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

was my brother. and I knew he was right, and somehow I both loved and envied him for his wisdom, his knowledge.
    “Brother,” said I, “you’re doing all right. Better than I’d expected. Thank you.”
    This seemed to take him somewhat aback. It was as if he’d never received a good word from a relative before.
    “I’m doing my best,” he said, “and I’ll do it all the way, I promise. Look at it! We’ve got the sky, and we’ve got the forest! It’s almost too good to be true! We’ve passed the halfway point, and nothing’s bugged us especially. I think we’re very fortunate. Will you give me a Regency?”
    “Yes.” I said, not knowing what it meant, but willing to grant it. if it lay within my powers.
    He nodded then and said, “You’re okay.”
    He was a homicidal little fink, who I recalled had always been sort of a rebel. Our parents had tried to discipline him in the past, I knew, never very successfully. And I realized. with that, that we had shared common parents, which I suddenly knew was not the case with me and Eric, me and Flora, me and Caine and Bleys and Fiona. And probably others, but these I’d recalled, I knew for sure.
    We were driving on a bare, dirt roadway through a cathedral of enormous trees. It seemed to go on forever and ever. I felt safe in the place. Occasionally, startled a deer, surprised a fox crossing or standing near the road. In places, the way was marked with hoof prints. The sunlight was sometimes filtered through leaves, angling like tight golden strings on some Hindu musical instrument. The breeze was moist and spoke of living things. It came to me that I knew this place, that I had ridden this road often in the past. I had ridden through the Forest of Arden on horseback, walked through it, hunted in it. lay on my back beneath some of those great boughs, my arms beneath my head, staring upward. I had climbed among the branches of some of those giants and looked down upon a green world, constantly shifting.
    “I love this place.” I said, only half realizing I had said it aloud. and Random replied. “You always did.” and there might have been a trace of amusement in his voice. I couldn’t be sure.
    Then off in the distance I heard a note which I knew to be the voice of a hunting born.
    “Drive faster,” said Random suddenly. “That sounds to be Julian’s horn”
    I obeyed.
    The horn sounded again, nearer.
    “Those damn hounds of his will tear this car to pieces, and his birds will feed on our eyes!” he said. “I’d hate to meet him when he’s this well prepared. Whatever he hunts, I know he’d willingly relinquish it for quarry such as two of his brothers.”
    “’Live and let live’ is my philosophy these days,” I remarked.
    Random chuckled.
    “What a quaint notion. I’ll bet it will last all of five minutes.”
    Then the horn sounded again, even nearer, and he remarked, “Damn!”
    The speedometer said seventy-five, in quaint, runic numerals, and I was afraid to go any faster on that road,
    And the horn sounded again, much nearer now, three long notes, and I could hear the baying of hounds, off to the left.
    “We are now very near to the real Earth, though still far from Amber,” said my brother. “It will be futile to run through adjacent Shadows, for if it is truly us that he follows. he will pursue us. Or his shadow will.”
    “What shall we do?”
    “Speed. and hope it is not us that be follows.”
    And the horn sounded once again, almost next to us this time.
    “What the hell is be riding, a locomotive?” I asked.
    “I’d say he is riding the mighty Morgenstern, the fastest horse he has ever created.”
    I let that last word roIl around in my head for a while, wondering at it and wondering at it. Yes, it was true, some inner voice told me. He did create Morgenstern, out of Shadows, fusing into the beast the strength and speed of a hurricane and a pile driver.
    I remembered that I had call to fear that animal, and then I saw