The Courts of Chaos, chapter 9

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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While Oberon attempted to repair the primal Pattern, he tasked Corwin with riding from Amber to Chaos, delivering to him the Jewel of Judgment by messenger bird along the way. Corwin was hindered in that mission: by his brother Brand who attempted to steal the Jewel and shot his horse, by the seductive Lady, by murderous leprechauns, and by a ponderous crow, and last by a murderous jackal. Finally Corwin reached a vast plateau he could not hope to cross before the storm of Shadow undoing itself caught up with him. On the plateau he sees the black road, proving that Oberon had failed. He realized his only choice was to use the Jewel to create a pattern where he was.

He plants the staff he cut from the tree, Ygg, in the ground. Staring into the Jewel, which contains the template of the Pattern, Corwin begins to walk its shape on the ground. He meets no resistance as he goes, unlike walking an established Pattern like the one in Amber. The act brings up pleasant memories of his past life on Earth, especially of Paris in the early 20th century. However, around the periphery of the Pattern, images of faces mock him. The advancing storm finally catches up with and overtakes him, but it does not obliterate the ground where he is working.

There is one moment of resistance as Corwin nears the end of the labyrinth, but then the Pattern is complete, and he stands at its centre. Suddenly Brand appears, having apparently teleported there just as Corwin finished. He is wearing an eyepatch over the eye that Corwin's bloodbird attacked. He steals the Jewel, kicks Corwin to the ground, and disappears. Corwin collapses in despair.

This is a short chapter, light on plot but momentous. Corwin has succeeded where Oberon apparently failed: creating a new Pattern, albeit one in Shadow and close to Chaos rather than in the primal Amber. Presumably this new Pattern will hold off the destruction of the Shadow multiverse that began with Oberon's work. Brand regards it as a hindrance to his own plan to destroy the primal Pattern, then recreate Amber and Shadow to his own liking. "Now," he complains, "I have another Pattern to destroy before I set things right."

First, he says, as he departs with the Jewel of Judgment, "I need this to turn the battle at the Courts." In case you'd forgotten, Corwin's hellride was but one part of Oberon's larger plan. Benedict went directly to the Courts of Chaos to engage the Chaosians in battle, but how that is going, we don't yet know, because Corwin doesn't know. I'm still half convinced Corwin's hellride was intended as a diversion. It's kept Brand distracted until now. Maybe giving Corwin the opportunity to create a new Pattern was actually the plan all along. Obviously, it' within Oberton's abilities to manipulate people and events that way.

As Corwin walks his new Pattern, he recalls good memories of living in Paris in 1905. The suggestion is that the Jewel is evoking these memories, just as walking the Pattern in Rebma restored his memory the first time. But he also seems to be channelling those memories back into his work to create the Pattern. Perhaps by feeding good memories of a good world back into the Jewel, this new Pattern will also have a good effect on the Shadows it casts.

The chapter ends with Corwin seemingly defeated. But I think he's won. Whatever Brand's plan is, he's foiled it, at least for the time being. And this is a pulp novel with only five chapters remaining, so it's a fair guess that everything will turn out right. The fun will be in seeing where it goes from here. Back to the Courts of Chaos, I hope.