There were seven floors to the Castle, the top most guarded by five towers, the building in the shape of a pentagram. The rooms I occupied were Corwin’s old chambers in the East Wing. The guards barracks were one floor below.
The lowest levels were the dungeons and I opted not to visit those. In fact, Corwin wasn’t too keen on re-visiting them, he told me he had spent over four years there as a guest of King Eric. I was told that the floor plan didn’t always remain the same down there, it changed on some arcane whim leaving people stranded and lost, some never to be found again.
A stairway led to another entrance to the Pattern but it was heavily guarded by both Palace Guards and unnatural beings, seek it at your peril, they told me. The throne room was last on the tour and was unoccupied, the Throne a massive chair built of gold, ivory with a Unicorn carved into the headrest and peacock feathers laid out in gems. A bit gaudy and Corwin agreed with me. Random, the King, my tour guide said, liked to be out and about on the Kingdom’s business, not stuck in the Royal Chair with Ministers and syncopates fawning over him. I could care less about the ballroom. The Armory was cool and the Treasury. Talk about dreams of diving into Aladin’s Cave. Of course, they only pointed that room out and wouldn’t let me go in it whereas they made a point of showing me the Guards Barracks and weapons store. I asked why there were swords but no guns and was told that gun powder would not explode in Amber. By the time we hit the massive kitchens, busy chefs and Banquet Hall, I was drooping. Every person who spotted us gave cheery greetings to Corwin and Bill, and stared curiously at me.
Bill made a comment about my white face and whisked me back to the sick room where the doc was already pacing and in a tizzy. He bitched at them as he took my vitals and I felt so bad, I didn’t argue or complain as Corwin gently placed me back on the bed.
“Please,” I murmured brokenly. “It hurts. On fire.” To my disgust, I started crying and plucked at his hands, thrashing my legs under the thin covers, unable to keep still and the doc stuck something in my hand. A warm tide rushed through me, crawled up and hit my chest and took away the burning growing beast that was clawing its way out of my belly leaving a bloody cavity behind.
I sank into the mattress. Drool slid from my lips onto the pillow. I blinked lids heavy as a tombstone. He lifted them and shone a light in my pupils. “Morphine will keep him sedated for six hours. I’m worried about peritonitis, his bowels were torn and bacteria reached the abdominal cavity. I’d really like him in a trauma suite in a big medical center, Cory. He needs an ICU. I’ve never seen so much damage and the patient survive.”
“He’s safer here than on the Shadow earth. Flora would have access to him and she’d know as soon as we brought him back. Just tell me what you need and I’ll bring it back here.”
“What he needs is round the clock ICU care and a miracle,” the doctor returned. “Pray to your gods or your damn Unicorn. His temp is rising again.”
I floated in a pool of lava, riding a raft down a river of flames seeking out the Devil in his hell.
I wasn’t aware of much around me for the next 48 hours. I was lost in a nightmare of hell and flames, demons, monsters and being eaten alive. I heard screaming in the background, someone calling for his mama and fire engine sirens that nearly blasted my eardrums. Sometimes, I was asleep in the snow with my limbs stuck deep in a snowbank, so cold I couldn’t feel my hands or feet. Sometimes, I was roasting on a spit turned by evil dwarves as they basted me with barbecue sauce fighting over what part of me they would eat first. I wanted Murphy and called incessantly for him. Demanded his presence until my voice became so hoarse I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t understand why he wasn’t there, I remember trying to get up and go look for him, falling out of bed in the dark and attempting to crawl down a hallway. Soldiers stopped me and a mermaid brought me back under the waves but I didn’t drown. She sat with me and poured water all over and in me until she put out the fire. She tied me to my bed and I didn’t like her after that.
I had brief lucid periods when I knew who I was and where I was. That I was seriously ill and missing Murphy. One of the faces that stayed with me promised to look for him and bring him home to my side. If I promised to wait and not do something foolish like die.
I promised.
The doctor named Henry was underfoot. Whenever I opened an eye, tried to turn, he was there. They didn’t leave me alone for one minute. On the evening of the third day, I opened my eyes briefly to feel a shift in the pressure of the room, a drop in temperature so sharp that it roused me.
Glowing in the air just above my eyes was a wheel, spinning and hovering at the same time. I thought it another hallucination especially when it spoke to me, without causing the watchers in my room to react. I watched it stoically, incurious. The glow it produced washed over me, almost as if it were scanning my vital signs. Coming closer, it extended a thin probe and pricked me, drawing up a bead of blood.
I didn’t flinch, I barely felt it, the doc had given me another dose of morphine earlier in the afternoon.
“What are you?” I whispered.
“Call me Ghost, or Ghostwheel,” it replied. “I am an artificial intelligence created by my father, Merlin. A sentient computing, analyzing and data gathering device. You are the child Corbin Sines of Shadow earth and Raven Murphy-Sines of Amber?”
“I guess. Yes.” I answered listless. Talking hallucinations went with the tactile ones. Hell, I was raised by a stone gargoyle, slipped between parallel worlds and seen a Unicorn. What was a talking wheel?
“I bring you salutations from the King. An offer to visit the Courts and become acquainted with Dad.”
“Dad? You call your programmer Dad?”
“He created me, nurtured and protected me. Allowed me to grow and evolve. I have a sense of self and self protection, I am alive. He is my father.”
“Well, he didn’t do much for me. Anyway, I’m dying. If he wants to see what else he made, he’d better come see me and tell him to hurry, I don’t know how long I have or how long I’ll be here.” I closed my eyes on the thing and turned my head away. I didn’t care if I never saw it again or opened my eyes. Both actions seemed too much of an effort. I sank back into delirium, lost in the heart of a volcano and made mud pies with lava rocks.
I screamed out my complaints one minute and in the next was stoic and quiet, preferring to suffer in silence which worried the strangers who treated me. I woke up once on the cold floor, attempting to crawl for the doorway and escape. Escape to God knows where; in my fever dreams I had no memories of where I was. At one point, I was in a rowboat on a sea of wheat jousting against ears of corn. One speared me in the side and I fell overboard to wake up on the floor. I lay there on cold flagstones, a puddle of drool under my cheek and a torn IV pitter-pattering under my wrist.
That brought a crowd in, worried lords and ladies who hovered anxiously over my prostrate body while they discussed options above my head before I was carried back into the bed.
A man who looked like me ordered me to remain in the bed while a green lady soaked me with cold rags and alcohol. I didn’t care that I was naked or that the cloth stung on the incision over my belly, I only cared about closing my eyes and sinking into oblivion where nothing hurt, burned or stank.
“Corbin, can you understand me?” his mellow voice broke my delirium.
“Can’t you let me die in peace?” I asked peevishly.
“No. I’m going to Shadow earth and bring back your morph. Flora found him and hurt him grievously, Raven. You have to get well so you can save him. If you die, so does he.”
“Murphy,” I mumbled. “That bitch has him?”
“Yes, Raven. She caught him in his stone demon form and tore off his wings. She chained him to a dog house and has him tethered by the neck. Throws him cow bones to eat off once a week. He’s going mad with worry over you and can’t morph to escape her. She’s told him she killed you and he’s afraid she’s telling the truth.”
“Murphy,” I mourned. “Save him and I’ll do anything for you.”
“Raven, I don’t want anything from you but a relationship, “ he returned gently. “You’re my grandson.”
“What I have is yours, Gramps,” I promised. “If you save Murph.”
“You hold on, then, Raven. You promise to wait until Murph is safe and back at your side?”
I crossed my fingers. Swore on my mother’s name and watched curiously as he thumbed out one of those cold cards, stared at the person’s image and reached his hand forward to disappear from my sight. That left me with the green lady and a doctor in everyday blue jeans without the white coat. He made me sleep with his magic needle and washed out my insides. I know, because he told me sometime the next day when I woke up to see my friend’s worried face at my bedside. Murphy looked thin, grayer that ever with dark circles under sunken eyes. His smile was broad and blinding as he ran his work roughened hand across my face.
“Master, my master,” he choked with great emotion. He was almost weeping and he looked ill and gravely mistreated.
“Murphy, are you alright?” I frowned at the livid scars on his face and arms. I wondered what others he was hiding from me.
“I am recovering, master,” he said softly. “Your...grand sire rescued me from the witch woman’s keep. Here on the one true realm, the magic of Amber will put me right.”
I furrowed my brow. “Just where are you from, Murph, that you know about this place?”
“Eire, master. The land of green magic and stone monsters. All of us magic creatures know of the Realm of Amber. Your mother drew on me from her blood and Eire’s soul, stone and magic. And your blood of Amber. If you live, so do I.”
I felt a strange chill in the air and lost the rhythm of my breathing. The doctor pushed Murph aside to check my pulse and listen to my heart but the chill wasn’t in me. It came from a spot near the doorway where a glow grew into a circle the size of the door and from it emerged that strange flying wheel I vaguely remembered from a dream. Then, a young dude in a three piece suit with slicked back hair, dark eyes, dimpled chin slipped in behind the wheel. He wore a hooded cape and came with an entourage as he studied the room, the occupants and finally, me.
“Dad,” he greeted Corwin. “Ghostwheel. Vialle, King Random. Bill, Dr. Flauvel, Devlin. Hi, kid. I’m Merle, you are?” he asked of Murphy.
“Murphy,” my bodyguard answered, blocking his view of me. Some of the...people with him didn’t look quite...human.
“Murphy? A morph named Murphy?” He moved so he could see me. “Dad? Who is this? Ghost said I needed to show up in Amber urgently without the usual protocol.”
Corwin made a hole in the circle of bodies around me. We stared at each other. I saw a six foot, dark haired, greenish brown-eyed handsome dude in a fancy designer suit; he saw a fifteen year old kid in a nightgown that looked enough like him to be his younger twin.
Corwin said, “Merlin, meet Corbin called Raven Murphy-Sines, son of Amber Sines of Ireland. Your son.”
His mouth dropped open. “Amber? Amber had a kid? My kid? Holy crap! Why didn’t she tell me?” He paused. “What’s wrong with him?”
In dry, clinical terms, Dr. Flauvel and his Ghostwheel described my condition, that I was dying from peritonitis, courtesy of Flora and her gut eating goons. On that note, I closed my eyes and drifted into a troubled sleep