The Standard Trump of the castle is at the back, in a guarded area. It is impossible (or almost so :) to use that Trump to bring through more than one person, or to open up a gate. It feels like a rock you can pull to, not a window you can open. (There is actually a filter on it to prevent "dangerous" things from being Trumped in - players may find this out the hard way.)
I stood behind him on a balcony overlooking one of the courtyards. The railing was of white marble, and not much was blooming down below. We were two stories up.
[Sign of the Unicorn]
[Starting at the stables]
I skirted the exercise area and made my way to the trail that led toward the southern end of the palace gardens. Fewer eyes along that route.
There were a few idlers beside the fountain at the far end of the garden.
I crossed the guarden, out of the shade and into the slanting sunlight. I swung up the wide, curving stair. A guard snapped to attention as I entered the palace. I made for the rear stairway, then up to the second floor. Then the third.
Baron Bayle owned a number of vineyards about thirty miles to the east. He was the official vintner to the Court, and his red wines were generally excellent. He was less successful with the whites, though Baylesport - to the east. About a league to Arbor house from Baylesport, and a valley south of Baylesport.
the Isles of the Sun are south and perhaps east of Amber and Kolvir
Deciduous trees, open fields with dew
It was a map of the western fringe of Arden, and he pointed out our position on it. Garnath lay to our south-southwest, Amber to the southeast.
When I reached the avenue I strolled. A few closed carriages rolled by as I passed along the way. An old man walking a tiny green dragon on a chain leash touched his hat to me as I passed and said, "Good evening." He had seen the direction from which I had come, though I was sure he did not recognize me.
I continued on down the concourse. Near to its farther end I heard laughter and saw where some hardy drinkers still occupied a few tables at a sidewalk cafe. One of them was Droppa, but he didn't spot me and I passed on. I did not feel like being amused. I turned onto Weavers Street, which would take me over to where West Vine wound its way up from the harbor district. Then a gust of wind brought me the smokesmell of someone's fireplace and rattled a few dead leaves as it went by.
Down along the street then and left on West Vine... Narrower here than the concourse, but still wide; a greater distance between lights, but still sufficiently illuminated for night travelers. A pair of horsemen clopped slowly by, singing a song I did not recognize. Something large and dark passed overhead a bit later, to settle upon a roof across the street. A few scratching noises came from that direction, then silence. I followed a curve to the right, then another to the left, entering what I knew to be a long series of switchbacks. My way grew gradually steeper. A harbor breeze came up at some point a little later, bearing me my first salt sea smells of the evening. A short while afterward-two turns, I believe-and I had a view of the sea itself, far below; bobbing lights on a sparkling, swelling slickness over black, pent by the curving line of bright dots, Harbor Road. To the east the sky was powdered slightly. A hint of horizon appeared at the edge of the world. I thought I caught a glimpse of the distant light of Cabra minutes later, then lost it again with another turning of the way.
A puddle of light like spilled milk pulsed on the street to my right, outlining a ghostly gridwork of cobbles at its farthest downhill reach; the stippled pole above it might advertise some spectral barbershop; the cracked globe at its top still showed a faint phosphorescence, skull-on-a-stick style, reminding me of a game we used to play as kids back in the Courts. A few lighted footprints proceeded downhill away from it, faint, fainter, gone. I passed on, and across the distance I heard the cries of sea birds. Autumn's smells were submerged in ocean's. The powdered light beyond my left shoulder rose higher about the water, drifted forward across the wrinkled face of the deep. Soon. . . .
My appetite grew as I walked. Ahead, I beheld another dark-cloaked stroller on the other side of the street, a slight glowing at the edges of the boots. I thought of the fish I would soon be eating and hurried, breasting the figure and passing. A cat in a doorway paused at licking her asshole to watch me go by, hind leg held vertical the while. Another horseman passed, this one headed up the hill. I heard the fringes of an argument between a man and a woman from upstairs in one of the darkened buildings. Another turning and the shoulder of the moon came into sight like some magnificent beast surfacing, shrugging droplets From bright bathic grottoes. . . .
Ten minutes later I had reached the port district and found my way over to Harbor Road, its lack of all but occasional globes supplemented by window spillage, a number of buckets of burning pitch and the glow of the now-risen moon. The smells of salt and sea- wrack were more intense here, the road more cluttered with trash, the passersby more colorfully garbed and noisier than any on the concourse, unless you counted Droppa. I made my way to the rear of the cove, where the sounds of the sea came to me more strongly: the rushing, building advances of waves, then their crashing and splashing out beyond the breakwater; the gentler falls and slopping withdrawals nearer at hand; the creaking of ships, the rattling of chains, the bumping of some smaller vessel at pier or moor post. I wondered where the Starburst, my old sailboat, might be now.
I followed the curve of the road over to the western shore of the harbor. A pair of rats chased a black cat across my path as I wandered briefly, checking several sidestreets for the one I sought. The smells of barf as well as solid and liquid human waste mingled with other odors here, and I heard the cries, crashes and thuds of a struggle from somewhere nearby, leading me to believe that I was in the proper neighborhood. From somewhere distant a buoy bell rattled; from somewhere nearby I heard an almost bored-sounding string of curses preceding a pair of sailors who rounded the nearest corner to my right, reeling, staggered on past me, grinning, and broke into song moments later, receding. I advanced and checked the sign on that comer. SEABREEZE LANE, it read.
Loud music poured from one of the places back toward Harbor Street, with accompanying sounds of laughter. I glanced within as I passed it and saw where a tired-looking woman on a small stage appeared to be giving herself a gynecological examination. From somewhere nearby I heard a sound of breaking glass.
"The Net's still supposed to be good-down near the comer of the Smiths and Ironmongers Street. It's not real fancy."
"Well, it's a long walk. But if you go all the way down to the docks, at the back of
the cove, it's a little to the west. . . . But maybe you shouldn't. It's kind of late, and
that isn't the best neighborhood after dark."
"Is that by any chance Death Alley?" [Seabreeze Lane]
Rare to find coffee outside the palace
It was a yellow dirt road that I traveled, showing the impress of many wagon wheels. It followed the contours of the land, passing between fallow fields bordered by low stone fences, a few trees at either hand. I could see the stark outlines of mountains far ahead, standing above the forested area I was soon to encounter. We moved along at an easy gait, and I let my mind drift over the events of the past few days.
There were more trees at the roadside now, and the forest itself was nearer. I crossed a wooden bridge above a clear stream, and the gentle splashing sounds followed me for a time. There were brown fields and distant hams to my left, a wagon with a broken axle off to my right. . . .
The fields gave way to wilderness as I approached the verge of the forest. Something of twilight had already entered its bright-leafed domain. It did not seem a dense, ancient wood like Arden, however; from the distance I had seen numerous gaps within its higher reaches. The road continued wide and well-kept.
We crossed a small but sturdy wooden bridge a little later, but no trolls were taking tolls. The road took a turn upward, and we wound our way slowly but steadily to a higher elevation. Now there were numerous stars visible through the weave of the branches, but no clouds that I could see. The deciduous trees grew barer as we gained a bit of altitude, and more evergreens began to occur. I felt the breezes more strongly now.
We commenced a slightly downward course then, soon passing into a somewhat more sheltered area where the smell of pines came heavy
The road improved steadily after that, and it was not long before I caught distant glimpses of Amber atop Kolvir, sparkling in the noonday light. My uphill way took several turnings as the route passed through the heights, but Amber remained in sight most of the time. I reached the Eastern Gate-part of an ancient fortification-late in the afternoon. I made my way up East Vine?
I proceeded up East Vine on foot. Near the top, but before the slope grew roughly level, I smelled food and discarded my plan of waiting to eat until I was back at the palace. I halted and cast about me for the source of the aromas. I located it up a side street to my right where the way widened into a large circle, a fountain at its center in which a rearing copper dragon with a wonderful green patina pissed into a pink stone basin. The dragon faced a basement restaurant called the Pit, with ten outside tables enclosed by a low fence of copper pickets, potted plants along its inside perimeter.
The sky became a dark but brilliant blue, the sky of Amber. The earth was black among rocks and the bright green of the grass. The trees and the shrubs had a moist lucency to their foliage. The air was sweet and clean.
By nightfall, we were passing among the massive trees at the fringes of Arden. We still had about forty miles to go before we hit the mountains.
The trucks gave out the following afternoon. They went through several transformations, stalled repeatedly, and finally refused to start at all. We pushed them into a ravine and cut branches to cover them over.
We departed the hard, dirt roadway after that and worked our way through the woods themselves. Near sunset, I scaled a forest giant and was able to make out the range that held Kolvir. A storm was playing about its peaks just then and its clouds hid their highest portions.
The next day we reached the foothills, successful avoiding two patrols. We bedded down at an altitude perhaps half a mile higher than we had the previous night. We were under the cloud cover, but there was no rainfall?
About mid-morning, as I led our file up a twisted, rocky route, I heard a shout from behind me, followed by several bursts of gunfire. [Manticora]
We achieved perhaps another four miles and several thousand feet in elevation before we were forced to stop. We camped in a large circle on a hard, bare slope, sentries all about the perimeter.
During what passed for morning, we advanced perhaps five miles toward Kolvir before bearing off to the west. It was one of three possible routes we could follow, and I had always considered it the best for a possible attack.
Finally, we rounded the base of a large escarpment, our way taking us outward and upward through thunder and mist, until we were afforded a sudden vista, sweeping down and out for dozens of miles across the Valley of Garnath that lay to our right.
[a few hours later]
When we came to a safe-seeming place later that afternoon - a place within five miles of the outskirts of Amber - I halted us again, for rest and a final meal. About a mile farther along, I mounted a steep upturn, pausing when I achieved its crest. [Attackers coming from the sky, out of the west.]
[Gates manned by Julian's rangers]
"There were two more gates before we made it through the pass... We had gained several thousand feet in elevation now, and I braked the car on a road that crawled along the edge of a cliff. To our right hand, there was nothing other than a long way down."
[the sea appears]
"And as the cliff curved further and further to the left, and as we swung downward across its face, heading toward a wooded valley, and more and more of the sea came within our range of vision."
[The lighthouse of Cabra is visible from here, as from many other places]
"After almost half an hour, we reached the bottom. I kept coasting for as far as I could, then turned on the engine. At its sound, a flock of dark birds beat its way into the air from the shrubbery off to the left. Something gray and wolfish-looking broke from cover and dashing toward a nearby thicket; the deer it has been stalking, invisible till then, bounded away. We were in a lush valley, though not so thickly or massively wooded as the Forest of Arden, which sloped gently but steadily toward the distant sea."
"High, and climbing higher on the left, the mountains reared. The further we advanced into the valley, the better came our view of the nature and full extent of that massive height of rock down one of whose lesser slopes we had coasted. The mountains continued their march to the sea, growing larger as they did so, and taking upon their shoulders a shifting mantle tinged with green, mauve, purple, gold, and indigo. The face they turned to the sea was invisible to us from the valley, but about the back of that final, highest peak swirled the faintest veil of ghost clouds, and occasionally the golden sun touched it with fire. I judged we were about thirty-five miles from the place of light..."
By high noon we were crossing the valley that paralleled the seacoast. The Forest of Arden was to our North and left. Amber lay directly ahead. The breezes were cool and filled with the odors of earth and its sweet growing things. A few leaves fell. Amber lay eighty miles distant and was but a shimmer above the horizon.
That afternoon, with a gathering of clouds and but the lightest of rains, the bolts began to fall from the heavens. Then the storm ceased and the sun came forth to dry things off.
After a time, we smelled the smoke.
After another time, we saw it, flapping skyward all about us.
Then the sheets of flame began to rise and fall. They moved toward us, with their crunching, constant footsteps; and as they came nearer, we began to feel the heat, and somewhere, way back along the lines, a panic arose. There were cries, and the columns swelled and welled forward. [...]
To burn this ancient wood, as venerable as the Forest of Arden, seemed almost an act of sacrilege to me. [...]
Seventy miles of wooded valley lay between us and Amber, and over thirty behind us, going back to the forest's end.
"Bleys!" I gasped. "Two or three miles ahead of us the trail forks! The right branch comes more quickly to the river Oisen, which goes down to the sea! I think it's our one chance! The whole Valley of Garnath is going to be burned! Our only hope lies in reaching the water!"
We made it to the fork, though, beating out flames on our smoldering clothing [...] "Only about a quarter mile more," I said.
We ran through burning grasses, heading down a long slope, and when we reached the bottom we saw the water [...]
Bleys and I contrived to float as near together as possible as the currents took us and we were swept along the twisting course of the Oisen. The interlocked branches of the trees overhead had become as the beams in a cathedral of fire. [...]
It was several miles before we left the burning wood and reached the low, flat, treeless place that led onto the sea. [...]
"You're near the river?"
"Yes."
"Which bank?"
"Left, as you'd face the sea. North."
[...] and conducted me back to the camp. It was perhaps two miles distant.
By afternoon we had made maybe fifteen miles. We marched along the beach, and there was no sign of Julian anywhere.
We marched on, and soon we were within forty miles of Amber. The weather stayed clement, and all the wood to our left was a desolate, blackened ruin. The fire had destroyed most of the timber in the valley, so for once there was a thing in our favor. J[...] We made another ten miles ere the sun fell and we biovaced on the beach.
We led a speed-march toward noon, then rested. By then, we were twenty-five miles away from the foot of Kolvir. By twilight, the distance was ten. [...]
But the next day we began the ascent. There was a stairway, allowing for the men to go two abreast along it. This would narrow soon, however, forcing us to go single file.
We made it a hundred yards up Kolvir, then two, then three. [...]
We made it to the halfway point, fighting for every step. Once we reached the top, there would be the broad stair of which the one to Rebma had been but an image. It would lead up to the Great Arch, which was the eastern entranceway to Amber.
We were about two-thirds of the way up by then, and the stair zigged and zagged its way back and forth across the face of Kolvir. The eastern stair is seldom used. It is almost a decoration. Our original plans had been to cut through the now blackened valley and then circle, climbing, and to take the western way over the mountains and enter Amber from behind.
Tethering our mounts to a nearby shrub, I unslung our bags of provisions and carried them to the nearest bench.
[...] "Though they did thoughtfully provide a niche and a casket, just in case my remains put in an appearance. You cover both bets that way." [...]
So we sat there while the moon fell, till the last bottle was interred among its fellows. We talked for a time of days gone by. At length we fell silent and my eyes drifted to the stars above Amber.
The Grove of the Unicorn lies in Arden to the southwest of Kolvir, near to that jutting place where the land beings its final descent into the valley called Garnath. While Garnath had been cursed, burned, invaded, and fought through in recent years, the adjacent highlands stood unmolested. The grove where Dad claimed to have seen the unicorn ages before and to have experienced the peculiar events which led to his adopting the beast as the patron of Amber and placing it on his coat of arms, was, as near as we could tell, a spot now but slightly screened from the long view across Garnath to the sea -- twenty or thirty paces in from the upper edge of things: an asymmetrical glade where a small spring trickled from a mass of rock, formed a clear pool, brimmed into a tiny creek, made its way off toward Garnath and on down.
It was to this place that Gerard and I rode the following day, leaving at an hour that found us halfway down our trail from Kolvir before the sun skipped flakes of light across the ocean, then cast its whole bucketful against the sky. [...]
I leaned upon the rail, I looked across the world . . . Utter silence held the night, the dream-drenched city, the entire universe from here. Distant things--the sea, Amber, Arden, Garnath, the Lighthouse of Cabra, the Grove of the Unicorn, my tomb atop Kolvir . . . Silent, far below, yet clear, distinct . . . A god's eye view, I'd say, or that of a soul cut loose and drifting high . . . in the middle of the night . . .
I had come to the place where the ghosts play at being ghosts, where the omens, portents, signs, and animate desires thread the nightly avenues and palace high halls of Amber in the sky, Tir-na Nog'th . . .
Turning, my back to the rail and dayworld's vestiges below, I regarded the avenues and dark terraces, the halls of the lords, the quarters of the low . . . The moonlight is intense in Tir-na Nog'th, silvers over the facing sides of all our imaged places . . . Stick in hand, I eased forward, and the strangelings moved about me, appeared at windows, on balconies, on benches, at gates . . . Unseen I passed, for truly put, in this place I was the ghost to whatever their substance . . .
Silence and silver . . . Only the tapping of my stick, and that mostly muted . . . More mists adrift toward the heart of things . . . The palace a white bonfire of it . . . Dew, like drops of mercury on the finely sanded petals and stems in the gardens by the walks . . . The passing moon as painful to the eye as the sun at midday, the stars outshone, dimmed by it . . . Silver and silence . . . The shine . . .
I had not planned on coming, for its omens -- if that they truly be -- are deceitful, its similarities to the lives and places below unsettling, its spectacle often disconcerting. Still, I had come . . . A part of my bargain with time . . .
I waited [...] on the highest crop of Kolvir, there where the three steps are fashioned, roughly, out of the stone . . .
When the moonlight touched them, the outline of the entire stairway began to take shape, spanning the great gulf to that point above the sea the vision city held. When the moonlight fell full upon it, the stair had taken as much of substance as it would ever possess, and I set my foot upon the stone. . . [...]
Grayswandir, forged upon this very stone by moonlight, held power in the city in the sky, and so I bore my blade along. [...]
The stairs through the Corwin-ignoring sky escalate somehow, for it is not a simple arithmetic progression up them once motion has commenced. I was here, I was there, I was a quarter of the way up before my shoulder had forgotten the clasp of Ganelon's hand . . . If I looked too hard at any portion of the stair, it lost its shimmering opacity and I saw the ocean far below as through a translucent lens . . . I lost track of time, though it seems its never long, afterward . . . As far beneath the waves as I'd soon be above them, off to my right, the outline of Rebma appeared beneath the sea. I thought of Moire, wondered how she fared. What would become of our deepwater double should Amber ever fall? Would the image remain unshattered in its mirror? Or would building blocks and bones be taken and shaken alike, dice in the deepwater casino canyons our fleets fly over? No answer in the man-drowning, Corwin-confounding waters, though I felt a twinge in my side.
At the head of the stair, I entered, coming into the ghost city as one would enter Amber after mounting the great forestair up Kolvir's seaward face.
I leaned upon the rail, looked across the world.
The black road led off to the south. I could not see it by night. [...]
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-have-beens . . . 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, unnoted.
There . . . One such figure . . . Alone, but waiting . . . Fingers unkotting 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 . . . [...]
Walking away . . . Not looking back . . . Crossing the promenade . . .
And sudden, the gleaming 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 fireworks 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, cunning alcoves in mazes of hedging . . . passing along the walks, up an occasional step, across small bridges . . . Moving past ponds, among trees, by an odd piece of statuary, a boulder, a sundial (moondial, here?), bearing to my right, pressing steadily ahead, rounding, after a time, the northern end of the palace, swinging left then, past a courtyard overhung by balconies, more ghosts here and there upon them, behind them, within l. . .
Circling around the rear, just to see the back gardens this way, again, for they are lovely by normal moonlight in the true Amber. [...]
. . . 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 . . .
[Corwin tormented by images of Dierdre and... someone. Himself? Brand?]
. . . 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 . . . [...]
Hurrying, climbing, up to the rearward portal . . . [...]
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, stair.
The rising sun cast billions of bright shards into the foaming swell of the waters, and our eyes were dazzled by the dance so that we could not see beneath the surface. We had lived on fruit and water for two days and I was ravenously hungry, but I forgot this as I regarded the wide, sloping tiger beach with its sudden twists and rises of coral, orange, pink, and red, and its abrupt caches of shells, driftwood, and small polished stones; and the sea beyond: rising and falling, splashing softly, all gold and blue and royal purple, and casting forth its life-song breezes like benedictions beneath dawn's violet skies.
The mountain that faces the dawn, Kolvir, which has held Amber like a mother her child for all of time, stood perhaps twenty miles to our left, the north, and the sun covered her with gold and made rainbow the veil above the city. Random looked upon it and gnashed his teeth, then looked away. Maybe I did, too.
Deirdre touched my hand, gestured with her head, and began to walk toward the north, parallel to the shore. Random and I followed. She had apparently spotted some landmark. [...]
"How much further is it?" I asked.
"That cairn of stones," she said, and I saw it perhaps a hundred yards away, about eight feet in height, builded of head-sized, gray stones, worn by the wind, the sand, the water, standing in the shape of a truncated pyramid. [...]
We were on some sort of rocky surface which descended into the sea. I didn't know how we would breathe while we walked it, but Deirdre didn't seem worried about it, so I tried not to be. But I was.
When the water swirled and swished about our heads, I was very worried. Deirdre walked straight ahead, though, descending, and I followed and Random followed.
Each few feet there was a drop. We were descending an enormous staircase, and it was named Faiella-bionin, I knew.
One more step would bring the water above my head, but Deirdre had already dropped the water line.
So I drew a deep breath and took the plunge.
There were more steps and I kept following them. I wondered why my body was not naturally buoyed above them, for I continued to remain erect and each step bore me downward as though on a natural staircase, though my movements were somewhat slowed. [...]
[Random's Voice] It was as though I had my ear pressed against the bottom of a bathtub and each of his words came as the sound of someone kicking upon the side. They were clear, though [...]
We were about twenty feet beneath the surface by then, and I exhaled a small amount of air and tried inhaling for perhaps a second.
There was nothing disturbing about the sensation, so I protracted it. There were more bubbles, but beyond that I felt nothing uncomfortable in the transition.
There was no sense of increasing pressure during the next ten feet or so, and I could see the staircase on which we moved as though through a greenish fog. Down, down, down it led. Straight. Direct. And there was some kind of light coming from below us.
[...] By the time we were perhaps fifty feet below the surface, the waters grew quite dark and chill, but the glow before us and below us increased, and after another ten steps, I could make out the source:
There was a pillar rising to the right. At its top was something globe-like and glowing. Perhaps fifteen steps lower, another such formation occurred to the left. Beyond that, it seemed there was another one on the right, and so on.
When we entered the vicinity of the thing, the waters grew warmer and the stairway itself became clear: it was white, shot through with pink and green, and resembled marble but was not slippery despite the water. It was perhaps fifty feet in width, and there was a wide banister of the same substance on either side.
Fishes swam past us as we walked it. [...]
It became brighter. We entered the vicinity of the first light, and it wasn't a globe on the top of a pillar. My mind must have added that touch to the phenomenon, to try to rationalize it at least a bit. It appeared to be a flame, about two feet in height, dancing there as atop a huge torch. I decided to ask about it later, and saved my - if you'll pardon the expression - breath, for the rapid descent we were making.
[...] We hurried though, and off to our left and to our right the water grew black as ink. Only the stairway was illuminated, in our mad flight down it, and distantly I saw what appeared to be a mighty arch. [...]
The archway loomed ahead, perhaps two hundred feet distant. Big, shining like alabaster, and carved with Tritons, sea nymphs, mermaids and dolphins, it was. And there seemed to be people on the other side of it.
The golden gates of Rebma stood before us. [...] Everything was to be seen through a green haze. There were buildings, all of them fragile and most of them high, grouped in patterns and standing in colors that entered my eyes and tore through my mind, seeking after remembrance. They failed, the sole result of their digging being the now familiar ache that accompanies the half recalled, the unrecalled. I had walked these streets before, however, that I knew, or ones very much like them. [...]
I examined our escort. They were men with green hair, purple hair, and black hair, and all of them had eyes of green, save for one fellow whose were of a hazel color. All wore only scaled trunks and cloaks, cross-braces on their breasts, and short swords depending from sea-shell belts. All were pretty much lacking in body hair. None of them spoke to me, though some stared and some glared. I was allowed to keep my weapon.
Inside the city, we were conducted up a wide avenue, lighted by pillar flames set at even closer intervals than on Faiella-bionin, and pepole stared out at us from behind octagonal, tinted windows, and bright-bellied fishes swam by. There came a cool current, like a breeze, as we turned a corner; and after a few steps, a warm one, like a wind.
We were taken to the palace in the center of the city, and I knew it as my hand knew the glove in my belt. It was an image of the palace of Amber, obscured only by the green and confused by the many strangelyplaced mirrors which had been set within its walls, inside and out. A woman set upon the throne in a glassite room I almost recalled, and her hair was green, though streaked with silver, and her eyes were round as moons of jade and her brows rose like the wings of olive gulls. Her mouth was small, her chin was small; her cheeks were high and wide and rounded. A circlet of white gold crossed her brow and there was a crystal nekclace about her neck. At its top there flashed a sapphire between her sweet bare breasts, whose nipples were also a pale green. She wore scaled trunks of blue and a silver belt, and she held a scepter of pink coral in her right hand and had a ring upon every finger, and each ring had a stone of a different blue within it.
I stood upon the sandy, rock-strewn edge of the small island Cabra, which held the great grey lighthouse that lit a path for the ships of Amber by night. A flock of frightened gulls wheeled and screamed about me, and my laughter was one with the booming of the surf and the free song of the wind. Amber lay forty-three miles behind my left shoulder.
I made my way to the lighthouse and climbed the stone stair that led to the door on its western face. It was high, wide, heavy, and watertight. Also, it was locked. There was a small quay about three hundred yards behind me. Two boats were moored at it. One was a rowboat and the other was a sailboat with a cabin. They swayed gently and beneath the sun and water was mica behind them.
"The Lighthouse of Cabra," said Random, gesturing towards an enormous gray tower that rose from the waters, miles out to sea.
[The lighthouse of alexandria - http://ce.eng.usf.edu/pharos/wonders/pharos.html
The Lighthouse of Alexandria used a mirror during the day. It was composed of 3 sections - a square base, and octagonal middle section, and a cylindrical upper section.]
[Cabra is 275 feet high, 150 feet in base, 75 in octagon, 50 in tower.]
I hiked the crest of Kolvir for the better part of an hour before I located the downward trail I was seeking. I halted then, took a drink of water and rested for a few minutes before I began the descent.
I thought about it as the trail grew steeper and curved on Kolvir's western face. I played over imaginary conversations with Random until the moon had drifted off to my left. I was more than halfway down Kolvir by then and the going was becoming progressively easier. I could already feel the force of the Pattern as somewhat diminished.
The sky was growing lighter when I crossed the last rocky slope to reach the wide trail at the foot of Kolvir to the northwest. I regarded a stand of trees across the way, one large one a familiar landmark
I walked until I ran out of garden, passing through a break in a hedge and continuing along the rough trail my path had become. It mounted slowly for the first few minutes, took an abrupt turn and grew immediately steeper. I paused at one jutting point and looked back, from where I was afforded a view of the dark outline of the palace, a few lighted windows within it. Some scatters of cirrus high above looked like raked starlight in the celestial garden over which Amber brooded. I turned away moments later. There was still a good distance to travel.
When I reached the crest I was able to discern a faint line of lightening to the east, beyond the forest I had traversed so recently. I hurried past the three massive steps of song and story and began my descent to the north. Slow at first, the way I followed steepened abruptly after a time and led off to the northeast, then into a gentler decline. When it swung back to the northwest there was another steep area followed by another easy one, and I knew the going would be fine after that. The high shoulder of Kolvir at my back blocked all traces of the pre-dawn light I had witnessed earlier, and star- hung night lay before me and above, rubbing outlines to ambiguity on all but the nearest boulders. Still, I knew approximately where I was going, having been this way once before, though I'd only halted briefly at that time.
It was about two miles past the crest, and I slowed as I neared the area, searching. It was a large, somewhat horseshoe-shaped declivity, and when I finally located it I entered slowly, a peculiar feeling rising within me. I had not consciously anticipated all my reactions in this matter; but at some level I must have, I was certain.
As I moved into it, canyonlike walls of stone rising at either hand, I came upon the trail and followed it. It led me slightly downhill, toward a shadowy pair of trees, and then between them to where a low stone building stood, various shrubs and grasses grown wild about it. I understand that the soil was actually transported there to support the foliage, but afterward it was forgotten and neglected.
I seated myself on one of the stone benches in front of the building and waited for the sky to lighten.
Leaves crunched beneath our feet as we took one of the walks toward a side gate. With only a few strands of cirrus high overhead, the sun shone brightly. To the west, a flock of dark birds flapped its way toward the ocean, south.
When we reached civilized precincts, we followed the Main Concourse for a time. I pointed out a few landmarks and notable residences, including the Begman Embassy. She showed no inclination to visit the latter, though, saying she'd have to see her countrymen officially before she left, anyway. She did stop in a shop we found later, however, to buy a couple of blouses, having the bill sent to the embassy and the garments to the palace.
We explored the streets of the various trades and stopped for a drink at a sidewalk cafe, watching pedestrians and horsemen pass.
Continuing our stroll, I headed us in the general direction of West Vine. When we reached it I decided to head downhill to the harbor, recalling her fondness for sailing. But she put her hand on my arm and halted me.
"I'd like to see it." "All right. "
I turned to the right and we headed back, uphill, toward the Main Concourse. We passed people in the garb of a dozen regions as we strolled, and the air was filled with the smells of cooking from open stalls, to satisfy a multitude of tastes. At various points in our career up the hill, we stopped for meat pies, yogurts; sweets. The stimuli were too overpowering for any but the most sated to ignore.
We made our way southward along the Concourse, and the breezes picked up as we neared Land's End. It was a winter ocean that came into view across the distance; slate-gray and white-capped. Many birds wheeled far out over the waves, and one very sinuous dragon.
We passed through the Great Arch and came at last to the landing and looked downward. It was a vertiginous prospect, out across a brief, broad stair-the steep drop to the tan-and-black beach far below. I regarded the ripples in the sand left by the retreating tide, wrinkles in an old man's brow. The breezes were stronger here, and the damp, salty smell, which had been increasing as we approached, seasoned the air to a new level of intensity. Coral drew back for a moment, then advanced again.
The broad stair took us down for perhaps thirty feet, then terminated abruptly where a much narrower version turned off to the side. At least the steps weren't damp and slippery. Somewhere far below, I could see where the stair widened again, permitting a pair of people to go abreast.
The landings where the stairway switched back were haphazard affairs, hacked wherever the contours of the rock permitted such a turning. Consequently, some descending stretches were longer than others and our route wandered all over the face of the mountain. The winds were much stronger now than they were above, and we found ourselves staying as close to the mountain's side as its contours permitted. Had there been no wind, we probably would have done the same. The absence of any sort of guard railing made us shy back from the edge. There were places where the mountain's wall overhung us for a cavelike effect; other places, we followed a bellying of the rock and felt very exposed. My cloak blew up across my face several times and I cursed, recalling that natives seldom visit historical spots in their own neighborhoods. I began to appreciate their wisdom. [...] Behind her, I could see that there was a landing which signaled the first turning of the way.
I began to wonder how far we were below the level of the palace itself. . .
When we finally came to the landing from which the stairway widened, I hurried to catch up with Coral so that we could walk abreast. In my haste, I snagged my heel and stumbled as I rounded the turn. It was no big deal. I was able to reach out and stabilize myself against the cliff's face as I jolted forward and swayed.
The beach, nearer now, was tiger-striped and shiny in places. A froth of foam retreated along its slopes while birds cried and dipped to examine the waves' leavings. Sails bobbed in the offing, and a small curtain of rain rippled in the southeast, far out at sea. The winds had ceased their noise-making, though they still came upon us with cloak-wrapping force.
"The harbor's in that direction," I said, gesturing to my right, westward, "and there's a church off that way," I added, indicating the dark building where Caine's service had been held and where seamen sometimes came to pray for safe voyages.
She watched them a moment longer, then looked away. "Aren't there caves along here somewhere?" she asked.
I nodded to my right.
"That way," I answered. "There's a whole series. People get lost in them periodically. Some are pretty colorful. Others just wander through darkness. A few are simply shallow openings."
We walked into a shadow-hung chill. The damp sand followed us for a while, thinning only slowly to be replaced by a gritty stone floor. The roof dipped and rose several times. A turn to the left joined us with the passage of another opening, for looking back along it I could see more light. The other direction led more deeply into the mountain. We could still feel the echoing pulse of the sea from where we stood.
"These caves could lead back really far," she observed.
"They do," I replied. "They twist and cross and wind. I wouldn't want to go too far without a map and a light. They've never been fully charted, that I know of."
She looked about, studying areas of blackness within the darkness where side tunnels debouched into our own.
When we reached the port district, I realized I was hungry, anyway, and I still had a lot of telling to do. In that it was still daylight and doubtless considerably safer than when I'd made my nighttime visit, I found my way over to Harbor Road-which was even dirtier in strong light-and, having learned that Coral was hungry, too, I took us on around to the rear of the cove, pausing for a few minutes to watch a many-masted vessel with golden sails round the sea wall and head in. Then we followed the curving way to the western shore, and I was able to locate Seabreeze Lane without any trouble.
We passed out of Death Alley without incident and made our way along Harbor Road over to Vine. The sun was getting ready to set as we headed upward, and the cobbles passed through a variety of bright earth tones and fire colors. Street and pedestrian traffic was light. Cooking smells drifted on the air; leaves. rattled along the road; a small yellow dragon rode the air currents high overhead; curtains of rainbow light rippled high in the north beyond the palace.
We had come by way of a trail that wound about Kolvir to the south. It was longer but less rugged than the route across the crest. I'd a humor to pamper myself so long as my side protested.
So we bore to the right, moving single file, Random in the lead, Ganelon to the rear. The trail ran gently upward, then cut back down again. The air was cool, and it bore the aromas of verdure and moist earth, a thing quite unusual in that start place, at that altitude. Straying air currents, I reasoned, from the forest far below.
[...] the sun was a fantastic golden ball. It seemed half again its normal size, and its peculiar coloration was unlike anything I remembered having seen before. It did marvelous things to the band of ocean that had come into vew above the next rise, and the tints of cloud and sky were indeed singular. I did not halt, though, for the sudden brightness was almost painful.
[...] When I had blinked away the aftereffects of that display I noticed that the vegetation was heavier than I had remembered in this little pocked in the sky. I had thought there were several scrubby trees and some patches of lichen, but there were actually several dozen trees, larger than I recalled, and greener, with a clutch of grasses here and there and a vine or two softening the outlines of the rocks. [...] Passing through, it seemed that the little hollow was also wider than I recalled it. By the time we had crossed and were ascending once more, I was certain of it.
The trail curved to the left as we entered among the trees. I could see no reason for this deviation from the direct route. We stayed with it, however, and it added to the illusion of distance. After a few moments it swung suddenly to the right again. The prospect on cutting back was peculiar. The trees seemed even taller and were now so dense as to puzzle the eye that sought their penetration. When it turned once more it broadened, and the way was straight for a great distace ahead. Too great, in fact. Our little dell just wasn't that wide.
[...] And, continuing, all three dimensions seemed to reassert themselves once more. The sun was that great orb of molten gold we had seen earlier. The sky was a deeper blue than that of Amber, and there were no clouds in it. That sea was a matching blue, unspecked by sail or island. I saw no birds, and I heard no sounds other than our own. An enormous silence lay upon this place, this day. In the bowl of my suddenly clear vision, the Pattern at least achieved its disposition upon the surface below. I thought at first that it was inscribed on the rock, but as we dream nearer I saw that it was contained within it - gold-pink swirls, like veining in an exotic marble, natural-seeming despite the obvious purpose to the design.
These pictures are of a possibly similar city in shadow earth:
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