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What's Through The Finndo Window?

Notes : Session 5.1


Recorded for Posterity by Iain Walker.


Session 4.7   Index   Session 5.2
The Gap 130 PPF to 145 PPF


145 PPF


Fifteen years on...


Tristan is in shadow, still on holiday with Isobel, when his anti-Trump ring begins to glow, indicating that someone is attempting to contact him. Eventually it stops. Tristan tells Isobel that he is returning to Amber to see what is happening.

She nods, and kisses him goodbye.

He then Trumps to the Amber Arrival Courtyard and goes to look for Random.


Phoenix is in shadow Requiem incognito. Things there are greatly improved over their pre-Tristan conditions. Towns are building up, and trade between them also beginning to flower.

She feels the tickle of a Trump call coming on, and accepts it.

It proves to be King Random, in his office. "We've got a bit of a situation here," he tells her. "Could you come through?"

Phoenix nods, and, holding out her hand, is brought through to Amber.

"Just a couple more people to call," he says, pulling out Tamarind's Trump. "If you could contact one of the others?"

He begins to concentrate on Tamarind's card while Phoenix concentrates on that of Damien.


Tamarind is in Girasol when he feels a Trump call coming on, and identifies the caller as Random.

As such, he takes the call.

Random explains the situation, and Tamarind makes his apologies to his hosts before stepping through the link into Amber.


Damien is supervising a dig in Girasol's universe, a joint expedition of Amber's School Of Antiquities and the University of Girasol. Angelique is with him, as is Mercedes, Osric's daughter, who is also interested in antiquities and so on. Sebek and Miutjemes are playing with the tomb guardians.


Phoenix concentrates hard on Damien's Trump. It is hard to reach him, but eventually, in his tent in a shadow far away in another universe altogether, Damien also feels a Trump call coming on, and accepts it.

She explains the situation to him.

Damien leaves a 'Gone Away' card on his desk, and comes through.

Phoenix then concentrates on Ibrahim's Trump.


Ibrahim is with Margot in shadow Keirei. He is teaching her to fly the great desert Sandships of that shadow when he too feels a Trump call coming on.

He accepts this, and greets his sister as the link opens up.

She explains that there is a situation in Amber.

Ibrahim tells Margot this, and she tells him she will carry on sailing the Sandship and will talk to him later.

That being so, he steps through into Amber.


At about this point, Tristan comes into Random's outer office. His secretary admits him immediately.

He enters and greets the rest of us and the King.


"I want to show you all something," Random says, everyone now being here.

He leads us out of his office and through the Castle to the area where many of the Family suites are. There is all of the usual bustle and activity as we make our way through that area of the Castle, then the activity level increases as we come up to a stub corridor with the entrance to Finndo's quarters at the end. Guards have sealed it off, but they let us through. However, we cannot reach the door as there is a slightly curved bubble effect across the corridor. That looks very much like a Tir-Na Nog'th bubble.

Tristan examines it closely, he being the only one of us with any Advanced Pattern skills when Beltaine's bubble was about.

After a few moments, he concludes that it is basically the same as the one that trapped Beltaine and Owen. There are slight differences, but overall it is the same kind of thing.

Through the bubble, we can see the closed door of Finndo's rooms. We cannot see inside, but from what servants have said Finndo is believed to be inside.

Tamarind checks Finndo's Trump.

It is not active.

He then tries to scry through it to its subject's location, although not very hard.

It feels, to him, much as Beltaine's Trump did when she was trapped in her bubble...

"We can wait to see if it pops," says Tristan. "Or ask Tamarind, Oberon or Brand to spend several years trying to break through. Or ask Beltaine for help. But she'll say no."

Ibrahim wonders whether this could have anything to do with Ossian. Could Finndo have brushed Ossian's dreams and this is the effect, or the result?

Tamarind thinks not. When he and Beltaine piqued Ossian's interest by freeing her from her bubble they dreamt of ravens that watched them repeat what happened. They did not become trapped in a bubble like this.

The edge of the bubble does not appear to be expanding, and marks have been drawn on the floor to make it as clear as possible if it does. No-one saw it appear. The Moon, incidentally, is full over Amber.

"Caleb has been told," says Random. "He said he would be along later."

"We have no way of knowing if he is really in there," observes Phoenix.

"If Finndo wanted to disappear..." notes Ibrahim.

A thought strikes Random, and he leads us away from Finndo's door.


After a few minutes we come out of a door and into the courtyard garden that Finndo's rooms look out onto, so we can look in the window. Doh.

The buildings enclosing the courtyard are some three stories tall, with Finndo's to one side, on the top floor. The curve of the Tir-Na Nog'th bubble is visible protruding out through the wall, encompassing his quarters and some of the floor beneath and the attic above. Both of these are apparently uninhabited, perhaps as a testament to Finndo's ... cautious ... nature.

Rose trellises are attached to all of the walls other than Finndo's, reaching up to the roof-line, so it should be possible to climb up the opposite wall and see inside. In principle, at least. We suspect that Finndo may well have trapped the trellises...

Despite this, Tristan begins to climb up the wall opposite Finndo's windows. He gets a few feet up when the roses entwined in the trellis begin to animate and wrap around him.

Damien leaps up pulls him off. The rose stems begin to reach out from the trellis towards them both, at least until Tristan, a much less vulnerable target now he is not climbing the trellis, grinds them underfoot.

As an alternative approach, Ibrahim sends for a ladder long enough to reach up to the level of Finndo's windows.


While we wait for this, Tristan summons a gardener and questions him about the roses. He is told that they were Prince Finndo's own plants, and they were not allowed to touch them. Oh.

Tristan begins to brutally prune the roses.


Shortly, a long ladder arrives, carried by some servants.

Ibrahim takes it and holds it upright by main strength as close to the edge of the Tir-Na Nog'th bubble as is practical so that others can climb it.

Damien checks the courtyard for other traps and, finding none, shins up the ladder, easily balancing at the top while Ibrahim supports it from below.

And he peers in Finndo's windows.

The first two windows have the curtains drawn, but the third, and last, gives a view into a small artists studio. Inside is someone who looks like Finndo. He appears to be frozen, working at a drawing table. From his posture it appears that he has just jerked up in alarm, and there is a look of horror on his face.

Damien relays this information down to everyone else.

He then stands up on the top rung of the ladder, balancing nimbly, and uses this improved vantage point to look down on Finndo's desk.

He seems to have been doing a Trump reading. The face-down cards have the traditional back of a white unicorn on a green field. The other cards are laid out in a standard interrogative spread, and are just visible from where Damien is. He notes down what they are.

"Can you tell if Finndo has a Pattern imprint?" Tristan shouts up at Damien.

Damien cannot sense anything through the bubble, and says as much.

Tristan tosses up a life-force lens, and Damien looks through it into the bubble.

However, no life-force is visible inside.

"I think people in bubbles are more in Tir-Na Nog'th than wherever the bubble is," Tamarind comments. "But I can't be sure."

"Could we try and locate him using the Jewel?" wonders Phoenix.

"Time to raid the shoe box?" Tristan says to Random.

"It's not kept in a bloody shoe box!" growls the King. Nonetheless, he goes off to fetch it from wherever it is secured.

"When Beltaine was affected," says Tamarind. "I looked for visions of how it happened. I saw lots, all slightly different, in which the bubble spread out from her as she lay in bed."

Damien looks back in through Finndo's window. He notices that Finndo's posture is slightly different, one of the cards in the spread is different, and there is now a dagger on the table. Hmm...

Tristan uses the Pattern to summon down a bird of desire. He pens a quick message to Finndo - 'What the hell are you doing?' - attaches it to the bird's leg, and sends it off. The bird is to return if it cannot find him.

Random returns with the Jewel of Judgement in his hand. He tosses it up to Damien, still balancing on top of the ladder that Ibrahim is holding upright.

Damien concentrates on the Jewel to see if he can get a resonance from Finndo's own attunement. However, there is nothing he can sense.

Ibrahim opines that these are not really Finndo's rooms, but instead their Tir-Na Nog'th 'negative'.

Tamarind agrees. "It's like a reflection in a mirror," he says.

Damien sends out a pulse of Jewel energy to Finndo, wherever he may be. Nothing appears to happen.

That being so, Damien shins down the ladder and returns the life-force lens and the Jewel of Judgement to their respective owners.

"Had Finndo mentioned any ailments like those Beltaine suffered?" Ibrahim asks Random.

Random shakes his head.

"He wouldn't have said even if he was," notes Tristan. Fair point.

"Well, I'm going to delegate the problem to all of you," says Random. "Let me know if there is anything you need..."

And he leaves, back to affairs of state. Or whatever.


With Random gone, Tristan states that he thinks we have three things we should do:

"Weird shit," mutters Phoenix. "I hate weird shit."

Tristan - having had second thoughts - wonders whether talking to Beltaine might be a bad idea. "If we tell her about the problem, she might actively take steps that would prevent us getting him out," he comments.

Ibrahim disagrees. "If Beltaine won't help, she just won't help," he states.

"I'll go and contact Beltaine," says Tamarind.

"If Tir-Na Nog'th is throwing out bubbles, then Beltaine might be in danger too," notes Ibrahim, nodding.

Damien volunteers to go with Tamarind while Phoenix, Tristan and Ibrahim will go and look for Corwin.

"I think another reason for Tamarind not going alone," says Phoenix. "Is that having independent witnesses to whatever Beltaine says would be beneficial - from the point of view of the rest of the Family."

Also a fair point.


That being decided, Tamarind and Damien Trump off through the relay station into the Girasol universe, and thence to the outskirts of Tenebrae.

Tamarind checks Beltaine's Trump to see where she is. From it, he tells Damien that he thinks she is in the more Tir-Na Nog'th-like area of Tenebrae, and as such not immediately contact-able.

He picks and eats one of her Tir-Na Nog'th apples to see if she has left a message in it. However, no such message becomes apparent.

That being so, Tamarind leads Damien into Beltaine's proto-Tir-Na Nog'th realm. He stops at the threshold of the most Tir-Na Nog'th-like area and looks for a ghost of Beltaine with whom to talk. They quickly find one in a clearing, her arms raised to the full moon shining overhead.

Tamarind places a hand on her shoulder.

She turns to face him.

He tells her that Finndo is in a Tir-Na Nog'th bubble, and when Beltaine is next in the physical realm would she contact him so they can discuss it.

The ghost nods, then returns to her moon-worship.

"Does anything feel different?" Damien asks Tamarind.

Tamarind considers this. "No," he replies.

Damien checks using his sensitivity to shadow. He can also detect nothing obviously wrong.

Tamarind then checks Chalice's Trump. He finds that she is off in shadow somewhere.

And with all of that done, the two of them Trump back to Amber.


Meanwhile, Tristan, Phoenix and Ibrahim are looking for Corwin.

Servants tell them that he is not in the Castle, so Ibrahim Trumps him instead.

After a while, Corwin takes the call. He proves to be in a bed, possibly in Rosa somewhere. There is a woman asleep beside him.

Ibrahim asks him to join us in Amber some time soon.

Corwin nods, and mentally asks Ibrahim to hold the link open.

Ibrahim does so.

Corwin carefully gets out of bed, naked, scribbles a quick note for the girl, throws on some clothes and comes through the link to us.

Once he appears, Ibrahim asks him about the Tir-Na Nog'th-related incident when Benedict lost his mechanical arm. "Finndo is trapped in a Tir-Na Nog'th bubble, and we want to learn what we can of the phenomenon," he explains.

"There were two linked incidents involved," Corwin relates.

"The first was a vision in Tir-Na Nog'th, where I saw Dara on the Throne of Amber with, beside her, Benedict with a mechanical arm. I entered the vision using Greyswandir, and Benedict and I ended up fighting. I chopped off his mechanical arm, and took it out of Tir-Na Nog'th with me. The real Benedict then had it attached to his stump."

"Later, there was the incident in the Throne Room. Benedict, Dara and Martin were trapped inside a Tir-Na Nog'th bubble that not even Gerard's strength could penetrate. From outside, we witnessed the scene in Tir-Na Nog'th replayed, or at least a close approximation of it. A ghostly Greyswandir attacked Benedict, who defended himself, but the sword was able to sever his mechanical arm, and vanished with it. Then the barrier, and the bubble, disappeared."

"Dara, Benedict and Martin later said that it was as if they were dreaming the events in the bubble, and awoke when it vanished."

"Dad claimed - implied, at least - that it was all his doing, but I suppose, based on what we know now, that he could have made a deal with Ossian."

We consider this.

"We'd like you to take a look at Finndo's bubble," we tell him. "And perhaps see if touching it with Greyswandir helps."

Corwin nods. He prepares to Trump off to shift shadow for Greyswandir.

"Don't bother," Tristan tells him. "It's in the next room."

And so it is. Corwin is impressed.


At this point, Ibrahim feels a Trump call coming on, mentions this to everyone, and accepts it.

It is Tamarind and Damien.

At their request, Ibrahim brings them through.

And we all troop back to Finndo's quarters.

By now workmen have erected a wooden viewing platform, with ladders, on the grass outside Finndo's windows, so we do not have to balance on the top of free-standing ladders to see in his windows. Probably a good thing...

We all climb up onto the platform and peer in.

Finndo now appears to be studying the spread of Trumps on his desk, and is frozen in the act of using the tip of his dagger to flip over the cards. A couple of the cards seem to be different from those Damien saw previously.

Looking at the cards, we can see that the central card of the spread is 'Death', not reversed. It was also the central card the last time Damien looked, though the first time he looked the central card was the Tower, again not reversed.

"The events in the bubble you encountered moved at normal speed, rather than being frozen," Phoenix notes to Corwin and the rest of us.

Corwin nods.

At our request he waves Greyswandir close to the Tir-Na Nog'th bubble without touching it.

Nothing happens.

Then he touches the sword to the surface of the bubble.

And the bubble instantaneously expands to encompass all of us and the top of the viewing platform. Whoops.

Finndo is now moving, and stabbing at something. "No! Stay away!" he cries, his words faintly audible to us outside.

Ibrahim whips out his life-force lens and scans around through it. Phoenix also looks at people's life-force. There is life-force in all of us, and also in Finndo. Except that in him there is a sort of double image, as if there is a Finndo with life-force and another one without, occupying the same space.

Tamarind tries to open a Trump link to somewhere outside the bubble. He finds that he cannot; the destination feels cut off, like somewhere Trump-barred or otherwise inaccessible.

Through the window, we see Finndo backing away from something that, from here, is only visible as a faint flicker.

Damien leaps for the window, Dashwood in hand. As he uses Dashwood to break the glass, the glass explodes violently outwards, as if detonated rather than merely broken. Only Damien's armoured clothing saves him from serious injury. Broken glass showers the rest of us and Corwin but again, fortunately, our armour generally protects us from all but a few cuts.

"Not you as well!" cries Finndo as he sees Damien and the rest of us. "You're all against me!"

Behind Finndo there are a mass of shapes in the doorway to the studio. They seem to be the moonlit outlines of people and other entities, as if lit by moonlight from one side with nothing but the moonlight being visible, giving a sort of silvery half outline.

"Why isn't Finndo shapeshifting?" Ibrahim wonders. Despite this, he jumps in through the window too.

Damien jumps past Finndo towards the shapes crowding the doorway. Their moonlit outlines are crowding into the room, overlapping with and interpenetrating with one another.

"Do you know how long this effect will last?" Tristan asks Corwin.

"No idea," shrugs Corwin.

Finndo dives out of the broken window, past Ibrahim.

Using the Pattern, Ibrahim tries to get a feel of where he now is. It feels, to him, much more like Tir-Na Nog'th than like Amber.

Having done this, he then grabs Finndo's Trumps from the desk in his studio, keeping those in the spread separate from those in the remainder of his deck.

Damien attacks the shapes in the doorway, but they seem to be intangible as far as Dashwood is concerned. He jumps back onto the window ledge.

Outside the window, Finndo drops down towards the ground. He reaches the edge of the Tir-Na Nog'th bubble and seems to disappear as he falls through it. He reappears in his studio, looking more than a little concerned.

Damien and Ibrahim jump back onto the viewing platform.

Corwin draws Greyswandir back from where it touched the previous edge of the Tir-Na Nog'th bubble, and suddenly we are outside the bubble again, still on the platform. The boundary of the bubble has snapped back to where it was.

Tamarind leaps down from the platform very, very quickly.

Through the window, we can see that Finndo is back at his desk, and there are Trumps on the table. The Tir-Na Nog'th bubble seems to have reset itself.

However, Ibrahim still has Finndo's Trump deck.

"If we try and pull him out that way," notes Damien. "He'll just plink back in." Fair point.

"If we had another Greyswandir," ponders Ibrahim. "We could go in, kill Finndo, and retrieve him from the Land of the Dead."

"Do we need another Greyswandir-like thing?" Phoenix wonders. "Maybe another mechanical arm?"

We wonder whether we could do some kind of deal with Ossian.


The rest of us climb down from the viewing platform and study Finndo's Trump reading as recorded by Damien and revealed by the cards Ibrahim brought out of his studio.

We wonder whether Finndo found the layout waiting in his studio rather than cast it. That is, whether someone prepared it for him in advance, perhaps as a trap of some kind, which is why he was using his dagger to turn them over. However, to Damien the use of the dagger looked more like Finndo's style of doing a reading rather than anything else.

The cards that were in the layout include many of the Major Arcana, and are:

Taken together they indicate a major change into something drastically different, but not necessarily a bad thing. The layout also indicates that a strong will of some kind is behind it all.

Substituting the Tower as the central card implies that the change all goes horribly wrong.

Substituting the other different cards that Damien saw from glimpse to glimpse suggest that the change may go in other directions too.


Phoenix and Damien wonder if Tamarind could do a Trump reading and see if we get anything similar to Finndo's result.

Tamarind does not see much point to this.

A servant comes out of a door and begins to walk across the courtyard. When she sees us, she curtseys.

We question her and learn that a day has passed since we went into the bubble!

King Random is apparently being informed of our re-emergence from it.

Tristan checks via the servant that there is another full moon tonight. There is.

Tamarind riffles through Finndo's Trumps while we talk.

No-one is particularly enthusiastic about trying the Greyswandir trick a second time, as next time we might not get off so lightly.

Phoenix does wonder whether it would be worth nipping back in to try and find Finndo's secret diary. Assuming he has such a thing. No-one else is terribly enthusiastic about this idea.

Tamarind begins to lay out Finndo's Trumps to conduct a general, what-does-the-future-hold kind of Trump reading.

As the cards are laid out, the overall spread appears to be similar to Finndo's. There are big changes coming. They might be good. They might be bad...

As we look at this, Random emerges into the courtyard and comes over to us. "So, what happened?" he asks.

We tell him what we saw.

"Has anyone talked to or seen Benedict since the bubble appeared?" Damien asks.

"No," replies Random. "I'll check up on people."

This appearing to perhaps be the start of a long job, Damien Trumps Angelique at the dig in the Girasol universe.

When she takes the call, he tells he that he will be gone for a while, and that she and Mercedes should check in with Girasol to see if anything odd is happening there. Angelique nods, and the call ends.

We ask Corwin whether he - by which we really mean Greyswandir - could accompany us up to Tir-Na Nog'th tonight.

"If you like," he replies.

"I wonder if the things crowding in on Finndo are part of the changes that are on the cards?" Ibrahim ponders.

He recommends that Amber's alert level be raised, whatever the coming changes are. Random nods.

"Ossian may be waking up," Damien suggests.

"That would be my current guess, too," says Ibrahim.

Random begins Trumping the other Family members to inform them of what is going on. From our side of the universe he gets through to everyone apart from Oberon, Dworkin, Caine, Brand, Llewella, Beltaine, Benedict and, of course, Finndo. Of the Girasolians he gets through to everyone apart from Osric and Sandrine. When he talks to Mercedes, she tells him that she has tried to contact Osric too, but also cannot get through.

"I was with Osric and Sandrine just before you called," Tamarind tells Random. "They seemed fine then."


Phoenix leaves the courtyard and heads for the Library.

Once she gets there, she finds a book on the Tarot, and leafs through it, looking for insight into Finndo's Trump reading.

She finds that the Seven of cups, when upright, is to do with dreams and illusions, and is often represented by a man in a stupor whose dreams take shape around him. Hmm...

That being so, she returns to the rest of us, and this information is passed on.


Elsewhere, Tamarind scans the Trumps, attempting to see who, if anyone, is behind a barrier of some kind.

From what he can tell, Beltaine is where she was before. Benedict is probably asleep, as are Brand and Caine. Dworkin is near the Primal Pattern. Llewella is also asleep. Oberon's Trump gives off meaningless static. Finndo is still in the Tir-Na Nog'th bubble.


We decide that the way forward is to go to Tir-Na Nog'th tonight and see what we can find out.

We ask Random if he could use the Jewel to ensure appropriate weather for a Tir-Na Nog'th visit tonight. He nods.

With that settled, we head for the stables, where horses and supplies are procured, and then out of the Castle and up the slopes of Kolvir towards its peak.

Tamarind tags along, rather disconcerted not to be Trumping up there. He consoles himself by Trump scrying the steps at the top of Kolvir instead. All seems to be well with them, and with the guard post on the peak.

"Who do we want standing by in case we need to leave in a hurry?" Damien asks.

Tamarind gives him a Look.

"You can form Trump links in an instant," Damien points out. "The rest of us can't."

A fair point. Tamarind Trumps away, then returns with some Trump Traps of Amber's courtyard. He hands them out.

As we ride up Kolvir the sun sinks into the west, inland, and twilight spreads across the landscape.

When we reach the summit, the guards there salute us. They report that all is well.

We picnic until the moon rises, silvery, out of the sea to the east. As it comes fully above the horizon, Tir-Na Nog'th shimmers into existence in the sky above, and the staircase extends down from it to the steps at the top of Kolvir, close by where we are.

We step onto them and begin to ascend, the steps carrying us up faster than our walking speed alone would allow.

And upon reaching the top, we step through the shining arch there and into the ghostly streets of Tir-Na Nog'th.


We set off through Tir-Na Nog'th, looking for Finndo's rooms.

There are a few ghosts around in the city. A ghostly carriage rolls past. Through the window we can see Isobel and Delaney inside, making eyes at each other.

It rolls off. We proceed.

We pass the end of a ruined street. Down it soldiers are visible advancing towards up. They all look like Delaney, and are all armed with what appear to be Abyss guns. They carry the standard of the Faceless Sphinx.

"It's just playing mix-and-match," Damien comments.

We pass on. Down another side-street Sebek is visible leaping about, also with an Abyss gun. He seems to be chasing Tristan...

Doing our best to ignore the various ghosts and illusions, we head straight for the Castle.

Tristan attempts to get us there faster using his enhanced shadow shifting powers, and is quite surprised when this seems to actually work. We come around a corner and find ourselves outside Finndo's door. Or the Tir-Na Nog'th equivalent of it, at least.

However, there is a shimmering silver wall across the corridor, similar to that surrounding the reflection of Beltaine's rooms in Tir-Na Nog'th when she was trapped in her bubble.

"We need to be here earlier?" suggests Phoenix.

Tristan nods, and shifts us away and then back. This time when we turn up outside the ghost of Finndo's door there is no barrier present.


Tamarind is not keen on entering, but the rest of us are ready to go in. Then Tristan suddenly wonders whether we would be trapped inside if the bubble forms in a vision while we are in the room. A fair point. We decide not to go in after all.

Instead, with help from Greyswandir, we procure a ghostly mirror and set it up so that we can see in without having to actually enter Finndo's rooms. However, we will need to go in if we want to talk to him.

In the mirror, Finndo can be seen drinking coffee, pacing the room, and toying with his Trump cards.

After watching this for a while, we decide that talking to him is more important than observing, so all of us apart from Tamarind, who remains outside, troop in with Corwin.

As we enter, Finndo finishes his coffee and heads for the door into his studio, apparently preparing to do his Trump reading.

"Quick!" says Damien.

Corwin touches Finndo with Greyswandir before he leaves the living room, and he seems to become aware of us, jumping slightly.

"What is the question you are going to ask?" we ask him

He tries to evade this for a while, but eventually tells us that is was to be a general 'what does the future hold' type reading to be the basis for more specific follow-on readings. "I was concerned for ... myself," he says. "I feel as if I am being haunted."

"When did you last sleep?" Ibrahim asks him.

"For a full night?" he replies. "A long time ago. Years."

Further questions reveal that this was not just because he had become bored with sleeping...

"Is there anyone you trust?" asks Tristan. "Think carefully - this might help in rescuing you."

"No," replies Finndo, after some thought.

"You haven't been experimenting with Tir-Na Nog'th things?" Phoenix asks him.

"No," says Finndo, more readily.

In the mirror, Damien notices a silvery shape flit across the room. It is not visible in the actual room, though.

Finndo seems to see it, however. He throws his dagger at a hovering outline.

Suspecting that Finndo's en-bubbling is imminent, we leave quickly.

When the contact with Greyswandir is broken, Finndo looks about wildly for a few seconds, then backs off towards his studio.


In the hallway, Tamarind notices moon-illuminated outlines moving in the mirror showing Finndo's rooms. He retreats off down the hallway outside.


The rest of us barrel out, and the silvery bubble forms behind us.

We tell Tamarind what Finndo said, and then we go to look for Ossian.


The best way to do this, we think, is to find the Throne Room, where Ossian was sleeping before.

A little hunting around leads us to the Throne Room doorway.

However, when we open it and go in, the door proves to lead, not to the Throne Room, but to a moonlit field of flowers. In the distance a town of small, black, square stone houses is visible. It looks like one of the towns from the Land of the Dead.

In the background the mountain upon which the Amber-equivalent of the Land of the Dead is set is visible, with colour visible on the slopes, even under moonlight. The castle is visible on the slopes, too.

None of us have ever seen a vision of the Land of the Dead in Tir-Na Nog'th before, let alone the Land of the Dead with flowers, and colour. We are definitely in Tir-Na Nog'th though.

We step through the door and into the field of flowers. Birds and insects rise around us, disturbed by our passage, and there is a warm breeze. This is also an innovation for the Land of the Dead. Turning around, we discover that the doorway is no longer visible behind us.

We head for the town. As we approach it we see that the houses are definitely Land of the Dead architecture. Apart from the flowers growing up the walls, in the cracks in the stonework, and on their roofs...

Entering the town, we find that the people there are not zombies, but are instead moving around, talking and interacting normally.

"The Land of the Dead as it once was?" wonders Tristan.

"Or as it may become?" responds Ibrahim.

We head for the castle.

As we approach it, we can see that the harbour is full of water rather than dry, its waters glittering in the moonlight. The ships there, previously lying on their sides on the dry floor of the harbour, are now afloat, bobbing on the sparkling waters.

There are flowers growing everywhere.

Large numbers of banners are flying over the castle. As we approach we see that they are from a multitude of groups and races, including Amber, Girasol, Chaos, the Moonriders out of Ghenesh, the Amber noble houses, the Council for Victory, various Golden Circle shadows, and so on.

Other people are also heading up towards the castle.

The castle gates stand wide open, so we go right on in.

We decide to head for the Throne Room here. A little searching leads us to a room that probably fits the bill, but rather than monarchs, it is full of children playing.

People move about the castle. A significant percentage of them seem to be drifting downwards, in the direction of where, in the Land of the Dead we are familiar with, the nonagram might be found.

We follow them down.

Deep under the castle and the mountain we reach the Nonagram Room. It is full of light. The nonagram is gone, replaced by a swirling design on the floor, seemingly made of light. It is a simple spiral, nowhere near as complicated a design as that of the Pattern.

People are wandering along its length. As they reach the centre, they seem to fade, elongate, and vanish upwards.

We decide that it might be sensible to talk to one of them.

However, at this point, Tir-Na Nog'th begins to fade around us.

"Corwin!" we chorus.

He taps one of the passing people, a man, with Greyswandir.

"What is going on here?" we ask him.

"We're going back to real life, to the Land of the Living," he says happily.

"Who created all of this, and when?" we ask.

"It was made along time ago, back in the Age of Death," the man says. "I don't know by who. Sorry."

We begin to sink into the floor as the first rays of the sun strike upwards through Tir-Na Nog'th.

"How many times have you lived and died?" Tristan asks the man.

"Fifteen..." says the man.

Then he and all of Tir-Na Nog'th fades away, and is gone. And we are falling.

Tamarind attempts to Trump us all. Tristan, protected by his ring, is of course immune to this. Instead, he quickly shifts off through shadow to somewhere more hospitable.

Everyone else is Trumped by Tamarind, who carries us all down to the top of Mount Kolvir.

Elsewhere, Tristan quickly uses the Pattern to find a griffin, climbs onto its back, and flies back into Amber's shadow. On griffin-back he glides down to the top of Kolvir, rejoining the rest of us.

And we are all there in the bright sunlight of dawn over Amber.

"I wonder if Ossian has ended up in the Land of the Dead?" wonders Tamarind.

"What now?" asks Corwin.


Session 4.7   Index   Session 5.2

Tristan's Diary for This Session.

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