Winds That Will Be — Aedan's Journal
"I Suddenly Wondered if the Keep Had a Torture Chamber"
Aedan's Journal. Session 1-6-01.
© 2001 Todd Worrell
Alone in the woods with a good horse beneath me, I let the rhythm of the hooves lull me into a kind of meditation. Things had been moving along quite quickly, and I hadn't had much time to just think lately. Now I had that time.
Ever since I had facetiously offered to give Gregory a list of our problems, the back of my brain had been working on just such a list. I mulled it over.
- Benedict had stabbed Caine. He was still hostile toward Martin, assuming that the Regent had sent my uncle to attack him. Hence the comment about the dogs.
- Bleys carried Werewindle, possibly Grayswandir, and was returning to Amber. He knew of the Unicorn's odd qualities.
- Caine had once again disappeared into Shadow.
- Flora was actively trying to restore Finnvarra's Court, and possibly my mother, to human form. Currently, they were statues.
- Brand was healthy, had restored the Keep of the Four Worlds, and his motives were unknown to me. Gabriel's belief that his father was not plotting Amber's demise didn't reassure me.
- Gerard was depressed. He moped around Amber doing little or nothing useful.
- Corwin was missing. He had allegedly been to the Courts of Chaos and slain Dara.
- Martin was up to his armpits in paperwork and meetings. Would he make a good King of Amber? I couldn't answer that. He certainly was trying to get things under control.
- My horse was still missing. Magni had loaned it to Gabriel outside the Keep. For all I knew, it was still there. Magni went there often. Maybe he was there now.
I took out Magni's trump and focused on it.
"Thank Wotan," Magni said and held out his hand. He seemed eager, too eager. I didn't take his hand for a moment. Studying the scene behind him, I didn't see any telltale signs of combat. In fact, I saw sand, white stone, and a beaded curtain.
Magni was in Osric's realm and couldn't trump out.
"What's it worth to you?" I asked him. He opened his mouth and closed it.
"I'll tell you all I know about Caine's wounds," he replied.
"It's a deal," I extended my hand.
"Wait, let me get my horse." Magni took that damn horse everywhere, whether he needed to ride somewhere or not. Every action has a reason. The horse meant something to Magni, either sentimentally or pragmatically.
After a moment, I pulled two horses and riders through. Raj, perched on the back of a big gray stallion, thanked me with a lazy salute.
"Benedict stabbed Caine," Magni said.
"I know that," I said. "What else?"
"Nothing," Magni smiled broadly. "Nothing at all." That turned out to be true. Magni had spoken with Benedict himself, but had learned no details about the fight. He also said that he hadn't seen Corwin's sword anywhere in Benedict's vicinity.
Which raised the possibility that Bleys had simply lied to my face.
"Hey, where are we?" Magni asked. "I thought you were in Amber."
"This is Arden," I informed him. "Near the coast."
I had in fact ridden toward the ocean. Something had bothered me about Julian's Lodge. I wasn't ready to return to the Castle, and so I had gone the other direction. We were a couple hours away from the castle.
We rode east to the water and south. The sun set behind the trees as we rode. Gulls wheeled about in the sea air, heading home to roost for the night. Shades of red and orange colored the distant walls of the castle atop Kolvir. We traveled in relative silence, only the drumming of the horses' hooves and their deep breaths reminding us that we had someplace to be.
The road splits before it climbs too much. The western path detours around the mountain and branches off toward Garnath. The eastern path hugs the shoreline. It was built during Oberon's reign well above the high tide mark. Heavily patrolled at all times, three Lords of Amber were nevertheless given uncontested passage to Amber City.
At this time of night, the shops were all closed. We watered our horses at a guardpost, then found a pub Raj knew in the Ivory District. It was called the Three Horsemen, which was entirely appropriate. I am sure they shall remember us there forever. Despite the black gauze hung over much of the city, we were loud and rowdy. Raj pinched the serving wenches' bottoms, Magni sang cantatas around a huge cigar, and I recited the epic poem The Five Hundred Feats of Fergus MacRei. At least, I think I did. I remember feat number 437 for certain, because that was when the barkeep informed us that they were out of wine.
I don't remember much after that.* * *
In the morning, or closer to noon, I felt awake enough to stumble down to the breakfast nook. I had the cooks prepare me an enormous omelette and ten pounds of five-way potatoes, heavy on the cheese way. It was delicious and the world no longer smelled exclusively of fermented grapes and stale cigar smoke.
Feeling exceedingly pleased with myself, and perhaps a bit lucky, I pulled out my trump deck and flipped over the top card. This time, he answered.
Corwin was bundled up in furs, snow whipping around his face. He wasn't in a mood to talk, but said if I were looking for him later, I should check the Keep of the Four Worlds. He said he had some questions for Brand. He discontinued our conversation rather abruptly. Even so, it wasn't enough to foul my good mood.
Caine had once told me The best time to do the things you hate is when you are in a good mood. I had asked him if he had ever been in a good mood, and I've got the scar on my left bicep to prove it. Nonetheless, I followed his advice and re-memorized my spells. Three hours of that was more than enough, even if I wasn't quite done. I left my chambers and went for a walk in the garden.
Amber's gardens have always struck me as abnormal, somehow. From my first night in the castle, when Random had been working on his balcony and I saw the wild tangle of plants below him, I had always thought that they just weren't the way they were supposed to be. Most cultivated gardens are either tame and lush, like Brand's, or wild and primeval. The castle gardens were neither, but instead combined esoteric elements of all kinds.
On this day, I walked to the flower gardens that overlooked the ocean. I crossed the broad expanse of grass that served no known purpose except to move the flowers further away from anyone who wished to see them. The flower garden was rather dull. I suppose I should have expected that, as Autumn was well underway. I was disappointed in the near-total lack of brightly colored blossoms and heavy scents.
My mood had turned black.
I stomped back to the castle and through its hallways intent on accomplishing something. What it was, I cared not. I just needed to be doing something.* * *
Four hours later I reined in my horse.
"Did you feel that?" Raj asked us.
"Yeah," Magni said, bringing his horse closer.
Even I felt it, and I knew that my sensitivity to Shadow was relatively small. That meant the disturbance had to have been enormous.
We urged our horses to a gallop. I gave my horse his lead and tried to concentrate on Raj's use of Pattern to shift us closer and closer to the source of the commotion. I was able to predict the major veils before we passed through them, which was better than I had done before. Maybe I was making progress.
After only a few minutes Raj pulled his horse to a stop. He held up his hand and spoke to the air. He made a few acquiescent noises, grunted noncommittally a couple of times.
"Are you sure that's a wise idea?" Raj asked. He paused, listening. "Okay."
It sounded like trouble, but nothing urgent. I would have bet that one of our cousins had done something stupid. Magni and I exchanged glances.
"Gabriel?" he mouthed silently at me. He was at the top of my list too. But we were wrong.
"That was Giselle," Raj told us. "She and her mother are trying to quarantine Benedict so they can cure him of the fey infection."
"And that involves drastically editing Shadow?" Magni asked.
"I guess so," Raj shrugged. "In any case, we don't need to investigate."
So we continued on our original path to the Keep of Four Worlds. I had told Magni and Raj about my brief conversation with Corwin. They had both tried trumping him. Magni said Brand never accepted trump calls, so we decided to visit them the old-fashioned way. I still didn't know why it was so important that we had to meet with Corwin (or was it Brand?), but I was more than willing to go along for the ride. Besides, my horse was supposed to be there.
We rode, ate, slept, and rode some more. Nearly a full day later, we were close. To my left I could see snow-covered mountains, much closer than they should have been. Geographically speaking, it was impossible for an arctic, high altitude climate to have such a close proximity to a temperate one. That was one of the quirks of the place.
We were riding in through the Front Entrance, as Magni called it. Twenty-foot high blue dolmens marked some sort of boundary. I held my breath as we passed the first. The air became hot and humid. On the left, the snow looked inviting.
Deep ruts in the ground told me we were on a road, although the ground all around us was pretty much the same hard-packed dirt. There were many uniformed soldiers in groups, all of them watching us. They were all dressed in brown and red, with a symbol of a tower in a circle over crossed swords. I thought that was a good sign, since that was the Keep's badge and not Brand's. We trotted over a rise and I saw it.
The Keep rises like an angry god, all dark stone, with high walls and massive towers. It looked about twice as big as Castle Amber. I thought it must have taken several lifetimes to build, and each successive builder had changed the architectural style. In short, it was hideously ugly.
But it was formidable. Caine had told me some of its history, although we had never been this close. The place was supposed to be impenetrable when it wasn't in disrepair. It was supposed to be in disrepair now, but it wasn't. Instead, it was almost frightening. Brand owned this place, this bastion of power. I suddenly wondered if the Keep had a torture chamber. Then I decided I didn't really want to find out.
Magni smiled and waved and they let us through. A few of the officers even called him by name. Yeah, Magni was hedging his bets. If Brand came out of this latest fracas on top, I would bet that Magni's white, pointy-haired head wouldn't be impaled on these castle gates.
Would mine? Probably. Oh well, I wasn't about to start kissing Brand's conniving ass. It wouldn't make a difference anyway.
Inside the fortress the place was busy as a hive of bees. Soldiers marched to and fro and fro and to. The walls reverberated with a vague thrum of machinery.
Something was happening. Undoubtedly we would talk to Brand and Corwin, learn nothing, not be allowed to investigate, and then we would leave. As I was thinking these impolite thoughts, Magni led us to the door to the Fount itself. We passed several checkpoints before we were allowed to even see the door.
It was a vault door, with levers and wheels. It was closed, locked, and sealed. Plus, as we got within ten feet, we could feel the overwhelming heat it was giving off.
Raj, being Raj, opened the door. It didn't creak, which worried me quite a bit.
Corwin and Brand were sitting inside the Fount Chamber, off to the side. There were platters of food remains lingering around their feet. The two men relaxed in camping chairs.
There were only two chairs.
Brand and Corwin regarded us silently, one might say grumpily.
"Hello," Magni leaned his head in through the doorway. He smiled and waved. It didn't work as well as it had with all the guards.
Raj strode forward. He was in his stick-up-the-butt mode, which meant he was prepared for a fight. Oh, boy, I thought. Excitement.
But all he did was apologize to Brand for conking him on the head. He blamed the Unicorn Beast. Before Brand had a chance to accept his apology or not, Raj asked him a few questions about it.
"That thing," Brand sneered, "has the mark of the Logrus." But he didn't twitch his nose and turn Raj into a frog.
We all filed into the room. Corwin stretched out his legs and looked semi-tolerantly at me. I gave him my "I was just bored and willing to do anything" look.
"Oh?" Raj asked Brand innocently. To my surprise, Brand continued speaking.
"It's conceivable," he said, "that this thing is an artifact of the Patternfall War."
"Who could make such a thing?" Raj asked like he really had no idea.
Brand smiled thinly in response to Raj's question. Apparently Raj's Stupid Act wasn't fooling Brand as much as I had originally thought.
"Where," Magni interjected, "is the 'Off' button, Brand?"
Brand shrugged eloquently and settled back into his chair. He picked up his drink. Magni walked over to the big stone circle in the center of the floor. He peered down. That must be the Fount, I thought. At the moment, it wasn't exactly founting, though. I hoped it didn't just turn itself on suddenly. We were all in the inner chamber. But Brand would tell us if the energy were about to surge, wouldn't he?
"Do you know of any other artifacts from the Patternfall War and earlier?" I asked.
Brand looked away. "If I did, I see no reason why I would reveal their existence to you."
"Well," I bowed minisculely. "Thank you for nothing."
"You're welcome," Brand grinned haughtily at me.
"If something is a threat to Amber, we need to know about it." Raj stepped forward, his chest puffed out once again.
"According to your definition," Brand looked at Raj, "everything is a threat to Amber. That would mean revealing everyone's dirty little secrets."
"Only the dangerous ones," Raj said.
Brand laughed. Corwin tried to hide his smile behind his mug.
"Dear boy," Brand said condescendingly "every secret is dangerous."
The conversation deteriorated from there. I tried to save it by asking Corwin about his trip to the Courts, but he gave his usual non-responsive response. Wasn't he supposed to have been a patient of some great Shadow psychoanalyst? Shouldn't he have been made aware that passive-aggressive behavior is unhealthy? When I got him alone, I would get some straight answers out of him.
Yeah, right, I thought.
The verbal wrangling continued for most of an hour. I was ready to give it up and go home, but Raj kept prodding Brand on. Magni threw in a comment every now and then that seemed designed to irritate Brand and Corwin. They just sat there and waited for us to leave.
"If we're going to be impolite to each other," I said, "you might have servants fetch us chairs."
"But then you might stay." Brand said.
This set Magni off completely. His fuse had been burning down since we arrived. He ranted on and on about the lack of cooperation in the family, how we all seemed intent on fighting each other instead of working together against a common threat. It was a good rant.
"Oooh," Raj said when Magni was finished. "Good rant."
On that note, we left.
When we got back to the Keep's stables, I went looking for Trick. They had taken good care of him, apparently. In fact, he looked fat. What do you feed a Fey Horse? Whatever he wants.
Raj and Magni said they were going to go handle the Fey army marching through Shadow. I know they just wanted to blow off some steam. I wasn't really interested in killing more imps and elves, so I took Trick off at a good canter out the front gate. We rode around while I tried to shift shadow. It worked, at least I think it worked. Well, maybe it worked a little bit. After an hour of trying to get the grass to turn green, I trumped back to the Great Hall of the Castle. The guards weren't even startled by my appearance on horseback.
I put Trick in his stall in the stables and handed the stableboy a silver piece to take extra good care of him. The kid would undoubtedly have some extra bruises from Trick's sense of humor, so it seemed right that I should throw him some coin.
Inside, I showered and changed my clothes. I gave Martin a quick report of what I had seen and asked if he had anything he needed help with. He looked around at his stacks of papers and pulled a few off the top of one. I was supposed to take these messages to various city officers, most notably the Harbormaster. I did. It wasn't very exciting. The harbor was bustling. Several ships from the Golden Circle were in port. Undoubtedly they had delivered some of the people who were making Martin's life so busy. Perhaps if I cast one loose and set it on fire a few miles out, the rest of the merchants and politicos would get the message and stay away. It was a nice thought, but I knew it would only cause more trouble than good.
The city was still clad in black, so to speak. Black ribbons wrapped the lamp-poles. Black gauze covered many windows. People wore black cloth tied around their upper arms. Random had been very well-liked by the people and his death was unexpected as well as being unwelcome. Oberon's demise had been taken in stride, from what I could gather. According to Corwin, his father had always been the man in charge, but he was gone from Amber for years at a time. Plus the attacks from the Black Road had prepared people for some radical changes. I guess a new king was almost expected after the war.
But Martin was young, untried, and seemingly ill-equipped for royal duty. He had spent years as a musician, the most irresponsible job in all of Shadow. People doubted that he would have an easy transition from professional hedonist to monarch, or that he would make a good king.
As I climbed the foothills of Kolvir, I hoped that they were wrong.* * *
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