To Rule in Amber by Roger Zelazny, John Gregory Betancourt Read Free Book Online Page B

funny!"
    "Don't be a fool, Blaise. Everything I've told you is true. You can see it, if you'll let yourself. Dad has gone crazy in a dangerous way. He can't help us now. We have to help him ."
    "He must have had a good reason to kill you. You did something to him, or he knew you were a danger to Chaos, or -"
    I sighed. She didn't want to listen to reason.
    "No," I said slowly and calmly. "As I told you, it wasn't like that. I found him lying unconscious in the middle of the Pattern. He kept saying the same strange thing over and over… 'Thellops.' Does it mean anything to you?"
    She looked startled. "Thellops?"
    "Yes." I saw the recognition in her eyes. "You know what it is, don't you?"
    "It's not a what, it's a who." She licked her lips. "Thellops guards the Logrus."

Six
    "A Lord of Chaos." I snorted. It always came back to our enemies. "I should have guessed."
    "He is more than that," Blaise said. "He takes care of the Logrus. It's a sacred trust. After the king, he is the most important man in the Courts."
    "So he attacked Dad?"
    "No. He's harmless… old and doddering. His mind drifts. Everyone says he's crazy, but no one does anything about it."
    "He's crazy?" That caught my attention. "How? Like Dad?"
    "He… he talks to the Logrus. Treats it like a person. Wanders around mumbling to it all day long.
    I've seen him do it. It's… unnerving."
    Dad hadn't gone quite that far around the bend yet. At least, I knew who Thellops was now.
    Perhaps the answer lay somewhere close at hand, and I just didn't see it yet.
    "How well do you know Thellops?" I pressed. Maybe she could get him to come here and help us. "Would he take a look at Dad, if we asked? Or would he betray us to King Uthor?"
    "I don't know. I never paid much attention to him before."
    "But you've met him," I said. "He knows you?"
    "Yes."
    "And Dad?"
    "Of course. We've all met him. Everyone in Chaos has. He decides when - and if- you can enter the Logrus. And sometimes he gives you advice, whether you want it or not."
    That piqued my interest. If magically powerful objects were anything alike, maybe Thellops's advice about the Logrus could be applied to the Pattern, too. If I could only master the Pattern and its powers, I had a feeling everything would be a lot easier for all of us.
    "What sort of advice?" I asked. "What did he say to you about the Logrus?"
    "When my turn came to enter it, he told me to bring a mirror with me. I did, and it became enchanted." Her voice grew husky. "Though I've lost my mirror now, of course."
    "Can't you get it back?" Aber, after all, could summon almost anything across vast distances using the Logrus. Something as small as a mirror ought to be fairly easy. And an enchanted one might prove very useful to us here…
    Blaise shrugged. "I will try later. I miss her."
    "Who - the mirror?"
    "Yes."
    "What did it do?"
    "She showed me the truth, always. Even when it hurt."
    Interesting. Unfortunately, truth didn't strike me as particularly useful right now. I already knew the truth: we had a lunatic for a father and no clear way to help him.
    What I needed more than anything else was a plan of action. If there was even a chance that Thellops could help Dad, we had to find a way to get him here. But how?
    I took a deep breath and slowed myself down. It never helped to rush into things. I tried to take a mental step backward. It always helped me to try to look at problems from a different angle.
    Instead of bringing Thellops here… might we somehow bring Dad to Thellops? King Uthor might have a price on our heads, but I could change my appearance at will. From what I'd seen, others in Chaos had that ability, too… maybe even Blaise? If we could disguise our father and smuggle him back to the Courts of Chaos for Thellops to cure…
    Then I almost chuckled out loud. Ridiculous - we couldn't just walk into our enemy's stronghold with a vague hope someone might be able to cure our father. We might as well stroll up to the palace gates and