Sign of the unicorn (21 page)

But mine is the power to be heard here. . . . It hangs in the sheath at my side.

Drawing Grayswandir, I raise my blade overhead where moonlight tricks its patterns into a kind of motion. I place it on the ground between us.

“Corwin!”

Her head snaps back, her hair rusts in the moonlight, her eyes focus.

“Where did you come from? You’re early.”

“You wait for me?”

“Of course. You told me to-“

“How did you come to this place?”

“This bench...?”

“No. This city.”

“Amber? I do not understand. You brought me yourself. I-“

“Are you happy here?”

“You know that I am, so long as I am with you.”

I had not forgotten the evenness of her teeth, the hint of freckles beneath the soft light’s veil. . . .

“What happened? It is very important. Pretend for a moment that I do not know, and tell me everything that happened to us after the battle of the Black Circle in Lorraine.”

She frowned. She stood. She turned away.

“We had that argument,” she said. “You followed me, drove away Melkin, and we talked. I saw that I was wrong and I went with you to Avalon. There, your brother Benedict persuaded you to talk with Eric. You were not reconciled, but you agreed to a truce because of something that he told you. He swore not to harm you and you swore to defend Amber, with Benedict to witness both oaths. We remained in Avalon while you obtained chemicals, and we went to another place later, a place where you purchased strange weapons. We won the battle, but Eric lies wounded now.”

She stood and faced me.

“Are you thinking of ending the truce? Is that it, Corwin?”

I shook my head, and though I knew better I reached to embrace her. I wanted to hold her, despite the fact that one of us did not exist, could not exist, when that tiny gap of space between our skins was crossed, to tell her that whatever bad happened or would happen-

The shock was not severe, but it caused me to stumble. I lay across Grayswandir. . . . My staff had fallen to the grass several paces away. Rising to my knees, I saw that the color had gone out of her face, her eyes, her hair. Her mouth shaped ghost words as her head turned, searching. Sheathing Grayswandir, recovering my staff, I rose once again. Her seeing passed through me and focused. Her face grew smooth, she smiled, started forward. I moved aside and turned, watching her run toward the man who approached, seeing her clasped in his arms, glimpsing his face as he bent it toward her own, lucky ghost, silver rose at the throat of his garment, kissing her, this man I would never know, silver on silence, and silver. . . .

Walking away . . . Not looking back . . . Crossing the promenade . . .

The voice of Random: “Corwin, are you all right?”

“Yes.”

“Anything interesting happening?”

“Later, Random.”

“Sorry.”

And sudden, the gleammg stair before the palace grounds . . . Up it, and a turn to the right . . . Slow and easy now, into the garden . . . Ghost flowers throb on their stalks all about me, ghost shrubs spill blossoms like frozen firework displays. Sans colors, all . . . Only the essentials sketched in, degrees of luminosity in silver the terms of their claim on the eye. Only the essentials here. Is Tir-na Nog’th a special sphere of Shadow in the real world, swayed by the promptings of the id-a full-sized projective test in the sky, perhaps even a therapeutic device? Despite the silver. I’d say, if this is a piece of the soul, the night is very dark. . . . And silent. . .

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 you!”

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. . . .

. . . 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.