Winds That Will Be — Aedan's Journal
"Aedan, Remind Me to Stab You in the Head When I Get Grayswandir Back, Just in Case I Forget."
Aedan's Journal. Session 8-19-00.
© 2000 Todd Worrell
Peaches, pears, six different kinds of melon—now this was a breakfast worth eating. The carrot-tomato juice had at least ten other fruits and vegetables mixed in, and it was absolutely delicious. I left a note with my compliments for Elissa.
The way things were going, it was likely that breakfast was going to be the high point of the day.
Raj and Gabriel and I were stationed in our usual places in the nook. Raj took up one side of the table, his dark bulk silhouetted against the morning sunrise in the window behind him.
"Gerard didn't go to Chaos," he said. "He delivered the sword to Osric's realm."
"How do you know?" I asked.
"I was there," Raj said. He didn't elaborate.
"What did you notice about Shadow?" Gabriel was still picking at a bunch of red grapes.
"Not much. We didn't travel through it."
"I must go analyze Shadow," Gabriel said. "I need more information."
"Do you have a theory?" I prompted.
"Not quite. Not yet."
"What are your plans?" Raj interrupted my baiting of Gabriel.
"I have a date… with Chaos." I pronounced.
"Still want that ambassador position, eh?" Raj grinned.
"Well, not really. I just want to check the place out. Caine kept me away from there for ten years. Now that he's not my keeper, I thought I would see what it's like." I thought for a moment. "Besides, there's no way that Martin is going to name me 'official' anything."
"Well," Gabriel swallowed another grape. "Maybe you could be some sort of unofficial envoy. It might make you less likely to die."
Had he been talking to Corwin? I could take care of myself. However, the three of us agreed to journey through Shadow together. Gabriel was leaving immediately after breakfast. Raj had a couple errands he needed to run, then he would shift and I could start to learn how. I knew that Magni wouldn't want to be left behind. So we would meet at ten o'clock and if Magni wasn't awake he could trump through later.
A servant brought over a tray loaded with more fruits, rolls, and juices. I was stuffed. Raj ate another five or six rolls, smothered in jam.
"Hey," I said. "We could deliver breakfast to Martin." And maybe get some inside information. He was so busy that any excuse to see him was a good one.
So I loaded up the last tray and took it to the royal chambers. We met Magni along the way. He was stumbling about the hallway in his robe and slippers. We greeted him, and he followed us.
"Where we goin'?" he slurred.
"Martin's chambers," Raj answered.
"With my breakfast?" Magni mental faculties apparently hadn't fully awakened yet. Raj grabbed the lapel of Magni's robe and dragged him to Martin's rooms with us.
Martin said he wasn't hungry, so Magni ate everything on the tray. Dressed in a morning robe, his hair sleepily mussed, the de facto regent listened to the reasons why I should go to the Courts of Chaos.
"From my father's notes," he waved at the piles of papers littering the floor, "I should be expecting monthly reports from our agents in Chaos. I haven't heard anything yet, though."
"What day are the reports due?" Gabriel asked.
"I don't know." Martin rubbed his face, then shook his head vigorously to try to awaken himself.
"My presence there should alert our agents that—" I began.
"—things aren't going well in Amber," Gabriel finished. I wasn't sure if he was mocking me. I peered suspiciously at him, but he kept a straight face, even if his skin turned slightly more pale than normal. But what was normal for him? He still had that 'woodsy' tint, and his hair would never be as red as it had been.
"It would be nice if I had a note of some sort. It doesn't have to be anything special, just 'Hello,' and a word or three declaring that I am in fact from Amber, so please be nice to me, etc."
"I'll have someone draft up a document for you," Martin said.
"Do you want me to write it?" I smiled sweetly.
"No!" Everyone shouted. Gee, I guess my reputation is pretty well known around here.
"I'll give you a summary of our information as well. Stop by this afternoon and I should have it ready."
"Thanks, Martin. I'll do my best."
"Um…" He shrugged. "Yeah. Good luck."
* * *
Since I had a couple hours, I went to the training yard. There were always a dozen guardsmen practicing their swordplay here. I gave them a good workout, then went to shower. Fighting six men at a time makes you use different muscles than fighting just one, and I expected to be a little sore later. Then again, it was worth it seeing six well-trained elite warriors all rolling in the dirt clutching their sore ass cheeks. Finn, their captain, had bet me a song, and I told him I would collect in a few days.
I returned to my rooms and showered. I packed a bag full of various outfits: formal, traveling, stealth, casual, and what I called my "heavy storm at sea" duds. I threw in a few accessories, a unicorn brooch that looked somewhat official in green and white. I filled my saddlebags with foodstuffs and a bottle of DuChatrille Chablis from Gwydion's private stock. It had to be a dozen centuries old and was the best wine he could find. A little spell to help it stay intact was a half-hour's work, but necessary.
Corwin stopped by just as I was leaving. We talked as we walked toward the stables.
"I've made some arrangements for you," he said. "Dara will call me back when she has someplace suitable."
"I expect that I'll be staying at the Palace," I said. "Martin is going to give me a letter of introduction."
"Dara didn't think that you would want to be seen."
What?
"No," I explained. "I intend to be seen. I am going to speak with Mandor, among others, and try to find out how events in the Courts are affecting things in the rest of the Universe."
"Oh," he said. He stopped walking and started thinking. I waited. "Well then I had better tell Dara." Corwin gave me a frustrated look. "Aedan, remind me to stab you in the head when I get Grayswandir back, in case I forget."
"Yeah," I smiled innocently. "I'll do that."
He laughed, slapped me on the shoulder and walked back to the castle, shaking his head and chuckling. Someday, I thought, I'll figure Corwin out.
Raj was saddling up his mount, a big black stallion named Lionel. I made sure that Trick was loaded with my stuff, including my bow and a couple quivers of arrows. We had the grooms prepare Magni's horse Wixa and he ambled in a few minutes later.
We rode through the city, waved at the people. Raj was well-liked in town by just about everyone. Women held up babies at him and he kissed them—the babies, that is. I thought about kissing the women, but we didn't have time to dawdle.
In fact…
"Hey," I said, halting Trick. "Where is Gabriel?"
"Out in Shadow," Raj said. Magni took advantage of our brief pause to drink from a flask. He wiped his lips on the back of his sleeve.
"Are you thinking what I think you're thinking?" he said.
"I think so."
So I trumped Gabriel and he pulled us through, horses and all. Now that is what I consider the proper way to ride a horse.
Gabriel was in a Shadow within a half-day's ride of Amber. Okay, we were there now, too. It was a spooky place, with a double ring of stones fifty feet high and a hundred and twenty feet across dominating the local landscape of trees and hills. Gabriel was standing at the edge of the perimeter, studying it. A few sketches were weighed down by rocks at his feet. I dismounted and told Trick to behave himself. He snorted at me, so I asked him nicely.
Twenty feet away were all the makings of a picnic: checkered blanket, wicker basket, sandwiches, a couple thermoses, and some ants.
"There's something odd about this rock formation," Gabriel said.
"You mean, it isn't a natural by-product of glacial retreat?" I asked facetiously.
"I see what you mean." Raj ignored me and dismounted. He and Gabriel stood and discussed the nature of Shadow veils. Listening, I heard that this henge was a veil, and that passing within its border would transport one to Someplace Else.
Exactly where it went was what Raj and Gabriel were discussing.
"There's only one way to find out," Raj pronounced, and stepped forward. He vanished at the edge of the stones without a sound.
We waited for perhaps a half-dozen heartbeats.
"Saddwick?" Magni asked from the picnic blanket. His mouth was full of food. I shrugged at Gabriel and walked over. The sandwiches were pretty good.
* * *
A half-hour later, Raj had still not returned to tell us how wonderful the afterlife was. Gabriel had continued to try his trump while Magni and I had a lovely picnic.
"Magni," I began, "the violin is a wonderful instrument, but I must question your bringing it on this journey."
"But you have your flute," he said.
"True, but my flute is less fragile than your violin."
"Indeed," he admitted. "However, my violin brings me great comfort as I travel the lonely highways of life."
"In other words, chicks dig musicians," I said.
"Exactly."
We shared a knowing smile.
"Hey Gabriel, any sign?" I shouted. He shook his head.
"I say we go in after Raj, one at a time." Magni had that sparkle in his eye that promised mischief. It sounded like fun, but I was headed to the Courts of Chaos and told him so.
That reminded me that I hadn't received any paperwork from Martin before I left. I trumped him now and was quickly handed a sheaf of papers in a leather-bound file: letter of introduction, summary of reports, some secret agent code stuff which I promptly memorized and destroyed, and an outline of the major houses with the names, descriptions and details of all the main players. Whew!
While I was reading, Gabriel trumped back to Corwin to tell him about Raj's disappearance. Then he trumped back via Magni and cast a beacon spell of some kind.
"Why did you do that?" I asked.
"So we can find this place, if need be."
"Can't we just shift toward the Big Stone Henge?" Magni asked.
"Not exactly. These things are in just about every Shadow now."
At our inquisitive looks Gabriel explained that there were rings of stones in nearly every Shadow in the vicinity, and that they were becoming more and more prevalent as he got further from Amber. We talked about it and decided to trace the phenomenon back to its source. If we could find the origin of the henges, we would find… what?
Well, hopefully it wouldn't be boring, whatever it was.
So we rode. Raj wasn't around to show me how to use the Pattern to shift shadow, so Gabriel obliged. I noticed that Magni was listening closely to every word, but that just seemed typical. When it came to powers, he was a sponge.
Shadowshifting seemed to be an incredibly slow process. I had seen Caine do it a hundred times, and it had never been this tedious. I said so.
"That's because I'm being very careful," Gabriel said.
"But aren't we in a hurry?" I asked.
"I don't want to leave a wake."
"What's a wake?" Magni asked, triggering a new lecture on the nature of probability from Brand's son. For once, it was actually rather interesting. At least for the first five minutes.
Eventually the world became less green, more gray. The Shadows became more primitive, with eroded landscapes and rocky, sparse earth. Just as we entered a vast plain of uncomfortable-looking stony ground, Gabriel announced that we were going to stop for the night.
Magni and I convinced him to shift to someplace a bit more hospitable for the evening, and we slept in an inn on the edge of a lake. The inn was full to overflowing with people newly arrived from elsewhere, but Gabriel's gold convinced the owner that his own rooms would suit us nicely. I decided that it would be very helpful to master the use of the Pattern and resolved to listen more closely to Gabriel's rants on technique.
Morning found us on our way. At our pace, we had plenty of opportunity to talk. I shared the wonders of my island home. Gabriel told us that the Fount of Power sat at a convergence of four Shadows, none of which sounded particularly pleasant. Magni, however, was reluctant to speak of his past.
"What of your lineage?" I said "You have now proven to be a member of the family. The question is, whose?"
"My mother and father both died. They didn't seem like the kind of people that would be Amberites."
"But at least one of them had to be," Gabriel said.
"Yes, I suppose," Magni acknowledged. "My grandfather, on the other hand, was a remarkable man. I heard many mysterious things about him."
"Like his name?" I asked. Gabriel giggled.
"They called him 'The Wanderer.'"
Wonderful. Magni wouldn't give us a description, or anything that might help to identify the man who was probably one of my uncles. Magni continued talking, telling us of the black valley in his homeland and the battles around it where his parents were killed. He explored the valley and eventually ended up in one of Flora's haunts.
Which told me nothing. In response to pointed questions about his vambrace, he equivocated.
So I gave up and tried to follow Gabriel's mental exploits. It wasn't any different than how Caine had explained it to me, except for the fact that Gabriel used words with fewer syllables. But this time it felt different, somehow. I could feel the tug of energy in my veins when he made a major change, like the sky. I tried to make flowers appear, or a slight breeze, but to no avail. Curiously enough, Magni had more success. In fact, he was able to make some significant changes. I added that to the long list of peculiar things I knew about him.
I had more time to think than I could have ever wanted. If you're short of answers, ask more questions. If my brain were as big as Brand's, I would have figured out everything in that time. It wasn't, so I didn't, but I did think of a few good questions.
Namely, was it possible that other Fey Lords were also Chaosians in disguise? Given their ability to alter their appearances, it seemed like a reasonable consideration. The Unseelie, in particular, seemed likely candidates for double agents. I thought back to the Unseelie Knight that Gregory and Giselle had escorted from Amber to Chaos.
Second, what was Osric's history? From Gabriel's trump scrye I had gathered that his part in our play wasn't quite finished. Now that his sword had been returned to him, was he going to start appearing at family functions?
Finally, what did the appearance of all these strange circle things in Shadows mean? We had encountered rings of toadstools, wooden circles, too many stone clusters to count, and one earthen hollow that was surrounded by recent footprints. Gabriel had told us that three men had approached him as he was studying the henge Raj had entered. Two of them had muttered strange warnings. They believed that "the man who had one hand on the Pattern and one in the Abyss created the Shadow between." They also said "the man who talked to Chaos started it all." Of whom were they speaking? Brand? Osric? Mandor/The Dagda?
The third man was dressed in a turquoise and gold uniform. Gabriel said he carried some cross-shadow artifact in his backpack, but he didn't reveal it. He also had Gerard's sword.
Magni's ears perked up at that. He even suggested returning to the henge and going after him, but he was easily dissuaded.
Even I was able to feel the increase in Shadow density toward midday. Gabriel said it was probably due to the proximity of Corwin's Pattern and Ygg. The source of the henges lay somewhere further on, but we decided to check out Corwin's Pattern since it was relatively close. Gregory had said that he felt pushed away from it when he traversed Shadow, and Gabriel wanted to analyze that impulse.
As it turned out, we weren't pushed away. We came upon a rocky caldera overlooking a vast open space shrouded in mist: Corwin's Pattern. It wasn't visible from up here, but I had been to it once before and knew that if you got close enough to touch it, the lines glowed with a silver shimmer like heat waves escaping the earth. At the far end, the great ash tree stood like a sentinel.
Our way down from the caldera's edge took us to Ygg. Magni and Gabriel rode past, but I dismounted and approached. They stopped and watched me. I removed my riding gloves and laid a hand on the bark.
"Hello, tree." I said.
"Welcome," a voice said. It filled my head, but it didn't overwhelm me. It sounded like a well-trained actor's voice projecting across an auditorium.
"Thank you. My name is Aedan. I am Deirdre's son, and a grandson of Oberon."
"Your blood is known to me, as is that of your acquaintances."
"You are aware of our lineage," Gabriel dismounted and stood near me. "We have never been formally introduced. I am Brand's son, Gabriel."
"Hi," Magni waved. "I'm Magni."
The tree said nothing.
"What have you seen of note recently?" Gabriel inquired.
"This place," Ygg answered, "does not admit casual visitors."
We puzzled that out. It sounded like Ygg hadn't seen that much because it didn't allow people to visit. Maybe it was bored.
"Would it amuse you to see me walk this sigil?" I asked.
"I would not care to see you die," the voice echoed in my head. I took that to mean "No."
"What about him?" I pointed jokingly at Magni. He smiled.
"None of you are of the correct bloodline to traverse yon path and live." Ygg actually said "yon."
"Are you certain?" I said. "Corwin is my mother's brother."
"Someday, you may be able. This place fades. It has no anchor."
That made me wonder.
"Can you sense the Shadows near this place?" Gabriel said. "Have you sensed any recent changes?"
"There is a wave, with a trough and a swell."
"Do you know its origin?" Gabriel asked.
"Farther on," the tree said. "Some source of Pattern is there."
This was news. We all looked at each other in surprise.
"Is it new?" Gabriel said.
"Newly awakened."
"Have any other members of our family been here in the past week?" Gabriel said.
"Your father, but I did not admit him."
Gabriel blinked and looked like he would have to think about that for a long while.
* * *
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