The courts of chaos (2 page)

I lurched forward, recovered my balance, moved ahead. The barrier was gone.

Martin and Dara reached Benedict before we did. Dara had already torn a strip from her cloak and was binding Benedict’s stump when Gerard, Random and I got there. Random seized Martin by the shoulder and turned him.

“What happened?” he asked.

“Dara . . . Dara told me she wanted to see Amber,” he said. “Since I live here now, I agreed to bring her through and show her around. Then-“

“Bring her through? You mean on a Trump?”

“Well, yes.”

“Yours or hers?”

Martin raked his lower lip with his teeth.

“Well, you see . . .”

“Give me those cards,” said Random, and he snatched the case from Martin’s belt. He opened it and began going through them.

“Then I thought to tell Benedict, since he was interested in her,” Martin went on. “Then Benedict wanted to come and see-“

“What the hell!” Random said. “There is one of you, one of her, and one of a guy I’ve never even seen before! Where did you get these?”

“Let me see them,” I said.

He passed me the three cards.

“Well?” he said. “Was it Brand? He is the only one I know who can make Trumps now.”

“I would not have anything to do with Brand,” Martin replied, “except to kill him.”

But I already knew they were not from Brand. They were simply not in his style. Nor were they in the style of anyone whose work I knew. Style was not foremost in my mind at that moment, however. Rather, it was the features of the third person, the one whom Random had said he had never seen before. I had. I was looking at the face of the youth who had confronted me with a crossbow before the Courts of Chaos, recognized me and then declined to shoot.

I extended the card.

“Martin, who is this?” I asked.

“The man who made these extra Trumps,” he said.

“He drew one of himself while he was about it. I do not know his name. He is a friend of Dara’s.”

“You are lying,” Random said.

“Then let Dara tell us,” I said, and I turned to her.

She still knelt beside Benedict, though she had finished bandaging him and he was now sitting up.

“How about it?” I said, waving the card at her. “Who is this man?”

She glanced at the card, then up at me.

She smiled.

“You really do not know?” she said.

“Would I be asking if I did?”

“Then look at it again and go look in a mirror. He is your son as much as mine. His name is Merlin.”

I am not easily shocked, but this had nothing of ease about it. I felt dizzy. But my mind moved quickly. With the proper time differential the thing was possible.

“Dara,” I said, “what is it that you want?”

“I told you when I walked the Pattern,” she said, “that Amber must be destroyed. What I want is to have my rightful part in it.”

“You will have my old cell,” I said. “No, the one next to it. Guards!”

“Corwin, it is all right,” Benedict said, getting to his feet. “It is not as bad as it sounds. She can explain everything.”

“Then let her start now.”

“No. In private, just family.”

I motioned back the guards who had come at my call.

“Very well. Let us adjourn to one of the rooms up the hall.”

He nodded, and Dara took hold of his left arm. Random, Gerard, Martin and I followed them out. I looked back once to the empty place where my dream had come true. Such is the stuff.

I rode up over the crest of Kolvir and dismounted when I came to my tomb. I went inside and opened the casket. It was empty. Good. I was beginning to wonder. I had half expected to see myself laid out before me, evidence that despite signs and intuitions I had somehow wandered into the wrong Shadow.

I went back outside and rubbed Star’s nose. The sun was shining and the breeze was chill. I had a sudden desire to go to sea. I seated myself on the bench instead and fumbled with my pipe.

We had talked. Seated with her legs beneath her on the brown sofa, Dara had smiled and repeated the story of her descent from Benedict and Lintra, the hellmaid, growing up in and about the Courts of Chaos, a grossly non Euclidean realm where time itself presented strange distribution problems.

“The things you told me when we met were lies,” I said. “Why should I believe you now?”

She had smiled and regarded her fingernails.

“I had to lie to you then,” she explained, “to get what I wanted from you.”

“That being . . . ?”

“Knowledge, of the family, the Pattern, the Trumps, of Amber. To gain your trust. To have your child.”

“The truth would not have served as well?”

“Hardly. I come from the enemy. My reasons for wanting these things were not the sort of which you would approve.”

“Your swordplay . . . ? You told me then that Benedict had trained you.”

She smiled again and her eyes glowed dark fires.

“I learned from the great Duke Borel himself, a High Lord of Chaos.”

“. . . and your appearance,” I said. “It was altered on a number of occasions when I saw you walk the Pattern. How? Also, why?”

“All whose origins involve Chaos are shapeshifters,” she replied.

I thought of Dworkin’s performance the night he had impersonated me. Benedict nodded.

“Dad fooled us with his Ganelon disguise.”

“Oberon is a son of Chaos,” Dara said, “a rebel son of a rebel father. But the power is still there.”

“Then why is it we cannot do it?” Random asked.

She shrugged.

“Have you ever tried? Perhaps you can. On the other hand, it may have died out with your generation. I do not know. As to myself, however, I have certain favored shapes to which I revert in times of stress. I grew up where this was the rule, where the other shape was actually sometimes dominant. It is still a reflex with me. This is what you witnessed-that day.”

“Dara,” I said, “Why did you want the things that you said you wanted-knowledge of the family, the Pattern, the Trumps, Amber? And a son?”

“All right.” She sighed. “All right. You are by now aware of Brand’s plans-the destruction and rebuilding of Amber. . . ?”

“Yes.”

“This involved our consent and co-operation.”

“Including the murder of Martin?” Random asked.

“No,” she said. “We did not know who he intended to use as the-agent.”

“Would it have stopped you had you known?”

“You are asking a hypothetical question,” she said. “Answer it yourself. I am glad that Martin is still alive. That is all that I can say about it.”

“All right,” Random said. “What about Brand?”

“He was able to contact our leaders by methods he had learned from Dworkin. He had ambitions. He needed knowledge, power. He offered a deal.”

“What sort of knowledge?”

“For one thing, he did not know how to destroy the Pattern-“

“Then you were responsible for what he did,” Random said.

“If you choose to look at it that way.”

“I do.”

She shrugged, looked at me.

“Do you want to hear this story?”

“Go ahead.”

I glanced at Random and he nodded.

“Brand was given what he wanted,” she said, “but he was not trusted. It was feared that once he possessed the power to shape the world as he would, he would not stop with ruling over a revised Amber. He would attempt to extend his dominion over Chaos as well. A weakened Amber was what was desired, so that Chaos would be stronger than it now is-the striking of a new balance, giving to us more of the shadowlands that lie between our realms. It was realized long ago that the two kingdoms can never be merged, or one destroyed, without also disrupting all the processes that lie in flux between us. Total stasis or complete chaos would be the result. Yet, though it was seen what Brand had in mind, our leaders came to terms with him. It was the best opportunity to present itself in ages. It had to be seized. It was felt that Brand could be dealt with, and finally replaced, when the time came.”

“So you were also planning a double-cross,” Random said.

“Not if he kept his word. But then, we knew that he would not. So we provided for the move against him.”

“How?”

“He would be allowed to accomplish his end and then be destroyed. He would be succeeded by a member of the royal family of Amber who was also of the first family of the Courts, one who had been raised among us and trained for the position. Merlin even traces his connection with Amber on both sides, through my forebear Benedict and directly from yourself-the two most favored claimants to your throne.”

“You are of the royal house of Chaos?”

She smiled.

I rose. Strode away. Stared at the ashes on the grate.

“I find it somewhat distressing to have been involved in a calculated breeding project,” I said, at length. “But be that as it may, and accepting everything you have said as true-for the moment-why are you telling us all of these things now?”

“Because,” she said, “I fear that the lords of my realm would go as far for their vision as Brand would for his. Farther, perhaps. That balance I spoke of. Few seem to appreciate what a delicate thing it is. I have traveled in the shadowlands near to Amber, and I have walked in Amber herself. I also have known the shadows that lie by Chaos side. I have met many people and seen many things. Then, when I encountered Martin and spoke with him, I began to feel that the changes I had been told would be for the better would not simply result in a revision of Amber more along the lines of my elders’ liking. They would, instead, turn Amber into a mere extension of the Courts, most of the shadows would boil away to join with Chaos. Amber would become an island. Some of my seniors who still smart at Dworkin’s having created Amber in the first place are really seeking a return to the days before this happened. Total Chaos, from which all things arose. I see the present condition as superior and I wish to preserve it. My desire is that neither side emerge victorious in any conflict.”

I turned in time to see Benedict shaking his head.

“Then you are on neither side,” he stated.

“I like to think that I am on both.”

“Martin,” I said, “are you in this with her?”

He nodded.

Random laughed.

“The two of you? Against both Amber and the Courts of Chaos? What do you hope to achieve? How do you plan to further this notion of balance?”

“We are not alone,” she said, “and the plan is not ours.”

Her fingers dipped into her pocket. Something glittered when she withdrew them. She turned it in the light. It was our father’s signet ring that she held.

“Where did you get that?” Random asked.

“Where else?”

Benedict stepped toward her and held out his hand. She gave it to him. He scrutinized it.

“It is his,” he said. “It has the little markings on the back that I’ve seen before. Why do you have it?”

“First, to convince you that I am acting properly When I convey his orders,” she said.

“How is it that you even know him?” I asked.

“I met him during his-difficulties-some time back,” she told us. “In fact, you might say that I helped to deliver him from them. This was after I had met Martin, and I was inclined to be more sympathetic toward Amber. But then, your father is also a charming and persuasive man. I decided that I could not simply stand by and see him remain prisoner to my kin.”

“Do you know how he was captured in the first place?”

She shook her head.

“I only know that Brand effected his presence in a shadow far enough from Amber that he could be taken there. I believe it involved a fake quest for a nonexistent magical tool which might heal the Pattern. He realizes now that only the Jewel can do it.”

“Your helping him to get away . . . How did this affect your relations with your own people?”

“Not too damned well,” she said. “I am temporarily without a home.”

“And you want one here?”

She smiled again.

“It depends on how things turn out. If my people have their way, I would as soon go back-or stay with what shadows remain.”

I withdrew a Trump, glanced at it.

“What of Merlin? Where is he now?”

“They have him,” she said. “I fear he may be their man now. He knows his parentage, but they have had charge of his education for a long while. I do not know whether he could be gotten away.”

I raised the Trump, stared at it.

“No good,” she said. “It will not function between here and there.”

I recalled how difficult Trump communication had been when I had been to the fringes of that place. I tried anyway.
 
The card grew cold in my hand and I reached out. There was the faintest flicker of a responding presence. I tried harder.