The Hand of Oberon, chapter 1

Today I continue my readthrough of Roger Zelazny's The Chronicles of Amber. I've been sick, so I'm late—sorry! So far I have competed the first three books in the series, so we pick up the story with the fourth novel, The Hand of Oberon.

Spoiler alert: This post is part of an in-depth discussion of The Hand of Oberon by Roger Zelazny, which will inevitably reveal key plot points. I recommend you support your local bookseller or public library, and read the book first.

The story so far

Corwin is a prince of Amber, one of nine brothers and four sisters who, along with their long-lost father Oberon, can travel between realities. Their power is gained from the Pattern, a magic labyrinth on the floor in the depths of the palace of Amber. Amber is the real world; all other worlds, including our own Earth, are Shadows cast by it. The Amberites can also make use of magical Trump cards bearing their likenesses to communicate with each other or travel over long distances.

In Nine Princes of Amber, our protagonist Corwin woke up in hospital with amnesia, where his sister Flora, working for their brother Eric who ruled Amber, had him kept sedated. Corwin regained his memories and powers, and with his brother Bleys, marched on Amber with an army to take the throne from Eric. The attack failed, Bleys was apparently killed, and Eric blinded and imprisoned Corwin. Three years later, he regained his sight and escaped.

In the second novel, The Guns of Avalon, Corwin made another attempt on Amber, this time by arming his troops with Earth guns. He discovered that a "black road," used by dark creatures to move between realities, ran through Shadow right to the base of Mt. Kolvir, location of the palace of Amber. When Corwin and his ally Ganelon marched again on Amber, it was already under siege by creatures of the black road. Eric was killed in the fighting, but before dying he gave Corwin the Jewel of Judgment, an amulet with the power to control the weather. Corwin also discovered that Dara, supposedly his great-grandniece, was in Amber. She walked the Pattern, declared herself the enemy of Amber, and disappeared.

The third novel, Sign of the Unicorn, begins a week later, with Corwin, now the ruler of Amber, discovering that his brother Caine, Eric's ally, was murdered by a Shadow creature in an attempt to frame him. His brother Random recognized the creature as of the same kind that had chased him away from a tower where he had found their brother Brand imprisoned. Using the combined power of all the Amberites' Trumps, they successfully rescued Brand, but one of them stabbed him in the process. While Corwin tried to identify the attacker, he himself was attacked in his room.

Corwin awakened in his house on Earth, where the Jewel of Judgment had transported him, to his surprise. His friend Bill Roth found him and took him to hospital. From the doctor, Bill, and subsequently Brand when he awakened, Corwin learned the truth about his imprisonment on Earth.

He had originally been left there by Eric in the 16th century after a fight. He survived the plague but lost his memories, and was presumed dead. Meanwhile, Brand, Bleys, and their sister Fiona made plans to keep Eric off the throne. They allied with the dark Shadow creatures (a move Brand opposed) to get Oberon out of the way, then planned to storm the palace with a Shadow army and put Bleys on the throne. Brand believed they were in over their heads with their Shadow alliance. Fortunately, he had learned that Corwin was still alive on Earth. He had him committed to a sanitarium, where he hoped treatment would restore his memory. However, Corwin escaped the sanitarium. With Brand's co-conspirators after him as well, Brand arranged the car "accident" that put him in hospital at the beginning of Nine Princes in Amber, to protect him.¹ It was Brand's associates who then locked him up in the tower. Fiona was the one who stabbed him and Corwin.

To spend some time recovering from his wound, Corwin visited the floating city of Tir-na Nog'th, accompanied by Random and Ganelon. While there, he had a vision of Dara on the throne of Amber, accompanied by his eldest brother and her supposed great-grandfather, Benedict. She declared herself the rightful ruler of Amber. Corwin and Benedict fenced as Tir-na Nog'th began to fade away at dawn. Random pulled him back to Kolvir. As they returned to the palace, they found the world around them was changed, and they were lost. But then they saw a unicorn, the symbol of Amber, which led them to a location where they could see the Pattern atop the mountain—but no palace. Corwin realized that this world was the real, primordial one, and the Amber he knew was another Shadow.²

The Hand of Oberon

The fourth novel of The Chronicles of Amber begins where Sign of the Unicorn left off. Corwin, Random, and Ganelon ride down to the plateau with the prototype Pattern on it. A dark blot damages the Pattern from the centre to the south; this seems to correspond to the end of the black road at the base of Kolvir in Amber. Ganelon spots an object at the centre. while Corwin and Random debate how to walk the damaged Pattern to recover it, he simply runs along the damaged part and picks it up. It is a Trump impaled by a dagger, but none of them recognizes the image on the card.

A purple beast like a griffin emerges from a cave near the Pattern. It panics the horses: Random's mount Iago bolts into the Pattern, where the griffin summons a whirlwind to carry him off. However, the beast does not threaten the men at all, and it is chained to the cave. They decide that it is friendly toward Amberites and was left as a watchdog(possibly by Brand's faction) to prevent any further damage to the Pattern.

Ganelon guesses how the Pattern was marred: a drop of Random's Amberite blood from his pricked finger leaves a small black spot in the stone. However, the damage to the Pattern is far greater than a single drop could have caused. Random figures it out: someone had walked the Pattern, called the victim with a Trump, and then stabbed him to spill his blood on the stone. He is enraged when he recognizes the image on the Trump they found: it is his son, Martin.

Again, Ganelon the non-Amberite is surprisingly insightful about a reality he knew nothing of only a few months earlier. He deduces that Amber itself cannot be ultimate reality, if Shadow (the black road) can alter it. This domain is the real world: Amber itself is only its first Shadow. The damage to the proto-Pattern manifests as the black road, and gives the dark creatures the ability to move through Shadow.

Why, then, has Corwin been led to believe that the Amber in which he dwelt was the real one? Brand and Fiona have a greater understanding of Shadow than their siblings. Did they discover the proto-Amber?

Martin was first mentioned in Nine Princes He is the son of Random and Marganthe, the daughter of Moire of Rebma. When he came of age, he walked the Pattern. He travelled through Shadow afterward and had not been seen. He wasn't mentioned again until Sign of the Unicorn, in which Random recounts that Brand had once questioned him at length about Martin. Llewella adds that Brand had come to Rebma looking for him. Did Brand murder Martin? Was it the intent of his faction from the start to sacrifice an Amberite on the proto-Pattern to open up the black road?

The killer had a working Trump of Martin, but Corwin does not recognize the style of Dworkin, the mad hunchback who designed the other Trumps and (as it was supposed) the Pattern. Dworkin did not invent the Amberites' power, which is innate; he simply figured out how it worked. Someone else has apparently done the same.

Random's horse was named Iago. This is, of course, an allusion to the antagonist of Shakespeare's Othello. Embittered because he was passed over for a promotion, Iago plotted to use Othello's jealousy, particularly of his wife Desdemona, to isolate and destroy him. I think we can be confident Random's horse had no such ulterior motive.

The purple creature in the cave is similar to a griffin. This mythical beast has the head, wings, and talons of an eagle, and the body, tail, and back legs of a lion. As Corwin points out, it's a common heraldic symbol.

What happened to Martin, and who is responsible? How will Corwin, Ganelon, and Random escape the primal Amber with no Shadow to alter? Can they repair the Pattern? We will continue with chapter 2, this Sunday. It's good to return to this series. Welcome back!

Footnotes

Erratum: In my original summary of Sign of the Unicorn chapter 9, I suggested instead that Brand had put Corwin in hospital to get him out of the way of his own plans, as Corwin had the most legitimate claim to the throne. That was a misreading. Brand was trying to help rather than hinder Corwin, albeit because he needed Corwin's help dealing with their Shadow allies and not to support his more legitimate claim to the throne.

Errata: I vacillated between this being the same Amber they had left and a proto-Amber in my summary of chapter 10, initially presuming the palace and top of Kolvir had been destroyed while Corwin was in Tir-na Nog'th. (Funny how no one noticed.) I guess I read "'You know,' Random finally said, 'it is as if someone had shaved the top off Kolvir, cutting at about the level of the dungeons'" a little too literally.