Corwin, Deidre, and Random spend two nights skulking through the forest ducking patrols. On the third morning, running on berries and rainwater, they come to the beach – the “pink and sable sands of the great sea.” They need to find the marker on the beach that indicates where the Stairway to Rebma – Faiella-bionin – is located. “Faiella” is an Italian surname that stems from a Sicilian town (Failla) or maybe means “little Fairy.”
I’d assumed it was an Irish name, since so many of the names Zelazny uses in this book are Irish.
It’s apparently named after Oberon’s former one time wife, Faiella, who is the mother of Eric, Corwin and Deidre. She died tragically in childbirth with Deidre. I couldn’t find what “bionin” might be a reference to.
Our heroes protagonists find the marker they need on the beach and start toward it, leaving them very exposed. A hawk, probably Julian’s, circles overhead and hoofbeats pound the earth. They’ve been spotted, they are pursued. They make a run for the ocean and Corwin finds that they’re basically walking down a big staircase into the sea, and then under the sea.
“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.
It, uh, Corwin might know but we don’t.
Zelazny just handwaves big chunks of stuff. How do they breathe underwater? They just do. It’s magic. It’s elegant. Efficient. No wasted words. No turning a slim novel into a weighty tome with explanations of magic systems and the history of magic. Just accept it, the way we accept gravity and magnets. They’re fuckin’ magic. It just is. I love it. I love a complicated in depth detailed magic system too but this? This just IS. You have to take it on faith that it makes sense. You have to trust the story. You have to invest in things other than background details like how the magic works. It just does.
They get down the stairs, there’s a big cinematic fight with murky green light and blooms of drifting blood and maniacal laughter, and then they cross through the gate to Rebma and are safe among people who don’t wear much clothing, and have green nipples. Deidre greets Queen Moire and asks for help against Eric. Moire says she won’t send troops because that will fuck up her city, but also says she hates Eric almost as much as she hates Random.
If he was going to pay-whatever the price-for whatever he had done, I could see that he would pay it like a true prince of Amber-as our three dead brothers had done ages ago, I suddenly recalled. He would pay it, mocking them the while, laughing though his mouth was filled with the blood of his body, and as he died he would pronounce an irrevocable curse which would come to pass.
I just… I just need to point out… that the price he’s paying is to marry a hot chick. I just… seriously. That’s his big sentence. To be married for a year, to a VERY nice lady. Spoiler: they fall in love. Dang, what a horrific punishment. Poor guy.
Deidre does the talking because Corwin doesn’t know what to ask for or why, and Random will be straight up executed if he pushes even the smallest boundary. What does Deidre ask for? Access to power.
“In a place in this building,” she said, “there is a room where few would go. In that room,” she continued, “upon the floor, traced in fiery outline, there lies a duplicate of the thing we call the Pattern. Only a son or daughter of Amber’s late liege may walk this Pattern and live; and it gives to such a person a power over Shadow.” Here Moire blinked several times, and I speculated as to the number of her subjects she had sent upon that path, to gain some control of this power for Rebma. Of course, she had fai!ed. “To walk the Pattern,” Deirdre went on, “should, we feel, restore to Corwin his memory of himself as a prince of Amber. He cannot go to Amber to do it, and this is the only place I know where it is duplicated, other than Tir-na Nog’th, where of course we may not go at this time.”
This is a great introduction to The Pattern, one of the most important things in the series. Among other things it provides power to the people able to navigate it, the power to traverse Shadow, and in this case can heal Corwin’s fractured memory. Moire apparently didn’t know the genetic requirements for the trial, and has sent many of her people to their deaths.
We also discover what Random did to piss off Moire so much: he ran off with her daughter, who returned pregnant and heart broken. She killed herself after giving birth, leaving her son to grow up without any parents. Random didn’t know he had a kid, or else didn’t care. He certainly wasn’t involved in the kid’s life. At all. Because Random is… say it with me… the worst. His poor future wife.
Corwin, meanwhile, has a tête-à-tête with Moire where he mentions he lived in a place that he loved, and a few sentences later mentions that he loves Random as a brother. Moire is pretty shocked to hear this! A lord of Amber capable of LOVE? This is one of the big themes of the series, and something Corwin later touches on explicitly – the idea that he and his siblings are kind of emotionally developmentally arrested and take a long time to mature into adulthood. In this way it makes sense that Random is such an incredible asshole – if he were a human he’d be 15 and listening to Linkin Park and browsing incel forums.
Corwin and Moire fuck, and in addition to having green nipples she also has green pubes. It is VERY important that we know this about her. They go to dinner then and Zelazny continues the whole “Yeah, this is magic, deal with it,” as Corwin continues narrating to his unseen audience including discussing some of the practicalities of living underwave.
After we had eaten-and I had learned the trick of eating under water, which I might detail later on if circumstances really warrant-
“So what was it like visiting this strange and magical realm?”
“Oh, you know, stuff.”
Dedire’s no better, though.
“Why is this part of the ocean, within the double of Amber, so different from waters elsewhere?” I asked.
“Because that is the way it is,” said Deirdre, which irritated me.
Like my dude, as you sow so shall you reap. But again, there’s magic! The world is magic! It just is! There’s no long explanations or history!
They start descending a long spiral staircase, but it’s such a long distance that they just… jump off and swim down which is such a great bit of real-world common sense levity.
It’s a nice moment before the Real Shit starts. Corwin sees The Pattern for the first time (in his memory) and it’s impressive. It’s also something that’s never solidly, cohesively described or depicted as Zelazny wanted to leave it up to the reader’s imagination as to what it looks like. Corwin begins walking it after a little instructional pep talk from Random and… the memories start coming.
It’s… a lot.
Corwin’s seen a lot of history.
Corwin’s taken part in a lot of history.
I’m going to go over some of his history in the next entry.
References:
- Tir-na Nog’th is “Tír na nÓg” with a “‘th” appended to it. Tír na nÓg is the land of youth or the land of the young, a Celtic other world populated by gods.
- Lir is the Irish God of the Sea, and also IS The Sea. God (the ocean) only knows where Benedict is.
