The Chronicles of Amber

ill at ease to relax.

“How much longer?” I asked her.

“It depends on Father. He is not taking the fastest or most direct route to Juniper, after all.”

Juniper? Was that our destination?

I’d never heard of it… and from the name it could have been anything, from castle keep to sprawling kingdom. She expected me to know the name, I thought, from the way she said it, so I simply smiled like I knew what she meant. Perhaps she’d tell me more if she thought I already knew about this Juniper.

Instead of talking to me, though, she settled farther back in her seat and folded her hands in her lap, volunteering nothing.

I did notice that dawn had just broken outside again, burning off the fog with supernatural speed.

After that, everything kept changing, but subtly, never quite while you were looking at it. The sky turned greenish, then yellow-green, then back to blue. Clouds came and vanished. Forests rose and fell to grassland, which gave way to farmland and then back to forests again. Dawn broke half a dozen times.

I had never even heard of magic like this before, which bent time and place to a driver’s will, and my estimation of Dworkin—or the people he worked for—grew steadily greater, if that was possible. Whatever wizards had created his crystal-weapon and this carriage clearly had the power to save Ilerium from hell-creatures.

My job would be winning them over to King Elnar’s cause.

It seemed our only hope.

Finally, after what felt like hours of travel, we entered a land of rolling green hills. The highway we traveled—at times paved with yellow bricks but for the moment deep ruts with grass in between—curved gently ahead. Brightly plumed birds flitted among the scattered bushes and trees, their cheerful songs strangely normal after all we had been through. Overhead, high white clouds streaked the deep, perfect blue of the sky,

“We are close to Juniper now,” I heard Freda say.

I glanced at her. “You recognize the scenery?”

“Yes. A few more hours and we should be there.” Then a dozen horsemen dressed in silvered armor fell in around the carriage.

Chapter 4

Instantly my hand flew to the sword lying across my knees, but I didn’t draw it. These soldiers seemed to be acting as an escort or honor guard, I thought, rather than a band of attackers.

When one turned slightly, I noticed the red-and-gold rampant lion stitched on the front of his blouse. The pattern matched Dworkin’s—these had to be his men.

I allowed myself to relax. We should be safe in their care. So close to this mysterious Juniper, what could go wrong?

The carriage slowed enough for them to keep up with us. Trying to appear uncurious, I opened the window again and pulled back the curtain a bit, studying the rider closest to us. Thick black braids hung down behind his rounded silver helmet, and he had a long, thin black mustache that flapped as he rode. His arms seemed odd, I decided—a little too long. And they seemed to be bending halfway between shoulder and elbow, as if they had an extra joint.

Suddenly he turned and looked straight at me. His slitted yellow eyes caught the light, glinting like a cat’s with an almost opalescent fire.

Swallowing, I let the curtain fall. Thus hidden, I continued to study him. These might be Dworkin’s guards, I thought, but they weren’t human. Nor did they have the unpleasant features of hell-creatures. So who—or what— were they?

Taking a deep breath, I forced myself to turn away. I’d seen enough. No sense brooding on questions I couldn’t yet answer.

My attention now focused on Freda, who had begun to shuffle her Tarot cards and lay them out again. Every few minutes she rearranged them into a different pattern, sometimes circular, sometimes diagonal, once square with a cascading pattern in the center.

“Solitaire?” I asked, trying to get her attention. Perhaps I could learn more from her.

“No.”

“I prefer games for two players, myself.”

“Games are for children and old men.”

I leaned forward, tilting my head and looking at her deck more carefully now. Rather than the standard Tarot cards such as any wisewoman or soothsayer might employ, filled with religious and astrological figures, these showed men and women I didn’t recognize and places I had never been—a strange castle, a dark forest glade, even a romantic beach bathed in the warm glow of moonlight… or moonslight, rather, for two moons hung in the sky— the artist’s idea of a joke, or a real place? I could no longer be sure.

Freda gathered the cards, shuffled seven times, and dealt out fifteen, three lines of five cards each. Only portraits of men and women came up. Most had features similar enough to Dworkin’s to be related to him.

“What do you see?” I finally asked after the waiting became impossible to bear.

“Our family.” She pointed to the cards before her. “Nine princes of Chaos, all torn asunder. Six princesses of Chaos, where do they wander.”

“I know fortune-tellers are always vague,” I said, taking a stab at humor. “But at least it rhymes, almost.”

“It is part of an old nursery verse:

“Nine princes of Chaos, all torn asunder;
Six princesses of Chaos, where do they wander?
Fly falcon, stout hart, and unicorn brave;
Between the Shadows, to escape your grave.”

I had never heard it before. And yet it did fit.

“A bit grim,” I said.

She shrugged. “I did not write it.”

With a start, I realized we were no longer speaking Tantari, but some other language, a richer one with a lilting rhythm. It spilled from her tongue like water from a glass, and I understood every word as though I had been speaking it all my life. How did I know it? More magic? Had I come under some spell without even realizing it?

Stammering a bit, unable to help myself, I asked her, “W-what language is this?”

“It’s Thari, of course,” she said, giving me the sort of odd, puzzled look you’d give the village idiot when he asked why water was wet.

Thari… It sounded right, somehow, and I knew on some inner level she spoke the truth. But how did I know it? When had I learned it?

My every thought and memory told me I never had.

And yet… and yet, now I spoke it like I’d known it my entire life. And I found it increasingly difficult to recall Tantari, my native tongue, as though it belonged to some distant, hazy dream.

“You have been in Shadow a long time, haven’t you?” she said with a sigh. “Sometimes it is easy to forget what that can do to you…”

In Shadow? What did that mean?

Remembering the look she’d given me when I asked what language we spoke, I bit back my questions. I wouldn’t appear foolish or ignorant again, if I could help it.

Instead, I said, “Yes, I suppose I have been gone too long.” I didn’t know what else to say, and I didn’t want to volunteer too much and reveal my ignorance. “I hadn’t seen Dworkin in many years.”