was able to perceive the Logrus from another perspective. Eerie. Also painless.

  I centered myself within my own skull once again, extended my arms into the Logrus limbs, reached… In less than a minute I had a plate of buttermilk pancakes, a side order of sausages, a cup of coffee, and a glass of orange juice.

  “I could have gotten them for you faster than that,” Ghost remarked.

  “I’m sure you could have,” I said. “I was just testing systems.”

  As I ate, I tried to sort my priorities. When I
finished, I sent the dishes back where they had come from, retrieved the Jewel, hung it about my neck, and stood.

  “Okay, Ghost. Time to head back to Amber,” I said.

  He expanded and opened and sank, so that I stood before a golden arch. I stepped forward —

  — and back into my apartment.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “De nada, Dad. Listen, I’ve a question: When you summoned breakfast, did you notice anything at all unusual in the way the Logrus Sign behaved?”

  “How do you mean that?” I asked as I moved to wash my hands.

  “Let’s start with physical sensations. Did it seem… sticky?”

  “That’s an odd way to put it,” I said. “But as a matter of fact, it did seem to take slightly longer than usual to disengage. Why do you ask?”

  “A peculiar notion has just occurred to me. Can you do Pattern magic?”

  “Yeah, but I’m better at the Logrus variety.”

  “You might want to try them both and compare them if you get a chance.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m actually starting to get hunches. I’ll tell you as soon as I’ve checked this one out.”

  Ghostwheel was gone.

  “Shit,” I said, and I washed my face.

  I looked out the window, and a handful of snowflakes blew by. I fetched a key from my desk drawer. There were a couple of things I wanted to get out of the way immediately.

  I stepped into the corridor. I had not gone more than a few paces before I heard the sound. I halted and listened. Then I continued, past the stairway, the sound growing steadily in volume as I advanced. By the time I reached the long corridor which ran past the library I knew that Random was back because I didn’t know of anyone else around here who could drum like that — or would dare to use the King’s drums if he could.

  I continued on past the half opened door to the corner, where I turned right. My first impulse had been to enter, give him back the Jewel of Judgment, and try to explain what had happened. Then I recalled Flora’s advice that anything honest, straightforward, and above-board would always get you in trouble here. While I hated to give her credit for having enunciated a general rule, I could see that in this particular instance it would certainly tie me up with a lot of explaining when then were other things I wanted to be about — and, for that matter, it might also get me ordered not to do some of them.