"There are things in Heaven and Earth..."
I’m not writing this to be a hero, or to the play the part of the historian. I’m
no chronicler of deeds -- just a simple soldier who, over time, witnessed events far
beyond his ken (and often beyond his understanding).
I write this to redress a wrong.
You see, somewhere, somehow, a man in a Shadow Earth (that same Shadow which was made home for Princess Florimel, Lord Ander, and even Prince Corwin) heard something about Amber. I have no idea how, or how much he learned, but whether he knew very little and covered his ignorance or knew a great deal and chose to ignore the facts. The end result was the same:
Under the guise of a fiction, he told a story of Amber, and the story was wrong.
Some who read this will know to that which I refer. The story goes something like this: Prince Corwin, lost in amnesia, comes to Amber, walks the Pattern, regains his memory, discovers his brother Eric is acting regent, mounts a military force to retake Amber, fails, spends several years blinded in a dungeon cell from which he escapes to mount a second attack, becomes the acting regent of Amber, and eventually plays a part in Amber’s defeat of the armies of Chaos at the edge of the Abyss.
All in all, a hell of a story.
Except it didn’t happen that way.
Yes, Corwin had amnesia, and came to Amber, and fought with Eric, and then fled into Shadow to mount an assault against Amber. But Corwin came to Amber carrying working firearms the first time.
And there was no second assault: there was no need, for Amber had certainly bled enough.
Eric is dead, Julian and Gerard were crippled (Gerard can move about in a wheelchair, but his legs were destroyed from the knees down by gunfire; and Julian has only recently awakened from his coma). Prince Random is missing, and Caine’s flagship sank in deep waters during the assault, all hands aboard, for Corwin had brought cannon as well.
The attackers did not fair better: Bleys went over a cliff under a hail of stones and hot oil dropped from above, and has since returned to Amber, under both a house arrest and deep miasma of alcohol. Corwin took one step too close as Gerard lay bleeding upon the cobblestones -- he never had a chance, and I won’t mourn his passing.
Fiona has returned to Amber, rescued from the wastelands of Shadow, Llewella, like Rebma, is missing, and while Benedict once moved quietly through the halls of the Castle, both his eyes burned from his sockets, he now flickers through reality on his own tasks -- the Jewel of Judgment glowing greenly from his eye.
Deirdre sits the throne of Amber and tries to maintain order as a mist falls over Garnath and Arden and rumors of war with the Eldar fill the streets of the City and all of the Golden Circle.
The shadow author got one thing right:
"they died, and they died..."
I wonder now if those who have remained in Amber during these dark days won’t wish we’d died with the rest before we reach the end of this story.
View the Chapters of our Story