The Geography of Amber

Let us endeavor to deliver the most accurate map of Amber and its surrounding terrain as possible, relying upon the source material alone (avoiding the speculative work done in books such as Visual Guide to Castle Amber), and tackling the contradictions, when necessary.

To begin with, it is important to acknowledge that there has never been an "official" map of Amber. We have come to expect such things in major fantasy works, inspired perhaps by the map of Middle-Earth we all remember from inside the cover of The Hobbit, or the map of Westeros, popularized by the 3D credits sequence at the opening of each episode of Games of Thrones.

We do not have the benefit of an asset like this for Amber.  (NOTE: It turns out this is not entirely true; see correction at the bottom of the article.)

As Zelazny biographer  F. Brett Cox speculates, this may have even been intentional, or at the least part of Amber's enduring mystique. Cox writes:

There is truth in this observation, but it does not mean we are without any description of Amber as a place. (And I would argue that with the Merlin chronicles, the temptation to create more of a "living world" out of Amber, the city, the harbor, the vineyards, and so forth, clearly motivated Zelazny.) We may be left without an official map, but we do have a collection of descritions and references that allow us to piece together the topography. Though unfortunately we are also left with contradictions that amount to two distinct and conflicting layouts of Amber -- one that stems mainly from the Corwin chronicles, and another that stems from the Merlin chronicles. We will come to this contradiction later.

The Corwin Chronicles

First, let us begin with collecting all of the major pieces of information the canon provides. In Nine Princes in Amber, Corwin and Random make their way toward Kolvir in the Mercedes, and later on foot. They end up skirting the mountain, changing direction toward the sea, and entering Rebma instead. This mutli-day journey affords us these descriptions:

With these early descriptions, we learn a few high-level facts:

1. Amber sits atop a mountain that is the "final" mountain in a range.

2. That mountain (we will learn it is called Kolvir) is on a coast.

3. The coast likely runs north/south.

4. The Forest of Arden, at some point, "gives way" to the Valley of Garnath, which slopes toward the sea.

At this stage, it is not entirely clear what the spatial relationship is between Arden, Kolvir and Garnath, nor is it entirely clear the vector of travel that Corwin/Random are following. Are they coming from the north? The northwest? The west? One could make various arguments, given all the twisting and turning they do. Generally speaking, it seems as though they are coming from the west, and then once they enter the mountains, the are forced to head southeast into the valley.

Pausing here, we can sketch a broad topographical view of the Forest of Arden, the Valley of Garnath, the sea, the mountains, and Kolvir. (And we can confidently say that the sun rises in the east, and sets in the west!)

Having ditched the Mercedes, and joined up with Deirdre, they make their way on foot through the valley and to the coast.

With the above description of the Random/Corwin/Deirdre "approach" to Amber, we get a sense of scale that helps inform the distances in the above map: namely that there are twenty miles between Kolvir and the Faiella-bionon (the stairway to Rebma). 

We also get clear confirmation that the coast runs north/south.

The next opportunity we have to piece together the geography of Amber is during the failed assault on Amber by the armies of Bleys and Corwin.

With this description, we learn a number of key facts:

1. Garnath parallels the seacoast, running north/south.

2. Garnath is 100 miles wide.

3. The River Oisen east/west runs through Garnath to the sea.

4. There is a trail cutting through Garnath leading to Amber, and it forks about 66 miles from Amber, with the left fork presumeaby leading to Kolvir, and the right fork to the coast.

At this point, the exact location of Arden and its "shape" are still somewhat muddied. We can assume that Arden is generally to the west and north of Amber, while the Valley of Garnath is to the south.

With this sequence, a clear picture emerges of Kolvir's relationship to the coast. Again, they march north along a north/south coast, and eventually hit Kolvir. They ascend Kolvir's eastern face. Given how soldiers are falling from the staircase and passing by those further down the mountain, we can imagine the staircase literally zigzagging up a sheer, vertical face. This is not a standard staircase that goes up a steep angle; the eastern face of Kolvir is straight up.

Amber as a City
Let us consider the City of Amber for a moment. Something I find interesting about the above descriptions of Corwin finishing the climb up the eastern stair of Kolvir and entering Amber, is that the the Faiella-bionin, stairway to Rebma, is not actually the mirror structure to the whole of the eastern stair. The eastern staircase that zig-zags up Kolvir is unique to Kolvir, and only near the top does it transition into a "broad stair" that mirrors the Faiella-bionin. This serves to help us understand the scale of the ascent up Kolvir, the majority of which simply gets one to the actual staircase leading into the city. And before even entering the city -- and it's worth pausing to acknowledge that Zelazny is clearly using the word "Amber" in this section to mean the city -- there is a landing which occupies the space between the stair's ledge and the Great Arch. This landing, which Merlin will later identify as "Land's End", takes Corwin's army an hour to fight across. We can roughly estimate that to be a distance of a hundred yards or so.

From there, Corwin enters the city, through the Great Arch, and even after traversing a thousand yards, he says they are still "far" from the palace. With this information, as well as upcoming descriptions, we can begin estimating the size of the city of Amber. Let us assume that the full distance between the Great Arch and the palace is, say, three times the distance they have already travelled. That is, a thousand yards have been travelled, and there are three thousand still to go. This is as good an interpretation of "far" as we will get, and is admittedly a guess. But this would put the complete distance at four thousands yards. And since we know that the Palace of Amber lies at the back of the city (exiting the rear of the Palace puts one immediately on the trails down Kolvir), that means the city of Amber is around four thousand yards wide, or around 2.3 miles. And if we further assume that the city is built with some level of symmetry (it is the one, true city, after all), then it would be around 5.3 square miles.

This scale feels believable. With these rough assumptions, the distance from the Great Arch to the Palace of Amber would be about the same as the distance between the Arc de Triomphe in Paris and the Louvre Museum, and about the same as the distance between the Empire State Building and One World Trade Center.

(For further reading, here is a full in-depth look at the layout of Kolvir and the City of Amber.)

At this point in the story, Corwin is thrown into the dungeons. Later, we get a couple of additional terrain references toward the end of the first book:

As we move into The Guns of Avalon, we get a second significant crack at the geogrpahy of Kolvir and Amber, when Corwin and Ganelon lead their army to attack Amber from an entirely different direction: the north.

This sequence gives us a few important facts:

1. The Forest of Arden "wraps" around the mountains; it is both north of Kolvir as well as west of Kolvir.

2. There is forty miles of forest north of the mountain range.

3. There are foothills as you transition from the forest into the mountains.

However there are some complications with this description. It would appear that, from his position in the mountains, Corwin looks west to see Garnath and the black road. This is inconsistent with most of the passages to come, which clearly put Garnath and the the black road to the south. This reference to the black road in the west is incongruent and will need to be explained (below).

With the first two books concluded, we can now step back and draft a different kind of overlay on top of the Amber map. This next map depicts the three different "approaches" to Amber: (1) Random/Corwin/Deirdre from the west, moving toward the sea; (2) the Bleys/Corwin assault, intended attack from the west, but ultimately re-routed down the River Oisen, forcing a march up from the south, and a climb up the eastern stair; and finally (3) the Corwin/Ganelon assault from the north, sweeping around Kolvir to come in from the west, stopping on the "heights" where Eric dies. 

Later, in Sign of the Unicorn, Corwin occupies the city and palace, and he focuses on rooting out the traitor(s) in the family. With this "pause" of sorts, we get a handful of descriptions of the local geography, as well as the palace:

In this sequence, the orientation of Kolvir and the palace are reinforced. The front of the palace faces east, toward the sea, and the rear of the palace faces west, toward the mountains and the bulk of the Forest of Arden. Corwin is coming back from the Grove of the Unicorn, and his encounter with the creature that killed Caine (that is, Caine's body double), and he is entering Amber from behind. The stables are at the rear of the palace, with the rear gardens (including an exercise area) occupying the space between the stables and the palace's rear entrance. Rather than coming straight through the gardens directly (west to east), Corwin skirts and moves toward the southern end of these rear gardens, finds the shade, follows the way there until he is forced, as he approaches the palace, to cut back into the sun in order to take the rear entrance, which is presumeably centered on the back wall of the palace.

The Palace
We also learn that Random's suite is on the third floor, and that it has a balcony. We know from Nine Princes in Amber that the library is also on the third floor. The palace has a rear entrance, which is used frequently by Princes coming and going from the palace, and there are rear gardens and stables behind the palace. (Much of this will be confirmed, expanded, and occassionally contradicted in Sign of the Unicorn; the layout of the Palace will be the subject of a different essay.)

In Sign of the Unicorn, we are introduced to the Grove of the Unicorn. While this new information (below) reinforces some aspects of the terrain, by placing the grove in Arden and saying it is "southwest of Kolvir", this challenges the idea that Arden lies to the north of Kolvir. And it certainly reinforces the idea that Arden somewhat "wraps" the mountains:

Next, we get some additional geographical information when Corwin visits Tir-na Nog'th:

Here the geography is confirmed once more. Clearly the steps to Tir-na Nog'th are at some eastern edge of Kolvir, and they ascend out over the ocean, eastward, such that when Corwin reaches the top, Rebma is off to his right.

The Black Road
The mention of the black road, however, is a complication. In many ways, it makes the most sense that black road leads south, through the Valley of Garnath, toward the Courts of Chaos. This arrangement is generally confirmed throughout the books. However, at the end of TGOA, Corwin describes the enemies attacking Amber and he says, "These were coming in from the west, along the black road". This seems to suggest that the black road cuts west to east; but this cannot be the case, since the Valley of Garnath is to the south of Amber... and we know for certain that the black road's terminus lies in the Valley of Garnath, butting up agains the southern base of Kolvir. (This is further corroborated in SOTU Ch. 11, when Corwin says, "And that blotted area is to the south, from whence comes the black road.")

This next description from The Hand of Oberon serves to further reinforce the basic geography of Kolvir, Garnath, and Arden, as well as the location of the black road.

There can be no mistake that both Garnath and the black road are to the south of Kolvir, and we can perhaps justify Corwin's description of creatures coming "from the west" in TGOA if we recall that Garnath is 100 miles wide (NPIA), and as such, creatures could be coming from the western width of the black road, while the black road -- on the whole -- stretches to the south into Shadow.

And finally, in The Courts of Chaos, we get further confirmation that Garnath is to the south of Amber, and that the black road runs to the south. It is also reinforced that there is a trail on the souther face of Kolvir that heads from Amber straight down into Garnath. And we understand that this is a separate trail from the one that heads down the back of Kolvir (westward), toward the Grove of the Unicorn, and into Arden. 

This sequence will be the final description of Amber's terrain in the Corwin chronicles, and with it, Zelazny brings together several key ideas:

1. There is a southern trail off Kolvir leading down into the Valley of Garnath. In this sequence, Corwin is moving westerly across the southern face of Kolvir; this is why Garnath and the black road are to his "left" despite his general movement to the south.

2. The Grove of the Unicorn is to the west / southwest of Kolvir (though he says "west" in this passage, he has already moved slightly south, so this does not inherently contradict the "Grove to the southwest" passage in SOTU).

3. Again, the sea runs north/south.

4. Arden lies west of Garnath and Kolvir, again reinforcing the "wrap", where Arden is both north and west of Amber.

With all of the above, we have a complete set of references to geography from the first five books, the Corwin chronicles. And we can present a final map, which includes all of the various trails described in the books as overlays:

The Merlin Chronicles

Now, with the Merlin chronicles, Zelazny throws a wrench into the works with an entirely different take on the geophraphy of Amber:

While the basics remain in tact, Zelazny rotates the entire map by 90 degrees. After multiple books of descriptions of Garnath to the south of Kolvir, Arden to the north and west, the coast running north/south, and the black road running to the south... in the second series, the sea is now suddenly to the south of Kolvir, instead of the east. And the coast now runs east/west. 

Whether intentional, or because he failed to consult his own notes (or re-read the Corwin books!), we cannot know.

But the description of Merlin hiking down Kolvir at night in Trumps of Doom, and heading "north into Arden", is very likely the same path Corwin and Gerard take to the Grove of the Unicorn. But the map is rotated.

An additional challenge with the information introduced in the Merlin chronicles is the scale of the terrain to the north (per Corwin) or east (per Merlin) of Amber. The Merlin chronicles introduce the notion of a wine country to the east of Amber; Merlin says that "Baron Bayle owned a number of vineyards about thirty miles to the east." If we are to accept that the map has been rotated 90 degrees since the Corwin chronicles, and all other things are equal, we are left with the problem that Corwin tells us in TGOA that there are "forty miles" of Arden to the north of Amber, in addition to the mountains and foothills. As such, thirty miles would not be enough to get you out of a high-altitude forest, much less to a place suitable for growing grapes. 

Despite this inconsistency, the Merlin chronicles do offer us a very different lens onto Amber -- one of a living world, a city with a population and a working economy, a class system, and various industries. With the second series, Zelazny deliberately evolves from an idealized broad-stroked world -- what Wolfe called the "emotional archetype" -- into a place with sounds, smells, texture, and ordinary people. Merlin's Amber is more like a medieval kingdom straight out of our Shadow Earth, and less like the fantastical, almost alien (or sci-fi) universe of infinite parallel worlds that we find in Corwin's Amber. In Merlin's Amber, there is no talk of seawater that is "purple" and "thick as paint", or grass that is "very, very bright green... unlike Earth", or of trees "tinged with gold", or of "rainbow veils" over Kolvir. But we do get Bloody Bill's and various restaurants, names of streets, harbor life, dairy villages, a wine industry, and "traffic" at the Eastern Gate of Amber. (See an extended exploration of this in City I Was Born to Rule.)

But perhaps these two different (and occasionally conflicting) "takes" on Amber -- together -- give us a deeper, richer imagination of Amber than either series could alone. 

UPDATE:  After publishing this, it was pointed out to me by Marv Breig that there is, in fact, an "official map" that was published with Zelazny's blessing.  "Roger Zelazny published a simple map of Amber and the nearby areas (Mt. Kolvir; Garnath; the stairs to Rebma) as part of the original serialization in Galaxy magazine. The map appeared in Galaxy, Volume 39, No. 2, pg. 101. "

This map confirms much of the basics discussed above, without offering a lot of detail. It also raises additional questions, including why there is not much of a mountain range beyond Kolvir, even though this is clearly described in multiple places in the Corwin chronicles. 

Importantly, this map does nothing to resolve the contradictions introduced in the Merlin chronicles; indeed Galaxy Vol. 39 No. 2 was published in 1978, seven years before Trumps of Doom. If anything, it makes us wonder why Zelazny did not do a better job of consulting his own map when he said things like "vineyards thirty miles to the east 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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