PRINCE OF CHAOS (34 page)

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 fumed 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 Dana.
 
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 flower-faced 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.