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AMBER
Boadice’s diary,
Session 86
Played on March the 5th, 1999
Written by Jopie Schekkerman, based on a campaign by Astrid Tops.
as
it deliberate? I don’t know how she managed it but Trisha’s rooms
were on the topmost floors of Escallwyn Ways. When I say ‘topmost floors’,
I mean it in a figurative way. Even if the shadows that held her rooms were
not really 'higher' than the others, somehow all the stairs we took to get to
Trisha’s rooms went ‘up’. None of us: Gran, the guard, the
house’s power expert and I, spoke much while we climbed the stairs.
I had good reasons to be silent. I had just had a conversation cum shouting match with Yaslin. My sister could kill herself with her fanaticism! And still I could not afford to spend all my time on her case. Finding out who killed Trisha could save her from the Chartins' wrath and that was what I was going to work on first, but both Ornach and my King had claims on me and I really had to keep pleasing both or things would go from bad to worse.
Before I went to Trisha’s rooms I had written a short letter to Random, explaining what had happened to Trisha. The letter was short and to the point. Random had asked for management information that could fit on one side of half a sheet of paper, -half an A-four as he called it-, and that was what he got. The brevity of the letter conveniently allowed me to leave out Yaslin’s presence in Escallwyn Ways.
Ornach had been next. Before Gran dragged me to the Courts I had been on my way to see Rinaldo about a black-and-white trump. The trump was a prison for Ornach’s daughter Tiphane, hence his desire to get it back. I wrote to Ornach about what had dragged me away from my mission (literally) and assured him I would to get back on the case as soon as possible. I gave Ornach more details about Trisha’s assassination than I had given to Random; he might be able to use some of it in his political machinations. With those letters in the mail (birds, birds!), I could start the investigation into Trisha’s death by making a thorough search of her rooms.
. . . _ . . .
When we got to Trisha’s suite, I was disappointed by the sheer ordinariness of the rooms. My rival didn’t have a laboratory or magician’s study; just a bedroom, a bathroom, a parlour, a dressing room and a music room that doubled as a library. We went through the rooms with a fine toothcomb but could find nothing out of the ordinary. Her perfume bottles I sent to the house poison expert, just in case. But that was all; there was nothing to explain her assassination, not even a hint of anything interesting in the papers on her desk. Of course, she still had her old apartments in Chartin Ways. I regretted I could not introduce myself there and ask if I could have a look around, even if the rules of the vendetta forbade them to harm me while I was a guest in their Ways.
While I searched, I could not help but keep my eyes open for signs that Mardoc, my former secretary, had been here. I knew no-one in Escallwyn ways had seen him but that was to be expected. It would have been unseemly for Trisha’s to keep her lover in her husband's house, but I imagined she would have him over from time to time just for fun. I found nothing. The blonde hairs on the pillow all Trisha’s, and I felt no trace of the Trump of myself that Mardoc wore on his upper arm. No, Mardoc had not been here. Not recently, anyway.
When I said we found nothing out of the ordinary, I meant we found nothing except for her trumps and one other thing. Her trump deck was nice and thick, a real who’s who of the Courts. I would have loved to keep it. There were no trumps of Amberites, nor one of Mardoc, but it did contain trumps of Mandor, Despil Sawall, Berice Omega, Emall Grice and Sarana Thilzy. Those were strong and influential men and women, except maybe for Despil who was just pretending to be a major player. Trisha had trumps of many members of the high society, mostly of Major houses. There was no bias to her deck; there was a balance between conservative and progressive people. Trisha obviously had been a woman who kept her options open.
The other thing we found was a little less straightforward. In Trisha's dressing room we found a silver casket, It was about 1 ½ by 2-½ foot in size and studded with semi-precious stones in green, blue and red. It was something you would expect on the dressing table of any rich lady but it had sat on the shelf in a cupboard. It also interested me because it was locked tight.
I beckoned the power expert; the young girl with the permanently worried expression
who had come with us. Her name was Eyva, by the way.
“After you.”
“Well,” she said, looking at the casket, “The security on
it is custom-built. We should send it back to her family. It probably just holds
her personal effects."
I looked at Gran, who kept quiet.
“The Escallwyns were her family,” I said when it became clear that
Gran would not speak up.
“And if the box contains clues about her killer, it is our duty to find
them and use them.”
Eyva looked at Gran, in doubt; a doubt which Gran seemed to share.
Finally, Gran said:
“I don’t think we can, Boadice. It smacks of a lack of respect for
my… former wife.”
“She would want us to find her killer,” I said. “I’m
sure of that. And if it bothers you, you can open it yourself. Then you know
she wouldn’t have objected.”
Gran nodded, rolled up his sleeves and did something with Logrus.
We all jumped back in alarm when there was a hiss and crackle and a shower
of sparks. The stink of Logrus filled the air.
“That’s well protected,” Gran said and blew on his fingers.
“Why would she protect anything this well?” I asked. “What
do people usually keep in caskets like this?”
“Jewellery,” Gran said.
I didn’t think Trisha’s would use a casket as spectacular as this
to guard a couple of trinkets. I bit my lip and thought about it for a moment.
Forcing the lock would probably destroy the contents. That is what I would do
if I were Trisha and had secrets to protect. I asked Eyva to get her gear and
we sat down for a couple of hours of magical tinkering.
Our first efforts were soon thwarted. A ‘look, feel and smell’ spell that was to give us a general impression of the box fizzled out without any effect. The casket did not radiate anything and if it was approached with power, the power drained away into nothing. Neither Logrus, Pattern nor Magic would work; the casket neutralised them all.
I tried the most subtle lock picking spell I knew. I am fond of sympathetic
magic: 'things that influence things because they are at some level like those
things'. It’s a very basic magic but even that didn’t work. The
magic just slid off the casket like water off a duck’s back.
"It's a powerful nullifier," Gran said when he saw my face. "I
heard of those things, and it is a property of the material these caskets are
made of. I don't know what it is but it's rare stuff. It means you can't pick
the box up with telekinesis, for example."
Eyva nodded.
"They are much sought after, these caskets," she said. "We should
return it to the Chartins untouched." She looked at me and smiled. "Or
at least looking untouched."
I was starting to like her.
We searched Trisha’s apartment again to see if we could find a small
silver key, one that we had previously overlooked. We found nothing. Trisha
could have worn it on her person when she died, and the poison that killed her
had disintegrated her clothes and ornaments. A small metal key could easily
have been dissolved as well. I felt it was time to raise a small but thorny
issue.
"Was she put in a container?" I asked. "Her remains, I mean."
I had to bite my tongue and swallow twice before I said it. What I had meant
to say was: 'You did put her in a bucket, didn't you, that bit of slime you
could scrape of the floorboards?'
Trisha’s dreadful end brought me no pleasure, I found, not as much as
defeating her would have brought.
"As far as there were any. Any remains, that is." Gran said. "We
gathered as much as we could and sent to the Chartins."
"In a red lacquer urn, in a traditional red hearse drawn by two red dragons,"
the guard said. We all looked at him, surprised that he had anything to contribute.
He blushed and shut up.
"Well done," I said.
There were two things I thought I could try. Both involved taking the box into shadow. Gran didn't object but suggested we would try to open the box the old fashioned way by picking the lock. I didn’t think that would work. Trisha would have foreseen it and taken precautions. Even if we found an expert pick-lock, there were no guarantees that he would be able to outwit whoever made the casket and I would not risk destroying the contents. I had a good idea; something that Trisha might not have thought of. Gran shrugged and left the casket to me.
. . . _ . . .
Before I went into shadow, I fed the baby. My little little girl with eleven little little green toes looked alive and healthy, and in a good mood.
I trumped to Ygg, walked a while in shadow and found a spot that was safe and quiet. If I could not find Trisha's secrets, I would find the one whom she would have shared them with. I would find Mardoc. There was a link between the two of us. A long time ago he let me trump-tattoo my face on his arm so he would become strong enough to take trump contacts. I intended to use that link as a back door into Mardoc’s mind.
To make a long story short; it didn’t work. I was furious; how could Trisha have sabotaged even this? I am an accomplished trump mistress, the link was of my own design and that Trisha had destroyed it made me livid. I knew Trisha gave Mardoc a headband that protected him from normal trump contact, but that could not have destroyed my link with Mardoc. Had she killed him? The bitch! For the next two hours, I tried everything I could think of but in the end I had to admit defeat.
After a snack at a wayside restaurant, I walked deeper into shadow and tried
using magic again. By the flickering light a torch I painted Mardoc’s
likeness on the wall of a cave with charcoal and ochre. Under the image, I poured
enchanted water into a holy bowl and searched for the essence of the man who
used to be my friend. I saw nothing. Stubbornly, I tried again, a quarter of
an hour to see if I made any progress and half an hour extra out of sheer pig-headedness.
Finally, I gave up and tried to figure out what I did wrong. I guess you need
Pattern to see outside a single shadow, sorcery is not enough for that. And
I could not combine the two. Fuck.
So if Pattern was what was needed, then Pattern I would use. Carefully, I walked through shadow to find Mardoc on foot, taking care to see him before he would see me. My steps took me in the direction of the Courts of Chaos, and later even into the Courts, in the directions of the Ways of Chartin. Like all Ways, theirs are a collection of shadows and if Mardoc moved from one room to another my sense of direction would shift with him. So again, I did not find him. Bugger bugger bugger.
. . . _ . . .
Now I was in the Courts I might as well go back to the ways of Escallwyn. After a brief visit with the baby, --they still had not named her--, I took the jewelled casket and headed back into shadow. While walking, I kept half an eye on the thing. It kept its power-sink attributes in every shadow I stopped in, and that made me pause and think. I had seen this sort of thing before, but where? Almost remembering was like an itch I could not scratch. When I stopped for lunch it came to me. Long ago, on my first day in Amber, someone mailed me a trump that was done in the same style as the trumps I found in my father’s tower in Verdiga. It took me to the shore of a purple sea. There, I found a blue crystal tower. To my Pattern sight, the tower looked like a hole, a nothing, just like Trisha's casket.
Curious, I peeked into the sack in which I carried the box. Yes, with Pattern it looked like the blue tower: like nothing. And it were the stones that made it so. Interesting, but what did it mean? In the blue crystal tower I had found Fiona, who was... who had been... locked in. No, that could not be. Nothing ever happens to Fiona that she does not want to. But she seemed very annoyed when I unbolted the trap door and let her out. No, I must have been mistaken; she was annoyed at me, not at having been imprisoned, she couldn’t have been.
Back to the blue crystal; what did it tell me? That there might be a connection between Trisha and either Fiona or my father. That sounded about right; when Trisha faked her death in the Cathedral of the Serpent, she had been asking questions about my father. Much later, the second time I saw her --it was in the art collection of Sawall-- I fought her and won, but seconds after my victory Bleys and Delwin showed up; Uncle-Daddy and Daddy-Uncle.
All this just made me itch with desire to open her casket and learn Trisha’s secrets. And I knew how to do it. I know a fair amount about working precious metals. I would carefully lift the bottom out of the casket. I’d bet Trisha would not have thought of that. The intricate decoration would hide my tampering.
. . . _ . . .
Smiling, I tried to finish my meal but Murlas’ trump grew cool against
my left wrist. I quieted my mind and listened in.
"...--bout royal business?" I heard Murlas ask. With my free hand
I went through my cards to see whom he was speaking with. It was Adrian.
My favourite cousin said something I didn't quite catch, and Murlas answered:
"Isn't that a bit premature?"
"What do you mean?" Adrian said.
"So you didn't hear?"
I imagined Adrian shaking his head.
"I appear to be a candidate for the throne, here."
I stifled a giggle. Murlas king of Chaos: yeah right!
"Congratulations," Adrian said.
"Not really." I heard Murlas sigh. "It seems to be an... interesting
procedure."
"With lots of killing and such..." Adrian added. I hoped it would
be, so Murlas would have no time to stick his nose in my business.
"And I'm in the front line. But well..."
"I see," Adrian said. "Do you think it is wise to participate,
if I may ask? And you taking this trump contact..?"
"My trumps are not readily available."
"May I come through?"
Murlas said Adrian could, and I felt the surge and dying down of trump that
signalled transportation.
So the race for the crown of Chaos was on again. Interesting, but of no immediate concern to me. My money was on Ornach, always had been. The news did put more pressure on my search for his daughter's trump prison, but on the other hand the information in the casket could save my sister's life. What I needed was a plan to keep the Escallwyns from taking the easy way out and handing her over to the Chartins. Maybe I could put the blame on Alexander.
Someone would have to hang for Trisha's death. Until I found the murderer or an acceptable scapegoat --preferably one of the enemies of Escallwyn-- Alexander would do just fine. In fact, he would fit perfectly. Why would Alexander be involved in the murder of Monias? Well, look at who stood to gain most from his death. Who married Myrthe just after her father was killed, and became king of Galoria? The incident in Sherwyn had been an attempt on the lives of Monias and Adrian simultaneously, and Adrian was Alexander's biggest enemy. He and Monias had been negotiating for peace; a peace Alexander did not want because he was waging a war that he had been dying to fight for a long time. This war was giving him a chance to finish what he started: the destruction of Corwin's pattern. But how would Alexander have arranged it all? Alex could have been deeply involved in the Amber Democratic Movement; there was no way to prove that he wasn’t. When Alexander heard how I defended my sister during the Family council, he decided to murder Trisha because it would be the best way to keep me busy and further blacken Yaslin's image. Besides, Murlas and I had nettled Alexander something fierce after that dinner and he would want to get back at me. Alexander had all the resources to pull of the murder. He had strong ties with Chaos through the progressive half of House Hendrake, so he could have gotten hold of the special poison. There are even rumours about him and the Oban. He also has Pattern, of which we found traces at the scene of the crime. But damnit, he was far too strong to draw into this. And the Escallwyns would gain nothing by accusing Alexander.
I sighed to myself. This theory fitted so well, I could almost make myself
believe it was true. If only other people would believe it and give me some
time. I really had to follow up on the lead of the black and white trump, and
soon. Ornach was too powerful an ally to antagonise.
With a hundred different plans churning in my head, I paid my bill and left.
. . . _ . . .
To be continued.
