Notes Taken by Samantha and Alastair Beadle.
Out in shadow, Arun of the Akina is returning to Amber. After the defeat of Finndo and Lillian he went into shadow and returned to his home shadow of Eridos, where he attempted to teach the best of his people his skills. After a year or so, some of them are grasping shapeshifting (though it is much more tiring for them than for Arun), but no-one has the least clue how to shift through shadow in a Pattern-like way. The only thing he doesn't mention is how to destroy the Pattern with Amberite blood. He leaves his people to continue their training on their own and heads into shadow. He intends to go on a quest to discover himself and figure out what he should do. Strangely, he discovers various shadows of himself, many of whom also seem to be questing for various reasons. They talk. None of them know anywhere hear as much about the universe as he does. He then goes to find Lirin, the water god from Eridos. After a while, he does (or at least, finds a Lirin). He spends time talking to Lirin, but finds him disappointing - Lirin know all about water in this shadow, but nothing of water in other shadows - there is no connection there. And Lirin is not anywhere as concerned or informed about these things as Arun. Arun leaves. He searches for a place where people have a level of knowledge, understanding and power over shadow like that of himself. He finds himself heading for Amber, but stops before he gets there, in the Golden Circle shadows close to the place. He tours them, looking for people knowledgeable. They tend to suggest he go to Amber and talk to the Royal family there as they don't have the knowledge of Pattern and shadow they do. Arun decides that his goal shall be to raise everyone to his level of control and understanding of the universe. This may take a while. He decides to find some brave volunteers to travel with him and be the first of his students. He looks for some likely people, and quickly finds four people who he takes on as squires as he heads back to Amber.
Arun and his followers ride into Amber through Forest Arden, up the Great Stair from the harbour, and along the Royal Way to the castle. It is late afternoon. They ride up to the main gate, and Arun is greeted by the soldiers on guard. Arun has one of them usher him in (another soldier runs out to replace him) and he and his entourage are led into the vast main courtyard (where they hand their horses over to grooms) and into the castle under the main portico and into the magnificent entrance hall.
They are led to the throne room. There are many people in the vast throne room, mostly Amber nobles, clustered around the dais at the other end. Arun is led forward and makes his way through the crowd to the front. On top of the dais is a large golden throne, but on the bottom stair are two stools, on which are sat Gerard and Lady Vialle. Gerard is listening to a couple who are stood before him, who are putting forward their cases for a divorce settlement. Eventually they stop. Gerard decrees that things shall be divided equally between husband and wife. Neither look too happy, but don't argue. They step back into the crowd. Gerard looks around, and stops Arun in the crowd. He stands up and greets Arun, shaking his hand. Lady Vialle says 'Hello'.
Gerard explains to Arun about the problem Amber is currently suffering from - that this wintry day is in fact June, and that his cousins are looking into the problem. Arun agrees to assist. He excuses himself from Gerard, and goes to his rooms. He has servants contact the others and ask them to meet him in his rooms (close by theirs) quite quickly. They head out through the entrance hall and across the courtyard to the keep, where their rooms are. In the courtyard, Arun asks who of his followers are ready to come with him. Two bow out, saying they want to stay here and learn for now. However, two step forward to carry on.
They go to Arun's rooms.
Meanwhile, in their rooms the others are resting and preparing to go off to the cold shadows whose Trumps they 'borrowed' from Dworkin's rooms. Unbeknownst to the others, Caitlin sleight-of-handed away a 'super-Trump' of Deirdre, her mother. She tries the Trump. Despite its being a 'super-Trump' no contact occurs. Damn.
Servants knock on the doors of Caitlin, Jihx, Etienne and Godofos, and relay the message that Arun is back and would like to talk to everyone else in his rooms at their earliest possible convenience. Everyone goes to Arun's rooms with little delay. Servants admit them. Etienne greets Arun with four French-style kisses on the cheeks. The rest just shake his hand.
Donik and Lena, Arun's two remaining squires, are introduced. "They will accompany us in this 'serious crisis'," says Arun. Caitlin, Etienne, Godofos and Jihx explain everything that has happened to Arun, including their visit to Dworkin's cave and their plans to visit the icy shadows or, perhaps, the Courts of Chaos (which is another suspect for who is behind this attack on Amber). Godofos also reminds everyone about the rays of cold in the city, centred on the castle. Some discussion of what to do now ensues; some are in favour of going to the ice shadows, others of following the rays of cold or trying to get to the Courts of Chaos.
Eventually it is agreed that Etienne and Caitlin will go to the place of mountains protruding through an ice sheet, while Godofos, Jihx and Arun will go to the place Gerard identified as Ghenesh.
Servants bring in the warm weather clothing Etienne has provided for everyone from the Enchanted Earth, and people don it. They go down to the stables to get their various steeds. Once everyone is ready to leave, Arun has Donik try the Trump of Ghenesh. He concentrates on the card, and is obviously exerting himself, but nothing happens and no link forms. He hands the card back and apologises.
Etienne concentrates on the Trump of the ice sheet. She quickly forms a contact with, as before, a sense of the link shifting as it forms, and Etienne, Caitlin and Electra (her winged horse) all go through. Etienne and Caitlin mount Electra and they take to air, flying across the ice sheet under vast numbers of bright stars.
Arun has his female squire, Lena, try the Trump. She has as much success as Donik and also hands the card back. Jihx takes the Trump and concentrates on it. Gradually the link opens, with the same slightly wrenching shift as it does so. The five people and their horses step through the link into a slightly snowy moonlit clearing in the middle of night-time forest. The only difference to the Trump image is that the moon is in a very different place in the sky.
Arun casts a 'far-sense' spell to allow him to see and hear far away. As he does so he can that this place is extremely rich in magic, much more so than most shadows.
High above the ice sheet, Etienne and Jihx fly towards the nearest mountain peak protruding through the ice. After a while they reach it, a vast jagged mass of dark rock under the moonlight. The fly parallel it, looking for anything suspicious. After a while they both notice that in crevices and cracks in the rock there seem to be holes, the bottoms of which cannot be seen in the bright moonlight. Etienne produces a brightly glowing gem from a leather bag and uses it to illuminate the scene. The gem is very bright - this place must be very magical, but the light doesn't do much for their night vision.
However, with the aid of the light from the gem, it is clear that there are roughly human-sized holes in the rock, hidden in crevices and under overhangs. They fly down to investigate. Caitlin casts about and can make out faint signs of tracks in the thin layer of snow, which have been covered up by having the snow brushed over them. Suspicious. Also, Etienne can sense magical power from inside the tunnel. Even more suspicious. They mount Electra again and fly up into the sky. Etienne pulls out Arun's Trump and attempts to make contact...
Back in Ghenesh, Arun sends his point of view off to explore as he sits on his horse.
Jihx and Godofos leave Arun and his squires there and ride into the forest separately, to explore. It is very dark, with confusing moonlight and blackness. It is just about possible to ride in it, but very easy to get lost. Godofos does. Jihx finds his way back to the clearing, and Godofos is guided back by shouting between him and Jihx.
Arun's point of view zooms invisibly off. After about 20 miles (the range of the spell being about 30 miles) he is still looking at forest. Then he sees a couple of breaks in the canopy - a stream and a river. He follows the river and before too long comes to a two mile wide circular clearing in the forest with the river running through it, which is a patchwork of fields. In the centre, on the river, is a cluster of about two dozen huts. One is of stone; the others are wooden. The point of view goes into the stone hut. Inside are what looks like a family. At one end an open space on the floor has a magic circle carved into it, with a desk close by, a couple of books on a shelf, and various other magical paraphernalia. Arun can also sense magic here.
At this point, Arun begins to sense a Trump contact coming on. This will cause his spell to dissipate if he accepts, so he resists. Etienne persists for a while, then stops. She Trumps Jihx instead. Jihx accepts the call.
Etienne tells him what they have found, and that they are going to go into one of the tunnels to investigate. She wants to pass Electra through the Trump link, as she won't fit down the tunnel. Jihx agrees, and Etienne has Electra land by a tunnel. Jihx opens up the link, and Electra goes through. Etienne drops the Trump link and she and Caitlin enter the tunnel, but has Jihx Trump her so they can stay in touch without hampering her actions too much.
Once they're inside Etienne turns back to the entrance and summons an Angel, Lauriel, to guard the entrance behind them; a glowing androgynous robed, winged figure appears, hovering in the air. She apologises to it for failing to dismiss it last time. It nods. Etienne sets Lauriel to guard the tunnel mouth. It nods again. She and Caitlin head down into the tunnel.
Arun sends his point to view on down the river. After a little way he finds another, smaller, clearing, about a mile across, with fields and a smaller village of about twelve huts (all of wood) in it. He carries on and at the limit of his range finds another clearing about the same size as the first, with about the same number of huts in it.
He returns his point of view to his body and ends the spell, having decided that this world is harmless.
He, Jihx and Godofos decide they should go to the first village to question the inhabitants. But riding through these woods for twenty miles doesn't seem a good idea. They look at Electra and wonder if she could carry them. Electra gives them an extremely sceptical look. They decide to try another way. Godofos volunteers to stay behind with Arun's squires and keep an eye on the horses. Arun turns into his dragon form, takes Jihx onto his back, and flies off over the forest towards the village.
Etienne and Caitlin continue down the dark tunnel with Caitlin leading. Etienne becomes irritated with the wind noise coming over the Trump link from Jihx as he's flown along by Arun, and closes the link. Jihx can do nothing to stop her. After a short while, Etienne pulls her glowing gem out of its bag again to cast some light ahead so they can see things before walking into them (and nicely silhouetting Caitlin against the glow). After a short while, Etienne senses magic ahead. She tells Caitlin (before Caitlin enters the magical area) and joins her. She crawls forward on all fours and examines the magic. It appears to be some form of trap or warding. She concentrates upon it and begins to pray for guidance.
Arun and Jihx arrive at the village and land out of sight, just into the trees. Arun turns back into human form and they leave the trees, heading for the village. Shortly after they leave the trees they notice the moonlight reflecting from something on the opposite side of the clearing to them, two miles away. They decide this is probably more important and begin to sprint across the fields to see what it is, avoiding the village.
After fifteen minutes or so they reach the trees on the far side. There seems to be a building of some kind with its frontage at the edge of the woods, extending back into the forest. From the front it looks like a Grecian-style temple built of polished black stone, with steps leading up to a pillared front over which is a triangular roof-front. It looks well kept and is not at all overgrown. They go up the steps and in.
The place seems to have no walls, but instead several concentric layers of black stone pillars holding up the roof from a stepped base. It is about 20m long (into the forest), 10m wide, and inside the ceiling is 3m high. There is an open area in the centre, with an altar that is a plain block of black stone. The whole place seems deserted; like the shadow as a whole so far, it seems cold and wintry. Looking back from the where they came in, they see that the place seem aligned with the moon, which shines in through the pillars, casting criss-crossing shadows through the place.
Having seen enough the pair leave the temple and head back to the village. Glancing back at it as they go, they can see some kind of carvings on the triangular roof-front. In the centre is a circular design - the moon, perhaps?
Etienne prays for a while and finds that the spell in the trap has already been triggered. She doesn't tell Caitlin this, but pretends that she has disarmed the trap. She can tell it was triggered within the last few years, and that it was a very powerful disintegration spell that would have entirely obliterated anywhere in the warded part of the tunnel; she tells Caitlin this last.
They proceed together with Etienne using her light-stone shield to give a dim light. Caitlin notes that there appear to be very faint recent tracks in the tunnel here, too. After a while they reach a fork. Caitlin examines the floor and sees that the right hand tunnel is most used, so they go that way. They pass another triggered warding and continue on.
After a while, they come across a body lying face-down in the floor. It seems to have been cut down from behind with a sword while trying to flee. They can see that it has faintly white-furred skin, cat-like eyes and small claws instead of fingernails. It is wearing a tabard and breeches, but no other protection against the cold. On they go. Before long, they come across openings in the tunnel walls, and more bodies, some of which are clearly children. All seem to have been cut down while trying to flee, or butchered in their rooms. The rooms vary; some are living quarters or offices, while others seem to be fungus farms left to run riot (with long metre-tall stone troughs out of which fungi are growing and spilling.
They decide this is taking too long. Etienne pulls her light-gem entirely out of it bag, and a bright light fills the tunnel. They start running.
Jihx and Arun reach the village and go up to the stone hut. They knock on the door. After a while a muffled voice from inside shouts something they don't understand. Nothing else happens. They knock again. This time, after a while, the door is opened (following sounds of a bar being lifted and a catch being opened) and a tall, thin bearded middle-aged man peers out, holding a glowing stone aloft in one hand. He looks them dubiously up and down, and says something.
Neither Arun nor Jihx understand what he says, which is worrying as supposedly all languages are shadows of Thari, the language of Amber, and walking the Pattern allows you to understand them all. Not good.
Arun and Jihx look bemused for an instant, then Jihx walks off and round the corner of the hut. He riffles through his Trump deck and concentrates on Etienne's card. Back round the corner, Arun offers the man money.
In the tunnels, Etienne answers Jihx's Trump call. He tells her that they can't understand the language of the people here. Etienne passes her pendant of language translation (a gift from Fiona, her mother) through the Trump link to Jihx. Jihx keeps the Trump link up and returns back to the doorway, where Arun is little success with his bribery attempt. The pendant doesn't allow Jihx to understand the man's language. The man starts to repeat what he said previously SLOWLY AND LOUDLY while pointing into the forest.
Etienne decides this need her personal touch, and comes through the Trump link to Jihx in a burst of purple rainbows. She tries using the pendant to understand the man. It doesn't work. She tries some of her other items of enchanted equipment - her telescope-ring for example. They all seem to work fine. But the pendant doesn't. Etienne doesn't understand why the pendant doesn't work when all her other magic items do.
Jihx gives up on the subtle approach and barges past the man into the stone hut. He looks annoyed, raises a hand and starts to cast a spell with words and gestures (they may not understand the language, but Etienne knows enough to recognise a spell being cast when she hears it). Etienne slaps him across the face, disrupting his spell casting; he looks even more annoyed, but the spell has been stopped. He starts trying to cast a second spell. Arun grabs him, which also effectively stops him. Inside the hut Jihx goes over to where Arun said the books were. On the way he notices that the woman and children Arun had seen in the hut are nowhere to be seen. Jihx examines the books. They seem to be written in a script he doesn't understand (but even when a spoken language is understandable scripts, being much more arbitrary, often are not).
Caitlin sits in the dark. It is pitch black, as Etienne has taken away the glowing gem, and cold. As she sits there, she starts to hear very distant wailing and moaning voices. She waits for Etienne to return.
Etienne, by the stone hut, feels for the reality of Ghenesh. She realises that it is as real as Amber, though in a somewhat different way! She concludes that there is not much else she can do here, and Trumps Caitlin. Caitlin takes the call, and Etienne returns to the darkened tunnel.
She and Caitlin continue down the tunnels. Caitlin tells Etienne about the voices she heard, and they start to search for them. As they go Etienne feels for the reality of this place. It is pretty real, but no-where near as real as Amber. Further away, perhaps? The two of them shout to the voices, then listen for any response. All is quiet. Etienne uses her 'Enchanting Voice' spell to try and calm the voices, and get them to respond. Again, there is no response.
Continuing on, they find a corridor with magical power radiating up it from somewhere below. They can also hear sounds of movement from down there. They go down the corridor and shout, 'HELLO!" There is no response. They come out in a fairly large hemispherical room, lit by something low down in the centre. It seems to be on top of a fat flat-topped glossy black hexagonal stone obelisk, inscribed with runes. Around it are six other, thinner point-tipped black obelisks. The whole chamber is very cold. Etienne can feel power surging back and forth. There seem to be some other tunnels opening into this chamber around its walls.
At this point, arrows fly from the openings towards Caitlin and Etienne...
Back in the village on Ghenesh, Arun goes off towards the forest in the direction the local mage is pointing to see what is there. As far as he can tell it's just forest like the rest. Perhaps the mage is just telling them to go away.
With Arun going away and Jihx in the hut, the local mage flees towards the other huts. He hammers on their doors and rouses his neighbours, summoning the rest of the populace. When Jihx comes out of the hut and Arun returns, they see the villagers massed, with bows, scythes, axes and boar spears at the ready. They advance. Arrows are fired, but Arun and Jihx dodge nimbly aside. Arun changes into his dragon form again, which causes the villagers to pause slightly, and Jihx activates his armour, which rapidly covers him. He draws his sword and fires a beam of purple energy into the ground before the villagers. They hesitate again, and Arun takes advantage of this to grab Jihx and fly off into the night, back towards the clearing where they arrived.
In the hemispherical chamber, arrows fly towards Etienne and Caitlin. Caitlin easily dodges them, and Etienne's magical shield draw's in those aimed at her, taking the impact without harm.
Six tall, slender people with pale skin, angular elfin features and slightly pointed ears, dressed in ornately embroidered black, grey and silver medieval-style clothing exit the other passages into the room and charge Etienne and Caitlin. They are wielding glossy black swords whose blades are inscribed with some kind of runes. Etienne fires her arquebus at one of them, hoping to hit him with an explosive ball, but he is too fast, and she misses. However, the explosion of the ball does unbalance him as he runs.
Caitlin pulls off two of her broaches, flicks them open into throwing daggers, and throws them at two of the attackers. She hits them both and though they don't stop, they obviously take damage, and hiss with pain.
Etienne draws her enchanted sword and back to the door. Caitlin launches four more of her broach/daggers at the attackers (in two groups of two) before they close with her. As the attackers approach, with the light of the thing in the centre of the chamber behind them, tit can be seen that their wounds are glowing, with a silvery light.
From the doorway, Etienne casts a spell. A pillar of fire bursts from the roof of the chamber onto one of the luckless attackers. He hisses loudly and instantly falls to the floor, a charred mess. Caitlin also backs to the door, and borrows Etienne's sword. Etienne steps back and Caitlin defends the door while Etienne makes Trump contact with Arun. She doesn't take 'no' for an answer, forces the contact, and pulls Arun and Jihx through the link to the tunnel where she is. They get a very quick description of the situation as this is done.
Then it's in to the attack. Caitlin backs off down the tunnel, and as the attackers approach, Jihx fires his sword's Trump-purple energy bolt at one of them, hitting it in the shoulder. Arun attacks the second with a star-fire bolt, but misses and takes out some wall instead. Etienne works to reload her arquebus.
While Jihx and Arun hold the corridor Caitlin runs back along the tunnel and sucks into the first room. It's possible, no, likely, no certain that there is a loaded crossbow hanging on the wall in here. Indeed there is. She grabs it and runs back.
Jihx fires again, and singes his attacker. However, it's not down and swings at him, hitting him in the side. Most of the blow bounces off Jihx's armour, but he is knocked slightly aside. Arun leaps over the heads of the two attackers in the tunnel and lands among the three outside. He slashes at them with his dragon-form's claws, but they are too fast and he misses as they duck out of the way.
Caitlin arrives back and shoots at the one attacking Jihx. She hits him square on and he doubles up, slumping to the floor. Jihx stabs his sword through the doubled-up foe, triggering its magical blast as he does so. A large hole is blown in the figure and it falls back to the floor and does not move. However, no blood flows from the wound, only a bright silvery light, like moonlight.
Arun casts an invisibility spell, then a teleportation spell to take him behind one of the attackers. Jihx swings at another one. Etienne has finished reloading her arquebus. She offers it to Caitlin. Caitlin takes it and shoots at another of the attackers, hitting it square in the chest. The exploding ball blows a large hole in its chest, and it falls heavily to the floor.
Arun slashes at one of the attackers while invisible. He scratches its skin and knocks it to one side, but does no serious damage. Another attacker steps towards Jihx; he stabs into its abdomen and triggers his sword's energy blast once more. It suddenly develops a large hole in the abdomen and falls over.
Only two attackers remain now, one of which is being attacked by the invisible Arun. The one that is not being attacked steps back out of line of sight from the tunnel entrance. Arun sees it turn and run for one of the other entrances into the hemispherical chamber. Etienne joins the attack on the remaining one. It is much faster than she is, but hampered by having Arun hanging on to it. Arun attempts to bite its throat out, but it twists and he only scratches the side of its neck instead. Etienne jumps onto his back.
Caitlin, seeing that the fighting is essentially over, collects the fallen attackers weapons, then goes back into the hemispherical chamber. She avoids Arun, Etienne and the remaining attacker, and collects both the fallen weapons and her broaches. Jihx runs off after the fleeing attacker, who has just ducked into one of the tunnels, calling for assistance from the others as the tunnel is totally dark. Arun leaps from the attacker he and Etienne are fighting and heads for the tunnel mouth. He casts his 'little sun' spell, and a point of light flies up, growing brighter and brighter until it matches the sun. Ouch! He runs off after Jihx and the fleeing attacker.
With the departure of Arun, Etienne starts to find herself at a serious disadvantage against the one she is tackling. It starts to break her grip. Then Caitlin, seeing what is going on, sneaks up and hamstrings him. He falls over, though he is still entirely conscious and struggling to get away. Caitlin pulls out her Trump of the Amber castle courtyard and concentrates on it. The image quickly clears. The prisoner is pushed through the link. Caitlin sees the guards pick him up and take him away, the closes the link.
Back in the tunnels, Jihx and Arun have no luck finding the escapee - the tunnels are a labyrinth, and very dark. Once he goes round a corner, Jihx and Arun lose him. They go back and get Caitlin. She finds some very faint tracks in the little dust on the floor, but there are other tracks, too, and she cannot distinguish them. They go back to the hemispherical chamber.
The arrangement of obelisks is examined. The fat obelisk in the centre has a fist-sized colourless faceted gem resting on its top surface. Etienne can feel magical power radiating from it. On closer examination, a flaw is seen running through them gem. In fact, the flaw bears a striking resemblance to a three-dimensional image of the Pattern itself...
At this point, action is instantly decided upon. Caitlin pulls out her Trump of Gerard, and starts concentrating upon it. Etienne starts concentrating upon her Trump of Godofos...