“My! My!” he said. “Will you please introduce me, Merlin?”
“Who,” Fiona asked, “is that?”
“This is my brother Mandor,” I told her, “of the House of Sawall in the Courts of Chaos. Mandor; this is my Aunt Fiona, Princess of Amber.”
Mandor bowed.
“I have heard of you, Princess,” he said. “It is indeed a pleasure.”
Her eyes widened for a moment.
“I know of the house,” she replied, “but I’d no idea of Merlin’s relationship with it. I am pleased to know you.”
“I take it there’s some problem, Fi?” I asked.
“Yes,” she answered, glancing at Mandor.
“I will retire,” he said. “Honored to have met you, Princess. I wish you lived a bit nearer the Rim.”
She smiled.
“Wait,” she said. “This does not involve any state secrets. You are an initiate of the Logrus?”
“I am,” he stated.
“…And I take it you two did not get together to fight a duel?”
“Hardly,” I answered.
“In that case, I would welcome his view of the problem, also. Are you willing to come to me, Mandor?” He bowed again, which I thought was hamming it a bit.
“Anyplace, Madam,” he responded.
She said, “Come then,” and she extended her left hand and I clasped it. Mandor reached out and touched her wrist. We stepped forward.
We stood before her in the rocky place. It was breezy and a bit chill there. From somewhere distant there came a muted roar, as of a muffled engine.
“Have you been in touch with anyone in Amber recently?” I asked her.
“No,” she stated.
“Your departure was somewhat abrupt.”
“There were reasons.”
“Such as your recognizing Luke?”
“His identity is known to you now?”
“Yes.”
“And to the others?”
“I told Random,” I answered, “and Flora.”
“Then everyone knows,” she said. “I departed quickly and took Bleys with me because we had to be next on Luke’s list. After all, I tried killing his father and almost succeeded. Bleys and I were Brand’s closest relatives, and we’d turned against him.”
She turned a penetrating gaze upon Mandor, who smiled.
“I understand,” he stated, “that right now Luke drinks with a Cat, a Dodo, a Caterpillar, and a White Rabbit. I also understand that with his mother a prisoner in Amber he is powerless against you.”
She regarded me again.
“You have been busy,” she said. “I try.”
“…So that it is probably safe for you to return,” Mandor continued.
She smiled at him, then glanced at me.
“Your brother seems well informed,” she observed.
“He’s family, too,” I said, “and we’ve a lifelong habit of looking out for each other.”
“His life or yours?” she asked.
“Mine,” I replied. “He is my senior.”
“What are a few centuries this way or that?” Mandor offered.
“I thought I felt a certain maturity of spirit,” she noted. “I’ve a mind to trust you further than I’d intended.”
“That’s very sporting of you,” he replied, “and I treasure the sentiment…”
“…But you’d rather I didn’t overdo it?”
“Precisely.”
“I’ve no intention of testing your loyalties to home and throne,” she said, “on such short acquaintance. It does concern both Amber and the Courts, but I see no conflict in the matter.”
“I do not doubt your prudence. I merely wanted to make my position clear.”
She turned back toward me.
“Merlin,” she said then, “I think you lied to me.”
I felt myself frowning as I tried to recall an occasion when I might have misled her about something. I shook my head.
“If I did,” I told her, “I don’t remember.”
“It was some years ago,” she said, “when I asked you to try walking your father’s Pattern.”
“Oh,” I answered, feeling myself blush and wondering whether it was apparent in this strange light.
“You took advantage of what I had told you — about the Pattern’s resistance,” she continued. “You pretended it was preventing you from setting your foot upon it. But there was no visible sign of the resistance, such as there was when I tried stepping onto it.”
She looked at me, as if for confirmation. “So?” I said.
“So,” she replied, “it has become more important now than it was then, and I have to know: Were you faking it that day?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Why?”
“Once I took one step upon it,” I explained, “I’d have been committed to walking it. Who knows where it might have led me and what situation might have followed? I was near the end of my holiday and in a hurry to get back to school. I didn’t have time for what might have turned into a lengthy expedition. Telling you there were difficulties seemed the most graceful way of begging off.”
“I think there’s more to it than that,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“I think Corwin told you something about it that the rest of us do not know — or that he left you a message. I believe you know more than you let on concerning the thing.”
I shrugged.
“Sorry, Fiona. I have no control over your suspicions,” I said. “Wish I could be of more help.”
“You can,” she replied.
“Tell me how.”
“Come with me to the place of the new Pattern. I want you to walk it.”
I shook my head.
“I’ve got a lot more pressing business,” I told her, “than satisfying your curiosity about something my dad did years ago.”
“It’s more than just curiosity,” she said. “I told you once before that I think it’s what is behind the increased incidence of Shadow-storms.”
“And I gave you a perfectly good reason for something else being the cause. I believe it’s an adjustment to they partial destruction and recreation of the old Pattern.”
“Would you come this way?” she asked, and she turned from me and began to climb.
I glanced at Mandor, shrugged, and followed her. He came along.
We mounted toward a jagged screen of rock. She reached it first and made her way onto a lopsided ledge which ran partway along it. She traversed this until she came to a place where the rock wall had broken down into a wide V-shaped gap. She stood there with her back to us then, the light from the green sky doing strange things to her hair.
I came up beside her and followed the direction of her gaze. On a distant plain, far below us and to the left, a large black funnel spun like a top. It seemed the source of the roaring sound we had been hearing. The ground appeared to be cracked beneath it. I stared for several minutes, but it did not change in form or position. Finally, I cleared my throat.
“Looks like a big tornado,” I said, “not going anyplace.”
“That’s why I want you to walk the new Pattern,” she’ told me. “I think it’s going to get us unless we get it first.”
Chapter 3
If you had a choice between the ability to detect falsehood and the ability to discover truth, which one would you take? There was a time when I thought they were different ways of saying the same thing, but I no longer believe that. Most of my relatives, for example, are almost as good at seeing through subterfuge as they are at perpetrating it. I’m not at all sure, though, that they care much about truth. On the other hand, I’d always felt there was something noble, special, and honorable about seeking truth — a thing I’d attempted with Ghostwheel. Mandor had made me wonder, though. Had this made me a sucker for truth’s opposite?