The Great Book of Amber - Chronicles 1-10

by Roger Zelazny

  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 I 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 Trump 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.

  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.
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br />   “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 mid-thigh, and my hair was rising. I began a slow series of turns. Above the crackling and the music, I asked, How’re you doing, 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.”

  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 t
ried 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 Great 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 . . .