does not transcend the limits of the ego. It may be argued, and in fact has, by most of us, that we create the shadows we visit out of the stuff of our own psyches, that we alone truly exist, that the shadows we traverse are but projections of our own desires... . Whatever the merits of this argument, and there are several, it does go far toward explaining much of the family's attitude toward people, places, and things outside of Amber. Namely, we are toymakers and they, our playthings-sometimes dangerously animated, to be sure; but this, too, is part of the game. We are impresarios by temperament, and we treat one another accordingly. While solipsism does tend to leave one slightly embarrassed on questions of etiology, one can easily avoid the embarrassment by refusing to admit the validity of the questions. Most of us are, as I have often observed, almost entirely pragmatic in the conduct of our affairs. Almost...
Yet-yet there is a disturbing element in the picture. There is a place where the shadows go mad... . When you purposely push yourself through layer after layer of Shadow, surrendering-again, purposely-a piece of your understanding every step of the way, you come at last to a mad place beyond which you cannot go. Why do this? In hope of an insight. I'd say, or a new game... But when you come to this place, as we all have, you realize that you have reached the limit of Shadow or the end of yourself-synonymous terms, as we had always thought. Now, though...
Now I know that it is not so, now as I stand, waiting, without the Courts of Chaos, telling you what it was like, I know that it is not so. But I knew well enough then, that night, in Tir-na Nog'th, had known earlier, when I had fought the goat-man in the Black Circle of Lorraine, had known that day in the Lighthouse of Cabra, after my escape from the dungeons of Amber, when I had looked upon ruined Garnath... . I knew that that was not all there was to it. I knew because I knew that the black road ran beyond that point. It passed through madness into chaos and kept going, lhe things that traveled across it came from somewhere, but they were not my things. I had somehow helped to grant them this passage, but they did not spring from my version of reality. They were their own, or someone else's-small matter there-and they tore holes in that small metaphysic we had woven over the ages. They had entered our preserve, they were not of it, they threatened it, they threatened us. Fiona and Brand had reached beyond everything and found something, where none of the rest of us had believed anything to exist. The danger released was, on some level, almost worth the evidence obtained: we were not alone, nor were shadows truly our toys. Whatever our relationship with Shadow, I could nevermore regard it in the old light... .
All because the black road headed south and ran beyond the end of the world, where I stop.
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-havebeens... 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 unknotting 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... Her form is quite familiar... Approaching, I see that it is Lorraine... She continues to regard a point far beyond me, does not hear me say that I have avenged her death.
But mine is the power to be heard here... . It hangs in the sheath at my side.
Drawing Grayswandir, I raise my blade overhead where moonlight tricks its patterns into a kind of motion. I place it on the ground between us.
'Corwin!'
Her head snaps back, her hair rusts in the moonlight, her eyes focus.
'Where did you come from? You're early.'
'You wait for me?'
'Of course. You told me to-'
'How did you come to this place?'
'This bench...?'
'No. This city.'
'Amber? I do not understand. You brought me yourself. I-'
'Are you happy here?'
'You know that I am, so long as I am with you.'
I had not forgotten the evenness of her teeth, the hint of freckles beneath the soft light's veil... .
'What happened? It is very important. Pretend for a moment that I do not know, and tell me everything that happened to us after the battle of the Black Circle in Lorraine.'
She frowned. She stood. She turned away.
'We had that argument,' she said. 'You followed me, drove away Melkin, and we talked. I saw that I was wrong and I went with you to Avalon. There, your brother Benedict persuaded you to talk with Eric. You were not reconciled, but you agreed to a truce because of something that he told you. He swore not to harm you and you swore to defend Amber, with Benedict to witness both oaths. We remained in Avalon while you obtained chemicals, and we went to another place later, a place where you purchased strange weapons. We won the battle, but Eric lies wounded now.'
She stood and faced me.
'Are you thinking of ending the truce? Is that it, Corwin?'
I shook my head, and though I knew better I reached to embrace her. I wanted to hold her, despite the fact that one of us did not exist, could not exist, when that tiny gap of space between our skins was crossed, to tell her that whatever bad happened or would happen-
The shock was not severe, but it caused me to stumble. I lay across Grayswandir... . My staff had fallen to the grass several paces away. Rising to my knees, I saw that the color had gone out of her face, her eyes, her hair. Her mouth shaped ghost words as her head turned, searching. Sheathing Grayswandir, recovering my staff, I rose once again. Her seeing passed through me and focused. Her face grew smooth, she smiled, started forward. I moved aside and turned, watching her run toward the man who approached, seeing her clasped in his arms, glimpsing his face as he bent it toward her own, lucky ghost, silver rose at the throat of his garment, kissing her, this man I would never know, silver on silence, and silver... .
Walking away... Not looking back... Crossing the promenade...
The voice of Random: 'Corwin, are you all right?'
'Yes.'
'Anything interesting happening?'
'Later, Random.'
'Sorry.'
And sudden, the gleammg 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 firework 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...
Circling around to the rear, just to see the back gardens this way, again, for they are lovely by normal moonlight in the true Amber.
A few more figures, talking, standing... No motion but my own is apparent.
... 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...
Two figures, embracing, within. They part as I begin to turn away. None of my affair, but... Deirdre... One of them is Deirdre. I know who the man will be before he turns. It is a cruel joke by whatever powers rule that silver,
