Folly returns to the royal suite carrying a satchel of willow bark from Hannah's quarters. "We're trumping the rest of the family with updates," she tells her as she hands it off. "I asked Fiona to join us when she's done. I figured I should go ahead and rejoin you, since my first call is to Martin. Assuming I can get through."
Hannah has been staring at the ceiling of the 'nursery', biting her lower lip and looking very worried.
Folly takes a seat in the sitting room, away from the magic circle, at one end of the sofa so there's room for Hannah to join the contact easily if she gets through.
Hannah sits, none of the concern leaving her expression. "Folly, if they've been compromised, how will you protect yourself? How will you know?"
Folly pulls out a card, touches the image lightly, like a caress, and then concentrates. She's willing to sit quietly and concentrate for a while if she doesn't get through immediately.
There is no immediate response from Martin.
"It's a risk," Folly says as she waits, "but for this call, where I know the recipient as intimately as I do, I should sense immediately if something is off. If he's compromised to the point of no longer really being himself, I would expect the trump not to work. Otherwise... I'm trusting that between his mental fortitude and my intuition we can disconnect before anything goes haywire." She smiles reassuringly, still watching the card. It's obvious she has a lot of faith in her husband's skills, or their skills together as a team.
"If you've got other suggestions, though...." she adds, and makes a palm-up gesture that invites Hannah's comments.
Hannah takes Folly's hand. "I'll just be with you in case you need helping disconnecting."
Folly is not getting an answer. It's not like Martin's mind is preoccupied as if he were hellriding or otherwise preoccupied. More like he's blocking.
Folly purses her lips, gives a curt nod, and says, "Call me when you can," as if her intent could somehow get through even if the call itself can't.
She turns the card face-down against her thigh. She's careful not to let it touch her skin, which -- now that she's sitting, and her legs are poking out from the ridiculous cloak she's wearing -- seems to be flecked here and there with glitter. "It feels like he's blocking," she says, "which could mean a few different things. I'm hoping he's guessed who's calling and will try me when he's able. Or I'll try him again later. In the meantime...." Folly turns a little to face Hannah and nods toward the nursery. "What else have you been able to find out?"
Hannah takes a deep breath. "All I have are new speculations. For example, they were not living here. In this extended suite, there is no sign one might expect of an expectant mother, or even a father under thrall enough to expect us all to swear oaths to an unborn child. Has Random said he remembers anything of recent events?"
Folly shakes her head. "Not much. At best it's a blur, and some of it he doesn't remember at all. I asked about the alleged trip to Rebma, for example, and he vaguely remembers going to Paris and starting down the stairs, but nothing after that." She glances around the room, thinking, before returning her gaze to Hannah. "From what I've heard, though, he hasn't been doing much of anything except hovering in Vialle's orbit. Certainly not preparing for a child, because... I mean, it's not like they're actually expecting an actual child, you know?"
"Maybe, operating only as an extension of her will. Still, there are hand drums by the bed, and they're about the only thing in the space that feels like him to me. He was in there somewhere. But, Folly, I mean, here, let me try to list it."
Hannah does not count things out on her fingers, possibly because there aren't enough. "We need to reconstruct the facts as thoroughly as we can so as to find hidden bombs. This involves interviewing everyone and their mother.
"I am concerned she was taking him through the, uh," Hannah gestures into the other room, "gateway. We need to prove or disprove this and respond. Someone will want to go through and explore, if it is. Someone will need to decide if that's worth it."
"Fiona variously suggested it was a power conduit, and a side-effect of the workings the Queen was trying to do and not necessarily dangerous in and of itself, or at least not dangerous at the moment," Folly interjects. "Not that I completely trust her accuracy or forthrightness under the circumstances, mind you." She gestures to Hannah to continue.
"I'm interested how something that ordered could be the leaves that blew in through the door," Hannah adds dryly.
"We need someone with the right skills to assess and cleanse her staff of any residual taint. I'm guessing she had her hands full with Random and - based on what I've seen and Corvis told me - she was running everyone else through intimidation and manipulation. Still, needs doing."
Folly nods.
"It would be good to know if this intrusion," she gestures again to the other room, "is connected with First to the Fray's clan, uh, gens, dynasty... I am not sure how to even ask. People tend to group and subgroup. She is a princess of something... perhaps it is a military title - what I'm trying to say is they can't possibly all be united in this. It's possible the Queen was trying to avoid the fighting entirely. It seems worthwhile to understand who among them might have supported this..." Hannah doesn't seem to have a good grip on this train of thought so she waves it off.
"Random needs new suites, and should not come back in here until we are sure we've done everything we can - or possibly ever."
"Killing it with fire is still on the table, check," Folly says with not nearly as much humor as the words imply.
"Someone needs to examine this powder inside the perverted... abomination."
Folly gives her a quizzical look, but then...
Hannah holds her hands open, palm up, before Folly. "You have had a great victory, bringing him back to us. I know there is a great deal to be done, but if you do not rest before you use all the energy this has brought you, the crash will be much harder and... now I am intruding, but you need to save some energy for Martin, so he knows," she taps her chest, "he's your priority, if he is." There is no judgement in her eyes or her body language, just concern. "He likely knows," Hannah taps her own temple ruefully, "but it will matter for him to Know. You are a fire that has had winds blown into it right now, and your desire to see Xanadu safe is your strength, but women like us have to be careful not to singe our loves when busy healing our home. I say this for you and me too. I know how narrow my sight becomes - I see that same dedication in you. I have crashed to earth to find people I love... broken in ways that can't be healed. I don't know what your path is, but if you mean to choose it, make your steps intentional. If you can, singing bird, write the song." Hannah shrugs.
Folly gives her a sad smile. "I hear you. Martin knew what I was planning to do, but we didn't foresee all the consequences. Or maybe he did, more clearly than I did." She shakes her head minutely. "But he's strong, and he's still my husband, and I have hope that we can survive a slight remaking of one corner of the universe, and an epically awkward conversation about what that means, and everything that comes after."
She looks down at her rumpled clothes and grubby legs and adds, "And yes, I could really use a bath and a nap, but everything keeps happening at once."
"I know. This is my fourth dress since I got back, which was before dinner yesterday, and I had a baby right quick. Even if you can't sleep, conserve. And yes, I did sleep," Hannah smiles proudly. "That's all I've got. Want to try him again?"
"I'm going to wait just a little longer, in case he's blocking because he's in the middle of something that requires concentration. And..." Folly looks a bit sheepish, but her eyes are twinkling "...because I'm thinking of trying something that will probably annoy him. But if it works, he'll know it's me even if he doesn't answer.
"In the meantime, let me give you a little bit more detail about what I got from Fiona about...." Folly nods toward the nursery. "When I first asked her about the nature and purpose of the magic circle and the hellish nursery furniture, she said she thought the circle was a power conduit, and the furniture a side-effect of the reality-bending required to get the circle here, which had to do with the Queen of Air and Darkness and Random. I think I have an idea what that's all about.
"As we were wrapping up the conversation, though, I mentioned the next items on my agenda included trying to get rid of the circle if we could do so safely, and she said she thought it was a side effect of the spells the Queen was using rather than a planned manifestation or the main goal of the spells -- which isn't quite what she'd said before. She also suggested just watching it for a while to 'make sure it doesn't act as a barometer to detect if Random relapses'." Folly frowns. "That... doesn't quite scan, to me."
She looks toward the nursery. "I think I know how to go into the thing. One option, anyway. Still debating how horrible an idea it would be, though, or what kind of precautions we'd need."
"It's very horrible. We'd need all of them." Hannah sighs.
Fiona comes up the back stair. "Just being here makes my head feel like it's got cobwebs in it. How do you two feel?"
"Much better than I did when I came through before to kidnap the king," Folly says, "except for needing a bath and a nap, as I was telling Hannah. Does it feel different for you since then?"
Hannah looks at Fiona, concerned, and waits to hear her answer.
Fiona holds the doorframe, as if hesitant to enter. "I'm not both fighting off a continual mental assault and trying to hide the fact that I was doing so. Using Vialle was either blind luck or a masterstroke on The Queen's part. Honestly, we didn't pay much attention to her."
Hannah's lips press together in regret. "Do you feel as if you could reconstruct a timeline of... everything you are willing to share of the time before Cambina's death and now? I would be happy to scribe for you. Folly and I were talking about the living arrangements, or seeming lack of them, here." Hannah gestures about; looks to Folly.
Folly nods. "Hannah was just noting how, except for the weird-ass nursery furniture monstrosities, this suite doesn't really feel like the lived-in residence of a couple expecting a child... or doing much of anything, really." While she's talking she slips Martin's trump back into the case in her pocket and pulls out a small drawstring bag, which she holds loosely between her hands in her lap. "If it helps you feel less fuzzy-headed, we can set up a chair for you in the hall outside the sitting-room, so you don't have to be too close to the magic portal of doom yet."
If Fiona indicates that's her preference, Folly will open the door to the hall -- away from the nursery -- and put a chair for Fiona just outside so she can talk to them through the open doorway.
Fiona shakes her head. "I suspect that time and activity will do the trick, but thank you.
"Part of the effect was becuase it wasn't possible to get restful sleep. It was basically like being under attack 24 hours. We had some tricks, but it's a hard thing to deal with. Random will need some time to get over it all. He took the brunt of it, just as she created her opening by being 'only' Vialle, I was ignored as 'not the King' except when she had to do something about me.
"There wasn't really much living going on in here, just the show of it, when ordered for seeming. It was basically the site of a mental battleground."
Fiona comes in and inspects the broken furniture with distaste.
"So, high-level, there were four phases, I think. First the Queen lured or tricked or bribed Vialle to go to Tir. That's the story we got from Vere. She killed Cambina there.
"At that point, she worked on getting well-settled. It works and it doesn't. The King became more and more dissatisfied with the Queen and they were very much separating. Everyone thought it was a matter of time before she was 'retired' to a quiet Shell in the Far Shallows of Rebma." She sighs. "We didn't realize it was resistance to being controlled; we thought he was just catting around."
"The second phase was when he got sick. 'When the King sneezes, all of Shadow catches a cold'. Gerard couldn't find anything physically wrong with him. Bleys and I were asked to look in, with Vialle hovering at his side, and when she decided he would go to Rebma for the healing waters, we came with her.
"Rebma is a blur. We didn't know what was going on, but something was attacking the King, magically. Bleys got out, but wasn't sure what the source was or how not to make things worse. He lent me strength and stayed available for rescues, if I needed one. I stayed to help the King fight and I was also entrapped, or partially so."
For a small woman who has been described as looking like a porcelain doll, she seems remarkably matter-of-fact about fighting the Queen of Air and Darkness to a near-draw in a protracted magical duel.
"And the last phase is the return here, which you and Martin so brilliantly broke up. It's also a bit of a blur, but I think it wasn't very long."
Folly gives a nod of acknowledgement. "From what I understand, you would have left for Rebma no more than a few days ago Xanadu time and returned sometime yesterday. But given who was involved in the trip, I suppose local subjective time could have been minutes or years."
"We can write it down at a later point, if you think it would be valuable."
"Thank you, Fiona -- it might," Folly says. "Your story answers a lot of my questions, even some I didn't quite get around to asking. But something else just occurred to me: I think well before all this started you'd been trying to help Vialle with the nightmares she'd been having for... I don't know how long, but well before she went to Tir with Cambina. Were you able to learn anything at that time about what was happening to her? In retrospect it seems like it could well have been connected -- the Queen choosing her as a potential host, or reacting to something she did." She hesitates, frowns, and adds, "...or that was done to her. Could any of that fit with what you saw before, if you looked closely enough to uncover anything?" Remembering Fiona's comment about nobody paying any attention to Vialle, she keeps her tone curious rather than accusatory; she's looking for clues, not blame-laying.
"I spoke to Vialle about the nightmares too, had intended to do more, but seemingly higher priorities kept arising. One doesn't think a women under stress in her role and her marriage who is adapting to a relatively new environment having nightmares is going to be the issue that becomes an existential crisis. It would have been more strange if she wasn't having them. I didn't find anything physically wrong with her, myself." Hannah sighs, looking back at Fiona, and shrugs.
Fiona nods sympathetically. "I didn't find anything magically wrong, either, but I think we were being manipulated. One of the lessons we haven't learned from the Klybesians and other enemies is that we're not untouchable perfect playing cards, who are only a danger to each other because of our sharp edges."
She stares at the circle on the floor, perhaps looking at it with her magic vision. "I think you were right, and we should get rid of that. Or at least contain it." Fiona tucks a loose strand of hair behind an ear, or would have had any of her hair been loose.
"Don't let me tie too neat a ribbon around things. A number of the women in the family have reported seeing the Queen at various points, but I hadn't heard of that since Vialle stopped talking about nightmares. Either she was doing a good job at acting like a distressed Queen losing her grip on power or she really was and hadn't made whatever bargain I uncharitably assume she made. Or those two things are only related the way infection follows injury.
"I would like to learn more about her background. It surprises me that she was able to be a host for the Queen of Air and Darkness."
"Likewise," Folly says. "I'm working on one hell of a nutjob conspiracy theory over here that I would really like to prove wrong. The king didn't think she was natively capable of walking a Pattern, which rules out close relative, and Martin always characterized her as a social-climbing lady-in-waiting, not someone who came from a background or position of power. But on the other hand, I think Celina would have been described the same way before she walked the Pattern, and almost nobody knew any different -- including Celina." Folly frowns. "Do either of you know how recently she became pregnant -- or maybe I should say, 'pregnant'?" She makes air-quotes with her pinkies. "And the portal-thingie -- that happened after the Rebma trip as part of Phase Four?"
Hannah's thoughts shift this way and that over her face. Finally, she says, "I couldn't answer the pregnancy question even if I had done enough of an exam to make a determination. My oath prevents me. But we never got that far. You're suggesting this thing here is recent?" Hannah gestures to the circle.
Fiona walks around the room, as if she's looking for something. Whatever it is, she doesn't find it. "I don't think we were fooled so badly that we'll discover that she wasn't really pregnant. We may find that she doesn't keep the pregnancy, or that it was artificially cultivated or some such. However, there's historically precedent amongst failing queens to try to claim pregnant to shore up their role. It's obvious and frequently unsuccessful. Perhaps here less so than usual.
"It might be that helping her get pregnant was part of the deal she struck, possibly when she was 'kidnapped'. It's possible, I suppose, that we never got her back."
Folly nods. "Random wondered the same thing. I'm more inclined to think what we got back was not entirely her, but...." She gestures to Fiona to continue.
"We simply don't know enough to do anything but speculate."
Fiona frowns. "We should step up efforts to find Moire, and anyone else who knew Vialle in Rebma. This may be older than we think. And it's possible that it has implications in terms of Khela's death, and not just as a reflection of Cambina's."
"I think I missed this- do you remember if this circle was here before the Rebma trip?" Hannah asks.
"I don't think it was like this before, which is not to say that nothing was here. I am not sure I've been in this room more than twice before today." She shrugs. "There's never been any particular need for me to be here.
"That said, I didn't detect anything magically unusual in the royal suite, which I should've were this here. I think I recall some 'make a nursery out of a spare room' talk, as if the King and Queen were a young couple in their first apartment in the city. It didn't seem related to his illness."
"Fine way to make it uninteresting. This 'furniture'," Hannah says, and mimics Folly's pinky quotes, "has blue powder where I might have expected it to have blood. Have you ever seen this material around?" Hannah points to the little pile left on the floor by the piece she broke. She gives Folly a look too, because maybe she's seen it.
Brow furrowed, Folly looks at it and shakes her head 'no'.
Fiona pulls out a loop of some sort and looks at the powder. "Why did you expect it to have blood? That's not what I'd ever expect from furniture. That said, I've definitely seen woods with tree-sap still inside. Can someone fetch a jar from the Queen's nightstand? Something we an clean out to take a sample of this."
Folly goes to take a look for something suitable. She's also taking a look at the general state of Vialle's things, and in particular whether it seems to have been a while since they were used.
Folly finds what she needs easily. Her initial take is that everything is exactly how it would be if the staff were cleaning and re-stocking everything and nothing much was being used. It's like a hotel. And not a hotel the band would stay in. A nice hotel.
"How did this break? How sturdy was it?"
"I broke it. I was trying to get a clean break at the rib. Look, I know this isn't rational, but I kept feeling like it was going to come alive and do something. So I needed more information about anatomy - because that's not furniture." She gets up to come around and show Fiona the inside of cross-section of the broken piece she's been carrying around. "It's like an organic entity that has been mutated by disease or design. I wanted to see if I would get a reaction to causing damage. I did not. Unless I did what it wanted and this blue powder is spore." Hannah shrugs, and offers Fiona the specimen.
Fiona puts on a pair of gloves from her bag and takes the broken off chunk.
Hannah's eyes follow this bit of caution and she adds 'gloves' to the list of things she really ought to carry around.
"In Chaos, this would've been an entity, with the possibility that it was sentient. Here, that wouldn't work at all. So maybe this is like some sort of incursion. A Chaosian might've camouflaged itself as a table and gotten stuck this way."
She looks at the furniture. "We could take it elsewhere, closer to the Tree, and see if it wanted to talk. But it might just be an opportunist, which wandered into a new place, with no more knowledge of what was going on than the spiders in the corner."
"Are we thinking it came through the magic circle somehow?" Folly asks from the next room. "Hannah was wondering if maybe it's a portal the Queen was trying to take Random through, and if so, maybe we should send someone to scout the other side. That's not my first instinct as to what it was for, but she does have a point that knowing what's on the other side would be useful. I mean, if it is a portal, and the trip wouldn't be suicidal."
Hannah smiles. "It could be, if it goes to the enemy's stronghold. I just... if they really were not living in these rooms, where were they living? Or... where might she take him to gain even more power over him? And the Rebma trip - maybe it has to be part of the... spell? Or maybe she was making one of these there too?"
Fiona doesn't move. It's as if she's focused on something that takes concentration that isn't in this world.
Hannah's expression grows disgusted.
"My impulse is that the furniture may be incidental to the purpose of the circle. It may be like the Dragon of Arden. It was nearby and slipped in via the weakness that this introduced, and then found itself trapped." She turns towards the circle.
"As for the portal, we might be able to re-open it. It might be very dangerous on the far side, but we are also very dangerous. If it's just a way to cut a entry inside our defenses, then it might lead to Rebma or chaos or Tir."
She pauses. "If we decide to send someone through, it shouldn't be Folly."
"...Why not?" Folly asks, wary but curious. She doesn't sound like she particularly disagrees, though.
Hannah looks to Fiona.
Fiona looks back at Hannah. "Because I have no other way to help Random if something slips again." She turns towards Folly. "I hate to say this, but you're not expendable and I, for instance, am." She pauses. "Not personally, of course."
Folly gives her a wry smile. "I'd like to think none of us are expendable, but I do see your point."
She hands Fiona a container for the furniture-dust sample (assuming she found one), hesitates, and says, "I don't know if this matches what you're seeing, but I tried looking at that thing through the Jewel and it looked... out-of-phase. Or maybe polarized."
Hannah's eyebrows go up at this. "Like, fuzzy? Or like you expect to be able to see it if you just turn your head a little?"
Fiona's eyebrow arches upwards. "Given that the jewel is a focal agent for reality, I'm not sure what that means. Can you describe it more fully?"
Folly scrunches up her nose, remembering. "You know how when you look through a faceted thing, at some angles you can see really sharply, and at others it's like the image bounces around and interferes with itself? It was like that, but the circle came into focus at different angles than the rest of the room. Like it was out of sync."
She looks at Fiona and Hannah. "My wild-ass speculation is that she's opened a portal to Tir before it was broken. And she wasn't trying to take the king there; she was trying to bring herself, or her power, here."
"Not impossible. My worst fear is that she's sending copies of herself back there until she has enough power to not fail at whatever she was trying to do when she broke her pattern."
Hannah makes a choked noise, then clears her throat. "They can manipulate time, not probability, correct? She could perhaps do what you're suggesting, but not, say, make a portal to a reality where Tir never broke to begin with? That's the theory, yes?"
Fiona frowns. "I haven't got a model yet for how they manipulate Time and yet are fundementally creatures of Order. Which is not to say that they cannot be, or that I can't describe it, but I don't see the equations.
"But in the very broad language where we 'tell' the Universe that it has to make it the case that we've arrived at the present moment where we will find a leather bag full of dates in that dresser, they 'tell' the universe that you were here five days ago. Or 5 years.
"It really makes a mess of all the equations we use to understand the existence of, well, of everything. And those are generally useful, so we need to determine how to fix them to incorporate what we observe into our model.
"So I can't say what the limits are, or how much manipulation is beyond the point at which the universe will bend to our will. Or if it worked how we'd know it had happened, since we would have lived a different history.
"But if it only partially works, who knows? It might bifurcate everything. I can't say that's not what happened, not without knowing more than I do."
Hannah absorbs all this with a nod. "Folly, have you looked at Tir Na Nog with the jewel? Or do we know someone who has?" Hannah tilts her head, trying to filter through all the conversations she's had and stories she has heard.
"I haven't," Folly says, "but that's an interesting idea. Tir shouldn't appear again for several weeks yet, but it might be interesting to see if looking through the Jewel would make it, or the line of connection to it from the stairs, visible."
Folly mulls over Fiona's comments and adds, "I'm not familiar with those equations, but I'd be interested to see them... and then probably catch up on the extra grad maths courses I'd need to understand them. But as a naive question, what would happen if you just replaced space with time in the equations you've got? Because I'm suddenly very amused that maybe Chaos is called Chaos precisely because if 'future' is the direction in which entropy increases for a being that can move freely in space but not in time, then maybe 'Chaos' is the maximum entropy point for beings that can move freely in time but have other constraints in space."
She gives Hannah a sheepish look, as if in apology for the sudden mind trip/physics lecture. "I, ah, may have done some extra studying while I was away on maternity leave."
"If we can't wait, we can see if Corwin's sword looks different through the Jewel. I admit I never thought to try that, but Father wasn't free with it for experimental purposes."
"That's a good idea, and Corwin and I were just discussing recently that it would be good to know more about the pattern swords," Folly says. "Luckily he doesn't seem to mind too much that I keep asking to look at his sword."
Fiona seems to think that studying during maternity leave is a perfectly fine thing to do. "I recall Master Dworkin one, responding to a question from Brand. 'Nothing happened "before the pattern",' he said, 'it was sort of a time-soup of events with no chronology. The Pattern happened becuase we wanted things to continue to have been while enabling new things to happen. For that, you need a framework that naturally accretes time, which is what The Pattern does.'" She pauses, possibly trying to remember if anything else he said was useful.
"It wasn't his most lucid day or clearest explanation. His clearest explamations came from the equations. And Bleys is a better teacher of higher maths than I am, but if he's unavailable, I can try to get you started. It's maths, yes, but it's also Mabrahoring. Do you speak it?"
Folly seems fascinated by the explanation from Dworkin, and delighted at the thought of lessons, but her face falls ever so slightly at the metion of Mabrahoring. "I do not," she says, "and the couple of times I heard it, it gave me a bit of a headache. But I'm willing to give it a try."
"Mabrahoring is the language of mathematics?" Hannah asks.
"Mabrahoring is the language of Chaos, and Sorcery. It's only incidentally the language of mathematics if you learn you mathematics from a native speaker, such as my mother or Dworkin.
"It really shows that there is a substrate of Order even to what we call Chaos. It has rules and temporal modes, and provides an ability to comminicate using a shared framework that is inherently ordered, albeit at a deeper level of abstraction than we think of as 'chaos and order'."
It's not the first time she's explained this, although it might be the first time she's explained this to Folly and Hannah.
"It sounds like it will be structurally as well as acoustically interesting," Folly says, "and now I'm fascinated to know what it would take to filter out the parts that set my teeth on edge, and what that would tell me, if anything, about the order-y and chaos-y bits. Did you have that reaction to it when you first heard it?" she asks Fiona; and then to Hannah, "Have you heard it? It's probably good you're not pregnant anymore, because it doesn't seem like a thing that would mix well with morning sickness." She says the last a little too brightly in a 'haha only serious' kind of way.
"I don't think I've heard it, unless Edan uses it when he's casting," she says. "But truthfully, I'm always amazed how much I know of languages I haven't studied." Hannah shrugs.
"Most spells only require a word or so to execute, but researching the correct word and pronouncing it correctly are... quite important. The language of chaos is unsurprisingly flexible and could end up pouring your energy into something unwanted."
"The ordered parts are in the language spoken here and in Amber, surely? If that's what Dworkin knew, and he's one of the founding ancestors, it wouldn't make sense otherwise."
"Grandfather is originally of Chaos, and their language predates our Order. I like to think our language is what he and our grandmother created to communicate with each other, and it became a part of Order because it was there at the beginning. I have no reason to believe it is true, but it is my somewhat romantic vision of the birth of language.
"Any language is inherently a thing of order, and some organizing principle had to exist before the pattern, enough to make a gem, Dworkin, the Unicorn, lightning, blood, a lyre, and a small, sudden island upon which to draw the pattern all exist and persist long enough to make everything else in a moment.
"Father never wanted to talk about it, but we speculated endlessly as to whether he pre-dated the pattern or came afterward. He said he didn't remember."
Folly blinks. "Somehow it did not occur to me until this moment that perhaps that's why it's called the 'Big Bang'." She shakes her head. "That does sound rather like a 'before, but I don't want to think about it' or possibly a '"before" and "after" have no meaning in this context and I don't feel like explaining it'."
Fiona nods. "There's certainly an after, but it's hard to reconcile a before as we understand it, except we know that there are beings who remember it."
She looks at Hannah. "But speaking of time, it's probably time I try the boys again. If you'll excuse me a minute?"
She pulls out her trump of Martin again and concentrates, not insistently but steadily.
After a moment, the connection opens and Martin says, "Hello?" He's in some sort of building, heavy, low ceiling, stone walls. He sounds kind of annoyed.
"Yeah, I know," Folly says, without preamble, in response to his mood, "but I wanted to let you know your father is feeling more himself again, and to see how you're doing." Martin can feel the relief flooding through the contact as she says that last. "Are you ok? Do you need anything? Or anyone?" She's positioned, or is controlling the view through the trump, so he can see Fiona and Hannah even though they're not in the contact.
Out of view of the contact, she holds up her free hand in a "bide a moment" gesture.
Martin says, flat: "Folly, this is really not a good time. I'm glad Dad's feeling more himself but we have a carpet full of possibly ex-queen here and scrying suggests we need to get a move on to avoid a fight. No extra contact, but do Hannah or Fiona have anything to tell us from where you are in Xanadu?"
Hannah looks back to Fiona. "I've gone from being a community expert and elder at thirty back to being a novice at most everything. I suspect motherhood is not going to help me feel more competent. Do you have any advice on mothering? I feel like I had good examples, but we never discussed... how they got everything done."
Fiona actually laughs, a brief pleasant noise. Hannah suspects that it's genuine. "Oh, I am absolutely the last person to ask how to be a good mother. Between magic, pattern, and having unlimited power and wealth when in shadow, I didn't have many hard choices to make. Since we were all, at that point, hiding our children, I never had a chance to compare notes with my sisters. I always assumed I managed things better than they did.
"I tried to be there when they needed me when young, I wanted them to learn right from wrong and how those differed from power, and I let them raise themselves. More so Conner than Brita. She had her father's family and Conner did not. I'll let you know in a few centuries if I think I managed successfully."
Still in her trump contact, Folly says, "Tell Edan Fiona examined the chain that was recovered when Vialle was found, and thinks it could be used to keep a prisoner from using sorcery. Of course, if the Queen is the one who made it in the first place, it might be exactly the wrong thing for your purposes. But if you think it might be useful we can get it to you later -- Signy has it now..." -- her voice rises, clearly meant for Hannah and Fiona -- "...and is there anything else you want me to pass along to Martin and Edan? They may not have much time before they have to move again."
Martin says, "Check. Edan, Folly tells me Fiona says she's looked at that silver chain Signy has and thinks it could keep a prisoner from using Sorcery. Which is just what we needed unless it doesn't work on our current problem. Do we want it? Also Hannah is with Folly, any message to pass through?"
Hannah shakes her head at Folly and give Fiona time to answer.
"Well, thank you for that. Just knowing even you aren't sure you succeeded yet is a bit helpful." Hannah grins. "I had a whole community raising me. I don't know how to do it any other way, but he'll be the first... at home child since your generation, if I understand right. I have been trying not to worry about his safety. He would have been no safer where I was raised."
Fiona nods. That's sadly obvious to her. "Our family does not have a strong record of self-reflection and modification of behavior, in part because we tend to be so remarkably powerful that even our failures succeed well enough, or can be left behind. I am an outlier in my generation."
She sighs. "My generation isn't a generation. We were so far apart in age that only Random has experience of childhood siblings while he was himself a child. But we have twins, and we have Folly's child, and Lucas' family and his other children and your own child.
"Even your generation, to some extent, was a surprise, It's too many, after all the time when we had none."
"Something changed it. Maybe her."
After conferring with Edan, Martin says, "Yes, Folly we want the chain, ASAP. Also Edan asks whether his child is safe and the Raven is still with him."
Folly, not wanting to interrupt Hannah and Fiona's conversation any more than necessary, says, "Back in a bit -- Edan wants the chain." She's already moving out of the room as she speaks.
"Her? Our interloping queen?" Hannah asks, curious how this idea has formed.
Fiona nods. "If you needed a new body, it would certainly be helpful if the people who could make one strong enough for you were to start having babies.
"Dad at one point thought it was cyclical, but we tried like hell to work out the cycles and never could. Either we didn't have enough information or there was a variable that we didn't know how to examine.
"If she figured it out and figured out how to open the tap, as it were, it would explain our recent fertility." She blinks. "I wonder if it's focused on your generation or if I should be worrying about becoming pregnant again." Fiona looks slightly worried, "or my sisters should be worrying."
"Hm," Hannah says. "Paige once told me if we were outside the influence of the pattern, our desire alone would be enough to prevent a pregnancy. I had to question the logic. I haven't tried to test the theory. Our bodies, it seems to me, are ordered regardless of where we are. So things like fertilization and implantation... You'd have to keep control of your decision for some time to keep the probabilities unlikely. And I'd imagine there are new variables introduced when one is mating with another ordered being. So the predominance in my generation of cousins and near cousins producing children, based on the miniscule data I have, would also be indicative of a change in the probability distribution. Or it's just that we all have some shared experiences that are unusual on the universe at large, it is nice to be understood, and we have an ally for parenthood which makes the risks to the child more distributed. So here is a question. Have you figured the calculation for Random's pattern? It would be different, wouldn't it?"
Fiona looks perplexed. "If I were to apply Paige's logic to the men of our family, we would be drowning in babies. Perhaps that's a thing her father can explain, since he taught her about our powers." Hannah gets the feeling that Bleys is going to be asked to explain and soon.
"I might be explaining her approach badly. It must have worked for a long time, or, it's as you speculate."
"Well, you know which of those two options I'm leaning towards. Corwin alone would've had dozens of children on Shadow Earth when he didn't remember not to want to have children.
"They are and they aren't, it turns out. Different, I mean. Each pattern is an inscription of the true pattern, as filtered through the author, who must be attuned to it and therefore already has the true pattern in his or her every fiber. It looks somewhat different, but it's not. It's more like parallax than actual differences." She pauses.
"Parallax is what gives us stereoscopic vision, so it's not nothing. It's just that the math is done from the real pattern. We've never done anything to determine what, if anything, is in the math of the first order shadows."
"Who do you think is best at math in my generation? Knowing the variables between prime and Xanadu, Rebma, Paris and Tir might be informative in the current situation."
"Ambrose. Merlin. Dara." She sighs. "You should've met Dara before Corwin killed old Borel. She was not so... bitter, once upon a time."
Hannah nods. "I've caught up on many things but I don't think I know this story of Dara and Corwin and Borel. Who are Dara and Borel?"
"I keep forgetting you weren't at the coronation ball, where she attacked the King. Dara is Merlin's Mother. She and Martin raised the boy, but they fell out early on. They stayed together for the child's sake. Borel was, to the first approximation, her father. She's my first cousin, because Borel is Mother's brother, but she was so much more interested in Order than he was."
"More distant family, right. I have a question on a different topic. Trumping people who may be family but those lines are diluted enough... I don't even know. It came up that Lucas thought someone was attacking Solace via Trump. And that Brita's father had experienced the same effect. Dworkin thinks my father might be one of his descendants, but Random is quite certain he could not survive pattern initiation. I was wondering what you can tell me about the non-royal cousins in the sense of... do these abilities or lack thereof have a connection? Was there any point at which you were certain Conner or Brita would have a chance at surviving a pattern walk, or was it always a dread risk? Basically, is there an equation for that?"
"Not one I know. For the most part, we could just ask Dworkin. I had a disadvantage over my brothers, in that Grandfather and I talked regularly enough that he saw me while I was pregnant and told me. Told me Brita was going to be a girl, too, despite my not wanting to know in advance." She looks annoyed, but it quickly passes.
Hannah draws a breath and looks sympathetic.
"It's not a sure thing, as far as I can tell, even if your lineage says it should be. Mirelle failed, and it killed Paulette. Khela failed. Pinobello failed. Rumor has it that it killed Morganthe. It's not just being descended from Dworkin. There's more to it. It's on my list of mysteries to investigate, but I just haven't had time."
Hannah nods. "Well, I know what my list looks like so I can hardly imagine yours. You don't happen to have a family tree with mothers for Huon and Pinobello et al filled in, do you? Brennan gave me a good start, and I haven't been back to Amber to dig about the library."
"I'll send you a copy of my list. It's hopelessly out of date, but I did try to keep up. At this point, I practically just assume anyone who calls me 'Aunt Fiona' is probably a niece or nephew. Or a grandchild. Or both."
Hannah snorts. "I thank you. I'll send along notes if I learn anything new elsewhere. You don't suppose the Queen knows they've already lost and is just out for revenge, do you?"
Fiona sighs. "I don't suppose that, no. In a family of near-immortals, I have come to anticipate long-game play from most players. A second plan behind the first, another beyond that. Was this a disraction? Does this open us up to some more insidious plan? I don't know." Fiona steps up to the crib-shaped thing and peers closely at the broken edge. It's probably just to keep her doing something.
"But I'm not ready to think this was a clean win for our side. We haven't looked deeply enough into it yet to assure ourselves that it was a win at all. In any case, she's still pregnant. That's a problem we'll have for many years."
Hannah chooses not to worry about Vialle or her pregnancy for the moment. "Do you think Greyswandir would help us destroy this thing? Corwin told me," this seems a preface to Hannah treating the information warily, "she gives him insight into the Queen. Or perhaps their society as a whole... but the context made it sound like the Queen."
"I can't decide if that sword is a risk or an opportunity. Corwin should have every tool he needs to control it, and moreso now, but still...." She sighs.
"I'd be happier if it were Werewindle or Halosydne," she finally adds. "Or if we just sent it to a shadow that we destroyed as we left it. It may well fall apart from lack of connection as it is. We should probably put something around it to make sure we don't leave any pieces."
"I don't have sorcery... like spells. But I do know, at least in the woods, I can slip into the spirit realm here. I don't know this close to the center. Of course, I'd like to find out for certain, but this isn't the time for experiments. How would you send this to a shadow? Parting the Veil?" Hannah wonders.
Fiona looks concerned. "Not from here. We don't Part the Veil here. It's too risky. Mostly of premature collapse, where you might end up half in Xanadu and half in Amber and it would be difficult to declare where you'd died.
"But also, we don't know what the side effects are close to pattern. In shadow, parting the veil causes a displacing reaction. Almost always nothing that's anywhere you'll ever detect, like changing a probability a million miles away. We found it in the equations, and then Bleys devised an experiment to see it in a pocket shadow, and we observed it.
"Near a pattern, it might be magnified, or it might be unable to sustain itself. Or it might be unable to project it very far and happen inside your head.
"We just don't know. And to answer your question, we'd probably send it via Trump."
"I appreciate you indulging my many questions with these kind of long answers. So to safely go through a trunk it would have to be wrapped in magic?" Hannah seems to know this isn't quite right, which comes through in her tone. She's looking for an adjective she doesn't have.
Fiona shakes her head. "The magic is just to make sure we don't miss or lose any bits. Like those flakes that fell off when you took off the corner. And the bits on your hand. I'm not particularly concerned for its safety, but I am concerned for the King and Folly." If Fiona even notices that she has switched from 'the King and Vialle' to 'the King and Folly, she doesn't show it.
"And questions are good. I've asked a lot of questions myself. When we get so confident that we have no questions, we cease to grow." She looks over at Hannah. "While I can't actually prescribe Corwin's methods, it's hard to argue with the results. Perhaps when I am as old as Benedict, a course of amnesia and a fresh set of questions will do me good..."
Last modified: 15 October 2020