I retreated several paces, commencing the spell which would restore my blasted wards.
“Hey! Don’t run off!” he called. “I’ve got to talk to you.
The wards fell into place, and I drew my blade and held it, point lowered, at my tight, entirely out of sight from the cave mouth when I turned my body. I ordered Frakir to hang invisible from my left hand also. The second figure had been stronger than the first, to make it past my wards. If this third one should prove stronger than the second, I was going to need everything I could muster.
“Yeah?” I called out. “Who are you and what do you want?”
“Hell!” I heard it say “I’m no one in particular. Just your old man. I need some help, and I like to keep things in the family.”
I had to admit, when it reached the area of firelight, that it was a very good imitation of Prince Corwin of Amber, my father, complete with black cloak, boots, and trousers, gray shirt, silver studs, and buckle-and even a silver rose-and he was smiling that same quirky sort of smile the real Corwin had sometimes worn on telling me his story, long ago. …I felt a kind of wrenching in my guts at the sight. I’d wanted to get to know him better, but he’d disappeared, and I’d never been able to find him again. Now, for this thing-whatever it was-to pull this impersonation…I was more than a little irritated at such a patent attempt to manipulate my feelings.
“The first fake was Dworkin,” I said, “and the second was Oberon. You’re climbing right down the family tree, aren’t you?”
He squinted and cocked his head in puzzlement as he advanced, another realistic mannerism.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Merlin,” he responded. “I-“ Then it entered the warded area and jerked as if touching a hot wire. “Holy shit!” it said. “You don’t trust anybody, do you?”
“Family tradition,” I replied, “backed up by recent experience.”
I was puzzled, though, that the encounter had not involved more pyrotechnics. Also, I wondered why the thing’s transformation into scrollwork had not yet commenced.
With another oath, it swirled its cloak to the left, wrapping it about its arm; its right hand crossed toward an excellent facsimile of my father’s scabbard. A silver-chased blade sighed as it arced upward, then fell toward the eye of the ward. When they met, the sparks rose in a foot-high splash and the blade hissed as if it had been heated and were now being quenched in water. The design on the blade flared, and the sparks leaped again this time as high as a man-and in that instant I felt the ward break.
Then it entered, and I fumed my body, swinging my blade. But the blade that looked like Grayswandir fell and rose again, in a tightening circle, drawing my own weapon’s point to the right and sliding straight in toward my breast. I did a simple parry in quarte, but he slipped under it and was still coming in from the outside. I parried sixte, but he wasn’t there. His movement had been only a feint. He was back inside and coming in low now. I reversed myself and parried again as he slid his entire body in to my right, dropping his blade’s point, reversing his grip, fanning my face with his left hand.
Too late I saw the right hand rising as the left slid behind my head.
Grayswandir’s pommel was headed straight for my jaw.
“You’re really…” I began, and then it connected. The last thing I remember seeing was the silver rose.
That’s life: Trust and you’re betrayed; don’t trust and you betray yourself. Like most moral paradoxes, it places you in an untenable position. And it was too late for my normal solution. I couldn’t walk away from the game.
I woke in a place of darkness. I woke wondering and wary. As usual when wondering and wary, I lay perfectly still and let my breathing continue its natural rhythm. And I listened.
Not a sound.
I opened my eyes slightly.
Disconcerting patterns. I closed them again.