I woke in the dirt. Flat on my back in dirt and leaves, in filthy clothes. Not on a sandy beach nor a hospital bed or surrounded by beautiful nurses administering to my every whim.
It was dark so I couldn’t even tell where I was, all I knew was that it smelled different and that Murphy wasn’t near me. Nor did he come when I whispered for him. In my head, it was a shout.
I rolled over onto my side and immediately, my belly hurt. Raw, blinding pain like when that thing had stuck his claws in it and tore. My hand explored and found both my shirt and bandage sodden with more blood and fluid. I curled my legs into my stomach and rested, taking shallow breaths that didn’t raise or move my lower half much. While I did that, the sky gradually lightened to let me know that the sun was coming up. It shadowed a forest of trees manicured like a parkland and a stairwell descending from a cliff over my head. Atop the cliff was a genuine castle with five towers from which pennants of a white unicorn were flying.
Somehow, I had managed to climb down that stairwell in the dark, unconscious and wounded. I know I did it by the bloodied drag marks I had left on the white marble treads.
I heard a rustling in the wood and looked up at an image I had dreamed of but never imagined I would ever really see. A white unicorn stood before me, a creature too beautiful to be called anything but a force of magic. Snow white with a spiraled golden horn, silver fetlocks with cloven hooves and a tail like a lion, not a horse. It was clearly not a horse with a horn. A wisp of a beard hung from the delicate jaw and her eyes were the gas blue of a flame. She was too awe-inspiring to stare at so I lowered my gaze in respect and missed it when she floated close to touch that horn to my flesh. In a flash, she knelt beside me and using her horn, rolled me over until I was astride her. Only then, did she climb to her feet with me as a passenger.
Weaving her way through the forest, she forged her own path to emerge on a flat plain guarded by soldiers in blue and gold who made no attempt to stop us as she walked out upon a pattern carved in the solid stones of the earth. I knew this place. Deep in my bones and my blood, I knew this place.
She dropped to her knees and I slid off to stand on wobbly legs at the very beginning of the Pattern. Without her body holding me up, I would have fallen face first onto the first step. I could just see the First Veil and knew that once stepping foot on it, I must follow it through to the end or die trying. To leave the Pattern in any place other than the end was to suffer annihilation. Or, I might die anyway if my blood was not strong enough to proclaim me a son of Amber.
I took that first step and she hit me in the chest with her horn, barring me from moving ahead. My blood dripped between my clenched hands down to my feet and hissed as the drops hit the ground, fog rising up around us until I was lost in the thick of it. When it slowly dissipated, I was leaning against the postern of a tavern on a street corner in a pretty little town straight out of Old England. In front of me was the open door to the tavern called The Blue Pig and it bustled with customers. Next door was a farmer’s market selling all kinds of goods.
The people were dressed in comfortable blouses, trousers and capes, the women in old fashioned dresses and aprons. Horses, mules stood at hitching posts alongside buggies and wagons. I saw no cars, neon or electric lights.
Above the town on a cliff sat the castle with flags flying from its turrets.
Two men approached and walked up to the bar, standing out because both of them were in business suits yet seemed perfectly at ease amongst all the other less formally dressed clientele. One of the pair was tall, dark haired and blue eyed, the other short with brown hair and brown eyes. He carried a briefcase in his right hand that he laid on the bar. I took a step forward and felt the ground moving away from both my head and my feet as reality stretched thin my awareness.
Inside was cool and dim. A long bar of carved maple with blue glass mugs sliding down its forty foot length. A big picture window behind the comfortably fat bartender in a white apron. Wooden tables with golden tablecloths and buxom barmaids in heavy skirts and white aprons, low cut blouses that would surely earn them big tips. Big white smiles at me. I held my arm against my stomach as I approached the shorter man to touch his sleeve. He was in his forties and looked like a banker or a lawyer. He looked normal.
“Can I help you?” he asked politely, putting down his mug of beer. It too, was blue although that could have been the glass of the colored mug. His eyes widened as he studied my face.
“Help me,” I managed and my hand came up. The other man grabbed it, turned it over to stare at the blood covering my palm. I reached for the dimple in the tall man’s chin and then a swooping sensation filled me as I was whisked away.
Voices speaking in low murmurs over my head.
Cory, who is he?
I don’t know, Bill I’ve never seen him before.
He looks like you. Or at least, like you when I first met you years ago. Is he one of Oberon’s bastards?
No. He doesn’t have that same look or smell to him. And those wounds---they’re like those goons Flora and Eric used years ago---they liked to gut, disembowel and eat their victims alive.
How could he have run into Flora?
I don’t know. Random wants to speak to him when he wakes up. So do I. He sounded grim.
Why did he approach us?
I think...because of our suits.
You think he’s from my shadow? Even though he was in local wear?
He didn’t go to the barkeep or the local Healer. He picked you, Bill. Ah, his eyes are fluttering.
I dragged my eyes open. This time, I was in a bed, in a spacious room that was clearly inside the castle. Tapestries, rich rugs, fancy furniture. Both men were standing next to the bed wearing designer jeans, denim shirts and comfortable boots. The taller man had a long sword at his waist in a scabbard. He wore a silver rose on his collar that held back a light cape. Dark haired with blue eyes and a dimpled chin, he was easy on the eyes and I knew I couldn’t piss him off and get away with it.
“What’s your name?” he interrogated me and there was an implied threat in the tone.
“Corbin. Raven,” I whispered. “I’m thirsty.”
“I can’t give you anything until the doctor okays it,” he said. “You have a gut wound. He’ll be up in a few minutes.”
“Where am I?”
“Amber. The castle. What are you doing here? From whence did you come?”
My answer was interrupted by a medical doctor, a red-haired dude with a beard and a green skinned woman who was lovely. I rubbed my eyes. Wow. I’m really hallucinating some weird shit, I thought. Did I lose so much blood my brain’s starving for oxygen?
No one answered me but the doc stuck a thermometer in my mouth. It tasted real. A BP cuff on my arm and poked at my belly under the covers. It hurt. Felt real not a fantasy.
In two minutes, he had everyone out of the room and was cutting my clothes off to my feeble protests. Seconds later, he stuck me in the hand with a needle, he and the room faded away before I could say ‘wait.’
Someone’s soft singing woke me. A song about a lonely maid under the waves who pined for a lover to rescue her from some unnamed disaster. I listened drowsily to the gentle melancholy of the song and when it was finished, asked for another.
Soft fingers brushed my forehead and the voice asked my name.
“Corbin. Raven.” I was happy to tell her. “What’s yours?”
“Vialle.”
“You sing pretty, Vialle,” I told her. “You should try out for The Voice.”
“The voice?”
“You know, the TV show.” I sighed and stretched. My arm hurt and it would only move so much but I was too tired to care.
“Ah, yes, I doubt that would please my husband.”
I heard the implied laughter. “So do it and don’t tell him.”
“He has his own musical band,” she added.
“Yeah? Maybe I’ve heard of him. What is it called?”
“Random Hearts.”
I thought. Slowly, my thoughts were processing so slowly. “Nope. Guess he hasn’t made it big yet. Where am I?” I opened my eyes and roamed the room, saw a hot chick dressed in silk with long hair held back by a crown. She wore jewels that complimented her greenish skin, emerald hair and lovely neck. I blinked but she stayed green. Her hands were delicate, her nails the same deep green as her hair. There was something odd about her eyes and she held her long fingers in her lap. They were stained with what I later learned was clay. She sculpted.
“I am Vialle, we met earlier but I do not believe you remember. I am Queen of Amber, wife to King Random whom you also met,” she smiled softly. “You will come to no harm here if your intentions are peaceful. Are they peaceful, young Corbin?”
“Call me Raven, please. Yes, ma’am.”
“Who injured you?”
I looked around at the IV set up. I was on fluids, antibiotics and whole blood. A BP, TPR machine stood next to the bed along with a table and bed tray. On the tray were 4X4 gauze, tape, pill bottles and other medical paraphernalia and debris.
My belly was newly bandaged completely around my middle and a drain led to a bag on the floor. I recognized the feeling of lethargy as a hefty dose of morphine in my system.
“You know a lady name of Flora?” I felt and saw her stiffen. She nodded. “She kidnapped me. Gave me to her goons and told them to kill me. They wanted to eat me alive.” I shuddered at the memory of them ripping my guts open.
“Why?”
“She thought I was somebody’s son.”
“Whose?”
“My mother was mortal, a human. Amber Murphy Sines of the US. She died in Ireland, never told me who my dad was. When she died, she bound a morph to me, to protect me. I don’t know who my father was. I never met him.” I wouldn’t tell what I did know, I would lie to protect myself and Murph and not trust anyone else.
“I know who he is, Vialle,” said the second taller man from the tavern. He entered the room with the doctor. He checked my vitals again and seemed pleased.
“How do you feel, Corbin? Any pain?”
“Not yet,” I answered. “There’s enough morphine in me to sedate a horse.”
“Vialle, he’s not one of mine although he looks enough like a younger me to be a brother, save I know all of Oberon’s get. No, I’d wager he’s one of Merlin’s.”
“One of? There are more?” she sounded upset and he laughed.
“I’m surprised there aren’t dozens. We do have a family tradition to uphold.”
“If I catch Random straying, I’ll cut off his---,” she threatened.
I laughed and stifled it as pain bloomed in my gut.
“Tell me, boy. Have you come from the Courts of Chaos? Who is your mother? Your father? How did you get hurt?” He asked a million questions while I was held a helpless captive. The morphine in me made me so stoned I didn’t care. Didn’t answer his questions, either. I looked around. Asked one question only.
“Where’s Murphy?”
“Murphy? Who is Murphy?” he charged.
“My...bodyguard. Nursemaid. Wolfman.” To my horror, I giggled.
“He’s high,” the dark man said in amusement.
“Well yes. If your stomach looked like his, Corwin, you’d be screaming for pain relief. If he was pure human, he’d be dead,” the doctor said. “How old are you, kid?”
“Fifteen. I just turned fifteen,” I giggled. “And I guess I won’t live to see 16.”
“Let’s leave him to rest, Corwin, Bill, Random. He’ll be in less pain and more coherent in the morning,” the doctor added.
“Hey, bones,” I said. “I’m hungry and thirsty. Can I have a big old glass of Pepsi? You know I saw a unicorn and she carried me to the base of the cliff?”
There was dead silence, and then the man named Corwin asked, “You saw the Unicorn?”
“She was beautiful,” I mused remembering. “I wanted to walk the Pattern but she wouldn’t let me. My blood was running, you see and it’d burn it.”
“Who told you that, Corbin?”
“I dunno. Murph, maybe. Or maybe the unicorn did.” My face twisted as the pain crept back into my awareness. It was as if a fire had been lit inside my guts and nothing would put it out. My face must have shown distress because the doc shooed them all out and did something to the IV line in my arm. Everything floated away.