| 'It's a bit like a mascot -' |
| '- Only less use.' |
| - Damien and Tristan explain the Unicorn to Phoenix |
Recorded for Posterity by Iain Walker.
Notes typed up by Jane Winter.
In Amber, all of the recent Jewel-attunees are shattered by the experience, and so go to bed.
The next morning they are still tired, but refreshed.
Beltaine seems to have gone, having left for the Girasol universe. Tamarind has gone with her to help in the move.
Margot and Ibrahim wake up together, as they tend to.
Damien wakes and gulps down his usual pick-me-up.
Everyone goes down to breakfast. Altair, Tristan, Damien, Ibrahim, Margot, Flora and Esmée are all there in the family dining room.
Tristan realises that he can faintly sense the Jewel off in 'that' direction. This is also true for Ibrahim and Damien.
As breakfast comes to a close, a servant enters and approaches Ibrahim. Something about his father...
Apparently a bird has arrived in his father's old quarters - it seems to be carrying a message. But it won't let anyone near it.
Ibrahim immediately gets up and follows the servant. Tristan, Margot and Damien follow Ibrahim out of the dining room and off through the Castle.
"We were airing the rooms," the servant explains as we enter Eric's old rooms, "When we found ... that."
'That' is a large blue-black falcon, about which Tristan senses a very faint hint of Pattern - as if it were a bird of desire. It does indeed have a message tied to its leg.
Ibrahim approaches it gently. It's wary, and he needs a minute or two to gain its trust. Eventually, offered raw meat, the falcon hops off the mantelpiece and onto Ibrahim's arm.
Damien checks that this is not one of the warning birds from the Shadow where Eric's body is hidden.
"It isn't," Tristan says.
Ibrahim removes and unwraps the message, which is on a piece of parchment seemingly decades old. It is in a handwriting he recognises as Eric's.
|
Eric, Your daughter is in danger. Return to Shadow Requiem at once. Eric |
Ibrahim reads this aloud, sounding puzzled and alarmed. He asks whether Tristan could follow the bird's trail back to where it came from?
"Perhaps," says Tristan. "But I hope that the bird itself might lead us back to Requiem, wherever that is."
"If my sister is in danger," declares Ibrahim. "Then there is no time to waste. To the stables!"
We head off, stable-wards.
En route, Ibrahim grabs his armour and sends a servant off to give the message to the King. He also collects some spare weapons and armour from the Castle Armoury.
In the stables, the blue-black falcon is introduced to a suspicious Tora, who is un-enthused about this new arrival.
We mount our various horses and head off.
"Er... Did you actually want us to come?" checks Tristan.
"Yes," says Ibrahim.
"Well, let us know if you change your mind," mutters Tristan.
Ibrahim has now released both falcons, and we are following Eric's falcon through the City and down past the harbour. Tora circles around, looking as dubious as is possible for a falcon.
Tristan shifts us off at speed through Shadow, after Eric's falcon.
After a while, we are out beyond the Golden Circle, and the quality of Shadow changes almost at once, becoming more high technology, and also more magickal.
Tristan keeps an eye out for any traps that Eric might have left to deter Family members from using this route.
Ibrahim is happy to trust the falcon to guide us through any minefields.
We begin to pass through war zones. Destroyed tanks and battlefields, heavily war torn areas, columns of refugees. A few wisps of gas cross our path, and thicken.
Tristan quickly finds some NBC suits in an overturned supply truck. And some guns. We help ourselves to these. Tristan puts on a NBC suit. Ibrahim does not bother with one, instead trusting to his Empowered robe to protect him. Damien simply trusts to Amberite endurance rather than technology.
We travel on.
Soon the war zones become grimmer and grimmer, then give way to post-holocaust landscapes. The land is barren and dotted with ruins, including those of whole cities. Vegetation is scarce, twisted and stunted. It also begins to rain constantly, from low, dirty-looking clouds. The rain is acidic and burns slightly.
Meanwhile, in shadow Requiem, Phoenix is assisting at a complicated birth of twins in Settlement 17.
By the end, there are two healthy children and a mother who is alive, healthy and capable of bearing further children.
As the parents proudly show off the twins to their neighbours, and celebrations seem about to begin, Phoenix slips quietly away from the settlement.
The rest of us are approaching the same settlement. Tristan's horse has begun to cough.
There are fields around stockade of the settlement, looking noticeably more fertile than the rest of the landscape.
Phoenix sees us as we ride in, and is taken aback at the sight of strangers on horses (horses being extinct here as far as she knows), one rider wearing a NBC suit and all carrying swords. She blurs into camouflage form.
Ibrahim and Damien notice a moving figure. Then it's gone.
The messenger falcon begins to descend. Ibrahim reins in. We can see a crowd in the settlement, more people in the fields, and animals in the far distance beyond the settlement.
The falcon flies down to the area where the moving figure disappeared.
Phoenix de-camouflages herself and holds up an arm tentatively. The bird lands on her wrist and looks back at the rest of us.
From a Requiem perspective, Phoenix sees a robed man with a hood hiding his face, a man in a NBC suit, and a man in fancy dress.
We dismount, and Ibrahim walks towards her, hands held well away from his weapons.
We see a girl with thick black hair, pale and tired-looking, slight (maybe 5'3") and athletic-looking. She wears patched leather armour over well-worn clothing, a mixture of very old military gear and much more basic home-made stuff. She has something metallic embedded behind her left ear, and a tattoo running the length of her left arm, which radiates magick. She carries a couple of knives, a high-tech pistol and a much more primitive-looking flintlock pistol.
The girl sighs. "This settlement is protected," she says, quietly.
When this doesn't seem to mean anything to us, she continues. "If you're not here to cause trouble, you are welcome. If you are here to cause trouble, let's just get on with it. I've had a really bad morning."
We deny that we are here to cause trouble.
Tristan's horse coughs one last time and falls over dead. It dawns on him that this place feels as though the Black Road once ran through it.
The girl is looking at Ibrahim and Naseem curiously.
"That's a horse, isn't it?" she asks.
"Yes - his name is Naseem," responds Ibrahim. He then remembers his manners, and introduces himself.
Tristan and Damien do likewise.
"Phoenix," says the girl.
She glances, fascinated, at the falcon perched on her wrist. "Is this yours?"
"No - it arrived in my father's quarters," says Ibrahim. "Our father's quarters," he amends. "I believe we are brother and sister."
Phoenix looks unimpressed at this declaration.
"Do you recall your father?" asks Ibrahim.
"No," she shakes her head. She just remembers that her mother wasn't happy about being 'left pregnant' - in the old days that was considered terribly déclassé, no one reproduced that way. "And it interrupted one of her research projects."
"That was before the disaster struck," hazards Tristan.
Phoenix nods again. "Before the Inferno."
Ibrahim tries to explain that we are from another world.
Phoenix isn't interested in the prospect of visiting other worlds, as she's needed here.
Tristan suggests to the rest of us that we could help, by taking people from here to an un-poisoned world.
"How bad is the damage here - and how much of it can you fix?" Damien asks him.
This does capture Phoenix's attention.
However at this point, through Tora's eyes, Ibrahim senses that the animals beyond the village are actually charging straight towards it. They appear to be rhino-sized sabre-toothed tiger-striped cat creatures. He points this out, and Phoenix immediately takes off back towards them.
Ibrahim runs after her.
Damien goes back for his horse.
In the village, alarm bells are sounding as the creatures reach the edge of the fields.
Phoenix blurs back into her Predator-like demon form. She and Ibrahim are first within range of the tigers.
Ibrahim peppers them with machine gun fire.
Phoenix casts a spell, turning the ground in front of them into quicksand. The first two ranks of tigers run into this.
Damien and Tristan arrive.
Damien casts a Hellfire spell, creating a wall of flame to prevent the tigers outflanking the quicksand, leaving them only two directions to go - back the way they came, or towards us.
Tristan decides it's possible there are leftover live mines in the land just beyond the fields. There is an explosion, and one tiger duly falls over minus a leg.
Phoenix casts a second spell, and the ground behind the quicksand begins to turn into boiling magma.
Tigers begin to sink, and burn. The remainder edge towards us. Two or three try to leap over the Hellfire wall.
Ibrahim catches several more in a Sandstorm spell.
About a dozen are now left.
The three tigers leaping over the Hellfire spell combust at a muttered spell from Phoenix.
Damien moves round to pick them off as they emerge from the flames.
Tristan is using Pattern to summon a storm. The clouds overhead darken and roil with un-natural speed, then lightning begins to strike down from it onto the tigers, and only the tigers.
The three who jumped the Hellfire emerge and Damien shoots them in their respective heads. This seems to stun them.
Phoenix fires her laser pistol at another, which stumbles as the bolt of energy hits it.
Ibrahim machine-guns and lightning bolts tigers, about half a dozen of which have bypassed the sandstorm.
Tristan moves to engage these, feeling that they are familiar to him. One of the people caught in one of his 'trap' Shadows was a lunatic with a big halberd who rode one of these creatures, or something very like them.
Phoenix begins casting again, while Damien fells a tiger with an eye-shot.
Ibrahim draws Chrysanthir and leaps forward on horseback to get to the tigers threatening Tristan before they reach him.
Tristan decides his probability manipulation of the storm isn't sufficient defence against teeth and claws, and takes evasive action.
Phoenix finishes her Corrupt Flesh spell, and one of the tigers rushing towards her 'ripples' and begins turning itself inside out. This briefly gives its companions pause.
Two tigers leap for Tristan.
Phoenix jumps onto one of them, tearing at its throat.
Tristan sticks a sword in the other one as he leaps to one side, denting it but not cutting it.
Ibrahim arrives and hamstrings the beast with Chrysanthir.
Damien draws Dashwood and wades into the remaining two on his side. He spears one in the throat and jumps up on the back of the other as it runs past.
Ibrahim is machine-gunning some of the stunned tigers.
Phoenix tears out the spinal chord of the tiger she's grappling, and it falls to the ground.
On tiger-back, Damien shifts Shadow such that the tiger is now running towards a settlement where they have a rocket-launcher. He stabs the tiger to distract it, then jumps and rolls as the rocket launcher is fired. The tiger has its chest blown out. Gobbets of flesh rain down around (but not onto) Damien. He waves to the settlers ("Enjoy!" he shouts) and starts shifting Shadow back to requiem. The settlers, not appreciating his gift of a dead tiger, shoot at him but miss.
Back in requiem, the remaining tigers are being finished off.
Tristan asks for one to be left alive, as these creatures are from another Shadow and don't usually travel in packs. Hmm. He needs a cage, though.
"Don't panic," he says to the world in general. "Something strange is about to happen."
Castle Corvallin flies down out of the clouds.
The villagers, disregarding Tristan's words, panic, and go back to hide in their shelters.
Phoenix tastes a dead tiger to find out if they are edible. They're very, very chewy. And alien, not local to this world at all (at least, not in her experience), being made up of compounds, and indeed elements, which she has never encountered before. Definitely not edible. Now in human form again, she gets out her sampling kit to analyse this further.
Damien arrives back in Requiem to find an unconscious tiger being loaded into a cage which has been lowered down from Corvallin.
Ibrahim checks through Tora's eyes and sees more movement in the distance. He informs the rest of us about this.
"The falcon may not have been too late after all," he says.
"Do you mind if I seed the land beyond the field with landmines?" Tristan asks Phoenix.
"It's not my land," she shrugs.
Tristan sends Corvallin off to lay mines.
Tora shows Ibrahim that there are lots more of these things coming.
As he stands there, Tristan analyses the shadow. Quite quickly, he works out that the tigers are definitely from out of Shadow and that he can bar them from Requiem, given a few hours. "But I wonder who sent them?" he wonders aloud.
Phoenix looks at him. "Are you suggesting these things are after me?"
"I'm not sure," says Tristan.
So Phoenix heads away from the settlement to test whether it is her the tigers are after.
Ibrahim shifts Shadow to find a tank. Quickly finding one, he removes the skeletons of its former crew and heads back to Requiem with it.
The tigers do not change course to follow Phoenix, but keep right on heading for the settlement. She comes back, and puzzles over Tristan apparently sitting staring into space.
"Are you alright?" she asks.
"I'm doing ... well, it's not magick, but it's like it," he explains.
She goes and joins Damien in the village watchtower.
He points out an exposed area he'd like to divert the tigers onto, so they'd then run into the minefield.
She tells him about a defile they might use to bypass it, and he works this into his scheme.
Ibrahim arrives back in Requiem with his tank.
In Corvallin, field guns emerge from gun ports in the walls.
The tigers approach. We see that there are about one hundred and fifty of them this time.
Damien casts a Hellfire spell to divert them.
Ibrahim uses the tank (with Tora as aerial spotter) to bombard the defile, so eventually the tigers are channelled into an exposed area leading directly onto the minefield.
Corvallin's guns open up.
Ibrahim redirects fire.
Mines explode.
Damien casts a couple of Militia spells.
Phoenix casts a couple of spells that result in strategically-placed tigers falling over for no apparent reason (actually, she is turning their blood to water).
A horrible massacre of tigers ensues.
Some of the survivors head back the way they came; others try to bypass the village.
Ibrahim and Corvallin bombard the tigers attempting the latter. In the end, perhaps ten tigers escape into the countryside.
A silence falls over the battlefield.
We move around it finishing off the dying animals.
Tristan, who has sat out the battle in a field, finishes amending the Shadow. He has now stopped more rhino-sized sabre-toothed tigers getting in, and in fact, has barred the Shadow to non-Pattern Shadow-shifting altogether (Trump still works too). He also decides the poisons and radiation in the area round the village have all been neutralised.
Ibrahim and Damien sense that he is making some changes.
Phoenix just notices that the air becomes cleaner and purer.
"What's happening?" she demands.
"Oh, that's Tristan," says Damien airily. "Might take him a bit longer to do the whole world."
"How?" she asks Tristan.
"It's something you can do too," he tells her, adding quickly. "Not yet, but potentially. Your father was an extraordinary man... "
"That he was," echoes Ibrahim fervently.
"How do you know anything about my father?" Phoenix wants to know.
"He was my brother," explains Tristan.
"My father," says Ibrahim.
"My uncle," finishes Damien.
Phoenix is starting to look a bit dazed.
"Uh... OK," she says.
Tristan tells her he can indeed fix the rest of her world.
"Even the wild magick areas?" she asks. Then she explains that there are areas where magick fluctuates, or goes suddenly dead, and storms that leave changed magickal conditions in their wake.
"I can fix those too," Tristan says. "But do you want me to?"
Phoenix looks at him incredulously. "Why don't you ask the villagers?" she suggests. "What do you think they'd say?"
"I don't think the environmental conditions are a lifestyle choice," puts in Damien.
Tristan gives him a Look, then says, pointedly. "Medmenham."
"I've sometimes made ... changes ... without asking before," he adds to Phoenix.
"I have supplies in Corvallin that will make up for the damage done to the fields," he continues.
Phoenix goes to fetch the village head-people, Harold and Miriam.
"These people are here to help," she tells them.
They are wary of us. "Who are these people? And what's that?" they ask, indicating Castle Corvallin.
Phoenix gives them a level, 'are you questioning me?' Look.
"They are here to help," she repeats.
They notice the Look, and accept this.
Tristan introduces them to Miranda, who takes them into the castle.
Phoenix seems not a little in awe of Tristan's achievements. "Lucky I'm not religious," she mutters.
"Some people have that reaction," notes Damien. "But it rarely does them any good."
Phoenix says she has been trying to discourage such thoughts in Requiem. "I'm trying to rebuild civilisation, not perpetuate barbarism."
"Are there any books in there?" she asks Tristan. "The children would love some books."
Damien suggests that Tristan must at least have a couple of copies of The Adventures of Sebek.
"And lots of improving pamphlets," growls Tristan, giving him a Look too.
We take Phoenix up to Corvallin, where she is struck speechless by the gardens.
"As a relative of ours, you can gain the power to move between the dimensions," Tristan tells her.
"But I'm needed here," she says, automatically.
Damien points out that she could use such power to ameliorate local conditions, even if not to the same extent that Tristan can.
She just goes on staring at the trees.
Damien tells her he first discovered our family in a forest that dwarfed Tristan's gardens. "I was moved there against my will, without my knowledge," he adds.
"Can people do that?" she begins to look worried. "It was apparently my father, who is now dead," says Damien. "There are ... four others ... who might be able to. Tristan, whom I trust, and I'm willing to give the others the benefit of the doubt."
"Large family," she comments.
"Some of the family history might be useful to you," Damien suggests.
"This must all be something of a shock," says Ibrahim gently.
Phoenix doesn't disagree.
Tristan is working on cleaning up the Shadow and fixing the errant magick zones.
On request, he also neutralises the minefields.
And after a while, the clouds part to let the sun shine through and there is a rainbow or two. He also tweaks the laws of physics so that weapons of mass destruction will no longer work here.
And he saw that this was good, and stopped before he buggered things up.
We talk to Phoenix about Amber, explaining about the Pattern. And the Family.
We warn her that the catch to walking the Pattern is that some of the Family might try to use her in their schemes. Otherwise, the advantages are numerous.
"Is what you've done going to last?" she asks Tristan.
"I think so," he replies.
"Then I'm free to go," she decides.
We decide to head back to Amber in the morning, when we're all rested.
Phoenix asks Tristan if we can go to one of the other settlements, in the mountains, before we leave.
He has no problem with this, and flies Corvallin above the clouds to the desired locality.
When we arrive, Phoenix turns herself into a large bird and flies down, quietly visits Delaney's grave and leaves some flowers, then flies back up.
Damien warns her that some members of the Family are wary of shape-shifters, due to their ancient enmity with ancestors in 'Chaos'. But most of us are relaxed about it.
She shrugs.
We sit down and try to explain the Family, and our history, using Damien's Trump deck to illustrate matters.
We try to let Ibrahim (whom Phoenix keeps watching as if worried he might disappear) do most of the talking, but Damien frequently 'corrects' and expands on his account.
A potted history of Amber is given, with much disagreement over various people's assessment of other Family members. Phoenix's eyes glaze over at regular intervals, and the phrase 'we'll leave this bit for later' is increasingly heard.
Eventually, she has been shown Trumps of the whole Family, including Vialle and (this being Damien's deck) Sebek. In the course of this, Ibrahim gives her one of his spare Trumps of himself. Tristan does this too.
"That all sounds very ... interesting," allows Phoenix. "But what I'd really like to do is find out where those tigers came from, and if someone sent them."
Damien is also curious about this.
Tristan rests.
While he does this, Ibrahim and Damien take it in turns to guide Corvallin back along the trail left by the tigers. We see other groups of tigers making their way Requiem-wards.
Phoenix asks Tristan what he has kept the tiger (now waking up) for?
"To see who, if anyone, sent it," he says.
Damien turns command of Corvallin over to Ibrahim, and begins weaving a spell that will let him 'talk' to the tiger.
Tristan sends a bird of desire with a note to the lunatic he met riding one of these things previously, Klerothos the Red.
We have now passed hundreds of thousands of the tigers, who seem to be backing up now that Tristan has barred the Shadow ahead of them.
Ibrahim senses that the trail left by the tigers is too fresh for it to be their own shadow-shifting - he doesn't think they could have made it themselves. He wakes Tristan to have a look.
Tristan does so, and agrees with Ibrahim's assessment. He thinks that there is a lead tiger that the others are following. He wonders whether the lead tiger may not be an actual tiger ...
As we travel, we pass over occasional villages that have been decimated by the tigers.
Tristan senses there are multiple lines of tigers moving on parallel courses through various close-together shadows.
After a while, Damien is ready and casts a Mind Touch spell on the captive tiger.
From its mind, Damien can sense that the tiger is angry, a bit afraid, and hungry. Damien gets a servant to feed it mutton.
Now it's just angry and afraid. And it wants to go on ... towards Amber. Along the route of the Black Road. As far as Damien can tell, this desire is a new one, only recently acquired. Or recently implanted.
Tristan is not finding it too easy to shift Shadow along this route using Pattern. He tries Impossigon power instead, and finds the going easier, if slower. We are still following the rough route of the Black Road.
Damien finds that the captive tiger associates humanoids with food and enemies, but not with 'He/She Who Must Be Obeyed'. Damien reports this to the rest of us.
Tristan is of the opinion that hordes of tigers are just generally heading for Amber.
Damien Trumps Random to report this.
When Random takes the call, he explains the situation to him. Random says he'll inform Julian.
We discuss, briefly, whether we need to inform Finndo, if he isn't listening in.
Ibrahim Trumps Julian to warn him and give him an estimation of the tigers' strength. When Julian takes the call and has the situation explained to him, Julian thanks him and goes to put the Rangers on alert.
Ibrahim suggests we check other routes towards Amber.
Damien Trumps Finndo, and when Finndo takes the call, tells him what's happening. Explanations done, he points out that if Finndo has any undeclared sources that may shed light on this, then declaring them now might be forgiven if they bear fruit ...
As usual, Finndo denies nothing.
Tristan slides Corvallin back and forth across the area of shadow the tigers are passing through. There are definite trails from other tigers. All head from the direction of the Black Road.
We decide that following them to the source (probably the Chaos end of the Universe) is currently less important than finding out exactly where they are going and defending against them.
Tristan Trumps Julian, and when he has got through we warn Phoenix that she will lose all of her spells when we go through the link. Damien goes through first, keeping a hand on Julian's shoulder so that Phoenix can still see him. Warily, she steps through. And feels all of her racked spells go 'poof'.
"Greetings," says Julian.
Phoenix is too busy gazing at Arden's Very Big Trees to reply for a few moments, then returns the greeting a little shyly. She looks round in awe.
Ibrahim presents her with the spare armour he brought, which she gets into, shapeshifting it to fit her as she does so.
Damien explains to Julian that the tiger army is en route.
"Preparations are in hand," says Julian.
Tristan begins shifting Julian's men through shadow towards the tiger's route.
Damien Trumps Sebek and when he gets through gives him a message for Agrippina which is written in Greek, a language he can't read.
Sebek wants to join Damien in Arden.
Damien tells him we're busy. "But there may be new friends for you to meet soon."
After some argument, Sebek agrees to pass on the message.
We go to Holtom, a shadow on the very edge of the Golden Circle which was the first Golden Circle shadow affected by the Black Road. This is where Julian thinks the tigers will come if they follow the route we described.
Damien warns Julian that he has activated the 'Sebek supports the Rangers as a scout' plan.
Julian refrains from groaning.
We decide now is a good time to check the Chaos end of this affair, so as we go, Ibrahim Trumps Random and when he gets through introduces him to Phoenix.
We go through to a conference room in Amber, with our horses.
Random greets us, and Phoenix. He seems pleased to meet her.
When we ask, he tells us that he'll pass us and our horses through to Chaos. He pulls out a SuperTrump to do this, and concentrates upon it.
We begin to warn Phoenix that Chaos is ... different ... strange. But then the link clears and she can see for herself. We and our horses step through anyway. Upon arrival, Phoenix reacts the way most normal people do on their first sight of Chaos, looking rather sick.
"We did warn you," says Damien. "One gets used to it ... eventually."
We mount our horses, and head back through shadow on them, away from Chaos along the route of the Black Road.
As we go, Tristan is looking for traces of the old Black Road. However, he cannot find a continuous trail here. Nevertheless, knowing the general direction he can pick up the sections where there are traces well enough to follow the route of the Black Road on through Shadow.
As we go along, Phoenix is learning to ride.
Under Tristan's guidance, we race through Shadow. As we do so, Tristan is trying to explain to Phoenix how to shift Shadow.
Suddenly, we arrive in a Shadow where lots of the tigers have been. Tens of thousands of them.
The Shadow doesn't look as though it could support that number of predators. In fact, it looks as though they were all summoned here, then sent out again.
Phoenix hunts around, and senses another scent besides that of the tigers. We slow briefly so that she can shift to demon form and follow the scent more easily.
She does this, with Tristan shifting Shadow for her, and we are able to follow the 'not-tiger scent'.
As we go, the scent trail grows old, as if whatever it was arrived this way but left by other means.
After a while, the trail becomes narrower and narrow before ending at a smallish cave on a high cliff face, somewhere in Shadow. The scent is strong here, but weeks old, as if the cave is heavily used. It's also vaguely ungulate. Could it be the Unicorn?
Far below us, the cliff face drops into a continuous cloud deck. Huge jellyfish creatures float across the sky above us, and 'trains' of suns, ten or more together in a line, rise from random points about the horizon, move rapidly across the sky and sink again with dizzying speed, usually accompanied by faint 'whoo whoo' noises, as if they really were trains. Tristan can sense that time here flows some twenty five times faster than it does in Amber, and that the place is very Real.
Tristan thinks that something left this cave, and headed to where the tigers gathered.
Damien searches for physical tracks, and after a moment finds a few faint cloven hoof-prints in the dust on the cave floor. He points these out to everyone else.
We return to the 'gathering' Shadow.
Damien looks for evidence of cloven hoof-prints leading the advance there. He quickly finds some. The last prints he finds seem to begin changing into a more tiger-like form, with pads which then leave no tracks.
So... Now, how do we get back?
Damien sighs, and concentrates on Finndo's Trump.
Tristan meanwhile senses that this Shadow is a trap Shadow of Desire ... for the tiger-creatures. And a definite assembly point for them.
Damien is meanwhile getting nowhere with Finndo's Trump.
Phoenix offers to help, if she can.
He begins to explain to her how to use Trumps, when...
"Ho! Tristan!" booms a voice. A huge man on a red-and-purple-striped tiger (similar to the ones we met) has arrived on a ridge above us. He is dressed in black clothing similar to motorcycle leathers and carries a huge lance/halberd.
"This is Klerothos the Red," Tristan tells us, and introductions are made.
Klerothos says he found his mount more fractious than usual, and when he let it have its head, it came here.
"Can you follow the trail?" asks Tristan.
"I can," booms Klerothos. "But I have a price - I wish to assay this Pattern of yours."
With commendable restraint, we eventually convince him to not die attempting this, and instead to accept attunement to the Impossigon.
By now, Damien has given up on Trumping Finndo, so we follow Klerothos instead.
He leads us off through shadow on tiger-back, which is somehow allowing us to travel through Shadow faster than we should be able to, given that Klerothos is not using the Pattern.
Tristan thinks we're following something equivalent in Power to the Jewel of Judgement.
Time becomes strange as we race along - we seem to be cutting through each Shadow very quickly, and irrespective of time differentials.
"So - how did you tame your tiger?" Tristan asks Klerothos.
"I killed its mother when it was a cub, after which I brought it up," he booms. "And he has served me well," Klerothos concludes.
"Does it have a name?" we ask.
"Yes," he replies. "But it is a Secret Name, known only to me."
Uh huh.
As we ride, Damien lays a bet with Tristan as to whether or not he can tame our captive tiger.
When asked, Klerothos tells us that he tamed his tiger from a cub over a twenty-year period.
Damien bets Tristan that he can tame ours in three years. If he does, Tristan has to organise Sebek's birthday parties for the next three years.
If Damien loses, Tristan wants him to renounce duelling.
Damien protests that the two forfeits are hardly commensurate, and a final decision on what he has to do if he loses is postponed for now.
Travelling through shadow this way is like being funnelled through a tunnel with a travelator in it - the 'tunnel' itself is doing lots of the work to speed us on faster than we could go ourselves.
After a while we begin to catch up with a rearguard of tigers, then another group.
They notice us and some turn back to attack.
Phoenix jumps from her horse onto the back of a tiger, blurring into combat form.
Damien takes control of her horse, tries Wilkes to no effect ('Click'), then reaches for the crossbow Ibrahim gave Phoenix which is still on her saddle. He loads and fires, taking a tiger in the eye, and it falls.
Ibrahim slashes at a tiger from horseback, then semi-dismounts to kill it, hanging from a stirrup to reach it with Chrysanthir. Unfortunately, it manages to wound his horse before it dies.
Phoenix is ripping out the spine of the tiger she's holding onto.
Tristan defends himself, having to abandon his horse, which is killed by the tiger he is fighting. He is left behind by the running fight.
Phoenix, having dismounted, is also left behind when she finishes killing her tiger.
Both she and Tristan find themselves in different, but similar, 'Wild West' type Shadows of semi-desert and mesas.
Phoenix can see a stagecoach nearby.
Tristan sees a group of blue-uniformed men riding over the nearest ridge. They have crossbows, and shoot at the tiger attacking him. It is unharmed by this, but does switch its attention from him to the cavalry.
Tristan sighs. He cannot, in good conscience, leave the cavalry to be eaten.
In the neighbouring Shadow, the occupants of the stagecoach climb out and poke curiously at the dead tiger while Phoenix watches from hiding in camouflage form, unable to understand their language. The locals appear to decide to come back for the tiger corpse later, climb back into the stagecoach, and head off.
In Tristan's Shadow, the tiger is laying into the cavalry.
Tristan decides that it falls into a pit disguised by a crust of sand. It does so, and dies (it is a very deep pit).
Tristan thanks the surviving cavalry. They tell him they are out here hunting Indians, so Tristan directs them toward some Indians he decides are in that direction (Imperialist bastard...). He also gives them some money for their trouble (capitalist bastard...).
Meanwhile, Ibrahim has turned and started to gallop back, leaving Damien following Klerothos and the mass of tigers.
Phoenix tries Ibrahim's Trump.
She quickly gets through, and comes through to him. This process is obviously another source of wonder to her, but she refrains from comment for now.
With Phoenix recovered, Ibrahim Trumps Tristan and brings him through to him too.
He suggests making our horses smell more like the tigers as a way of avoiding trouble.
Phoenix thinks she can help with this. She concentrates briefly, then exudes tiger-sweat and smears it on Ibrahim, Tristan and our horses.
Then we Trump Damien.
While all this has been going on, Damien has been keeping Klerothos in sight. He has found that if he attempts to fall back, Klerothos recedes dramatically, as if he is still on the 'travelator' while Damien has stepped off it, so Damien is keeping up as best he can.
At this point, Damien feels a Trump call coming on, and takes it. It is everyone else. He brings the rest of us through, Ibrahim's horse and all.
Ibrahim finds that covering his horse's eyes before coming through the link helps it stay calm.
The tigers now seem to think of us as tigers, as we are now either smeared with tiger-sweat (thanks to Phoenix) or splattered with tiger-blood (thanks to Damien), so we are not having to constantly fight our way along.
After a while, we can feel that our progress is slowing, and the ground seems more fertile and less desert-like. Then we stop. We seem to be in Shadow Holtom, a world of mesas with the land between cut by streams and covered by farmland and flowers.
As the tigers move forwards, towards what Ibrahim realises is the location of the shadow path out of Holtom, we decide to search for whatever is leading them.
Ahead, we can see Julian's Rangers behind barricades linking several of the mesas in the path of the tigers, and cavalry moving to oppose the tigers' advance.
Damien casts a spell and teleports to the top of a nearby mesa, from where he intends to scan the idea and hopefully see who or what may be organising the tigers.
From this new vantage point they seem pretty disorganised, but there is one tiger on top of another mesa, peering down at the advancing mass. Suspicious.
Damien Trumps Ibrahim and passes on this information.
Phoenix reckons she could fly up there and then Trump Ibrahim and Tristan through. The rest of us think this is a good idea, so she sprouts wings and flies off at speed.
Below the mesas, the Rangers seem to be making a good show of defending their positions against the horde of tigers. Some of them throw things that turn into thrashing balls of vegetation, strangling nearby tigers.
Klerothos is laying into tigers with his halberd.
Phoenix quickly flies up the sheer side of the mesa where the suspicious 'observer tiger' is until she reaches a point under its edge. She then clings to the rock face while she Trumps Ibrahim. When she gets through she brings Ibrahim and Tristan through to her.
They then Trump Damien and when he takes the call, bring him through to them too.
Phoenix reverts to camouflaged form and flies up over the edge of the mesa into the air over its top.
Ibrahim removes his robes, turns them inside-out and puts them back on. Now he is invisible. With this done, he also heads up towards the tiger.
Damien merely steps out and walks briskly towards it, reluctantly followed by Tristan.
The tiger turns as they approach.
"Start talking, or start bleeding," Damien suggests to it.
Phoenix dives toward the tiger, which dodges. It glances at her as she goes past, then looks at Damien. It seems to manage to raise a sceptical eyebrow.
"What are you?" demands Tristan.
It doesn't reply.
Damien flicks his coat aside to show where Wilkes is holstered.
Phoenix lands, and flicks small darts from her fingertips at the creature; they sink into its flesh but seem to do no damage.
It flicks barbs back, but Phoenix turns into her avatar, a winged figure of fire, and the barbs pass through her with only a little swirling of her fire before incinerating harmlessly.
Damien draws Dashwood.
The thing seems aware of all of us, including Ibrahim the Invisible.
Damien leaps forward into a fencing lunge ... and spears the creature in its side. The idea had been to make a feint as he drew Wilkes, but being this close, and the thing not having dodged, he attempts to put the pistol to its head and shoot it.
Suddenly, everything goes into slow motion ... or the creature goes into fast motion. It is hard to tell which.
As Damien raises his pistol, and Ibrahim leaps in with Chrysanthir, the creature vanishes.
Tristan senses a Jewel-like phenomenon, with something like Pattern-teleportation, allowing this escape.
"Can you track it, then?" Phoenix asks him.
Tristan checks that it isn't just on another mesa.
We can't see it if it is. Damn.
Tristan Trumps Random and, when he gets through, tells him that the thing co-ordinating the attack has been using something like the Jewel. Could Random bring the Jewel here to help counter it?
Random considers this, then nods and says he'll Trump us back.
Damien observes the battle below.
The Rangers have the edge by a sixty-to-forty margin, casualty-wise. The however, there are more of them, and the tigers seem even less co-ordinated now.
Damien can see no signs of control being re-established over them.
Neither can Ibrahim, when he joins Damien in observing the battle.
At this point Tristan feels a Trump call coming on. He accepts it. It's Random, who comes through to him with the Jewel.
He casts about with it, but after a while tells us that he can't see where the creature has gone. He can tell that something Real, using a Jewel-like power, was here though.
We point out that it appears to be Unicorn-like at the very least. Cloven-hoofed, with power over Shadow, Jewel-like powers, the whole nine yards.
"As Esmée would say," comments Damien. "It all adds up to one big 'Doh'!"
"Think you might need another mascot," mutters Phoenix.
"How," wonders Tristan. "Do we tell the difference between 'a Unicorn-pretending-to-be-a-sabre-toothed-tiger' from a 'Chaos-type-lion-pretending-to-be-a-sabre-toothed-tiger'?"
We decide that we can't.
Given that we can't follow it, we decide to do what we can to help repel the current incursion.
Random apologises to Phoenix for her turbulent introduction to Amber.
"It's actually been a good day for me so far," she says. "No one I'm with has died, and my world is renewed."
"Oh," says Random. "Fair enough." He then Trumps back to Amber.
"Um... If he owes his position to the Jewel... " Phoenix begins, once Random has gone.
"It's not how you get the position that matters - it's what you do with it," interrupts Damien.
"I didn't mean that," says Phoenix. "I was actually wondering if Random was at risk."
"Oh. The power involved rather than the justification," says Damien.
Discussion over, Phoenix, carrying Ibrahim, flies down to the Rangers lines to assist in the battle.
Damien remains on top of the mesa. He still sees no sign of the tigers becoming more co-ordinated, and the Rangers' defence seems solid enough.
Phoenix attacks the tigers, while Ibrahim directs his cavalry.
Damien notices Klerothos still laying about him.
Tristan concentrates on the Pattern, trying to block the outgoing Shadow path from the tigers.
Ibrahim redirects his troops to physically block the Amber end of the path through this Shadow.
Julian and Margot are directing the Rangers, with Esmée and Flora behind the lines to give magickal support. Caleb is also present.
Damien shifts Shadow off the top of the mesa and down to its foot. He wades into the tigers.
Phoenix retires from the battle for a while to heal herself up, then goes back into the fray. It's been a weird day, and she appreciates the tension release.
The tigers finally break, scatter and try to shift Shadow away, but thanks to Tristan, they can't, and get massacred instead.
"Lion or Unicorn," says Tristan. "It didn't come back to save its people."
"What have I been saying all these years?" mutters Damien. "That was a bit ... anti-climactic, wasn't it?" he adds.
No one replies.
At this point, Tristan gets a Trump call from Random, who is sweating and exhausted-looking. "Something was trying to use the Jewel," he says. "I think I managed to stop it."
Tristan tells him that he seems to have prevented the creature recovering the tigers. But he recommends Random keep the Jewel on him for the time being, and that he calls in some 'Jewel backup'.
Random says that he has sent for Corwin. They're using Damien's techniques to sober him up.
Tristan mentions that he has an ally he's promised to let attune to the Impossigon. He explains about Klerothos, and Random agrees that, after his help today, he can indeed attune to the Impossigon.
As Ibrahim and the cavalry pursue the remaining tigers, Phoenix takes a break to meditate close by the Ranger's camp and medical facility.
Damien finds her sitting cross-legged beneath a cliff and sits down next to her.
"That's not yours is it?" she asks, noticing his blood-covered state.
"Just borrowing it," grins Damien.
Tristan Trumps Damien, and when Damien takes the call, goes through to him.
Upon arrival he tells us about Random having to fight off something that was trying to use the Jewel.
We give Ibrahim half an hour, then Trump him.
When he takes the call, he is seen to be heading back, the rout of the tigers complete.
Tristan updates him on the Random and Jewel situation.
Ibrahim says he will return on foot. He'll also contact Flora to make sure the Shadow path to Amber is all right.
Once Tristan breaks contact, Ibrahim does indeed Trump Flora.
She quickly takes the call. She tells Ibrahim that she and Esmée are fine. No tigers got as far as where they are. She leaves Caleb and Esmée behind and comes through to join Ibrahim.
When they reach the camp of the Rangers, she brings out a bag of rings and puts one of them on each of the worst of the wounded, who then begin to heal very quickly indeed.
Ibrahim also tends to the most injured troops.
A Ranger comes up to the rest of us as we sit outside, and tells us that Prince Julian wants to know if any of us have any surgical skills.
"Doesn't he have any battlefield medics?" sighs Damien.
"Yes, but..." says the unfortunate Ranger.
"Not as good as us," Damien finishes for him.
"Yes, sir."
We head off.
Much triage is performed in the field hospitals behind the lines.
Phoenix, unfamiliar with carnage on this scale, asks what she can do.
Damien indicates the cases set aside as hopeless and suggests that perhaps she can help them.
Phoenix wanders off and lays hands on them, and many become a lot less hopeless than they were.
Late in the day, we have done all we can.
Phoenix is exhausted from using her shapeshift powers to heal so many, and the rest of us are pretty damned tired too.
We find Klerothos and his Tiger, both enjoying a hearty meal.
He is quickly convinced to return to Amber with us, and we quickly transport ourselves, him, and his tiger through to Amber via the Trump of the Arrival Courtyard.
Upon arrival, Phoenix notices the banners of a white Unicorn on a green field. "Is that entirely ... appropriate?" she murmurs.
"We don't know yet," says Tristan.
We find a dining room, and everyone eats a lot of food. Klerothos's tiger falls asleep in the corner.
"I really need to go to sleep," says Phoenix, who is very tired.
We find her a suite of rooms.
Klerothos and the Tiger With A Secret Name are given another suite close by.
Damien sends Childers and a couple of other servants to set things up in Phoenix's rooms, so she will have food, fresh and vaguely familiar clothing and so on lying ready for when she wakes up.
In the morning, everyone wakes up. As you do.
Phoenix finds Childers and Damien's other servants bustling quietly about in her rooms.
"Can I help you?" she asks warily.
"How may we assist you?" asks Childers. He explains that Damien sent them, and that they have prepared some clothes and drawn a bath.
She likes the idea of a bath, it being the first chance she has for a proper one in a very long time, and closets herself in the bathroom for ages.
Ibrahim gets up and checks on the post-battle situation in the Command Centre. The people there report that the last few tigers are currently being hunted across shadow Holtom by some of the Rangers, while other defend the shadow path and tidy up.
He writes a memo suggesting that the tiger skin might prove strong enough to make barding for his cavalry horses and sends it off to Julian.
He then checks on Naseem and Tora out in the stables, and proceeds on to breakfast.
Tristan goes in search of Corwin, who is in his quarters, wearing the Jewel, with a book and bottle of wine to hand.
When asked, he says something tried to use the Jewel a couple of times, but he thinks he stopped it. He has been with the Jewel all night, although only wearing it when he senses an incursion.
Tristan is worried about these attempts to draw power from the Jewel and thinks we should have a Jewel-Watching Rota.
Corwin does not disagree with this.
Tristan also sends someone to usher Klerothos down to breakfast.
Damien gets up, has a bath and heads down to breakfast.
Most of the Family are present in the breakfast room, except for Altair, Gerard, Julian and Brand.
Random congratulates us on a job well done yesterday.
These formalities over, people question us curiously about Phoenix. We get the impression that many of them have probably turned up just to look her over.
To assist with this, Tristan sends her a message about breakfast.
Random asks about the creature leading the tigers.
Tristan runs through what we've found. This includes its appearance based on footprints, plus the powers and abilities it has shown.
Corwin reports the additional attempts to use the Jewel during the night.
"Maybe it's objecting to the mass attunement," suggests Damien.
Phoenix finishes her mammoth bubble bath. When she emerges from the bathroom, Childers hands her Tristan's note. She reads this, then dresses in the clothes laid out for her (which are much like those she arrived in, but cleaner and newer), then leaves the rooms and shortly arrives at breakfast.
Random stands, and formally welcomes her to the Family.
She sits down and servants bring her food. She is a bit overwhelmed by the variety, and amount, of food being served.
"How do you find Amber?" Flora asks her brightly.
"Um. Very big. Nice air. And water," replies Phoenix. She adds that she would like to see Arden again. And the sea.
"Is it true you're a shapeshifter?" Esmée wants to know.
Phoenix nods.
"Me too," Esmée says. "We should compare notes."
Finndo volunteers that he is also a shapeshifter, and Phoenix accepts later note-comparing with them both.
Asked about her background, she says she lived in a place called Requiem. Before the inferno, she was named Meredith (Finndo raises his eyebrows at this) Forrester, but later came to be called Phoenix because of her fiery avatar form 'and because I didn't die'. She had spent several hundred years trying to restore some measure of civilisation to the Shadow, and repair some of the damage. "Then Tristan came and fixed things, and I was free to leave," she finishes happily.
"It sounds as though you took on a very hard task very well," Random says to her encouragingly.
She shrugs, looking a little embarrassed. "There wasn't anybody else."
There's a tap on the window, which Ibrahim opens. It's the blue-black falcon again. It hops in and flies over to perch on the back of Phoenix's chair.
"You should walk the Pattern," decides Random.
"In that case, it would be useful to have a Trump of her first," suggests Ibrahim.
"I'll create one," Random says. Finndo's offer to do this is ignored.
People begin to explain to Phoenix about walking the Pattern.
"We need to keep watching the Jewel," says Tristan.
Random agrees, but would also like to know more about this creature.
"That means going back to the Abyss," says Tristan.
Random agrees to this, and loans him two SuperTrumps. One is of the Abyss end of the Universe, and one is of Amber.
Flora and Finndo leave the breakfast room.
Margot and Esmée also leave, each telling Phoenix how nice it was to meet her.
Tristan asks Random for the Impossigon, so that Klerothos can attune to it.
Random nods, and he and Vialle lead Tristan and Phoenix off to Random's study.
Once there, Random goes out of the room and when he returns gives Tristan the Impossigon. He then sits down and prepares to draw a Trump of Phoenix.
Meanwhile, in the breakfast room, Ibrahim Trumps Julian, who, when he takes the call, proves to be tidying up in Arden.
"No tigers escaped the net," Julian tells him. Julian also says that he got Ibrahim's note regarding possible uses of the tiger skin, and is having the bodies skinned. He is also going to investigate whether any other body parts have any use or mystical properties, since they come from so far away in Shadow.
Ibrahim requests a body to study, if it could be delivered somewhere he could use magick.
Julian says he will have a body delivered to the Amber Embassy in Bannen, a suitably magical Golden Circle shadow.
Ibrahim suggests that the old route of the Black Road needs more permanent fortifications.
Damien, overhearing Ibrahim's end of the Trump call, sighs audibly in the background. He had offered to design a set of fortresses along that very route years ago.
Ibrahim belatedly recalls this. After thanking Julian and dropping the link to him, he turns to Damien.
"I'll have the plans sent over, shall I?" drawls Damien.
Ibrahim nods his assent. "You do take the science of fortification more seriously than I," he allows.
"It's really only a hobby," says Damien modestly.
Tristan takes the Impossigon to down Klerothos. Klerothos, not being able to read or understand Thari when it is spoken by a non-Pattern user, has not got Tristan's message and so has missed breakfast.
"I will attune to the device now," he booms.
Tristan shows him how this is done.
Klerothos takes it, and begins to concentrate on the impossible edges.
Elsewhere, Random has finished the Trump of Phoenix. This has taken about three-quarters of an hour.
She is deeply impressed with the whole idea of the Trumps.
Random mentions that he's only been drawing them for a few decades. He also lists the other Family Trump Artists for her.
He hands Phoenix her new Trump, and gives her some more Pattern-walking advice.
Back at breakfast, people drift off, until only Damien and Ibrahim remain.
Damien offers to send a copy of the fortification plans to Julian too.
Ibrahim agrees that this is a good idea.
Damien leaves for his quarters where he packages up two sets of the plans and sends them off to Julian and Ibrahim's offices.
Ibrahim leaves the breakfast room and goes to find Phoenix, who he encounters leaving Random's office.
She shows him the Trump.
"A good likeness," he says. They walk for a while.
"I don't mean any offence," she says tentatively. "But the Queen - is blind, isn't she?"
Ibrahim nods.
"Don't you have any healers?"
Ibrahim explains that magickal healing has failed, and that healing by shapeshift has been problematic due to paucity of trustworthy practitioners.
Phoenix looks thoughtful.
She asks Ibrahim in more detail about walking the Pattern, and this occupies them for a good while.
Tristan watches Klerothos as he attempts to attune to the Impossigon. The Tiger With the Secret Name also peers over his master's shoulder, and seems to be helping him. Doing most of the work, in fact.
After an hour and a half of this, Klerothos manages to master the shifting of the Impossigon.
"Now the power is mine! Ha!" booms Klerothos as he does this, though with rather less enthusiasm than usual, clearly being exhausted by attunement process. He demands a drink.
Tristan gets him a drink, and offers him a lift back to Chaos.
He accepts this offer, then crawls back into bed to rest.
Tristan leaves and returns the Impossigon to Random.
Random is impressed that Klerothos took only an hour and a half to attune, even helped by his tiger.
After talking with Ibrahim about the Pattern, Phoenix thinks she's ready to walk the it now.
Ibrahim Trumps Damien and Tristan, and they both come through to him.
"Thank you for the clothes," says Phoenix to Damien.
Tristan suggests that we demonstrate the use of Trumps to Phoenix before she sets off around the Pattern, just in case we need to Trump her off it. A good plan.
Ibrahim uses her new Trump, and when she takes the call (prompted by Ibrahim's voice) tells her over the link what can be done with Trumps.
That done, we head off to the Pattern room, through the Marble Dining Room, round behind the stairs, along the hall, down and down the long spiral stairs to the bottom and along the tunnel passing the various filled-in side tunnels until we reach the guardroom outside the Pattern Room itself. Guards usher us through the guardroom and unlock the door to let us into the Pattern Room.
And there is the Pattern, glowing in the floor of the Pattern Room, making all else seem insubstantial by comparison.
"Good luck," we tell Phoenix.
"Thanks," she replies. She steps on to the glowing line of the Pattern line and begins walking.
Ibrahim holds her Trump ready, just in case.
Phoenix moves slowly around the Pattern, sparks rising about her. She pushes past the first veil. And begins to recall her earliest childhood... The Inferno... Going into hibernation ... And coming out to find the world changed...
The rest of us see her shapeshifting like mad as she moves along the lines of the Pattern, as if revisiting every form she's ever taken. She feels the Pattern disassembling and reassembling her, Realer and better than before, with Pattern imprinted into every cell of her body.
She pushes her way on and through the second veil... Remembering meeting Delaney, and their work in Requiem... Jericho... Sparks rise higher and higher, rising above her head as she passes the Grand Curve and heads for the final veil. She pushes on and on, eventually forcing her way through the third veil and falling to her knees in the centre of the Pattern. She has made it. Phew.
"Phoenix?" enquires Ibrahim.
She teleports over to him, and sits down on the floor.
"Well done," says Tristan
Damien offers her his hip flask.
She takes it, has a couple of swallows from it, and then passes it back.
Ibrahim Trumps Random, and when he takes the call, with the King's permission, passes everyone back up to Random's study.
"Congratulations," he says to Phoenix. "Welcome to the Family."
Ibrahim asks Random whether the Jewel pulsed when Phoenix used the Pattern to teleport just now. In the same way that it did when the Mystery Creature teleported away?
"Er," says Tristan. "Wouldn't Corwin have tried to suppress any activity?"
We briefly contemplate this potential oversight which might have resulted in Corwin killing Eric's daughter.
Random Trumps Corwin and asks him about this.
Corwin tells us that he did observe 'a resonance effect of some kind', but it didn't resemble an attempt to draw power, so he didn't attempt to block it. Phew.
We take our leave of the King and go and sit in one of the Castle gardens so that Phoenix can rest.
"Have you come up with a proper forfeit for our bet?" Damien asks Tristan.
Tristan wants him to 'give up wine, women and song for a week' if he loses.
Damien says he'll begin constructing a training facility right away. "Might as well start now," he comments.
And the bet is on.
A while later, Phoenix says she has rested enough.
Tristan thinks we should return to Chaos to follow up on the mystery creature. He admits he has offered transportation there to Klerothos, who has survived the Impossigon no madder than he was before.
This sounds like a plan, so we go and collect Klerothos, who is awake again and just finishing another huge meal.
Once we have got him, various people then go and collect armour and/or weapons.
That done, Tristan SuperTrumps us to the edge of the Abyss.
"This feels more like home!" booms Klerothos happily. "I have heard legends of this place!"
He bids us farewell and heads off on tiger-back, flourishing his halberd as he goes. He is quickly lost to sight.
"Let's go and see Brand," suggests Tristan.
We walk along the edge of the Abyss. As we go, Tristan attempts to explain probability manipulation to Phoenix using coin and card tricks.
She asks whether she can borrow a place Trump in case she gets separated from the rest of us again.
Tristan lends her the SuperTrump of Amber. "Don't lose it or Random will skin me," he admonishes.
She takes it reluctantly, then places it against her arm and grows skin over it. "I'll keep it safe," she assures him.
We quickly arrive at Brand's Research Camp. There's his tent, larger than ever, plus a gantry-like structure projecting out over the edge of the Abyss. Brand emerges from the tent as we approach. He now looks to be about sixteen.
Tristan introduces Phoenix to him, and vice versa.
"What brings you to the edge of the Abyss?" Brand asks us.
"Noticed anything unusual?" Tristan asks him.
"No."
He invites us into the tent, and serves us tea and cake.
Tristan explains about the Shadow-travelling tiger incursion.
Brand chokes on his tea at the thought of tens of thousands of these things coming together and travelling from Chaos to Amber in (subjectively) one day.
"Nothing can travel that fast in Shadow without the Pattern," he insists.
We explain about the mystery beast and its ability to draw power from the Jewel.
"You're talking about the Unicorn," he says, flatly.
"Or something like it," we agree.
Brand is inclined to doubt it's the Unicorn given the tradition he was raised in and other rumours about it...
We find ourselves explaining the 'Unicorn is our ancestor' theory to Phoenix, who gets that Glazed Look again.
When asked, Brand says he's never met the Unicorn. Apparently, when it took the Jewel from him in the Abyss, he had already passed out. He seems unsure of how to advise us.
"Seen any demons about?" Tristan wants to know.
Brand says he's seen creatures watching him, but that's about it. He has set up perimeter alarms and defences just in case they are hostile.
We ponder a bit more. We could go back to the Shadow to which we were able to track it, but what should we do if we find it?
Tristan observes that if the Jewel is being watched, it might not be able to just teleport away.
"Do we want to kill it?" checks Phoenix.
"If it is the Unicorn," notes Damien. "Its death might have ... universal ... repercussions."
"I don't particularly want to kill it. Just wanted to know," responds Phoenix.
Our options widen to include leaving it a message, or trying to use the Jewel to contact it.
Tristan quizzes Brand about 'the Lion'.
He tells us what little he knows from the time he spent in Chaos. It is - was - the heraldic beast of Chaos. He sketches the silhouette of a very stylised lion which is the icon representing it and shows it to us. It is apparently supposed to have created the Courts. Otherwise, the Chaosites didn't talk about it to him very much.
Tristan asks whether Brand knows the Chaos script we've been trying to translate.
"No," says Brand. "I has looked at it, and can't read it."
Brand has a question of his own. "What the hell is Random doing?" he asks.
People look confused.
"About Beltaine," he clarifies, shortly.
We tell him it's best to talk to Random about this.
"He may have been distracted by recent events," adds Ibrahim.
Brand looks unimpressed.
We discuss the possibility of trapping the Unicorn (or whatever it is). Tristan's Shadows of Destiny once 'trapped' it, in the sense that there was nothing to stop it leaving once it was there, but it did seem to be drawn in. So perhaps we could do that with a more secure shadow.
Damien reminds Brand of his idea for trapping Anurerishkigal using Shadows of Destiny. This entails explaining Anurerishkigal to Phoenix...
Tristan asks Brand to Trump Corwin, so we can ask him for the Jewel, plus himself or Random to help hunt the Mystery Beast.
Brand pulls out a Trump, concentrates upon it, and after a little while, gets through. Tristan joins him in the link.
Corwin is not keen on coming to Chaos, but will pass on the request to Random.
Tristan gives him the Abyss SuperTrump.
While we wait, Brand gives us a tour of his lab. He tells us that he is currently trying to duplicate the Ordnung's containment ability for Abyss-stuff. We mention Phoenix's thought that the destruction of the Ordnung may have somehow caused the Unicorn's strange behaviour - as if it needed the Ordnung somehow to stabilise itself.
Brand contemplates our suggestion of recreating a small Ordnung, just for the Unicorn. [Note that this does rather ignore the original Ordnung's inherent bent for expansion....]
As we discuss this, Corwin Trumps Brand and appears through the link with the Jewel. "Random says you can borrow it for a while," he tells us. However, we aren't to take it anywhere we can't be contacted, in case of need.
Corwin then gives all of us other than Phoenix (who is not yet attuned to it) a lesson in using the Jewel. He mainly shows us how to stop other people trying to draw power from the Jewel. Tristan and Ibrahim act as guinea pigs in this.
Ibrahim tries to draw on the Jewel and Tristan (under Corwin's instruction) tries to stop him. They seem evenly matched. However, when Tristan actually touches the Jewel while Ibrahim does not, he is able to cut the flow of power going to Ibrahim down to almost nothing.
Corwin then lectures Ibrahim, Damien and Tristan on the other uses of the Jewel. Teleportation, playing with time flows, weather control, setting people on fire, and so on...
Brand starts to look glum. He and Phoenix have some more cake.
Phoenix isn't looking forward to returning to the Shadow with the trains of quickly-moving suns, but, unfortunately, that's where the mystery creature's tracks lead us.
Damien gives her a pair of sunglasses.
Corwin returns to Amber, via the Amber SuperTrump, used by Phoenix, who is still surprised when these things work.
He gives her a hug and kiss on the cheek as he disappears through the link, and she is seen to blush.
We say goodbye to Brand and head off with the Jewel.
Phoenix takes her first Shadow-shifting steps, visualising changes in terms of the shape-shifting techniques she would use to restore land at home to fertility - slowly and gradually. This proves effective. As we shift along she finds us some horse-like animals, tied up with saddles attached on a cliff edge which has a huge 'bite' out of it, as if from a recent landslide.
Tristan doesn't wear the Jewel but does keep a close eye on it.
After about a day of travel, we stop to rest. The shadow we have stopped in is a magickal one, so everyone else enlightens Phoenix the on of hanging spells that will survive across shadow, and how to compensate for the magick of Shadow when casting them. She picks up how to do this.
Tristan belatedly also explains to her how to use Pattern Defence.
Everyone else hangs and maintains spells, while Tristan has an early night.
Next day, we travel on. A sun appears in the sky, and is joined by another and another, one by one, in a train which moves faster and faster and more and more frequently across the sky from random directions. The path we are following narrows.
Eventually it narrows to the point where we have to abandon our horses. We continue up a narrow path across a sheer rock face, and arrive at the cave where we found the tracks before. Below us are clouds, and the giant flying jellyfish.
Phoenix detects a fresh 'Unicorn' scent in the cave.
"It's been back," she says. "But I don't think it's here now."
Tristan puts on the Jewel.
We crowd into the cave, which is small - big enough for a Unicorn and no more. There are definitely residues of the recent use of power here. A few marks indicate movement that has worn down the rock of the cave over a long period of time.
Phoenix begins tracking the scent. She discovers that it seems to appear 'over there' and then head off out of the cave and down the track.
Tristan asks if anyone has a scrying spell.
No one has one of these hung at the moment, but Damien says he can cast one from scratch.
Tristan would like an idea of what this thing looks like, so Damien gets to work.
While he does this, Tristan checks the properties of the Shadow. He finds that it is very, very old and as Real as Amber, despite the fact that we shifted into it quite easily. Magic works here, and time flows roughly twenty five times faster than in Amber. He can't detect any obvious signs of a trap, or recent changes to the local Reality.
Over the course of half an hour, Damien casts his spell.
He flicks back through the psychic impressions left in the cave, giving a running description of what he sees as he does so. He senses our recent arrival, then the cave is empty, then a shape backs up into the cave and settles onto the floor. He can't get a close view of it, as if its not radiating much in a psychic fashion, or as if it radiates in different ways. However, it does look vaguely quadruped, with hints of a horn. It appears to rest, then pace, giving an impression of thought. It rests more, stands, and disappears.
He peers farther back... An even vaguer shape, probably the same one, backs in. It seems to concentrate, and becomes more Unicorn-like. It seems to be trying to use power. Then it starts shapeshifting into varied forms, including tigers, jellyfish, beetles... Then it leaves (that is, arrives) again.
Damien tries to go further back, but the psychic impressions have faded to the point of un-detectablility beyond this, and he can see no more.
"The forms it took sounded like other Shadow-shifting creatures to me," Tristan says.
We wonder whether the tigers were merely the first wave...
Tristan suggests three alternative courses of action:
Phoenix suggests that if it were possible, contacting Dworkin and asking him about the Unicorn might help.
We consider this, and decide that there is nothing to be lost by trying. So we attempt to Trump Dworkin...
Oddly, we get through quite quickly. To a huge, green-scaled demonic monster that somehow sucks us through the link and into a room with it. The monster lunges at us.
"Dworkin!" Tristan shouts, and grabs buckets of power from the Jewel.
Phoenix turns into demon form.
The monster seems to be moving very slowly, as if slowed by the Jewel. But this is not Tristan's doing.
The room is of very solid stone construction with only one door out, a solid metal door rather like that of a bank vault, with no handle or hinges on this side.
Ibrahim picks a side of the door and, with difficulty, forces Chrysanthir into the join between door and frame on that side before, with more difficulty, forcing the sword down that side of the door. As he does this the monster lunges for him in slow motion. He side-steps and it crashes into the door, which bursts open as if hit at a speed as much faster than normal as the monster is slower. Fortunately, Ibrahim seems to have cut down the lock side of the door rather than the hinge side.
The monster stumbles outside, where it visibly speeds up to normal.
Beyond it we see a rocky landscape made up of the tumbled remains of incredibly ancient-looking buildings, with jellyfish in the sky and clouds above us. We seem to be further down in the same Shadow as before.
The monster rounds on us. It seems to be very hungry.
"Dworkin," begins Tristan.
It roars at him.
We run out of the room, shifting Shadow away in the hope of finding something it can eat which isn't us. Behind us, the room seems to 'explode' as something magickal collapses.
We round a corner, with the Dworkin monster behind us, and see a white horse-like creature with a horn in its forehead race around a corner in front of us and screech to a stop.
It looks rather annoyed...