Chapter Three
A Chaosian in King Random's Court

Riding into the city of Amber was like a dream. I wasn't quite prepared for the long winding streets, or the little, so very still, buildings. It seemed unreal, and it was making me very dizzy. If I though the trees were unnerving, all these little buildings were far worse. The streets went in flat lines, and the sky was all one, unchanging color. Apparently, the buildings all had door-holes in them, which were their entryways. The whole effect was overwhelming, and I slowed down to look around the city while I passed through. I must have been gawking like a child, but I got no more than a few amused smiles from people on the streets. I guess the subjects of Amber are used to that reation. Amber must get a lot more visitors than the Courts, since we almost never got company, and our rare visitors always looked somewhat shocked and vaguely sick.
When I finally reached the gates of Amber Castle, I was stopped by the guards. They asked my business, and I told them I was a messenger from the Courts to see the King. They directed me to a waiting room, telling me the King wasn't in at the moment. They wanted to take my horse to the stables, which I found amusing, so I let them. I gave Raven instructions to wait until they were gone, change to raven form and return to me. Sitting down in the waiting room, I began to finally relax a little.
Suddenly, there was a strong magical disturbance from deep underneath the castle. For a minute I panicked inwardly, thinking that something bad was happening with the Pattern thingie, and maybe I'd inadvertantly done something wrong. Other people were running up and down the corridor outside the waiting room, and there was a feeling of general panic and disarray. I was about to get up and find out what was happening when a guard reentered the room.
"The King will see you now" he announced. With a gesture I interpreted as a follow me, he started back up the hallway. I followed him to a small sitting room and went in at his wave. Inside there was a short, sandy-blond haired man pacing back and forth in an aggravated manner. He looked up as I entered.
"So" he snapped, "you have some sort of message from Merlin?" In response, I respectfully dropped into a formal courtsey.
"Oh cut it out and get up" Random said. Totally perplexed, I silently handed him the letter and the box. He opened the letter and read it aloud. Now I was totally confused. After the bit about the ring being Oberon's and Random needing it, he went on to read Merlin's comments on who I was, what my relationship was with him, and that I would be investigating Prescott's death for him, and on and on. Now where the hell was THAT written? I watched as Random opened the box with no problem. There's something to remember. He frowned at the ring. "You came all the way here to give me this?" he asked. I could only shrug. He took the ring out of the box, while I concentrated on not drooling. He put it on a finger, and I heard an almost audible 'snap', like something fitting into place. Interesting.
Random studied me for a moment. I felt awfully small. "So, you're Merlin's sister, huh?"
"Uh, yes, sir"
"Well" he continued "if you want to investigate the murder, you're a bit late."
"Uh, why?" I stammered.
"If you're at all sensitive, you noticed that explosive effect a few moments ago." I nodded.
"Well, that was the suspects vanishing from under guard. Again." He sounded disgusted. "You ought to go down and have a look around their rooms. See what you can find."
I thanked him, but he just waved me off. Either Corwin greatly exaggerated his brother's reasonable temperament, or I made the not-so-favorite people list in record time. Huh. Maybe Merlin was right about the hair.
Taking the King's suggestions, I followed a servent to the rooms in question, on a lower level of the castle. I was extremely nervous about being anywhere near the basement of Castle Amber, not to mention I was really getting queasy being surrounded by all these walls. I felt a monumental headache building up, and this dizzy feeling of being locked in wouldn't go away.
Looking around the rooms, it looked like a small hurricane had been let loose in there. The place was a physical mess, but I figured any real clues would be magical in nature. Concentrating, I summoned up the Sign of the Logrus (wow, that's tough to do around here) and examined the room through my enhanced sight. I turned to scan the rooms. In the middle of the floor was what appeared to be a gaping hole full of light Pain stabbed through my head, and the input overwhelmed me. The room started going black just as I noticed the floor jumping up to meet me.

As I woke up, I felt ever so vaguely disoriented. Laying with my eyes closed, to fight the wave of dizziness, I tried to figure out where I was. I seemed to be lying down, on something soft, flat and still. As far as I remember, the only thing meeting that description was something dead. I sniffed, and caught a vague smell of food, and something like flowers. Ok, nothing dead. Opening my eyes I sat up, and immediately wished I hadn't. The dizziness spinning in my skull decided that it wasn't doing it's job correctly, and redoubled it's efforts. Through slitted eyes, I noticed Raven sitting by a window, which was definately comforting. I got off the ridiculously soft pile of feathers Amberites laughingly call a bed and joined Raven at the window. He was all sorts of question marks, so I looked to see what was confusing him. Out the window was a scene of water, and the steep side of a mountain. It looked suspiciously like the mountain that the castle was on. I wondered why they would bother creating a way to a view of where they were, when an impulse told me to reach through the window. It was a hole in the wall, with air on the other side. It began to dawn on me that this wasn't scenary - that was really on the other side of the wall. Wierd. That must have been what was upsetting Raven.
I walked around the rooms, but there were no pulls, no tugs and no shifts; seemingly no ways here at all. The only exit from these rooms seemed to be the entryway with a large wooden doorlike appearing thing at the far end of the room. Sitting back down on the bed, I pulled out Merlin's trump and attemped to call him so he'd know the ring had beed delivered. Merlin wasn't answering trump calls. Fine, let him find out for himself. Shaking my head, I leaned out the door, called for a servant and ordered some breakfast. She seemed very pleasant, and brought me a large breakfast. After I ate, I felt reasonably recovered from the previous days exertion. Getting cleaned up, I wrapped Raven around me as a cloak and went exploring in Amber castle.

I walked along the corridor, which was distressingly straight and flat. I noticed an open doorway and looked in. The room was interesting and colorful. Along the back there were a series of wildly colorful pictures. I didn't recognize any of them, but there were people dressed oddly and depicted in strange poses. Some of them had strange runes on them, as well as being decorated with lightning bolts, skull and an excessive amount of dripping bloodlike paint. I wasn't sure what they were for. The room was appallingly neat, which I attributed to the servant busily cleaning and straightening inside. Leaning in the doorway, I interrupted her, "Whose rooms are these?"
She was polite, but the look on her face clearly said people wandering around the castle and plying the servants with questions was tiresome.
"These are Martin's rooms, Random's son."
"Um. Do you know if Random is available." I asked.
"He's not in right now" she sighed.
"Right. Thanks." I left her alone to her work. Guess it doesn't matter how far you go, you just can't get good help.
Wandering on down the corridor, I came to a second open room, but with no servant cleaning. The door was ajar, and on closer inspection I realized it wouldn't close any more. It was broken and misshappen. I wondered why it was left like this, or if it had happened very recently. I looked around the corridor, but no-one was in sight. With a mental shrug, I decided to look around the room. I found a number of books, and various magical tools and impliments, but nothing exceptional. In the corner was a large black chair, with several basic books of magic, and a half empty glass of red wine. I glanced back into the hall, but it seemed as if all the servant had vanished.
I decided to look around the room some more. It looked like some had just left, and no-one had cleaned up after their dinner yet. My curiosity peaked, I wandered through to the next room. It was an odd room. There were more books on magic, a skeleton, jars and vials, and chains attached to the wall. Ashes were scattered about the floor. As I moved about examining this, I suddenly felt a pulsing and something tightened around my left wrist. Startled, I grabbed my wrist. Feeling around carefully, I managed to ascertain that I had accidently acquired a warm, seemingly living piece of rope. It acted reasonably friendly, and Raven didn't seem to mind it at all. It seemed, oddly enough, to be infused with Logrus. I found I could pry it off if I wanted, and it had apparently adopted me, so I left it there. Whatever. I've seen stranger things than that.
Going back into the corridor, I finally managed to locate of the of servants, and questioned them as to whose rooms those were. The servant looked at me like I had three heads, and told me those were Brand's rooms. Ah-ha. If Merlin's insinuations were even vaguely on track, this was an opportunity to snoop for information.
I returned to the open rooms and got really nosy. I searched around carefully, looking for anything unusual, or for some idea about the person who had lived there. Unfortunately, with the exception of lots of books and magic tools I had no use for, and the friendly rope which seemed vaguely familiar, there wasn't anything that told me anything about Brand. Oh well. Guess I'd have to look out for more interesting methods of digging for information. Nothing else to do, I headed again back to the investigation.

Go on to Chapter Four

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