Chronicles of Amber fic: A Shifting in Shadow and Light (pg-13)
Title: A Shifting in Shadow and Light
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 2,188
Beta: grammarwoman ♥
Focus: Corwin of Amber
Summary: Thus begins Corwin's long, slow acknowledgment of and change from being an utter bastard.
Author's notes: Written for kabal42 as part of yuletide 2011. I couldn't have gotten a better assignment. \o/ And I have to thank grammarwoman for the awesome summary; I hate writing summaries and because of a comment she made in beta, I didn't have to. :D Oh! And just so you know, the last line of the fic is the first line of Roger Zelazny's amazing book, Nine Princes in Amber.
-----------------------
As I stand here and look down upon Chaos, reflecting on all that came to bring me to this pass, it is a surprisingly difficult decision, where to begin the tale. I could begin with my first true memory, but I do not believe we have that kind of time. Perhaps I should begin it with the memories that have only recently been restored to me, of my centuries dwelling upon the shadow Earth.
Perhaps this will serve…
***
Ropes about my wrists and ankles, more ropes to secure me to the horse beneath me. A blur of scenery shifting in shadow and light, in chiaroscuro, in stark monochromatic crescendo. A sky of pink, the ground beneath it deepest crimson. A flock of birds, blue and green stripes, startled into flight, a cacophony of shrieking voices. Soft hide under my cheek suddenly shifting to smooth scales, to stiff and unyielding feathers, back to soft hide. A snarled curse. A raucous laugh. A rain of acid and a flaying wind. The toll of a bell. A smell of smoke, of sulphur, of unwashed human bodies. And above it all the sensation of burning from the inside out.
***
I awoke to a terrible thirst. It was as though a great desert had formed in my mouth, desiccating my lips and tongue as it sent feelers into my throat and turned my tonsils to shriveled and painful husks.
When I opened my eyes, it was to a room I had never seen before; of that I was certain, despite the fact that I could not see it clearly at all, given how dry and sticky my eyes, how blurred my vision. Light seeped in through gaps surrounding the door, illuminating what little there was to see: a table on which sat a pitcher and bowl, and a simple lamp, unlit. A stool rested on three legs beneath the table and a small chest hugged tightly to one wall. There were no windows. The bed on which I lay took up most of the remaining space.
I tried to sit up, my eventual goal the pitcher, which might contain water. Sadly, my conscious goals and those of my body were at odds. My body won as my vision further blurred with the effort and then went black.
***
When next I woke, I knew better than to attempt to rise. The room was dark, though there was nothing of pitch in the blackness of it. Oddly enough, I was not so parched as the last time I woke. As I pondered that, a noise came to me from the vicinity of the floor beside my bed, too large to be caused by a rat. Or so I hoped. From without, a bell tolled twice, muffled by distance and other barriers. Again a noise, as of a sleeper shifting, and I reasoned that whoever it was must not mean me harm or they would have done it to me already, diminished as I was.
Still having a great if no longer terrible thirst and nothing better to do, I decided to test that theory. “Water,” I croaked. There was a sharp intake of breath and then nothing, so I tried again, a bit louder. “Water…”
Movement and a shuffling sound, then, “Here.” A woman’s voice. And it was a woman’s small hand that helped me to lift my head, steadied a cup at my lips. The water smelled only of water. I drank. It was frustrating to me that I needed her help to hold my head steady. It was somehow subtly wrong that I should be indebted to anyone for such a trivial thing.
She moved to take the cup away and I grasped her wrist. Feeble as I felt, my grip was strong enough that she gasped in pain. I released her. “More,” I told her and she obliged but when I would have demanded more again, she denied me.
“There is no more.” Again a shuffling in the darkness and the sound of the wooden cup set on the wooden table. “Go to sleep.” It was a measure of just how weakened my state that I did as she bade me without protest. It was, again, a thing that was subtly wrong.
***
When I woke for the third time, it was to the sound of the door slamming, rattling in its ill-fitting frame. It was day, as evidenced by the light streaming in again through the cracks. A slight figure who I assumed to be the one who slammed the door dragged the table across the floor with a screech of wood on wood to block said door from opening again.
“Is there a problem?” I asked.
The rearranger of furniture gasped and whirled to face me. “You are awake,” she astutely observed.
“So it would seem,” I replied. My voice could have been stronger, but at least I no longer felt at death’s door.
I heard shouting outside and the pounding of fists on doors, coming closer. I straightened in my bed, wondered where my sword might be, for I felt sure that one belonged with me. Of course, I might not have the strength to wield it…
A heavy fist pounded on our door and an angry voice shouted, “Open up in the name of the Queen!” The woman sat on the table to lend her weight - Ha! As if what little there was of it might make a difference - to the barrier. Even in the dim light, I saw her place a finger to her lips and shake her head at me. I shrugged. Who was I to help those apparently hunting her? If my feverish recollections of the past several days were any indication, she had provided me aid in a time of need and only a bastard would repay her with anything but his silence now.
I frowned as it occurred to me that I was a bastard, although not necessarily by birth. It simultaneously occurred to me that I had no idea if such was the case. Nor had I any idea as to my name or my past. I could remember nothing prior to waking in this one small room. That could become a problem.
The fist and voice moved on to the next door down the street and the woman slumped back against our door.
“I don’t suppose you’d care to explain?” I prompted.
“Not particularly.” She drew her legs up onto the table with the rest of her and wrapped her arms around her drawn up knees.
Pushing aside the sheet that covered me, I saw that I was naked. I swung my legs to the floor. The wood planks beneath my bare feet were rough and when I attempted to stand, I grew light-headed, my vision shot with snow and lightning at the edges, but I was nothing if not stubborn - or so I assumed - and I persevered. My vision and my balance steadied.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Trying not to fall over,” I answered. “Where are my clothes?” She slid from the table then and brushed past me as she stepped toward the chest against the wall. Lifting the lid, she removed from it a bundle which she handed to me, keeping her eyes averted from my nakedness. I accepted them from her with a bow and a flourish and if the gesture was somewhat mocking in nature, she made no comment.
I sat on the edge of the bed to dress; it was either that or fall over and I chose the option that would cause me the least embarrassment. While I may have been no longer at death’s door, I was by no means fully recovered. As I dressed, there came a flare of light and a smell of sulphur - superimposed above it the flare of a red-lined black cloak, a bearded, blue-eyed face, there and gone, leaving nothing to grasp- and then the light steadied as the wick caught, smoking fiercely but providing more light than what little could slip past the still barricaded door. That flare, or perhaps the scent that came with it, had also seemed to provide me with a tantalizing glimpse into my past, or so I believed; that belief only became stronger over the years as similar occurrences invaded my awareness.
The girl - for in the brighter light of the crude lamp it was clear that she was much younger than I had at first thought - turned toward me. She had short black hair, bright blue eyes, a dusting of freckles across her nose, and she had gone to great lengths to appear to the world as a boy. Wariness took up residence in her eyes when I stood, no longer naked. She frowned.
“Are you going to surrender me to the Watch?” she asked, staring at me suspiciously. I followed her gaze, looking down at myself, at my black trousers with silver piping along the seams, at my shirt of unrelieved black that felt as though it was made of silk. It was my turn to frown.
“Why would I do that? And why would I not have done it a few minutes ago, with less effort on my part?”
She nodded toward me. “You’re some kind of gentry and I’m…” She shrugged rather then naming herself a pickpocket or thief, which I suspected was the reason the Queen’s Watch hunted her.
I laughed. “I am far more rogue than noble, I promise you,” I told her. It didn’t matter that I could not recall anything of my past, for I knew that one statement to be an incontrovertible truth. She visibly relaxed, though not completely, and her eyes lost some of their wariness.
I took an experimental step toward the table. When that ended in something less than disaster, which is to say I remained upright and ambulatory, I asked her, “Why did you help me?” While she considered her answer, I took another step and, having successfully reached the table on which she sat, I reached for the pitcher. As I had hoped, it proved full of water. I poured a measure into the cup and drank.
“I saw you throw Ned Cranston into the street.” Not quite the answer I was expecting. “Not an easy thing for even a healthy man, and you were plague ridden.” Her eyes met mine. “In truth, when I returned that night, I thought I’d find you dead. My only thought was that with Cranston gone, I might have a place to stay uncontested.”
“You would have willingly slept in a room with a man dead of the plague?”
She shrugged. “It has not touched me yet and it would not be the first time.” Her gaze slipped away from mine, found instead the orange flame of the lamp and the memories it held for her. Ah, memories. I wished I were in possession of some. “My parents died of plague.”
I gave her a moment with her memories, then, “But I yet lived.”
“But you yet lived. The least I could do for you, having dealt with Ned Cranston, was to offer you water and what other aid I could.”
“You have my thanks.” Again I bowed to her, but without either the mockery or the flourish, and she looked at me sharply, shook her head.
“Your manners are too pretty for you to be anything but a noble, sir.” She cocked her head to the side and smiled. “By what name should I call you?”
I gave a short bark of a laugh. “You may call me whatever you’d like, my lady.” I felt no need to share with her my lack of memory. I finished the water, then took a step back and sat on the end of the bed, facing her.
“I asked your name once,” she told me, “but you were delirious and I could not quite understand what you said.” She slid forward until her legs dangled from the edge of the table. “I think I shall call you Corey. It is close to what you told me, I think.”
Corey. It was not my name. Of that I was almost certain. But it felt… almost right. I nodded. It would do. “And you?”
“I go by Kit.”
“A boy’s name to go with your boyish dress.”
“It serves its purpose.” My stomach chose that moment to remind me that I had not eaten for several days and Kit laughed. I liked the sound. “Come, Sir Corey. I would see you fed.”
***
Her given name was Katherine and she called herself Kit, a boy’s name behind which she could hide. She was twenty years old when we met and she was thirty-nine when she died, and during those nearly two decades we shared much laughter and some tears and as it turns out, this is not the place where I should begin this tale.
No. There is a more efficient - and far less painful - route. Try this, then…
It was starting to end, after what seemed most of eternity to me.
And now, back to working on my Festivid. D:
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 2,188
Beta: grammarwoman ♥
Focus: Corwin of Amber
Summary: Thus begins Corwin's long, slow acknowledgment of and change from being an utter bastard.
Author's notes: Written for kabal42 as part of yuletide 2011. I couldn't have gotten a better assignment. \o/ And I have to thank grammarwoman for the awesome summary; I hate writing summaries and because of a comment she made in beta, I didn't have to. :D Oh! And just so you know, the last line of the fic is the first line of Roger Zelazny's amazing book, Nine Princes in Amber.
-----------------------
As I stand here and look down upon Chaos, reflecting on all that came to bring me to this pass, it is a surprisingly difficult decision, where to begin the tale. I could begin with my first true memory, but I do not believe we have that kind of time. Perhaps I should begin it with the memories that have only recently been restored to me, of my centuries dwelling upon the shadow Earth.
Perhaps this will serve…
***
Ropes about my wrists and ankles, more ropes to secure me to the horse beneath me. A blur of scenery shifting in shadow and light, in chiaroscuro, in stark monochromatic crescendo. A sky of pink, the ground beneath it deepest crimson. A flock of birds, blue and green stripes, startled into flight, a cacophony of shrieking voices. Soft hide under my cheek suddenly shifting to smooth scales, to stiff and unyielding feathers, back to soft hide. A snarled curse. A raucous laugh. A rain of acid and a flaying wind. The toll of a bell. A smell of smoke, of sulphur, of unwashed human bodies. And above it all the sensation of burning from the inside out.
***
I awoke to a terrible thirst. It was as though a great desert had formed in my mouth, desiccating my lips and tongue as it sent feelers into my throat and turned my tonsils to shriveled and painful husks.
When I opened my eyes, it was to a room I had never seen before; of that I was certain, despite the fact that I could not see it clearly at all, given how dry and sticky my eyes, how blurred my vision. Light seeped in through gaps surrounding the door, illuminating what little there was to see: a table on which sat a pitcher and bowl, and a simple lamp, unlit. A stool rested on three legs beneath the table and a small chest hugged tightly to one wall. There were no windows. The bed on which I lay took up most of the remaining space.
I tried to sit up, my eventual goal the pitcher, which might contain water. Sadly, my conscious goals and those of my body were at odds. My body won as my vision further blurred with the effort and then went black.
***
When next I woke, I knew better than to attempt to rise. The room was dark, though there was nothing of pitch in the blackness of it. Oddly enough, I was not so parched as the last time I woke. As I pondered that, a noise came to me from the vicinity of the floor beside my bed, too large to be caused by a rat. Or so I hoped. From without, a bell tolled twice, muffled by distance and other barriers. Again a noise, as of a sleeper shifting, and I reasoned that whoever it was must not mean me harm or they would have done it to me already, diminished as I was.
Still having a great if no longer terrible thirst and nothing better to do, I decided to test that theory. “Water,” I croaked. There was a sharp intake of breath and then nothing, so I tried again, a bit louder. “Water…”
Movement and a shuffling sound, then, “Here.” A woman’s voice. And it was a woman’s small hand that helped me to lift my head, steadied a cup at my lips. The water smelled only of water. I drank. It was frustrating to me that I needed her help to hold my head steady. It was somehow subtly wrong that I should be indebted to anyone for such a trivial thing.
She moved to take the cup away and I grasped her wrist. Feeble as I felt, my grip was strong enough that she gasped in pain. I released her. “More,” I told her and she obliged but when I would have demanded more again, she denied me.
“There is no more.” Again a shuffling in the darkness and the sound of the wooden cup set on the wooden table. “Go to sleep.” It was a measure of just how weakened my state that I did as she bade me without protest. It was, again, a thing that was subtly wrong.
***
When I woke for the third time, it was to the sound of the door slamming, rattling in its ill-fitting frame. It was day, as evidenced by the light streaming in again through the cracks. A slight figure who I assumed to be the one who slammed the door dragged the table across the floor with a screech of wood on wood to block said door from opening again.
“Is there a problem?” I asked.
The rearranger of furniture gasped and whirled to face me. “You are awake,” she astutely observed.
“So it would seem,” I replied. My voice could have been stronger, but at least I no longer felt at death’s door.
I heard shouting outside and the pounding of fists on doors, coming closer. I straightened in my bed, wondered where my sword might be, for I felt sure that one belonged with me. Of course, I might not have the strength to wield it…
A heavy fist pounded on our door and an angry voice shouted, “Open up in the name of the Queen!” The woman sat on the table to lend her weight - Ha! As if what little there was of it might make a difference - to the barrier. Even in the dim light, I saw her place a finger to her lips and shake her head at me. I shrugged. Who was I to help those apparently hunting her? If my feverish recollections of the past several days were any indication, she had provided me aid in a time of need and only a bastard would repay her with anything but his silence now.
I frowned as it occurred to me that I was a bastard, although not necessarily by birth. It simultaneously occurred to me that I had no idea if such was the case. Nor had I any idea as to my name or my past. I could remember nothing prior to waking in this one small room. That could become a problem.
The fist and voice moved on to the next door down the street and the woman slumped back against our door.
“I don’t suppose you’d care to explain?” I prompted.
“Not particularly.” She drew her legs up onto the table with the rest of her and wrapped her arms around her drawn up knees.
Pushing aside the sheet that covered me, I saw that I was naked. I swung my legs to the floor. The wood planks beneath my bare feet were rough and when I attempted to stand, I grew light-headed, my vision shot with snow and lightning at the edges, but I was nothing if not stubborn - or so I assumed - and I persevered. My vision and my balance steadied.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Trying not to fall over,” I answered. “Where are my clothes?” She slid from the table then and brushed past me as she stepped toward the chest against the wall. Lifting the lid, she removed from it a bundle which she handed to me, keeping her eyes averted from my nakedness. I accepted them from her with a bow and a flourish and if the gesture was somewhat mocking in nature, she made no comment.
I sat on the edge of the bed to dress; it was either that or fall over and I chose the option that would cause me the least embarrassment. While I may have been no longer at death’s door, I was by no means fully recovered. As I dressed, there came a flare of light and a smell of sulphur - superimposed above it the flare of a red-lined black cloak, a bearded, blue-eyed face, there and gone, leaving nothing to grasp- and then the light steadied as the wick caught, smoking fiercely but providing more light than what little could slip past the still barricaded door. That flare, or perhaps the scent that came with it, had also seemed to provide me with a tantalizing glimpse into my past, or so I believed; that belief only became stronger over the years as similar occurrences invaded my awareness.
The girl - for in the brighter light of the crude lamp it was clear that she was much younger than I had at first thought - turned toward me. She had short black hair, bright blue eyes, a dusting of freckles across her nose, and she had gone to great lengths to appear to the world as a boy. Wariness took up residence in her eyes when I stood, no longer naked. She frowned.
“Are you going to surrender me to the Watch?” she asked, staring at me suspiciously. I followed her gaze, looking down at myself, at my black trousers with silver piping along the seams, at my shirt of unrelieved black that felt as though it was made of silk. It was my turn to frown.
“Why would I do that? And why would I not have done it a few minutes ago, with less effort on my part?”
She nodded toward me. “You’re some kind of gentry and I’m…” She shrugged rather then naming herself a pickpocket or thief, which I suspected was the reason the Queen’s Watch hunted her.
I laughed. “I am far more rogue than noble, I promise you,” I told her. It didn’t matter that I could not recall anything of my past, for I knew that one statement to be an incontrovertible truth. She visibly relaxed, though not completely, and her eyes lost some of their wariness.
I took an experimental step toward the table. When that ended in something less than disaster, which is to say I remained upright and ambulatory, I asked her, “Why did you help me?” While she considered her answer, I took another step and, having successfully reached the table on which she sat, I reached for the pitcher. As I had hoped, it proved full of water. I poured a measure into the cup and drank.
“I saw you throw Ned Cranston into the street.” Not quite the answer I was expecting. “Not an easy thing for even a healthy man, and you were plague ridden.” Her eyes met mine. “In truth, when I returned that night, I thought I’d find you dead. My only thought was that with Cranston gone, I might have a place to stay uncontested.”
“You would have willingly slept in a room with a man dead of the plague?”
She shrugged. “It has not touched me yet and it would not be the first time.” Her gaze slipped away from mine, found instead the orange flame of the lamp and the memories it held for her. Ah, memories. I wished I were in possession of some. “My parents died of plague.”
I gave her a moment with her memories, then, “But I yet lived.”
“But you yet lived. The least I could do for you, having dealt with Ned Cranston, was to offer you water and what other aid I could.”
“You have my thanks.” Again I bowed to her, but without either the mockery or the flourish, and she looked at me sharply, shook her head.
“Your manners are too pretty for you to be anything but a noble, sir.” She cocked her head to the side and smiled. “By what name should I call you?”
I gave a short bark of a laugh. “You may call me whatever you’d like, my lady.” I felt no need to share with her my lack of memory. I finished the water, then took a step back and sat on the end of the bed, facing her.
“I asked your name once,” she told me, “but you were delirious and I could not quite understand what you said.” She slid forward until her legs dangled from the edge of the table. “I think I shall call you Corey. It is close to what you told me, I think.”
Corey. It was not my name. Of that I was almost certain. But it felt… almost right. I nodded. It would do. “And you?”
“I go by Kit.”
“A boy’s name to go with your boyish dress.”
“It serves its purpose.” My stomach chose that moment to remind me that I had not eaten for several days and Kit laughed. I liked the sound. “Come, Sir Corey. I would see you fed.”
***
Her given name was Katherine and she called herself Kit, a boy’s name behind which she could hide. She was twenty years old when we met and she was thirty-nine when she died, and during those nearly two decades we shared much laughter and some tears and as it turns out, this is not the place where I should begin this tale.
No. There is a more efficient - and far less painful - route. Try this, then…
It was starting to end, after what seemed most of eternity to me.
And now, back to working on my Festivid. D: