Chaos and Amber

by John Gregory Betancourt

  "Yeah. Chaos legs." He chuckled.

  I tried to rise and found some leverage with my elbows, but couldn't keep my balance. I fell in the wrong direction. Aber grabbed my arm and helped pull me upright.

  Why did everything want to go up instead of d o wn? And why did up keep moving to the sides? If it would all stop for a minute, I thought I'd be able to get my bearings. My head began to pound.

  "Steady."

  Without being asked, Aber rose, took my legs, and swung them around and over the side of the bed. Big mistake; I almost passed out as the room seemed to twist down and away, moving out from under me.

  I gasped. This couldn't be happening, couldn't possibly be real. The room was strangely shaped.

  No corners met at right angles-walls curved and the ceiling sloped in an architect's nightmare. It was also sparsely furnished: a tall lookingglass, the bed on which I now sat, a table pushed up against the far wall, and two heavy wooden chairs whose high backs had been carved with the likenesses of dragons.

  "Let's get you up," Aber said.

  "Wait-"

  Reaching down with my feet, I touched the floor with the tips of my toes. Hard, bare, no carpet, just wood that had been polished smooth as glass. It seemed fine. I frowned. So why couldn't I get my balance? Why was everything moving?

  Aber glanced over his shoulder at our father. "If you pass out again, Dad will skin you alive."

  "But-"

  "Don't be a baby about it! Just get up!"

  I glared, but shut up. He didn't understand. Well, I'd just have to show him. It wasn't possible for anyone to stand here with the floor moving so much.

  "Stand up!" he said. "On your feet, Oberon!"

  "Help me-"

  With a sigh, Aber draped my right arm over his shoulder and heaved. He was stronger than he looked, like everyone in my family, and he got me up with little trouble considering I must have weighed a hundred pounds more than he did.

  Leaning on him, I stood unsteadily. The room kept shifting. The corners moved. The floor kept trying to slide away from under me. Without Aber propping me up, I would have fallen.

  "There you go," he said, cheerful as always. "First things first. Chaos legs. See?"

  He let go. For a second, it wasn't so bad. I steadied myself on his arm and actually thought about trying to walk. Maybe I could make it a few feet.

  Then the walls spasmed with reds and yellows. The floor heaved. I felt myself falling and seized his arm hard enough to make him yelp.

  "No-you-don't!" He staggered under my weight, bracing himself.

  A fierce humming noise filled my ears. The room spun and slipped, and I felt myself going over backwards. Aber quickly caught my shoulders and lowered me back to the floor with a grunt.

  I hugged the broad wooden boards, feeling the universe spin, praying that everything would stop moving soon. What sort of place was this? I couldn't even stand up here.

  Pressing my eyes shut, I tried to block this place from my mind. I willed myself back to Ilerium. It had worked once before, after all.

  But it didn't now.

  "Want to try standing again?" Aber asked.

  "No!"

  "At least sit up," he said. "You can do it. Try."

  "Maybe…"

  Taking a deep breath, I eased myself up and braced my feet against the floor. The walls seemed to slide around me like they weren't fastened down. But at least I was sitting now.

  "Better," Aber said. I noticed he was rubbing his arm where I'd grabbed him. "We'll take it slowly."

  "I need sleep," I growled. "Then I can wake up from this nightmare!"

  "You'll get the hang of it. Give yourself time."

  Time? I had always been able to walk, even when I was so drunk I could barely see. But I could tell he wasn't going to let me rest.

  "Give me a hand-I'll try again."

  "Are you sure?" Aber said, hesitating. He rubbed his arm again. I must have really hurt him.

  "Sorry about your arm," I said. Sighing, I looked up at his face. He flickered: horns, no horns, horns. I had never felt so dizzy and disoriented.

  "Don't worry," he said. "Accidents happen. I heal fast, and I'm happy to carry a grudge." He chuckled. "I'll get even when you least expect it, dear brother. Maybe you ought to sit still for a while."

  Slowly I began to crawl toward the bed. It felt like a trip across a constantly moving sheet of ice-tipping first one way then another, with me hanging on desperately and trying not to slide away.

  Maybe I could use the bed to balance myself. Mostly I tried not to think about throwing up.

  As I reached the bed and began to climb back onto it, Dworkin hurried over, grabbed a fistful of my hair, and yanked my head back. I felt my eyes roll in panic as colors and lights burst like fireworks around me.

  "Let go!" I cried. It came out more like the howl of some haunted beast.

  Shoving his face close to mine, he peered into my eyes like a physician studying a new patient. I smelled wine on his breath and knew he'd been drinking. That wasn't a good sign. He'd drunk himself into a stupor in Juniper when faced with overwhelming problems. With a comment of, "Interesting," he let go.

  I fell flat with an oomph of lost air. Then I curled up in a ball on the floor. My breath came in shudders. I wanted to pull the universe in on top of me.

  "Do not go to sleep," Dworkin told me firmly.

  I peered up at him through a haze.

  "Why?" I whispered

  "Because you will die."

  I groaned. "I'm too stubborn to die."

  "Then you are a fool, my boy."

  "Send me back to Juniper!" I begged. "Or Ilerium. Anywhere but here!" I would rather face an army of hell-creatures alone and unarmed than put up with this Shadow of the Courts of Chaos for another minute.

  "Quiet, Oberon," he said. He began to pace. "I need to think."

  As the room began to steady once more, I forced myself to roll over toward the bed. I leaned back against it, watching him. As long as I remained motionless, barely breathing, the room seemed almost steady.

  "Can I do anything to help?" Aber asked.

  Dworkin said, "Try this."

  As I watched, he reached into the air and, seemingly from nothingness, pulled down a large reddish-brown clay pitcher. That was another one of those Logrus tricks. Wine? Something stronger, hopefully. I needed a drink right now. I needed it desperately. I wasn't sure I could keep it down, but I welcomed the chance to try.

  Aber accepted the pitcher with his left hand, then reached down, grabbed my shirt, and hoisted all two hundred and forty pounds of me to my feet as though picking up a kitten. When he released me, I teetered unsteadily. Colors leaped and pulsed around me; my vision dimmed, then brightened, then dimmed again. The scream of wind in my ears grew wild and discordant.

  "Whiskey?" I gasped. "Brandy?"

  "Afraid not," Aber said.

  "What-?"

  "See for yourself."

  Without warning, he raised the pitcher and dumped the contents over my head.

  I gasped. It was cold water. Very cold water. Water so icy it shocked and numbed my entire body.

  Stunned, I didn't move, couldn't breathe. I just stared at him, feeling like a whipped dog thrown out into the pouring rain in the dead of winter just in time to be kicked by a runaway horse.

  "Now," said Aber, "we're even." He grinned mischievously at me.

  Folding my arms, I silently cursed all siblings to the worst of the seven hells. Fathers, too. A special torture-pit must be reserved for the gleefully malevolent. Dworkin had doubled up with laughter.

  So I glared at both of them and waited for their composure to return.

  "Remember, Oberon," Dworkin said sharply, catching his breath. He leaned toward me, one stubby finger leveled at my eyes. As I focused on him, his entire body seemed to waver like a flame in a strong breeze. "No sleeping. If you go to sleep, there is a good chance you will never wake up."

  I gave a low growl of disple
asure. I wasn't sure if I meant it for him or Aber.

  "We need to talk," I said to Dworkin.

  "Not now." He returned to the table, gathered up half a dozen scrolls scattered there and hurried out the door.

  "When-" I began.

  The door slammed before I could finish. I looked at Aber.

  "Off to see the king," my brother said with a half sigh. "I told you he'd been summoned, remember?"

  "Why?"

  "Dad petitioned for an audience. It took a while. Everything has its proper time and ceremony.

  And I'm afraid Dad isn't held in very high regard at the Courts. None of us is."

  What rot. I saw the truth. The delay was a deliberate insult… King Uthor's way of letting us know we weren't important enough to merit his attention. We would have to change that. Being here was the first step. Making ourselves important would be the second.

  Right now, though, I felt like crawling into bed, pulling the covers over my ears, and hiding from the world for the next ten years. Fathers and their advice be damned, if I could just get rid of Aber…

  "You should go with Dad," I suggested.

  "Hah! He would never let me." A sour note crept into his voice.

  "I'm not like you…"

  "He didn't ask me."

  "No, he wouldn't. Not with you being sick. He would have taken Locke, though. He was always the privileged one. The favorite son. And now there's you, of course. As soon as you're well, you'll take Locke's place."

  "If you're not happy with your place here, do something about it."

  He chuckled. "What do you suggest? Should I murder my way to the top of the family? Make sure I'm the last male heir, so he has to depend on me whether he likes it or not?"

  "No. But I'm sure there's something…"

  "Uh-uh. Dad doesn't like me. That's not going to change." He smiled a bit at my expression. "I do have a plan, though, and I am doing something to help. I don't stand around all day whining about my place in the family, you know."

  I gave him a searching look, but he didn't elaborate. I changed the subject.

  "I don't suppose you have any intention of letting me go back to sleep?"

  "Nope." He focused on me and grinned wolfishly. His horns were back. "One must take these small pleasures as they come. Just try, and I'll empty a lake on your head!"

  "You're a sadist!"

  "I'll take that as a compliment."

  I gave him a half-hearted glower. "Then how about a towel? And maybe some dry clothes."

  "Well… not just yet, dear brother. I've been ordered to keep you awake, and that's what I'm going to do. I don't want you too comfortable just yet."

  Dripping, cold and miserable and thoroughly wide awake now, I stumbled to one of the dragon-backed chairs, sat heavily, and glared at him. At least the room wasn't moving so much anymore.

  Maybe there was something to his "Chaos legs" theory. Or the ice-water had shocked the worst of the disorientation from me.

  "I am going to kill you, you know," I promised. "Don't think this is over."

  He gave a thoroughly evil chuckle.

  "First you have to catch me," he said, "and I don't think you're up to it."

  At that remark, I rose and took a step toward him. The room jumped and shook. My skin seemed to be on fire. Winds howled in my ears.

  I ignored everything and took another step. No matter what it cost, I wouldn't let him get the better of me. That was the difference between us. No one ever got the better of me.

  "You ought to sit down," he said hastily.

  "No." I gritted my teeth and took another step. Then another.

  "You're going to fall."

  "You'd be amazed at what I can do," I said, "when I put my mind to it."

  One foot at a time. I took another step. Everything around me swayed. That howling noise, like wind but a hundred times louder, filled my ears.

  Chaos legs, indeed.

  I reached for him.

  Aber gulped.

  THREE

  I don't know if it was the shock of the cold water or just getting up out of bed and moving around, but it came to me suddenly, as I was advancing with malicious intent on my brother, that I had stopped paying so much attention to the strange noises, pulsing colors, and seemingly random movements of the universe around me. Instead, by focusing all my attention on fratricide, I found myself at least beginning to compensate for the distractions around me. With effort, I could stand and walk on my own-if awkwardly and unsteadily. A small improvement, but an important one.

  Aber suddenly laughed, then reached into the air, felt around for a second, and plucked a large white towel seemingly from nothingness.

  "Here." He threw the towel in my face. "You're no fun when you're wet."

  "About time you realized it."

  I shook my head like a dog caught in the rain, mindless of the way the room suddenly lurched and dipped, just to spray him with droplets. A petty revenge; I quickly regretted it.

  "Hey!" He shielded his face.

  That gave me some small satisfaction. Then, as I began to blot myself dry, he flopped down on one of the chairs, watching me like a hunter studying an unfamiliar beast. Somehow, I got the impression he didn't trust me not to keel over dead or unconscious at any moment. Well, he had me up, and now I had no intention of resting. Sick or not, I had to find out what I'd missed. We hadn't come here for me to waste time sleeping.

  "How long was I in bed?" I demanded.

  "Three days."

  "Three!" I stared at him, scarcely able to believe it. "Impossible!"

  He shrugged. "We've been busy. Dad finally decided you weren't going to wake up on your own, so we spent the last three hours talking to you, shaking you, and yelling at you. You only started to respond when he told you some king needed you. Not King Uthor, I guess?"

  "King Elnar. I served him in Ilerium." I shook my head, then winced as it suddenly throbbed; the room whirled around me, then steadied a bit when I stopped moving. "I barely heard you. I was dreaming. I thought I was sailing on a ship."

  "A ship? Why?"

  "This room-this place-it all feels like it's moving. It still does. But it's not, is it? It's me?"

  "Afraid so, Oberon."

  I sighed. When I stayed still, the room largely stopped jumping around. Turning slowly and carefully, making no sudden movements, I found the floor seemed to glide subtly underfoot, as though trying to shift with or against me depending on which way I turned. Cold and damp and sick and altogether miserable just about summed up my condition. But for now the worst of the dizziness had passed, and with it at least some of my desire to strangle Aber.

  Feeling less like a drowned dog, I threw the towel back at his head. He caught it, tossed it aside, and made it disappear with a snap of his fingers as easily as he had appeared it.

  "No sleeping," he warned me again.

  "Not much chance of that with you on guard. How about some food?" I felt a yawning emptiness inside. "And wine. Lots of wine."

  "Are you sure that's wise?"

  I hesitated. He was probably right.

  "Okay, skip the wine. I'm starving. If you can find it, I want something plain. Bread, cheese, maybe a meat pie-whatever you can scrounge up on short notice."

  He hesitated, glancing toward the door. "The dining hall is downstairs. Dinner won't be served for another two or three hours. Do you think you can make it?"

  "I… I think I'll eat here." I wasn't ready for stairs just yet.

  He reached into the air and pulled a dinner tray from nothingness, then set it on the table. Bread, cheese, a sharp knife, and a large glass of what looked like cider of some kind.

  "Thanks. Join me?"

  "Not yet. I-"

  He broke off as a bell sounded outside. It rang three times, then grew still. From the way his brow furrowed, I didn't think it was good news.

  I said, "What's the alarm for?"

  "Visitors."

  "The unwelcome kind?"

  "I
… don't know." He rose, took a step toward the door, paused. "Don't go to sleep," he said ominously, "or else. There's plenty more water where that pitcher came from. I'll be back in a couple of minutes."

  "I won't go back to sleep," I said with a chuckle, trying to appear innocent. "After three days of it, lying down is the last thing on my mind right now."

  "Hmm." He gave me a suspicious look, then shut the door. I heard his footsteps receding on the other side.

  The food did look good. I carved a large chunk off the cheese and chewed it slowly. Sharp and well aged, with a slightly smoky aftertaste, it was quite delicious. I took another bite. No sense waiting for my brother if he wasn't going to eat.

  The bread, warm and crusty, went well with the cheese. The cider didn't appeal to me much-it had always struck me as a child's drink unless properly laced with spirits-but it washed everything down satisfactorily.

  I finished everything, then sat back, feeling full and vaguely content. No sounds came from the hall, and the bell did not ring again.

  Then I heard a distant banging sound, followed by a couple of softer bangs. Doors? Windows opening to air out some long-unused parlor?

  Much as I hoped for a simple, harmless explanation, doubts crept in. What was happening down there? Where had Aber gone? Why hadn't he come back?

  As I listened for Aber's returning footsteps outside the door, my apprehension grew. I hated being sick and disoriented. I was used to being in control of every situation, a leader and not some helpless invalid. If anyone attacked us, I would not be able to leave this room, let alone protect Aber or fight my way clear of the building.

  I strained to hear over the constant low hiss of wind. No clash of weapons nor screams from dying guards reached me. If we were under attack, wouldn't I hear something ! Our visitors had to be friendly. Probably neighbors paying a social call; after all, Dworkin hadn't been here in years. Wouldn't everyone want to stop by, say hello, and catch up on all the gossip for old times' sake? That must be it.

  As host, Aber couldn't get away. Nor would he want to let them know about my illness. We couldn't reveal our weaknesses to anyone here.

  A long silence stretched. The wind rose slightly. I picked at the crumbs on my plate, gulped the dregs of the cider, and waited impatiently. Doing nothing had always been hard for me. The chair creaked slightly as I shifted. Not so much as a whisper came from the outside.