Lightning struck Kolvir, somewhere outside the windows, as I made my way back to my room. I saw no one.
There was a fire going on the grate, and everything was as I had left it. Which meant drink of my choosing was handy. I chose generously.
Full of good spirits, I cracked a better book and waited for whatever spirits might come.
Let a year blow by, more than one, but in time there was another con, and another table, and Roger’s latest, glossy and new. I handed it to him open, with the bookmark in it.
He looked up at me with an almost fierce grin, looked down again to read what I’d written, and then wrote under it:
It was very late, or rather early, before one of the walls opened in a place where it should not have done, and something that was both silver and shadow joined me.
Grayswandir felt good in my hand as I put down what I was finished drinking anyway, and waited.
Patience, they say, is chiefly a virtue for statues, but I’d made more than my share of mistakes, thus far, and blood is hell to get out of good rugs.
Came a whisper, out of darkness: “Corwin. Is it time?”
Another year, another new Amber book, and by then I’d penned my feeble few under Roger’s:
So it knew me. You have the advantage, and all that. Time for what?
“No,” I said very firmly. “Go away.”
A stirring of silver, rising before me. “I fear not, Prince of Amber. I must have the blood I came for.” The whisper was close, and hungry, and utterly unfamiliar.
I stepped back, slicing the air before me with my blade. “Suppose you tell me why. And your name, while you’re at it.”
The reply was a chuckle that did seem familiar, somehow, in the moment before the shadows boiled up into half a dozen stabbing, slashing blades, and Grayswandir rang in protest, sparks flying around me.
I considered some obscenities and then discarded them all.
Fiona had been ahead of me. Again.
“The Fool Prince,” she’d called me once. And would again, if I was lucky enough in these next few panting minutes. Or swift enough.
Lightning struck the Castle, somewhere nearby. Which itself should not have happened, what with the enchantments –
A swordpoint melted back into shadow, and then another, and my blade bit into nothing beyond.
A nothing that spilled silver out across my floor, scorching the rugs with sudden plumes of smoke.
“Prince of Amber!” my visitor hissed in pain. “You fight well!”
I struck again.
A handful of years, and another con, both of us visibly older now, but the grin as sharp as ever.
Roger sat back to read the whole thing through, this time, then reached out and shook my hand. Then without a pause he wrote:
And shadows fled before me, and I was alone.
My book was on the floor, blackened. Damn. I watched lightning flicker and wondered if I would ever know what I fought, or why. Family politics seemed as tiresome as ever.
Three ghosts, Benedict had said, and had been on the brink of saying more ere his face had smoothed and he’d turned away. Which meant he’d recognized the one he’d seen.
So had the lamplighter, before the ghost that slew him caught up with him and burned his skull bare, from within.
Coln had died, before that, and one of the cooks. Seven maids, or more by now, since.
Then they’d started on us. Flora had almost fallen to one, and then Julian. Almost.
We’re tough meat, we of Amber.
I laughed at that, and so did he. I went home and pondered for some months before I wrote:
My wall was as solid as ever, so I got out a lantern, and went looking for trouble. Something Princes of Amber never do, according to one of Droppa’s little ditties.
Ho ho.
“Do not be too hasty,” Dad had told me once, when I’d broken something in a rage at Eric. But then, a lot had changed since Dad’s disappearance.
A lot, indeed. I was descending a stair when shadows and silver spun up again. Below me and above me, to the accompaniment of ghostly laughter.
I sighed. It was going to be one of those nights.
And when next our paths seemed fated to cross, it was to be at a GenCon where Roger Zelazny was to be Guest of Honor, and I’d be on my usual panels, plus one with him.
I was looking forward to a pleasant hour or so of passing that bookmark – two panels long, now, and I planned to bring more with me – back and forth along the table as we answered questions and held gentle debate, and really getting into the tale.
Our own little foray into Amber. May I have this dance, please? Yes, I’ll have the same again, thanks!
But whatever gods there be had other ideas. Roger never made it into the summer, and now I’ll never know how it would have turned out.
Damn it all.
But thank you, Roger. Thank you.
Thank you, Lord of Amber.
Ed Greenwood:
Ed Greenwood is known to the world as an incredibly prolific and talented writer, creator of the ‘Forgotten Realms,’ and lots of other stuff (google his name for more complete lists). Ed is known to Phage Press as a tremendous fan and morale booster, sure to show up at our booth at every Gencon, with a ready smile and epic words of encouragement. Thanks, Ed, for sharing your treasured Zelazny experiences!
The Salesman's Tale
1994
Glad I'd planned on leaving Merlin in the Crystal Cave for a long while. Glad he didn't stay the entire time. As I interrupted our trumped conversation by kicking over my glass of iced tea and shouting 'Shit! I spilled it-' I turned over the Trump of Doom in my good hand.
Junkyard Forest. Nice sketch, that. Though it didn't matter what it depicted, which is why I'd had Merlin fan the cards face down and had drawn one at random. That was for show, to confuse the Pattern. All of them led to places within spitting distance of the Crystal Cave-which had been the real reason for their existence in the first place. Their only purpose had been to draw Merlin into the Cave's orbit, at which point a blue crystal warning system was to have alerted me. The plan was for me to get there in a hurry and find a way to make him a prisoner.
Unfortunately, I hadn't gotten the message when he'd drawn the Sphinx to escape from mom. Her neurotoxins had canceled a necessary trigger signal from his nervous system-just one of the many ways she's messed up my plans without half-trying. Didn't matter, though, in the long run. I got Merlin there, anyway. Only... everything changed after that.
'Luke! You fool!' The Pattern's message blasted through me like the closing number at a rock concert. But the Junkyard Forest had already come clear, and I was trumping out, before the Pattern realized that tea rather than my blood was flowing upon it.
I rose to my feet as the Pattern faded, and I moved forward amid the rusty sawblade bushes, the twisted girder trees, the gaily colored beds of broken bottles. I began to run, blood spilling from the slashed palm of my left hand. I didn't even take the time to bind it. Once the Pattern recovered from its shock and discovered itself undamaged, it was going to begin scanning Shadow for me, for the others. They'd be safe within the ambit of the
