The hand of Oberon (8 page)

I entered, taking a candle from a nearby table, and moved toward the fireplace to give it a light. As I knelt and sought a flame among the embers, I heard a soft footfall in the vicinity of the doorway.

Turning, I saw him just beyond the threshold. About five feet in height, hunchbacked. His hair and beard were even longer than I remembered. Dworkin wore a nightshirt which reached to his ankles. He carried an oil lamp, his dark eyes peering across its sooty chimney.

“Oberon” he said, “is it finally time?”

“What time is that?” I asked softly.

He chuckled.

“What other? Time to destroy the world, of course!”

I kept the light away from my face, kept my voice low.

“Not quite,” I said. “Not quite.”

He sighed.

“You remain unconvinced.”

He looked forward and cocked his head, peering down at me.

“Why must you spoil things?” he said.

“I’ve spoiled nothing.”

He lowered the lamp. I turned my head again, but he finally got a good look at my face. He laughed.

“Funny. Funny, funny, funny,” he said. “you come as the young Lord Corwin, thinking to sway me with family sentiment. Why did you not choose Brand or Bleys? It was Clarissa’s lot served us best.”

I shrugged and stood.

“Yes and no,” I said, determined now to feed him ambiguities for so long as he’d accept them and respond. Something of value might emerge, and it seemed an easy way to keep him in a good humor.

“And yourself?” I continued. “What face would you put on things?”

“Why, to win your good will I’ll match you,” he said, and then he began to laugh.

He threw his head back, and as his laughter rang about me a change came over him. His stature seemed to increase, and his face fluffed like a sail cut too close to the wind. The hump on his back was diminished as he straightened and stood taller. His features rearranged themselves and his beard darkened. By then it was obvious that he was somehow redistributing his body mass, for the nightshirt which had reached his ankles was now midway up his shins. He breathed deeply and his shoulders widened. His arms lengthened, his bulging abdomen narrowed, tapered. He reached shoulder height on me, then higher. He looked me in the eye. His garment reached only to his knees. His hump was totally resorbed. His face gave a final twist, his features steadied, were reset. His laughter fell to a chuckle, faded, closed with a smirk.

I regarded a slightly slimmer version of myself.

“Sufficient?” he inquired.

“Not half bad,” I said.

“Wait till I toss a couple logs on the fire.”

“I will help you.”

“That’s all right.”

I drew some wood from a rack to the right. Any stall served me somewhat, buying reactions for my study. As I was about the work, he crossed to a chair and seated himself. When I glanced at him I saw that he was not looking at me, but staring into the shadows. I drew out the fire-building, hoping that he would say something, anything. Eventually, he did.

“Whatever became of the grand design?” he asked.

I did not know whether he was speaking of the Pattern or of some master plan of Dad’s to which he had been privy. So, “You tell me,” I said. He chuckled again.

“Why not? You changed your mind, that is what happened,” he said.

“From what to what-as you see it?”

“Don’t mock me. Even you have no right to mock me,” he said. “Least of all, you.”

I got to my feet.

“I was not mocking you,” I said.

I crossed the room to another chair and carried it over to a position near the fire, across from Dworkin. I seated myself.

“How did you recognize me?” I asked.

“My whereabouts are hardly common knowledge.”

“That is true.”

“Do many in Amber think me dead?”

“Yes, and others suppose you might be traveling off in Shadow.”

“I see.”

“How have you been feeling?”

He gave me an evil grin.

“Do you mean am I still mad?”

“You put it more bluntly than I care to.”

“There is a fading, there is an intensifying,” he said. “It comes to me and it departs again. For the moment I am almost myself-almost, I say. The shock of your visit, perhaps . . . Something is broken in my mind. You know that. It cannot be otherwise, though. You know that, too.”

“I suppose that I do,” I said. “Why don’t you tell me all about it, all over again? Just the business of talking might make you feel better, might give me something I’ve missed. Tell me a story.”

Another laugh.

“Anything you like. Have you any preferences? My flight from Chaos to this small sudden island in the sea of night? My meditations upon the abyss? The revelation of the Pattern in a jewel hung round the neck of a unicorn? My transcription of the design by lightning, blood, and lyre while our fathers raged baffled, too late come to call me back while the poem of fire ran that first route in my brain, infecting me with the will to form? Too late! Too late . . . Possessed of the abominations born of the disease, beyond their aid, their power, I planned and built, captive of my new self. Is that the tale you’d hear again? Or rather I tell you of its cure?”

My mind spun at the implications he had just scattered by the fistful. I could not tell whether he spoke literally or metaphorically or was simply sharing paranoid delusions, but the things that I wanted to hear, had to hear, were things closer to the moment. So, regarding the shadowy image of myself from which that ancient voice emerged, “Tell me of its cure,” I said.

He braced his finger tips together and spoke through them.

“I am the Pattern,” he said, “in a very real sense. In passing through my mind to achieve the form it now holds, the foundation of Amber, it marked me as surely as I marked it. I realized one day that I am both the Pattern and myself, and it was forced to become Dworkin in the process of becoming itself. There were mutual modifications in the birthing of this place and this time, and therein lay our weakness as well as our strength. For it occurred to me that damage to the Pattern would be damage to myself, and damage to myself would be reflected within the Pattern. Yet I could not be truly banned because the Pattern protects me, and who but I could harm the Pattern? A beautiful closed system, it seemed, its weakness totally shielded by its strength.”

He fell silent. I listened to the fire. I do not know what he listened to.

Then, “I was wrong,” he said. “Such a simple matter, too . . . My blood, with which I drew it, could deface it. But it took me ages to realize that the blood of my blood could also do this thing. You could use it, you could also change it-yea, unto the third generation.”

It did not come to me as a surprise, learning that he was grandsire to us all. Somehow, it seemed that I had known all along, had known but never voiced it. Yet . . . if anything, this raised more questions than it answered. Collect one generation of ancestry. Proceed to confusion. I had less idea now than ever before as to what Dworkin really was. Add to this the fact which even he acknowledged: It was a tale told by a madman.

“But to repair it. . . ?” I said.

He smirked, my own face twisting before me.

“Have you lost your taste to be a lord of the living void, a king of chaos?” he asked.

“Mayhap,” I replied.

“By the Unicorn, thy mother, I knew it would come to this! The Pattern is as strong in you as is the greater realm. What then is your desire?”

“To preserve the realm.”

He shook his/my head.

“ ‘Twould be simpler to destroy everything and try a new start-as I have told you so often before.”

“I’m stubborn. So tell me again,” I said, attempting to simulate Dad’s gruffness.

He shrugged.

“Destroy the Pattern and we destroy Amber-and all of the shadows in polar array about it. Give me leave to destroy myself in the midst of the Pattern and we will obliterate it. Give me leave by giving me your word that you will then take the Jewel which contains the essence of order and use it to create a new Pattern, bright and pure, untainted, drawing upon the stuff of your own being while the legions of chaos attempt to distract you on every side. Promise me that and let me end it, for broken as I am, I would rather die for order than live for it. What say you now?”

“Would it not be better to try mending the one we’ve got than to undo the work of eons?”

“Coward!” he cried, leaping to his feet. “I knew you would say that again!”

“Well, wouldn’t it?”

He began to pace.

“How many times have we been through this?” he asked. “Nothing has changed! You are afraid to try it!”

“Perhaps,” I said. “But do you not feel that something for which you have given so much is worth some effort-some additional sacrifice-if there is even a possibility of saving it?”

“You still do not understand,” he said. “I cannot but think that a damaged thing should be destroyed-and hopefully replaced. The nature of my personal injury is such that I cannot envision repair. I am damaged in just this fashion. My feelings are foreordained.”

“If the Jewel can create a new Pattern, why will it not serve to repair the old one, end our troubles, heal your spirit?”

He approached and stood before me.

“Where is your memory?” he said. “You know that it would be infinitely more difficult to repair the damage than it would be to start over again. Even the Jewel could more easily destroy it than repair it. Have your forgotten what it is like out there?” He gestured toward the wall behind him. “Do you want to go and look at it again?”

“Yes,” I said. “I would like that. Let’s go.”

I rose and looked down at him. His control over his form had begun slipping when he had grown angry. He had already lost three or four inches in height, the image of my face was melting back into his gnomelike features, and a noticeable bulge was growing between his shoulders, had already been visible when he had gestured.

His eyes widened and he studied my face.

“You really mean it,” he said after a moment. “All right, then. Let us go.”

He turned and moved toward the big metal door. I followed him. He used both hands to turn the key. Then he threw his weight against it. I moved to help him, but he brushed me aside with extraordinary strength before giving the door a final shove. It made a grating noise and moved outward into a fully opened position. I was immediately struck by a strange, somehow familiar odor.

Dworkin stepped through and paused. He located what looked to be a long staff leaning against the wall off to his right. He struck it several times against the ground and its upper end began to glow. It lit up the area fairly well, revealing a narrow tunnel into which he now advanced. I followed him and it widened before too long, so that I was able to come abreast of him. The odor grew stronger, and I could almost place it. It had been something fairly recent. . .

It was close to eighty paces before our way took a turn to the left and upward. We passed then through a little appendix like area. It was strewn with broken bones, and a large metal ring was set in the rock a couple of feet above the floor. Affixed thereto was a glittering chain, which fell to the floor and trailed on ahead like a line of molten droplets cooling in the gloom.

Our way narrowed again after that and Dworkin took the lead once more. After a brief time, he turned an abrupt corner and I heard him muttering. I nearly ran into him when I made the turn myself. He was crouched down and groping with his left hand inside a shadowy cleft. When I heard the soft cawing noise and saw that the chain vanished into the opening I realized what it was and where we were.

“Good Wixer,” I heard him say. “I am not going far. It is all right, good Wixer. Here is something to chew on.”

From where he had fetched whatever he tossed the beast, I do not know. But the purple griffin, which I had now advanced far enough to glimpse as it stirred within its lair, accepted the offering with a toss of its head and a series of crunching noises. Dworkin grinned up at me.

“Surprised?” he asked.

“At what?”

“You thought I was afraid of him. You thought I would never make friends with him. You set him out here to keep me in there-away from the Pattern.”

“Did I ever say that?”

“You did not have to. I am not a fool.”

“Have it your way,” I said.

He chuckled, rose, and continued on along the passageway.

I followed and it grew level underfoot once again. The ceiling rose and the way widened. At length, we came to the cave mouth. Dworkin stood for a moment silhouetted, staff raised before him. It was night outside, and a clean salt smell swept the musk from my nostrils.

Another moment, and he moved forward once more, passing into a world of sky-candles and blue velours. Continuing after him, I had gasped briefly at that amazing view. It was not simply that the stars in the moonless, cloudless sky blazed with a preternatural brilliance, nor that the distinction between sky and sea had once again been totally obliterated. It was that the Pattern glowed an almost acetylene blue by that skysea, and all of the stars above, beside, and below were arrayed with a geometric precision, forming a fantastic, oblique latticework which, more than anything else, gave the impression that we hung in the midst of a cosmic web where the Pattern was the true center, the rest of the radiant meshwork a precise consequence of its existence, configuration, position.