It was dark. It could have been night time, my eyes could be damaged or it could be because I was in a dark place. A very dark place. I moved a fraction and felt the straw under me covering dank stone. Not small bricks or ornamental flagstones. No, these were large cut blocks of commercial size. A chain rattled. It was attached to my wrists and ankles. Big links the size to hold one of the Master’s Mastiffs. I let my fingers be my eyes as they explored further and the chain was bolted to the wall of equally big blocks with a huge metal pin screwed into the stone. Screwed into the wall of a dungeon cell. I couldn’t turn it.
Raising my head was a feat more taxing than Sisyphus pushing the rock uphill, more tiring than Hercules cleaning the Aegean stables. I was cold, my hands told me I had been stripped and roughly bandaged.
“Master, save me,” I whispered and called for the hell-hounds to come rescue me, one way or the other. I preferred to have them rip me to pieces than report to the Master that I had failed him. Although I had killed the General, his main instructions had been for me to take a hostage and return.
The door creaked open and figures holding torches entered my humble abode. I could barely see them even in the light.
“How old are you?” It was Corwin, the shorter man spoke and I recognized his voice as that of the King. The last man was a soldier, most probably the torturer.
“Kill me now,” I rasped. “For I will not talk.” I couldn’t, the Master had a spell on me for that, also.
The last man in kicked me in the side and I gasped, felt the blackness deepen and a warmth run down my ribs. “Assassin, you’re moments away from death,” he warned, his voice coming from far away.
Corwin pulled him back. “Christ, Anson, he’s nearly dead now, you hit him again and he will die without giving us any answers. Besides, look at the scars on this kid, he’s obviously been tortured his whole life. You think we can do any worse? Tell us what we want to know, kid, and we’ll help you.”
“Help me to die?” I asked. Chuckled. “I have died before and the Master always brings me back.” I coughed and blood stained my lips. Stared at the King. “I would have taken your life too, Random, but the Master said not yet.” I shivered, an icy chill was creeping up my lips.
Corwin slapped at my cheeks lightly. “He’s dying,” he said from far away. “Do you want to try and save him, Random or let him go?”
“He murdered Gracchus,” the King’s words were grim and faint. “Saves us a trial, anyway.”
I saw a white Unicorn in the corner of the cell and she stared sorrowfully at me. She was so beautiful that she brought tears to my eyes. I knew her, reached out my hand to touch her horn but the chains sent her skittering away. Her horn pricked my finger bringing a drop of blood. There wasn’t much left in me but I would gladly give her my last drop of life’s ruby elixir.
Vaguely, I was aware that another man joined the group and with him a blazing wheel of light that drove away my unicorn. “Analyzing,” the thing spoke, rays of brilliance circling it and sparking around the room. “Dad, he’s not from a far shadow. Definitively not from Lameara, or Szeged as he told Roelle. You’re not going to believe this but his DNA says he’s Amber bred and Shadow Earth, seventeen years old and Oberon’s bloodline. Dad, he’s your son and he’s dying.”
That was the last thing I heard before I died.
***
I was wandering in a wasteland and it resembled the tales of hell and the river Styx only here, there was a boat and the pilot was a woman with green eyes and skin. We were already under water; fish swam through the eye holes of a man’s skull while others congregated near a sea monster’s rib cage. The water was translucent green and shimmered making me slightly disorientated. My stomach lurched in the beginnings of sea-sickness but how could the dead feel nausea?
The green lady raised me up and pushed something down my throat, it tasted odd, burned and cooled at the same time. It was all I could do to swallow, even that hurt and took a conscious effort.
“Why are you in hell?” I asked her and she bent low to my mouth.
“What? Say it again,” she urged. “I can’t understand or hear you.”
“Never mind,” I closed my eyes wanting to sink back into the darkness but she tapped me lightly on the cheek. “Raven, open your eyes, please,” she ordered and I did.
“My name is Corbel,” I managed in little gasps. “You’re too pretty to be a witch in hell.”
“Oh Raven, you’re not in hell,” she smiled although her face was wet. Strange, how could your face be showing tears when we were underwater? “You’re not dead, not yet, Raven.”
“Who’s Raven?”
“You are. Raven Murphy-Sines, son of Merlin, King of the Courts and grandson of Prince Corwin, nephew of King Random of Amber, my husband.”
I tried. I really tried to get up. I managed to get one hand under me and pushed up but the moment I was nearly vertical, I passed out. Master, I tried to take the Queen hostage as you bid me but this body you have trained and fostered had been too badly damaged. I spoke the spell to bring me back to your shadow but the magic flared against the wall of sea water and dispersed, unable to function below the depths. I willed my hands to strike her and all it did was lightly touch her throat. She grasped my hands and pulled me into her bosom and rocked me. I rested my head against her soft skin and was comforted even though I knew the Master would not forgive me for this failure.
“If I’m not dead---it would be kinder to let me die,” I whispered and went away again.
***
I woke many times. Sometimes, I could breathe and other times, something was down my throat and breathed for me. I was in a bed that moved up and down and had railings so that I could not climb out. I was grateful for the warm blankets piled on me. The air was rich and heavy, there were no walls around me that I could see, just walls of water with sea life beyond. While I was in the bed and room, the air was denser, richer as if under pressure and made it easier to breathe.
I was aware when visitors came and the composition of the room’s atmosphere changed, became lighter with less pressure. I could hear them talking but I was in another place, another reality and treated them as an annoying hallucination, not real or tactile.
“He’s so thin. Pale. His eyelids are translucent, he looks awful,” a young girl cried in a whisper.
“Roelle, he can hear us,” the green lady remonstrated.
“Is he making any improvement?” Random questioned. “Do you think he’ll make it, Vialle?”
“So you can try and convict him to death?” she snapped back. “Look at him, Random, Corey, Bill. Just look, he’s been whipped, beaten with chains, burned, beaten and who knows what else. I’ve felt knife scars, broken bones and starvation rings on his nails. He has nearly been eviscerated, this child has been tortured to the breaking point and beyond. No wonder he doesn’t know who he is or that he’s not an assassin!”
“On the contrary, Vialle,” Corwin said grimly. “That is exactly who and what he is. Corbel known as the Blackbird, the master assassin for the Lord of the Gray Realm.”
If they knew that, I was truly doomed. I had one spell left that I thought might work, a simple spell taught me by the Master on a whim. I uttered it just under my breath and Corwin spoke. “What’s he saying?”
Someone leaned closer and listened but by then, I had nearly completed the water unplugging spell used to open a leaky bath drain. I heard the sound of water dripping, and then rushing, gushing as the deluge of the walls collapsing fell in on us. Drowning was the easiest way I knew to kill myself, a much more peaceful way to die than any the Master would choose.
“Christ! That was a spell! Vialle, do something!” Corwin shouted.
“I can’t! His spell uncorked the seawalls into this room!” She returned.
Corwin shouted, “Random, your Trumps! Use ‘em to bring us all to the Castle!”
Someone picked me up as I floated off the bed in a swirl of cold green water. It hurt as they applied pressure in those places where I’d been impaled by sharp steel. I felt an instant of coldness and abruptly, was dripping onto the stone floor of a giant Great Hall. Was deposited into a stunned guard’s arms and Corwin disappeared only to reappear seconds later with Random and the others.
Vialle told them she needed to be taken back to Rebma and deal with the disaster, she could enact repairs with help from the Queen and other sorceresses.
“What about the assassin?” The guard holding me asked. I tried to bite him, he merely pushed my head to the side. “Dungeon, Your Highness?”
“If you want him dead before sunset,” Vialle rounded on them in a fury. “Random, I forbid it! If you must, put him in Corwin’s room and post guards there.”
“I have a better idea,” Corwin said. “Call Merlin through Ghostwheel and have him meet us at Cabra. Anson, give me my grandson.”
“Corey,” Random said uneasily. “Are you sure about this? He’ll try and run you through, first chance he gets.”
The Prince nodded. “It was Grayswandir that punctured his lung, Random. If he dies because of me---well, that’s not going to happen. Besides, he’s so weak he can barely lift a hand.” His lips tightened as he thumbed through his infamous pack of Trumps, the Master wanted those worse than anything. He pulled two out and stared as he handed one to the King. Anson, the guard lifted me into Corwin’s arms and within seconds, we were in a study with thousands of books on shelves, on all four walls save for the space of windows and doors. There were even piles in the corner of the floor.
A leather couch large enough for a mastiff to stretch out was in the center of the room, a desk straight out of a medieval castle and a comfortably padded swivel chair. He laid me down on the couch, covered me and stared. I tried to roll off and barely managed to lift my head. My chest felt tight; a rattle was deep in my lungs. “Why didn’t you let me drown?” I wailed and he stroked my face as if I were a puppy.
“Two years, Raven, we’ve been looking for you. Two years of searching the shadows wondering if you were dead or alive. What did that bastard do to you?”
I did not answer, I could not answer and moments later, that strange glowing wheel arrived within the room accompanied by a man and a creature made of stone. The man made my eyes widen in fear for it was like staring into a mirror. His face was mine own and that frightened me for if I looked like him, then how could I be the Master’s slave? To deny the likeness was to deny my own existence.
“Who are you?” I whispered as fear raced through me. My whole body ached, I could sense everything shutting down as I slipped into terminal shock. The gray thing looked like a stone gargoyle and he called a name urgently, reaching for my flesh. I recoiled. “Master!”
“I am no master,” I sighed. “I’m a slave.”
“Dad,” the wheel cautioned. “You’re losing him. BP is falling, heart rate is dropping and thready, p-waves are starting. I’m going to inject him.” Before I could move, the wheel thing stuck me several times in a humming blur. I felt an instant rush of heat and my heart shuddered, ran like a lemming for the cliffs. “Adrenalin, antibiotics, heart stimulant and pain killers,” it announced. “He’s going to crash in seconds.”
I gagged. Heaved for breath and melted into the cushions. “Who are you?” I begged of the man with my face. “Tell me who you are.”
He put his arms around me and hugged me tightly, laid his head on my cheek, his lips brushed my skin so that I felt his words as well as heard them. “Merlin,” he breathed. “I’m your father, Raven. Merlin, King of the Courts of Chaos, I’m your Dad as Corwin is your grandfather.”
I shook my head in denial but his face followed me into my nightmares.