SIGN OF CHAOS by Roger Zelazny Read Free Book Online Page B

It seemed the source of the roaring sound we had been hearing.   The ground; appeared to be cracked beneath it.   I stared for several minutes, but it did not change in form or position.   Finally, I cleared my throat.
    “Looks like a big tornado,” I said, “not going any place.”
    “That’s why I want you to walk the new Pattern,” she’ told me.   “I think it’s going to get us unless we get it first.”
     

CHAPTER 3
    If you had a choice between the ability to detect falsehood and the ability to discover truth, which one would you take? There was a time when I thought they were different ways of saying the same thing, but I no longer believe that.   Most of my relatives, for example, are almost as good at seeing through subterfuge as they are at perpetrating it.   I’m not at all sure, though, that they care much about truth: On the other hand, I’d always felt there was something noble, special, and honorable about seeking truth-a thing I’d attempted with Ghostwheel.   Mandor had made me wonder, though.   Had this made me a sucker for truth’s opposite?
    Of course, it’s not as cut and dried as all that.   I know that it is not a pure either/or situation with the middle excluded, but is rather a statement of attitude.   Still, I was suddenly willing to concede that I might have gone to an extreme-to the point of foolhardiness-and that I had let certain of my critical faculties doze for far too long.
    So I wondered about Fiona’s request.
    “What makes it such a threat?” I asked her.
    “It is a shadow storm in the form of a tornado,” she said.
    “There have been such things before,” I answered.  
    “True,” she responded, “but they tend to move through Shadow.   This one does have extension through an area of Shadow, but it is totally stationary.   It first appeared several days ago, and it has not altered in any way since then.”
    “What’s that come to in Amber-time?” I asked.
    “Half a day, perhaps.   Why?”
    I shrugged.   “I don’t know.   Just curious,” I said.   “I still don’t see why it’s a threat.”
    “I told you that such storms had proliferated since Corwin drew the extra Pattern.   Now they’re changing in character as well as frequency.   That Pattern has to be understood soon.”
    A moment’s quick reflection showed me that whoever gained control of Dad’s Pattern could become master of some terrible forces.   Or mistress.
    So, “Supposing I walk it;” I said.   “Then what? As I understand it from Dad’s story, I’d just wind up in the middle, the same as with the Pattern back home.   What’s to be learned from that?”
    I studied her face for some display of emotion, but my relatives tend to have too much control for such simple self-betrayal.
    “As I understand it,” she said, “Brand was able to trump in when Corwin was at the middle.“
    “That’s the way I understand it, too.”
    “...   So, when you reach.the center, I can come in on a Trump.”
    “I suppose so.   Then there will be two of us standing at the middle of the Pattern.”
    “...   And from there we will be in a position to go someplace we could not reach from any other point in existence.”
    “That being?” I asked.
    “The primal Pattern which lies behind it.”
    “You’re sure there is one?”
    “There must be.   It is in the nature of such a construct to be scribed at a more basic level of reality as well as the mundane.”
    “And our purpose in traveling to that place?”
    “That is where its secrets dwell; where its deepest magics might be learned.”
    “I see,” I told her.   “Then what?”
    “Why, there we might learn how to undo the trouble the thing is causing,” she answered.
    “That’s all?”
    Her eyes narrowed.
    “We will learn whatever we can, of course.   Power is power, and represents a threat until it is understood.”
    I nodded slowly.
    “But right now there are a number of powers that are more pressing in the