Tied to a set of marble columns in an ante-chamber. I was hanging from my wrists and on my knees before an audience of soldiers and demon kin. The Queen was seated in a chair with a maid and a guard keeping her from rising. He was whispering in her ear.
The Master was dressed in blood red leathers with a heavy black robe over it and open from neck to floor. I swallowed in terror as I saw the flagellum in his hands.
“Master,” I whispered. “No, I’ll die. For good.”
He heard me. “Admit you came back to take the Queen, my Blackbird. Admit you came to kill me and I will let you live.” He swung the flail and cracked it near the pillars. Marble flew in chips from the floor. Several pieces hit me and drew tiny stings of blood.
I said in desperation, “I came, Master because I love you.”
The air was curiously still as if the entire assemblage had withdrawn their breaths. He lowered his upraised arm, told them all to leave and stood at my side. “Say it again, Corbel,” he encouraged.
“Master, I came back because I no longer fear death, no longer want to be anywhere but at your feet. Because I love you more than life itself. I belong to you, Master and that is all I want or need.”
He closed his eyes and breathed deeply. “I believe you, Blackbird,” he murmured and stripped off his clothes. Once naked, he whipped me, blood springing swiftly as the flail touched my skin. I screamed. Before my cries of pain died, he turned the whip on himself in a bizarre parody of one for me and one for himself. He managed only to reach five on me before he collapsed on me, adding the burden of his weight to my own straining wrists. “Now we are bound in blood and pain,” he murmured, his lips on my own fevered back. I felt his erection fade as he passed out leaving me in a gray haze of agony.
***
He woke first and his groans woke me. “Master,” I whispered. “Get up. You will bleed to death if you don’t get help.”
“Corbel, my lovely Blackbird. Your blood runs in my veins and mine in yours. What you feel is what I feel. What I do unto you is visited upon me. We are joined at the soul.” Aghast, I stared at him and the look of triumph on his face was devastating. “So, you see, my Blackbird of deceit, I know you lied when you said you loved me. As I know you came to take the Queen and to plant your daggers in my black heart.”
And before my eyes, he slowly dissolved to become another man I had seen once in my fevered dreams. A short, well built younger man that looked curiously like my remembered images of Merlin. “Who are you?” I mumbled.
“Jurt. My name is Jurt.” It meant nothing to me. “Didn’t see my picture in Corwin’s Trumps, did you? Nor dear Bro Merlin’s? I’m your Uncle, Raven. Uncle Jurt. Half brother to Merlin and resident of the Courts of Chaos. This lovely place is part of my realm, part of my inheritance when Merlin usurped my claim on the throne. Mandor did me the favor of ‘rescuing’ you from those two men who wanted to rape you back in Amber. He held you in Chaos until I arrived to buy you at the slave market. I spent two years breaking your stubborn self and find you still a problem. How I love that in you, it’s like having a baby Merlin to torture and fuck. Oh, don’t worry, I won’t touch you again, I really do prefer to torture you. It gives me a better orgasm than fucking your dry hole.”
I screamed and bucked trying to tear my wrists loose, trying to get to my feet and attack him. He rose lithely to his and before my eyes, the wounds he had suffered faded away to mere shadows on his back. “Just an illusion to fool you, poor unsophisticated magic user. The spells I gave you to learn were mere child’s primary lessons, Corbel. None could cause me more than a bee sting. Now, I have a war to win.” He pointed at me and the blue flame that Steen warned me of shot from his index finger and wrapped me in torment. I could not faint but only suffer and endure.
“Steen,” I thought. “Run! Hide! I have failed.” The image of the Queen, her head high and unbowed was all that kept me from giving up.
I felt the incursion of magic as it bounced against the Master’s...Jurt’s warded shield. Each blow from Amber’s side resonated in my body and caused the pain to soar. It escalated until I thought my mind would crush under its weight. The harder I fought against it, the worse it hurt. Hurt was not strong enough of a word to describe it, the very fiber of my cells were in agony as if their structure was being torn apart. Each time it subsided, I felt weaker and closer to complete collapse.
The Logus came and stood before me, it took the form of a glowing wheel and mocked me. “Not to choose one side over the other puts you in the middle, son Raven, slave Blackbird. You are the pawn upon which this war pivots. Even now, your blood and will power Jurt’s spells. When you collapse, as you soon will, the backlash of power your death releases will destroy Amber’s King, his army, his family and the Pattern allowing Jurt and me to become supreme. With you gone, destroyed by your own power, I will make Jurt my puppet and become the dominant force in creation.”
“Why does everyone want to rule the universe?” I ground out forcing my words beyond the pain. I put the agony in a box inside my head and managed to climb to my feet rather than be on my knees. “I won’t. I won’t choose sides. The Pattern exists as does the Logus. Without Darkness, there can be no Light. Without pain, joy has no meaning. Without Evil, Good is not felt.”
The Logus shrieked, struck me on the chest and my heart shuddered. Pain seized me and my resolve to stand faltered. I threw my head back and fell as far as the chains would allow me, writhing on the floor. My heart felt as if it would explode out of my chest.
Oh gods. I hurt. I hurt. I could not bear it. Master--- I cried out and in my inner vision, a mythical beast appeared. A white Unicorn. A being of such physical beauty that I could only stare in bemused fascination. Where she trod, flowers sprang up and her gaze upon me was both compassionate and frightening. She touched me with her horn, the dangerously sharp tip resting lightly on my aching heart. The pain abated and coolness spread the course of my body, numbing the fire of those lashes on my back. The chains on my wrists fell away and I stood in the glade with her.
Lifted my hands to her horn and caressed the golden spiral, advanced them to the soft hollows over her crystal blue eyes, the silken hide under which steel muscles rippled. I choose,” I said. “My choice is neither. And it is a choice, not a reluctance to choose. Though you be beautiful and good, you alone are not enough. The Pattern must have its opposite or all is nothingness. I choose to be the balance between Chaos and Order.”
She bowed her head and went to one knee before leaping straight at me. I shouted and her spiral horn took me dead center and pierced my heart. I had a moment of astonishment, a second of obliterating pain and then, an endless darkness.
***
This awakening was strange, my body hurt but in a different way. I still felt the fire licking at my cells and the tearing agony of the five lashes that had exposed bone in my back but it was muted somehow. I stretched and arched my neck, objects seemed to be further away than they should, as if they were forty or fifty feet below me and smaller. My eyes blinked and I was seeing with pin-point accuracy, each individual blade of grass and pebbles in the soil. I gasped and my shoulders ached. Turned my head around and actually saw behind myself. A vast expanse of black leathery wings and diamond scaled black hide ending in a tail with a forked barb.
My mouth hurt and something jerked at it, pulling my head down to ground level. I stared into the amused face of my torturer and uncle. Jurt. The Master.
“Like it, Corbel? Truly, now you are my Blackbird. The Logus gave you to me as a pet. You will serve me in this war.” I shook and thrashed but what he had in my mouth kept me bound to his hand. “It’s the bridle of Bellerophon. Remember your Greek fairy tales? It works on Dragons, too and that’s what you are now, dear nephew. Your Logus blood took over and morphed you into your demon form which I now control.” He leapt onto my back, gouged me with his silver spurs. I screamed and took off into the sky with powerful strokes of my wings. Flew as high as I could and dove, intending to smash us both into the ground. He jerked the reins and forced me to a complete halt and I beat the air frantically hovering. Though large as a house, I was lighter than I seemed.
“You can’t escape me, Corbel,” he laughed. “Only pain will follow you should you fight my commands. A dragon is very sensitive to pain and its bodily responses far outweigh your human mind.” He demonstrated by lashing me on the wounds of my back and I almost fainted. With legs, reins and whip, he steered me towards the battlefield far below.