Prince of Chaos

Chapter 12

Thus did I return to the Courts of Chaos, coming through into Sawall’s space-warped sculpture garden.

“Where are we?” my ghost-father asked.

“A museum of sorts,” I replied, “in the house of my stepfather. I chose it because the lighting is tricky and there are many places to hide.”

He studied some of the pieces, as well as their disposition upon the walls and ceiling.

“This would be a hell of a place to fight a skirmish,” he observed.

“I suppose it would.”

“You grew up hereabout, huh?”

“Yes.”

“What was it like?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I don’t have anything to compare it to. I had some good times, alone, and with friends and a few bad times. All a part of being a kid.”

“This place…?”

“The Ways of Sawall. I wish I had time to show you the whole thing, take you through all of the ways.”

“One day, perhaps.”

“Yes.”

I began walking, hoping for the Ghostwheel or Kergma to appear. Neither did, however.

We finally passed into a corridor that took us to a hall of tapestries, whence there was a way to a room that I desired — for the room let upon the hallway that passed the gallery of metal trees. Before we could depart, however, I heard voices from that hallway. So we waited in the room — which contained the skeleton of a Jabberwock painted in orange, blue, and yellow, Early Psychedelic — as the speakers approached. One of them I recognized immediately as my brother Mandor; the other I could not identify by voice alone, but managing a glimpse as they passed, I saw it to be Lord Bances of Amblerash, High Priest of the Serpent Which Manifests the Logrus (to cite a full title just once). In a badly plotted story they’d have paused outside the doorway, and I’d have overheard a conversation telling me everything I needed to know about anything.

They slowed as they passed.

“That’s the way it will be then?” Bances said.

“Yes,” Mandor replied. “Soon.”

And they were by, and I couldn’t make out another word. I listened to their receding footsteps till they were gone. Then I waited a little longer. I would have sworn I heard a small voice saying, “Follow. Follow.”

“Hear anything just then?” I whispered.

“Nope.”

So we stepped out into the hallway and turned right, moving in the opposite direction from that which Mandor and Bances had taken. As we did, I felt a sensation of heat at a point somewhat below my left hip…

“You think he is somewhere near here?” the Corwin ghost asked. “Prisoner to Dara?”

“Yes and no,” I said. “Ow!”

It felt like a hot coal pressed against my upper leg. I jammed my hand into my pocket as I slid into the nearest display niche, which I shared with a mummified lady in an amber casket.

Even as my hand closed about it, I knew what it was, raising all manner of philosophical speculations I had neither time nor desire to address at the moment and so treated in the time-honored fashion of dealing with such things: I shelved them.

It was a spikard that I withdrew, that lay warmly upon my paten. Almost immediately a small spark leapt between it and the one that I wore upon my finger.

There followed a wordless communication, a sequence of images, ideas, feelings, urging me to find Mandor and place myself in his hands for the preparations for my crowning as the next King of the Courts. I could see why Bleys had told me not to put the thing on. Unmediated by my own spikard, its injunctions would probably have been overpowering. I used mine to shut it off, to build a tiny insulating wall about it.

“You have two of the damned things!” Corwin’s ghost observed.

I nodded.

“Know anything about them that I don’t?” I asked. “That would include almost anything.”

He shook his head.

“Only that they were said to be very early power objects, from the days when the universe was still a murky place and the Shadow realms less clearly defined. When the time came, their wielders slept or dissolved or whatever such figures do, and the spikards were withdrawn or stashed or transformed, or whatever becomes of such things when the story’s over. There are many versions, of course. There always are. But bringing two of them to the Courts could conceivably draw a lot of attention to yourself, not to mention adding to the general power of Chaos just by virtue of their presence at this pole of existence.”

“Oh, my,” I said. “I’ll order the one I’m wearing to conceal itself, also.”

“I don’t think that’ll work,” he said, “though I’m not certain. I’d think they must maintain a constant fluxpin with each source of power, and that would give some indication of the thing’s presence because of its broadcast nature.”

“I’ll tell it to tune itself as low as it can then.”

He nodded.

“It can’t hurt to make it specific,” he said, “though I’d guess it probably does that anyhow, automatically.”

I placed the other ring back in my pocket, departed the niche, and hurried on up the hallway.

I slowed when we neared what I thought to be the area. But I seemed mistaken. The metal forest was not there. We passed that section. Shortly, we came to a familiar display — the one that had preceded the metal forest, on approaching it from that direction.

Even as I turned back, I knew. I knew what had happened. When we reached what had been the area, I stopped and studied it.

“What is it?” my ghostly father asked.

“It seems a display of every conceivable variety of edged weapon and tool that Chaos has ever spewed forth,” I said, “all of them exhibited point up, you’ll note.”

“So?” he asked.

“This is the place,” I answered, “the place where we were going to climb a metal tree.”

“Merle,” he said, “maybe this place does something to my thought processes, or yours. I just don’t understand.”

“It’s up near the ceiling,” I explained, gesturing. “I know the approximate area — I think. Looks a little different now…”

“What’s there, son?”

“A way — a transport area, like the one we passed through to the place of the Jabberwock skeleton. Only this one would take us to your chapel.”

“And that’s where we’re headed?”

“Right.”

He rubbed his chin.

“Well, there were some fairly tall items in some of the displays we passed,” he observed, “and not all of them were metal or stone. We could wrestle over that totem pole or whatever the hell it is, from back up the hall, clear away some of the sharp displays below that place, set the thing up —”

“No,” I said. “Dara obviously caught on to the fact that someone had visited it — probably this last time around, when she almost surprised me. The display was changed because of this. There are only two obvious ways to get up there — transport something unwieldy, as you suggest, and clear away a lot of cutlery before we climb. Or rev up the spikard and levitate ourselves to the spot. The first would take too long and probably get us discovered. The second would employ so much power that it would doubtless set off any magical wards she’s installed about the area.”

He took hold of my arm and drew me on past the display.

“We’ve got to talk,” he said, leading me into an alcove containing a small bench.

He seated himself and folded his arms.

“I’ve got to know what the hell’s going on,” he said. “I can’t help properly unless I’m briefed. What’s the connection between the man and the chapel?”

“I figured out something I think my mother really meant when she told me, ‘Seek him in the Pit,’” I explained. “The floor of the chapel bears stylized representations of the Courts and of Amber worked out in tiles. At the extreme of the Courts’ end is a representation of the Pit. I never set foot in that area when I visited the chapel. I’m willing to bet there’s a way located there, and at the other end is the place of his imprisonment.”

He’d begun nodding as I spoke, then, “So you were going to pass through and free him?” he asked.

“Right.”

“Tell me, do these ways have to work both ways?” he said.

“Well, no… Oh, I see what you’re getting at.”

“Give me a more complete description of the chapel,” he said.

I proceeded to do so.

“That magic circle on the floor intrigues me,” he said. “It might be a means of communicating with him without risking the dangers of presence. Some sort of image-exchange, perhaps.”

“I might have to fool with it a long while to figure it out,” I said, “unless I got lucky. What I propose doing is to levitate, enter, use the way at the Pit to reach him, free him, and get the hell out. No subtlety. No finesse. If anything fails to do what we expect, we force our way through it with the spikard. We’ll have to move fast because they’ll be after us once we start.”

He stared past me for a long while, as if thinking hard. At length, he asked, “Is there any way her wards might be set off accidentally?”

“Hm. The passage of a stray magical current from the real Pit, I suppose. It sometimes spews them forth.”

“What would characterize its passage?”

“A magical deposit or transformation,” I said.

“Could you fake such a phenomenon?”

“I suppose. But what would be the point? They’d still investigate, and with Corwin gone they’d realize it was just a trick. The effort would be wasted.”

He chuckled.

“But he won’t be missing,” he said. “I’m going to take his place.”

“I can’t let you do that!”

“My choice,” he said. “But he’s going to need the time if he’s going to help stop Dara and Mandor from advancing the conflict between the Powers beyond anything at Patternfall.”

I sighed.

“It’s the only way,” he said.

“I guess you’re right.”

He unfolded his arms, stretched, and rose to his feet.

“Let’s go do it,” he said.

I had to work out a spell, a thing I hadn’t done recently — well, half of a spell, the effects half, as I had the spikard to juice it. Then I lay it in a swathe across the display, turning portions of blades into flowers, joined at the molecular level. As I did, I felt a tingling I was certain was the psychic alarm taking note of the enterprise and reporting it to central.

Then I summoned a lot of juice and lofted us. I felt the tug of the way as we nears it. I had been almost dead-on. I let it take us through.

He whistled softly on regarding the chapel.

“Enjoy,” I said. “It’s the treatment a god gets.”

“Yeah. Prisoner in his own church.”

He stalked across the room, unbuckling his belt as he went. He substituted it for the one upon the altar.

“Good copy,” he said, “but not even the Pattern can duplicate Grayswandir.”

“I thought a section of the Pattern was reproduced on the blade.”

“Maybe it’s the other way around,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“Ask the other Corwin sometime,” he said. “It has to do with something we were talking about recently.”

He approached and passed the lethal package to me — weapon, sheath, belt.

“Be nice if you take it to him,” he said.

I buckled it and hung it over my head and shoulder.

“Okay,” I told him. “We’d better move.”

I headed toward the far corner of the chapel. As I neared the area where the Pit was represented I felt the unmistakable tug of a way.

“Eureka!” I said, activating channels on the spikard. “Follow me.”

I stepped forward and it took me away.

We arrived in a chamber of perhaps fifteen feet square. There was a wooden post at its center and the floor was of stone with some straw strewn upon it. Several of the big candles, as from the chapel, were spotted about. The walls were of stone on two sides, wood on the others. The wooden walls contained unlatched wooden doors. One of the stone walls contained a windowless metal door, a keyhole at its left side. A key, which looked about the right size, hung from a nail in the post.

I took down the key and checked quickly beyond the wooden door to my right, discovering a large barrel of water, a dipper, and a variety of dishes, cups, utensils. Behind the other door were a few blankets and stacks of what were probably toilet tissues.

I crossed to the metal door then and knocked upon it with the key. There was no response. I inserted the key in the lock and felt my companion take hold of my arm.

“Better let me do that,” he said. “I think like him, and I think I’ll be safer.”

I had to agree with the wisdom of this, and I stepped aside.

“Corwin!” he called out. “We’re springing you! It’s your son Merlin and me, your double. Don’t jump me when I open the door, okay? We’ll stand still and you can take a look.”

“Open it,” came a voice from within.

So he did, and we stood there.

“What do you know?” came the voice I remembered, finally. “You guys look for real.”

“We are,” said his ghost, “and as usual, at times such as this, you’d better hurry.”

“Yeah.” There came a slow tread from within, and when he emerged he was shielding his eyes with his left hand. “Either of you got a pair of shades? The light hurts.”

“Damn!” I said, wishing I’d thought of it. “No, and if I send for them the Logrus might spot me.”

“Later, later. I’ll squint and stumble. Let’s get the hell out.”

His ghost entered the cell.

“Now make me bearded, thin, and grimy. Lengthen the hair and tatter the clothes,” he said. “Then lock me in.

“What’s going on?” my father asked.

“Your ghost will be impersonating you in your cell for a while.”

“It’s your plan,” Corwin stated. “Do what the ghost says.” And so I did. He turned and extended his hand back into the cell then. “Thanks, buddy.”

“My pleasure,” the other replied, clasping his hand and shaking it. “Good luck.”

“So long.”

I closed and locked the cell door. I hung the key on its nail and steered him to the way. It took us through.

He lowered his hand as we came into the chapel. The dimness must have been sufficient for him to handle now. He drew away from me and crossed to the altar.

“We’d better go, Dad.”

He chuckled as he reached across the altar, raised a burning taper, and used it to light one of the others that had apparently gone out in some draft.

“I’ve pissed on my own grave,” he announced. “Can’t pass up the pleasure of lighting a candle to myself in my own church.”

He extended his left hand in my direction without looking at me.

“Give me Grayswandir,” he said.

I slipped it off and passed it to him. He unfastened it and buckled it about his waist, loosened it in its sheath. “All right. What now?” he asked.

I thought fast. If Dara was aware that I had exited through the wall last time — a distinct possibility, considering — then the walls might well be booby-trapped in some fashion. On the other hand, if we went out the way I had come in we might encounter someone rushing this way in answer to the alarm.

Hell.

“Come on,” I said, activating the spikard, ready to whisk us away at the glimpse of an intruder. “It’s going to be tricky because it involves levitation on the way out.”

I caught hold of him again and we approached the way. I wrapped us in energies as it took us, and I lofted us above the field of blades and flowers as we departed.

There were footfalls from up the corridor. I swirled us away to another place.

I took us to Jurt’s apartment, which didn’t seem a place anyone was likely to come looking for a man who was still in his cell; and I knew that Jurt had no need of it just then.

Corwin sprawled on the bed and squinted at me. “By the way,” he said, “thanks.”

“Anytime,” I told him.

“You know your way around this place pretty well?” he said.

“It doesn’t seem to have changed that much,” I told him.

“Then how’s about raiding an icebox for me while I borrow your brother’s scissors and razor for a quick shave and haircut.”

“What would you like?”

“Meat, bread, cheese, wine, maybe a piece of pie,” he said. “Just so it’s fresh and there’s lots of it. Then you’re going to have a lot of story to tell me.”

“I guess I am,” I said.

And so I made my way to the kitchen, down familiar halls and ways I had traversed as a boy. The place was lit by just a few tapers, the fires banked. No one was about.

I proceeded to raid the larder, heaping a tray with the various viands requested, adding a few pieces of fruit I came across. I almost dropped the wine bottle when I heard a sharp intake of breath near the doorway I had entered.

It was Julia, in a blue silk wrap.

“Merlin!”

I crossed to her.

“I owe you several apologies,” I said. “I’m ready to make them.”

“I’d heard you were back. I heard you were to be king.”

“Funny, I heard that, too.”

“Then it would be unpatriotic of me to stay mad, wouldn’t it?”

“I never meant to hurt you,” I said. “Physically, or any other way.”

Suddenly, we were holding each other. It lasted a long time before she told me, “Jurt says you’re friends now.”

“I guess we sort of are.”

I kissed her.

“If we got back together again,” she said, “he’d probably try to kill you again.”

“I know. This time the consequences could really be cataclysmic, too.”

“Where are you going right now?”

“I’m on an errand, and it’s going to take me several hours.”

“Why don’t you stop by when you’re finished? We’ve got a lot to talk about. I’m staying in a place called the Wisteria Room for now. Know where that is?”

“Yes,” I said. “This is crazy.”

“See you later?”

“Maybe.”

The next day I traveled to the Rim, for I’d heard report that the Pit-divers — those who seek after artifacts of creation beyond the Rim — had suspended operations for the first time in a generation. When I questioned them they told me of dangerous activities in the depths — whirlwinds, wings of fire, blasts of new-minted matter.

Sitting in a secluded place and looking down, I used the spikard I wore to question the one I didn’t. When I removed the shield in which I’d encased it, it commenced a steady litany, “Go to Mandor. Get crowned. See your brother. See your mother. Begin preparations.” I wrapped it again and put it away. If I didn’t do something soon he was going to suspect that I was beyond its control. Did I care?

I could just absent myself, perhaps going away with my father, helping him at whatever showdown might finally develop over his Pattern. I could even ditch both spikards there, enhancing the forces in that place. I could still rely on my own magic in a pinch. But my problem was right here. I had been bred and conditioned to be a perfect royal flunky, under the control of my mother, and possibly my brother Mandor. I loved Amber, but I loved the Courts as well. Fleeing to Amber, while assuring my safety, would no more solve my personal problem than running off with my dad — or returning to the Shadow Earth I also cared for, with or without Coral. No. The problem was here — and inside me.

I summoned a filmy to bear me to an elevated way to take me back to Sawall. As I traveled, I thought of what I must do, and I realized that I was afraid. If things got pushed as far as they well might, there was a strong possibility that I would die. Alternatively, I might have to kill someone I didn’t really want to.

Either way, though, there had to be some resolution or I’d never know peace at this pole of my existence.

I walked beside a purple stream beneath a green sun atop a pearly sky. I summoned a purple and gray bird, which came and sat upon my wrist. I had thought to dispatch it to Amber with a message for Random. Try as I might, however, I could phrase no simple note. Too many things depended on other things. Laughing, I released it and leapt from the bank, where I struck another way above the water.

Returned to Sawall, I made my way to the sculpture hall. By then, I knew what I must try to do and how I must go about it. I stood where I had stood — how long ago? — regarding massive structures, simple figures, intricate ones.

“Ghost?” I said. “You in the neighborhood?”

There was no response.

“Ghost!” I repeated more loudly. “Can you hear me?”

Nothing.

I dug out my Trumps, located the one I had done for Ghostwheel, bright circle.

I regarded it with some intensity, but it was slow to grow cool. This was understandable, considering some of the odd areas of space to which this hall gave access. Also, it was irritating.

I raised the spikard. Using it here at the level I intended would be like setting off a burglar alarm. Amen.

I touched the Tarot with a line of subtle force, attempting to enhance the instrument’s sensitivity. I maintained my concentration.

Again, nothing.

I backed it with more force. There followed a perceptible cooling. But there was no contact.

“Ghost,” I said through clenched teeth. “This is important. Come to me.”

No reply. So I sent power into the thing. The card began to glow and frost crystals formed upon it. Small crackling sounds occurred in its vicinity.

“Ghost,” I repeated.

A weak sense of his presence occurred then, and I poured more juice into the card. It shattered in my hand, and I caught it in a web of forces and held all of the pieces together, looking like a small stained-glass window. I continued to reach through it.

“Dad! I’m in trouble!” came to me then.

“Where are you? What’s the matter?” I asked.

“I followed this entity I met. Pursued her — it. Almost a mathematical abstraction. Called Kergma. Got caught here at an odd-even dimensional interface, where I’m spiraling. Was having a good time up until then —”

“I know Kergma well. Kergma is a trickster. I can feel your spatial situation. I am about to send bursts of energy to counter the rotation. Let me know if there are problems. As soon as you’re able to Trump through, tell me and come ahead.”

I pulsed it through the spikard and the braking effect began. Moments later, he informed me, “I think I can escape now.”

“Come on, then.”

Suddenly, Ghost was there, spinning about me like a magic circle.

“Thanks, Dad. I really appreciate this. Let me know if there’s ever anything —”

“There is,” I said.

“What?”

“Shrink yourself down and hide somewhere about my person.”

“Wrist okay again?”

“Sure.”

He did that thing. Then, “Why?” he asked.

“I may need a sudden ally,” I replied.

“Against what?”

“Anything,” I said. “It’s showdown time.”

“I don’t like the sound of that.”

“Then leave me now. I won’t hold it against you.”

“I couldn’t do that.”

“Listen, Ghost. This thing has escalated, and a line must be drawn now. I —”

The air began to shimmer, off to my right. I knew what it meant.

“Later,” I said. “Be still.”

… And there was a doorway, and it opened to admit a tower of green light: eyes, ears, nose, mouth, limbs cycling about its sea-like range — one of the more inspired demonic forms I’d beheld of late. And, of course, I knew the features.

“Merlin,” he said. “I felt you ply the spikard here.”

“I thought you might,” I replied, “and I am at your service, Mandor.”

“Really?”

“In all respects, brother.”

“Including a certain matter of succession?”

“That in particular.”

“Excellent! And what business were you about here?”

“I was but seeking something I had lost.”

“That can wait upon another day, Merlin. We have much to do just now.”

“Yes, that is true.”

“So assume a more pleasing form and come with me. We must discuss the measures you are to take upon assuming the throne — which Houses are to be suppressed, who outlawed —”

“I must speak with Dara immediately.”

“I would rather lay some groundwork first. Come! Shift, and let us be away!”

“Would you know where she is just now?”

“Gantu, I believe. But we will confer with her later.”

“You wouldn’t happen to have her Trump handy, would you?”

“I fear not. I thought you carried a deck of your own?”

“I do. But hers was inadvertently destroyed one night when I was drinking.”

“No matter,” he said. “We will see her later, as I explained.”

I had been opening channels on the spikard as we spoke. I caught him at the center of a whirlwind of forces. I could see the transformation procedure within him, and it was a simple matter to reverse it, collapsing the green and spinning tower into the form of a whitehaired man clad in black and white and looking very irritated.

“Merlin!” he cried. “Why have you changed me?”

“This thing fascinates me,” I said, waving the spikard. “I just wanted to see whether I could do it.”

“Now you’ve seen it,” he said. “Kindly release me to turn back, and find a more fitting form for yourself.”

“A moment,” I said, as he attempted to melt and flow. “I require you just as you are.”

I held him against his effort, and I drew a fiery rectangle in the air. A series of quick movements filled it with a rough likeness of my mother.

“Merlin! What are you doing?” he cried.

I suppressed his effort to extricate himself by means of a transport spell.

“Conference time,” I announced. “Bear with me.”

I didn’t just meditate upon the impromptu Trump I had hung in the air before me, but practically attacked it with a charge of the energies I was cycling through my body and the space about me.

Suddenly, Dara stood within the frame I had created — tall, coal-black, eyes of green flame.

“Merlin! What’s happening?” she cried.

I’d never heard of it being done quite this way before, but I held the contact, willed her presence, and blew away the frame. She stood before me then, perhaps seven feet tall, pulsing with indignation.

“What is the meaning of this?” she asked.

I caught her as I had Mandor and collapsed her down to human scale.

“Democracy,” I said “Let’s all look alike for a minute.”

“This is not amusing,” she responded, and she began to change back.

I canceled her effort.

“No, it isn’t,” I answered. “But I called this meeting, and it will be run on my terms.”

“Very well,” she said, shrugging. “What has become so terribly urgent?”

“The succession.”

“The matter is settled. The throne is yours.”

“And whose creature am I to be?” I raised my left hand, hoping they had no way of telling one spikard from another. “This thing confers great powers. It also charges for their use. It bore a spell for control of its wearer.”

“It was Swayvill’s,” Mandor said. “I got it to you when I did to accustom you to the force of its presence. And yes, there is a price. Its wearer must come to terms with it.”

“I have wrestled with it,” I lied, “and I am its master. But the main problems were not cosmic. They were compulsions of your own installation.”

“I do not deny it,” he said. “But there was a very good reason for their presence. You were reluctant to take the throne. I felt it necessary to add an element of compulsion.”

I shook my head.

“Not good enough,” I said. “There was more to it than that. It was a thing designed to make me subservient to you.”

“Necessary,” he responded. “You’ve been away. You lack intimate knowledge of the local political scene. We could not simply let you take the reins and go off in your own direction — not in times such as these, when blunders could be very costly. The House needed some means to control you. But this was only to be until your education was complete.”

“Permit me to doubt you, brother,” I said.

He glanced at Dara, who nodded slightly.

“He is right,” she said, “and I see nothing wrong with such temporary control until you learn the business. Too much is at stake to permit otherwise.”

“It was a slave-spell,” I said. “It would force me to take the throne, to follow orders.”

Mandor licked his lips. It was the first time I’d ever seen him betray a sign of nervousness. It instantly made me wary — though I realized moments later that it may have been a calculated distraction. It caused me to guard against him immediately; and, of course, the attack came from Dara.

A wave of heat swept over me. I shifted my attention at once, attempting to raise a barrier. It was not an attack against my person. It was something soothing, coercive. I bared my teeth as I fought to hold it off.

“Mother —” I growled.

“We must restore the imperatives,” she said flatly, more to Mandor than to me.

“Why?” I asked. “You’re getting what you want.”

“The throne is not enough,” she answered. “I do not trust you in this, and reliance will be necessary.”

“You never trusted me,” I said, pushing away the remains of her spell.

“That is not true,” she told me, “and this is a technical matter, not a personal one.”

“Whatever the matter,” I said, “I’m not buying.”

Mandor tossed a paralysis spell at me, and I pushed it away, ready for anything now. As I was doing this, Dara hit me with an elaborate working I recognized as a Confusion Storm. I was not about to try matching them both, spell for spell. A good sorcerer may have a half dozen major spells hung. Their judicious employment is generally enough for dealing with most situations. In a sorcerous duel the strategy involved in their employment is a major part of the game. If both parties are still standing when the spells have been exhausted, then they are reduced to fighting with raw energies. Whoever controls a greater quantity usually has the edge then.

I raised an umbrella against the Confusion Storm, parried Mandor’s Astral Club, held myself together through Mom’s Spirit Split, maintained my senses through Mandor’s Well of Blackness. My major spells had all gone stale, and I had hung no new ones since I’d begun relying on the spikard. I was already reduced to reliance on raw power. Fortunately, the spikard gave me control of more of it than I’d ever held before. All I had to do was force them to use up their spells, then all trickiness would be removed from the situation. I would wear them down, drain them.

Mandor sneaked one partway through, hurting me in a brush with an Electric Porcupine. I battered him with a wall of force, however, slamming him into a system of revolving discs that flashed off in all directions. Dara turned into a liquid flame, coiling, waving, flowing through circles and figure-bights, as she advanced and retreated, tossing bubbles of euphoria and pain to orbit me. I tried to blow them away, hurricane-wise, shattering the great porcelain face, uprooting towers, family groups with holes in them, glowing geometries. Mandor turned to sand, which filtered downward through the structure upon which he sprawled, became a yellow carpet, crept toward me.

I ignored the effects and continued to beat at them with energies. I hurled the carpet through the flame and dumped a floating fountain upon them. Brushing out small fires in my clothing and hair, I forced my consciousness through numbed areas in my left shoulder and leg. I fell apart and drew myself back together again as I mastered Dara’s spell of Unweaving. I shattered Mandor’s Diamond Bubble and digested the Chains of Deliverance. On three occasions, I dropped my human form for things more suitable, but always I returned to it. I hadn’t had a workout like this since my final exams with Suhuy.

But the ultimate advantage was obviously mine. Their only real chance had lain in surprise, and that was gone now. I opened all channels on the spikard, a thing which might have intimidated even the Pattern — though, now I thought on it, it had gotten me knocked senseless. I caught Mandor in a cone of force that stripped him down to a skeleton and built him back up again in an instant. Dara was harder to nail, but when I blasted her with all of the channels, she hit me with a Dazzlement spell she’d been holding in reserve, the only thing that saved her from turning into a statue as I’d intended. Instead, it left her in mortal form and restricted to slow motion.

I shook my head and rubbed my eyes. Lights danced before me.

“Congratulations,” she said, over a span of perhaps ten seconds. “You’re better than I’d thought.”

“And I’m not even finished,” I replied, breathing deeply. “It’s time to do unto you as you’d have done unto me.”

I began to craft the working which would place them under my control. It was then that I noticed her small slow smile.

“I’d thought — we might — deal with — you — ourselves,” she said as the air began to shimmer before her. “I was — wrong.”

The Sign of the Logrus took form before her. Immediately, her features grew more animated.

Then I felt its terrible regard. When it addressed me, that pastiche-voice tore at my nervous system.

“I have been summoned,” it said, “to deal with your recalcitrance, oh man who would be king.”

There came a crash from downhill as the house of mirrors collapsed. I looked in that direction. So did Dara. Mandor, just now struggling to his feet, did also.

The reflective panels rose into the air and drifted toward us. They were quickly deployed all about us, reflecting and re-reflecting our confrontation from countless angles. The prospect was bewildering, for space itself seemed somehow bent, twisted now in our vicinity. And in each image we were surrounded by a circle of light, though I could not detect its absolute source.

“I stand with Merlin,” Ghost said, from somewhere.

“Construct!” the Logrus Sign stated. “You thwarted me in Amber!”

“And a short thwart for the Pattern, too,” Ghost observed. “It sort of balances out.”

“What are your wishes now?”

“Hands off Merlin,” Ghost said. “He’ll rule here as well as reign. No strings on him.”

Ghost’s lights began cycling.

I pulsed the spikard, open on all channels, hoping to locate Ghost, give him access to its energies. I couldn’t seem to make contact, though.

“I don’t need that, Dad,” Ghost stated. “I access sources in Shadow myself.”

“What is it that you want for yourself, construct?” the Sign inquired.

“To protect one who cares for me.”

“I can offer you cosmic greatness.”

“You already did. I turned you down then, too. Remember?”

“I remember. And I will remember.” A jagged tentacle of the constantly shifting figure moved toward one of the circles of light. There was a blinding rush of flame when they met. When my vision cleared, however, nothing had changed. “Very well,” the Sign acknowledged. “You came prepared. It is not yet time to weaken myself in your destruction. Not when another waits for me to falter.

“Lady of Chaos,” it stated, “you must honor Merlin’s wishes. If his reign be a foolish thing, he will destroy himself by his own actions. If it be prudent, you will have gained what you sought without interference.”

The expression on her face was one of disbelief.

“You would back down before a son of Amber and his toy?” she asked.

“We must give him what he wants,” it acknowledged, “for now. For now…”

The air squealed about its vanishment. Mandor smiled the smallest of smiles, reflected to infinity.

“I can’t believe this,” she said, becoming a flowerfaced cat and then a tree of green flame.

“Believe as you would,” Mandor told her. “He’s won.”

The tree flared through its autumn and was gone. Mandor nodded to me.

“I just hope you know what you’re doing,” he said.

“I know what I’m doing.”

“Take it however you would,” he said, “but if you need advice I’ll try to help you.”

“Thanks.”

“Care to discuss it over lunch?”

“Not just now.”

He shrugged and became a blue whirlwind.

“Till later then,” came the voice out of the whirlwind, before it blew away.

“Thanks, Ghost,” I said. “Your timing’s gotten a lot better.”

“Chaos has a weak left,” he replied.

I located fresh garments of silver, black, gray, and white. I took them back to Jurt’s apartments with me. I had a long story to tell.

We walked little-used ways, passing through Shadow, coming at length to the final battlefield of the Patternfall War. The place had healed itself over the years, leaving no indication of all that had transpired there. Corwin regarded it for a long while in silence.

Then he turned to me and said, “It’ll take some doing to sort everything out, to achieve a more permanent balance, to assure its stability.”

“Yes.”

“You think you can keep things peaceful on this end for a while?”

“That’s the idea,” I said. “I’ll give it my best shot.”

“That’s all any of us can do,” he said. “Okay, Random has to know what’s happened, of course. I’m not sure how he’s going to take having you as an opposite number, but that’s the breaks.”

“Give him my regards, and Bill Roth, too.”

He nodded.

“And good luck,” I said.

“There are still mysteries within mysteries,” he told me. “I’ll let you know what I find out, as soon as I have something.”

He moved forward and embraced me.

Then, “Rev up that ring and send me back to Amber.”

“It’s already revved,” I said. “Good-bye.”

“…And hello,” he answered, from the tail end of a rainbow.

I turned away then, for the long walk back to Chaos.