Knight of Shadows tcoa-9 Read online

  Nor can I say what it was that roused me. I know only that I was somewhere else and the next moment I had returned. My position had changed slightly, my toes were cold, and I felt that I was no longer alone. I kept my eyes closed, and did not alter my breathing pattern. It could be that Ghost had simply decided to look in on me. It could also be that something was testing my wards.

  I raised my eyelids but the smallest distance, peering outward and upward through a screen of eyelashes. A small misshaped figure stood outside the cave mouth, the fire’s remaining glow faintly illuminating his strangely familiar face. There was something of myself in those features and something of my father.

  “Merlin,” he said softly. “Come awake now. You’ve places to go and things to do.”

  I opened my eyes wide and stared. He fitted a certain description… Frakir throbbed, and I stroked her still.

  “Dworkin…?” I said.

  He chuckled.

  “You’ve named me,” he replied.

  He paced, from one side of the cave mouth to the other, occasionally pausing to extend a hand partway toward me. Each time he hesitated and drew it back.

  “What is it?” I asked. “What’s the matter? Why are you here?”

  “I’ve come to fetch you back to the journey you abandoned.”

  “And what journey might that be?”

  “Your search for the lady somewhere astray who walked the Pattern t’other day.”

  “Coral? You know where she is?”

  He raised his hand, lowered it, gnashed his teeth.

  “Coral? Is that her name? Let me in. We must discuss her.”

  “We seem to be talking just fine the way we are.”

  “Have you no respect for an ancestor?”

  “I do. But I also have a shapeshifting brother who’d like to mount my head and hang it on the wall of his den. And he might just be able to do it real quick if I give him half a chance.” I sat up and rubbed my eyes, my wits finishing the job of reassembling themselves. “So where’s Coral?”

  “Come. I will show you the way,” he said, reaching forward. This time his hand passed my ward and was immediately outlined in fire. He did not seem to notice. His eyes were a pair of dark stars, drawing me to my feet, pulling me toward him. His hand began to melt. The flesh ran and dripped away like wax. There were no bones within, but rather an odd geometry — as if someone had sketched a hand quickly in a three-dimensional medium, then molded some fleshlike cover for it. “Take my hand.”

  I found myself raising my hand against my will, reaching toward the fingerlike curves, the swirls of the knuckles. He chuckled again. I could feel the force that drew me. I wondered what would happen if I took hold of that strange hand in a special way.

  So I summoned the Sign of the Logrus and sent it on ahead to do my handclasping for me.

  This may not have been my best choice of actions. I was momentarily blinded by the brilliant, sizzling flash that followed. When my vision cleared, I saw that Dworkin was gone. A quick check showed that my wards still held. I perked up the fire with a short, simple spell, noted that my coffee cup was half full, and warmed its tepid contents with an abbreviated version of the same rendering. I reshrouded myself then, settled, and sipped. Analyze as I might, I couldn’t figure what had just happened.

  I knew of no one who had seen the half mad demiurge in years, though according to my father’s tale, Dworkin’s mind should have been largely mended when Oberon repaired the Pattern. If it had really been Jurt, seeking to trick his way into my presence and finish me off, it was an odd choice of form for him to assume. Come to think of it, I wasn’t at all certain that Jurt even knew what Dworkin looked like. I debated the wisdom of calling for Ghostwheel to solicit an inhuman opinion on the matter. Before I could decide, however, the stars beyond the cave mouth were occulted by another figure, much larger than Dworkin’s — heroically proportioned even.

  A single step brought it within range of the firelight, and I spilled coffee when I beheld that face. We had never met, but I had seen his likeness in many places in Castle Amber.

  “I understand that Oberon died in redrawing the Pattern,” I said.

  “Were you present at the time?” he asked.

  “No,” I replied, “but coming as you do, on the heels of a rather bizarre apparition of Dworkin, you must excuse my suspicions as to your bona fides.”

  “Oh, that was a fake you encountered. I’m the real thing.”

  “What was it then that I saw?”

  “It was the astral form of a practical joker — a sorcerer named Jolos from the fourth circle of Shadow.”

  “Oh,” I responded. “And how am I to know you’re not the projection of someone named Jalas from the fifth?”

  “I can recite the entire genealogy of the royal House of Amber.”

  “So can any good scribe back home.”

  “I’ll throw in the illegitimates.”

  “How many were there, anyway?”

  “Forty-seven, that I know of.”

  “Aw, come on! How’d you manage?”

  “Different time streams,” he said, smiling.

  “If you survived the reconstruction of the Pattern, how come you didn’t return to Amber and continue your reign?” I asked. “Why’d you let Random get crowned and muddy the picture even further?”

  He laughed.

  “But I didn’t survive it,” he said. “I was destroyed in the process. I am a ghost, returned to solicit a living champion for Amber against the rising power of the Logrus.”

  “Granted, arguendo, that you are what you say you are,” I replied, “you’re still in the wrong neighborhood, sir. I am an initiate of the Logrus and a son of Chaos.”

  “You are also an initiate of the Pattern and a son of Amber,” the magnificent figure answered.

  “True,” I said, “and all the more reason for me not to choose sides.”

  “There comes a time when a man must choose,” he stared, “and that time is now. Which side are you on?”

  “Even if I believed that you ate what you say, I do not feel obliged to make such a choice,” I said. “And there is a tradition in the Courts that Dworkin himself was an initiate of the Logrus. If that is true, I’m only following in the footsteps of a venerable ancestor.”

  “But he renounced Chaos when he founded Amber.”

  I shrugged.

  “Good thing I haven’t founded anything,” I said. “If there is something specific that you want of me, tell me what it is, give me a good reason for doing it and maybe I’ll cooperate.”

  He extended his hand.

  “Come with me, and I will set your feet upon the new Pattern you must follow, in a game to be played out between the Powers.”

  “I still don’t understand you, but I am certain that the real Oberon would not be stopped by these simple wards. You come to me and clasp my hand, and I will be glad to accompany you and take a look at whatever it is you want me to see.”

  He drew himself up to an even greater height.

  “You would test me?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “As a man, it would hardly have troubled me,” he stated. “But being formed out of this spiritual crap now, I don’t know. I’d rather not take the chance.”

  “In that case, I must echo your sentiment with respect to your own proposal.”

  “Grandson,” he said levelly, a ruddy light entering his eyes, “even dead, none of my spawn may address me so. I come for thee now in a less than friendly fashion. I come for thee now, and this journey shall I hale thee amid fires.”

  I took a step backward as he advanced.

  “No need to take it personally…” I began.

  I shaded my eyes as he hit my wards, and the flashbulb effect began. Squinting through it, I saw something of a repetition of the flensing of Dworkin’s flesh by fire. Oberon became transparent in places; other places he melted. Within him, through him, as the outward semblance of the kind passed away, I saw the swirls a
nd curves, the straits and channels — black-lined, geometrizing abstractly inside the general outline of a large and noble figure. Unlike Dworkin, however, the image did not fade. Having passed my wards, its movement slowed, it continued toward me nevertheless, reaching. Whatever its true nature, it was one of the most frightening things I had ever encountered. I continued to back away, raising my hands, and I called again upon the Logrus.

  The Sign of the Logrus occurred between us. The abstract version of Oberon continued to reach, scribbled spirit hands encountering the writhing limbs of Chaos.

  I was not reaching through the Logrus’s image to manipulate it against that apparition. I felt an unusual dread of the thing, even at our distance. What I did was more on the order of thrusting the Sign against the image of the king. Then I dived past them both, out the cave mouth, and I rolled, scrabbling for handholds and toeholds when I struck a slope, coming up hard against a boulder and hugging it as the cave erupted with the noisy and flash of an ammo dump that had taken a hit.

  I lay there shuddering, my eyes squeezed shut, for perhaps half a minute. Any second, I felt, and something would be on my ass — unless, perhaps, I crouched perfectly still and tried hard to look like another rock…

  The silence was profound, and when I opened my eyes, the light had vanished and the shape of the cave mouth was unaltered. I rose slowly to my feet, advanced even more slowly. The Sign of the Logrus had departed, and for reasons I did not understand I was loath to call it back. When I looked within the cave, there were no signs that anything at all had occurred, save for the fact that my wards were blown.

  I stepped inside. The blanket still lay where it had fallen. I put out a hand and touched the wall. Cold stone. That blast must have taken place at some other level than the immediate. My small fire was still flickering feebly. I recalled it yet again to life. But the only thing I saw in its glow which I had not seen previously was my coffee cup, broken where it had fallen.

  I let my hand remain upon the wall. I leaned. After a time, there came an uncontrollable tightening of my diaphragm. I began laughing. I am not sure why. The weight of everything which had transpired since April 30 was upon me. It just happened that laughter had edged out the alternative of beating my breast and howling.

  I thought I knew who all the players were in this complex game. Luke and Jasra seemed to be on my side now, along with my brother Mandor, who’d always looked out for me. My mad brother Jurt wanted me dead, and he was now allied with my old lover Julia, who didn’t seem too kindly disposed toward me either. There was the ty’iga — an overprotective demon inhabiting the body of Coral’s sister, Nayda, whom I’d left sleeping in the midst of a spell back in Amber. There was the mercenary Dalt — who, now I thought of it, was also my uncle — who’d made off with Luke for points and purposes unknown after kicking Luke’s ass in Arden with two armies watching. He had nasty designs on Amber but lacked the military muscle to provide more than occasional guerrilla-style annoyance. And then there was Ghostwheel, my cybernetic Trump dealer and minor-league mechanical demigod, who seemed to have evolved from rash and manic to rational and paranoid — and I wasn’t at all sure where he was headed from here, but at least he was showing some filial respect mixed in with the current cowardice.

  And that had been pretty much it.

  But these latest manifestations seemed evidence that there was something else at play here also, something that wanted to drag me off in yet another direction. I had Ghost’s testimony that it was strong. I had no idea what it really represented. And I had no desire to trust it. This made for an awkward relationship.

  “Hey, kid!” came a familiar voice from down the slope. “You’re a hard man to find. You don’t stay put.”

  I turned quickly, moved forward, stared downward.

  A lone figure was toiling up the slope. A big man. Something flashed in the vicinity of his throat. It was too dark to make out his features.

  I retreated several paces, commencing the spell which would restore my blasted wards.

  “Hey! Don’t run off!” he called. “I’ve got to talk to you.

  The wards fell into place, and I drew my blade and held it, point lowered, at my thigh, entirely out of sight from the cave mouth when I turned my body. I ordered Frakir to hang invisible from my left hand also. The second figure had been stronger than the first, to make it past my wards. If this third one should prove stronger than the second, I was going to need everything I could muster.

  “Yeah?” I called out. “Who are you and what do you want?”

  “Hell!” I heard it say “I’m no one in particular. Just your old man. I need some help, and I like to keep things in the family.”

  I had to admit, when it reached the area of firelight, that it was a very good imitation of Prince Corwin of Amber, my father, complete with black cloak, boots, and trousers, gray shirt, silver studs, and buckle — and even a silver rose — and he was smiling that same quirky sort of smile the real Corwin had sometimes worn on telling me his story, long ago… I felt a kind of wrenching in my guts at the sight. I’d wanted to get to know him better, but he’d disappeared, and I’d never been able to find him again. Now, for this thing — whatever it was — to pull this impersonation… I was more than a little irritated at such a patent attempt to manipulate my feelings.

  “The first fake was Dworkin,” I said, “and the second was Oberon. You’re climbing right down the family tree, aren’t you?”

  He squinted and cocked his head in puzzlement as he advanced, another realistic mannerism.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Merlin,” he responded. “I —”

  Then it entered the warded area and jerked as if touching a hot wire.

  “Holy shit!” it said. “You don’t trust anybody, do you?”

  “Family tradition,” I replied, “backed up by recent experience.”

  I was puzzled, though, that the encounter had not involved more pyrotechnics. Also, I wondered why the thing’s transformation into scrollwork had not yet commenced.

  With another oath, it swirled its cloak to the left, wrapping it abut its arm; its right hand crossed toward an excellent facsimile of my father’s scabbard. A silverchased blade sighed as it arced upward, then fell toward the eye of the ward. When they met, the sparks rose in a foot-high splash and the blade hissed as if it had been heated and were now being quenched in water. The design on the blade flared, and the sparks leaped again this time as high as a man — and in that instant I felt the ward break.

  Then it entered, and I turned my body, swinging my blade. But the blade that looked like Grayswandir fell and rose again, in a tightening circle, drawing my own weapon’s point to the right and sliding straight in toward my breast. I did a simple parry in quarte, but he slipped under it and was still coming in from the outside. I parried sixte, but he wasn’t there. His movement had been only a feint. He was back inside and coming in low now. I reversed myself and parried again as he slid his entire body in to my right, dropping his blade’s point, reversing his grip, fanning my face with his left hand.

  Too late I saw the right hand rising as the left slid behind my head. Grayswandir’s pommel was headed straight for my jaw.

  “You’re really…” I began, and then it connected. The last thing I remember seeing was the silver rose.

  That’s life. Trust and you’re betrayed; don’t trust and you betray yourself. Like most moral paradoxes, it places you in an untenable position. And it was too late for my normal solution. I couldn’t walk away from the game.

  I woke in a place of darkness. I woke wondering and wary. As usual when wondering and wary, I lay perfectly still and let my breathing continue its natural rhythm. And I listened.

  Not a sound.

  I opened my eyes slightly.

  Disconcerting patterns. I closed them again.

  I felt with my body for vibrations within the rocky surface upon which I was sprawled.

  No vibes.

  I opened my
eyes entirely, fought back an impulse to close them. I raised myself onto my elbows, then gathered my knees beneath me, straightened my back, turned my head. Fascinating. I hadn’t been this disoriented since I’d gone drinking with Luke and the Cheshire Cat.

  There was no color anywhere about me. Everything was black, white, or some shade of gray. It was as if I had entered a photographic negative. What I presumed to be a sun hung like a black hole several diameters above the horizon to my right. The sky was a very dark gray, and ebon clouds moved slowly within it. My skin was the color of ink. The rocky ground beneath me and about me shone an almost translucent bone-white, however. I rose slowly to my feet, turning. Yes. The ground seemed to glow, the sky was dark, and I was a shadow between them. I did not like the feeling at all.

  The air was dry, cool. I stood in the foothills to an albino mountain range, so stark in appearance as to rouse comparison with the Antarctic. These stretched off and up to my left. To the right-low and rolling-toward what I guessed to be a morning sun, lay a black plain. Desert? I had to raise my hand and ‘shade’ against its… what? Antiglow?

  “Shit!” I tried saying, and I noticed two things immediately.

  The first was that my word remained unvoiced. The second was that my jaw hurt where my father or his simulacrum had slugged me.

  I repeated my silent observation and withdrew my Trumps. All bets were off when it came to messing with sendings. I shuffled out the Trump for the Ghostwheel and focused my attention upon it.

  Nothing. It was completely dead to me. But, then, it was Ghost who’d told me to lie low, and maybe he was simply refusing to entertain my calf. I thumbed through the others. I paused at Flora’s. She was usually willing to help me out of a tight spot. I studied that lovely face, sent out my call to it…

  Not a golden curl stirred. Not a degree’s drop in temperature. The card remained a card. I tried harder, even muttering an enhancement spell. But there was nobody home.

  Mandor, then. I spent several minutes on his card with the same result. I tried Random’s. Ditto. Benedict’s, Julian’s. No and no. I tried for Fiona, Luke, and Bill Roth. Three more negatives. I even pulled a couple of the Trumps of Doom, but I couldn’t reach the Sphinx either, or a building of bones atop a green glass mountain.