The courts of chaos (17 page)

“Soon,” I muttered, thinking of Deirdre.

“Soon . . .” Why not?

I watched the stormfront, flashing, masking, transforming. Yes, soon. With the Jewel gone along with Brand-

“Brand . . .” I said. “Who was it finally got him?”

“I claim that distinction,” said a familiar voice which I could not place.

I turned my head and stared. The man in green was seated on a rock. His bow and quiver lay beside him on the around. He flashed an evil smile in my direction. It was Caine.

“I’ll be damned,” I said, rubbing my jaw. “A funny thing happened to me on the way to your funeral.”

“Yes. I heard about it.” He laughed.

“You ever kill yourself, Corwin?”

“Not recently. How’d you manage it?”

“Walked to the proper shadow,” he said, “waylaid the Shadow of myself there. He provided the corpse.” He shuddered. “An eerie feeling, that. Not one I’d care to repeat.”

“But why?” I said. “Why fake your death and try to frame me for it?”

“I wanted to get to the root of the trouble in Amber,” he said, “and destroy it. I thought it best to go underground for that. What better way than by convincing everyone that I was dead? I finally succeeded, too, as you saw.”

He paused.

“I’m sorry about Deirdre, though. But I had no choice. It was our last chance. I did not really think he would take her with him.”

I looked away.

“I had no choice,” he repeated. “I hope you can see that.”

I nodded.

“But why did you try to make it look as if I had killed you?” I asked.

Just then Fiona approached with Bleys. I greeted them both and turned back to Caine for my answer. There were things I wanted to ask Bleys, too, but they could wait.

“Well?” I said.

“I wanted you out of the way,” he said. “I still thought you might be behind the whole thing. You or Brand. I had it narrowed down that far. I thought it might even be the two of you in it together-especially with him struggling to bring you back.”

“You have that wrong,” said Bleys. “Brand was trying to keep him away. He had learned that his memory was returning and-“

“I gather,” Caine replied, “but at the time it looked that way. So I wanted Corwin back in a dungeon while I searched for Brand. I lay low then and listened in on the Trumps to everything everyone said, hoping for a clue as to Brand’s whereabouts.”

“That’s what Dad meant,” I said.

“What?” Caine asked.

“He implied there was an eavesdropper on the Trumps.”

“I do not see how he could have known. I had learned to be completely passive about it. I had taught myself to deal them all out and touch all of them lightly at the same time, waiting for a stirring. When it came, I would shift my attention to the speakers. Taking you one at a time, I even found I could sometimes get into your minds when you were not using the Trumps yourselves-if you were sufficiently distracted and I allowed myself no reaction.”

“Yet he knew,” I said.

“It is entirely possible. Likely, even,” said Fiona, and Bleys nodded.

Random drew nearer.

“What did you mean when you asked about Corwin’s side?” he inquired. “How could you even know about it unless-“

Caine merely nodded. I saw Benedict and Julian together in the distance, addressing their troops. At Caine’s silent movement, I forgot them.

“You?” I croaked. “You stabbed me?”

“Have a drink, Corwin,” Random said, passing me his flask. It was a dilute wine. I gulped it. My thirst was immense, but I stopped after several good swigs.

“Tell me about it,” I said.

“All right. I owe you that,” he said. “When I learned from Julian’s mind that you had brought Brand back to Amber, I decided that an earlier guess had been correct-that you and Brand were in it together. That meant you both had to be destroyed. I used the Pattern to project myself into your chambers that night. There, I tried to kill you, but you moved too fast and you somehow managed to Trump out before I got a second chance.”

“Well, damn your eyes,” I said. “If you could touch our minds couldn’t you have seen that I was not the man you were looking for?”

He shook his head.

“I could pick up only surface thoughts and reactions to your immediate environment. Not always that, even. And I had heard your curse, Corwin. And it was coming true. I could see it all around us. I felt that we would all be a lot safer with you and Brand both out of the way. I knew what he could do, from his actions back before your return. I could not get at him just then, though, because of Gerard. Then he began to grow stronger. I made one effort later, but it failed.”

“When was that?” Random asked.

“That was the one Corwin got blamed for. I masked myself. In case he managed to get away as Corwin had, I did not want him knowing I was still around. I used the Pattern to project myself into his chambers and tried to finish him off. We were both hurt-there was a lot of blood around-but he managed to Trump away, too. Then I got in touch with Julian a while back and joined him for this battle, because Brand just had to show up here. I had some silver-tipped arrows made because I was more than half convinced that he was no longer like the rest of us. I wanted to kill him fast and do it from a distance. I practiced my archery and came looking for him. I finally found him. Now everyone tells me I was wrong about you, so I guess your arrow will go unused.”

“Thanks a lot.”

“I might even owe you an apology.”

“That would be nice.”

“On the other hand, I thought that I was right. I was doing it to save the rest-“

I never did get Caine’s apology, because just then a trumpet blast seemed to shake the entire world-directionless, loud, prolonged. We cast about, seeking its source.

Caine stood and pointed.

“There!” he said.

My eyes followed his gesture. The curtain of the stormfront was broken off to the northwest, at the point where the black road emerged from it. There, a ghostly rider on a black horse had appeared and was winding his horn. It was a while before more of its notes reached us. Moments later, two more trumpeters-also pale, and mounted on black steeds-joined him. They raised their horns and added to the sound.

“What can it be?” Random asked.

“I think I know,” Bleys said, and Fiona nodded.

“What, then?” I asked.

But they did not answer me. The horsemen were beginning to move again, passing along the black road, and more were emerging behind them.

I watched. There was a great silence on the heights about me. All of the troops had halted and were regarding the procession. Even the prisoners from the Courts, hemmed by steel, turned their attention that way.

Led by the pale trumpeters came a mass of horsemen mounted on white steeds, bearing banners, some of which I did not recognize, behind a man-thing who bore the Unicorn standard of Amber. These were followed by more musicians, some of them playing upon instruments of a sort I had never seen before.

Behind the musicians marched horned man-shaped things in light armor, long columns of them, and every twentieth or so bore a great torch before him, reaching high above his head. A deep noise came to us then-slow, rhythmic, rolling beneath the notes of the trumpets and the sounds of the musicians-and I realized that the foot soldiers were singing. A great deal of time seemed to pass as this body advanced along that black way across the distant track below us, yet none of us stirred and none of us spoke. They passed, with the torches and the banners and the music and the singing, and they finally came to the edge of the abyss and continued over the near-invisible extension of that dark highway, their torches flaring against the blackness now, lighting their way. The music grew stronger, despite the distance, with more and more voices added to that chorus, as the guard continued to emerge from that flashing storm curtain. An occasional roll of thunder passed by, but this could not drown it; nor did the winds which assailed the torches extinguish any so far as I could see. The movement had a hypnotic effect. It seemed that I had been watching the procession for countless days, years perhaps, listening to the tune I now recognized.

Suddenly, a dragon sailed through the stormfront, and another, and another. Green and golden and black as old iron, I watched them soar on the winds, turning their heads to trail pennons of fire. The lightning flashed behind them and they were awesome and magnificent and of incalculable size. Beneath them came a small herd of white cattle, tossing their heads and blowing, beating the ground with their hoofs. Riders passed beside and among these, cracking long black whips.

Then came a procession of truly bestial troops from a shadow with which Amber sometimes has commerce-heavy, scaled, taloned-playing upon instruments like bagpipes, whose skirling notes came to us with vibrance and pathos.

These marched on, and there were more torch bearers and more troops with their colors-from shadows both distant and near. We watched them pass and wind their way into the far sky, like a migration of fireflies, their destination that black citadel called the Courts of Chaos.

There seemed no end to it. I had lost all track of time. But the stormfront, strangely, was not advancing as all this went on. I had even lost something of my sense of person, to be caught up in the procession which passed us. This, I knew, was an event which could never be repeated. Bright flying things darted above the columns and dark ones floated, higher.

There were ghostly drummers, beings of pure light and a flock of floating machines; I saw horsemen, clad all in black, mounted on a variety of beasts; a wyvern seemed to hang in the sky for a moment, like part of a fireworks display. And the sounds-of hoofbeats and footfalls, of singing and skirling, of drumming and trumpeting-mounted to a mighty wave that washed over us. And on, on, on out over the bridge of darkness, wound the procession, its lights lining the great span for a vast distance now.

Then, as my eyes drifted back along those lines, another shape emerged from the glistening curtain. It was a cart draped all in black and drawn by a team of black horses. At each corner rose a staff which glowed with blue fire, and atop it rested what could only be a casket, draped with our Unicorn flag. The driver was a hunchback clad in purple and orange garments, and I knew even at that distance that it was Dworkin.

It is thus, then, I thought. I do not know why, but somehow it is fitting, fitting that it be the Old Country to which you travel now. There were many things that I might have said while you lived. Some of them I did say, but few of the right words were ever spoken. Now it is over, for you are dead. As dead as all of those who have gone before you into that place where the rest of us soon may follow. I am sorry. It was only after all these years, on your assuming another face and form, that I finally knew you, respected you, even came to like you-though you were a crotchety old bastard in that form, too. Was the Ganelon self the real you all along, or was it only another form adopted for convenience’s sake. Old Shapeshifter? I will never know, but I like to think that I finally saw you as you were, that I met someone I liked, someone I could trust, and that it was you. I wish that I might have known you even better, but I am grateful for this much. . . .

“Dad . . . ?” Julian said softly.

“He wanted to be taken beyond the Courts of Chaos and into the final darkness when his time came at last,” Bleys said. “So Dworkin once told me. Beyond Chaos and Amber, to a place where none reigned.”

“And so it is,” Fiona said. “But is there order somewhere beyond that wall they come through? Or does the storm go on forever? If he succeeded, it is but a passing matter and we are in no danger. But if he did not . . .”

“It does not matter,” I said, “whether or not he succeeded, because I did.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“I believe that he failed,” I said, “that he was destroyed before he could repair the old Pattern. When I saw this storm coming-actually, I experienced a part of it-I realized that I could not possibly make it here in time with the Jewel, which he had sent to me after his efforts. Brand had been trying to get it from me all along the way-to create a new Pattern, he said. Later, that gave me the idea. When I saw that all else was failing, I used the Jewel to create a new Pattern. It was the most difficult thing I ever did, but I succeeded. Things should hold together after this wave passes, whether we survive it or not. Brand stole the Jewel from me just as I completed it. When I recovered from his attack I was able to use the new Pattern to project me here. So there is still a Pattern, no
 
matter what else happens.”

“But Corwin,” she said, “what if Dad succeeded?”

“I do not know.”

“It is my understanding,” Bleys said, “from things that Dworkin told me, that two distinct Patterns could not exist in the same universe. Those in Rebma and Tir-na Nog’th do not count, being but reflections of our own. . . .”

“What would happen?” I said.

“I think there would be a splitting off, the founding of a new existence-somewhere.”

“Then what would its effect be upon our own?”