"It seemed the most amusing option."
- The Unicorn, on her choice of Random as King
Recorded for Posterity by Iain Walker.
Notes typed up by Jane Winter.
And so we find ourselves in the ruins of an ancient city, a hungry, demonic, Dworkin behind us and an angry Unicorn in front...
Meanwhile, Tamarind has finished helping Beltaine relocate to the other side of the Universe. She is planting an orchard by Corwin's Pattern, extending out from the Tir-Na Nog'th apple tree sapling she planted there previously.
Tamarind says farewell to Beltaine and Chalice and returns to Amber, teleporting to his rooms in the Castle. He cleans up, then wanders out. He notices that the Castle seems to be in a state of alert, and finds no Family members in evidence. So he Trumps Random.
Random, when he takes the call, proves to be in his office. He brings Tamarind through and explains about the recent Big Cat Incursion. He also tells him that we have acquired Eric's daughter. That there may be other waves of creatures en route. And that the rest of us are off investigating the origin of the tigers at the Chaos end of the Universe. He adds that whatever controls the tigers seems able to draw on the Jewel - which is currently in Tristan's possession.
Tamarind suggests he check in on us.
Random agrees. "Make sure he hasn't lost the Jewel," he adds.
Tamarind quickly scans the Trumps, finding that Finndo's is active, but no others.
He then Trumps himself to the edge of the Abyss.
Meanwhile...
"Can you use that thing to teleport us out of their way?" Phoenix asks Tristan, indicating the Jewel.
"I think so," he says, and begins concentrating. We are surrounded by a red glow.
"You!" Damien calls to the Unicorn. "You have a lot of explaining to do!"
"Going now..." says Tristan.
At the last moment, Damien grabs hold of him, and we all teleport out of the way, up onto the highest place we can see, the crumbled stump of a ruined building, perhaps four stories tall, from which we can watch the meeting of Unicorn and Dworkin.
The Unicorn looks up at us; Dworkin charges it.
Tristan begins to summon a reserve of Jewel energy.
From the edge of the Abyss, Tamarind tries to Trump Tristan.
Tristan feels a Trump call coming on, and blocks it.
We watch the scene in the streets below.
"Personally," says Ibrahim. "I'd be happy for Dworkin to eat the Unicorn."
"Thirty Crowns on the big shapeshifting monster," offers Damien, indicating Dworkin.
"I'm prepared to cheat," he adds. "Given that if bad things happen to Dworkin, the Primal Pattern suffers."
"I'd prefer to separate the two of them," says Tristan.
"But we could let them exhaust each other first," suggests Ibrahim.
Elsewhere, Tamarind gives up on Tristan and Trumps Damien instead.
"You have got to see this," says a maniacally-grinning Damien, pulling him through when he takes the call.
We point out the fight below.
Dworkin grows large claws and leaps at the Unicorn, his arms extending as he does so. He slashes it in the side.
"Do we have a vested interest?" enquires Tamarind.
"Thirty Crowns," shrugs Damien.
We explain that we're waiting to see how things develop.
The combatants merge into a ball of shapeshifting fury, distinguishable only by their different colours, the Unicorn white and Dworkin green.
We recap for Tamarind that the Unicorn was leading the tigers through Shadow to attack Amber, and seems to have been holding Dworkin prisoner.
Phoenix thinks the two may just exhaust one another. "But it could take a really long time."
Ibrahim suggests we let them do this, then zap them with the Jewel.
The combatants begin absorbing matter and growing. A wind picks up as they turn air into flesh and muscle.
Tristan is reluctant to attack either with the Jewel.
Tamarind concentrates on a mental SuperTrump of shadow Haven, but the link does not open up. He warns us that he may not be able to get us away in a hurry.
Ibrahim looks around for a physical escape route.
"Can anyone stop them absorbing the air and growing?" asks Tristan. "Maybe with magick?"
Damien indicates the Jewel. "Maybe weather control?" he suggests.
"Um - they could just keep going until they've absorbed everything," says Phoenix. "You know, the air, the rocks, us..."
The Unicorn seems to be gaining the upper hand as the two grow to the size of trees, then large buildings, then small skyscrapers.
"I think I could feed Dworkin Jewel energy," volunteers Tristan.
"Time to cheat," agrees Damien.
Tristan sends enough energy to Dworkin to stabilise the fight again.
Tamarind spies on Dworkin's Trump. He senses mainly rage and hunger coming from the subject.
Phoenix wonders if Tamarind could somehow feed the 'essence' of Dworkin's Trump image to him over the link to try and make him more himself ... or something.
We consider the idea of letting the two combatants merge into one entity.
Tamarind thinks this might be a Good, Stabilising Thing.
Tristan gives Ibrahim the Jewel and goes off to find a Shadow with nothing in it, so we can transport Dworkin and the Unicorn there and thus prevent them growing any more.
Below, Dworkin appears to be losing again, so Ibrahim feeds him more energy from the Jewel.
"Feed him more; see how the Unicorn reacts to losing," suggests Damien.
Ibrahim does this, assisted by Tamarind.
Large chunks of the ruined city have now been flattened.
Ibrahim senses something trying to draw on the Jewel, as does Tamarind. They try to block it.
Phoenix offers to let them borrow her mental strength too, though she isn't attuned.
Even with the help of Phoenix, they are not able to fully stop the drain, but they do reduce it a great deal.
"We could use help," Tamarind points out to Damien.
Damien checks that the ruins we're on top of aren't about to be demolished, then joins in. This helps, and the flow of power to the Unicorn is reduced to a trickle.
Tristan shifts away from the rest of us, looking for a void. Quite quickly he finds himself moving along the edge of an Abyss-like chasm. Ahead, structures become visible which prove to be some kind of abandoned launch facility to service a rocket-ship mounted on a ramp and pointing down into the chasm. Tristan enters the facility and finds five spacesuits in a locker. He puts one on and shifts Shadow onwards, making sure the suits are in perfect working order as he does so.
He carries on along the edge of the chasm. Another drop-off appears on the other side and the land narrows to a ridge, then a knife-edge ridge, then stops. Tristan steps off, and is floating in perfect, black, vacuum. He tries to get to his Trumps to contact the others, but they are inside his spacesuit. Oops.
He manages to shift back to land, then back the launch facility. The facility becomes newer and newer as he approaches, until when he arrives it seems just abandoned. Tristan enters the facility, boards the rocket-ship, chucks out the corpses inside, and launches the ship into the void.
Now he can go back to the empty Shadow, and use a Trump.
This he does, and upon arrival Trumps Tamarind.
Back at the Jewel-a-thon...
"If one of them dies, will it go to this Land of the Dead place?" wonders Phoenix.
We aren't sure, but agree this would probably be bad.
By now it has become clear that the Unicorn doesn't seem to be trying to kill Dworkin, but to contain him. Dworkin, on the other hand, is trying to kill the Unicorn.
"Does anyone mind if I try to re-awaken Dworkin's memories?" asks Tamarind.
We don't object to this.
When he leaves the Jewel-link, the drain of power from it grows.
Damien and Phoenix try to slow it, while Ibrahim feeds more energy to Dworkin to compensate.
Tamarind concentrates on Dworkin's Trump. Very quickly the link opens up and he is surrounded by a purple glow and is beginning to be dragged through the link by an enraged animal psyche...
Phoenix notices the purple glow and hits Tamarind over the head, briefly knocking him out. However, the link to Dworkin is broken.
There wasn't time to relay the results of everyone else's Trumping Dworkin previously...
Tamarind comes round quite quickly, in time to take the Trump call from Tristan.
A brief discussion ends with Tamarind saying he can probably create a Trump Gate that the two combatants can simply roll through into the vacuum Shadow.
Tamarind goes through the link and joins Tristan in The Void to sketch the end-point of the Gate. He's still not sure how easy it will be to roll the two combatants through, though.
"Just open the Gate and let them be sucked through," sighs Tristan.
"Oh, yeah, physics..." muses Tamarind.
Back in the ruins, Damien is now modulating the power the Unicorn is drawing from the Jewel in the most distracting way he can. Ibrahim modulates the flow to Dworkin in an opposite, but less annoying, fashion, so that when the Unicorn is getting less, Dworkin is getting more.
Damien tosses a vial of sobering-up vitamins into Dworkin's shifting form, with no apparent effect. Well, Dworkin is the size of a skyscraper now...
At this point, the Unicorn-blob grows and fires a cloud of metre-long metal spikes at us.
Ibrahim ducks them. Damien leans casually to one side and Phoenix turns into her fire form. Ibrahim is hit and knocked backwards, Damien is grazed and the spikes go through Phoenix causing pain but no damage as her flaming body is swirled about.
The ruined building we were standing on is largely destroyed.
Tamarind and Tristan Trump through to where we all were ... which is now six metres above a pile of rubble. They drop down to our new level.
"The Unicorn has worked out we aren't neutral," Damien informs them.
Tamarind needs to borrow the Jewel to power the Trump Gate. It is handed to him.
By now, the Unicorn has budded off half a dozen 'UFOs' - white lens-shaped things the size of double-decker buses moving through the air without wings or rotors, which head toward us. Damien burns two with a 'Hellfire' spell. A spell from Phoenix - 'Render Combustible' - accelerates the fire, and they burn up like Roman candles.
We head off to avoid being sucked through Tamarind's Trump Gate when it opens, wishing to avoid the fate of the blobs. Ibrahim carries Tamarind, who is concentrating on opening the Trump Gate.
Phoenix casts 'Flesh-to-Stone' at one of the UFOs, and half of it turns to stone. It promptly falls out of the sky.
The three remaining UFOs fire more spikes at us.
Damien and Phoenix join forces to burn another one of them.
Damien's sword and Ibrahim's body protect Tamarind, who is concentrating on his Gate.
Tristan is impaled through the abdomen by one of the spikes which seems at least partly alive, growing barbs, and doing more damage when pulled out than when it went in. Tristan now has a large and badly bleeding abdominal wound.
"Tristan, learn a bloody armour spell," growls Damien, helping him up.
"I know an armour spell," mutters Tristan.
Ibrahim directs all the power he has been drawing from the Jewel at the Unicorn. The Unicorn catches fire.
Phoenix casts a 'Vapourise' spell at one of the two remaining UFO-blobs. Half of it disappears, and its remaining part wobbles in mid-air, but does not fall.
The Unicorn is on fire. The UFOs are not.
The Gate is opening, first just a point in the air, then wider and wider...
Tristan shifts off to a neighbouring Shadow where there are still huge monsters fighting but no UFOs shooting spikes at him. He stops the bleeding from his wound with a spacesuit patch, but this is a temporary measure at best.
Phoenix casts a 'Corrupt Flesh' spell at the remaining intact UFO, as its halved companion fires at us again. The UFO she hits wobbles a bit, then begins to turn itself inside out ... then inside out again. It doesn't fire again, but also does not fall.
The half-intact UFO does fire.
Damien deflects the spikes, cutting them from the air with Dashwood.
Ibrahim, no longer concentrating on the Jewel, 'Lightning Bolts' both UFOs, which wobble.
Phoenix turns the 'half-UFO' to stone, and it falls out of the sky. The remaining one continues to turn itself inside out, a bit like a white lava lamp.
By now, with an immense effort, and drawing heavily on the Jewel, Tamarind has opened the Trump Gate to about a kilometre wide. Air is rushing through it into the void beyond and the Dworkin-thing and Unicorn-thing are slowly sucked through along with it. As they vanish through the gate, Tamarind relinquishes the Jewel, and immediately falls unconscious as the Gate snaps closed. The already-charred Trump sketch he was using to generate the Gate bursts into flame and burns into ashes.
Ibrahim searches him to see if there's a Trump of where we're supposed to get to next.
Phoenix pumps Tamarind full of drugs and sugar to pep him up a bit.
He begins to recover, or at least to come round.
Damien Trumps Tristan, and when Tristan takes the call brings him through and pumps healing magick into him.
That done, Phoenix lays on hands on him and heals the rest of his wound.
Ibrahim has found a sketch of a space-ship on Tamarind and uses it, going through the link while leaving the Jewel with Damien, who pockets it.
Ibrahim jumps to the controls to manoeuvre the spaceship away from the two huge fighting creatures drifting towards it, barely visible in the darkness of the void.
Phoenix persuades Tamarind to relax and stop resisting her attempts to shapeshift him better. She comments on the fact that his left arm is newer than the rest of him.
No one wants to leave the surviving bits of Unicorn alive here.
Damien uses the Jewel to summon a brief storm to lightning bolt the last ('lava-lamp') UFO to bits.
Then he Trumps Ibrahim, and when Ibrahim takes the call we go through the link to join him.
Tristan hits the spotlights and peers out of a porthole with the life-force lens. The two shapes are extending tentacles towards us. But they have stopped growing.
Tristan can see Dworkin has thirty percent of a young Amberite's life-force. The Unicorn has something like one hundred percent of a young Amberite's life-force, but its life-force aura is ... odd. He also notices most of us are down a life-force percentage point or two, due to Jewel-drainage.
Tristan shifts us through shadow and back into the void nine hundred miles away from where we were.
Tamarind and Damien try to stop the Unicorn drawing on the Jewel with partial success.
Tristan modifies the Shadow to glow so that we can see the now-distant fight through the rocket-ship's rear-mounted telescope.
No one is terribly sure what we want to do next, other than not let either combatant escape.
But we are agreed we would like Dworkin to be better, and no longer locked in combat with the Unicorn.
We decide to ask for Brand's help.
Tamarind Trumps him and when he takes the call, explains the situation and brings him through.
We show him the view of the battling blobs.
Brand mentions he's heard that more waves of creatures have followed the tigers.
We tell Brand that we are undecided. If we take the Jewel away, the Unicorn won't be able to draw on it. But equally, we won't be able to send Dworkin any more energy.
"Maybe someone else attuned to the Jewel could help, before we all fall over?" suggests Phoenix.
Brand considers this, then Trumps Corwin, who comes through to us.
Damien hands over the Jewel to Corwin and then has to sit down as a sudden wave of tiredness hits him.
We ask Corwin to try to block the Unicorn and feed Dworkin, as we were trying to do.
Corwin concentrates upon the Jewel for a moment, the tells us that he cannot fully block the Unicorn.
That being so, we use Tamarind's Trump sketch of the ruined city to send both Corwin and the Jewel away, though we ask him to continue blocking as much as he can from there.
"How can we separate them, and how might we restore Dworkin?" Tamarind asks Brand.
Brand thinks we could probably suck Dworkin's mind out of his body for subsequent relocation, but we would need to get closer to see if it's possible to also restore his rationality and/or personality.
So Tristan moves us closer...
From closer range Brand examines things for a while, then tells us that the two combatants are not psychically merged, though they are in psychic combat. They are evenly matched in terms of mental strength, but the Unicorn has more vitality to throw into the fight and so will probably win in the end.
Brand thinks the 'least worst' option is to grab Dworkin's mind out of his body and flee with it to somewhere where we can work.
Tamarind suggests snipping off a bit of Dworkin's body, too, to put the mind in.
"Hmm, now that Dworkin is released, I wonder if the Primal Pattern is accessible again?" muses Tristan.
Damien asks Tristan to add energy weapons and a mechanical grab to the ship.
He does this, and Ibrahim zaps tentacles with the rocket ship's blasters, including the fine ones he notices that the Unicorn was extending in search of matter to absorb.
Damien catches a severed 'Dworkin' tentacle with the mechanical grab and stuffs it into an airlock.
Tristan then moves us rapidly away.
While he does this, the tentacle, still alarmingly active, eats its way out of the airlock and into the cabin.
Damien tries to keep it dancing away from the rest of us with Dashwood, while Phoenix creates a 'sheet' from her blood to wrap round it and keep it contained. Her mind proves to be stronger than its, so this is quite effective.
Brand and Tamarind concentrate on Dworkin's Trump to perform the mind-transfer. Together they seem somewhat stronger than he does, and they begin to slowly break down Dworkin's psychic defences.
However, the Unicorn begins to take advantage of this double attack on Dworkin...
Damien asks Ibrahim to fire on it some more, which he does. The pressure on Dworkin from the Unicorn eases somewhat...
Tristan Trumps Corwin, who comes through and distracts the Unicorn by heating it up with the Jewel. A lot.
Tamarind and Brand get through to Dworkin and rip his mind out of his body, holding it briefly before putting it into the captive tentacle, which stops moving.
Phoenix then lets go of the tentacle.
Ibrahim hits the rocket-ship's 'turbo' button and we race away.
Tristan shifts us away very fast too. He takes us to a Shadow full of nuclear mines that are about to go off, then very quickly on to another Shadow that has an atmosphere.
Vast white tentacles follow us into the first Shadow, but seem to stop after encountering the minefield.
We throw food at the Dworkin thing, which it absorbs.
But it seems that the only way Brand and Tamarind can keep it contained is by keeping it unconscious. This they do. It stops moving.
Brand takes over shifting Shadow, and we move even faster.
Corwin tells us that there was an attempt to draw on the Jewel a few moments ago, but that it has now stopped.
Tristan wants to get closer to Amber and see if we can get to the Primal Pattern.
Brand nods, then does something which involves a bit of Pattern (Tristan senses) and a bit of Trump (Tamarind senses)... There is a sudden discontinuity. We fall out of the sky low to the ground and crash-land on a mountainside under a late afternoon sun, in somewhere that is clearly Amber.
"We should be on Kolvir, near Corwin's tomb," says Brand.
As a matter of fact, we discover that the rocket-ship has landed on Corwin's tomb, demolishing it. Corwin does not seem too bothered by this.
We use the handcart Tristan used to carry spacesuits around in to carry the Dworkin-tentacle, and Brand leads us off round Kolvir, trying to reach the Primal Pattern.
After a short while he admits that he doesn't seem able to get there. "It's still blocked, I think," he says.
Tristan wonders if Corwin could Jewel-teleport us all to the Primal Pattern.
He tries this. Jewel power builds... Then we disappear and find ourselves standing next to a Pattern etched in pink-gold swirls in a depression under a very blue sky and molten-gold sun. We can sense that this place is Very Real, and different from the other Patterns.
We wonder whether to wake Dworkin now. Then we realise we haven't brought him any food. And that we don't have any other way out than the way we got in (or walking the Pattern itself) to fetch any. Doh!
Tamarind is of the opinion that Trumps won't work here.
We take Dworkin into the cave and down the long, narrow tunnel to his old rooms, past the skeleton of a dragon-like creature and through a thick metal door. Inside, there is a sitting room, a small, windowless living place with walls of stone that arch above us and a fireplace in a possibly natural niche in the wall. with a few other rooms leading off it, including a study/studio (a stone-walled room with bookshelves on all four walls, no windows, and a long, low table covered with books and papers beside the door; bizarre curios occupy open spaces on the shelves and odd niches and recesses in the walls, and there is a huge rug on the floor; something resembling a branch of coral shines faintly on a shelf in the room), a bedroom (leading off the study), a bathroom and a kitchenette. There are cupboards full of tinned peaches in the kitchenette.
Phoenix suggests that we fill the bath with peaches, and then put Dworkin into the bath.
Not having any better ideas, we proceed to do this...
Tristan suggests we also all sit and radiate Pattern at him too.
We send Corwin away to check on Amber, tell people there that the Unicorn is the current villain of the piece and to bring some cows. Or pizza.
He nods, then uses the Jewel to transport himself away.
Tamarind monitors Dworkin's Trump, and also searches for any of Dworkin's Trumps which might be lying about. Unfortunately, he finds none.
Damien and Phoenix go outside to keep an eye on the Pattern.
Before long, Corwin appears outside, near the cave entrance, with a couple of cows. He leaves them tied up there, then heads inside, carrying pizza boxes.
Inside, he tells us Random is unhappy at the 'Unicorn is behind all this' news. He also says he's brought pizza for the Dworkin-watchers. Only he forgot to give any to Damien and Phoenix.
"You're a bastard, aren't you Corwin?" says Tamarind through a mouthful of pizza.
Corwin grins, then goes back outside and gives some pizza to Damien and Phoenix.
After an hour and a half, Tamarind senses some activity in Dworkin's Trump.
In the bath, we observe the tentacle grow a mouth and begin to feed. More peaches are tipped into the bath.
Tamarind senses Dworkin becoming less hungry, and less angry.
The tentacle grows as it absorbs peaches. But its appetite seems to slow, and it stops eating after a bathtub-and-a-half. It belches.
Tristan goes outside and fetches Damien and Phoenix.
Then he hangs one of Dworkin's old robes in the bathroom.
"Uh - Dworkin?" tries Tamarind.
The tentacle shifts into a bent old man covered in peach juice. Tristan hands him the robe.
"Traitor!" shouts Dworkin at Tristan.
"Doom!" he shouts at Damien.
"Yes!" at Tamarind.
"You!" at Ibrahim
"Son!" to Corwin
"Actually, no," says Corwin.
"Idiot!" shouts Dworkin at him.
Phoenix offers him a slice of pizza.
"Girl!" he yells. Though this is possibly at Tamarind, we aren't sure.
Brand is meanwhile keeping well out of sight.
We try, without immediate success, to usher Dworkin outside.
"Death!" he shouts, when Damien mentions the Pattern.
We do manage to take him into his study, to his easel.
Tamarind gives him a paintbrush.
Dworkin quickly draws something mad and very abstract on the canvas there - a Trump of some kind. He concentrates on it.
Tristan hurriedly removes it from the easel as it begins to open up, and tries to destroy it, but is unable to tear the canvas in half.
Damien uses Dashwood to slice it in half, just as strange Chaosian angles are beginning to emerge from the canvas out into the air towards Dworkin. They fade as the Trump is sliced in two.
"Aaargh! Doom!" screeches Dworkin.
He points a finger at Damien. "Doom!" he insists. The finger extends until it sticks in Damien's chest, painlessly passing into his flesh.
"Please remove that," requests Damien, taking hold of it with his left hand.
Dworkin retracts his finger - taking Damien's hand, which comes neatly off his wrist, with it.
Dworkin shakes the hand free and it scuttles away, making rude gestures at Damien.
Phoenix catches it and tries to reattach it, but it seems to have a life of its own now. She re-grows Damien a new hand from his own body mass, and suggests he keep the old one 'safe'.
"Pain! Blood! Lyre!" barks Dworkin at the Pattern as the rest of us finally get him outside.
"Maybe you can train it or something..." suggests Phoenix to Damien, back inside.
"Got a tiger to train first," he mutters.
They put the rogue hand in a box, and rejoin everyone else outside.
Meanwhile, Dworkin spots the cows, turns into a big lizard-creature and devours them both.
Brand has disappeared. Funny, you'd almost think he didn't want to meet up with Dworkin.
Tamarind tries to remind Dworkin of his son.
"Ossian!" shouts Dworkin.
"The other son," says Tristan.
"Bastard!" he rants.
"That's the one," nods Tristan.
"Dead!"
"Do you remember your daughter?" hazards Tristan.
"Fish!"
"What was her name?"
"Moins!"
Damien emerges with Phoenix.
"Doom!" Dworkin immediately yells again.
Tristan shows him various Trumps, eliciting the following responses:
As a test, Tristan holds up Sebek.
"Hungry!" responds Dworkin. Sounds about right.
Finally, Tristan shows him Brand's Trump.
Dworkin shrieks and runs back in to his cave.
We follow him.
However, by the time we get to the end of the tunnel, he has shut us out and won't open the bank vault-like door.
So Ibrahim Trumps him.
When the link opens up, Dworkin is still shrieking, mentally as well as physically.
Ibrahim pulls himself through to Dworkin, who does not resist this, and pats him on the shoulder. Then he gives him a hug.
Outside, Tamarind tries to Trump Ibrahim, but can't...
Inside, Dworkin hugs Ibrahim back, still screaming. He is very strong.
Eventually, Ibrahim lets go, and once Dworkin also lets go of him, checks for broken ribs. He finds that some bones were almost, but not quite broken. He will have bruises. That done, he lets the rest of us in.
Meanwhile, Dworkin has returned to his studio and is working on another abstract Trump drawing. As we come in, he begins to concentrate on it.
"Where does that go?" asks Tamarind.
"Me!" shouts Dworkin.
"Oh," realises Tamarind. "It's a safety-deposit box."
Angles and swirls seem to spiral off the completed Trump and into Dworkin, taking the madly abstract image with them as they do so. Finally, the canvas is blank and Dworkin falls over. Slowly, his spine seems to straighten, and he also appears younger. His eyes acquire vertical, cat-like pupils, and his fingernails become narrow and rather like blunt claws.
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Tristan checks him through the life-force lens, and discovers that he has the same life-force as before, but a younger appearance.
"What the hell was that?" demands Corwin.
Phoenix lifts Dworkin onto a couch, and puts a pillow beneath his head.
Tamarind explains that he thinks Dworkin was Trumping his essence, which he'd previously 'stored' in some fashion.
"Like a back-up, you mean?" asks Phoenix.
He nods.
Dworkin wakes up.
When we ask him, he says that the last thing he remembers is something crystalline coming through the Patterns. When there were five Patterns. Ah.
Tamarind tries to explain that he has just updated himself by Trump.
Tristan tries to explain that a lot of time has passed, and we are descended from Dworkin's son Oberon.
Dworkin says he has four children, quadruplets, one for each Pattern. Their names are Oberon, Ossian, Morgana and Moins. Ossian was associated with Tir-Na Nog'th's Pattern.
Tamarind asks him about the Unicorn.
Dworkin says she was an explorer; she showed him the Jewel and together they explored its potential. They found they could create a New Order.
They opened Gates to the Universe of Order, and 'crystallised out' Shadow. Chaos was not pleased. The Unicorn helped keep Chaos at bay while Dworkin drew the Pattern.
They then remained in Amber a while, and had the children. Then she left to continue exploring, and Dworkin remained in Amber to study.
Tamarind tells him what the Unicorn has been up to recently.
"She did have a temper," allows Dworkin. "And she didn't like not getting her own way." It appears the Unicorn did actually speak to him, and so can communicate if it chooses.
"Chaos is gone, dead," we tell him.
He does not seem too bothered by this, and tells us that in principle we should be able to reason with the Unicorn. He isn't sure why she would be attacking Amber.
Tamarind notes that only Dworkin's Trump seems to work here.
"Things have changed here - the Pattern too," says Dworkin.
"Could you come and go from here yourself?" Damien asks him.
He thinks it would be hard, though easier with the Jewel.
We are able to ascertain that 'this' Dworkin remembers Finndo, Osric and Benedict, but not Sandrine and Delwin.
Tristan theorises that the previous conflict with the Ordnung lasted a long time, and that Dworkin 'backed himself up' before Sandrine and Delwin came on the scene.
He then asks Dworkin about Anurerishkigal and Su-Chan of the Mera.
"A mythical monster back in Chaos, and some leader of an old race of demons, respectively," says Dworkin.
We convince Dworkin that walking the Pattern might restore his memories of the events that occurred since his back-up. But first we warn him of an unpleasant and potentially distracting memory or two that might crop up en route. Such as damage to the Primal Pattern.
And we warn him that his current memories of Oberon as a dutiful son may not stand up to a Pattern walk.
He decides to do it anyway.
We go outside.
Ibrahim checks that Dworkin's Trump still works. It does.
And Dworkin sets off around the Pattern....
As he goes, Damien spots Brand hiding behind some boulders and suggests Corwin take him away before Dworkin gets his memories back.
Corwin does this, he and Brand vanishing in a flash of Jewel energy, then he returns alone in the same fashion.
"And ends up the way we found him," mutters Damien as Dworkin walks, glass firmly half empty.
"If that happens, Dworkin will probably just update himself again, then we can tell him not to walk the Pattern again," Tristan points out.
Dworkin walks the Pattern terribly fast, shifting shape as he goes, sometimes a hunchback, sometimes not. When he reaches the centre, he looks just as he did when he began.
He teleports over to us.
"Interesting," he comments. "I do remember more now." But apparently it's different. Oberon changed a lot of things - the Pattern is no longer a Gate to the other Universe, and Dworkin himself is no longer linked to it.
He recalls that he was walking in Chaos after consigning Oberon's body to the Abyss, when he was attacked. He was mad at the time, so it's all hazy. That was how he came to be locked up.
He thinks the Unicorn may be ... bored.
We are unimpressed by this news, though it is possible that Damien secretly sympathises.
We tell Dworkin how we come to know about the other Universe, which leads on to a description of the Land of the Dead, via mention of Brand's magickal spikes.
Tristan has a theory. The Ordnung wanted to store up all the Chaos in Shadow on that side, and spit it into the Abyss, so the two Universes would be pure Order and Chaos once more. Perhaps the Unicorn approved - or at least was finding it diverting...
We question Dworkin about the 'changed' Primal Pattern, worried that if it is now linked to Oberon it may vanish when he is finally drained of life-force in the Land of the Dead.
Dworkin considers this, then tells us that he thinks this won't happen.
He asks Corwin to take us out into Shadow with the Jewel.
"But don't do any more with it, or you'll die," he adds.
Corwin teleports us all to a road beside an inn called the 'King's Head'.
Dworkin quickly 'finds' his Trumps deck under a bush.
Tamarind finds his armour and puts it on.
Tristan shifts Shadow to go and buy some armour.
Phoenix meanwhile uses her first attempt at probability manipulation to find money, then goes into the pub and brings us out some beer.
Dworkin pulls out a Trump of the Unicorn.
"Where does she get her power?" Tamarind wants to know.
"She is innately enormously powerful," Dworkin replies. "But she can also can draw from the Jewel."
He says he will ask her to come through if we are willing to agree to a truce.
We agree to this, so he begins trying to Trump the Unicorn.
He gets through, and after a while, the Unicorn emerges through a purple Trump rainbow.
"Hello; I'm Tristan," Tristan greets her. "I know," she replies.
"Anyway, as we were saying..." says Damien.
"...what's your problem?" finishes Phoenix.
"Perhaps you could tell us what the problem is?" suggests Tristan in a more diplomatic tone. "Do you object to anything we have done, for example?"
"Yes," replies the Unicorn. A conversation begins.
Eventually, it turns out that she is annoyed because we destroyed the Ordnung before she could study - or perhaps play with - it properly.
When asked, she says she made Dworkin mad because he was easier to restrain that way. She sounds a very little regretful about this.
And she gave the Jewel to Random "Because it would be the most interesting and amusing choice."
"He has," she allows. "Done better than I expected."
She was behind the Dragon attack on Amber. She killed Anurerishkigal a very long time ago because it had something she wanted - demons it had bred for food, and which she thought would make interesting toys. She turned them into the Lords of Chaos, and was the Lion of Chaos to them. For the dull, dull culture of Chaos she accepts no responsibility.
Ibrahim Trumps Random to join the conversation.
"We're currently partying with the Unicorn," he tells Random, when he gets through.
"What???!!!" is Random's response.
Random quickly comes through to join us.
We run through what the Unicorn has told us already.
Random takes Damien's proffered brandy flask and drinks deeply.
"It is pleasing when a piece does better than expected - when a pawn turns into a king," The Unicorn admits.
"Oh, spare us the clichés," mutters Phoenix.
Getting any kind of agreement is clearly going to take a while. From what she has said, the Unicorn is bored and, it becomes clear, only interested in 'the big things'. Such as Corwin creating a new Pattern, our freeing of Dworkin or the toppling of Chaos.
We suggest various alternatives to its playing with our lives. These include hibernation, so that things would be different and new when she awoke, or pulling the same trick Dworkin did and storing away lots of its memories so as to approach things 'fresh'.
We also try to explain the interest and attraction (and importance) of the little details. The Unicorn seems only to see the big picture, or fundamental levels, never anything in-between.
And yet, we insist, it is at that level that the limitless diversity of Shadow lies.
Phoenix points out that she spent hundreds of years trying to make her home Shadow even a tiny little bit better than it was, then Tristan came along and fixed things totally, on a grand scale, in a couple of hours. "And yet he'll never know or love that place like I do, and it will never belong to him in the same way."
Tristan agrees. He doesn't feel any particular connection to Requiem, even though he made the most fundamental changes there. He looks a little thoughtful at this.
"Perhaps you should try seeing the Universe through another's perceptions," suggests Tamarind.
After some further discussion along these lines, we do seem to get through to her. The Unicorn seems intrigued by this possibility.
"I could become human, see things from the perspective of a piece on the board ... what a challenge!" she says.
She turns into human form, so she can try drinking beer. She is female, white-haired and beautiful. She looks a bit like Dworkin's current form, with the same cat-like eyes and vaguely claw-like narrow fingernails.
Tamarind asks her about Anurerishkigal, and how she defeated it.
"I defeated it in magickal and physical combat over several years," she replies. "It's quite adaptable," she warns.
Now she says she will be off - to blank her memories and start over as a human. She won't apologise, but does thank us for what we have shown her.
"My blessings go with you," she says.
We feel this does ... something ... to us. A Blood Blessing?
"New lives!" we toast with the remaining beer.
"Maybe in a thousand years, you'll have to come back and remind us what it's like to be human," murmurs Phoenix to the Unicorn.
Random is still looking a little fed up.
The Unicorn assures him that he was definitely a lot better at being King than she expected.
He is only partially mollified by this.
We get ready to return to Amber. The Unicorn decides she'll come too, for a while.
Phoenix suggests we call her 'Miranda' rather than 'Unicorn' during her visit. This is probably for the best...
"It will be interesting to walk openly through Amber's halls," says 'Miranda'.
And via a Trump, we arrive in the Amber Arrival Courtyard.
Once we are out of the Arrival Courtyard, Tristan returns the Jewel to Random.
Dworkin and 'Miranda' wander off.
Tristan Trumps Brand, who, when he takes the call, turns out to be in his rooms in the Castle. Tristan tells him briefly that Dworkin is himself again and the Unicorn has returned here with us.
Brand appears ... surprised ... by this news. To say the least.
Ibrahim goes and checks in on his Situation Room. He learns that there is still some post-tiger-invasion clearing up going on. Also, there has been fighting in Shadows Collenso and Latenz, which were invaded by giant beetles and flying jellyfish respectively. However, the influx of creatures has now slowed.
Margot is in Collenso and Altair in Latenz, keeping things under control.
The two newly-attacked Shadows are both on the outskirts of the Golden Circle. Only a few creatures got past the defenders there, but an alert has been issued for people across the Golden Circle to keep a watch out for them in all Golden Circle Shadows.
Ibrahim's dead tiger has been delivered to shadow Bannen and put into magical stasis there to await his later analysis.
Oh. And a rocket-ship is reported to have crash-landed on Corwin's tomb.
Ibrahim gives some orders regarding the situation, then goes to take a bath.
Everyone else goes to dinner.
About halfway through the meal, Flora joins us. We pass on the essentials of recent development:
Flora covers her reactions well. Then she excuses herself and leaves.
Peels of silvery laughter echo back through the door.
Tristan warns that the 'Random's reign a cosmic joke' revelation should probably not be widely circulated. Fair point...
Esmée arrives and asks what Flora was so amused about.
So we tell her.
Tristan sighs.
Damien shows Esmée his severed hand, which tries to escape. He announces the vague intention of training it and giving it to Sebek as a pet. "He's always wanted one," he says.
Tamarind draws a Trump sketch of the hand on a napkin.
"So - what shall we do tomorrow?" wonders Phoenix brightly.
We recommend a relaxing holiday.
Tamarind offers to show her some Trump tricks.
In return, she offers to show him some Shapeshifting, such as how to heal yourself.
Esmée wants to discuss shapeshifting with her new cousin, and they talk shop for a while. It's clear that Phoenix is the more expert of the two in this field, but her range of experience is narrower.
Phoenix comments that no one in Amber seems to have considered the medical implications of shapeshifting.
Esmée agrees. "Most of us seem to see magick as the main healing tool," she comments.
Tristan and Damien suggest that Oberon probably discouraged his children from learning the power to prevent them from becoming curious about their origins in Chaos and to maintain the edge of being the only person in Amber with shapeshifting abilities.
Damien adds that the main reason shapeshift healing hasn't been tried on Vialle is that the people proficient in the power haven't been around for long enough. Or, in the case of Finndo, couldn't admit to the power, so could neither volunteer or be asked.
We agree there would be no harm in Phoenix offering to try and help Vialle regain her sight.
She suggests that she first show Esmée some healing techniques. As a newcomer, she expects people would be (quite reasonably) reluctant to trust her with something like this, and happier if Esmée were involved.
"What do the rest of us do, when not saving the world?" she then asks.
We explain our various professions, activities, hobbies, duties, and so on.
Esmée runs down a list of other Family members, and what they do with their time.
Phoenix asks Tristan for a favour. There is a small part of Requiem that she would very much like protected in some way so that people 'just don't go there'. After some prompting from Esmée, she explains that her 'partner' ("I suppose you would say 'husband'"), Delaney, is buried in this particular location. Until Tristan's repair job it was rendered totally inaccessible to anyone by Phoenix, but that isn't necessarily going to be true anymore. She doesn't like the idea of the recovering civilisation building over it, or of it becoming some kind of tourist attraction.
Then, for some reason, we suggest showing Phoenix Tir-Na Nog'th, which is currently in the sky.
Esmée encourages this.
Tristan's urgings that Tir-Na Nog'th is really, really dangerous and might be too upsetting seem to have the opposite of the desired effect on Phoenix, who says she would like to see it.
Damien gives the hand to Esmée, and asks her to take it personally to Childers and tell him to put it in a metal box.
Tamarind offers the nutrient formula that he used to feed his 'spare parts' on.
Esmée instead sends the box and formula off with a servant. She intends to come to Kolvir and hold our Trumps for us.
Tamarind makes a Trump sketch of Phoenix and with her permission gives the sketch to Esmée.
Then we Trump to the top of Kolvir, where the guards at the guard post there tense as we appear, then greet us.
Tamarind also sketches the Arrival Courtyard in Amber and gives it to Phoenix.
We step from the top of Kolvir onto the translucent steps up to Tir-Na Nog'th, and are carried up to the city in the sky far faster than our walking pace would normally imply. We quickly pass under a silvery archway, through the gates of the city and into the city.
On a street leading off a plaza we are passing through, we see a riot in progress. Smoke and flames are rising from Amber Castle, visible behind the mob. The rioters, with Unicorn banners, are seen to be (silently) chanting. "Uni-corn! Uni-corn! No Royal Blasphemy!" they seem to be shouting. The mob charges into the Castle, apparently unopposed by the guards.
We wander in to see what happens.
Bodies are piled everywhere. The Castle is burning. The heads of all of us apart from Phoenix, and of the rest of the Family are mounted on spikes by the Main Gate.
Largely unimpressed, we leave to go look for a vision of Ossian.
We pass a vision of Tristan, arm in arm with Isabel. Both look younger, and happy. The real Tristan averts his gaze and hurries on.
We pass Nitocris, arm in arm with Bleys and looking happier than she ever did with Damien. Damien glances at it, shrugs, and moves on.
We spot Eric, with a younger Ibrahim, perhaps fourteen years old. Eric seems to be taking his son into a pub/brothel. They too look very happy.
Tristan surreptitiously wipes his eyes.
A Royal Coach rolls past. Inside it we see Deirdre wearing a crown, and Tamarind wearing a royal circlet. She looks cold and arrogant, he petulant.
We are now approaching the Castle again, but it now looks delicate and gossamer-like, as if built from moonlight and cobwebs.
We pass into a grassy square, where Phoenix and Delaney, both dressed as Amber nobility, stand back to back in preparation for a duel. Both hold hand crossbows. Eric and Ibrahim stand watching next to a nearby coach. An unconscious Tristan lies on the cobbles close to them, presumably having tried to enforce the anti-duelling edicts. Phoenix and Delaney pace, turn and fire. Each shoots the other in the heart and they fall to the ground.
We walk on. A rather white Phoenix confirms that this was Delaney. "As a matter of fact, the first time we met we did try to kill each other," she adds, as expressionlessly as possible.
As we head up towards the Castle, we can see lights in Tir-Na Nog'th's Arden. There is a bright flash, and the trees are swept aside and turned to dust by a silent blast-wave.
Phoenix goes from being pale to completely white.
As we get to the Castle, aircraft seem to pass overhead. The Gates swing wide and we enter the courtyard, going through to the throne room.
Outside a window, we can see the Black Road with creatures moving on it. There is an unnatural darkness to the sky, but we can see winged things flying over the City below. The next window shows only sky.
The doors to the throne room seem paper-thin, gossamer-like. When we enter, the room itself seems insubstantial. Gothic arches and columns are visible to each side. A thirty foot long bed stands on the dais where the throne should be. In it is a thirty foot-tall, thin, beardless man with a distinct resemblance to Oberon, sleeping peacefully, his long white hair spread out on the pillow. Above him is a huge stained-glass window showing an hourglass about half spent. Two normal-sized ravens sit on the bedposts, looking directly at us in that way that Tir-Na Nog'th visions tend not to.
"Ossian?" tries Tamarind. He peers at the ravens, then does a sketch of one and tries it. It's like trying to Trump to a Tir-Na Nog'th vision - not as though there's nothing there, but as though it's too far away.
The raven shakes its head at him.
Tristan climbs up onto the bed to peer at Ossian more closely. He looks at him through the life-force lens and finds that both the ravens and the figure in the bed have about fifty percent of a young Amberite's life-force.
Tamarind tries to climb up to a raven, but as he approaches it flaps off to another bedpost.
From his new vantage point, Tamarind instead makes a sketch of the figure in the bed.
Out of a window, Damien sees a desert at night, with pyramids. It looks like Saqqara in Egypt, but there is a city where the necropolis itself should be, with lights in it.
Tristan senses a Primal Pattern imprint from the sleeping man, who is breathing as if in a very deep sleep. Tristan wonders whether radiating Pattern at him might wake him up.
Damien thinks waking him might actually be bad.
The ravens are nodding before he even finishes his sentence (with "So what are we waiting for?").
Tamarind mentions that he has seen these ravens before - in the dream he and Beltaine shared, when they replayed his rescue of her from the Tir-Na Nog'th-sphere.
Through a sort of conversation with the ravens, we confirm that this is Ossian, the King of Tir-Na Nog'th. It is unclear whether he chose to sleep, whether he does dream, and whether Tir-Na Nog'th itself is his dream.
We leave.
"Thank you for having us," says Damien politely. He peers out of the window again. Now Saqqara has been blown up, and crater-ful of Nyarlathotep is left in its place.
We wander out, and on, back out through the Castle.
We come across a frightened-looking Isabel being chased by Tristan, who looks ... like not a nice person. They are lost to sight around a corner.
Phoenix passes a room that resembles one at her first training centre, in Sanctuary. Inside, she sees herself facing a much older Delaney. She recognises this as the time they said goodbye, when Delaney realised he was dying of old age and sent her away. The two salute one another, then embrace tightly, with a few tears on each side. The vision dims. It isn't exactly as she recalls the event, but very close...
Tamarind recognises a corridor from the Castle where he grew up. He senses something Bad down there, though, but cannot see anything out of the ordinary. The rest of us sense nothing, but don't mind going with him. In a living-room, we find Deirdre and Corwin having a flaming (if silent) row, with a six-year-old Tamarind clinging to Deirdre's skirts. Corwin draws Greyswandir. Tristan senses the sword is a bit Real, but the life-force lens shows no life-force at all in the vision.
Corwin runs Deirdre through, and she falls. Little Tamarind kneels beside her and seems to be trying to wake her up. Corwin snatches him up and strides out - through us - carrying him.
"Mind the sword," says Tristan.
"It's a vision," growls Damien.
We head away. Out of yet another window, Phoenix catches a glimpse of herself and Delaney in Sanctuary, both looking much younger, and recognises the day they first realised the settlement was going to survive.
By now, the night has progressed on a good deal, so we head for the stairs down to Kolvir.
Out of another window Ibrahim sees sandships drifting across the desert sands of Keiri under its three moons.
We reach the stairs and head down, again moving faster than our walking pace would imply.
"And on some evenings you can wander for hours and never see a single ghost," remarks Damien conversationally to Phoenix.
She nods, tight-lipped.
"Depends who you're with," notes Tamarind.
We reach the bottom of the steps and greet Esmée.
"We met Oberon's brother, who's apparently dreaming the entire place," Damien announces blithely.
"Huh?" goes Esmée, though in a slightly more graceful way than that.
She Trumps us all back to Amber, where we retire for the night.
Apart from Tamarind, who crawls off to Haven, utterly exhausted. He does offer hospitality to the similarly-shattered Damien, but he declines, pleading a rogue appendage to keep an eye on. In Haven, Tamarind sleeps for three days straight.
Next morning, people wake refreshed. Sort of.
Childers has followed instructions, and Damien's hand is being looked after.
Tristan, en route to breakfast, asks if Dworkin and 'Miranda' are still in the Castle. A servant tells him that apparently they are at breakfast.
Damien checks on his hand.
It isn't eating, but seems healthy enough in its new box, which has air-holes, a dropper of nutrient solution, and a barred lid under the solid one. The hand makes rude gestures at Damien when he opens the lid to check on him.
Damien then Trumps Sebek.
When he gets through, Sebek tells him that he wants marshmallows, sheep, dormice, beer and to go out.
Damien tells him he has to draw up a shortlist of birthday presents first.
Sebek says he'll write really small.
Ibrahim Trumps Margot, who when she takes the call proves to be in the gondola of an airship in shadow Collenso, on patrol for giant beetles. "A few more occasionally wander in," she says. "So we'll stay here for a while."
Ibrahim wonders if he might take one away for study.
Margot is dubious - the things are about two hundred yards long, after all - but says she will see what she can do.
Ibrahim then checks into his office. He makes arrangements for work to begin on Damien's fortress chain, and begins an interim report on lessons to be learned from the battle with the tigers.
He thus arrives at breakfast late.
In shadow Haven, Tamarind wakes, checks up on his Shadow, and has a restorative purple energy drink.
He then Trumps to Amber, taking his lute, and heads for the breakfast room.
Damien, Tamarind and Tristan all arrive for breakfast at about the same time. Flora, Phoenix, Esmée, Corwin, Merlin, Deirdre, Dworkin and Miranda are all there already.
Tristan tells Dworkin about our trip to Tir-Na Nog'th and how we found Ossian.
"What happened to him?" he wants to know.
Dworkin says he went up to Tir-Na Nog'th one day not long after the founding of Amber and fell asleep. He hasn't woken up since.
"Who was ... is ... he?" asks Deirdre.
Tristan mentions that Oberon had siblings, Ossian, Morgana and Moins.
"Llewella's mother?" she asks, meaning Moins.
"Yes - eek!" says Tristan, figuring it out.
Dworkin doesn't know what happened to Moins. He seems to have lost quite a few of his Trumps. He adds that Ossian was a dreamy child who slept more and more as he grew older.
"What was Tir-Na Nog'th like beforehand?" asks Damien. "Since the Ravens said Ossian was dreaming the place?"
Dworkin says it was an uninhabited town, that came and went with the moon but was otherwise fixed or solid. There were no ghosts there before Ossian took up residence.
Tristan asks about the hourglass in the window.
Dworkin says it was largely full when he last saw it, tens of thousands of years ago.
Tristan seems relieved that Ossian isn't scheduled to wake up yet.
Just as Ibrahim arrives, Tamarind asks how the battles are going.
Ibrahim updates us. Things are in hand, but stragglers are still turning up from time to time and must be dealt with.
Tristan thinks he should go and try to keep the creatures out.
Tamarind suggests he just create a Shadow to draw them in and away from the Golden Circle.
There is some discussion of whether any of the creatures could be tamed. They don't seem terribly bright, though.
Phoenix and Esmée excuse themselves and leave.
We also discuss Klerothos the Red.
No one is enthused by Dworkin's suggestion that he might in principle be able to attune to the Jewel.
Talk turns to Damien's 'pet' hand.
Dworkin says it's an independent creature now.
"Could it walk the Pattern?" asks Tamarind.
Dworkin isn't sure why not, but doesn't necessarily recommend this.
Tamarind wonders whether, if the hand's shapeshifting potential were activated, it could grow into a new individual who might be a problem.
"Why do you always see things as threats?" mutters Tristan.
Tamarind denies that this is the case.
A servant enters, and politely summons Damien, Tristan, Tamarind and Ibrahim to go and see Random.
Remembering something strange he saw in the void shadow, as he leaves, Tristan peers at people through the life-force lens. He finds that Miranda's life-force looks different to any he has seen before, structured in some way. She seems to be absorbing life-force from somewhere as well as shedding it as everyone does.
"Can I help you?" she asks, noticing his scrutiny.
"Later, perhaps," says Tristan.
"I'll come and look for you, " she promises.
We go see Random, who is in the Royal apartments with Vialle. He tells us that the invading creatures seem to be under control.
This being the case, he would like to get on with meeting Osric and see about drawing the Girasolians a Pattern.
Ibrahim notes that we have a real expert on Pattern-drawing now.
Random thanks us (and the absent Phoenix) for finding Dworkin and redirecting the Unicorn's attention to more productive matters.
He would like us to act as envoys to arrange his meeting with Osric, and suggests Castle Rosa as a suitable location.
We tell Random the full tale told to us by the Unicorn, including how it also masqueraded as the Lion of Chaos.
Tamarind wonders if Llewella's view of the Unicorn might change if she were to meet her.
We think this is quite likely.
Tristan asks Vialle about Moins.
Vialle says she was Queen of Rebma before Vialle was born. She disappeared a few hundred years ago.
Random notes that this was about the same time as Oberon disappeared.
Tristan realises Moins was still on the throne of Rebma when he was in Amber.
When asked, Vialle says Moire isn't of Amberite blood as far as she is aware. "Llewella was Moins' only child, I think," she says.
"How did Moire inherit the throne?" asks Tristan.
"I don't know," says Vialle.
Strange.
That conversation over, Random produces an envelope addressed to King Osric and Queen Sandrine of Girasol. He hands it to Tristan.
We begin to leave.
"Can you imagine how Bleys would have reacted if the Unicorn had chosen him?" Damien asks Random on the way out.
Random seems to find the thought cheering: "Thank you, Damien," he replies.
Tristan wants to quickly seal off the trails that the beetles and jellyfish are using before we set out for Girasol. Fair point.
Tamarind and Damien decide to go with him.
Ibrahim intends to talk to Julian first.
Tristan Trumps Margot and when she takes the call we join her in the airship gondola floating above shadow Collenso.
Below us is a flat plain under a lavender sky dotted with two hundred yard-long beetle corpses.
"I could seal off Shadow Holtom so that tigers couldn't get in anymore," Tristan says. "I'm going to try the same thing here." He begins to concentrate.
Tamarind and Damien watch him, both of them having an interest in learning more about the Pattern.
While this is going on, a new beetle turns up.
Margot uses a magic communications ring to summon more airships.
Tamarind Trump sketches the beetle, Trumps it and takes over its tiny mind, sending it to sleep slowly, so that it gently coasts down to the ground.
Margot is happy with this. "Ibrahim wanted one alive," she tells us.
The beetle sleeps.
Margot sends people to restrain it.
Meanwhile, Ibrahim Trumps Julian and when Julian takes the call, goes through to tell him what's new. He omits the 'Random Cosmic Joke' element when passing on this information.
Julian is disconcerted to learn that the Unicorn - which he had always revered - has turned out to be a jaded troublemaker. He will need to think more about this.
Ibrahim says he is also here to visit the wounded.
Julian tells him all is in hand, and passes on his thanks to Phoenix. "She saved many who seemed beyond hope," he says. He adds that no new tigers have turned up and the remnants are being hunted down. "I may keep a few," he adds.
Julian takes Ibrahim off to the hospital tents.
In Shadow Collenso, Damien studies Tristan. He hasn't a clue what he's doing. At least, he knows what, just not how.
It takes an hour for Tristan to bar Collenso to further incursions.
Then he Trumps Altair, who turns out to be on the HMS Porcupine in shadow Latenz.
He asks if she would like Latenz barred to the jellyfish.
She most certainly would.
So Tristan, Damien and Tamarind go through to Latenz and to her.
The greenish-blue sea under a dusty orange sky is full of mangled blobby organic-looking islands - the floating remains of giant flying shadow-shifting jellyfish.
Tristan sits down and bars this Shadow too.
While he does this, Damien hangs a 'Hellfire' spell.
Meanwhile, in shadow Holtom, Ibrahim is Trumped. When he takes the call it proves to be Margot.
She tells him that Tamarind has got him a live beetle.
His work in Holtom done, Ibrahim joins her in Collenso.
By now the sleeping beetle has been pinned by nets, with worried-looking troops standing nearby, guarding it.
"Have you ever read a shadow Earth author named Swift?" asks Ibrahim, surveying the scene.
"I have," nods Margot. "Gulliver's Travels, isn't it?"
Ibrahim casts a 'Stone Binding' spell from scratch, to keep the beetle quiescent. He also discusses some ideas for using the beetles for troop transport and the like with Margot.
In Shadow Latenz, Tristan finishes his adjustments to the local barriers.
Then he Trumps Ibrahim, who says goodbye to Margot, then comes through and joins us.
Tamarind then Trumps us all to the centre of Corwin's Pattern, and we teleport through to the centre on the far side. Castle Moebius is looking more advanced and a tent city has grown up around the Pattern. Beltaine's large and luxurious tent and her Tir-Na Nog'th apple tree orchard are visible to one side.
Damien suggests saying hello before heading on, so we teleport over there.
Beltaine and Chalice emerge. Chalice is holding a large maths textbook.
When asked how she is, Beltaine says she's busy here - lots to do, getting settled in. She also has some 'thoughts', currently in their early stages.
We tell her what we're doing here.
She approves of the meeting, but says she won't be there.
Tamarind decides to stay and bring her up to date on events. He gives Tristan a SuperTrump of Girasol and another of above the centre of Corwin's Pattern, then realises that his sketch of the Girasol gardens has lost its power and he needs to draw it again. This he does, taking half an hour.
While Tamarind draws, Damien tells Beltaine and Chalice about his hand.
Then the new SuperTrump is ready, so we say goodbye and Trump through to the gardens by Castle Girasol.
Guards challenge us as we approach the castle gates. We identify ourselves and are admitted. We ask for an audience with Osric and Sandrine.
We are shown into the throne room, where Osric and Sandrine greet us.
"I bear a letter from King Random," announces Tristan, handing it over.
"We're here to make sure he didn't lose it," adds Damien, wondering about his use of first person singular.
Tristan looks slightly pained.
Osric and Sandrine read the letter, then say the arrangements are acceptable, although they will bring their own security. Or rather, find some of their own on the other side since bringing non-Family members through the Pattern is problematic to say the least.
Osric says he will attend, while Sandrine stays in Girasol. Just in case. Osric will bring Thomas with him instead.
Damien mentions that we have a new shapeshifter in the Family who might be able to help Nicholas.
"Sorry Ibrahim," he adds. "But it was going to come up sooner or later, and Phoenix will be deluged with requests anyway."
Ibrahim nods.
We begin telling Osric and Sandrine about the Unicorn as jaded traveller hungry for experience.
Ibrahim and Tristan suspect the release of gods in neighbouring Shadow here was the Unicorn's work, as part of the reproof for destroying the Ordnung.
We also mention Oberon's siblings.
It turns out that they knew of Morgana and Moins, but not Ossian. They do recall Moins, but not any Trumps of her existing. They certainly don't have any.
Osric says he and Thomas will travel to Corwin's Pattern with us. If we go through to pass on their requests to King Random, they will wait for us.
We agree to this, so Osric Trumps Thomas and after he has come through we use a SuperTrump of Osric's to return to beside Corwin's Pattern. Tamarind, Beltaine and Chalice are not in evidence.
Tristan uses Tamarind's Trump to go to the centre of the Pattern, we go through, and Damien teleports to Amber, just outside the Royal apartments, to put Osric's terms to Random. Tristan and Ibrahim remain in the centre of Corwin's Pattern, on the Amber side.
Random suggests that Osric can collect a bodyguard equivalent to the garrison of Castle Rosa (several thousand troops), as long as most of them wait outside Rosa Town itself, and he recommends an honour guard of a dozen guards each.
He goes to get the Jewel, then he and Damien return to Castle Rosa using a SuperTrump of Random's. They arrive in the Castle Rosa Arrival Courtyard, are admitted, and head to the Pattern.
In the middle of Corwin's Pattern, Tristan is tossing coins. He discovers that his Pattern manipulation skills have no effect whatsoever in the centre of a Pattern.
At this point Damien and Random enter the Pattern Courtyard.
Random Trumps Tristan, and Ibrahim and Damien join the link from their respective sides.
Random repeats his suggestions, and says he will ask Corwin to join him too.
Ibrahim returns to the Girasol side to pass this news on to Osric.
Osric and Thomas are visible beside the Pattern, sitting around with Tamarind, Beltaine and Chalice.
Like Random, Ibrahim prefers not to shout across the Pattern, so he instead Trumps Tamarind.
Tamarind takes the call and, on request, brings Osric into the link.
The situation is explained, and Osric accepts Random's amended terms.
He and Thomas and Tamarind come through to Ibrahim, and thence to Castle Rosa.
On the other side, Tristan can sense them coming, a sensation he hasn't experienced before, like a gate opening in the Pattern itself. He steps to one side. To his senses, the 'gate' closes again as soon as the others arrive. He wonders if it would be possible to keep it open ... but has no time to experiment at present.
Tristan warns Osric about the Shadow traps around Castle Rosa before Osric goes off to collect security forces.
Osric nods, and he and Thomas teleport away. They appear far up in the distant sky, fall, and fade from vision as they (we assume) shadow shift away.
Damien asks Random if he should go and prepare the Castle Rosa guards for the diplomatic invasion.
"You should," nods Random.
Tristan and Ibrahim remain in the centre of the Pattern.
Tristan asks for a pack of cards.
Random has one on him and it is passed through the Trump link.
The two play cards while they wait. Ibrahim wins, in games of both skill and chance.
Tamarind helps Random collect Corwin and Lord Rein via the Trumps, and with this done the three go inside Castle Rosa.
Damien also leaves the Pattern Courtyard. He tells the officers of the Watch what to expect, and that they are not to initiate hostilities with the expected approaching army.
They remember Thomas, so they're cool with this.
Then Damien climbs a tower and watches for Osric's army.
After a while a force of several thousand troops appears from behind one of the large rose thickets dotting the plain around Rosa Town.
Damien goes down from the tower and rides out to meet them. As he goes, he sees that the former inhabitants and evacuees of Rosa town are still settling back in.
As he approaches, Damien sees that most of Osric's troops seem to be cat-people, riding cat-horses. Their tabards bear the image of a honeysuckle flower.
Riding alongside Osric, Damien points out three possible locations for the deployment of Osric' guard:
The cat army takes up its defensive position in the third, 'compromise', location.
Osric, Thomas and Damien, accompanied by twelve cat-person guards, march into Rosa Town.
The town-dwellers stop their settling back in to stare. Thomas is cheered by those who recognise him.
In the Castle, stable-hands take charge of the cat-horses, and the Captain of the Guards leads Damien, Osric and Thomas inside.
A conference room has been set up in the castle keep, with a large conference table and lots of space. The windows open onto a balcony looking out over the castle's rose gardens.
As the Captain leads Damien in, he sees that Random and Corwin are there with twelve Castle Rosa guards. The two sets of honour guards line up at opposite sides of the room. Random thanks Damien in a 'you can bugger off now' kind of way.
Damien leaves Corwin to make the introductions and does indeed bugger off, to find the rest of us.
Outside, He finds Tristan and Ibrahim still playing cards in the middle of the Pattern.
Tristan tells us that the Unicorn absorbs life-force as well as losing it, so it might be worth talking to her about 'our problem'.
Since we're not needed here any more, Damien Trumps to the other two and we all use Corwin's Pattern to teleport to Amber to find 'Miranda'.
Upon arrival, we enquire about 'Miranda'. A servant tells us that 'the white-haired lady' went down into the town with Master Dworkin.
Tristan, ignoring Ibrahim's idea of introducing Miranda to the bar favoured by the Siluridae, Trumps Dworkin.
He quickly gets through, and at our request Dworkin brings us through. We join him and 'Miranda' in the R'lyeh gallery of Damien's Museum. 'Miranda' is examining the details of a non-Euclidian bas-relief.
Oddly enough, the gallery is not crowded.
Tristan asks if we might have a chat with 'Miranda'.
No-one objects, so he shows her the life-force lens.
She appears able to tell what it is meant to do.
Ibrahim, using the lens can, with difficulty, see the image Tristan describes. 'Miranda' is indeed drawing life-force in.
Dworkin, with the lens, sees the same.
"Do you know how this all works?" Tristan asks Miranda, bluntly.
She says that she knows that life-force is associated with sentient beings. Beings other than herself have a fixed amount, but she is different and has always been so.
We ask if she knows how to rekindle the initial spark of life in those who lack it.
She says she does not, seeming to know all about our previous efforts.
"But your own researches are leading you ... in the right direction," she says. "But I cannot help you - I'm sorry," she concludes.
"Were you able to cut off Anurerishkigal's supply of life-force when fighting it?" asks Ibrahim.
"Yes. One can bind and contain life-force, and create wardings to this end," she says. "Although it is entirely possible that Anurerishkigal may have learned new tricks since I killed it."
We admit we seem to have reached the limits of what can be achieved using magick alone.
She also mentions that Anurerishkigal invented the farming of sentient proto-demons to supply itself with life-force, upon which it fed. Anurerishkigal itself had only a very limited reservoir of its own life-force and developed farming to make its own, otherwise very 'hand-to-mouth' existence more secure.
We prepare to leave.
'Miranda' pokes the bas-relief, which turns inside out. Bodies tumble out. So that's where all the people who disappeared in here went.
Damien summons an attendant and tells him to activate Plan K - to return the bodies to their families if they were ever found.
Tristan Trumps Tamarind who, when he takes the call, proves to be with Brand in the Castle.
At Tristan's request, Tamarind provides a SuperTrump of this side of Corwin's Pattern, then drops the link.
Meanwhile, Phoenix is in Esmée's Shadow, Irenol, with Esmée.
It is a fast time Shadow, and they are in a Russian-style fairy-tale castle with a high level of magick. It's all very pretty.
Esmée has been learning the basics of shapeshifting things other than herself, while Phoenix is beginning to learn how to expand her sorcery skills beyond transmutation alone. In between, they exchange upbringing reminiscences. Eventually, they pause for supper.
At about this point, Ibrahim Trumps Phoenix from the Museum, wanting to talk. It has been suggested to him (by us) that he should really make some explanation of the Eric situation to Phoenix...
So Phoenix makes her apologies to Esmée and comes through to Ibrahim.
We are now in a corridor outside the R'lyeh Gallery.
Ibrahim says he wants to tell her what happened to Eric.
Phoenix agrees to this, and they go off together and find a side-gallery with a couple of chairs.
Ibrahim tells her about the conflict with the Council For Victory, and our visits to the Land of the Dead. Of Brand's return mechanism. Of Ibrahim's rescue of Eric as a zombie, with no spark of life-force left in him. And of how Eric is now in stasis, until we find a way to spark him back to life.
Ibrahim also relates the attendant problems in returning form there now, and recommends not dying.
He tells her that Random is now meeting with Osric, and the creation of a new Pattern may be imminent.
Both he and would like to see this.
Phoenix doesn't seem overly worried about Eric's fate, though the Land of the Dead descriptions clearly disturb her.
Outside, the blue-black falcon taps on a window.
Damien lets it in and it flies down the corridor to find Phoenix.
"Where are the others?" Phoenix asks Ibrahim.
"Elsewhere in the museum," he tells her. He vaguely warns her about Damien's 'collecting expeditions' too.
They then rejoin the rest of us.
Tristan and Damien tell her additional things about the Land of the Dead, including the returning ritual.
They mention that returning from the dead creates holes in reality which need to be sealed afterwards. And some other details Ibrahim ... glossed over. Phoenix looks thoughtful.
On a lighter note, we Trump back to Castle Rosa, in the hope of seeing a new Pattern being drawn if negotiations have gone well.
We arrive in the Castle Rosa Arrival Courtyard and are quickly admitted.
Tristan tells Phoenix that Corwin built this place.
The cat-horses are visible off to one side eating a pile of raw meat. The guards, when asked, tell us that they think the meeting is still going on.
We show Phoenix Corwin's Pattern and the large, formally arranged ornamental rose gardens.
Damien explains to her that this Pattern is the only one left with an obverse in the Other Universe.
"Uh .... huh." she goes, getting that glazed look again.
Phoenix asks why there are no stars in Amber.
People explain about Dworkin's having allegedly made the stars of Amber by throwing eternally-burning Lords of Chaos up into the sky, then Tristan and Ibrahim begin to discuss just how tough they think Dworkin is compared to his reputation.
While they do this, Damien shows Phoenix around the rose gardens.
Phoenix is overwhelmed by the rose gardens, and wanders there happily until a servant arrives to announce that the negotiations are over, and that Random would like us to join them.
Damien picks a blue-silver rose for Phoenix. "I'm sure Corwin won't mind," he says.
She tucks it into a buttonhole of her black flak jacket.
We go to join the Kings of the Universes.
"You have pollen on your nose," Damien whispers to Phoenix.
She hurriedly brushes it away.
Before we enter the conference room, Ibrahim mentions to her that Random and Julian sent her their thanks for her efforts over the past few days.
We go in.
Random formally introduces Phoenix to Osric and Thomas.
"There has been an agreement," he announces. "Full diplomatic relations will be opened between Amber and Girasol. In addition, Sandrine will attune to the Jewel and draw and new Pattern near to the old Ht'gon An-Rit site, which should reduce any disruption caused by its creation."
"I will stay here," Random continues. "King Osric will return and send Sandrine here so that she can attune to the Jewel and draw the new Pattern."
Tristan suggests contacting Dworkin for a consultation regarding this new Pattern.
Random and Osric agree that this is a good idea.
"Brand, too," says Random.
"OK," replies Tristan, unenthusiastically.
Toasts are made.
"Co-operation and mutual harmony," proposes Osric.
We drink.
A treaty is brought in to be signed.
What the two Kings have agreed is:
The treaty is signed, by Random, the Osric.
Osric goes to get Sandrine.
Tristan asks if observers will be permitted at the drawing of the new Pattern.
"Yes," says Random. "From both sides."
We linger at the reception until Sandrine arrives.
As we linger, Thomas chats with Phoenix. She's interested in hearing about the fight against the Ordnung.
Sandrine arrives.
Meanwhile, Tristan has Trumped Dworkin. And, at Random's insistence, Brand.
Brand shies away from Dworkin, but Dworkin seems less upset with him than when he was mad.
Random, Corwin, Brand, Dworkin, Tristan and Sandrine go into a huddle to discuss the technicalities of Pattern creation. Dworkin says there will be some disruption, though drawing the new Pattern on the site of the old Ht'gon An-Rit Pattern will reduce it to a minimum.
Phoenix and Damien check they really can put the new Pattern exactly where Ht'gon An-Rit was.
Apparently they can.
A note is sent to Julian warning him that a new Pattern is going to appear in Arden.
Random sits down on a chair on the balcony overlooking the rose garden, and attunes Sandrine to the Jewel.
Once he has attuned Sandrine he asks Phoenix whether she wants to be attuned too.
Damien reassures Phoenix that (a) it's useful to know and (b) it's fairly safe. "Like walking the Pattern, only in three dimensions," he says.
So Phoenix agrees to be attuned to the Jewel too. She sits down with Random and is guided by him to the flaw in the Jewel of Judgement, then in and around the three-dimensional Pattern within until she, too, is attuned to the Jewel, and rather tired.
"Like cyber-space - only not broken," Is how Phoenix describes the experience afterwards.
After a night's rest in Castle Rosa, Sandrine returns to the Girasol universe, accompanied by Damien, Tamarind, Tristan, Phoenix, Ibrahim and Corwin.
Thomas is staying to see the Pattern appear in Arden, and Una comes through from Girasol to join him.
On the other side of Corwin's Pattern, Tamarind brings Beltaine and Chalice through to us in the centre of the Pattern., then Sandrine teleports us all to the gates of a fortress on top of a hill in rolling farmland. The city of Girasol is visible in the distance, on an island out to sea, perhaps twenty miles away.
When Sandrine leads us in, we see that the fortress contains a large blackened area, with power but no structure, like a Pattern but wrong, destroyed. It is clearly the obverse of the old Ht'gon An-Rit Pattern.
Sandrine takes the Jewel and steps onto the black area in roughly the place where one might expect the beginning of a Pattern to be.
Other members of the Girasol Family arrive to watch.
And Sandrine begins walking. Power rises as she does so. It seems she is drawing from both herself and the Jewel, and is crystallising something out of the two. The line of the new Pattern, which has a bronze colour, takes shape as she advances. The process is slow, and obviously exhausting.
Eventually, after much longer than it would take to merely walk a Pattern, Sandrine finishes, and collapses in the centre of her new Pattern.
As she finishes drawing the new Pattern there is a crack of thunder, and the ground and fortress shake around us.
We applaud politely.
Tristan can sense a flow of Order and Disorder through the centre of the new Pattern which is, again, different to any of the others.
Sandrine teleports back to the rest of us.
"Congratulations," Damien greets her. "You are now the owner of a shiny new Pattern."
Others congratulate her less flippantly.
She gives the Jewel to Corwin and sags further with tiredness.
Gideon and the other Girasolians stay with the new Pattern, to arrange for its improved fortification, while we help Sandrine Trump over to Girasol itself. She goes to bed.
The rest of us join the ongoing party that is still taking up most of the locals' time...
Session 3.6 Index Session 4.1
The Gap 126 PPF to 130 PPF
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