KNIGHT OF SHADOWS (23 page)

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 then.

“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 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 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 it off now, you will probably die.”

I sat down again.

“Cream and sugar?” I asked him.

I came around slowly.
 
That familiar blueness was a lake of prebeing 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 lingers 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 myself 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.