Blood of Amber (34 page)

Wearing a dark robe, cowl and gauntlets, the wizard of the cobalt mask stood on the landing above me, one hand on the railing, the other pointed toward the fountain.
 
In that I had anticipated our meeting on this expedition, I was not unprepared for the encounter.
 
As the flames leaped even higher, forming a great bright tower that almost immediately began to bend and then topple toward me, I raised my arms in a wide gesture and spoke the word for the most appropriate of the three defensive spells I had hung earlier.

Air currents began to stir, powered by the Logrus, almost immediately achieving gale force and sending the flames back away from me.
 
I adjusted my position then so that they were blown toward the wizard upstairs.
 
Instantly, he gestured, and the flames fell back within the fountain, sub- .
 
siding to the barest glowing trickle.

Okay.
 
A draw.
 
I had not come here to have it out with this guy.
 
I had come to finesse Luke by rescuing Jasra on my own.
 
Once she was my prisoner, Amber would sure as hell be safe from anything Luke had in mind.
 
I found myself wondering, though, about this wizard, as my winds died down and the chuckle came again: Was he using spells, as I was? Or, living in the midst of a power source such as this, was he able to control the forces directly and shape them as he chose? If it were the latter, which I suspected, then he had a virtually inexhaustible source of tricks up his sleeve, so that in any full-scale competition on his turf I would eventually be reduced to flight or to calling in the nukes-that is, summoning Chaos itself to utterly reduce everything in the area-and this was a thing I was not about to do, destroying all the mysteries, including that of the wizard’s identity, rather than solving them for answers that might be essential to Amber’s well-being.

A shining metallic spear materialized in midair before the wizard, hung a moment, then flashed toward me.
 
I used my second defensive spell, summoning a shield that turned it aside.

The only alternative I could see to my dueling with spells or blasting the place with Chaos would be for me to learn to control the forces here myself and try beating this guy at his own game.
 
No time for practice now, though; I’d a job to do as soon as I could buy a few moments in which to get it done.
 
Sooner or later, however, it seemed that we would have to have a full confrontation-since he seemed to have it in for me, and may well even have been the motive force behind the attack by the clumsy werewolf in the woods.

And I was not hot on taking chances to explore the power here further at this point-not if Jasra had been good enough to beat the original master of this place, Sharu Garrul, and then this guy had been good enough to beat Jasra.
 
I’d give a lot, though, to know why he had it in for me....

So, “What do you want, anyway?” I called out.

Immediately, that metallic voice replied, “Your blood, your soul, your mind and your body.”

“What about my stamp collection?” I hollered back.
 
“Do I get to keep the First Day Covers?”

I moved over beside Jasra and threw my right arm about her shoulders.

“What do you want with that one, funny man?” the wizard asked.
 
“She is the most worthless property in this place.”

“Then why should you object to my taking her off your hands?”

“You collect stamps.
 
I collect presumptuous sorcerers.
 
She’s mine, and you’re next.”

I felt the power rising against me again even as I shouted, “What have you got against your brothers and sisters in the Art?”

There was no reply, but the air about me was suddenly filled with sharp, spinning shapes-knives, ax blades, throwing stars, broken bottles.
 
I spoke the word for my final defense, the Curtain of Chaos, raising a chittering, smoky screen about us.
 
The sharp items hurtling in our direction were instantly reduced to cosmic dust on coming into contact with it.

Above the din of this engagement I cried out; “By what name shall I call you?”

“Mask!” was the wizard’s immediate reply-not very original, I thought.
 
I’d half expected a John D.
 
MacDonald appellation-Nightmare Mauve or Cobalt Casque, perhaps.
 
Oh, well.

I had just used my last defensive spell.
 
I had also just raised my left arm so that that portion of my sleeve bearing the Amber Trump now hung within my field of vision.
 
I had cut things a bit fine, but I had not yet played my full hand.
 
So far, I had run a completely defensive show, and I was rather proud of the spell I had kept in reserve.

“She’ll do you no good, that one,” Mask said, as both our spells subsided and he prepared to strike again.

“Have a nice day, anyway,” I said, and I rotated my wrists, pointed my fingers to direct the flow and spoke the word that beat him to the punch.
 
“An eye for an eye!” I called out, as the contents of an entire florist shop fell upon Mask, completely burying him in the biggest damned bouquet I’d ever seen.
 
Smelled nice, too.

There was silence and a subsidence of forces as I regarded the Trump, reached through it.
 
Just as the contact was achieved there was a disturbance in the floral display and Mask rose through it, like the Allegory of Spring.

I was probably already fading from his view as he said, “I’ll have you yet.”

“And sweets to the sweet,” I replied, then spoke the word that completed the spell, dropping a load of manure upon him.

I stepped through into the main hall of Amber, bearing Jasra with me.
 
Martin stood near a sideboard, a glass of wine in his hand, talking with Bors, the falconer.
 
He grew silent at Bors’s wide-eyed stare in my direction, then turned and stared himself.

I set Jasra on her feet beside the doorway.
 
I was not about to screw around with the spell on her right now-and I was not at all sure what I’d do with her if I released her from it.
 
So I hung my cloak on her, went over to the sideboard and poured myself a glass of wine, nodding to Bors and Martin as I passed.

I drained the glass, put it down, then said to them, “Whatever you do, don’t carve your initials on her.” Then I went and found a sofa in a room to the east, stretched out on it and closed my eyes.
 
Like a bridge over troubled waters.
 
Some days are diamonds.
 
Where have all the flowers gone?

Something like that.

There was a lot of smoke, a giant worm and many flashes of colored light.
 
Every sound was born into form, blazed to its peak, faded as it waned.
 
Lightninglike stabs of existence, these-called from, returning to, Shadow.
 
The worm went on forever.
 
The dog-headed flowers snapped at me but later wagged their leaves.
 
The flowing smoke halted before a skyhooked traffic light.
 
The worm-no, caterpillar-smiled.
 
A slow, blinding rain began, and all the drifting drops were faceted.
 
.
 
.
 
.

What is wrong with this picture? something within me asked.

I gave up, because I couldn’t be sure.
 
Though I’d a vague feeling the occasional landscape shouldn’t be Rowing the way that it did.
 
.
 
.
 
.

“Oh, man! Merle.
 
.
 
.
 
.”

What did Luke want now? Why wouldn’t he get off my case? Always a new problem.

“Look at that, will you?”

I watched where a series of bright bounding balls-or maybe they were comets-wove a tapestry of light.
 
It fell upon the forest of umbrellas.

“Luke-“ I began, but one of the dog-headed flowers bit a hand I’d forgotten about, and everything nearby cracked as if it were painted on glass through which a shot had just passed.
 
There was a rainbow beyond-

“Merle! Merle!”

It was Droppa shaking my shoulder, my suddenly opened eyes showed me.

And there was a damp place on the sofa where my head was resting.
 
I propped myself on an elbow.
 
I rubbed my eyes.

“Droppa.
 
.
 
.
 
.
 
What-?”

“I don’t know,” he told me.

“What don’t you know? I mean.
 
.
 
.
 
.
 
Hell! What happened?”

“I was sitting in that chair,” he said, with a gesture, “waiting for you to wake up.
 
Martin had told me you were here.
 
I was just going to tell you that Random wanted to see you when you got back.”

I nodded, then noticed that my hand was oozing blood-from the place where the flower had bitten me.

“How long was I out?”

“Twenty minutes, maybe.”

I swung my feet to the floor, sat up.
 
“So why’d you decide to wake me?”

“You were trumping out,” he said.

“Trumping out? While I was asleep? It doesn’t work that way.
 
Are you sure “

“I am, unfortunately, sober at the moment,” he said.
 
“You got that rainbow glow and you started to soften around the edges and fade.
 
Thought I’d better wake you then and ask if that’s what you really had in mind.
 
What’ve you been drinking, spot remover?”

“No,” I said.

“I tried it on my dog once
 
.
 
.
 
.”

“Dreams,” I said, massaging my temples, which had begun throbbing.

“That’s all.
 
Dreams.”

“The kind other people can see, too? Like DTs  deux?”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“We’d better go see Random.” He started to turn toward the doorway.

I shook my head.
 
“Not yet.
 
I’m just going to sit here and collect myself.
 
Something’s wrong.”

When I glanced at him I saw that his eyes were wide, and he was staring past me.
 
I turned.

The wall at my back seemed to be melting, as if it were cast of wax and had been set too near a fire.

“It appears to be alarums and excursions time,” Droppa remarked.
 
“Help!” And he was across the room and out of the door, screaming.

Three eyeblinks later the wall was normal again in every way, but I was trembling.
 
What the hell was going on? Had Mask managed to lay a spell on me before I’d cut out? If so, where was it headed?

I rose to my feet and turned in a slow circle.
 
Everything seemed to be in place now.
 
I knew that it could not have been anything as simple as hallucination born of all my recent stresses, since Droppa had seen it too.
 
So I was not cracking up.
 
‘This was something else-and whatever it was, I felt that it was still lurking nearby.
 
There was a certain unnatural clarity to the air now, and every object seemed unusually vivid within it.

I made a quick circuit of the room, not knowing what I was really seeking.
 
Not surprisingly, therefore, I did not End it.
 
I stepped outside then.
 
Whatever the problem, could it spring from something I had brought back with me? Might Jasra, stiff and gaudy, have been a Trojan horse?

I headed for the main hall.
 
A dozen steps along the way, a lopsided gridwork of light appeared before me.
 
I forced myself to continue, and it receded as I advanced, changing shape as it did so.

“Merle, come on!” Luke’s voice, Luke himself nowhere in sight.

“Where?” I called out, not slowing.

No answer, but the gridwork split down the middle and its two halves swung away from me like a pair of shutters.
 
They opened onto a near-blinding light; within it, I thought I glimpsed a rabbit.
 
Then, abruptly, the vision was gone, and the only thing that saved me from believing everything was normal again was several seconds’ worth of Luke’s sourceless laughter.

I ran.
 
Was it really Luke who was the enemy, as I had been warned repeatedly? Had I somehow been manipulated through everything which had happened recently, solely for the purpose of freeing his mother from the Keep of the Four Worlds? And now that she was safe had he the temerity to invade Amber herself and summon me to a sorcerous duel the terms of which I did not even understand?

No, I could not believe it.
 
I was certain he did not possess that sort of power.
 
But even if he did, he wouldn’t dare try it-not with Jasra my hostage.