Between bouts of sight-seeing in Paris and asking Corwin's staff about Rebman-Parisian relations, Fletcher takes the time to draft a note to Corwin and have it delivered to His Majesty's secretary.
In Fletcher's well-practiced formal script it reads:
Your Majesty,
I thank you for your hospitality in this time of familial tragedy. Circumstances require that I must soon journey to Xanadu to confer with King Random. I hope that before I must go I will have the opportunity to take you up on your offer to show off your handiwork here in Paris.
I await your convenience.
Fletcher, KCOU
The return note offers a time the next afternoon; it's sealed with Corwin's rose seal in silver wax. Corwin and Fletcher will meet at the great temple of Notre Dame in the early evening, after the people of Paris have completed their day's labors but before the hour in which dinner is normally served at the Louvre.
The reference to the temple is the first time Fletcher can recall hearing anything like a religious reference since his return to Amber's environs.
Fletcher accepts the invitation and spends the next day putting together a map of Paris and its environs and assembling his notes about Paris in a number of small leather-bound notebooks he's purchased.
Fletcher, of course, arrives at the temple fifteen minutes early so as to minimize the risk of keeping the king waiting. He studies the architecture, sculpture, and symbols, learning what he can of the faith that Corwin has created here in Paris.
The artistic language is different to what Fletcher recalls from his youth in Amber, in that he doesn't think the creatures mean the same things for the most part, but there is one unsurprisingly familiar icon in the temple's windows and numbered among its grotesques: the unicorn, whose portrait appears in the great rose window on the north face of the temple.
Corwin arrives perhaps five minutes after the appointed hour in something that reminds Fletcher of a hansom cab. "Sorry I'm late. I was tied up with Lance," he says, without explaining who Lance is, as if he expects Fletcher to know. "Let's go in." He gestures to the main door and strides onward, expecting Fletcher to follow in his wake.
Fletcher follows. While doing so he comments, "Given what I'd seen of the current family thinking so far I'm somewhat surprised we aren't deep beneath the Louvre. Your design and so your choice I presume?"
"You haven't seen where we're going yet. I'm not sure I chose this consciously, but apparently I liked it," Corwin says. "It was this way when I got back."
The temple itself is empty of worshippers. Wooden screens block off portions of its interior and the side aisles. Corwin opens a gate in the one that bars their way. Passing through it, Fletcher follows him through the building, to the semicircular protrusion at the far end. Given its height, the temple is remarkably well-lit, something to do with the quality of the windows, although at this time of the evening the sunlight is beginning to fade. Instead, there are side altars through the length of the building, with beeswax candles presented in iron racks. Their small flames twinkle like starlight in the lengthening shadows.
At the far end of the building, in that semicircle, is a heavy stone block with reliefs of groves and pools in gold on the sides. Fletcher recognizes it as the altar. At the rear of the altar, standing atop it, is a life-sized statue of a unicorn in white stone.
"I hope I haven't misremembered your strength. I'll need a hand with this." Corwin moves to stand by one end of the altar, and gestures to Fletcher to join him. If they have to move the altar aside somehow, and it seems they do, it'll take both of them to do it.
Fletcher is a bit surprised by the compliment. When they were younger Fletcher was accustomed to being on the weaker end of the family spectrum. Still, he doesn't consider himself a pushover. He follows Corwin's lead, hoping he won't let Corwin down. Or hurt himself in the process. "So the city was just here when you arrived?"
They put their shoulders to the altar and, when they both throw all their effort into it for a few minutes, manage to slide the heavy block aside. The empty space reveals a stairwell down into the depths under the city, beneath the sewers and catacombs. The whole place seems impossibly ancient to Fletcher for something that can't have been here more than a few years, as if it came into being with history full-fledged.
"The city was here when I got back, afterwards," Corwin explains, taking a candle from a nearby altar and lighting their way down the stairs. "I was a little too busy preventing the end of the universe to hang around and watch it grow."
Fletcher picks up a second candle and follows Corwin down the stairs. "Of course. Still, it's a remarkable. From what I heard you didn't take that long to save the universe. Though some accounts do vary by up to six years. But even if shadow time varies, Pattern time is remarkably steady. Is timing actually in sync with Paris, Xanadu, and Rebma?"
"It seems to be between Paris and Xanadu, as best I can judge. Random thinks the same. I haven't been to Rebma since I wrote the Pattern here, so I can't vouch for that. Nor has Random, not since he scribed Xanadu's Pattern." Corwin says this so definitely that it seems either he and Random have discussed the subject or he has some other source of knowledge about Random's schedule.
"We'll be on the stairs for a while. It's not quite as far down as the chamber in Amber was, but I hope you didn't have a late night date planned after this."
"I left my schedule open. I was half-expecting an elevator shaft though." Fletcher smiles. Continuing downward, he asks, "While we've got a few minutes, do you mind my asking how you chose this location? I've been wondering about relative locations and roads connecting the Patterns." Fletcher avoids mentioning Corwin's mother by name in case it's still a sore point.
"It was where I was when I realized I couldn't outrun the storm that was destroying the universe after Dad and Dworkin unmade the primal." To the allusion to his mother, indirect as it was, Corwin appears to make no response. As they descend further, Corwin says, "I don't think it was five years here. More like five hundred. Or maybe five thousand. But the storm did strange things to time." He shrugs.
"There's a theory that the Dragon represents a necessary imperfection in the realms of Order. I don't suppose you've run across your own version here, have you?"
Corwin shakes his head in the negative. In case Fletcher can't see that in the dim light, he says, "No, no I haven't. I haven't heard that Random has one near Xanadu, either. My thought is that they're like the half-giants out toward Ygg, where the Shadows run mad. The dragon of Arcadia would need to be that old for the stories about it to be true, and many of them are."
"I had heard concerns that the Dragon might be menacing Broceliande. If true, I suppose it must be the same one from before then, and it's mobile. I had an idea that the Pattern might be an effective force to wield against it, depending on how close-in to the Realm it actually gets. You've fought against it's manifestations, right?" Fletcher leaves the question open, hanging in the air as they descend the stairs.
"Yes, when I was the Warden of Arden. But I've been retired from that position for centuries; Julian holds it now. And he wouldn't thank me for interfering." Corwin touches his great blade Grayswandir. "It doesn't burn the Arcadians the way it does actual Chaosi, but they don't like my sword. I've found Pattern to be effective in the same kind of way. It's not like the Black Road, even, but it drives out the Green influence. Have they told you about Julian's son? Adonis? Daeon?"
Fletcher pauses. "I've heard that he was a some sort of Shadow God and that he'd died. There's been so much to catch up on that I haven't pressed for any of the gory details. I take it he was tied up with the Dragon?" Wheels in Fletcher's mind are clearly working furiously to put the details of pieces he's heard together. "Was he part Arcadian himself?"
"He was, through Finndo's line. Finndo and Julian had similar ideas about how to bind the Dragon." Corwin's tone takes on a dry humor. "Random likes to joke about my dating habits, but I didn't deliberately make a Great Marriage with an enemy of Amber and I definitely didn't repeat the mistake.
"So Finndo gave the Dragon a bunch of demigoddesses and Julian sired Daeon on one of them. And eventually he sired twins on Bleys' daughter Paige. The Dragon tried to possess those children, and Daeon sacrificed himself to stop it."
"Possession? Messy." Somewhere in the background, Fletcher's mind has clearly run off on its own and already started working on solutions to the problem. Fletcher's feet continue down the stairs. Fletcher's mouth continues on automatic. "How close was that to a Pattern? Is it limited in regard to how close it can get? Who witnessed the sacrifice? I wonder if the Dragon itself is a self-contained force." Fletcher looks at Corwin apologetically. "I'm sorry. There's so much news to assimilate. I don't expect you to be able to answer everything," he says, hoping that this older and wiser Corwin will offer some useful advice, or barring that the Corwin of old will rise to the challenge.
"It happened in Amber, after what the locals call the Sundering, so the Pattern influence was minimal. It's the only time I've ever heard of that level of power and influence being brought to bear in Amber, though. Several of your cousins were witnesses; Brita tried to stop him." Corwin pauses in his attempt to answer all of Fletcher's questions to try to remember who else he'd heard was in the room. "Paige and Conner were also there, I think."
It's clearly a long way down to the Pattern, but that probably doesn't surprise Fletcher.
Fletcher stops for a moment. A hint of tension creeps into his voice. "As weird as it is to be meeting cousins I haven't met, it's something else to know there were cousins I'll never meet. And both lists seem to have been growing a lot lately." Fletcher resumes his pace. Fletcher regains his normal, if somewhat cynical calm, and continues. "So whatever it is, this dragon wants to reproduce with us. I had a thought that it might be some ancient, alien force trying to burrow its way into the Ordered realms, possibly looking at a way to target a more primal level of Order to spread its influence. From what everyone's told me, the 'primal' Pattern isn't there anymore but somewhere deep inside I feel there's still something deeper out there. I guess you're one of the few people worth asking. Was it necessary to have a Pattern in Amber in addition to that original one? I haven't heard anyone talking about Rebma having a 'primal' Pattern that we need to worry about. Was Amber's some funky two-for-one deal rather than the one being a true primal Pattern underlying the realms of Order?"
"There's another Pattern, on Kolvir. The real Kolvir, of which the Amber we lived in of old was but a first-order shadow." Corwin stops suddenly and half-turns to look at Fletcher. "Did you get that from your father?"
Fletcher stops as well. "No. I'm still warming up to this modern idea that my father is a wise and beneficent soul. The theory is just something I've put together based on various things I've heard, mostly from cousins. Is that other Pattern on that 'real Kolvir' still out there then? I'd had an idea that I'd go look around out there someday to be sure. I didn't used to think that messing around with such things was a good precedent, but that was before there were quite so many people willing and capable of doing the messing around. If... this is something I shouldn't be discussing with the cousins, please say so. From the family meeting I got the idea that everyone was an expert."
Corwin shakes his head. "I wouldn't say that. Some things that the redheads knew have been more widely distributed since the war, but that doesn't make the people who figured them out sometime in the last five and a half years experts. You're stronger in using the family talents than most of your cousins will be. It's a strength; use it."
He turns back around and starts moving down the stairs again. "I just wondered because Ben is usually so close-mouthed. Wise he may be, and some people think of him as beneficent, but I'd never have called him generous with his knowledge."
Fletcher takes a moment to digest Corwin's words. He opts for deflection rather than a serious analysis of his father. "Yeah. I kinda worry about gaps in Lilly's knowledge because of that, but she seems ok with it. Anyway, is it known whether or not Amber was the only place with a both a functioning first-order shadow Pattern and a 'real' Pattern?"
"Amber's Pattern is no less real for being in a first-order shadow of True Kolvir. Or it wasn't, before the Sundering." Corwin doesn't sound entirely comfortable with the name. "People who walked the Pattern on Tir or in Rebma have the same power over shadow as those who walked in Amber, or those who walk in Xanadu or Paris now. How much do you know about Dad's Jewel?"
"It had a singular power that allowed it to exert remarkable influence in Amber. That combined with the degree to which he cared for its security made me think it was special. In that regard it was, to me, like the idea of Primal Order: something best left unmolested. I'm guessing it plays into the powers of the Pattern. Bu then I have a lot of guesses. How does it play into this? And for that matter why do they call it 'the Sundering'?"
Corwin presses his lips together slightly. "The name was already attached when we got back from the war. I don't know who came up with it.
"The Jewel is a three-dimensional structure; the Patterns take slices out of it. So they're all a little different, and all the same in that respect. That's why some Patterns have different numbers of veils, and why the Grand Curve doesn't always fall in quite the same place."
Fletchers takes a few moments to take in that idea. "So, is the Jewel the sum of all ordered possibilities? That would give it a level of Substance I had only thought of in terms of the Unicorn. Does that common origin explain why we can walk different Patterns then? I wish I had taken the opportunity to look at Rebma's Pattern before. I'm told it has the same number of veils as Amber's pattern did. I suppose they'll get the door open eventually. I wonder if it can be opened from the inside. Still, I'm worried about what all this implies for us. If Rebma and Tir are not simply reflections of Amber, I would not want us to vanish the way the people who created those Patterns seem to have."
"A lot of people have tried to make that happen for me and none of them have succeeded yet. I don't plan to let that change now that I have a Pattern to ground me," Corwin quips.
"My understanding is that you have to be of the line of Dworkin to walk a Pattern. That's what we always held about Amber and it seems to be true of Paris and Xanadu. I'd know if you couldn't walk mine."
"We might be a tougher lot, or luckier, but I do still wonder what happened to the people who made those Patterns. I didn't think the Moonriders were quite that capable. And it seems clear that royal family of Rebma doesn't have the ability to harness their Pattern." Fletcher grows silent for a moment, and then ask, "For that matter, when you came back here were the people of the city just ready and waiting for you to come be king?"
Corwin nods, and then says, in case Fletcher didn't see him, "Yes. It was as if I'd just been away for a time. A few years instead of a few days, but a long vacation, like Dad used to take."
Ahead, Fletcher can see that the stairs are coming to an end, and the staircase, so reminiscent of Amber's, is opening out into something like a cavern.
"Random must think you have it easy in that regard." Thinking back to Amber's stairs and the altar up above Fletcher inquires, "No guard station down here, I take it?"
"No key, either. If I stationed a guard down here, he couldn't get out," Corwin explains.
"Well at least you don't need to worry about being locked out." Fletcher jokes as he enters the chamber.
The Pattern of Paris is in a place that cannot rightly be called a cavern, nor can it rightly be called a chamber. Most of the area is taken up by the eerie glow of the thing; like Amber's, it's difficult to tell much about the shape when one stands alongside it.
There's also a tree, which seems to be in good shape despite the lack of sunlight and water.
Fletcher looks upon the scene and begins gradually tuning his senses to more fully assess Corwin's creation. The parts of his heart and brain that feel the Pattern slowly open themselves up, feeling for the familiar and the different in this new Power. As usual, Fletcher's mouth continues on automatic. "No guard means no arborist either I assume? I'm guessing the tree wasn't already down here when you took your slice from the jewel?" He grows quiet. He's out of material for the moment and too busy taking this all in to come up with more.
"The tree is a long story, but it's from the same stock as Ygg. One of these days, I hope it starts talking back to me." Corwin moves to place a hand on a low branch, almost as if the tree were a person and he was patting its arm.
To Fletcher's Pattern senses, this is a Pattern. It is as Real and Ordered and true as the one in the basement of Amber was when he walked it. Its presence is solid and overwhelming to his senses in exactly the same way.
Fletcher continues to bask in the brightly shining Order of Corwin's Pattern. At first glance this is a Pattern like any other. Fletcher knew Amber, and has toured Paris. He knew Oberon, and knew the man that Corwin was. He recognizes their similarities but he knows that on some level they aren't perfectly identical. This Pattern is a different slice of the Jewel, with a feel that Martin likened to "Jazz Flugelhorn." Fletcher knows that patience and effort will be the key to fully appreciating what Corwin has made here. He decides to make conversation while his senses recoil, adapt, and regenerate.
"Even with Paris above and the tree here it's so much like Amber's. You said the Patterns were slices taken from a three-dimensional design. How did you choose which one to draw? Or did it choose you? Have you seen the Shadows it casts?"
"I did what it seemed like I had to do at the time. I can't explain it to someone who isn't an initiate of the Jewel." Corwin shrugs; it's not an answer he likes, but it's the answer he got. "I came through some of the shadows on my way back from Amber. I haven't toured them all yet, but I'll try to get to the close ones in the next few years. Until then, I have Flora to help me with the dirty work."
"Starting the center does seem like the best strategy - for figuring out the Shadows I mean. I've been more of an out on the edges kind of guy myself. But I came from the center. Or near the center as it turns out. And knowing the true Order, carrying it with me sustained me in some hairy situations. I still believe in it, but I get what everyone has been saying about the new Patterns, different shapes, things changing. So I know there's a way to reconcile what I know and what I... know. I'm just still trying to find it. That's why I'm here, and why I've got to go Xanadu, and Rebma, and depressingly I may even have to visit candy apple island or whatever. And maybe Tir if it's ever back to just being unsafe instead of hostile and dangerous. Seeing the shapes, feeling them, I think will help me figure 'it' out. And whatever 'it' is, with the enemies we've got stacked up it's gotta help, because in that family meeting I heard a whole lot of questions and a whole lot of guessing without any solid answers." Fletcher stops, as if he's just heard what he said. "I know I can't save the world on my own like Granddad might have, but like you said, this is the one piece I'm good at."
"Then you should pursue it. But be ready for some answers you didn't expect and don't like," Corwin says, and it's clear he has some personal experience with that.
"There's been a lot of that ever since I returned to Amber. I don't suppose you happen to know if the differences between your Pattern and the one in Amber are as great as the differences between Amber's and the one in Rebma, do you? Or even between the 'Primal' one." Fletcher employs air quotes. Fletchers gets a thoughtful look on his face for a moment as he recalls something from earlier. "And you said that one is still around?"
"Yes, it is," Corwin says. "Dad and Dworkin managed to rewrite it." He doesn't elaborate on that point.
"I had an idea, that the positions of the Patterns might influence how or where creatures like the Dragon might move. Being restricted by the Pattern. If that theory holds, and that true Pattern remains, then it follows that, given the Dragon's activities, the... shadow that is Amber has changed position. Does that make sense to you? The movement of the Shadow rather than just a 'sundering'?" Fletcher continues to soak up what impressions he can from Corwin's Pattern, gleaning what he can of its overall shape.
Fletcher can't tell anything more about the shape of the Pattern than he could about the shape of the Amber Pattern while standing next to it: not much. It's big and glowing. To get a real feel for its shape and power beyond 'it's a Pattern', Fletcher would probably have to walk it.
Corwin shakes his head. "The theory makes sense, I mean, it hangs together as a theory, but there's no evidence for it."
Fletcher frowns and admits, "At the moment I do seem to be high on supposition and low on hard facts. Not something one should generally find satisfactory." He squares his shoulders, faces Corwin, and asks, "Would you allow me to walk this Pattern so I can more fully know it and perhaps understand it better?"
Corwin only looks mildly surprised. "Right now? Are you ready for that?"
That's more cooperation than Fletcher would have expected in the old days right there; Corwin has been extraordinarily cooperative in general, in fact. If the rest of the family didn't accept him, Fletcher might wonder whether he was dealing with an impostor.
"I am ready." Fletcher states, reflecting on the irony that two months ago he would not have considered a Pattern walk as ever being necessary after one's first. On some level this possibility must have occurred to him prior to his descent beneath Paris with Corwin, and his subconscious seems to have prepared him for the eventuality. So yes, bravado aside he concludes that he is sure he is ready. "If you have a spare trump of yourself to loan me in case things go unpredictably, I should even be able to help you close the altar entrance again."
"I don't have a spare," Corwin says, pulling out his pack, "but you can borrow it anyway." He shuffles out his own card and hands it to Fletcher. "I'll want that back afterwards. Dworkin's not hanging around making spare decks anymore. If you're carrying anything that won't survive the walk, I'll take it."
He sounds mildly disgruntled with himself for making the offer, but there it is.
"Thanks. I don't think I've got anything that won't survive." Fletcher checks his pockets to be sure, and then tucks the trump into his jacket pocket. Fletcher looks back to Corwin and says, "well, no time like the present."
Fletcher moves to the beginning of the Pattern, inhales, and takes a few moments to further gear himself up mentally for the walk.
The pattern's silvery glow is laid out before Fletcher and he takes the first of what he knows will be many arduous steps. This part is not difficult, but the resistance grows minutely with each step. It has been many, many years since Fletcher undertook a patternwalk and he cannot help but compare it to the first.
Centuries and centuries had passed, but the day and the struggle had etched itself in his mind. The one was more muted, a silvery glow rather than the bluish tinge from Amber's crypts. The King had thought him ready, although his father disagreed.
They were such bright days then, pure and strong and fighting to expand Amber's influence and protect her from enemies. Before Fletcher had had his ... disagreements with the Order.
"Disagreements? You suborned a Holy Sister from her vows in the name of Purity. You never honored Purity, only yourself." Mother Lorimer of the Vestal Sisters looked no different in his memory than when she had called upon Oberon in anger, many years ago. She stands athwart the pattern, as real and disapproving as she was that day.
As he continues along the silvery lines, an older and perhaps wiser Fletcher than Lorimer knew is still just as angry in responding now as he had been then. "Your claim to value purity rings hollow, or else you would have recognized the purity of our love and released Aurelie instead of using her to wring concessions from the King. Your pettiness destroyed purity, not the other way around." He continues moving toward the image, ready to walk through it. Or possibly give it a much-deserved slap while walking through it.
"Be at Peace, Confrere!", shouts Sir Yare, the Circator. "You have driven a wedge of ill-feeling between the Sisters and our own Brotherhood. Even within it, Aurelie's father Sir Gumfiate is most wroth. Turn aside from this path and join us in the chapter-house and we will meditate on how we can support Order in this un-Ordered world."
The leaping sparks of the pattern beneath his feet tells Fletcher that he has reached a point of resistance, although it should be too soon for the First Veil. Perhaps Corwin's Pattern is harder. That would be bad.
Fletcher presses on, both knowing and believing that he can do this and that this resistance is a test he shall pass and the difference is only the difference in the veils he'd discussed with Corwin and Jarod. Now is not the time to revisit his theological debates with Sir Yare and his scathing criticism of Gumfiate. His belief that his was the cause closest to inspired Order compared to a pair of religious orders too concerned with political advantage to recognize anything as extraordinary as the love he and Aurelia shared has long since been incorporated into the substrata of his psyche to the point where he no longer needs words to express them internally. And so he continues, sure of who he is, and pushes against the forces confronting him, be they the Pattern or the ghost of Sir Yare.
"Peace I say!", shouts Yare. "Even if you are right, you could tear us all apart. No mortal man can live as purely as you would have us be!" His argument is old, and in hindsight might have been right, albeit beside the point. Fletcher pushes against his outstretched hand and passes the Veil.
Fletcher does not stumble; the relaxed resistance beyond the Veil is expected. Proof, as if he needed it, that he is a part of the pattern and it a part of him. Fletcher moves forward, amazed at how clearly he recalls the gestures and tones of men and women more than a millennium dead.
Very little changed in Amber. Some things. They hadn't had the printing press when Fletcher was young, and there were holy houses outside of the Foreign Quarter. That had been a surprise, when he'd come back and those were gone.
Rantipole had told him not to refer to himself as a Militant Brother. Rantipole, who had inherited a family with the power, influence, and money to marry a daughter to a son of Oberon and who had ruined it in ill-timed speculation. The same first cousin who had overseen the decline of his mother's family had been giving him advice on how to deal with Amber. He'd been an unpromising baby and turned into a useless man.
"You've been gone too long, Coz. It's not the same. You can't just ride down the High Street with a Unicorn on your horse's butt and have everyone bow down to you. It's a pity the King won't put you in the line of succession. Then you'd not need worry about it."
Rantipole had been a pleasant and friendly, if useless, companion in the past, and Fletcher is torn that he is now accompanying him along the lines of the Pattern. Rantipole was at once family and the embodiment of everything Emerald raised Fletcher not to be. For all his lack of.... fire and brilliance he did have some wisdom. As Fletcher walks the silver line he appreciates that, having learned a bit in his centuries of wandering. He address the shade. "Politics has its place, but whether they bow or not, right is still right and the Blood of Oberon is still the Blood of Oberon. There is a purpose to Order. Expedience and greed and wounded pride are perishable. They will see the light eventually." The world might be a different place if Fletcher had realized that at the time.
Rantipole frowns and marches along, step by step in sync with Fletcher. "That's all right for you. I have to worry about the family, and we're hard pressed by creditors. These new men, so cold and interested in nothing but money, will be the death of me. Father never had to deal with anything like this." He turns to face his aunt's son and a ghostly hand lands amid the sparks on Fletcher's arm. "I know I've asked before, but we're now it's important. The family needs you, I need you. You're half them, but you're half us! Right is still right!"
Despite his belated realization that Rantipole did get a few things right, Fletcher remembers that on the balance Rantipole's ideas generally led toward disaster. "You knew it wasn't that simple. My first responsibility is to Granddad. I took our ships into the new paths when I could, but the family's profits always turned out to be ephemeral. You are my family but your path is not completely my path, nor is my path necessarily my own." Fletcher focuses on the glowing path he is walking, strangely content to glean new insights from rehashing old arguments.
Rantipole stands directly in front of him. "If you don't have family, what do you have?" The resistance is high, and Fletcher pushes through. The sparks are near his chest now, and rising. He might be halfway through. It's getting tricky, and while it's indubitably the Pattern, it is subtly different and requires his attention.
He does have family, though, no matter what Rantipole said. He is a member of the world's largest family of only children. Cneve, and later Reid, the cousins he'd never met, Lilly, the sister whose entire lifespan he could've napped through. Dara and her line, whom even Father did not know of for centuries.
Father. It's hard to understand him. Sworn to defend Amber, but denied his inheritance. Still a Prince but out of succession. It's as if he cares deeply about Amber, but doesn't at the same time. Sometime, he'd changed. He isn't the man who had met Fletcher on his return years ago.
"You were a fool to leave and doubly so to return," It isn't a memory; there Benedict is, standing athwart the Pattern, fists on his hips, his long arms blocking the way where his lean frame does not.
Fletcher refuses to trade insults with his father. Instead he embraces this subtly different Pattern and presses on along the shining line. To both the apparition and the Pattern he declares, "That was before. Now I'm focusing on what's ahead."
"A fool. Your grandfather uses people, uses us more than anyone because he can get more out of us. Look at Caine, look at Bleys, look at me. Your uncles died of it. If you bring yourself to Eric or Corwin's attention, you could too. Maybe the King would do something about them then, or maybe I would, but it wouldn't matter to you.
Benedict puts out his arms. "At best, he wants to use you as a potential threat to Bleys, who inherited Caine's portfolio. I will be clear. You wouldn't stand a chance. I would think hard before I took on Bleys. He may be young, but he's dangerous. You need to turn back before you commit yourself to something that will kill you."
"I thought you were in the 'King is Dead, long live the King' camp. And I'm no threat to Bleys." Fletcher steps closer to the apparition. "Plus, this path I'm on is a one-way street. Maybe we should talk at the next intersection."
"The King can't die, and if he does, he'll use you from beyond the grave. I've buried enough of us, damn you! You owe your first duty to me." Benedict stands dead in Fletcher's way, and the resistance is tremendous.
Fletcher makes eye contact with the shade as he leans in against the resistance, measuring progress in sixteenths of an inch. "I will NOT be ignored or forgotten. I work to serve a higher purpose and if you suddenly want my loyalty you can go ahead and earn it."
"You're in over your head", he says, as Fletcher breaks through. The last sentence comes as he walks through the image of his father, his arms akimbo. If the image had been real, he'd be looking at Benedict's heart right now, if the old man had one.
The age-old conflict was perhaps no different. It was one of style rather than goals, or so it seemed on the better days. Prince Benedict was all logic and calculation, and to the extent he had emotions, they had little to do with his decision making process. He was very different from his son. Or his daughter, based on what Fletcher had seen.
His sister. A puzzle--not who she was now, but who she would become. Perhaps she was to Fletcher as Random was to Benedict. So young, the King. How could he understand, with only a few centuries to his name? The new King had first seen the moonriders a few months ago. He'd never seen the Brothers Militant in full procession--he didn't even know he'd existed.
"Yes, it's the question, isn't it? Can you trust that he's following my wishes?" The voice, the tone, the man he'd been told would never speak to him again. The King. Oberon.
Fletcher's expression calms and he approaches the ghost before him. "Oh, it's even worse than that your majesty. The Unicorn chose him, so he's the King and now his wishes matter. Change is a scary thing, but I'm hoping he's in tune with the higher order you were."
Oberon, eternal Oberon, one of three constants in his life, along with Amber, along with Benedict. "And if he's not? Are you prepared to do something drastic if it turns out he's not ready? Can you do your duty if your duty is regicide?"
As Fletcher's steps bring him closer to Oberon his faith doesn't waiver. "The choice of the Unicorn is the right one. It wouldn't choose someone unready."
Oberon's laugh is short and dismissive. "She can only choose someone unready. You could die, very certain of what you know and very wrong, child. I am Amber and Amber is me."
Fletcher moves closer to Oberon, far enough along the line that he feels he can maintain a conversational volume. "That you are sir, and I wish you would rejoin the family. Because it seems Amber is no longer alone. I will do as my duty demands, but look about us. This is something new."
Oberon laughs, and although it is not hostile, it is not friendly, either. "There is nothing new. Amber is but one waystation along an eternal, unending road. The death-blessing of Faiella. Even if the anchor points change, the road is eternal. You do your duty, and you look around. Is what you are seeing truly new? On an eternal road, nothing is."
Fletcher keeps his tone respectful as he approaches the king . "Why has Amber been cut loose then? Why haven't we seen more of this road?"
Oberon grunts. "Why don't fish see the ocean? Don't think, do. Close you eyes and walk the pattern in your blood, not this one. You give too much away."
Somewhere in the back of Fletcher's brain, impulses instruct his feet to keep moving while the rest of his brain digests this. His mouth seizes the opportunity to interject, "And all of this came from Faiella?" before a reasoned response can be made. Patterns in blood, his blood, are on his mind but he is keenly aware that the design he has begun is Corwin's and must be finished before he can explore the possibility. Drawing resolve to finish this walk from his need to explore this idea more, Fletcher presses on.
Oberon stands before him, blocking his way as he presses into the final veil. "If you take that last step, Corwin will know all your thoughts from this walk, as you know things you have learned from his mind alone. Protect yourself, stop, and trump away, while you can!"
At this point Fletcher grins. "All my trumps are of dead people, except the one I just borrowed from Corwin. So it seems I'm out of options." He presses forward into the veil, his mind searching for other options, but ultimately knowing he must finish this walk, wondering if it's really so bad for Corwin to find out these things. It occurs to him that if the Patterns are merely anchor points on the road then they must be connected on some level, and the veils themselves may have some connection from Pattern to Pattern. A dangerous thought, Interpattern travel. His will and his feet press forward.
For a moment, the ground beneath the sparks above Fletcher's feet seems to waver, as if unsure what to be. A trick of the light, perhaps. In many ways it wouldn't matter if he was on another pattern, he'd still need to finish. To cross the final barrier.
It's not hard to tell which way he must go, it's the direction which is hardest-- into the most resistance.
Fletcher presses forward, working too hard to speak or to think of anything but his will and the effort and the resistance. If his inner ghosts speak to him, he cannot hear them over the pounding of his own blood in his ears. If anyone's ghosts are haunting him, he cannot see them for the sparks. They no longer matter. It is merely him, the unstoppable force, and the veil, the immovable object.
Fletcher moves his foot forward, not stopping. One. Two. He's beyond thinking and beyond his feet. He feels as if he's nothing but will.
And he breaks through, and has made it again! He is as exhausted as he ever has been, and could easily fall to his knees, just to catch his breath. The world of possibilities are open to him, and he can go anywhere. After a brief breather.
On the inside Fletcher is grinning like an idiot. On the outside he's too tired to grin, and drops to his knees to gather himself for moment. For a few endless moments he reflects on his walk to get to this point. He feels like he's experienced something nuanced and important and doesn't want to forget the details. Thinking that, he remembers the notebook he carries in his jacket pocket. He takes it out and makes a few notes. Then he ponders the merits and worth of this latest pattern walk. Keeping his conclusions to himself, he gets around to thinking what should come next. He had had a plan, and he decides to continue with it.
In his mind he constructs an image, a painted-over memory touched up and then altered. The Pattern of Amber shining unbroken in a bowl atop the true Kolvir, just as Corwin and others described, with the sky overhead. He remembers the feel of Amber's Pattern, not the broken remnant currently guarded by Caine but the original glory and imagines a slight breeze and sunlight. Still kneeling, he looks up, closes his eyes, and wills the Pattern to send him to the center of that older design.
The sun is different. Warm, primal, and unimpeded by anything. There is sun because there is sun, but it's hard to imagine it doing anything as unfixed as moving.
The pattern lies on a plane of rock, surrounded by a forest, with boulders near the place that would be the entrance. It glows, like the pattern does, but is not resisting him. There are no sparks or veils to be seen.
In the distance, near the start of the pattern, something moves, like someone ducking out of sight. He doesn't reappear.
The next thing Fletcher notices is that he's in the center of a pattern, but doesn't seem to be able to direct it to take him anyplace.
Fletcher stands and squints in the direction where he saw someone. He makes sure the trump of Corwin is still right in his pocket where he left it. He smooths back his hair and calls out, "Hello! I am Sir Fletcher of Amber. I mean no harm." He waits a few minutes for further signs of movement, idly pondering whether there are any signs of this Pattern being true, or having been true. He must examine that later. For the moment though, there is the question of who else may be here.
After a moment, Fletcher sees a flash of metal and then shortly afterwards sees a great gryphon, starlingly blue in color, back out from behind the rock. The creature is pulling someone along by the sleeve.
"Yes, I'm coming, you wretched thing! I'm sure it's nothing..." The figure turns. Dworkin, Grandfather's court magician and the painter of trumps.
"Hello!", he calls out. "Now how did you get there?"
Fletcher smiles. "Greetings Doctor Bariman. I came via Pattern. My trump deck is sadly not up to the task. I don't suppose you can help with that?" Fletcher decides not to laugh at his own joke, and instead continues. "Actually I have recently returned from an extended trip in Shadow, and am trying to make sense of the shift invent Faella Bionin in the wake of granddad's death......great grandfather."
"Call me Dworkin, it is as much a title as the other, and even moreso." He straightens, which was a thing he did not do. For a hunchbacked dwarf, he seems very tall and non-hunched. "And since you've heard a thing or two, I don't have to be who you remember, do I?"
For a moment, he seems more serious and perhaps ominous than the Court Magician/Jester/Painter/Foot that Dworkin was a dozen centuries or more ago. He breaks the mood and laughs. "It's perfectly obvious, of course. If a King is dead and his pattern is broken, it can't be on the ring, can it? Have you picked up any mathematics in your travels, young Fletcher?"
"Indeed I have, Dworkin, " Fletcher replies. "And I know there is something of a road that theoretically connects the Patterned realms, though it went through the Amber I grew up in rather than this place. One can hardly help but wonder the reason for that difference, and indeed what the circle encircles. Which branch of mathematics applies here?"
"Well, I had a lot of time to think, you see, so I invented some of my own, because it worked better. More of a limb than a branch, really. Here, let me show you." He pulls a slate and some chalk from his pocket, which hardly seems large enough to hold a coin.
He starts writing on it. And walking forwards. "So, you see the key realization, of course, was the closed and semi-finite nature of the universe was identical to my own, with a many to one relationship between me and shadows. That was where it started, with the First Equation, which was of course not exactly wrong, but not exactly balanced, if you know what I mean. It was equibri-ish."
If he keeps walking and talking, he'll be on the pattern in a few seconds.
Fletcher maintains interest but speaks quickly. "I've often relied on a mix of math and internal logic, or perhaps instincts. It's supposedly in the blood, isn't it. By the way, is it safe to be stepping on this Pattern now?"
"Hmm?" says Dworkin. "Oh, yes." He continues inwards. "For me. Not for you, though. Don't rely on instincts. Very unreliable those." He reaches the center and, perhaps by a trick of the light, seems taller than he'd ever been. The old wizard hands Fletcher the slate. "You see, it's intuitive, but the form is indeterminate, or was."
Fletcher doesn't really see any such thing, at least not from these equations.
Fletcher politely studies the slate for a moment, memorizing what there is before continuing.
It's gibberish. But memorizable gibberish. Probably.
"And now the road is a circle, you say? I've been concerned about some of the other pieces outside the circle that might have been held in place by Amber. Like the dragon of Arcadia. It would be pretty useful to drive it further from the road. How far off is this place?"
Dworkin snorts, standing about where the final veil was, looking unlike the vision of Oberon that tried to stop Fletcher mere moments ago. "The road has always been a circle, but if you only look at two endpoints, you don't see it. In any case it's only coincidentally a road. Do you know where you are, young Fletcher? This is The Center."
"I hadn't really considered that possibility. I was trying to avoid being self-centered I suppose. The next question could be 'center of what?' but I think I shall instead ask this: Do you mean all of this place?" he gestures about them. "And what remains here? Amber is fading and I thought the two shared a fate after granddad passed."
Dworkin looks up, sharply. "There are many forms of mathematical representation, each more appropriate for some tasks and less for others. The basic equations of the universe are most elegant when using a radial mapping. The Center is The Center, because everything is measured by distance to it.
"And my son aside, this pattern will stand until the universe ends. It can't help it."
Having come all this way, Fletcher decides to plow onward in this conversation that is only making half-sense to him, or full sense if he faces northwest. "I think I see what you mean. I have a practical concern. How does one measure the distance from the center? Is it a built-in sense to those of our line? To measure it does one have to have walked this Pattern? Would I be able to walk this Pattern as I did the ones in Amber and Paris? If I could measure the distance I might make some progress." In Fletcher's mind, radial maps oriented on each of the Patterns are spinning around, and the movements of the Dragon might be limited to a minimum distance from any given Pattern. It's been a long day and he hasn't even had a drink yet.
Dworkin takes his equations and jams them in his trousers. "Distance is such a meaningless term. Putting aside all the places where two points are never connected by the same path twice, how can we measure something we can travel across, but not with a yardstick left behind.
"Bleys and Fiona like to measure isochronal deltas, but that really only makes sense on this side of your grandfather's tree. Why he made a tree, I'll never understand.
"Now the problem with isochronometrics, is there's no way to determine the angle, and in any case when we attempt to measure velocity with a time factor that is changing as it is being measured, it becomes close to hopeless.
"Not to mention how my son threw the whole thing up in the air and let the pieces fall where they would, time-wise. There's still oscillations in temporality from that, and when those hit the inflection point, anything could've happened. Probably did, too."
He looks up, and it's unclear what part of the previous statement he thinks merits a reply, but it's clearly in Fletcher's court to provide one.
"I'm not a terrible fan of isochronometrics myself. It doesn't fully take into account the very close mutual proximity of congruent realities with drastically different properties. Take, for example, the earth-shadows that have congruent realities overlapping them such that a seasonal gift-giver can travel all over the world at a time rate the equivalent of thousands of times faster than he would were he to occupy the base shadow. Measurement of that depends greatly on which part of the system one is observing. Still though, shouldn't the influence of the Pattern be felt to some degree in each shadow? If that's the case, than a sensitive enough initiate might be able to perceive the direction, if not the exact angle, in relation to the center. And barring interference...wait a second. What inflection point are we talking about?"
Dworkin pulls back with a suspicious look on his face. "I thought you said you'd studied math. The inflection point where the power of the pattern is exactly in balance with the power the preceded it, the point beyond which other rules apply. At the inflection point, all rules and none apply. And for some reason, it is a tree. I know that the universe reflects my state at least as much as I was remade in making it, but really, I have no idea what I was thinking.
"If I'd been on the ball, it would've been something useful, or a gumball machine or something. Which is not to say that gumballs are not useful, under certain circumstances."
Dworkin begins fishing around in his pockets.
Fletcher tries to allay Dworkin's suspicions. "I guess I meant which inflection point we were talking about. So, OK the tree. You see, I've been wondering, what with the recent proliferation of Patterns whether or not they all spread their influence and have different inflection points out there somewhere. I've been concerned about upheaval and overlap in shadow as a result of granddad's death and Corwin and Random's creations. Or are they all subsumed in the influence of this one?"
"Oh, no. It's an interesting conjecture, but they just add to the influence of the Pattern, perhaps even making it less in some places as it focuses around the others. That's why it's important that there be more. There's a reason they're described as shadows. You need three things to have a shadow, of course. A source of light, an unlighted place, and an intervening solid object.
"And the tree, of course, isn't at a fixed place. It's a fixed thing in an unfixed placed. If shadow moves, so does the tree. Slightly ridiculous if you ask me, but I think I was crazed at the time."
Dworkin smiles, and pulls something out of his pocket. "Gumball?"
Fletcher shrugs. "Sure. I'd had my suspicions about whether Pattern was the light source or the solid object. At one point I was convinced that you might have been inspired by a higher power an that Inspiring power was the light. If this is the center, is it the light source all on its own?"
Dworkin comes up close to him, conspiratorially. "Let me tell you a secret," he says. He puts his arm around Fletcher's shoulder, and hands him a gumball.
"You need to study a lot more math if you don't know that one yet."
Fletcher smiles serenely. "Maybe. But I have faith and it has served me well so far. I'd appreciate your advice on how go about learning more, of course. You are the expert. At the moment though there's a Dragon to contain, Rebma to deal with, and the threat of the moonriders. As much as I'd like to learn generally, I am a bit motivated to achieve practical results in the short term. I'd hoped that a better understanding of the patterns and forces would lend insight into defending against the dragon and the moonriders. And I believe I'm still on the right track. I worry though. How well is the center defended?"
"Well, you popped in and I came out to look, so it's defended as well as that. I suppose I could put it under a castle again, but you come to miss the sunlight, and if you can get sunlight a hundred yards below your castle, then it's hardly impregnable, is it, and you might as well go for something that has weather. Plus castles need servants and servants need towns and why bother with that when my son and his siblings have it under control?"
He stands up straighter, which didn't seem possible before. He may be nearly seven feet tall, here. "Another question for you. If you wanted a castle, not a palace like young Siddartha, but a proper castle, what do you have outside your inner keep?"
Fletcher resists the urge to say, 'an outer keep', and instead thinks for a few seconds. "You'd want more defenses, outer walls, watchtowers, guards, stables, granaries, maybe a moat for good measure." Fletcher suspects Rebma is the moat.
Dworkin nods, enthusiastically. "Yes, defences! You'd want an outer curtain. Defended towers, a wall in between that could be manned. Sound like anything you can think of?"
Fletcher nods. "Of course. But in the current scenario one of the towers seems more than a little bit hostile to the others, there are sections of wall missing between some of the towers, and there's a dragon pressing in around gaps in the defenses. Is there some way I could shore up the walls?"
Dworkin looks very concerned. "Well, the last time someone wanted to shore things up, I ended up in prison, so let's not go there, shall we? Disagreeable place, prison, far too many rules for an old chaos-lord like myself."
He shakes his head, and it blurs slightly, as if it's merely a convenience. "Now, where were we? Oh, yes. Sometimes patterns fight because siblings are siblings, and it's not bad; it's like knives fighting with sharpening stones. That kind, leave alone. Patterns need to be as far away from each other as they can be, and no farther, and differences are important.
"Now, that's settled. Do you need another gumball?"
"Sure." Fletcher holds out a hand to accept the gumball. "By shoring up the walls I was thinking about the road between the patterns. I'm hoping that doesn't involve locking someone up. Though I'd like to get Patterns working together to lock the Dragon out. In general I had the impression she avoided the strength of the Patterns, though she will push to get as close as she can within limits. Wouldn't the Pattern be the perfect rolled-up newspaper with which one could whack her nose?"
Dworkin hands him a gumball. "What? I already told you. Get the patterns to work together if you can, but remember when they strengthen one aspect, another weakens. It's a zero sum game. Or it is if you play in enough dimensions.
"Have you given any more thought about how you'll get out of here? I suppose someone might trump you eventually. You did leave someone a trump, didn't you?
"Gosh. It seems like almost all of the trumps there were of me vanished somewhere along the way. Corwin loaned me a trump of himself. I could see if that works. If it doesn't, I might be stuck here for a while. Is there anyway safe way you could get me off this Pattern? I could try walking back then. Or at least camp out and see."
Dworkin claps his hands together. "Oh, walking backwards! Now that is an interesting idea. Most of you just want to get to the middle and then away, so I'm not sure it's ever been tried. I've no idea what would happen. You'll have to let me know if there is resistance or veils, or if it just assumes you've stepped on at the wrong place."
"Why would it think that? As long as it's one end or the other the design is intact. And wouldn't your intent matter in that equation? Of course it does... What do you believe?"
Dworkin walks in circles around Fletcher, widdershins, across the pattern in a way that would kill anyone else. "Oh, well I don't believe in anything I haven't made with my own eyes, young Fletcher. Until I've seen the pattern's reaction to someone starting at the center and walking away, I can only offer conjecture."
He stops in front of Fletcher and begins walking sunwise instead. "Now, where was I? Ah, yes! Conjecture. All roads lead to Amber, so it might lead you to the Center. Would you know, as you hit the sparks that were as high as your eyes, which direction you were going? Perhaps not.
"It may be that the path only metaphysically exists, and therefore if you find a valid entrance-point, the end-point is the same. Or would it be like being pushed through a maze at greater and greater speed? It might be like riding a surfboard, except without the board. One could only hope that the entrance was the smooth, sandy beach and not a rocky cliff-face.
"If we conject that the effort to re-walk the pattern is no more difficult than the effort to walk it and may be significantly less difficult, are you sufficiently recovered from your first walk today to walk again? All this conjecturation may be moot, you see."
"I can do whatever I put my mind to, and I put my mind to taking a nap at the center then I'll be fine. I'm still not clear on why you think my trump of Corwin won't work, or why you couldn't help me. Surely you must have kept a trump of me tucked away somewhere...."
Fletcher takes a moment to casually check if the trump is still in his coat pocket.
The card is there. However, it's not even cool to the touch.
"That's the spirit, you almost certainly can take any nap you put your mind to! You certainly wouldn't be the first person to nap at the end of the pattern, so it's almost certainly safe, as long as you don't sleepwalk." He smiles. "Or snore," he adds, "Wixer detests snoring." He pats his coat pockets. "I think I might even have a pillow here, somewhere, would you like a pillow?"
He turns back to Fletcher, the pillow apparently forgotten.
"Oh, and I could certainly help you, but I wasn't sure if you'd want me to. It would've been quite unfortunate if you were performing some delicate sorcerous experiment that relied on you being in the middle of my pattern and I'd taken you away from it. Are you? Because if you're not, I can."
"I was getting a feel for the place, trying to better understand the structure of forces at work in order to defend the patterned realms better from the Dragon and the Moonriders. I think I have done that now. I have planned on trumping away, but that seems to not work here at the center. If you could move me say, over there..." Fletcher points to the area from which Dworkin has first approached, "could I walk away, using the Pattern to shift away from the center, or failing that could I rest up and then walk the Pattern to return to Paris?"
Dworkin nods and says "Don't move." He grabs Fletcher by the scruff of his neck and picks him up into the air and carries him over to the rock. Interestingly, he doesn't really see anything behind the rock for Dworkin to have appeared from. Unless he was sleeping on the grass.
Dworkin is still standing below the rock, but he's eye to eye with Fletcher. That would make him about eight feet tall. The extra height is all in his legs.
Dworkin puts a long arm around Fletcher.
"Now if you go that way, or any way, really, except back, you'll get to a place where dimensionality is apparently odd, but only because you're in it. It's a bit unstable and you'll quickly be through it. Then you can go where you want."
"OK. Maybe I'll walk it some other time. Just give me a minute to focus." Fletcher looks around, getting a sure sense of the area. He walks over near the Pattern and looks at it, certain that he'll be back with more questions. He turns back to Dworkin and adds, "and thanks."
[If Dworkin is still there Fletcher waves a salute and adds, "I'll see you around."]
[Dworkin isn't there, although the grass is still trampled where he walked.]
Fletcher brings his concentration to bear on his internal Pattern and prepares to not only shift through shadow, but to experience unusual dimensionality.
Fletcher opens up his Pattern senses to this place, and enjoys the familiarity of Amber and notes a few, well not imperfections so perhaps...'perfections' as he walk away from the Pattern. He could enjoy the giant matte-painting scenery for some time, but he's in something of a hurry, so as soon as he starts moving down the slope of the mountain he starts trying to use the Pattern to shift. In Amber it would be difficult at best, and this place probably follows many of the same rules, so he narrows his vision, focusing solely on the path in front of him. He exerts his will not to change the world, only the path in his narrowed vision.
Opening up his Pattern senses, Fletcher quickly realizes, is a bad idea. He finds they are quickly and painfully overwhelmed and that he needs some distance to start shifting. He doesn't attain it before the world starts shifting despite him.
At first, the space around him seems to blur, like things do when he starts a hellride, and then objects lose their relationships; there is no depth, just things of various sizes. Fletcher has lost all clues to distance and perspective. He continues, as if he is being swept along.
Fletcher looks down at his legs and sees them multiply, moving over steps carved in the path by adding new legs like a cubist's fever-dream.
Light began to leave, as if it had overstayed its welcome. Objects began to stop reflecting, then stop emitting light. Blacknesses between space are more void than darkness and what few things were still light became bright white, as if they are hoarding all the light of the world. Soon there is nothing but light and stillness.
In the stillness there are brief sounds. Old names whispered in the nothingness. "Mirelle" is one, and "Morganthe". A more masculine voice says "Pinobello". Fletcher smells wet paper.
A step further, which Fletcher cannot resist taking, and there is nothing at all. He doesn't know how long it lasts--a minute, a lifetime, or no time at all; there is no yardstick to measure against, not even his own breath or heartbeat. Nothing is at the heart of this place and it is unclear if there even is a Fletcher.
And then light bursts out everywhere, so bright it hurts. It is as bright as the world before was dark, an anti-darkness and what he can see in it is inverted, like photographic negatives. Fletcher continues to move, and it feels as if he has willed it, perhaps subconsciously. Perhaps it is a consequence of whatever this place is has done to him or perhaps the place just pushes.
Each step brings back more reality as he has always known it. Shapes regain sizes, his body begin to look like he recalls it, and before long things regain their more mundane perspective and relationships.
Fletcher notices that he's breathing again, and that he's slightly out of breath. He doesn't remember when he stopped.
Whatever that was, he's out of it, and the Primal Pattern is well within. He still doesn't think he can manipulate the pattern, but he's within a few hours walking distance of where he can.
Maybe he can find a horse.
Fletcher looks around at the ground, and listens to the sounds, making sure he is not surrounded by whatever lives around this mound.
He takes a moment to steady himself, closes his eyes and inhales deeply. He reflects on his recent experience, committing it to memory for further pondering. Perhaps when he has more time he can attempt a return trip. For now though, time continues to move around him and so he should really get moving with it.
He starts walking, keeping an eye open for a borrowable mount to expedite his return to Paris. As he walks he goes over his recent experiences, and starts trying to align his intuitive understanding of the Pattern into a form more compatible to equations. He's not convinced it's worth doing, but he has the time and it's an interesting exercise.
Fletcher is reminded of shadows that have discoverable laws of physics. Places like that often had the universe defined in a series of equations. He's not sure how to start identifying determining correspondences between the world he knows and an equation.
After about fifteen minutes, he remembers Corwin's trump. He stops, pulls it out of his pocket and tries to call Corwin.
"Who calls?" Corwin answers.
"Fletcher, ready to return to Paris." Fletcher extends his hand, ready to go if Corwin assents. "Is now still a good time? For that matter what time is it?"
"It's evening. The day after you left. I thought you'd gone into shadow." Corwin extends his hand to take Fletcher's. "Come through."
[Presuming that Fletcher does so.]
Fletcher finds himself in a private salon in the Louvre somewhere, he guesses. For company, Corwin has an elegant older woman dressed in Parisian fashion, who has risen from her chair and come around the side of the table. It looks like they'd finished dinner and were chatting over the remnants of the meal "Fletcher, this is Lady Hardwind. Felicity, this is my nephew, Sir Fletcher."
"A pleasure to meet you," Felicity says. She speaks French with an Amber accent.
"The pleasure is mine, Lady Hardwind."
"If you have family matters to discuss, I'll excuse myself. Good evening, Your Majesty, Sir Fletcher." And Felicity glides toward the door, with Corwin making no move to stop her.
Fletcher nods. "My apologies for the interruption." He stands, waiting for her to make her exit. Once she is gone he offers the trump to Corwin. "Thank you. For me it seemed at most an hour. By now I must be overdue in Xanadu. Has there been any more excitement since I left?"
Corwin shakes his head. "No, or at least none that's been reported to me." He takes the trump and pockets it, and gestures to Fletcher to seat himself in the circle of chairs away from the dining table where he and Lady Hardwind were dining. "Tell me about your adventures," he suggests as he moves to pour them both drinks.
Fletcher gladly takes a comfortable seat and accepts a drink. For him it's been altogether too few minutes since he last saw Corwin beneath Notre Dame. "There's so little to tell one might not even call it a proper adventure. I sought information about how the Patterns new and old fit together. I still have a notion that some invocation of the Pattern at the correct point in shadow may block the path of the Dragon, and possibly the Moonriders. When I left you I sought that Pattern you'd described open to the sky on a shortened Kolvir. It seemed the safest to attempt to study. I found myself at the Pattern's center, and was received there by the wizard Dworkin. I took advantage of the opportunity to ask him for advice. He alternately confirmed and dashed my theories, which I'm still trying to digest. He framed most of his ideas in terms of equations, Laplace transformations and the like. I suppose it's as good a framework as any though it lacks a certain poetry in my book." Fletcher sips his drink. "And after that I left that place, getting to a place where the trumps work. And there you have it."
He supposes Corwin might have questions, and so Fletcher dutifully sips his drink and waits.
"Bleys talks about the mathematics all the time. I can't figure out whether Dworkin likes the language and the redheads adopted it, or whether it was the only way he could teach them," Corwin says, with a slight twist of his mouth that suggests he agrees with Fletcher's distaste for the metaphor. "When you know what you're doing, you can feel it. No offense, but you and Bleys don't. Just don't tell Bleys I said that because he'll never get over it."
Corwin settles into his own chair with his drink. "Which of your theories did Dworkin dash, and which of them did he confirm?"
"The two categories are not mutually exclusive," Fletcher jokes. "He implied that the Pattern here, and the other ones, were essentially the towers in fortifications meant to defend the Primal Order. I posited that the Dragon and other unfriendly forces might be impeded if we understood more of the interactions among the patterns; the wall between the towers in his metaphor. He did did not seem to think that the Patterns other than the Primal exerted enough influence on nearby shadows to be employed that way. I'm trying to reconcile that notion with my own experience. After all, shifting things near a Pattern is much harder than out there in Shadow. One supposes that if such a defense could be derived from looking at things mathematically Bleys would already have done it. So I'll have to keep looking at things from my own perspective."
"Try this metaphor: the Patterns are static defenses, but they're also like dropping a stone into a pond. They make ripples. The distance you need between is close enough that the ripples don't break up before they touch but far enough that the ripples don't break each other up." Corwin watches Fletcher as he explains to see that Fletcher is following his narrative. "Do I need to elaborate or does that make sense?"
"That absolutely makes sense!" Fletcher says, happy to find someone of a like mind. Somewhat calmer, he continues, "I was thinking that at some points the ripples might intersect in a way that we could trap, or at least limit, the Dragon. Or perhaps someone with enough skill might be able to introduce a similar effect to swat the Dragon on its nose. Right now it seems to be freed up and moving around with impunity, at least according to what I've heard."
Corwin shakes his head. "Its influence is moving. The Dragon itself can't, exactly. It stays in the same place but the place that it is moves. It's not unlike the half-giants, if you've ever seen those--no? In any case, it's a function of the Dragon effectively being a Lord of Chaos caught in the shockwave of the creation of the Pattern. At least that's my operating theory, coming from things I learned in Arden, things I've learned since, and things I've heard from Dworkin when I've talked to him.
"Julian wants to destroy the Dragon. I'm not sure that's possible, other than in the same sense that you can kill a Lord of Chaos. Which is to say, not very well. But certainly you can defend against it, or its influence, and strike at its projections better than we've been doing. And that's without getting into what the Black Road may have done to strengthen it, to allow it access to unOrdered Chaos." There's another shake of Corwin's head, and he takes a long swallow of his drink.
Fletcher follows suit with his own drink, and then looks up at nothing in particular on the ceiling. "And this little side trip cost me how many days? I wanted to see if I could offer Paige any help with ideas for fighting the Dragon, but first I promised Random I'd go on a mission to Rebma, presumably after swearing fealty. I suppose the family has already dispersed far and wide? So many things to eat of chunks of time. That's the story of my life." Rather than going about his amazing lack of time management skills, Fletcher focus on productive endeavors; to wit: seeing about another drink, and offering to make one for Corwin.
Corwin hands Fletcher his glass and gestures to the cabinet where he keeps the liquor.
"Yes, almost everyone has gone their own way. If your next stop is in Rebma, though, you're in luck. I have charge of that stairway now. It's a little different to the old one, in that you're in caverns he whole way instead of descending into the open. But the Rebmans know that people who come through have come from Paris. Even with the change of regime, they don't assume we're hostile."
"That's good news. Jerod was giving me some advice about dealing with the current situation. But I should actually check in with Random before heading to Rebma. If I could borrow a horse or a motorbike in the morning, I'll be bound for Xanadu. Suddenly I've got a lot of running around to do."
"Take a horse," Corwin suggests. "I don't know whether Random will let motorbikes work in Xanadu."
Last modified: 23 March 2011