Aylwin’s Diary part 11: An Unwelcome Guest at the Funeral

In The Doom that Came to Amber

27^th Bull

Breakfast, Alaric appears to have spent the night in hell! It seems he has been in a Trump Shadow and killed someone, his son apparently. I offered him a shot from the hip flask and the offer of listening later – not much time for more. He reminds me unnecessarily to keep a special eye on mother.

We are briefed in the Overseer's office on the funeral etiquette then Trump through to the Archmage’s Palace, we arrive in the courtyard, avoid the traffic and then make our way to the family enclosure where we meet Fiona and Anya. Fiona is concerned for Alaric, I’m more concerned for her; she is almost sheltering behind Anya (who seems to benefit from being relied on). Alaric has brought Anya a cloak, nice gesture. I take over caring for mother.

King Rinaldo arrives; I had already spotted the hair and worked out who he was. Mother is pleased to see him. He smiles, a bit too much for a funeral; seems like he could be a nice guy to drink with but never buy a used horse from! As he is Brand’s acknowledged son he has seniority in the receiving line.

We all ascend the palace steps to be introduced to Clarissa, even Fiona curtsies; hard as it may be to swallow, this is a ruler in her own land. I bow low, call her by her correct style ‘Exalted One’, I attempt the usual small talk, always like bobbing for piranhas. She has been well but says she did not get my letters, (since our embassy delivered them I think she is just being as sweet as ever).

Two hours in the receiving line, a thousand handshakes and murmured condolences, I am at the end of the line and they are running short of things to say by the seventh person – knowing almost none of them I run out of comment somewhere about number fifty. It is amazing how many song lyrics out of context sound profound. (Bathsheba seems to have met Rinaldo before, and likes him! She is almost gushing, for her.)

We finally withdraw to the anteroom; Rinaldo sweeps Anya away to circulate, I ache to get out but stay with mother. Clarissa seems delighted with Asmark but starts to needle Alaric and me for the harm we have done to mother. She seems to have observed all our actions via the Amethyst and mocks us for our actions and me for my putative father (Julian?) who showers us with duties. She is gracious in her offers of magical and military support (but does not name the cost). That she also hates the Unicorn is apparent. She also reveals that she has read my letters – what a fine wife she would make for a politician!

She wants to rule Amber (what another one?), writing off most of the Elders. She is not the one who trapped Corwin (only due to someone else getting in first). She offers her support and that of Amethyst, including ‘Dark’, which seems to mean something to Alaric. She sees little standing in the way of her choosing the next king (& pulling the strings) and ruling Amber. My blood is apparently tainted (this from the mother of Brand and Timon) by which I assume she means a connection with Julian (which she just described as putative – make up your mind woman!).

As we move off to the Cathedral in the moving tent, Alaric and I realise how little else stands between Clarissa and her ambitions.

The funeral service is traditional Amber (without the blood sacrifice and apart from the tent). As we leave the Cathedral dark clouds are rolling in, I am suddenly reminded of a Remembrance Day back on Shadow Earth, the red rosettes of mourning like the poppies bright in the gloom.

We watch the interment and Clarissa calls lightning to seal the crystal tomb and the thunder strikes a chime from the crystal trees. I was taught magic beneath such trees, the only time in my life that Fiona actually lavished attention on me, strange how that sound brings back echoes of my flute among those trees. I wish I had known the old man better…

After the interment Clarissa continues to insist that we must help her take Amber. On such an occasion I feel I have no choice but to endure the nagging though I am tempted to resort to a sudden physical attack, but she is twice (and more) the sorcerer I am & my spell would turn such a blow.

Alaric, like a child using a rude word, mentions Nyarlathohotep. Clarissa looks concerned, then Fiona starts to scream (a few months with Clarissa and my nerves and self esteem would be in tatters). Then there is a weird silence.

That was not a name to use where the magic runs as freely as it does in Amethyst. A face, strange, beautiful, appears in the sky and the feeling of threat is palpable.

Clarissa starts a spell, lashing out with the lightning. I pick up mother and Alaric shouts ‘Shadow shift!’ I keep the ground, lose the sky, head for the coast, hell walk speed. Shift! I find just a half-world at the join of the shadows, still a graveyard but an unquiet one. Shift! A different world but no substantive change. In both these places the face is still marked out in dull stars against the night. I try to shift into a more wholesome world and the shadow become solid; things are coming for us. The sky speaks its name and approaches like a rushing wind…

Remembering the Black Road, I bring up the Pattern and rend the shadow open. The sun, the sky, the sea are right. The huge cliff before me is wrong, so is the rent in reality with an Elder God trying to follow me out of it. I draw in the rift but too slowly. I draw up the Pattern and spin it into the rift, winding in the edges smaller and smaller, a cartwheel, a dinner plate, a saucer. I will not let him take mother!

A saucer sized gap in reality with an eye looking at me through it. His mind is pushing at me, I fight back. A half-crown, shilling, a sixpence, I am pushed back a step and the ground is no longer beneath my feet. Someone is Trumping me. I hurl myself sideways, trying to get over or around. The rift is but a pinprick in reality but the malice is pouring through like a tide and I AM FALLING!

Shape shadow as I fall, the sea is deep and light with foam, there are no rocks. Let mother go feet first, it’s the best I can do, but she is limp as a rag. Down, like an arrow, deep into the green sea, the air smashed from my lungs, sand beneath my feet; I kick for the surface and breathe the sweet air.

Frantically I look around me. Fiona is floating face down and I swim to her, a tendril of blood escapes from her mouth. I reach for her, her heart is still beating but there is no breath. I breathe air into her mouth, her chest rises. I get to a better position and keep breathing for her. My hands search for wounds. Some ribs broken, certainly the collarbone but not the neck, I think her skull is fractured.

We float for an unknown time; I can feel her sorrow. I cannot shift shadow and perform resuscitation. Trump again now, please! Her pulse is gone, I start CPR, Trump! Now! I try to frame a calm sea and a beach but the rhythm of breathing makes it distracting.

Bathsheba, trumping from a muddy meadow – muddier still and sown with salt once she has pulled us through.

I maintain the kiss of life; Khitan and Bathsheba discuss where they might find a high tech shadow where these injuries could be treated? Bleys’ ship is the best hope but it is under a strong magical screen.

Bathsheba cannot force her way through to Bleys. She takes over the CPR and I take the Trump, there are electro-magic generators powering the field. I batter my mind against it in the Morse pattern A-Y-L-W-I-N-S-O-S.

After only a thousand years, or four minutes, I am through to Bleys who gets the idea in a second and drags Bathsheba and Fiona through.