Prince of chaos

A light rain had begun while he was speaking.

«I came here because I thought it was the one place neither of them would touch in the event of a contest,» he went on. «I'd assumed neither would care to divert energy from its own attack or defense for a swipe in this direction.»

«That reasoning may still hold,» I said.

«Just for once I'd like to be on the winning side,» he stated. «I'm not sure I care about right or wrong.

They're very arguable quantities. I'd just like to be in with the guys who win for a change. What do you think, Merle? What are you going to do?»

«Corwin here and I are going to head for the Courts, and we're going to free my father,» I said. «Then we're going to resolve whatever needs resolving and live happily ever after. You know how it goes.»

He shook his head.

«I can never decide whether you're a fool or whether your confidence is warranted. Every time I decided you were a fool, though, it cost me.» He looked up at the dark sky, wiped rain from his brow. «I'm really torn,» he said, «but you could still be King of Chaos.»

«No,» I said.

«…And you enjoy some special relationship with the Powers.»

«If I do, I don't understand it myself.»

«No matter,» he said. «I'm still with you.» I crossed to the others, hugged Coral.

«I must return to the Courts,» I said. «Guard the Pattern. We'll be back.»

The sky was illuminated by three brilliant flashes. The wind shook the tree.

I turned away and created a door in the middle of the air. Corwin's ghost and I stepped through it.

XII

Thus did I return to the Courts of Chaos, coming through into Sawall's space-warped sculpture garden.

«Where are we?» my ghost-father asked.

«A museum of sorts,» I replied, «in the house of my stepfather. I chose it because the lighting is tricky and there are many places to hide.»

He studied some of the pieces, as well as their disposition upon the walls and ceiling.

«This would be a hell of a place to fight a skirmish,» he observed.

«I suppose it would.»

«You grew up hereabout, huh?»

«Yes.»

«What was it like?»

«Oh, I don't know. I don't have anything to compare it to. I had some good times, alone, and with friends and a few bad times. All a part of being a kid.»

«This place…?»

«The Ways of Sawall. I wish I had time to show you the whole thing, take you through all of the ways.»

«One day, perhaps.»

«Yes.»

I began walking, hoping for the Ghostwheel or Kergma to appear. Neither did, however.

We finally passed into a corridor that took us to a hall of tapestries, whence there was a way to a room that I desired - for the room let upon the hallway that passed the gallery of metal trees. Before we could depart, however, I heard voices from that hallway. So we waited in the room - which contained the skeleton of a Jabberwock painted in orange, blue, and yellow, Early Psychedelic - as the speakers approached. One of them I recognized immediately as my brother Mandor; the other I could not identify by voice alone, but managing a glimpse as they passed, I saw it to be Lord Bances of Amblerash, High Priest of the Serpent Which Manifests the Logrus (to cite a full title just once). In a badly plotted story they'd have paused outside the doorway, and I'd have overheard a conversation telling me everything I needed to know about anything.

They slowed as they passed.

«That's the way it will be then?» Bances said.

«Yes,» Mandor replied. «Soon.»

And they were by, and I couldn't make out another word. I listened to their receding footsteps till they were gone. Then I waited a little longer. I would have sworn I heard a small voice saying, «Follow. Follow.»

«Hear anything just then?» I whispered.

«Nope.»

So we stepped out into the hallway and turned right, moving in the opposite direction from that which Mandor and Bances had taken. As we did, I felt a sensation of heat at a point somewhat below my left hip…

«You think he is somewhere near here?» the Corwin ghost asked. «Prisoner to Dara?»

«Yes and no,» I said. «Ow!»

It felt like a hot coal pressed against my upper leg. I jammed my hand into my pocket as I slid into the nearest display niche, which I shared with a mummified lady in an amber casket.

Even as my hand closed about it, I knew what it was, raising all manner of philosophical speculations I had neither time nor desire to address at the moment and so treated in the time-honored fashion of dealing with such things: I shelved them.

It was a spikard that I withdrew, that lay warmly upon my paten. Almost immediately a small spark leapt between it and the one that I wore upon my finger.

There followed a wordless communication, a sequence of images, ideas, feelings, urging me to find Mandor and place myself in his hands for the preparations for my crowning as the next King of the Courts. I could see why Bleys had told me not to put the thing on. Unmediated by my own spikard, its injunctions would probably have been overpowering. I used mine to shut it off, to build a tiny insulating wall about it.

«You have two of the damned things!» Corwin's ghost observed.

I nodded.