The most important of the things Tristan does over the next fifteen years is to swan around having a good time with Isobel. This mainly takes the form of cruising through Shadow in Castle Corvallin. However, unlike the last time they did this, while on the run from Oberon, this time they go to interesting, fast-time places, so that, subjectively it is as long as a seventy-five year gap.
Tristan having also examined the door to Fianurerishkigal's control room in the Farm carefully (which he did previously) and having gained an understanding of how it works, he spends some time creating a pair of Real gold and sapphire rings which duplicate the effect for the wearer, one for him and one for Isobel. He obtains the materials for them from by the Primal Pattern. Each ring has four settings, namely off, Trump barred, Trump barred and damage shield versus the person(s) doing the Trumping, Trump barred and damage shield versus the physical Trump itself. There was no Trump in the door itself, so he does not need Trump to duplicate the effect, and as far as Tristan is aware no-one else can unravel the defences of the rings.
Once he has constructed his anti-Trump devices he turns his on, and never turns it off again. He then sends everyone a Bird of his Desire bearing a message. It states that he is no longer answering the Trumps, and is on holiday for the indefinite future.
If anyone wants to contact him, they can send a Bird of Desire. If they want to urgently contact him in an emergency they can either:
If they don't like either way, then tough.
In response, Damien sends Tristan an excellent griffin of his Desire carrying a 'received and understood' message.
Tristan also puts some Real power into his sword that he forged by the Primal Pattern. This makes it not just Real, and very tough, but also very sharp [Double Damage, that is].
As time goes by Tristan investigates giving Corvallin Real power, so it will work anywhere, including in Amber. This turns out to be do-able, but also involves basically rebuilding her from the ground up, in a manner that is vastly harder than simply building an entirely new Corvallin with everything in it. Of course, then she wouldn't be the same person...
Tristan definitely wants her to be the same person and since he isn't in any particular hurry (and has seventy-five years) that's the way he does it.
When he is reasonably sure that he has done his work correctly, he carefully brings Corvallin in towards Amber, closer and closer. She does not fall out of the sky. Eventually he brings her into Amber's shadow close to Clemenstown. And again, she still seems to be functioning correctly. He does not bring her to Amber itself, however.
He also keeps a regular check on the former Farm shadows. He has no more plans for them, but wants to keep an eye open, just in case. The people from them are spreading out into the surrounding shadows, advancing in civilisation and growing in numbers, but other than that nothing seems to be particularly out of the ordinary.
Tristan also conducts a bit of research. He knows there is an anti-shapeshifter poison. He wants to know if it is possible therefore to come up with a spell that has much the same effect. There are certainly no theoretical reasons why he shouldn't be able to come up with such a thing given a bit of research, though having a willing shapeshifter around to experiment on would probably help.
A willing shapeshifter... Hmmmm. Tristan does not try and find such a person. Instead, he tries to keep this quiet, because he can imagine that the news that he is developing this kind of spell might put him on, say, Finndo's hit list. Instead he creates through Empowerment a non-sentient shapeshifter to try the spell out on. A full Real shapeshifter would be a better test subject, but he comes up with something as close to that as he can. And by the end of the gap he has a spell that he is reasonably sure will work on a real shapeshifter should it be required (assuming a Psyche advantage, of course).
He ensures that the spell does not kill non-shapeshifters. He also modifies the spell to simply indicate whether or not someone is a shapeshifter without the result being spelled out by their death. A form of 'red/green light' effect. This is, however, also the sort of spell that requires a Psyche advantage to work without the target noticing.
One other thing that Tristan does over the gap is to 'top up' Isobel with life force every few years.
It occurs to Tristan that Anurerishkigal came back from the dead several times and probably didn't tidy up after itself. As such he tries shifting towards large tears in the fabric of reality between the Lands of the Dead and of the Living. There are indeed a number of such tears.
The first of them that he finds is extremely well-guarded (not to the level of the Farm, but still quite hard to reach and access). As such he asks for help from the rest of us, and, to cut a long story short, by working together we are able to reach the tears and, with the aid of the Jewel of Judgement, seal them up. Most of them seem to be Fiona's old laboratory shadows.
Tristan having promised to pay Delaney for his body-guarding of Isobel, he makes some more equipment for him, mainly weapons and armour.
The next time Tamarind spends a night in shadow Haven he wakes to find himself under attack from the purple koalas that inhabit the place. They seem vicious now, with sharp teeth. Poisonous sharp teeth.
Somewhat weirded out by all of this, he throws off the attacking koalas and Trumps to Amber and thence to the Infirmary, where the doctors treat his wounds, and his poisoning.
Once patched up, he borrows one of Tristan's griffins from their tower in Castle Amber and Trumps back to Haven, quickly taking to the air on griffin-back before any of the koalas can attack him.
The koalas are gathering below him. He drops raw meat for them, but they ignore it, seeming to only be interested in him. Now they are trying to form a living pyramid of koalas to reach him where he hovers in the sky on griffin-back. He moves away. They follow.
Tamarind quickly sketches and then Trumps a random koala.
Forcing the contact with its tiny mind, he drags it through the link and immobilises it, then reads what he can from its mind. It is definitely trying to kill him, or at least humanoid figures in general.
He flies around the shadow for a while, but cannot find any non-carnivorous koalas.
After that, he returns to his villa and takes away some of the local food and drink, easily dodging the koalas infesting the place now that he is aware of them. Testing these samples elsewhere, he finds that they are now poisonous too.
He Trumps Tristan.
Who proves to be in Castle Corvallin on holiday with Isobel somewhere in shadow.
He accepts the Trump call. Tamarind explains the situation and Tristan makes his apologies to Isobel and comes through onto the back of Tamarind's griffin.
At first 'glance' Tristan reckons that the shadow is not actually Haven - its properties are different. The differences are mainly environmental, but the shadow has certainly been re-written. He cannot tell by whom. "I can turn it back, if you like," he tells Tamarind.
"I want to do a Trump reading first," says Tamarind.
Thinking that somewhere more stable than griffin-back would be a good place from which to do such things, Tristan summons Castle Corvallin, which floats out from behind a cloud towards them. They fly up and land on board, to be greeted by Isobel.
With refreshments provided, Tamarind does a Trump reading. "Who is responsible for changing Haven?" is the question he asks.
Tristan reckons the effect is like the plague that Ibrahim's shadow, Keirei, suffered when Ibrahim was blood-cursed by Hania of the Council for Victory.
At this point, Corvallin alerts Tristan to the approach of a huge flock of bat-winged hell-koalas. Tristan quickly shifts Corvallin into an adjacent shadow, and the problem goes away.
And Tamarind does his Trump reading. As the spread is laid out, Fiona's Trump is in the centre.
"Ah," says Tristan. "You might like to walk the Pattern. I think it is indeed a Blood Curse."
That being so, they shift back to shadow Haven, and while Corvallin drifts around avoiding flocks of winged hell-koalas, he attempts to shift the shadow back to the way it should be. And over the course of a few hours he does indeed fix the place.
With that done, the rest of us are Trumped, and informed that we are all, it seems, weakly Blood Cursed. Oops. "All of us should walk the Pattern immediately," Damien recommends.
We all do this. When Tamarind and Damien walk the Pattern they both feel a certain lifting of tension. No-one else feels odd on the Pattern.
But once this is done, no more bad effects are immediately obvious. Phew.
The only visible long-term side effect of Fiona's (presumed) Blood Curse is that the restored, tamed koalas of shadow Haven retain a tendency to form themselves into koala pyramids every now and again, for no good reason.
Tamarind spends a lot of time with Beltaine in her newly-formed Tir-Na Nog'th-equivalent realm of Tenebrae.
He also spends some time with Osric and the others of the Girasol branch of the Family without bearing doom-laden news to them. This is partly to increase his ties to the Girasol court, to get to know them, cement a few friendships and so on. They are quite happy to spend time with him, also.
He also spends some time getting to know the new family and friends recently returned from the Land of the Dead.
Tamarind spends some time working out why Finndo's Trump is always active. He compares the type of activity he senses on it with the various Trump effects that he knows to be possible and with the kind of activity generated by items.
After some thought, it seems that it is basically a cheap Trump trick on Finndo's part. He has somehow created a Trump-powered item that simulates the effect of a Trump being active all the time. Tamarind is quite disappointed at how simple this is once he knows how it works...
He also works on the idea of projecting a 'false' Trump identity when making a call. He has some success in this, but thinks it might require something like Phoenix's level of spiritual shapeshifting to be fully effective.
Another idea that he works on is a form of automatic Trump Gate. Something Trump-powered that would be capable of opening Trump Gates to a number of pre-programmed locations, without the users having to be Trump Artists themselves. He is thinking of something somewhat like the ones that Osric has in Girasol that use Trump Traps to transport people from place to place without effort. To begin with this is mostly out of curiosity on his part, but does have some success, in time.
Tamarind spends some time figuring out how to sense the properties of shadow, as Tristan and the other people with advanced knowledge of the Pattern can. He thinks that if he can do so, he will be able to spy on people's Trumps and draw place Trumps of where they are.
After some time, he masters this technique, and it does appear to be true that he can now do this...
As for Phoenix, there isn't much to tell. Having achieved her overriding goal and got her husband back, she now has time to breathe.
The main alteration for Phoenix that happens over the fifteen year period is a conscious move away from her shapeshifting. Some time after his resurrection, Delaney points out to Phoenix just how out of touch she has got with being human. In particular, how she has become very over-dependent on her shapeshifting and let her more 'mundane' skills become, to say the least, rusty. "How would you cope if somehow your shapeshifting were 'paralysed' or taken away?" he asks.
A fair point, and one that Phoenix definitely takes on board. She thus tries to cope without her shapeshifting for a while, focussing back on her Warfare and other skills, letting injuries heal naturally so that she can still function if in pain, and things of that nature. This involves her having to deal with her walled-away mental baggage, too, but Delaney certainly helps with that too.
As such, from time to time she is seen in Amber injured, to the surprise of those who know her.
She and John spend some time travelling through Shadow, to explore and practise their powers, and find a place of their own. This they do without trouble. It is a frontier sort of place, a close Shadow of Arden. Not quite the same, or as magnificent as the Real Arden, but pretty damn close...
They visit the 'new' Sanctuary in shadow Requiem from time to time, but have no plans to return there for good.
It is made abundantly clear to Eric that he is not welcome there. He takes this on board.
She spends some time in a Shadow closely resembling Keirei, the place where Ibrahim grew up. This is so as to better understand her brother's very different background.
It seems to dawn on Random fairly quickly that though Phoenix still works for him, her husband could gainsay him at any time. So, as Phoenix points out, perhaps he should employ him too - if Delaney is up for it. Delaney is. As long as there aren't going to be any conflicts between working for Random and body-guarding Isobel...
She also teaches Delaney a small amount of shapeshifting, so that they can fly together. His Demon form looks exactly the same as Delaney in human form. His Avatar form is a golden eagle.
Phoenix also attempts to gain immunity to anti-shapeshifting poisons by exposing herself to them in small quantities and learning how to recognise them and eject the affected parts. She also learns how to survive with said poisons in her system. Although unpleasant, these researches do allow her to gain a wide immunity to anti-shapeshifting chemicals in general.
Phoenix also takes Delaney to the ballet.
After a while, Phoenix asks Damien to teach her more about combat.
Damien assumes she means as a shapeshifter.
However, she really wants to learn more about fighting as a 'normal' humanoid.
Damien agrees to do so, and offers to teach Delaney too.
Both of them learn quite a lot from Damien's lessons...
One thing Phoenix and Delaney work on and develop over the fifteen years is a physical version of 'meta-concert', a 'combat meta-concert'. This is similar to Beltaine and Tamarind's psychic meta-concert, but rather than being a mental thing, is a level of trust in and understanding of the fighting style of the other person, so that the two of them fight so well together they are effectively one attacker/defender. So that, fighting together, they become more than the sum of their parts. It also makes for great dancing.
Phoenix shuts down the laboratories she established to conduct research into life-force-related issues.
However, she does work out how to shapeshift others to allow them to regenerate life-force, as the Unicorn does. However, this change is permanent only for non-Real people, that is, non-Family members. That being so, she offers it to Isobel, who accepts, then to Nitocris and Jaheira, who also accept this offer. With Damien's permission, she modifies Sebek too. He likes the idea of "living forever even more!" Agrippina declines, preferring the idea of periodic top-ups of life-force. Delaney, naturally, is happy to have his fundamental self rewritten to allow him to live forever. Even though he is sufficiently Real to walk the Pattern, he is also sufficiently unReal for Phoenix's change to permanently affect him.
She also ensures that she maintains the 'off-switches' in all of the non-Pattern-blooded bodies into which we transferred various of the Amberites we brought back from the Land of the Dead.
Ibrahim puts his newly learned skills of Real Empowerment to work.
First, he forges his own Pattern Sword. A proper, desert-style khopesh sword this time, not some cast off inherited from his dad. He names it 'Jamal', after his adoptive father. The Pattern the sword is linked to is that of Amber, because that's the one he has walked most recently.
With that done he forges some 'Pattern Armour'. The limitations of the Empowerment techniques and the containment of energy required mean that this cannot be the chain-mail or leather armour of a similar style to his current armour that he would prefer, but instead must be plate mail. This is also successfully created, and he now possesses a suit of silvery blue-white plate armour.
Ibrahim also forges a Pattern sword for Margot, as a betrothal gift.
And once that is done, he invites Margot to dinner out in shadow. Over dinner, he offers her "Something worthy of you."
It is, of course, the Pattern sword. Ibrahim asks Margot to marry him.
Margot looks at it, and hesitates just long enough to make Ibrahim begin to sweat. "Of course I will!" she says happily.
There is a huge engagement party in Castle Arden to celebrate this, quite as big as the one where Julian and Felicia were married. Everyone attends.
Ibrahim thanks everyone for attending, and Margot for consenting to be his bride. However, the two of them have not, as yet, set an actual date for the wedding.
At the party, as it is now quite clear that Ibrahim can make Pattern swords, Damien suggests that the Ht'gon-An Rit Pattern in Forest Arden no longer has a Pattern sword associated with it - that would have been Bleys' Pattern sword, Jacintha. "Perhaps it would be an idea if its guardian - Julian - had one?" he suggests.
Ibrahim considers this.
Tristan and Isobel attend the party. Tristan show us the ring he has made. It is completely Trump-proof. While it is activated he cannot make or receive Trump calls. At all.
Tamarind considers this.
Eric approves of the union of Ibrahim and Margot.
And for along time afterwards, Ibrahim goes around with a big shit-eating grin on his face...
Ibrahim also spends some time with Eric trying to actually get to know him. He is now considerably less in awe of Eric than he was when he first met him back in Keirei, so he does not, however, spend every waking minute trailing around after him like a puppy.
Eric is quite happy to spend time with Ibrahim, too, to much the same end. He seems quite impressed with everything Ibrahim has done, both in Amber and in shadow.
In terms of Eric's personality, Ibrahim can tell that there are definite similarities to Corwin. However, he does seem, perhaps, somewhat more studious and serious than Corwin.
Having learnt more about his mother from Eric, Ibrahim visits his mother's home shadow, Jahangir. He initially does this incognito while he tries to find out some more about her, and her people.
The shadow is not unlike Keiri, in that it is a desert shadow with competing desert tribes and city dwellers. However, the cities are smaller and weaker than those in Keirei, and the desert tribes of Jahangir stronger and more skilled in magics than their counterparts.
Investigation reveals that Ibrahim's mother's full name was Sukaina umm Ibrahim bint Harith. She was a female warrior and mage, one of the most powerful in the shadow, and Queen of one of the Al-Optaramu tribe there. From the local tales and legends she fell in love with a mysterious stranger and bore him their child before strange creatures, perhaps a kind of djinn (though they sound, to Ibrahim, more like what he has heard of the creatures from the Black Road), killed her and most of her tribe in battle. The mysterious stranger took their child away and they were never seen again. Her tribe has prospered since...
Ibrahim also spends some time travelling through Shadow looking for any other siblings that Eric might have 'forgotten' about. He does not find any of these.
Also, Ibrahim spends some time with Brand and Chalice, discussing ideas for a Pattern-powered cross-shadow bathysphere, based on Brand's Abyss Bathysphere, but with some major safety enhancements. These include its not being dependent on a cable to avoid plummeting to ones doom, as well as the addition of some kind of airlock to allow one in and out of it without having to spend some time dissolving in the Abyss in the process. Ibrahim basically wants to develop a proper submersible and use it to swan about in the Abyss.
Brand and Chalice are quite happy to talk to him about these matters.
"My original bathysphere idea was," says Brand. "Based on two things. First, having a source of stability with a physical connection to the bathysphere made protecting the device easier than making it self-contained would have been. However, it may well be possible to improve on that now that I have had a chance to examine some of the Abyss-resistant demons you encountered. Secondly, protecting things with nothing physical to bolster the protection is much harder than when there is a wall there to reinforce. An airlock would be possible, but would suffer erosion over time. However, now that we know it could be useful, one could certainly be added..."
Damien and Nitocris spend some time conducting investigations in shadow Saqqara, particularly around the vast corpse of Nyarlathotep there. From under his gigantic corpse, now partially submerged in the lake formed by the Nile in the crater where he fell, they excavate the broken remains of the Shining Trapezohedron. [The Shining Trapezohedron that we originally found with Nitocris was her own copy (which was why she also had it in the Land of the Dead), and not the original - in which case an expedition to find the original is still a sensible proposition.]
Using this, Nitocris begins attempting to build her own Shining Trapezohedron. Again.
Damien learns Empowerment magic to complement his Grand Sorcery and assist in his researches into Life and Death.
Early on during the Gap, Damien reclaims the Shadow-body into which Bleys was briefly and unenthusiastically resurrected and takes it to Shadow Medmenham, where he buries it beneath some trees in the grounds of Medmenham Abbey. The headstone reads simply:
The Last Resting Place of Bleys, Prince of Amber
Then he sends Tristan a message by bird of desire (since at this point Tristan is off with Isabel observing Trump silence), suggesting that he might like to make a brief visit to Shadow Medmenham. Tristan accepts, turning up later on his own, without Corvallin or Isabel.
Tristan asks Damien if he particularly minds if he uses the Pattern to suspend the effects of the Nobles' Rot, since he'd rather not have to put up with even temporary syphilis. Damien seems more inclined to weather the pestilence, but raises no objections to Tristan turning it down a few notches. However, he does ask Tristan to set things back again when they leave.
"They don't need any more sorcerers here," he says.
He then shows Tristan the grave. Tristan stands silently, thin lipped, observing the grave for a long time, contemplating all that has gone before. Then he says solemnly "Farewell my brother. We failed you and I am sorry."
There is another long pause.
"Thank you Damien," he says, shaking him by the hand.
Damien just nods. However, as they walk away, he gestures towards the ruins of the Abbey, and says:
"You remember when we were here last? Suppose I'd suggested that you stay behind when I asked the others to step outside. How far do you think we'd have been able to get him before the others caught up with us?"
[He's referring to Bleys' execution in 119 PPF. "The others" in this case were Caine/Finndo, Brand, Deirdre, Benedict, Margot, Ibrahim, Beltaine and Tamarind.]
Tristan considers this. "Well, if we'd managed to make it to a Trump-barred Shadow," he says, "then I'd like to think that we would have got clean away. Hiding in Shadow is something I'm well practiced at, you know. Unless of course they were so desperate to get him that someone would have trusted Brand into their head."
"If," says Damien, emphasising the word. He looks as if the answer he'd been hoping for was "Not very far at all".
Tristan raises an eyebrow.
"I very much doubt," he says, "that a mere worry that you were unlikely to 'get away with it' or even that Tamarind would doubtless have interpreted the King's order as including summary execution and throwing into the Abyss for all concerned, was what stopped you from the course you are suggesting. No. You chose to obey the Kings decree despite the fact you thought it wrong. As did I."
Damien gives one of his nastier grins, although the nastiness is not directed at Tristan.
"It is difficult to be exercised one way or the other," he says, "by an idea that occurs to one only in retrospect, and in the small hours of the morning. I was too angry at the time. I'm guessing that it didn't occur to you as an option until later either."
"There are many things that I wish had played out differently," says Tristan.
Damien doesn't disagree. Instead, he invites Tristan to lunch in a neighbouring Shadow where Sebek is having his portrait painted by Hogarth.
Tristan accepts, after first carefully seeking confirmation that Hogarth is not a Trump Artist. Damien thinks he can guarantee this.
Sebek is very excited to see Tristan again and shows him the finished portrait, which depicts him looking very much the English Country Gentleman, wearing a tricorn hat, a stock and a waistcoat, and clutching a large beer mug. He complains, however, that he wasn't allowed any beer in it during the sitting. Lunch involves a lot of roast beef, especially when Miutjemes turns up to sit for his portrait too.
Tristan chats to Sebek, and makes the mistake of asking him about what he has done since they last met. Sebek rabbits on at length about winning races at the Circus, his new music box, finding a baby gargoyle on top of the opera house, and about the battles he's been to see with the cadets at Amber's new Staff College. He complains about being made to tidy up the Velocidrome as punishment for coming home drunk (again), and is looking forward to a new expedition to "dig up Narly Hotep to see if he's sitting on the Shiny Trap Easy Headroom".
"It's an interesting project," says Damien blandly, "The idea is to see if the original can be repaired or reconstructed by finding as many of its Shadows as possible and reverse engineering them. It has a number of possible applications in museum conservation."
"Yes," says Sebek blithely, "Nitocris wants it so that she can have ul-tim-ate-cos-mic-pow-er again."
"And Nitocris wants it so that she can have ultimate cosmic power again," nods Damien.
Sebek also wants Tristan to know that Tristan's Trump is broken, because it caught fire when he tried to use it. Tristan provides Sebek with some Birds-of-Desire which will be able to relay messages to him. He provides a dozen of them and arranges for them to be rather unpleasant in taste so that hopefully some will survive.
There is also a riot later on (this is 18th Century London, after all), but Tristan doesn't stay for that, instead heading off for the nearest Trump barred shadow (perhaps an hours shifting away). Sebek on the other hand has to be dissuaded from joining in, even though he doesn't know what a "Papist" is.
Tamarind, offended by the lack of a direct Trump link between the Amber and Girasol universes, wants to set up Trump relay stations in the centres of the Patterns to permit direct Trump communications and travel between the two universes. However, as Trump, as such, does not work in the centre of the Patterns he asks Ibrahim for help with the Pattern-related elements of this idea.
Over a fairly long period, they work out how to create a 'conduit' of Pattern energy through the centre of a Pattern from one universe to the other. This screens the Trump energy within, and allows Trumps to work from one universe to the other. This is irreverently referred to as the Trump/Pattern equivalent of placing two paper cups and a bit of string in the middle of two universe-linking Patterns.
And it works. Communications and even physical transportation are now possible directly between Amber's and Girasol's universes.
However, Tamarind notices that the link feels rather ... constricted.
Ibrahim experiments to find out what happens if the link is broken mid-Trump. He discovers that the connection just shuts down, blocking communication and movement, rather than vaporising anyone trying to pass through. Phew.
The children continue to get older, and develop. All of them still spend significant amounts of time with one another too.
Not long after the big party, Benedict walks the Pattern again.
It almost kills him, despite his being fully prepared for the experience.
Based on this, we worry that the intactness of one's memory is an issue when assaying the Pattern.
Using Damien as an intermediary, Oberon and Llewella negotiate a treaty basically the same as the one we arranged with him, with the same conditions relating to her throne as to Random's.
In 134 PPF, Brand calls everyone together and tells us that he has come up with an implantable device for recycling life-force, based on what we observed of the Unicorn doing the same. This should thus confer true immortality upon those possessing it. The devices are roughly one inch tall octahedrons of some sort of black metal or stone, their surfaces densely engraved with fractal spikes and patterns.
He tells us all that they should be implanted into the body at a point under the heart, the point where life-force floods back into the body when people return from the Land of the Dead.
Some Family members accept it immediately. Most do not. Or at least not to have implanted immediately. Brand hands out the devices to anyone who is interested in having them implanted themselves. He also gives copies of his notes on the subject to anyone who wants them. This includes Ibrahim.
Phoenix (grumbling slightly at Brand's hijacking of some of her research) takes one of the devices so that she can study it and hopefully duplicate the effects in herself without needing a device.
Damien accepts two devices.
Phoenix eventually, although not without study and effort, manages to duplicate the effects of the device in herself.
Ibrahim builds a device of his own following Brand's instructions. There do not seem to be any traps or other things in it that should not be there.
Nitocris accepts one of Brand's devices at once.
Agrippina does not want bits of metal inside her, but tells Damien that she will accept regular life-force top-ups instead.
Damien takes the second device for himself.
The following people accept the implantation of a device by ones or another, or who achieve its effect by other means:
The following do not:
Those who have the devices implanted into themselves find them not entirely pleasant. They are, after all, quite large and spiky pieces of metal being inserted into the chest cavity. They are also cold. However, everyone seems to be able to live with that...
The Girasolians are happy, in the main, to accept Brand's devices.
The Girasolians are also taught how to bring people back from the Land of the Dead and the state of Beloved Zombie-dom. This they then proceed to do, returning their dead to life. This includes:
There are now forty-one Amberites and twenty-one Girasolians!
However, one of the Girasolians who was thought to be dead, Stephanie, daughter of Sandrine and Dominic, proves not to be in the Land of the Dead after all. There is much speculation that she faked her own death in some way to avoid taking part in the war...
A little later, Brand also finds way to send remote scrying devices into the Land of the Dead. This is based on his previously-stated plan. That is, he finds people near death and persuades them, via whatever means necessary, to have the devices become part of their Personal Reality. When they die they then carry the scrying devices with them into the Land of the Dead, allowing observations to be made without having to go there. The people carrying the devices can also be moved around in the Land of the Dead by people using them, though only by walking them from place to place.
The Gang of Four meanwhile have signed up to the No Retribution pact with Oberon and been allowed to attune to the Impossigon. They then spend some time exploring Amber and the Golden Circle before travelling to the Girasol universe and exploring that, too.
Reanna and Meredith go to work for Osric in the Girasol universe, while Joshua and Gareth remain in the Amber universe.
All four of them accept Brand's recycling devices.
Delwin returns to Girasol. However he is not immediately made a King there. Although he is welcomed back as a brother, it seems that Sandrine and Osric don't think he has the experience necessary for the job. Yet.
In the Girasol universe, Isolde grows up and walks Sandrine's Pattern there.
An exchange programme is set up between the Families of Amber and Girasol. As such various people from each universe spend time in the other, to learn.
Flora continues to be spy-mistress of Amber, but her natural flair for all things fashionable has quite gone. People can help her get, and remain, neat and tidy but she has utterly lost the ability to do so for herself. She rumples easily. However, her political and Trump skills remain unaffected.
She creates some Empowered de-rumpling, self-tidying clothes and jewellery that help her cope with this.
Apart from Benedict and Flora, none of the other resurrectees show any obvious gaps in their memory or abilities.
After a couple of years, Oberon reappears in Amber. He now has a proper human, and Pattern-blooded, body.
He talks to people a bit, but also spends time out in shadow.
Caine eventually swears allegiance to Random, and is made an Admiral of the Fleet.
He spends quite a long time looking for his original body, where it was destroyed by us after returning as a sea monster. He eventually finds enough of it for a Pattern-blooded body to be rebuilt from the remains, with help from Phoenix. His mind is shifted into this.
Benedict appears to have lost much of his tactical and strategic nous. He remains, however, quite as fast as Damien. And is still much better at strategy and tactics than him.
He swears allegiance to Random.
Benedict is now more affable than he was after he killed Dara in 41 PPF. He is hardly the most talkative man alive, but is definitely much more pleasant to be around now than he was in the period before his being taken over by Fianurerishkigal. He is given a formal post in the Amber military, but as an Advisor rather than an overall commander. He does spend some time with Finndo, but they are not best buddies, or even friends, really, by the end of the gap period. Initially persona non grata in Girasol, he and Osric have several meetings, after which he is rendered persona grata again.
Mirelle also swears loyalty to Random and, with Phoenix's help, regains a Pattern-blooded body. And walks the Pattern.
Eric swears loyalty to Random. Eventually.
Martin does not swear loyalty to his father. He is not heir to the throne of Amber; that remains as Flora.
However, he does not appear to have any issues over being heir to the throne of Rebma. He does visit the place now and again.
Corwin and Eric continue to hang around together and seem to get on like people that quite like one another. They do spend time together. Corwin also shows Eric his Pattern.
It would also appear that the Owen-Corwin feud is actually over.
Merlin re-swears loyalty to Random, and gets over the loss of his mother.
Damien loses his bet with Ibrahim. Finndo and Caine get on tolerably well, but neither very well nor very badly.
Now that we know it is possible to carry-non-Amberites across the Patterns to and from the Girasol universe, Sebek is allowed to visit Beltaine in Tenebrae. He is also inflicted upon Girasol...
Beltaine gives Sebek a splurge gun, which he uses with glee.
The disappearances of people from Amber continue over the gap years.
By the end of the fifteen years, that is about it. Not a lot else seems to have happened...