I would never have lets things - people - get to me like they are now when I was back in Timashkurabad. Certainly not in that last year there. So why, now, am I feeling it so much?
Was I simply numb before? Not letting matter get to me? Not letting them - grief and pain and so forth - distract me from the business of day-to-day survival?
But now? Now I am out of Timashkurabad and have walked the Pattern, perhaps, deep down I feel I can let myself feel things again and this extremity of feeling is simply unfamiliarity rather than something new. Or perhaps the Pattern simply tore off all the old scabs and now everything rubs against the raw wounds in my heart. As with so many things here time will, I imagine, tell.
I am not sure I like all this choice. Choosing who to be loyal to. Who to be! Things were simple when there was no choice. But ... I cannot help but think that, in Amber, things are rarely that simple. So, deciding things - making choices - is something I suppose I should learn to do. And quickly.
One presumes we have all passed the identity test (which was much less unpleasant than I anticipated, to be honest) now? One imagines so, and that someone would have made a fuss, if not.
And there goes Xandra, saying she does not believe might makes right. Perhaps that is so where she comes from, but Timashkurabad taught me a different lesson. When might can torture and kill anyone who will nay-say it, then it does have the right, because no-one will dare to say it does not. I suppose that may not make real right, but what, really, is the difference? Might will certainly make what it wishes to happen, happen, regardless.
"The throne must be respected, not simply because of who sits on it," says Rune. Why? How can you respect a chair? I am certainly not going to be loyal to a chair, however loyal I may be to the person who sits in it.
I only give my loyalty to people. Not items of furniture.
I did not realise we had quite so many questions. Quite so many mysteries. Well, I hope we shall be able to resolve some of them before this is all over...
I wonder if we could resolve this Mandor and Tomora ... problem ... simply by my going with her (though not alone). That might help to sort some things out, though it might also be horribly dangerous! At least it might cut to the heart of event - perhaps literally if the likes of Legion are involved!
Gods, this feels like one of Alakhan's planning sessions, where he would lets us all - all of us older ones anyway - chip in. Every idea we had. Everything we knew. Everything laid out and chewed over. Ruminated upon. All the pieces shuffled into different shapes and forms until some conclusion emerged. Lives, perhaps, riding on what was decided.
And someone doing the final deciding. Alakhan then. Rune, one imagines, now.
Llewella must knew something about recent events. But of course she is not contributing anything of what she knows. Anything that might be useful. Anything that might save some lives. Oh no. She would rather simply sit and blatantly exploit our good will.
And why can Simon not teach us how to detect shapeshifters? Or tell us how he does it? He is free enough in revealing other people's powers, but of course that does not stop him being secretive with his own. One law for himself, one for everyone else I imagine.
Also, why does - did - Llewella think Dworkin was dead? And more importantly why was she apparently so frightened to learn that he was not?