VII

Some of the arms seemed to be waving good-bye to us as we commenced our climb after reaching the wall.  Jurt thumbed his nose at them.

“Can you blame me for wanting to escape this place?” he asked.

“Not in the least,” I replied.

“If that transfusion you gave me really placed me beyond control of the Logrus, then I might dwell here for some indefinite period of time.”

“Sounds possible.”

“That’s why you must realize I threw the ice at Borel, not you.  Besides the fact that you’re smarter than he was and might be able to find a way out of here, he was a creature of the Logrus, too, and wouldn’t have had enough fire if the need arose.”

“That had occurred to me also,” I said, withholding a possible out I’d guessed at, to keep myself indispensable.  “But what are you getting at?”

“I’m trying to say that I’ll give you any kind of help you need, just so you don’t leave me behind when you go.  I know we never got along before, but I’m willing to put that aside if you are.”

“I always was,” I said.  “You were the one who started all our fights and kept me in trouble.”

He smiled.

“I never did, and I won’t do it again,” he said.  “Yeah, okay, you’re right.  I didn’t like you, and maybe I still don’t.  But I won t mess you up when we need each other this way.”

“The way I see it, you need me a hell of a lot more than I need you.”

“I can’t argue with that, and I can’t make you trust me,” he said.

“Wish I could.” We climbed a little more before he continued, and I fancied the air had already grown a trifle warmer.  Then, “But look at it this way,” he finally continued, “I resemble your brother Jurt, and I come close to representing something he once was-close, but not a perfect fit.  I began diverging from his model beginning with our race.  My circumstances are uniquely my own, and I’ve been thinking steadily since I gained my autonomy.  The real Jurt knows things I do not and has powers I don’t possess.  But I have his memories up through his taking the Logrus, and I’m the second greatest authority there is on the way he thinks.  Now, if he’s become such a threat as you’ve indicated, you might find me more than a little useful when it comes to second-guessing him.”

“You have a point,” I acknowledged.  “Unless, of course, the two of you were to throw in together.”

He shook his head.

“He wouldn’t trust me,” he said, “and I wouldn’t trust him.  We’d both know better.  A matter of introspection. See what I mean?”

“It means neither one of you is trustworthy.” His brow furrowed; then he nodded.

“Yeah, I guess so,” he said.

“So why should I trust you?”

“Right now because you’ve got me by the balls.  Later on because I’ll be so damn useful.”

After several more minutes ascending, I told him; “The thing that bothers me the most about you is that its was not all that long ago that Jurt took the Logrus.  You are not an older, milder version of my least favorite relative.  You are a very recent model.  As for your divergence from the original, I can’t see this short while as making that much difference.”

He shrugged.

“What can I say that I haven’t said already?” he asked.  “Let’s just deal in terms of power and self interest then.”

I smiled.  We both knew that that was the way it was anyway. The conversation helped pass the time, though.  A thought came to me as we climbed.

“Do you think you could walk through Shadow?” I asked him.

“I don’t know,” he answered after a time.  “My last memory from before I came to this place was of completing the Logrus.  I guess the recording was completed at that time, too.  So I have no recollection of Suhuy instructing me in shadow-walking, no memory of trying it.  I’d guess I could do it, wouldn’t you think?”

I paused to catch my breath.

“It’s such an arcane matter that I don’t even feel qualified to speculate on it.  I thought maybe you’d come equipped with ready-made answers for things like that-some sort of preternatural awareness of your limits and abilities.”

“Afraid not.  Unless you’d call a hunch preternatural.”

“I suppose I would if you were right often enough.”

“Shit.  It’s too soon to tell.”

“Shit.  You’re right.”

Soon we’d climbed above the line of haze from which the flakes seemed to fall.  A little farther, and the winds died to breezes.  Farther still, and these subsided to nothing.  The rim was in sight by then, and shortly thereafter we achieved it.

I turned and looked back down.  All I could see was a bit of glitter through the mist.  In the other direction our trail ran on in a zigzag fashion, here and there looking like a series of Morse dashes-regular interruptions, possibly rock formations.  We followed it to the right until it turned left.

I reserved some attention for Jurt, looking for signs of recognition at any feature of the terrain.  A talk is only words, and he was still some version of the Jurt I’d grown up with.  And if he became responsible for my falling into any sort of trap, I was going to pass Grayswandir through his personal space as soon as I became aware of it.

Flicker...

Formation to the left, cavelike, as if the hole in the rock opened into another reality.  An oddly shaped car driving up a steep city street...

“What...?” Jurt began.

“I still don’t know their significance.  A whole mess of sequences like this were with me earlier, though.  In fact, at first I thought you were one of them.”

“Looks real enough to walk into.”

“Maybe it is.”

“It might be our way out of here.”

“Somehow that just seems a little too easy.”

“Well, let’s give it a try,”

“Go ahead,” I told him.

We departed the trail, advanced upon the reality window, and kept going.  In a moment he was on the side walk next to the street up which the car was passing.  He turned and waved.  I saw his mouth working, but no words came to me.

If I could brush snow off the red Chevy, why couldn’t I enter entirely into one of these sequences? And if I could; do that, mightn’t it be possible that I could shadow-walk from there, wending my way to some more congenial spot, leaving this dark world behind? I moved forward.

Suddenly I was there, and the sound had been turned on for me.  I looked about at the buildings, at the sharply inclined street.  I listened to the traffic sounds, and I sniffed the air.  This place could almost be one of San Francisco’s shadows.  I hurried to catch up with Jurt, who was moving toward the corner.

I reached him quickly, fell into step beside him.  We came to the corner.  We turned.  We froze.

There was nothing there.  We faced a wall of blackness.  That is, not just darkness but an absolute emptiness, from which we immediately drew back.

I put my hand forth slowly.  A tingling began as it neared the blackness, then a chill, followed by a fear.  I drew back.  Jurt reached for it, did the same.  Abruptly he stopped, picked up the bottom of a broken bottle from the gutter, turned, and hurled it through a nearby window.  Immediately he began running in that direction.

I followed.  I joined him before the broken pane, stared within.

Again the blackness.  There was nothing at all on the other side of the window.

“Kind of spooky,” I remarked.

“Uh-huh,” Jurt said.  “It’s as if we’re being granted extremely limited access to various shadows.  What do you make of it?”

“I’m beginning to wonder whether there isn’t something we’re supposed to be looking for in one of these places,” I said.

Suddenly the blackness beyond the window was gone, and a candle flickered on a small table beyond it.  I began to reach through the broken glass toward it.  Immediately it vanished.  Again there was only blackness.

“I’d take that as an affirmative response to your question,” Jurt said.

“I believe you’re right.  But we can’t be looking for something in every one of these things we pass.”

“I think maybe something’s just been trying to get your attention, to get you to realize that you should be watching what appears, that something probably will be presented once you begin noticing.”

Brightness.  A whole tableful of candles now blazed beyond the window.

“Okay,” I hollered.  “If that’s all you want, I’ll do it.  Is there anything else I should be looking for here?”

The darkness came.  It crept around the corner and moved slowly toward us.  The candles vanished, and it flowed from the window.  The buildings across the street disappeared behind an ebon wall.

“I take it the answer is no,” I cried.  Then I turned and beat it back along our narrowing black tunnel toward the trail.  Jurt was right behind me.

“Good thinking,” I told him when we stood back on the glowing way, watching that rising street get squeezed out of existence beside us.  “Do you think it was just pulling these sequences at random till I finally entered one?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I think it has more control in those places and could respond to your questions more readily in one of them.”

“‘It being the Pattern?”

“Probably.  “

“Okay.  The next one it opens to me, I’m going in.  I’ll do whatever it wants there if it means I get out of here sooner.”

“We, brother.  We.”

“Of course,” I answered.

We commenced walking again.  Nothing new and intriguing appeared beside us, though.  The road zigged and zagged, and we walked along it, and I got to wondering whom we might meet next.  If I were indeed on the Pattern’s turf and on the verge of doing something it wanted, then it seemed that the Logrus might send along someone I knew to attempt to dissuade me.  No one appeared at all, though, and we took the final turn, followed a trail suddenly grown straight for some time, then saw it end abruptly within a dark mass far ahead.

Continuing, I saw that it plunged on into a great, dark, mountainous mass.  I felt vaguely claustrophobic; just considering the implications, and I heard Jurt mutter an obscenity as we trudged toward it.  Before we reached it, there came a flickering to my right.  Turning, I beheld Random and Vialle’s bedroom, back in Amber.  I was looking from the southern side of the room, between the sofa and a bedside table, past a chair, across the rug and the cushions toward the fireplace, the windows which flanked it admitting a soft daylight.  No one was present in the bed or occupying any other piece of furniture, and the logs on the grate had burned themselves down to red embers, smoking fitfully.

“What now?” Jurt asked.

“This is it,” I replied “It has to be, don’t you see? Once I got the message as to what was going on, it presented the real thing.  I’ve got to act fast, too, I think-as soon as I figure just what-“

One of the stones beside the fireplace began to glow redly.  It increased in intensity as I watched.  There was no way that those embers could be doing it.  Therefore...

I rushed forward under the influence of a powerful imperative.  I heard Jurt shout something behind me, but his voice was cut off as I entered the room.  I caught a whiff of Vialle’s favorite perfume as I passed beside the bed.  This was really Amber, I was certain, not just some shadowy facsimile thereof.  I moved quickly to the right of the fireplace.

Jurt burst into the room behind me.

“Better come out fighting!” he cried.

I whirled to face him, shouted, “Shut up!” then raised a finger to my lips.

He crossed to my side, caught hold of my arm, and whispered hoarsely, “Borel’s trying to materialize again! He might be solid and waiting by the time you leave!”

From the sitting room I heard Vialle’s voice.  “Is someone there?” she called.

I jerked my arm free of Jurt’s grasp, knelt upon the hearth, and seized hold of the glowing stone.  It appeared to be mortared in place but came loose easily when I drew upon it.

“How’d you know that one came free?” Jurt whispered.

“The glow,” I replied.

“What glow?” he asked.

I did not answer him but thrust my right hand into the opened area, hoping offhandedly there were no booby traps.  The opening extended back for a good distance beyond the length of the stone.  And there I felt it, suspended from peg or hook: a length of chain.  I caught hold of it and drew it forth.  I heard Jurt catch his breath beside me.

The last time I had seen it was when Random had worn it at Caine’s funeral.  It was the Jewel of Judgment that I held in my hand.  I raised it quickly and slipped the chain over my head, letting that red stone fall upon my breast, just as the door to the sitting room was opened.

Placing my finger to my lips, once more I reached forward, caught hold of Jurt’s shoulders, and turned him back toward the opened wall which let upon our trail.  He began to protest; but I propelled him with a sharp push, and he moved off in that direction.

“Who’s there?” I heard Vialle ask, and Jurt glanced back at me, looking puzzled.

I did not feel we could afford the time for my explaining by sign language or whisper that she was blind.  So I gave him another push.  Only this time he stepped to the side, extended his leg, slipped a hand behind my back, and pushed me forward.  A brief expletive escaped my lips, and then I was falling.  From behind me, I heard Vialle’s “Who -“ before her voice was cut off:

I tumbled onto the trail, managing to draw the dagger from my right boot as I fell.  I rolled and came up with the point extended toward the figure of Borel, which seemed to have found its form once more.

He was smiling, his weapon yet undrawn, as he regarded me.

“There is no field of arms here,” he stated, “to provide you with a lucky accident such as you enjoyed when last we met.  “

“Too bad,” I said.

“If I but gain that bauble you wear about your neck and deliver it to the place of the Logrus, I will be granted a normal existence, to replace my living counterpart-he who was treacherously slain by your father, as you pointed out.”

The vision of Amber’s royal apartments had vanished.  Jurt stood off the trail, near what had been its interface with this odd realm.  “I knew I couldn’t beat him,” he called out when he felt my glance, “but you took him once.”

I shrugged.

At this Borel turned toward Jurt.

“You would betray the Courts and the Logrus?” he asked him.

“On the contrary,” Jurt responded.  “I may be saving them from a serious mistake.”

“What mistake might that be?”

“Tell him, Merlin.  Tell him what you told me while we were climbing out of the deep freeze,” he said.

Borel glanced back at me.

“There’s something funny about this entire setup,” I said.  “I’ve afeeling it’s all a duel between the Powers - the Logrus and the Pattern.  Amber and the Courts may be secondary to the entire affair.  You see-“

“Ridiculous!” he interrupted, drawing his weapon.  “This is just made-up nonsense to avoid our duel.”

I tossed the dagger into my left hand and drew Grayswandir with my right.

“The hell with you then!” I said.  “Come and get it!”

A hand fell upon my shoulder.  And it kept right on falling with a sort of twist to it, spinning me into a downward spiral which threw me off to the left of the trail.  From the corner of my eye, I saw that Borel had taken a step backward.

“You’ve a resemblance to Eric or to Corwin,” came a soft, familiar voice, “though I know you not.  But you wear the Jewel, which makes your person too important to risk in a petty squabble.”

I came to a stop and turned my head.  It was Benedict whom I beheld-a Benedict with two normal hands.

“My name is Merlin and I’m Corwin’s son,” I said; “and this is a master duelist from the Courts of Chaos.”

“You appear to be on a mission, Merlin.  Be about it then,” Benedict said.

The point of Borel’s blade flicked into a position about ten inches from my throat.  “You are going nowhere,” he stated, “not with that jewel.”

There was no sound as Benedict’s blade was drawn and moved to beat Borel’s off its line.

“As I said; be on your way, Merlin,” Benedict told me.

I got to my feet, moved quickly out of range, passed them both cautiously.

“If you kill him,” Jurt said, “he can rematerialize after a period of time.”

“How interesting,” Benedict remarked, flicking off an attack and retreating slightly “How long a time?”

“Several hours.”

“And how much time will you need to complete whatever you’re about?”

Jurt looked at me.

“I’m not certain,” I answered.

Benedict executed an odd little parry, followed by a strange shuffling step and a brief slashing attack.  A button flew from Borel’s shirt front.

“In that case I’ll make this last for a time,” Benedict said.  “Good luck, lad.”

He gave me a quick salute with the weapon, at which moment Borel attacked.  Benedict used an Italianate sixte which threw both their points off to the side, advancing as he did so.  He reached forward quickly then with his left hand and pulled the other’s nose.  Then he pushed him away, stepped back a pace, and smiled.

“What do you usually charge for lessons?” I overheard him asking as Jurt and I hurried down the path.

“I wonder how long it does take for one of the Powers to materialize a ghost,” Jurt said as we jogged toward the mountainous mass the trail entered.

“Several hours for Borel alone,” I said, “and if the Logrus wants the Jewel as badly as I’d guess, I’d think it would have summoned an army of ghosts if it could.  I’m certain now that this place is very difficult for both Powers to reach.  I get the feeling they can only manifest via the barest trickles of energy. If that weren’t the case, I’d never have gotten this far.”

Jurt reached out as if to touch the Jewel, apparently thought better of it, withdrew his hand.

“It seems you’ve definitely aligned yourself with the Pattern now,” he observed.

“Looks as if you have, too.  Unless you’re planning on stabbing me in the back at the last moment,” I said.

He chuckled.  Then, “Not funny,” he said.  “I’ve got to be on your side.  I can see that the Logrus just created me as a disposable tool.  I’d wind up on the scrap heap when the job’s done.  I’ve a feeling I might have dissipated already had it not been for the transfusion.  So I’m with you, like it or not, and your back is safe.”

We ran on along the now-straight way, its terminus finally grown near.  Jurt finally asked, “What is the significance of that pendant? The Logrus seems to want it badly.”

“lt’s called the Jewel of Judgment,” I answered.  “It is said to be older than the Pattern itself and to have been instrumental in its creation.”

“Why do you think you were led to it and obtained it with such ease?”

“I have no idea whatsoever,” I said.  “If you get one before I do, I’ll be glad to hear it.”

Soon we reached the place where the trail plunged into the greater darkness.  We halted and regarded it.

“No signs posted,” I said, checking above and to either side of that entranceway.

Jurt gave me an odd look.

“You’ve always had a weird sense of humor, Merlin “ he said.  “Who’d put up a sign in a place like this?”

“Someone else with a weird sense of humor,” I replied.

“Might as well go on,” he said, turning back toward the entrance.

A bright red exit sign had appeared above the opening.  Jurt stared for a moment, then shook his head slowly.  We entered.

We took our way down a wandering tunnel-a thing which puzzled me a bit.  The artificial quality of most of the rest of this place had led me to expect a ruler-straight trail through a smooth-walled shaft, geometrically precise in all its features.  Instead, it seemed as if we were traversing a series of natural caverns-stalactites, stalagmites, pillars, and pools displayed at either hand.

The Jewel cast a baleful light over any features I turned to scrutinize.

“Do you know how to use that stone?” Jurt asked me.

I thought back over my father’s story

“When the time comes, I believe that I will,” I said, raising the Jewel and studying it for a moment, then letting it fall again.  I was less concerned with it than with the route we were following.

I kept turning my head as we made our way from damp grotto to high cathedral chamber, along narrow passages, down stony waterfalls.  There was something familiar here, though I couldn’t put my finger on it.

“Anything about this place bring back memories?” I asked him.

“Not for me,” Jurt replied.

We kept going, at one point passing a side cave containing three human skeletons.  These being, in their fashion, the first real signs of life I had seen since the onset of this journey, I remarked on it.

Jurt nodded slowly.

“I am beginning to wonder whether we are still walking between shadows,” he said, “or whether we might actually have departed that place and entered Shadow-perhaps when we came into these caves.”

“I could find out by trying to summon the Logrus,” I said, causing Frakir immediately to pulse sharply upon my wrist.  “But considering the metaphysical politics of the situation, I’d rather not.”

“I was just going by the colors of all the minerals in the walls,” he said.  “The place we left behind kind of favored monochrome.  Not that I give a shit about the scenery.  What I’m saying is that if we have, it’s a kind of victory.”

I pointed at the ground.

“So long as that glowing trail is there, we’re not off the hook.”

“What if we simply walked away from it now?” he asked, turning to the right and taking a single step in that direction.

A stalactite vibrated and crashed to the ground before him.  It missed him by about a foot.  He was back beside me in an instant.

“Of course, it would be a real shame not to find out where we’re headed,” he said.

“Quests are that way.  It’d be bad form to miss the fun.”

We hiked on.  Nothing allegorical happened around us.  Our voices and our footfalls echoed.  Water dripped in some of the danker grots.  Minerals flashed.  Our way seemed a gradual descent.

For how long we walked I could not tell.  After a time stony chambers took on a generic appearance-as if we passed regularly through a teleportation device which rerouted us back through the same caves and corridors.  This had the effect of blurring my sense of time.  Repetitious actions have a lulling effect and-

Suddenly our trail debouched into a larger passage, turned left.  Finally, some variation.  Only this way, too, looked familiar.  We followed our line of light through the darkness.  After a time we went by a side passage to the left.  Jurt glanced up it and hurried past.

“Any damned thing might be lurking around here,” he observed.

“True,” I acknowledged.  “But I wouldn’t worry about it.”

“Why not?”

“I think I’m beginning to understand.”

“Mind telling me what’s going on?”

“It’d take too long.  Just wait.  We’ll be finding out pretty soon.”

We went by another side passage.  Similar, yet different.  Of course. I increased my pace, anxious to learn the truth.  Another sideway.  I broke into a run...

Another...

Jurt pounded along beside me, the echoes falling about us.  Up ahead.

Soon.

Another turning.

And then I slowed, for the passage continued ahead but our trail didn’t.  It curved to the left, vanishing beneath a big metal-bound door.  I reached out to my right to where the hook was supposed to be, located it, removed the key that hung there.  I inserted it, turned it, withdrew it, rehung it.

I don’t like this place, boss, Frakir noted.

I know.

“Seems as if you know what you’re doing,” Jurt remarked.

“Yep,” I said, then added, “Up to a point,” as I realized that this door opened outward rather than inward.

I caught hold of the large handle to the left and began to pull upon it.

“Mind telling me where we’ve wound up?” he asked.

The big door creaked, commenced a slow movement as I walked backward.

“These are amazingly like a section of caverns in Kolvir beneath Amber Castle,” I replied.

“Great,” he said.  “And what’s behind the door?”

“This is much like the entrance to the chamber which houses the Pattern in Amber.”

“Wonderful,” he said.  “I’ll probably go up in a puff of smoke if I set foot inside.”

“But it is not quite the same,” I continued.  “We had Suhuy come and look at the Pattern itself before I walked it.  He didn’t suffer any ill effects from the proximity.  “

“Our mother walked the Pattern.”

“Yes, that’s true.”

“Frankly, I think anyone of proper consanguinity in the Courts could walk the Pattern-and vice versa for my relatives in Amber with the Logrus.  Tradition has it we’re all related from back somewhere in the dim and misty.“

“Okay I’ll go in with you.  There’s room to move around inside without touching the thing, isn’t there?”

“Yes.”

I drew the door the rest of the way open, braced my shoulder against it, and stared.  This was it.  I saw that our glowing trail ended a few inches beyond the threshold.

I drew a deep breath and muttered some expletive as I let it go.

“What is it?” Jurt asked, trying to see past me.

“Not what I expected,” I told him.

I moved aside and let him have a look.

He stared for several seconds, then said, “I don’t understand.”

“I am not certain that I do either,” I said, “but I intend to find out.”

I entered the chamber, and he followed me.  This was not the Pattern that I knew.  Or rather, it was and wasn’t.  It conformed to the same general configuration as the Pattern in Amber, only it was broken.  There were several places where the lines had been erased, destroyed, removed in some fashion-or perhaps never properly executed in the first place.  The ordinarily dark interline areas were bright, bluewhite, the lines themselves black.  It was as if some essence had drained from the diagram to permeate the field.  The lighted area seemd to ripple slowly as I viewed it.

And beyond all of this was the big difference: The Pattern in Amber did not contain a circle of fire at its center, a woman dead, unconscious, or under a spell within it.

And the woman, of course, had to be Coral.  I knew that immediately, though I had to wait for more than a minute before I got a glimpse of her face beyond the flames.

The big door shut itself behind us while I stood staring.  Jurt stood unmoving for a long time also before he said, “That Jewel is certainly busy at something.  You should see your face in its light right now.”

I glanced downward and observed its ruddy pulsations.  Between the blue-white flux in which the Pattern was grounded and the flickering of that circle of flame had not noted the sudden activity on the part of the stone.

I moved a step nearer, feeling a wave of coldness similar to that of an activated Trump.  This had to be one of the Broken Patterns of which Jasra had been speaking-representative of one of the Ways in which she and Julia were initiates.  This placed me in one of the early shadows, near Amber herself.  Thoughts began to race through my mind at a ferocious pace.

I had only recently become aware of the possibility that the Pattern might actually be sentient.  Its corollary, that the Logrus was sentient, seemed likely also.  The notion of its sentiency had been presented to me when Coral had succeeded in negotiating the Pattern and then had asked it to send her where she should go.  It had done so, and this was the place to which she had been transported, and her condition was obviously the reason I couldn’t reach her by means of her Trump.  When I had addressed the Pattern following her disappearance, it had-almost playfully, it seemed at the time-shifted me from one end of its chamber to the other, apparently to satisfy me on the matter of its sentience.

And it wasn’t merely sentient, I decided, as I raised the jewel of Judgment and stared into its depths.  It was clever.  For the images that I saw within the stone, showing me what it was that was desired of me, represented something I would not have been willing to do under other circumstances.  Having come away from that strange realm through which I had been led on this guest, I would have shuffled out a Trump and called someone for a fast exit-or even summoned the image of the Logrus and let the two of them slug it out while I slipped away through Shadow.  But Coral slept in a circle of flame at the heart of the Broken Pattern. ...She was the authentic Pattern’s hold over me.  It had to have understood something back when she was walking it, laid its plan, and set me up at that time.

It wanted me to repair this particular image of itself, to mend this Broken Pattern, by walking it, bearing the Jewel of Judgment with me.  This was how Oberon had repaired the damage to the original.  Of course, the act had been sufficiently traumatic to kill him...

On the other hand, the King had been dealing with the real thing, and this was only one of its images.  Also; my father had survived the creation of his own ersatz Pattern from scratch.

Why me? I wondered then.  Was it because I was the son of the man who had succeeded in creating another Pattern? Did it involve the fact that I bore the image of the Logrus within me as well as that of the Pattern? Was it simply because I was handy and coercible.  All of the above? None of them?

“How about it?” I called out.  “Have you got an answer for me?”

There was a quick pang in my stomach and a wave of dizziness as the chamber spun, faded, stood still, and I regarded Jurt across the expanse of the Pattern, the big door at his back.

“How’d you do that?” he hollered.

“I didn’t,” I replied.

“Oh.”

He edged his way to his right till he came to the wall.  Maintaining contact with it, he began moving about the Pattern’s periphery, as if afraid to approach any nearer to it than he had to or to remove his gaze from it.

From this side I could see Coral a bit more clearly, within the fiery hedge.  Funny It was not as if there were a large emotional investment here.  We were not lovers, not even terrifically close friends.  We had become acquainted only the other day, shared a long walk about, around, and under the town and palace, had a meal together, a couple of drinks, a few laughs.  If we became better acquainted, perhaps we would discover that we couldn’t stand each other.  Still, I had enjoyed her company, and I realized that I did want to take the time to get to know her better.  And in some ways I felt responsible for her present condition, through a kind of contributory negligence.  In other words, the Pattern had me by the balls.  If I wanted to free her, I had to repair it.

The flames nodded in my direction.

“It’s a dirty trick,” I said aloud.

The flames nodded again.

I continued to study the Broken Pattern.  Almost everything I knew about the phenomenon had come to me by way of my conversation with Jasra.  But I recalled her telling me that initiates of the Broken Pattern walked it in the areas between the lines, whereas the image in the Jewel was instructing me to walk the lines, as one normally would the Pattern itself.  Which made sense, as I recalled my father’s story.  It should serve to inscribe the proper path across the breaks.  I wasn’t looking for any half assed between-the-lines initiation.

Jurt made his way about the far end of the Pattern, turned, and began to move toward me.  When he came abreast of a break in the outer line, the light flowed from it across the floor.  The look on his face was ghastly as it touched his foot.  He screamed and began to melt.

“Stop!” I cried.  “Or you can find another Pattern repairman! Restore him and leave him alone or I won’t do it! I mean it!”

Jurt’s collapsing legs lengthened again.  The rush of blue-white incandescence which had fled upward through his body was withdrawn as the light retreated from him.  The expression of pain left his face.

“I know he’s a Logrus-ghost,” I said, “and he’s patterned on my least favorite relative, but you leave him alone, you son of a bitch, or I won’t walk you! You can keep Coral and you can stay broken!”

The light flowed back through the imperfection, and things stood as they had moments before.

“I want a promise,” I said.

A gigantic sheet of flame rose from the Broken Pattern to the top of the chamber, then fell again.

“I take it that is an affirmative,” I said.

The flames nodded.

“Thanks,” I heard Jurt whisper.

VIII

And so I commenced my walk.  The black line did not have the same feeling to it as the blazing ones back under Amber.  My feet came down as if on dead ground, though there was a tug and a crackle when I raised them.

“Merlin!” Jurt called out.  “What should I do?”

“What do you mean?” I shouted back.

“How do I get out of here?”

“Go out the door and start shadow-shifting,” I said, “or follow me through this Pattern and have it send you wherever you want.”

“I don’t believe you can shadow-shift this close to Amber, can you?”

“Maybe we are too close.  So get away physically and then do it.”

I kept moving.  There came small crackling sounds whenever I raised my feet now.

“I’d get lost in the caves if I tried that.”

“Then follow me.”

“The Pattern will destroy me.”

“It’s promised not to.”

He laughed harshly.

“And you believe it?”

“If it wants this job done properly, it has no choice.”

I came to the first break in the Pattern.  A quick consultation of the Jewel showed me where the line should lie.  With some trepidation I took my first step beyond the visible marking.  Then another.  And another.  I wanted to look back when I finally crossed the gap.  Instead, I waited until the natural curving of my route granted me that view.  I saw then that the entire line I had walked thus far had begun to glow, just like the real thing.  The spilled luminescence seemed to have been absorbed within it, darkening the interstitial ground area.  Jurt had moved to a position near that beginning;

He caught my gaze.

“I don’t know, Merlin,” he said.  “I just don’t know.”

“The Jurt I knew wouldn’t have had guts enough to try it,” I told him.

“Neither do I.”

“As you pointed out, our mother did it.  Odds are you’ve got the genes.  What the hell.  If I’m wrong, it’ll be over before you know it.”

I took another step.  He gave a mirthless laugh.

Then, “What the hell,” he said, and he set his foot upon it.

“Hey, I’m still alive,” he called out.  “What now?”

“Keep coming,” I said.  “Follow me.  Don’t stop.  And don’t leave the line or all bets are off:”

There followed another turning of the way, and I followed it and lost sight of him.  As I continued along, I became aware of a pain in my right ankle-product of all the hiking and climbing I had done, I supposed.  It began increasing with each step.  It was hot and soon grew to be quite terrible.  Had I somehow torn a ligament? Had I-

Of course.  I could smell the burning leather now.

I plunged my hand into the sheath area of my boot and withdrew the Chaos dagger.  It was radiating heat.  This proximity to the Pattern was affecting it.  I couldn’t keep it about me any longer.

I drew my arm back and cast the weapon across the Pattern in the direction I was facing, toward the end of the room where the doorway was situated.  Automatically my gaze followed its passage.  There was a small movement in the shadows toward which it flew.  A man was standing there, watching me.  The dagger struck the wall and fell to the floor.  He leaned over and picked it up.  I heard a chuckle.  He made a sudden movement, and the dagger came arcing back across the Pattern in my direction.

It landed ahead and to the right of me.  As soon as it made contact with the Pattern, a fountain of blue flame engulfed it, rising well above the level of my head, splattering, sizzling.  I flinched and I slowed, though I knew it would do me no permanent harm, and I kept walking.  I had reached the long frontal arc where the going was slow.

“Stay on the line,” I yelled to Jurt.  “Don’t worry about things like that.”

“I understand,” he said.  “Who’s that guy?”

“Damned if I know.”

I pushed ahead.  I was nearer to the circle of flame now.  I wondered what the ty’iga would think of my present predicament.  I made my way around another turn and was able to see back over a considerable section of my trail.  It was glowing evenly, and Jurt was coming on strongly, moving as I had, the flames rising above his ankles now.  They were almost up to my knees.  From the corner of my eye I saw a movement from that area of the chamber where the stranger stood.

The man moved forth from his shadowy alcove, slowly carefully, flowing along the far wall.  At least he did not seem interested in walking the Pattern.  He moved to a point almost directly opposite its beginning.

I had no choice but to continue my course, which took me through curves and turns that removed him from my sight.  I came to another break in the Pattern and felt it knit as I crossed it.  A barely audible music seemed to occur as I did so.  The tempo of the flux within the lighted area seemed to increase also, as it flowed into the lines, etching a sharp, bright trail behind me.  I called an occasional piece of advice to Jurt, who was several laps back, though his course sometimes brought him abreast of me and close enough to touch had there been any reason to.

The blue fires were higher now, reaching up to midthigh, and my hair was rising.  I began a slow series of turns.  Above the crackling and the music, I asked, How’re you doing, Frakir? There was no reply.

I turned, kept moving through an area of high impedance, emerged from it, beholding the fiery wall of Coral’s prison there at the Pattern’s center.  As I took my way around it, the opposite side of the Pattern slowly came into view.

The stranger stood waiting, the collar of his cloak turned high.  Within the shadows which lay upon his face, I could see that his teeth were bared in a grin.  I was startled by the fact that he stood in the midst of the Pattern itself-watching my advance, apparently waiting for me-until I realized that he had entered by way of a break in the design which I was headed to repair.

“You are going to have to get out of my way,” I called out.  “I can’t stop, and I can’t let you stop me!”

He didn’t stir, and I recalled my father’s telling me of a fight which had occurred on the primal Pattern.  I slapped the hilt of Grayswandir.

“I’m coming through,” I said.

The blue-white fires came up even higher with my next step, and in their light I saw his face.  It was my own.

“No,” I said.

“Yes,” he said.

“You are the last of the Logrus-ghosts to confront me.”

“Indeed,” he replied.

I took another step.

“Yet,” I observed, “if you are a reconstruction of myself from the time I made it through the Logrus, why should you oppose me here? The self I recall being in those days wouldn’t have taken a job like this.”

His grin went away

“I am not you in that sense,” he stated.  “The only way to make this happen as it must, as I understand it, was to synthesize my personality in some fashion.”

“So you’re me with a lobotomy and orders to kill.”

“Don’t say that,” he replied.  “It makes it sound wrong, and what I’m doing is right.  We even have many of the same memories.”

“Let me through and I’ll talk to you afterward.  I think the Logrus may have screwed itself by trying this stunt.  You don’t want to kill yourself, and neither do I.  Together we could win this game, and there’s room in Shadow for more than one Merlin.”

I’d slowed, but I had to take another step then.  I couldn’t afford to lose momentum at this point.

His lips tightened to a thin line, and he shook his head.

“Sorry,” he said.  “I was born to live one hour-unless I kill you.  If I do, your life will be given to me.”

He drew his blade.

“I know you better than you think I do,” I said, “whether you’ve been restructured or not.  I don t think you’ll do it.  Furthermore, I might be able to lift that death sentence.  I’ve learned some things about how it works for you ghosts.”

He extended his blade, which resembled one I’d had years ago, and its point almost reached me.

“Sorry,” he repeated.

I drew Grayswandir for purposes of parrying it.  I’d have been a fool not to.  I didn’t know what sort of job the Logrus had done on his head.  I racked my memories for fencing techniques I’d studied since I’d become an initiate of the Logrus.

Yes.  Benedict’s game with Borel had reminded me.  I’d taken some lessons in Italian-style fencing since then.  It gave one wider, more careless-seeming parries, compensated by greater extension.  Grayswandir went forth, beat his blade to the outside, and extended.  His wrist bent into a French four, but I was already under it, arm still extended, wrist straight, sliding my right foot forward along the line as the forte of my blade beat.heavily against the forte of his from the outside, and I immediately stepped forward with my left foot, driving the weapon across his body till the guards locked and continuing its drop in that direction.

And then my left hand fell upon the inside of his right elbow, in a maneuver a martial artist friend had taught me back in college-zenponage, I think he called it.  I lowered my hips as I pressed downward.  I turned my hips then, counterclockwise.  His balance broke, and he fell toward my left.  Only I could not permit that.  If he landed on the Pattern proper, I’d a funny feeling he’d go off like a fireworks display. So I continued the drop for several more inches, shifted my hand to his shoulder, and pushed him, so that he fell back into the broken area.  Then I heard a scream, and a blazing form passed on my left side.

“No!” I cried, reaching for it.

But I was too late.  Jurt had stepped off the line, springing past me, driving his blade into my double even as his own body swirled and blazed.  Fire also poured from my double’s wound.  He tried unsuccessfully to rise and fell back.

“Don’t say that I never served you, brother,” Jurt stated, before he was transformed into a whirlwind, which rose to the chamber’s roof, where it dissipated.

I could not reach far enough to touch my doppelganger, and moments later I did not wish to, for he was quickly transformed into a human torch.

His gaze was directed upward, following Jurt’s spectacular passing.  He looked at me then and smiled crookedly.

“He was right, you know,” he said, and then he, too, was engulfed.

It took awhile to overcome my inertia, but after a time I did, continuing my ritual dance about the fire.  The next time around there was no trace of either of their persons, though their blades remained where they had fallen, crossed, across my path.  I kicked them off the Pattern as I went by. The flames were up to my waist by then.

.Around, back, over.  I glanced into the Jewel periodically, to avoid missteps, and piece by piece I stitched the Pattern together.  The light was drawn into the lines, and save for the central blaze, it came more and more to resemble the thing we kept in the basement back home.

The First Veil brought painful memories of the Courts and of Amber.  I stayed aloof, shivering, and these things passed.  The Second Veil mixed memory and desire in San Francisco.  I controlled my breathing and pretended I was only a spectator.  The flames danced about my shoulders, and I thought of a series of half moons as I traversed arc after arc, curve upon reverse curve.  The resistance grew till I was drenched with sweat as I struggled against it.  But I had been this way before.  The Pattern was not just around me but inside me as well.

I moved, and I reached the point of diminishing returns, of less and less distance gained for the effort expended.  I kept seeing dissolving Jurt and my own dying face amid flames, and it didn’t matter a bit that I knew the memory rush was Pattern-induced.  It stilt bothered me as I drove myself forward.

I swept my gaze around me once as I neared the Grate Curve, and I saw that this Pattern had now been full repaired.  I had bridged all of the breaks with connecting lines, and it burned now like a frozen Catherine wheel against a black and starless sky.  Another step...

I patted the warm Jewel that I wore.  Its ruddy glow came up to me even more strongly now than it had earlier.  I wondered whether there was an easy way to get it back where it belonged.  Another step...

I raised the Jewel and stared into it.  There was an image of me completing the walking of the Grand Curve and continuing right on through the wall of flames as if this represented no problem whatsoever.  While I took the vision as a piece of advice, I was reminded of a David Steinberg routine which Droppa had once appropriated.  I hoped that the Pattern was not into practical jokes.

The flames enveloped me fully as I commenced the Curve.  I continued to slow as my efforts mounted.  Step after painful step I drew nearer to the Final Veil.  I could feel myself being transformed into an expression of pure will, as everything that I was became focused upon a single end, Another step...It felt as if I were weighted down with heavy armor.  It was the final three steps that pushed one near despair’s edge.

Again .  .

Then came the point where even movement became less important than the effort.  It was no longer the results but the attempt that mattered.  My will was the flame; my body, smoke or shadow....

And again...

Seen through my risen blue light, the orange flames which surrounded Coral became silver-gray spikes of incandescence.  Within the crackling and the popping I heard something like music once again-low, adagio, a deep, vibrant thing, like Michael Moore playing bass.  I tried to accept the rhythm, to move with it.  Somehow, then, it seemed that I succeeded-that, or my time sense became distorted-as I moved with a feeling of something like fluidity through the next steps.

Or maybe the Pattern felt it owed me a favor and had eased up for a few beats.  I’ll never know.

I passed through the Final Veil, faced the wall of flame, suddenly orange again, and kept going.  I drew my next breath in the heart of fire.

Coral lay there at the Pattern’s center, looking pretty much as she had when last I had seen her-in a copper shirt and dark green breeches-save that she appeared to be sleeping, sprawled there upon her heavy brown cloak.  I dropped to my right knee beside her and laid my hand upon her shoulder.  She did not stir.  I brushed a strand of her reddish hair off her cheek, stroked that cheek a few times.

“Coral?” I said.

No response.

I returned my hand to her shoulder, shook her gently.

“Coral?”

She drew a deep breath and sighed it out, but she did not awaken.

I shook her a bit harder.  “Wake up, Coral.”

I slipped my arm beneath her shoulders, raised her partway Her eyes did not open.  Obviously she was under some sort of spell.  The middle of the Pattern was hardly the place to summon the Sign of the Logrus if one wished to remain unincinerated.  So I tried the storybook remedy.  I leaned forward and kiss her.  She made a small, deep noise, and her eyelids fluttered.  But she did not come around.  I tried again.  Same result.

“Shit!” I remarked.  I wanted a little elbowroom for working on a spell like this, a place where I had access to some of the tools of my trade and could call upon the source of my powers with impunity.

I raised her higher and commanded the Pattern to transport us back to my apartment in Amber, where her ty’iga-possessed sister lay in a trance of her own-one of my brother’s doing, for purposes of protecting me from her.

“Take us home,” I said aloud, for emphasis.

Nothing happened.

I employed a strong visualization then and backed once more with the mental command.

We didn’t stir.

I lowered Coral gently, rose, and looked out across the Pattern through the faintest area of the flames.

“Look,” I said, “I just did you a big favor, involving lot of exertion and considerable risk.  Now I want to go the hell out of here and take the lady with me.  Will you please oblige?”

The flames died down, were gone, for several beats.  In the diminished light which followed I became aware that the Jewel was pulsing, like the message light on a hotel phone.  I raised it and stared into it.

I hardly expected an X-rated short feature, but that’s what was playing.

“I believe I’m receiving the wrong channel,” I said.  “If you’ve got a message, let’s have it.  Otherwise, I just want to go home.”

Nothing changed, save that I became aware of a strong resemblance between the two figures in the Jewel and Coral and myself.  They were going at it on a cloak at what appeared to be the center of a Pattern, flagrante ad infinitum-rather like a spicier version of the old salt box label, it seemed, if they could be seeing into the jewel the guy was wearing and watching....

“Enough!” I cried.  “This is fucking ridiculous! You want a Tantric ritual I’ll send you some professionals! The lady isn’t even awake-“

The Jewel pulsed again, with such intensity that it hurt my eyes.  I let it fall.  I knelt then, scooped Coral up, and stood.

“I don’t know whether anyone’s ever walked you backwards before,” I said, “but I don’t see why it shouldn’t work.”

I took a step in the direction of the Final Veil.  Immediately the wall of flame sprang up before me.  I stumbled in drawing away from it, fell back upon the outspread cloak.  I held Coral to me that she not be cast into the fire.  She came down on top of me.  She seemed almost awake....

Her arms went around my neck, and she sort of nuzzled my cheek.  She seemed more drowsy than comatose now.  I held her tightly and thought about it.

“Coral?” I tried again.

“Mm,” she said.

“Seems the only way we can get out of here is by making love.”

“Thought you’d never ask,” she mumbled, eyes still closed.

That made it seem somewhat less like necrophilia, I told myself as I turned us onto our sides so I could get at those coppery buttons.  She muttered a little more while I was about things, but it didn’t exactly turn into a conversation.  Still, her body was not unresponsive to my attentions, and the encounter quickly took on all the usual features, too commonplace to be of much concern to the sophisticated.  It seemed an interesting way to break a spell.  Maybe the Pattern did have a sense of humor.  I don’t know.

The fires died down at about the same time that the fires died down, so to speak.  Coral’s eyes finally opened.

“That seems to have taken care of the circle of flames” I said.

“When did this cease being a dream?” she asked.

“Good question,” I replied, “and only you can answer it.”

“Did you just rescue me from something?”

“That seems the easiest way to put it,” I answered as she drew away somewhat and cast her gaze about the chamber.  “See where it got you when you asked the Pattern to send you where you should go?” I said.

“Screwed,” she replied.

“Precisely.”

We drew apart.  We adjusted our apparel.

“It’s a good way to get to know each other better...” I had begun when the cavern was shaken by a powerful earth tremor.

“The timing is really off here,” I observed as we were rocked together and clung to each other for comfort, if not support.

It was over in an instant, and the Pattern was suddenly blazing more brilliantly than I’d ever seen it before.  I shook my head.  I rubbed my eyes.  Something was wrong, even though it felt very right.  Then the great metal-bound door opened-inward!-and I realized that we had come back to Amber, the real timber.  My glowing trail still led up to the threshold, though it was fading fast, and a small figure stood upon it.  Before I could even squint against the corridor’s gloom, I felt a familiar disorientation, and we were in my bedroom.

“Nayda!” Coral exclaimed when she viewed the figure reclined upon my bed.

“Not exactly,” I said.  “I mean, it’s her body.  But the spirit that moves it is of a different order.”

“I don’t understand.”

I was busy thinking of the person who had been about to invade the precincts of the Pattern.  I was also a mass of aching muscles, screaming nerves, and assorted fatigue poisons.  I crossed to the table where the wine bottle I’d opened for Jasra-how long ago?-still stood.  I found us two clean glasses.  I filled them.  I passed one to Coral.

“Your sister was very ill awhile back, wasn’t she?”

“Yes,” she replied.

I took a big swallow.

“She was near death.  At that time her body was possessed by a ty’iga spirit-a kind of demon-as Nayda no longer had any use for it.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I understand that she actually died.”

Coral stared into my eyes.  She didn’t find whatever she sought, and she took a drink instead.

“I’d known something was wrong,” she said.  “She hasn’t really been herself since the illness.”

“She became nasty? Sneaky?”

“No, a lot nicer.  Nayda was always a bitch.”

“You didn’t get along?”

“Not till recently.  She’s not in any pain, is she?”

“No, she’s just sleeping.  She’s under a spell.”

“Why don’t you release her? She doesn’t look like much of a danger.”

“I don’t think she is now.  Just the opposite, in fact,” I said.  “And we will release her, soon.  My brother Mandor will have to undo it, though.  It’s his spell.”

“Mandor? I don’t really know much about you-or your family-do I?”

“Nope,” I said, “and vice versa.  Listen, I don’t even know what day it is.” I crossed the room and peered out the window.  There was daylight.  It was cloudy though, and I couldn’t guess the time.  “There’s something you should do right away.  Go see your father and let him know you’re all right.  Tell him you got lost in the caverns or took a wrong turn into the Corridor Mirrors and wound up on some other plane of existence or something.  Anything.  To avoid a diplomatic incident.  Okay?”

She finished her drink and nodded.  Then she looked at me and blushed and looked away.

“We’ll get together again before I leave, won’t we?”

I reached out and patted her shoulder, not really knowing what my feelings were.  Then I realized that wouldn’t do, and I stepped forward and embraced her.

“You know it,” I said as I stroked her hair.

“Thanks for showing me around town.”

“We’ll have to do it again,” I told her, “as soon as the pace slackens.”

“Uh-huh.”

We walked to the door.

“I want to see you soon,” she said.

“I’m fading fast,” I told her, as I opened it.  “I’ve been through hell and back.”

She touched my cheek.

“Poor Merlin,” she said.  “Sleep tight.”

I gulped the rest of my wine and withdrew my Trumps.  I wanted to do just what she said, but certain unavoidables came first.  I riffled my way to the Ghostwheel’s card, removed it, and regarded it.

Almost immediately, following the faintest drop in temperature and the barest formation of desire on my part, Ghostwheel appeared before me-a red circle turning in the middle of the air.

“Uh, hello, Dad,” it stated.  “I was wondering where you’d gotten to.  When I checked back at the cave, you were gone, and none of my shadow-indexing procedures could turn you up.  It never even occurred to me that you might simply have come home.  I-“

“Later,” I said.  “I’m in a hurry.  Get me down to the chamber of the Pattern fast.”

“There’s something I’d better tell you first.”

“What?”

“That force that followed you to the Keep-the one I hid you from in the cave...?”

“Yes.”

“It was the Pattern itself that was seeking you.”

“I guessed that,” I said, “later.  We’ve had our encounter and sort of come to terms for now.  Get me down there right away.  It’s important.”

“Sir, I am afraid of that thing.”

“Then take me as close as you dare and step aside.  I have to check something out.”

“Very well.  Come this way.”

I took a step forward.  Ghost rose into the air, rotated ninety degrees toward me, and dropped quickly, passing my head, shoulders, torso and vanishing beneath my feet.  The lights went out as he did so, and I called up my Logrus vision immediately.  It showed me that I stood in the passageway outside the big door to the chamber of the Pattern.

“Ghost?” I said softly.

There was no reply.

I moved forward, turned the comer, advanced to the door, and leaned upon it.  It was still unlocked, and it yielded to my pushing.  Frakir pulsed once upon my wrist.

Frakir? I inquired.

There came no answer from that quarter either.

Lose your voice, lady?

She pulsed twice.  I stroked her.

As the door opened before me, I was certain that the Pattern had grown brighter.  The observation was quickly pushed aside, however.  A dark-haired woman stood at the Pattern’s center, her back to me, her arms upraised.  I almost shouted the name I thought she might answer to, but she was gone before my vocal mechanism responded.  I slumped against the wall.

“I really feel used,” I said aloud.  “You’ve run my ass ragged, you placed my life in jeopardy more than once, you got me to perform to satisfy your metaphysical voyeurism, then you kicked me out after you got the last thing you wanted-a slightly brighter glow.  I guess that gods or powers or whatever the hell you are don’t have to say ‘Thank you’ or ‘I’m sorry’ or ‘Go to hell’ when they’ve finished using someone.  And obviously you feel no need to justify yourself to me.  Well, I’m not a baby carriage.  I resent being pushed around by you and the Logrus in whatever game you’re playing.  How’d you like it if I opened a vein and bled all over you?”

Immediately there was a great coalescence of energy at my side of the Pattern.  With a heavy whooshing sound a tower of blue flame built itself before me, widened, assumed genderless features of an enormous inhuman beauty.  I had to shade my eyes against it.

“You do not understand,” came a voice modulated of the roaring of flames.

“I know.  That’s why I’m here.”

“Your efforts are not unappreciated.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“There was no other way to conduct matters.”

“Well, were they conducted to your satisfaction?”

“They were.”

“Then you are welcome, I guess.”

“You are insolent, Merlin.”

“The way I feel right now I’ve nothing to lose.  I’m just too damned tired to care what you do to me.  So I came down here to tell you that I think you owe me a big one.  That’s all.”

I turned my back on it then.

“Not even Oberon dared address me so,” it said.

I shrugged and took a step toward the door.  When I set my foot down, I was back in my apartment.

I shrugged again, then went and splashed water in my face.

“You still okay, Dad?”

There was a ring around the bowl.  It rose into the air and followed me about the room.

“I’m all right,” I acknowledged.  “How about yourself?”

“Fine.  It ignored me completely.”

“Do you know what it’s up to?” I asked.

“It seems to be dueling with the Logrus for control of Shadow.  And it just won a round.  Whatever happened seems to have strengthened it.  You were involved, right?”

“Right.”

“Where were you after you left the cave I’d put you in?”

“You know of a land that lies between the shadows?”

“Between? No.  That doesn’t make sense.”

“Well, that’s where I was.”

“How’d you get there?”

“I don’t know.  With considerable difficulty, I’d guess.  Are Mandor and Jasra all right?”

“The last time I looked they were.”

“How about Luke?”

“I’d no reason to seek him out.  Do you want me to?”

“Not just now.  Right now I want you to go upstairs and look in on the royal suite.  I want to know whether it is, at the moment, occupied.  And if so, by whom.  I also want you to check the fireplace in the bedroom.  See whether loose stone which was removed from an area to the right of it has been replaced or is still lying upon the hearth.”

He vanished, and I paced.  I was afraid to sit down or to lie down.  I’d a feeling that I’d go to sleep instantly if I did and that I’d be difficult to awaken.  But Ghost spun back into existence before I chalked up much mileage.

“The Queen, Vialle, is present,” he said, “in her studio, the loose stone has been replaced, and there is a dwarf in the hall knocking on doors.”

“Damn,” I said.  “Then they know it’s missing.  A dwarf ?”

“A dwarf.”

I sighed.

“I guess I’d better walk on upstairs, return the Jewel, and try to explain what happened.  If Vialle likes my story, she might just forget to mention it to Random.”

“I’ll transfer you up there.”

“No, that would not be too politic.  Or polite either.  I’d better go knock on the door and get admitted properly this time.”

“How do people know when to knock and when to go on in?”

“In general, if it’s closed, you knock on it.”

“As the dwarf is doing?”

I heard a faint knocking from somewhere outside.

“He’s just going along, indiscriminately banging on doors?” I asked.

“Well, he’s trying them in sequence, so I don’t know that you could say it’s indiscriminate.  So far all of the doors he’s tried have been to rooms which are empty.  He should reach yours in another minute or so.”

I crossed to my door, unlocked it, opened it, and stepped out into the hallway.

Sure enough, there was a short guy moving along the hallway.  He looked in my direction at the opening of my door, and his teeth showed within his beard as he smiled and headed toward me.

It quickly became apparent that he was a hunchback.

“My God!” I said.  “You’re Dworkin, aren’t t you? The real Dworkin!”

“I believe so,” he replied in a not unpleasant voice.  “And I do hope that you are Corwin’s son, Merlin.”

“I am,” I said.  “This is an unusual pleasure, coming at an unusual time.”

“It is not a social call,” he stated, drawing near and clasping my hand and shoulder.  “Ah! These are your quarters!”

“Yes.  Won’t you come in?”

“Thank you.”

I led him in.  Ghost did a fly-on-the-wall imitation, became about a half inch in diameter, and took up residence on the armoire as if the result of a stray sunbeam.  Dworkin did a quick turn about the sitting room, glanced into the bedroom, stared at Nayda for a time, muttered, “Always let sleeping demons lie,” touched the Jewel as he passed me on his return, shook his head forebodingly, and sank into the chair I’d been afraid I’d go to sleep in.

“Would you care for a glass of wine?” I asked him.  He shook his head.

“No, thank you,” he replied.  “It was you who repaired the nearest Broken Pattern in Shadow, was it not?”

“Yes, it was.”

“Why did you do it?”

“I didn’t have much choice in the matter.”

“You had better tell me all about it,” the old man said, tugging at his grisly, irregular beard.  His hair was long and could have used a trim also.  Still, there seemed nothing of madness in his gaze or his words.

“It is not a simple story, and if I am to stay awake long enough to tell it, I am going to need some coffee,” I said.

He spread his hands, and a small, white-clothed table appeared between us, bearing service for two and a steaming silvery carafe set above a squat candle.  There was also a tray of biscuits.  I couldn’t have summoned it all that fast.  I wondered whether Mandor could.

“In that case, I will join you,” Dworkin said.

I sighed and poured.  I raised the Jewel of Judgment.

“Perhaps I’d better return this thing before I start,” I told him.  “It may save me a lot of trouble later.”

He shook his head as I began to rise.

“I think not,” he stated.  “If you take it off now, you will probably die.”

I sat down again.

“Cream and sugar?” I asked him.

IX

I came around slowly.  That familiar blueness was a lake of prebeing in which I drifted.  Oh, yes, I was here because...I was here, as the song said.  I turned over onto my other side within my sleeping bag, drew my knees up to my chest, and went back to sleep.

The next time I came around and gave it a quick glance the world was still a blue place.  Fine: There is much to be said for the tried, the true.  Then I recalled that Luke might be by at any time to kill me, and my lingers wrapped themselves around the hilt of the weapon beside me, and I strained my hearing after signs of anything’s approach.

Would I spend the day chipping at the wall of my crystal cave? I wondered.  Or would Jasra come and try again to kill me?

Again? Something was wrong.  There’d been an awful lot of business involving Jurt and Coral and Luke and Mandor, and even Julia.  Had it all been a dream?

The moment of panic came and went, and then my wandering spirit returned, bringing along the rest of my memories, and I yawned and everything was all right again.

I stretched.  I sat up.  I knuckled my eyes.

Yes, I was back in the crystal cave.  No, everything that had happened since Luke imprisoned me had not been a dream.  I had returned here by choice (a) because a good night’s sleep in this time line amounted to only a brief span back in Amber, (b) because nobody could bother me here with a Trump contact, and (c) because it was possible that even the Pattern and the Logrus couldn’t track me down here.

I brushed my hair out of my eyes, rose, and headed back to the john.  It had been a good idea, having Ghost‘ transport me here following my colloquy with Dworkin.  I was certain I had slept for something like twelve hours -deep, undisturbed stuff, the best kind.  I drained a quart water bottle.  I washed my face with more of the stuff.

Later, after I had dressed and stowed the bedclothes in the storeroom, I walked to the entrance chamber and stood in the light beneath the overhead adit.  What I could see of the sky through it was clear.  I could still hear Luke’s words the day he had imprisoned me here and I’d learned we were related.

I drew the Jewel of Judgment up from within my shirt, removed it, held it high so that the light shone from behind it, stared into its depths.  No messages this time.

Just as well.  I wasn’t in the mood for two-way traffic.  I lowered myself into a comfortable cross-legged position, still regarding the stone.  Time to do it and be done with it, now that I felt rested and somewhat alert.  As Dworkin had suggested, I sought the Pattern within that red pool.

After a time it began to take shape.  It did not appear as I had been visualizing it, but this was not an exercise in visualization.  I watched the structure come clear.  It was not as if it were suddenly coming into existence, however, but rather as if it had been there all along and my eyes were just now adjusting to perceive it properly.  Likely this was actually the case, too.

I took a deep breath and released it.  I repeated the process.  Then I began a careful survey of the design: I couldn’t recall everything my father had said about attuning oneself to the Jewel.  When I had mentioned this to Dworkin, he had told me not to worry about it, that I needed but to locate the three-dimensional edition of the Pattern within the stone, find its point of entry, and traverse it.  When I pressed him for details, he had simply chuckled and told me not to worry.

All right.

Slowly I turned it, drawing it nearer.  A small break appeared, high, to the right.  As I focused upon it, it seemed to rush toward me.

I went to that place, and I went in there.  It was a strange roller coaster of an experience, moving along Pattern-like lines within the gemstone.  I went where it drew me, sometimes with a near-eviscerating feeling of vertigo, other times pushing with my will against the ruby barriers till they yielded and I climbed, fell, slid, or pushed my way onward.  I lost most of the awareness of my body, hand holding the chain high, save that I knew I was sweating profusely, as it stung my eyes with some regularity.

I’ve no idea how much time passed in my attunement to the Jewel of Judgment, the higher octave of the Pattern.  Dworkin felt that there were reasons other than my having pissed off the Pattern for its wanting me dead immediately following my completion of my bizarre quest and repairing of the nearest of the Broken Patterns.  But Dworkin refused to elaborate, feeling that my knowing the reason could influence a possible future choice which should be made freely.  All of which sounded like gibberish to me, save that everything else he said struck me as eminently sane, in contrast with the Dworkin I knew of from legend and hearsay.

My mind plunged and reared through the pool of blood that was the Jewel’s interior.  The Pattern segments I had traversed and those I had yet to travel moved about me, flashing like lightning.  I’d a feeling my mind was going to crash against some invisible Veil and shatter.  My movement was out of control now, accelerating.  There was no way, I knew, for me to withdraw from this thing until I had run its course.

Dworkin felt that I had been protected from the Pattern during our confrontation, when I had gone back to check on the figure I had seen, because I was wearing the Jewel.  I could not keep wearing it for too long, though, because this also had a tendency to prove fatal.  He decided that I must become attuned to the Jewel-as were my father and Random-before I let it out of my possession.  I would thereafter bear the higher-order image within me, which should function as well as the Jewel in defending me against the Pattern.  I could hardly argue with the man who had supposedly created the Pattern, using the Jewel.  So I agreed with him.  Only I was too tired to do what he suggested.  That was why I had had Ghost return me to my crystal cave, my sanctuary, to rest first.

Now, now...I flowed.  I spun.  Occasionally I stalled.  The Jewel’s equivalents of the Veils were no less formidable because I had left my body behind.  Each such passage left me as wrung out as running a mile in Olympic time.  Though I knew at one level that I stood holding the Jewel through which I took my initiatory way, at another I could feel my heart pounding, and at another I recalled parts of a guest lecture by Joan Halifax for an anthropology course I was taking, years before.  The medium swirled like Geyser Peak Merlot 1985 in a goblet-and whom was I looking across the table at that night? No matter.  Onward, down and around.  The blood-brightened tide was loosed.  A message was being inscribed upon my spirit.  In the beginning was a word I cannot spell.  .  .Brighter, brighter.  Faster, faster.  Collision with a ruby wall, I a smear upon it.  Come now, Schopenhauer, to the final game of will.  An age or two came and went; then, suddenly, the way was opened.  I was spilled forth into the light of an exploding star.  Red, red, red, shifting me onward, away, like my little boat Starburst, driven, expanding, coming home...

I collapsed.  Though I did not lose consciousness, my state of mind was not normal either.  There was a hypnagogia I could have passed through at any time I chose, in either direction.  But why? I am seldom the recipient of such a delivery of euphoria.  I felt I’d earned it, so I drifted, right there, for a long, long time.

When it finally subsided below the level that made indulgence worthwhile, I climbed to my feet, swayed, leaned against the wall, made my way to the storeroom for another drink of water.  I was also ravenous, but none of the tinned or freeze-dried foods appealed to me that greatly.  Especially when fresher things were not that hard to come by.

I walked back through those familiar chambers.  So I had followed Dworkin’s advice.  It was a pity I’d turned my back before I recalled a long list of questions I wished to ask him.  When I turned back again, he was gone.

I climbed.  Coming up out of my cave, I stood atop the blue prominence which held the only entranceway I knew of.  It was a breezy, balmy, springlike morning with only a few small puffs of cloud to the east.  I drew a deep breath for pleasure and expelled it.  Then I stooped and moved the blue boulder to block the opening.  I’d hate to be surprised by a predator should I come this way again in need of sanctuary.

I took off the Jewel of Judgment and hung it on a spur of the boulder.

Then I moved off about ten paces.

“Hi, Dad.”

The Ghostwheel was a golden Frisbee, come sailing out of the west.

“Good morning, Ghost.”

“Why are you abandoning that device? It’s one of the most powerful tools I’ve ever seen.”

“I’m not abandoning it, but I’m about to summon the Sign of the Logrus, and I don’t think they’d get on too well.  I’m even a little leery over how the Logrus will take to me with this higher-order Pattern attunement I’m wearing.”

“Perhaps I’d better move along and check back with you later.”

“Stick around,” I said.  “Maybe you can bail me out if this turns into a problem.”

I summoned the Sign of the Logrus then, and it came and hovered before me, and nothing happened.  I shifted a part of my awareness into the jewel, there on the side of the boulder, and through it I was able to perceive the Logrus from another perspective.  Eerie.  Also painless.

I centered myself within my own skull once again, extended my arms into the Logrus limbs, reached....In less than a minute I had a plate of buttermilk pancakes, a side order of sausages, a cup of coffee, and a glass of orange juice.

“I could have gotten them for you faster than that,” Ghost remarked.

“I’m sure you could have,” I said.  “I was just testing systems.”

As I ate, I tried to sort my priorities.  When I finished, I sent the dishes back where they had come from, retrieved the Jewel, hung it about my neck, and stood.

“Okay, Ghost.  Time to head back to Amber,” I said.

He expanded and opened and sank, so that I stood before a golden arch.

I stepped forward-

and back into my apartment.

“Thanks,” I said.

“De nada, Dad.  Listen, I’ve a question: When you summoned breakfast, did you notice anything at all unusual in the way the Logrus Sign behaved?”

“How do you mean that?” I asked as I moved to wash my hands.

“Let’s start with physical sensations.  Did it seem...sticky?”

“That’s an odd way to put it,” I said.  “But as a matter of fact, it did seem to take slightly longer than usual to disengage.  Why do you ask?”

“A peculiar notion has just occurred to me.  Can you do Pattern magic?”

“Yeah, but I’m better at the Logrus variety.”

“You might want to try them both and compare them if you get a chance.”

“ Why?”

“I’m actually starting to get hunches.  I’ll tell you as soon as I’ve checked this one out.”

Ghostwheel was gone.

“Shit,” I said, and I washed my face.

I looked out the window, and a handful of snowflakes blew by.  I fetched a key from my desk drawer.  There were a couple of things I wanted to get out of the way immediately.

I stepped into the corridor.  I had not gone more than a few paces before I heard the sound.  I halted and listened.  Then I continued, past the stairway, the sound growing steadily in volume as I advanced.  By the time I reached the long corridor which ran past the library I knew that Random was back because I didn’t know of anyone else around here who could drum like that-or would dare to use the King’s drums if he could.

I continued on past the half opened door to the corner, where I turned right.  My first impulse had been to enter, give him back the Jewel of Judgment, and try to explain what had happened.  Then I recalled Flora’s advice that anything honest, straightforward, and above-board would always get you in trouble here.  While I hated to give her credit for having enunciated a general rule, I could see that in this particular instance it would certainly tie me up with a lot of explaining when then were other things I wanted to be about-and, for that matter, it might also get me ordered not to do some of them.

I continued to the far entrance to the dining room, where I checked quickly and determined the place to be deserted.  Good.  Inside and to the right, as I recalled; there was a sliding panel which would get me into a hollow section of wall beside the library, furnished with pegs or a ladder that would take me up to a hidden entrance to the library’s balcony.  It could also take me down through the spiral stair’s shaft and into the caverns below, if memory served.  I hoped I never had reason to check that part out, but I was sufficiently into family tradition these days that I wanted to do a little spying, as several muttered exchanges as I’d passed the opened door led me to believe that Random was not alone in there.  If knowledge really is power, then I needed all I could get my hands on, as I’d felt especially vulnerable for some time now.

Yes, the panel slid, and I was through it in a trice, sending my spirit-light on ahead.  I hand-over-handed my way quickly to the top and opened the panel there slowly and quietly, feeling grateful to whoever had thought to conceal its space with a wide chair.  I was able to see around the chair’s right arm with comparative safety from detection-a good view of the room’s north end.

And there was Random, drumming, and Martin, all chains and leather, was seated before him, listening.  Random was doing something I’d never seen done before.  He was playing with five sticks.  He had one in each hand, one under each arm, and he held one in his teeth.  And he was revolving them as he played, moving the one in his mouth to replace the one under his right arm, which replaced the one in his right hand, which he had switched over to his left hand, the left-hand one going up beneath his left arm, the left arm one going to his teeth, all without missing a beat.  It was hypnotic.  I stared until he wound out the number.  His old set of traps was hardly the fusion drummer’s dreamworld of translucent plastic with tipped cymbals the size of battle shields set around the snares, a mess of tomtoms, and a couple of basses, all lit up like Coral’s circle of fire.  Random’s set went back to a time before snares grew thin and nervous, basses shrank, and cymbals caught acromegaly and began to hum.

“Never saw that done before,” I heard Martin say.  Random shrugged.

“Bit of horsing around,” he said.  “Learned it from Freddie Moore, in the thirties, either at the Victoria or the Village Vanguard, when he was with Art Hodes and Max Kaminsky.  I forget which place.  It goes back to vaudeville, when they didn’t have any mikes and the lighting was bad.  Had to do show-off things like that, or dress funny, he told me, to keep the audience paying attention.”

“Shame they had to cater to the crowd that way.”

“Yeah, none of you guys would dream of dressing funny or throwing your instruments around.”

There followed a silence, and there was no way I could see the expression on Martin’s face.  Then, “I meant it different from that,” Martin said.

“Yeah, me too,” Random replied.  Then he tossed three of the sticks down and began to play again.

I leaned back and listened.  A moment later I was startled to hear an alto sax come in.  When I looked again, Martin was standing, his back still to me, and playing the thing.  It must have been on the floor on the other side of his chair.  There was a Richie Cole flavor to it that I rather liked, and it kind of surprised me.  As much as I enjoyed it, I felt that I did not belong in this room right now, and I edged back, opened the panel, passed through, and closed it.  After I’d climbed down and let myself out, I decided to cut through the dining room rather than pass the library entrance again.  The music carried for some distance thereafter, and I wished I’d learned a spell of Mandor’s for capturing sounds in precious stones, though I’m not sure how the Jewel of Judgment would have taken to containing “Wild Man Blues.”

I was planning on walking up the east corridor to the point where it intersected with the north one in the vicinity of my apartment, turning left there, and taking the stairs up to the royal suite, knocking on the door, and returning the Jewel to Vialle, whom I hoped I could get to take a rain check on explanations.  And if not, I’d rather explain to her than to Random anyway.  I could leave out a lot that she wouldn’t know to ask me.  Of course, Random would catch up with me with questions eventually.  But the later, the better.

But then I was going right past my father’s rooms.  I’d brought along the key so that I could stop in later, for what I considered obvious reasons.  Still, since I was already on the spot, it would be more time-effective.  I unlocked the door, opened it, and stepped inside.

The silver rose was gone from the bud vase on the dresser.  Odd.  I took a step toward it.  There came a sound of voices from the other room, too soft for me to distinguish words.  I froze.  He might well be in there.  But you don’t just go bursting into someone’s bedroom, especially when it’s likely there’s company present-particularly when it’s your father’s room and you had to unlock an outer door to get where you were.  Suddenly I was extremely self-conscious.  I wanted to get out of there, fast.  I unbuckled my sword belt, from which Grayswandir depended in its not-quite-perfect fit of a sheath.  I did not dare bear it any farther but hung it from one of the garment pegs on the wall near the door next to a short trench coat I hadn’t noticed before.  I slipped out then and locked the door as quietly as I could.

Awkward.  Was he really coming and going with some regularity, somehow managing to avoid notice? Or was some sort of phenomenon of an entirely different order in progress within his quarters? I’d heard an occasional rumor that some of the older chambers had sub specie spatium doorways, if one could but figure how to activate them, providing considerable extra closet space as well as private means of entry and egress.  Something else I should have asked Dworkin about.  Maybe I’ve got a pocket universe under my bed.  I’d never looked.

I turned and walked quickly away.  As I neared the corner, I slowed.  Dworkin had felt that the presence of the Jewel of Judgment on my person was the thing that had protected me from the Pattern, had it really tempted to harm me earlier.  On the other hand, the Jewel, worn too long, could itself do damage to the wearer.  Therefore, he had counseled me to get some rest and then pass my mind through the stone’s matrix; in effect creating a recording of a higher power of the Pattern within me along with some measure of immunity to assaults by the Pattern itself.  Interesting conjecture.  And that’s all it was, of course: conjecture.

When I reached the cross corridor where a left would take me to the stairway or a right back to my rooms, I hesitated.  There was a sitting room diagonally across the way, to the left, across from Benedict’s seldom used rooms.  I headed for it, entered, sank into a heavy chair in the corner.  All I wanted to do was deal with my enemies, help my friends, get my name off any shit lists it currently occupied, locate my father, and come to some sort of terms with the sleeping ty’iga.  Then I could see about the continuance of my interrupted Wanderjahr.  All of which, I realized, required that I now reask myself the now near-rhetorical question, How much of my business did I want Random to know?

I thought of him in the library, playing a duet with his near-estranged son.  I understood that he had once been pretty wild and footloose and nasty, that he hadn’t really wanted the job of ruling this archetypal world.  But parenthood, marriage, and the Unicorn’s choice seemed to have laid a lot on him-deepening his character, I suppose, at the price of a lot of the fun things in his life.  Right now he seemed to have a lot of problems with this Kashfa-Begma business, possibly having just resorted to an assassination and agreed to a less than favorable treaty to maintain the complex political forces of the Golden Circle at an even level.  And who knew what might be going on elsewhere to add to his troubles? Did I really want to draw this man into something I might well be able to handle myself with his never being any the wiser, or ever even bothered, concerning it? Conversely, if I did draw him into my affairs, it seemed likely that he might well lay restrictions on me which could hamper my ability to respond to what seemed the daily exigencies of my life.  It could also raise another matter which had been shunted aside years ago.

I had never sworn allegiance to Amber.  Nobody had ever asked me to.  After all, I was Corwin’s son, and I had come to Amber willingly and made my home here for some time before going off to the shadow Earth, where so many of the Amberites had gone to school.  I returned often, and I seemed to be on good terms with everyone.  I didn’t really see why the concept of dual citizenship shouldn’t apply.

I’d rather the matter did not come up at all, though.  I did not like the thought of being forced to choose between Amber and the Courts.  I wouldn’t do it for the Unicorn and the Serpent, the Pattern and the Logrus, and I didn’t care to do it for the royalty of either court.

All of which indicated that Vialle should not have even a sketchy edition of my story.  Any version at all would require an eventual accounting.  However, if the Jewel were returned without an explanation of where it had been, then no one would know to come after me on the matter, and things would still be set right.  How could I lie if I were not even asked questions?

I mulled that along a little further.  What I would actually be doing would be to save a tired, troubled man the burden of additional problems.  There was nothing he could or should do about most of my affairs.  Whatever was going on between the Pattern and the Logrus seemed mainly important as a metaphysical affair.  I couldn’t see where much good or bad might come out of it on a practical level.  And if I saw something coming, I could always tell Random then.

Okay.  That’s one nice thing about reasoning abilities.  You can use them to make yourself feel virtuous rather than, say, guilty.  I stretched and cracked my knuckles.

“Ghost?” I said softly.

No response.

I reached for my Trumps, but even as I touched them, a wheel of light flashed on across the room.

“You did hear me,” I said.

“I felt your need,” came the reply.

“Whatever,” I said, drawing the Jewel’s chain up over my head and holding the stone out before me.  “Do you think you could return this to its secret compartment beside the fireplace in the royal suite without anyone’s being any wiser?” I asked.

“I’m leery about touching that thing,” Ghost responded.  “I don’t know what its structure might do to my structure.”

“Okay,” I said.  “I guess I’ll find a way to do it myself then.  But the time has come to test a hypothesis.  If the Pattern attacks me, try to whisk me to safety, please.”

“Very well.”

I set the Jewel on a nearby table.

After about a half minute I realized that I had braced myself against the Pattern’s death stroke.  I relaxed my shoulders.  I drew a deep breath.  I remained intact.  Could be that Dworkin was right and the Partern would leave me alone.  Also, I should be able to summon the Pattern in the Jewel now, he told me, as I do the Sign of the Logrus.  There were Pattern-magics which could only be wrought via this route, though Dworkin hadn’t taken the time to instruct me in their employment.  He’d suggested that a sorcerer should be able to figure the system out.  I decided that this could wait.  I was in no mood just now for commerce of any sort with the Pattern in any of its incarnations.

“Hey, Pattern,” I said.  “Want to call it even?”

There came no reply.

“I believe it is aware of you here and what you just did,” Ghost said.  “I feel its presence.  Could be you’re off the hook.”

“Could be,” I responded, taking out my Trumps and sorting through them.

“Whom would you like to get in touch with?” Ghost asked.

“I’m curious about Luke,” I said.  “I want to see whether he’s okay.  And I’m wondering about Mandor.  I assume you sent him to a safe place.”

“Oh, nothing but the best,” Ghost replied.  “Same for Queen Jasra.  Did you want her, too?”

“Not really.  In fact, I don’t want any of them.  I just wanted to see-“

Ghost winked out while I was still talking.  I wasn’t at all certain that his eagerness to please was an improvement over his earlier belligerence.

I withdrew Luke’s card and went inside it.

I heard someone passing along the corridor.  The footsteps went on by.

I felt Luke’s awareness, though no vision of his circumstances reached me.

“Luke, you hear me?” I inquired.

“Yep,” he answered.  “You okay, Merle?”

“I’m all right,” I said.  “How about yourself? That was quite a fight you-“

“I’m fine.”

“I hear your voice, but I can’t see a thing.”

“Got a blackout on the Trumps.  You don’t know how to do that?”

“Never looked into the matter.  Have to get you to teach me sometime.  Uh, why are they blacked out anyway?”

“Somebody might get in touch and figure what I’m up to.”

“If you’re about to lead a commando raid on Amber, I’m going to be highly pissed.”

“Come on! You know I swore off? This is something entirely different.”

“Thought you were a prisoner of Dalt’s.”

“My status is unchanged.”

“Well, he damn near killed you once and he just beat the shit out of you the other day.”

“The first time he’d stumbled into an old berserker spell Sharu’d left behind for a trap; the second time was business.  I’ll be okay.  But right now everything I’m up to is hush-hush, and I’ve got to run.  G’bye.”

Gone Luke, the presence.

The footsteps had halted, and I’d heard a knocking on a nearby door.

After a time I heard a door being opened, then closed.  I had not overheard any exchange of words.  In that it had been nearby and that the two nearest apartments were Benedict’s and my own, I began to wonder.  I was fairly certain that Benedict was not in his, and I recalled not having locked my own door when I had stepped out.  Therefore...

Picking up the Jewel of Judgment, I crossed the room and stepped out into the hall.  I checked Benedict’s door.  Locked.  I looked down the north-south hallway and walked back to the stairway and checked around in that area.  There was no one in sight.  I strode up to my own place then and stood listening for a time outside each of my doors.  No sounds from within.  The only alternatives I could think of were Gerard’s rooms, back down the side corridor, and Brand’s, which lay behind my own.  I had thought of knocking out a wall-in keeping with the recent spirit of remodeling and redecorating Random had gotten into-adding Brand’s rooms to my own, for a very good-size apartment.  The rumor that his were haunted, though, and the wailings I sometimes heard through the walls late at night dissuaded me.

I took a quick walk then, knocking on and finally trying both Brand’s and Gerard’s doors.  No response, and both were locked.  Odder and odder.

Frakir had given a quick pulse when I’d touched Brand’s door, and while I’d gone on alert for several moments, nothing untoward had approached.  I was about to dismiss it as a disturbing reaction to the remnants of eldritch spells I had occasionally seen drifting about the vicinity when I noticed that the Jewel of Judgment was pulsing.

I raised the chain and stared into the gem.  Yes, an image had taken form.  I beheld the hallway around the corner, my two doors, and intervening artwork on the wall in plain view.  The doorway to the left-the one that let upon my bedroom-seemed to be outlined in red and pulsing.  Did that mean I was supposed to avoid it or rush in there? That’s the trouble with mystical advice.

I walked back and turned the corner again.  This time the gem-perhaps having felt my query and decided some editing was in order-showed me approaching and opening the door it was indicating.  Of course, of the two, that door was locked....

I fumbled for my key, reflecting that I could not even rush in with a drawn blade, having just disposed of Grayswandir.  I did have a couple of tricky spells hung, though.  Maybe one of them would save me if the going got too rough.  Maybe not, too.

I turned the key and flung the door open.

“Merle!” she shrieked, and I saw that it was Coral.  She stood beside my bed, where her putative sister the ty’iga was reclined.  She quickly moved one hand behind her back.  “You, uh, surprised me.”

“Vice versa,” I replied, for which there is an equivalent in Thari.  “What’s up, lady?”

“I came back to tell you that I located my father and gave him a soothing story about that Corridor of Mirrors you told me about.  Is there really such a place here?”

“Yes.  You won’t find it in any guides, though.  It comes and goes.  So, he’s mollified?”

“Uh-huh.  But now he’s wondering where Nayda is.”

“This gets trickier.”

“Yes.  “

She was blushing, and she did not meet my eyes readily.  She seemed aware, too, that I was noting her discomfort.

“I told him that perhaps Nayda was exploring, as I’d been,” she went on, “and that I’d ask after her.”

“Mm-hm.”

I shifted my gaze to Nayda.  Coral immediately moved forward and brushed against me.  She placed a hand on my shoulder, drew me toward her.

“I thought you were going to sleep,” she said.

“Yes, I was.  Did, too.  I was running some errands just now.”

“I don’t understand,” she said.

“Time lines,” I explained.  “I economized.  I’m rested.”

“Fascinating,” she said, brushing my lips with her own.  “I’m glad that you’re rested.”

“Coral,” I said, embracing her briefly, “you don’t have to bullshit me.  You know I was dead tired when you left.  You had no reason to believe that I’d be anything but comatose if you returned this soon.”

I caught hold of her left wrist behind her back and drew her hand around to the front, raising it between us.  She was surprisingly strong.  And I made no effort to pry open her hand, for I could see between the fingers what it was that she held.  It was one of the metal balls Mandor often used to create impromptu spells.  I released her hand.  She did not draw away from me, but rather, “I can explain,” she said, finally meeting my gaze and holding it.

“I wish you would,” I said.  “In fact, I wish you’d done it a bit sooner.”

“Maybe the story you heard about her being dead and her body the host for a demon is true,” she said.  “But she’s been good to me recently.  She’s finally become the sister I’d always wished she’d been.  Then you brought me back here and I saw her like that, not knowing what you really planned to do with her-“

“I want you to know that I wouldn’t hurt her, Coral,” I interrupted.  “I owe her-it-for favors past.  When I was young and naive on the shadow Earth, she probably saved my neck, several times.  You have no reason to fear for her here.”

She cocked her head to the right and narrowed one eye.  “I’d no way of knowing that,” she said, “from what you told me I came back, hoping to get in, hoping you were deeply asleep, hoping I could break the spell or at least lift it enough to talk with her.  I wanted to find out for myself whether she was really my sister-or something else.”

I sighed.  I reached out to squeeze her shoulder and realized I was still clutching the Jewel of Judgment in my left hand.  I squeezed her arm with my right hand instead and said, “Look, I understand.  It was boorish of me to show you your sister laid out that way and not to have gone into a little more detail.  I can only plead industrial fatigue and apologize.  I promise you she’s in no pain.  But I really don’t want to mess with this spell right now because it’s not one of mine-‘

Just then Nayda moaned softly.  I studied her for several minutes, but nothing more followed.

“Did you pluck that metal ball out of the air?” I asked.  “I don’t recall seeing one for the final spell.”

Coral shook her head.

“It was lying on her breast.  One of her hands was over it,” she said.

“What prompted you to check there?”

“The position looked unnatural, that’s all.  Here.”

She handed me the ball.  I took it and weighed it in the palm of my right hand.  I had no idea how the things functioned.  The metal balls were to Mandor what Frakir was to me-a piece of idiosyncratic personal magic, forged out of his unconscious in the heart of the Logrus.

“Are you going to put it back?” she asked.

“No,” I told her.  “Like I said, it wasn’t one of my spells.  I don’t know how it works, and I don’t want to fool around with it.”

“Merlin...?” whispered, from Nayda, her eyes still closed.

“We’d better go talk in the next room,” I said to Coral.  “I’ll lay a spell of my own on her first, though.  Just a simple soporific-“

The air sparkled and spun behind Coral, and she must have guessed from my stare that something was going on, for she turned.

“Merle, what is it?” she asked, retreating toward me as a golden archway took form.

“Ghost?” I said.

“Right,” came the reply “Jasra was not where I left her.  But I brought your brother.”

Mandor, still clad mainly in black, his hair a great mass of silver-white, appeared suddenly, glancing at Coral and Nayda, focusing on me, beginning to smile, stepping forward.  Then his gaze shifted, and he halted.  He stared.  I had never seen that frightened expression on his face before.

“Bloody Eye of Chaos!” he exclaimed, summoning up a protective screen with a gesture.  “How did you come by it?”

He took a step backward.  The arch immediately collapsed into a gold-leaf calligraphed letter O, and Ghost slid around the room to hover at my right side.

Suddenly Nayda sat up on my bed, darting wild glances.

“Merlin!” she cried.  “Are you all right?”

“So far so good,” I answered.  “Not to worry. Take it easy.  All’s well.”

“Who’s been tampering with my spell?” Mandor asked as Nayda swung her legs over the side of the bed and Coral cringed.

“It was a sort of accident,” I said.

I opened my right hand.  The metal sphere immediately levitated and shot off in his direction, narrowly missing Coral, whose hands were now extended in a general martial arts defense pattern, though she seemed uncertain what or whom she should be defending against.  So she kept turning-Mandor, Nayda, Ghost, repeat....

“Cool it, Coral,” I said.  “You’re in no danger.”

“The left eye of the Serpent!” Nayda cried.  “Free me, oh, Formless One, and I will pledge with mine!” Frakir in the meantime was warning me that all was not well, in case I hadn’t noticed.

“Just what the hell is going on?” I yelled.

Nayda sprang to her feet, lunged forward, and with that unnatural demon strength snatched the Jewel of Judgment from my hand, pushed me aside, and tore into the hallway.

I stumbled, recovered.

“Hold that ty’iga!” I cried, and the Ghostwheel sailed past me followed by Mandor’s balls.

X

I was the next thing out into the hallway.  I turned left and started running.  A ty’iga may be fast, but so am I.

“I thought you were supposed to be protecting me!” I shouted after her.

“This takes precedence,” she answered, “over your mother’s binding.”

“What?” I said.  “My mother?”

“She placed me under a geas to take care of you when you went off to school,” she replied.  “This breaks it! Free at last!”

“Damn!” I observed.

Then, as she neared the stairway, the Sign of the Logrus appeared before her, larger than any I’d ever summoned, filling the corridor from wall to wall, roiling, sprawling, fire-shot, tentacular, a reddish haze of menace drifting about it.  It took a certain measure of chutzpah for it to manifest like that here in Amber on the Pattern’s turf, so I knew the stakes were high.

“Receive me, oh, Logrus,” she cried, “for I bear the Eye of the Serpent,” and the Logrus opened, creating a fiery tunnel at its center.  I could somehow tell that its other end was not a place further along my hallway.

But then Nayda was halted, as if she had suddenly encountered a glass partition, and she stiffened into a position of attention.  Three of Mandor’s gleaming spheres were suddenly orbiting her cataleptic form.

I was thrown from my feet and pressed back against the wall.  I raised my right arm to block whatever might be coming down on me, as I looked backward.

An image of the Pattern itself, as large as the Logrus Sign, had just put in an appearance only a few feet behind me, manifesting about as far in that direction from Nayda as the Logrus was before her, parenthesizing the lady or the ty’iga between the poles of existence, so to speak, and incidentally enclosing me along with her.  The area about me near the Pattern grew bright as a sunny morning while that at the other end took on the aspect of a baleful twilight.  Were they about to reenact the Big Bang/Crunch, I wondered, with me as an unwilling momentary witness?

“Uh, Your Honors,” I began, feeling obliged to try talking them out of it and wishing I were Luke, who just might be able to swing such a feat.

“This is a perfect time to employ an impartial arbitrator, and I just happen to be uniquely qualified if you will but reflect-“

The golden circlet that I knew to be Ghostwheel suddenly dropped over Nayda’s head, lengthening itself downward into a tube.  Ghost had fitted himself within the orbits of Mandor’s spheres and must somehow have insulated himself against whatever forces they were exerting, for they slowed, wobbled, and finally dropped to the floor, two striking the wall ahead of me and one rolling down the stairway ahead and to the right.

The Signs of the Pattern and the Logrus began to advance then, and I crawled quickly to keep ahead of the Pattern.

“Don’t come any closer, fellows,” Ghostwheel suddenly announced.  “There’s no telling what I might do if you make me even more nervous than I already am.”

Both Power Signs halted in their advances.  From around the corner to the left, up ahead, I heard Droppa’s drunken voice, raised in some bawdy ballad, coming this way.  Then it grew silent.  Several moments passed, and he began singing “Rock of Ages” in a far, far weaker voice.  Then this, too, was cut off, followed by a heavy thud and the sound of breaking glass.

It occurred to me that I should be able, from a distance such as this, to extend my awareness into the Jewel.  But I was uncertain what effects I might then be able to produce with the thing, considering the fact that none of the four principals involved in the confrontation was human.

I felt the beginnings of a Trump contact.  “Yes?” I whispered.

Dworkin’s voice came to me then.

“Whatever control you may have over the thing,” he said, “use it to keep the Jewel away from the Logrus.”

Just then a crackly voice, shifting in pitch and gender from syllable to syllable, emerged from the red tunnel.  “Return the Eye of Chaos,” it said.  “The Unicorn took it from the Serpent when they fought, in the beginning.  It was stolen.  Return it.  Return it.”

The blue face I had seen above the Pattern did not materialize, but the voice I’d heard at that time responded, “It was paid for with blood and pain.  Title passed.”

“The Jewel of Judgment and the Eye of Chaos or Eye of the Serpent are different names for the same stone?” I said.

“Yes,” Dworkin replied.

“What happens if the Serpent gets its eye back?” I inquired.

“The universe will probably come to an end.”

“Oh,” I observed.

“What am I bid for the thing?” Ghost asked.

“Impetuous construct,” the voice of the Pattern intoned.

“Rash artifact,” wailed the Logrus.

“Save the compliments,” Ghost said, “and give me something I want.”

“I could tear it from you,” the Pattern responded.

“I could have you apart and it away in an instant,” stated the Logrus.

“But neither of you will do it,” Ghost answered, “because such a focusing of your attention and energies would leave either of you vulnerable to the other.”

In my mind, I heard Dworkin chuckle.

“Tell me why this confrontation need take place at all,” Ghost went on, “after all this time.”

“The balance was tipped against me by recent actions of this turncoat,” the Logrus replied-a burst of fire occurring above my head, presumably to demonstrate the identity of the turncoat in question.

I smelled burning hair, and I warded the flame.

“Just a minute!” I cried.  “I wasn’t given much choice in the matter!”

“But there was a choice,” wailed the Logrus, “and you made it.”

“Indeed, he did,” responded the Pattern.  “But it served only to redress the balance you’d tipped in your own favor.”

“Redress? You overcompensated! Now it’s tipped in your favor! Besides, it was accidentally tipped my way, by the traitor’s father.” Another fireball followed, and I warded again.  “It was not my doing.”

“You probably inspired it.”

“If you can get the Jewel to me,” Dworkin said, “I can put it out of reach of both of them until this matter is settled.”

“I don’t know whether I can get hold of it,” I said, “but I’ll remember that.”

“Give it to me,” the Logrus said to Ghost, “and I will take you with me as First Servant.”

“You are a processor of data,” said the Pattern.  “I will give you knowledge such as none in all of Shadow possess.”

“I will give you power,” said the Logrus.

“Not interested,” said Ghost, and the cylinder spun and vanished.

The girl, the Jewel, and everything were gone.

The Logrus wailed, the Pattern growled, and the Signs of both Powers rushed to meet, somewhere near Bleys’s nearer room.

I raised every protective spell that I could.  Behind me I could feel Mandor doing the same.  I covered my head, I drew up my knees, I-

I was falling.  Through a bright, soundless concussion.  Bits of debris struck me.  From several directions.  I’d a hunch that I had just bought the farm and that I was about to die without opportunity to reveal my insight into the nature of reality: The Pattern did not care about the children of Amber any more than the Logrus did about those of the Courts of Chaos.  The Powers cared, perhaps, about themselves, about each other, about heavy cosmic principles, about the Unicorn and the Serpent, of which they were very probably but geometric manifestations They did not care about me, about Coral, about Mandor, probably not even about Oberon or Dworkin himself.  We were totally insignificant or at most tools or sometimes annoyances, to be employed or destroyed as the occasion warranted-

“Give me your hand,” Dworkin said, and I saw him, as in a Trump contact.  I reached and-

fell hard at his feet upon a colorful rug spread over a stone floor, in a windowless chamber my father had once described to me, filled with books and exotic artifacts, lit by bowls of light which hung without visible means of support high in the air.

“Thanks,” I said, rising slowly, brushing myself off, massaging a sore spot in my left thigh.

“Caught a whiff of your thoughts,” he said “There’s more to it.”

“I’m sure.  But sometimes I enjoy being bleak-minded.  How much of that crap the Powers were arguing about was true?”

“Oh, all of it,” Dworkin said, “by their lights The biggest bar to understanding is the interpretation they put on each other’s doings.  That, and the fact that everything can always be pushed another step backward - such as the break in the Pattern having strengthened the Logrus and the possibility that the Logrus actively influenced Brand into doing it.  But then the Logrus might claim this was in retaliation for the Day of the Broken Branches several centuries ago.”

“I haven’t heard about that one,” I said.

He shrugged.

“I’m not surprised.  It wasn’t all that important a matter, except to them.  What I’m saying is that to argue as they do is to head into an infinite regression-back to first causes, which are always untrustworthy.”

“So what’s the answer?”

“Answer? This isn’t a classroom There are no answers that would matter, except to a philosopher-that is, none with any practical applications.”

He poured a small cup of green liquid from a silver flask and passed it to me.

“Drink this,” he said.

“It’s a little early in the day for me.”

“It’s not refreshment.  It’s medication,” he explained.  “You’re in a state of near shock, whether you’ve noticed or not.”

I tossed the thing off, and it burned like a liquor but didn’t seem to be one.  I did feet myself beginning to relax during the next few minutes, in places I had not even realized I was tense.

“Coral, Mandor.  .  .” I said.

He gestured, and a glowing globe descended, drew nearer.  He signed the air with a half familiar gesture, and something like the Logrus Sign without the Logrus came over me.  A picture formed within the globe.

That long section of hallway where the encounter had occurred had been destroyed, along with the stairs, Benedict’s apartment, and possibly Gerard’s as well.  Also, Bleys’s rooms, portions of my own, the sitting room I had been occupying but a short time before, and the northeast corner of the library were missing, as were the floor and ceiling.  Below, I could see that sections of the kitchen and armory had been hit, and possibly more across the way Looking upward-magic globes being wondrous accommodating-I could see sky, which meant that the blast had gone through the third and fourth floors, possibly damaging the royal suite along with the upper stairways and maybe the laboratory-and who knew what all else.

Standing on the edge of the abyss near what had been a section of Bleys’s or Gerard’s quarters was Mandor, his right arm apparently broken, hand tucked in behind his wide black belt.  Coral leaned heavily upon his left shoulder, and there was blood on her face.  I am not sure that she was fully conscious.  Mandor held her about the waist with his left arm, and a metal ball circled the two of them.  Diagonally across the abyss, Random stood on a heavy crossbeam near the opening to the library.  I believe Martin was standing atop a short stack, below and to the rear.  He was still holding his sax.  Random appeared more than a little agitated and seemed to be shouting.

“Voice! Voice!’ I said.  Dworkin waved.

“-ucking Lord of Chaos blowing up my palace!” Random was saying.

“The lady is injured, Your Highness,” Mandor said.  Random passed a hand across his face.  Then he looked upward.

“If there’s an easy way to get her to my quarters, Vialle is very skilled in certain areas of medicine,” he said in a softer voice.  “So am I, for that matter.”

“Just where is that, Your Highness?”

Random leaned to his side and pointed upward.  “Looks as if you won’t need the door to get in, but I can’t tell whether there’s enough stairway left to get up there or where you might cross to it if there is.”

“I’ll make it,” Mandor said, and two more of the balls came rushing to him and set themselves into eccentric orbits about him and Coral.  Shortly thereafter they were levitated and drifted slowly toward the opening Random had indicated.

“I’ll be along shortly,” Random called after them.  He looked as if he were about to add something, but then regarded the devastation, lowered his head, and turned away.  I did the same thing.

Dworkin was offering me another dose of the green medicine, and I took it.  Some sort of trank, it seemed, in addition to whatever else it did.

“I have to go to her,” I told him.  “I like that lady, and I want to be sure she’s all right.”

“I can certainly send you there,” Dworkin said, “though I cannot think of anything you could do for her which will not be done well by others.  Perhaps the time were more profitably spent in pursuit of that errant construct of yours the Ghostwheel.  It must be persuaded to return the Jewel of Judgment.”

“Very well,” I acknowledged.  “But I want to see Coral first.”

“Your appearance could cause considerable delay,” he said, “because of explanations which may be required of you.”

“I don’t care,” I told him.

“All right.  A moment then.”

He moved away and took down what appeared to be a sheathed wand from the wall, where it had hung suspended from a peg.  He hung the sheath upon his belt, then crossed to a small cabinet and removed a flat leather-bound case from one of its drawers.  It rattled with a faint metallic sound as he slipped it into a pocket.  A small jewelry box vanished up a sleeve without any sound.

“Come this way,” he told me, approaching and taking my hand.

He turned me and led me toward the room’s darkest corner, where I had not noted that a tall, curiously framed mirror hung.  It exhibited an odd reflective capacity in that it showed us and the room behind us with perfect clarity from a distance, but the closer we approached to its surface, the more indistinct all of its images became.  I could see what was coming, coming.  But I still tensed as Dworkin, a pace in advance of me by then, stepped through its foggy surface and jerked me after him.

I stumbled and regained my footing, coming to myself in the good half of the blasted royal suite in front of a decorative mirror.  I reached back quickly and tapped it with my fingertips, but its surface remain solid.  The short, stooped figure of Dworkin stood before me, and he still had hold of my right hand.  Looking past that profile, which in some ways caricatured my own, I saw that the bed had been moved eastward, away from the broken corner and a large opening formerly occupied by a section of flooring.  Random and Vialle stood on the near side of the bed, their backs to us.  They were studying Coral, who was stretched out upon the counterpane and appeared to be unconscious.  Mandor, seated in a heavy chair at they bed’s foot, observing operations, was the first to notice our presence, which he acknowledged with a nod.

“How...is she?” I asked.

“Concussion,” Mandor replied, “and damage to the right eye.”

Random turned.  Whatever he was about to say to me died on his lips when he realized who stood beside me.

“Dworkin!” he said.  “It’s been so long.  I didn’t know whether you were still alive.  Are you...all right?”

The dwarf chuckled.

“I read your meaning, and I’m rational,” he replied.  “I would like to examine the lady now.”

“Of course,” Random answered, moving aside.

“Merlin,” Dworkin said; “see whether you can locate that Ghostwheel device of yours, and ask it to return the artifact it borrowed.”

“I understand,” I said, reaching for my Trumps.

Moments later I was reaching, reaching...

“I felt your intent several moments ago, Dad.”

“Well, do you have the Jewel or don’t you?”

“Yes, I just finished with it.”

“’Finished’?”

“Finished utilizing it.”

“In what fashion did you...utilize it?”

“As I understood from you that passing one’s awareness through it would give some protection against the Pattern, I wondered whether it might work for an ideally synthesized being such as myself.”

“That’s a nice term, ‘ideally synthesized.’ Where’d it come from?”

“I coined it myself when seeking the most appropriate designation.”

“I’ve a hunch it’ll reject you.”

“It didn’t.”

“Oh.  You actually got all the way through the thing?”

“I did.”

“What effect did it have upon you?”

“That’s a hard thing to assess.  My perceptions are altered.  It’s difficult to explain....It’s subtle, whatever it is.”

“Fascinating.  Can you move your awareness into the stone from a distance now?”

“Yes.”

“When all of our present troubles have passed, I’m going to want to test you again.  “

“I’m curious myself to know what’s changed.”

“In the meantime, there is a need for the Jewel here.”

“Coming through.”

The air shimmered before me.

Ghostwheel appeared as a silver circlet, the Jewel of Judgment at its center.  I cupped my hand and collected it.  I took it to Dworkin, who did not even glance at me as he received it.  I looked down at Coral’s face and looked away quickly, wishing I hadn’t.

I moved back near Ghost.

“Where’s Nayda?” I asked.

“I’m not sure,” he replied.  “She asked me to leave her-there near the crystal cave-after I took the Jewel away from her.”

“What was she doing?”

“Crying.”

“Why?”

“I suppose because both of her missions in life have been frustrated.  She was charged to guard you unless some wild chance brought her the opportunity of obtaining the Jewel, in which instance she was released from the first directive.  This actually occurred; only I deprived her of the stone.  Now she is bound to neither course.”

“You’d think she’d be happy to be free at last.  She wasn’t on either job as a matter of choice.  She can go back to doing whatever carefree demons do beyond the Rimwall.”

“Not exactly, Dad.”

“What do you mean?”

“She seems to be stuck in that body.  Apparently she can’t simply abandon it the way she could others she’s used.  It has something to do with there being no primary occupant.”

“Oh.  I suppose she could, uh, terminate and get loose that way.”

“I suggested that, but she’s not sure it would work that way.  It might just kill her along with the body, now that she’s bound to it the way she is.”

“So she’s still somewhere near the cave?”

“No.  She retains her ty’iga powers, which make her something of a magical being.  I believe she must simply have wandered off through Shadow while I was in the cave experimenting with the Jewel.”

“Why the cave?”

“That’s where you go to do clandestine things, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.  So how come I could reach you there with the Trump?”

“I’d already finished the experiment and departed.  In fact, I was looking for her when you called.”

“I think you’d better go and look some more.”

“Why?”

“Because I owe her for favors past-even if my mother did sic her on me.”

“Certainly.  I’m not sure how successful I’ll be, though.  Magical beings don’t track as readily as the more mundane sort.”

“Give it a shot anyway.  I’d like to know where she’s gotten to and whether there’s anything I can do for her.  Maybe your new orientation will be of help -somehow.”

“We’ll see,” he said, and he winked out.

I sagged.  How was Orkus going to take it? I wondered.  One daughter injured and the other possessed of a demon and wandering, off in Shadow.  I moved to the foot of the bed and leaned against Mandor’s chair.  He reached up with his left hand and squeezed my arm.

“I don’t suppose you learned anything about bone-setting off on that shadow-world, did you?” he inquired.

“Afraid not,” I answered.

“Pity,” he replied.  “I’ll just have to wait my turn.”

“We can Trump you somewhere and get it taken care of right away,” I said, reaching for my cards.

“No,” he said.  “I want to see things played out here.”

While he was speaking, I noticed that Random seemed engaged in an intense Trump communication.  Vialle stood nearby, as if shielding him from the opening in the wall and whatever might emerge therefrom.  Dworkin continued to work upon Coral’s face, his body blocking sight of exactly what he was doing.

“Mandor,” I said, “did you know that my mother sent the ty’iga to take care of me?”

“Yes,” he replied.  “It told me that when you stepped out of the room.  A part of the spell would not permit it to tell you this.”

“Was she just there to protect me, or was she spying on me, too?”

“That I couldn’t tell you.  The matter didn’t come up.  But it does seem her fears were warranted.  You were in danger.”

“You think Dara knew about Jasra and Luke?”

He began to shrug, winced, thought better of it.

“Again, I don’t know for certain.  If she did, I can’t answer the next one either: How did she know? Okay?”

“Okay.”

Random completed a conversation, covering a Trump. Then he turned and stared at Vialle for some time.  He looked as if he were about to say something, thought better of it, looked away.  He looked at me.  About then I heard Coral moan, and I looked away, rising.

“A moment, Merlin,” Random said, “before you go rushing off.“

I met his gaze.  Whether it was angry or merely curious, I could not tell.  The tightening of the brows, the narrowing of the eyes could indicate either.

“Sir?” I said.

He approached, took me by the elbow, and turned me away from the bed, leading me off toward the doorway to the next room.

“Vialle, I’m borrowing your studio for a few moments,” he said.

“Surely,” she replied.

He led me inside and closed the door behind us.  Across the room a bust of Gerard had fallen and broken.  What appeared to be her current project-a multilimbed sea creature of a sort I’d never seen-occupied a work area at the studio’s far end.

Random turned on me suddenly and searched my face.

“Have you been following the Begma-Kashfa situation?” he asked.

“More or less,” I replied.  “Bill briefed me on it the other night.  Eregnor and all that.”

“Did he tell you that we were going to bring Kashfa into the Golden Circle and solve the Eregnor problem by recognizing Kashfa’s right to that piece of real estate?”

I didn’t like the way he’d asked that one, and I didn’t want to get Bill in trouble.  It had seemed that that matter was still under wraps when we’d spoken.  So, “I’m afraid I don’t recall all the details on this stuff,” I said.

“Well, that’s what I planned on doing,” Random told me.  “We don’t usually make guarantees like that-the kind that will favor one treaty country at the expense of another-but Arkans, the Duke of Shadburne, kind of had us over a barrel.  He was the best possible head of state for our purposes, and I’d paved the way for his taking the throne now that that red-haired bitch is out of the picture.  He knew he could lean on me a bit, though -since he’d be taking a chance accepting the throne following a double break in the succession-and he asked for Eregnor, so I gave it to him.”

“I see,” I said, “everything except how this affects me.”

He turned his head and studied me through his left eye.

“The coronation was to be today.  In fact, I was going to dress and Trump back for it in a little while...”

“You use the past tense,” I observed, to fill the silence he had left before me.

“So I do.  So I do,” he muttered, turning away, pacing a few steps, resting his foot on a piece of broken statuary, turning back.  “The good Duke is now either dead or imprisoned.”

“And there will be no coronation?” I said.

“Au contraire,” Random replied, still studying my face.

“I give up,” I said.  “Tell me what’s going on.”

“There was a coup, at dawn, this morning.”

“Palace?”

“Possibly that, too.  But it was backed by external military force.”

“What was Benedict doing while this was going on?”

“I ordered him to pull the troops out yesterday, right before I came home myself.  Things seemed stable, and it wouldn’t have looked good to have combat troops from Amber stationed there during the coronation.”

“True,” I said.  “So somebody moved right in, almost as soon as Benedict moved out and did away with the man who would be king, without the local constabulary even suggesting that that was not nice?”

Random nodded slowly

“That’s about the size of it,” he said.  “Now why do you think that might be?”

“Perhaps they were not totally displeased with the new state of affairs.”

Random smiled and snapped his fingers.

“Inspired,” he said.  “One could almost think you knew what was going on.”

“One would be wrong,” I said.

“Today your former classmate Lucas Raynard becomes Rinaldo I, King of Kashfa.”

“I’ll be damned,” I said.  “I’d no idea he really wanted that job.  What are you going to do about it?”

“I think I’ll skip the coronation.

“I mean, over a slightly longer term.”

Random sighed and turned away, kicking at the rubble.

“You mean, am I going to send Benedict back, to depose him?’.

“In a word, yes.”

“That would make us look pretty bad.  What Luke just did is not above the Graustarkian politics that prevail in the area.  We’d moved in and helped straighten out something that was fast becoming a political shambles.  We could go back and do it again, too, if it were just some half assed coup by a crazy general or some noble with delusions of grandeur.  But Luke’s got a legitimate claim, and it actually is stronger than Shadburne’s.  Also, he’s popular.  He’s young, and he makes a good appearance.  We’d have a lot less justification for going back than we had for going in initially.  Even so, I was almost willing to risk being called an aggressor to keep that bitch’s homicidal son off the throne.  Then my man in Kashfa tells me that he’s under Vialle’s protection.  So I asked her about it.  She says that it’s true and that you were present when it happened.  She said she’d tell me about it after the operation Dworkin’s doing now, in case he needs her empathic abilities.  But I can’t wait.  Tell me what happened.”

“You tell me one more thing first.”

“What is it?”

“What military forces brought Luke to power?”

“Mercenaries.”

“Dalt’s?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.  Luke canceled his vendetta against the House of Amber,” I said.  “He did this freely, following a conversation with Vialle, just the other night.  It was then that she gave him the ring.  At the time I thought it was to keep Julian from trying to kill him, as we were on our way down to Arden.”

“This was in response to Dalt’s so-called ultimatum regarding Luke and Jasra?”

“That’s right.  It never occurred to me that the whole thing might be a setup-to get Luke and Dalt together so they could go off and pull a coup.  That would mean that even that fight was staged, and now that I think of it, Luke did have a chance to talk with Dale before it occurred.”

Random raised his hand.

“Wait,” he said.  “Go back and tell me the thing from the beginning.”

“Right.”

And so I did.  By the time I’d finished we had both paced the length of the studio countless times.

“You know,” he said then, “the whole business sounds like something Jasra might have set up before her career as a piece of furniture.”

“The thought had occurred to me,” I said, hoping he wasn’t about to pursue the matter of her present whereabouts.  And the more I thought of it, recalling her reaction to the information about Luke following our raid on the Keep, the more I began to feel not only that she had been aware of what was going on but that she’d even been in touch with Luke more recently than I had at that time.

“It was pretty smoothly done,” he observed.  “Dalt must have been operating under old orders.  Not being certain how to collect Luke or locate Jasra for fresh instructions, he took a chance with that feint on Amber.  Benedict might well have spitted him again, with equal skill and greater effect.”

“True.  I guess you have to give the devil his due when it comes to guts.  It also means that Luke must have done a lot of fast plotting and laid that fixed fight out during their brief conference in Arden.  So he was really in control there, and he conned us into thinking he was a prisoner, which precluded his being the threat to Kashfa that he really was-if you want to look at it that way.”

“That other way is there to look at it?”

“Well, as you said yourself, his claim is not exactly without merit.  What do you want to do?”

Random massaged his temples.

“Going after him, preventing the coronation, would be a very unpopular move,” he said.  “First, though, I’m curious.  You say this guy’s a great bullshitter.  You were there.  Did he con Vialle into placing him under her protection?”

“No, he didn’t,” I said.  “He seemed as surprised as I was at her gesture.  He called off the vendetta because he felt that honor had been satisfied, that he had to an extent been used by his mother, and out of friendship for me.  He did it without any strings on it.  I still think she gave him the ring so the vendetta would end there, so none of us would go gunning for him.”

“That is very like her,” Random said.  “If I thought he’d taken advantage of that, I was going to go after him myself.  The embarrassment for me is unintentional then, and I guess I can live with it.  I prime Arkans for the throne, and then he’s shunted aside at the last minute by someone under my wife’s protection.  Almost makes it look as if there’s a bit of divisiveness here at the center of things-and I’d hate to give that impression.”

“I’ve got a hunch Luke will be very conciliatory.  I know him well enough to know he appreciates all of these nuances.  I’d guess he’d be a very easy man for Amber to deal with, on any level.”

“I’ll bet he will.  Why shouldn’t he?”

“No reason,” I said.  “What’s going to happen to that treaty now?”

Random smiled.

“I’m off the hook.  I never felt right about the Eregnor provisions.  Now, if there’s to be a treaty at all, we go at it ab initio.  I’m not even sure we need one, though.  The hell with ‘em.”

“I’ll bet Arkans is still alive,” I said.

“You think Luke’s holding him hostage, against my giving him Golden Circle status?”

I shrugged.

“How close are you to Arkans?”

“Well, I did set him up for this thing, and I feel I owe him.  I don’t feel I owe him that much, though.”

“Understandable.”

“There would be loss of face for Amber even to approach a second-rate power like Kashfa directly at a time like this.”

“True,” I said, “and for that matter, Luke isn’t officially head of state yet.”

“Arkans would still be enjoying life at his villa if it weren’t for me, though, and Luke really does seem to be a friend of yours-a scheming friend, but a friend.”

“You would like me to mention this during a forthcoming discussion of Tony Price’s atomic sculpture?”

He nodded.

“I feel you should have your art discussion very soon.  In fact, it would not be inappropriate for you to attend a friend’s coronation-as a private individual.  Your dual heritage will serve us well here, and he will still be honored.”

“Even so, I’ll bet he wants that treaty.”

“Even if we were inclined to grant it, we would not guarantee him Eregnor.”

“I understand.”

“And you are not empowered to commit us to anything.”

“I understand that, too.”

“Then why don’t you clean up a bit and go talk to him about it? Your room is just around the abyss.  You can leave through the hole in the wall and shinny down a beam I noticed was intact.”

“Okay, I will,” I answered, moving in that direction.  “But one question first, completely off the subject.”

“Yes?”

“Has my father been back recently?”

“Not to my knowledge,” he said, shaking his head slowly.  “We’re all pretty good at hiding our comings and goings if we wish, of course.  But I think he’d have let me know if he were around.”

“Guess so,” I said, and I turned and exited through the wall, skirting the abyss.

XI

No.

I hung from the beam, swung, and let go.  I landed almost gracefully in the middle of the hallway in an area that would have been located approximately midway between my two doors, save that the first door was missing, also the section of wall through which it had provided entrance (or exit, depending on which side you happened to be), not to mention my favorite chair and a display case which had held seashells I’d picked up from beaches around the world.  Pity.

I rubbed my eyes and turned away, for even the prospect of my ruined apartment took second place just now.  Hell, I’d had apartments ruined in the past.  Usually around April 30...

As in “Niagara Falls,” slowly I turned.  .  .

No.

Yes.  Across the hall from my rooms, where I had previously faced a blank wall, there was now a hallway running to the north.  I’d gotten a glimpse up its sparkling length as I’d dropped from my rafter.  Amazing.  The gods had just uptempoed my background music yet again.  I’d been in that hallway before, in one of its commoner locations up on the fourth floor, running east-west between a couple of storerooms.  One of Castle Amber’s intriguing anomalies, the Corridor of Mirrors, in addition to seeming longer in one direction than the other, contained countless mirrors.  Literally countless.  Try counting them, and you never come up with the same total twice.  Tapers flicker in high, standing holders, casting infinities of shadows.  There are big mirrors, little mirrors, narrow mirrors, squat mirrors, tinted mirrors, distorting mirrors, mirrors with elaborate frames-cast or carved-plain, simply framed mirrors, and mirrors with no frames at all; there are mirrors in multitudes of sharp-angled geometric shapes, amorphous shapes, curved mirrors.

I had walked the Corridor of Mirrors on several occasions, sniffing the perfumes of scented candles, sometimes feeling subliminal presences among the images, things which faded at an instant’s sharp regard.  I had felt the mixed enchantments of the place but had somehow never roused its sleeping genii.  Just as well perhaps.  One never knew what to expect in that place; at least that’s what Bleys once told me.  He was not certain whether the mirrors propelled one into obscure realms of Shadow, hypnotized one and induced bizarre dream states, cast one into purely symbolic realms decorated with the furniture of the psyche, played malicious or harmless head games with the viewer, none of the above, all of the above, or some of the above.  Whatever, it was something less than harmless, though, as thieves, servants, and visitors had occasionally been found dead or stunned and mumbling along that sparkling route, ofttimes wearing highly unusual expressions.  And generally around the solstices and equinoxes-though it could occur at any season-the corridor moved itself to a new location, sometimes simply departing altogether for a time.  Usually it was treated with suspicion, shunned, though it could as often reward as injure one or offer a useful omen or insight as readily as an unnerving experience.  It was the uncertainty of it that roused trepidations.

And sometimes, I was told, it was almost as if it came looking for a particular person, bearing its ambiguous gifts.  On such occasions it was said to be more dangerous to turn it down than to accept its invitation.

“Aw, come on,” I said.  “Now?”

The shadows danced along its length, and I caught a I whiff of those intoxicating tapers.  I moved forward.  I extended my left hand past its corner and patted the wall.  Frakir didn’t stir.

“This is Merlin,” I said, “and I’m kind of busy just now.  You sure you wouldn’t rather reflect someone else?”

The nearest flame seemed, for an instant, a fiery hand, beckoning.

“Shit,” I whispered, and I strode forward.

There was no sense of transition as I entered.  A long red-patterned runner coveted the floor.  Dust motes spun in the lights I passed.  I was beside myself in many aspects, flickering flamelight harlequinading my garments, transforming my face within a dance of shadows.

Flicker.

For an instant it seemed that the stern visage of Oberon regarded me from a small high metal-framed oval-as easily a trick of the light as the shade of his late highness, of course.

Flicker.

I’d swear an animalistic travesty of my own face had leered at me for a moment, tongue lolling, from a midlevel rectangle of quicksilver to my left, framed is ceramic flowers, face humanizing as I turned, quickly, to mock me.

Walking.  Footsteps muffled.  Breathing slightly tight.  I woadered whether I should summon my Logrus sight or even try that of the Pattern.  I was loath to attempt either, though, memories of the nastier aspects of both Powers still too fresh within me for comfort.  Something was about to happen to me, I was certain.

I halted and examined the one I thought must have my number-framed in black metal, with various signs from the magical arts inlaid in silver about it.  The glass was murky, as if spirits swam just out of sight within its depths.  My face looked leaner, its lines more heavily inscribed, the faintest of purple halos, perhaps, flickering about my head within it.  There was something cold and vaguely sinister about that image, but though I studied it for a long while, nothing happened.  There were no messages, enlighteaments, changes.  In fact, the longer I stared, the more all of the dramatic little touches seemed but tricks of the lighting.

I walked on, fist glimpses of unearthly landscapes, exotic creatures, hints of memory, neat subliminals of dead friends and relatives.  Something within a pool even waved a rake at me.  I waved back.  Having so recently survived the traumas of my trek through the land between shadows, I was not as intimidated by these manifestations of strangeness and possible menace as I would likely have been at almost any other time.  I thought I had sight of a gibbeted man, swinging as in a strong wind, hands tied behind his back, El Greco sky above him.

“I’ve had a rough couple of days,” I said aloud, “and there’s no sign of any letup.  I’m sort of in a hurry, if you know what I mean.”

Something punched me in the right kidney, and I spun around, but there was no one there.  Then I felt a hand upon my shoulder, turning me.  I cooperated quickly.  No one there either.

“I apologize,” I said, “if the truth requires it here.”

Invisible hands continued to push and tug at me, moving me past a number of attractive mirrors.  I was steered to a cheap-looking mirror in a dark-stained wooden frame.  It looked as if it might have come from some discount house.  There was a slight imperfection in the glass, in the vicinity of my left eye.  Whatever forces had propelled me to this point released me here.  It occurred to me that the powers that be here might actually have been attempting to expedite things per my request, rather than simply hustling me in a peevish spirit.

So, “Thanks,” I said, just to be safe, and I continued to stare.  I moved my head back and forth and from side to side, producing ripple effects across my image.  I repeated the movements while waiting for whatever might occur.

My image remained unchanged, but on the third or fourth ripple my background was altered.  It was no longer a wall of dimly lit mirrors that stood behind me.  It flowed away and did not return with my next movement.  In its place was a stand of dark shrubbery beneath an evening sky.  I continued to move my head slightly several times more, but the ripple effect had vanished.  The bushes seemed very real, though my peripheral vision showed me that the hallway was intact in both directions and still seemed to possess its right-hand wall at both ends.

I continued to search the seemingly reflected shrubbery, looking for portents, omens, signs, or just a little movement.  None of these became apparent, though a very real sensation of depth was there.  I could almost feel a cool breeze upon my neck.  I must have stared for several minutes, waiting for the mirror to produce something new.  But it did not.  If this was the best the mirror had to offer, it was time to move on, I decided.

Something seemed to stir in the bushes at my back, then, causing reflex to take over.  I turned quickly, raising my hands before me.

It was only the wind that had rustled them, I saw.  And then I realized that I was not in the hallway, and I turned again.  The mirror and its wall were gone.  I now faced a low hill, a line of broken masonry at its top.  Light flickered from behind that shattered wall.  Both curiosity and my sense of purpose roused, I began climbiing slowly, my wariness yet present.

The sky seemed to grow darker even as I climbed and it was cloudless, a profusion of stars pulsing in unfamiliar constellations across it.  I moved with some stealth amid stones, grasses, shrubs, broken masonry.  From beyond the vine-clad wall I now heard the sounds of voices.  Though I could not distinguish the words being spoken, it did not seem conversation that I overheard, but rather a cacophony-as if a number of individuals, of both genders and various ages, were delivering simultaneous monologues.

Coming to the hill’s top, I extended my hand until it made contact with the wall’s irregular surface.  I decided against going around it to see what sort of activity was in progress on the other side.  It could make me visible to I knew not what.  It seemed so much simpler to reach as high as I could, hook my fingers over the top of the nearest depressed area, and draw myself upward-as I did.  I even located toeholds as my head neared the top, and I was able to ease some of the strain on my arms by resting part of my weight upon them.

I drew myself carefully up those final few inches, peering past fractured stone and down into the interior of the ruined structure.  It appeared to have been some sort of church.  The roof was fallen, and the far wall still stood, in much the same condition as the one I clung to.  There was an altar in bad repair in a raised area off to my right.  Whatever had happened here must have happened long ago, for shrubs and vines grew in the interior as well as without, softening the lines of collapsed pews, fallen pillars, fragments of the roof.

Below me, in a cleared area, a large pentagram was drawn.  At each of the star’s points stood a figure, facing outward.  Inward from them, at the five points where the lines crossed, flared a torch, its butt driven into the earth.  This seemed a somewhat peculiar variation on the rituals with which I was familiar, and I wondered at the summoning and why the five were not better protected and why they were not about the work in concert, rather than each seeming off on a personal trip and ignoring the others.  The three whom I could see clearly had their backs to me.  The two who faced in my direction were barely within my line of sight, their faces covered over with shadows.  Some of the voices were male; some, female.  One was singing; two were chanting; the other two seemed merely to be speaking, though in stagy, artificial tones.

I drew myself higher, trying for a glimpse of the faces of the nearer two.  This because there was something familiar about the entire ensemble, and I felt that if I were to identify one, I might well realize all of their identities.

Another question high on my list was, What was it they were summoning? Was I safe up here on the wall, this close to the operation, if something unusual put in an appearance? It did not seem that the proper constraints were in place below.  I drew myself higher still.  I felt my center of gravity shifting just as my view of affairs improved yet again.  Then I realized that I was moving forward without effort.  An instant later I knew that the wall was toppling, carrying me forward and down right into the midst of their oddly choreographed ritual.  I tried to push myself away from the wall, hoping to hit the ground rolling and run like hell.  But it was already too late.  My abrupt push-up raised me into the air but did not really halt my forward momentum.

No one beneath me stirred, though rubble rained about them all, and I finally caught some recognizable words as I fell.

“...summon thee, Merlin, to fall into my power now!” one of the women was chanting.

A very effective ritual after all, I decided, as I landed on my back upon the pentagram, arms flopping out to my sides at shoulder level, legs spread.  I was able to tuck my chin, protecting my head, and the slapping of my arms seemed to produce a break-fall effect so that I was not badly stunned by the impact.  The five high towers of fire danced wildly about me for several seconds, then settled once again into steadier blazing.  The five figures still faced outward.  I attempted to rise and found that I could not.  It was as if I were staked out in that position.

Frakir had warned me too late, as I was falling, and now I was uncertain to what employment I might put her.  I could send her creeping off to any of the figures with orders to work her way upward and commence choking.  But so far I had no way of knowing which one, if any, might deserve such treatment.

“I hate dropping in without notice,” I said, “and I can see this is a private party.  If someone will be good enough to turn me loose, I’ll be on my way-“

The figure in the vicinity of my left foot did an about face and stood staring down at me.  She wore a blue robe, but there was no mask upon her fire-reddened face.  There was only a tight smile, which went away when she licked her lips.  It was Julia, and there was a knife in her right hand.

“Always the smartass,” she said.  “Ready with a flippant answer to any situation.  It’s a cover for your unwillingness to commit yourself to anything or anyone.  Even those who love you.”

“It could just be a sense of humor, too,” I said, “a thing I’m beginning to realize you never possessed.”

She shook her head slowly.

“You keep everyone at arms’ distance.  There is no trust in you.”

“Runs in the family,” I said.  “But prudence does not preclude affection.”

She had begun raising the blade, but she faltered for a second.

“Are you saying that you still care about me?” she asked.

“I never stopped,” I said.  “It’s just that you came on too strong all of a sudden.  You wanted more of me than I was willing to give just then.”

“You lie,” she said, “because I hold your life in my hand.”

“I could think of a lot worse reasons for lying,” I said.  “But, unfortunately, I’m telling the truth.”

There came another familiar voice then, from off to my right.

“It was too early for us to speak of such things,” she said, “but I begrudge her your affection.”

Turning my head, I saw that this figure, too, now faced inward, and it was Coral and her right eye was covered by a black patch and she, too, held a knife in her right hand.  Then I saw what was in her left hand, and I shot a glance back at Julia.  Yes, they both held forks as well as knives.

“Et tu, “ I said.

“I told you I don’t speak English,” Coral replied.

“Et by two,” Julia responded, raising her utensils.  “Who says I don’t have a sense of humor?”

They spit at each other across me, some of the spittle not quite going the distance.

Luke, it occurred to me, might have tried settling matters by proposing to both of them on the spot.  I’d a feeling it wouldn’t work for me, so I didn’t.

“This is an objectification of marriage neurosis,” I said.  “It’s a projective experience.  It’s a vivid dream.  It,s-“

Julia dropped to one knee, and her right hand flashed downward.  I felt the blade enter my left thigh.

My scream was interrupted when Coral drove her fork into my right shoulder.

“This is ridiculous!” I cried as the other utensils flashed in their hands and I felt fresh stabs of pain.

Then the figure at the star’s point near my right foot turned slowly, gracefully.  She was wrapped in a dark brown cloak with a yellow border, her arms crossed before her holding it closed up to her eye level.

“Stop, you bitches!” she ordered, flinging the garment wide and resembling nothing so much as a mourning cloak butterfly.  It was, of course, Dara, my mother.

Julia and Coral had already raised their forks to their mouths and were chewing.  There was a tiny bead of blood beside Julia’s lip.  The cloak continued to flow outward from my mother’s fingertips as if it were alive, as if it were a part of her.  Its wings blocked Julia and Coral completely from my sight, falling upon them as she continued to spread her arms, covering them, bearing them over backward to become body-size lumps upon the ground, growing smaller and smaller until the garment simply hung naturally and they were gone from their points of the star.

There came a slow, delicate clapping sound then, followed by a hoarse laugh from my left.

“Extremely well executed,” came that painfully familiar voice, “but then you always liked him best.”

“Better,” she corrected.

“Isn’t poor Despil even in the running?” Jurt said.

“You’re being unfair,” she told him.

“You liked that mad Prince of Amber more than you ever cared for our father, who was a decent man,” he told her, “ That’s why Merlin was always your pet, isn’t it?”

“That’s just not true, Jurt, and you know it,” she said.

He laughed again.  “We all summoned him because we all want him,” he said, “for different reasons.  But in the end our desires all come to this, do they not?”

I heard the growl, and I turned my head just in time to see his face slide along the projective curve wolfward, muzzle descending, fangs flashing as he fell to all fours and slashed at my left shoulder, gaining himself a gory taste of my person.

“Stop that!” she cried.  “You little beast!”

He threw back his muzzle and howled, and it came out the way a coyote’s cry does, as a kind of mad laughter.

A black boot struck his shoulder, knocking him over backward and sending him crashing into the uncollapsed section of wall behind him, which promptly collapsed upon him.  He uttered but a brief whimper before being covered over completely by the falling rubble.

“Well, well, well,” I heard Dara say, and looking that way, I saw that she also held a knife and fork.  “What’s a bastard like you doing in a nice place like this?”

“Keeping the last of the predators at bay, it would seem,” replied the voice which had once told me a very long story containing multiple versions of an auto accident and a number of genealogical gaffes.

She lunged at me, but he stooped, caught me beneath the shoulders, and snatched me out of her way.  Then his great black cloak swirled like a matador’s, covering her.  As she had done with Coral and Julia, she herself seemed to melt into the earth beneath it.  He set me on my feet, stooped then, raised the cloak, and brushed it off.  As he refastened it with a silver rose of a clasp, I studied him for fangs or at least cutlery.

“Four out of five,” I said, brushing myself off: “No matter how real this seems, I’m sure it’s only analogically or anagogically true.  So how come you’re not cannibalistically inclined in this place?”

“On the other hand,” he said, drawing on a silver gauntlet, “I was never a real father to you.  It’s kind of difficult when you don’t even know the kid exists.  So I didn’t really want anything from you either.”

“That sure looks like Grayswandir you’re wearing,” I said.

He nodded.

“It seems to have served you, too.”

“I suppose I should thank you for that.  I also suppose you’re the wrong...person to ask whether you really bore me from that cave to the land between shadows.”

“Oh, it was me all right.”

“Of course, you’d say that.”

“I don’t know why I should if I didn’t.  Look out! The wall!”

One quick glance showed me that another big section of wall was falling toward us.  Then he pushed me, and I sprawled across the pentagram again.  I heard the stone; crashing behind me, and I half rose and threw myself even farther forward.

Something struck the side of my head.

I woke up in the Corridor of Mirrors.  I was lying facedownward, my head resting on my right forearm, a rectangular piece of stone clutched in my hand, the aromas of the candles drifting about me.  When I began to rise, I felt pains in both shoulders and in my left thigh.  A quick investigation showed me that I bore cuts; in all three of those places.  Though there wasn’t much I could do now to help demonstrate the veracity of my recent adventure beyond this, it wasn’t something I felt like shrugging off either.

I got to my feet and limped back to the corridor that ran past my rooms.

“Where’d you go?” Random called down to me.

“Huh? What do you mean?” I responded.

“You walked back up the hall, but there’s nothing there.”

“How long was I gone?”

“Half a minute maybe,” he answered.  I waved the stone I still carried.

“Saw this lying on the floor.  Couldn’t figure what it was,” I said.

“Probably blown there when the Powers met,” he said, “from one of the walls.  There were a number of arches edged with stones like that at one time.  Mostly plastered over on your floor now.”

“Oh,” I said.  “See you in a bit, before I take off.”

“Do that,” he replied, and I turned and found my way through one of the day’s many broken walls and on into my room.

The far wall had also been blasted, I noticed, creating a large opening into Brand’s dusty chambers.  I paused and studied it.  Synchronicity, I decided.  It appeared there had once been an archway connecting those rooms with these.  I moved forward and examined the exposed curve along its left side.  Yes, it had been rendered from stones similar to the one I held.  In fact-

I brushed away plaster and slid mine into a broken area.  It fitted perfectly. In fact, when I gave it a small tug, it refused to be removed.  Had I really brought it back from the sinister father-mother-brother-lovers ritual dream beyond the mirror? Or had I half-consciously picked it up on my return, from wherever it had been blasted during the recent architectural distress?

I turned away, removing my cloak, stripping off my shirt.  Yes.  There were punctures like fork marks on my right shoulder, something like an animal bite on my left.  Also, there was dried blood on my left trouser leg in the area of a tear beyond which my thigh was tender.  I washed up and brushed my teeth and combed my hair, and I put a dressing on my leg and left shoulder.  The family metabolism would see me healed in a day, but I didn’t want some exertion tearing them open and getting fresh garments gory.

Speaking of which...

The armoire was undamaged and I thought I’d wear my other colors, to give Luke a happy memory or two for his coronation: the golden shirt and royal blue trousers I’d found which approximated Berkeley’s colors almost exactly; a leather vest dyed to match the pants; matching cloak with gold trim; black sword belt, black gloves tucked behind it, reminding me I needed a new blade.  Dagger, too, for that matter.  I was wondering about a hat when a series of sounds caught my attention.  I turned.

Through a fresh screen of dust I now had a symmetrical view into Brand’s quarters; rather than a jagged opening in the wall the archway stood perfect and entire, the wall intact at either hand and above.  The wall to my right also seemed less damaged than it had been earlier.

I moved forward and ran my hand along the curve of stones.  I inspected adjacent plastered areas, looking for cracks.  There were none.  All right.  The stone had borne an enchantment.  To what end?

I strode through the archway and looked around.  The room was dark, and I summoned the Logrus sight reflexively.  It came and served me, as usual.  Perhaps the Logrus had decided against holding a grudge.

At this level I could see the residue of many magical experiments as well as a number of standing spells.  Most sorcerers leave a certain amount of not normally visible magical clutter about, but Brand seemed to have been a real slob, though of course, he might have been rushed quite a bit near the end there when he was trying to take over control of the universe.  It’s not the sort of occupation wherein neatness counts the way it might in other endeavors.  I passed on along my tour of inspection.  There were mysteries here, unfinished bits of business and indications that he had gone farther along some magical routes than I had ever wished to go.  Still, there was nothing here that I felt I could not handle and nothing representing grave and immediate danger.  It was just possible, now I’d finally had an opportunity to inspect them, that I might want to leave the archway intact and add Brand’s quarters to my own.

On the way out I decided to check Brand’s armoire to see whether he had a hat to go with what I was wearing.  I opened it and discovered a dark three-cornered one with a golden feather, which fitted me perfectly.  The color was a little off, but I suddenly recalled a spell which altered it.  As I was about to turn away, something to the rear of that top shelf which held the hats glinted for a moment within my Logrus vision.  I reached in and withdrew it.

It was a long and lovely gold-chased sheath of dark green, and the hilt of the blade which protruded from it appeared to be goldplated, with an enormous emerald set in its pommel.  I took hold of it and drew it partway, half expecting it to wail like a demon on whom one has dropped a balloon filled with holy water.  Instead, it merely hissed and smoked a little.  And there was a bright design worked into the metal of its blade-almost recognizable.  Yes, a section of the Pattern.  Only this excerpting was from the Pattern’s end, whereas Grayswandir’s was from a point near the beginning.

I sheathed it, and on an impulse I hung it from my belt.  His old man’s sword would make a neat coronation present for Luke, I decided.  So I’d take it along for him.  I let myself out into the side corridor then, made my way over a small section of collapsed wall from Gerard’s quarters and back past Fiona’s door to my dad’s rooms.  There was one thing more I wanted to check, and the sword had reminded me.  I fished in my pocket for the key I’d transferred from my bloody trousers.  Then I decided I’d better knock.  What if...

I knocked and waited, knocked again and waited again.  In that nothing but silence ensued I unlocked the door and entered.  I went no farther than that first place.  I’d just wanted to check the rack.

Grayswandir was gone from the peg where I’d hung it.  I backed out, closing and locking the door.  The fact that the row of pegs had been empty was an instance of obtaining the knowledge one wanted and still not being certain what one had proved thereby.  Yet it had been something I’d wished to know, and it did make me feel that final knowledge was nearer than it had been....

I walked back, past Fiona’s rooms.  I reentered Brand’s rooms through the door I had left ajar.  I hunted around till I spotted a key in a nearby ashtray.  I locked the door and pocketed the key; that was almost silly because anyone could walk in from my room now and my room was missing a wall.  Still...

I hesitated before crossing back to my sitting room with its Tabriz stained with ty’iga spit and partly covered by fallen wall.  There was something almost restful about Brand’s quarters, a kind of peaceful quality I hadn’t really noticed before.  I wandered a bit, opening drawers and looking inside magic boxes, studying a folder of the man’s drawings.  The Logrus sight showed me that something small and potent and magical was secreted in a bedpost, radiating lines of force every which way.  I unscrewed the knob, found the compartment within it.  It contained a small velvet bag which bore a ring.  The band was wide, possibly of platinum.  It bore a wheellike device of some reddish metal, with countless tiny spokes, many of them hair-fine.  And each of these spokes extended a line of power leading off somewhere, quite possibly into Shadow, where some power cache of spell source lay.  Perhaps Luke would rather have the ring than the sword.  When I slipped it on, it seemed to extend roots to the very center of my body.  I could feel my way back along them to the ring and then out along those connections.  I was impressed by the variety of energies it reached and controlled-from simple chthonic forces to sophisticated constructs of High Magic, from elementals to things that seemed like lobotomized gods.  I wondered why he hadn’t been wearing it on the day of the Patternfall battle.  If he had, I’d a feeling he might have been truly invincible.  We could all have been living on Brandenberg in Castle Brand.  I wondered, too, why Fiona, in the next room over, had not felt its presence and come looking for it.  On the other hand, I hadn’t.  For what it was, it didn’t register well at all, beyond a few feet.  It was amazing the treasures this place contained.  Was it something about the private universe effect said to obtain in some of these rooms? The ring was a beautiful alternative to Pattern Power or Logrus Power, hooked in as it was with so many sources.  It must have taken centuries to empower the thing.  Whatever Brand had wanted it for, it had not been part of a short-range plan.  I decided I could not surrender the thing to Luke-or to anyone with any familiarity with the Arts.  I didn’t even think I should trust a nonmagician with it.  And I certainly didn’t feel like returning it to the bedpost.  What was that throbbing at my wrist? Oh, yes, Frakir.  It had been going on for some small while, and I’d barely noticed.

“Sorry you lost your voice, old girl,” I said, stroking her as I explored the room for threats both psychic and physical.  “I can’t find a damned thing here that I should be worried about.”

Immediately she spiraled down from my wrist and tried to remove the ring from my finger.

“Stop!” I ordered.  “I know the ring could be dangerous.  But only if you use it wrongly.  I’m a sorcerer, remember? I’m into these matters.  There is nothing special about it for me to fear.”

But Frakir disobeyed my order and continued her attack on the ring, which I could now only attribute to some form of magical artifact jealousy.  I tied her in a tight knot around the bedpost and left her there, to teach her a lesson.

I began to search the apartment more diligently.  If I were to keep the sword and the ring, it would be nice to find something else of his father’s that I could take to Luke-

“Merlin! Merlin!” I heard bellowed from somewhere beyond my room.

Rising from a tapping of the floor and lower walls, where I had been seeking hollow spots, I returned to my archway and passed through into my own sitting room.  I halted then despite another summons in what I now recognized to be Random’s voice.  The wall which faced upon the side corridor was more than half rebuilt since last I had viewed it-as if an invisible crew of carpenters and plasterers had been silently at work since I had positioned the dreamstone in the gateway to the kingdom of Brand.  Amazing.  I simply stood and stared, hoping for some betraying bit of business within the damaged area.  Then I heard Random mutter, “I guess he’s gone,” and I called back, “Yeah? What is it?”

“Get your ass up here quick,” he said.  “I need your advice.”

I stepped out into the corridor through the opening which remained in that wall, and I looked upward, Immediately I could feel the capabilities in the ring that I wore, responding like a musical instrument to my most immediate need.  The appropriate line was activated as I assented to the suggestion, and I took the gloves from behind my belt and drew them on as I was levitated toward the opening in the ceiling.  This, because it had occurred to me that Random might recognize the ring as having once been Brand’s, and that could lead to a complicated discussion I’d no desire for at the moment.

I held my cloak close to my side as I came up through the hole into the studio, to keep the blade under wraps also.

“Impressive,” Random said.  “Glad you’re keeping the magical muscle exercised.  That’s what I called you for.”

I gave him a bow.  Being dressed up made me feel vaguely courtly.

“How may I be of service?’

“Cut the crap and come on,” he said, taking hold of my elbow and steering me back toward the demibedroom.  Vialle stood at the door, holding it open.

“Merlin?” she said as I brushed by.

“Yes?” I answered.

“I wasn’t certain,” she said.

“Of what?” I asked.

“That it was you,” she responded.

“Oh, it’s me, all right,” I said.

“It is indeed my brother,” Mandor stated, rising from his chair and approaching us.  His arm was splinted and slung, his face considerably relaxed.  “If anything about him strikes you as strange,” he continued, “it is likely because he has had a number of traumatic experiences since he left here.”

“Is that true?” Random asked.

“Yes,” I replied.  “I didn’t realize it was all that apparent.”

“Are you all right?” Random asked.

“I seem to be intact,” I said.

“Good.  Then we’ll save the particulars of your story for another time.  As you can see, Coral is gone and Dworkin is, too.  I didn’t see them go.  I was still in the studio when it happened.”

“When what happened?” I asked.

“Dwrkin finished his operation,” Mandor said, “took the lady by the hand, drew her to her feet, and transported her away from here.  It was most elegantly managed.  One moment they stood at the bedside; the next their afterimages ran through the spectrum and winked out.”

“You say that he transported them.  How do you know that they weren’t snatched away by Ghostwheel or one of the Powers?” I asked.

“Because I watched his face,” he said, “and there was no surprise.whatsoever upon it, only a small smile.”

“I guess you’re right,” I admitted.  “Then who set your arm, if Random was off in the studio and Dworkin occupied?”

“I did,” Vialle said.  “I’ve been trained in it.”

“So you were the only eyewitness to their vanishment?” I said to Mandor.

He nodded.

“What I want of you,” Random said, “is some idea where they flashed off to.  Mandor said he couldn’t tell.  Here!”

He handed me a chain, from which a metal setting hung.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“It was the most important of all the Crown Jewels,” he said, “the Jewel of Judgment.  This is what they left me.  The Jewel part is what they took.”

“Oh,” I said.  Then: “It must be secure if it’s in Dwotkin’s care.  He’d said something about putting it in a safe place, and he knows more about it than anyone else-“

“He may also have flipped out again,” Random said.  “I’m not interested in discussing his merits as its custodian, though.  I just want to know where the hell he’s gone with the thing.”

“I don’t believe he left any tracks,” Mandor said.

“Where were they standing?” I asked.

“Over there,” he said, with a gesture of the good arm, “to the right of the bed.”

I moved to that area, feeling through the potencies I ruled after the most appropriate.

“A little nearer the foot.”

I nodded, feeling it would not be all that difficult to look back a small distance through time within my personal space.  I felt the rainbow rush and saw their outlines.  Freeze.

A power line moved forth from the ring, attached itself, ran rainbow with them, passed through the portal which closed with a mild implosion. 

Raising the back of my hand to my forehead, I seemed to look down the line-into a large hall hung with six shields to my left.  To my right hung a multitude of flags and pennons.  A fire blazed in an enormous hearth before me....

“I see the place they went to,” I said, “but I don’t recognize it.”

“Is there some way you can share the vision?” Random asked.

“Perhaps,” I replied, realizing there was a way even as I said it.  “Regard the mirror.”

Random turned, moved nearer the looking glass through which Dworkin had brought me-how long ago? “By the blood of the beast on the pole and the shell that is cracked at the center of the world,” I said, feeling the need to address two of the powers I controlled, “may the sight be cast!”

The mirror frosted over, and when it cleared, my vision of the hall lay within it.

“I’ll be damned,” Random said.  “He took her to Kashfa.  I wonder why “

“One day you’ll have to teach me that trick, brother,” Mandor commented.

“In that I was about to head for Kashfa,” I said, “is there anything special I should do?”

“Do?” Random said.  “Just find out what’s going on and let me know, will you?”

“Of course,” I said, uncasing my Trumps.

Vialle came up and took my hand as if in farewell.

“Gloves,” she commented.

“Trying to look a little formal,” I explained.

“There is something in Kashfa that Coral seems to fear,” she whispered.  “She muttered about it in her sleep.”

“Thanks,” I said.  “I’m ready for anything now.”

“You may say that for confidence,” she said, “but never believe it.”

I laughed as I held a Trump before me and pretended to study it while extending the force of my being along the line I had sent to Kashfa.  I reopened the route Dworkin had taken and stepped through.

XII

Kashfa.

I stood in the gray stone hall, flags and shields on the walls, rushes strewn about the floors, rude furniture about me, a fire before me which did not completely dispel the dampness of the place, cooking smells heavy on the air.  I was the only person in the room, though I could hear voices from many directions; also the sounds of musicians tuning and practicing.  So I had to be fairly near the action.  The disadvantage of coming in the way I did rather than using a Trump was that there was no one on the spot to show me around and tell me what was going on.  The advantage was the same-that is, if there were any spying I wanted to do, now was the time.  The ring, a veritable encyclopedia of magics, found me an invisibility spell in which I quickly cloaked myself:

I spent the next hour or so exploring.  There were four large buildings and a number of smaller ones within this central walled area.  There was another walled sector beyond it and another beyond that-three roughly concentric zones of ivy-covered protection.  I couldn’t see any signs of heavy damage, and I got the feeling Dalt’s troops hadn’t met with much resistance.  No indications of pillaging or burning, but then they’d been hired to deliver a property, and I’d a feeling Jasra had stipulated that it remain relatively intact.  The troops occupied all three rings, and I got the impression from a bit of eavesdropping that they’d be around till after the coronation.  There were quite a few in the large plaza in the central area, making fun of the local troops in their fancy livery as they awaited for the coronation procession.  None of this was in particular bad nature, however, possibly because Luke was popular with both groups, though it did also seem that many individuals on both sides seemed personally acquainted.

The First Unicornian Church of Kashfa, as one might translate its title, was across the plaza from the palace proper.  The building in which I’d arrived was an ancillary, all-purpose adjunct, at this time being used to house a number of hastily summoned guests, along with servants, courtiers, and hangers-on.

I’d no idea exactly when the coronation was to take place, but I decided I’d better try to see Luke in a hurry, before he got too swept up into the course of events.  He might even have an idea where Coral had been delivered, and why.

So I found me a niche with a blank-walled, neutral background even a native probably couldn’t recognize out of context, dropped my invisibility spell, located Luke’s Trump, and gave him a call.  I didn’t want him to think I was already in town because I didn’t want him to know I possessed the power to drop in the way I had.  This under the theory that you never tell anybody everything.

“Merlin!” he announced, studying me.  “Is the cat out of the sack or what?”

“Yeah, the kittens, too,” I said.  “Congratulations on your coronation day “

“Hey! You’re wearing the school colors!”

“What the hell.  Why not? You won something, didn’t you?”

“Listen.  It’s not as festive a thing as all that.  In fact, I was about to call you.  I need your advice before this goes any further.  Can you bring me through?”

“I’m not in Amber, Luke.”

“Where are you?”

“Well...downstairs,” I admitted.  “I’m on the side street between your palace and the building next door that’s sort of like a hotel at the moment.”

“That won’t do,” he said.  “I’d get spotted too quick if you bring me down.  Go on over to the Unicorn Temple.  If it’s relatively empty and there’s a dark, quiet corner where we can talk, call me and bring me through.  If there isn’t, figure something else, okay?”

“Okay.  “

“Hey, how’d you get here anyway?”

“Advance scout for an invasion,” I said.  “One more take-over would be a coup-coup, wouldn’t it?”

“You’re about as funny as a hangover,” he said.  “Call me.”

Break.  So I crossed the plaza, following what seemed marked out as the route of the procession.  I thought I might meet some trouble at the House of the Unicorn and need a spell to get in, but no one barred my way.

I entered.  It was big and all decked out for the ceremony, with a great variety of pennons on the walls and flowers all over the place.  The only other inhabitant was a muffled woman up near the front who appeared to be praying.  I moved off to the left into a somewhat darker section.

“Luke,” I addressed his Trump.  “All clear.  Do you read me?”

I felt his presence before I caught the image.  “Okay,” he said.  “Bring me through,” and we clasped hands, and he was there.

He clapped me on the shoulders.

“Well, now, let me look at you,” he said.  “Wonder whatever became of my letter sweater?”

“I think you gave it to Gail.”

“I think you may be right.”

“Brought you a present,” I said, tossing back my cloak and fumbling at the side of my sword belt.  “Here.  I turned up your father’s sword.”

“You’re kidding.”

He took it into his hands, examined the sheath, turned it over many times.  Then he drew it partway, and it hissed again and sparks danced along its tracery and a bit of smoke drifted upward from it.

“It really is!” he said.  “Werewindle, the Daysword-brother to the Nightblade, Grayswandir!”

“What’s that?” I said.  “I didn’t know there was any connection.”

“I’d have to think hard to remember the full story, but they go back a long way.  Thank you.”

He turned and took several paces, slapping the weapon against his thigh as he walked.  Abruptly he returned.

“I’ve been had,” he said.  “That woman has done it again, and I am peeved to the extreme.  I don’t know how to handle this.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“My mother,” he explained.  “She’s done it again.  Just when I thought I’d taken the reins and was riding my own course, she’s come along and messed up my life.”

“How’d she do that?”

“She hired Dalt and his boys to take over here.”

“Yeah, we sort of figured that out.  By the way, what happened to Arkans?”

“Oh, he’s okay.  I’ve got him under arrest, of course.  But he’s in good quarters and he can have anything he wants.  I wouldn’t hurt him.  I always kind of liked the guy “

“So what’s the problem? You win.  You’ve got your own kingdom now.”

“Hell,” he said, then glanced furtively toward the sanctum.  “I think I was conned, but I’m not exactly sure.  See, I never wanted this job.  Dalt told me we were taking over for Mom.  I was coming in with him to establish order, claim the place for the family again, then welcome her back with a lot of pomp and crap.  I figured once she had her throne back, she’d be off my case for good.  I’d hit it out of here for more congenial turf, and she’d have a whole kingdom to occupy her attention.  Nothing was said about me getting stuck with this lousy job.”

I shook my head.

“I don’t understand at all,” I said.  “You got it for her.  Why not just turn it over to her and do as you planned?”

He gave a humorless laugh.

“Arkans they liked,” he said.  “Me they like.  Mom they’re not so fond of.  Nobody seems that enthusiastic about having her back.  In fact, there were strong indications that if she tried it, there would indeed be a coup-coup.”

“I suppose you could still step aside and give it to Arkans.”

Luke punched the stone wall.

“I don’t know whether she’d be madder at me or at herself for having paid Daft as much as she did to throw Arkans out.  But she’d tell me it’s my duty to do it, and I don’t know-maybe it is.  What do you think?”

“That’s a hard one to answer, Luke.  Who do you think would do a better job, you or Arkans?”

“I honestly don’t know.  He’s had a lot of experience in government, but I did grow up here, and I do know how the place is run and how to get things done.  The only thing I’m sure of is that either of us would be better at it than Mom.”

I folded my arms, and I thought hard.

“I can’t make this decision for you,” I said.  “But tell me, what would you most like to do?”

He chuckled.

“You know I’ve always been a salesman.  If I were going to stick around and do something for Kashfa.  I’d rather represent her industries abroad, which would be sort of undignified for a monarch.  Probably what I’d be best at, though.  I don’t know.”

“It’s a problem and a half, Luke.  I don’t want the responsibility of telling you which way to go.”

“If I’d known it was going to come to this, I’d have smeared Dalt back in Arden.”

“You really think you could take him?”

“Believe it,” he said.

“Well, that doesn’t solve your present problem.”

“True.  I’ve a strong feeling I may have to go through with this.”

The woman up front glanced our way several times.  I guess we were talking kind of loud for the surroundings.

“Too bad there are no other good candidates,” I said, lowering my voice.

“This must seem like pretty small beer to someone from Amber.”

“Hell, it’s your home.  You’ve got a right to take it seriously.  I’m just sorry it’s doing such a job on you.”

“Yeah, most problems seem to start at home, don’t they? Sometimes I just feel like taking a walk and not coming back.”

“What would happen if you did?”

“Either Mom would restore herself to the throne with Dalt’s gang to back her up, which would require a mess of executions of people I can think of who’d be against it, or she’d say the game isn’t worth the candle and settle for the Keep.  If she decided to enjoy her retirement, then the coalition which backed him in the first place would probably spring Arkans and continue things from where they’d had to leave off “

“Which course of action seems most likely to you?” I said.

“She’d go for it and there’d be a civil war.  Win or lose, it would mess up the country and doubtless keep us out of the Golden Circle this time around, too.  Speaking of which-“

“I don’t know,” I said quickly.  “I’m not empowered to talk Golden Circle Treaty with you.”

“I’d kind of guessed that,” Luke said, “and that wasn’t what I wanted to ask.  I was just curious whether anyone back in Amber might have said, ‘They just blew it,’ or ‘Maybe we’ll give them another crack at it a little farther down the road,’ or ‘We’ll still deal, but they can forget the Eregnor guarantees.”

He gave me an artificial grin, and I returned it.

“You can forget Eregnor,” I said.

“Figured that,” he said.  “What about the rest?”

“I get the impression it’s ‘Let’s wait and see what happens.”

“Guessed that much, too.  Give me a good report, even if they don’t ask, okay? By the way, I don’t suppose your presence here is technically official?”

“Personal,” I said, “from a diplomatic standpoint.”

The lady up front rose to her feet.  Luke sighed.

“Wish I could find my way back to Alice’s restaurant.  Maybe the Hatter would see something we’re missing,” he said.  Then: “Hey! Where’d he come from? Looks just like you but-“

He was staring past me, and I could already feel the disturbance.  I didn’t even bother to summon the Logrus, though, because I felt ready for anything.

I turned, smiling.

“Are you ready to die, brother?” Jurt asked.  He had either managed to regrow his eye or was wearing an artificial one, and he now had sufficient hair that I could no longer tell about the ear.  His little finger was partly regrown also.

“No, but I’m ready to kill,” I said.  “I’m glad you happened by.”

He bowed, mockingly.  There was a faint glow about him.  I could feel the power that flowed through and around his person.

“Have you been back to the Keep for your final treatment?” I inquired.

“I don’t believe that will be necessary,” he said.  “I am more than adequate for any task I’ve set myself, now I’ve control of these forces.”

“This is Jurt?” Luke asked.

“Yes,” I replied.  “This is Jurt.”

Jurt cast a quick glance Luke’s way.  I could feel him focusing on the blade.

“Is that a power object you bear?” he inquired.  “Let me see it!”

He extended his hand, and the weapon jerked within Luke’s grip but did not come loose.

“No, thanks,” Luke said, and Jurt vanished.  A moment later he appeared behind Luke, and his arm went around Luke’s neck in a choke.  Luke gripped it with one hand, bowed, and turned and threw him over his shoulder.

Jurt landed on his back before him, and Luke made no move to follow up on his action.

“Draw that blade,” Jurt said, “and let me see it.” Then he shook himself like a dog and rose to his feet.  “Well?” he said.

“I see no need for a weapon in dealing with the likes of you,” Luke told him.

Jurt raised both hands above his head and formed them into fists.  They met, remained in contact for a moment.  Then he drew them apart, his right hand somehow drawing a long blade out of his left.

“You ought to take that show on the road,” Luke said, “now:”

“Draw it!” Jurt said.

“I don’t like the idea of fighting in a church,” Luke told him.  “You want to step outside?”

“Very funny,” Jurt replied.  “I know you’ve got an army out there.  No thanks.  I’ll even take a certain pleasure in bloodying a Unicorn shrine.”

“You ought to talk to Dalt,” Luke said.  “He gets his kicks in weird ways, too.  Can I get you a horse-or a chicken? Maybe some white mice and aluminum foil?”

Jurt lunged.  Luke stepped backward and drew his father’s blade.  It hissed and crackled and smoked as he parried lightly and drove it forward.  There was a sudden fear on Jurt’s face as he threw himself backward, batting at it, stumbling.  As he fell, Luke kicked him in the stomach and Jurt’s blade went flying.

“That’s Werewindle!” Jurt gasped.  “How did you come by the sword of Brand?”

“Brand was my father,” Luke said.

A momentary look of respect passed over Jurt’s face.

“I didn’t know...” he muttered, and then he vanished.

I waited.  I extended magical feelers all over the place.  But there was just Luke, myself and the lady, who had halted some distance from us, watching, as if afraid to come any nearer on her way out.

Then Luke collapsed.  Jurt was standing behind him, having just stuck him on the back of the neck with his elbow.  He reached then for Luke’s wrist, as if to seize it and wrench the blade from his hand.

“It must be mine!” he said as I reached through the ring and struck him with a bolt of pure energy which I thought would rupture most of his organs and leave him a bleeding mass of jelly.  Only for an instant had I considered using anything less than lethal force.  I could see that sooner or later one of us was going to kill the other, and I’d decided to get it over with before he got lucky.

But he was already lucky.  His bath in the Fount must have toughened him even more than I’d thought.  He spun around three times, as if he’d been clipped by a truck, and was slammed up against the wall.  He sagged.  He slipped to the floor.  Blood came out of his mouth.  He looked as if he were about to pass out.  Then his eyes focused and his hands extended.

A force similar to the one I’d just thrown at him struck at me.  I was surprised by his ability to regroup and retaliate at that level with that speed.  Not so surprised that I wasn’t able to parry it, though.  I took a step forward then and tried to set him afire with a beautiful spell the ring suggested.  Rising, he was able to shield against it within moments of his clothes’ beginning to smolder.  I kept coming, and he created a vacuum around me.  I pierced it and kept breathing.  Then I a battering ram spell which the ring showed me, even more forceful than the first working with which I’d hit him.

He vanished before it hit, and a crack ran up three feet of the stone wall which had been behind him.  I sent sense-tendrils all over and spotted him seconds later, crouched on a cornice high overhead.  He launched himself at me just as I looked up.

I didn’t know whether it would break my hand or not, but I felt it would be worth it, even so, as I levitated.  I contrived to pass him at about the midway point, and I hit him with a left, which I hoped broke his neck as well as his jaw.  Unfortunately it also broke my levitation spell, and I tumbled to the floor along with him.

I heard the lady cry out as we fell, and she came rushing toward us.  We lay stunned for several heartbeats.  Then he rolled over onto his stomach, reached, hunched and fell, reached again.

His hand fell upon the haft of Werewindle.  He must have felt my gaze as his fingers tightened about it, for he glanced at me and smiled.  I heard Luke mutter a curse and stir.  I threw a deep freeze spell at Jurt, but he trumped out before the cold front hit.

Then the lady screamed again, and even before I turned, I knew that the voice had been Coral’s.  Reappearing, Jurt half collapsed against her from the rear, finding her throat with the edge of that bright, smoldering blade.

“Nobody,” he gasped, “move...or I’ll carve her...an extra smile.”

I sought after a quick spell that would finish him without endangering her.

“Don’t try it, Merle,” he said.  “I’ll feel it ...coming.  Just leave me...alone...for half a minute...and you’ll get to live...a little longer.  I don’t know where you picked up...those extra tricks . . .  but they won’t save you-“

He was panting and covered with sweat.  The blood still dripped from his mouth.

“Let go of my wife,” Luke said, rising, “or there’ll never be anyplace you’ll be able to hide.”

“I don’t want you for an enemy, son of Brand,” Jurt said.

“Then do as I say, fella.  I’ve taken out better men than you.”

And then Jurt screamed as if his soul were on fire.  Werewindle moved away from Coral’s throat, and Jurt backed off and began jerking, like a puppet whose joints have seized up but whose strings are still being yanked.  Coral turned toward him, her back to Luke and me.  Her right hand rose to her face.  After a time Jurt fell to the floor and curled into a fetal position.  A red light seemed to be playing upon him.  He was shaking steadily, and I could even hear his teeth chattering.

Abruptly, then, he was gone, trailing rainbows, leaving blood and spittle, bearing Werewindle with him.  I sent a parting bolt after, but I knew that it did not reach him.  I’d felt Julia’s presence at the other end of the spectrum, and despite everything else, I was pleased to know that I had not slain her yet.  But Jurt - Jurt was very dangerous now, I realized.  For this was the first time we’d fought that he hadn’t left a piece of himself behind, had even taken something away with him.  Something deadly.  He was learning, and that did not bode well.

When I turned my head, I caught sight of the red glow before Coral lowered her eyepatch, and I realized what had become of the Jewel of Judgment, though not, of course, why.

“Wife?” I said.

“Well, sort of...Yes,” she replied.

“Just one of those things,” Luke said.  “Do you two know each other?”