Chapter three starts out with another recap of the previous book and the first two chapters. It’s short but still gives a very serialized feeling to the book, although I couldn’t find information about it having been published in whole or part serially when I looked online. It also gives a bit of a spinning wheels feeling in an already slim volume.
Corwin’s pretty hung up on Moire possibly having hooked up with Eric. It’s like he claimed her as HIS, a woman he met once and slept with once and hasn’t been in contact with since then (as far as we know, maybe they had some kind of long distance romantic correspondence he never mentions). He muses on his family situation a bit, a melancholy guy on the morning of a battle.
I awoke wondering whether my brothers and sisters thought of me as I thought of them. It was a very sad thought.
It is! It’s very sad! It’s a sadness of their own making. Or, at least, of his making. In a later book Flora mentions that Random used to come hang out at her place and stink it up with pot (inferred) and gross icky gross musicians. They used to hang out! He kept inflicting himself upon her! She put up with him! Benedict provides a safe harbor for Martin. Julian and Caine are best buddies. Fiona, Bleys, and Brand are super tight. How much of this strife is innate to the children of Oberon and how much of it is Corwin himself? I mean, they are a plotty bunch, and they are fond of vendettas (in theory). But mostly they seem to just sit around and shit talk each other when the throne isn’t on the line.
Corwin being concerned about how his siblings think of him, how they perceive him, feels like a relatively new development for him. He wants them to think of him, and think well of him. He doesn’t want them to think of him as a pawn in a game.
Corwin cleans up, shaves, and puts on the clothing he arrived in – the clothing that Eric had his people dress Corwin in when he was starved and blind. It’s ragged and torn but it’s his colors; it’s his silver rose clasping his cloak closed; it’s his bright silver sword hanging at his side. Lance remarks on his freshly shaven face but neither he nor Ganelon, who was once his friend and knew him well, recognize him as Corwin the sorcerer king of Avalon. Ganelon has a lot on his mind, including what’s up with Corwin.
“I wonder about Corwin,” Ganelon said to me.
“He is with us,” I told him, and he looked at me strangely, seemed to notice the rose for the first time, then nodded brusquely.
“He is with us,” I told him, “from a certain point of view.” How do you drop that little knowledge bomb on someone? “Hey, you know that guy you hate who fucked you up real bad? Ha ha so, like, funny story… that’s me!” “Hey, Ganelon ol’ buddy, you know how you trust me a lot and depend on me? Psych! I’m the evil sorcerer who fucked you over and exiled you from home to a life of misery and murderous squalor! It’s a funny old world, innit?” “Hey, Lance, you know the evil demon king who was such a coward he fled at the first sign of trouble? hehe, that’s me! I mean, it’s not, but it is, too. What laffs!”
There’s no easy way of doing it.
Corwin et al enter the Circle and fight and fight and fight and kill all the men and start facing off against non-human enemies as well.
Corwin swings his magical silver sword, to good affect.
Grayswandir became a flame in my hand, a thunderbolt, a portable electric chair.
That’s more than just a sword.
Interestingly this book again brings up Christianity – or a Christianity analog, as practiced by Lancelot du Lac.
“I know no gods, but if any care to be with us, I welcome them.”
“There is but one God,” said Lance. “I pray that He be with us.”
“Amen,” said Ganelon, lighting his pipe. “For today.”
To my right, I saw Lance draw a similar line of chaos, and he was muttering beneath his breath. Prayers for the dead, no doubt.
Our trio of protagonists make it to the center of the Circle. Lancelot and Corwin each claim the right to kill the head demon. Ganelon does not give a fuck who does it as long as it’s done. Soon after Lance and Ganelon each holler for someone to get going and kill the demon. Corwin takes the lead and kicks in a door. The demon responds by hurling his sword at Corwin.
And like.
Zelazny was a fencer, he loved swords, but also he loved judo and other martial arts. So yeah, he’s got these sword guys swording at each other but also they do so love to grapple. Corwin and the demon wrestle and the demon tempts Corwin so the wrestling, you know, is more than just physical. Look upon the Courts of Chaos ye mighty and revel in the throne you might claim! Corwin rejects it, though, but uses it as a fakeout. He fights dirty. Yet again, there’s death by throttling. Corwin isn’t sure at first who snapped whose neck but he wakes up so it wasn’t him that got got.
Ganelon is there when Corwin wakes up and Has A Moment Of Connection with him. Lorraine is also there and she has a long memory. Although Ganelon interacted personally with Corwin as King of Avalon and is able to forgive him, Lorraine only knows of him from stories… including the gruesome execution of her grandfather. Or maybe she does remember! I’m not sure when exactly it happened. It was so gross and horrible that people are still talking about it. She cannot forgive him, she sees him only as a monster in the shadow of his past, and she leaves him behind. He stays with Ganelon which really is a mistake, I must say. Ganelon does not give a shit and keeps talking to Corwin.
One thing I wish Zelazny had touched upon more is exactly how different routes through the Shadows looked! We hear a lot about The Black Road but here we have an ever-expanding Circle.
Here, the path was the Circle. Elsewhere, it might be some different thing.
There’s only the Circle, and the Cave in the Avalon that Benedict is nurse-maiding in memory of Corwin. And, you know, I get it. These books aren’t filled with world building and consistent details. Zelazny isn’t Tolkien. There’s just these tantalizing crumbs.
It’s a big part of why the diceless roleplaying game is so much fun. You can really dig in and flesh stuff out.
Corwin tells Ganelon that Avalon, a version of it at least, still exists and he’s headed there… to buy a substance that explodes in Amber. This motherfucker is bringing GUNS to a FANTASY WORLD that CARS simply DO NOT WORK IN. He is CROSSING GENRES. The title of the novel IS LITERAL. Corwin is going to AVALON to get GUNS. He is getting GUNS that are FROM AVALON. One could say that the Guns are… OF Avalon!!!
Ganelon takes this in stride and doesn’t ask what a “gun” is.
He proposes that he accompany Corwin not only to Avalon, but on to Amber itself. Corwin agrees because what the fuck why not. They head back to the Keep and everyone who Corwin thought was a friend and comrade is just… scared of him. Not even wary, scared. They don’t want to look at him. Again, they see him only as the reflection of the man he was; the creature living in the dark shadow of the former king of their land. And I know that I ask this a lot but seriously what kind of king WAS HE? This is BAD.
Lorraine rode off with another guy, eager to flee Corwin. If he’d gone after her at the time, if he’d taken it seriously, his life would have been very different. Instead that guy kills her. And this is a failing of the book because Corwin says he was really into her and he’s grieving her but that doesn’t really come across. Or perhaps he’s telling himself a story about a tragic lost love, a good woman that he drove away simply by being who and what he is. I don’t know. But I’d like to have seen more of their relationship as it grew. That would be a completely different book, though. “The Chronicles of Amber” is a series of books about personal growth and about relationships and yes the relationships aren’t super fleshed out. This is party because his protagonists are a pair of real dumbfucks. Sorry, sorry, I love them, they have sacks of mud in their heads. They regularly overlook the obvious, and rely on preconceived notions. They’re also both over confident, although Merlin has a dollop of insecurity in there. It’s wonderful, it’s wonderful characterization. They aren’t quite himbos – Corwin is too murderous and Merlin does computer stuff – but lord they aren’t SMART. It’s one of the things that keeps them from being too perfect. Witty? Quippy? Clever? Charismatic? Strong, fast, magical, good with swords? Yes and yes and yes and yes. Able to put two and two together and come up with four or possibly twenty-two? Not always! It’s fun to yell at them.
Corwin chases down and kills Melkin pretty brutally, which of course doesn’t bring Lorraine back. It’s a whole thing where he doesn’t use a sword on him – just picks him up and throws him, kind of an insult-to-injury-I-mean-death thing. Just hurls him into a tree. It doesn’t make him feel any better.
He has a big emo moment where he ends up kind of justifying things to himself.
I replaced her rings, her bracelets, her combs, before I closed the grave, and that was Lorraine. All that she had ever been or wanted to be had come to this, and that is the whole story of how we met and how we parted, Lorraine and I, in the land called Lorraine, and it is like onto my life, I guess, for a Prince of Amber is part and party to all the rottenness that is in the world, which is why whenever I do speak of my conscience, something else within me must answer, “Ha!” In the mirrors of the many judgments, my hands are the color of blood. I am a part of the evil that exists in the world and in Shadow. I sometime fancy myself an evil which exists to oppose other evils. I destroy Melkins when I find them, and on that Great Day of which prophets speak but in which they do not truly believe, on that day when the world is completely cleansed of evil, then I, too, will go down into darkness, swallowing curses. Perhaps even sooner than that, I now judge. But whatever… Until that time, I shall not wash my hands nor let them hang useless.
Corwin sees himself as an evil. A necessary evil, sure, but still an evil. A useful evil. A vengeful evil. A part of him enjoys it. He’s cocky about it. And he doesn’t have to be this way. He could have talked to Lorraine, he could have sweet talked her into staying, he could have not assumed she’d wait around for him. But whatever…
References:
- Pikemen are soldiers who fight with pikes, extremely long spear-type weapons. They’re often arrayed against cavalry. You get several rows of men with these hugely long sharp pikes advancing on you. You can’t jump over them. It’s just a wall of sharp shit coming right at your tender, delicate horse.
- Electric Chairs are a method of execution, first used in the 1800s. There’s probably no link, but every time I read that line about Grayswandir I think of Andy Warhol. Although he produced “Big Electric Chair” in 1964, his ten-print collection “Electric Chair” came out in 1971.
- Have some Arthurian Melkin while you’re here. Yes, he’s got a link to the mythical Avalon.
- Roses were associated with Jesus Christ, and sacrifice, in the medieval era. Lorraine isn’t Christlike, but Christianity pops up in the land of Lorraine, and Lorraine the woman is sacrificed. And, of course, they’re linked with love.
- “I shall not wash my hands” is a reference to having blood on his hands, i.e. a reference to Lady MacBeth of the play by Shakespeare.
- “The Great Day” is the Day of Judgement, which is to say the end of the world.
