“No,” I said. “I must know more. Tell me again how the damage was done.”
“I still do not know which of your children shed our blood on this spot, if this is what you mean. It was done. Let it go at that. Our darker natures came forth strongly in them. It must be that they are too close to the chaos from which we sprang, growing without the exercises of will we endured in defeating it. I had thought that the ritual of traveling the Pattern might suffice for them. I could think of nothing stronger. Yet it failed. They strike out against everything. They seek to destroy the Pattern itself.”
“If we succeed in making a fresh start, might not these events simply repeat themselves?”
“I do not know. But what choice have we other than failure and a return to chaos?”
“What will become of them if we try for a new beginning?”
He was silent for a long while. Then he shrugged. “I cannot tell.”
“What would another generation have been like?”
He chuckled.
“How can such a question be answered? I have no idea.”
I withdrew the mutilated Trump and passed it to him. He regarded it near the blaze of his staff.
“I believe it is Random’s son Martin,” I said, “he whose blood was spilled here. I have no idea whether he still lives. What do you think he might have amounted to?”
He looked back out over the Pattern.
“So this is the object which decorated it,” he said. “How did you fetch it forth?”
“It was gotten,” I said. “It is not your work, is it?”
“Of course not. I have never set eyes on the boy. But this answers your question, does it not? If there is another generation, your children will destroy it.”
“As we would destroy them?”
He met my eyes and peered.
“Is it that you are suddenly becoming a doting father?” he asked.
“If you did not prepare that Trump, who did?”
He glanced down and flicked it with his fingernail.
“My best pupil. Your son Brand. That is his style. See what they do as soon as they gain a little power? Would any of them offer their lives to preserve the realm, to restore the Pattern?”
“Probably,” I said. “Probably Benedict, Gerard, Random, Corwin…”
“Benedict has the mark of doom upon him, Gerard possesses the will but not the wit, Random lacks courage and determination. Corwin… Is he not out of favor and out of sight?”
My thoughts returned to our last meeting, when he had helped me to escape from my cell to Cabra. It occurred to me that he might have had second thoughts concerning that, not having been aware of the circumstances which had put me there.
“Is that why you have taken his form?” he went on. “Is this some manner of rebuke? Are you testing me again?”
“He is neither out of favor nor sight,” I said, “though he has enemies among the family and elsewhere. He would attempt anything to preserve the realm. How do you see his chances?”
“Has he not been away for a long while?”
“Yes.”
“Then he might have changed. I do not know.”
“I believe he is changed. I know that he is willing to try.”
He stared at me again, and he kept staring.
“You are not Oberon,” he said at length.
“No.”
“You are he whom I see before me.”
“No more, no less.”
“I see… I did not realize that you knew of this place.”
“I didn’t, until recently. The first time that I came here I was led by the unicorn.”
His eyes widened.
“That is — very — interesting,” he said. “It has been so long…”
“What of my question?”
“Eh? Question? What question?”
“My chances. Do you think I might be able to repair the Pattern?”
He advanced slowly, and reaching up, placed his right hand on my shoulder. The staff tilled in is other hand as he did so; its blue light flared within a foot of my face, but I felt no heat. He looked into my eyes.
“You have changed,” he said, after a time.
“Enough,” I asked, “to do the job?”
He looked away.
“Perhaps enough to make it worth trying,” he said, “even if we are foredoomed to failure.”
“Will you help me?”
“I do not know,” he said, “that I will be able. This thing with my moods, my thoughts — it comes and it goes. Even now, I feel some of my control slipping away. The excitement, perhaps… We had best get back inside.”
I heard a clinking noise at my back. When I turned, the griffin was there, his head swinging slowly from left to right, his tail from right to left, his tongue darting. He began to circle us, halting when he came to a position between Dworkin and the Pattern.
“He knows,” Dworkin said. “He can sense it when I begin to change. He will not let me near the Pattern then… Good Wixer. We are returning now. It is all right… Come, Corwin.”
We headed back toward the cave mouth and Wixer followed, a clink for every pace.
“The Jewel,” I said, “the Jewel of Judgment… you say that it is necessary for the repair of the Pattern?”
“Yes,” he said. “It would have to be borne the entire distance through the Pattern, reinscribing the original design in the places where it has been broken. This could only be done by one who is attuned to the Jewel, though.”
“I am attuned to the Jewel,” I said.
“How?” he asked, halting.
Wixer made a cackling noise behind us, and we resumed walking.
“I followed your written instructions — and Eric’s verbal ones,” I said. “I took it with me to the center of the Pattern and projected myself through it.”
“I see,” he said. “How did you obtain it?”
“From Eric, on his deathbed.”
We entered the cave.
“You have it now?”
“I was forced to cache it in a place off in Shadow.”
“I would suggest you retrieve it quickly and bring it here or take it back to the palace. It is best kept near the center of things.”
“Why is that?”
“It tends to have a distorting effect on shadows if it lies too long among them.”
“Distorting? In what fashion?”
“There is no way to tell, in advance. It depends entirely upon the locale.”
We rounded a corner, continued on back through the gloom.
“What does it mean,” I said, “when you are wearing the Jewel and everything begins to slow down about you? Fiona warned me that this was dangerous, but she was not certain why.”
“It means that you have reached the bounds of your own existence, that your energies will shortly be exhausted, that you will die unless you do something quickly.”
“What is that?”
“Begin to draw power from the Pattern itself — the primal Pattern within the Jewel.”
“How is this achieved?”
“You must surrender to it, release yourself, blot out your identity, erase the bounds which separate you from everything else.”
“It sounds easier said than done.”
“But it can be done, and it is the only way.”
I shook my head. We moved on, coming at last to the big door. Dworkin extinguished the staff and leaned it against the wall. We entered and he secured the door. Wixer had stationed himself just outside.
“You will have to leave now,” Dworkin said.
“But there are many more things that I must ask you, and some that I would like to tell you.”
“My thoughts grow meaningless, and your words would be wasted. Tomorrow night, or the next, or the next. Hurry! Go!”
“Why the rush?”
“I may harm you when the change comes over me. I am holding it back by main will now. Depart!”
“I do not know how. I know how to get here, but —”
“There are all manner of special Trumps in the desk in the next room. Take the light! Go anywhere! Get out of here!”