The hand of Oberon (2 page)

A funnel descended from the noisy formation-bright, flashing, wailing now, and tremendously fast. It touched the rearing horse, and for a moment his outline expanded enormously, becoming increasingly tenuous in direct proportion to this effect. And then he was gone. For a brief interval, the funnel remained stationary, like a perfectly balanced top. Then the sound began to diminish.

The trunk raised itself, slowly, to a point but a small distance-perhaps the height of a man-above the Pattern. Then it snapped upward as quickly as it had descended.

The wailing ceased. The roaring began to subside. The miniature lightnings faded within the circle. The entire formation began to pale and slow. A moment later, it was but a bit of darkness; another moment and it was gone.

No trace of lago remained anywhere that I could see.

“Don’t ask me,” I said when Random turned toward me. “I don’t know either.”

He nodded, then directed his attention toward our purple companion, who was just then rattling his chain.

“What about Charlie here?” he asked, fingering his blade.

“I had the distinct impression he was trying to protect us,” I said, taking a step forward. “Cover me. I want to try something.”

“You sure you can move fast enough?” he asked. “With that side...”

“Don’t worry,” I said, a trifle more heartily than necessary, and I kept moving.

He was correct about my left side, where the healing knife wound still ached dully and seemed to exercise a drag on my movements. But Grayswandir was still in my right hand and this was one of those occasions when my trust in my instincts was running high. I had relied on this feeling in the past with good results. There are times when such gambles just seem to be in order.

Random moved ahead and to the right. I turned sidewise and extended my left hand as you would in introducing yourself to a strange dog, slowly. Our heraldic companion had risen from its crouch and was turning.

It faced us again and studied Ganelon, off to my left. Then it regarded my hand. It lowered its head and repeated the ground-striking movement, cawed very softly-a small, bubbling sound-raised its head and slowly extended it. It wagged its great tail, touched my fingers with its beak, then repeated the performance. Carefully, I placed my hand on its head. The wagging increased; its head remained motionless. I scratched it gently about the neck and it turned its head slowly then, as if enjoying it. I withdrew my hand and dropped back a pace.

“I think we’re friends,” I said softly. “Now you try it. Random.”

“Are you kidding?”

“No, I’m sure you’re safe. Try it.”

“What will you do if you are wrong?”

“Apologize.”

“Great.”

He advanced and offered his hand. The beast remained friendly.

“All right,” he said half a minute or so later, still stroking its neck, “what have we proved?”

“That he is a watchdog.”

“What is he watching?”

“The Pattern, apparently.”

“Offhand then,” said Random, moving back, “I would say that his work leaves something to be desired.” He gestured at the dark area. “Which is understandable, if he is this friendly to anyone who doesn’t eat oats and whinny.”

“My guess is that he is quite selective. It is also possible that he was set here after the damage was done, to defend against further unappreciated activity.”

“Who set him?”

“I’d like to know myself. Someone on our side, apparently.”

“You can now test your theory further by letting Ganelon approach him.”

Ganelon did not move.

“It may be you have a family smell about you,” he finally said, “and he only favors Amberites. So I will pass, thank you.”

“All right. It is not that important. Your guesses have been good so far. How do you interpret events?”

“Of the two factions out for the throne,” he said, “that composed of Brand, Fiona, and Bleys was, as you said, more aware of the nature of the forces that play about Amber. Brand did not supply you with particulars-unless you omitted some incidents he might have related-but my guess is that this damage to the Pattern represents the means by which their allies gained access to your realm. One or more of them did that damage, which provided the dark route. If the watchdog here responds to a family smell or some other identifying information you all possess, then he could actually have been here all along and not seen fit to move against the despoilers.”

“Possibly,” Random observed. “Any idea how it was accomplished?”

“Perhaps,” he replied. “I will let you demonstrate it for me, if you are willing.”

“What does it involve?”

“Come this way,” he said, turning and heading over to the edge of the Pattern.

I followed him. Random did the same. The watchgriffin slunk at my side.

Ganelon turned and extended his hand.

“Corwin, may I trouble you for that dagger I fetched us?”

“Here,” I said, drawing it from my belt and passing it over.

“I repeat, what does it involve?” Random inquired.

“The blood of Amber,” Ganelon replied.

“I am not so sure I like this idea,” Random said.

“All you have to do is prick your finger with it,” he said, extending the blade, “and let a drop fall upon the Pattern.”

“What will happen?”

“Let’s try it and see.”

Random looked at me.

“What do you say?” he asked.

“Go ahead. Let’s find out. I’m intrigued.”

He nodded.

“Okay.”

He received the blade from Ganelon and nicked the tip of his left little finger. He squeezed the finger then, holding it above the Pattern. A tiny red bead appeared, grew larger, quivered, fell.

Immediately, a wisp of smoke rose from the spot where it struck, accompanied by a tiny crackling noise.

“I’ll be damned!” said Random, apparently fascinated.

A tiny stain had come into being, gradually spreading to about the size of a half dollar.

“There you are,” said Ganelon. “That is how it was done.”

The stain was indeed a miniature counterpart of the massive blot further to our right. The watchgrifiin gave forth a small shriek and drew back, rapidly turning his head from one of us to the other.

“Easy, fellow. Easy,” I said, reaching out and calming him once more.

“But what could have caused such a large-“ Random began, and then he nodded slowly.

“What indeed?” said Ganelon. “I see no mark to show where your horse was destroyed.”

“The blood of Amber,” Random said. “You are just full of insights today, aren’t you?”

“Ask Corwin to tell you of Lorraine, the place where I dwelled for so long,” he said, “the place where the dark circle grew. I am alert to the effects of those powers, though I knew them then only at a distance. These matters have become clearer to me with each new thing I have learned from you. Yes, I have insights now that I know more of these workings. Ask Corwin of the mind of his general.”

“Corwin,” Random said, “give me the pierced Trump.”

I withdrew it from my pocket and smoothed it. The stains seemed more ominous now. Another thing also struck me. I did not believe that it had been executed by Dworkin, sage, mage, artist, and one-time mentor to the children of Oberon. It had not occurred to me until that moment that anyone else might be capable of producing one. While the style of this one did seem somehow familiar, it was not his work. Where had I seen that deliberate line before, less spontaneous than the master’s, as though every movement had been totally intellectualized before the pen touched the paper? And there was something else wrong with it-a quality of idealization of a different order from that of our own Trumps, almost as if the artist had been working with old memories, glimpses, or descriptions rather than a living subject.

“The Trump, Corwin. If you please,” Random said.

There was that about the way in which he said it to make me hesitate. It gave rise to the feeling that he was somehow a jump ahead of me on something important, a feeling which I did not like at all.

“I’ve petted old ugly here for you, and I’ve just bled for the cause, Corwin. Now let’s have it.”

I handed it over, my uneasiness increasing as he held it in his hand and furrowed his brow. Why was I suddenly the stupid one? Does a night in Tir-na Nog’th slow cerebration? Why-

Random began to curse, a string of profanities unsurpassed by anything encountered in my long military career.

Then, “What is it?” I said. “I don’t understand.”

“The blood of Amber,” he finally said. “Whoever did it walked the Pattern first, you see. Then they stood there at the center and contacted him via this Trump. When he responded and a firm contact was achieved, they stabbed him. His blood flowed upon the Pattern, obliterating that part of it, as mine did here.”

He was silent for the space of several deep breaths.

“It smacks of a ritual,” I said.

“Damn rituals!” he said. “Damn all of them! One of them is going to die, Corwin. I am going to kill him-or her.”

“I still do not-“

“I am a fool,” he said, “for not seeing it right away. Look! Look closely!”

He thrust the pierced Trump at me. I stared. I still did not see.

“Now look at me!” he said. “See me!”

I did. Then I looked back at the card. I realized what he meant.

“I was never anything to him but a whisper of life in the darkness. But they used my son for this,” he said.

“That has to be a picture of Martin.”

Standing there beside the broken Pattern, regarding a picture of the man who may or may not have been Random’s son, who may or may not have died of a knife wound received from a point within the Pattern, I turned and took a giant step back within my mind for an instant replay of the events which had brought me to this point of peculiar revelation. I had learned so many new things recently that the occurrences of the past few years seemed almost to constitute a different story than they had while I was living them. Now this new possibility and a number of things it implied had just shifted the perspective again.

I had not even been aware of my name when I had awakened in Greenwood, that private hospital in upstate New York where I had spent two totally blank weeks subsequent to my accident. It was only recently that I had been told that the accident itself had been engineered by my brother Bleys, immediately following my escape from the Porter Sanitarium in Albany. I got this story from my brother Brand, who had railroaded me into Porter in the first place, by means of fake psychiatric evidence. At Porter, I had been subjected to electroshock therapy over the span of several days, results ambiguous but presumably involving the return of a few memories. Apparently, this was what had scared Bleys into making the attempt on my life at the time of my escape, shooting out a couple of my tires on a curve above a lake. This doubtless would have resulted in my death, had Brand not been a step behind Bleys and out to protect his insurance investment, me. He said he had gotten word to the cops, dragged me out of the lake, and administered first aid until help arrived. Shortly after that, he was captured by his former partners-Bleys and our sister Fiona-who confined him in a guarded tower in a distant place in Shadow.

There had been two cabals, plotting and counterplotting after the throne, treading on one another’s heels, breathing down one another’s necks, and doing anything else to one another that might suggest itself at that range. Our brother Eric, backed by brothers Julian and Caine, had been preparing to take the throne, long left vacant by the unexplained absence of our father, Oberon. Unexplained to Eric, Julian, and Caine, that is. To the other group, consisting of Bleys, Fiona, and-formerly-Brand, it was not unexplained because they were responsible for it. They had arranged for this state of affairs to come into being in order to open the way for Bleys’s accession to the throne. But Brand had committed a tactical error in attempting to obtain Caine’s assistance in their play for the throne, in that Caine decided a better deal obtained in upholding Eric’s part. This left Brand under close scrutiny, but did not immediately result in the betrayal of his partners’ identities. At about that time, Bleys and Fiona decided to employ their secret allies against Eric. Brand had demurred in this, fearing the strength of those forces, and as a result had been rejected by Bleys and Fiona. With everyone on his back then, he had sought to upset the balance of powers completely by journeying to the shadow Earth where Eric had left me to die centuries before. It was only later that Eric had learned that I had not died but was possessed of total amnesia, which was almost as good, had set sister Flora to watch over my exile, and hoped that that was the last of it. Brand later told me he had gotten me committed to Porter in a desperate move to restore my memory as a preliminary to my return to Amber.

While Fiona and Bleys had been dealing with Brand, Eric had been in touch with Flora. She had arranged for my transfer to Greenwood from the clinic to which the police had taken me, with instructions to keep me narcotized, while Eric began arrangements for his coronation in Amber. Shortly thereafter, our brother Random’s idyllic existence in Texorami was broken when Brand managed to send him a message outside the normal family channels-i.e., the Trumps-requesting deliverance. While Random, who was blissfully nonpartisan in the power struggle, was about this business, I managed to deliver myself from Greenwood, still relatively unmemoried. Having obtained Flora’s address from Greenwood’s frightened director, I betook myself to her place in Westchester, engaged in some elaborate bluffing, and moved in as a house guest. Random, in the meantime, had been less than successful in his attempt to rescue Brand. Slaying the snaky warden of the tower, he had had to flee its inner guards, utilizing one of the region’s strangely mobile rocks. The guards, a hardy band of not quite human guys, had succeeded in pursuing him through Shadow, however, a feat normally impossible for most nonAmberites. Random had fled then to the shadow Earth where I was guiding Flora along the paths of misunderstanding while attempting to locate the proper route to enlightenment as to my own circumstances. Crossing the continent in response to my assurance that he would be under my protection. Random had come believing that his pursuers were my own creatures. When I helped him destroy them he was puzzled but unwilling to raise the issue while I seemed engaged in some private maneuver throneward. In fact, he had easily been tricked into conveying me back to Amber through Shadow.