So, “What do you want, anyway?” I called out.
Immediately, that metallic voice replied, “Your blood, your soul, your mind and your body.”
“What about my stamp collection?” I hollered back. “Do I get to keep the First Day Covers?”
I moved over beside Jasra and threw my right arm about her shoulders.
“What do you want with that one, funny man?” the wizard asked. “She is the most worthless property in this place.”
“Then why should you object to my taking her off your hands?”
“You collect stamps. I collect presumptuous sorcerers. She’s mine, and you’re next.”
I felt the power rising against me again even as I shouted, “What have you got against your brothers and sisters in the Art?”
There was no reply, but the air about me was suddenly filled with sharp, spinning shapes—knives, ax blades, throwing stars, broken bottles. I spoke the word for my final defense, the Curtain of Chaos, raising a chittering, smoky screen about us. The sharp items hurtling in our direction were instantly reduced to cosmic dust on coming into contact with it.
Above the din of this engagement I cried out; “By what name shall I call you?”
“Mask!” was the wizard’s immediate reply—not very original, I thought. I’d half expected a John D. MacDonald appellation—Nightmare Mauve or Cobalt Casque, perhaps. Oh, well.
I had just used my last defensive spell. I had also just raised my left arm so that that portion of my sleeve bearing the Amber Trump now hung within my field of vision. I had cut things a bit fine, but I had not yet played my full hand. So far, I had run a completely defensive show, and I was rather proud of the spell I had kept in reserve.
“She’ll do you no good, that one,” Mask said, as both our spells subsided and he prepared to strike again.
“Have a nice day, anyway,” I said, and I rotated my wrists, pointed my fingers to direct the flow and spoke the word that beat him to the punch. “An eye for an eye!” I called out, as the contents of an entire florist shop fell upon Mask, completely burying him in the biggest damned bouquet I’d ever seen. Smelled nice, too.
There was silence and a subsidence of forces as I regarded the Trump, reached through it. Just as the contact was achieved there was a disturbance in the floral display and Mask rose through it, like the Allegory of Spring.
I was probably already fading from his view as he said, “I’ll have you yet.”
“And sweets to the sweet,” I replied, then spoke the word that completed the spell, dropping a load of manure upon him.
I stepped through into the main hall of Amber, bearing Jasra with me. Martin stood near a sideboard, a glass of wine in his hand, talking with Bors, the falconer. He grew silent at Bors’s wide-eyed stare in my direction, then turned and stared himself.
I set Jasra on her feet beside the doorway. I was not about to screw around with the spell on her right now—and I was not at all sure what I’d do with her if I released her from it. So I hung my cloak on her, went over to the sideboard and poured myself a glass of wine, nodding to Bors and Martin as I passed.
I drained the glass, put it down, then said to them, “Whatever you do, don’t carve your initials on her.” Then I went and found a sofa in a room to the east, stretched out on it and closed my eyes. Like a bridge over troubled waters. Some days are diamonds. Where have all the flowers gone?
Something like that.
Chapter 12
There was a lot of smoke, a giant worm and many flashes of colored light. Every sound was born into form, blazed to its peak, faded as it waned. Lightning-like stabs of existence, these—called from, returning to, Shadow. The worm went on forever. The dog-headed flowers snapped at me but later wagged their leaves. The flowing smoke halted before a skyhooked traffic light. The worm—no, caterpillar—smiled. A slow, blinding rain began, and all the drifting drops were faceted. . . .
What is wrong with this picture? something within me asked.
I gave up, because I couldn’t be sure. Though I’d a vague feeling the occasional landscape shouldn’t be flowing the way that it did. . . .
“Oh, man! Merle. . . . ”
What did Luke want now? Why wouldn’t he get off my case? Always a new problem.
“Look at that, will you?”
I watched where a series of bright bounding balls—or maybe they were comets—wove a tapestry of light. It fell upon the forest of umbrellas.
“Luke—” I began, but one of the dog-headed flowers bit a hand I’d forgotten about, and everything nearby cracked as if it were painted on glass through which a shot had just passed. There was a rainbow beyond—
“Merle! Merle!”
It was Droppa shaking my shoulder, my suddenly opened eyes showed me. And there was a damp place on the sofa where my head was resting. I propped myself on an elbow. I rubbed my eyes.
“Droppa. . . . What—?”
“I don’t know,” he told me.
“What don’t you know? I mean. . . . Hell! What happened?”
“I was sitting in that chair,” he said, with a gesture, “waiting for you to wake up. Martin had told me you were here. I was just going to tell you that Random wanted to see you when you got back.”
I nodded, then noticed that my hand was oozing blood—from the place where the flower had bitten me.
“How long was I out?”
“Twenty minutes, maybe.”
I swung my feet to the floor, sat up. “So why’d you decide to wake me?”
“You were trumping out,” he said.
“Trumping out? While I was asleep? It doesn’t work that way. Are you sure ”
“I am, unfortunately, sober at the moment,” he said. “You got that rainbow glow and you started to soften around the edges and fade. Thought I’d better wake you then and ask if that’s what you really had in mind. What’ve you been drinking, spot remover?”
“No,” I said.
“I tried it on my dog once. . . . ”
“Dreams,” I said, massaging my temples, which had begun throbbing. “That’s all. Dreams.”
“The kind other people can see, too? Like DTs á deux?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“We’d better go see Random.” He started to turn toward the doorway.
I shook my head. “Not yet. I’m just going to sit here and collect myself. Something’s wrong.”
When I glanced at him I saw that his eyes were wide, and he was staring past me. I turned.
The wall at my back seemed to be melting, as if it were cast of wax and had been set too near a fire.
“It appears to be alarums and excursions time,” Droppa remarked. “Help!” And he was across the room and out of the door, screaming.
Three eyeblinks later the wall was normal again in every way, but I was trembling. What the hell was going on? Had Mask managed to lay a spell on me before I’d cut out? If so, where was it headed?
I rose to my feet and turned in a slow circle. Everything seemed to be in place now. I knew that it could not have been anything as simple as hallucination born of all my recent stresses, since Droppa had seen it too. So I was not cracking up. This was something else—and whatever it was, I felt that it was still lurking nearby. There was a certain unnatural clarity to the air now, and every object seemed unusually vivid within it.
I made a quick circuit of the room, not knowing what I was really seeking. Not surprisingly, therefore, I did not find it. I stepped outside then. Whatever the problem, could it spring from something I had brought back with me? Might Jasra, stiff and gaudy, have been a Trojan horse?
I headed for the main hall. A dozen steps along the way, a lopsided gridwork of light appeared before me. I forced myself to continue, and it receded as I advanced, changing shape as it did so.
“Merle, come on!” Luke’s voice, Luke himself nowhere in sight.
“Where?” I called out, not slowing.
No answer, but the gridwork split down
the middle and its two halves swung away from me like a pair of shutters. They opened onto a nearblinding light; within it, I thought I glimpsed a rabbit. Then, abruptly, the vision was gone, and the only thing that saved me from believing everything was normal again was several seconds’ worth of Luke’s sourceless laughter.
I ran. Was it really Luke who was the enemy, as I had been warned repeatedly? Had I somehow been manipulated through everything which had happened recently, solely for the purpose of freeing his mother from the Keep of the Four Worlds? And now that she was safe had he the temerity to invade Amber herself and summon me to a sorcerous duel the terms of which I did not even understand?
No, I could not believe it. I was certain he did not possess that sort of power. But even if he did, he wouldn’t dare try it—not with Jasra my hostage.
As I rushed along I heard him again—from everywhere, from nowhere. This time he was singing. He had a powerful baritone voice, and the song was “Auld Lang Syne.” What sort of irony did this represent?
I burst into the main hall. Martin and Bors had departed. I saw their empty glasses on the sideboard near which they had been standing. And near the other door—? Yes, near the other door Jasra remained, erect, unchanged, still holding my cloak.
“Okay, Luke! Let’s have it out!” I cried. “Cut the crap and let’s settle this business!”
“Huh?”
The singing stopped abruptly.
I crossed slowly to Jasra, studying her as I went. Completely unchanged, save for a hat someone had added to her other hand. From somewhere else in the palace, I heard a shout. Maybe it was Droppa still alaruming.
“Luke, wherever you are,” I said, “if you can hear me, if you can see me, take a good look and listen: I’ve got her here. See? Whatever you’re planning, bear that in mind.”
The room rippled violently, as if I were standing in the midst of an unframed painting someone had just decided to give a shake, to crinkle and then draw taut.
“Well?”
Nothing.
Then, a chuckle.
“My mother the hat rack. . . . Well, well. Hey, thanks, buddy. Good show. Couldn’t reach you earlier. Didn’t know you’d gone in. They slaughtered us. Took some mercs in on hang gliders, rode the thermals. They were ready, though. Took us out. Don’t remember exactly then. . . . Hurts!”
“You okay?”
There came something like a sob, just as Random and Droppa entered the hall, the lank form of Benedict silent as death at their back.
“Merle!” Random called to me. “What’s going on?”
I shook my head. “Don’t know,” I said.
“Sure, I’ll buy you a drink,” Luke’s voice came very faintly.
A fiery blizzard swept through the center of the hall. It lasted only a moment, and then a large rectangle appeared in its place.
“You’re the sorcerer,” Random said. “Do something!”
“I don’t know what the hell it is,” I replied. “I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s like magic gone wild.”
An outline began to appear within the rectangle, human. Its form settled and took on features, garments. . . . It was a Trump—a giant Trump—hanging in the middle of the air, solidifying. It was Me. I regarded my own features and they looked back at me. I noted that I was smiling.
“C’mon, Merle. Join the party,” I heard Luke say, and the Trump began to rotate slowly upon its vertical axis.
Sounds, as of glass bells, filled the hall.
The huge card turned until I viewed it edge-on, a black slash. Then the dark line widened with a ripple, like parting curtains, and I saw colored patches of intense light sliding beyond it. I also saw the caterpillar, puffing on a hookah, and fat umbrellas and a bright, shiny rail.
A hand emerged from the slit. “Right this way.”
I heard a sharp intake of breath from Random.
Benedict’s blade was suddenly pointed at the tableau. But Random laid his hand on his shoulder and said, “No.”
There was a strange, disconnected sort of music hanging in the air now; it seemed somehow appropriate.
“C’mon, Merle.”
“You coming or going?” I asked.
“Both.”
“You made me a promise, Luke: a piece of information for your mother’s rescue,” I said. “Well, I’ve got her here. What’s the secret?”
“Something vital to your well-being?” he asked slowly.
“Vital to the safety of Amber is what you’d said.”
“Oh, that secret.”
“I’d be glad to have the other one too.”
“Sorry. One secret is all I’m selling. Which will it be?”
“The safety of Amber,” I answered.
“Dalt,” he replied.
“What of him?”
“Deela the Desacratrix was his mother—”
“I already know that.”
“—and she’d been Oberon’s prisoner nine months before he was born. He raped her. That’s why Dalt’s got it in for you guys.”
“Bullshit!” I said.
“That’s what I told him when I’d heard the story one time too many. I dared him to walk the Pattern in the sky then.”
“And?”
“He did.”
“Oh.”
“I just learned that story recently,” Random said, “from an emissary I’d sent to Kashfa. I didn’t know about his taking the Pattern, though.”
“If you knew, I still owe you,” Luke said slowly, almost distractedly. “Okay, here’s more: Dalt visited me on the shadow Earth after that. He’s the one who raided my warehouse, stole a stock of weapons and special ammo. Burnt the place after that to cover the theft. I found witnesses, though. He’ll be along—any time. Who knows when?”
“Another relative coming to visit,” Random said. “Why couldn’t I have been an only child?”
“Make what you will of it,” Luke added. “We’re square now. Give me a hand!”
“You coming through?”
He laughed, and the whole hall seemed to lurch. The opening in the air hung before me and the hand clasped my own. Something felt very wrong.
I tried to draw him to me, but felt myself drawn toward him instead.
There was a mad power I could not fight, and the universe seemed to twist as it took hold of me. Constellations parted before me and I saw the bright railing again. Luke’s booted foot rested upon it.
From some distant point to the rear I heard Random shouting, “B-twelve! B-twelve! And out!”
. . . And then I couldn’t recall what the problem had been. It seemed a wonderful place. Silly of me to have mistaken the mushrooms for umbrellas, though. . . .
I put my own foot up on the rail as the Hatter poured me a drink and topped off Luke’s. Luke gestured to his left and the March Hare got a refill too. Humpty was fine, balanced there near the end of things. Tweedledum, Tweedledee, the Dodo and the Frog Footman kept the music moving. And the Caterpillar just kept puffing away.
Luke clapped me on the shoulder, and there was something I wanted to remember but it kept slipping out of sight.
“I’m okay now,” Luke said. “Everything’s okay.”
“No, there’s something. . . . I can’t recall. . . . ”
He raised his tankard, clanked it against my own. “Enjoy!” he said. “Life is a cabaret, old chum!”
The cat on the stool beside me just kept grinning.
Sign of Chaos
The Second Amber Pentology - Merlin’s Story: Book 3
Chapter 1
I felt vaguely uneasy, though I couldn’t say why. It did not seem all that unusual to be drinking with a White Rabbit, a short guy who resembled Bertrand Russell, a grinning Cat, and my old friend Luke Raynard, who was singing Irish ballads while a peculiar landscape shifted from mural to reality at his back. Well, I was impressed by the huge blue Caterpillar smoking the hookah atop the giant mushroom because I know how hard it is to keep a water pipe lit. Still, that wasn’
t it. It was a convivial scene, and Luke was known to keep pretty strange company on occasion. So why should I feel uneasy?
The beer was good and there was even a free lunch. The demons tormenting the red-haired woman tied to the stake had been so shiny they’d hurt to look at. Gone now, but the whole thing had been beautiful. Everything was beautiful. When Luke sang of Galway Bay it had been so sparkling and lovely that I’d wanted to dive in and lose myself there. Sad, too.
Something to do with the feeling. . . . Yes. Funny thought. When Luke sang a sad song I felt melancholy. When it was a happy one I was greatly cheered. There seemed an unusual amount of empathy in the air. No matter, I guess. The light show was superb. . . .
I sipped my drink and watched Humpty teeter, there at the end of the bar. For a moment I tried to remember when I’d come into this place, but that cylinder wasn’t hitting. It would come to me, eventually. Nice party. . . .
I watched and listened and tasted and felt, and it was all great. Anything that caught my attention was fascinating. Was there something I’d wanted to ask Luke? It seemed there was, but he was busy singing and I couldn’t think of it now, anyway.
What had I been doing before I’d come into this place? Trying to recall just didn’t seem worth the effort either. Not when everything was so interesting right here and now.
It seemed that it might have been something important, though. Could that be why I felt uneasy? Might it be there was business I had left unfinished and should be getting back to?
I turned to ask the Cat but he was fading again, still seeming vastly amused. It occurred to me then that I, too, could do that. Fade, I mean, and go someplace else. Was that how I had come here and how I might depart? Possibly. I put down my drink and rubbed my eyes and my temples. Things seemed to be swimming inside my head, too.
I suddenly recalled a picture of me. On a giant card. A Trump. Yes. That was how I’d gotten here. Through the card. . . .
A hand fell upon my shoulder and I turned. It belonged to Luke, who grinned at me as he edged up to the bar for a refill.
“Great party, huh?” he said.
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