Notes Taken by Samantha and Alastair Beadle.
Five years have passed since the ending of Finndo's attacks on Amber, Finndo's death, and the imprisonment of his daughter, Lillian.
In that time, Caitlin has not returned to Amber, wandering through shadow, seeing everything she can imagine and listening to the stories of shadow dwellers to go to things she can't imagine.
Jihx has stayed around Amber, dividing his time roughly equally between Amber itself (helping out with things there sometimes) and Rebma, where he Moire continue their affair. He attempts to contact Caitlin every now and then, but after the first couple of years, Caitlin stops accepting the calls, and her mind is strong enough to keep Jihx out.
Gilgamesh spends some time partially teaching Godofos Trump, but also begins spending more and more time in Tir-na 'Nogth, the city in the sky that only appears over Amber in the full moon. He vanishes into it for long periods of time when the city is not present (supposedly impossible), then returns to Amber. He last went in there about two years ago, and has not been seen since. However, he did have time to make some Trumps for people at their request, and to makes Trumps of everyone for everyone.
Godofos studies the power of Trump and spends time in shadow, where he meets a number of women, who tend to dump him, jilt him at the altar, turn out to be assassins or die in various unfortunate ways. Sad. He has mastered the art of identifying who is calling him on the Trumps. His learning of Trump has slowed down somewhat since Gilgamesh went up to Tir-na 'Nogth, but he thinks he's close to getting it.
Etienne has gone out into shadow and found a shadow very like (or which may be) he home shadow - the Enchanted Earth. It is a place where no technology works, of magic only sorcery and empowerment work, power words do not work at all, and which has a time flow rate about twice that of Amber. Only this one has a Christian-type God, omniscient and omnipotent within the shadow, whose agent Etienne is. She spends ten (local) years defeating the Byzantine Empire and taking over the entire Known World, incorporating it all into a Holy Roman Empire, of which she is the power behind the throne (the Pope is the head of the church, of course).
Arun of the Akina has been off in shadow, out of contact with the others.
Lillian has been languishing in a cell in the Amber Castle dungeons for the last five years. She has been sleeping more and more, and talking less and less, as time has passed.
In Amber (and Rebma, to a lesser extent) winters are cold and summers are hot, unlike before the Primal Pattern was re-drawn, when there were no seasons in Amber, so Gerard (the regent) says. However, it is now June. And it is still winter. The trees are still bare of leaves, and the sea is starting to freeze out from the coast (apart from at the top of Faiella-Bionin, the stair down to Rebma, which remains ice-free). Not good. However, it is unclear why this is happening.
Just having left Moire's bedroom, Jihx receives a Trump call from Gerard. Gerard seems to be in the hall outside the Pattern room, and tells Jihx that there is a problem. Can he come through? Jihx agrees, and appears in the hall. Gerard leads him into the Pattern room. Inside, the Pattern is flickering, and seems dimmer than usual. Brownish energy is rippling across and around it, overlaid on the normal blue. The room around the Pattern seems more solid than it normally is. Gerard says that he thinks this is linked to the current lack of a summer. Jihx kneels and examines the Pattern. It seems to be fading, almost imperceptibly slowly. Bad!
Jihx suggests that he go check the Pattern in Rebma to see if it, too, is behaving like this. Gerard agrees. Jihx steps outside the Pattern room and uses his Trump of the plaza outside Castle Rebma to go there.
Out in shadow, Caitlin is currently living in a harem tent in the middle of a vast hot desert for some reason. She is still dressed in her normal clothes though, not harem gear. Gerard tells her there's a problem and asks her to come back to Amber. She accepts Gerard's plea for help, and he brings her through to outside the Pattern room. He points her to the Pattern and pulls out another Trump.
Out in a different shadow, Godofos has just got married (again) to a beautiful woman who really loves him. Having just set out on their honeymoon they are standing on the edge of a ravine, admiring the scenery. He feels a Trump call coming on, and checks his cards to see who it is. Gerard. He accepts the call. Gerard tells him there's a problem and can he come to help. As he talks to Gerard, Godofos accidentally knocks his new wife with his arm, and she topples into the ravine. At the same time the edge of the cliff under Godofos' feet starts to crumble, and he has to leap back before he can grab her. She falls away, screaming. Gerard looks appalled, but Godofos shrugs it off, and comes through to Amber
As he heads into the Pattern room, he sees Gerard pull out another Trump, try it, shake his head, put it away and get out another.
Etienne is walking down a corridor in the Vatican on the Enchanted Earth II with some of her minions, when she, too feels the beginning of a Trump contact. She accepts. Strangely enough, it is Gerard, who tells her there is a problem and can she return to Amber. Etienne agrees. She tells her people she will be away for a while, and that what is about to happen is not an act of God or the devil. Then she leaves through the Trump link.
Caitlin, Godofos and Etienne examine the Pattern. Dimmer. Flickering with brown energy. After a short while Godofos suggests walking it, and seeing what happens. Gerard looks a bit dubious - it could be dangerous, he says. Etienne asks Gerard about who knows about the Pattern enough to do this. He says that the red-headed elders (Fiona, Brand, Bleys) knew the most about the Pattern - they paid attention when Dworkin was trying to tell people about the Pattern. But they are all off at the Courts of Chaos as far as he is aware. Gerard also mentions that Amber is having a bad extended winter now, and he thinks that it cannot be unconnected to this.
He pulls out a Trump of courtyard in the castle, and takes everyone through. It is cold, the shaded stones of the courtyard covered with frost. Of course, Godofos has just come from a nice warm shadow, so he is wearing only shorts and a pair of smooth-soled leather sandals. He instantly slips over on the frosty stones. Godofos gets up, and Gerard leads everyone to a gate in the outer wall, opens, and shows everyone the view over the city. It is cold, frosty roofs glittering in the bright sunshine, with smoke rising from many chimneys. The sea is clearly frozen out some way from the shore. Etienne glances at the sun. It seems no lower or dimmer than 'normal', just radiating less heat.
In Rebma, Jihx walks into the Palace. He asks Queen Moire if he can go to examine the Rebman Pattern. She says yes, and that she will come with him. They swim down to the level of the Rebman Pattern room, and along to the side corridor (on the opposite side to the one in Amber). Moire opens the huge metal-bound grey stone door with a key from her belt, and they go in. She gasps when she sees the Pattern (the mirror image of the Amber one) dimmed and rippling with brown energy. Jihx explains to Moire that the same has happened in Amber, and it is being looked into. He thanks Moire for her assistance and Trumps Gerard.
Back in Amber, Gerard leads the others inside the castle, and down a corridor (much warmer than outside) towards a place where they can talk. As they go, Gerard receives a Trump call (Godofos can feel this), then reaches out and Jihx appears in a purple rainbow effect, dripping wet. Jihx tells them that the Rebma Pattern is suffering from whatever the Amber one is.
They carry on down the corridor. Godofos slips over on the wet floor.
Shortly, a sitting room is reached. Servants bring in food and big jugs of mulled wine. Godofos sends s servant to bring him clothes and shoes more suited to the weather in Amber. Everyone sits and discusses what to do. The only two options so far are to walk the Pattern and see what happens, or to check the temperature about Amber and see if the cold is coming from the Pattern, or into Amber from elsewhere, or what. No-one is quite sure how to do this (they all come from fairly low-tech shadows). Eventually Godofos comes up with the idea of having people take water with different amounts of salt dissolved in it (which will freeze at different temperatures) about the city, and measure temperatures by which ones freeze where. Gerard is impressed. Etienne is a bit confused. That's not how it works on the Enchanted Earth. Some servants are called in, and the plan explained to them. Twenty groups will go about the city and do what Godofos suggests, but it will take a few hours. Godofos decides to walk the Pattern anyway. His clothes and shoes arrive, and he dresses.
They all get up and go down to the Pattern room, apart from Gerard, who has running-the-kingdom type things to do elsewhere. He asks them to keep him informed and leaves.
On the way to the Pattern, Caitlin stops some servants and tells them to bring a trestle table and a load of food and drink down to the Pattern room. They go off to do this. Servants are also told to go to the library and have the librarians look up attacks on Amber using cold, and which affected the Pattern, which may have happened in the past.
Upon reaching the Pattern, Godofos goes up to it and begins to walk it. It does not seem as hard to walk now as it was before, for some reason, but unlike previously, it is now cold. As he goes, sparks rise around him, but not as high as before. As he forces his way through each veil (again, these are easier than before) the cold bites deeper and deeper into him, worse and worse. The others standing beside the Pattern see Godofos becoming paler and paler as he goes - he seems to be becoming encrusted with frost. The Pattern room also seems to become somewhat colder as he goes, they notice.
Eventually he reaches the centre of the Pattern, forcing his way through the final veil (the hardest of them all, and the coldest) and collapsing in the centre. He is cold to the bone, covered with frost and shivering a great deal. He gradually recovers, and as he does so he can feel that the Pattern is under some external influence. When he has recovered sufficiently, Godofos concentrates and teleports to under the food table without getting up. He takes a warm drink.
When he's stopped shivering, he tells the others what happened - it was easier than before, but unlike before it now has the biting cold. He is dubious that the others would survive it.
Godofos uses a Trump to return to the castle, above, and goes to his rooms to rest, falling into bed. Everyone else goes with him, but upon arrival they head for the library to see what information (if any) has been found.
In the library, Caitlin, Jihx and Etienne question a librarian. He tells them that he has found six instances of attacks on Amber using cold from the records he has:
It appears that in most of these cases the Jewel of Judgement was used to protect Amber by controlling its weather.
Hmm. After discovering this, Caitlin suggests that perhaps someone is using the Jewel of Judgement against Amber in some fashion, and that is why the winter continues. They leave the library and head off to find Gerard. They find him in his office, between stacks of papers, and ask him two questions:
Gerard says that before Oberon started re-drawing the Primal Pattern, he cut Corwin with a knife and created a bird from Corwin's blood. When Oberon finished re-drawing it, he teleported from the centre of the Pattern to outside it before dying of exhaustion. The Jewel fell from his hand, and the blood-bird flew down and flew off with it. Gerard has no idea where it went, or what happened to it after that.
No, says Gerard. The damaged part was only a segment, where Martin's blood was spilt (he explains about Martin and Brand), so when Oberon re-drew it he walked the damaged parts and fixed the damaged parts. Although, he adds, the Patterns have changed somehow, he just can't put his finger on how.
Caitlin suggests that perhaps Lillian could be visited to see is she has any information which could help with this problem. No-one else is at all enthusiastic about this idea, so it isn't done.
Jihx mentions the stone which Queen Moire wears, which he is aware definitely radiates some kind of power. He has, at some point in the last five years, asked Moire about it. It is known as the 'Heartstone', and is one of the Rebman royal regalia (along with a sceptre, orb and crown). Apparently it can control sea life and the ocean.
However, it appears that neither the Heartstone or the Jewel of Judgement can be used without some form of initiation (an initiation being something like walking the Pattern), and practice. Gerard doesn't know what the initiation is, but says that both Eric and Corwin seemed to have done it.
Up in his bedroom, Godofos wakes up. He feels much better. He gets up and attempts to Trump Caitlin. She resists, and he makes no progress. He tries Trumping Etienne instead. She too resists, but suspects who it might be, and calls Godofos instead (being an untrusting type). He is somewhat surprised, but comes through to Gerard's office. They give him a brief run-down of what has been found out so far.
Godofos asks how to get to this Primal Pattern, and see whether it is affected. Gerard says that you can't get there as you have to shift shadow from Amber itself, which can't be done unless you're Oberon or Fiona, it seems. Caitlin suggests that as the Pattern is weaker now, it may now be possible to shift to it from within Amber. Not a bad idea. Everyone (other than Gerard) decides to give it a try.
Gerard describes the Primal Pattern, and how Oberon (in his disguise as Ganelon) carried Corwin and Random there as they returned from Corwin's tomb. He also describes the place itself - an oval depression as if Kolvir had been cut off slightly above the level of the Pattern, with the Primal Pattern in it, gold-pink lines embedded in the rock rather than on it as the others are, under an even bluer, almost textured, sky. "Good luck," says Gerard as they go, and returns to his paperwork.
They head down to the stables. On the way Godofos speculates about what might happen if someone walked a Pattern carrying the Heartstone.
Everyone other than Jihx just gets a horse. Jihx uses his own horse. Etienne has left her winged steed, Electra, on the Enchanted Earth, so she takes a normal horse too. They head out of the castle and up Kolvir. After a while, they reach Corwin's tomb, about two miles down behind the crest of Kolvir. It stands alone in a rocky declivity, shielded on three sides against the elements, surrounded by transported soil containing a pair of scrubby trees, assorted shrubs, weeds, and great ropes of mountain ivy. It is a long, low white marble building with two benches in front. The ivy covers it to a great extent, masking most of a bombastic statement carved on its face beneath Corwin's name. It has a lot of broken glass inside, as if someone has been throwing bottle into it at some point.
They start down from the tomb. Caitlin states that if they go down the mountain and don't look at it then it can be shifted away and they'll reach the Primal Pattern. Etienne begins trying to shift shadow, being the best qualified of the group.
Etienne concentrates hard, exerting herself to the utmost. It is a massive effort, but things gradually start to change. The sky and ground become textured, as if painted on. Suddenly, everything changes, and it seems as if the horses are vast under their riders. Then things change again, and it seems as if horses and riders have become paper-thin from side to side, and perspective changes so that it seems the horizon is right in front of them. Another change. The sky goes black, the ground glows, and everyone and everything becomes transparent, the light gleaming through them from below. Then everything goes brilliant (but non-blinding) white. Then absolute black.
Etienne carries on shifting shadow, exerting as much effort as she can. And before long, the black clears. They are riding along a rocky surface with a deeply blue sky and a huge golden sun overhead, both them and the landscape highly textured, looking almost painted on. There is a huge silence, broken only by the sound they themselves are making. Ahead of them the rock drops into an oval depression, and beyond, where the rocky area drops away, is visible the sea, which glitters in the sun, and seems to be moving far too slowly to support the waves it carries. It is impossible to see where the sea joins the sky. Etienne slumps in the saddle, exhausted.
They ride to the edge of the depression, and look down. There is a pink and gold Pattern burning within the rock on the floor of the depression, and the headless skeleton of a dragon-like creature to one side, with the skull nearby. A metal collar is around the headless neck, and a chain leads off below them. A track leads down the rocky slope of the depression to its floor.
They ride down. Closer, the Pattern here is clearly about as bright as the Pattern in Amber, and upon it, too, waves of brownish energy are coursing about. Not good. Etienne can sense 'something' that is not Pattern here, but can't specify it any closer than that. Also from down here, the chain from the dragon's collar can be seen to lead into a cave mouth in the sloping wall of the depression.
Godofos attempts to Trump Gerard, but gets no response. He then tries to Trump Jihx, but that fails too! Well, Trumps don't work in the Pattern room in Amber, and this is next to the Primal Pattern, from which the Amber Pattern derives...
Jihx investigates the cave. It seems to be more of a tunnel, and is easily large enough, at the entrance, for the creature to have entered when alive. The chain goes in for some way, then stops at a large metal loop embedded in the wall. A little further on the tunnel narrows sharply and ends a big metal door, like a vault door, with a big handle. Jihx tries it. It's not lock, and it slowly swings open.
Inside is a window-less room carved from the rock. There is a fireplace with a couple of armchairs in front of it, some shelves against the walls with books and few odd knickknacks on them (including what looks like a small piece of glowing pink coral), a rug on the floor and three other metal doors going off, one on each wall to left, right and in front. Two glowing white hemispheres on the ceiling light the whole room. There a layer of dust everywhere, and the whole place gives the impression of not having been lived in recently.
Jihx goes out and tells the others what he's found. They all troop in for a look around. Etienne collapses into one of the armchairs and immediately falls asleep. The other three doors are tried, but all seem to locked in some way. No keyholes are visible, and none of the group who are present have a clue about picking locks or the like, alas. Godofos and Jihx go over to one of the doors (which have their hinges visible on this side) and attempt to knock the pins out of the hinges so the door will come off. BANG! BANG! BANG!
Etienne is woken up by this (strangely enough). She sees what is going on, stumbles to her feet, staggers outside and goes back to sleep on the bare rock by the Primal Pattern.
Unfortunately the hinges seem to be very tough, and the pins are not showing any signs of coming out. They give up and look for another way in. The books and shelves do not seem to be hiding any secret entrance or switch to open the doors. Many of them (about 80 percent) are in scripts no-one understands. Of the remainder, some are about magic of various kinds, while the remainder are divided between books on history, music, and a selection of light romantic fiction ('Mills and Boon' style). Some of the books have book plaques inside the front cover, mostly a unicorn (the same shape as that on the Amber flag, but with detail rather than just a silhouette) with a shield over it upon which the dedication is written. One says 'Presented to Dworkin Barimen by Bleys, Brand and Fiona, in Gratitude'. Another, a big tome on magic, says 'To Dad, Good Luck, Oberon'.
Godofos notices that the piece of glowing pink coral has Trump power within it. None of the other things on the shelves do.
After a while, someone has the bright idea that perhaps the inner doors will open if the outer one is closed. The outer door is closed to try this, and lo and behold, the inner doors do seem to be unlocked now. The first room is a bedroom with a big unmade bed and a wardrobe containing lots of artist's smocks, some splattered with paint (when they see this, they realise that some little coloured splotches here and there in the other room are paint too). The second one is a room with a hole in the corner (obviously a toilet) and racks of shelves with boxes of tinned and dried packet food. The last one seems to be a study. The walls are entirely lined with bookshelves apart from where a desk is up against the wall (and the door, of course). One side of the desk is set up with a small easel, about the size to draw Trumps, and splattered with paint. A few pots of paint and brushes are scattered about. All three rooms are dusty, like the main room, and seem not to have been entered for quite a while.
The whole place is searched thoroughly.
Jihx opens a drawer in the desk and finds a pile of Trumps, assorted ones of the elders (including Finndo and Gerard), and some people and places no-one recognises. Two of the places look cold - one is a wintry forest, some skeletal tree branches against a late twilight sky, with a big moon above; the other is a rough, crevassed ice sheet at night with mountain peaks protruding through and a big moon above. Other places include a big tree of a type no-one recognises; an ill-defined black landscape, the edge of a drop, with a divided sky beyond (half multicoloured and half black and starry) and perhaps some kind of black structure in the distance against the starry half; the Amber throne room; the Rebma throne room and this room. In the study Godofos finds a book on Trump, written by Dworkin himself. He 'borrows' it.
Godofos can feel that these Trumps all seem to have far more Trump energy within them than the standard ones. For this reason, they attempt to contact Gerard using his Trump from this set. This works quite well, and Gerard answers the call perhaps more quickly than he would with a 'normal' Trump. He sees where they are and looks quite impressed. He comes through the link to join Caitlin, Godofos and Jihx.
Gerard is told what has happened. The general idea is to leave all Dworkin's stuff here in case he's annoyed. Apart from all these new Trumps, and Godofos' books. The plan is to use the powerful Trump of Fiona to try and contact here - she knows more about the Pattern than anyone other than Dworkin, after all, points out Gerard. This is tried. Nothing happens.
Etienne is woken up to try the Trump, but is too tired, and goes back to sleep without trying it.
Gerard has a look through the rest of the Trump deck.
He points out Ghenesh (the wintry woodland), Ragasa (the ice field with mountain peaks poking through it), Ygg (a tree planted by Oberon), and the Courts of Chaos (the place with the divided sky). When this is mentioned, Caitlin speculates that as the Primal Pattern is so textured (like, in fact, Dworkin painted the scenery somehow), and Amber only slightly less so, that there is less texture the further from Amber one goes, until the Courts have very little.
Of the Trumps of people, there are three other than the elders (including Dworkin, Oberon and Finndo) whom Gerard can identify. They are Osric (Finndo and Benedict's full brother, the youngest of the three), Mirelle (the twin sister of Random, killed long ago while very young) and Lucas (who was, in age, between Osric and whichever of Corwin or Eric was the older). That leaves four who are unidentified.
Outside at about this point Etienne wakes up, feeling considerably less tired. The sun is just setting in the west, and stars are coming out in the east, twinkling, richly textured stars arranged in a geometric array. She goes inside the cave and is told what has been found out, and the plan to contact Fiona, her mother, by Trump. Gerard mentions that it is apparently possible to combine forces on a Trump to get contact through more difficult conditions, and that perhaps this should be tried here.
This is tried. Everyone touches the Trump of Fiona and concentrates on it. But again there is no response. Godofos feels that the link is vanishing into something very unlike normal shadow out there somewhere.
Someone wonders if perhaps they're not getting through to Fiona because they're so close to the Primal Pattern. Perhaps. They use the Trump of the Amber throne room and go through to it. Gerard re-assures the guards who leap to alertness as they appear that everything is all right, and they relax.
Gerard takes the Trumps of the Amber and Rebma throne rooms, and Dworkin's room, for security reasons.
They leave the throne room and head for a sitting room. As they are going there, a servant runs up, and tells them that the freezing salted water results are back. She holds out a map of the city, on which are twenty dots where the servants did their experiments, each one marked with how salty the water was before it didn't freeze. It can be seen that the castle, and four broad lines radiating out from it are the coldest places in the city, colder than the areas between. Hmmm...
The sitting room is reached. The two Trumps of Ghenesh and Ragasa are tried, Ghenesh first. A contact with Ghenesh is made, although there is a peculiar wrench as the contact forms. And the Trump shows a scene exactly like the Trump, wintry skeletal trees, glistening with frost under a large full moon. They can feel the cold through the Trump link. As they observe, there is an agonised scream from somewhere, as if something quite large has met a nasty end.
They then try the Trump of Ragasa. The contact there clears too, again with a wrench (although less of a one than to Ghenesh), and they can see the place laid out before them, looking just like the Trump image. A bird can be seen flying far off in the distance. Again, cold radiates through the link. They drop the contact.
Another attempt is made to contact Fiona, with the same lack of results as before.
It is decided to go to the wintry shadows and see what can be found there.
Etienne Trumps to her Enchanted Earth to fetch Electra (her winged horse), and cold weather gear for everyone. Her minions are much impressed by her arrival in a purple rainbow. She collects the gear, then tells her underlings that she may be gone some time, though not in heaven or hell, just some other planes. She Trumps out to Amber.
Upon her return everyone goes to rest in preparation for their expedition...