The Guns of Avalon, chapter 7

Spoiler alert: This post is part of an in-depth discussion of The Guns of Avalon by Roger Zelazny, which will inevitably reveal key plot points. Unless you're the sort of person who likes skipping to the last page, go read the book first.

---

Corwin and his former enemy, now ally, Ganelon, arrived in a shadow Avalon ruled by Corwin's eldest brother, Benedict. They want to obtain a large quantity of jeweller's rouge in Avalon, and to buy firearms in Belgium on our Earth. Gunpowder will not ignite in Amber, but rouge will, so he intends to use it as a gunpowder substitute. In Avalon, he met Benedict's great-granddaughter Dara, and they fell for each other. Corwin and Ganelon then left Benedict's house secretly.

Corwin obtains the rouge, and he and Ganelon transport it through Shadow on a horse-drawn cart. They come close to the "black road," which Dara had told Corwin was the cause of injuries Gérard and Julian had suffered. It is yet another manifestation of the dark rift, full of blackened trees and vegetation. They find a woman being attacked by hairy albino men, and go to rescue her. However, it's a trap. Some of the grass grabs Ganelon like tentacles. Corwin rescues Ganelon by focusing his mind on the Pattern, which pushes back on the road.

Later, they see Benedict pursuing them on horseback. Shifting Shadow doesn't lose him, so Corwin sends Ganelon ahead and turns to face him. Although he believes Benedict may be trying to protect Dara, to his surprise he accuses him of murder. Corwin is no match for Benedict in a swordfight, but with some unexpected help from Ganelon, they lure him into the tentacular grass and defeat him, leaving him unconscious and bound. Corwin calls Gérard on Benedict's Trumps to bring him back to Avalon;Gérard, though mistrusting, agrees. He warns Corwin that the black road has reached the base of Kolvir, the mountain on which the palace of Amber sits, and Amber is preoccupied with repelling it. For the good of Amber, he urges Corwin to put off any action against Eric for now. Corwin and Ganelon then continue their journey through Shadow to Antwerp.

Chapter 6 ended with Corwin and Dara kissing, and it's evident from this chapter that they went further than that. There's a lengthy paragraph in which Corwin contrasts the three relationships with women he has had thus far in this series. With Moire, it was strictly physical; with Lorraine, it was a deeper friendship "with its element of world-weary understanding between two veterans." But with Dara, he actually cares for her—though, he admits, with the ulterior motive of transferring her trust from Benedict to himself, for which he feels guilty. (He also notes that she is a relative, though distant enough that it doesn't matter to him, though I still think it's skeevy.) I'm glad to see this excursus. I was beginning to think Zelazny wanted to include an element of romance in the story, but he just couldn't write it properly and got rid of it at his earliest convenience.

As he and Ganelon try to avoid the black road, Corwin shifts the sun higher in the sky, back toward noon. Apparently manipulating time is part of the Amberites' power over Shadow. This makes sense: time passes differently in different Shadows: Ganelon had been living an ordinary human lifespan in Lorraine, though by Corwin's reckoning it had been six centuries since he banished him from Avalon. Amber itself seems to be timeless.

Gérard tells Corwin that the black road has reached Kolvir, and he believes that the other end reaches all the way to the "Courts of Chaos." By my recollection, this is the third time Chaos or the Courts of Chaos have been mentioned, though we haven't been told any more about it. To reiterate my questions from chapter 6 of Nine Princes in Amber: What exactly is Chaos? Is it another world, a sort of anti-Amber? Is it simply the edge of existence, past which Shadows cease to emanate? Or is it something else? I assume answers will be forthcoming by the fifth book in this series, which is titled The Courts of Chaos.

Why, exactly, is Benedict angry at Corwin? He thinks he's a murderer, but Corwin hasn't murdered anyone in Avalon. It's clearly a case of mistaken identity. But who's the victim? My guess is the buried bodies Ganelon discovered in Avalon. But he thought ‘'Benedict'' had killed them.

With two chapters left, we're going to need some resolution soon. Stay tuned for chapter 8 this Sunday.