The Courts of Chaos, chapter 1

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.

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This is it. The home stretch. The final novel in the original five Chronicles of Amber.

My plot summary is starting to rebel against my desire to be concise. Nonetheless—

The story so far

Our hero, Carl Corey, woke up in a New York hospital after a car accident, with amnesia. With the help of his brother, Random, he recovered his memories, learning he was Corwin, a prince of Amber—who, along with his nine brothers and four sisters, has the ability to travel in Shadow, alternate realities cast by Amber, including Earth. They derive this power from the Pattern, a labyrinth inscribed on the floor of the palace of Amber. They can also use magical Trump cards bearing their images to communicate with each other or transport themselves from place to place.

Following their father Oberon's mysterious disappearance, Corwin's illegitimate brother Eric assumed the throne of Amber. Corwin had the legitimate claim and made two attempts to retake Amber from Eric. In the first, he was captured and imprisoned. He escaped and made a second attempt by allying with an old enemy, Ganelon. They found Amber already under siege by strange creatures from Shadow, and helped repel them, but Eric died in the battle. The Shadow things were aided by a young woman named Dara, apparently the great-granddaughter of Corwin's elder brother, Benedict. From Eric, Corwin obtained the Jewel of Judgment, a powerful amulet with the ability to control the weather, as well as other as yet untapped powers.

A Shadow creature murdered his brother Caine in an apparent attempt to frame Corwin, as Caine was allied with Eric. Random recognized the thing as one of the wardens of a tower, deep in Shadow, where he found their brother Brand imprisoned. The Amberites rescued Brand, but he was stabbed by one of them in the process, and Corwin himself was later attacked. Brand later identified their attacker as their sister Fiona. She, Brand, and their brother Bleys had allied with the Shadow creatures to take the throne for themselves.

To buy time to recover from his wound, Corwin visited the ghostly floating city of Tir-na Nog'th, where Amberites often go to gain insight. There, he saw a vision of Benedict and Dara together. He fought with the one-armed apparition of Benedict, now wearing an elaborate metal prosthetic. Corwin and the ghostly Benedict fought, and at the last minute, Corwin defeated Benedict and took his mechanical arm.

Returning to the ground, Corwin, accompanied by Random and Ganelon, found themselves transported to a new reality, in which was another Pattern. Corwin realized this was the real Amber. The primal Pattern was marred. They learned it could be damaged or destroyed by the spilt blood of an Amberite. Random identified his son Martin as the intended victim. Returning to their own Amber, Random went with Benedict to find Martin or avenge his death. Seeking his own answers, Corwin visited Dworkin, the mad hunchback who designed the Trumps and knows the most about the Amberites' power. However, Dworkin went mad and tried to attack Corwin, who narrowly escaped with a Trump he found on Dworkin's desk. He found himself in the Courts of Chaos, another realm at the other end of reality. There, he was attacked by one rider, whom he defeated, then challenged by another, who let him go when he recognized Corwin's sword, Greyswandir.

Returning to Amber, Corwin learned that it was Brand who had stabbed Martin to damage the Pattern as part of his play to gain the throne. He wanted to destroy the Pattern, and thus all of reality, before remaking it to his own liking. Brand himself had become so powerful that he no longer needed the Trumps to teleport himself, but he had also gone mad. He went to Earth and found the Jewel of Judgment where Corwin had hidden it. He then attempted to walk the primal Pattern and attune himself to the Jewel's powers, but Corwin intercepted him there and forced him to escape.

Meanwhile, Random and Benedict returned from Shadow, having found Martin. Benedict now wore the artificial arm. Guessing that Brand would try to use the Pattern in Tir-na Nog'th to attune himself to the Jewel, Benedict ascended to the floating city to confront him there, with Corwin observing on his Trump. Brand indeed appeared, and using the limited powers he had gained from partially attuning himself earlier, he immobilized Benedict. However, the Jewel's power did not work on Benedict's metal arm. It grabbed the Jewel from Brand right before Tir-na Nog'th faded away and Corwin pulled Benedict back to earth. Corwin and Benedict realized only their missing father, Oberon, could orchestrate these events, they tried to contact him via his Trump. To their surprise, they discovered that Oberon had been posing as Ganelon.

The Courts of Chaos

This novel picks up with Corwin brooding in the library. Oberon has returned and taken back the Jewel of Judgment. He has given several of his children separate (and sometimes secret) orders and three days to prepare for war. Random brings him some lunch, and invites him down to the throne room to speak to Martin.

They find the entrance to the throne room blocked by an invisible barrier. Inside, they find Martin with Benedict and Dara, who are re-enacting the vision Corwin had had of them in Tir-na Nog'th. It is, in fact, the other side of the same vision. A ghostly Greyswandir, as though wielded by an invisible Corwin, fences with Benedict. Greyswandir severs the mechanical arm from Benedict's shoulder, and it disappears into the past, where it was retrieved by Corwin.

It was Martin who brought Dara to Amber, using some Trumps unfamiliar to Corwin. He has three of them: of himself, Dara, and a familiar man whom Corwin recognizes as the second rider from the Courts of Chaos. Dara reveals that he is Corwin's and her son, Merlin, and the creator of Martin's Trumps. Corwin is angry and prepared to lock Dara in the dungeon, but Benedict persuades him to let her explain herself, in private, with just family present.

Oberon orchestrated the climax of The Hand of Oberon: specifically, he eningeered the circumstances in which Benedict gained a seemingly autonomous artificial arm immune to the power of the Jewel of Judgment. Only Oberon has sufficient power over Shadow to pull it off. This chapter also says that he alone could have brought Corwin to the primal Pattern—while posing as Ganelon, of course. I should have seen that coming, too.

In this chapter, we see the other side of Corwin's vision in Tir-na Nog'th. Benedict was given an artificial arm capable of defeating Brand. Corwin, using Greyswandir, took the arm. Random gave it to Benedict, who used it to take the Jewel from Brand. Now, Benedict and Dara re-enact the vision that sends the arm back to Corwin in the past.

It's quite a tidy time loop for a fantasy novel, and possibly the most science-fictiony thing Zelazny has put into this series so far. But as a bigger reader of science fiction than fantasy, all I can think of is: Where did the arm come from? No one ever crafted it. It goes round and around in time, ad infinitum.

There's a similar (supposed) paradox in Star Trek IV, when Captain Kirk hocks his reading glasses in 20th-century San Francisco because the Enterprise crew needs cash. Spock criticizes him for selling a gift from Dr. McCoy. Kirk responds: "They will be again, that's the beauty of it." At face value, he seems to be saying that McCoy would buy him the same pair of glasses in the 23rd century.

During his run on DC Comics' Star Trek series, Peter David picks up on this:

Chekov: Who made the glasses, Keptin?

Kirk: What?

Chekov: Vell, if you sold them in the twentieth century, that is when they came into "existence." And they existed through to our century, when you brought them back to the twentieth. It's a loop. The question is, how were they made when they didn't exist in time until you brought them back?

Don't you see? How could they exist when they didn't exist earlier than the 1980s? The Keptin sold them, the doctor bought them, but nobody actually made them—unless there is a second set of glasses in a parallel vorld, that crossed over into our vorld—¹

Of course, Kirk may well have been speaking tongue-in-cheek, or just optimistically meaning that Bones had yet to give him the glasses in the future.

It was strongly implied that Corwin and Dara had a romantic encounter in Avalon. And now Corwin has a son, Merlin, that he didn't know about. Earlier in the series, Benedict had had a relationship with the hellmaid Lintra, Dara's great-grandmother. Wherever Lintra, her daughter and granddaughter, and Dara live—the Courts of Chaos, presumably—time runs considerably faster than in Avalon or Amber.

"Merlin" is yet another reference to Arthurian legend. The mythical wizard Merlin is the son of a woman and an incubus; arguably, as Dara is descended from a hellmaid, Amber's Merlin is the son of a man and a succubus. The legendary Merlin's powers include shapeshifting, of which Amberites Oberon and Dworkin, at least, are capable. Merlin of Amber has inherited Dworkin's ability to draw Trumps; it remains to be seen what other Amberite powers he manifests. He, rather than Corwin, is the protagonist of Zelazny's second cycle of Amber novels.

So far, so good. This first chapter of The Courts of Chaos has drawn me right in, and made me hopeful for a satisfying conclusion to the story in a few weeks. Stay tuned for chapter 2.

Footnote

¹Peter David, James W. Fry, and Arne Starr, "The First Thing We Do…," Star Trek #10 (July 1990), DC Comics, 10.