“Screwed,” she replied.
“Precisely.”
We drew apart. We adjusted our apparel.
“It’s a good way to get to know each other better . . . ” I had begun when the cavern was shaken by a powerful earth tremor.
“The timing is really off here,” I observed as we were rocked together and clung to each other for comfort, if not support.
It was over in an instant, and the Pattern was suddenly blazing more brilliantly than I’d ever seen it before. I shook my head. I rubbed my eyes. Something was wrong, even though it felt very right. Then the great metal-bound door opened-inward!—and I realized that we had come back to Amber, the real Amber. My glowing trail still led up to the threshold, though it was fading fast, and a small figure stood upon it. Before I could even squint against the corridor’s gloom, I felt a familiar disorientation, and we were in my bedroom.
“Nayda!” Coral exclaimed when she viewed the figure reclined upon my bed.
“Not exactly,” I said. “I mean, it’s her body. But the spirit that moves it is of a different order.”
“I don’t understand.”
I was busy thinking of the person who had been about to invade the precincts of the Pattern. I was also a mass of aching muscles, screaming nerves, and assorted fatigue poisons. I crossed to the table where the wine bottle I’d opened for Jasra—how long ago?—still stood. I found us two clean glasses. I filled them. I passed one to Coral.
“Your sister was very ill awhile back, wasn’t she?”
“Yes,” she replied.
I took a big swallow.
“She was near death. At that time her body was possessed by a ty’iga spirit—a kind of demon—as Nayda no longer had any use for it.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I understand that she actually died.”
Coral stared into my eyes. She didn’t find whatever she sought, and she took a drink instead.
“I’d known something was wrong,” she said. “She hasn’t really been herself since the illness.”
“She became nasty? Sneaky?”
“No, a lot nicer. Nayda was always a bitch.”
“You didn’t get along?”
“Not till recently. She’s not in any pain, is she?”
“No, she’s just sleeping. She’s under a spell.”
“Why don’t you release her? She doesn’t look like much of a danger.”
“I don’t think she is now. Just the opposite, in fact,” I said. “And we will release her, soon. My brother Mandor will have to undo it, though. It’s his spell.”
“Mandor? I don’t really know much about you—or your family—do I?”
“Nope,”,I said, “and vice versa. Listen, I don’t even know what day it is.” I crossed the room and peered out the window. There was daylight. It was cloudy though, and I couldn’t guess the time. “There’s something you should do right away. Go see your father and let him know you’re all right. Tell him you got lost in the caverns or took a wrong turn into the Corridor Mirrors and wound up on some other plane of existence or something. Anything. To avoid a diplomatic incident. Okay?”
She finished her drink and nodded. Then she looked at me and blushed and looked away.
“We’ll get together again before I leave, won’t we?”
I reached out and patted her shoulder, not really knowing what my feelings were. Then I realized that wouldn’t do, and I stepped forward and embraced her.
“You know it,” I said as I stroked her hair.
“Thanks for showing me around town.”
“We’ll have to do it again,” I told her, “as soon as the pace slackens.”
“Uh-huh.”
We walked to the door.
“I want to see you soon,” she said.
“I’m fading fast,” I told her, as I opened it. “I’ve been through hell and back.”
She touched my cheek.
“Poor Merlin,” she said. “Sleep tight.”
I gulped the rest of my wine and withdrew my Trumps. I wanted to do just what she said, but certain unavoidables came first. I riffled my way to the Ghostwheel’s card, removed it, and regarded it.
Almost immediately, following the faintest drop in temperature and the barest formation of desire on my part, Ghostwheel appeared before me—a red circle turning in the middle of the air.
“Uh, hello, Dad,” it stated. “I was wondering where you’d gotten to. When I checked back at the cave, you were gone, and none of my shadow-indexing procedures could turn you up. It never even occurred to me that you might simply have come home. I—”
“Later,” I said. “I’m in a hurry. Get me down to the chamber of the Pattern fast.”
“There’s something I’d better tell you first.”
“What?”
“That force that followed you to the Keep—the one I hid you from in the cave . . . ?”
“Yes.”
“It was the Pattern itself that was seeking you.”
“I guessed that,” I said, “later. We’ve had our encounter and sort of come to terms for now. Get me down there right away. It’s important.”
“Sir, I am afraid of that thing.”
“Then take me as close as you dare and step aside. I have to check something out.”
“Very well. Come this way.”
I took a step forward. Ghost rose into the air, rotated ninety degrees toward me, and dropped quickly, passing my head, shoulders, torso and vanishing beneath my feet. The lights went out as he did so, and I called up my Logrus vision immediately. It showed me that I stood in the passageway outside the big door to the chamber of the Pattern.
“Ghost?” I said softly.
There was no reply.
I moved forward, turned the corner, advanced to the door, and leaned upon it. It was still unlocked, and it yielded to my pushing. Frakir pulsed once upon my wrist.
Frakir? I inquired.
There came no answer from that quarter either.
Lose your voice, lady?
She pulsed twice. I stroked her.
As the door opened before me, I was certain that the Pattern had grown brighter. The observation was quickly pushed aside, however. A dark-haired woman stood at the Pattern’s center, her back to me, her arms upraised. I almost shouted the name I thought she might answer to, but she was gone before my vocal mechanism responded. I slumped against the wall.
“I really feel used,” I said aloud. “You’ve run my ass ragged, you placed my life in jeopardy more than once, you got me to perform to satisfy your metaphysical voyeurism, then you kicked me out after you got the last thing you wanted—a slightly brighter glow. I guess that gods or powers or whatever the hell you are don’t have to say ‘Thank you’ or ‘I’m sorry’ or ’Go to hell’ when they’ve finished using someone. And obviously you feel no need to justify yourself to me. Well, I’m not a baby carriage. I resent being pushed around by you and the Logrus in whatever game you’re playing. How’d you like it if I opened a vein and bled all over you?”
Immediately there was a great coalescence of energy at my side of the Pattern. With a heavy whooshing sound a tower of blue flame built itself before me, widened, assumed genderless features of an enormous inhuman beauty. I had to shade my eyes against it.
“You do not understand,” came a voice modulated of the roaring of flames.
“I know. That’s why I’m here.”
“Your efforts are not unappreciated.”
“Glad to hear it.”
“There was no other way to conduct matters.”
“Well, were they conducted to your satisfaction?”
“They were.”
“Then you are welcome, I guess.”
“You are insolent, Merlin.”
“The way I feel right now I’ve nothing to lose. I’m just too damned tired to care what you do to me. So I came down here to tell you that I think you owe me a big one. That’s all.”
I turned my back on it th
en.
“Not even Oberon dared address me so,” it said.
I shrugged and took a step toward the door. When I set my foot down, I was back in my apartment.
I shrugged again, then went and splashed water in my face.
“You still okay, Dad?”
There was a ring around the bowl. It rose into the air and followed me about the room.
“I’m all right,” I acknowledged. “How about yourself?”
“Fine. It ignored me completely.”
“Do you know what it’s up to?” I asked.
“It seems to be dueling with the Logrus for control of Shadow. And it just won a round. Whatever happened seems to have strengthened it. You were involved, right?”
“Right.”
“Where were you after you left the cave I’d put you in?”
“You know of a land that lies between the shadows?”
“Between? No. That doesn’t make sense.”
“Well, that’s where I was.”
“How’d you get there?”
“I don’t know. With considerable difficulty, I’d guess. Are Mandor and Jasra all right?”
“The last time I looked they were.”
“How about Luke?”
“I’d no reason to seek him out. Do you want me to?”
“Not just now. Right now I want you to go upstairs and look in on the royal suite. I want to know whether it is, at the moment, occupied. And if so, by whom. I also want you to check the fireplace in the bedroom. See whether a loose stone which was removed from an area to the right of it has been replaced or is still lying upon the hearth.”
He vanished, and I paced. I was afraid to sit down or to lie down. I’d a feeling that I’d go to sleep instantly if I did and that I’d be difficult to awaken. But Ghost spun back into existence before I chalked up much mileage.
“The Queen, Vialle, is present,” he said, “in her studio, the loose stone has been replaced, and there is a dwarf in the hall knocking on doors.”
“Damn,” I said. “Then they know it’s missing. A dwarf?”
“A dwarf.”
I sighed.
“I guess I’d better walk on upstairs, return the Jewel, and try to explain what happened. If Vialle likes my story, she might just forget to mention it to Random.”
“I’ll transfer you up there.”
“No, that would not be too politic. Or polite either. I’d better go knock on the door and get admitted properly this time.”
“How do people know when to knock and when to go on in?”
“In general, if it’s closed, you knock on it.”
“As the dwarf is doing?”
I heard a faint knocking from somewhere outside.
“He’s just going along, indiscriminately banging on doors?” I asked.
“Well, he’s trying them in sequence, so I don’t know that you could say it’s indiscriminate. So far all of the doors he’s tried have been to rooms which are empty. He should reach yours in another minute or so.”
I crossed to my door, unlocked it, opened it, and stepped out into the hallway.
Sure enough, there was a short guy moving along the hallway. He looked in my direction at the opening of my door, and his teeth showed within his beard as he smiled and headed toward me.
It quickly became apparent that he was a hunchback.
“My God!” I said. “You’re Dworkin, aren’t you? The real Dworkin!”
“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.
Chapter 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 myse
lf 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.
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