Read Online Nine princes in Amber by Roger Zelazny - Free Book Online

sky was now a royal blue, and the sun was of fallow gold.
    “We’ve now got less than a quarter tank of gas,” I commented.
    “Okay,” said Random, “stop the car.”
    I did this and waited.
    For a long time-like maybe six minutes-he was silent, then, “Drive on,” he said.
    After about three miles we came to a barricade of logs and I began driving around it. A gate occurred on one side, and Random told me, “Stop and blow your horn.”
    I did so. and after a time the wooden gate creaked upon its huge iron hinges and swung inward.
    “Go on in.” he said. “It’s safe.”
    I drove in, and off to my left were three bubble-headed Esso pumps, the small building behind them being one of the kind I had seen countless times before, under more ordinary circumstances. I pulled up before one of the pumps and waited.
    The guy who emerged from the building was about five feet tall, of enormous girth, with a strawberry-like nose, and his shoulders maybe a yard across.
    “What’ll it be?” he asked. “Fill ‘er up?”
    I nodded. “With regular,” I said.
    “Pull it up a bit,” he directed.
    I did, and asked Random, “Is my money any good here?”
    “Look at it,” he told me, and I did.
    My wallet was stuffed with orange and yellow bills1 Roman numerals in their corners, followed by the letters “D.R.”
    He grinned at me as I examined the sheaf.
    “See, I’ve taken care of everything,” he said.
    “Great. By the way, I’m getting hungry.”
    We looked around us, and we saw a picture of a gent who sells Kentucky Fried Chicken in another place, staring down at us from a big sign.
    Strawberry Nose sloshed a little on the ground to make it come out even, hung up the hose, approached, and said, “Eight Drachae Regums.”
    I found an orange note with a “V D.R.” on it and three more with “I D.R.” and passed them to him.
    “Thanks,” he said, and stuffed them in his pocket. “Check your oil and water?”
    “Yeah.”
    He added a little water, told me the oil level was okay, and smeared the windshield a bit with a dirty rag. Then he waved and walked back into the shack
    We drove over to Kenni Roi’s and got us a bucket full of Kentucki Fried Lizzard Partes and another bucket of weak, salty tasting beer.
    Then we washed up in the outbuilding, beeped the horn at the gate, and waited till a man with a halberd hanging over his right shoulder came and opened it for us.
    Then we hit the road again.
    A tyrannosaurus leaped before us, hesitated for a moment, then went on his way, off to the left. Three more pterodactyls passed overhead.
    “I am loath to relinquish Amber’s sky,” said Random, whatever that meant, and I grunted back at him.
    “I’m afraid to try it all at once, though,” he continued. “We might be torn to bits.”
    “Agreed,” I agreed.
    “But on the other hand, I don’t like this place.”
    I nodded, so we drove on, till the silicon plain ended and bare rock lay all about us.
    “What are you doing now?” I ventured.
    “Now that I’ve got the sky, I’m going to try for the terrain,” he said.
    And the rock sheet became rocks, as we drove along. There was bare, black earth between, After a while, there was more earth and fewer rocks. Finally, I saw splotches of green. First a bit of grass here and there. But it was a very, very bright green, of a kind like yet unlike that common on Earth as I knew it
    Soon there was much of it.
    After a time there were trees, spotted occasionally along our way.
    Then there was a forest
    And what a forest!
    I had never seen trees such as this, mighty and majestic, of a deep, rich green, slightly tinged with gold. They towered, they soared. They were enormous pines, oaks, maples, and many others which I could not distinguish. Through them crept a breeze of fantastic and lovely fragrance, when I cracked the window a bit. I decided to open it all the way and leave it like that after I’d had a few whiffs.
    “The Forest of Arden,” said the man who