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AMBER
Boadice’s diary,
Session 90
Played on the fifth of June, 1999
Written by Jopie Schekkerman, based on a campaign by Astrid Tops.
found the mistress of the Keep of the Four Worlds on the seaward ramparts, sending
bright bolts of fountain power into the mist and spray. She stopped when she
saw me, a slight frown creasing her brows.
“Boadice,” she said. “You understand this changes our negotiations
somewhat. I assume that is why you are here now.”
“I am,” I said, “but I must admit I don’t need the trump
so badly that I want to take advantage of the situation. I can offer you to
sneak through the lines. In exchange for troops, I—“
“Yes,” she interrupted, “but you will have to get through
the lines first. I will make a deal with you. This is important to me, you understand.
So you see what you can do. If you can get out of the Keep: fetch help for me,
from Ornach if he’s willing. If you don’t get out, help me defend
the place. I understand you are quite accomplished in several uses of power;
we can always use someone who’s good at that.”
Well, fine, if you don’t hear me out, you don’t get to hear what
I have to say. No skin off my nose. I concentrated on what Jasra had just said.
“It would be my pleasure,’ I said. “But which would you prefer?
At the moment there is trouble in the Courts of Chaos, and I can’t guarantee
Ornach has troops to spare. Maybe we can persuade him to send someone who can
take the trump barrier down?”
“Just see what you can do,” said Jasra. “I myself can always
get out of here, even if I can’t use trumps. When push comes to shove
I can always get away. But I really want to keep the Keep for myself. And yet,
if Flora is dead set on taking it from me, there’s only so much I can
do.”
I took a deep breath and waited for her to get to the point.
“My negotiations are with Lord Ornach; you must take my offer to him.
And I think I would prefer troops over someone to break down the barrier. Rinaldo
and I can break out ourselves if it’s time to get away.”
“If that is what you want for the trump—“
“Just try to get through. We will create a diversion.”
“Let’s see what Flora has put out there,” I said, and took
a borrowed pair of binoculars out of my pocket.
“She’s got more than we can see,” Jasra said while I studied
the sea. “And an air force too.”
Damn. I had learned to fly but had not practiced aerial combat yet. The air
above the lava fields would offer good rising thermals, but if Flora’s
flying troops forced me to land I would be barbecued. Carefully, I looked over
the ramparts and peered down at the jagged cliffs. I had not practiced swimming
in chaos form either, and I dared not brave this sea in human form. Besides,
I would have to rely on a breathing-under-water spell and that would be dangerous.
The mountain-earth side of the Keep was swarming with the main force of Flora’s
army. That left the desert shadow with its sand storms as my only option. Jasra
led me to the other side of the Keep, where we could study that part of the
area. While we walked, we discussed using an invisibility spell, but discarded
the idea. Flora would have set up a detection grid against that sort of thing.
. . . _ . . .
The desert looked terribly unappealing. In fact, I could barely see the ground from the ramparts, so much did the winds and sand obscure my view. So Jasra and I went to study the mountain shadow. Through the binoculars, I searched Flora’s army for the usual camp followers: whores, washerwomen and various hangers on. Someone would have to fetch and carry, hawk dubious wares and dig latrines! I couldn’t find any; this was a very disciplined army and I guessed its non-military personnel would have identity papers too. No, sneaking through the camp in disguise was out. The Family had really underestimated its little sister.
So: the desert it was. The sand storms were terrible: on Jasra’s advice I took several days to prepare. I wanted to sneak through the lines under cover of a storm and that meant extensive preparations. Firstly, I needed gear made of metal: according to Jasra leather or cloth wore away in the storms. The sand would totally obscure my view so with a small magic we made a compass that always pointed to the Fount of Power. It had a cold spot where the arrow pointed at the case so I wouldn’t need to use my eyes. In case of emergency, I wanted to be able to trump someone, so I spent two days making a trump of Rinaldo. I depicted him standing in a white-washed doorway, clutching a pile of papers to his chest with one arm and holding two bottles, a sword and a couple of brushes with the other. In stolen moments I also drew Delwin’s trump, carefully so no-one would notice I had made more than one card. I painted him in an impressionistic style, half disguised by dappled sunlight. It was very difficult for me to destroy this latter trump; it had come out so well, but I did. I could not take it with me and I could not leave it behind.
When I was finished with Rinaldo’s trump, it was his turn to paint me. No, not a trump of me, but my chaos-form body in the desert colours I wanted. My natural chaos form is tall, extremely thin and metallic dark blue and that just wouldn’t do in a desert. We had great fun with the painting; it tickled and it was more than a little erotic. Halfway through, his mother walked in and asked why I did not just shift my body into the colours I wanted. Before I could find an excuse, she said she supposed it would take too much energy and concentration, and left. Never mind. There was no need to tell her I could not shape shift that well. When the paint had dried, Rinaldo and I put a few layers of varnish on for added protection, leaving patches of skin bare so it could breathe. With metal equipment, the magic compass and the camouflage, I was ready to go, but not before I ruined a set of bed clothes and one of Jasra’s mattresses by sleeping in my chaos form.
I was lucky. On the morning of my departure the grandmother of all sandstorms
had struck up on the desert side of the Keep. I handed my trump deck to Rinaldo
for safe keeping and he, at the last moment, proposed I’d carry a tracer.
I declined. The last thing I needed was to be traced, by anybody.
“But what if you get lost, or unconscious?” he asked, worried. I
was touched he cared.
“I’ll be fine.” I said. “I have experience with sand
storms.” My shadow Chiraz is a desert shadow and I spent much time having
adventures there. “Just make sure that diversion you have planned lasts
long enough; this storm is sure to blow over at the most inconvenient moment.”
Rinaldo nodded and led me to a small secret door. I put the power compass in
my mouth, got down on all fours and when Rinaldo opened the door a crack I slipped
out on all fours, like the lizard I now resembled.
. . . _ . . .
The storm outside hit me like a blanket of needles. Stunned, I pressed my belly to the ground and closed my eyes. I should have taken a bit of cloth to put over my mouth. Too late now… Carefully, I opened my eyes and discovered I had an extra set of eyelids: strong and transparent. As fast as I could, I started to walk, following the low points in the landscape like a river. All I had to do was keep the coldness of the compass in the back of my throat. The trump barrier could not be far away.
After a while –it was hard to keep track of time on the howling sand— I heard a sound like a metallic bleating. Damn, I was detected! Dark shapes appeared among the flying sand and I pressed myself to the ground, letting the sand cover and protect me. Crocodile-like, I kept my eyes above the surface and looked at what had found me. It were Flora’s men in dark robes. They were riding on a flat black flying saucer. Their craft; a disk to stand on with a thin railing for its riders to hang on to, was pulled about by the wind but somehow they always got back on course. Under cover of a fresh gust of wind I sprinted away from them until another flying platform came from straight ahead. This one made bleeping noises too. The platforms were well designed to fly against the wind, and worked on magic as far as I could tell. But they could not see through their floor, and there were pipes and things for me to hang on to.
I waited for another gust of wind and grabbed hold of the craft. It was already
shaking and the riders did not notice an extra passenger. It looked like I was
going to get a lift. From where I hung, I could hear my enemies talk. The beeps
had gotten louder and faster too.
“The metal detector…” one of them said. “It’s
going crazy. There’s gotta be one near. There’s signals everywhere.”
I did not know who or what a metal detector was but the name gave its function
away. I hoped they would think it was broken and head back to the camp. But
the men didn’t, and started to fly in widening circles.
“That can’t be, there’s signals everywhere.”
Darn. Another craft appeared from the storm.
“How can that be, our detector reacts to you!” a soldier from the
other craft shouted.
I had heard enough. Quickly, I drank my water bottle dry and threw it far away.
Detect this, you scumbags! The people on the second platform exclaimed: “There
it goes!” and left, but the one I hung under kept patrolling the desert,
never in the direction I wanted it to go. Bit by bit I dropped whatever metal
I carried, first the case that held the rope, then my belt, the knife last.
The sand of the desert quickly covered all. My little compass I kept, it was
too small to be easily detected and I needed it. When the craft bumped into
an unexpectedly high sand dune, I got up and sprinted away, leaving Flora’s
men behind me in confusion.
. . . _ . . .
I felt a tingle and knew I had passed through the trump barrier. I flattened
myself to the ground, closed my eyes and trumped to Ygg via the trump in my
mind. The cool moist air under the tree was balm to my gritty lungs. I shook
the sand from my body and spit and coughed until I felt I could breathe again.
“Hoom, hom,” said the tree.
I startled.
”Don’t tell me you really do talk.”
“Of course I do,” the tree called Ygg said.
I rubbed some more sand from behind my ridges and shook out my wings.
“You never said anything to me. I thought you didn’t like me.”
“Lady Boadice, you never stayed long enough for me to talk to you!”
Ygg sounded indignant. And he knew my name!
“What about the days I spent here to paint your trump?”
“I couldn’t speak then,” the tree said pompously. “Indeed
not! I wouldn’t dream of breaking your concentration.”
“How considerate,” I said and patted his trunk. The sand had gotten
into my ears.
“I hope I don’t discomfort you, spilling desert sand all over your
soil?”
“It will blow away,” the tree said.
I said it was nice speaking to him and concentrated on the image of Ornach.
Ornach frowned when he saw me.
“Boadice?”
I was still in my chaos form, painted, sandblasted and dirty.
“Yes, I look a fright,” I said. “The search for Tiphane’s
trump was long and arduous.”
“I can see that,” he said, and pulled me through to Chaos.
I asked permission to freshen up before giving him my report. Ornach said I
could, so I went to my studio and set to work with paint remover, thinner and
a basket full of tissues. The varnish was extremely hard to remove, even where
most of it was worn away by the sandstorm. Rinaldo and I had kept in mind that
the paint and varnish had to be removed later, but you know how tricky inter-shadow
chemistry can be. In short: I couldn’t remove all of it, and when the
strongest thinner started to dissolve my hard black chaos skin I called it quits.
I turned into human form, which hurt, and took a long bath with scented oils.
Drying off afterwards was painful: my skin was raw, dry and painful to the
touch. There were splashes of paint in my hair and my complexion was ruined.
Flora would have been appalled, and not just because I slipped through her defences.
Dressed and made as presentable as possible, I went back to Ornach’s office.
“You still look injured,” Ornach said when I walked through the
door. I took the chance to point out the sacrifices I made and the difficulties
I went through to find his daughters trump.
“So, tell me all about it.”
So I explained how Rinaldo had given the trump to his mother, who collected
rare trumps. Ornach had not heard of Jasra and I told him of her lineage: a
by-blow of a minor Baccaran, married to prince Brand of Amber. Her castle was
under siege by Flora, who used a trump barrier to keep Jasra from trumping in
supplies.
“So the situation is urgent?” Ornach said. “Hang on for
a moment.”
He took a trump from a drawer and concentrated on it.
“How fast are we?” he asked the card. “Yes, I told you to
crank it up but you’ll have to turn it down again. Can you do that? …
Yes, right now. … Yes, I will tell you when we can go fast again. That’s
right; those elections will take for ever. I’m not about to sit around
and wait for them.”
Now wait a minute!
“Are we talking about the speed of this shadow?” I asked.
“The speed of the Ways,” Ornach said, and explained he had turned
up the time flow of Ornach Ways compared to the rest of the Courts so that outside
time went faster than on the inside.
“I’m glad you turned it down,” I said, and asked him to slow
it down even further because we needed all the time we could get.
“But that Chaos thingy, the king elections, may I know what position
the house of Ornach is taking?”
“That hasn’t been decided yet,” Ornach said breezily. “I
am not interested in the procedure while it’s still in this early stage.
When the heads of the Houses have chosen their leader and there’s someone
I can deal with, I will contact him. Or her.”
“And what do you want to get out of it?” I asked. Ornach was being
far too uninvolved for my taste. I had hoped he would try to become King of
Chaos himself. I had kind of counted on it. But maybe he still would, and just
wasn’t telling me.
“I want it to be clear who’s on whose side, and if I don’t
agree with that I will let them know.”
I waited for a moment, then shrugged and nodded. If he wasn’t going to
tell me more, there wasn’t much I could do about it. Pity, though…
I would have liked to be secretary to the king of Chaos.
“So, tell me more about this siege,” Ornach said. I did, and asked him if he could spare the troops now that the Courts were in such upheaval. It turned out he couldn’t. There had been a series of unexplained murders, without discernable motive except for the fact that all victims were horribly mutilated. The dead weren’t even important people or involved in the king finding procedure. The Houses were scared and the Minor Houses were asking for protection from the Houses they were allied to. Major Houses who were unable to provide sufficient resources were losing allied Minor Houses to those who could. When Ornach took the position the Hendrakes had vacated in the Major Council, he had also taken most of their allied Minor Houses under his wing, but not all of them. When the house of Hendrake split in two, the best of their Minor Houses had left immediately for greener pastures, and Ornach had not made any special effort to recover them. But even if he did not have many soldiers to spare, he still was anxious to make a deal with Jasra. Then I had a luminous idea.
“Perhaps you could make a deal with my father? Bleys has troops, and
you have something to offer him. I bet he is tired of being a wanted criminal
in the Courts. Perhaps you could fix that for him?”
Ornach rubbed his beard and nodded.
“We could throw that into the deal. Look—“ He leaned back
in his chair. “Whoever is going to be king eventually has to deal with
me. By the time the really interesting candidates are knocking on my door –that
will be Jaill and Jostin— we’ll see what they have to offer. If
Jaill wants my support, he will have to publicly apologise to Bleys.”
We both smiled a broad and contented smile, imagining the lovely humiliation
for Jaill Helgram. Jaill, of course, would bring it off with style and grace
and try to twist apologising to Bleys to his own advantage, but it would still
hurt him a lot.
“That would be amusing,” Ornach said, and I considered the big blow
I had just struck for the house Baccaran. It had been a Helgram whom Bleys was
supposed to have killed, and it was the house Helgram who charged him with the
murder, tried him and had him convicted. If a Baccaran became king and had to
pardon Bleys, it would cost him a lot less than it would Helgram. I sighed contentedly.
“I’m sure uncle daddy will agree to this,“ I said.
“Considering what I know of your branch of the family, I think he will
appreciate the gesture.” Ornach said. “O yes, your trump deck has
arrived. Galoria sent it over.”
He opened a box that stood before him on the desk and handed me my old lizard
skin pouch. My trumps! Happy, I fanned them out and sorted through them, my
lovely tools of the trade, my little works of Art. I should still retrieve my
other deck, the ones I left with Rinaldo, but it was good to have my own trumps
back. Oddly, the trump of Adrian was not as cold to the touch as it should have
been. Normally I would be worried because it could mean that the subject of
the trump was dead. But a trump also goes ‘warm’ when its subject
is in Overshadow or another reality so I did not torment myself.
I offered to trump Bleys, and Ornach agreed. Uncle daddy was taking calls and
soon I saw him ride through shadow on a brown horse, shifting shadow at a moderate
pace.
“Hi uncle daddy,” I said.
“Hi there Boa,” he said, not really looking at me but squinting
at the distance.
“Have you got a moment for a little talk? Something that could be of use
to you?”
Now he looked at me.
“That depends on what it’s about.”
“Could you come to the Courts? Ornach Ways? If you don’t like that—“
I looked to Ornach and put my hand on his shoulder to include him in the trump
contact.
Bleys shrugged, but I could feel he did not like the idea of coming to the Courts.
“Considering my status as, let’s call it court criminal, I am less
than eager to come to Ornach Ways. As a good Chaosian citizen it’s his
duty to deliver me to justice.“
Ornach snorted when he heard himself described as a good Chaosian citizen.
“These are my ways,” he said, “and in my ways I do what I
please. Whoever does not agree with that can come over and try to convince me
otherwise. You are my guest and you will leave when you want to.”
Bleys smiled, shrugged again, reached for my hand and came through the trump
contact, horse and all.
The brown horse was handed over to a stable demon and led away while I explained
the situation to Bleys: Flora, The Keep of the Four Worlds, the trump barrier
and the army.
“Interesting,” Bleys said. He had settled into one of the overstuffed
chairs with a cigar and a goblet of Ornach’s best wine. He stroked his
beard and grinned.
“So Flora has left Sherwyn… Who else have you told about this?”
“You are the first,” I said.
“Nice of you to think of your old daddy.”
I could see he liked that. I had considered trumping Random from Ygg but I did
not have any trumps, then. But I had scored a point with Bleys.
I asked for troops to break the siege of the Keep, explained why Ornach could
not supply them and what Ornach was prepared to offer in exchange for my uncle-father’s
help. I also told him the number and kind of troops I thought I would need.
Bleys raised his eyebrows.
“Those are pretty ambitious plans. Do you intend to invade Amber?”
“No, just get at Flora.”
“Come on, what kind of troops can Flora have?”
I told him about the siege engines, the flying platforms, the metal detectors
and the fanatical, well-trained soldiers.
“Flora?” Bleys asked.
“Yes. And dressed in black and silver too. You’d think—“
“That’s not very fashionable!”
I agreed. Flora is a summer type.
“I also would very much like to get my hands on whatever she uses to
make that trump barrier. So my army will have to be more than merely sufficient
to break the siege.”
I stopped for a moment. Did I really intend to lead the army all by myself?
I realized I did, and thought about myself taking on an Elder on the field of
battle. What had I been thinking? I was good, but Flora was hundreds, maybe
even thousands of years older than me. And she had been underestimated all her
life.
Still, who was I to take up arms against aunt Florimel? I would if I had to; I was never one to shy away from conflict. Only this time I could not afford to loose. Chances were I was horribly outmatched, so the best way to win was to ask Bleys to lead the army for me. But on the other hand… If I could pull it off I would have the right to keep Flora’s trump barrier thing for myself. But I would only get that thing and win if I could keep her from trumping in more troops during the battle or keep her from trumping out if she started to lose. And I saw no way I could keep her in her place if the latter happened. Random might be able to do so with the Jewel of Judgement, but how could I get him involved? Maybe Adrian would want to help. But the best way to win this would be if I could get Flora to underestimate me. Yes, she should be surprised at every step I took. I should lead the army under an assumed name, the name of one of Jasra’s generals maybe, so she expected different strengths and strategies than she’d get. I should take my time planning this counterattack… Luckily, I had time enough now time in Ornach Ways was moving faster than outside.
I shook my head to clear it and turned to Bleys, to settle on the number and level of training of the soldiers I would need. He had trained troops available but not enough for my purposes, so we would have to flesh out our army with untrained men. I looked again to Ornach for whatever Chaosian troops he could spare. He said he would see what he could do.
“I can send a handful along to keep the banner or Ornach flying high,” he said. But I would rather that our army fight under the banner of the Keep of the Four Worlds. I wasn’t entirely sure where Amber stood on Flora, even after her perfidious treason. And you never knew how they would react to a Chaosian army on their side of Ygg. No, it would be best to make this look like an unconnected, politically neutral action. The banner of the keep shows a tower with signs of the four elements above it.
The conversation came back to the price we were to pay for the troops.
“I’ve had enough of it,” Bleys said. “Being wanted has
lost its appeal by now. I haven’t even got time for my duels, though it
would be a shame to put a sword in Murlas while he’s busy with the royal
elections. I can always do that later.”
Ornach promised he would negotiate Bleys’ official pardon with the next
king of Chaos as soon as it became clear who that was going to be, or else he
would make his demands in the last round of voting. His attitude was one of
‘What I want, I get, and the rest I leave to someone else.’
It reminded me of my own attitude to rulers in shadow. Chilling.
. . . _ . . .
To be continued…
