9 Princes in Amber: Ch. 3

[chroniclingamber]

It makes me feel comfortable and secure to have walls of words, beautiful and wise, all around me. I always feel better when I can see that there is something to hold back the shadows.

Corwin wakes up alone, again, but this time he knows where he is for all that he’s still working on who he is. He knows he’s in danger and he’s back to investigating. He heads into the library to take stock of the situation and luckily for him his sister has a big library full of interesting and memory-jogging things. He knows so much about himself without knowing himself, like the fact that he thinks better when occupied with other stuff. Zelazny again delivers information in a sparse, economical way. Corwin knows medical stuff, he knows sword stuff, he knows how to toss a drawer, he knows how to pick a lock.

What he finds in that drawer is a deck of Tarot cards.

Tarot cards are special cards that are sometimes used for playing card games but are also used as a tool of divination. Corwin et al are featured as the Major Arcana, or “Trumps.” Trump is also a card game specific term, where a card that usually has a lower rank is elevated to a higher rank. It’s why we have the expression “to trump something” – to defeat someone/thing or outrank, to win in some way, usually publicly. It’s interesting that Zelazny uses the term “trumps” instead of “major arcana.”

What’s unfortunate is that although Corwin uses the cards as a divination tool, and later we see a few examples of scenes directly referencing Tarot cards (a woman blindfolded and tied to a pole a la the eight of Swords, a youth suspended upside down from his ankle as The Hanged Man) we don’t see the tarot cards actually used as tarot cards much.

The cards give us the first hint that unicorns are important, as there’s one on the backs of the cards and not recognizing the import of it bothers Corwin. He knows that it’s a unicorn, sure, but he doesn’t know what it means… only that it does mean something, mean something incredibly important. They’re COLD which is fascinating, a detail that elevates them. They obviously aren’t just cards. It’s not simply that they were hidden, have a unicorn on them, and have weird super realistic and compelling art. They are cold to the touch. They are unearthly.

This brings us to another bit of info-dumping. There’s a pretty big cast of characters and someone like George R. R. Martin might just include a family tree in the back of his door stopper novels. Instead we get some family photos shuffled in front of us, impressions and observations.

It’s noteworthy that all the women are lumped together in one paragraph. Interestingly, moist and sad Llewella has green hair.

So cocky little Random was in trouble! I had a feeling it shouldn’t have bothered me especially. But now, he was one of the keys to my past, and quite possibly my future also. So I would try to help him, in any way I could, until I’d learned all I wanted from him. I knew that there wasn’t much brotherly love lost between the two of us. But I knew that on the one hand he was nobody’s fool; he was resourceful, shrewd, strangely sentimental over the damnedest things; and on the other hand, his word wasn’t worth the spit behind it, and he’d probably sell my corpse to the medical school of his choice if he could get much for it. I remembered the little fink all right, with only a touch of affection, perhaps for a few pleasant times it seemed we had spent together. But trust him? Never. I decided I wouldn’t tell Flora he was coming until the last possible moment. He might be made to serve as an ace, or at least a knave, in the hole.

Random here sounds like a REAL piece of shit, but don’t worry, he absolutely is. He doesn’t quite live up to his sneaky betrayer nature, but wow does he hate women. He goes through a pretty significant alteration through the books and in many ways it mirrors Corwin’s journey – he matures quite a bit, he grows and changes. But damn he’s a real piece of shit until then. He’s one of the better fleshed-out siblings, maybe because it can be fun to write terrible people.

One thing to note is that Random apparently can take shortcuts through the Shadow. He talks about taking a circuitous route, and avoiding “the wrong shadows.” They can not only travel from one world to another, but take shortcuts from one place to a different place within that world.

Corwin falls asleep (again) and wakes up when Flora gets back home. She’s tried to walk into Amber instead of Trumping there – which narratively allows Corwin to find the cards and also establishes that it’s possible to walk to Amber and that another Amberite can alter the path, throw up obstacles. It doesn’t really make sense. She has Trumps for Amber proper, for Eric, and for several other siblings. Why hoof it, unless she believes nobody would answer her call? She’d still be able to Trump into Amber, though. Zelazny digs into this a bit in a later book, but still.

Amberites being able to affect other peoples’ journey through Shadow, along with a few other things, pops up in the first two books and then not to often after that. In some ways, Zelazny powered-down his Pattern users. A character in a later book refers to Corwin as a sorcerer but he doesn’t really do much magic at all… especially compared to certain of his siblings.

Flora also refers to Corwin as “being in exile TOO.” This infers that she’s in exile, but she’s also keeping watch over Corwin which isn’t an exile-ish thing to do.

Another noteworthy Shadow-Magic thing that pops up like ONCE and never again is when Corwin muses about his age. He looks “thirty-ish” but senses he’s older than that… and that “Shadows would lie for me,” as in he could look a specific wage or what-not. Again, it’s a bit of magic that gets dropped quickly although later we get full-on shapeshifters and Corwin himself is directly descended from shapeshifters.

Corwin also mentions that at one point he and his siblings hung out together, all chill, with “no tension, no friction among them.”

Then Random walks in.

References:

• Donner and Blitzen are the names of two of Santa’s reindeer. “Donner” means “thunder” and “blitzen” means “lightning,” as well.


• Unicorns are mythical creatures. Now depicted as horses with single long spiral horns emerging from their foreheads, older depictions were more goat-like and the horn often curved or was like a single antler. Unicorns are attracted to purity, able to be tamed by a virginal maiden. Their horns can be used to purify poison and heal infection. While associated with (young, virginal) women they're associated with the masculine.


• “Rampant” and “dexter” are heraldric terms. The unicorn is rearing up, hooves raised (“rampant”) and facing to the left (“dexter”).


• “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” a short story published in 1820 by Washington Irving, is a spooky story set in the Hudson Valley, near Westchester County. The locals have a legend about the ghost of a long-dead cavalryman who lost his head to a cannonball and rides at night searching for revenge. Ichabod Crane, the tall skinny arrogant outsider school teacher, sweeps into town and tries to woo a young woman from a wealthy family. The local who’s taken with her pranks the guy unceasingly. Crane finally screws his courage to the sticking place and asks the girl out. When she refuses, he takes off and heads home. While headed home a horseman with no head comes galloping up behind him and hurls his head at Crane. The next day, Crane’s gone from the town. It’s inferred that this was another prank, the “head” was a pumpkin, and Crane ran off like a coward. There’s been a lot of films and tv shows based on and about the story, which is especially popular at Halloween.


• A lance is a very specific thing, and that thing is not a spear. If you’ve seen a knight on horseback jousting, that’s what a lance is. They’re about eleven feet long so frankly I don’t know how easy it would be to “lean on” one. Most of the art I’ve seen of this Trump involves a spear or a staff, not a lance.


• “… the faint ringing and the ghost voices that indicate long distance.” is a poetic way to describe a real phenomena that once existed and does no longer. It’s something I experienced as a kid, up until the mid-00s with transatlantic phone calls especially. Just the very slight lag, a second or maybe two, and the pressure of a sound that both is and isn’t there behind and between the words of the conversation. It’s eerie and as far as I know it’s gone forever.


• A fink is someone who’s unpleasant, someone who betrays people. A fink is also an informant, and “to fink” means “to reveal information.”


• Ace and Knave refer to playing cards that have different values. Aces are either the most valuable or least valuable card. “An ace in the hole” is a hidden advantage kept secret until needed. It’s a poker term. A knave as a playing card is also known as the Jack; a “knave” is someone who’s deceitful, dishonest, a trickster.