The Courts Of Chaos tcoa-5 Read online

I reached out quickly and twisted his head off, wishing that I had time to build a fire. Though he made it look like a sacrifice, it is difficult to say to whom the moral victory belonged, since I was planning on doing it anyway.

  Chapter 9

  …Cassis, and the smell of the chestnut blossoms. All along the Champs-Elysies the chestnuts were foaming white…

  I remembered the play of the fountains in the Place de la Concorde… And down the Rue de la Seine and along the quais, the smell of the old books, the smell of the river… The smell of chestnut blossoms…

  Why should I suddenly remember 1905 and Paris on the shadow Earth, save that I was very happy that year and I might, reflexively, have sought an antidote for the present? Yes…

  White absinthe, Amer Picon, grenadine… Wild strawberries, with Creme d’Isigny… Chess at the Cafe de la Regence with actors from the Comedie Francaise, just across the way… The races at Chantilly… Evenings at the Boite a Fursy on the Rue Pigalle…

  I placed my left foot firmly before my right, my right before my left. In my left hand, I held the chain from which the Jewel depended — and I carried it high, so that I could stare into the stone’s depths, seeing and feeling there the emergence of the new Pattern which I described with each step. I had screwed my staff into the ground and left it to stand near the Pattern’s beginning. Left…

  The wind sang about me and there was thunder near at hand. I did not meet with the physical resistance that I did on the old Pattern. There was no resistance at all. Instead — and in many ways worse — a peculiar deliberation had come over all my movements, slowing them, ritualizing them. I seemed to expend more energy in preparing for each step — perceiving it, realizing it and ordering my mind for its execution — than I did in the physical performance of the act. Yet the slowness seemed to require itself, was exacted of me by some unknown agency which determined precision and an adagio tempo for all my movements. Right…

  …And, as the Pattern in Rebma had helped to restore my faded memories, so this one I was now striving to create stirred and elicited the smell of the chestnut trees, of the wagonloads of vegetables moving through the dawn toward the Hallos… I was not in love with anyone in particular at the time, though there were many girls — Yvettes and Mimis and Simones, their faces merge — and it was spring in Paris, with Gipsy bands and cocktails at Louis’… I remembered, and my heart leaped with a kind of Proustian joy while Time tolled about me like a bell… And perhaps this was the reason for the recollection, for this joy seemed transmitted to my movements, informed my perceptions, empowered my will…

  I saw the next step and I took it… I had been around once now, creating the perimeter of my Pattern. At my back, I could feel the storm. It must have mounted to the plateau’s rim. The sky was darkening, the storm blotting the swinging, swimming, colored limits. Flashes of lightning splayed about, and I could not spare the energy and the attention to try to control things.

  Having gone completely around, I could see that as much of the new Pattern as I had walked was now inscribed in the rock and glowing palely, bluely. Yet, there were no sparks, no tinges in my feet, no hair-raising currents — only the steady law of deliberation, upon me like a great weight… Left…

  …Poppies, poppies and cornflowers and tall poplars along country roads, the taste of Normandy cider… And in town again, the smell of the chestnut blossoms… The Seine full of stars… The smell of the old brick houses in the Place des Vosges after a morning’s rain… The bar under the Olympia Music Hall… A fight there… Bloodied knuckles, bandaged by a girl who took me home…

  …What was her name? Chestnut blossoms… A white rose…

  I sniffed then. The odor was all but gone from the remains of the rose at my collar. Surprising that any of it had survived this far. It heartened me. I pushed ahead, curving gently to my right. From the corner of my eye, I saw the advancing wall of the storm, slick as glass, obliterating everything it passed. The roar of its thunder was deafening now.

  Right, left…

  The advance of the armies of the night… Would my Pattern hold against it? I wished that I might hurry, but if anything I was moving with increasing slowness as I went on. I felt a curious sense of bilocation, almost as if I were within the Jewel tracing the Pattern there myself while I moved out here, regarding it and mimicking its progress. Left… Turn… Right… The storm was indeed advancing. Soon it would reach old Hugi’s bones. I smelled the moisture and the ozone and wondered about the strange dark bird who had said he’d been waiting for me since the beginning of Time. Waiting to argue with me or to be eaten by me in this place without history? Whatever, considering the exaggeration usual in moralists, it was fitting that, having failed to leave me with my heart all laden with rue over my spiritual condition, he be consumed to the accompaniment of theatrical thunder… There was distant thunder, near thunder and more thunder now. As I turned in that direction once more, the lightning flashes were nearly blinding. I clutched my chain and took another step…

  The storm pushed right up to the edge of my Pattern, and then it parted. It began to creep around me. Not a drop fell upon me or the Pattern. But slowly, gradually, we came to be totally engulfed within it.

  It seemed as if I were in a bubble at the bottom of a stormy sea. Walls of water encircled me and dark shapes darted by. It seemed as if the entire universe were pressing in to crush me. I concentrated on the red world of the Jewel. Left…

  The chestnut blossoms… A cup of hot chocolate at a sidewalk cafe… A band concert in the Tuileries Gardens, the sounds climbing through the sunbright air… Berlin in the twenties, the Pacific in the thirties — there had been pleasures there, but of a different order. It may not be the true past, but images of the past that rush to comfort or torment us later, man or nation. No matter. Across the Pont Neuf and down the Rue Rivoli, buses and fiacres… Painters at their easels in the Luxembourg Gardens… If all were to fall well, I might seek a shadow like this again one day… It ranked with my Avalon. I had forgotten… The details… The touches that make for life… The smell of the chestnuts…

  Walking… I completed another circuit. The wind screamed and the storm roared on, but I was untouched. So long as I did not permit it to distract me, so long as I kept moving and maintained my focus on the Jewel… I had to hold up, had to keep taking these slow, careful steps, never to stop, slower and slower but constantly moving… Faces… It seemed that rows of faces regarded me from beyond the Pattern’s edge… Large, like the Head, but twisted-grinning. Jeering, mocking me, waiting for me to stop or step wrongly… Waiting for the whole thing to come apart around me… There was lightning behind their eyes and in their mouths, their laughter was the thunder… Shadows crawled among them… Now they spoke to me, with words like a gale from off a dark ocean… I would fail, they told me, fail and be swept away, this fragment of a Pattern dashed to pieces behind me and consumed… They cursed me, they spat and vomited toward me, though none of it reached… Perhaps they were not really there… Perhaps my mind had been broken by the strain… Then what good were my efforts? A new Pattern to be shaped by a madman? I wavered, and they took up the chorus, “Mad! Mad! Mad!” in the voices of the elements.

  I drew a deep breath and smelled what was left of the rose and thought of chestnuts once again, and days filled with the joys of life and organic order. The voices seemed to soften as my mind raced back through the events of that happy year… And I took another step… And another… They had been playing on my weaknesses, they could feel my doubts, my anxiety, my fatigue… Whatever they were, they seized what they saw and tried to use it against me… Left… Right… Now let them feel my confidence and wither, I told myself. I have come this far. I will continue. Left…

  They swirled and swelled about me, still mouthing discouragements. But some of the force seemed gone out of them. I made my way through another section of arc, seeing it grow before me in my mind’s red eye.

  I thought back to my escape from Greenwood, to my tr
icking Flora out of information, to my encounter with Random, our fight with his pursuers, our journey back to Amber… I thought of our flight to Rebma and my walking of the reversed Pattern there for a restoration of much of my memory… Of Random’s shotgun wedding and my sojourn to Amber, where I fought with Eric and fled to Bleys… Of the battles that followed, my blinding, my recovery, my escape, my journey to Lorraine and then to Avalon…

  Moving into even higher gear, my mind skimmed the surface of subsequent events… Ganelon and Lorraine… The creatures of the Black Circle… Benedict’s arm… Dara… The return of Brand and his stabbing… My stabbing… Bill Roth… Hospital records… My accident…

  …Now, from the very beginning at Greenwood, through it all, to this moment of my struggle to assure each perfect maneuver as it appeared to me, I felt the growing sense of anticipation I had known — whether my actions were directed toward the throne, vengeance, or my conception of duty — felt it, was aware of its continuous existence across those years up until this moment, when it was finally accompanied by something else… I felt that the waiting was just about over, that whatever I had been anticipating and struggling toward was soon to occur.

  Left… Very, very slowly… Nothing else was important. I threw all of my will into the movements now. My concentration became total. Whatever lay beyond the Pattern, I was now oblivious to it. Lightnings, faces, winds… It did not matter. There was only the Jewel, the growing Pattern and myself — and I was barely aware of myself. Perhaps this was the closest I would ever come to Hugi’s ideal of merging with the Absolute. Turn… Right foot… Turn again…

  Time ceased to have meaning. Space was restricted to the design I was creating. I drew strength from the Jewel without summoning it now, as part of the process in which I was engaged. In a sense, I suppose, I was obliterated. I became a moving point, programed by the Jewel, performing an operation which absorbed me so totally that I had no attention available for self-consciousness. Yet, at some level, I realized that I was a part of the process, also. For I knew, somehow, that if anyone else were doing it, it would be a different Pattern emerging.

  I was vaguely aware that I had passed the halfway point. The way had become trickier, my movements even slower. Despite the matter of velocity, I was somehow reminded of my experiences on originally becoming attuned to the Jewel, in that strange, many-dimensional matrix which seemed to be the source of the Pattern itself. Right… Left…

  There was no drag. I felt very light, despite the deliberation. A boundless energy seemed to wash constantly through me. All of the sounds about me had merged into a white noise and vanished.

  Suddenly then, I no longer seemed to be moving slowly. It did not seem as if I had passed a Veil or barrier, but rather that I had undergone some internal adjustment.

  It felt as if I were moving at a more normal pace now, winding my way through tighter and tighter coils, approadhing what would soon be the design’s terminus. Mainly, I was still emotionless, though I knew intellectually that at some level a sense of elation was growing and would soon burst through. Another step… Another… Perhaps half a dozen more paces…

  Suddenly, the world went dark. It seemed that I stood within a great void, with only the faint light of the Jewel before me and the glow of the Pattern like a spiral nebula through which I was striding. I wavered, but only for an instant. This must be the last trial, the final assault. I would have to be sufficient to the distraction.

  The Jewel showed me what to do and the Pattern showed me where to do it. The only thing missing was a view of myself. Left…

  I continued, executing each move with all of my attention. An opposing force began to rise against me finally, as on the old Pattern. But for this, I was prepared by years of experience. I struggled for two more steps against the mounting barrier.

  Then, within the Jewel, I saw the ending of the Pattern. I would have gasped at the sudden realization of its beauty, but at this point even my breath was regulated by my efforts. I threw all of my strength into the next step, and the void seemed to shake about me. I completed it, and the next was even more difficult. I felt as if I were at the center of the universe, treading on stars, struggling to impart some essential motion by what was basically an act of will.

  My foot slowly advanced, though I could not see it. The Pattern began to brighten. Soon its blaze was almost blinding.

  Just a little farther… I strove harder than I ever had on the old Pattern, for now the resistance seemed absolute. I had to oppose it with a firmness and constancy of will that excluded everything else, though I seemed not to be moving at all now, though all of my energies seemed diverted into the brightening of the design. At least, I would go out with a splendid backdrop…

  Minutes, days, years… I do not know how long this went on. It felt like forever, as if I had been engaged in this single act for all of eternity…

  Then I moved, and how long that took I do not know. But I completed the step and began another. Then another…

  The universe seemed to reel about me. I was through. The pressure was gone. The blackness was gone…

  For an instant, I stood at the center of my Pattern. Without even regarding it, I fell forward onto my knees and bent double, my blood pounding in my ears. Head swimming, I panted. I began to shake, all over. I had done it, I realized dimly. Come whatever may, there was a Pattern. And it would endure…

  I heard a sound where there should have been none, but my jaded muscles refused to respond, even reflexively, until it was too late. Not until the Jewel was jerked from my limp fingers did I raise my head and roll back onto my haunches. No one had been following me through the Pattern — I was certain that I would have been aware of it. Therefore…

  The light was almost normal, and blinking against it, I looked up into Brand’s smiling face. He wore a black eyepatch now, and he held the Jewel in his hand. He must have teleported himself in.

  He struck me just as I raised my head, and I fell onto my left side. He kicked me in the stomach then, hard.

  “Well, you’ve done it,” he said. “I did not think you could. Now I have another Pattern to destroy before I set things right. I need this to turn the battle at the Courts first, though.” He waved the Jewel. “Good-bye for now.” And he vanished.

  I lay there gasping and clutching at my stomach. Waves of blackness rose and fell, like a surf, within me, though I did not completely succumb to unconsciousness. A feeling of enormous despair washed over me and I closed my eyes and moaned. There was no Jewel for me to draw upon now, either.

  The chestnut trees…

  Chapter 10

  As I lay there hurting, I had visions of Brand appearing on the battlefield where the forces of Amber and Chaos fought, the Jewel pulsing about his neck. Apparently his control over it was sufficient, as he saw it, to enable him to turn things against us. I saw him lashing out with lightning bolts among our troops. I saw him summoning great winds and hailstorms to strike at us. I almost wept. All of this, when he could still redeem himself by coming in on our side. Just winning was not enough for him now, though. He had to win for himself, and on his own terms. And I? I had failed. I had thrown up a Pattern against the Chaos, a thing I had never thought I could do. Yet, this would be as nothing if the battle was lost and Brand returned and wiped out my work. To have come this close, passing through everything that I had, and then to fail here… It made me want to cry “Injustice!” though I knew the universe did not run in accordance with my notions of equity. I gnashed my teeth and spat some dirt I had mouthed. I had been charged by our father to take the Jewel to the place of battle. I had almost made it.

  A sense of strangeness came over me then. Something was calling for my attention. What? The silence.

  The raging winds and the thunder had ceased. The air was still. In fact, the air felt cool and fresh. And on the other side of my eyelids, I knew that there was light.

  I opened my eyes. I saw a sky of a bright, uniform white. I blinked, I turned my hea
d. There was something off to my right…

  A tree. A tree stood where I had planted the staff I had cut from old Ygg. It was already far taller than the staff itself had been. I could almost see it growing. And it was green with leaves and white with a sprinkling of buds; a few blossoms had opened. From that direction, the breeze brought me a faint and delicate scent which offered me some comfort.

  I felt along my sides. I did not seem to have any broken ribs, though my guts still felt knotted from the kick I had taken. I rubbed my eyes with my knuckles and ran my hands through my hair. I sighed heavily then and rose to one knee.

  Turning my head, I regarded the prospect. The plateau was the same, yet somehow not the same. It was still bare but was no longer harsh. Likely an effect of the new illumination. No, there was more to it than that…

  I had continued to turn, completing my scanning of the horizon. It was not the same place where I had commenced my walk. There were differences both subtle and gross: altered rock formations, a dip where there had been a rise, a new texture to the stone beneath and near me, in the distance what appeared to be soil. I stood and it seemed that now, from somewhere, I caught the scent of the sea. This place had an entirely different feeling to it than the one to which I had mounted — so long ago, it seemed. It was too much of a change for that storm to have wrought. It reminded me of something.

  I sighed again, there at the Pattern’s center, and continued to consider my surroundings. Somehow, in spite of myself, my despair was slipping away and a feeling of — “refreshment” — seems somehow the best word — was rising within me. The air was so clean and sweet, and the place had a new, unused feeling about it. I —

  Of course. It was like the place, of the primal Pattern. I turned back to the tree and regarded it again, higher already. Like, yet unlike… There was something new in the air, the ground, the sky. This was a new place. A new primal Pattern. Everything about me then was a result of the Pattern in which I stood.