The Continued Chronicles of Amber, 2: What the Short Stories Contribute – Revisited

This article is a reprint of one I originally published in January 2010. I am reprinting here now, for two reasons. First, I have discovered that some of my original thoughts, specifically the ones surrounding “A Secret of Amber’, were hasty and incorrect. I’d like to revisit that story from a new and, I hope, wiser perspective. Also, I realized that I never wrote a promised third article on the last two short stories by Roger Zelazny. To get the perspective correct, I am reprinting the first two articles – with some revisions – and then the third will hopefully make sense in the proper context.

WARNING – This essay contains spoilers from the first ten books of the Chronicles of Amber, and speculates on the intentions of the late writer Roger Zelazny, had he written a third cycle.

I finished the first part of these posts by discussing things learned in one of the short stories written by Roger Zelazny after publishing 'Prince of Chaos' in 1991. We can get a sense, I think, of where things were headed by considering what we find in those short stories.

For review, and for those who may not know about the short stories, Roger Zelazny wrote six short stories, or fragments of stories, after publishing his last novel in the Amber Chronicles. They were as follows:

“A Secret of Amber” (co-written with Ed Greenwood, begun before 1994 but not published until March 2005, and never completed)
“The Salesman’s Tale” (published February, 1994)
“The Shroudling and the Guisel” (published October, 1994)
“Blue Horse, Dancing Mountains” (published 1995)
“Coming to a Cord” (published 1995)
“Hall of Mirrors” (published March, 1996)

I can’t prove it, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the fragment story, ”A Secret of Amber”, started Roger thinking about another cycle, and the subsequent stories took more and more shape in that direction. As I wrote last time, the short stories introduced a new villain and chief conspirator, hinted at major and surprising changes in Merlin’s relationships with his friends and family, warned that the prime forces of Order and Chaos had no intention of behaving, and reintroduced Corwin’s role in the supernatural conflict, with Dworkin and Suhuy as star players for primal forces. To look at what we can glean from the short stories, I begin with the one first begun, yet ironically never finished.

“A Secret of Amber” is a difficult work to find. Only a few paragraphs long, it can only found in Amberzine issue 12-15, and most fans will tell you not to buy the anthology just for the story, because there are no plot secrets revealed. Perhaps. Also, since this work was done in cooperation with Ed Greenwood, some may claim that this work is not even pure Zelazny. Again, perhaps. But we do find out a few things from the setting and characters. What happens in the story is a chat between Corwin and his sister Fiona, and it concerns attacks, as Corwin put it, by “at least three murderous ghosts”. When I first wrote about the story, I said that ‘no new information appears to be divulged’.

Oops.

I went back and re-read “A Secret of Amber”. The story is problematic, not least because it started as an informal game between Roger Zelazny and Ed Greenwood. Also, there’s not much there from Roger. 348 words. 29 sentences. Two, maybe three scenes, depending on whether the last was new or continued the previous episode … it can be read either way. But when you look closely, there are some intriguing points from Zelazny, even in this short submission. The following are key items from the story:

‘She [Fiona]chuckled, behind me ... “You are wearing your blade,” she said. “Good.”

Hmm. While Corwin is hostile to Fiona, could it be important that she mentions his sword? And given the situation, why is she laughing about the situation?

Anyway, the next sentence is Corwin’s response, just so you know things are serious:

’I went out, uttering no clever comments. With at least three murderous ghosts stalking Castle Amber, the time for such things was past.’

Hmm. Three murderous ghosts? Corwin as Holmes? Certainly grabbed my interest.

Here’s the next key phrase from Roger in the story:

‘one of the walls opened in a place where it should not have done, and something that was both silver and shadow joined me.’

Two things come up from that passage. First off, we see that Castle Amber can be manipulated, and second, we note the first host referenced is ‘silver and shadow’, as if reflecting Corwin’s own silver and black colors.

This is also a clear indication about when the story took place. I originally thought that the story took place sometime after the novels. But by even the end of the first series, Corwin understood a great deal more about how chaotic Amber could be, than he appears to be in this story. Also, by the end of the first series, Corwin and Fiona are, if not friends, at least not hostile to each other, as appears to be the case in "A Secret of Amber". This is in the early years, then, before Corwin’s disappearance from Amber when Eric tried to kill him. We have the full set of siblings, then, to consider as actors, perhaps suspects.

We get another clue then, in Zelazny’s last passage in the story:

‘My book was on the floor, blackened. Damn. I watched lightning flicker and wondered if I would ever know what I fought, or why. Family politics seemed as tiresome as ever.

‘Three ghosts, Benedict had said, and had been on the brink of saying more ere his face had smoothed and he’d turned away.

‘Which meant he’d recognized the one he’d seen.

‘So had the lamplighter, before the ghost that slew him caught up with him and burned his skull bare, from within.

‘Coln had died, before that, and one of the cooks. Seven maids, or more by now, since.

‘Then they started on us. Flora had almost fallen to one, and then Julian. Almost’

OK, that’s several clues actually. The ghosts are human-formed, but not very human in form. Benedict and other victims recognized their attackers, even so, but for some reason are reluctant to talk about it. Politics somehow plays a role, even in murder. The ghosts kill by fire and lightning.

Oh, my. A lot here to think about, especially since this story gives us a look into how Roger thinks about Amber and the family.

Not a story to ignore, after all, but one to weigh in the full context of the whole set of chronicles. Including the five short stories.

Moving on now to those short stories.

In those short stories, we see Corwin on the road again. It seems he is headed back to Amber, but from where? At the end of “Prince of Chaos”, Merlin sent Corwin directly back to Amber. That seems to mean he gets a mission, apparently a very personal one. The nature and purpose of that mission is, I think, something we should talk about.

The first full short story is “The Salesman’s Tale", and focuses on the actions of Luke. Or King Rinaldo, but no, for here we must call him Luke, for his character tracks along the character we knew, hmm, pre-coronation.

In this story, Luke escapes from the Pattern as described in 'Prince of Chaos' - turns out when he cries "I spilled it!", he only meant his tea. Luke did that on purpose, to distract the Pattern while he got out fast. From there, Luke finds his way to Amber and meets with Vialle, Queen of Amber and wife of King Random, who is less than friendly with Luke. Along the way, Luke calls up the sword Werewindle to him, demonstrating sentience in the sword with all sorts of implications for Grayswandir and the spikards. Speaking of which, after discovering that Vialle has prophetic powers, Luke also learns about the 'guardians', a “self-exiled Prince of Amber and his sister” who have custody of the spikards, rings of tremendous power which first showed up in “Knight of Shadow” and were named in 'Prince of Chaos'. Vialle asks Luke to query Delwin as to ”whether his stewardship of the spikards remains intact”. We know, of course, from the novels that this is not so; Merlin has two of them now, and in ”Prince of Chaos” Bleys was wearing one. Of the nine spikards total, two became Werewindle and Grayswandir, and three more are accounted for by Merlin and Bleys, leaving only four that Delwin could control. And since Suhuy, Mandor, and Dara are aware of the spikards, the cat is well out of the bag, but Vialle could not know that at this point. A final significance of the story is pointed out by Vialle after Luke speaks with Delwin, that Delwin was intrigued by Brand being Luke’s father, but Jasra’s mention warned him off cold. We see a hint that there is something of a higher-level threat from Jasra, more than was obvious earlier, and by the way the last time we saw Jasra (in 'Knight of Shadows') she was less than completely amiable with Merlin, and by the way she now holds complete control of the Keep of the Four Worlds, or will once she returns from wherever Ghostwheel sent her at the start of 'Knight of Shadows'.

We change course now, and catch up with Merlin in ”The Shroudling and the Geisel”. In this story, Merlin wakes up to find himself in bed with Rhanda, his childhood friend whose parents thought him a vampire or demon. Oddly enough, Merlin now believes Rhanda is a vampire, but in this story he discovers that he is mistaken, as well. Rhanda, it turns out, is of a race known as Shroudlings, sort of high-principled ghouls who only eat “those the word might be better off without”. Shroudlings can enter normal space through mirrors; their world is on the other side and they seek to remain unknown as much as possible, not least because they seem to be dying off, in some part due to a beast known as a Guisel. Shroudlings also have the ability to prevent conscious notice and to remove memory of their appearance and actions in mortal realms. They can also ‘lock’ a mirror behind them to prevent beings from entering or leaving through a mirror. Rhanda, it turns out, regards Merlin as a ‘pet’, of whom she is fond.

Rhanda warns Merlin that Dara and Mandor continue to form schemes, that Julia is determined to play up feelings for Merlin in order to turn Jurt against him again. We learn that despite his front-runner status for the throne of Chaos, Merlin faces six other contenders now that he knows about, and Rhanda warns that there is one more that he does not know. Rhanda calls him ‘the hidden one’, and says “I do not know his name to tell you, though I know you saw him in Suhuy’s pool. I know his appearance, Chaotic and human. I know that even Mandor considers him a worthy antagonist” - though Rhanda also says this ‘hidden’ one fears Mandor. This is a prime clue we must consider later on.

The ‘hidden one’ has procured a guisel and has been using it to kill off rivals, apparently through the mirrorworld for surprise. In between human killings, it has apparently been killing Shroudlings, which seems to be another reason Rhanda seeks out Merlin. Merlin finds a way to come at it through another mirror, but is surprised by it anyway and what’s worse, he finds out that even the spikard has limited effect on it. Merlin calls on Ghostwheel, but discovers the mirrorworld is a place barred to it. Fortunately, Merlin is able to call up Kergma, a childhood friend and more to the point a chaos intellectual structure Zelazny calls “the living equation”. In the end, a combination of the spikard and the vorpal sword last seen in 'Sign of Chaos' at the Wonderland Bar are sufficient to defeat the guisel. In an imaginative mood, Merlin saves a last piece of the monster, renews it into a new creature and sends it back after the guy who was trying to kill him.

We return to Prince Corwin in ”Blue Horse, Dancing Mountains”. I found this story especially intriguing, for the following reasons. First, it reintroduced Corwin as a major character, and seemed to indicate a father-son team might be in the works. Next, it tied two of the stories together, as it foreshadowed ”Hall of Mirrors”, an irrational phenomenon of magic and psychology which appears to act independent of any power but its own, although in ”Prince of Chaos”, Merlin seemed to believe it was influenced by Suhuy, which carries its own implications. At first read, one may be confused by Corwin’s purpose and timing – Zelazny never mentions what Corwin was doing, that he had to flee Chaos on the strange steed Shask. This does not pick up where ‘Prince of Chaos’ ends, since at the end of that book, Merlin seemed to send Corwin from Chaos directly to Amber by way of his spikard. Therefore, Corwin appears to have returned to Chaos, and did something that required him to flee in great haste. Or else Merlin was only able to send Corwin part of the way … As the story tells it, Corwin “fled smoke ghosts across the Uplands of Artine. I slew the leader of the Kerts of Shern as her flock harried me from hightowered perches among the canyons of that place” . Sounds like we can rule out sightseeing or a simple vacation, especially since in the Merlin Cycle there were a number of references which implied peaceful conditions between Amber and Chaos, such as the fact that Mandor was free to return from Amber to Chaos, even following the disaster when the Pattern and Logrus clashed in the castle itself in 'Knight of Shadow'. We are not told what Corwin was doing in Chaos, but as it follows the visit by Luke to Vialle – who incidentally told Luke in that story that she was expecting Corwin to arrive back in Amber, and as a by-the-way Corwin was referenced by her talking sculptures as vital to addressing the crisis.

Soon after escaping from Chaos, Corwin finds himself making his way in a more leisurely manner, now somehow indicating no rush – whatever was important, it was time-sensitive in Chaos but apparently not time sensitive in the shadowlands. That changes during the first night out, though, as Corwin finds himself to a very strange variety of chess game between Dworkin and Suhuy – one in which the known universe comprises the pieces, with Amber Castle and the Unicorn on one end of the board, and Thelbane and the Serpent on the other. Pieces specifically named in the game include Mandor, Corwin, a Fire Angel, and a female being manipulated by Dworkin which surprises Suhuy, in that the woman is of Chaos. Dara? Or someone else?

The two masters also discuss a ‘hall of mirrors’ which is important to their contest – but only if he gets there in time; Suhuy wonders “without their clues, how effective will he be?” As if on cue, Corwin wakes his steed and rushes him to reach Amber in time.

next: “Coming to a Cord”, "Hall of Mirrors”, and some speculations. Yes, really, I will post them this time.