Spoiler alert: This post is part of an in-depth discussion of The Courts of Chaos by Roger Zelazny, which will inevitably reveal key plot points. You may well have a lot of reading ahead of you.
Using the new primal Pattern he had created before Brand stole the Jewel of Judgment, Corwin teleported himself to the battleground at the Courts of Chaos. There, Brand took Dierdre hostage as a bargaining chip to force Corwin to help him with his own plans. However, he was shot by a mysterious green-clad archer, causing him, Dierdre, and the Jewel fell into the Chaosian abyss. The archer revealed himself as Caine, who had faked his own murder to get to the bottom of the intrigue in Amber secretly. As they spoke, they were interrupted by three trumpeters on horseback emerging from the black road.
The three horsemen are the heralds of a massive procession of musicians, horsemen, dragons, and other creatures from Shadow. Finally, there is a cart draped in black, bearing a casket, and driven by Dworkin. It is Oberon's funeral cortège.
After the procession, Fiona leads Corwin away from the edge of the abyss, and he rests. He is awakened by a woman with a non-human appearance on horseback; it is Dara. She says Corwin is not the man she thought he was, and blames him for losing "the two most important persons in my life." Announcing that she is returning to her own people at the Courts of Chaos, she rides away along the black road.
When Fiona returns, Corwin complains that his life has come to nothing: after breaking out of a santitarium, fighting for Amber, and reconciling with his father and family, all of it is on the brink of destruction. After some comforting, Fiona announces that Corwin's son Merlin would like to see him. They share some wine, and they talk. Merlin believed he was going to sit on the throne of Amber, and wanted to walk its Pattern, but as Corwin tells him, Amber may no longer even exist.
The stormfront finally advances enough that it is time to retreat to the Courts of Chaos. As Corwin and Merlin rise to leave, they receive a visitor: the Unicorn of Amber.
According to Bleys, Oberon "wanted to be taken beyond the Courts of Chaos and into the final darkness when his time came at last.… Beyond Chaos and Amber, to a place where none reigned." I have this macabre image of the cortège carrying Oberon's casket to the very edge of reality, and then chucking him over the edge.
It seems this may be the last we see of Dara (or is it?). Corwin's character has developed for the better since the beginning of series, from his own point of view, but obviously Dara has a completely different impression: "You are not what I was led to believe. I had seen you as a truly noble figure—strong, yet understanding and sometimes gentle. Honorable…" Also, she says, "You have cost me two of the most important persons in my life." Assuming one is Borel, her sword teacher whom Corwin rather unceremoniously dispatched in the previous chapter, then who is the second?
"I thought of Hugi. Had I digested his flight from life as well as his flesh?" Corwin did eat Hugi. Heh. Well, he did tell him he'd eat crow…
Merlin and Corwin seem to get along all right, despite the fact that though they are father and son, they are complete strangers—;and on their first encounter, Corwin killed Merlin's friend.
The unicorn makes its third appearance in the Amber series. The first was (predictably) in Sign of the Unicorn, where it appeared to Corwin and Gérard as they retrieved the body of Caine. The second was at the end of the same novel, where the unicorn leads Corwin, Ganelon/Oberon and Random to the primal Pattern in the real Amber. The first apparition didn't have a clearly defined significance or message, except maybe to foreshadow that there were more things in heaven and earth than were dreamt of in Amberite philosophy—a truth borne out by the second. So what does this sudden and last-minute third appearance of the unicorn portend? The penultimate chapter of The Courts of Chaos drops on Thursday.
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