Blood of Amber

Chapter 1

I threw the hilt away after the blade had shattered. The weapon had done me no good against that blue sea of a wall in what I had taken to be its thinnest section. A few small chips of stone lay at my feet. I picked them up and rubbed them together. This was not the way out for me. The only way out seemed to be the way I had come in, and it wasn’t working.

I walked back to my quarters, meaning that section of the caves where I had cast my sleeping bag. I sat down on the bag, a heavy brown one, uncorked a wine bottle and took a drink. I had worked up a sweat hacking away at the wall.

Frakir stirred upon my wrist then, unwound herself partway and slithered into the palm of my left hand, to coil around the two blue chips I still held. She knotted herself about them, then dropped to hang and swing pendulum-like. I put the bottle aside and watched. The arc of her swing paralleled the lengthwise direction of the tunnel I now called home. The swinging continued for perhaps a full minute. Then she withdrew upward, halting when she came to the back of my hand. She released the chips at the base of my third finger and returned to her normal hidden position about my wrist.

I stared. I raised the flickering oil lamp and studied the stones. Their color…

Yes.

Seen against skin, they were similar in appearance to the stone in that ring of Luke’s I had picked up at the New Line Motel some time ago. Coincidence? Or was there a connection? What had my strangling cord been trying to tell me? And where had I seen another such stone?

Luke’s key ring. He’d a blue stone on it, mounted on a piece of metal… And where might I have seen another?

The caverns in which I was imprisoned had the power to block the Trumps and my Logrus magic. If Luke carried stones from these walls about with him, there was probably a special reason. What other properties might they possess?

I tried for perhaps an hour to learn something concerning their nature, but they resisted my Logrus probes. Finally, disgusted, I pocketed them, ate some bread and cheese and took another swallow of wine.

Then I rose and made the rounds once more, inspecting my traps. I’d been a prisoner in this place for what seemed at least a month now. I had paced all these tunnels, corridors, grottoes, seeking an exit. None of them proved a way out. There were times when I had run manic through them and bloodied my knuckles upon their cold sides. There were times when I had moved slowly, seeking after cracks and fault lines. I had tried on several occasions to dislodge the boulder that barred the entranceway — to no avail. It was wedged in place, and I couldn’t budge it. It seemed that I was in for the duration.

My traps…

They were all as they had been the last time I had checked — deadfalls, boulders nature had left lying about in typical careless fashion, propped high and ready now to be released from their wedging when someone tripped any of the shadow-masked lengths of packing cord I’d removed from crates in the storeroom.

Someone? Luke, of course. Who else? He was the one who’d imprisoned me. And if he returned — no, when he returned — the booby traps would be waiting. He was armed. He would have me at a disadvantage from the overhead position of the entrance if I merely waited for him below. No way. I would not be there. I would make him come in after me — and then —

Vaguely troubled, I returned to my quarters.

Hands behind my head, I lay there and reviewed my plans. The deadfalls could kill a man, and I did not want Luke dead. This had nothing to do with sentiment, though I had thought of Luke as a good friend until fairly recently — up until the time I learned that he had killed my Uncle.

Caine and seemed intent upon destroying the rest of my relatives in Amber as well. This was because Caine had killed Luke’s father — my Uncle Brand — a man whom any of the others would gladly have done in also. Yes, Luke — or Rinaldo, as I now knew him — was my cousin, and he had a reason for engaging in one of our in-family vendettas. Still, going after everybody struck me as a bit intemperate.

But neither consanguinity nor sentiment bade me dismantle my traps. I wanted him alive because there were too many things about the entire situation that I did not understand and might never understand were he to perish without telling me.

Jasra… the Trumps of Doom… the means by which I had been tracked so easily through Shadow… the entire story of Luke’s relationship with the painter and mad occultist Victor Melman… anything he knew about Julia and her death…

I began again. I dismantled the deadfalls. The new plan was a simple one, and it drew upon something of which I believed Luke had no knowledge.

I moved my sleeping bag to a new position, in the tunnel just outside the chamber whose roof held the blocked entranceway. I shifted some of the food stores there, also. I was determined to remain in its vicinity for as much of the time as possible.

The new trap was a very basic thing: direct and just about unavoidable. Once I’d set it there was nothing to do but wait. Wait, and remember. And plan. I had to warn the others. I had to do something about my Ghostwheel. I needed to find out what Meg Devlin knew. I needed to… lots of things.

I waited. I thought of Shadow-storms, dreams, strange Trumps and the Lady in the Lake. After a long spell of drifting, my life had become very crowded in a matter of days. Then this long spell of doing nothing. My only consolation was that this time line probably outpaced most of the others that were important to me right now. My month here might only be a day back in Amber, or even less. If I could deliver myself from this place soon, the trails I wished to follow might still be relatively fresh.

Later, I put out the lamp and went to sleep. Sufficient light filtered through the crystal lenses of my prison, brightening and waning, for me to distinguish day from night in the outside world, and I kept my small series of routines in accord with its rhythms.

During the next three days I read through Melman’s diary again — a thing heavy in allusion and low in useful information — and just about succeeded in convincing myself that the Hooded One, as he referred to his visitor and teacher, had probably been Luke. Except for a few references to androgyny, which puzzled me. References to the sacrifice of the Son of Chaos near the end of the volume were something I could take personally, in light of my present knowledge of Melman’s having been set up to destroy me. But if Luke had done it, how to explain his ambiguous behavior on the mountain in New Mexico, when he had advised me to destroy the Trumps of Doom and had driven me away almost as if to protect me from something? And then he had admitted to several of the earlier attempts on my life, but denied the later ones. No reason to do that if he were indeed responsible for all of them. What else might be involved? Who else? And how? There were obviously missing pieces to the puzzle, but I felt as if they were minor, as if the smallest bit of new information and the slightest jiggling of the pattern would suddenly cause everything to fall into place, with the emerging picture to be something I should have seen all along.

I might have guessed that the visitation would be by night. I might have, but I didn’t. Had it occurred to me, I would have changed my sleep cycle and been awake and alert. Even though I felt fairly confident of my trap’s efficiency, every little edge is important in truly crucial matters.

I was deeply asleep, and the grating of rock upon rock was a distant thing. I stirred but slowly as the sounds continued, and it was several seconds more before the proper circuits closed and I realized what was occurring. Then I sat up, my mind still dusty, and moved into a crouch beside the wall of the chamber nearest the entranceway, knuckling my eyes, brushing back my hair, seeking lost alertness on sleep’s receding shore.

The first sounds I heard must have accompanied the removal of the wedges, which apparently had entailed some rocking or tipping of the boulder. The continuing sounds were muffled, echoless — external.

So I ventured a quick glance into the chamber. There was no opened adit, showing stars. The overhead vibrations continued. The rocking sounds were now succeeded by a steady crunching, grating noise. A ball of light with a diffuse halo shone through the translucent stone of the chamber’s roof. A lantern, I guessed. Too steady to be a torch. And a torch would be impractical under the circumstances.

A crescent of sky appeared, holding two stars near its nether horn. It widened, and I heard the heavy breathing and grunts of what I took to be two men.

My extremities tingled as I felt additional adrenaline doing its biological trick within me. I hadn’t counted on Luke’s bringing anyone with him. My foolproof plan might not be proof against this — meaning I was the fool.

The boulder rolled more quickly now, and there was not even time for profanity as my mind raced, focused upon a course of action and assumed its appropriate stance.

I summoned the image of the Logrus and it took shape before me. I rose to my feet, still leaning against the wall, and began moving my arms to correspond with the random-seeming movements of two of the eidolon’s limbs. By the time I achieved a satisfactory conjunction, the sounds from overhead had ceased.

The opening was now clear. Moments later the light was raised and moved toward it.

I stepped into the chamber and extended my hands. As the men, short and dark, came into view above me my original plan was canceled completely. They both carried unsheathed poignards in their right hands. Neither of them was Luke.

I reached out with my Logrus gauntlets and took hold of each of them by the throat. I squeezed until they collapsed within my grip. I squeezed a little longer, then released them.

As they dropped from sight I hooked the high lip of the entrance with my glowing lines of force and drew myself upward with them. As I reached the opening I paused to recover Frakir, who was coiled about its underside. That had been my trap. Luke, or anyone else, would have been passing through a noose to enter, a noose ready to tighten instantly upon anything moving through.

Now, though…

A trail of fire ran down the slope to my right. The fallen lantern had shattered, its spilled fuel become a burning riwlet. The men I had choked lay sprawled at either hand. The boulder that had blocked this opening rested to the left and somewhat to the rear of me. I remained where I was — head and shoulders above the opening, resting on my elbows — with the image of the Logrus dancing between my eyes, the warm tingling of its power lines yet a part of my arms, Frakir moving from my left shoulder down to my biceps.

It had been almost too easy. I couldn’t see Luke trusting a couple of lackeys to question, kill or transport me — whichever of these had been their mission. That is why I had not emerged fully, but scanned the nighted environs from my vantage of relative security.

Prudent, for a change. For someone else shared the night with me. It was sufficiently dark, even with the dwindling fire trail, that my ordinary vision did not serve to furnish me this intelligence. But when I summon the Logrus, the mental set that grants me vision of its image permits me to view other nonphysical manifestations as well.

So it was that I detected such a construct beneath a tree to my left, amid shadows where I would not have seen the human figure before which it hovered. And a strange pattern at that, reminiscent of Amber’s own; it turned like a slow pinwheel, extending tendrils of smoke-shot yellow light. These drifted toward me across the night and I watched, fascinated, knowing already what I would do when the moment came.

There were four big ones, and they came on slowly, probing. When they were within several yards of me they halted, gained slack, then struck like cobras. My hands were together and slightly crossed, Logrus limbs extended. I separated them with a single sweeping motion, tilting them slightly forward as I did so. They struck the yellow tendrils, casting them away to be thrown back upon their pattern. I felt a tingling sensation in my forearms as this occurred. Then, using my right-hand extension as if it were a blade, I struck at the now-wavering pattern as if it were a shield. I heard a short sharp cry as that image grew dim, and I struck again quickly, hauled myself out of my hole and started down the slope, my arm aching.

The image — whatever it had been — faded and was gone. By then, however, I could make out more clearly the figure leaning against the tree trunk. It appeared to be that of a woman, though I could not distinguish her features because of some small object she had raised and now held before her near to eye level. Fearing that it was a weapon, I struck at it with a Logrus extension, hoping to knock it from her hand.

I stumbled then, for there was a recoil which jolted my arm with considerable force. It would seem to have been a potent sorcerous object which I had struck. At least I had the pleasure of seeing the lady sway also. She uttered a short cry, too, but she hung on to the object.

A moment later a faint polychrome shimmering began about her form and I realized what the thing was. I had just directed the force of the Logrus against a Trump. I had to reach her now, if only to find out who she was.

But as I rushed ahead I realized that I could not get to her in time. Unless…

I plucked Frakir from my shoulder and past her along the line of the Logrus force, manipulating her in the proper direction and issuing my commands as she flew.

From my new angle of view and by the faint rainbow halo that now surrounded her I finally saw the lady’s face. It was Jasra, who had damn near killed me with a bite back in Melman’s apartment. In a moment she would be gone, taking with her my chance of obtaining some answers on which my life might depend.

“Jasra!” I cried, trying to break her concentration.

It didn’t work, but Frakir did. My strangling cord, glowing silver now, caught her about the throat, whipping out with a free end to lash tightly about the branch that hung near, to Jasra’s left.

The lady began to fade, apparently not realizing that it was too late. She couldn’t trump out without decapitating herself.

She learned it quickly. I heard her gurgling cry as she stepped back, grew solid, lost her halo, dropped her Trump and clawed at the cord encircling her throat.

I came up beside her, to lay my hand upon Frakir, who uncoiled one end from the tree limb and rewound it about my wrist.

“Good evening, Jasra,” I said, jerking her head back. “Try the poison bite again and you’ll need a neck brace. You understand?”

She tried to talk but couldn’t. She nodded.

“I’m going to loosen my cord a bit,” I said, “so you can answer my questions.”

I eased Frakir’s grip upon her throat. She began coughing, then, and gave me a look that would have turned sand to glass. Her magical construct had faded completely, so I let the Logrus slip away also.

“Why are you after me?” I asked. “What am I to you?”

“Son of perdition!” she said, and she tried to spit at me but her mouth must have been too dry.

I jerked lightly on Frakir and she coughed again. “Wrong answer,” I said. “Try again.”

But she smiled then, her gaze shifting to a point beyond me. I kept the slack out of Frakir and chanced a glance. The air was beginning to shimmer, behind me and to the right, in obvious preparation to someone’s trumping in.

I did not feel ready to take on an additional threat at this time, and so I dipped my free hand into my pocket and withdrew a handful of my own Trumps. Flora’s was on top. Fine. She’d do.

I pushed my mind toward her, through the feeble light, beyond the face of the card. I felt her distracted attention, followed by a sudden alertness. Then, Yes…?

“Bring me through! Hurry!” I said.

“Is it an emergency?” she asked.

“You’d better believe it,” I told her.

“Uh — okay. Come on.”

I had an image of her in bed. It grew clearer, clearer. She extended her hand.

I reached out and took it. I moved forward just as I heard Luke’s voice ring out, crying, “Stop!”

I continued on through, dragging Jasra after me. She tried to draw back and succeeded in halting me as I stumbled against the side of the bed. It was then I noted the dark-haired, bearded man regarding me with wide eyes from the bed’s farther side.

“Who —? What —?” he began as I smiled bleakly and regained my balance.

Luke’s shadowy form came into view beyond my prisoner. He reached forward and seized Jasra’s arm, drawing her back away from me. She made a gurgling noise as the movement drew Frakir more tightly about her throat.

Damn! What now?

Flora rose suddenly, her face contorted, the scented lavender sheet falling away as she drove a fist forward with surprising speed.

“You bitch!” she cried. “Remember me?”

The blow fell upon Jasra’s jaw, and I barely managed to free Frakir in time to keep from being dragged backward with her into Luke’s waiting arms.

Both of them faded, and the shimmer was gone.

The dark-haired guy in the meantime had scrambled out of the bed and was snatching up articles of clothing. Once he had them all in his grasp he did not bother to don any, but simply held them in front of him and backed quickly toward the door.

“Ron! Where are you going?” Flora asked.

“Away!” he answered, and he opened the door and passed through it.

“Hey! Wait!”

“No way!” came the reply from the next room.

“Damn!” she said, glaring at me. “You have a way of messing up a person’s life.” Then, “Ron! What about dinner?” she called.

“I have to see my analyst,” came his voice, followed shortly by the slamming of another door.

“I hope you realize what a beautiful thing you just destroyed,” Flora told me.

I sighed. “When did you meet him?” I asked.

She frowned. “Well, yesterday,” she replied. “Go ahead and smirk. These things are not always a mere function of time. I could tell right away that it was going to be something special. Trust someone crass like you or your father to cheapen a beautiful —”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Thanks for pulling me through. Of course he’ll be back. We just scared the hell out of him. But how could he fail to return once he’s known you?”

She smiled. “Yes, you are like Corwin,” she said. “Crass, but perceptive.”

She rose and crossed to the closet, took out a lavender robe and donned it.

“What,” she said, belting it about her, “was that all about?”

“It’s a long story —”

“Then I’d better hear it over lunch. Are you hungry?” she asked.

I grinned.

“It figures. Come on.”

She led me out through a French Provincial living room and into a large country kitchen full of tiles and copper. I offered to help her, but she pointed at a chair beside the table and told me to sit.

As she was removing numerous goodies from the refrigerator, I said, “First —”

“Yes?”

“Where are we?”

“San Francisco,” she replied.

“Why have you set up housekeeping here?”

“After I finished that business of Random’s I decided to stay on. The town looked good to me again.”

I snapped my fingers. I’d forgotten she’d been sent to determine the ownership of the warehouse where Victor Melman had had his apartment and studio, and where Brutus Storage had a supply of ammo that would Ere in Amber.

“So who owned the warehouse?” I asked.

“Brutus Storage,” she replied. “Melman rented from them.”

“And who owns Brutes Storage?”

“J. B. Rand, Inc.”

“Address?”

“An office in Sausalito. It was vacated a couple of months ago.”

“Did the people who owned the place have a home address for the renter?”

“Just a post office box. It’s been abandoned too.”

I nodded. “I’d a feeling it would be something like that,” I said. “Now tell me about Jasra. Obviously you know the lady.”

She sniffed. “No lady,” she said. “A royal whore is what she was when I knew her.”

“Where?”

“In Kashfa.”

“Where’s that?”

“An interesting little shadow kingdom, a bit over the edge of the Golden Circle of those with which Amber has commerce. Shabby barbaric splendor and all that. It’s kind of a cultural backwater.”

“How is it you know it at all, then?”

She paused a moment in stirring something in a bowl.

“Oh, I used to keep company with a Kashfan nobleman I’d met in a wood one day. He was out hawking and I happened to have twisted my ankle —”

“Uh,” I interjected, lest we be diverted by details. “And Jasra?”

“She was consort to the old king Menillan. Had him wrapped around her finger.”

“What have you got against her?”

“She stole Jasrick while I was out of town.”

“Jasrick?”

“My nobleman. Earl of Kronklef.”

“What did His Highness Menillan think of these goings-on?”

“He never knew. He was on his deathbed at the time. Succumbed shortly thereafter. In fact, that’s why she really wanted Jasrick. He was chief of the palace guard and his brother was a general. She used them to pull off a coup when Menillan expired. Last I heard, she was queen in Kashfa and she’d ditched Jasrick. Served him proper, I’d say. I think he had his eye on the throne, but she didn’t care to share it. She had him and his brother executed for treason of one sort or another. He was really a handsome fellow… Not too bright, though.”

“Do the people of Kashfa have any — uh — unusual physical endowments?” I asked.

She smiled. “Well, Jasrick was one hell of a fellow. But I wouldn’t use the word unusual’ to —”

“No, no,” I interrupted. “What I meant was some sort of anomaly of the mouth — retractable fangs or a sting or something of that sort.”

“Un-uh,” she said, and I could not tell whether her heightened coloring came from the heat of the stove. “Nothing like that. They’re built along standard lines. Why do you ask?”

“When I told you my story back in Amber I omitted the part where Jasra bit me, and I was barely able to trump out because of some sort of poison she seemed to have injected. It left me numb, paralyzed and very weak for a long while.”

She shook her head.

“Kashfans can’t do anything like that. But then, of course, Jasra is not a Kashfan.”

“Oh? Where’s she from?”

“I don’t know. But she’s a foreigner. Some say a slaver brought her in from a distant land. Others say she just wandered in herself one day and caught Menillan’s eye. It was rumored she was a sorceress. I don’t know.”

“I do. That rumor is right.”

“Really? Perhaps that’s how she got Jasrick.”

I shrugged. “How long ago was your — experience — with her?”

“Thirty or forty years, I’d guess.”

“And she is still queen in Kashfa?”

“I don’t know. It’s been a long time since I’ve been back that way.”

“Is Amber on bad terms with Kashfa?”

She shook her head. “No special terms at all, really. As I said, they’re a bit out of the way. Not as accessible as a lot of other places, with nothing greatly desirable for trade.”

“No real reason then for her to hate us?”

“No more than for hating anyone else.”

Some delightful cooking odors began to fill the room. As I sat there sniffing them and thinking of the long, hot shower I would head for after lunch, Flora said what I had somehow known she would say.

“That man who dragged Jasra back… He looked familiar. Who was he?”

“He was the one I told you about back in Amber,” I replied. “Luke. I’m curious whether he reminds you of anyone.”

“He seems to,” she said, after a pause. “But I can’t say just who.”

As her back was to me I said, “If you’re holding anything that might break or spill if you drop it, please put it down.”

I heard something set to rest on the countertop. Then she turned, a puzzled expression on her face.

“Yes?”

“His real name is Rinaldo, and he’s Brand’s son,” I told her. “I was his prisoner for over a month in another shadow. I just now escaped.”

“Oh, my,” she whispered. Then, “What does he want?”

“Revenge,” I answered.

“Against anyone in particular?”

“No. All of us. But Caine, of course, was first.”

“I see.”

“Please don’t burn anything,” I said. “I’ve been looking forward to a good meal for a long time.”

She nodded and turned away. After a while she said, “You knew him for a pretty long time. What’s he like?”

“He always seemed to be a fairly nice guy. If he’s crazy, like his dad, he hid it well.”

She uncorked a wine bottle, poured two glasses and brought them over. Then she began serving the meal.

After a few bites she paused with her fork half raised and stared at nothing in particular.

“Who’d have thought the son of a bitch would reproduce?” she remarked.

“Fiona, I think,” I told her. “The night before Caine’s funeral she asked me whether I had a photo of Luke. When I showed her one I could tell that something was bothering her, but she wouldn’t say what.”

“And the next day she and Bleys were gone,” Flora said. “Yes. Now I think of it, he does look somewhat the way Brand did when he was very young — so long ago. Luke seems bigger and heavier, but there is a resemblance.”

She resumed eating.

“By the way, this is very good,” I said.

“Oh, thanks.” She sighed then. “That means I have to wait till you’re finished eating to hear the whole story.”

I nodded, because my mouth was full. Let the empire totter. I was starved.