Images of avenues lined with ancient chestnut trees filled my mind as we trudged along and fought our way through the First Veil. By then, the sparks came higher about us and I felt the forces of the Pattern beating about me, penetrating me, body and mind. I recalled my days in school, remembered my greatest efforts on the athletic field. The resistance continued to rise, and we leaned into it. Moving my feet became a great effort, and I realized that — somehow — the effort was more important than the movement. I felt my hair beginning to rise as a current passed entirely through my body. Still, this had not to it the maddening quality of the Logrus the time I had negotiated it, nor the adversarial feeling I had felt upon Amber’s Pattern. It was almost as if I traversed the interior of a mind, one not unkindly disposed toward me. There was a feeling of encouragement, almost — as I struggled along a curve, executed a turn. The resistance was as strong, the sparks came as high as on the other at about this point, yet I somehow knew that this Pattern held me in a different fashion. We pushed our way along the lines. We turned, we burned… Penetrating the Second Veil was a slow-motion exercise in stamina and will. Our way eased for a time after that, and images from all over my life came to frighten and console me.
Walking. One, two… Three. I felt that if I were able to take ten more steps I would have a chance to win through. Four… I was drenched with perspiration. Five. The resistance was awful. It took all the effort of running a hundred meters just to inch my foot ahead… My lungs were working like a bellows. Six. The sparks reached my face, passed my eyes, enveloped me completely. I felt as if I had been transformed into an immortal blue flame and that I must, somehow, burn my way through a block of marble. I burned and I burned and the stone remained unchanged. I could spend all of eternity this way. Perhaps I already had. Seven. And the images were gone. All of memory had fled. Even my identity was on vacation. I was stripped to a thing of pure will. I was an act, an act of striving against resistance. Eight… I no longer felt my body. Time was an alien concept. The striving was no longer striving, but a form of elemental movement now, beside which glaciers rushed. Nine. Now I was only movement — infinitesimal, a constant…
Ten.
There came an easing. It would become difficult again at the center end, but I knew that the rest of the walk was anticlimax. Something like a slow, low music buoyed me as I trudged ahead, turned, trudged. It was with me through the Final Veil, and as I passed the midpoint of that final stride, it became something like “Caravan.”
We stood there at the center, silent for a long while, breathing deeply. Exactly what I had achieved, I was uncertain. I did feel, though, that, in some way, I knew my father better as a result. Strands of mist still drifted, across the Pattern, across the valley.
“I feel stronger,” Luke announced later. “Yes, I’ll help guard this place. It seems a good way to spend some time.”
“By the way, Luke, what was your message for me?” I asked.
“Oh, to tell you to clear out of the Courts,” he replied, “that things were getting dangerous.”
“I already knew the danger part,” I said. “But there are still things I must do.”
He shrugged. “Well, that’s the message,” he said. “No place really seems safe just now.”
“There won’t be any problems here yet,” Corwin said. “Neither Power knows exactly how to approach this place or what to do with it. It’s too strong for Amber’s Pattern to absorb, and the Logrus doesn’t know how to destroy it.”
“Sounds pretty easy, then.”
“There will probably come a time later, though, when they will try to move against it.”
“Until then, we wait and watch. Okay. If some things do come, what might they be?”
“Probably ghosts — like ourselves — seeking to learn more about it, to test. You any good with that blade?”
“In all modesty, yes. If that’s not good enough, I’ve studied the Arts, as well.”
“They’ll fall to steel, though it’s fire they’ll bleed not blood. You can have the Pattern transport you outside now, if you wish. I’ll join you in a few moments to show you where the weapons are cached, and the other supplies. I’d like to take a little trip and leave you in charge for a while.”
“Sure thing,” Luke said. “What about you, Merle?”
“I’ve got to get back to the Courts. I’ve a luncheon engagement with my mother, and then Swayvill’s funeral to attend.”
“It may not be able to send you all the way to the Courts,” Corwin said. “That’s getting awfully near the Logrus. But you’ll work something out with it, or vice versa. How is Dara?”
“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen her for more than a few moments,” I answered. “She is still peremptory, arrogant, and over-solicitous when it comes to me. I get the impression, too, that she may be involved in local political scheming as well as aspects of the larger relationship between the Courts and Amber.”
Luke closed his eyes for a moment and vanished. Shortly afterward, I saw him beside the Polly Jackson car. He opened the door, slid onto the passenger seat, leaned and fiddled with something inside. A little later I could hear the radio playing music across the distance.
“It’s likely,” Corwin said. “I never understood her, you know. She came to me out of nowhere at a strange time in my life, she lied to me, we became lovers, she walked the Pattern in Amber, and she vanished. It was like a bizarre dream. It was obvious that she used me. For years I thought that it was only to get knowledge of the Pattern and access to it. But I’ve had a lot of time for reflection recently, and I’m no longer certain that that was the case.”
“Oh?” I said. “What, then?”
“You,” he replied. “More and more I’m coming to think, what she really wanted was to bear a son or daughter of Amber.”
I felt myself grow cold. Could the reason for my own existence have been such a calculated thing? Had there been no affection there at all? Had I been intentionally conceived to serve some special purpose? I did not at all like the notion. It made me feel the way Ghostwheel must; carefully structured product of my imagination and intellect, built to test design ideas only an Amberite could have come up with. Yet he called me “Dad.” He actually seemed to care about me. Oddly, I had begun feeling an irrational affection for him myself. Was it partly because we were even more alike than I had consciously realized?
“Why?” I asked. “Why would it have been so important to her that I be born?”
“I can only remember her final words when she had completed the Pattern, turning into a demon in the process. ‘Amber,’ she said, ‘will be destroyed.’ Then she was gone.”
I was shaking now. The implications were so unsettling that I wanted to cry, sleep, or get drunk. Anything, for a moment’s respite.
“You think that my existence might be part of a longterm plan for the destruction of Amber?” I asked.
“‘Might,’” he said. “I could be wrong, kid. I could be very wrong, and if that’s the case I apologize for troubling you this much. On the other hand, it would also be wrong of me not to let you know what the possibility is.”
I massaged my temples, my brow, my eyes.
“What should I do?” I said then. “I don’t want to help destroy Amber.”
He clasped me to his breast for a moment and said, “No matter what you are and no matter what’s been done to you, there will have to be some element of choice for you, sooner or later. You are greater than the sum of your parts, Merlin. No matter what went into your birth and your life up to now, you’ve got eyes and a brain and a set of values. Don’t let anybody bullshit you, not even me. And when the time comes, if it comes, make damn sure the choice is your own. Nothing that’s gone before will matter then.”