PRINCE OF CHAOS (24 page)

“Fascinating sociological phenomenon,” I said, “and your cult figure is Benedict.”

She laughed.

“That wouldn’t have been hard to guess,” she said.

“Actually, I had the chapel described to me by my brother Mandor.
 
He claimed to have wandered into it at a party at Hendrake, not knowing what it was.”

She chuckled.

“He must have been testing you,” she said.
 
“The practice has been common knowledge for a long while: And I happen to know he’s a cultist himself.”

“Really? How do you know this?”

“He made no secret of it in the old days, before the general proscription.”

“And who might his personal patron be?” I said.

“The Princess Fiona,” she replied.

Curiouser and curiouser...

“You’ve actually seen his chapel to her?” I asked.

“Yes.
 
Before the ban it was not uncommon to have your friends over for a service whenever you were feeling particularly disgruntled with royal policy.”

“And after the ban?”

“Everyone claimed publicly that their shrines had been destroyed.
 
Many were simply relocated, I think, up hidden ways.”

“And the business of having friends over for services?”

“I’d guess it would depend on how good a friend you’re talking about.
 
I don’t really know how organized the Amber cult is.” She gestured widely.
 
“A place like this is illegal, though.
 
Good thing I don’t know where we are.”

“I guess so,” I said.
 
“What about the relationship between the cult figure and the real thing? I’d say that Mandor really does have a thing about Fiona.
 
He’s met her, you know, and I’ve been present and seen it.
 
Someone else I know stole something belonging to his-patron?-and keeps it in his shrine.
 
And that”- I rose, crossed the altar, and picked up Corwin’s sword-‘ ‘is the real thing.
 
I’d seen Grayswandir close-up, touched it, held it.
 
This is it.
 
But what I’m getting at is that my father is missing, and the last time I saw him he was wearing that blade.
 
Would it be in keeping with the tenets of this cult to keep your patron prisoner?”

“I never heard of such a thing,” she said.
 
“But I don’t see why not.
 
It is really the spirit of the person that is being venerated.
 
There is no reason the person could not be imprisoned.”

“Or dead?”

“Or dead,” she agreed.

“Then fascinating as all this is,” I said, turning away from the altar, “it doesn’t really help me to find my father.”

I moved back to her, across what must have been a representation of Amber, stylized as the pattern on a Caucasian rug, there in the dark and light tile, the Chaotic one far off to my right.

“You would have to ask the person responsible for his blade’s being there,” she said, rising.

“I already asked the person I believed responsible.
 
The response was not satisfactory.”

I took her arm to steer her back toward the way to the tree, and she was suddenly standing very close.

“I would like to serve our next king any way I might,” she said.
 
“Though I may not normally speak for our House, I am certain Hendrake would agree to help you bring pressure upon the person responsible.”

“Thanks,” I said as we embraced.
 
Her scales were cool.
 
Her fangs would have shredded my human ear, but it was only a nibble in demon-form.
 
“I will talk to you again if I need help along those lines.”

“Talk to me again, anyway.”

It was good to hold and be held for a time, and that is what we did, till I saw a shadow move in the vicinity of the way.

“Masster Merlin.”

“Glait!”

“Yess.
 
I ssaw you come thiss way.
 
Manform, demonform, grown or ssmall, I know you.”

“Merlin, what is it?” Gilva asked.

“An old friend,” I told her.
 
“Glait, meet Gilva.
 
And vice versa.”

“Pleassed.
 
I came to warn you that ssomeone approachess.”

“Who?”

“Princess Dara.”

“Oh, dear!” Gilva remarked.

“You suspect where we are,” I said to her.
 
“Keep it to yourself.”

“I value my head, Lord.
 
What do we do now?”

“Glait, to me,” I said, kneeling and extending an arm.
 
She flowed up it and made herself comfortable.
 
I rose and caught hold of Gilva with the other.
 
I sent my will into the spikard.

Then I hesitated

I didn’t know where the hell we were-really, physically, in terms of geography.
 
A way can deliver you next door, or somewhere thousands of miles distant from its point of origin, or somewhere off in Shadow.
 
It would take a while to have the spikard figure where we were and then work out the way back, if we were going to bypass the way.
 
Too long, I was certain.

I could simply use it to render us invisible.
 
But I feared my mother’s sorcerous sensitivity would be sufficient to detect our presence at levels beyond the visual.

I faced the nearest wall and extended my senses past it on a line of the spikard’s force.
 
We were not underwater or drifting on a sea of lava or quicksand.
 
We seemed to be in a wooded spot.

So I walked toward the wall and passed us through it when we got there.

Several paces later, in the midst of a shaded glade, I looked back and beheld a grassy hillside, with no singing coming from beneath it.
 
We stood under a blue sky, orange sun nearing its top.
 
There were bird and insect sounds about us.

“Marrow!” Glait exclaimed, unwound herself from my arm and vanished into the gasses.

“Don’t stay away long!” I hissed, trying to keep my voice low; and I led Gilva away from the hill.

“Merlin,” she said, “I’m frightened at what I’ve learned.”

“I won’t tell anyone if you won’t,” I said.
 
“If you’d like, I can even remove these memories before I send you back to the funeral.”

“No, let me keep them.
 
I can even wish there were more.”

“I’ll figure our location and get you back before you’re missed.”

“I’ll wait with you while your friend hunts.”

I half expected her to continue, “...
 
in case I never see you again,” what with the near skateboarding of Tmer and Tubble off this ever-mortal helix.
 
But no, she was a demure and well-bred battle-maid-with over thirty notches on the haft of her broadsword, I later learned-and she was above stating the distasteful obvious in the presence of her possible future liege.

When Glait returned after an appropriate time, I said, “Thanks, Gilva.
 
I’m going to send you back to the funeral now.
 
If anyone saw us together and wants to know where I am, tell them I said I was going into hiding.”

“If you do need a place to hide ...”

“Talk to you sometime later perhaps,” I said, and I sent her back to the temple at the edge of everything.

“Good vermin,” Glait remarked, as I commenced my shift human-ward.
 
(It’s always easier that way for me than the demon-shift.)

“I’d like to send you back to Sawall’s sculpture garden,” I said.

“Why there, Masster Merlin?”

“To wait for a time, to see whether you behold a sentient circle of light.
 
And if you do, to address it as Ghostwheel and tell it to come to me.”

“Where shall I tell it to sseek you?”

“That I do not know, but it is good at that sort of thing.”

“Then ssend me.
 
And if you are not eaten by ssomething bigger, come tell me your sstory one night.”

“I shall.”

It was the work of but a moment to hang the serpent back in her tree.

I’ve never been sure when she’s joking, reptilian humor being more than a little strange.

I summoned fresh garments and garbed myself in gray and purple.
 
Fetched me blades long and short then, also.
 
I wondered what my mother might have been up to in her chapel, but decided against trying to spy on her.
 
I raised the spikard and regarded it for a moment, then lowered it.
 
It seemed possibly counterproductive to transport myself to Kashfa when I was uncertain how much time had passed and whether Luke was actually still there.
 
I took out my Trumps, which I had had along in my mourning garb, uncased them.

I located Luke’s, focused upon it.
 
Before too long it went cold and I felt Luke’s presence.

“Yes?” he said.
 
“That you, Merle?” at about the same time as his image swam and altered, causing me to see him mounted and riding through a part-blasted, part-normal countryside.

“Yeah,” I answered.
 
“I gather you’re no longer in Kashfa.”

“Right,” he said.
 
“Where’re you?”

“Somewhere in Shadow.
 
How’s about yourself?”

“Damned if I know for sure,” he responded.
 
“We’ve been following this black path for days-and I can only say ‘somewhere in Shadow,’ too.”

“0h, you located it?”

“Nayda did.
 
I didn’t see anything, but she just led me on.
 
Eventually, the trail got clear to me.
 
Hell of a tracker, that gal.”

“She’s with you now?”

“That’s right.
 
She says we’re gaining on them, too.”

“Better bring me through then.”

“Come ahead.”

He extended a hand.
 
I reached forward, clasped it, took a step, released his hand, began walking beside him, a pack horse to the rear.

“Hi, Nayda!” I called, to where she rode at his other side.
 
A grim figure was mounted upon a black horse ahead and to her right.

She smiled.

“Merlin,” she said.
 
“Hello.”

“How about Merle?” I said.

“If you wish.”

The figure on the dark horse turned and regarded me.

I halted a death strike that ran from reflex to the spikard so fast that it scared me.
 
The air between us was smudged and filled with a screeching note, as of a car grabbing pavement to avert collision.

He was a big, blond-haired son of a bitch, and he had on a yellow shirt and black trousers, black boots, lots of cutlery.
 
The medallion of the Lion rending the Unicorn bounced upon his broad chest.
 
Every time I’d seen or heard of the man, he’d been about something nasty, damn near killing Luke on one occasion.
 
He was a mercenary, a Robin Hood figure out of Eregnor, and a sworn enemy of Amber-illegitimate son of her late liege Oberon.
 
I believed there was a price on his head within the Golden Circle.
 
On the other hand, he and Luke had been buddies for years, and Luke swore he wasn’t all that bad.
 
He was my uncle Dalt, and I’d a feeling that if he moved too quickly the flexing of his muscles would shred his shirt.

“...
 
And you remember my military adviser, Dalt,” Luke said.

“I remember,” I stated.

Dalt stared at the black lines in the air that faded, smoke-like, between us.
 
He actually smiled then, a little.

“Merlin,” he said, “son of Amber, Prince of Chaos, the man who dug my grave.”

“What’s this?” Luke asked.

“A little conversational gambit,” I replied.
 
“You’ve a good memory, Dalt-for faces.”

He chuckled.

“Hard to forget something like a grave opening itself,” he said.
 
“But I’ve no quarrel with you, Merlin.”

“Nor I you-now,” I said.

He grunted then and I grunted back and considered us introduced.
 
I turned back toward Luke.

“Is the path itself giving you any trouble?” I asked.

“No,” he replied.
 
“It’s nothing at all like those stories I’d heard about the Black Road.
 
It looks a little bleak at times, but nothing’s really threatened us.” He glanced downward and chuckled.
 
“Of course it’s only a few yards wide,” he added, “and this is the broadest it’s been, so far.”

“Still,” I said, opening my senses and studying its emanations with my Logrus sight, “I’d think something might have threatened.”