“I’ll tell it to tune itself as low as it can then.”
He nodded.
“It can’t hurt to make it specific,” he said, “though I’d guess it probably does that anyhow, automatically.”
I placed the other ring back in my pocket, departed the niche, and hurried on up the hallway.
I slowed when we neared what I thought to be the area. But I seemed mistaken. The metal forest was not there. We passed that section. Shortly, we came to a familiar display — the one that had preceded the metal forest, on approaching it from that direction.
Even as I turned back, I knew. I knew what had happened. When we reached what had been the area, I stopped and studied it.
“What is it?” my ghostly father asked.
“It seems a display of every conceivable variety of edged weapon and tool that Chaos has ever spewed forth,” I said, “all of them exhibited point up, you’ll note.”
“So?” he asked.
“This is the place,” I answered, “the place where we were going to climb a metal tree.”
“Merle,” he said, “maybe this place does something to my thought processes, or yours. I just don’t understand.”
“It’s up near the ceiling,” I explained, gesturing. “I know the approximate area — I think. Looks a little different now…”
“What’s there, son?”
“A way — a transport area, like the one we passed through to the place of the Jabberwock skeleton. Only this one would take us to your chapel.”
“And that’s where we’re headed?”
“Right.”
He rubbed his chin.
“Well, there were some fairly tall items in some of the displays we passed,” he observed, “and not all of them were metal or stone. We could wrestle over that totem pole or whatever the hell it is, from back up the hall, clear away some of the sharp displays below that place, set the thing up —”
“No,” I said. “Dara obviously caught on to the fact that someone had visited it — probably this last time around, when she almost surprised me. The display was changed because of this. There are only two obvious ways to get up there — transport something unwieldy, as you suggest, and clear away a lot of cutlery before we climb. Or rev up the spikard and levitate ourselves to the spot. The first would take too long and probably get us discovered. The second would employ so much power that it would doubtless set off any magical wards she’s installed about the area.”
He took hold of my arm and drew me on past the display.
“We’ve got to talk,” he said, leading me into an alcove containing a small bench.
He seated himself and folded his arms.
“I’ve got to know what the hell’s going on,” he said. “I can’t help properly unless I’m briefed. What’s the connection between the man and the chapel?”
“I figured out something I think my mother really meant when she told me, ‘Seek him in the Pit,’” I explained. “The floor of the chapel bears stylized representations of the Courts and of Amber worked out in tiles. At the extreme of the Courts’ end is a representation of the Pit. I never set foot in that area when I visited the chapel. I’m willing to bet there’s a way located there, and at the other end is the place of his imprisonment.”
He’d begun nodding as I spoke, then, “So you were going to pass through and free him?” he asked.
“Right.”
“Tell me, do these ways have to work both ways?” he said.
“Well, no… Oh, I see what you’re getting at.”
“Give me a more complete description of the chapel,” he said.
I proceeded to do so.
“That magic circle on the floor intrigues me,” he said. “It might be a means of communicating with him without risking the dangers of presence. Some sort of image-exchange, perhaps.”
“I might have to fool with it a long while to figure it out,” I said, “unless I got lucky. What I propose doing is to levitate, enter, use the way at the Pit to reach him, free him, and get the hell out. No subtlety. No finesse. If anything fails to do what we expect, we force our way through it with the spikard. We’ll have to move fast because they’ll be after us once we start.”
He stared past me for a long while, as if thinking hard. At length, he asked, “Is there any way her wards might be set off accidentally?”
“Hm. The passage of a stray magical current from the real Pit, I suppose. It sometimes spews them forth.”
“What would characterize its passage?”
“A magical deposit or transformation,” I said.
“Could you fake such a phenomenon?”
“I suppose. But what would be the point? They’d still investigate, and with Corwin gone they’d realize it was just a trick. The effort would be wasted.”
He chuckled.
“But he won’t be missing,” he said. “I’m going to take his place.”
“I can’t let you do that!”
“My choice,” he said. “But he’s going to need the time if he’s going to help stop Dara and Mandor from advancing the conflict between the Powers beyond anything at Patternfall.”
I sighed.
“It’s the only way,” he said.
“I guess you’re right.”
He unfolded his arms, stretched, and rose to his feet.
“Let’s go do it,” he said.
I had to work out a spell, a thing I hadn’t done recently — well, half of a spell, the effects half, as I had the spikard to juice it. Then I lay it in a swathe across the display, turning portions of blades into flowers, joined at the molecular level. As I did, I felt a tingling I was certain was the psychic alarm taking note of the enterprise and reporting it to central.
Then I summoned a lot of juice and lofted us. I felt the tug of the way as we nears it. I had been almost dead-on. I let it take us through.
He whistled softly on regarding the chapel.
“Enjoy,” I said. “It’s the treatment a god gets.”
“Yeah. Prisoner in his own church.”
He stalked across the room, unbuckling his belt as he went. He substituted it for the one upon the altar.
“Good copy,” he said, “but not even the Pattern can duplicate Grayswandir.”
“I thought a section of the Pattern was reproduced on the blade.”
“Maybe it’s the other way around,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“Ask the other Corwin sometime,” he said. “It has to do with something we were talking about recently.”
He approached and passed the lethal package to me — weapon, sheath, belt.
“Be nice if you take it to him,” he said.
I buckled it and hung it over my head and shoulder.
“Okay,” I told him. “We’d better move.”
I headed toward the far corner of the chapel. As I neared the area where the Pit was represented I felt the unmistakable tug of a way.
“Eureka!” I said, activating channels on the spikard. “Follow me.”
I stepped forward and it took me away.
We arrived in a chamber of perhaps fifteen feet square. There was a wooden post at its center and the floor was of stone with some straw strewn upon it. Several of the big candles, as from the chapel, were spotted about. The walls were of stone on two sides, wood on the others. The wooden walls contained unlatched wooden doors. One of the stone walls contained a windowless metal door, a keyhole at its left side. A key, which looked about the right size, hung from a nail in the post.
I took down the key and checked quickly beyond the wooden door to my right, discovering a large barrel of water, a dipper, and a variety of dishes, cups, utensils. Behind the other door were a few blankets and stacks of what were probably toilet tissues.
I crossed to the metal door then and knocked upon it with the key. There was no response. I inserted the key in the lock and felt my companion take hold of my arm.