[FFML] [Amber]Dog of War 2

[Miashara]

The Chronicles of Amber were written by Roger Zelazney. They are fantastic. Go read them. 

This may have been posted before, while the list was acting screwy, but I haven't seen it on either of my email accounts. If this is a repost, someone please let me know off list. Instead of one huge second part, I'm going back to my originl intent and making this a three part fic. The last part should drop soon. C&C is welcome and appreciated. 

Oh, and this was formatted by 3FT by Dan Brown. It's very good.

Miashara

http://www.deepfriedpuppies.com/miashara

        I left the lair of Fiona with the relaxation that comes from
knowing exactly what I had to do. I was going to kill Orpheus.
Regardless of what abilities, aptitudes, or powers he had, I was going
to kill him because he could not kill me. Well, he could, but that did
not matter. I went out the door, flicking the lights off. That switch
method was ingenious.

"What are you doing?" someone yelled at me. I turned to find a servant
staring at me aghast. If you looked aghast up in the dictionary his
picture would be there next to words like scandalized and confused.

"Leaving."

"Naked?"

I looked down. He had a point. I looked up at him. He also had a full
set of servant's clothes, about my size, that would let me avoid any
number of violent, and delaying, altercations.

"You want to hear something absurd?"

"Does it involve you putting on pants?"

"Yes." I pretended I cared about how I looked and moved over to him.
"Ever hear of mind control?"

"Yes," he replied cautiously, continuing to watch me. He obviously did
not recognize me, which made everything that much easier.

"I can't do it." I dropped him the hard way and left him in the
antechamber to the painting room. By the time he woke up, it would not
matter if he talked.

A doorway from the same corridor lead to a stairway. That put me on the
ground floor. The torches had burned down, and a few sleepy people were
moving about, extinguishing them, so it must have been almost dawn. I
found a doorway to the courtyard and glanced out. There were two alert,
frightened guards watching the well, and they had several well tended
fires nearby. There was a hint of light in the sky. I shut the door
quietly.

I walked along until I found a tired maid cleaning chamber pots.

"Hey, sorry to interrupt. Where's lord Orpheus?"

"Don't worry about it." She smiled and stared disgusted at her job.
"He's probably in his rooms. Why?"

"With all the excitement last night, the cooks are wondering when he'll
want breakfast. I want to see if he's awake."

She shrugged and waved her hand towards the door to the courtyard.
"Don't know. Just head on up."

I nodded and went out.

There was a wind whipping around outside, blowing the snow into drifts.
It felt fake, unimportant to me, but I hunched my shoulders and hurried
across for appearances sake. I kept a wide berth of the
well, but neither of the guards looked like they cared.

Inside, I found someone else and asked again. "Do you know if the lord
is awake?"

"I don't think so," he answered. "I was just up there to fill his wood
pile, and he was still asleep." He glanced almost straight up as he said
this. There was something odd in the way he said it. I didn't really
care.

The stairs were just as I remembered them. The guard at the top was
missing, so I went again to the door to the master's office and bent my
ear against it. There was nothing on the other side.

On one, two, three, I thought and kicked the door down.

Orpheus was sitting on his desk, a longsword in his lap, looking at me.
I was so nonplussed I forgot to charge in.

"Well don't just stand there. In or out. You're letting the heat
escape."

I trotted in and glanced at the door. It was never going to shut again.

"Don't worry about it," Orpheus told me. "I'll have someone fix that."

"Have at thee, and all that," I said. I realized I was unarmed, but that
hadn't bothered me on the way here.

"Need a weapon?"

"Please."

"Here." He took another longsword from his desk and tossed it to me. It
fit my hand easily, and whistled when I slashed the air. Orpheus rose
and stretched a few times. Then he turned his back to me and pushed the
table aside to give us room. By the time I was familiar with the sword
he had cleared the furniture, and we faced off.

"Very polite of you," I said.

"I want this to be settled here and now. There should be no doubt in
your mind about the outcome. That way we won't need a repeat, and you
won't have to come back and try this again."

"Agreed."

I feinted right, left, and slashed at his legs. He ignored both feints,
sidestepped the slash, and returned to his ready position. We circled
once and I came in, thrusting as I charged. Again he dodged, and this
time made contact with my blade driving the point down and away. I swept
it around and he caught it with his, helping it along until I swung
wide. I followed his weapon with my eyes, observing too late he wielded
it one handed.

The mace connected with my head at the end of a stunning arc. Moving
somewhere around Mach Oh My God it bashed my head in, and that was the
end of that.

I woke up. I could feel soft leather around me, and it took a while to
realize I was sitting in the large, overstuffed chair that had been in
the corner earlier. My head was wrapped in gauze. Orpheus still sat on
the desk, staring out  window at the night sky smoking cigarettes.

"Don't move too quickly. Your skull shattered. I stuffed your brains
back in and wrapped them up, but if you start twitching you might shake
something loose."

As he said that I noticed a peculiar sensation in my head. A moment's
concentration brought it into focus, and I suddenly realized how badly
the human head can hurt. My vision went fuzzy, and it took several long
gasping breaths for me to get myself back under control.

"Now, any question left in your mind about that? Do we need to go over
this again?"

"No," I replied. "I'm good."

"Are you sure?"

"Oh, yeah."

"Want me to do it without the mace this time? I can use the floor or a
ceiling beam," he offered helpfully.

"Nope," I hissed. Speaking was very difficult. I think my jaw was in
more pieces than usual.

"Good." Orpheus sounded both irritated and relieved. He finished his
smoke, took another from a simple wooden box, and offered me one.

"No, thanks." I tried to wave him off but learned very quickly movement
was a bad idea.

"Worried about lung cancer?" he asked sarcastically.

"I don't like fire."

"Fair enough. You've been out for a little over fourteen hours. I've
been cooped up here that whole time," he indicated a couple trays of
dirty dishes as evidence. "But no one else here knows of your presence.
I'd prefer to keep it that way."

"That's fine with me."

"Good. Good. Whiskey?"

"Please."

He handed me a glass, and I made it go away. He refilled it.

"Now, I don't know exactly what you're capable of," he admitted. He put
the cigarette between his lips. There was a candle behind him he lit it
with, but he did so blocking the fire with his body so I didn't have to
see it. "But you'll notice I didn't do anything horrific to you while
you were in my power. Consider that my way of thanking you for your
politeness before."

"You're welcome," I grunted. Talking was hard because my headache was
killing me. I let him continue to carry the conversation.

"What I want to understand is why you're here. You're an assassin,
that's clear, but I'm not sure you're here to assassinate me. You aren't
very prepared for that. You have no equipment, no intelligence, and I
mean that in the military sense, and as far as I can tell no plan. That
means you're either overconfident or incompetent, neither one of which I
believe considering you were sent by my dear sister Fiona.

"What you do have is an amazing ability to take a beating. Why would she
send an indestructible assassin without doing any of the preliminary
work? Why would she send you here without any plan or information on
me?"

"She doesn't like you?"

"She doesn't, but there's more to it than that. I spent the last day
thinking over this very thing while I was waiting for you to wake up. I
was sure you would. I hit you carefully, hard enough to kill but not
enough to cause too much permanent damage."

"Thanks." It hurt to say, but I felt I had to.

"No, I think the reason she sent you is because she has no intelligence
on me. I think she's watching you, and me, and wants to see what
happens. She wants to know what I'm capable of, how I react, and what
powers are at my command. That's why I beat you at simple sword
fighting." He paused a moment, considering his words. "You're good.
You're very good. You're probably better than any of my men, certainly
better than anyone else here. You've had decades of training at the
hands of masters, and it shows."

I waited. Compliments like that come with hooks.

"But I'm better. I've been doing this for a very long time. A very long
time. Probably longer than anyone else alive. She has to know that
already so she hasn't learned anything new. As such, I'm going to turn
this to my advantage. Pay attention, this involves you.

"First, what's your name?"

"Havok," I replied. That was what she had called me when we'd spoken
earlier.

"Havok, you aren't a person. You're a thing. The technical term is
construct. You were made, probably by Fiona, from something I don't
entirely understand. It's vastly powerful, so powerful I know of only
one other thing that can match it. But it's far away and there's a large
conduit that carries the power to you. It's what keeps you going, and I
have no idea how to break that conduit."

He was probably lying about that. At the very least I expected him to
have some theories. Still, my mind was a bit fuzzy, and I waited for him
to keep going. The whiskey was starting to ebb the hurt.

"Why would she do this at all?" he asked rhetorically. "Perhaps just our
own brand of sibling rivalry but perhaps more. That more is what I need
to find out. My second question is why did you pause the first time you
had the drop on me? Why question me at all instead of immediately
acting?"

"Because I don't what the hell you're talking about now, and didn't then
either." I wanted to be subtle and cagey but still couldn't think
clearly. "She does something to me, something that makes me do what she
says, but it doesn't seem to take as throughly as she expects. She did
it when I came here and again when I spoke to her in the painting."

"The painting?"

I summarized the events of the room below quickly. He lit another smoke
from the butt of his last and puffed away.

"Trump contact, that's what that was by the way, is mostly mental to
begin with. Why would she be skeptical of anything you have to say?"

"Because it doesn't work all the way. She can't read my mind very well,
and I keep getting free of her control."

"How?"

"Because someone, you, keeps knocking my head open," I suggested.

"That might do it."

"Let's avoid it from now on, shall we?"

"I wasn't aware that severe cranial trauma could break mind control like
that, but I've never known anyone or anything to survive what you did.
It doesn't seem like a good area of experimentation."

"Gee, you think?"

He rose to his feet and flicked the butt into the cold fireplace.
"Havok, I'm going to bed. If you're still here in the morning, we'll
continue this conversation then. The servants have orders to leave food
at the landing. Please don't let them see you. If you do leave, good
luck."

He nodded to me and walked out the open doorway. Just before he
disappeared, he stopped and looked back.

"And, Havok, don't do anything stupid. I'm very grumpy when I get woken
up."

I've been told you can sleep all you want when you're dead. This proved
to be another let down. I sat in the office all night, kept company by
the bottle and my disordered thoughts. My brain did not seem to work
right. My trains of thought got muddled and confused, and frequently I
was unable to review what I'd just decided. By midnight the whiskey was
gone, but I considered the condition of my mind a fair exchange for the
hurting.

What little I could piece together was this. Orpheus, for reasons he
attributed to his altruism and desire to help his fellow man, had kindly
broken Fiona's command over me. That was a heap of bovine feces that
stank just thinking about it. Fiona wanted Orpheus dead, and I found
myself taking offense at her means. No party involved other than me was
someone I wanted to ally myself with.

I stared that decision in the face for a while before realizing what it
implied. Orpheus had opened the door for me, allowing me to leave if I
felt so inclined. That inclination was growing rapidly.

What was growing faster was my desire to relieve myself of the used
whiskey. I found the longsword I'd been so unsuccessful with earlier and
used it to pull myself to my feet. When sheathed it was the perfect
length for a cane, so I took a moment to compose myself as best I could
before stepping out the door.

The landing was brilliantly lit with torches and candles. Before me,
taller than I was, stood a magnificent oil on canvas work of incredible
detail. In the same vein as the portrait of Fiona below, it portrayed
her in fire and majesty. She was tall and confident, ringed with the
same blue halo. The image was calculated to impress the minds of any who
looked upon it.

But I was pretty drunk and had whatever came three steps beyond a
concussion. I was in no mood to be impressed. I couldn't remember if
this had been here when I came this way previously. I stopped and before
understanding could percolate through my twisted brain, I started
talking to it. It seemed like the thing to do at the time. This would
not prove to be one of my better ideas.

"Hey! Fiera, Fiona, whoever you are. How you doing? Don't bother
answering that, because I don't care. I'm doing well, thanks for asking.
Pay no attention to these trivial injuries to my head parts, I'll be
fine. You see, darling, that guy Orpheus explained it to me. I'm a
machine. I can't die. Well, I can, but I just keep getting better. So,
baby, I think at this point you and I need to come to an understanding
where I go forth and live my life without you, and you don't do a damn
thing about it. Does that work for you?"

"I think not," the painting replied.

"Doesn't matter. What are you going to do, kill me?" I swaggered a
little.

"Listen to me, Havok. You will obey me." Her eyes seemed very wide, and
my gaze was drawn inexorably to them. Unfortunately, my gaze kept right
on drifting, and when the full force of her mind tried to slam into my
own, I was staring with interest at a small door in the corner of the
painting. I think it lead to a water closet.

"No, I think not," I replied. It felt good to throw her words back at
her.

"Havok!" she commanded.

I walked forward, stepped past her, and passed through the door I'd been
looking at so keenly. I had been right, and I became a happier man.

Through the door, I suddenly heard words, muted by the wood. I scarcely
paid any attention to them until the sound of steel ringing on steel
echoed outside. It took me a few moments to turn, confused, because I
could swear that I recognized the voices. When I was ready, I pulled the
door open and looked out.

Orpheus struck Fiona in the face. He had his sword drawn, but it was
caught in the wooden bedpost. He hit her with his clenched fist, and
when she came to rest against the far wall she was not moving.

"Eh?" I asked.

"Oh, Havok. Thank you, by the way. You've done me an incredible
service."

"Eh?" I reiterated.

"Bait. You were her bait for me. Instead, you became my bait against
her. She'd be able to evade me alone, but you were perfect. You've done
a wonderful job." While he was talking he crossed the room, swung his
unconscious sibling over one shoulder, and yanked the sword free. "Oh,
and one other thing."

It might seem unchivalric of me, but this turn of events really didn't
bother me. She could take care of herself and certainly wasn't innocent
in this affair. Orpheus had used me, but I had come out of that more or
less unscathed, save a few inconsequential mortal injuries. My feelings
towards him were tolerance and some affection. "What's that?" I asked.

"Don't follow me."

He smacked a tall candelabra over, and it crashed against the bed. I
stared at it in fear and before I could react the bedsheets were
blazing. Terror paralyzed me. The fire before me roared up
supernaturally fast, leaping to the ceiling. It was a horror of orange
and red. Flames made faces that were my own, twisting and moving in
chaotic speed. Perhaps if I had been sober I could have reacted, but
instead the fear that had gripped me before seized me. I fell to my
knees and tried to block the light out with my hands. The interior of
the building was composed of wood and plaster. It caught fire like
tinder. Finally I found out that I could scream, but by then it was too
late. This was worse than when Orpheus had stabbed me before. There was
no well to fall in. Nothing stopped the blaze. I felt flesh sear away,
felt the smoke try to choke me, and lived on through it until there was
nothing left of me to keep going.



When I awoke referring to my emotions with the word mad would be an
absurdity. Only if an eternity of torment was inflicted upon a gorgon of
wrath whose sole vent for rage was the creation of new words would a way
of expressing myself be possible. Unlike normal, when the process of
awakening is slow and not absolutely fixed in time, I opened my eyes
suddenly, instantly completely cognizant. Rubble was atop me. I
discarded it. Great broken stones that had cracked in the blaze pinned
me. I moved them relentlessly until I was free to climb into the
sunlight. I stood atop a pile of shattered debris and knew what must be
done.

I went out into the city that surrounded the blasted rubble of Fiona's
mansion. There were people everywhere, and a great number of them seemed
to be picking through the wreckage. I bypassed them and walked in
expanding circles about the rubble until I found a street vendor, a
middle aged man mostly without teeth who was hawking assorted wood
carvings and charcoal portraits.

"Good morning."

"Good morning," he replied. He looked me up and down, noticed my charred
clothing and disreputable appearance.

"I need a portrait of Lady Fiera, or Fiona, or whatever the lady who
lived in the burnt house called herself."

"Lady Fiona, sir? Why I have just the thing for you."

"Excellent."

I looked it over. The black and white rendition was of her standing on a
balcony, looking down at the artist. It was faithful but mundane, and
lacked a few of the details I considered necessary. I found out he had
some blue chalk that would serve my purposes well. We came to the
discussion of the price, and I told him to remain where he was.

I stalked off and found a dark alley. The first person I met seemed
intent on pursuing my own course of action, so we had words and I left
him in a pile. I took his wallet, wondering if there was irony inherent
to that. The artist was where I left him, money exchanged hands, and we
parted ways. He glanced once at my injuries but never asked any
questions.

When I returned to the empty lot, I searched through the wreckage until
I found the place I had revived. Some burnt stones marked the outlines
of the room, and I sat down to began to fill in the missing details I
required. I remembered the bizarre blue designs of the first painting I
had seen very distinctly. In the empty spaces behind her, in the walls,
and across the sky I drew them in, until the entire background was
covered in intricate twirls. Then I positioned myself until the sun was
over my shoulder, and I stared at her image. I thought about her. I
remembered the way she summoned me to her the first time, exchanging our
places. I recalled her face, the way she spoke, and every mannerism I
could recall. Most of all, I focused on her consistent orders for me to
dispatch Orpheus, and my current intense willingness to oblige.

Hours passed. It grew dark, but by then the image was fully memorized.
Brooding and obsessing is best done in the dark wee hours of the
morning, and they came and went while I stared, feeding of my own fury.
By moon rise I had ascended to a towering rage, something so monolithic
in its intensity that my eyes were clouded over and the cold veins of my
temples throbbed. At some point local boys crept in, no doubt searching
for something to steal, but they thought better of it and left.
Moonlight peaked in between cracks in shattered walls above me and lit
Fiona's face.

Finally something happened.

Her lips moved, whispering something. By now anger induced
hallucinations were beginning to plague me, but this one excited me
viscerally.

"Pull me through," I commanded.

"Havok?" she mouthed.

"Pull me through."

"How?"

"Pull me through."

Originally she had looked dominant and beautiful, terrible underneath
the strange patterned sky. Now hints of weakness, incredible deprivation
and trial beyond what seemed possible in the two days I estimated her to
have been Orpheus' prisoner showed on her face. Her magnificent
clothing, implied by a few well placed charcoal strokes, seemed to turn
to tatters. The coal lines were faded and weak. She was not leaning
commandingly upon the balustrade but resting upon it, barely able to
stand without its help.

"I can't."

"Pull me through."

"He's blocked everything, somehow. Havok, I told you then, you must kill
him."

I glared down at the sketch of her, focusing until my teeth ached, the
image of her floated before my eyes, and the world outside the sketch
grew fuzzy and indistinct. Splinters of pain began to dig inwards from
the base of my skull.

"The Pattern itself is blocking you," she said, but now her words were
louder and more distinct. Superimposed upon the balcony scene was a
small cell with stone walls and ceilings. "You were created of the
Logrus, and the two are opposed."

"I'm coming anyway," I replied, already beginning to smell the damp air.
Neither world seemed totally real to me now. My clothing, my skin, and
the air itself seemed to be pulling me back, away from her. Only my head
and my eyes, which seemed to bulge forward from their sockets, drove me
on as I focused every bit of power I had on forward progress, trying to
drive myself on by will alone. The moonbeams began to fade around me,
and I could hear drops of water falling from the ceiling. The cell was
small, and one deep set door banded in iron closed me in. The woodgrain
ran vertically, and the four hinges were bolted to the walls with three
nuts at each point. I grasped at details, making this world mine. I
almost had it.

The door slammed open, and Orpheus appeared, hair wild and standing
straight up. He was inside with Fiona, summoning his own powers before
he noticed my presence, and it caught him off guard.

"You!" he exclaimed.

I punched him in the face so hard I broke my hand.

The momentary lack of concentration was enough for the powers I was
working against to snap me backwards, sling shotting me away. I crashed
upwards from the charcoal drawing as it exploded into flames, breaking
the rocks above with my body before I sailed across the night sky. The
energy imparted upon me must have been tremendous, for I distinctly
recall rising above the clouds, and a moment when I floated alone with
the sky below and moon blue and white above. Stars waltzed around me,
and I felt included in their dance, utterly at peace. Landing was not
nearly so fun.

My crater was slightly larger than my body, and it took me a few minutes
to summon the strength to climb out of it when I was conscious again. My
weakness surprised me, for I had expected to stand up fully healed.
Instead I hurt everywhere, though most intensely in my broken hand. When
I did stumble upright and took a few tottering steps, it was difficult
to move. Still, I smiled evilly when I considered my injured fist. If
Orpheus' face had managed to do that much damage to me, I looked forward
to finding out what I had done to him.

This was all probably a side effect of trying to force myself through a
portal I had no mastery of, I surmised. In addition, while I could beat
Orpheus if he wasn't expecting me, as I had demonstrated twice now, in a
fair fight I did not have much chance and he would expect a repeat of
before. If he had been able to make those guesses about me, and what
Fiona had said lent credence to them, he would probably be working on a
way to stop my regenerative powers. I doubted he could do it when I was
here, wherever here was. If he could it wouldn't really matter because
suddenly I'd be dead, and there was nothing I could do about it. But in
his castle, surrounded by his people, he would be the master, and I
needed a plan. I was certainly going. Nothing would stop that now.

Still- "This is going to be hard. And it's going to hurt. A lot." I
observed to myself. I stumbled a little further, and sank down to rest
against a tree. "Oh man, is this going to-" I trailed off.

Very peculiarly, an image had suddenly appeared before me in the dark.
It was night when I awoke and dark as pitch, but before me, outlined
with glowing light was the fireman, he whom I had met so long ago, when
his duty was to incinerate me to prevent all this from happening. I
stared at him in the dark, and suddenly realization dawned.

"Oman. Oh man, Oman, you spoke about me and now, as promised, I'm going
to find you." Unsteadily I pulled myself afoot again, and staggered
forward, moving after the image.
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