The City of Amber

As discussed in the article The Geography of Amber, the Corwin chronicles did little to shed light on the layout of the City of Amber, or its population, economy, establishments or institutions. Apart from some details about the Palace itself (which we will tackle in a different article), the Amber of Corwin's tale remains largely an emotional archetype. The word "Amber" sends lightening down Corwin's spine. He says the word is "charged with a mighty longing and a massive nostalgia". Whenever Corwin speaks of Amber, he falls into a kind of old English, saying things like "thy wide promenades," "I could not hate thee Eric, loved I not Amber more", and "I remember thee with love, city that I was born to rule..." His fleeting physical descriptions are flowery, emotional and idealistic: 

Yet he does not say much more than this, nor does Corwin ever actually spend any meaningful time in the city throughout the first five books.

When we come to the Merlin chronicles, however, the story is entirely different. In these books, Zelazny is apparently quite set on taking a different approach, and spends time elucidating various aspects of Amber the City, its inhabitants and economy, its inner workings, and the city's relationship to both the Palace and the mountain of Kolvir. And the image he paints, in many ways, is just that of any other city; rich neighborhoods, poor neighborhoods, a crime-ridden port district, embassies, industry, traffic, restaurants, and shops.

In this essay, we will work through all ten books to bring together these two "takes", and construct our best map of Kolvir and the City of Amber. 

Rebma 

We should begin by acknowledging that the first description of the City of Amber that readers get is actually a description of Rebma. It is easy to overlook this, as it is a "mirror image" of Amber and clearly distorted in ways that are not obvious. Also, when Corwin visits Rebma, he is without his memories, and cannot be relied upon to describe places of particular meaning. Nonetheless, we can glean some fleeting insights from this section:

One thing notable here is that he says the Palace is at the "center of the city." As we will see, this is not entirely accurate. While we expect that the Palace is centered along the north/south axis of Kolvir, its position along the east/west axis is at the rear of the city, up against the back side of Kolvir. We know this from the many descriptions of characters existing the rear of the Palace, and immediately hitting the trails down Kolvir. On the other hand, when Corwin climbs the Eastern Stair to reach Amber during the last stage of his failed assault, we understand clearly that he arrives at the eastern edge of the city, and then says "we were still far from the Palace." So it would be more accurate if he had said "the center of the back of the city".

The Assault of Bleys and Corwin

The next opportunity we have to learn about the layout of Kolvir and Amber is the attack by Bleys and Corwin. But in these chapters, Zelazny offers us little in the way of description of the city. In retrospect, after having read the Merlin chronicles, we are left to imagine that in their march northward up the coast (from the mouth of the River Oisen, up to Kolvir), they must surely have passed the Harbor that Merlin later describes in such detail. Yet all that we hear about are the troops of Julian and Caine that meet them at the base of Kolvir for a penultimate battle. Was the Harbor emptied of residents given the invading force? Did Corwin and Bleys circle around it, as they approached the Eastern Stair? When they and their troops spent a final night at the base of Kolvir, did they raid the Harbor for supplies? All of this is left to our imagination.

As they begin climbing the eastern face of Kolvir, we get some clear visualizations of Kolvir's relationship to Amber:  "Once we reached the top, there would be the broad stair of which the one to Rebma had been but an image. It would lead up to the Great Arch, which was the eastern entranceway to Amber." (NPIA, Ch. 7). And then:

As discussed briefly in The Geography of Amber, this snippet helps us form the foundation of a layout of Kolvir, by grounding the city itself at a rough scale and position. Corwin enters the eastern end of the city, through the Great Arch, and after making his way 1,000 yards, he describes being "still far from the palace." We will assume that means the city is roughly 4,000 square yards, or a little over 2 square miles, since we know the Palace is at the far end of the city, backed up against trails leading down Kolvir.

It is worth pausing at this point to imagine a profile -- or cross section -- of Kolvir. Given the descriptions we have of the easter stair, and the ascent of the armies of Bleys and Corwin, it is clear that the eastern (that is, seaward) face of Kolvir is essentially sheer. (Corwin describes soldiers in the vanguard of the attack as being "brought by" the soldiers further back as they fell to their deaths.) This feature of Kolvir is further confirmed in Sign of Chaos when Merlin and Coral execute a dangerous descent of this ancient stair.

Therefore, in profile, we can imagine Kolvir and Amber like this:

After the failure of Corwin's assault in Nine Princes in Amber, all we get are some tidbits about the Palace (again, for another article), after which Corwin is blinded and thrown in the dungeons for four years. Later, his escape from the dungeon takes him to the Lighthouse of Cabra, and then into Shadow. We will not return to Amber until the end of The Guns of Avalon, when we get some detailed descriptions of the terrain, Kolvir, Arden, and Garnath. But once gain, here we will learn nothing about the city itself. After Eric dies, and the battle turns in Amber's favor, Corwin trumps to the Palace for the book's final scene, in which we get more confirmation of the layout of the dungeons and the Pattern Room.

Given all of the above assumptions derived from the first two books, the general description of Kolvir, the easter stair, and the City of Amber thus far, we can begin with this basic layout as a foundation:

All Palace, No City

As we move into Sign of the Unicorn, we are similarly left thirsty for any details about Amber City, outside of the Palace. The book takes place over four days (Amber time), during which Corwin is mostly in the royal residences, attempting (as the biographer F. Brett Cox said) “to solve the locked-room puzzle of Who Stabbed Brand”. We do, however, get some delicious descriptions of the Palace's relationship to the mountain of Kolvir:

With this one phrase, "down in town", we get our very first taste of Amber as a city, and here -- all the way in book three -- the city is first referred to as a "town". As the reader, you cannot help but imagine Flora saying, "I'm going into town to do some shopping," or "I'm meeting friends in town." Nowhere else in the Corwin chronicles, I would argue, can we find this kind of inference. 

Then, in this next passage, when Corwin teleports himself to the "highest tower", we get this brief visualization of how Amber City relates to the Palace and the overall geography:

This language confirms the general layout we have described above, with the Palace at the western "back" of the city, Kolvir having a "rim" around the city, and the sea being off in the distance to the east. But I particularly love this hastily sketched view of Amber and Kolvir, as it serves to reassure the reader that Zelazny does, in fact, imagine a thriving, populous city, busy with activity, perhaps on edge only days after their city was nearly sacked by Chaos creatures, and perhaps oblivious to the all of the Machiavellian dynamics of the royal family.

Outside the City

Just as quickly as Zelazny teases us with this image of the city of Amber, he willfully discards it in the coming chapters. Corwin leaves the Palace, to visit his tomb, then says "the city was calling me back" (SOTU, Ch. 4), but does not describe going back to the city at all. Later, he journeys to the Grove of the Unicorn with Gerard, down the back side of Kolvir, avoiding again any mention of passing through the city. In fact the "back way out of Kolvir" seems almost designed, by Zelazny or by the royal family, to be a way for the children of Oberon to avoid having to mingle with the commoners, as it were. This route is taken often to get them from the Palace to where they want to go, avoiding the city. Only Flora, and (as we will see) Merlin, seem to want to spend time in the actual city over which they rule. (And in SOTU Ch. 1, Corwin does briefly mention that he "had eaten down at the harbor with Gerard".)

Tir-na Nog'th

As we move through the later part of Sign of the Unicorn and The Hand of Oberon, Tir-na No'gth plays a key role in the story, with two major appearances. As another reflection of the true City of Amber, it can give us clues as to the layout of the city that Zelazny imagines. With Corwin's first visit to the ghost city, in particular, we learn more about the geography of Kolvir and its relationship to Amber City. As Corwin strolls through Tir-na Nog'th, we get some wonderful, albeit shadowy, descriptions:

Similar to Corwin's description of Rebma, we cannot take this too literally as a description of City Amber, given the continual reference to its insubstantiality, and its almost expressionistic quality; it is, perhaps, only the city that its visitor "wants to see." But we get a good flavor for its pedestrian-friendly components, and one perhaps fresh idea when Corwin describes "halls of the lords, the quarters of the low". This is one of the only indications of traditional medieval class system, which is implied elsewhere, but explicit here. In the Merlin chronicles, Zelazny will latch on to this idea and take it much further.

(Incidentally, I do find it fascinating that of the three times Corwin actually talks about being in the city of Amber (not just the Palace), two of them come from his visits to the reflections -- Rebma and Tir-na Nog'th -- and these are the most descriptive. The other is when he is fighting his way toward the Palace, and not bothering to describe much of anything.)

Following the Tir-na Nog'th experiences, Sign of the Unicorn concludes with Corwin, Random, and Ganelon returning back to Amber from the steps to the ghost city. We get more confirmation of the geography, but nothing new about the city itself. And of course they are taken off course by Oberon, who leads them to the Primal Pattern.

Across both The Hand of Oberon and The Courts of Chaos, none of the action takes place in the city. THOO focuses on Corwin's pursuit of the Jewel, which takes him to Shadow Earth, and concludes with another scene in Tir-na Nog'th (but we see the Pattern Room only). And in book five, we only get brief descriptions of the Palace, and a return to Dworkin's chambers near the Primal Pattern, before Corwin departs Amber for good.

So let us ask, as we wrap up the Corwin chronicles: what is the totality of information we know about the city of Amber from the whole of these first five books? It is a short list:

• The city is laid out between the Palace (near the western edge of Kolvir's rim) and the Great Arch (near the eastern edge of Kolvir's rim). There is some kind of wide avenue or promenade that leads from the eastern gate, through the city, to the Palace.

• The city proper is probably around 2 square miles.

• The city has golden spires, terraces, gardens, promenades, thoroughfares, avenues, and temples.

• There are halls of lords, and houses of the low.

• Outside the confines of the city, there are several important locations, on our around the rim of Kolvir: Corwin's tomb, The Grove of the Unicorn, the steps to Tir-na Nog'th.

Given all of this, here is perhaps the most accurate map we can construct of Kolvir and Amber City thus-far:

Enter Merlin

With the Merlin chronicles, Zelazny takes a different approach to bringing the City of Amber to life, in two key ways:

1. He rotates the whole thing 90 degrees.

2. He brings Amber out of the realm of the "emotional ideal" and into the realm of "how it would really work".

Let us address the rotation first. While Zelazny was quite clear in the Corwin chronicles that the coast runs north/south and the sea is to the east (see The Geography of Amber), with Blood of Amber, he changes this such that the coast runs east/west and the sea is to the south. This rotation affects the entire layout of Amber, including Kolvir and the city atop it. 

Why Zelazny chooses to make this drastic change, we cannot know. But with this in mind, we will continue under this new layout:

A Pedestrian, Working City

In the Merlin chronicles, we learn a lot about the layout of Kolvir and Amber City from a few key passages, starting with Trumps of Doom. In this first Merlin book, we get about two-thirds of the way through (Ch. 7) before Merlin visits Amber, in that long await return to the center of things. As readers, we have not seen Amber since Corwin left it, early in The Courts of Chaos. In TOD, we mainly get descriptions of the Palace, as Merlin interfaces Random, and gets invited to a family dinner. He later departs Amber on foot, deciding to hike down Kolvir:

This sequence largely confirms what we already know about the relationship between the Palace and the trails that lead down Kolvir.

With the funeral sequence in a later chapter of Trumps of Doom, we also learn about two other points-of-interest associated with Kolvir: the Chapel of the Unicorn and the sea caves. "On the wide strand of shoreline at the southern foot of Kolvir there is a small chapel dedicated to the Unicorn ... [Caine] had once expressed a desire to be laid to rest in one of the sea caves at the mountain's foot" (Ch. 8, TOD). We can place the entrance to these caves along the (now southern) shoreline, east of the great staircase that Corwin and Bleys used to assault Amber in NPIA. In a later Merlin novel, Sign of Chaos, we will learn that these caves actually connect with the dungeons below Amber, and the Pattern Room. 

As an aside, this seems somewhat preposterous. If this were true, why would Corwin and Bleys not have sent a column of warriors through the caves during their assault, to fight their way through the dungeons, the guard station, and up the staircase directly into the Dining Hall? Moreover, why did Corwin not mention this in NPIA, when he was plotting his escape from his jail cell? He fully expected to carve open his cell door, face and take the guards in the hallway, and then find and walk the Pattern. Why not just head toward the cave exit instead? He could then hijack a boat from the harbor, and be a free man? This would have been by far the most realistic escape plan, rather than walking the Pattern in his weakened condition, and risk being felled by an arrow from Eric, who would have most certainly been alerted to Corwin's escape attempt, and come straight down to the Pattern Room to stop him. (Note, Corwin claims that he must use the Pattern to escape because it is "impossible to walk into Shadow from Amber itself", but then proceeds to do just that several times throughout the series.)

Furthermore, the idea that the dungeons of Amber connect to the sea caves is cast into doubt by Random's description of Kolvir at the end of Sign of the Unicorn. Looking at the Primal Patter, Random says: "You know, it is as if someone had shaved the top off Kolvir, cutting at about the level of the dungeons." This leaves us with the distinct impression that the dungeons are somewhere in the middle of Kolvir, decidedly not at sea level. 

Moving on, after Caine's funeral in Turmps of Doom, it is not until Blood of Amber that we get some of the best descriptions of the city of Amber in all ten books. 

The Eastern Gate

In Blood of Amber, following his brief stay at Vinta Bayle's home in the wine country, Merlin rides back to Amber. He enters the city from the east (what used to be the north, in the Corwin chronicles), and we learn a little more of the layout:

A few things bear mentioning from this sequence:

• By mentioning "traffic", Zelazny reinforces the bustling life and economy of the city.

• Merlin passes through the "heights", which could quite possibly refer to the area where Eric died at the end of The Guns of Avalon (recall Corwin saying "Yes, I am on the heights ... We have won. Eric died in the battle"). That said, Corwin and his army had swung around Kolvir by that point, further to the north (or west), such that they could see the Valley of Garnath below. Not so for Merlin; here, he stays completely east (or north) of Amber. This merely means that "the heights" must represent a large area wrapped around Kolvir.

• With the Eastern Gate, an "ancient fortification", we can imagine why Corwin, in TGOA, decides against this as an attack route. Though his army of riflemen is coming from this direction (from the east, per Merlin, or the north, per Corwin), he nonetheless bears "off to the west" (or north), swinging around to attack Amber from "behind", saying "It was one of three possible routes we could follow, and I had always considered it the best for a possible attack" (TGOA, Ch. 9). Incidentally, this is also the original attack plan of Bleys and Corwin in NPIA. This makes sense if the Eastern Gate (or northern) is well fortified, though it does make one wonder: was the plan to literally enter Amber from behind, attacking the rear gardens of the Palace, and marching straight into the main hall? Probably. There is never any mention of a gate, or even an arch, behind the Palace. There is merely a stable, and then trails down the mountain.

• Next, with the mention of the Baron Bayle townhouse on East Vine, we can speculate that the "halls of the lords" that Corwin mentions are indeed located in this part of town; a picture emerges of the "East Side" as one of nobility, and the "West Side" (as we will see) as one of the tradespeople. 

• A restaurant, called the Pit, is on a cul-de-sac somewhere off East Vine, likely not far from where East Vine meets the Main Concourse (assuming that it does).

But perhaps the most vivid and detailed revelations about Amber City are offered in Chapter 4 of Blood of Amber. Zelazny leads off this section with Merlin saying, "I hadn't been outside the palace and into town in years", almost admitting, as author, this gap that fans have been begging him to fill. He continues:

We learn a few things from this passage. Importantly, this means Merlin begins his exploration on foot at around 10:00pm; we will return to this later. Next, it is worth noting that even before Merlin goes into town, his conversation with Jordy lays bare the notion that Amber has a class system, and a local economy. We begin to see the royals through the eyes of the commoners, as Corwin's invoking of the "halls of lords, and houses of the low" is brought forth with specificity. 

But from a mapping perspective, we learn:

• There is a Main Concourse; this likely is an evolution of the "avenue" or "promenade" from the Corwin chronicles that runs through the city up to the Palace.

• "Fiddler's Green" is on this Main Concourse; so we can imagine it being lined with businesses, perhaps like a medieval version of the Champs Elysee in Paris (which Zelazny references in TCOC).

• There is a neighborhood where Smiths and Ironmongers Street intersect; this appears to be a working class neighborhood of various crafts and industries, as suggested by the street names. There is a seafood place called "The Net" here.

• The docks (or the harbor) wrap around a cove, and that area can be reached by means of a "long walk" from the Palace.

Following his talk with Jordy, Merlin indeed takes that "long walk", and in doing so, describes more of the city as he strolls.

This passage is great because it reminds us that, despite the newfound realism with which Zelazny is painting the city of Amber, it is still a place of fantasy -- with its streetlamps illuminated by some liquid of fantastical property, and its "mountain moths" (whatever those are), and an otherwise Dickensian old man walking a pet dragon.

Merlin continues:

With the above sequence, Merlin gives us some additional sense of the structure of the roadways that make up City Amber. Though it is not explicitly stated, we can imagine that Weaver Street is around that same working calss area as Smiths and Ironmongers Streets mentioned earlier by Jordy (with perhaps a Stonecutters Street and a Bakers Street?). More importantly, we learn that West Vine connects the periphery of the city to the Harbor below, and can extrapolate that perhaps an East Vine does something similar on the other side of Kolvir (this will be confirmed in Ch. 10). 

Furthermore, with his description of the cat in the doorway and the arguing couple, Zelazny continues his juxtaposition of the "houses of the low" with the royal Palace above. (In perhaps an overdose of this theme, he will go on to describe the odors of "barf" and "solid and liquid human waste", and the "crashes and thuds of a struggle nearby", rats that chase cats, broken bottles, and more.)

At this stage, we can sketch this rough outline of the road network of Amber:

The Harbor

From here, Merlin says "ten minutes later I had reached the port district and found my way over to Harbor Road" (BOA, Ch. 4). 

After his dinner at Bloody Bill's, we get a couple of additional insights:

A Walkable Mountain?

Puasing a moment to reflect on this layout ... I will say that I think there is something at odds between (a) the vision of the shining city atop the mountain of Kolvir, high above the valley and sea, where Kolvir itself is the highest peak in a range of peaks, and (b) the idea that one could simply walk from the Palace at the far end of Amber, through the city, down the mountainside, and end up in the Harbor district a couple of hours later. In the Corwin chronicles, they set out on horseback with packed meals to go from the Palace to Corwin's tomb, or the Grove of the Unicorn, or the steps of Tir-na Nog'th. These places feel miles, or even tens of miles, apart. Merlin makes it from the Palace to Bloody Bill's, on foot, in what seems like a couple of hours. 

If this is the case, how high can Kolvir really be?

Before we answer this question, let us take a moment to unpack time and distance in this extremely descriptive Chapter 4 of Blood of Amber.

We know that Merlin leaves the Palace at 10:00pm. At the other end of the evening, we know that the sun rises as Merlin and Vinta arrive by boat to Baylesport. If we put sunrise at 6:00am, that means that the following must take place over the course of eight hours:

• Merlin walks from the Palace, down the Main Concourse, to Weaver Street.

• Merlin takes Weaver Street to West Vine.

• Merlin takes West Vine down the mountain to Harbor Road.

• Merlin takes Harbor Road and eventually finds Seabreeze Lane (Death Alley).

• Merlin has dinner.

• Merlin walks away from Death Alley and encounters his assailants; the fight scene ensues, including the arrival of Vinta and Bayle's servingmen. The assailants are killed.

• Vinta and Merlin walk until they locate her boat; they all get in the boat.

• They sail east toward Baylesport; Merlin sleeps.

• Merlin wakes up.

Taking these events one by one, we can piece together a timeline of the evening, and from there, reverse-engineer some distance and layout estimates.

• [10:00pm departure]

• [est. 1 hour] About a two mile walk from Palace > Main Concourse > Weaver > West Vine 

• [ ??? ] Hike down the mountain

• [10 min.] From the bottom of Kolvir to Harbor Road

• [est. 10 min.] Harbor Road > Bloody Bill's

• [est. 1 hour] Order and eat dinner, talk with owner

• [est. 1-2 hours] Bloody Bill's > fight scene > Vinta's boat

• [est. 2-3 hours] On the water, Merlin sleeps and dreams

• [6:00am] Sunrise

There are admittedly several assumptions in these estimates, but all together they give us a believable guess of about five hours spent in both the Harbor District and on the water (i.e., 1:00AM to 6:00AM). If we assume his (approximately) two mile walk from the Palace to West Vine takes about an hour (10:00PM to 11:00PM), then that leaves two hours (from 11:00PM to 1:00AM) for Merlin to get down the mountain. 

So how high is a mountain that takes a fit Chaos Lord two hours to walk down?

This hiking site estimates that a person can hike down 1200 meters in elevation loss per hour. Merlin is not just any person, but neither was he in a rush, so let's assume he does about 1500 meters in an hour. To get to down in two hours, then, there would need to be about 2000 meters of elevation loss down Kolvir from West Vine to the harbor, or about 6500 feet. And West Vine is likely not the highest point in Amber; since East Vine (see below) slopes up from the East Gate toward the Palace, we can assume West Vine does something similar. The Palace itself might be at 7000 feet, and the "highest crop on Kolvir" (the steps to Tir-na Nog'th) might be 7500 feet.

7500 feet in elevation (or about 2300 meters) -- as measured by prominence (height relative to lowest elevation that encircles it) -- would put Kolvir at around the 32nd highest mountain on Earth.

This entire calculation, however, is thrown massively into question when we consider Chapter 4 of Sign of Chaos.

A Date with Coral

In Sign of Chaos, we get another good look at Amber City and the geography of Kolvir when Merlin goes on his walking date with Coral. Lucky for us, Zelazny was clearly not done bringing the city to life when he gave us Merlin's solo stroll in Blood of Amber. Here, we get several new clues about the city layout, and a fascinating "return" to the infamous Eastern (now Southern) Stair which Corwin and Bleys once used to assail Amber.

With this sequence above we have a return to the Main Concourse, with confirmation of its Champs Elysses-style cafes and shops, and a mention of an embassy. They also explore "streets of various trades", which sounds a lot like a return to the district of Weavers, Ironmongers, and Smiths, introduced earlier in Blood of Amber. Indeed Merlin seems to be entirely retracing his steps from that time he went questing for seafood, taking West Vine, intending to head down to the harbor, again. But Coral's desire to see the southern (once eastern) staircase has them pivot and head back toward the center of the city.

Once Merlin and Coral reach the bottom, Merlin says, "The harbor's in that direction," gesturing to his right, "westward." And he says "there's a church off that way," referring to the Chapel of the Unicorn where Caine was buried, east of the staircase.

At this point, across the last three books, Merlin has spent a decent amount of time walking Amber, and as readers we have far more information about the city of Amber than we ever had from the Corwin chronicles. Merlin has walked the western (once southern) region of the city, and descended that part of Kolvir to the Harbor; he has entered the city from the east (once north), following his journey from Amber's wine country back to the city; and he has walked to the southern (once eastern) most point of the city, where the Main Concourse terminates at Lands's End, and is about to descend the ancient staircase to the beach. And he has obviously entered and departed the Palace at the north (once west) end of Amber several times over. 

North, west, south, east, top, bottom ... he has covered all sides of town, and we can now create an even more detailed layout than before:

Two Visions Remain

Importantly for our mapping assumptions, what follows next (in Sign of the Unicorn) is that Merlin and Coral then retrace Merlin's steps from Blood of Amber. They walk along Harbor Road to Seabreeze Lane, where they eat a late lunch, and then take West Vine back up to the top of Kolvir. And in doing so, call into question our earlier assumptions about the height of Kolvir.

Once inside the palace, Merlin is told that dinner is in "an hour and a half". 

Shocklingly, this means that he and Coral left the harbor and began the ascent of Kolvir at sunset, and then made it to the Palace with an hour and a half still remaining before dinner? With generosity, let us assume a 6pm sunset, and a 10pm dinner. That still only gives them 2.5 hours to make a 7000 foot ascent. This site says that the Mt. Hood climb (a 5000 foot climb) takes "five to seven hours"; meaning that the fastest human would still need seven hours to make it up Kolvir. Merlin and Coral are Amberites, sure, but could they really do it in 2.5?

As an aside, one can certainly make the argument that Amber does not run on a 24 hour clock, making these kinds of time estimates difficult. While this is certainly true in one sense, consider on the other hand the many references both Corwin and Merlin make to the passage of "hours" in Amber, as well as comments about the time (such as Merlin saying "midnight"). And in Sign of the Unicorn, Corwin makes is clear that "eight hours" in Amber is the expected time for an evening's sleep. Taken on the whole, we can reasonably assume that a day in Amber passes much as a day on Earth, for locals; it is the relative passage of time comparatively that is different. 

Given all this, it remains questionable that Kovlir is actaully a 7000-7500 foot mountain. It is more likely to be half of that, if we are to believe the Merlin chronicles. And I will reiterate the difficulty I have reconcilning this vision of Kolvir with the one from the Corwin chronicles. 

A cute European-style walkable town on a hill? Or a vast, majestic, archetypical city atop a mountain, which requires half a million men to conquer?

For the remainder of Sign of Chaos, Merlin is in the Palace for some extended politics, after which he trumps to Arden, where the basic geography of Amber is confirmed once more. Later, back in the Palace, Merlin has scenes with Nadya, Mandor, and more, and then ultimately leaves Amber for the book's finale at the Keep of the Four Worlds.

The Final Two Merlin Books

The majority of Knight of Shadows takes place away from Amber, in various shadows like the Keep of the Four Worlds, Kashfa, and the crystal cave. In this fourth book, Merlin's time in Amber is restricted to the palace, the dungeons, and Dworkin's chambers, and there are some great descriptions that will be covered in a separate article about the Palace. But we learn nothing new about Amber the city, or Kolvir's layout, here. As for Prince of Chaos, as the title suggests, the action takes place almost entirely in The Courts of Chaos.

Here ends my comprehensive look at mapping Kolvir and the layout of the City of Amber.  

I'd love to hear your thoughts! Please follow me on Twitter @RZAmberFan, or email me at jkisherenow@gmail.com.

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