Walking… By fountains, benches, groves, cunning alcoves in mazes of hedging… Passing along the walks, up an occasional step, across small bridges… Moving past ponds, among trees, by an odd piece of statuary, a boulder, a sundial (moondial, here?), bearing to my right, pressing steadily ahead, rounding, after a time, the northern end of the palace, swinging left then, past a courtyard overhung by balconies, more ghosts here and there upon them, behind them, within…
Circling around to the rear, just to see the back gardens this way, again, for they are lovely by normal moonlight in the true Amber.
A few more figures, talking, standing… No motion but my own is apparent.
…And feel myself drawn to the right. As one should never turn down a free oracle, I go.
…Toward a mass of high hedging, a small open area within, if it is not overgrown… Long ago there was…
Two figures, embracing, within. They part as I begin to turn away. None of my affair, but… Deirdre… One of them is Deirdre. I know who the man will be before he turns. It is a cruel joke by whatever powers rule that silver, that silence… Back, back, away from that hedge… Turning, stumbling, rising again, going, away, now, quickly…
The voice of Random: “Corwin? Are you all right?”
“Later! Damn it! Later!”
“It is not too long till sunrise, Corwin. I felt I had better remind you —”
“Consider me reminded!”
Away, now, quickly… Time, too, is a dream in Tir-na Nog’th. Small comfort, but better than none. Quickly, now, away, going, again…
…Toward the palace, bright architecture of the mind or spirit, more clearly standing now than the real ever did… To judge perfection is to render a worthless verdict, but I must see what lies within… This must be an end of sorts, for I am driven. I had not paused to recover my staff from where it had fallen this time, among the sparkling grasses. I know where I must go, what I must do. Obvious now, though the logic which has seized me is not that of the waking mind.
Hurrying, climbing, up to the rearward portal… The side-biting soreness comes home again… Across the threshold, in…
Into an absence of starshine and moonlight. The illumination is without direction, seeming almost to drift and to pool, aimlessly. Wherever it misses, the shadows are absolute, occulting large sections of room, hallway, closet, and stair.
Among them, through them, almost running now… Monochrome of my home… Apprehension overtakes me… The black spots seem like holes in this piece of reality now… I fear to pass too near. Fall in and be lost…
Turning… Crossing… Finally… Entering… The throne room… Bushels of blackness stacked where my eyes would drive down lines of seeing to the throne itself…
There, though, is movement.
A drifting, to my right, as I advance.
A lifting, with the drifting.
The boots on feet on legs come into view as forward pressing I near the place’s base.
Grayswandir comes into my hand, finding its way into a patch of light, renewing its eyetricking, shapeshifting stretch, acquiring a glow of its own…
I place my left foot on the step, rest my left hand on my knee. Distracting but bearable, the throb of my healing gut. I wait for the blackness, the emptiness, to be drawn, appropriate curtain for the theatrics with which I am burdened this night.
And it slides aside, revealing a hand, an arm, a shoulder, the arm a glinting, metallic thing, its planes like the facets of a gem, its wrist and elbow wondrous weaves of silver cable, pinned with flecks of fire, the hand, stylized, skeletal, a Swiss toy, a mechanical insect, functional, deadly, beautiful in its way…
And it slides aside, revealing the rest of the man…
Benedict stands relaxed beside the throne, his left and human hand laid lightly upon it. He leans toward the throne. His lips are moving.
And it slides aside, revealing the throne’s occupant…
“Dara!”
Turned toward her right, she smiles, she nods to Benedict, her lips move. I advance and extend Grayswandir till its point rests lightly in the concavity beneath her sternum…
Slowly, quite slowly, she turns her head and meets my eyes. She takes on color and life. Her lips move again, and this time her words reach me.
“What are you?”
“No. That is my question. You answer it. Now.”
“I am Dara. Dara of Amber, Queen Dara. I hold this throne by right of blood and conquest. Who are you?”
“Corwin. Also of Amber. Don’t move! I did not ask who you are —”
“Corwin is dead these many centuries. I have seen his tomb.”
“Empty.”
“Not so. His body lies within.”
“Give me your lineage!”
Her eyes move to her right, where the shade of Benedict still stands. A blade has appeared in his new hand, seeming almost an extension of it, but he holds it loosely, casually. His left hand now rests on her arm. His eyes seek me in back of Grayswandir’s hilt. Failing, they go again to that which is visible — Grayswandir — recognizing its design…
“I am the great-granddaughter of Benedict and the hellmaid Lintra, whom he loved and later slew.” Benedict winces at this, but She continues. “I never knew her. My mother and my mother’s mother were born in a place where time does not run as in Amber. I am the first of my mother’s line to bear all the marks of humanity. And you, Lord Corwin, are but a ghost from a long dead past, albeit a dangerous shade. How you came here, I do not know. But it was wrong of you. Return to your grave. Trouble not the living.”
My hand wavers. Grayswandir strays no more than half an inch. Yet that is sufficient.
Benedict’s thrust is below my threshold of perception. His new arm drives the new hand that holds the blade that strikes Grayswandir, as his old arm draws his old hand, which has seized upon Dara, back across the arm of the throne… This subliminal impression reaches me moments later, as I fall back, catting air, recover and strike an en garde, reflexively… It is ridiculous for a pair of ghosts to fight. Here, it is uneven. He cannot even reach me, whereas Grayswandir —
But no! His blade changes hands as he releases Dara and pivots, bringing them together, old hand and new. His left wrist rotates as he slides it forward and down, moving into what would be corps a corps, were we two facing mortal bodies. For a moment our guards are locked. That moment is enough…
That gleaming, mechanical hand comes forward, a thing of moonlight and fire, blackness and smoothness, all angles, no curves, fingers slightly flexed, palm silverscribbled with a half-familiar design, comes forward, comes forward and catches at my throat…
Missing, the fingers catch my shoulder and the thumb goes hooking — whether for clavicle or larynx, I do not know. I throw one punch with my left, toward his midsection, and there is nothing there…
The voice of Random: “Corwin! The sun is about to rise! You’ve got to come down now!”
I cannot even answer. A second or two and that hand would tear away whatever it held. That hand… Grayswandir and that hand, which strangely resembles it, are the only two things which seem to coexist in my world and the city of ghosts…
“I see it, Corwin! Pull away and reach for me! The Trump —”
I spin Grayswandir out of the bind and bring it around and down in a long, slashing arc…
Only a ghost could have beaten Benedict or Benedict’s ghost with that maneuver. We stand too close for him to block my blade, but his countercut, perfectly placed, would have removed my arm, had there been an arm there to meet it…
As there is not, I complete the stroke, delivering the blow with the full force of my right arm, high upon that lethal device of moonlight and fire, blackness and smoothness, near to the point where it is joined with him.
With an evil tearing at my shoulder, the arm comes away from Benedict and grows still… We both fall.
“Get up! By the unicorn, Corwin, get up! The sun is rising! The city will come apart about yo
u!”
The floor beneath me wavers to and from a misty transparency. I glimpse a light-scaled expanse of water. I roll to my feet, barely avoiding the ghost’s rush to clutch at the arm he has lost. It clings like a dead parasite and my side is hurting again…
Suddenly I am heavy and the vision of ocean does not fade. I begin to sink through the floor. Color returns to the world, wavering stripes of pink. The Corwin-spurning floor parts and the Corwin-killing gulf is opened…
I fall…
“This way, Corwin! Now!”
Random stands on a mountaintop and reaches for me. I extend my hand…
Chapter 11
…And frying pans without fires are often far between…
We untangled ourselves and rose. I sat down again immediately, on the bottommost stair. I worked the metal hand loose from my shoulder — no blood there, but a promise of bruises to come — then cast it and its arm to the ground. The light of early morning did not detract from its exquisite and menacing appearance.
Ganelon and Random stood beside me.
“You all right, Corwin?”
“Yes. Just let me catch my breath.”
“I brought food,” Random said. “We could have breakfast right here.”
“Good idea.”
As Random began unpacking provisions, Ganelon nudged the arm with the toe of his boot.
“What the hell,” he asked, “is that?”
I shook my head.
“I lopped it off the ghost of Benedict,” I told him. “For reasons I do not understand, it was able to reach me.”
He stooped and picked it up, studied it.
“A lot lighter than I thought it would be,” he observed. He raked the air with it. “You could do quite a job on someone, with a hand like that.”
“I know.”
He worked the fingers.
“Maybe the real Benedict could use it.”
“Maybe,” I said. “My feelings are quite mixed when it comes to offering it to him, but possibly you’re right…”
“How’s the side?”
I prodded it gently.
“Not especially bad, everything considered. I’ll be able to ride after breakfast, so long as we take it nice and easy.”
“Good. Say, Corwin, while Random is getting things ready, I have a question that may be out of order, but it has been bothering me all along.”
“Ask it.”
“Well, let me put it this way: I am all for you, or I would not be here. I will fight for you to have your throne, no matter what. But every time talk of the succession occurs, someone gets angry and breaks it off or the subject gets changed. Like Random did, while you were up there. I suppose that it is not absolutely essential for me to know the basis of your claim to the throne, or that of any of the others, but I cannot help being curious as to the reasons for all the friction.”
I sighed, then sat silent for a time.
“All right,” I said after a while, and then I chuckled. “All right. If we cannot agree on these things ourselves, I would guess that they must seem pretty confused to an outsider. Benedict is the eldest. His mother was Cymnea. She bore Dad two other sons, also — Osric and Finndo. Then — how does one put these things? — Faiella bore Eric. After that, Dad found some defect in his marriage with Cymnea and had it dissolved — ab initio, as they would say in my old shadow — from the beginning. Neat trick, that. But he was the king.”
“Didn’t that make all of them illegitimate?”
“Well, it left their status less certain. Osric and Finndo were more than a little irritated, as I understand it, but they died shortly thereafter. Benedict was either less irritated or more politic about the entire affair. He never raised a fuss. Dad then married Faiella.”
“And that made Eric legitimate?”
“It would have, if he had acknowledged Eric as his son. He treated him as if he were, but he never did anything formal in that regard. It involved the smoothing-over process with Cymnea’s family, which had become a bit stronger around that time.”
“Still, if he treated him as his own…”
“Ah! But he later did acknowledge Llewella formally. She was born out of wedlock, but he decided to recognize her, poor girl. All of Eric’s supporters hated her for its effect on his status. Anyway, Faiella was later to become my mother. I was born safely in wedlock, making me the first with a clean claim on the throne. Talk to one of the others and you may get a different line of reasoning, but those are the facts it will have to be based on. Somehow it does not seem quite as important as it once did, though, with Eric dead and Benedict not really interested… But that is where I stand.”
“I see — sort of,” he said. “Just one more thing, then…”
“What?”
“Who is next? That is to say, if anything were to happen to you…?”
I shook my head.
“It gets even more complicated there, now. Caine would have been next with him dead, I see it as swinging over to Clarissa’s brood — the redheads. Bleys would have followed, then Brand.”
“Clarissa? What became of your mother?”
“She died in childbirth. Deirdre was the child. Dad did not remarry for many years after mother’s death. When he did, it was a redheaded wench from a far southern shadow. I never liked her. He began feeling the same way after a time and started fooling around again. They had one reconciliation after Llewella’s birth in Rebma, and Brand was the result. When they were finally divorced, he recognized Llewella to spite Clarissa. At least, that is what I think happened.”
“So you are not counting the ladies in the succession?”
“No. They are neither interested nor fit. If I were, though, Fiona would precede Bleys and Llewella would follow him. After Clarissa’s crowd, it would swing over to Julian, Gerard, and Random, in that order. Excuse me — count Flora before Julian. The marriage data is even more involved, but no one will dispute the final order. Let it go at that.”
“Gladly,” he said. “So now Brand gets it if you die, right?”
“Well… He is a self-confessed traitor and he rubs everybody the wrong way. I do not believe the rest of them would have him, as he stands now. But I do not believe he has by any means given up.”
“But the alternative is Julian.” I shrugged. “The fact that I do not like Julian does not make him unfit. In fact, he might even be a very effective monarch.”
“So he knifed you for the chance to prove it,” Random called out. “Come on and eat.”
“I still don’t think so,” I said, getting to my feet and heading for the food. “First, I don’t see how he could have gotten to me. Second, it would have been too damned obvious. Third, if I die in the near future Benedict will have the real say as to the succession. Everyone knows that. He’s got the seniority, he’s got the wits, and he’s got the power. He could simply say, for example, The hell with all this bickering, I am backing Gerard, and that would be it.”
“What if he decided to reinterpret his own status and take it himself?” Ganelon asked.
We seated ourselves on the ground and took the tin dishes Random had filled.
“He could have had it long before this, had he wanted it,” I said. “There are several ways of regarding the offspring of a void marriage, and the most favorable one would be the most likely in his case. Osric and Finndo rushed to judgment, taking the worst view. Benedict knew better. He just waited. So… It is possible. Unlikely, though. I’d say.”
“Then — in the normal course of affairs — if anything happened to you, it could still be very much in the air?”
“Very much.”
“But why was Caine killed?” Random asked. Then, between mouthfuls, he answered his own question. “So that when they got you, it would swing over to Clarissa’s kids immediately. It has occurred to me that Bleys is probably still living, and he is next in line. His body was never found. My guess is this: He trumped off to Fiona during your attack and returned to Shadow to rebuild his forces,
leaving you to what he hoped would be your death at the hands of Eric. He is finally ready to move again. So they killed Caine and tried for you. If they are really allied with the black-road horde, they could have arranged for another assault from that quarter. Then he could have done the same thing you did — arrive at the last hour, turn back the invaders, and move on in. And there he would be, next in line and first in force. Simple. Except that you survived and Brand has been returned. If we are to believe Brand’s accusation of Fiona — and I see no reason why we should not — then it follows from their original program.”
I nodded.
“Possibly,” I said. “I asked Brand just those things. He admitted their possibility, but he disavowed any knowledge as to whether Bleys was still living. Personally, I think he was lying.”
“Why?”
“It is possible that he wishes to combine revenge for his imprisonment and the attempt on his life with the removal of the one impediment, save for myself, to his own succession. I think he feels that I will be expended in a scheme he is evolving to deal with the black road. The destruction of his own cabal and the removal of the road could make him look pretty decent, especially after all the penance he has had thrust upon him. Then, maybe then, he would have a chance — or thinks that he would.”
“Then you think Bleys is still living, too?”
“Just a feeling,” I said. “But yes, I do.”
“What is their strength, anyway?”
“An endorsement of higher education,” I said. “Fiona and Brand paid attention to Dworkin while the rest of us were off indulging our assorted passions in Shadow. Consequently, they seem to have obtained a better grasp of principles than we possess. They know more about Shadow and what lies beyond it, more about the Pattern, more about the Trumps than we do. That is why Brand was able to send you his message.”
“An interesting thought…” Random mused. “Do you think they might have disposed of Dworkin after they felt they had learned enough from him? It would certainly help to keep things exclusive, if anything happened to Dad.”
“That thought had not occurred to me,” I said.
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