Beltaine played by Jane Winter.

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Beltaine's Alternate Reality Diary For Session 3.2

Twenty Shadows. That's what we were worth. That's what Random, my King and the man I considered more of a father to me than my own, would have sacrificed us all for. He would have trapped us all there in Girasol, with no way back, ever (as far as he knew), to our own universe. Would have orphaned my child, my beloved Chalice, whom only days ago he was cradling in his arms. He would have left me trapped just - just - like Brand did. And for so little. Twenty Shadows. Almost nothing. For the love of the Unicorn, Tristan can probably make him another twenty. But no - we weren't worth taking a risk for. We went through to get the answers he wanted, and he betrayed us.

How could he?

At Caine's urging, naturally. At least now Random has been made to see where the free hand he has always given Caine leads - attempted 'elimination' of five Family members, and Gerard dead, for no reason he was prepared to give. I know he's always wanted me out of the way, but what did the others ever do to him? There's just no other explanation for him withholding the information he could have given us before we left, or given the King before he decided to maroon us on the other side. I've always believed he was some kind of necessary evil, that he always had the good of Amber at heart. I respected that. Damn it, I was even beginning to like him. But this was attempted murder, plain and simple. There is no way at all it could have been for Amber's good. What - to lose Tristan, one of the best of us, and the only one of us left with such command of the Pattern? Ibrahim, maybe Amber's most loyal general? Damien, needed more than ever now that Benedict proves not only useless but malicious? And my Tamarind, whose skill has served Amber so well time and again? For Amber's good? This time even Random couldn't look the other way.

Though he tried. Having already failed to protect us by keeping the bastard under control, he would have let him off this hook too if we hadn't forced him to act. Would still, I think, have looked the other way if we hadn't brought back Corwin for him to lean on in Caine's place. And I really believe that as soon as he can find an excuse, he'll reinstate him. He's just too used to depending on him for almost everything. I used to think of Random as a good man - why is it I never saw before how weak he is?

As for Benedict, finally pushing him off the fence (even though it meant first pushing him rather scarily over the edge) was satisfying in the extreme. I don't regret it, even if I have made an enemy of him. Someone should have done it years ago, instead of just treating him like a weapon to be got out in emergencies and left to rust the rest of the time. If any of his brothers and sisters really cared about him, instead of just wanting to use him, they would have done it. Now he'll either come back into the Family or he won't - but at least he'll have taken up his life again. Everyone should have a life. At least when his eyes lit up with anger he stopped looking like a damned zombie. We have enough of those around the place as it is.

Caine was already an enemy, so absolutely no regrets about pushing Random so hard on his account either. At least now he isn't an enemy with most of the Crown's power and authority at his back. (Not that he would need it, of course, should he decide to revenge himself.) It does, however, make being in his debt rather more unnerving. I can't help but wonder when he will choose to reclaim the debt. And what the price will be when he does.

I have come to believe that the oath of loyalty means nothing. Not just to some of those who took it, but to the King himself. Every time he allows someone to disregard their oath (either by breaking it outright, or blackmailing permission to 'bend' it) it makes meaningless the oath that others of us struggle to keep faithfully. And what about his duty to protect those who swore to him? That's meant to be the deal, isn't it? We serve; he protects. But what protection did he give us from Caine? From Benedict? What was his protection worth when he gave the order to cut us off from everything we had ever known and loved?

Nothing.

Is this what Llewella meant, when she said he was the most corrupt of them all? Is weakness worse than malice? Abdication of power as bad as abuse? Good men doing nothing, and all that?

At least father only tried to sacrifice one child of Amber to suit his plans - Random was prepared to sacrifice all five of us over a security problem still in its infancy. The hordes of Chaos howled at the gates of Amber itself without such sacrifices being made.

And Damien! Damien, who always made such a life-and-death issue of how much he hated his father and renounced all links with him - except when it suddenly suited him to claim that the very link he had always denied gave him the exclusive right to decide what should happen to Bleys' Patternblade, one of our most ancient items of Power. 'No one else had the right.' I think someone should explain to him what the word 'renounce' means. Also the word 'hypocrisy'. Having finally managed to see his father dead, he seems to have decided to become him.

Bleys was executed for what he did, and now Damien turns round and blackmails Random into letting him do the same thing, take the same risk with all our lives and futures, as his father did. What, exactly, is supposed to be the difference between going against Random's wishes in an openly defiant way and exerting emotional blackmail to be allowed to go against them? One seems more...honest...than the other.

So much for the justice of the Crown. Now it feels as though Bleys were murdered, and all of us were made part of that murder. As if he suffered for his actions because of who he was, and not because of what he did.

This is exactly the kind of judgment everyone applies to father -'oh, yes, everyone can be forgiven except Brand. Everyone can make a new start but him. His evil is different.' I see that now. I grew up surrounded by that attitude, and adopted it without thinking, and I have been unfair. Father, after all, did the things he did driven by madness. Caine on the other hand is evil for evil's own sake. Benedict would have done harm through lack of interest. Random would have seen us lost because he is too lazy and weak to use his own authority. Certainly fewer of the Family than I used to think have any right to sit in moral judgment on my father's sins.

Maybe it isn't too late for he and I to be a family again. Maybe we could start over.

I loved Gerard, and I would have grieved for him every day of my life, but I wouldn't have risked everyone else's lives to bring him back from the Land of the Dead. People shouldn't come back from the dead! That's what death is - an ending. People are meant to end. Barriers are there for a reason. If you break enough barriers, everything becomes nothing. What if we broke the barriers between my two worlds? At a guess, we'd end up with the New Kingdoms of my old vision. Reality and unreality should stay separate - and so should life and death. However much we wish otherwise.

Some things have to be true. They just have to be.

When we didn't know about Anurerishkigal, I had the whole Land of the Dead thing figured for a personal decision. If some people chose to make the trip, that was up to them. But things are different now. The risk of that nightmare returning to our world is there. Which of us is really worth the risk of our whole world being swallowed by Death? And how can that be a choice for one person to make?

Is it murder to kill someone anymore, if death isn't really final? Is it now a worse crime to imprison, or cripple? Someone 'kills' my friend - should I be angrier than if they had broken his arm? Should I be angry at all, since all they've really caused is temporary inconvenience? Is it, in fact, now a kind of murder to fail to go and bring someone back from the dead? If death is no longer the 'ultimate fear', then what is? The 'supreme sacrifice' - what is it now? What should I tell my child, when she asks about death?

There are just too many decisions I feel I can't make any more. I don't know what's right. All my centres, my guideposts, are gone. All the things I used to think were sure and safe and right seem to be dissolving - my faith in Random, my belief that he cared about me, my trust in Damien, any conviction that Amber was a place of order and fairness.

Why should I be good, when evil goes unpunished? Why be loyal, when loyalty goes unregarded? Where did all the absolutes go?

When did everything stop making sense?

The only thing I trust right now is Tamarind, and the life we have together with our daughter. That is what comes first for me from now on; that is what I will protect above all else. I can believe in that. Twice-imprisoned was enough. I will not allow anyone, anything, to cut me off again from those I love.