Blood of Amber (Doubleday Science Fiction)

295 Pages·1993·0.6 MB·English

by  Roger Zelazny

Blood of Amber
(The seventh book in the Amber series)
Roger Zelazny
REFLECTIONS IN A CRYSTAL CAVE
My life had been relatively peaceful for eight years-not counting April
thirtieths, when someone invariably tried to kill me. Outside of that, my
academic career with its concentration on computer science went well enough
and my four years employment at Grand Design proved a rewarding experience,
letting me use what I'd learned in a situation I liked while I labored on a
project of my own on the side. I had a good friend in Luke Raynard, who
worked for the same company, in sales. I sailed my little boat, I jogged
regularly.
It all fell apart this past April 30, just when I thought things were
about to come together. My pet project, Ghostwheel, was built; I'd quit my
job, packed my gear and was ready to move on to greener shadows. I'd stayed
in town this long only because that morbidly fascinating day was near, and
this time I intended to discover who was behind the attempts on my life and
why.
At breakfast that morning Luke appeared with a message from my former
girlfriend, Julia. Her note said that she wanted to see me again. So I
stopped by her place, where I found her dead, apparently killed by the same
doglike beast which then attacked me. I succeeded in destroying the
creature. A quick search of the apartment before I fled the scene fumed up a
slim packet of strange playing cards, which I took along with me.
They were too much like the magical Tarots of Amber and Chaos for a
sorcerer such as myself not to be interested in them.
Yes.I am a sorcerer. I am Merlin, son of Corwin of Amber and Dara of
the Courts of Chaos, known to local friends and acquaintances as Merle
Corey: bright, charming, witty, athletic. . . . Go read Castiglione and Lord
Byron for particulars, as I'm modest, aloof and reticent, as well.
The cards proved to be genuine magical objects, which seemed
appropriate once I learned that Julia had been keeping company with an
occultist named Victor Melman after we had broken up. A visit to this
gentleman's studio resulted in his attempting to kill me in a ritual
fashion. I was able to free myself from the constraints of the ceremony and
question him somewhat, before local conditions and my enthusiasm resulted in
his death. So much for rituals.
I'd learned enough from him to realize that he'd been but a cat's-paw.
Someone else had apparently put him up to the sacrifice bit-and it seemed
quite possible that the other person was the one responsible for Julia's
death and my collection of memorable April thirtieths.
I had small time to reflect upon these matters, though, because I was
bitten (yes, bitten) shortly thereafter by an attractive red-haired woman
who materialized in Melman's apartment, following my brief telephone
conversation with her in which I'd tried to pose as Melman. Her bite
paralyzed me, but I was able to depart before it took full effect by
employing one of the magical cards I'd found at Julia's place. It bore me
into the presence of a sphinx, which permitted me to recover so that it
could play that silly riddle game sphinxes love so well because they get to
eat you when you lose. All I can say about it is that this particular sphinx
was a bad sport.
Anyhow, I returned to the shadow Earth where I'd been making my home to
discover that Melman's place had burned down during my absence. I tried
phoning Luke, because I wanted to have dinner with him, and learned that he
had checked out of his motel, leaving me a message indicating that he had
gone to New Mexico on business and telling me where he'd be staying. The
desk clerk also gave me a blue-stone ring Luke had left behind, and I took
it with me to return when I saw him.
I Sew to New Mexico, finally catching up with Luke in Santa Fe. While I
waited in the bar for him to get ready for dinner, a man named Dan Martinez
questioned me, giving the impression that Luke had proposed some business
deal and that he wanted to be assured Luke was reliable and could deliver.
After dinner, Luke and I went for a drive in the mountains.
Martinez followed us and started shooting as we stood admiring the
night. Perhaps he'd decided Luke was not reliable or couldn't deliver. Luke
surprised me by drawing a weapon of his own and shooting Martinez. Then an
even stranger thing happened. Luke called me by name-my real name, which I'd
never told him-and cited my parentage and told me to get into the car and
get the hell out. He emphasized his point by placing a shot in the ground
near my feet. The matter did not seem open to discussion so I departed. He
also told me to destroy those strange Trumps that had saved my life once
already. And I'd learned on the way up that he'd known Victor Melman. . . .
I didn't go far. I parked downhill and returned on foot. Luke was gone.
So was Martinei s body. Luke did not return to the hotel, that night or the
next day, so I checked out and departed. The only person I was sure I could
trust, and who actually might have some good advice for me, was Bill Roth.
Bill was an attorney who lived in upstate New York, and he had been my
father's best friend. I went to visit him, and I told him my story.
Bill got me to wondering even morc about Luke. Luke, by the way, is a
big, smart, red-haired natural athlete of uncanny prowess-and though we'd
been friends for many years I knew next to nothing (as Bill pointed out)
concerning his background.
A neighboring lad named George Hansen began hanging out near Bill's
place, asking strange questions. I received an odd phone call, asking
similar questions. Both interrogators seemed curious as to my mother's name.
Naturally, I lied. The fact that my mother is a member of the dark
aristocracy of the Courts of Chaos was none of their business. But the
caller spoke my language, Thari, which made me curious enough to propose a
meeting and a trade-off of information that evening in the bar of the local
country club.
But my Uncle Random, King of Amber, called me home before that, while
Bill and I were out hiking. George Hansen, it turned out, was following us
and wanted to come along as we shifted away across the shadows of reality.
Tough; he wasn't invited. I took Bill along because I didn't want to leave
him with anyone acting that peculiar.
I learned from Random that my Uncle Caine was dead, of an assassin's
bullet, and that someone had also tried to kill my Uncle Bleys but only
succeeded in wounding him. The funeral service for Caine would be the
following day.
I kept my date at the country club that evening, but my mysterious
interrogator was nowhere in sight. All was not lost, however, as I made the
acquaintance of a pretty lady named Meg Devlin-and, one thing leading to
another, I saw her home and we got to know each other a lot better. Then, at
a moment when I would have judged her thoughts to be anywhere but there, she
asked me my mother's name. So, what the hell, I told her. It did not come to
me until later that she might really have been the person I'd gone to the
bar to meet.
Our liaison was terminated prematurely by a call from the lobby-from a
man purportedly Meg's husband. I did what any gentleman would do. I got the
hell out fast.
My Aunt Fiona, who is a sorceress (of a different style from my own),
had not approved of my date. And apparently she approved even less of Luke,
because she asked me whether I had a picture of him after I'd told her
somewhat concerning him. I showed her a photo I had in my wallet, which
included Luke in the group. I'd have sworn she recognized him from
somewhere, though she wouldn't admit it. But the fact that she and her
brother Bleys both disappeared from Amber that night would seem more than
coincidental.
The pace of events was accelerated even more after that. A crude
attempt at knocking off most of the family with a thrown bomb was made the
next day, following Caine's funeral. The would-be assassin escaped. Later,
Random was upset at a brief demonstration on my part of the power of the
Ghostwheel, my pet project, my hobby, my avocation during those years at
Grand Design. Ghostwheel is a-well, it started out as a computer that
required a different set of physical laws to operate than those I'd learned
in school. It involved what might be called magic. But I found a place where
it could be built and operated, and I'd constructed it there. It was still
programming itself when I'd left it. It seemed to have gone sentient, and I
think it scared Random. He ordered me to go and turn it off. I didn't much
like the idea, but I departed.
I was followed in my passage through Shadow; I was harassed, threatened
and even attacked. I was rescued from a fire by a strange lady who later
died in a lake. I was protected from vicious beasts by a mysterious
individual and saved from a bizarre earthquake by the same person-who turned
out to be Luke. He accompanied me to the final barrier, for a confrontation
with Ghostwheel. My creation was a bit irritated with me and banished us by
means of a shadow-storm-a thing it is not fun to be caught in, with or
without an umbrella. I delivered us from the vicissitudes by means of one of
the Trumps of Doom, as I'd dubbed the odd pasteboards from Julia's
apartment.
We wound up outside a blue crystal cave, and Luke took me in. Good old
Luke. After seeing to my needs he proceeded to imprison me. When he told me
who he was, I realized that it was a resemblance to his father which had
upset Fiona when she'd seen his photo. For Luke was the son of Brand,
assassin and arch traitor, who had damn near destroyed the kingdom and the
rest of the universe along with it some years back. Fortunately, Caine had
killed him before he'd accomplished his designs. Luke, I learned then, was
the one who'd killed Caine, to avenge his father. (And it turned out he'd
gotten the news of his father's death on an April thirtieth and had had a
peculiar way of observing its anniversary over the years.) Like Random, he
too had been impressed by my Ghostwheel, and he told me that I was to remain
his prisoner, as I might become necessary in his eforts to gain control of
the machine, which he felt would be the perfect weapon for destroying the
rest of the family.
He departed to pursue the matter, and I quickly discovered that my
powers were canceled by some peculiar property of the cave, leaving me with
no one to talk to but you, Frakir, and no one here for you to strangle. . .
.
Would you care to hear a few bars of "Over the Rainbow"?
I threw the hilt away after the blade had shattered. The weapon had
done me no good against that blue sea of a wall in what I had taken to be
its thinnest section. A few small chips of stone lay at my feet. I picked
them up and rubbed
them together. This was not the way out for me. The only way out seemed
to be the way I had come in, and it wasn't working.
I walked back to my quarters, meaning that section of the caves where I
had cast my sleeping bag. I sat down on the bag, a heavy brown one, uncorked
a wine bottle and took a drink. I had worked up a sweat hacking away at the
wall.
Frakir stirred upon my wrist then, unwound herself partway and
slithered into the palm of my left hand, to coil around the two blue chips I
still held. She knotted herself about them, then dropped to hang and swing
pendulum-like. I put the bottle aside and watched. The arc of her swing
paralleled the lengthwise direction of the tunnel I now called home. The
swinging continued for perhaps a full minute. Then she withdrew upward,
halting when she came to the back of my hand. She released the chips at the
base of my third linger and returned to her normal hidden position about my
wrist.
I stared. I raised the flickering oil lamp and studied the stones.
Their color. . . .
Yes.
Seen against skin, they were similar in appearance to the stone in that
ring of Luke's I had picked up at the New Line Motel some time ago.
Coincidence? Or was there a connection? What had my strangling cord been
trying to tell me? And where had I seen another such stone?
Luke's key ring. He'd a blue stone on it, mounted on a piece of metal.
. . . And where might I have seen another?
The caverns in which I was imprisoned had the power to block the Trumps
and my Logrus magic. If Luke carried stones from these walls about with him,
there was probably a special reason. What other properties might they
possess?
I tried for perhaps an hour to learn something concerning their nature,
but they resisted my Logrus probes. Finally, disgusted, I pocketed them, ate
some bread and cheese and took another swallow of wine.
Then I rose and made the rounds once more, inspecting my traps. I'd
been a prisoner in this place for what seemed at least a month now. I had