The Great Book of Amber - Chronicles 1-10

by Roger Zelazny

  Now, Benedict made no secret of the fact that he distrusted me. I could see this alone as sufficient reason for his withholding information on anything he judged too sensitive to become my business. Hell, buying his story, I would not have trusted me either if our situations were reversed. Only a fool would have called him on it at that moment, though. Because of the other possibilities.

  It could be that he planned to tell me later, in private, of the circumstances surrounding Brand’s visits. They could well have involved something he did not wish to discuss before the group, and especially before Brand’s would-be killer.

  Or—There was, of course, the possibility that Benedict himself was behind it all. I did not even like to think about the consequences. Having served under Napoleon, Lee, and MacArthur, I appreciated the tactician as well as the strategist. Benedict was both, and he was the best I had ever known. The recent loss of his right arm had in no way diminished him in this, or for that matter impaired his personal fighting skills. Had I not been very lucky recently he could easily have turned me into a pile of scallops over our misunderstanding. No, I did not want it to be Benedict, and I was not about to grope after whatever he had at that moment seen fit to conceal. I only hoped that he was just saving it for later.

  So I settled for his, “That is all,” and decided to move on to other matters.

  “Flora,” I said, “back when I first visited you, after my accident, you said something which I still do not quite understand. In that I had ample time relatively soon thereafter in which to review many things, I came across it in my memories and occasionally puzzled over it. I still do not understand it. So would you please tell me what you meant when you said that the shadows contained more horrors than any had thought?”

  “Why, I do not properly recall saying it,” Flora said. “But I suppose that I must have, if it made such an impression. You know the effect that I was referring to: that Amber seems to act as something of a magnet on adjacent shadows, drawing things across from them; the nearer you get to Amber the easier the road becomes, even for shadow-things. While there always seems to be some exchange of materials among adjacent shadows themselves, the effect is more forceful and also more of a one-way process when it comes to Amber. We have always been alert for peculiar things slipping through. Well, for several years prior to your recovery, more such things than usual seemed to be showing up in the vicinity of Amber. Dangerous things, almost invariably. Many were recognizable creatures from nearby realms. After a time, though, things kept coming in from farther and farther afield. Eventually, some which were totally unknown made it through. No reason could be found for this sudden transportation of menaces, although we sought fairly far for disturbances which might be driving them this way. In other words, highly improbable penetrations of Shadow were occurring.”

  “This actually began while Dad was still around?”

  “Oh yes. It started several years before your recovery—as I said.”

  “I see. Did anyone consider the possibility of there being a connection between this state of affairs and Dad’s departure?”

  “Certainly,” Benedict replied. “I still feel that that was the reason for it. He went off to investigate, or to seek a remedy.”

  “But that is purely conjecture,” Julian said. “You know how he was. He gave no reasons.”

  Benedict shrugged.

  “It is a reasonable inference, though,” he said. “I understand that he had spoken of his concern over the—monster migrations, if you like—on numerous occasions.”

  I withdrew my cards from their case, having recently gotten into the habit of carrying a set of Trumps with me at all times. I raised Gerard’s Trump and regarded it. The others were silent, watching me as I did this. Moments later, there was contact.

  Gerard was still seated in his chair, his blade across his knees. He was still eating. He swallowed when he felt my presence and said, “Yes, Corwin? What do you want?”

  “How is Brand?”

  “Sleeping,” he said. “His pulse is a little stronger. His breathing is the same—regular. It’s still too early—”

  “I know,” I said. “I mainly wanted to check your recollection of something: Near the end there, did you get the impression from anything he might have said or done that Dad’s going away might have been connected with the increased number of Shadow beings that were slipping through into Amber?”

  “That,” said Julian, “is what is known as a leading question.”

  Gerard wiped his mouth.

  “There could have been a connection, yes,” he said. “He seemed disturbed, preoccupied with something. And he did talk about the creatures. But he never really said that that was his main concern—or whether it was something entirely different.”

  “Like what?”

  He shook his head.

  “Anything. I—yes . . . yes, there is something you probably ought to know, for whatever it is worth. Some time after his disappearance, I did make an effort to find out one thing. That was, whether I was indeed the last person to see him before his departure. I am fairly certain that I was. I had been here in the palace all evening, and I was preparing to return to the flagship. Dad had retired about an hour earlier, but I had stayed on in the guard room, playing draughts with Captain Thoben. As we were sailing the following morning, I decided to take a book with me. So I came up here to the library. Dad was seated at the desk.” He gestured with his head. “He was going through some old books, and he had not yet changed his garments. He nodded to me when I entered, and I told him I had just come up for a book. He said, ‘You’ve come to the right place,’ and he kept on reading. While I was looking over the shelves, he said something to the effect that he could not sleep. I found a book, told him good night, he said, ‘Good sailing,’ and I left.”

  He lowered his eyes again. “Now I am positive he was wearing the Jewel of Judgment that night, that I saw it on him then as plainly as I see it on you now. I am equally certain that he had not had it on earlier that evening. For a long while after, I thought that he had taken it along with him, wherever he went. There was no indication in his chambers that he had later changed his clothing. I never saw the stone again until you and Bleys were defeated in your assault on Amber. Then, Eric was wearing it. When I questioned him he claimed that he had found it in Dad’s chambers. Lacking evidence to the contrary, I had to accept his story. But I was never happy with it. Your question—and seeing you wearing it—has brought it all back. So I thought you had better know about it.”

  “Thanks,” I said, and another question occurred to me but I decided against asking it at that moment. For the benefit of the others, I closed off by saying, "So do you think he needs any more blankets? Or anything else?”

  Gerard raised his glass to me, then took a drink.

  “Very good. Keep up the good work,” I said, and I passed my hand over his card.

  “Brother Brand seems to be doing all right,” I said, “and Gerard does not recollect Dad’s saying anything that would directly connect Shadow slippage and his departure. I wonder how Brand will recall things, when he comes around?”

  “If he comes around,” Julian said.

  “I think that he will,” I said. “We have all taken some pretty bad beatings. Our vitality is one of the few things we have come to trust. My guess is that he will be talking by morning.”

  “What do you propose doing with the guilty party,” he asked, “if Brand names him?”

  “Question him,” I said.

  “Then I would like to do the questioning. I am beginning to feel that you may be right this time, Corwin, and that the person who stabbed him may also be responsible for our intermittent state of siege, for Dad’s disappearance, and for Caine’s killing. So I would enjoy questioning him before we cut his throat, and I would like to volunteer for that last part also.”

  “We will keep it in mind,” I said.

  “You are not excluded from the reckoning, Corwin.”

  “I
was aware of that.”

  “I have something to say,” said Benedict, smothering a rejoinder from Julian. "I find myself troubled both by the strength and the apparent objective of the opposition. I have encountered them now on several occasions, and they are out for blood. Accepting for the moment your story of the girl Dara, Corwin, her final words do seem to sum up their attitude: ‘Amber will be destroyed.’ Not conquered, subjugated, or taught a lesson. Destroyed. Julian, you wouldn’t mind ruling here, would you?”

  Julian smiled. “Perhaps next year this time,” he said. “Not today, thank you.”

  “What I am getting at is that I could see you—or any of us—employing mercenaries or obtaining allies to effect a takeover. I cannot see you employing a force so powerful that it would represent a grave problem itself afterward. Not a force that seems bent on destruction rather than conquest. I cannot see you, me, Corwin, the others as actually trying to destroy Amber, or willing to gamble with forces that would. That is the part I do not like about Corwin’s notion that one of us is behind this.”

  I had to nod. I was not unaware of the weakness of that link in my chain of speculations. Still, there were so many unknowns. . . . I could offer alternatives, such as Random then did, but guesses prove nothing.

  “It may be,” Random said, “that one of us made the deal but underestimated his allies. The guilty party may now be sweating this thing as much as the rest of us. He may not be in a position to turn things off now, even if he wants to.”

  “We could offer him the opportunity,” Fiona said, “to betray his allies to us now. If Julian could be persuaded to leave his throat uncut and the rest of us were willing to do the same, he might come around—if Random’s guess is correct. He would not claim the throne, but he was obviously not about to have it before. He would have his life and he could save Amber quite a bit of trouble. Is anyone willing to commit himself to a position on this?”

  “I am,” I said. “I will give him life if he will come across, with the understanding that it will be spent in exile.”

  “I will go along with that,” Benedict said.

  “So will I,” said Random.

  “On one condition,” Julian said. “If he was not personally responsible for Caine’s death, I will go along with it. Otherwise, no. And there would have to be evidence.”

  “Life, in exile,” Deirdre said. “All right. I agree.”

  “So do I,” said Flora.

  “And I,” Llewella followed.

  “Gerard will probably agree too,” I said. “But I really wonder whether Brand will feel the same as the rest of us. I’ve a feeling he may not.”

  “Let us check with Gerard,” Benedict said. “If Brand makes it and proves the only holdout, the guilty party will know he has only one enemy to avoid—and they can always work out their own terms on that count.”

  “All right,” I said, smothering a few misgivings, and I recontacted Gerard, who agreed also.

  So we rose to our feet and swore that much by the Unicorn of Amber—Julian’s oath having an extra clause to it—and swore to enforce exile on any of our own number who violated the oath. Frankly, I did not think it would net us anything, but it is always nice to see families doing things together.

  After that, everyone made a point of mentioning that he would be remaining in the palace overnight, presumably to indicate that no one feared anything Brand might have to say in the morning—and especially to indicate that no one had a desire to get out of town, a thing that would not be forgotten, even if Brand gave up the ghost during the night. In that I had no further questions to put to the group and no one had sprung forward to own up to the misdeeds covered by the oath, I leaned back and listened for a time after that. Things came apart, falling into a series of conversations and exchanges, one of the main topics being an attempted reconstruction of the library tableau, each of us in his own place and, invariably, why each of us was in a position to have done it, except for the speaker. I smoked; I said nothing on the subject. Deirdre did spot an interesting possibility, however. Namely, that Gerard could have done the stabbing himself while we were all crowded around, and that his heroic efforts were not prompted by any desire to save Brand’s neck, but rather to achieve a position where he could stop his tongue—in which case Brand would never make it through the night. Ingenious, but I just couldn’t believe it. No one else bought it either. At least, no one volunteered to go upstairs and throw Gerard out. After a time Fiona drifted over and sat beside me.

  “Well, I’ve tried the only thing I could think of,” she said. “I hope some good comes of it.”

  “It may,” I said.

  “I see that you have added a peculiar piece of ornamentation to your wardrobe,” she said, raising the Jewel of Judgment between her thumb and forefinger and studying it.

  Then she raised her eyes.

  “Can you make it do tricks for you?” she asked.

  “Some,” I said.

  “Then you knew how to attune it. It involves the Pattern, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes. Eric told me how to go about it, right before he died.”

  “I see.”

  She released it, settled back into her seat, regarded the flames.

  “Did he give you any cautions to go along with it?” she asked.

  “No,” I said.

  “I wonder whether that was a matter of design or circumstance?”

  “Well, he was pretty busy dying at the time. That limited our conversation considerably.”

  “I know. I was wondering whether his hatred for you outweighed his hopes for the realm, or whether he was simply ignorant of some of the principles involved.”

  “What do you know about it?”

  “Think again of Eric’s death, Corwin. I was not there when it occurred, but I came in early for the funeral. I was present when his body was bathed, shaved, dressed—and I examined his wounds. I do not believe that any of them were fatal, in themselves. There were three chest wounds, but only one looked as if it might have run into the mediastinal area—”

  “One’s enough, if—”

  “Wait,” she said. “It was difficult, but I tried judging the angle of the puncture with a thin glass rod. I wanted to make an incision, but Caine would not permit it. Still, I do not believe that his heart or arteries were damaged. It is still not too late to order an autopsy, if you would like me to check further on this. I am certain that his injuries and the general stress contributed to his death, but I believe it was the jewel that made the difference.”

  “Why do you think this?”

  “Because of some things that Dworkin said when I studied with him—and things that I noticed afterward, because of this. He indicated that while it conferred unusual abilities, it also represented a drain on the vitality of its master. The longer you wear it, the more it somehow takes out of you. I paid attention after that, and I noticed that Dad wore it only seldom and never kept it on for long periods of time.”

  My thoughts returned to Eric, the day he lay dying on the slopes of Kolvir, the battle raging about him. I remembered my first look at him, his face pale, his breath labored, blood on his chest. . . . And the Jewel of Judgment, there on its chain, was pulsing, heartlike, among the moist folds of his garments. I had never seen it do that before, or since. I recalled that the effect had grown fainter, weaker. And when he died and I folded his hands atop it, the phenomenon had ceased.

  “What do you know of its function?” I asked her.

  She shook her head.

  “Dworkin considered that a state secret. I know the obvious—weather control—and I inferred from some of Dad’s remarks that it has something to do with a heightened perception, or a higher perception. Dworkin had mentioned it primarily as an example of the pervasiveness of the Pattern in everything that gives us power—even the Trumps contain the Pattern, if you look closely, look long enough—and he cited it as an instance of a conservation principle: all of our special powers have their price. The greater the pow
er, the larger the investment. The Trumps are a small matter, but there is still an element of fatigue involved in their employment. Walking through Shadow, which is an exercise of the image of the Pattern which exists within us, is an even greater expenditure. To essay the Pattern itself, physically, is a massive drain on one’s energies. But the jewel, he said, represents an even higher octave of the same thing, and its cost to its employer is exponentially greater.”

  Thus, if correct, another ambiguous insight into the character of my late and least favored brother. If he were aware of this phenomenon and had donned the jewel and worn it overlong anyhow, in the defense of Amber, it made him something of a hero. But then, seen in this light, his passing it along to me, without warnings, became a deathbed effort at a final piece of vengeance. But he had exempted me from his curse, he’d said, so as to spend it properly on our enemies in the field. This, of course, only meant that he hated them a little more than he hated me and was deploying his final energies as strategically as possible, for Amber. I thought then of the partial character of Dworkin’s notes, as I had recovered them from the hiding place Eric had indicated. Could it be that Eric had acquired them intact and had purposely destroyed that portion containing the cautions so as to damn his successor? That notion did not strike me as quite adequate, for he had had no way of knowing that I would return when I did, as I did, that the course of battle would run as it had, and that I would indeed be his successor. It could just as easily have been one of his favorites that followed him to power, in which case he would certainly not have wanted him to inherit any booby traps. No. As I saw it, either Eric was not really aware of this property of the stone, having acquired only partial instructions for its use, or someone had gotten to those papers before I had and removed sufficient material to leave me with a mortal liability. It may well have been the hand of the real enemy, once again.