The Hand Of Oberon
The Hand Of Oberon
by Roger Zelazny
Chapter 1
A bright flash of insight, to match that peculiar sun . . .
There it was. . . . Displayed within that light, a thing I had only seen self-illuminated in darkness up until then: the Pattern, the great Pattern of Amber cast upon an oval shelf beneath/above a strange sky-sea.
. . . And I knew, perhaps by that within me which bound us, that this had to be the real one. Which meant that the Pattern in Amber was but its first shadow. Which meant-
Which meant that Amber itself was not carried over into places beyond the realm of Amber, Rebma, and Tir-na Nog’th. Meaning, then, that this place to which we had come was, by the law of precedence and configuration, the real Amber.
I turned to a smiling Ganelon, his beard and wild hair molten in the merciless light.
“How did you know?” I asked him.
“You know I am a very good guesser, Corwin,” he replied, “and I recall everything you ever told me about how things work in Amber: how its shadow and those of your struggles are cast across the worlds. I often wondered, in thinking of the black road, whether anything could have cast such a shadow into Amber itself. And I imagined that such a something would have to be extremely basic, powerful, and secret.” He gestured at the scene before us. “Like that.”
“Continue,” I said.
His expression changed and he shrugged.
“So there had to be a layer of reality deeper than your Amber,” he explained, “where the dirty work was done. Your patron beast led us to what seems to be such a place, and that blot on the Pattern looks to be the dirty work. You agreed.”
I nodded.
“It was your perceptiveness rather than the conclusion itself which stunned me so,” I said.
“You beat me to it,” admitted Random, off to my right, “but the feeling has found its way into my intestines-to put it delicately. I do believe that somehow that is the basis of our world down there.”
“An outsider can sometimes see things better than one who is part of them,” Ganelon offered.
Random glanced at me and returned his attention to the spectacle.
“Do you think things will change any more,” he asked, “if we go down for a closer look?”
“Only one way to find out,” I said.
“Single file, then,” Random agreed. “I’ll lead.”
“All right.”
Random guided his mount to the right, the left, the right, in a long series of switchbacks which zigged us and zagged us across most of the face of the wall. Continuing in the order we had maintained all day, I followed him and Ganelon came last.
“Seems stable enough now,” Random called back.
“So far,” I said.
“Some sort of opening in the rocks below.”
I leaned forward. There was a cave mouth back to the right, on level with the oval plain. Its situation was such that it had been hidden from sight when we had occupied our higher position.
“We pass fairly near it,” I said.
“-quickly, cautiously, and silently,” Random added, drawing his blade.
I unsheathed Grayswandir, and one turn back above me Ganelon drew his own weapon.
We did not pass the opening, but turned leftward once more before we came to it. We moved within ten or fifteen feet of it, however, and I detected an unpleasant odor which I could not identify. The horses must have done a better job of it, though, or been pessimists by nature, because they flattened their ears, widened their nostrils, and made alarmed noises while turning against the reins. They calmed, however, as soon as we had made the turn and begun moving away once again. They did not suffer a relapse until we reached the end of our descent and moved to approach the damaged Pattern. They refused to go near it.
Random dismounted. He advanced to the edge of the design, paused and stared. After a time, he spoke without looking back.
“It follows that the damage was deliberate,” he said, “from everything else that we know.”