“Probably,” I said, “but what is the Pattern?”
“Rebma is the ghost city.” he told me. “It is the reflection of Amber within the sea. In it, everything in Amber is duplicated, as in a mirror. Llewella’s people live there, and dwell as though in Amber. They hate me for a few past peccadilloes, so I cannot venture there with you, but if you would speak them fair and perhaps hint at your mission, I feel they would let you walk the Pattern of Rebma, which, while it is the reverse of that in Amber, should have the same effect. That is, it gives to a son of our father the power to walk among Shadows.”
“How will this power help me?”
“It should make you to know what you are.”
“Then I’m game.” I said.
“Good man. In that case, we’ll keep heading south. It will take several days to reach the stairway …You will go with him, Deirdre?”
“I will go with my brother Corwin.”
I knew she would say that, and I was glad. I was afraid, but I was glad.
We walked all that night. We avoided three parties of armed troops, and in the morning we slept in a cave.
Chapter 5
We spent two evenings making our way to the pink and sable sands of the great sea. It was on the morning of the third day that we arrived at the beach, having successfully avoided a small party the sundown before. We were loath to step out into the open until we had located the precise spot, Faiella-bionin, the Stairway to Rebma, and could cross quickly to it.
The rising sun cast billions of bright shards into the foaming swell of the waters, and our eyes were dazzled by their dance so that we could not see beneath the surface. We had lived on fruit and water for two days and I was ravenously hungry, but I forgot this as I regarded the wide, sloping tiger beach with its sudden twists and rises of coral, orange, pink, and red, and its abrupt caches of shells, driftwood, and small polished stones; and the sea beyond: rising and falling, splashing softly, all gold and blue and royal purple, and casting forth its lifesong breezes like benedictions beneath dawn’s violet skies.
The mountain that faces the dawn, Kolvir, which has held Amber like a mother her child for all of time, stood perhaps twenty miles to our left, the north, and the sun covered her with gold and made rainbow the veil above the city. Random looked upon it and gnashed his teeth, then looked away. Maybe I did, too.
Deirdre touched my hand, gestured with her head, and began to walk toward the north, parallel to the shore. Random and I followed. She had apparently spotted some landmark.
We’d advanced perhaps a quarter of a mile, when it seemed that the earth shook lightly.
“Hoofbeats!” hissed Random.
“Look!” said Deirdre, and her head was tilted back and she was pointing upward.
My eyes followed the gesture.
Overhead a hawk circled.
“How much farther is it?” I asked.
“That cairn of stones,” she said, and I saw it perhaps a hundred yards away, about eight feet in height, builded of head-sized, gray stones, worn by the wind, the sand, the water, standing in the shape of a truncated pyramid.
The hoofbeats came louder, and then there were the notes of a horn, not Julian’s call, though.
“Run!” said Random, and we did.
After perhaps twenty-five paces, the hawk descended. It swooped at Random, but he had his blade out and took a cut at it. Then it turned its attention to Deirdre.
I snatched my own blade from its sheath and tried a cut. Feathers flew. It rose and dropped again, and this time my blade bit something hard — and I think it fell, but I couldn’t tell for sure, because I wasn’t about to stop and look back. The sound of hoofbeats was quite steady now, and loud, and the horn notes were near at hand.
We reached the cairn and Deirdre turned at right angles to it and headed straight toward the sea.
I was not about to argue with someone who seemed to know what she was doing. I followed, and from the corner of my eye I saw the horsemen.
They were still off in the distance, but they were thundering along the beach, dogs barking and horns blowing, and Random and I ran like hell and waded out into the surf after our sister.
We were up to our waists when Random said, “It’s death if I stay and death if I go on.
“One is imminent.” I said, “and the other may be open to negotiation. Let’s move!”
We did. We were on some sort of rocky surface which descended into the sea. I didn’t know how we would breathe while we walked it, but Deirdre didn’t seem worried about it, so I tried not to be.
But I was.
When the water swirled and swished about our heads, I was very worried. Deirdre walked straight ahead, though, descending, and I followed, and Random followed. Each few feet there was a drop. We were descending an enormous staircase, and it was named Faiella-bionin, I knew.
One more step would bring the water above my head, but Deirdre had already dropped below the water line.
So I drew a deep breath and took the plunge.
There were more steps and I kept following them. I wondered why my body was not naturally buoyed above them, for I continued to remain erect and each step bore me downward as though on a natural staircase, though my movements were somewhat slowed. I began wondering what I’d do when I could hold my breath no longer.
There were bubbles about Random’s head, and Deirdre’s. I tried to observe what they were doing, but I couldn’t figure it. Their breasts seemed to be rising and falling in a normal manner.
When we were about ten feet beneath the surface, Random glanced at me from where he moved at my left side, and I heard his voice. It was as though I had my ear pressed against the bottom of a bathtub and each of his words came as the sound of someone kicking upon the side.
They were clear, though:
“I don’t think they’ll persuade the dogs to follow, even if the horses do,” he said.
“How are you managing to breathe?” I tried saying, and I heard my own words distantly.
“Relax,” he said quickly. “If you’re holding your breath, let it out and don’t worry. You’ll be able to breathe so long as you don’t venture off the stairway.”
“How can that be?” I asked.
“If we make it, you’ll know,” he said, and his voice had a ringing quality to it, through the cold and passing green.
We were about twenty feet beneath the surface by then, and I exhaled a small amount of air and tried inhaling for perhaps a second.
There was nothing disturbing about the sensation, so I protracted it. There were more bubbles, but beyond that I felt nothing uncomfortable in the transition.
There was no sense of increasing pressure during the next ten feet or so, and I could see the staircase on which we moved as though through a greenish fog. Down, down, down it led. Straight. Direct. And there was some kind of light coming from below us.
“If we can make it through the archway, we’ll be safe,” said my sister.
“You’ll be safe,” Random corrected, and I wondered what he had done to be despised in the place called Rebma.
“If they ride horses which have never made the journey before, then they’ll have to follow on foot,” said Random. “In that case, we’ll make it.”
“So they might not follow — if that is the case,” said Deirdre.
We hurried.
By the time we were perhaps fifty feet below the surface, the waters grew quite dark and chill. But the glow before us and below us increased, and after another ten steps, I could make out the source.
There was a pillar rising to the right. At its top was something globe-like and glowing. Perhaps fifteen steps lower, another such formation occurred to the left. Beyond that, it seemed there was another one on the right, and so on.