The Barons were ensconced in the Great Hall surrounded by their men at arms, aide-de-camps and Master Sergeants. They gaped at me as I struggled to walk with the guard’s hand holding me up by the armpit. No one said a word at the sight of my bare feet or pale, white face.
Baldly, I relayed the Master’s message and the named persons departed ahead of us. The guard with me assigned two men to carry the trunk up to the room. He looked at me. “Do we return now, Lord Corbel?”
“I am no lord. Rinlon is your name?”
“Guardsman 1st Class Rinlon Preel,” he turned me around and used both hands to aid me in remaining upright. By the time we reached the Master’s suite, I was clearly in distress and Rinlon was carrying me. The Master looked up from his table and conference with the Armed Forces People and ordered the guard to place me on the floor.
“Floor, Lord Webster?” Rinlon chided. He slid me carefully onto the bed and removed my cloak to gape at the sight of my naked, bruised and bloody body. The face he turned to the Master was strangely blank but there was a dark shine in his eyes and his jaw ticked.
“Thank you,” I said simply and pushed him away. “The Master will deal with me now.”
Slowly, the guard returned to his post outside the door. Baron Resonant’s fist was clenched at his side, the other on the hilt of his sword. “Lucian, what have you done?” His voice was a deadly insult.
“Do you think to challenge me, Phlip?” The Master’s voice was amused. I knew his hand was on his blade, toying with the hilt or perhaps, fingers moving in an elaborate spell casting. I wanted to watch but even my eyelids wouldn’t lift at my command. I felt odd. Insubstantial. As if my flesh had suddenly become something else.
“Master!” I cried out in fear and I saw him turn to stare at me on the bed. The others at the table pushed back from their chairs to leap to their feet. A glowing light formed around my body on the bed and made me look paler than death. I saw this from a point of view above the body and felt a stretching sensation from it as well.
My hair was long, silky but shot with silver, every spare ounce of fat missing from the near skeletal frame. My eyes were open, huge pools of citrine from which a manic shine emanated, made brighter by un-shed tears. He, I, it was not breathing. There was no rise and fall of that bony chest, the open wounds on both sides of its torso were blued as blood drained back into the corpse. The Master shouted. “NO! He can’t die! The Spell can’t be reversed!”
The Baron laughed. “So much for your vaunted magic, Lucian. You’ve finally murdered the son of King Merlin. What will you tell the King now?”
I saw him pick up the body on the bed and hug it to his chest as he recited spell after spell until the room was awash with drifting magic. My body dissolved in his hold and the light winked out drawing me with it. Drawing me away from that scene, that place and from life.
***
The light was in me, a presence that was cold yet comforting. It filled me with reassurances that I was safe and would be cared for. It wasn’t a...human presence but something more like an entity. I floated in a void, a bubble of light that it created just for me and bathed me in blue-violet rays that gently warmed and soothed the parts of me that ached.
After a time in which I had no way to judge or measure, I asked its name or title. It responded that it was the Logus, the power behind the Courts of Chaos which now saturated my body. “Does that mean I’m dead?” I asked naively. The pain oozed away, I felt a well-being I hadn’t experienced in years. Eyes open or closed, it made no difference in what I perceived, all I saw was an afterimage of a bright orb. “Like the Pattern? Am I dead?”
“No. And no. I removed you from Webster’s influence and brought you to the Logus center. What you feel are the eddies of power and magic infusing your cells and repairing them.”
“I thought the Pattern walkers could not mix with the Logus,” I thought and it heard me.
“You are unlike any human ever born, Prince of the Void. In you, resides the power of both Pattern and Logus, melding together and seperate. You have the ability to...set one above the other or to force both into one. That is why Webster wanted you, why the factions fight over you, why the Queen Mother and Mandor spirited you away. You must choose one over the other.”
“King Random, too?”
“Of course. To save his realm and crown, he made you his Heir, did he not?” the Logus returned.
“Everybody wants something,” I said bitterly.
“What do you want, Raven-Corbel?”
I hesitated. “Death.”
“There is no longer death for you, Prince of Chaos. You are forever a part of the Logus and the Pattern. Only by destroying both can you find the death you seek. However, the power you are privy to, now ensures no man’s hand will ever be able to harm your body again.”
“I’m like a god?”
It laughed. “I am a god. You are one of my chosen disciples. I can punish you with the forces I control for I am the Logus.”
“So, I’m still a slave, just a different master,” I sighed. At least this one wouldn’t beat me.
“You will rest. The repairs will take time and be a drain on your powers. Sleep.” I felt its presence inside my head and it shut off the lights so it was instant darkness.
***
Waking was a pleasure. I yawned, stretched and shook when I saw that I was floating in the center of a gray nothingness with a dim light surrounding me. Waving my hands and legs only made me warmer and had no discernible effects on movement or the ability to perceive it. I shouted and my voice did not echo back, it just disappeared into the smoky vapor. I drifted in an eternity with no thoughts, no pain just a feeling that my body was once again whole and belonging only to me. I experienced no hunger or thirst, no sense of time passing, just an endless sense of well-being.
The Logus came as a presence behind my eyes, and in my head. It asked a question of me; a decision about balance and taking sides. It wanted to know if I would choose between the side of the Pattern or it, the Logus.
My decision was instant, my loathing for the side of the Master evident yet I sensed a millisecond of dis-satisfaction on the part of the Logus. It reminded me that it had saved me from Webster. Neither would I choose Random even though my heart broke at the thought of denying the Unicorn.
“If you don’t choose the Logus,” it told me. “I will have to send you back to Webster. Who is not really Webster.”
“What do you mean?” I demanded.
It smirked. “Your power sensed a deception once and yet you did not pursue it. Webster is no more a human from your old shadow than I am. He masquerades as Lucian Webster, he thinks to seize control over me but all this time I have been controlling him through you.”
“Through me?”
“Does he not sob like a broken child at your loss? Does he not dare a war to keep you? He took you because he knew you were the power piece in this game of Chess but when the time came to play and lose you, he could not throw you into play.”
“He wants a war to overthrow the throne of Amber,” I retorted. “Why don’t you ask Merlin for his allegiance?”
The Logus flared red with anger and pain hit me, the very maximum of all that Webster had done to me, an exquisite agony and the Logus laughed. A cold sound that had no humanity in it. “The spell he cast on your cells has been destroyed, son of Merlin. It is in my power to let you die and even end your existence.”
“Then why do you need me?” I returned.
It shrieked a howl of frustration and sent me flying through the voids, from one gray realm to another, from blazing blue to frantic red, to revolting purple and violent black shot with scarlet flashes, where eventually, I recognized the sight and sound of warfare.
Magic bolts soared overhead, griffins and wyverns screamed as they drove into centaurs and satyrs. Horses neighed in fear and panic as the air smelled of sulfur and blood, ozone and the sharp, bitter tang of lightning and tears.
The ground trembled underfoot with the massive weight of elephant like creatures and millions of feet, human, equine, vulpine, bovine and magical. Wagons drawn by common animals such as oxen, mule and horse galloped past me followed by monsters. Lines of soldiers in red and violet uniforms marched forward with heavy pikes, their sergeants exhorting their ranks to charge.
My back hurt and I felt beneath me a piled bulk of branches and limbs. I wore clothing, fine lace and butter soft wool, a uniform bedecked with gold and silver braid, polished boots and a circlet of gold on my brow. I lay atop a robe of spotted fur and there were flowers piled at my head, feet and at my sides. My hands were laid upon my chest, tied at the wrists and held the pommel of an ornate sword.
A guard dressed in formal attire stood at each corner with a lighted torch. My eyes widened as I took in the fact that I was laid out on a funeral bier, a pyre ready to be immolated. Only problem was, I wasn’t quite dead yet.
I didn’t say anything, I just rolled off and started running, twisting at my wrists trying to tear the ropes free. I’d gotten ten yards away before my immolation crew realized I wasn’t dead and waiting for the first spark. Within minutes, I was able to merge into the chaos of the battle lines, dodging dead horses and wounded men and monsters.
I wasn’t sure how far the front lines were, I wouldn’t recognize the Amber forces or their allies. I just hoped I wasn’t hit by an arrow or reckless swordsmen before I could escape to the sidelines. Shouts pursued me but in the melee, the noise, confusion and carnage of the battle, no one paid any attention to the four other screamers.
I tripped over a struggling horse, a big bay with an officer’s saddle as it attempted to rise, trapped by its reins. On the saddle was a sword still in its scabbard, I pulled it free and sliced the rope holding my wrists together. They parted with a snap and I had no time to worry about the thin ribbons of blood the ropes had left behind. Climbing aboard the horse, I sliced its reins free and used my legs, seat and hands on its mane, aimed it for the side of the battlefield where the barrier of woods and hills funneled the forces towards the center of the valley.
Behind me, I could feel eyes on my back but refused to turn and look. Whatever was chasing me would have to use either magic or luck to stop the runaway from bolting as my frantic heels urged it on.
Somehow, my charge emboldened the forces of the Master, rallying behind me. I heard them cheering as now, I swerved and leapt over short, blue-skinned men with two sets of arms and leaking purple blood where the Thrid forces had met them head on. Their fallen standard was snatched by a Thrid Captain and raised aloft, a flag of neon green with a Golden Circle in which a Unicorn danced.
I saw men and boys, dressed in Amber’s colors, their faces young, brave and resolute. A red-head caught my eyes, a Thrid on a glivet aiming for him with an ax and I could not stand by to watch the youngster die by such a creature or weapon. Steering with my hand and knees and minus the reins, I hit the Thrid with my horse and sword, decapitating the captain, jerking back to pull the blade loose from the astonished body. It toppled from its mount and I was past, ducking under the swing of a light saber wielding cavalry man.
The horse headed up a small rise at a trot and I sat back in astonishment as before me on a vast plain lay an army so immense that I could not comprehend it.
Sunlight gleamed off of their weapons, harness and armor. Hundreds of thousands of men, animals and monsters. Machines that threw rocks and battering rams. Creatures the size of dinosaurs, winged beasts like flying tanks. Gargoyles in the skies that dropped flaming pots atop the heads of anything unlucky enough to be in reach. The horse reared and stopped dead at the sight before bolting to my left. I heard the air whistle and the sky darkened as thousands of arrows swarmed towards us like a flight of locusts. There was dust everywhere, the air was thick with it and hard to breathe. The ground was either bare of grass or wet with the offal of dead and dying.
The army behind me raised their shields and ducked under them. The sound of the arrows hitting was as loud as thunder. I was not so lucky, I had to depend on the horse’s quick legs and my ability to judge the bolts flight and targets.
Mostly, they fell short and to my right, in the thick of the company following me. One or two came closer, one struck the horse in the neck right in front of the saddle bow. He collapsed as the arrow severed his spine, throwing me from my seat to land face first on the ground with a force hard enough to knock me for a loop. No helmet, I remembered just before the sounds of battle faded.