The hand of Oberon (22 page)

I was distracted by a stirring above my shoulder, a tiny effect of brightening in the higher air. Turning, then standing, I regarded the horizon. A preliminary glow had occurred out over the sea at the point where the moon would ascend. As I watched, a minute arc of light came into view. The clouds had shifted slightly also, though not enough to cause concern. I glanced up then, but the overhead phenomenon had not yet begun. I withdrew my Trumps, however, riffled them, and cut out Benedict’s.

Lethargy forgotten, I stared, watching the moon expand above the water, casting a trail of light over the waves. A faint form was suddenly hovering on the threshold of visibility high overhead. As the light grew, a spark limned it here and there. The first lines, faint as spider webbing, appeared above the rock. I studied Benedict’s card, I reached for contact. . . .

His cold image came alive. I saw him in the chamber of the Pattern, standing at the designs’ center. A lighted lantern glowed beside his left foot. He became aware of my presence.

“Corwin,” he said, “is it time?”

“Not quite,” I told him. “The moon is rising. The city is just beginning to take form. So it will only be a little longer. I wanted to be certain you were ready.”

“I am ready,” he said.

“It is good that you came back when you did. Did you learn anything of interest?”

“Ganelon called me back,” he said, “as soon as he learned what had happened. His plan seemed a good one, which is why I am here. As for the Courts of Chaos, yes. I believe I have learned a few things-“

“A moment,” I said.

The moonbeam strands had assumed a more tangible appearance. The city overhead was now clear in outline. The stairway was visible in its entirety, though fainter in some places than in others. I stretched forth enough to slake my mind’s thirst for the moment . . ..

Cool, soft, I encountered the fourth stair. It seemed to give somewhat beneath my push, however.

“Almost,” I said to Benedict. “I am going to try the stairs. Be ready.”

He nodded.

I mounted the stone stairs, one, two, three. I raised my foot then and lowered it upon the fourth, ghostly one. It yielded gently to my weight. I was afraid to raise my other foot, so I waited, watching the moon. I breathed the cool air as the brightness increased, as the path in the waters widened. Glancing upward, I saw Tir-na Nog’th lose something of its transparency. The stars behind it grew dimmer. As this occurred, the stair became firmer beneath my foot. All resiliency went out of it. I felt that it might bear my full weight. Casting my eyes along its length, I now saw it in its entirety, here translucent, there transparent, sparkling, but continuous all the way up to the silent city that drifted above the sea. I raised my other foot and stood on the fourth stair. If I’d the mind, a few more steps would send me along that celestial escalator into the place of dreams made real, walking neuroses and dubious prophecy, into a moonlit city of ambiguous wish fulfillment, twisted time, and pallid beauty. I stepped back down and glanced at the moon, now balanced on the world’s wet rim. I regarded Benedict’s Trump in its silvery glow.

“The stair is solid, the moon is up,” I said.

“All right. I am going.”

I watched him there at the center of the Pattern. He raised the lantern in his left hand and for a moment stood unmoving. An instant later he was gone, and so was Pattern. Another instant, and he stood within a similar chamber, this time outside the Pattern, next to the point where it begins. He raised the lantern high and looked all around the room. He was alone.

He turned, walked to the wall, set the lantern beside it. His shadow stretched toward the Pattern, changed shape as he turned on his heel, moved back to his first position.

This Pattern, I noted, glowed with a paler light than the one in Amber-silvery white, without the hint of blue with which I-was familiar. Its configuration was the same, but the ghost city played strange tricks with perspective. There were distortions-narrowings, widenings—which seemed to shift for no particular reason across its surface, as though I viewed the entire tableau through an irregular lens rather than Benedict’s Trump.

I retreated down the stairs, settled once again on the lowest step. I continued to observe.

Benedict loosened his blade in its scabbard.

“You know about the possible effect of blood on the Pattern?” I asked.

“Yes. Ganelon told me.”

“Did you ever suspect-any of this?”

“I never trusted Brand,” he told me.

“What of your journey to the Courts of Chaos? What did you learn?”

“Later, Corwin. He could come any time now.”

“I hope no distracting visions show up,” I said, recalling my own journey to Tir-na Nog’th and his own part in my final adventure there.

He shrugged.

“One gives them power by paying them heed. My attention is reserved for one matter tonight.”

He turned through a full circle, regarding every part of the chamber, halted when he had finished.

“I wonder if he knows you are there?” I said.

“Perhaps. It does not matter.”

I nodded. If Brand did not show up, we had gained a day. The guards would ward the other Patterns, Fiona would have a chance to demonstrate her own skill in matters arcane by locating Brand for us. We would then pursue him. She and Bleys had been able to stop him once before. Could she do it alone now? Or would we have to find Bleys and try to convince him to help? Had Brand found Bleys? What the hell did Brand want this kind of power for anyhow? A desire for the throne I could understand. Yet. . . The man was mad, leave it at that. Too bad, but that’s the way it was. Heredity or environment? I wondered wryly. We were all of us, to some degree, mad after his fashion. To be honest, it had to be a form of madness, to have so much and to strive so bitterly for just a little more, for a bit of an edge over the others. He carried this tendency to its extreme, that is all. He was a caricature of this mania in all of us. In this sense, did it really matter which of us was the traitor?

Yes, it did. He was the one who had acted. Mad or not, he had gone too far. He had done things Eric, Julian, and I would not have done. Bleys and Fiona had finally backed away from his thickening plot. Gerard and Benedict were a notch above the rest of us-moral, mature, whatever-for they had exempted themselves from the zero-sum power game. Random had changed, quite a bit, in recent years. Could it be that the children of the unicorn took ages in which to mature, that it was slowly happening to the rest of us but had somehow passed Brand by? Or could it be that by his actions Brand was causing it in the rest of us? Like most such questions, the benefit of these was in the asking, not the answering. We were enough like Brand that I knew a particular species of fear nothing else could so provoke. But yes, it did matter. Whatever the reason, he was the one who had acted.

The moon was higher now, its vision superimposed upon my inward viewing of the chamber of the Pattern. The clouds continued to shift, to boil nearer the moon. I thought of advising Benedict, but it would serve no other end than distraction. Above me, Tir-na Nog’th rode like some supernatural ark upon the seas of night

. . . And suddenly Brand was there.

Reflexively, my hand went to Grayswandir’s hilt, despite the fact that a part of me realized from the very first that he stood across the Pattern from Benedict in a dark chamber high in the sky.

My hand fell again. Benedict had become aware of the intruding presence immediately, and he turned to face him. He made no move toward his weapon, but simply stared across the Pattern at our brother.

My earliest fear had been that Brand would contrive to arrive directly behind Benedict and stab him in the back. I would not have tried that though, because even in death Benedict’s reflexes might have been sufficient to dispatch his assailant Apparently, Brand wasn’t that crazy either.

Brand smiled.

“Benedict,” he said. “Fancy. . . You. . . Here.”

The Jewel of Judgment hung fiery upon his breast.

“Brand,” Benedict said, “don’t try it.”

Still smiling. Brand unclasped his sword belt and let his weapon fall to the floor. When the echoes died, he said, “I am not a fool, Benedict. The man hasn’t been born who can go up against you with a blade.”

“I don’t need the blade, Brand.”

Brand began walking, slowly, about the edge of the Pattern.

“Yet you wear it as a servant of the throne, when you could have been king.”

“That has never been high on my list of ambitions.”

“That is right.” He paused, only part way about the Pattern.

“Loyal, self-effacing. You have not changed at all. Pity Dad conditioned you so well. You could have gone so much further.”

“I have everything that I want,” Benedict said.

“. . . To have been stifled, cut off, so early.”

“You cannot talk your way past me either, Brand. Do not make me hurt you.”

The smile still on his face. Brand began moving again, slowly. What was it he was trying to do? I could not figure his strategy.

“You know I can do certain things the others cannot,” Brand said. “If there is anything at all that you want and think that you cannot have, now is your chance to name it and learn how wrong you were. I have learned things you would scarcely believe.”

Benedict smiled one of his rare smiles.

“You have chosen the wrong line,” he said. “I can walk to anything that I want.”

“Shadows!” Brand snorted, halting again. “Any of the others can clutch a phantom! I am talking of reality! Amber! Power! Chaos! Not daydreams made solid! Not second best!”

“If I had wanted more than I have, I knew what to do. I did not do it.”

Brand laughed, began walking again. He had come a quarter of the way about the Pattern’s periphery. The Jewel burned more brightly. His voice rang.

“You are a fool, to wear your chains willingly! But if things do not call out to you to possess them and if power holds no attraction, what of knowledge? I learned the last of Dworkin’s lore. I have gone on since then and paid dark prices for greater insight into the workings of the universe. This you could have without that price tag.”

“There would be a price,” Benedict said, “one that I will not pay.”

Brand shook his head and tossed his hair. The image of the Pattern wavered for a moment then, as a wisp of cloud crossed the moon. Tir-na Nog’th faded slightly, returned to normal focus.

“You mean it, you really mean it,” Brand said, apparently not aware of the moment of fading.

“I shan’t test you further then. I had to try.”

He halted again, staring.

“You are too good a man to waste yourself on that mess in Amber, defending something that is obviously falling apart. I am going to win, Benedict. I am going to erase Amber and build it anew. I am going to rub out the old Pattern and draw my own. You can be with me. I want you on my side. I am going to raise up a perfect world, one with more direct access to and from Shadow. I am going to merge Amber with the Courts of Chaos. I am going to extend this realm directly through all of Shadow. You will command our legions, the mightiest military forces ever assembled. You-“

“If your new world would be as perfect as you say, Brand, there would be no need for legions. If, on the other hand, it is to reflect the mind of its creator, then I see it as something less than an improvement over the present state of affairs. Thank you for your offer, but I hold with the Amber which already exists.”

“You are a fool, Benedict. A well-meaning one, but a fool nevertheless.”

He began to move again, casually. He was within forty feet of Benedict. Thirty. . . . He kept moving. He finally paused about twenty feet away, hooked his thumbs behind his belt, and simply stared. Benedict met his gaze. I checked the clouds again. A long mass of them continued a moonward slide. I could pull Benedict out at any time, though. It was hardly worth disturbing him at the moment.

“Why don’t you come and cut me down then?” Brand finally said. “Unarmed as I am, it should not be difficult. The fact that the same blood flows in both our veins makes no difference, does it? What are you waiting for?”

“I already told you that I do not wish to hurt you,” Benedict said.

“Yet you stand ready to, if I attempt to pass your way.”

Benedict simply nodded.

“Admit that you fear me, Benedict. All of you are afraid of me. Even when I approach you weaponless like this, something mast be twisting your guts. You see my confidence and you do not understand it. You must be afraid.”

Benedict did not reply.

“. . . And you fear my blood on your hands,” Brand went on, “you fear my death curse.”

“Did you fear Martin’s blood on your own?” Benedict asked.

“That bastard puppy!” Brand said. “He was not truly one of us. He was only a tool.”

“Brand, I have no desire to kill a brother. Give me that trinket you wear about your neck and come back with me now to Amber. It is not too late to set matters right.”

Brand threw back his head and laughed.

“Oh, nobly spoken! Nobly spoken, Benedict! Like a true lord of the realm! You would shame me with your excessive virtue! And what is the sticking point of this all?”