Hall of Mirrors (amber stories) Read online

  "But I don't give a damn whether you're a Pattern ghost," I said. "It's nothing to me."

  "Not that," Oberon interjected. "This is of a different order."

  "What, then?" I asked.

  "Easier to show than to tell," Oberon replied.

  Luke shrugged.

  "So nick my arm," he said. "Big deal."

  "All right. Let's see how the show beats the tell."

  I drew a stiletto from my boot sheath. He pulled back his sleeve and extended his arm. I stabbed lightly.

  My blade passed through his arm as if the limb were made of smoke.

  "Shit," Luke said. "It's contagious."

  "No," Oberon responded. "It is a thing of very special scope."

  "That is to say?" Luke asked.

  "Would you draw your sword, please?"

  Luke nodded and drew a familiar-looking golden blade. It emitted a high keening sound, causing all of the candle flames in the vicinity to flicker. Then I knew it for what it was--my brother Brand's blade, Werewindle.

  "Haven't seen that in a long while," I said, as the keening continued.

  "Luke, would you cut Corwin with your blade, please?"

  Luke raised his eyes, met my gaze. I nodded. He moved the blade, scored my arm with its point. I bled.

  "Corwin--If you would...?" Oberon said.

  I drew Grayswandir and it, too, ventured into fighting song--as I had only heard it do on great battlefields in the past. The two tones joined together into a devastating duet.

  "Cut Luke."

  Luke nodded and I sliced the back of his hand with Grayswandir. An incision line occurred, reddening immediately. The sounds from our blades rose and fell. I sheathed Grayswandir to shut her up. Luke did the same with Werewindle.

  "There's a lesson there somewhere," Luke said. "Damned If I can see what it is, though."

  "They're brother and sister weapons, you know, with a certain magic in common. In fact, they've a powerful secret in common," Oberon said. "Tell him, Corwin."

  "It's a dangerous secret, sir."

  "The time has come for it to be known. You may tell him,"

  "All right," I said. "Back in the early days of creation, the gods had a series of rings their champions used in the stabilization of Shadow."

  "I know of them," Luke said. "Merlin wears a spikard."

  "Really," I said. "They each have the power to draw on many sources in many shadows. They're all different."

  "So Merlin said."

  "Ours were turned into swords, and so they remain."

  "Oh?" Luke said. "What do you know?"

  "What do you deduce from the fact that they can do you harm when another weapon cannot?"

  "Looks as if they're somehow involved in our enchantment," I ventured.

  "That's right," Oberon said. "In whatever conflict lies ahead--no matter what side you are on--you will need exotic protection against the oddball power of someone like Jurt."

  "Jurt?" I said.

  "Later," Luke told me. "I'll fill you in."

  I nodded.

  "Just how is this protection to be employed. How do we lot back to full permeability?" I asked.

  "I will not say," he replied, "but someone along the way here should be able to tell you. And whatever happens, my blessing--which is probably no longer worth much--lies on both of you."

  We bowed and said thanks. When we looked up again, he was gone.

  "Great," I said. "Back for less than an hour and involved in Amber ambiguity."

  Luke nodded.

  "Chaos and Kashfa seem just as bad, though," he said. "Maybe the state's highest function is to grind out insoluble problems."

  I chuckled as we moved on, regarding ourselves in dozens of pools of light. For several paces nothing happened, then a familiar face appeared in a red-framed oval to my left.

  "Corwin, what a pleasure," she said.

  "Dara!"

  "It seems that my unconscious will must be stronger than that of anyone else who wishes you ill," she said. "So I get to deliver the best piece of news of all."

  "Yes?" I said.

  "I see one of you lying pierced by the blade of the other. What joy!"

  "I've no intention of killing this guy," I told her.

  "Goes both ways," Luke said.

  "Ah, but that is the deadly beauty of it," she said. "One of you must be run through by the other for the survivor to regain that element of permeability he has lost."

  "Thanks, but I'll find another way," Luke said. "My mom, Jasra, is a pretty good sorceress."

  Her laughter sounded like the breaking of one of the mirrors.

  "Jasra! She was one of my maids," she said. "She picked up whatever she knows of the Art by eavesdropping on my work. Not without talent, but she never received full training."

  "My dad completed her training," Luke said.

  As she studied Luke, the merriment went out of her face.

  "All right," she said. "I'll level with you, son of Brand. I can't see any way to resolve it other than the way I stated. As I have nothing against you, I hope to see you victorious."

  "Thanks," he said, "but I've no intention of fighting my uncle. Someone must be able to lift this thing."

  "The tools themselves have drawn you into this," she said. "They will force you to fight. They are stronger than mortal sorcery."

  "Thanks for the advice," he said. "Some of it may come in handy," and he winked at her. She blushed, hardly a response I'd have anticipated, then she was gone.

  "I don't like the tenor this has acquired," I said.

  "Me neither. Can't we just turn around and go back?"

  I shook my head.

  "It sucks you in," I told him. "Just get everything you can out of it--that's the best advice I ever got on the thing."

  We walked on for perhaps ten feet, past some absolutely lovely examples of mirror making as well as some battered old looking glasses.

  A yellow-lacquered one on Luke's side, embossed with Chinese characters and chipped here and there, froze us in our tracks as the booming voice of my late brother Eric rang out:

  "I see your fates," he said with a rumbling laugh. "And I can see the killing ground where you are destined to enact them. It will be interesting, brother. If you hear laughter as you lie dying, it will be mine."

  "Oh, you always were a great kidder," I said. "By the way, rest in peace. You're a hero, you know."

  He studied my face.

  "Crazy brother," he said, and he turned his head away and was gone.

  "That was Eric, who reigned briefly as king here?" Luke asked.

  I nodded. "Crazy brother," I said.

  We moved forward and a slim hand emerged from a steel-framed mirror patterned with roses of rust.

  I halted, then turned quickly, somehow knowing even before I saw her who I would behold.

  "Deirdre..." I said.

  "Corwin," she replied softly.

  "Do you know what's been going on as we walked along?"

  She nodded.

  "How much is bullshit and how much is true?" I asked.

  "I don't know, but I don't think any of the others do either--not for sure."

  "Thanks. I'll take all the reassurances I can get. What now?"

  "If you will take hold of the other's arm, it will make the transport easier."

  "What transport?"

  "You may not leave this hall on your own motion. You will be taken direct to the killing ground."

  "By you, love?"

  "I've no choice in the matter."

  I nodded. I took hold of Luke's arm.

  "What do you think?" I asked him.

  "I think we should go," he said, "offering no resistance--and when we find out who's behind this, we take him apart with hot irons."

  "I like the way you think," I said. "Deirdre, show us the way."

  "I've bad feelings about this one, Corwin."

  "If, as you said, we've no choice in the matter, what difference does it make? Lead on, lady. Lead
on."

  She took my hand. The world began to spin around us.

  Somebody owed me a chicken and a bottle of wine. I would collect.

  I awoke lying in what seemed a glade under a moonlit sky. I kept my eyes half-lidded and did not move. No sense in giving away my wakefulness.

  Very slowly, I moved my eyes. Deirdre was nowhere in sight. My rightside peripheral vision informed me that there might be a bonfire in that direction, with some folks seated around it.

  I rolled my eyes to the left and got a glimpse of Luke. No one else seemed to be nearby.

  "You awake?" I whispered.

  "Yeah," he replied.

  "No one near," I said, rising, "except maybe for a few around a fire off to the right. We might be able to find a way out and take it--Trumps, Shadowalk--and thus break the ritual. Or we might be trapped."

  Luke put a finger into his mouth, removed it, and raised it, as if testing the wind.

  "We're caught up in a sequence I think we need," he said.

  "To the death?" I said.

  "I don't know. But I don't really think we can escape this one," he replied.

  He rose to his feet.

  "Ain't the fighting, it's the familiarity," I said. "I begrudge knowing you."

  "Me, too. Want to flip a coin?" he asked.

  "Heads, we walk away. Tails, we go over and see what the story is."

  "Fine with me." He plunged his hand into a pocket, pulled out a quarter.

  "Do the honors," I said.

  He flipped it. We both dropped to our knees.

  "Tails," he said. "Best two out of three?"

  "Naw," I said. "Let's go."

  Luke pocketed his quarter, and we turned and walked toward the fire.

  "Only a dozen people or so. We can take them," Luke said softly.

  "They don't look particularly hostile," I said.

  "True."

  I nodded as we approached and addressed them in Thari:

  "Hello," I said. "I'm Corwin of Amber and this is Rinaldo I, King of Kashfa, also known as Luke. Are we by any chance expected here?"

  An older man, who had been seated before the fire and poking at it with a stick, rose to his feet and bowed.

  "My name is Reis," he said, "and we are witnesses."

  "For whom?" Luke said.

  "We do not know their names. There were two and they wore hoods. One, I think, was a woman. --We may offer you food and drink before things begin..."

  "Yeah," I said, "I'm out a meal because of this. Feed me."

  "Me, too," Luke added, and the man and a couple of his cohorts brought meat, apples, cheese, bread, and cups of red wine.

  As we ate, I asked Reis, "Can you tell me how this thing works?"

  "Of course," he said. "They told me. When you're finished eating, if you two will move to the other side of the fire, the cues will come to you."

  I laughed and then I shrugged.

  "All right," I said.

  Finished dining, I looked at Luke. He smiled.

  "If we've got to sing for our supper," Luke said, "let's give them a ten-minute demonstration and call it a draw."

  I nodded.

  "Sounds good to me."

  We put aside our plates, rose, moved to the fire, and passed behind it.

  "Ready?" I said.

  "Sure. Why not?"

  We drew our weapons, stepped back, and saluted. We both laughed when the music began. Suddenly, I found myself attacking, though I had decided to await the attack and put my first energies into its counter. The movement had been thoughtless, though quite deft and speedy.

  "Luke," I said as he parried, "it got away from me. Be careful. There's something odd going on."

  "I know," he said as he delivered a formidable attack. "I wasn't planning that."

  I parried it and came back even faster. He retreated.

  "Not bad," he said, as I felt something loosened in my arm. Suddenly I was fencing on my own again, voluntarily, with no apparent control but with fear that it might be reasserted at any moment.

  Suddenly, I knew that we were fairly free and it scared me. If I weren't sufficiently vicious, I might be taken over again. If I were, someone might slip in an unsolicited move at the wrong moment. I grew somewhat afraid.

  "Luke, if what's happening to you is similar to what's been happening to me, I don't like this show a bit," I told him.

  "Me neither," he said.

  I glanced back across the fire. A pair of hooded individuals stood among the others. They were not overlarge and there was a certain whiteness within the cowl of the nearer.

  "We've more audience," I said.

  Luke glanced back; it was only with great difficulty that I halted a cowardly attack as he turned away. When we returned to hard combat, he shook his head.

  "Couldn't recognize either of them," he said. "This seems a little more serious than I thought."

  "Yeah."

  "We can both take quite a beating and recover."

  "True."

  Our blades rattled on. Occasionally, one or the other of us received a cheer.

  "What say we injure each other," Luke said, "then throw ourselves down and wait for their judgment on whatever's been accomplished. If either of them come near enough, we take them out just for laughs."

  "Okay," I said. "If you can expose your left shoulder a bit, I'm willing to take a midline cut. Let's give them lots of gore before we flop, though. Head and forearm cuts. Anything easy."

  "Okay. And 'simultaneity' is the word."

  So we fought. I stood off a bit, going faster and faster. Why not? It was kind of a game.

  Suddenly, my body executed a move I had not ordered it to. Luke's eyes widened as the blood spurted and Grayswandir passed entirely through his shoulder. Moments later, Werewindle pierced my vitals.

  "Sorry," Luke said. "Listen, Corwin. If you live and I don't, you'd better know that there's too much crazy stuff involving mirrors going on around the castle. The night before you came back, Flora and I fought a creature that came out of a mirror. And there's an odd sorcerer involved--has a crush on Flora. Nobody knows his name. Has something to do with Chaos, though, I'd judge. Could it be that for the first time Amber is starting to reflect Shadow, rather than the other way around?"

  "Hello," said a familiar voice. "The deed is done."

  "Indeed," said another.

  It was the two cowled figures who had spoken. One was Fiona, the other Mandor.

  "However it be resolved, good night, sweet prince," said Fiona.

  I tried to rise. So did Luke. Tried also to raise my blade. Could not. Again, the world grew dim, and this time I was leaking precious bodily fluids.

  "I'm going to live--and come after you," I said.

  "Corwin," I heard her say faintly. "We are not as culpable as you may think. This was--"

  "--all for my own good, I'll bet," I muttered before the world went dark, growling with the realization that I hadn't gotten to use my death curse. One of these days....

  I woke up in the dispensary in Amber, Luke in the next bed. We both had IVs dripping into us.

  "You're going to live," Flora said, lowering my wrist from taking my pulse. "Care to tell me your story now?"

  "They just found us in the hall?" Luke asked. "The Hall of Mirrors was nowhere in sight?"

  "That's right."

  "I don't want to mention any names yet," I said.

  "Corwin," Luke said, "Did the Hall of Mirrors show up a lot when you were a kid?"

  "No," I said.

  "Hardly ever, when I was growing up either," Flora said. "It's only in recent years that it's become this active. Almost as if the place were waking up."

  "The place?" Luke said.

  "Almost as if there's another player in the game," she responded.

  "Who?" I demanded, causing a pain in my gut.

  "Why, the castle itself, of course," she said.

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  Document creation date: 12.06.2008

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