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All because the black road headed south and ran beyond the end of the world, where I stop.
Silence and silver... Walking away from the rail, leaning on my stick, passing through the fog-spun, mist-woven, moonlight-brushed fabric of vision within the troubling city... Ghosts... Shadows of shadows... Images of probability... Might-bes and might-havebeens... Probability lost... Probability regained...
Walking, across the promenade now... Figures, faces, many of them familiar... What are they about? Hard to say... Some lips move, some faces show animation. There are no words there for me. I pass among them, u
There... One such figure... Alone, but waiting... Fingers unknotting minutes, casting them away... Face averted, and I wish to see it... A sign that I will or should... She sits on a stone bench beneath a gnarly tree... She gazes in the direction of the palace... Her form is quite familiar... Approaching, I see that it is Lorraine... She continues to regard a point far beyond me, does not hear me say that I have avenged her death.
But mine is the power to be heard here... It hangs in the sheath at my side.
Drawing Grayswandir, I raise my blade overhead where moonlight tricks its patterns into a kind of motion. I place it on the ground between us.
“Corwin!”
Her head snaps back, her hair rusts in the moonlight, her eyes focus.
“Where did you come from? You're early.”
“You wait for me?”
“Of course. You told me to—”
“How did you come to this place?”
“This bench... ?”
“No. This city.”
“Amber? I do not understand. You brought me yourself. I—”
“Are you happy here?”
“You know that I am, so long as I am with you.”
I had not forgotten the eve
“What happened? It is very important. Pretend for a moment that I do not know, and tell me everything that happened to us after the battle of the Black Circle in Lorraine.”
She frowned. She stood. She turned away.
“We had that argument,” she said. “You followed me, drove away Melkin, and we talked. I saw that I was wrong and I went with you to Avalon. There, your brother Benedict persuaded you to talk with Eric. You were not reconciled, but you agreed to a truce because of something that he told you. He swore not to harm you and you swore to defend Amber, with Benedict to witness both oaths. We remained in Avalon while you obtained chemicals, and we went to another place later, a place where you purchased strange weapons. We won the battle, but Eric lies wounded now.”
She stood and faced me.
“Are you thinking of ending the truce? Is that it, Corwin?”
I shook my head, and though I knew better I reached to embrace her. I wanted to hold her, despite the fact that one of us did not exist, could not exist, when that tiny gap of space between our skins was crossed, to tell her that whatever bad happened or would happen—
The shock was not severe, but it caused me to stumble. I lay across Grayswandir... My staff had fallen to the grass several paces away. Rising to my knees, I saw that the color had gone out of her face, her eyes, her hair. Her mouth shaped ghost words as her head turned, searching. Sheathing Grayswandir, recovering my staff, I rose once again. Her seeing passed through me and focused. Her face grew smooth, she smiled, started forward. I moved aside and turned, watching her run toward the man who approached, seeing her clasped in his arms, glimpsing his face as he bent it toward her own, lucky ghost, silver rose at the throat of his garment, kissing her, this man I would never know, silver on silence, and silver...
Walking away... Not looking back... Crossing the promenade...
The voice of Random: “Corwin, are you all right?”
“Yes.”
“Anything interesting happening?”
“Later, Random.”
“Sorry.”
And sudden, the gleammg stair before the palace grounds... Up it, and a turn to the right... Slow and easy now, into the garden... Ghost flowers throb on their stalks all about me, ghost shrubs spill blossoms like frozen firework displays. Sans colors, all... Only the essentials sketched in, degrees of luminosity in silver the terms of their claim on the eye. Only the essentials here. Is Tir-na Nog'th a special sphere of Shadow in the real world, swayed by the promptings of the id-a full-sized projective test in the sky, perhaps even a therapeutic device? Despite the silver. I'd say, if this is a piece of the soul, the night is very dark... And silent...
Walking... By fountains, benches, groves, cu
Circling around to the rear, just to see the back gardens this way, again, for they are lovely by normal moonlight in the true Amber.
A few more figures, talking, standing... No motion but my own is apparent.
...And feel myself drawn to the right. As one should never turn down a free oracle, I go.
...Toward a mass of high hedging, a small open area within, if it is not overgrown... Long ago there was...
Two figures, embracing, within. They part as I begin to turn away. None of my affair, but... Deirdre... One of them is Deirdre. I know who the man will be before he turns. It is a cruel joke by whatever powers rule that silver, that silence... Back, back, away from that hedge... Turning, stumbling, rising again, going, away, now, quickly...
The voice of Random: “Corwin? Are you all right?”
“Later! Damn it! Later!”
“It is not too long till sunrise, Corwin. I felt I had better remind you—”
“Consider me reminded!”
Away, now, quickly... Time, too, is a dream in Tir-na Nog'th. Small comfort, but better than none. Quickly, now, away, going, again...
...Toward the palace, bright architecture of the mind or spirit, more clearly standing now than the real ever did... To judge perfection is to render a worthless verdict, but I must see what lies within... This must be an end of sorts, for I am driven. I had not paused to recover my staff from where it had fallen this time, among the sparkling grasses. I know where I must go, what I must do. Obvious now, though the logic which has seized me is not that of the waking mind.
Hurrying, climbing, up to the rearward portal... The side-biting soreness comes home again... Across the threshold, in...
Into an absence of starshine and moonlight. The illumination is without direction, seeming almost to drift and to pool, aimlessly. Wherever it misses, the shadows are absolute, occulting large sections of room, hallway, closet, and stair.
Among them, through them, almost ru
Turning... Crossing... Finally... Entering... The throne room... Bushels of blackness stacked where my eyes would drive down lines of seeing to the throne itself...
There, though, is movement.
A drifting, to my right, as I advance.
A lifting, with the drifting.
The boots on feet on legs come into view as forward pressing I near the place's base.
Grayswandir comes into my hand, finding its way into a patch of light, renewing its eyetricking, shapeshifting stretch, acquiring a glow of its own...
I place my left foot on the step, rest my left hand on my knee. Distracting but bearable, the throb of my healing gut. I wait for the blackness, the emptiness, to be drawn, appropriate curtain for the theatrics with which I am burdened this night.