Favorite stories of Amber...

... by our heroes. During the voyage out from Gleamingrose on the Morning Glory, the adventurers took turns closing the evening with their favorite myths of ancient Amber. Sometimes the stories had ulterior motives, such as Starwind's parable of fatal jealousy and Delve's cautionary tale of the limits of soothsaying. Sometimes not.

Index of Stories

• The Tale of Cane and Able - Fisher
• The Tale of Three Cities - Delve
• Behemoth's Tale - Behemoth
• The Tale of the Knight of the Rose Sword - Starwind
• The Tale of Fish and the Wyrm of Cain - Turtle
• The Tale of Dovehawk, Raven and Eagle - Seeker

The Tale of Three Cities

by Delve

As dusk settles on the ship and food disappears while mugs keep refilling, Delve says, "I only know one story of Amber, and unfortunately it has a moral, but on the good side, it's three times as big as all the other Amber stories you've heard.

"Because Amber is really _three_ cities," Delve explains, "and this story is about all of them."

So saying he commences his tale:

There's "Amber," the city by the beach, which you know about. Fewer people know its companions, Lapis, the city under the sea, and Argent, the city in the clouds. And how many of those know the story of the time before Argent flew upward and Lapis sank like a turtle beneath the waves?

Because once upon a time, Lapis was a great city on an island off the coast of the Plateau of Garnet, on which Argent sat in silver splendour, not far below Amber on the great coastal mountain, Kolvir. Argent was actually the richest of the kingdoms, with its gleaming towers and its bazaar that was so busy, they say, that you could hear the clink of coins outside the walls. Now Argent was well-ruled by King Night, named for his raven eyes and hair, who taxed the people lightly and kept enough troops keep his people safe from each other and from the neighbouring kingdoms, and no more.

Some say King Night had the ears of an ass, and some say the _head_ of an ass. But I make my trade in the graves of empires, even storied ones, and what I find is that those old places and times turn out to be a lot less strange than the stories would have you believe when you actually get down in and poke around in them. My guess is that King Night just had really long, regular ears.

Now King Night had an advisor, Doormouse, a twisted little man of great age. In fact, some of the versions have it that Doormouse was King Night's father by a donkey, but I've already told you what I think of that kind of thing. Still, Doormouse was a great wizard, and King Night, this unbelievably rich and powerful man, genuinely admired his sage. For that reason, King Night made enormous allowances for him. Because Doormouse was frighteningly changeable in mood and not to be relied on to keep appointments, even with the King. This shouldn't surprise one too much, a lot of what passes for wizardry is what earns the mummers their obols, if you know what I mean. But some even said that Doormouse was secretly the advisor to King Oberon in Amber, and Queen Malachite in Lapis. They said that when he disappeared from Argent he was off being Court Sage in those kingdoms.

King Night said, pretty patiently, that that was silly. That you had to make allowances for wizards, and that when a wizard was off somewhere you didn't know, it was probably somewhere you didn't want to know, you'd be scared to know.

The problem was that Doormouse was gone one time when Night needed him. And the other problem was that, good a King as he was, Night, like all kings, felt deep down that there was nothing one of his subjects could do that he couldn't do. Doormouse was wont to tell the future with a magical deck of cards he called "Trumps," and King Night was fascinated by them. He used to make Doormouse tell fortunes from the cards on the slightest excuse: "Doormouse, a ship with blue sails came into the harbour today, I've never seen one, what does it portend? Doormouse, they say a woman in the rugmakers' quarter gave birth to triplets, what do the cards say? Doormouse, the Ambassador from Avon fell off his horse today hunting, what will be the issue?" and like that.

This mightn't have been so bad, except that King Night didn't just listen to the fortunes, he studied them. And he asked Doormouse question after question, and rather good ones I might add. Pretty soon, I'm afraid, he fancied _himself_ at the very least a soothsayer in waiting.

So when the running disputes over fishing rights that the fleets of Argent were always having with the fleets of Lapis kept getting bigger, even a generally peaceful king like Night began to wonder if he shouldn't make what your courtiers call "a definitive settlement of the issue." When King Night went looking for Doormouse in his apartments, he found the sage gone.

Unfortunately, he found the deck of Trumps was still there.

Surely, things could have waited. There are so few things in life that won't keep, even in the lives of kingdoms. But Night seized the cards and prepared to deal them out as he'd seen his councillor do so many times.

"What would be the result of war with Lapis?" he asked the cards, and there was The Tower in the key location. The message was clear, as he told his advisors:

"If we go to war I will destroy a great kingdom."

Oh you listen and laugh, and the ending is clear enough to us from that, but we're sitting on a good ship in a pleasant wind, with Kingfisher's fine meal to warm us, and no great stake in the matter. But we've all in the fullness of our pride probably gotten in bad situations because we thought so highly of ourselves, and we mostly haven't had people touching their foreheads for us and saying, "Yes, Your Majesty," "Of course, Your grace" at us all our lives, like Argent's Night did. Even a good prince is the object of a conspiracy to make him forget his limitations.

Suffice it to say that, as I mentioned before, King Night was wont to keep enough troops to defend his kingdom and no more. And when he launched his invasion of Lapis, it was noted in ever-covetous Amber, up there on the mountain with a clear view of everything. King Oberon saw his chance for "a definitive settlement of the issue" of what kingdom would rule the others, and he set his chief warlord to the task.

Now Oberon's chief warlord was his son, Been. They called him that because if he decided to make an enemy of you, you would soon cease to Be. In fact, they also called him "Ceaser." Been marched on the Plateau of Garnet and the Kingdom of Argent with the flower of Amber's army, and believe me when I say that Amber did not keep just enough troops to defend itself and no more. King Night hastened back to direct the defence of the city with what forces he could muster. He had the advantage of terrain, being atop the plateau like that.

Did I mention that his city walls had been made impregnable by sorcery? No matter. You know how these things go -- there's always some spot that the builders decided was already invulnerable and so they don't cast the spell there, and Been saw the narrow path up that part of the cliff and personally led a picked force to the summit under cover of darkness.

Night had no choice but to lead his troops out for battle, which raged all day. The Argentines fought brilliantly and their silver spears and arrows cut down Amberite after Amberite. But it was only a matter of time. King Night himself was struck through the stomach by a spear said to have been thrown by Been's brother Gerard, and went ringing down to the dust with his armour clattering around him. At the same time, Been lost his hand in a flash of silver. For all that he had mowed down scores of Argentines, he fell straight away from shock. When his generals later told him the battle was won and they had captured the dying King Night, Been bolted upright and demanded that he be taken to his foe. The wounded warlord and the dying king met on the plain at dusk. No one knows what Been said; some say he simply saluted to show his respect for his opponent, but they say Night told him, "I have destroyed a great kingdom indeed," and laughed. Blood bubbled and he died.

Now Doormouse considered how to arrange the future of the three kingdoms. For he was, indeed, in Amber's throne room at that moment, as people had always said. To forestall further battle, he worked mighty magics. He sank the city of Lapis beneath the waves because only the ocean could protect it from the might of Amber. The people of Lapis can fish all they want now, with never a worry for who's boats may be plying the sea. Argent he moved to the sky. They say you can just see its outline above the clouds on nights when the moon is full, a reminder that the future is always obscure to men, and that we should be wary of believing we can see beyond its veil.

"And that," says Delve, "is the story of how Amber gained its reflections under sea and in the sky. The first woman who told me this story said that the princes of Amber believe they can learn the future by visiting Argent, if only they could get up there. But maybe not even Doormouse knows how to do that."

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