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Back to the diary entry for A Matter Of Security.
It's yet again amazing how quickly things can go to pot. Not that this should be too surprising in the light of past events, for example how we managed to pull defeat from the jaws of victory down in Chaos a couple of years ago. But still... Disheartening is perhaps the best way to describe it.
And the worst of it is that by my - our? - actions I have not only hurt myself badly but also Khortez, to a lesser extent Sal, and an entire shadow of innocents, which is, incidentally, of some significance to Amber.
Perhaps I should go back to the start of this entire debacle and begin there. In K'dell. And elsewhere.
I sent a message to Duke Calen, by bird of desire, informing him of what had happened to K'dell since he left. It seemed to get through, as I received a reply asking me to look after Thomas. Well, I tried.
And he is fine.
I also sent a hopeful bird of desire to mother, but this one, unfortunately, had less success. The bird returned with my message, tired and bedraggled. Does this mean she is really and truly dead? I hope not. Given the number of other unknown Amberites, and ones thought dead, who have turned up in recent years perhaps there is still hope, but I don't think it's something to rely on...
Khortez has added a new vendetta to the book of same, between him and Winton. Not that, I think, Winton was ever made aware of this. While I feel I can understand why he did so, I felt at the time that it was a bad idea, like most pacts of revenge, though I didn't mention this to him. But, alas, how right I was.
In K'dell I was helping to fix the damage done to the place by Dalt and his cronies. Rebuilding its defences and on the side helping Robert de Harquoy rebuild the K'dell government too. Fortunately I did have the help of a loan of some of Benedict's elite troops to bolster the new ducal guard. Unicorn knows why Benedict chose to let his elite troops out for such an apparently mundane task. Presumably there is some tie between Benedict and Calen of which the rest of us are unaware. Not entirely unexpected, I suppose, given that K'dell's main export is (was) military skill.
Such a link might also explain Benedict's coming to K'dell to guard Thomas while we assaulted Anders' fortress. But more on that later.
In Amber, Arran asked me to get Inigo to investigate some cats in his (the?) library. Apparently, he said, they were drilling away at the floor behind a bookcase in the Archaeology section. With pneumatic drills. To be honest, I did consider that he might have simply lost his mind. He wouldn't have been the first Amberite to do so, after all. Then a cat wandered past. On its hind legs. In little trousers. Wearing a little hard hat. Sort of cute really. I was speechless. But at least it implied that Arran retained whatever marbles he previously had.
So Inigo asked the cat-engineers what they were doing. They wouldn't tell him because he was too associated with humans. So I set Inigo to watch them further. Now he walks in his hind legs and has a hard hat. He is a supervisor, it seems. And now he won't tell what the cats are doing because I'm a human. This is really quite frustrating.
Then the cats started putting up signs and planning applications about the place:
However, it at least seems that the object of their digging has been found. Some kind of 'Transfer Point' magical teleportation device hidden under the floor. Of the same kind as one which Khortez found in a hidden room in the K'dell ducal palace. Somewhere which was apparently warded by Oberon! The two ends of the same system? Time will, hopefully, tell. I saw least one of the cats in K'dell too, which tends to imply that there is some connection.
And of course, there are, as yet, still no clues as to why the cats are drilling, or how they got to be so organised. Of all the species in Amber, cats are really the last I would have expected to be working in such an organised manner - they are cats after all!
However, they do seem to be very aware of what's going on in and around the place. The sign on Tony's quarters, for example, could only have been written with knowledge of what was happening in K'dell. Somewhat worrying.
This was too much for any sane mind to comprehend, so I hired Sal as my lawyer in this matter. I don't need the stress at present. And I had my things moved from my rooms to elsewhere in the castle. Just in case. And of course, it turns out that Sal is also working for the cats, but by this point I'm past caring.
But at least Inigo is safe.
Meanwhile, it seems our Tony has been a bad boy, and is not longer quite the apple of Llewella's eye that he once was. This became apparent when we learnt of his banishment from Rebma, which explained his non-appearance at the meeting he previously arranged in that Rebman restaurant. All the more provoking was Tony's reluctance to speak of it. So, by bird of desire and face to face means I had a little chat with Llewella to discover what had occurred.
Most enlightening. Apparently Tony has eloped with, and married, a lady of Chaos (or a 'Chaos bitch' as Llewella so nicely put it)! One Lady Adira of House Tallis, a client house of Sawall, so Vialle told Sal and myself. Llewella is not pleased. Especially as she learnt of Tony's actions from Random. Given the, apparently quite serious, desire to kill Tony which she expressed, she is definitely not happy with recent events. Though I can't help thinking that driving Tony away like this is not going to remove him from his current state of nuptial bliss.
I wonder what this Lady Adira is like? A saint perhaps? That's the only sort of woman I can think of who would be able to put up with Tony for any prolonged period of time without wanting to hurt him badly. Perhaps she just doesn't know him very well yet. And how have her house taken this news, I wonder? Just as delighted as Llewella, perhaps?
I was wondering about wedding gifts. A surprise party too, perhaps? For gifts, given Tony's bridge-building (or burning?) actions, perhaps a matched pair of 'his' and 'hers' bullet-proof vests and first aid kits would be appropriate. Maybe a brain for Tony, too? A little harsh, perhaps, but then it's been a harsh kind of day...
But I must remember, the next time someone, even Benedict, asks me to give Tony a job, to tell them where to get off (though with Benedict I will be more polite than that). Although my opinion on the subject has varied somewhat in the past, recent events have, I think, placed Tony firmly in the category of 'liability'.
This all arises from events following Tony's departure from Rebma. Benedict asked me to usefully employ Tony. Silly me, I agreed to do so, and put him in charge of the cleaning-up crews in K'dell, fixing buildings and generally tidying up. But, of course, he had to go and join Jay in looking for Winton within the city. And they even had a sighting, around a pharmacy, part of some cross-shadow operation (which, in the light of recent events, perhaps deserves further investigation too).
When I was informed of this I, of course, told them to watch for longer and find out more information before acting. But no, Tony and Jay had to take it into their heads to raid the place, with the help of a squad of K'dell police. Winton was indeed there and rendered them all unconscious with the same magical alacrity he had shown previously. And then, of course, he escaped. But not before, as it turned out, using Tony's body (mindlessness such as he possesses obviously being a gift as far as Winton was concerned) to nearly assassinate Robert de Harquoy, punching his face through to his spinal column in a most unpleasant fashion. He was only saved, apparently, by his being a latent shapeshifter.
Strangely, I was not pleased with Tony. Ordered him from the pharmacy and K'dell, and back to Amber. Of course, once he woke up, he was 'too busy searching the place' (desperately trying to bolt the stable door after the horse was miles away) to pay any mind to me, and I was forced to use Curetana to make him pay attention. At this point he did indeed leave, though not to Amber, and also not to the cells as I ordered.
I feel a little ashamed at having to use a weapon to make a subordinate (as Tony was at the time) pay attention; can't thinking of it as a failure of leadership. But then again, he is an Amberite and I'm sure that had some contributory effect!
If Tony and Jay had found Winton, then done what was asked of them, we might well have caught him, and I might well have been quite impressed. As it is, unimpressed is hardly the word.
And, by being associated with Tony in this, Jay has seriously damaged my previous good opinion of him. However, he did at least try (fairly successfully) to undo some of the damage done, and managed to re-locate Winton after his escape by using birds of desire. Winton was hiding out in the fortress of the former Duke Anders, from which I rescued Thomas previously.
For someone so apparently used to living on the fringes of society, Jay does seem somewhat untutored in criminal skills, let alone criminal uses of (for example) the Pattern.
What did they think they were doing? Trying to grab all the glory for themselves (as if I would have cared)? Being massively over-confident? Showboating? Simply being very stupid? I really would like to know. Then perhaps we could avoid a repeat of this in the future. Assuming I have one, of course.
If it wasn't so damned unworthy of me, it would be very easy to consider Tony's little act of stupidity to be the entire cause of the debacle which followed. After all, without his actions, if they had left Winton alone, we could well have caught Winton in the city rather than having hunt him down, with all the consequences that brought, and much of this would probably have been avoided.
At least Arran, Sal, and of course Khortez remain their reliable selves.
And yet anther younger generation Amberite has been brought in from shadow - Amora, another child of Corwin. Perhaps the Corwin clan is beginning to compete with the Deirdre clan? She seems quite useful to have around, though, being another Mage, though not, it seems, one quite at the same level as Khortez.
How many Amberites are there anyway? It looks like there is a slow but constant trickle turning up out of shadow, or even from the Courts of Chaos. New, lost, previously unknown, hiding, all these things.
Everywhere you look, Amberites!
I wonder where Morgalyn is?
This seems to be his kind of affair (or debacle?). Of course, we could still pin blame on him - if he had been there he would probably have been the one to do the killing and take the curse. After writing these words, however, I find I'm somewhat disgusted at myself for even entertaining such unworthy thoughts.
The fight in the castle of the former Duke Anders was unpleasant, though, until the end, nothing I hadn't seen before. As Malachite, on Gotham, I've had fights just like that, but somehow they never seemed so real as this. I suppose the stakes were higher. The opponents more of an unknown. And there was so much more killing. Much more than I should have done. So much easier to kill than to remove from combat without killing, unfortunately, and once Tony helped us lose the element of surprise, we just had to rush. My Praxis training did help, but even so it was still ... very unpleasant.
I should be satisfied that my new armour, at least, worked so well. But it seems the least of my concerns at present.
Winton certainly went down more easily than we expected.
He was muttering before we got to him. I should have thought about what he was doing; I did, to some extent, but thought I could stop him. But I should have knocked him out. In retrospect there is, as usual, too little we know which he could have told us. What was he doing in that pharmacy? What were his links to Chaos? Why was he still in K'dell at all, given he must have known we were looking for him? What does this bode for Amber? But now it's too late for such questions. Much too late.
I think I understand, now, why I acted as I did against Winton. I was afraid. I heard him mumbling and I thought he was trying to cast another one of those unpleasant 'force beam' spells with which he hurt me previously, as opposed to the far worse thing he was actually doing. And so he had to be stopped, or so I thought at the time.
Not that it makes me at all happy to admit it, but it nonetheless seems true. I was scared, and over-reacted. And so paid the price.
Who would have thought it?
I was aware of Khortez' declared vendetta at that point, but given my opinions on that topic I simply ignored it and went for Winton. Perhaps if I had thought. But no, it's too late.
And so, in a moment of blind stupidity I killed Winton, with Khortez and Sal close behind me. Cleaved his head in twain. And thus Khortez, Sal, myself and the entire shadow of K'dell were death-cursed.
Damnation.
One of the worst things is that I was insisting we use non-lethal weaponry as much as possible., and, when I armed us from one of my stockpiles on Gotham, I got us a lot of tranquilliser dart guns (though some, such as Tony, insisted on replacing the tranquilliser with nerve poison provided by Sal and carrying the antidote).
Then, of course, I didn't carry them, because I though I was sufficiently responsible not to do something stupid with the more lethal weaponry.
How wrong I was.
There was Logrus in the wards on Anders' castle which had not been there before. Did Winton sell out to Chaos, or House Caradoc as least? Perhaps. Cymnea (the mother of Prince Benedict!), or whoever she was, looking after his son certainly implies it. Why? For protection from us? Can't say I blame him, really.
I was quite surprised when the King agreed to come the K'dell and assist us in assaulting the fortress. And also when he called in a Logrus expert from the Courts by the name of Mandor to help us with the Logrus parts of the warding.
Perhaps that explained the Chaos demons we fought there, too.
But if Winton did sell out, perhaps his going down so easily was because they used him. Used him to remove K'dell as a factor in Amber's defences by predicting our actions. Given the reputation of House Caradoc as virulently anti-Amber I can't help thinking this is not inconceivable.
Used. I hate that. Another thing to hate in recent events.
I feel that I should apologise to the King for my failure. Not that, I imagine, it will help anything. But.
It appears that the power of a death-curse (and presumably a death-blessing) is dependant on the blood of the person doing the cursing. It would be ... embarrassing ... to say the least if one died and did a death-blessing only to discover ones blood to be less powerful that that of the person who was the source of the curse one was trying to remove. I didn't realise a family member could do a death-curse without a proper Pattern imprint; it seems to be simply the family blood which is required. Though of course such knowledge comes far too late.
I've never felt so vulnerable before. How fine a knife edge we of Amber walk. How wrong things can go if we take a mis-step.
And so much for the high ideals of my earlier thoughts. The worst crime being the killing of a family member. Now I am guilty of just that crime, and am paying the price for doing so. My alleged high moral tone of the previous entry to this diary now seems like a sick joke. Events have shown me more of my real nature. Nearly as bad as those I railed against, but less able to avoid the cursing part of such actions. So much for idealism.
We talked to Dworkin, afterwards, to see if there was any hope of a cure. Apparently his grandfather, Serathin, came up with the concept of the death curse (now there is a strange idea - that of Dworkin having parents or a grandfather!) and only a death-blessing can undo it - there is no cure because otherwise it is of no deterrent value, he said. Not the news we wanted to hear. However, Dworkin was at least able to stave off the physical effects of the curse, for a while. Perhaps forever with regular attention.
But Dworkin is hardly a reliable source of information. Who knows what he did, or what effects it will have? Perhaps the library will be able to provide some help. I should consult with Arran.
I do feel much better now, but only physically...
I feel that, while I have the time, I should apologise to everyone on the shadow of K'dell for destroying their world. But how would it help? Unless someone can shadow shift them all off, they are doomed. Apologising would just, perhaps, let me feel a bit better without doing anything. Which is missing the point, I think.
I never killed a whole shadow before. It makes me feel nauseous...
I really, really hope Khortez doesn't try to kill himself to cure the death curse. He tried it with Dworkin's poison. Sal stopped him. I didn't even try. Why? How could I? How could I not? Now I know where that spot between a rock and hard place is. It's right here. Right now.
I don't want to die of this curse. And I don't want Khortez or K'dell to die of it either. But I don't want to lose Khortez to his trying to cure things, either. One life against so many. It should be an easy choice. But when that life is Khortez it's not so simple. He's my brother. My closest relative. And I don't want to do it, even to save K'dell. How cowardly that makes me feel. I hate it.
I suppose this is what a shadowite might feel when faced with a terminal illness. Helpless. What a terrible thing. I never felt like this before. And I hate it, too.
The last time I prayed was as a child in Church on Praxis. But I don't think I ever believed in it, even when I was very little. Perhaps I should start. It would probably be of as much use as anything else we might try. But I just don't have much faith in a God, any God.
And if I were the crying type, now would probably be the time too...
I really hope Khortez doesn't do anything stupid. He seems unusually - strangely even - calm. I can't help thinking this is a bad sign. I hope I'm wrong.
We thought, from his looks, that Winton was a child of Corwin. However, it turns out that the truth is, as is often the case in Amber, even worse. Winton is Sal's son. The product of some fling with a woman he doesn't even remember, I'd wager. And now he's dead.
Poor Sal.
And it turns out that Sal is, in fact, not just a father, but a grandfather. Winton having had a son of his own, Nicholas, currently aged about seven. And in the care of a powerful lady of Chaos, probably Cymnea. This does not bode well for the future, us, and especially Sal, I fear.
Perhaps we (or I) should have started a fight then - had a chance to die and do a death-blessing to undo Winton's death-curse. But it was really Sal's show at that point, and given the circumstances I didn't really feel like starting anything without his say-so, and he did not say so.
I wonder why Sal did not insist on taking Nicholas away with him?
And I did not need Corwins comments on destroying a second shadow after we returned to him with Sal after failing to recover Nicholas. Apparently Cymnea (or whoever she was) summoned Primal Chaos in the place and now it is doomed too. I wondered what the black swirling was, but I didn't realise it was anything as serious as that. Damn. Again.
I can't say I liked Winton's shadow. Its mix of industrial wasteland, fallout zones and varying technology made the worst of Gotham look like paradise. And its inhabitants seemed worryingly powerful - able to detect Sal using Trumps, certainly. I didn't realise shadow folk could do that. Look up the word 'hellhole' in the dictionary and there's a picture of this place next to it. But even so, I'd rather it hadn't been destroyed.
Perhaps it was ... unwise ... of me to tell Caine where to go after we returned to Amber following our visit to Dworkin. But he is just so smug and I was just not in the mood to verbally fence with him.
Of course, Caine was un-perturbed by my outburst. But it was, at least, satisfying for once to vent my spleen at him.
Perhaps I should send another message to Duke Calen. Let him know what has happened. Let him know I failed. Apologise. I don't particularly want to. But I must.
I'm not sure why I suggested, once things had calmed down and the full depths of the excrement we were in became apparent, that Khortez and I go down to Chaos, visit mothers monument and contemplate the Abyss. It just seemed ... appropriate somehow...
And so, here we are. Now where do we go?
On to the diary entry for 'Tis a Far, Far Better Thing...' Part 1