Chapter 018: Tantric Obstacles

"In the here and now,

Although completely different people

In the moments before and after having sex

We are time-locked.

Cracked, forgotten statues, we are

Strangled in the undergrowth,

Lost in ancient magic, we are motion,

We are wonderful flow.

We are time-locked,

Unknowing of the code, but addicted to the pulse.

Now, lover,

Melt in the crucible, flesh and blood

Bodies consumed by the catalyst,

Somehow we'll raise our sights from the mud

We are always now,

We are Always Now!"

Now Lover - Peter Hammill

     A stunned silence followed in the wake of Deirdre's angry outburst. Frankly, I was completely at loss for words. I had been too much caught up in my worries about Diana to really think about, to really anticipate my first conversation with my Mother, when, or rather if I would finally come face to face with her for the first time. What was I supposed to say to her?

      When Caine's ritual to bring her back had seemingly failed, I had more or less shifted that problem a few places back on the list of things that I still had to deal with. There were other, more immediate problems, I thought, like my whole relationship with Diana, which was due for some revisions, now that I knew that she was my daughter. The fact that Diana's body now appeared to be possessed by Deirdre further complicated the already quite muddled picture that was the sum of my thoughts and emotions.

      There could, however, be no doubt in my mind that the person who  slipped out of my arms and started curiously taking in her surroundings was indeed not Diana. She regarded the world with an amount of self confidence like Diana had never shown in all the time I had known her. For instance, she appraised her body, almost naked save for my cloak and adorned with mystic signs drawn with her own blood, with a satisfied smile and made no real move to cover it up. As she turned round and saw Sand, though, her smile disappeared.

      "Well," she said, lowering the overall temperature in the room by several degrees just through the tone of her voice, "I see that some things have changed in my absence."

     "Things haven't changed as much as you might think," Sand replied. She was smiling as she said it, but her voice had that same icy quality that Deirdre's carried. Apparently Caine's remark about Sand, so to speak, hating my Mother's guts held more truth than I had originally thought it had.

     "But I will no longer keep you. I have a feeling that I have done  enough as it is," Sand continued.

     "You certainly have!" Caine said angrily. Sand just smiled, nodded to the three of us and left. There were still some things I wanted to ask her, but those would have to wait. I still had her Trump, though, so it wouldn't be too much of a problem to contact her again (I hoped).

     "I'm sure that I will be very interested in hearing everything that's been going on," Deirdre sighed, "but first, somebody please give me a cigarette. I'm dying for a smoke!"

      Damn! It was extremely unnerving to hear her talk like that, with Diana's voice. I stared at her as she wandered around the room, found a bottle of wine and poured herself a drink.

     "Mother...?" I finally managed.

      She looked up and slowly walked back to me. She seemed to be as hesitant about this meeting as I was.

     "I... I don't know what to say, really," I said.

     "Neither do I," she replied. Her tone of voice was soft and caring. If I didn't know better I'd think that it was Diana who was saying those words. We regarded each other for a moment or two with very mixed feelings, then she heaved a sigh and continued: "I do want to talk with you, get to know you, but not now. First I want to get some answers." With this promise her voice became firmer and more serious. She turned to Caine, who was still contemplating what had gone wrong.

      "You," she said, "what has happened to my granddaughter?"

     "I don't know," Caine said. "If everything had gone right, you would have been here in body as well as in spirit."

     "Well, you'd better start thinking of a way for me to get my body back, since I don't intend on keeping on sharing this one!"

     "What kind of power did you use for the ritual?" I asked.

     "Just an ordinary kind of magic power commonly used for summonings," he said. "Why do you ask?"

     "Well, it reminded me a bit of the Blue Macaroni."

     "The blue what?" He seemed genuinely surprised. I sighed and explained.

     "I don't know what its official name is, but it's that power that manifests itself as a sort of curving tunnel of glowing, blue lines. I think cousin Murlas was the first to coin the term."

     "Oh, you mean the Nexus," Caine said. He still seemed to be a bit surprised, but at least he appeared to know what I was talking about. Still, it wasn't all that surprising to me that he should know about it, since I remembered from Suzanne's description that her kidnapper had used the Blue Macaroni - sorry, the Nexus - to get into her apartement. He showed no special reactions at my mentioning of Murlas, though.

      "What kind of bungled mess is this?" Deirdre asked."What are you talking about?" Apparently she knew as little about the Macaroni as did I. Perhaps even less.

     "Let's save that for another time, shall we?" Caine said. "You said that the power of the ritual reminded you of the Nexus?" I nodded. "It shouldn't have. It is interesting, though. I was just trying to establish a link with that other reality..."

     "You've lost me. What other reality?"

     "The other reality where Deirdre was."

     "What do you mean? I thought you were going to get her back from whereever she was in the Abyss."

      Caine sighed and shook his head. However, before he could answer me Deirdre cut in.

     "We're getting nowhere if we continue in this way. Will you please excuse us for a moment, dear?" she said, and without waiting for any response from me she grabbed Caine's arm and dragged him out of the hall. I stared after them with a dumbfounded expression; I had never heard of or seen anyone treating Uncle Caine like that. I guess Mom's behaviour did help to explain something of Caine's feelings for her. He must really dote on her to let her order him around like that. And here I was thinking that Uncle Corwin was the one closest to my Mother...

      I looked down at Wylde, who was sitting beside me. I shrugged. Wylde shrugged back. It seemed that Mom was in charge now and that she wasn't about to let me in on their scheming just yet. I sighed and found myself a chair somewhere under the rubble. I might as well get the load off my feet for a couple of minutes. It wasn't that I didn't care what would happen next, I just felt I needed a breather. From the things Deirdre had said I had gathered that Diana's safety stood but slightly lower than the return of her own body on her personal agenda, so I felt somewhat reassured that she wouldn't go for any options that were possibly harmful.

      Still, somewhere deep inside of me, some dark spirit was rearing its ugly head. It was the Family Instinct, the sense of distrust that seemed to be inherent to being a member of the Royal Family of Amber, which had been woken in me by my recent abuse at the hands of both Uncle Caine and Aunt Sand. Just how fast should I place my trust in somebody, no matter how nice they seemed to be? Or, more to the point, just how far should I trust my own Mother?

     It was an ugly question, but it needed voicing, and answering. After all, she was the one who had left me to grow up with only the care of a father. I knew that she had done it because of the trouble that was brewing at the time concerning the throne, and later because of the whole  war with Chaos, but then I also remembered that she never played a really prominent part in all of that.

     As a matter of fact, there was very little that I knew about what she had done during that period, and there seemed to be a lot more that I didn't know about her, as her relationship with Caine was currently showing me. She seemed to be eager to get to know me and genuinely concerned about Diana's and my own wellfare, but how much of that was true and how much of that was just an act?

     Maybe I was getting too paranoid, but recent events had quite clearly and painfully shown that Diana and I were pure pawn-stuff, the perfect tools for any little scheme, and of course it would be even easier for Deirdre to use us that way, since we would both be more naturally inclined to take her at  face value. I tried to steer myself away from thoughts like this, but that  sprit of Family Paranoia in me just kept reminding me that I had trusted both Caine  and Sand, and I had to admit that he, or rather it had a point. So I would be more careful about trusting people in the future. I guess that I had learned a valuable lesson, a basic lesson for any Amberite, and though I had learned it at the cost of no real harm to myself, it still hurt to learn it. It felt as if there was some younger, more innocent part of me that I was leaving behind.

      Wylde sensed my disturbed mental state and found her familiar spot on my lap, knowing that stroking her would help to ease my mind a little. And it did. That is to say, my doubts and fears receded somewhat, but of course they didn't completely go away. Still it lightened my mood enough for me to be able to direct my attention to other matters. I poured myself a glass of wine and picked up the book that Caine had been working from, which he had dropped when the ritual had gone wrong, and started leafing through it. At first sight it all seemed to be a lot of gibberish, sort of like a DIY Necronomicon, but a closer look told me that there was something useful in this book after all, if only you knew where and how to look. The kind of magic in this book was based on establishing links at certain levels by means of a source of power. A link between two different realities required an awful lot of power, but something like a blood-tie could be used to strengthen the focus and reduce the required amount of power. From the description I gathered that everything should indeed have gone just like Caine had planned it. However, it still didn't help to explain why the ritual had failed.

      I wondered about the nature of that Nexus power. Maybe it was its intrusion in the ritual that had messed things up. The Nexus... No, the Blue Macaroni was a much better term. Clear, descriptive, you immediately knew what it looked like. The Nexus sounded like some kind of second-rate superhero from some comic book back on Earth. I also wondered whether Caine was going to tell me any more about it than just its name. Probably not...

      Something like half an hour had passed, when finally they returned.Deirdre had washed and had found herself a fitting black dress.

     "Oh, by the way," she said, "Diana sends her regards."

     "What?"

     "She's still here in this body with me," she explained, "but she has somewhat retreated to the background. When my spirit entered her body, I guess it more or less forced this on her. I fear that her mind is not nearly as strong as mine. So she's here, but she's unconscious to everything that's going on. Now and then I just happen to pick up some occasional thought from her."

      Well, that was a bit of a relief. I had assumed that Diana and Deirdre had switched bodies and that Diana was now out there somewhere in the Abyss, probably completely freaking out by now. I faintly recalled that Mom had said something about not wanting to share the body, but at that time it had slipped by me. And I also recalled that Caine had implied that Mom hadn't been in the Abyss when he had tried to contact her, but he had not yet explained where she had been, or how she had got there. But then I hoped that would be one of the coming topics of discussion.

      "Okay," I said, "so what are we going to to next?"

     "We're going to bring my body here too," Deirdre replied.

     "And how are we going to do that? Not another blood ritual, I hope..."

     "Well, your Uncle and I have discussed it..." She hesitated and  glanced at Caine. Uh oh, what kind of plot had they been hatching back there?

     "And...?" I ventured.

     "There are certain other rituals that might be effective in cases like this." Then, in a quite neutral tone of voice, she started explaining what they had in mind: a tantric ritual! The idea was for Deirdre and me to make love in a pentagram! Talk about incest: having sex with your own daughter, who is being possessed by your mother's spirit. Still... No, I shouldn't think such thoughts!

      While Mom warranted that we would be able to raise the required amount of energy that way I couldn't help but start blushing.

     "Yes, of course it will seem a little strange and awkward," she said firmly, "having sex with your own mother, or daughter. But look at it this way: it's all strictly business. This is just about the safest course of action open to us, and besides, Oberon isn't around anymore, so there's really little here to stop us."

      Beside her Caine was nodding. I regarded him suspiciously.

     "What about you, Uncle? Will you be here when we... perform this ritual?"

     "Yes, of course. I have to be here to establish the link, don't I?"

     "Hmm, yeah, I suppose... I'll have to think about it, though. Does Diana get to have a say in all of this? I mean, it's her body and all."

     "Well, you do know that she is in love with you, don't you?" said Deirdre. "She doesn't know that you're her father yet, but those are just details."

       I turned a deeper shade of red. I should have guessed as much. But  then Diana was much too shy to voice her feelings openly, and I had been too much caught up in my troubled relationship with Suzanne to take note of any subtle hints she might have sent out. Still, the feeling was there and it wasn't to be ignored, even more so since I felt it being echoed from within myself. Yes, I realised that I really was in love with Diana, and certainly not in just a fatherly fashion. The temptation was really too great to be resisted, but that was also a reason for me to be so hesitant, for I realised that doing this now might very well mess up any normal future relationship I was going to have with her. Then again, it seemed to be something that needed doing. We had to get Deirdre's own body back if both she and Diana were to live normal lives again. So...

      "Okay, I'll do it," I said. Deirdre smiled a little reassuringly, as if to say that she understood my dilemma.

     "If you think that you won't be able to, ehm, perform adequately, I think I might have some stimulants to help you," Caine ventured.

     "No, thank you, that won't be necessary." I smiled. I had no doubts about my ability to perform, as he had so nicely put it. It was the aftermath that worried me.

     "Shall we?" Deirdre asked and started stripping.

     "What, you mean, now? Immediately?"

     "Why not?" she replied looking up at me. "We'd better get on with it."

     This appeared to be another one of my Mother's typical traits. Although there might be a certain risk involved in what we were about to do, she had decided that we would do it and she would stick to that decision. This could be fun trait if we ever came to be at odds over something...

      So we got on with it. I asked Wylde to stick around and keep an eye on things, since I felt my attention would completely be taken up by the task ahead. She had already shared most of my intimate thoughts, so she might as well be party to this too.

      Caine cleared the floor and located two pentagrams, while Deirdre and I stripped. My, she looked good! I hadn't allowed myself to be taken in by the beauty of her naked body before, but the sight of her was now certainly stirring up some passions in me. Still, I couldn't help but feel more than a little embarrassed at having both my Mother and Uncle Caine see me like this. Yet, they weren't embarrassed at all; they were all business, and I even detected something of an air about them of having seen and, quite possibly, done far worse things. I wasn't about to inquire after any of those, though...

      Deirdre found a comfortable looking rug, which she placed in the centre of one of the pentagrams. She beckoned me to join her and I did, although a bit self-consciously. Well, I thought, it could be worse: it could be me and Caine naked in one pentagram, with Deirdre monitoring things from the other one. At that thought I barely suppressed a nervous giggle.

      Surprisingly Deirdre wasn't all business when it came to the act itself. Apparently she had seen the way I felt, had understood my somewhat apprehensive mood, for she was remarkably gentle and even a bit soothing. Of course she had a lot more experience in this area than I had, and it certainly showed through in all her moves, even though she was currently in another body, and a totally inexperienced one at that. Hmm, just add yet another item to the list of things that I would have to explain to Diana.

      Deirdre's easy attitude made me forget all about my inhibitions, and pretty soon I lost myself almost completely in our passionate embrace. As the intensity of our love-making increased, I could feel a three-way link being established between Deirdre, Diana and me, a bit like the link Diana and I had shared on our search for Suzanne. That had felt remarkably good, but this was even better, and it sure was a lot more powerful. But then I suppose that was largely because of Mom's extremely powerful mind; she was like a bright shining star compared to Diana and me, and I had some difficulty keeping my wits about me, something Diana just failed to do completely. I wondered what she would later be able to recall of this event, if anything.

      Finally, I felt someone, probably Caine, slowly starting to guide the power that was being generated through our link. He went about it very carefully, desperately wanting to get it right this time, and also having considerably more power at his command than he had had the first time. Very gradually I felt our energy being drawn away into the process of opening a portal between here and the place where Deirdre's body was. I couldn't be entirely sure whether it was working or not, for at that moment the world started to blur before my eyes. I blinked and tried to hold on to consciousness, but to no avail. Oblivion awaited me eagerly and swamped me with its blackness.

      There was no way to tell how much time had passed when I came to again. I found myself lying on a sofa. Somebody was sitting beside me, dabbing my brow with a cool, wet piece of cloth. I opened my eyes and saw that it was Diana. Diana's body, that is.

     "Oh, Dorian," she said, "how do you feel?" Well, it also sounded like Diana. I did a quick internal check and found that I actually felt pretty good, although I did feel rather tired. Not very surprising after such an intense experience. I wouldn't be able to do that every day.

     "I'm alright, I guess," I replied. "Not to sound too cliched, but  where am I?"

     "We're still in Uncle Caine's castle."

      I looked around and saw Caine standing beside another sofa, upon which lay the body of my mother Deirdre. It had worked! Now that I saw Deirdre and Diana together like this, I realised that there was quite a likeness between them, more than between either of them and myself. I should have noticed it before.

      I got up and walked towards the other sofa. Caine looked up with a frown.

     "What's the matter?" I asked. "It did work, didn't it?"

     "Yes," he said, "it did work alright. However, she is unconscious,  and I think she will remain that way for quite some time. Her body has been damaged quite severely and it will have to recuperate before she can regain consciousness. It's no big surprise really, all things considering. She knew the risk she was taking." He sighed. "I guess she'll have to be taken back to Amber now."

      I realised that he meant that he himself would be going back as well. Good. That meant that perhaps some things would be cleared up.

     "Oh, I'm so glad that it all worked out right and that I could be of assistance," Diana said beside me.

      I looked at her. Save for the slashes on her wrists, which were already fading, she looked as innocent and lovely as ever. I realised that she had not the faintest idea of anything that had happened, right from the moment that Deirdre's mind had entered her body. Apparently she thought that there had been only one ritual, the one that had required her blood, and that it had been successful. True to character Caine had let her remain under that delusion, so it was up to me to explain everything to her: that she was my daughter, that Caine had meant to kill her, and that Deirdre had been brought back by means of a second ritual, which had cost her her virginity. It was better than losing her life, I guess, but I still didn't relish the idea of having to tell her all of this. I decided to shelf it until we were alone. I had had enough interference from Caine in my personal life and I simply didn't need any more. Not if I could help it.

      "How did Mom's body get to be so severely damaged," I asked, turning my attention back to him.

     "She told me that the Abyss is like a enormously giant gap, which extends not only through our own reality, but through at least several others, each with their own version of the Pattern, just like the one that the Black Unicorn came from. After falling into the Abyss she ended up in one of those other realities. There she immediately became subjected to an attack from the power of the alternative Pattern. Since she has been there for quite a long time, the damage to her body is quite extensive."

      Caine had a wearied expression while he was talking to me. In a certain way I felt that he was a lot more open to me than he had ever been before, or than I was certain he would be hereafter. I guess everything must have taken its toll out of him as well. I could sense that his concern for Deirdre's wellfare was quite genuine, but there were also other things that were troubling him.

      "Just one question," I said. "What about Brand? Seeing as to how my Mother survived her fall into the Abyss, could it be that he is still around somewhere as well?"

     "I certainly don't hope so," Caine sighed. Yes, this was one of the things that was bothering him. "I did manage to nail him with two silver arrows, but with someone like him it might not have been enough." He sighed again. Then his expression changed. I could see that he was thinking, and it was not hard to guess what it was that was on his mind: if a ritual like this was necessary to bring someone back from another reality, I guess that Rinaldo had better start watching his back. Uncle Caine would gladly make sure that that option wouldn't be available for bringing back his dear father...

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