I sipped the coffee. Not as good as Mandor’s, but acceptable. I began wondering where Jasra and Mandor had been sent. I decided against trying to reach them. In fact, it might not be a bad idea, I decided, to fortify my own position against magical intrusion.
I resummoned the Sign of the Logrus, which I had let slip while Ghost was transporting me. I used it to set wards at the cave mouth and about my situation within. Then I released it and took another sip. As I did, I realized that this coffee could not possibly keep me awake. I was coming off a nervous jag, and the weight of all my activities was suddenly heavy upon me. Two more sips, and I could hardly hold the cup. Another, and I noticed that each time I blinked my eyelids were closing a lot more easily than they opened.
I set the cup aside, drew my blanket more tightly about me, and found a relatively comfortable position on the stone floor, having become something of an expert on the activity back in the crystal cave. The flickering flames mustered shadow armies behind my eyelids. The fire popped like a clash of arms; the air smelled of pitch.
I went away. Sleep is perhaps the only among life’s great pleasures which need not be of short duration. It filled me, and I drifted. How far and for how long, I cannot say.
Nor can I say what it was that roused me. I know only that I was somewhere else and the next moment I had returned. My position had changed slightly, my toes were cold, and I felt that I was no longer alone. I kept my eyes closed, and did not alter my breathing pattern. It could be that Ghost had simply decided to look in on me. It could also be that something was testing my wards.
I raised my eyelids but the smallest distance, peering outward and upward through a screen of eyelashes. A small misshaped figure stood outside the cave mouth, the fire’s remaining glow faintly illuminating his strangely familiar face. There was something of myself in those features and something of my father.
“Merlin,” he said softly. “Come awake now. You’ve places to go and things to do.”
I opened my eyes wide and stared. He fitted a certain description… Frakir throbbed, and I stroked her still.
“Dworkin…?” I said.
He chuckled.
“You’ve named me,” he replied.
He paced, from one side of the cave mouth to the other, occasionally pausing to extend a hand partway toward me. Each time he hesitated and drew it back.
“What is it?” I asked. “What’s the matter? Why are you here?”
“I’ve come to fetch you back to the journey you abandoned.”
“And what journey might that be?”
“Your search for the lady somewhere astray who walked the Pattern t’other day.”
“Coral? You know where she is?”
He raised his hand, lowered it, gnashed his teeth.
“Coral? Is that her name? Let me in. We must discuss her.”
“We seem to be talking just fine the way we are.”
“Have you no respect for an ancestor?”
“I do. But I also have a shapeshifting brother who’d like to mount my head and hang it on the wall of his den. And he might just be able to do it real quick if I give him half a chance.” I sat up and rubbed my eyes, my wits finishing the job of reassembling themselves. “So where’s Coral?”
“Come. I will show you the way,” he said, reaching forward. This time his hand passed my ward and was immediately outlined in fire. He did not seem to notice. His eyes were a pair of dark stars, drawing me to my feet, pulling me toward him. His hand began to melt. The flesh ran and dripped away like wax. There were no bones within, but rather an odd geometry — as if someone had sketched a hand quickly in a three-dimensional medium, then molded some fleshlike cover for it. “Take my hand.”
I found myself raising my hand against my will, reaching toward the fingerlike curves, the swirls of the knuckles. He chuckled again. I could feel the force that drew me. I wondered what would happen if I took hold of that strange hand in a special way.
So I summoned the Sign of the Logrus and sent it on ahead to do my handclasping for me.
This may not have been my best choice of actions. I was momentarily blinded by the brilliant, sizzling flash that followed. When my vision cleared, I saw that Dworkin was gone. A quick check showed that my wards still held. I perked up the fire with a short, simple spell, noted that my coffee cup was half full, and warmed its tepid contents with an abbreviated version of the same rendering. I reshrouded myself then, settled, and sipped. Analyze as I might, I couldn’t figure what had just happened.
I knew of no one who had seen the half mad demiurge in years, though according to my father’s tale, Dworkin’s mind should have been largely mended when Oberon repaired the Pattern. If it had really been Jurt, seeking to trick his way into my presence and finish me off, it was an odd choice of form for him to assume. Come to think of it, I wasn’t at all certain that Jurt even knew what Dworkin looked like. I debated the wisdom of calling for Ghostwheel to solicit an inhuman opinion on the matter. Before I could decide, however, the stars beyond the cave mouth were occulted by another figure, much larger than Dworkin’s — heroically proportioned even.
A single step brought it within range of the firelight, and I spilled coffee when I beheld that face. We had never met, but I had seen his likeness in many places in Castle Amber.
“I understand that Oberon died in redrawing the Pattern,” I said.
“Were you present at the time?” he asked.
“No,” I replied, “but coming as you do, on the heels of a rather bizarre apparition of Dworkin, you must excuse my suspicions as to your bona fides.”
“Oh, that was a fake you encountered. I’m the real thing.”
“What was it then that I saw?”
“It was the astral form of a practical joker — a sorcerer named Jolos from the fourth circle of Shadow.”
“Oh,” I responded. “And how am I to know you’re not the projection of someone named Jalas from the fifth?”
“I can recite the entire genealogy of the royal House of Amber.”
“So can any good scribe back home.”
“I’ll throw in the illegitimates.”
“How many were there, anyway?”
“Forty-seven, that I know of.”
“Aw, come on! How’d you manage?”
“Different time streams,” he said, smiling.
“If you survived the reconstruction of the Pattern, how come you didn’t return to Amber and continue your reign?” I asked. “Why’d you let Random get crowned and muddy the picture even further?”
He laughed.
“But I didn’t survive it,” he said. “I was destroyed in the process. I am a ghost, returned to solicit a living champion for Amber against the rising power of the Logrus.”
“Granted, arguendo, that you are what you say you are,” I replied, “you’re still in the wrong neighborhood, sir. I am an initiate of the Logrus and a son of Chaos.”
“You are also an initiate of the Pattern and a son of Amber,” the magnificent figure answered.
“True,” I said, “and all the more reason for me not to choose sides.”
“There comes a time when a man must choose,” he stared, “and that time is now. Which side are you on?”
“Even if I believed that you ate what you say, I do not feel obliged to make such a choice,” I said. “And there is a tradition in the Courts that Dworkin himself was an initiate of the Logrus. If that is true, I’m only following in the footsteps of a venerable ancestor.”
“But he renounced Chaos when he founded Amber.”
I shrugged.
“Good thing I haven’t founded anything,” I said. “If there is something specific that you want of me, tell me what it is, give me a good reason for doing it and maybe I’ll cooperate.”