Blood of Amber Read Free

stores there, also.   I was determined to remain in its vicinity for as much of the time as possible.
    The new trap was a very basic thing: direct and just about unavoidable.   Once I’d set it there was nothing to do but wait.   Wait, and remember.   And plan.   I had to warn the others.   I had to do something about my Ghostwheel.   I needed to find out what Meg Devlin knew.   I needed to .   .   .   lots of things.
    I waited.   I thought of Shadow storms, dreams, strange Trumps and the Lady in the Lake.   After a long spell of drifting, my life had become very crowded in a matter of days.   Then this long spell of doing nothing.   My only consolation was that this time line probably outpaced most of the others that were important to me right now.   My month here might only be a day back in Amber, or even less.   If I could deliver myself from this place soon, the trails I wished to follow might still be relatively fresh.
    Later, I put out the lamp and went to sleep.   Sufficient light filtered through the crystal lenses of my prison, brightening and waning, for me to distinguish day from night in the outside world, and I kept my small series of routines in accord with its rhythms.
    During the next three days I read through Melman’s diary again-a thing heavy in allusion and low in useful information-and just about succeeded in convincing myself that the Hooded One, as he referred to his visitor and teacher, had probably been Luke.   Except for a few references to androgyny, which puzzled me.   References to the sacrifice of the Son of Chaos near the end of the volume were something I could take personally, in light of my present knowledge of Melman’s having been set up to destroy me.   But if Luke had done it, how to explain his ambiguous behavior on the mountain in New Mexico, when he had advised me to destroy the Trumps of Doom and had driven me away almost as if to protect me from something? And then he had admitted to several of the earlier attempts on my life, but denied the later ones.   No reason to do that if he were indeed responsible for all of them.   What else might be involved? Who else? And how? There were obviously missing pieces to the puzzle, but I felt as if they were minor, as if the smallest bit of new information and the slightest jiggling of the pattern would suddenly cause everything to fall into place, with the emerging picture to be something I should have seen all along.
    I might have guessed that the visitation would be by night.   I might have, but I didn’t.   Had it occurred to me, I would have changed my sleep cycle and been awake and alert.   Even though I felt fairly confident of my trap’s efficiency, every little edge is important in truly crucial matters.
    I was deeply asleep, and the grating of rock upon rock was a distant thing.   I stirred but slowly as the sounds continued, and it was several seconds more before the proper circuits closed and I realized what was occurring.   Then I sat up, my mind still dusty, and moved into a crouch beside the wall of the chamber nearest the entranceway, knuckling my eyes, brushing back my hair, seeking lost alertness on sleep’s receding shore.
    The first sounds I heard must have accompanied the removal of the wedges, which apparently had entailed some rocking or tipping of the boulder.   The continuing sounds were muffled, echoless—external.
    So I ventured a quick glance into the chamber.   There was no opened adit, showing stars.   The overhead vibrations continued.   The rocking sounds were now succeeded by a steady crunching, grating noise.   A ball of light with a diffuse halo shone through the translucent stone of the chamber’s roof.   A lantern, I guessed.   Too steady to be a torch.   And a torch would be impractical under the circumstances.
    A crescent of sky appeared, holding two stars near its nether horn.   It widened, and I heard the heavy breathing and grunts of what I took to be two