KNIGHT OF SHADOWS (26 page)

I raised the chain and stared into the gem.
 
Yes, an image had taken form.
 
I beheld the hallway around the corner, my two doors, and intervening artwork on the wall in plain view.
 
The doorway to the left-the one that let upon my bedroom-seemed to be outlined in red and pulsing.
 
Did that mean I was supposed to avoid it or rush in there? That’s the trouble with mystical advice.

I walked back and turned the corner again.
 
This time the gem-perhaps having felt my query and decided some editing was in order-showed me approaching and opening the door it was indicating.
 
Of course, of the two, that door was locked....

I fumbled for my key, reflecting that I could not even rush in with a drawn blade, having just disposed of Grayswandir.
 
I did have a couple of tricky spells hung, though.
 
Maybe one of them would save me if the going got too rough.
 
Maybe not, too.

I turned the key and flung the door open.

“Merle!” she shrieked, and I saw that it was Coral.
 
She stood beside my bed, where her putative sister the ty’iga was reclined.
 
She quickly moved one hand behind her back.
 
“You, uh, surprised me.”

“Vice versa,” I replied, for which there is an equivalent in Thari.
 
“What’s up, lady?”

“I came back to tell you that I located my father and gave him a soothing story about that Corridor of Mirrors you told me about.
 
Is there really such a place here?”

“Yes.
 
You won’t find it in any guides, though.
 
It comes and goes.
 
So, he’s mollified?”

“Uh-huh.
 
But now he’s wondering where Nayda is.”

“This gets trickier.”

“Yes.
 
“

She was blushing, and she did not meet my eyes readily.
 
She seemed aware, too, that I was noting her discomfort.

“I told him that perhaps Nayda was exploring, as I’d been,” she went on, “and that I’d ask after her.”

“Mm-hm.”

I shifted my gaze to Nayda.
 
Coral immediately moved forward and brushed against me.
 
She placed a hand on my shoulder, drew me toward her.

“I thought you were going to sleep,” she said.

“Yes, I was.
 
Did, too.
 
I was running some errands just now.”

“I don’t understand,” she said.

“Time lines,” I explained.
 
“I economized.
 
I’m rested.”

“Fascinating,” she said, brushing my lips with her own.
 
“I’m glad that you’re rested.”

“Coral,” I said, embracing her briefly, “you don’t have to bullshit me.
 
You know I was dead tired when you left.
 
You had no reason to believe that I’d be anything but comatose if you returned this soon.”

I caught hold of her left wrist behind her back and drew her hand around to the front, raising it between us.
 
She was surprisingly strong.
 
And I made no effort to pry open her hand, for I could see between the fingers what it was that she held.
 
It was one of the metal balls Mandor often used to create impromptu spells.
 
I released her hand.
 
She did not draw away from me, but rather, “I can explain,” she said, finally meeting my gaze and holding it.

“I wish you would,” I said.
 
“In fact, I wish you’d done it a bit sooner.”

“Maybe the story you heard about her being dead and her body the host for a demon is true,” she said.
 
“But she’s been good to me recently.
 
She’s finally become the sister I’d always wished she’d been.
 
Then you brought me back here and I saw her like that, not knowing what you really planned to do with her-“

“I want you to know that I wouldn’t hurt her, Coral,” I interrupted.
 
“I owe her-it-for favors past.
 
When I was young and naive on the shadow Earth, she probably saved my neck, several times.
 
You have no reason to fear for her here.”

She cocked her head to the right and narrowed one eye.
 
“I’d no way of knowing that,” she said, “from what you told me I came back, hoping to get in, hoping you were deeply asleep, hoping I could break the spell or at least lift it enough to talk with her.
 
I wanted to find out for myself whether she was really my sister-or something else.”

I sighed.
 
I reached out to squeeze her shoulder and realized I was still clutching the Jewel of Judgment in my left hand.
 
I squeezed her arm with my right hand instead and said, “Look, I understand.
 
It was boorish of me to show you your sister laid out that way and not to have gone into a little more detail.
 
I can only plead industrial fatigue and apologize.
 
I promise you she’s in no pain.
 
But I really don’t want to mess with this spell right now because it’s not one of mine-‘

Just then Nayda moaned softly.
 
I studied her for several minutes, but nothing more followed.

“Did you pluck that metal ball out of the air?” I asked.
 
“I don’t recall seeing one for the final spell.”

Coral shook her head.

“It was lying on her breast.
 
One of her hands was over it,” she said.

“What prompted you to check there?”

“The position looked unnatural, that’s all.
 
Here.”

She handed me the ball.
 
I took it and weighed it in the palm of my right hand.
 
I had no idea how the things functioned.
 
The metal balls were to Mandor what Frakir was to me-a piece of idiosyncratic personal magic, forged out of his unconscious in the heart of the Logrus.

“Are you going to put it back?” she asked.

“No,” I told her.
 
“Like I said, it wasn’t one of my spells.
 
I don’t know how it works, and I don’t want to fool around with it.”

“Merlin...?” whispered, from Nayda, her eyes still closed.

“We’d better go talk in the next room,” I said to Coral.
 
“I’ll lay a spell of my own on her first, though.
 
Just a simple soporific-“

The air sparkled and spun behind Coral, and she must have guessed from my stare that something was going on, for she turned.

“Merle, what is it?” she asked, retreating toward me as a golden archway took form.

“Ghost?” I said.

“Right,” came the reply “Jasra was not where I left her.
 
But I brought your brother.”

Mandor, still clad mainly in black, his hair a great mass of silver-white, appeared suddenly, glancing at Coral and Nayda, focusing on me, beginning to smile, stepping forward.
 
Then his gaze shifted, and he halted.
 
He stared.
 
I had never seen that frightened expression on his face before.

“Bloody Eye of Chaos!” he exclaimed, summoning up a protective screen with a gesture.
 
“How did you come by it?”

He took a step backward.
 
The arch immediately collapsed into a gold-leaf calligraphed letter O, and Ghost slid around the room to hover at my right side.

Suddenly Nayda sat up on my bed, darting wild glances.

“Merlin!” she cried.
 
“Are you all right?”

“So far so good,” I answered.
 
“Not to worry. Take it easy.
 
All’s well.”

“Who’s been tampering with my spell?” Mandor asked as Nayda swung her legs over the side of the bed and Coral cringed.

“It was a sort of accident,” I said.

I opened my right hand.
 
The metal sphere immediately levitated and shot off in his direction, narrowly missing Coral, whose hands were now extended in a general martial arts defense pattern, though she seemed uncertain what or whom she should be defending against.
 
So she kept turning-Mandor, Nayda, Ghost, repeat....

“Cool it, Coral,” I said.
 
“You’re in no danger.”

“The left eye of the Serpent!” Nayda cried.
 
“Free me, oh, Formless One, and I will pledge with mine!” Frakir in the meantime was warning me that all was not well, in case I hadn’t noticed.

“Just what the hell is going on?” I yelled.

Nayda sprang to her feet, lunged forward, and with that unnatural demon strength snatched the Jewel of Judgment from my hand, pushed me aside, and tore into the hallway.

I stumbled, recovered.

“Hold that ty’iga!” I cried, and the Ghostwheel sailed past me followed by Mandor’s balls.

I was the next thing out into the hallway.
 
I turned left and started running.
 
A ty’iga may be fast, but so am I.

“I thought you were supposed to be protecting me!” I shouted after her.

“This takes precedence,” she answered, “over your mother’s binding.”

“What?” I said.
 
“My mother?”

“She placed me under a geas to take care of you when you went off to school,” she replied.
 
“This breaks it! Free at last!”

“Damn!” I observed.

Then, as she neared the stairway, the Sign of the Logrus appeared before her, larger than any I’d ever summoned, filling the corridor from wall to wall, roiling, sprawling, fire-shot, tentacular, a reddish haze of menace drifting about it.
 
It took a certain measure of chutzpah for it to manifest like that here in Amber on the Pattern’s turf, so I knew the stakes were high.

“Receive me, oh, Logrus,” she cried, “for I bear the Eye of the Serpent,” and the Logrus opened, creating a fiery tunnel at its center.
 
I could somehow tell that its other end was not a place further along my hallway.

But then Nayda was halted, as if she had suddenly encountered a glass partition, and she stiffened into a position of attention.
 
Three of Mandor’s gleaming spheres were suddenly orbiting her cataleptic form.

I was thrown from my feet and pressed back against the wall.
 
I raised my right arm to block whatever might be coming down on me, as I looked backward.

An image of the Pattern itself, as large as the Logrus Sign, had just put in an appearance only a few feet behind me, manifesting about as far in that direction from Nayda as the Logrus was before her, parenthesizing the lady or the ty’iga between the poles of existence, so to speak, and incidentally enclosing me along with her.
 
The area about me near the Pattern grew bright as a sunny morning while that at the other end took on the aspect of a baleful twilight.
 
Were they about to reenact the Big Bang/Crunch, I wondered, with me as an unwilling momentary witness?

“Uh, Your Honors,” I began, feeling obliged to try talking them out of it and wishing I were Luke, who just might be able to swing such a feat.

“This is a perfect time to employ an impartial arbitrator, and I just happen to be uniquely qualified if you will but reflect-“

The golden circlet that I knew to be Ghostwheel suddenly dropped over Nayda’s head, lengthening itself downward into a tube.
 
Ghost had fitted himself within the orbits of Mandor’s spheres and must somehow have insulated himself against whatever forces they were exerting, for they slowed, wobbled, and finally dropped to the floor, two striking the wall ahead of me and one rolling down the stairway ahead and to the right.

The Signs of the Pattern and the Logrus began to advance then, and I crawled quickly to keep ahead of the Pattern.

“Don’t come any closer, fellows,” Ghostwheel suddenly announced.
 
“There’s no telling what I might do if you make me even more nervous than I already am.”

Both Power Signs halted in their advances.
 
From around the corner to the left, up ahead, I heard Droppa’s drunken voice, raised in some bawdy ballad, coming this way.
 
Then it grew silent.
 
Several moments passed, and he began singing “Rock of Ages” in a far, far weaker voice.
 
Then this, too, was cut off, followed by a heavy thud and the sound of breaking glass.

It occurred to me that I should be able, from a distance such as this, to extend my awareness into the Jewel.
 
But I was uncertain what effects I might then be able to produce with the thing, considering the fact that none of the four principals involved in the confrontation was human.

I felt the beginnings of a Trump contact.
 
“Yes?” I whispered.

Dworkin’s voice came to me then.

“Whatever control you may have over the thing,” he said, “use it to keep the Jewel away from the Logrus.”