Ambrose leads Signy into another chamber where the code wheels are. They're stored on stands not unlike the rotating bases for maps. There are perhaps a half dozen of them, all made of metal and covered in strange symbols that Ambrose explains are Uxmali glyphs. He takes one and shows Signy how they work, physically, in the sense of how the rotations link the Uxmali glyphs.
Then he shows her a fairly simple glyph structure and unwinds it for her, which takes some time. Then he shows her a complicated page, where it's not immediately clear to Signy how one glyph ends and another starts, and says, "This is one of my father's simpler pages, or, rather, a copy of it. You can see how we need the code wheels to decipher his writings even though Brennan and I are native speakers."
Signy watches Ambrose work, watching and asking a couple of questions but mostly just letting him speak. Once done, she looks more at one of the wheels, examining it with a jeweler's loop though not yet touching it, studying the mechanism up close.
[Any thoughts on the material that it's made out of? Can she see the innards of it?]
The mechanisms are hidden. To see how the inner mechanisms work, Signy is going to have to disassemble one of them. Materials appear to be some kind of bronze-type metal, but without the sort of corrosion she might expect, possibly due to sorcerous influence.
[What about the glyphs? Inlaid, stamped, etched, or other?]
[I had to think about how to describe this but I have a very specific visual in mind and they’re actually sort of like the type balls in an IBM Selectric.
The rotations are all horizontal—not that Signy can tell that natively but Ambrose shows her and the way he’s holding it makes the rotations horizontal.]
After studying the wheel for a couple of minutes, she glances up at Ambrose.
"Where does the sorcery fit in on these? Clearly they're not all mechanical...."
"Part of the magic is in the preservation, which wasn't initially clear to me. It's one of the things that's failing. You can't keep sorcerously preserved things near a Pattern for too long, and in any case the preservation enchantments were designed specifically for Uxmal, which no longer exists."
Ambrose probably ought to sound more upset about it than he does.
"The other major sorcery on the globes is complicated and possibly not repeatable, though I suspect it's transferable from one globe to another. I think they're--not sentient, exactly, but--they seem to have some way of limiting the number of glyphs based on the set of interlocking patterns. They're still complicated, and difficult to use for a non-native speaker if not outright impossible, and there are multiple meanings that work with some of the glyphs, possibly because my father wrote things with two meanings. Or more. He was like that. But in any case, there's some sort of intentionality there, if that makes sense."
Signy frowns at this.
"How 'close' are we to a Pattern right now, though? Could we move them closer to Ygg, and make them last longer? And are they sensitive to Sorcery? I may need to take one apart, but before considering that I'd like to probe it a bit that way if you think it would be OK?"
"I don't understand the theory exactly, but we're obviously within the broad influence of Patterns or we'd be on the far side of Ygg. There's definitely a nearer field of influence for each of the Patterns, though, in which there's much less flexibility of, well, sorcery, or at least in Amber there was. And that's the circumstance that seems to be so degrading to the code wheels," Ambrose explains. "We could try moving them closer to Ygg, but for storage, Fiona's lab seemed the best place to put them.
"And," he adds, "while it doesn't technically require sorcery to use them, I think they might be, as you say, 'sensitive', to it."
Signy shakes her head distractedly. "No, here's probably best for now," she says in a quieter tone of voice. "What happens when they start to break down? Do they give the wrong answers, or just stop working altogether?"
She pays partial attention to Ambrose, as she easily brings up her Third Eye, simply looking at the device for a moment.
"There's a certain grinding in the gears, is I suppose the best way to surprise it. None of them have failed to the extent that they don't work physically, and the translations make sense, which if they were failing on a sorcerous level, they certainly shouldn't--" here, Ambrose trails off, as if he's considering some unspoken question. "At least they shouldn't as far as I know."
What Signy sees in terms of magical patterns with her Third Eye can best be described as fractal geometry of the non-Euclidean variety. No Lovecraftian beasties in them, though: if the code wheel is an affine, and it might be, it's not hostile.
Signy's look alternates between appraising and impressed. "These are incredible. And Brand came up with these all by himself?"
She gazes at them with her Third Eye for a moment longer, noting the details and allowing herself to be caught up in the sheer wonder.
She slowly extends her sight down into the device, looking at the structure internally [is there anything there, cogs or gears, or is it all done with Sorcery?], before cradling the wheel with her fingertips and raising it up just past her eyes. Her fingertips lightly brush the surface of the wheel without disturbing the hold of the device, as she sings softly to the device of metals and forges and castings, and listening for its song in return.
The sight, so often unclear or misleading, shows a mixture of gears and cogs and magical bindings and tensions. The device is remarkably well composed and internally elegant.
"Careful!", Ambrose warns. "These are delicately balanced. Adding either additional entropy or stasis will likely cause them to become unstable!" He pauses. "My father was trying to keep these things secret from both his family in Amber and his allies in Chaos."
Signy nods slowly. "Has anyone been able to figure out anything about how they're put together?"
Ambrose shakes his head in the negative. "I'm the one who's worked with them the most. Brennan has also used them, but I don't think he's tried to do more. They were my father's creation and so far as I know, we're the only two of the blood besides him to try to use them." After a moment he reconsiders. "Bleys and Fiona may have used them as well, and Fiona has had access to them, but I don't know how thoroughly they've delved into them. My father's relationship with them was complicated; we'll have to ask our aunt ourselves."
Signy winces slightly, thinking about having to talk with her aunt so soon after annoying her in their last conversation.
She spins one of the wheels, watching the interplay of the forces through her Third Eye as she forms various glyphs at random and without direction, then again while thinking of different words, images and concepts.
"I do wonder what my father would make of these, though."
[Anything standing out to her from her crafting skill?]
Signy is able to spin it at random in ways that make no sense and observe the mechanism, but without a basic knowledge of the language, it's hard for her to tell what she's getting when she tries to form glyphs with the wheel.
What is immediately obvious to her through watching the code wheel is that it would take a crafter of her caliber, one familiar with sorcery and craftsmanship, and possible Pattern as well, to build something like this. If her father could make the physical object--and he could, easily--it's not clear to her that he had the sorcerous knowledge to make an object work this way. Unless he's been lying to her about that for all these years, he doesn't have the sorcery for it.
Signy slowly releases her Third Eye as she puts the device back down, before looking at Ambrose.
"How long would it take to learn a little of this language? I could make the device, I think, but without that I don't know that I'd ever be able to make it work, at least not correctly."
"I don't know, exactly. I've never taught it to anyone, spoken or written, and the written language was something I learned as a child. It will take some time, but this is why I'm here: to teach you," Ambrose says. "Uxmali is not a dead language, exactly, but the number of competent speakers and readers is very small. Mostly my father's immediate family, and not in the half-blood either. You'll be the first one of our cousins to learn it.
"I assume you’re a quick learner," he adds with a bit of a smile. "It runs in the family."
Signy smiles distractedly, starting to go through the project in a little more detail. "Will the time here be sufficient, or would we want to find another Shadow where time moves faster for that?"
She gives Ambrose a quizzical look. "And does our Aunt have a forge that I could use to start experimenting with making the physical structures?"
"Your Aunt has a forge but it's not usually present in this location, although I can arrange for that to happen." How Fiona joined them in the room without being noticed or overheard is a bit of a question, but perhaps Fiona is just like that in her own place. "And it will take some time for you to learn Uxmali, but I can give you a head start, if you like. You'll be risking a bit of a headache, but it beats the old-fashioned way that involves years of speech and writing practice. Don't you think, Ambrose?"
Ambrose says, "I've had some--direct lessons--from Grandmother. The knowledge is useful. The headache will last, however."
If Signy is surprised at Fiona's sudden entrance, she hides it extremely well.
She notes Ambrose's endorsement, before looking back at her Aunt. "I think in this case the ability to bypass a few years of language lessons is probably worth risking it," she says simply. "If you are willing to help me...us with this, I am more than grateful."
She pauses, and looks back and forth at the two of them for a moment. "What's the best way to begin?"
"Oh, nothing in particular, other than that we should sit down. Ambrose, you've done this before with Mother, haven't you? You can assist with the spheres. Are all of them here?"
Ambrose nods, and says, "All seventeen. Though only the one is presently in need of repairs."
Fiona opens a lab drawer and produces some paper and brushes and pens of a sort that Signy might expect to see used for painting or perhaps calligraphy, to the extent that she's familiar with the art from Tomat's teaching.
"Now let me show you the basic glyphs," and thus Fiona begins.
After what seems like a couple of hours of discussion, with Ambrose's assistance, Signy feels as though she has mastered the first and simplest of the code wheels, the one she has been speaking with Ambrose about.
Without windows, though, there's no way to discern how much time has actually passed.
Signy sits back, rubbing the back of her neck absently.
"That...didn't seem too bad?" she offers the two of them. "I think I've got this first one straight. Mostly."
She brushes a lock of hair back behind her ear, exposing a healthy smudge of ink from previous attempts at coralling the wayward lock during their session.
"Does the next wheel in the sequence build off the first? How do they all hang together?"
"The vocabulary and the structure of the glyphs becomes more complex, but they're not in a specific interlocking sequence, if that's what you mean." Ambrose is clearly the expert here; Fiona has let him do a surprising amount of the talking. He looks a bit droopy about the edges, as if he's done more of it than Signy recalls. Possibly he has; it takes her a moment to realize that Ambrose is speaking to her in a language that isn't Thari.
He's speaking in Uxmali.
Signy's eyes narrow slightly as she takes in his condition, though she doesn't say anything just yet. "So the complexities add wheels?" she responds back, making a conscious effort to stay in the language.
She shakes her head, and works her way through the response again. "So the wheels. Add complexity. Depth?"
Better, but it's going to take a lot of practice to get it right.
"What otherness could Uxmali be used for, besides reading Brandpapers."
She winces slightly. Maybe better was a bit hasty.
"Your vocabulary is improving," Ambrose says, in what passes for liquidity in the harsh language of Uxmal. "But you don't have the trick of structuring your sentences yet." There's a way of phrasing that he has that Signy knows she can't duplicate just yet. It occurs to her after a moment that he's centering certain words in the sentences, just as certain sigils are centered in glyphs.
You could build up complicated sentences that way. Very complicated paragraph sentences. Expressed in very complicated glyphs.
It's Fiona who answers the actual question. "Directly, not so much. It's a good language for certain sorcerous applications and you might find it broadly useful for creating spell structures. It'll give you some new insights into your creative skills. How is your head? We should eat and drink, if you're up to it, and then you should rest for a while."
Signy can't quite control the brief look of disappointment at an end being called to the session. The low growl from her stomach was probably just a subconscious response to Fiona's words, as is the nagging feeling of pressure somewhere behind her eyes.
"Do you have any of Brand's papers here, or anything that I could use to practice on?"
She sneaks an involuntary glance around, on the off chance that there's a table of food nearby.
But just a brief snack. Not that she's hungry.
"I have some simple things you can use to test your ability to translate," Ambrose says. "After we eat, though. Or at least have some chocolate." There's what looks like a coffee set on the table nearby. Signy doesn't remember it being there before she started her lesson. It smells delicious.
Ambrose is already moving to pour some chocolate for them from the pot.
Fiona holds up a hand. "I'll fetch us something to eat. Both of you should sit down, though. This is hard work. Do you have any specific preferences, Signy, or will anything hearty do?"
Signy pulls over chairs for all three of them before dropping into it a bit quicker than she may have liked. "Anything hearty."
Gratefully she accepts the cup that Ambrose pours for her, but manages to wait until the other two have a chance to seat themselves with cups before drinking a huge mouthful of the melted chocolate, not noticing the heat.
"This wasn't really all that different than working with my Father -- how much time actually passed," she asks. "After the first year apprenticed to him it took a couple of days to notice that we hadn't really had a break, though."
Of course, the Dvarts would have had a table full of food for when she or Weyland did notice that they could use food. Maybe she just missed the servants that brought the drink here.
"Proper study is taxing, and I find it harder now that I am initiated into the mysteries of the Pattern. Energy is expended both suppressing the self and re-writing it. True knowledge is like a fever, one is resistant to it in small doses and succumbs to larger onslaughts."
Ambrose looks solemnly over the top of his steaming chocolate. "It is always worthwhile, and the skill of learning is a precious and hard-won thing. Few in Chaos value it."
Fiona walks back into the room, carrying a try with a small feast on it. She couldn't possibly have prepared it in the moments she was gone, so perhaps she does have servants somewhere after all.
Signy nods. "I imagine that it's much like how the iron feels after it's been hammered out and tempered."
She pauses for a moment, while Fiona puts the tray down. She manages to restrain herself while Ambrose and Fiona serve themselves, before quickly balancing an improbable amount of food on the small plate herself.
"Though learning is much like creation. True creation changes the craftswoman as much as the object being created."
Ambrose waits until Signy has taken a share to fill his own plate.
"There will be more if you're still hungry," Fiona advises, "so eat your fill." From the looks of her plate, she plans to. How a little woman can pack that much food away is a bit of a mystery.
She continues, having heard Signy's last question: "How do you account for the changes in yourself when you create, given that you're of the blood of Amber and initiated into the mystery of the Pattern? Do you think the solidification of your reality makes any difference?" She holds a finger up to silence Ambrose; this is Signy's question to answer.
After Ambrose fills a plate with whatever he chooses, Signy deftly leans over and refills her plate, though neither of them remember seeing her eat as much as she clearly did.
She doesn't eat right away, however, putting the plate next to her on a small table before unsheathing a small, functional dagger.
"The act of creating is often an act of discovery. I wanted to create a dagger, so I made this. But I did not picture this when I made it. I wanted to create something functional, something that would simply serve a simple purpose, and this is what I got. I didn't picture it, but when I was done it was there."
She leans back, focusing on the dagger. "Nothing really changed with me, that I know of. Yet, when I tried to make something Real for the Queen, and failed, I changed. I grew, I learned. I changed. And even if I had succeeded, the end result would have been the same, I think. When creating, the creation often speaks as much of the one that creates it as the one that views it."
"Reality," Fiona says, "is decidedly more difficult to tamper with than most anything else." She, too, is consuming far more food than her birdlike size would seem to require, or even allow. "A tool you make will travel with you easily, Signy. But something real, something with the Pattern invested in it, has a particular essence. Just as it's difficult to impossible for someone else to change you, it's difficult to make something Real, to invest some of our own Reality in it, as it were. When you think of it that way, it's not surprising that making something Real changes the maker."
Signy considers Fiona's statement while she finishes a mouthful of food.
"Yeees," she says slowly. "But even if you're not trying to make something Real, making things reveals things about the creator. A sword I made when I was mad at my father looked much different than one I made for a client, or because I was trying to learn a new technique. It was...uglier. Meaner. Even if it was as well-crafted as any I had made, there was something of me in it."
She idly pushes some of the food around on the plate, playing with it a little bit while she considers her next words.
"Every act of creation still requires you to invest something of yourself in it, whether you will it or no."
"There's a difference between that kind of investment, and the growth that comes with it, and change as we discuss it in sorcery," Fiona replies, not at all fussed by Signy's disagreement. (Perhaps to Ambrose's surprise.) "Your essence remains the same, particularly now that you've taken the Pattern. We do evolve, but slowly, and from deep roots. But change comes from us, and isn't imposed from the outside, the way we change objects and beings, particularly from Shadow.
"Changing beings of Chaos is different, of course, but that's what becoming a Lord and taking affines means: you control what they are."
Signy sits back, thinking. "Then maybe I'm not able to answer this question fully yet. I have attempted to make something Real, and it has changed me and given me a deeper understanding of some of the ways that I have failed to understand Reality. But it may be that until I have actually succeeded that I won't be able to fully answer this."
She thinks a bit more, before idly noting "I would be curious to know what my father says about this, given that he has made the Pattern blades, or perhaps what someone that can create a Trump thinks of this."
Ambrose, perhaps more out of a desire to change the subject before Fiona gets annoyed about the fact that she can't make trumps than personal curiosity, asks, "Do you think he'd give an honest answer? And if so, to whom?"
Signy's eyes harden slightly, and her mouth curves in a hard smile. "There's honest, and there's honest. He would never tell you an outright lie, but there may be some convenient...omissions."
Ambrose makes a face that says he recognizes that technique.
She pauses, and recalls her surroundings before continuing.
"I think he would be very candid in saying that there is a price, but the details of what needs to be paid or the full implications of the costs may not be as obvious."
Her smile becomes slightly more bitter again. "I don't know that there's anyone that I ever saw my father consider a peer, to be honest. Possibly Madoc, but I was a little busy to be overly observant of how they related. Certainly never anyone from the Family, other than a brief parlay with Brennan while I was laying siege to his Tower."
"My brother can channel our father's div--imperiousness when he wishes," Ambrose says. Like Signy, Ambrose appears to reconsider his words about halfway through the sentence.
Signy gives a knowing nod to Ambrose as he speaks. There's a lot of shared heritages in this Family, it appears.
Fiona is smirking at both of them, but not unkindly. "Nobody expects a full accounting of a price for something like a Pattern blade. I can't see any way the maker would know the price. The part that's paid to the maker, yes. But that's only a small part of wielding it." She turns to Signy. "They make all sorts of assumptions about the price your mother paid for the axe. Of course you wouldn't know the actual bargain, particularly not if you were part of it, but there's no reason to suspect it was as simple as people want to make it out to be."
Signy sighs softly, looking at Fiona. "Do you know anything about her relationship with my father? After she left, it wasn't something that was wise to bring up."
She pauses, before adding quietly, "Though there were some times....."
Fiona nods. "Bleys and I found out about you and your brother through Uncle Madoc, actually. After Ambrose's father failed to destroy Martin and the pattern, it became important to prevent him from finding any other children.
"Madoc is actually close to your father, which says something as it is quite difficult to be on good terms with that Uncle." Fiona looks over at Ambrose. "You may correctly assume that Bleys and I know the difficulties that you have with your Uncles and have long vowed not to be as difficult as ours were." Ambrose can only nod.
"In any case, the story as I understand it was that your mother changed the deal, perhaps because she found that being married and living with your father was not the thing she had hoped it would be.
"Your father apparently decided that one full-time daughter was better than nothing, and kept you to raise himself, over your mother's objections.
"If that sounds biased towards your father, it's because I only know Uncle Madoc's version and I can't ask your mother. Oh, I strongly suggest that you do not ask Vere to arrange for you to do so."
Signy nods slowly, the axe forgotten for the moment.
"If you know ...Uncle Madoc, do you know why he would be interested in me as a bride" she asks in a quiet voice.
Ambrose looks at Fiona, as if waiting for some signal to answer or defer. Apparently he receives it, because he speaks up. "An alliance with Weyland would gain him nothing from his nominal Chaosian allies, except perhaps Grandmother, who is always a special case."
Fiona raises an eyebrow at that, but there's a quirk of a wry smile at one corner of her mouth.
"It almost looks as if he's shoring up power against most of them. And without turning directly to Amber, as it were, in an act of open treachery to his Chaosian heritage. You're a sorceress as well, so you'd make a fit consort. He might need the power after he spent so much of his on making Aisling. Saeth," Ambrose concludes, correcting himself.
"Marriage alliances," Fiona adds, "are not made on personal charm. Unless you're Oberon, or Mother, in which case you do what you want."
Signy nods slowly, hoping that her eyes haven't glazed over in bewilderment at having to think about Chaosian politics now as well, before deciding to move back to perhaps safer ground.
"Was the axe bound to a Pattern?"
Signy mentally runs through the list quickly. Uncle Corwin had the sword for Tir. A sword for Rebma, but that was lost maybe? Bleys has one. And Patterns in Tir, Amber, Rebma plus the one for Grandfather Dworkin.
[OOC: I'm assuming that this is covered in Cambina's book, but if not we can simply snip the thought at Rebma.]
"It doesn't seem likely that marriage would be a price that someone from the Family would pay for a normal weapon, even one crafted by him."
Fiona looks at Signy for a moment. "No, the form of the protector-weapon is traditionally a sword, and the shadows cannot lie to make it other than what it has to be. Besides, those weapons are controlled by the Kings and Queens of those realms, not your father."
Ambrose continues. "Do not assume that the trade was merely two-sided. It need not be. And recall, also, that your father is old enough that he is likely to know things that no living being does. Perhaps your mother's deal was with the Klybesians, and they traded her favor to your father for something else."
Signy looks slightly unhappy at that.
"I've asked Brother Tomat, but he professes to know nothing of the deals that brought him to be my tutor."
She pauses, before looking at Ambrose.
"Do you think he's being truthful?"
Inwardly she winces that she's even entertaining this thought.
"He'd have every reason not to be," Ambrose replies, "but--" and he trails off thoughtfully, "On the other hand, if the Klybesians really do run an inter-shadow espionage service, they might keep their field operatives ignorant of significant information. What do you think, Aunt Fiona?"
"I think," Fiona says, "that if you want an answer, Signy, you can always give him to me and I'll get it out of him."
Signy blinks, nonplussed, at her Aunt's offer. Failing to think of a response to that, she looks away for a moment.
"I'll...maybe. He's with Queen Celina right now, so maybe she's getting a better read on him."
She pauses before steering the conversation back to the reason they're sitting in the lab of their Aunt in the first place. "What do you think the next steps for these should be," she asks them both, nodding her head towards one of the wheels. "Is there more to learn? Just practice?"
"You've had some very basic grammar lessons," Fiona says, "and as I'm sure Ambrose is too polite to tell you in so many words, you've got a child's grasp of Uxmali. It's enough to make a start on a simple wheel, but the complex wheels are still far beyond your capacity. But a combination of tutoring and work should bring you up to speed for some of the more complicated wheels over time."
Ambrose flushes slightly at Fiona's statement. "The glyphs are like a form of poetry. It takes practice with the language to work out their meaning, both from the complexity and from the allusions, which will be difficult for someone who knows little of Uxmal to comprehend. If it weren't for my father's papers, I think those of us who know it would be content to see the language die off now that Uxmal is destroyed."
The session with Aunt Fiona and Ambrose finishes up with some remaining small talk before they leave the lab. Signy goes back to her room and drops onto her bed to sleep without any delay.
The morning light outside slowly rising over the trees hits her face and wakes her the following day, still somewhat tired and light headed from the previous day's work. She lies on top of the bed and blinks for a moment before recalling where she is, and rising to make her way back to the lab.
She loses track of time, working on Brand's code wheels. Stacks of documents translated into and out of Uxmali, hours with Ambrose reviewing her translations, hours of drill and repetition that seem to slowly move past the basics. At some point she starts talking to Ambrose almost exclusively in the language, spending less and less time conversing in other languages.
The time with Ambrose is broken up rarely with a surprise visit from their Aunt, who seems to have a knack for dropping in when there is a subtle point of the language that needs clarification and expansion.
At some point a collection of pieces of balsa wood and a set of sharp, well-work knives appears in the lab. Slowly the pieces of wood start to form into smaller shapes, wheels and arcs, and slowly begin to fit together into small spheres that spin and twist and rotate in a manner somewhat similar to one of the first wheels she was introduced to. Over time the wooden sphere is somehow disassembled and the knives come out to shave and dig and scrape, only to be reassembled just as quickly.
She moves on to working with the larger wheels, but when she isn't working the real thing the wooden one is in her hands, being spun and manipulated like the real thing, the surface becoming shiny and smooth from the constant handling.
At some point she spends most of the afternoon looking at the wooden sphere, not really manipulating it, just thinking about the pieces and how they fit together. How they would fit together if they were metal. Where one might inlay magic like silver filigree, to construct the runes and glyphs that would become words and phrases and concepts in Uxmali. What would it need to be made of, sturdy enough to hold that much weight yet light enough to allow it to move, to be able to shift along almost any axis as needed to form the symbols that were needed.
The sun slowly goes down as Signy sits perched on a stool, simply gazing at the rounded piece of wood on the bench.
Signy works on this project for weeks, and finally decides that two things she suspects must be true.
First, some part of the wheels translate through a fractional dimensional transition, allowing things that are not congruent to be so in some partial place.
Second, while it looks as if transitions are reversible, there are sub-surface changes that do not necessarily always stay the same.
It would be possible to define the mathematics of the way this works, but determining what that is would be the work of years. That would be necessary to master the design, although Signy thinks she could get a working knowledge faster than that. (Fortunately, this is probably a fast-time shadow; Fiona undoubtedly encounters the same problem from time to time.)
Signy sits as the late afternoon slowly deepens into early evening, tossing the wooden sphere idly with one hand while looking at the array of wheels, thinking things over.
As the lights in the lab start to come on through some mechanism that is only known to her Aunt, she sighs quietly and catches the ball after one of its lazy arcs up and down and stands.
Walking quickly, she heads to where she knows her Aunt has to be and quietly slips into the library. She walks quietly enough to not disturb her if she is deep into the book that she is reading, and stands just close enough to be spoken to when Fiona is ready.
Fiona delicately closes the book she's been perusing, putting a ribbon in it to mark her place. She looks around as if she has been elsewhere, and only now noticed that she was in the library with Signy.
"How are your studies progressing, Signy?" she asks.
Signy hooks a nearby stool with a foot and drags it close enough to perch on the edge. She doesn't yet look at her Aunt, but holds the wooden sphere perched on her fingertips while she regards it soberly.
"So, I think I understand how they work." She quickly outlines her theories on how the wheels work to her Aunt, before continuing on.
"But I don't know how easy this will be to translate into making new wheels. The underlying math will take some time to work out, unless some shortcuts that look like they should be there are."
"The mathematics of the Pattern are my brother's particular delight, but the mathematics of Chaos are mine. I'm sure you understand the irrational and the unreal and their use in mathematics, and that in sorcerous mathematics the usual properties of stable numbers do not apply." Fiona looks at Signy, measuring Signy's response and her understanding of the basic principles of sorcerous mathematics as she speaks.
[OOC: Fiona is talking about math not having basic properties for sorcerous purposes, e.g., A+B does not equal B+A, or A+(B+C) may not equal (A+B)+C and so on with all the usual properties of stable math. In the same way, in Chaos, two paths that ought to lead to the same place often don't, and going from place X to place Y and reversing your course may not lead you back to place X.]
Signy nods her agreement with what her Aunt said.
"You see that in how they operate. The wheels seem to allow things that shouldn't be together to come together, and while you can get back to any point you want with the wheels the path isn't always the same. It may actually never be the same."
She pauses her study of the wooden sphere and finally looks at Fiona directly. "But I don't see a quick way to get from here to there," as she waves vaguely in the direction of the lab where the actual code wheels live. "I'm pretty sure that it can be done, and I can do it, but...the time."
At this last, she pauses looking equally frustrated and lost.
"We're immortals, Signy. As long as we don't get ourselves killed, we have all the time in the worlds," Fiona reminds her. "That my brother's way of thinking is impenetrable, or at least very difficult to penetrate, is no surprise. Brand was a mad genius who came up with a way to remake the universe according to his whims. It's taking his two sons, who are two of the very few members of the family who speak Uxmali, years and years to decipher his papers. I'm glad to help you, but it's going to be some of the hardest work we ever do. That's how it always was with Brand. Just when you thought you'd peeled the onion down to the core, you found another layer."
Signy steels herself before replying to her Aunt.
"But time still means something. No matter how different the time flows, it still flows for all Shadows. What good is solving this if we find that it takes us out of the picture for so long?"
Fiona smiles patiently at Signy. "You're immortal, Signy. I admire your determination to move forward as quickly as possible, and in a time of upheaval, that can have value. But you can also choose not to involve yourself in family affairs for a time, and come back with vast successes under your belt. This is how it was done for centuries under your grandfather, with all of us wandering Shadow at our will.
"Each of us can only judge for ourselves whether the time we spend in Shadow, where it often passes quickly compared to Amber, or Xanadu, is worth it. I can lay out the pros and the cons, but only you can say it's worth it or not."
Signy frowns and shakes her head.
"But I think the answer to the question is if it's worth it is one that I need help with. I've read everything I can, and I can't tell what the value is. Brand was a genius, but also seemed more than a little mad. What do you think? Will we be unlocking TRVTH, or just chasing our own tail down the rabbit hole?"
She pauses, before musing aloud "How is it with Dworkin?"
"With Dworkin it's hard to tell. He likes it that way." Which Fiona says with rueful affection.
Turning to the other subject, Fiona takes a moment to consider the answer. "Brand was mad at the end, yes. And much of what will be in his papers is madness. But already we've learned useful things we didn't know. For one, Ambrose found that Ossian was Brennan's son. Brennan had no idea. And that's led us to some other connections with lost children with Chaos heritage. So we don't know what we'll find when we translate more of his papers." Fiona sighs; this is as close to an uncomfortable subject for her as one might find.
"That's not the real treasure we're hoping for. And by 'we', I mean less myself and Ambrose and Brennan and more Random and Corwin and myself and Bleys. Brand had an idea about how to fix the damage to the universe. It's not necessarily that we think we can solve a problem he couldn't, but we're not even sure what the extent and nature of the damage is. Brand was so far ahead of us on that front at the time, and even now, having learned from his failure, he knew more than we know about Tir and could do things that we don't understand.
"Nobody wants to be caught flat-footed the way we were in the last war again. And it's clear that Dad's death has loosed other things that were bound, which compounds all our problems. So we don't know. Not you, not me, not Random, not Corwin. Possibly not even Dworkin, though he's more likely to obfuscate than admit it."
Signy looks slightly surprised. "Do you think that what's happening now is on the level of the Patternfall War?"
She thinks further on Fiona's words for a moment, before adding "and in talking about Tir, do you think that the Moonriders and the Queen are the biggest threat at the moment?"
"Honestly, for all that I say it's the last war, I don’t think we're finished with it. We're making the Patternfall peace."
Fiona has to consider her answer to the second question. "If they're not, it's the Dragon in Arden. Or the Tritons and Moire in and outside of Rebma. But the fact that they're all three such huge threats, even if the immediacy isn't obvious, is the reason I think the war isn't entirely over yet. We beat Borel, to be sure. But there were more things wriggling their way out from under rocks than any of us imagined." She frowns in a way that Corwin might have besottedly described as dainty, but to Signy just suggests thought. "That's probably the biggest threat. The not knowing."
Signy's frown mirrors her Aunt's.
"Do you think the groups are acting in concert? If not, how much of a threat is that?"
This requires more thought from Fiona. "I think any two of them might be: Moire with the Tritons, or maybe the Tritons with the Dragon. Or one of the three with the Moonriders, which are no small threat in and of themselves even if they're not on the level of the Tritons and the Dragon. The thing about universal powers is that they sometimes want to give each other--" and here she smiles as if this has some personal meaning for her "--a good hard punch in the jaw." More seriously, she adds, "I don't think any of them are as big of a threat to the universe as Brand was. But regardless of what we think, we're not the universe."
Signy files this away. "Since you mentioned him, I do have one last question. If Brand's original goal was to fix everything, what do you think happened to cause him to go mad so that he was willing to bring it all down?"
Fiona smiles, tightly. "My brother was artistically inclined. It is a tendency of artists to decide, at some point, that a work that is not working should be destroyed and a fresh attempt made. As he worked closer and closer to the damage and madness of the Queen of Air and Darkness, that impulse may have become amplified. That might explain it.
"But when I am most worried about the universe, I wonder if he was merely reflecting one of the multi-faceted opinions of Dworkin."
Signy hopes that her inward wince doesn't reflect outwardly, as she recalls the gauntlet.
"How do we guard against this? We have...Trump artists, is this something we need to worry about? Many of my father's things are works of art as much as functional, like the Pattern blades."
"Worry about which part, dear?" Fiona turns her full attention back to Signy from the musing she's been doing about the state of the universe. "Artistic solipsism? Or against what Brand tried to do? The former--I think Brand had the wrong temperament to have the kind of power he had. He wasn't invested in the world or in his children other than as means to an end. It's true that we're real in a way that other things aren't because of the Pattern. But it helps when we behave as though we're not.
"As for the other?" Fiona gives Signy a look that combines with the slightest of smiles. "Be careful about taking Trump calls."
Signy shakes her head slightly.
"No, do we need to worry about the Trump artists also deciding that artistically they want to start over?"
Signy blinks, suddenly.
"How much of yourself is in a Trump?"
"None of you," Fiona says, "not in the sense of losing anything that makes you you. The Trumps touch your reality, which is why they're an art of Order. But it's not the same as part of you being captured to be put in the Trump, as it were."
Signy pauses, trying to figure out how to get out the unformed questions that are starting to swirl around in her brain.
"But, it touches on you, and allows for people to talk to you and even reach out and physically interact with you. How do we know that's all they're capable of?"
"They're part of a system that derives from the Pattern. The Pattern is what makes you real, as it were, which is a vast simplification but suitable for our present purposes. The cards can touch that because they have some of that Reality. But they can't change you in a magical sense, and certainly not in a sorcerous one. Trying would be a bad idea," Fiona explains. "That's why we generally don't make Trumps of people who haven't taken the Pattern, or aren't eligible for it. There are some particular complexities there that we're still exploring, but we'll be exploring the edges of our knowledge of Pattern and Trump until the end of the universe."
Last modified: 4 December 2016