SIGN OF CHAOS (6 page)

“That might explain recent developments,” I said.
 
“Hell of a time for it, though, with everything else that’s been going on.
 
Muddies the waters considerably.”

“It’s one of the reasons I suggest you simply drop out; and let everything cool down.
 
Too busy.
 
With as many arrows as there seem to be in the air, one may well find your heart.”

“I can take care of myself, Mandor.”

“You could have fooled me.”

I shrugged, got up, walked over to the rail, and looked down at the stars.

After a long while he called out to me, “Have you got any better ideas?” but I didn’t answer him because I was thinking about that very matter.
 
I was considering what Mandor had said about my tunnel vision and lack of preparedness and had just about concluded that he was right, that in nearly everything that had happened to me: up to this point-with the exception of my going after Jasra-I had mainly been responding to circumstance.
 
I had been far more acted upon than acting.
 
Admittedly, it had all happened very quickly.
 
But still, I had not formed any real plans for covering myself, learning about my enemies or striking back.
 
It seemed that there were some things I might be doing...

“If there is that much to worry about,” he said, “you are probably better off playing it safe.”

He was probably right, from the standpoints of reason, safety, caution.
 
But he was strictly of the Courts, while I possessed an additional set of loyalties in which he did not participate.
 
It was possible-if only through my connection with Luke-that I might be able to come up with some personal course of action that would further the security of Amber.
 
So long as such a chance existed, I felt obliged to pursue matters.
 
And beyond this, from a purely personal standpoint, my curiosity was too strong to permit me to walk away from the unanswered questions which abounded when I could be actively seeking some answers.

As I was considering how I .
 
might best phrase these matters in my reply to Mandor, I was again acted upon.
 
I became aware of a faint feeling of inquiry, as of a cat scratching at the doors of my mind.
 
It grew in force, thrusting aside other considerations, until I knew it as a Trump sending from some very distant place.
 
I guessed that it might be from Random, anxious to discover what had transpired since my absence from Amber.
 
So I made myself receptive, inviting the contact.

“Merlin, what’s the matter?” Mandor asked, and I raised my hand to indicate I was occupied.
 
At that, I saw him place his napkin upon the tabletop and rise to his feet.

My vision cleared slowly and I beheld Fiona, looking stern, rocks at her back, a pale green sky above her.

“Merlin,” she said.
 
“Where are you?”

“Far away,” I answered.
 
“It’s’ a long story.
 
What’s going on? Where are you?”

She smiled bleakly.

“Far away,” she replied.

“We seem to have chosen very scenic spots,” I observed.
 
“Did you pick the sky to complement your hair?”

“Enough!“ she said.
 
“I did not call you to compare travel notes.”

At that moment Mandor came up aside me and placed his hand upon my shoulder, which was hardly in keeping with his character; as it is considered a gauche thing to do when a Trump communication is obviously in progress-on the order of intentionally picking up an extension phone and breaking in on someone’s call.
 
Nevertheless...

“My! My!” he said.
 
“Will you please introduce me, Merlin?”

“Who,” Fiona asked, “is that?”

“This is my brother Mandor,” I told her, “of the House of Sawall in the Courts of Chaos.
 
Mandor; this is my Aunt Fiona, Princess of Amber.”

Mandor bowed.

“I have heard of you, Princess,” he said.
 
“It is indeed a pleasure.”

Her eyes widened for a moment.

“I know of the house,” she replied, “but I’d no idea of Merlin’s relationship with it.
 
I am pleased to know you.”

“I take it there’s some problem, Fi?” I asked.

“Yes,” she answered, glancing at Mandor.

“I will retire,” he said.
 
“Honored to have met you, Princess.
 
I wish you lived a bit nearer the Rim.”

She smiled.

“Wait,” she said.
 
“This does not involve any state secrets.
 
You are an initiate of the Logrus?”

“I am,” he stated.

“...
 
And I take it you two did not get together to fight a duel?”

“Hardly,” I answered.

“In that case, I would welcome his view of the problem, also.
 
Are you willing to come to me, Mandor?” He bowed again, which I thought was hamming it a bit.

“Anyplace, Madam,” he responded.

She said, “Come then,” and she extended her left hand and I clasped it.

Mandor reached out and touched her wrist.
 
We stepped forward.

We stood before her in the rocky place.
 
It was breezy and a bit chill there.
 
From somewhere distant there came a muted roar, as of a muffled engine.

“Have you been in touch with anyone in Amber recently?” I asked her.

“No,” she stated.

“Your departure was somewhat abrupt.”

“There were reasons.”

“Such as your recognizing Luke?”

“His identity is known to you now?”

“Yes.”

“And to the others?”

“I told Random,” I answered, “and Flora.”

“Then everyone knows,” she said.
 
“I departed quickly and took Bleys with me because we had to be next on Luke’s list.
 
After all, I tried killing his father and almost succeeded.
 
Bleys and I were Brand’s closest relatives, and we’d turned against him.”

She turned a penetrating gaze upon Mandor, who smiled.

“I understand,” he stated, “that right now Luke drinks with a Cat, a Dodo, a Caterpillar, and a White Rabbit.
 
I also understand that with his mother a prisoner in Amber he is powerless against you.”

She regarded me again.

“You have been busy,” she said.
 
“I try.”

“...
 
So that it is probably safe for you to return,” Mandor continued.

She smiled at him, then glanced at me.

“Your brother seems well informed,” she observed.

“He’s family, too,” I said, “and we’ve a lifelong habit of looking out for each other.”

“His- life or yours?” she asked.

“Mine,” I replied.
 
“He is my senior.”

“What are a few centuries this way or that?” Mandor offered.

“I thought I felt a certain maturity of spirit,” she noted.
 
“I’ve a mind to trust you further than I’d intended.”

“That’s very sporting of you,” he replied, “and I treasure the sentiment...”

“...
 
But you’d rather I didn’t overdo it?”

“Precisely.”

“I’ve no intention of testing your loyalties to home and throne,” she said, “on such short acquaintance.
 
It does concern both Amber and the Courts, but I see no conflict in the matter.”

“I do not doubt your prudence.
 
I merely wanted to make my position clear.”

She turned back toward me.

“Merlin,” she said then, “I think you lied to me.”

I felt myself frowning as I tried to recall an occasion when I might have misled her about something.
 
I shook my head.

“If I did,” I told her, “I don’t remember.”

“It was some years ago,” she said, “when I asked you to try walking your father’s Pattern.”

“Oh,” I answered, feeling myself blush and wondering whether it was apparent in this strange light.

“You took advantage of what I had told you about the Pattern’s resistance,” she continued.
 
“You pretended it was preventing you from setting your foot upon it.
 
But there was no visible sign of the resistance, such as there was when I tried stepping onto it.”

She looked at me, as if for confirmation.
 
“So?” I said.

“So,” she replied, “it has become more important now than it was then, and I have to know: Were you faking it that day?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Why?”

“Once I took one step upon it,” I explained, “I’d have been committed to walking it.
 
Who knows where it might have led me and what situation might have followed? I was near the end of my holiday and in a hurry to get back to school: I didn’t have time for what might have turned into a lengthy expedition.
 
Telling you there were difficulties seemed the most graceful way of begging off.”

“I think there’s more to it than that,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“I think Corwin told you something about it that the rest of us do not know-or that he left you a message.
 
I believe you know more than you let on concerning the thing.”

I shrugged.

“Sorry, Fiona.
 
I have no control over your suspicions,” I said: “Wish I could be of more help.”

“You can,” she replied.

“Tell me how.”

“Come with me to the place of the new Pattern.
 
I want you to walk it.”

I shook my head.

“I’ve got a lot more pressing business,” I told her, ”than satisfying your curiosity about something my dad did years ago.”

“It’s more than just curiosity,” she said.
 
“I told you once before that I think it’s what is behind the increased incidence of shadow storms.”

“And I gave you a perfectly good reason for something else being the cause.
 
I believe it’s an adjustment to they partial destruction and recreation of the old Pattern.“

“Would you come this way?” she asked, and she turned from me and began to climb.

I glanced at Mandor, shrugged, and followed her.
 
He came along.

We mounted toward a jagged screen of rock.
 
She reached it first and made her way onto a lopsided ledge which ran partway along it.
 
She traversed this until she came to a place where the rock wall had broken down into a wide V-shaped gap.
 
She stood there with her back to us then, the light from the green sky doing strange things to her hair.

I came up beside her and followed the direction of her gaze.
 
On a distant plain, far below us and to the left, a large black funnel spun like a top.
 
It seemed the source of the roaring sound we had been hearing.
 
The ground; appeared to be cracked beneath it.
 
I stared for several minutes, but it did not change in form or position.
 
Finally, I cleared my throat.

“Looks like a big tornado,” I said, “not going any place.”

“That’s why I want you to walk the new Pattern,” she’ told me.
 
“I think it’s going to get us unless we get it first.”

If you had a choice between the ability to detect falsehood and the ability to discover truth, which one would you take? There was a time when I thought they were different ways of saying the same thing, but I no longer believe that.
 
Most of my relatives, for example, are almost as good at seeing through subterfuge as they are at perpetrating it.
 
I’m not at all sure, though, that they care much about truth: On the other hand, I’d always felt there was something noble, special, and honorable about seeking truth-a thing I’d attempted with Ghostwheel.
 
Mandor had made me wonder, though.
 
Had this made me a sucker for truth’s opposite?

Of course, it’s not as cut and dried as all that.
 
I know that it is not a pure either/or situation with the middle excluded, but is rather a statement of attitude.
 
Still, I was suddenly willing to concede that I might have gone to an extreme-to the point of foolhardiness-and that I had let certain of my critical faculties doze for far too long.

So I wondered about Fiona’s request.

“What makes it such a threat?” I asked her.

“It is a shadow storm in the form of a tornado,” she said.

“There have been such things before,” I answered.
 

“True,” she responded, “but they tend to move through Shadow.
 
This one does have extension through an area of Shadow, but it is totally stationary.
 
It first appeared several days ago, and it has not altered in any way since then.”

“What’s that come to in Amber-time?” I asked.

“Half a day, perhaps.
 
Why?”

I shrugged.
 
“I don’t know.
 
Just curious,” I said.
 
“I still don’t see why it’s a threat.”

“I told you that such storms had proliferated since Corwin drew the extra Pattern.
 
Now they’re changing in character as well as frequency.
 
That Pattern has to be understood soon.”

A moment’s quick reflection showed me that whoever gained control of Dad’s Pattern could become master of some terrible forces.
 
Or mistress.

So, “Supposing I walk it;” I said.
 
“Then what? As I understand it from Dad’s story, I’d just wind up in the middle, the same as with the Pattern back home.
 
What’s to be learned from that?”

I studied her face for some display of emotion, but my relatives tend to have too much control for such simple self-betrayal.

“As I understand it,” she said, “Brand was able to trump in when Corwin was at the middle.“

“That’s the way I understand it, too.”

“...
 
So, when you reach.the center, I can come in on a Trump.”

“I suppose so.
 
Then there will be two of us standing at the middle of the Pattern.”

“...
 
And from there we will be in a position to go someplace we could not reach from any other point in existence.”

“That being?” I asked.

“The primal Pattern which lies behind it.”

“You’re sure there is one?”

“There must be.
 
It is in the nature of such a construct to be scribed at a more basic level of reality as well as the mundane.”

“And our purpose in traveling to that place?”

“That is where its secrets dwell; where its deepest magics might be learned.”

“I see,” I told her.
 
“Then what?”

“Why, there we might learn how to undo the trouble the thing is causing,” she answered.

“That’s all?”

Her eyes narrowed.

“We will learn whatever we can, of course.
 
Power is power, and represents a threat until it is understood.”

I nodded slowly.

“But right now there are a number of powers that are more pressing in the threat department,” I said.
 
“That Pattern is going to have to wait its turn.”

“Even if it may represent the forces you need to deal with your other problems?” she asked.

“Even so,” I said.
 
“It might turn into a lengthy enterprise, and I don’t believe I have the time for that.”

“But you don’t know that for certain.”

“True.
 
But once I set foot on it, there’s no turning back.”

I did not add that I’d no intention of taking her to the primal Pattern, then leaving her there on her own.
 
After all, she had tried her hand at king-making once.
 
And if Brand had made it to the throne of Amber in those days, she would have been standing right behind him, no matter what she had to say about it now.
 
I think she was about to ask me to deliver her to the primal Pattern then but realized that I’d already considered it and rejected it.
 
Not wanting to lose face by asking and being refused, she returned to her original argument.

“I suggest you make time now,” she said, “if you do not wish to see worlds torn up about you.”

“I didn’t believe you the first time you told me that,” I answered, “and I don’t believe you now.
 
I still think the increased shadow-storm activity is probably an adjustment to the damage and repair of the original Pattern.
 
I also think that if we mess around with a new Pattern we don’t know anything about, we stand a chance of making things worse, not better-“

“I don’t want to mess around with it,” she said.
 
“I want to study-“

The Sign of the Logrus flashed between us suddenly.
 
She must have seen it or felt it somehow, too, because she drew back at the same instant I did.

I turned my head with sure knowledge as to what I would see.

Mandor had mounted the battlement-like wall of stone.
 
He stood as still as if he were a part of it, his arm, upraised.
 
I suppressed my first impulse, which was to shout to him to stop.
 
He knew what he was doing.
 
And I was certain that he would not pay me the slightest heed, anyway.

I advanced to the notch in which he had taken his position, and I looked past him at the swirling thing on the cracked plain far below.
 
Through the image of the Logrus, I felt the dark, awful rush of power that Suhuy had revealed to me in his final lesson.
 
Mandor was calling upon it now and pouring it into the shadow-storm.
 
Did he not realize that the force of Chaos he was unleashing must spread until it had run a terrible course? Could he not see that if the storm were indeed a manifestation of Chaos then he was turning it into a truly monstrous thing?

It grew larger.
 
It’s roaring increased in volume.
 
It became frightening to watch it.

From behind me, I heard Fiona gasp.

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” I called to him.

“We’ll know in about a minute,” he replied, lowering his arms.

The Sign of the Logrus winked out before me.

We watched the damned thing spin for some time, bigger and noisier.

Finally, “What have you proved?” I asked him.

“That you have no patience,” he answered.

There was nothing particularly instructive to the phenomenon, but I continued to watch it anyway.

Abruptly, the sound became a stutter.
 
The dark apparition jerked about suddenly, shaking off bits of accumulated debris as it contracted.
 
Soon it was restored to its former size, and it hit its earlier pitch and the sound grew steady once more.

“How did you do that?” I asked him.

“I didn’t,” he said.
 
“It adjusted itself.”

“It shouldn’t have,” Fiona stated.

“Exactly,” he replied.

“You’ve lost me,” I said.

“It should have gone roaring right on, stronger than ever, after he’d augmented it that way,” Fiona said.
 
“But whatever is controlling it had other plans.
 
So it was readjusted.”

“...
 
And it is a Chaos phenomenon,” Mandor continued.
 
“You could see that in the way it drew upon Chaos when I provided the means.
 
But that pushed it past some limit, and there was a correction.
 
Someone is playing with the primal forces themselves out there.
 
Who or what or why, I cannot say.
 
But I think it’s strong testimony that the Pattern isn’t involved.
 
Not with Chaos games.
 
So Merlin is probably correct.
 
I think that this business has its origin elsewhere.”

“All right,” Fiona conceded.
 
“All right.
 
What does that leave us with?”

“A mystery,” he said.
 
“But hardly, I think, an imminent threat.”

A faint firefly of an idea flitted through my mind.
 
It could easily be dead wrong, though that was not the reason I decided against sharing it.
 
It led into an area of thought I could not explore in an instant, and I don’t like giving away pieces of things like that.

Fiona was glaring at me now, but I maintained a bland expression.
 
Abruptly then, seeing that her cause was fruitless, she decided to change the subject:

“You said that you left Luke under somewhat unusual circumstances.
 
Just where is he now?”

The last thing I wanted to do was to get her really mad at me.
 
But I couldn’t see fuming her loose on Luke in his present condition.
 
For all I knew, she might actually be up to killing him, just as a form of life insurance.
 
And I did not want Luke dead.
 
I’d a feeling he might be undergoing something of a change of attitude, and I wanted to give him every break I could.
 
We still owed each other a few, even though it was hard keeping score; and there is something to be said for old times’ sake Considering what I’d judged his condition to be when I’d left him, it was going to be a while before he was in decent shape again.
 
And then I had a number of things I wanted to talk to him about.

“Sorry,” I said.
 
“He’s my province at the moment.”

“I believe I have some interest in the matter,” she replied levelly.

“Of course,” I said, “but I feel that mine is greater and that we may get in each other’s ways.”

“I can judge these things for myself,” she said.

“Okay,” I told her.
 
“He’s on an acid trip.
 
Any information you’d get out of him might be colorful, but it would also be highly disappointing.”

“How did this happen?” she asked.

“A wizard named Mask apparently slipped him some chemicals when he had him prisoner.”

“Where was this? I’ve never heard of Mask.”

“A place called the Keep of the Four Worlds,” I told her.

“It’s been a long time since I heard the Keep mentioned,” she said.
 
“A sorcerer named Sharu Garrul used to hold it.”

“He’s a coatrack now,” I stated.
 

“What?”

“Long story; but Mask has the place these days.”

She stared at me, and I could tell she was just realizing that there was a lot she didn’t know in the way of recent developments.
 
I’d judge she was deciding which of several obvious questions to ask next when I decided to beat her to the punch while she was still off balance.

“So how’s Bleys?” I asked.

“He’s much improved.
 
I treated him myself and he’s recovering quickly.”

I was about to ask her where he was, which I knew she would refuse to answer, and hopefully we would both smile when she saw what I was driving at: no address for Bleys, no address for Luke; we keep our secrets and stay friends.

“Hello!” I heard Mandor say, and we both turned in the direction he was facing-back out through the notch.

The dark tornado-form had collapsed to half its former size, and even as we watched, it continued to diminish.
 
It fell steadily in upon itself, shrinking and shrinking, and in about a half minute it was gone, completely.

I could not suppress a smile, but Fiona did not even notice.
 
She was looking at Mandor.

“Do you think it was because of what you did?” she asked him.

“I have no way of knowing,” he replied, “but it may well be.”

“But does it tell you anything?” she said.

“Perhaps whoever was responsible did not like having me tinker with his experiment.”

“You really believe there’s an intelligence behind it?”

“Yes.”