Trumps of Doom (14 page)

“You say that Luke didn’t show up the following day,” he said.
 
“Did he send a message?”

“ No.”

“What exactly did you do that day?”

“I checked his room in the morning.
 
It was just as I’d left it.
 
I went by the desk.
 
Nothing, like I said.
 
Then I had breakfast and I checked again.
 
Nothing again.
 
So I took a long walk around the town.
 
Got back a little after noon, had lunch, and tried the room again.
 
It was the same.
 
I borrowed the car keys then and drove back up to the place we’d been the night before.
 
No sign of anything unusual there, looking at it in the light of day.
 
I even climbed down the slope and hunted around.
 
No body, no clues.
 
I drove back, replaced the keys, hung around the hotel till dinner time, ate, then called you.
 
After you told me to come on up, I made a reservation and went to bed early.
 
Caught the Shuttlejack this morning and flew here from Albuquerque.”

“And you checked again this morning?”

“Yeah.
 
Nothing new.”

He shook his head and relit his pipe.

His name was Bill Rosh, and he had been my father’s friend as well as his attorney, back when he’d lived in this area.
 
He was possibly the only man on Earth Dad had trusted, and I trusted him, too.
 
I’d visited him a number of times during my eight years-most recently, unhappily, a year and a half earlier, at the time of his wife, Alice’s, funeral.
 
I had told him my father’s story, as I had heard it from his own lips, outside the Courts of Chaos, because I’d gotten the impression that he had wanted Bill to know what had been going on, felt he’ d owed him some sort of explanation for all the help he’d given him.
 
And Bill actually seemed to understand and believe it.
 
But then, he’d known Dad a lot better than I did.

“I’ve remarked before on the resemblance you bear your father.”

I nodded.

“It goes beyond the physical,” he continued.
 
“For a while there he had a habit of showing up like a downed fighter pilot behind enemy lines.
 
I’ll never forget the night he arrived on horseback with a sword at his side and had me trace a missing compost heap for him.” He chuckled.
 
“Now you come along with a story that makes me believe Pandora’s box has been opened again.
 
Why couldn’t you just want a divorce like any sensible young man? Or a will written or a trust set up? A partnership agreement? Something like that? No, this sounds more like one of Carl’s problems.
 
Even the other stuff I’ve done for Amber seems pretty sedate by comparison.”

“Other stuff ? You mean the Concord-the time Random sent Fiona with a copy of the Patternfall Treaty with Swayvil, King of Chaos, for her to translate and you to look at for loopholes?”

“That, yes,” he said, “though I wound up studying your language myself before I was done.
 
Then Flora wanted her library recovered-no easy job-and then an old flame traced-whether for reunion or revenge I never learned.
 
Paid me in gold, though.
 
Bought the place in Palm Beach with it.
 
Then-oh, hell.
 
For a while there, I thought of adding ‘Counsel to the Court of Amber’ to my business card.
 
But that sort of work was understandable.
 
I do similar things on a mundane level all the time.
 
Yours, though, has that black magic and sudden-death quality to it that seemed to follow your father about.
 
It scares the hell out of me, and I wouldn’t even know how to go about advising you on it.”

“Well, the black magic and sudden-death parts are my area, I guess,” I observed.
 
“In fact, they may color my thinking too much.
 
You’re bound to look at things a lot differently than I do.
 
A blind spot by definition is something you’re not aware of.
 
What might I be missing?”

He took a sip of his beer, lit his pipe again.

“Okay,” he said.
 
“Your friend Luke-where’s he from?”

“Somewhere in the Midwest, I believe he said: Nebraska, Iowa, Ohio-one of those places.”

“Mm-hm.
 
What line of work is his old man in?”

“He never mentioned it.”

“Does he have any brothers or sisters?”

“I don’t know.
 
He never said.”

“Doesn’t that strike you as somewhat odd-that he never mentioned his family or talked about his home town in the whole eight years you’ve known him?”

“No.
 
After all, I never talked about mine either.”

“It’s not natural, Merle.
 
You grew up in a strange place that you couldn’t talk about.
 
You had every reason to change the subject, avoid the issues.
 
He obviously did, too.
 
And then, back when you came you weren’t even certain how most people here behaved.
 
But didn’t you ever wonder about Luke?”

“Of course.
 
But he respected my reticence.
 
I could do no less for him.
 
You might say that we had a sort of tacit agreement that such things were off limits.”

“How’d you meet him?”

“We were freshmen together, had a lot of the same classes.”

“And you were both strangers in town, no other friends.
 
You hit it off from the beginning...”

“No.
 
We barely talked to each other.
 
I thought he was an arrogant bastard who felt he was ten times better than anybody he’d ever met.
 
I didn’t like him, and he didn’t like me much either.”

“Why not?”

“He felt the same way about me.”

“So it was only gradually that you came to realize you were both wrong?”

“No.
 
We were both right.
 
We got to know each other by trying to show each other up.
 
If I’d do something kind of outstanding-he’d try to top it.
 
And vice versa.
 
We got so we’d go out for the same sport, try to date the same girls, try to beat each other’s grades.”

“And .
 
.
 
.
 
?”

“Somewhere along the line I guess we started to respect each other.
 
When we both made the Olympic finals something broke.
 
We started slapping each other on the back and laughing, and we went out and had dinner and sat up all night talking and he said he didn’t give a shit about the Olympics and I said I didn’t either.
 
He said he’d just wanted to show me he was a better man and now he didn’t care anymore.
 
He’d decided we were both good enough, and he’d just as soon let the matter stand at that - I felt exactly the same way and told him so.
 
That was when we got to be friends.”

“I can understand that,” Bill said.
 
“It’s a specialized sort of friendship.
 
You’re friends in certain places.”

I laughed and took a drink.

“Isn’t everyone?”

“At first, yes.
 
Sometimes always.
 
Nothing wrong with that.
 
It’s just that yours seems a much more highly specialized friendship than most.”

I nodded slowly.
 
“Maybe so.”

“So it still doesn’t make sense.
 
Two guys as close as you got to be-with no pasts to show to each other.”

“I guess you’re right.
 
What does it mean?”

“You’re not a normal human being.”

“No, I’ m not.”

“I’m not so sure Luke is either.”

“What, then?”

“That’s your department.”

I nodded.

“Apart from that issue,” Bill continued, “something else has been bothering me.”

“What?”

“This Martinez fellow.
 
He followed you out to the boondocks, stopped when you did, stalked you, then opened fire.
 
Who was he after? Both of you? Just Luke? Or just you?”

“I don’t know.
 
I’m not sure which of us that first shot was aimed for.
 
After that, he was firing at Luke-because by then Luke was attacking and he was defending himself.”

“Exactly.
 
If he were S - or S’s agent - why would he even have bothered with that conversation with you in the bar?”

“I now have the impression that the whole thing was an elaborate buildup to that final question of his, as to whether Luke knew anything about Amber.”

“And your reaction, rather than your answer, led him to believe that he did.”

“Well, apparently Luke does-from the way he addressed me right there at the end.
 
You think he was really gunning for someone from Amber?”

“Maybe.
 
Luke is no Amberite, though?”

“I never heard of anyone like him in the time I spent there after the war.
 
And I got plenty of lectures on genealogy.
 
My relatives are like a sewing circle when it comes to keeping track of such matters - a lot less orderly about it than they are in Chaos - can’t even decide exactly who’s oldest, because some of them were born in different time streams-but they’re pretty thorough”

“Chaos! That’s right! You’re also lousy with relatives on that side! Could-?”

I shook my head.
 
“No way.
 
I have an even more extensive knowledge of the families there.
 
I believe I’m acquainted with just about all of the ones who can manipulate Shadow, traverse it.
 
Luke’s not one of them and-“

“Wait a minute! There are people in the Courts who can walk in Shadow, also?”

“Yes.
 
Or stay in one place and bring things from Shadow to them.
 
It’s a kind of reverse-“

“I thought you had to walk the Pattern to gain that power?”

“They have a sort of equivalent called the Logrus.
 
It’s a kind of chaotic maze.
 
Keeps shifting about.
 
Very dangerous.
 
Unbalances you mentally, too, for a time.
 
No fun.”

“So you’ve done it?”

“Yes.”

“And you walked the Pattern as well?”

I licked my lips, remembering.

“Yes.
 
Damn near killed me.
 
Suhuy’d thought it would, but Fiona thought I could make it if she helped.
 
I was-“

“Who’s Suhuy?”

“He’s Master of the Logrus.
 
He’s an uncle of mine, too.
 
He felt that the Pattern of Amber and the Logrus of Chaos were incompatible, that I could not bear the images of both within me.
 
Random, Fiona, and Gerard had taken me down to show me the Pattern.
 
I got in touch with Suhuy then and gave him a look at it.
 
He said that they seemed antithetical, and that I would either be destroyed by the attempt or the Pattern would drive the image of the Logrus from me, probably the former.
 
But Fiona said that the Pattern should be able to encompass anything, even the Logrus, and from what she understood of the Logrus it should be able to work its way around anything, even the Pattern.
 
So they left it up to me, and I knew that I had to walk it.
 
So I did.
 
I made it, and I still bear the Logrus as well as the Pattern.
 
Suhuy acknowledged that Fi had been right, and he speculated that it had to do with my mixed parentage.
 
She disagreed, though-“

Bill raised his hand.
 
“Wait a minute.
 
I don’t understand how you got your uncle Suhuy down into the basement of Amber Castle on a moment’s notice.”

“Oh, I have a set of Chaos Trumps as well as a set of Amber Trumps, for my relatives back in the Courts.”

He shook his head.
 
“All of this is fascinating, but we’re straying from the point.
 
Is there anyone else who can walk in Shadow? Or are there other ways of doing it?”

“Yes, there are different ways it could be done.
 
There are a number of magical beings, like the Unicorn, who can just wander wherever they want.
 
And you can follow a Shadow walker or a magical being through Shadow for so long as you can keep track of it, no matter who you are.
 
Kind of like Thomas Rhymer is the ballad.
 
And one Shadow walker could lead an army through.
 
And then there are the inhabitants of the various Shadow kingdoms nearest to Amber and to Chaos.
 
Those at both ends breed mighty sorcerers, just because of their proximity to the two power centers.
 
Some of the good ones can become fairly adept at it-but their images of the Pattern or the Logrus are imperfect, so they’re never quite as good as the real thing.
 
But on either end they don’t even need an initiation to wander on in.
 
The Shadow interfaces are thinnest there.
 
We even have commerce with them, actually.
 
And established routes become easier and easier to follow with time.
 
Going outward is harder, though.
 
But large attacking forces have been known to come through.
 
That’s why we maintain patrols.
 
Julian in Arden, Gerard at sea, and so forth.”