“No!” I cried. “Let it end!”
But the blade descended even as I moved in that direction. The ritual was repeated, and the altar collapsed, and everything again swirled away. When I reached the site, there was no indication that anything unusual had occurred upon it.
“What do you make of that one?” I asked Frakir.
Same forces as before, but somehow reversed.
“Why? What’s going on?”
It is a gathering of powers. The Pattern and the Logrus both attempting to force their way into this place, for a little while. Sacrifices, such as those you just witnessed, help provide the openings they need.
“Why do they wish to manifest here?”
Neutral ground. Their ancient tension is shifting in subtle ways. You are expected in some fashion to tip the balance of power one way or another.
“I haven’t the faintest idea how to go about such thing.”
When the time comes, you will.
I returned to the trail and walked on.
“Did I pass by just as the sacrifices were due?” I said: “Or were the sacrifices due because I was passing by?”
They were marked to occur in your vicinity. You are a nexus.
“Then do you think I can expect—”
A figure stepped out from behind a stone to my left and chuckled softly. My hand went to my sword, but his hands were empty, and he moved slowly.
“Talking to yourself. Not a good sign,” he remarked.
The man was a study in black, white, and gray In fact, from the cast of the darkness upon his right-hand side and the lay of the light on his left, he might have been the first wielder of the sacrificial dagger. I’d no real way of telling. Whoever or whatever he or it was, I’d no desire to become acquainted.
So I shrugged.
“The only sign I care about here has ‘exit’ written on it,” I told him as I brushed past him.
His hand fell upon my shoulder and turned me back easily in his direction.
Again the chuckle.
“You must be careful what you wish for in this place,” he told me in low and measured tones, “for wishes are sometimes granted here, and if the granter be depraved and read ‘quietus’ for your ‘exit’—why, then, poof! You may cease to be. Up in smoke. Downward to the earth. Sideways to hell and gone.”
“I’ve already been there,” I answered, “and lots of points along the way.”
“What ho! Look! Your wish has been granted,” he remarked, his left eye catching a flash of light and reflecting it, tapetum-like, in my direction. No matter how I turned or squinted, however, could I find sight of his right eye. “Over there,” he finished, pointing.
I turned my head in the direction he indicated, and there upon the top stone of a dolmen shone an exit sign exactly like the one above the emergency door at a theater I used to frequent near campus.
“You’re right,” I said.
“Will you go through it?”
“Will you?”
“No need,” he replied. “I already know what’s there.”
“What?” I inquired.
“The other side.”
“How droll,” I answered.
“If one gets one’s wish and spurns it, one might piss off the Powers,” he said then.
“You have firsthand knowledge of this?”
I heard a grinding, clicking noise then, and it was several moments before I realized he was gnashing his teeth. I walked away then toward the exit sign, wanting to inspect whatever it represented at nearer range.
There were two standing stones with a flat slab across the top. The gateway thus formed was large enough to walk through. It was shadowy, though. . . .
You going through it, boss?
“Why not? This is one of the few times in my life that I feel indispensable to whoever is running the show.”
I wouldn’t get too cocky . . . Frakir began, but I was already moving.
Three quick paces were all that it took, and I was looking outward across a circle of stones and sparkling grass past a black-and-white man toward another dolmen bearing an exit sign, a shadowy form within it. Halting, I took a step backward and turned. There was a black-and-white man regarding me, a dolmen to his rear, dark form within it. I raised my right hand above my head. So did the shadowy figure. I turned back in the direction I had initially been headed. The shadowy figure across from me also had his hand upraised. I stepped on through.
“Small world,” I observed, “but I’d hate to paint it.”
The man laughed.
“Now you are reminded that your every exit is also an entrance,” he said.
“Seeing you here, I am reminded even more of a play by Sartre,” I responded.
“Unkind,” he answered, “but philosophically cogent. I have always found that hell is other people. Only I have done nothing to rouse your distrust, have I?”
“Were you or were you not the person I saw sacrifice a woman in this vicinity?” I asked.
“Even if I were, what is that to you? You were not involved.”
“I guess I have peculiar feelings about little things—like the value of life.”
“Indignation is cheap. Even Albert Schweitzer’s reverence for life didn’t include the tapeworm, the tsetse fly, the cancer cell.”
“You know what I mean. Did you or did you not sacrifice a woman on a stone altar a little while ago?”
“Show me the altar.”
“I can’t. It’s gone.”
“Show me the woman.”
“She is, too.”
“Then you haven’t much of a case.”
“This isn’t a court, damn it! If you want to converse, answer my question. If you don’t, let’s stop making noises at each other.”
“I have answered you.”
I shrugged.
“All right,” I said. “I don’t know you, and I’m very happy that way. Good day.”
I took a step away from him, back in the direction of the trail. As I did, he said, “Deirdre. Her name was Deirdre, and I did indeed kill her,” and he stepped into the dolmen from which I had just emerged, and there he disappeared. Immediately I looked across the way, but he did not exit beneath the exit sign. I did an about-face and stepped into the dolmen myself. I did emerge from the other side, across the way, catching sight of myself entering the opposite one as I did so. I did not see the stranger anywhere along the way.
“What do you make of that?” I asked Frakir as I moved back toward the trail.
A spirit of place, perhaps? A nasty spirit for a nasty place? she ventured. I don’t know, but I think he was one of those damned constructs, too—and they’re stronger here.
I headed down to the trail, set foot upon it, and commenced following it once again.
“Your speech patterns have altered enormously since your enhancement,” I remarked.
Your nervous system’s a good teacher.
“Thanks. If that guy puts in an appearance again and you sense him before I see him, give me the high sign.”
Right. Actually, this entire place has the feeling of one of those constructs. Every stone here has a bit of Pattern scribble to it.
“When did you learn this?”
Back when we first tried the exit. I scanned it for danger then.
As we came to the periphery of the outer circle, I slapped a stone. It felt solid enough.
He’s here! Frakir warned suddenly.
“Hey!” came a voice from overhead, and I looked up. The black-and-white stranger was seated atop the stone, smoking a thin cigar. He held a chalice in his left hand. “You interest me, kid,” he went on. “What’s your name?”
“Merlin,” I answered. “What’s yours?”
Instead of replying, he pushed himself outward, fell in slow motion, landed on his feet beside me. His left eye squinted as he studied me. The shadows flowed like dark water down his right side. He blew silvery smoke into the air.
“You’re a live one,” he annou
nced then, “with the mark of the Pattern and the mark of Chaos upon you. You bear the blood of Amber. What is your lineage, Merlin?”
The shadows parted for a moment, and I saw that his right eye was hidden by a patch.
“I am the son of Corwin,” I told him, “and you are—somehow—the traitor Brand.”
“You have named me,” he said, “but I never betrayed what I believed in.”
“That being your own ambition,” I said. “Your home and your family and the forces of Order never mattered to you, did they?”
He snorted.
“I will not argue with a presumptuous puppy.”
“I’ve no desire to argue with you either. For whatever it’s worth, your son Rinaldo is probably my best friend.”
I turned away and began walking. His hand fell upon my shoulder.
“Wait!” he said. “What is this talk? Rinaldo is but a lad.”
“Wrong,” I answered. “He’s around my age.”
His hand fell away, and I turned. He had dropped his cigar, which lay smoking upon the trail, and he’d transferred the chalice to his shadow-clad hand. He massaged his brow.
“That much time has passed in the mainlines . . . ” he remarked.
On a whim, I withdrew my Trumps, shuffled out Luke’s, held it up for him to see.
“That’s Rinaldo,” I said.
He reached for it, and for some obscure reason I let him take it. He stared at it for a long while.
“Trump contact doesn’t seem to work from here,” I said.
He looked up, shook his head, and handed the card back to me.
“No, it wouldn’t,” he stated. “How . . . is he?”
“You know that he killed Caine to avenge you?”
“No, I didn’t know. But I’d expect no less of him.”
“You’re not exactly Brand, are you?”
He threw back his head and laughed.
“I am entirely Brand, and I am not Brand as you might have known him. Anything more than that will cost you.”
“What will it cost me to learn what you really are?” I inquired as I cased my cards.
He raised the chalice, held it before him with both hands, like a begging bowl.
“Some of your blood,” he said.
“You’ve become a vampire?”
“No, I’m a Pattern-ghost,” he replied. “Bleed for me, and I’ll explain.”
“All right,” I said. “It’d better be a good story, though,” and I drew my dagger and pricked my wrist, which I’d extended to a position above his cup.
Like a spilled oil lamp, the flames came forth. I don’t really have fire flowing around inside me, of course. But the blood of a Chaosite is highly volatile in certain places, and this, apparently, was such a place.
It spewed forth, half into and half past the cup, splashing over his hand, his forearm. He screamed and seemed to collapse in upon himself. I stepped backward as he was transformed into a vortex—not unlike those following the sacrifices I had witnessed, only this one of the fiery variety—which rose into the air with a roar and vanished a moment later, leaving me startled, staring upward and applying direct pressure to my smoking wrist.
Uh, colorful exit, Frakir remarked.
“Family specialty,” I responded, “and speaking of exits . . . ”
I stepped past the stone, departing the circle. The darkness moved in again, intensified. Reflexively my trail seemed to brighten. I released my wrist, saw that it had stopped smoking.
I broke into a jog then, anxious to be away from that place. When I looked back a little later, I no longer saw the standing stones. There was only a pale, fading vortex, drawing itself upward, upward, then gone.
I jogged on, and the trail began, gradually, to slope until I was running downhill with an easy, loping gait. The trail ran like a bright ribbon downward and off into a great distance before it faded from view. I was puzzled, however, to see that it intersected another glowing line not too far below. These lines quickly faded off to my right and my left.
“Any special instructions pertaining to crossroads?” I inquired.
Not yet, Frakir answered. Presumably, it’s a decision point, with no way of knowing what to base one on till you get there.
It seemed a vast, shadowy plain that was spread below, with here and there a few isolated dots of light, some of them constant, others appearing, then fading, all of them stationary. There were no other lines, however, than my trail and the one which intersected it. There were no sounds other than my breathing and that of my footfalls. There were no breezes, no peculiar odors, and the temperature was so clement that it claimed no notice. Again there were dark shapes at either hand, but I’d no desire to investigate them. All I wanted was to conclude whatever business was in progress and get the hell out and be about my own affairs as soon as possible.
Hazy patches of light then began occurring at irregular intervals, both sides of the trail, wavery, sourceless, blotchy, popping into and out of existence. These seemed like gauzy, dappled curtains hung beside the trail, and I did not pause to examine them at first, not till the obscure areas grew fewer and fewer, being replaced by shadings of greater and greater distinction. It was almost as if a tuning process were in operation, with increasing clarity of outline indicating familiar objects: chairs; tables; parked cars; store windows. Before long, faded colors began to occur within these tableaus.
I halted beside one and stared. It was a red ’57 Chevy with some snow on it, parked in a familiar-looking driveway. I advanced and reached toward it.
My left hand and arm faded as they entered the dim light. I reached to touch the left fin. There followed a vague sensation of contact and a faint coolness. I swept my hand to the right then, brushing away some of the snow. When I withdrew my hand, there was snow upon it. Immediately the prospect faded to black.
“I intentionally used my left hand,” I said, “with you on the wrist. What was there?”
Thanks a lot. It seemed a red car with snow on it.
“It was a construct of something picked from my mind. That’s my Polly Jackson painting, upscaled to life size.”
Then things are getting worse, Merle. I couldn’t tell it was a construct.
“Conclusions?”
Whatever’s doing it is getting better at it, or stronger. Or both.
“Shit,” I observed, and I turned away and jogged on.
Perhaps something wants to show you that it can baffle you completely now.
“Then it’s succeeded,” I acknowledged. “Hey, Something!” I shouted. “You hear that? You win! You’ve baffled me completely. Can I go home now? If it’s something else you’re trying to do, though, you’ve failed! I’m missing the point completely!”
The dazzling flash which followed cast me down upon the trail and blinded me for several long moments. I lay there tense and twitching, but no thunderclap followed. When my vision cleared and my muscles stopped their spasms, I beheld a giant regal figure posed but a few paces before me: Oberon.
Only it was a statue, a duplicate of one which occupied the far end of the Main Concourse back in Amber, or possibly even the real thing, for on closer inspection I noted what appeared to be bird droppings upon the great man’s shoulder.
“Real thing or construct?” I said aloud.
Real, I'd say, Frakir replied.
I rose slowly.
“I understand this to be an answer,” I said. “I just don’t understand what it means.”
I reached out to touch it, and it felt like canvas rather than bronze. In that instant my perspective somehow shifted, and I felt myself touching a larger than life-size painting of the Father of His Country. Then its borders began to waver, it faded, and I saw that it was part of one of those hazy tableaux I had been passing. Then it rippled and was gone.
“I give up,” I said, walking through the space it had occupied but moments before. “The answers are more confusing than the situations that cause the questions.”
Since we are passing between shadows, could this not be a statement that all things are real—somewhere?
“I suppose. But I already knew that.”
And that all things are real in different ways, at different times, in different places?
“Okay, what you are saying could well be the message. I doubt that something is going to these extremes, however, just to make philosophical points that may be new to you but are rather well-worn elsewhere. There must be a special reason, one that I still don’t grasp.”
Up until now the scenes I’d passed had been still lifes. Now, however, a number occurred which contained people; some, other creatures. In these, there was action—some of it violent, some amorous, some simply domestic.
Yes, it seems to be a progression. It may be leading up to something.
“When they leap out and attack me, I’ll know I’ve arrived.”
Who knows? I gather that art criticism is a complex area.
But the sequences faded shortly thereafter, and I was left jogging on my bright trail through darkness once again. Down, down the still gentle slope toward the crossroads. Where was the Cheshire Cat when rabbit hole logic was what I really needed?
One moment I was watching the crossroads as I advanced upon it. An eye blink later I was still watching the crossroads, only now the scene was altered. There was now a lamppost on the near right-hand corner. A shadowy figure stood beneath it, smoking.
“Frakir, how’d they pull that one?” I asked.
Very quickly, she replied.
“What do the vibes read?”
Attention focused in your direction. No vicious intent, yet.
I slowed as I drew near. The trail became pavement, curbs at either hand, sidewalks beyond them. I stepped out of the street onto the right-hand walk. As I moved along it, a damp fog blew past me, hung between me and the light. I slowed my pace even more. Shortly I saw that the pavement had grown damp. My footsteps echoed as if I walked between buildings. By then the fog had grown too dense for me to discern whether buildings had actually occurred beside me. It felt as if they had, for there were darker areas here and there within the gloom. A cold wind began to blow against my back, and droplets of moisture fell upon me at random intervals. I halted. I turned up the collar of my cloak. From somewhere entirely out of sight, high overhead, came the faint buzzing sound of an airplane. I began walking again after it had gone by. Tinily then, and muffled, from across the street perhaps, came the sound of a piano playing a half-familiar tune. I drew my cloak about me. The fog swirled and thickened.
The Chronicles of Amber Page 155
