Winds That Will Be — Aedan's Journal
"At the Edge of the Abyss"
Aedan's Journal. Session 5-26-01.
© 2001 Todd Worrell
Death was a common occurrence when I sailed the seas of Shadow with Caine. It didn't happen everyday, but it occurred often enough that I became somewhat inured to it. I had seen men I had known for years punctured like blood balloons and become still and silent forever. It was never easy, but it wasn't something I thought about often.
My skin tingled before battle. I could feel the air pressing in on me from all sides. Everything seemed louder, and more…imminent. Then the clash of steel, the shouts of anger and fear, and of pain. Suddenly, but never soon enough, it was over. Adrenaline coursed through my veins and forced me to find an outlet or go mad. I used to scream when I knew it was all over-not in exhilaration, or triumph, but simply to throw that lifesaving, now-useless energy to the wind.
I had seen dozens, maybe hundreds, of burials at sea. After a year, I forgot their names.
Corwin's name would never be forgotten.
* * *
"I have something to tell you," I said quietly.
My mother had dressed in riding clothes: a dark blue blouse under a black vest. She was pinning her hair up.
"Aedan, I don't have time to talk now. Can it wait?"
"No."
She looked at me doubtfully.
"Corwin," I told her, "is dead."
"Unh," she faltered, placed a hand on the bed for support. I moved to assist her, but she was too quick.
"Excuse me," she said, and vanished in a silver mist.
It hadn't happened how I had hoped it would. I wondered if I should worry about Deirdre, as I worried about Samineh and Variga back home. It was an unfamiliar feeling placed in context with my mother. She had been such a heroine to my younger self. Now I wondered if she would ever affectionately call me Violet Eyes again. I said a quick prayer to Brigit asking her to set the Prime Spirits to watch over Deirdre and walked in a daze to my rooms.
I packed for a long journey. I didn't know where I was going, exactly, but I decided I didn't want to stay in Amber. I closed my eyes and saw his lifeless body again, face down in a pool of blood. I shivered and rubbed my eyes until I saw spots.
A trip would be good for me, and it would keep me from having to answer the same questions about Corwin over and over. I could go home, but that would be hiding from myself. Besides, it would be too easy to find me there. I could find Caine and throw in with him again. That appealed to me and I spent the better part of an hour trying to deduce his likely whereabouts given what I knew about his methods. I finally had to admit that I didn't know where to start. Then I realized that if I went to Caine, I would undoubtedly lose myself in him for several years. I didn't want that. I was just beginning to find out who I was.
And there was my mother. I didn't want to run off so soon after having found her. She had survived thirty years in the Abyss. She would survive this.
I thought about where I could go for another ten minutes before I decided I would visit the Keep of the Four Worlds and speak with Brand. I took out his Trump card and concentrated.
"Stand by," I heard. I saw only a flat, featureless expanse of white. I felt a breeze come through and smelled the ocean and the scent of pine. The white dissolved and I saw Brand, standing in the strange Grove of the Unicorn, talking to the Tower.
"You've marked my line already," he said angrily. "You do not need another."
I could not hear the goddess's reply.
Brand moved toward me then, his attention still fixed on the woman behind the altar. Suddenly, there was a flash of chromatic energy, cold and vivid. Something metallic bounced off an invisible barrier surrounding Gabriel's father with a hideous clanging noise. He shuffled forward quickly, then was thrown back onto the ground. He extended his hand to me. I pulled him through.
"Thank you," Brand told me.
"You are welcome."
He brushed dirt and grass off his shirt and caught his breath. I poured him a glass of grape juice. He took it eagerly, then gave me a sour look.
"Don't you have any wine?"
"Not yet," I said, indicating the glass. He sighed and set it down. Brand glanced around my chambers. He paced around disinterestedly and stood next to me, appraisingly. When he saw my hand, he grabbed it and held the ring up to inspect it.
"I would think this is what one would call a bad idea," Brand said, meaning the ring.
"Yes," I agreed. "That is why I refused it. However, circumstances dictated that I take it."
He turned my hand over and regarded the scars, three parallel lines along my palm.
"It doesn't mean anything in the long run, you know," he said.
"The Seraph and the Tower seem to think otherwise."
He gave me a puzzled look at that, so I explained the appellations.
"Does she touch the Abyss?"
"I don't know," I said. "Circumstantial evidence seems to support that premise."
"It is…difficult," Brand released my hand and walked to the window. He pulled back the curtain and looked outside. The sky was beginning to lighten, and the faint pink tinge on Brand's face combined with his pensive expression almost made him look innocent.
Almost.
"What of the other one, the one you call Eve?"
"She claims Raj as her servant, and wishes to bring order and structure to the universe at the cost of destroying creativity."
"I have a power," he said, "a power which may oppose her. It was given to me by her enemy, though, and to use it would put me in her debt, which I do not wish to do. I have revoked my allegiance to her."
He turned and looked at me.
"I'm stuck."
Brand vanished in a rainbow blur. So much for that idea, I thought.
* * *
I checked in with Gwydion. The environment of Amber seemed to be absorbing Osric's realm's changes. I helped him with his experiments for a couple hours until I judged people would be awake.
I looked in the breakfast nook, but none of my relatives were there. I ate a couple omelettes and drank three glasses of orange juice before setting out for the library. Gabriel was there.
I relayed to him what had happened to his father. He seemed strangely unconcerned and didn't hear much of what I told him. Then he handed me a note and I knew why he was distracted.
Dearest Sister,
This is my parting kiss.
Think of Shadow. It comes about as we desire it. We desire because we live. Our desire links Nothing to Existence. Our desire, Fi, rising as our thoughts rise, natural as a lamb's first breath. Now go back farther, to Chaos. Chaos itself is the most tamed of all places. Where all is wild, control is most important. And so we have not gone back far enough. There was a time before that when even that world was not tamed, and where there was only the potential for life, then breath, then thought, then desire, then creation. Every day we take it as ordinary that we bring things into being; by the interaction of our desire, our blood, and some indefinable breath, we bring life, and those lives have thoughts and desires, and yearn each to create, and so on… But it is the greatest mystery. It is a theorem with no proof and an equation with no solution.
Where do gods fit in this? Where do we?
I love you, Fi. I hear them still, but when they are quiet, I remember that I love you, and Bleys. You are both beautiful to me.
After the Tower, I can think of nothing but the abyss. I can't hate you for that, anymore than you can hate a slave that does not want to be beaten or a cow that fears the slaughterhouse. I thought creation was an event of control. Our control, or, more honestly, mine. But creation is not about control. It is about death. Martin would understand this.
Siempre,
Brand
The note was in Brand's handwriting, and Gabriel indicated he had tested it and confirmed it was authentic. He also claimed it was an old note, from before the Patternfall war. Apparently, Brand had been following the Tower before he fell into the Abyss. I didn't know what to think about that.
I took a trump call from Magni and pulled him through to the Library. He said that he had recovered our horses from the spit where we faced off with Eve. I thanked him and made a note to check on Trick later. Magni said that he had a rather productive discussion with Ygg and thought he had learned something.
"Eve and the Tower each had a test," Magni said. "Eve was released from her test a while back. She was initially weak, but has been growing stronger. After the explosion on the Pattern, both of these powers were able to manifest forms in our universe. The Tower hasn't been made whole yet, so she is unable to move around as Eve does."
That fit in with what the Tower had told me regarding freeing herself. I wondered again if the "Gold" were Gabriel. It didn't seem likely, given his propensity for structure, that he would side with the force in opposition to it. Magni continued speaking.
"Also, there are apparently four Sisters from the beginning of time. The first of them may be gone. The second follows in Eve's wake and cannot be seen. The third walks in Shadow looking for the fourth, who is in the Abyss. Eve and the Tower are not part of this Sisterhood."
Gabriel and I absorbed that for a moment before he spoke.
"This begs some obvious questions."
"No it doesn't," Magni replied. "I was just giving answers."
We all laughed at that and settled ourselves in a circle of comfortable chairs. Magni kicked off his boots and a wave of unwashed foot-stink assaulted my nostrils.
"Your ring," he said, "in some way aids the Tower."
I noticed that he was not wearing his ring.
"Does not wearing a ring mean that you are not casting a vote?" Gabriel asked him.
"I don't know," Magni replied. "But I must get to Chaos soon."
"Why?"
"Ygg said that two of the Sisters would meet there. I want to be there when it happens."
"I have a trump of Mandor that you may use, provided that you take me along with you. I would like to see these Sisters," I told him.
"I have a little errand to run first, then I'll trump you," Magni said.
"Does it involve a big, sweaty mountain of a man wearing a leather apron and little else?" I asked.
"Yes. I intend to have him forge a weapon from my ring and the horn of the Unicorn."
That shut us up. Magni put on his boots and left. The stench of his feet remained behind. Gabriel and I stood and went to the window. The breeze blew in with the hint of salt water. It was good. We enjoyed the sights for a few minutes before he walked away. I took out one of the cards I had taken from Random's chambers.
Mandor wasn't particularly receptive to my Trump call.
"What?" His face was what one would call demonic, with a broad nose and curled horns pointing back from his temples. He was striding briskly across a city street. The air behind him was cloudy with red dust. I saw people scurrying around behind him.
"I seem to have left a bracelet—" I began.
"I have no time for this," he interrupted me and severed the contact.
I remembered that Giselle was often in Chaos. If she wasn't having sex with Merlin, she might have time to speak with me and give me passage. Or maybe, she could at least take a momentary break.
"No," she said, "I can't bring you here."
"But you are in Chaos," I said.
"Yes." She was in a fancy hotel room of some sort. "I can't invite you to someone else's home. That would be improper."
"But aren't you in a hotel?"
"Yes, the Ambassador, on the Plaza of the Immortals."
I didn't understand how a hotel could be someone else's home, and Giselle was in no mood to explain it to me.
"There is some sort of disturbance occurring at the edge of the Abyss," she said. Her hands were busy crafting something. After a few seconds, she handed me a bauble. It was a crystal sphere of some kind, pale yellow shot through with pink. Trapped inside was an elaborate golden wire butterfly.
"This will bring you to the courtyard of this hotel," Giselle said. "Toss it to the ground and be ready to travel. I must go."
She cut the connection and I thought for a moment before returning to my rooms. Giselle was part fey, so occasionally it was easy to forget that she was only nineteen years old. At times like this, however, it would have been impossible.
* * *
A couple hours later, Magni and I were cantering through Arden toward the clearing where six paths converged. We reined in and dismounted. It seemed as good a place as any.
"Tell me again what this thing is supposed to do," Magni gestured at the butterfly in crystal.
"It's supposed to transport us to Chaos."
"Yeah, that part I get, but how, exactly?"
"I don't know," I said. "Fey voodoo, I suppose."
"I didn't want to hear that," Magni lifted both his hands and showed me his palms in a defensive gesture.
"Before we go, you should change into something less…"
"…conspicuous?" Magni asked.
"I was thinking 'less bloody.'"
Magni summoned a clean undershirt, doublet, and hose and changed into them. His horse watched him change, which seemed odd to me. Then again, Magni had an odd relationship with that horse.
I used the opportunity to practice using my ring. I called forth the energy. It poured into me in great, gray waves. This time, I was able to slow down the input before it felt like some sort of critical mass. I held the energy inside me for a minute, accustoming myself to its frenetic sense of urgency. I could see the structure in everything, detect the varying levels of Pattern, of life, of subatomic stuff. It was too much. I released the magic as a great wind. The trees bent away from me in all directions. Twigs, dead leaves, and bits of loose stuff flew out of the clearing.
"Anything you want to tell me?" Magni said, chasing down his hat.
"Just practicing," I told him.
"Well, warn me next time."
"It was more fun this way. So, here goes nothing." I lifted the bauble over my head and started to throw it at the ground.
"Wait wait wait!" Magni grabbed my arm.
"What?"
"Oh, nothing," Magni smiled. "I just felt like doing that."
I smashed the crystal against the earth. It shattered in a million motes of light. The wire butterfly flew up and through some sort of portal that glowed bright yellow. Magni's horse neighed uncertainly, and we were there.
"There" turned out to be a very elegant room decorated tastefully in dark reds and browns. We sank a couple inches into plush maroon carpets. Men, women, and other humanoids walked all around us. The walls were dark wood, and distant. Perhaps forty feet ahead of us was a wall lined with shelves in front of which was a mahogany counter. Beings in maroon jackets bustled around looking busy.
It most definitely wasn't the hotel's courtyard.
A young goat-man-thing in a maroon jacket stepped toward us and looked at me expectantly.
"Take these to the stable," I told him, and he escorted our horses out a side door.
"Nice place," Magni said. "I wonder where the bar is."
"Later," I told him. "We should find Giselle and see what the disturbance at the Abyss is first."
"Yeah, yeah."
We walked to the counter. A blue-skinned yet attractive woman with writhing purple braided hair smiled at me. A forked tongue flicked out and I consciously didn't flinch.
"How mayyy I help you?" She susurrated.
"We would like a suite, with two bedrooms," I told her.
"Vvvery well," she looked back and forth between Magni and I. "Whichhh house iss sponsssoring you?"
Oh shit, I thought. This place must be inordinately expensive.
"The House of Oberon," I smiled.
"Right thisss way, sirsss." She led us to a wood-paneled elevator. Our room was on the eleventh floor. I penned a note for Giselle and left it with the blue clerk. She nodded at the mention of Giselle's name, obviously impressed.
Our window looked out over the central Plaza, nearly two hundred feet below. It looked like this hotel was in the commerce section of town. Tall buildings lined the streets. People scampered about below with that business-like importance in their stride.
I could tell where the Abyss was, a couple dozen blocks away. There didn't seem to be any disturbance currently underway. I probably should have gone out and investigated right away, but I didn't.
I took a quick bath and went to sleep.
* * *
"You should have that looked at," Corwin told me, gesturing at the bump on my head with his half-full stein. Dark golden ale sloshed onto the table in front of him.
"And you should have one just like it," I replied. Corwin had clumsily clouted me on the head during a particularly boisterous chorus of "The Dancing Leper." At least I had dented his mug.
He had taken me out drinking, as was his nightly ritual. Usually he holed up alone somewhere on the mountain, but once or twice a month he yelled and cajoled until I accompanied him down to the city. Tonight we were in the harbor district, an isolated little pub surrounded by empty streets and silent warehouses. It was raining heavily outside, and the moon was only a few days past new. Very few people were at the bar when we arrived, and several of those left as soon as they could when they saw us.
"Welcome to the Brass Wagon," Corwin had announced. The door banged closed behind us and all eyes turned our way. It was only the beginning of a long night. "Best mead this side of Verelgard."
It was good, too-thick enough to pour slowly, and sweet enough to make my toes curl. It was so delicious, I wondered why Corwin was drinking beer.
"It's a beer night for me, nephew!" That was part of a line from the aforementioned song and it set him to singing and waving his arms and causing the bump which threatened to upset my trademark spiky hair.
We were directed to the far corner, the darkest place in a dark bar. It smelled of stale cigarettes and piss. I checked the bench before I sat. It was dry. Corwin picked up the table with one hand and pulled it away from the wall. He seated himself in the absolute corner of the booth, and hauled the heavy oak table back over his lap.
"Sit down, boy. I paid good money for these seats." We drank too much to remember and laughed at the stupidest jokes. The barkeep reminded Corwin of a woman he once knew, which seemed hilariously funny at the time due to the fellow's bushy black beard.
Some local tough made the mistake of mentioning Random's name in a slur. Corwin downed his beer in a huge gulp and hurled the heavy mug at the dumb fellow. It caught him just below the breastbone. He collapsed in a sorry heap of flesh, six and a half feet shrunk to two feet tall in a split second. From the gasping sounds his lungs were making, it was obvious that he had gotten the wind knocked out of him, probably broken a rib as well.
"Even drunk as I am," Corwin raised his voice and the entire bar quieted to listen, "I can still kill every last damn one of you." He eyed the crowd of men gathered around the tough, about a dozen burly lads. "Or, just cut off your hands, feet, and balls, and make sure you stay alive. Your choice."
There was a moment of fear-laden silence. I heard the unmistakable sound of someone pissing himself. Then the clump of tough guys sprinted for the door in a rush. They left their friend behind, writhing on the floor. Corwin dumped the contents of his purse on the table. There were enough gold coins there to buy the pub and probably most of the surrounding block.
"Come on," he stood and wobbled a bit. "Let's get someplace with some good beer. All this drinking has made me thirsty."
We wandered uptown into the Merchants District. Corwin quieted down and we ate dinner in a private room at one of the fancier inns in town. Halfway through the third course, Corwin stopped eating and stared off into space. It wasn't that unusual for him to do this, but I had never known it to last more than a dozen heartbeats before now. This time, he gazed into the middle distance for at least ten minutes. I kept silent, wondering if I should say anything but determined to wait it out.
"Random is a good man," Corwin said finally, his voice husky. He cleared his throat and took a long swallow of his beer.
We didn't say another word to anyone for the rest of the night.
* * *
I awoke perhaps an hour later, ready to face the political maelstrom that was Chaos. Magni and I found the stables first and checked on our horses. Trick was doing well, apparently amused by the Chaosians attempts to feed him. He had ignored the various types of feed they gave him and had eaten half of a blanket.
I chided him gently for a moment when the ground shifted beneath me. I found a demonic orange stablehand and asked him if this was an ordinary occurrence in these parts. Apparently it wasn't. He thought there was some disturbance at the Abyss.
Magni and I ran out of the hotel's stables, across the plaza, and toward the near skyline. People and things were scurrying about frantically in every direction out here. Many were going the wrong direction, so we followed them.
The Abyss looked very different from the outside. It was dark, and vast, and I could see heat being sucked into it. I could also see the edge of it where it had sheared straight through the side of a building and into the street. Chunks of city blocks tumbled and fell into its depths. It sounded like some giant was scraping his marble fingernails against a massive granite blackboard. As we arrived, a horde of aerodynamic winged gargoyles were swooping into the near edge of the blackness and retrieving people from the great black refrigerator I knew too well. Other demonic shapes were milling about the edge, tying cords to their feet and plunging headfirst as part of the rescue squad.
I stopped well back from the chasm. Around me, people were pointing at the remains of the huge building. It was apparently the trading center of House Chanicut, or it had been. Now it was a pile of pretty marble waiting to slide into nothingness.
A murmur in the crowd around me made me realize that several of the rescue squad had been gone for far too long. Before I could do anything about it, the empty surface of the Abyss rippled. That wasn't exactly what happened, but I don't want to remember it, let alone try to describe it. I'll just say it was some sort of illusory refraction of black light and the edge of something mind-blowingly immense flowed past.
Slabs of street and foundation crumbled and slipped over the edge. A retaining wall of House Chanicut's headquarters buckled and toppled with a wave of red dust and a gritty boom that made my ears complain. Everything within about thirty feet of the edge fell away and the edge was suddenly thirty feet closer.
People screamed. Screaming is another thing shapeshifters can do very well. My ears were beginning to hurt. I flew to grab a green cat-like woman before she slid to her death. We soared to the top of a building a block and a half away. There were at least two dozen people on the rooftop, watching and yelling at each other.
Magni had found some rope and was swinging into and out of the Abyss, returning a few lucky people to the land of the living. As he surfaced, the inky black behind him shimmered again. A monstrous maw appeared as if out of a fog. It dwarfed Magni. Actually, it dwarfed the entire city. I knew that mouth.
The Great Serpent flowed past Magni and into the streets of the city. Dust rose in its wake as it slithered into the heart of the Courts of Chaos. Magni trailed along beside it The Serpent approached near to the building whose rooftop I occupied. I could see that where its eye had been was an open wound. Blood streamed down the mythic creatures face and fell to the earth. Where it touched, everything burned. The smoke writhed and hissed with an electric crackle.
From behind me, I heard a tremendous booming noise. It sounded like something really damn big hitting something even bigger. Then it sounded again. Out from behind a wall stepped a thirty foot tall, steel gray Unicorn. Her one eye glowed pale yellow-green and her nostrils flared. Boom, she stepped forward, moving slowly but determinedly toward us.
Lightning jabbed at her from hundreds of small forms. Demons swarmed around her, throwing hate and hurt at her body. She ignored them and slowly stomped forward.
The Serpent swayed in the street and rose. Its gleaming silver tongue flicked out, tasting the air. Boom. Where the Unicorn had stepped, all the color from the world had been replaced by a dull gray sheen. Boom. I looked around. Magni huddled near the Serpent. I was alone on the roof. The Unicorn came on.
I hated that beast. Family emblem or not, she had severed my spine and killed Corwin. I readied my deadliest spell and considered how best to use the Grayswandir ring.
I heard the unforgettable sound of a million angry insects buzzing in my ear. Boom. The Unicorn stepped closer. Boom. She lowered her head so her horn was pointing directly at the Serpent and pawed her hoof against the ground. Boom. Boom. They were very close now. I felt the air pass through me as the Serpent reared up and thrust forward. Its mouth opened wide and rested on the ground.
Boom. The Unicorn stomped next to the Serpent's head. I could see Magni on the far side of the Serpent, far too close to the conflict for my comfort. In his hand he gripped the horn of the Unicorn we had gotten at the funeral debacle.
The Unicorn stepped directly into the Serpent's mouth. She walked forward, seemingly oblivious. Magni darted next to the pair. He reached out a hand and appeared to touch the Serpent. He pulled his hand back and quickly wrapped it in his cloak, but not before I had seen that most of the flesh of his hand had sloughed off. I saw bone and tendon, and a wound much more painful than I wanted to imagine.
Then he put forth his other hand and touched the Unicorn. It didn't notice him. His eyes widened and he jumped away in a hurry.
The Serpent rose up, holding the Unicorn upright, and dove back into the Abyss. The earth, the air, and everything shuddered.
* * *
After that, even the appearance of the King of Chaos was rather anticlimactic. Magni and I had helped tend to the wounded as best we could. I examined the site of one of the Unicorn's gray hoof prints. It was approximately four hundred feet in diameter, and completely made up of something that I guessed was akin to raw shadow matter. Actually, I had no idea what it was. It looked somewhat like the gray stuff my ring summoned, so one guess was as good as another..
So when Merlin showed up and looked our way, I smiled and waved. A weird, mechanical voice sounded in my head like a trump call I couldn't refuse. I could tell that Magni heard it as well.
"Things here may get hostile toward you," the thing said. "Do you have a place where His Majesty can contact you?"
"We're staying at the Ambassador," I answered aloud.
"Ah, we know it well."
An hour later Magni and I found ourselves sitting down with the King of Chaos in the front room of our suite. Two slippery-looking emerald green demon bodyguards accompanied him. He also had a few pale gemstones circling his head. He waved and I felt a tingle pass through me. The curtains ruffled.
"You may go," Merlin told the bodyguards. They hesitated, then left. Magni closed the door behind them.
"Ghost?" Merlin said aloud to no one in particular.
"It's clear here," the mechanical voice said.
"Neat trick," I smiled.
"It has its uses," Merlin said. He sat down and removed a heavy gold and silver chain from around his neck.
"Your majesty," I said, "Please allow me to offer my congratulations on your ascension to the Throne. I would have mentioned this earlier, but my departure from the coronation was rather sudden."
Merlin chuckled.
"Yes," he said. "I noticed."
"I regret the scene I caused. I was somewhat overcome with excitement at witnessing such important events. I was unable to make my way to you by conventional means."
"Understood," the King said. He stroked his dark beard. "Now, tell me about what just happened."
I did. Merlin listened in silence for the first ten minutes. Occasionally he spoke to the disembodied mechanical voice and it answered him. Finally, he turned his attention to Magni.
"I assume," Merlin said, "that you're here to tell me Corwin is dead."
"I am," Magni said. He reached into his pouch and pulled out the silver rose cloak clasp. "I thought you should have this." By rights, I should have been the one to deliver Corwin's clasp. Magni had taken it when I was too weak to protest.
Merlin took it from him and held it at arm's length. He grimaced and wrinkled up his nose at it. I tried to hide my surprise. Corwin had said he wasn't sure of how Merlin felt about him. I was disappointed to find out. I told him how Corwin had died fighting the Unicorn and trying to save me. Merlin sat stone-faced throughout my little speech. It was the same thing I had told Martin. He said nothing and let the silence stretch on for several minutes before speaking.
"Here's what's going to happen," he declared. "People will say that the Unicorn came strolling through Chaos and killed three thousand of my subjects. They will say that I am a new king I am being pressed to prove his spine."
"How are you being pressed?" Magni asked.
"People don't separate the Unicorn from Amber. They will consider what happened today an act of war. The political battlefield here is something on a scale unimaginable in Amber. There are hundreds of powerful, important people, and every single one of them will have a strong opinion."
He was right. The situation looked very unlikely to resolve itself into peaceful relations between his realm and ours. Magni, however, didn't see it that way. He argued with Merlin and told him that he should talk with Martin.
"I've been trying," Merlin said. He looked at me again, recalling my earlier remark. "He doesn't answer my calls."
"That's odd," I replied. "He has been trying to reach you."
"I doubt that."
"I'm only telling you what I've seen," I said. "I'll tell you what: I'll call him right now and you can speak with him."
"Do it," Merlin said. I hesitated a moment, unwilling to accept his orders and wanting him to know it. Then I took out Martin's card and concentrated.
It took a long time, and I felt somewhat drained, but I got through.
"Your Majesty," I told Martin. "I am with someone who would like to speak with you."
"Um, I'm busy," Martin blustered, "now is a, not a—" He tried to sever the connection. Merlin noticed.
"Keep the contact open," he said. I pushed and it was surprisingly easy. Merlin's hand grasped my shoulder and he entered the psychic communication with Martin.
The King of Amber's mouth fell open. His face blanched. He physically retreated and backed against a wall. Merlin released my shoulder and sat back.
"Goodbye, your Majesty," I said wonderingly. I closed the call.
"How long has he been that way?" Merlin asked.
"What way?" I said.
"In no way Martin," Merlin replied, cradling his chin in his hand. "That's a construct."
* * *
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