Extracts from the Journal of

Chapter III
City of the Dead, 113 PPF

Non omnis moriar (I shall not wholly die)

- Horace

have some idea of a way out of here," Brand informed us. So why hadn't he used it before now? "But I'm not entirely sure it would work," he added. "And you and Deirdre don't have bodies to go back to," said Altair, hitting on the generic drawback of any such escape plan. "It's a problem," admitted Brand with a slight hint of sulkiness. Still, it was less of a problem for the rest of us. I was awaiting further revelations, but death seemed to have inflicted on my companions the average attention span of a mayfly. Tristan had wandered over to a window, and was peering out, while Tamarind seemed more interested in whether these lands contained any members of the Courts of Chaos. "A few," said Brand, "but in a region very far away." No fraternisation even in death, I noted. I idly entertained the notion that it might perhaps be interesting to converse with some of the more recently deceased Chaosites, before they ended up like Eric, or like Caine's doppelganger. If only to confirm that they had merely turned isolationist, and hadn't just blown themselves up. If I'd had any money riding on the outcome, I might have taken the idea more seriously, but I contented myself with the thought that Brand would probably have noticed any sudden, massive influx of dead Lords and Ladies of Chaos, even at the far end of this drab and unprepossessing universe. But anyway, while this was all very interesting, it was not in the slightest bit pertinent. If Brand had a way out, we should be preparing to use it. "Can you do anything for her?" I asked him, indicating Fiona, adding, "She's not actually dead. She just had an accident with one of the Court's hidden Shadows." Brand harrumphed like a parent faced with a crisped and smoking child who has hitherto refused to believe that fire burns. He looked her over, muttering to himself, and then peered at her Trump. "There's a price, you know," he said, without looking up, "for returning you to the land of the living." Tristan, turning back from the window, was instantly suspicious again. Brand flipped Fiona's Trump over a couple of times. "Whatever you may think of me," he continued, "both Deirdre and I want out of here. So we want our bodies - the originals if possible, acceptable substitutes otherwise." He rummaged around in his robes for a moment, and then handed me a small, carved black stone about an inch in diameter. Its aura was somewhat akin to those generated by the spikes. I took it. It was hideously cold to the touch, so I slipped it into a pocket. "Concentrate on it, and it will form a link to me, like a Trump," he explained, "Good only for communication, unfortunately, but you can use it to let us know when you have things ready for our return. Do we have a deal?" Tamarind nodded immediately. A living, breathing Brand would be a small price for the return of his mother. "You have my word," I said, mindful that we might encounter some resistance to the idea back in Amber. However, the expression "We don't leave our people in there" applied just as well to the Land of the Dead as to anywhere else. Ibrahim and Altair agreed with marginally less alacrity. We looked at Tristan, the only hold out. He lapsed back into Lord Legislator mode. "Just as long as you've learned your lesson," he said pompously. I waited for him to produce one of his improving tracts, presumably one entitled How I Saw The Light And Was Cleansed Of My Sin Of Bleeding People On Patterns, but I was disappointed. Brand waved a hand in what seemed a deliberately ambiguous gesture. Yes. No. Maybe. Frankly, I wasn't overly concerned. His contrition or lack thereof was a bridge we could cross when we came to it. "Very well," said Tristan reluctantly, thankfully foregoing the threatened sermon. Tamarind started telling Brand about Beltaine's current predicament. Brand pricked up his ears and set down Fiona's Trump. I waited, prepared to tolerate this one last distraction. If we could get both Brand and Fiona back then we would have some real experts to apply to the thorny problem of Beltaine's and Owen's internal exile. Another reason for agreeing to Brand's not overly onerous terms. And one possessing the added bonus of removing one of the many questionable justifications for Bleys' return. Tamarind kept the explanation succinct. Brand had no immediate answers, but on this side of the eternal divide I wouldn't have expected him to. His daughter was presumably safe enough where she was, and he would be more use to her there than here, so if there was anything disingenuous in his reticence, I wasn't going to make a point of holding it against him. Fiona, however, was here in the same room, and she needed his assistance now. "By the way," said Tristan, "There's another of us here, isn't there? Evan? I assume he wants to go back too." For a moment I thought Fiona was going to be forgotten again, but then Deirdre stepped forwards. "I'll take you to him," she said. She, Tristan and Tamarind disappeared off the way we had come in, leaving the rest of us looking at Brand, who at last seemed ready to do something about his sister's condition. He started mumbling again as he raised her head and looked into her eyes. She didn't react. Brand persevered, his eyes briefly flashing silver. Altair shuffled out Fiona's Trump, and held it thoughtfully for a moment before starting to concentrate on it. The others came back after a few minutes of this, towing an unfamiliar young man in their wake. This had to be Evan. He looked as if he was still in his teens, and had been squeezed into an ornate cavalry uniform of a cut I didn't recognise. There was a definite Family resemblance, although he looked nothing like Evander. He wore one of Brand's patented anti-aging spikes, the circular head just visible amongst the frogging, although he seemed slow, rather weak. He had also died violently, judging by the large concavity on the left side of his head, and from the way he was clutching a loaded crossbow, the event was still fresh in his memory. Whispered introductions were made. He didn't seem to have heard of any of us, but then Shadow is a large place, and even a Pattern initiate's reputation takes time to percolate through infinity. I nodded to him politely. "He doesn't remember very much," confided Tamarind to myself and Ibrahim, "but he says Oberon is his great-grandfather. He might be from Corwin's Universe, because he thinks there was something physically preventing him from travelling to Amber. But he doesn't recognise Corwin's Trump, or Merlin's. Wasn't so sure about Benedict's, though." I mentally filed this away. A more likely explanation for his inability to reach Amber could be that he simply hadn't walked the Pattern yet. As for his parentage, hadn't the long lost Martin been close to Benedict at one stage? Purely on the basis of looks, it didn't seem likely that Evan was mine, although I wasn't exactly unaware that of all of my generation, statistically I was the most likely culprit. I shot him a surreptitious glance. No, not a Mortlake. Probably. I turned my attention back to the trauma team. A silver glow of Trump energy sparkled between Fiona and Altair, and Brand's eyes were flickering pools of mercury. "Come on, you silly bitch," he muttered through what few teeth he had left to grit, apparently sufficiently engaged in his endeavour to take her lack of response as a personal sleight. He scowled, and Fiona's head became bathed in a spreading haze of silver light. Altair seemed to be sliding into late middle age as she redoubled her own efforts, and I realised with some dismay that she had yet to accept one of Brand's handy chest-ventilators. This had better not ... Ah. Fiona suddenly jerked, her hands twisting like claws, and Brand and Altair staggered back as if physically repulsed. Fiona slumped back, breathing deeply and raggedly, and slowly began to unfold from her previous foetal position. I nodded my thanks to Brand and Altair, and went over to help the patient sit up. "Hello Fiona," said Tristan, "You do know that you're dead, don't you?" After a tricky operation, always start with the good news first. "How do you feel?" I asked. Fiona shook her head as if trying to clear it. "The doors to the Chaos Shadow," she whispered, "They were a trap. Too many angles ..." She looked round. "We're in Brand's laboratory in the Land of the Dead," I explained, "But don't worry, we're only visiting." Tamarind was looking worriedly at Altair. "Don't you think the rest of you have put this off long enough?" he asked, indicating the remaining spikes, which were still lying on the desk where Brand had left them. He had a point. Altair looked almost relieved to have one jammed into her sternum. I permitted Tamarind to do the honours. It hurt like hell, as if a bundle of ice-cold razor-wire were being inserted into my chest, but the pain quickly subsided into a dull, throbbing ache, and I suddenly felt more animated than at any other time since awaking in the black city below. Ibrahim hesitated, and then acquiesced as well. An instant convert, he then appropriated one for Eric, who seemed unconcerned about acquiring another chest wound. I was beginning to worry about this. Ibrahim was obviously intent on bringing his father back with us, but while Fiona was herself again and had a living body to return to, there didn't seem enough left of Eric to restore to life. The same went for Caine's double, who was currently being perforated as well. Altair proffered a spike to Fiona, who accepted only after a precise explanation of what it did and why. We were all now partaking of essence of Oberon, like Ottomans seated around a hookah, inhaling exotic oriental anodynes. "Thank you," said Fiona to Altair, and then looked at Brand. "And thank you," she added, with perhaps a fraction more wariness. We seemed to be ready. Now, perhaps, we could finally learn how we were supposed to make good our escape. Brand turned professorial. Deirdre had probably ceased to be impressed after the first twenty years or so, but now he had a new audience, including his only real rival in matters arcane. "You've noticed the black mist," he said, rummaging amongst the laboratory's clutter, "Well, I've determined that it all tends to rise up this mountain we're on." He held up a black and white sketch of a mountain not unlike Kolvir, with a huge black pillar on top. "The mist rises to the summit," he continued, tracing his finger up the slope of the pictured peak in a manner not unlike a geography tutor with less than high hopes for his pupils, "and then keeps rising, up and up, until it returns to the Land of Life. All that's drained from the dead is recycled, all the life, all the vitality, all the passion." I suddenly realised why I'd had this faint but persistent notion that the mist kept on trailing after us, as if following us around. It was because it had been constantly leaking out of us, especially when we did anything like use the Trumps. I glanced down at myself. Even with the chest-spike, my cuffs and the tops of my boots seemed to be smoking very, very slightly, , as if I had just walked out of one of my own Hellfire spells. "However," Brand was saying, "it is my belief that one can essentially piggy-back out of here on the flow, as it were, albeit not without some difficulty." Well, I for one was willing to try it, difficulties or no. The others were also nodding. That was settled then. We would depart at once. Then, belatedly remembering my manners, I turned to Fiona. "Damien, Lord Mortlake," I introduced myself, kissing her hand, "You know Tristan, of course, but may I also name Captain Altair, Prince Tamarind, Prince Ibrahim and Prince Evan?" She smiled faintly, as if more amused than anything else, and for a dreadful moment I thought she was going to say something along the lines of how I reminded her of my father. Then the moment passed, and we still had the option of being friends. "Do you know how to trap the life force?" Ibrahim was asking Brand, "Or how to reverse the process?" I realised that his father's reduced condition and its potential untreatability was worrying him as well. Brand shook his head. Reconstituting Eric to his former self did not look like an option. The vital essence that had made him a complete, living person was probably now pushing up shoots in Forest Arden, or gamboling about in alpine meadows on the far slopes of Kolvir. It was dispersed, recycled a dozen different times in a dozen different forms since Eric's death. Ibrahim, had he been the sort of person prone to biting his lip, would at this point have done so. This might be his only chance to bring his father back, but if it failed, as seemed inevitable, he would never have another. I didn't envy him the choice. Brand was leading us back out into the corridor. I offered Fiona my arm, which she took, and followed. I noticed that whatever misgivings Ibrahim might be suffering, he was still taking Eric along with him. Caine's Shadow was also being led gently by Tamarind, although for what reason we needed to restore him I wasn't entirely sure, except possibly to embarrass the real Caine. Not that I anticipated an awful lot of joy there, given that embarrassment is one of those emotions to which our beloved uncle has built up a highly impressive immunity. Frankly, it seemed kinder to leave the poor beggar where he was, since I didn't really see what he would have to look forward to. After all, Caine was bound to want to fake his own death again sooner or later. We headed down some stairs and through a hallway. The more I saw of this place, the more it reminded me of a gloomy, run-down version of Castle Amber as it might have appeared in one of Walpole's or Lewis's romances. I took the opportunity to bring Fiona up to date on events in Amber since her enforced retirement from the scene. Like the rest of the Family, she had an insatiable appetite for gossip, although she hid it better than most. She at least seemed relieved to learn that she most likely had an intact, living body to which to return. We had reached ground level when Tristan suddenly diverged from the rest of our party. "I'll be right back," he said, and ran off waving a spare chest-spike that he must have appropriated earlier. I wondered briefly where he was going, and then I realised. Isabel, his dead wife. More than any of us, he had cause to play at being Orpheus. I paused - that wasn't entirely true. Somewhere out there might be the shade of Lady Elizabeth Mortlake, wandering vacantly beneath that desolate sky. I gritted my teeth. As a Shadow dweller, she would presumably have even less defence than we against the draining of the life force that afflicted all who entered here. She might have been dead only a handful of years, but I had no doubt that if I found her, she would not know me. And even if she did, I knew that she wouldn't want to return. Not by any means that smacked of Bleys' hated magick. For all that she had been helped into her grave prematurely, age would have claimed her by now anyway, which was precisely what she had wanted - a natural end to a life blighted, as she saw it, by the unnatural. That was why, despite Nitocris' urgings, I hadn't brought her back while I still had the chance, even only to speak with her, to tell her that despite heredity and despite her own convictions, I wasn't my father's son. That I was hers. Hers alone. That she had never lost me to him, and never would. But now that I was here, I could go to her, rather than bring her to me. Except ... I remembered her words when I first told her about Amber, and of what Dashwood had revealed to me of my parentage. "You'll never escape him," she had said, and from that moment on I had been a stranger to her. Thirty years - sixty from my point of view - had done nothing to change her mind. She had had a son, she had loved him, but then his otherworldly birthright had claimed him and made him into a daemon like his father. Maybe not immediately, but it was only a matter of time. That was all she could see. The idea of another confrontation, of dark silences mingled with desperately polite murmurs as she tried to change the subject, was just too painful to contemplate. I almost hoped that she was a mindless husk by now, that the irrational sense of loss that had plagued her in life was finally extinguished. The others had drawn ahead of me, and Fiona glanced back at me quizzically. I hurried to catch up. First duty to the living, I reminded myself. First duty always to the living. This barren necropolis wasn't exactly a place of peace, but it still afforded its inhabitants some semblance of rest, an oblivion that my mother had willingly embraced. I wasn't going to disturb that rest. An anti-Orpheus, then. I was going to leave her behind, and I was not going look back. Four years ago in Medmenham, standing over her grave, the lynchpins of a necromantic summoning spell on my lips, the hardest thing I had ever done was to let those words die unspoken, the magick fading into the still Surrey night. This was actually easier. It just felt worse. I took refuge in my traditional redoubt, raised from the bedrock by my hatred of Bleys. We were heading down a familiar-looking spiral staircase. If this place was laid out in the same fashion as Castle Amber, then we were presumably bound for the equivalent of the Pattern Room. As we descended I took care to remind Fiona that her living body was last seen in the possession of Bleys, and that Bleys was currently an outlaw from Amber, having tried and failed to overthrow Random. Hence, she should be careful. The subtext was: "Don't trust him." I don't know if she picked up on the latter - she merely nodded politely, as if grateful for the information. I didn't tell her any more. I've got better things to do with my briefly interrupted life than go around unburdening myself to everyone I meet. We reached the Pattern Room, or rather, the Obelisk Room. In place of the Pattern was carved a complex sigil based on another nonagram, with circles within diagrams within circles, the black mist seeping along the channels they formed, slowly winding its way towards the centre of the device. Each of the nine points of the structure was marked by an intricately carved black obelisk, in appearance and aura not unlike the stone that Brand had given me earlier. "You stand in the middle," said Brand, indicating an inner ring of circles, "I conduct the ritual, and off you go." We were still missing Tristan, so Tamarind Trumped him. Tristan arrived bathed in silver, a scrawny, aged woman lolling in his arms. I winced. She had evidently once been beautiful, but equally evidently, that had been a long, long time ago, and for all that the she now wore one of the enchanted spikes, she was as far gone as Eric and the duplicate Caine. Regardless, Tristan was obviously set on bringing her with him. I had a suspicion that he might not have thought this through, and the decidedly manic gleam in his eye suggested that he wasn't about to start. I wondered how I was going to word this. Fortunately I was provided with a brief respite in order to think it over. Brand was looking at Isabel and shaking his head. "I never really believed the stories," he said, almost admiringly, "until now." Tristan, long used to basking in the kudos heaped upon him for his long-ago defiance of Oberon, merely nodded. There was however one other matter he wished to address before we departed. "Before we go," he said to Brand, "Do you know if Dworkin is here?" Hmm. Good question. The old bugger's whereabouts were still a mystery. "I haven't seen him," said Brand, "but you could try the Trumps. They tend to be a fairly reliable indicator down here of who's dead and who isn't." Tamarind shook his head. "His Trump doesn't feel dead," he said, "so I don't think he's here." That being settled to the best of our abilities, I took a deep breath and spoke. "You should be aware," I said, addressing myself mainly to Tristan and Ibrahim, "that bringing Eric and Isabel back with us is almost certainly not going to restore them. At best, they'll be returned to life exactly as they are now." Ibrahim looked unhappy again, but Tristan just fixed me with a baleful glare. "Look," I tried reasonably, "I'm not suggesting you just abandon them, but ..." "Good," snapped Tristan, and pointedly looked away. That, evidently, was the end of the discussion as far as he was concerned. Ibrahim however turned back to Brand. "Would you try and find a way to restore my father?" he asked, "so that we can bring him back later, with you?" "I can try," said Brand dubiously. I was dubious too, but it still struck me as being Eric's best chance. However, the doubt in Brand's tone seemed to have made up Ibrahim's mind for him. He took Eric's arm in a possessive fashion. "No," he decided, "My father comes with us. I want to see if it works." It must work, said his eyes. I sighed. I had an overwhelming feeling that any rejoicing on our return was going to be severely tempered. Ibrahim glanced over at the dead Caine. "I also want to see who the real Caine is," he said. This time I rolled my eyes. I hate having to explain myself more than once. "More to the point," I said, "What happened to the body of the Shadow of himself that Caine killed?" Fiona spoke up. "I believe," she said, "that he was buried at sea." Part of me wanted to laugh, another part wanted to cry. This was ridiculous, and starting to border on the needlessly cruel. Eric and Isabel would have to be spoon-fed for the rest of their renewed but joyless lives, while the false Caine, lacking the wit or the will to break for the surface, would end up straight back here within five minutes of his departure, his lungs full of sea water. What was wrong with everybody that they didn't see this? Then I shook my head. Sometimes, even a hope that is doomed to disappointment is better than no hope at all. Maybe there was some outside chance that the transition back to the Land of the Living would somehow gather together the scattered fragments of our drained and soulless companions. I didn't believe it for an instant, but had it been someone like Nitocris, or had I the slightest reason to believe that my mother would have welcomed the restoration of life, then I too might have staked everything on that last, desperate throw of the dice. On balance, I'd still have felt safer entrusting them to Brand's expertise, in the hope that he could find some way of reversing the soul-leaching aftereffects of their demise. Even if he couldn't, nothing would be lost if he and Deirdre subsequently brought them through still in their current condition. But I could see why surrendering that responsibility for them could be difficult. Anything could happen in the meantime, and any delay could mean losing the infinitesimal chance that we possessed right now. Maybe even the Shadow Caine - perhaps especially he, given the way he had been abused by his Amberite original - deserved that chance while we still knew it was within our power to give it to him. I kept my mouth shut. I might be wrong. I really wanted to be wrong. I knew that I wasn't. And so we said our goodbyes to Brand and Deirdre, and to Evan, who if he regained his body was unlikely to be in a position to contact us in the immediate future, especially if it was true he hailed from the far side of Corwin's Pattern. I turned to Fiona and took her hand. "I'll be in touch," I promised, "Good luck." "And you," she said, and then we took our places in the inner circles of Brand's soul-catapult. Brand began moving from obelisk to obelisk, aligning and realigning them according to some pattern that only he could see. The black mist started flowing faster in its intricate channels, and then began to rise, spilling out over our feet. Brand was chanting in an unfamiliar tongue, jumping around the perimeter of the device like a child with a new toy. This was presumably the first time he had been able to test his creation, and I suspected that his enthusiasm stemmed as much from a desire to see his theories proved right as from the possible inauguration of a route home. The mist swirled higher and higher, reaching our thighs, our waists, our shoulders. I glimpsed Deirdre raising her hand to Tamarind one last time, and then the mist enveloped me, cutting off my view of the others. The mist was still rising as if borne by a wind I couldn't feel, blowing around me and through me. I was beginning to realise how a pile of leaves must feel when attacked by a sudden November gust: it was cold, it was painful and I could feel my ectoplasmic corpus starting to come apart, blown away on the rising tide of darkness. I couldn't feel my limbs any more, or tell where I ended and the mist began, and then I was rising with the mist, spiralling upwards faster and faster. I had a brief impression of looking down at the Castle, of the dead lands arrayed beneath me. The wall of which Tamarind had spoken was now visible, and beyond it I thought I glimpsed a cluster of rainbow-like arches emerging from a greenish glow. I risked a glance above me, but somehow the sky didn't look quite so bad up close. I seemed to be swirling towards a particular star, accelerating until the universe became a tunnel with a single white light waxing at the far end. I grew closer and closer until the star filled everything, and then I was plunged into its fiery embrace. There was no heat, only a blinding whiteness. I can see why people mistake this kind of thing for God. It really was a bit much. Theological musings were interrupted a hideous, crippling agony in what I hoped was my head, spreading to what with luck was probably my body. Then as suddenly as it had seized me, the pain slunk away, its duty as a wake up call apparently done. Air rushed into my lungs. I had lungs. I could breath. I was alive. Beep, went something close by, beep beep beep. I opened my eyes.

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