Chapter 043: With Needle And Thread

"Who was born in a house full of pain

Who was trained not to spit in the fan

Who was told what to do by the man

Who was broken by trained personnel

Who was fitted with collar and chain

Who was given a pat on the back

Who was breaking away from the pack

Who was only a stranger at home

Who was ground down in the end

Who was found dead on the phone

Who was dragged down by the stone

Who was dragged down by the stone..."

Dogs - Pink Floyd

     Whenever I go on a journey, I usually find at a certain point that however good I may have prepared in advance, there are always a few crucial things that had slipped my mind. At this particular point of my current quest I really wished I had thought of bringing a pair of sunglasses; all this squinting up at the relentlessly scorching sun was giving me a major headache. Some water would have been nice too, but then I hoped that I would find some sooner or later; after all, this was supposed to be the world of water. However, for the time being there was little evidence of this to be found in the sand and rock of the desert terrain that lay all around me. It was the same terrain that I remembered seeing in one of the four spheres at the start of my quest.

     Of course I had started off by trying to find some feature in the area that indicated the presence of something else than rock and sand, but since I hadn't been able to discern anything interesting, I had just wandered off in a random direction. I had been trudging through the sand for a couple of minutes when I heard Fiona mutter something under her breath.

     "What's wrong?" I asked.

     "This place is a mess," she sighed. "Lots of scrambled or broken files, looks like there's been a virus at work here. Hold on! You're going the wrong way."

     I shrugged and duly turned around. She knew best, I guessed.

     "Yes, that's better," Fiona said. "Now you're heading for an area where there are still a few files open."

     After about half an hour I saw the first signs of what seemed to be life in this apparently lifeless world. Looking out from the top of the hill I had just scaled, I could see a tiny spot of brownish green in the distance. I quickly made my way over there. It appeared to be the final remains of something that had once been an oasis: a few withering palm trees standing round a muddy waterhole, emphasis on the mud and not on the water. However, I had by this time become pretty thirsty, so I was happy to find some water, even if there was so little of it.

     "Is this water kosher enough for drinking?" I asked Fiona just to be sure.

     "Well, what's left of it seems to be pretty much okay. There's only a few bytes left, though."

     There was indeed very little water I could get at, barely enough to moisten my lips. Still, it probably meant that I was going in the right direction alright, so I just went on, hoping to find some more further on.

     It took me much longer to get to the next spot, but it was worth it. From quite some distance I could already make out a large green spot, marking a much bigger oasis than the first one. As I got closer I also got my first sight of this world's inhabitants: they appeared to be human enough, although they were a bit taller and slimmer than your average human. Their numbers around this oasis were quite large, and they had even put up their tents in the desert area well outside of the green zone. The settlement struck me as a typical refugee camp: lots of friendly-looking, but mainly apathetic with only a little cattle grazing, or at least trying to do so between the tents. All in all I got the feeling that the disaster that had threatened the other three worlds had progressed a lot further in this last one.

     Despite of my odd appearance the people all ignored me, and I had no difficulty in making my way to the spring in the middle of the camp. Actually, it was more of a fountain than a spring, its water sparkling forth from a beautifully crafted cup standing in the middle of the pool. Of course, the first thing I did was drink some water, but after that I sat back to study the situation. By now I had got pretty used to there being some kind of obstacle that I would have to overcome to get to the object of the quest, but as much as I looked here I couldn't see anything that might fit the bill. I asked Fiona whether she had noticed any security measures, but she hadn't. Even when I checked the place out with my mind, I couldn't find anything out of the ordinary except for the cup itself, which was very real and powerful. But then I already knew that that was what I had come for.

     Noticing some movement beside me, I glanced up to see a little girl of about five years old sitting there next to me. She looked at me intently, but didn't say a word. When I didn't speak either, she started running her hand through the cool water. Was this the only security this world could muster: the silent appeal from an innocent child? Ordinarily it might have worked with me, sucker that I am, but I had been through too much already and it had completely numbed my emotional responses. However, I wasn't so far gone yet that I just simply put the child out of her misery right there and then, and by the Unicorn, I hoped I would never get that far. The simple act of ignoring her plight made me feel cynical and bitter enough as it was.

     Since neither I nor Fiona could detect any other security measures, I decided to simply go for it and see what would happen. Well, it seemed that my attempt at getting the cup served as an alarm clock for the whole camp, rousing everyone from the apathetic slumber. As I rushed forwards through the water I heard a shrill scream behind me. I glanced back and saw the little girl still standing beside the pool, screaming at the top of her lungs. At that moment a whole mob of people rushed past her into the pool. It was unclear whether they were after me or the cup, but I guess that it didn't really matter, for the end result would be more or less the same for me. Half wading and half swimming I plunged on, and I barely managed to beat the whole group to it. As soon as I clasped the cup in my hand I yelled at Fiona to get me out of there, but to my consternation nothing happened. I only had time to grab the cup firmly with both hands before the whole human tide swept over me, doing its best to either drown or crush me beneath their weight.

     Just when I was beginning to despair about ever getting out of there alive, I felt a familiar tingling sensation and I found myself elsewhere. Phew, that was close.

     "Just be a little more quicker next time," I grumbled at Fiona.

     "Don't whine," she said sternly. "It's unbecoming. Besides, we still have much to do."

     Don't whine! Easy for her to say, she had not been both nearly crushed to death and drowned at the same time! I grumbled some more in the privacy of my own mind, then I drew a deep breath and glanced around to see where I had ended up. It looked a lot like the octagonal room I had found myself in when first entering the Trump, but somebody had apparently taken the trouble to do a bit of spring cleaning, for the room was entirely bare of shards.

     "So what do I do now?" I asked.

     "You have to open the door," Fiona replied.

     "What door would that be then?" I asked, looking at the alternating black and white walls.

     "I don't know. What does it look like over there?" I quickly described the room to her. "Hmm," she said, "I think you have to enter the right code words, although I do not know in what way you'll have to do this. Perhaps you'd better start off by trying some basic things like putting the four objects in the right order around you and concentrating or something like that."

     "Okay," I said, and I sat down in the middle of the room, facing one of the white walls. I didn't have a clue as to what the right order should be, but I guessed I had more than enough time to experiment. First I put the sword right in front of me, the staff at my right hand, the disc behind me, and the cup at my left hand. I started concentrating, and what do you know, the first try was the right one too. A rumbling noise of stone sliding on stone resounded throughout the room as the door opened itself. Ony problem was that the door wasn't actually a door, but a spiral staircase right in the middle of the room, leading downwards. Right in the middle of the room and right where I was sitting too. I tried to grab hold of something to stop my fall, but there was nothing but the stairs, and I soon found myself at the bottom of them, with several extra bruises and a huge bump on my head. Ouch!

     "Did it work?" Fiona asked innocently.

     "Yes," I snapped. I glanced around. "There isn't any light here, though."

     "I'll see what I can do. I should be able to get to this subsystem now." I heard her mumble a bit, then she said: "Exe!" and there was light.

     The stairs ended in the middle of a very large room that strongly reminded me of a mad professor's laboratory. There was a section with several bookcases full of books on biology and chemistry, a work area with several sinister-looking pieces of apparatus, and many, many large tanks with parts of bodies floating in them, ranging from quite small to whole ones.

     "This should be it," Fiona remarked. Great. After the classic quest scenario the mad professor one. I glanced up at the ceiling, already expecting to see the thunderclouds with their cliche lightningbolts streaking the sky, but there were no windows down here.

     "Do you have any idea over how many tanks your body has been distributed?" I asked Fiona.

     "No," she said, "I can't locate it from where I am now. Right, so it was searching time again. I wandered through the room, checking every tank with a whole body in it (well, you have to start somewhere, don't you?), and in one of the last ones I located a female body with a familiar crop of red hair. I had a hard time ignoring the fact that she was naked in there, especially since I could feel the Curse beginning to start up again. It wasn't as strong as usual, though, and by keeping a businesslike attitude I hoped to avoid Fiona picking up some indecent thoughts.

     When I told her that I'd found her body she wasn't as thrilled as I'd thought she'd be. She told me to find and revive Taureth first, because we couldn't get out of here without him anyway. I suspected that she secretly wasn't that sure about the whole reviving process and that she wanted me to have a bit of practice first. Personally, I didn't like the whole idea of handling human flesh as if it were mere clay, but if I had to do it to get out of here, I would. I had already done worse.

     I was just about to do as Fiona had suggested, when I realised that I didn't even know what Taureth looked like. I asked her, but she didn't know either, so I had to use some other means of finding his body. I strolled back to the first of the number of tanks with whole bodies in them and started concentrating lightly, hoping to make contact with the person within. Well, it wasn't a person as such, more of a giant gorilla, but I managed to make contact all the same. The beast wasn't too intelligent, still it was enough for me to get a firm psychic impression. Using this method I went from tank to tank, checking each of the remaining whole bodies against the information I'd got from Nisse. The powerful impressions that some of the bodies gave me had me in dubio now and again, but in the end I realised that Taureth wasn't among them. Okay, so he had gone to pieces and probably lay scattered all over the room. I should have guessed as much, a whole body would have been too easy.

     Again I wandered through the rows of tanks, this time concentrating whenever I found one that contained at least a head. I had completely lost track of time, when suddenly I found myself staring into the wide open eyes of a man's head. His hair was dark and slightly longer than fashionable, and he had a dark beard and moustache. His eyes were dark too, and very piercing. I got a strong feeling of depression and bitterness from him, an I realised that this had to be Taureth. At the same time I also realised that this wasn't really him, only a representation of part of him. Taureth himself was somehow imprisoned body and soul in the system of the whole Trump, and this was nothing more than a symbol of that imprisonment, and besides that a possible way of getting him out. The head was an important part of him, and with the psychic report I got from it I managed to find all the twenty other pieces of his body. With a little difficulty I moved all the tanks containing these pieces over to one side of the room, then I sighed and sat down. Guess I would have to do some sewing.

      My experience with medicine had up till then been rather scarce. Oh sure, I could apply bandages and treat most minor wounds, but in cases which needed heavy surgery I tended to rely on the professionals to handle it. It's not that I'm really squeamish or anything, I just don't share some people's fascination in these matters. Also, I do not think of medicine as an art. It seemed that I had to learn some more, though, much as I detested the job. Fortunately there were more than enough textbooks and manuals present to give me a further education in this area. Funny enough Fiona knew a lot about this kind of stuff, and with her guidance I managed to discard the books that were no use to me and select the essential ones. I wasn't really aware of how much time passed by while I went on studying these texts, and looking back I find it nearly impossible to make an educated guess. Fact of the matter was that I didn't stop to eat or sleep while I was working, but then I didn't recall feeling any hunger or sleep, despite the fact that I hadn't given in to these basic needs since I had left the world of air. I guess it was all because I had only entered the Trump mentally, and I was only in limited contact with my physical self.

      After I had read everything I had to read, I had to start experimenting. Not that I really wanted to, but I wasn't going to try to put Taureth back together without any practical experience. Plenty of material to practise with, though, and quite some time later I had at least once fitted every possible combination of body parts together. I felt pretty sure of my abilities, although joining a head to a torso was still a rather tricky business. With all those nerve ends anything could go wrong. Of course, I realise that some may be rather curious to the whole process of reviving a body in this way. Suffice to say that most Frankenstein films come close enough to the mark, and yes, you need a lot of electricity to supply the body with the vital spark of life. If I had had my Pattern handy, I could have used that instead, but I was still inside the Trump and had to do without.

     That final stage of adding the spark was the only thing I had not tried yet, and after much deliberation I decided that I should do so at least once. After all, I had gone and practised all the other gruesome stuff, I might as well practise this bit too, essential as it was. I selected one of the bodies that was already whole for this experiment: a little old lady that seemed as harmless as could be. I wasn't going to revive the gorilla without a cage. Still, just to be sure I tied the body down as much as was possible within the limits of the experiment. You never know...

     When everything was ready I looked around me for a few moments, almost waiting for the dramatic background score, but no, as dramatic as real life sometimes may be, it still can't beat the celluloid dream. So, I just counted to three instead and threw the switch. Electric currents streamed down through all the cables to the basin with the body, and the smell of ozone filled the room. I had only just switched off the current, when the old woman sat up straight in the bath and started screaming her head off. With the help of a syringe with tranquilizer I managed to subdue her, after which I got her out just in time to keep her from drowning the bath of salts. I tied her unconscious body to a slab before checking out her condition. Physically she was okay, but mentally I wasn't so sure. However, I hadn't been able to check on her mental condition beforehand, so there was no way of knowing how the experiment had affected her.

     Of course, I could have spent some more time reviving different bodies just to be sure of the soundness of the process, but by now I was well and truly sick and tired of the whole business. I wanted to put Taureth together again, revive him and Fiona, and get the hell out of here. A short breather later I started sewing, first head to torso, then hand to arm, and so on until Taureth's body lay like a giant three dimensional human puzzle in its bath. With all those stitches he really looked a lot like Frankenstein's monster, but while I was working on him I had noticed that his body parts had actually worked towards joining together again, albeit on a very basic subconscious level. Must be his natural shape shifting abilities, being the Chaos lord that he was.

     Okay, that was it. Everything was ready, and this time I didn't wait for the dramatic music. I threw the switch, let the juice run through Taureth's body for a couple of seconds, and then switched it off again. Expectantly I looked at all the gauges and dials: yes, he was alive. I looked at the tank just as he first opened his eyes. Slowly he rose from the fluid and turning towards me his mouth began to move. It took me a moment to realise that he was trying to say something, since he couldn't utter anything intelligible yet due to his recent surgery. He kept trying, though, and through his efforts and the feelings that eminated from him I gathered that he was trying to thank me. Well, that was something at least. 

     Taureth was still rather out of his element in his body after all this time, so I had to help him out of the tank and into a chair where he could get used to his new surroundings. Fiona was quite enthusiastic about our success, which she had been monitoring from her side of things. She was quite eager to get back in her own body, but she was cautious enough to want to wait till Taureth was able to assist me with the job. He was silent throughout the whole operation, still having trouble working his speech organs, but he was quite adept at this kind of work, and with his help I managed to bring back Fiona in no time at all. When she had recovered a bit from her ordeal, we were ready to leave. Finally. I sincerely hoped that I wouldn't be getting myself into something like this for some time to come.

     There was only a blink of an eye between me standing in the laboratory and waking up in my body in the room of the mansion. I felt odd somehow. Glancing over at the bed I saw Fiona's body there stirring back to life as well. She looked different, and it took me some time to figure out what it was. Then I realised that her hair and nails had grown a lot longer, and that she looked a bit emanciated. I checked out my own body, realising for the first time how much trouble it took for me to move, and I saw much the same thing as I had seen with Fi, plus an average length beard. Uh oh, looked like we had been gone for quite a long time. I remembered having synchronised the pocket Shadow with Amber before leaving, and if this still was the case, people might be looking for us by now.

     I shivered. It was rather cold in this room, much colder than should be the case for this Shadow. Concentrating on the Pattern was a relief after having been deprived of it for so long, and it didn't tax me as much as mere physical movement. Something was wrong with the whole universe, I could feel it. For the moment I couldn't tell what it was exactly, though, and it didn't have my immediate attention. The pocket Shadow did. It had been damaged somehow, that much was plain to see. Something had happened that had speeded up time rather substantially and that had at the same time messed up the climatic controls to a point where the current weather was of a lot more arctic nature. I quickly fixed it so that things would return to normal climat-wise, but I kept the current time speed. From the looks of it both Fiona and I would need some time to recover before venturing out again.

     Some noise in the room roused me from my task. I slowly turned my head and saw two figures standing near the bed. One was immediately familiar: Taureth, stitches and all. The other was an old woman who was quite upset and confused.

     "Who are you?" I croaked.

     The woman looked at me as if she didn't understand a word of what I had said. Taureth shambled over to me and with some trouble and gestures he managed to convey to me that he knew the lady in question; at one time she had been a servant of his. Suddenly I recalled the screaming woman I had experimented on. Poor woman.

     Before I could say anything, however, something swift and black shot past me and jumped straight at Taureth's chest, throwing him to the floor. When things had settled down I saw a familiar-looking black kitten, no, more a cat, standing protectively between me and Taureth, hissing at my recently released guest. A dark-grey shape hopped onto my lap, and looked at me with a grin. Dennis. I should have known that wherever Laura went, her brother went too. With difficulty I stretched out my hand to stroke his head.

     "What's all this noise?" I heard a familiar grumbling voice behind me. "Laura! You come here right now, young lady! And you too Dennis! Stop hissing at your father's guests!"

     Anna walked into my field of vision, saving me the trouble of turning my head once more.

     "So, you finally decide to wake up, have you?" she said, arms akimbo. Cautiously I nodded. "Well, it's about time," she continued, "this place is a mess. When you had not returned after several days, I took the trouble of breaking down the door and taking care of you and the lady on the bed. You should leave things in better order next time. Also, it's too cold here lately, and the food stock is running low. You high and mighty gentlemen, you always think that everything always works out right, no matter what."

     She had several other things to grumble about, but I let her. I was much too happy to be back in my own body again to begrudge her her little pleasures. When she had finished Anna went off for a moment to return with the four other children. All of them were a bit bigger than I remembered them, save for Miri perhaps, whose frail health was still more than enough cause for Anna to keep worrying. Dennis and Laura were not the least bit shy and after I had explained to them that Taureth was a friend, they even went up to him for a friendly greeting. They were soon joined by a happily cavorting Tigger, but Vilcon and Rowena were more reluctant to enter the room, and Miri wouldn't even leave Anna's side to say hello to me. Fortunately she got less shy once she got used to us being around.

     Introducing Taureth to Anna as a guest who would be staying with us for a while, I asked her to prepare two rooms: one for him and one for the old servant woman. When all the others had left and only Fiona and I remained in the room, I described to her the state I had found my pocket Shadow in and asked her if anything could have happened outside the Shadow that might cause such a mess. In turn Fiona asked me about all the relevant technical details of the Shadow: what kind of Shadows I had used as a model, what was the stabilisation factor like, what about the reality quotient, and more stuff like that. I answered all her questions as well as I could.

     "Where were you when you entered the Shadow last?" she wanted to know. I immediately saw the relevancy of the question, for the Shadow would remain anchored to that point until I left again.

     "It was a place in the Courts," I said, "very near the mansion of Alexa Grendyn."

     "Hmm, it might be possible that something has struck the Shadow from the outside," Fi said. "A Shadowstorm could do something like that."

     "As far as I could see there were no real signs of malfunctions here on the inside," I remarked, "although it was fairly hard to reset the climatic controls. First I attributed this to my current condition, but now I grow less and less sure."

     "I get the feeling that the Shadow's whole structure has somehow been changed, almost as if it had been dried up. Its substance has become very brittle and less easy to manipulate. Very vulnerable too. Strange..."

     "Well," I said, "if something did happen out there, I guess we shall find out soon enough when we step outside."

     "Another possibility I can think of," Fi continued, "is that the Logrus may have been undermining the integrity of the Shadow, due to its relative proximity to the anchor. The Pattern's influence would be less over there, although I haven't as yet made an in-depth study on the whole interplay of the four major powers."

     "That will have to wait till later. First we'd better try and get our strength back. I've kept the timeflow in here at a high level, so we won't be missing to much while we're busy recovering." Fi nodded.

     "Now that we're out of the Trump, however," she said, "I would like to know a bit more about this Taureth. Who is he, and why had he been locked up in there?" From her tone of voice I could tell that she was more than willing to put him back where we had found him in case she didn't like what she heard. Somehow I doubted whether this would be possible. Glancing down at the Trump, which I was somehow still holding in my right hand, I saw that the image of the snake with the branch had disappeared. The Trump's surface looked different too, with dozens of little fractures running across it. They could only be seen, however, for when I ran my finger over it, the surface seemed to be as smooth as ever.

     For a moment I wondered how much I should tell her, for she might very well jump at the conclusion that Taureth and his family could form a threat towards Amber. On the other hand, I did not doubt that now that Taureth had regained his freedom his brothers and sisters would very soon be released too. If this happened, it would be a matter of days before the story of Ornach's children would be common knowledge once again, and Fiona would not be very pleased when she found out that I had kept this information from her. This particular argument clinched it for me, along with my conviction that it was about time that we Amberites heard about this crucial part of our history. So, I told her everything that Nisse had told me, except for the names of Taureth's siblings and the descriptions of their prison Trumps; that was strictly on a need-to-know basis.

     "An interesting story," Fiona said when I had finished, keeping her tone of voice as neutral as possible. She looked at me speculatively, then said: "Are you certain that you want to keep someone like that on the loose? Remember Azrain." She needn't have said this; I remembered Azrain all too well. Still, I felt that Taureth was a different person, and besides, I needed his help, didn't I? I couldn't tell this to Fi, though, so I just kept a neutral expression. "We'll have to find out just how much of a danger he represents," Fi continued, "and see whether we can use him or not." Or whether he will let himself be used in this way, was her unspoken doubt.

     "I didn't get him out of that Trump just to put him straight back in again," I said stubbornly. She frowned slightly. Well, let her think that my feelings of nobility were playing up again; it would keep her from guessing my true motives. I sensed that she was willing to let me have my way, though, partly because she found those powers of the Ornach family so very interesting, and from what we had seen Taureth didn't appear to be nearly as twisted as Azrain had been. Caution was in order, but who knew what we might be able to learn from him.

     With some stumbling, some fumbling, and a lot of time I managed to get ready for dinner that night. Once I joined everyone downstairs, however, I found that the effort was more than worth it. Anna had done her best to make the children as presentable as possible, and had even insisted on them being all in human form for a change, much to the annoyance of the less quieter ones like Laura and Dennis. The kids looked a pretty picture, all cleaned up and in their best clothes, but their table-manners weren't altogether up to scratch. Only Rowena consistently made an effort to use the appropriate cutlery, for which some of the others called her a show-off. I could tell that they didn't mean it too unkindly, though. It was funny to notice that however different they may be, their differences didn't lead to any major quarrels among them, or at least it hadn't up till now. The kids just each went their own way, not bothering too much with their siblings' different preoccupations. Still, their different characters made for a rather lively dinner: Laura and Dennis kept grumbling about not being allowed to shift to cat form, Tigger just couldn't keep to his seat, Rowena was continually fishing for compliments, and Vilcon, who had apparently overcome his shyness, had a thousand questions for all of us, each answer greeted with another "Why?". Miri was the only one who was pretty quiet, but she demanded my attention in a different manner: despite Anna's rebukes she ate very little, and she looked very pale and thin. Clearly a problem child.

     After dinner Anna and I had a quiet private conversation about the kids. My commendations on the job she'd done she accepted with a slight nod, but she strongly expressed the opinion that it was about time the children got some formal training. They had now the mental age of a human child of perhaps five or six years, precisely the time when some start with their human education should be made. Little Cardane are physically speaking very active, and they were always busy, but they should learn some useful things too. Since Anna herself wasn't all that much at home with proper human etiquette, she entrusted the task to me. I realised that it would probably take me some time to find appropriate human teachers for my children, and that with their totally different characters I might even have to consider getting each of them a private tutor, but for now I might as well make a start by teaching them some basic things myself. I didn't know how long it would take me and Fiona to get into shape again, but with this extra task before me I simply decided to stay a month in the pocket Shadow. That should be more than enough time to get on my feet again and to do some basic teaching. This way I would also find out what kind of education would suit each of my children best, in case I would decide to find them private tutors. Perhaps Fiona might even be willing to lend me a hand here. I informed Anna of my plans, which fortunately met with her approval. When asked about Miri's condition her expression became sad and worried. She told me that Miri had suffered several infringements on her frail health, largely due to the extremely cold weather. Anna tried her very best to improve the little one's condition, but she hadn't been able to work any real progress. Miri was, however, one of the more intelligent children, she told me, and perhaps that some education would do her good. Unicorn knows that both she and Vilcon were more than ready for it.

     Fortunately, Fiona was more than willing to be of service. Together we set up a scheme in which the mornings were to be used for teaching the kids, and the afternoons for getting into shape again. Although all the kids were smart enough, there was one huge problem that we had to overcome: their lack of discipline. Making them sit in one place for a couple of hours was sheer torture to most of them, and it wasn't too surprising that Laura and Dennis ran away more than a few times. Tigger had much the same problem, but unlike his brother and sister he had an interest in the things Fiona and I had on offer (mostly basic stuff like reading, writing and arithmetic). Rowena on the other hand knew how to keep to her place, but she was easily distracted, and if something didn't catch her fancy she merely pretended to listen instead of really paying attention. As expected, Miri and Vilcon were the ones most easily taught, although especially Vilcon sometimes tended to ask a lot of questions which made him get ahead of himself. I tried to be as patient as I could with all of them and not to get too angry at their disobedience, and I'd like to think that they did learn something, even the more unruly ones.

     Fiona's approach was totally different from mine: instead of trying to reach all the kids, she was only interested in the ones who showed a willingness to learn something. Where I would fight back anger or despair when Laura and Dennis had managed to slip away again, or when Rowena hadn't been paying attention again, she would just shrug and turn back to the other three. The funny thing was that she somehow took a liking to Tigger, who was one of the unruliest of the lot. He was interested in learning stuff, though, and I got the feeling that he reminded Fi of someone, although she refused to comment. Fi was very pleased with Miri, but Vilcon turned out to be a bit of a problem. Fact was that Fiona was a lot more demanding than I was, and she had little patience for failure. Whenever one of her three star pupils did something wrong, she would fly out at them in a harsher fashion than I ever could. This gave the children the impression that Fi just didn't like them at all, and  especially Vilcon was simply very scared, only going to her classes quite reluctantly. It was just Fi's way of driving the ones who showed promise as hard as possible (the others she simply ignored), and I must say that she sometimes got results that I with my methods could never hope to accomplish. So, I comforted Vilcon as best as I could, and tried to reassure him that Fi wasn't as bad as she seemed, but I still made him attend her lessons. I didn't want him to get used to a life that was too sheltered; Amberites need thick skins.

     And then there was Taureth. When I had told him about my decision to stay in this Shadow for about a month he had shrugged and smiled, indicating that it was much the same to him. He too needed time to recuperate and to find his feet, and he seemed willing to stay in our company for the time being. It took a couple of days before he could speak normally again, and in the weeks that followed his scars slowly started to fade away. At his own request Anna had cut his hair and trimmed his beard, so he looked less like a wild man from the woods. After they had got used to one another, Taureth got along splendidly with my kids, and he spent a lot of time playing with them. He was of course aware of Fiona's and mine efforts at teaching, but he didn't offer his assistance in this area. This didn't mean that the kids didn't pick anything up from him, though, but he never approached matters too seriously and he kept a playful atmosphere with whatever he did.

     Taureth got on especially well with Vilcon, who seemed to share his fascination for building things or finding out how things worked. At one time Vilcon came to me with his alarm clock after he had taken it apart quite meticuously, in the hope that I'd be able to put it all back together again. Fortunately, Taureth caught my look of despair; he quickly took all the parts from me and within the hour the alarm clock was in working order again. Another one who managed to learn something from him was Rowena. She was always complaining to Anna how she didn't have enough dresses, with Anna in turn pointing out that Rowena did already have more clothes by herself than her combined siblings had. Most of the time these quarrels would end with Rowena in tears, so Taureth put a stop to them by simply teaching her how to make her own clothes. Now the only thing she would nag about was not having enough cloth to make new dresses...

     As I said, it took Taureth a couple of days to get his speech back. He spoke a slightly more archaic form of Thari, but he made a real effort to get up to date. When I had the feeling that he was once again able to communicate freely, I invited him to a private conversation. It was late at night, the fourth day since our return from the Trump prison, and all the kids were fast asleep. To keep the conversation really private I erected my Pattern shield to seal the room. I realised, of course, that Fiona would undoubtedly notice my efforts, but I hoped that she wouldn't be able to break through the shield without alerting me. After we had finished I would also use the Pattern to clean all psychic residu out of the room, just like Deirdre had told me. You never can be too careful with Family.

     It was hard for me to find a way to start the conversation, so in the end I simply began by saying: "I spoke to Nisse." Taureth gave an almost imperceptible nod.

     "How much time has passed?" His voice was deep and melodious, but thoughtful.

     "I don't know precisely," I said, "but I estimate at a couple of thousands of years."

     "That long?" The shock was slight, but still there.

     "Apart from Nisse there are but few people left who know the whole story," I said. Taureth sighed.

     "Is there any news of my brothers or sisters, or of my father?" he asked.

     "Of Ornach I know nothing else but that he is still chained up in his own prison," I said, "and you are probably the first of your brothers and sisters to be released after all this time." He frowned.

     "I have tried to make contact with the Logrus," he said, "but it appears to be much weaker than I remember it. Could it be that this place is somehow protected from it?"

     "No, not really. I did fashion this pocket Shadow with Pattern energy, but apart from that it's a Shadow much like any other. It should currently be anchored to a place in the Courts of Chaos too."

     "You have told me that you are from Amber. Could you please tell me what the current political situation between Amber and Chaos is like?"

     "Well, that's quite a story, but I'll do my best." I proceeded to tell him briefly about everything that had happened during the Patternfall War, the second Pattern that resulted from that conflict, and all the latest occurances that had let to the installation of the Nexus. I also told him of Merlin being King of Chaos, with his complete heritage, and of the civil war that seemed to be imminent. Taureth displayed a somewhat stoic interest in my story, but then I guess it's hard to get really enthusiastic over anything when you have been locked up for so long.

     "Hmm," he said when I had finished, "perhaps the addition of two new powers to this universe has weakened the Logrus to this extent. The fact is that I simply cannot summon it to me in this place. I must confess that I only know very little about the Pattern, although I do remember that its creation led to a great change in the shape of the universe. The possibilities implied fascinated me tremendously, and I had only just started studying its effects to use them in the creation of worlds. Then came the war..."

     "I know the rest," I said. The memories were clearly painful to him. "As far as I know Dworkin never told anybody what had really happened," I explained to him, "and contact with the Courts was only reestablished after the Patternfall War, when most people over there had already forgotten about all of you."

     "I wonder why there had not been any communication between the Courts and Amber for so long," Taureth said. I shrugged, indicating that I really didn't know. It might have been that Dworkin and Oberon had kept Amber shielded from the Courts for a long time, or it may have been the other way round with the Courts doing the shielding. Perhaps we would never know.

     "How did you manage to find my card?" Taureth asked. So I told him, starting with my second encounter with Tiziane and her promises to help me. When I got to the point where I had just entered the Trump and all the spheres had come crashing to the floor, Taureth interrupted me.

     "Were this other Pattern and the Nexus already present when this happened?" he asked.

     "Yes, of course," I said.

     "That is strange," he muttered, looking worried.

     "Why?" I asked nonplussed.

     "Well, the Logrus was the basic power source for all of those worlds. I do wonder if there is something wrong after all." He looked thoughtful for a few moments, then he shrugged. "I do not know," he sighed. "It all sounds rather strange, but I guess it may simply have been some kind of fluctuations." I wasn't so sure. Perhaps I'd better ask Fiona about this later on. For the moment, however, I let the matter rest and continued with my story. As I neared the end, I clearly sensed that Taureth felt indebted for his release, to me as well as to Fiona. He was also wondering, however, why I was telling him all this without Fi being present. Well, I guess he could come to his own agreement with her, but I didn't want her to get involved in mine.

     "I notice that you're puzzling over Fiona's absence," I said. "That's because I had a good reason to get you out of that Trump, one she knows and must know nothing about." He nodded gravely, as if to say that he would honour my need for secrecy. "According to Tiziane," I continued, "you or your family would be just about the only ones able to help me with my problem. You see, I suffer from a Blood Curse." Again I spent some time in monologue, only leaving out the specifics of the Curse's effects, and stuff like Oberon raping my mother. I was very tense telling all of this, for I succintly remembered Deirdre's warning never to tell anyone. Still, if we were ever to find a solution, we would have to trust someone. I just hoped that Taureth was the right someone.

     "This is quite a story," was his first reaction. "Is there nobody in the Courts who could help you with this problem?"

     "Nobody," I said, "at least, according to Tiziane there isn't."

     "Hmph, strange." He apparently had trouble coming to terms with the current level of knowledge in the Courts being lower than it once had been. I also sensed that he remembered Tiziane very well, and that he somehow didn't like her all that much. Not surprisingly, if she had in any way been involved in his imprisonment. "Well, I will have to do some research," he said. "Of course I will help you," he added when he saw my relieved expression. "I cannot do my research from here, however. The Logrus is my primal tool, so I will need access to it. It is imperative that I have all my powers at my disposal simply in order to study this Curse, so we shall have to find another place from which to work. Depending on how strong the Curse actually is, I may or may not need some extra assistance. I do not expect to require any, however. This Curse is in a way simply another construct, and just like all constructs it can be deconstructed."

     "I sincerely hope it will be as easy as that," I said. "At the time, the lady Tiziane expressed her inability to deal with this Curse herself." This both surprised and disturbed Taureth.

     "If this is true, it must be very powerful," he said. "Still, since it is a hereditary Curse, it must be very strong indeed. However, it is bound to be less strong in you than it was in the original victim; it is usual in these cases that the Curse grows in strength the longer it is active. Then again, the whole problem of lifting it may well be a matter of technique, which would also explain Tiziane's inability to deal with it."

     "I have to say here that it is my intention to lift the Curse from everyone who is affected by it, not only from myself or my kids."

     "I understand," Taureth said. "However, I will probably have to treat everyone separately. How many people do suffer from this Curse?"

     "Well, there is me, my mother Deirdre, and my uncle Caine. Currently there's only one among my children who shows the signs, my eldest daughter Diana, but the others would probably get to be affected as they reach puberty."

     "Is that everyone?"

     "There is someone else, my cousin Murlas. He is supposedly Caine's son, but I have never noticed the symptoms of the Curse in him as I have in the others."

     "That is quite interesting," Taureth remarked.

     "Then again, he may not be Caine's son at all. Up till now we have always assumed that he was, but it has never been made officially clear."

     "It could also be that the Curse is not as easily passed on from man to man," he theorized. "His other parent's heritage may be of import too." May be, but then that also wasn't entirely clear. I guessed we'd better leave Murlas out of it until we were completely sure of his heritage.

     Taureth explained to me that he also wanted to study the children, for if he was right in his assumption that the Curse would be stronger when longer active, the children would be easiest to help get rid of it. Also, he would be able to find out whether it wasn't passed on from father to son as he had posed. I assented to this, so long as he wouldn't place the kids in any danger.

     At the end of our conversation I once again impressed upon him the need for secrecy, especially in the case of Fiona. He assured me that he regarded it as a matter of honour, but he also agreed that Fiona wasn't the easiest person to keep secrets from. He seemed to think of her as a rather complicated woman, who wasn't altogether harmless either. During the remainder of our stay together I observed Taureth and Fiona circling around each other, mostly mentally of course, probing, testing, and trying to find the middle ground where they would meet. I was sure that they had a similar private conversation as I had had, but I wasn't all that interested in what Fiona would want from Taureth. Maybe I hoped that if I would keep out of her affairs, she would keep out of mine.

     I did take the time to discuss Taureth's remarks about the Logrus being less powerful with Fi. It didn't sound normal to her, but then she wasn't a Logrus user herself, so she couldn't compare the current situation to what it had been before. Ordinarily, however, the Logrus should be able to twist itself round any possible obstacle, so the fact that it couldn't be contacted from there was worrying. More and more it looked as if something had happened to the Logrus, and it must have been something serious too. What it had been, we couldn't tell as yet, but Fi didn't rule out the possibility of a battle between the four major powers. All the more reason to make sure we were fully recovered before venturing out into the unknown, I felt.

     For reasons of security Fiona wanted to know how well I had camouflaged the Shadow pocket's anchor. I had of course shaped it to be as unobtrusive as possible, but we realised that the Pattern energy involved would stick out like hell in a place like the Courts. Fi told me that it should be possible for someone inside the pocket to Shadow shift outside if they knew how; the exit point would always be at the anchor, though. On the other hand, someone who spotted the anchor could with some trouble try to shift into the pocket, using the anchor as a guideline. What I normally did when entering or leaving the Shadow was something entirely different altogether. It involved unfolding and folding the Shadow in some metaphysical sense, that would take much too much time and space to explain  here. Suffice to say that the anchor was linked to the paperweight that I carried with me, until I entered the Shadow myself. Then it would stay put at the place where I had entered it, till I came out again. Simple, isn't it? Still, the possibility that someone might enter the Shadow without my knowledge warranted some extra attention, and from that moment on I tried to keep an eye on any breaches or use of power in the vicinity. I didn't detect anything, though.

     At my insistence I had Fiona draw a Trump of Taureth, as well as copy it and our own Trumps, so we would be able to keep in contact once we were on the outside again. It wouldn't do to lose sight of Taureth after going through so much trouble to find him...

Previous Chapter

Next Chapter

Back to the index