The Great Book of Amber - Chronicles 1-10

by Roger Zelazny

  “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.

  9

  I came around slowly. That familiar blueness was a lake of pre-being 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 been 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 Trump 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 m
y 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, spring-like 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.

  I continued to the far entrance to the dining room, where I checked quickly and determined the place to be deserted. Good. Inside and to the right, as I recalled, there was a sliding panel which would get me into a hollow section of wall beside the library, furnished with pegs or a ladder that would take me up to a hidden entrance to the library’s balcony. It could also take me down through the spiral stair’s shaft and into the caverns below, if memory served. I hoped I never had reason to check that part out, but I was sufficiently into family tradition these days that I wanted to do a little spying, as several muttered exchanges as I’d passed the opened door led me to believe that Random was not alone in there. If knowledge really is power, then I needed all I could get my hands on, as I’d felt especially vulnerable for some time now.

  Yes, the panel slid, and I was through it in a trice, sending my spirit-light on ahead. I hand-over-handed my way quickly to the top and opened the panel there slowly and quietly, feeling grateful to whoever had thought to conceal its space with a wide chair. I was able to see around the chair’s right arm with comparative safety from detection—a good view of the room’s north end.

  And there was Random, drumming, and Martin, all chains and leather, was seated before him, listening. Random was doing something I’d never seen done before. He was playing with five sticks. He had one in each hand, one under each arm, and he held one in his teeth. And he was revolving them as he played, moving the one in his mouth to replace the one under his right arm, which replaced the one in his right hand, which he had switched over to his left hand, the left-hand one going up beneath his left arm, the left arm one going to his teeth, all without missing a beat. It was hypnotic. I stared until he wound out the number. His old set of traps was hardly the fusion drummer’s dreamworld of translucent plastic with tipped cymbals the size of battle shields set around the snares, a mess of tomtoms, and a couple of basses, all lit up like Coral’s circle of fire. Random’s set went back to a time before snares grew thin and nervous,
basses shrank, and cymbals caught acromegaly and began to hum.

  “Never saw that done before,” I heard Martin say. Random shrugged.

  “Bit of horsing around,” he said. “Learned it from Freddie Moore, in the thirties, either at the Victoria or the Village Vanguard, when he was with Art Hodes and Max Kaminsky. I forget which place. It goes back to vaudeville, when they didn’t have any mikes and the lighting was bad. Had to do show-off things like that, or dress funny, he told me, to keep the audience paying attention.”

  “Shame they had to cater to the crowd that way.”

  “Yeah, none of you guys would dream of dressing funny or throwing your instruments around.”

  There followed a silence, and there was no way I could see the expression on Martin’s face. Then, “I meant it different from that,” Martin said.

  “Yeah, me, too,” Random replied. Then he tossed three of the sticks down and began to play again.

  I leaned back and listened. A moment later I was startled to hear an alto sax come in. When I looked again, Martin was standing, his back still to me, and playing the thing. It must have been on the floor on the other side of his chair. There was a Richie Cole flavor to it that I rather liked, and it kind of surprised me. As much as I enjoyed it, I felt that I did not belong in this room right now, and I edged back, opened the panel, passed through, and closed it. After I’d climbed down and let myself out, I decided to cut through the dining room rather than pass the library entrance again. The music carried for some distance thereafter, and I wished I’d learned a spell of Mandor’s for capturing sounds in precious stones, though I’m not sure how the Jewel of Judgment would have taken to containing “Wild Man Blues.”

  I was planning on walking up the east corridor to the point where it intersected with the north one in the vicinity of my apartment, turning left there, and taking the stairs up to the royal suite, knocking on the door, and returning the Jewel to Vialle, whom I hoped I could get to take a rain check on explanations. And if not, I’d rather explain to her than to Random anyway. I could leave out a lot that she wouldn’t know to ask me. Of course, Random would catch up with me with questions eventually. But the later, the better.