The hand of Oberon (13 page)

“What are you going to do?” I asked him.

“Do?” he said. “What is Random now doing about Martin? I shall seek her, find her, have the story from her own lips, and then decide for myself. This will have to wait, however, until the matter of the black road is settled. That is another matter I wish to discuss with you.”

“Yes?”

“If time moves so differently in their stronghold, they have had more than they need in which to mount another attack. I do not want to keep waiting to meet them in indecisive encounters. I am contemplating following the black road back to its source and attacking them on their home ground. I would like to do it with your concurrence.”

“Benedict,” I said, “have you ever looked upon the Courts of Chaos?”

He raised his head and stared at the blank wall of the tent.

“Ages ago, when I was young,” he said, “I hellrode as far as I might go, to the end of everything. There, beneath a divided sky, I looked upon an awesome abyss. I do not know if the place lies there or if the road runs that far, but I am prepared to take that way again, if such is the case.”

“Such is the case,” I said.

“How can you be certain?”

“I am just returned from that land. A dark citadel hovers within it. The road goes to it.”

“How difficult was the way?”

“Here,” I said, taking out the Trump and passing it to him.

“This was Dworkin’s. I found it among his things. I only just tried it. It took me there. Time is already rapid at that point. I was attacked by a rider on a drifting roadway, of a sort not shown on the card. Trump contact is difficult there, perhaps because of the time differential. Gerard brought me back.”

He studied the card.

“It seems the place I saw that time,” he said at length. “This solves our logistics problems. With one of us on either end of a Trump connection we can transport the troops right through, as we did that day from Kolvir to Gamath.”

I nodded.

“That is one of the reasons I showed it to you, to indicate my good faith. There may be another way, involving less risk than running our forces into the unknown. I want you to hold off on this venture until I have explored my way further.”

“I will have to hold off in any event, to obtain some intelligence concerning that place. We do not even know whether your automatic weapons will function there, do we?”

“No, I did not have one along to test.”

He pursed his lips.

“You really should have thought to take one and try it.”

“The circumstances of my departure did not permit this.”

“Circumstances?”

“Another time. It is not relevant here. You spoke of following the black road to its source. . .”

“Yes?”

“That is not its true source. Its real source lies in the true Amber, in the defect in the primal Pattern.”

“Yes, I understand that. Both Random and Ganelon have described your journey to the place of the true Pattern, and the damage you discovered there. I see the analogy, the possible connection-“

“Do you recall my flight from Avalon, and your pursuit?”

In answer, he only smiled faintly.

“There was a point where we crossed the black road,” I said. “Do you recall it?”

He narrowed his eyes.

“Yes,” he said. “You cut a path through it. The world had returned to normal at that point. I had forgotten.”

“It was an effect of the Pattern upon it,” I said, “one which I believe can be employed upon a much larger scale.”

“How much larger?”

“To wipe out the entire thing.”

He leaned back and studied my face.

“Then why are you not about it?”

“There are a few preliminaries I must undertake.”

“How much time will they involve?”

“Not too much. Possibly as little as a few days. Perhaps a few weeks.”

“Why didn’t you mention all of this sooner?”

“I only learned how to go about it recently.”

“How do you go about it?”

“Basically, it amounts to repairing the Pattern.”

“All right,” he said. “Say you succeed. The enemy will still be out there.”

He gestured toward Garnath and the black road.

“Someone gave them passage once.”

“The enemy has always been out there,” I said. “And it will be up to us to see that they are not given passage again-by dealing properly with those who provided it in the first place.”

“I go along with you on that,” he said, “but that is not what I meant. They require a lesson, Corwin. I want to teach them a proper respect for Amber, such a respect that even if the way is opened again they will fear to use it. That is what I meant. It is necessary.”

“You do not know what it would be like to carry a battle to that place, Benedict. It is-literally-indescribable.”

He smiled and stood.

“Then I guess I had best go see for myself,” he said. “I will keep this card for a time, if you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind.”

“Good. Then you be on with your business about the Pattern, Corwin, and I will be about my own. This will take me some time, too. I must go give my commanders orders concerning my absence now. Let us agree that neither of us commence anything of a final nature without checking first with the other.”

“Agreed,” I said.

We finished our wine.

“I will be under way myself, very soon now,” I said. “So, good luck.”

“To you, also.” He smiled again. “Things are better,” he said, and he clasped my shoulder as he passed to the entrance. We followed him outside.

“Bring Benedict’s horse,” Ganelon directed the orderly who stood beneath a nearby tree; and turning, he offered Benedict his hand.

“I, too, want to wish you luck,” he said.

Benedict nodded and shook his hand.

“Thank you, Ganelon. For many things.”

Benedict withdrew his Trumps.

“I can bring Gerard up to date,” he said, “before my horse arrives.”

He riffled through them, withdrew one, studied it.

“How do you go about repairing the Pattern?” Ganelon asked me.

“I have to get hold of the Jewel of Judgment again,” I said. “With it, I can reinscribe the damaged area.”

“Is this dangerous?”

“Yes.”

“Where is the Jewel?”

“Back on the shadow Earth, where I left it.”

“Why did you abandon it?”

“I feared that it was killing me.”

He contorted his features into a near-impossible grimace.

“I don’t like the sound of this, Corwin. There must be another way.”

“If I knew a better way, I’d take it.”

“Supposing you just followed Benedict’s plan and took them all on? You said yourself that he could raise infinite legions in Shadow. You also said that he is the best man there is in the field.”

“Yet the damage would remain in the Pattern, and something else would come to fill it. Always. The enemy of the moment is not as important as our own inner weakness. If this is not mended we are already defeated, though no foreign conqueror stands within our walls.”

He turned away.

“I cannot argue with you. You know your own realm,” he said. “But I still feel you may be making a grave mistake by risking yourself on what may prove unnecessary at a time when you are very much needed.”

I chuckled, for it was Vialle’s word and I had not wanted to call it my own when she had said it.

“It is my duty,” I told him.

He did not reply.

Benedict, a dozen paces away, had apparently reached Gerard, for he would mutter something, then pause and listen. We stood there, waiting for him to conclude his conversation so that we could see him off.

“. . . Yes, he is here now,” I heard him say. “No, I doubt that very much. But-“

Benedict glanced at me several times and shook his head.

“No, I do not think so,” he said. Then, “All right, come ahead.”

He extended his new hand, and Gerard stepped into being, clasping it. Gerard turned his head, saw me, and immediately moved in my direction.

He ran his eyes up and down and back and forth across my entire person, as if searching for something.

“What is the matter?” I said.

“Brand,” he replied. “He is no longer in his quarters. At least, most of him isn’t. He left some blood behind. The place is also broken up enough to show there had been a fight.”

I glanced down at my shirt front and trousers.

“And you are looking for bloodstains? As you can see, these are the same things I had on earlier. They may be dirty and wrinkled, but that’s all.”

“That does not really prove anything,” he said.

“It was your idea to look. Not mine. What makes you think I-“

“You were the last one to see him,” he said.

“Except for the person be had a fight with-if he really did.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“You know his temper, his moods. We had a small argument. He might have started breaking things up after I left, maybe cut himself, gotten disgusted, trumped out for a change of scene-Wait! His rug! Was there any blood on that small, fancy rug before his door?”

“I am not sure-no, I don’t think so. Why?”

“Circumstantial evidence that he did it himself. He was very fond of that rug. He avoided messing it.”

“I don’t buy it,” Gerard said, “and Caine’s death still looks peculiar-and Benedict’s servants, who could have found out you wanted gunpowder. Now Brand-“

“This could well be another attempt to frame me,” I said, “and Benedict and I have come to better terms.”

He turned toward Benedict, who had not moved from where he stood a dozen paces away, regarding us without expression, listening.

“Has he explained away those deaths?” Gerard asked him.

“Not directly,” Benedict answered, “but much of the rest of the story now stands in a better light. So much so, that I am inclined to believe all of it.”

Gerard shook his head and glared down at me again.

“Still unsettled,” he said. “What were you and Brand arguing about?”

“Gerard,” I said, “that is our business, till Brand and I decide otherwise.”

“I dragged him back to life and watched over him, Corwin. I didn’t do it just to see him killed in a squabble.”

“Use your brains,” I told him. “Whose idea was it to search for him the way that we did? To bring him back?”

“You wanted something from him,” he said. “You finally got it. Then he became an impediment.”

“No. But even if that were the case, do you think I would be so damned obvious about it? If he has been killed, then it is on the same order as Caine’s death-an attempt to frame me.”

“You used the obviousness excuse with Caine, too. It seems to me it could be a kind of subtlety-a thing you are good at.”

“We have been through this before, Gerard. . .”

“. . . And you know what I told you then.”

“It would be difficult to have forgotten.”

He reached forward and seized my right shoulder. I immediately drove my left hand into his stomach and pulled away. It occurred to me then that perhaps I should have told him what Brand and I had been talking about. But I didn’t like the way he had asked me.

He came at me again. I side-stepped and caught him with a light left near the right eye. I kept jabbing after that, mainly to keep his head back. I was in no real shape to fight him again, and Grayswandir was back in the tent. I had no other weapon with me.

I kept circling him. My side hurt if I kicked with my left leg. I caught him once on the thigh with my right, but I was slow and off-balance and could not really follow through. I continued to jab.

Finally, he blocked my left and managed to drop his hand on my biceps. I should have pulled away then, but he was open. I stepped in with a heavy right to his stomach, all of my strength behind it. It bent him forward with a gasp, but his grip tightened on my arm. He blocked my attempted uppercut with his left, continuing its forward motion until the heel of his hand slammed against my chest, at the same time jerking my left arm backward and to the side with such force that I was thrown to the ground. If he came down on me, that was it.

He dropped to one knee and reached for my throat.

I moved to block his hand, but it halted in midreach. Turning my head, I saw that another hand had fallen upon Gerard’s arm, was now grasping it, was holding it back.

I rolled away. When I looked up again, I saw that Ganelon had caught hold of him. Gerard jerked his arm forward, but it did not come free.

“Stay out of this, Ganelon,” he said.

“Get going, Corwin!” Ganelon said. “Get the Jewel!”