Knight of Shadows

Chapter 3

A patch of light I had taken to be a stray sunbeam drifted from its position on the floor to a spot beside my coffee cup. It was ring-shaped, and I decided not to remark upon it since neither of the others seemed to take note of it.

I reached after Coral and found nothing. I felt Jasra and Mandor reaching also, and I tried again, joining forces with them. Harder.

Something? Something… I recalled wondering what Vialle felt when she used the Trumps. It had to be something other than the visual cues with which the rest of us were familiar. It might be something like this.

Something. What I felt was a sense of Coral’s presence. I regarded her form upon the card, but it would not come alive. The card itself had grown perceptibly cooler, but it was not the same ice-edged chill I normally felt on achieving communication with one of the others. I tried harder. I felt Mandor and Jasra increasing their efforts also.

Then Coral’s image on the card faded, but nothing came to replace it. I sensed her presence, however, as I regarded the void. The feeling came closest to that of attempting to make contact with someone who was asleep.

“I cannot tell whether it’s simply a difficult place to reach,” Mandor began, “or —”

“I believe she is under a spell,” Jasra announced.

“That could account for a part of it,” Mandor said.

“But only part,” came a soft, familiar voice from near at hand. “There are awesome powers holding her, Dad. I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

“The Ghostwheel is right,” Mandor said. “I’m beginning to feel it.”

“Yes,” Jasra began, “there is something…”

And suddenly the veil was pierced, and I beheld the slumped form of Coral, apparently unconscious, lying upon a dark surface in a very dark place, the only illumination coming from what seemed a circle of fire drawn about her. She couldn’t have brought me through if she wanted to, and —

“Ghost, can you take me to her?” I asked.

Her image faded before he could reply, and I felt a cold draft. It was several seconds before I realized that it seemed to be blowing upon me from the now-icy card.

“I don’t think so, I wouldn’t want to, and it may be that there is no need,” he answered. “The force that holds her has become aware of your interest and even now is reaching toward you. Is there some way you can turn off that Trump?”

I passed my hand across its face, which is usually sufficient. Nothing happened. The cold breeze even seemed to increase in intensity. I repeated the gesture along with a mental order. I began to feel whatever it was, focusing upon me.

Then the Sign of the Logrus fell upon the Trump, and the card was torn from my hand as I was cast backward, striking my shoulder against the edge of the door. Mandor lurched to his right as this occurred, catching hold of the table to steady himself. In my Logrus vision I had seen wild lines of light flash outward from the card before it fell away.

“Did that do the trick?” I called out.

“It broke the connection,” Ghost replied.

“Thanks, Mandor,” I said.

“But the power that was reaching for you through the Trump knows where you are now,” Ghost said.

“What makes you privy to its awareness?” I inquired.

“It is a surmise, based upon the fact that it’s still reaching for you. It is coming the long way roundacross space though. It could take as long as a quarter of a minute before it reaches you.”

“Your use of the pronoun is a little indefinite,” Jasra said. “Is it just Merlin that it wants? Or is it coming for all of us?”

“Uncertain. Merlin is the focus. I’ve no idea what it will do to you.”

I lurched forward during this exchange and retrieved Coral’s Trump.

“Can you protect us?” she asked.

“I’ve already begun transferring Merlin to a distant place. Shall I do this for you also?”

As I looked up from pocketing the Trump, I noted that the chamber had become something less than substantial — translucent, as if everything were made of colored glass.

“Please,” the cathedral-window form of Jasra said softly.

“Yes,” came my fading brother’s faint echo.

Then I was passed through a fiery hoop into a place of darkness. I stumbled against a stone wall, felt my way along it. A quarter turn, a lighter area before me dotted with bright points…

“Ghost?” I asked.

No answer.

“I don’t appreciate these interrupted conversations,” I continued.

I moved forward until I came to what was obviously a cave mouth. A clear night sky hung before me, and when I stepped outside a cold wind rubbed up against me. I retreated several paces, shivering.

I had no idea where I might be. Not that it really mattered if it brought me a breathing spell. I reached through the Logrus Sign for a great distance before I located a heavy blanket. Wrapping it about myself, I sank to a seated position upon the cave’s floor. Then I reached again. It was easier to find a stack of wood and no trick at all to ignite a portion of it. I’d also been looking forward to one more cup of coffee. I wondered…

Why not? I reached again, and the bright circle rolled into view before me.

“Dad! Please stop!” came the offended voice. “I’ve gone to a lot of trouble to tuck you away in this obscure corner of Shadow. Too many sendings, though, and you’ll call attention to yourself.”

“Come on!” I said. “All I want is a cup of coffee.”

“I’ll get one for you. Just don’t use your own powers for a while.”

“Why won’t your action draw just as much attention?”

“I’m using a roundabout route. There!”

A steaming mug of some dark stoneware stood on the floor of the cave near my right hand.

“Thanks,” I said, taking it up and sniffing it. “What did you do with Jasra and Mandor?”

“I sent each of you off in a different direction amidst a horde of fake images flitting hither and yon. All you have to do now is lie low for a while. Let its attention subside.”

“Whose attention? What’s attention?”

“The power that has Coral. We don’t want it to find us.”

“Why not? I seem to recall your wondering earlier whether you were a god. What’s for you to fear?”

“The real thing. It seems to be stronger than I am. On the other hand, I seem to be faster.”

“That’s something, anyway.”

“Get a good night’s sleep. I’ll let you know is the morning whether it’s still hunting you.”

“Maybe I’ll find out for myself.”

“Don’t go manifesting unless it’s a matter of life or death.”

“That wasn’t what I meant. Supposing it finds me?”

“Do whatever seems appropriate.”

“Why do I have a feeling you’re keeping things from me?”

“I guess you’re just suspicious by nature, Dad. It seems to run in your family. I’ve got to go now.”

“Where?” I asked.

“Check on the others. Run a few errands. See to my personal development. Check my experiments. Things like that. Bye.”

“What about Coral?”

But the circle of light which had hovered before me spun from brightness to dimness and vanished. An unarguable end to the conversation. Ghost was getting more and more like the rest of us — sneaky and misleading.

I sipped the coffee. Not as good as Mandor’s, but acceptable. I began wondering where Jasra and Mandor had been sent. I decided against trying to reach them. In fact, it might not be a bad idea, I decided, to fortify my own position against magical intrusion.

I resummoned the Sign of the Logrus, which I had let slip while Ghost was transporting me. I used it to set wards at the cave mouth and about my situation within. Then I released it and took another sip. As I did, I realized that this coffee could not possibly keep me awake. I was coming off a nervous jag, and the weight of all my activities was suddenly heavy upon me. Two more sips, and I could hardly hold the cup. Another, and I noticed that each time I blinked my eyelids were closing a lot more easily than they opened.

I set the cup aside, drew my blanket more tightly about me, and found a relatively comfortable position on the stone floor, having become something of an expert on the activity back in the crystal cave. The flickering flames mustered shadow armies behind my eyelids. The fire popped like a clash of arms; the air smelled of pitch.

I went away. Sleep is perhaps the only among life’s great pleasures which need not be of short duration. It filled me, and I drifted. How far and for how long, I cannot say.

Nor can I say what it was that roused me. I know only that I was somewhere else and the next moment I had returned. My position had changed slightly, my toes were cold, and I felt that I was no longer alone. I kept my eyes closed, and did not alter my breathing pattern. It could be that Ghost had simply decided to look in on me. It could also be that something was testing my wards.

I raised my eyelids but the smallest distance, peering outward and upward through a screen of eyelashes. A small misshaped figure stood outside the cave mouth, the fire’s remaining glow faintly illuminating his strangely familiar face. There was something of myself in those features and something of my father.

“Merlin,” he said softly. “Come awake now. You’ve places to go and things to do.”

I opened my eyes wide and stared. He fitted a certain description… Frakir throbbed, and I stroked her still.

“Dworkin…?” I said.

He chuckled.

“You’ve named me,” he replied.

He paced, from one side of the cave mouth to the other, occasionally pausing to extend a hand partway toward me. Each time he hesitated and drew it back.

“What is it?” I asked. “What’s the matter? Why are you here?”

“I’ve come to fetch you back to the journey you abandoned.”

“And what journey might that be?”

“Your search for the lady somewhere astray who walked the Pattern t’other day.”

“Coral? You know where she is?”

He raised his hand, lowered it, gnashed his teeth.

“Coral? Is that her name? Let me in. We must discuss her.”

“We seem to be talking just fine the way we are.”

“Have you no respect for an ancestor?”

“I do. But I also have a shapeshifting brother who’d like to mount my head and hang it on the wall of his den. And he might just be able to do it real quick if I give him half a chance.” I sat up and rubbed my eyes, my wits finishing the job of reassembling themselves. “So where’s Coral?”

“Come. I will show you the way,” he said, reaching forward. This time his hand passed my ward and was immediately outlined in fire. He did not seem to notice. His eyes were a pair of dark stars, drawing me to my feet, pulling me toward him. His hand began to melt. The flesh ran and dripped away like wax. There were no bones within, but rather an odd geometry — as if someone had sketched a hand quickly in a three-dimensional medium, then molded some fleshlike cover for it. “Take my hand.”

I found myself raising my hand against my will, reaching toward the fingerlike curves, the swirls of the knuckles. He chuckled again. I could feel the force that drew me. I wondered what would happen if I took hold of that strange hand in a special way.

So I summoned the Sign of the Logrus and sent it on ahead to do my handclasping for me.

This may not have been my best choice of actions. I was momentarily blinded by the brilliant, sizzling flash that followed. When my vision cleared, I saw that Dworkin was gone. A quick check showed that my wards still held. I perked up the fire with a short, simple spell, noted that my coffee cup was half full, and warmed its tepid contents with an abbreviated version of the same rendering. I reshrouded myself then, settled, and sipped. Analyze as I might, I couldn’t figure what had just happened.

I knew of no one who had seen the half mad demiurge in years, though according to my father’s tale, Dworkin’s mind should have been largely mended when Oberon repaired the Pattern. If it had really been Jurt, seeking to trick his way into my presence and finish me off, it was an odd choice of form for him to assume. Come to think of it, I wasn’t at all certain that Jurt even knew what Dworkin looked like. I debated the wisdom of calling for Ghostwheel to solicit an inhuman opinion on the matter. Before I could decide, however, the stars beyond the cave mouth were occulted by another figure, much larger than Dworkin’s — heroically proportioned even.

A single step brought it within range of the firelight, and I spilled coffee when I beheld that face. We had never met, but I had seen his likeness in many places in Castle Amber.

“I understand that Oberon died in redrawing the Pattern,” I said.

“Were you present at the time?” he asked.

“No,” I replied, “but coming as you do, on the heels of a rather bizarre apparition of Dworkin, you must excuse my suspicions as to your bona fides.”

“Oh, that was a fake you encountered. I’m the real thing.”

“What was it then that I saw?”

“It was the astral form of a practical joker — a sorcerer named Jolos from the fourth circle of Shadow.”

“Oh,” I responded. “And how am I to know you’re not the projection of someone named Jalas from the fifth?”

“I can recite the entire genealogy of the royal House of Amber.”

“So can any good scribe back home.”

“I’ll throw in the illegitimates.”

“How many were there, anyway?”

“Forty-seven, that I know of.”

“Aw, come on! How’d you manage?”

“Different time streams,” he said, smiling.

“If you survived the reconstruction of the Pattern, how come you didn’t return to Amber and continue your reign?” I asked. “Why’d you let Random get crowned and muddy the picture even further?”

He laughed.

“But I didn’t survive it,” he said. “I was destroyed in the process. I am a ghost, returned to solicit a living champion for Amber against the rising power of the Logrus.”

“Granted, arguendo, that you are what you say you are,” I replied, “you’re still in the wrong neighborhood, sir. I am an initiate of the Logrus and a son of Chaos.”

“You are also an initiate of the Pattern and a son of Amber,” the magnificent figure answered.

“True,” I said, “and all the more reason for me not to choose sides.”

“There comes a time when a man must choose,” he stared, “and that time is now. Which side are you on?”

“Even if I believed that you ate what you say, I do not feel obliged to make such a choice,” I said. “And there is a tradition in the Courts that Dworkin himself was an initiate of the Logrus. If that is true, I’m only following in the footsteps of a venerable ancestor.”

“But he renounced Chaos when he founded Amber.”

I shrugged.

“Good thing I haven’t founded anything,” I said. “If there is something specific that you want of me, tell me what it is, give me a good reason for doing it and maybe I’ll cooperate.”

He extended his hand.

“Come with me, and I will set your feet upon the new Pattern you must follow, in a game to be played out between the Powers.”

“I still don’t understand you, but I am certain that the real Oberon would not be stopped by these simple wards. You come to me and clasp my hand, and I will be glad to accompany you and take a look at whatever it is you want me to see.”

He drew himself up to an even greater height.

“You would test me?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“As a man, it would hardly have troubled me,” he stated. “But being formed out of this spiritual crap now, I don’t know. I’d rather not take the chance.”

“In that case, I must echo your sentiment with respect to your own proposal.”

“Grandson,” he said levelly, a ruddy light entering his eyes, “even dead, none of my spawn may address me so. I come for thee now in a less than friendly fashion. I come for thee now, and this journey shall I hale thee amid fires.”

I took a step backward as he advanced.

“No need to take it personally…” I began.

I shaded my eyes as he hit my wards, and the flashbulb effect began. Squinting through it, I saw something of a repetition of the flensing of Dworkin’s flesh by fire. Oberon became transparent in places; other places he melted. Within him, through him, as the outward semblance of the kind passed away, I saw the swirls and curves, the straits and channels — black-lined, geometrizing abstractly inside the general outline of a large and noble figure. Unlike Dworkin, however, the image did not fade. Having passed my wards, its movement slowed, it continued toward me nevertheless, reaching. Whatever its true nature, it was one of the most frightening things I had ever encountered. I continued to back away, raising my hands, and I called again upon the Logrus.

The Sign of the Logrus occurred between us. The abstract version of Oberon continued to reach, scribbled spirit hands encountering the writhing limbs of Chaos.

I was not reaching through the Logrus’s image to manipulate it against that apparition. I felt an unusual dread of the thing, even at our distance. What I did was more on the order of thrusting the Sign against the image of the king. Then I dived past them both, out the cave mouth, and I rolled, scrabbling for handholds and toeholds when I struck a slope, coming up hard against a boulder and hugging it as the cave erupted with the noisy and flash of an ammo dump that had taken a hit.

I lay there shuddering, my eyes squeezed shut, for perhaps half a minute. Any second, I felt, and something would be on my ass — unless, perhaps, I crouched perfectly still and tried hard to look like another rock…

The silence was profound, and when I opened my eyes, the light had vanished and the shape of the cave mouth was unaltered. I rose slowly to my feet, advanced even more slowly. The Sign of the Logrus had departed, and for reasons I did not understand I was loath to call it back. When I looked within the cave, there were no signs that anything at all had occurred, save for the fact that my wards were blown.

I stepped inside. The blanket still lay where it had fallen. I put out a hand and touched the wall. Cold stone. That blast must have taken place at some other level than the immediate. My small fire was still flickering feebly. I recalled it yet again to life. But the only thing I saw in its glow which I had not seen previously was my coffee cup, broken where it had fallen.

I let my hand remain upon the wall. I leaned. After a time, there came an uncontrollable tightening of my diaphragm. I began laughing. I am not sure why. The weight of everything which had transpired since April 30 was upon me. It just happened that laughter had edged out the alternative of beating my breast and howling.

I thought I knew who all the players were in this complex game. Luke and Jasra seemed to be on my side now, along with my brother Mandor, who’d always looked out for me. My mad brother Jurt wanted me dead, and he was now allied with my old lover Julia, who didn’t seem too kindly disposed toward me either. There was the ty’iga — an overprotective demon inhabiting the body of Coral’s sister, Nayda, whom I’d left sleeping in the midst of a spell back in Amber. There was the mercenary Dalt — who, now I thought of it, was also my uncle — who’d made off with Luke for points and purposes unknown after kicking Luke’s ass in Arden with two armies watching. He had nasty designs on Amber but lacked the military muscle to provide more than occasional guerrilla-style annoyance. And then there was Ghostwheel, my cybernetic Trump dealer and minor-league mechanical demigod, who seemed to have evolved from rash and manic to rational and paranoid — and I wasn’t at all sure where he was headed from here, but at least he was showing some filial respect mixed in with the current cowardice.

And that had been pretty much it.

But these latest manifestations seemed evidence that there was something else at play here also, something that wanted to drag me off in yet another direction. I had Ghost’s testimony that it was strong. I had no idea what it really represented. And I had no desire to trust it. This made for an awkward relationship.

“Hey, kid!” came a familiar voice from down the slope. “You’re a hard man to find. You don’t stay put.”

I turned quickly, moved forward, stared downward.

A lone figure was toiling up the slope. A big man. Something flashed in the vicinity of his throat. It was too dark to make out his features.

I retreated several paces, commencing the spell which would restore my blasted wards.

“Hey! Don’t run off!” he called. “I’ve got to talk to you.

The wards fell into place, and I drew my blade and held it, point lowered, at my thigh, entirely out of sight from the cave mouth when I turned my body. I ordered Frakir to hang invisible from my left hand also. The second figure had been stronger than the first, to make it past my wards. If this third one should prove stronger than the second, I was going to need everything I could muster.

“Yeah?” I called out. “Who are you and what do you want?”

“Hell!” I heard it say “I’m no one in particular. Just your old man. I need some help, and I like to keep things in the family.”

I had to admit, when it reached the area of firelight, that it was a very good imitation of Prince Corwin of Amber, my father, complete with black cloak, boots, and trousers, gray shirt, silver studs, and buckle — and even a silver rose — and he was smiling that same quirky sort of smile the real Corwin had sometimes worn on telling me his story, long ago… I felt a kind of wrenching in my guts at the sight. I’d wanted to get to know him better, but he’d disappeared, and I’d never been able to find him again. Now, for this thing — whatever it was — to pull this impersonation… I was more than a little irritated at such a patent attempt to manipulate my feelings.

“The first fake was Dworkin,” I said, “and the second was Oberon. You’re climbing right down the family tree, aren’t you?”

He squinted and cocked his head in puzzlement as he advanced, another realistic mannerism.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Merlin,” he responded. “I —”

Then it entered the warded area and jerked as if touching a hot wire.

“Holy shit!” it said. “You don’t trust anybody, do you?”

“Family tradition,” I replied, “backed up by recent experience.”

I was puzzled, though, that the encounter had not involved more pyrotechnics. Also, I wondered why the thing’s transformation into scrollwork had not yet commenced.

With another oath, it swirled its cloak to the left, wrapping it abut its arm; its right hand crossed toward an excellent facsimile of my father’s scabbard. A silverchased blade sighed as it arced upward, then fell toward the eye of the ward. When they met, the sparks rose in a foot-high splash and the blade hissed as if it had been heated and were now being quenched in water. The design on the blade flared, and the sparks leaped again this time as high as a man — and in that instant I felt the ward break.

Then it entered, and I turned my body, swinging my blade. But the blade that looked like Grayswandir fell and rose again, in a tightening circle, drawing my own weapon’s point to the right and sliding straight in toward my breast. I did a simple parry in quarte, but he slipped under it and was still coming in from the outside. I parried sixte, but he wasn’t there. His movement had been only a feint. He was back inside and coming in low now. I reversed myself and parried again as he slid his entire body in to my right, dropping his blade’s point, reversing his grip, fanning my face with his left hand.

Too late I saw the right hand rising as the left slid behind my head. Grayswandir’s pommel was headed straight for my jaw.

“You’re really…” I began, and then it connected. The last thing I remember seeing was the silver rose.

That’s life. Trust and you’re betrayed; don’t trust and you betray yourself. Like most moral paradoxes, it places you in an untenable position. And it was too late for my normal solution. I couldn’t walk away from the game.

I woke in a place of darkness. I woke wondering and wary. As usual when wondering and wary, I lay perfectly still and let my breathing continue its natural rhythm. And I listened.

Not a sound.

I opened my eyes slightly.

Disconcerting patterns. I closed them again.

I felt with my body for vibrations within the rocky surface upon which I was sprawled.

No vibes.

I opened my eyes entirely, fought back an impulse to close them. I raised myself onto my elbows, then gathered my knees beneath me, straightened my back, turned my head. Fascinating. I hadn’t been this disoriented since I’d gone drinking with Luke and the Cheshire Cat.

There was no color anywhere about me. Everything was black, white, or some shade of gray. It was as if I had entered a photographic negative. What I presumed to be a sun hung like a black hole several diameters above the horizon to my right. The sky was a very dark gray, and ebon clouds moved slowly within it. My skin was the color of ink. The rocky ground beneath me and about me shone an almost translucent bone-white, however. I rose slowly to my feet, turning. Yes. The ground seemed to glow, the sky was dark, and I was a shadow between them. I did not like the feeling at all.

The air was dry, cool. I stood in the foothills to an albino mountain range, so stark in appearance as to rouse comparison with the Antarctic. These stretched off and up to my left. To the right-low and rolling-toward what I guessed to be a morning sun, lay a black plain. Desert? I had to raise my hand and ‘shade’ against its… what? Antiglow?

“Shit!” I tried saying, and I noticed two things immediately.

The first was that my word remained unvoiced. The second was that my jaw hurt where my father or his simulacrum had slugged me.

I repeated my silent observation and withdrew my Trumps. All bets were off when it came to messing with sendings. I shuffled out the Trump for the Ghostwheel and focused my attention upon it.

Nothing. It was completely dead to me. But, then, it was Ghost who’d told me to lie low, and maybe he was simply refusing to entertain my calf. I thumbed through the others. I paused at Flora’s. She was usually willing to help me out of a tight spot. I studied that lovely face, sent out my call to it…

Not a golden curl stirred. Not a degree’s drop in temperature. The card remained a card. I tried harder, even muttering an enhancement spell. But there was nobody home.

Mandor, then. I spent several minutes on his card with the same result. I tried Random’s. Ditto. Benedict’s, Julian’s. No and no. I tried for Fiona, Luke, and Bill Roth. Three more negatives. I even pulled a couple of the Trumps of Doom, but I couldn’t reach the Sphinx either, or a building of bones atop a green glass mountain.

I squared them, cased them, and put them away. It was the first time I had encountered a phenomenon of this sort since the Crystal Cave. Trumps can be blocked in any of a number of ways, however, and so far as I was concerned, the matter was, at the moment, academic. I was more concerned about removing myself to a more congenial environment. I could save the research for some future bit of leisure.

I began walking. My footsteps were soundless. When I kicked a pebble and it bounced along before me, I could detect nothing of sound to its passage.

White to the left of me, black to the right. Mountains or desert. I turned left, walking. Nothing else in motion that I could see except for the black, black clouds. To the lee side of every outcrop a near-blinding area of enhanced brightness: crazy shadows across a crazy land.

Turn left again. Three paces, then round the boulder. Upward. Over the ridge, turn downhill. Turn right, Soon a streak of red amid rocks to the left…

Nope. Next time then…

Brief twinge in the frontal sinus. No red. Move on.

Crevice to the right, next turn…

I massaged my temples when they began to ache as no crevice was delivered. My breath came heavy, and I felt moisture upon my brow.

Textures of gray to green and brittle flowers, slate-blue, low on the next talus slope…

A small pain in my neck. No flowers. No gray. No green.

Then let the clouds part and the darkness pour down from the sun…

Nothing…

…and a sound of running water from a small stream, next gully.

I had to halt. My head was throbbing; my hands were shaking. I reached out and touched the rock wall to my left. It felt solid enough. Rampant reality. Why was it treading all over me?

And how had I gotten here?

And where was here?

I relaxed. I slowed my breathing and adjusted my energies. The pains in my head subsided, ebbed, were gone.

Again I began walking.

Birdsong and gentle breeze… Flower in a crannied nook…

No. And the first twinge of returning resistance… What sort of spell might I be under, that I had lost my power to walk in Shadow? I had never understood it to be something that could be taken away.

“It’s not funny,” I tried saying. “Whoever you are, whatever you are, how did you do it? What do you want? Where are you?”

Again I heard nothing; least of all an answer.

“I don’t know how you did it. Or why,” I mouthed, and thought. “I don’t feel as if I’m under a spell. But I must be here for a reason. Get on with your business. Tell me what you want.”

Nada.

I walked on, continuing in a halfhearted fashion my attempts to shift away through Shadow. As I did, I pondered my situation. I’d a feeling there was something elementary that I was overlooking in this entire business.

… And a small red flower behind a rock, next turn.

I made the turn, and there was the small red flower I had half consciously conjured. I rushed toward it to touch it, to confirm that the universe was a benign, essentially Merlin-loving place.

I stumbled in my rush, kicking up a cloud of dust. I caught myself, raised myself, looked about. I must have searched for the next ten or fifteen minutes, but I could not locate the flower. Finally, I cursed and turned away. No one likes to be a butt of the universe’s jokes.

On a sudden inspiration I sought through all my packets, should I have even a chip of the blue stones upon my person. Its odd vibrational abilities might just somehow conduct me through Shadow back toward its source. But no. Not even a speck of blue dust remained. They all were in my father’s tomb, and that was it. It would have been too easy an out for me, I guess.

What was I missing?

A fake Dworkin, a fake Oberon, and a man who’d claimed to be my father all had wanted to conduct me to some strange place — to compete in some sort of struggle between the Powers, the Oberon figure had indicated, whatever that meant. The Corwin figure had apparently succeeded, I reflected as I rubbed my jaw. Only what sort of game was it? And what were the Powers?

The Oberon thing had said something about my choosing between Amber and Chaos. But, then, it had lied about other things during the same conversation. The devil with both of them! I didn’t ask to get involved in their power game. I had enough problems of my own. I didn’t even care to learn the tales to whatever was going on.

I kicked a small white stone, watched it roll away. This didn’t feel like something of Jurt’s or Julia’s doing. It seemed either a new factor or an old one which had transformed itself considerably. Where had it first seemed to enter the picture? I guessed it had something to do with the force which had come rushing after me on our attempt to reach Coral. I could only assume that it had located me and this was the result. But what might it be? It would first, I supposed, be necessary that I learn where Coral lay in her circle of fire. Something in that place, I presumed, was behind my current situation. Where then? She had asked the Pattern to send her where she ought to go… I had no way now of asking the Pattern where that might be — and no way at the moment of walking it, to have it send me after her.

It was time, therefore, to resign the game and employ different means to solve the problem. My Trumps having blown a circuit and my ability to traverse Shadow having encountered a mysterious blockage, I decided it was time to up the power factor by an order of magnitude in my favor. I would summon the Sign of the Logrus and continue my shadow walk, backing every step that I took with the power of Chaos.

Frakir cut into my wrist. I sought about quickly after any approaching menaces, but I saw nothing. I remained wary for several minutes longer, exploring the vicinity. Nothing occurred, though, and Frakir grew still.

It was hardly the first time her alarm system had been improperly cued — whether by some stray astral current or some odd thought of my own. But in a place like this, one could not afford to take chances. The highest stand of stone in the vicinity stood at about fifteen to twenty meters, perhaps a hundred paces uphill, to my left. I made my way over to it and commenced climbing.

When I finally reached its chalky peak, I commanded a view over a great distance in every direction. I did not behold another living thing in this strange silent yin-yang universe.

So I decided that it had indeed been a false alarm, and I climbed back down. I reached once again to summon the Logrus and Frakir practically behanded me. Hell. I ignored her, and I sent out my call.

The Sign of the Logrus rose and rushed toward me. It danced like a butterfly, hit like a truck. My newsreel world went away, black and white to black.