Read To Rule in Amber for Free Online Page B

care. Dad came first. I looked down at him with a measure of concern - at least he had stopped struggling to free himself and lay quietly. Clearly he needed real medical care. That meant doctors.
    Where to start? The Courts of Chaos? Doctors there (did they have doctors in Chaos?) might be able to help him. Unfortunately, we would undoubtedly be arrested if not killed on sight.
    I supposed I could carry him to other Shadows looking for help…
    Then I felt a flicker of mental contact. Someone was trying to reach me through a Trump. Aber?
    Freda? I would take whatever help I could get.
    Opening my thoughts, I found myself gazing at my half-sister Blaise, but uncertainly, as though through a hazy, flickering tunnel. I saw part of a bed over her left shoulder. Her private chambers? I noted a smudge of dirt across her right cheek, and her normally elegantly coiffed hair now hung in disarray. I had never seen her looking this bad before.
    "Oberon!" she gasped.
    "What's wrong?" I gave a bitter smile. That might easily become our family greeting.
    "You are alive!" She smiled in relief.
    "I could say the same thing about you. How are you? What's going on there?"
    She smoothed her low-cut gown. Its shimmering green material, which accentuated her stunning figure, looked as though she'd slept in it for many days in a row.
    "I have been better. Where are you now? Safe?"
    "Yes," I said. "I'm in a Shadow with Dad."
    "Good. I had given you both up for dead." She glanced almost casually over her shoulder. I heard a distant pounding noise and the clash of steel on steel. Swordplay?
    "What's going on there?" I said sharply. "Where are Freda and Aber?"
    "I'm about to be arrested by King Uthor's men," she said with calmly measured tones. "I don't know what happened to the others. I haven't seen Freda in two weeks, and I haven't seen Aber in a month. Are you going to bring me through or not?"
    A loud banging noise, metal striking on wood, carried to my ears. She glanced over her shoulder again. The door behind her suddenly splintered.
    "Where are you?" I asked.
    "In the Courts," she said. "Visiting Aunt Tana and Uncle Snoddar." I had never heard of them. At my puzzled look, she went on: "They are all that's left of my mother's family. Unfortunately, things are not going well. Uncle is dead, and I think Aunt Tana just fled to the Beyond without me. I heard her carriage racing outside. Now, if you don't mind -"
    "Does Uthor have anyone else?" I asked.
    She nodded, eyes growing wide. "He ordered our whole family arrested. They already have Titus and, oh, I don't know how many others!"
    "And I'm your last hope for rescue," I said with a sigh. It figured I'd be the last one she'd call.
    "Who else but the family champion?" She smiled almost desperately. Behind her, the door snapped in two; the top half sagged off its hinges. "Don't make me beg. Bring me through like a good brother."
    Why not? I had nothing against her. In fact, my original low estimates of her had proved quite wrong. She had more of steel than lace in her blood, a true daughter of our father.
    "All right," I said.
    She swallowed visibly. "And, if you wouldn't mind hurrying u - "
    I reached out to her. "Come on!"
    She seized my hand with bone-crushing force, and I pulled her through to join me on the mountaintop. The bedroom scene behind her disappeared just as the first of Uthor's snake-faced troops came through the door.
    Blaise gave a cry and collapsed into my arms. A jolt of alarm went through me. Had she taken a knife or crossbow bolt to the back?
    Gently, I eased her onto the grass, searching for any sign of a wound. I couldn't find so much as a scratch. And yet she lay there gasping.
    "Are you injured?" I asked.
    "No…" she whispered. "I just feel… very strange… it hurts… all over… very sleepy now…"
    Mental alarms went off. The same thing had happened to me the first time I entered the Beyond, the part of Chaos where Dad had his lands and keep. I had not been prepared