Chapter 044: In A Sea Of Bigger Fish

"No! I'm not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;

Am an attendant lord, one that will do

To swell a progress, start a scene or two,

Advice the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,

Deferential, glad to be of use,

Politic, cautious, and meticulous;

Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;

At times, indeed, almost ridiculous -

Almost, at times, the Fool."

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock - T.S. Eliot

     Ouch! I quickly jerked back my hand to see the blood begin to well up from where I had cut myself. Fortunately it was a clean cut that I hoped would heal soon. I still didn't know what this stuff was, but at least now I knew that it was razor-sharp. It was hard too, and it must have taken quite some strength to force this breach in it that I was looking at. Frowning I regarded the terrain on the other side: a pale green sun beating  down on an orange-coloured desert. Weird. If I didn't know better I'd say that I was looking at another Shadow, but I had never heard of passages through Shadow taking on such a physical form as was the case here. I would ask Fiona or Taureth later whether this was normal for the Courts, but first I was going to finish my tour of what remained of Grendyn manor.

     When we had finally come out of the pocket Shadow, it had indeed still been right in front of Alexa's estate. However, it was plain to see that in our absence some kind of disaster had struck: the gates lay torn from their hinges, a lot of windows had been smashed, and most of the walls of the manor looked as if they could collapse at any moment. Both Taureth and Fiona had immediately noticed that something was wrong with the Logrus, and Fiona had started Trumping people to learn what exactly had happened. It had looked as if she would be busy for a while, so I had quietly slipped into the house, looking for Alexa. Just before we left my kids I had checked my Trumps and I had been quite disturbed to find that hers wasn't in working order anymore: her image was still on the card, but the whole surface was riddled with tiny cracks and there just seemed to be no power left in the thing anymore. I had wandered from empty room to empty room, sometimes crying out Alexa's name, sometimes stopping to survey the wreckage. I hoped that she had got away before whatever had happened had happened, but silently I feared that she was still in there somewhere.

     That's how I had discovered the strange breach in space. I guessed I'd better mention the phenomenon to Fi once I got back outside, it might be important. I glanced back at the door I had come through and sighed. It was going to take me ages to find Alexa this way, if she was even here at all. Perhaps it was time to change tactics. As soon as I started concentrating I was surprised by how little interference from the Logrus there was. From my short previous visits to the Courts I had got used to the whole atmosphere being virtually abuzz with magical energies and Logrus power, but now there was nearly nothing, save for some vagues traces of spell residues. Some of them had hung over the mansion itself, probably for maintainance. Apparently the place didn't really hold up well without them.

     Softly like a butterfly I let my spirit drift, fluttering slowly through the house, until finally in a remote room in the west wing I came upon the body of Alexa lying on a bed that had miracuously survived the devastation. Poor lady, her state was just as sorry as that of her House. She was unconscious, with a lot of blood all over her body, but she seemed to be alive. From the state of the remains of her dress I'd say that she had been badly abused, possibly even raped. When I'd got my hands on those who had done this to her... Once I had hauled my physical self over there as well I examined her more closely and found that she was in some kind of coma while her body did its best to mend itself. Her shape shifting abilities on auto repair mode; I had seen the same thing with Murlas when he had been wounded and I still wasn't used to the sight. However well it might work, it was a rather slow process, and there were a lot of wounds, probably internal ones too.

     I found myself faced with a dilemma: I couldn't leave her here of course, but transporting her might very well wreak havoc with the natural healing process and prove to be far more undesirable in the long run. Unfortunately I didn't know any healing techniques myself, but then either Fi or Taureth might. I tried contacting Fi first, but she was apparently still busy. Taureth was a little bit surprised to receive my call, since he still needed to get reacquainted to the whole idea of Trumps, but he was quick to come through when I asked him to. Just as quickly he took stock of the situation and started examining Alexa by placing his right hand on her brow. I concentrated and tried to follow what he was doing. It wasn't all that difficult really: he simply send his mind as a probe through her whole body, a trick I realised I might just as easily have done myself. When he was done he told me that she was recovering slowly but steadily and that he might be able to speed up the whole process a little bit, so that she might be moved to a more suitable location. I merely nodded and watched him place both hands on her brow this time. His face tensed with concentration and I felt some of his strength flow through Alexa's body, but it all went too fast for me to see precisely what he was doing. It all appeared to work, though, for most of Alexa's visible wounds looked a lot better when he was done. Taureth looked pretty worn out as he withdrew his hands.

     "That's all I can do for her at the moment," he sighed. "Is the lady an acquaintance of yours?"

     "Yes, her name is Alexa Grendyn." I saw him frown at that name and quickly added that without her help he would probably still be locked up in his Trump. He would have to learn that all those familiar names of old now all probably had a totally different ring to them.

     After carefully having taken Alexa's still unconscious body in my arms I began picking our way back through the rubble towards the entrance. When I told Taureth about the Shadow breach I'd seen he was just as puzzled as I had been. He said that he never really had had the time to study the phenomenon of Shadow, since he had been imprisoned fairly soon after the creation of the Pattern, so his knowledge in this area was rather limited. However, since Shadow seemed to be a product of both Pattern and Logrus, and the broken Shadow wall seemed to indicate a decreased flexibility in the system, he theorized that this may well be an effect of whatever it was that had befallen the Logrus. Hmm, the more I saw, the more I started to worry. This looked very serious indeed.

     Fiona was still busy Trumping people, going from one card to the other, and we had to wait for several minutes more until she had finished. She told me that she had only been able to contact those people who were also currently in the Courts. Fortunately there was quite a substantial number of them, among whom were Bleys (a slight satisfied smile from Fi at the mention of his name) and several of my cousins, namely Boadice, Adrian, Alexander, and Murlas.

     "So what the hell has happened here?" I asked.

     "Well, for starters, the Logrus has been seriously damaged, and Merlin has been killed. There appears to be some kind of connection between these two facts, but the precise facts of the matter are rather hazy at this point. The current hypothesis is that Dara's faction have started their little war. Anyway, Merlin's lifeless body was found in the middle of the Logrus. The Logrus has somehow been fixed in its place, which has weakened the whole structure of Shadow.

     "As for your cousins, Adrian appears to have some new problems of his own, but I guess you'd better get the story from him. Boadice also has run into some trouble, but you'd better contact her yourself too. Alexander has allied himself with both the Hendrakes and the Baccarans, or rather he's allied himself with half of the House Hendrake, since the House has split up following a fundamental difference of opinion. The House symbol has been broken in two, signifying the two now nameless factions that formerly made up the House. Both of them will try to claim the right to call themselves Hendrakes, but that will be settled later. Alexander himself... Well, he's not entirely the person he was, but you will see about that for yourself. The faction of the Hendrakes he's allied himself with is being led by Belissa Minobee Hendrake. The other half are the conservatives under the command of a certain Pardai. Surprisingly, Murlas seems to be the only one who has relatively few problems of his own, which of course raises quite some suspicions. Naturally, he's not telling everything, but that's just Murlas.

     "I think it's best if we travel as swiftly as possible towards the Thelbane and the Royal Palace, just as the Summons requires." She noticed my confused expression and added: "The Summons goes out whenever the King of Chaos has died. The representatives of all Major and Minor Chaos Houses convene in the Royal Palace for a special session of the Major and the Minor Council, in which they will try to determine who is going to succeed the throne. It might take a very long while for the whole succession matter to be resolved, though, since the vote has to be unanimous. That is, if they can't reach a unanimous decision within a few weeks, they'll settle on a two thirds majority.

     "Now, since Amber won the Patternfall War, the Courts are nominally still a satellite state. Not everyone is going to see it this way, of course, especially since Shadow travel has become nigh-impossible, virtually barring the way back to Amber. However, our voice still carries a lot of weight in this succession matter, and some unwary Amberites might easily become pawns in the clutches of some of the Major Houses. That's why all us present Amberites are going to convene for a special council of our own, in order to present a unified front to the Courts.

     "There are several people currently in the vicinity of the Thelbane," she said. "I guess we'd better contact Adrian and have him transport us through. Would you like to do the honours?" I shrugged. Sure, why not? Cradling Alexa in one arm I dug out Adrian's Trump with my other one, and after a few seconds contact was established. The King of Sherwyn was in his Chaos form, antlers and all, but apart from that he didn't look very royal: torn clothes, weary and annoyed expression, and clearly suffering from a major headache. He managed a smile as he recognised me, though.

     "Dorian," he said, "I'm happy to see you."

     "Me too. You don't look too good, though."

     "I know," he sighed. "There's a lot of ugly stuff going on. I don't know how much you know about it..."

     "Well, Fiona's told me a few things, but she didn't give too many details. Perhaps it's better if you bring us through."

     "Who's this?" he asked, indicating Alexa.

     "The Lady Alexa Grendyn," I replied. "Head and only remaining member of a Minor Chaos House. As you can see, she's in a pretty bad shape, and I can't leave her here all by herself."

     "I hope you can manage to keep her safe in the Palace," he said, extending his hand. I nodded to Fiona and Taureth, and the four of us stepped through. Of course Adrian was rather surprised to see Fiona and quite surprised to see Taureth come through as well. I introduced the two gentlemen to each other, including all of Adrian's official titles and stuff too, something I wasn't able to do in Taureth's case.

     "I have no family name," Taureth remarked, seeing Adrian's confusion.

     "All these strange people running around here...," Adrian muttered, shaking his head. The poor guy was clearly at the end of his tether and couldn't stand any more enigmas.

     There were indeed a lot of people milling about. I recognised some of the liveries and uniforms: Hendrake, Baccaran, and Sawall. These three Houses seemed to be cooperating in an effort to secure the area against anyone who might dare to trespass, but this alliance plainly wasn't an easy one, and there was a lot of tension in the air. Their efforts appeared to be centred around the still smoking ruins of what, as Adrian told me, had once been the Thelbane, the great Cathedral of the Courts. And here I was thinking that Grendyn Mansion had been in a bad state. This wasn't really the ideal spot for a little heart to heart, so we decided to travel straight on to Palace by means of Bleys's Trump. Fortunately the servants there had already been preparing suites for all of us Amberites; apparently news of who was present in the Courts travelled very fast. We sought some privacy in Adrian's chambers. There I put Alexa, who was still unconscious of course, on the couch and started working on a net to keep all the inquisitive ears from listening in on us.

     "What are you doing?" Adrian asked wearily.

     "Keeping eavesdroppers out," I said with a smile.

     "Neat trick," was his succinct comment. "Do you think you could teach me how to do it too?"

     "Sure, that is, we can always try."

     "It would be very handy." He looked around for something to drink, for a moment considered opening a bottle of wine, but then seemed to decide that alcohol wasn't the best thing for him right now and settled on a glass of water. "You seem to be very tight with Fiona lately," he remarked off-hand.

     "We have been working together on some projects, yes." He gave me a doubtful expression. "What's wrong?" I asked.

     "They're planning all kind of things, she and Bleys. Well, everyone is really... Bleys told me that Sereva's child might have a rather substantial claim on the throne of Chaos, providing it's a male. When I heard that, I immediately walked out of the Logrus. You know it's been fixed, don't you?"

     "Wait a minute, wait a minute," I interjected. "Alright, Fiona did tell me that the Logrus has been set, that Merlin has been killed, and that there might be some possible connection between the two."

     "I should think so!" he exclaimed. "Merlin's blood was used to fix the Logrus in its current form."

     "And you were there with Bleys?"

     "Yes, I walked it to check out what happened, together with Boadice, Bleys, and Delwin."

     "Delwin?"

     "Yes, I had never seen him before, but he introduced himself and all." He shrugged. "Anyway, Bleys explained that now that Merlin was dead, there were several possible interpretations of the rules of succession. One of them would have the succession pass on to the next Major House in line, being the Baccarans. Sereva would be candidate for her House, but being female she can't be taken into consideration. However, Bleys already knew that she was pregnant, and should the child be male, he could become the next King of Chaos." He sighed. It was clear that he wasn't very happy with all this extra interest in his unborn heir. "As soon as the situation had been explained to me, I rushed back outside where I'd left Sereva. It was too late, though: she had already been kidnapped by the Oban, a legendary group of mercenary assassins. We think she's probably in the hands of the Sawalls or the Helgrams by now, since those are the other two main pretenders to the throne. The problem is that if the rule that passes the succession on to House Baccaran is applied, the Sawalls will lose their claim, but the Helgrams will be one step closer to the throne, since they're just behind the Baccarans." He sighed once more. "Politics... I wish I could just get the child back alive and raise it myself without any fuss. It's already destined to be an heir to another kingdom anyway." After a moment's thought he added: "And I'd like to have Sereva back alive as well, I guess, although I might be the only one who thinks that way."

     "Boy," I said, "you sure got problems." I noticed that he had dropped his guard a little during the conversation, and was now showing plain signs of exhaustion and of becoming very emotional. There were even some tears in his eyes. It must be that he felt a little more at ease with me screening the room like that, and in a way I was touched that he trusted me this much. However, I didn't know whether I would be able to be of very much help to him beyond hearing him out. It didn't really matter, I guess; sometimes we all just need some shoulder to cry on.

     "Of course I'd appreciate it if you'd keep all this to yourself," he said.

     "Of course. Although I assume it will come up in the Family council that's been scheduled, won't it?"

     "Oh, yes," he said bitterly. "Fiona and Bleys made no secret of the fact that they saw lots of opportunities in the situation. Yet another nice little pawn for them to play with. I have no intention of just blindly following their orders, though. Whether I will be able to hold my own against them is another matter, but still..."

     "Don't let them walk all over you."

     "I'm not planning to, but there are so many things that I have to take into account, like the whole civil war with its battle for stronger positions and all. I guess we'll see what will happen. I can't even get back to Corwin's Pattern to see what the situation is like over there." He sighed once again and rubbed his face with both hands. "Then there's all these strange characters popping up out of nowhere, like that Ornach guy. He's really a brute, you know, handled Bleys like he was a little boy."

     "Hold on there. Ornach, you say?" He nodded. "What? How? Where?"

     "Apparently Boadice was the first to run into him. He gave her a choice: serve him or die. Naturally she went for the first option."

     "And later on you met him too?"

     "Yes, together with Bleys."

     "Where is he now?"

     "Who? Ornach? Well, if Boadice is here in the Palace, Ornach is bound to be there too. Why all these questions, though? Does the name Ornach mean anything to you?"

     "Yes, it does actually. I'll tell you later, though, after I've talked with Boa."

     "Mind if I tag along? I've got nothing better to do anyway."

     "Okay." He would probably pick up enough from my conversation with Boa to save me the trouble of explaning about Taureth and stuff. I took out my Trumps and contacted Boadice, with Adrian lightly touching my shoulder. As contact was established, I caught a brief glimpse of some lean black demon- like figure, but before I could think that I had reached the wrong person it turned into Boadice wearing a nice conservative black dress. Weird. Alexander was with her too, but he was quickly walking away from the scene. I couldn't say that I was sorry either.

     "Boadice," I said cheerily, "good to see you again."

     "Oh, hello. Fancy you being here too. How come?"

     "Oh, I got here with Fiona," I said evasively. The one thing I remembered from my earlier dealings with Boadice, limited though they may be, was her boundless curiosity, which only made me a litle more cagey.

     "You mean you managed to come here through Shadow? So we can go home?"

     "Hold you horses! Who said anything about going home? As far as I know that's still out of the question."

     "How did you get here, then?" she asked suspiciously.

     "Never mind that now," I said curtly. "Adrian has been telling me some things about your new... position." She sighed.

     "Yes, I ran into Ornach. Yes, he was much stronger than me. Yes, I had the choice between dying him or `voluntarily' joining his cause. And yes, I chose the latter." It was probably the umpteenth time she had to tell this story, I could tell.

     "I had already explained all of that to him," Adrian remarked almost apologetically.

     "Oh, have you already seen my Chaos form?" Boa asked. In the blink of an eye she changed to the black demon I had glimpsed earlier. What can I say? The usual demon thing really: black, tall, and looking very, very menacing. Sharp teeth and claws too. She flexed some muscles and suddenly her whole body was lined with rows of thin, very sharp-looking ridges. Not very huggable, I'd say. It was plain that her earlier human form had been nothing more than an illusion, though: she could never have switched forms that fast merely with shape shifting.

     "Looks... nice," I said. "About this Ornach: what's it like, working for him?" Boa frowned.

     "So so. His methods of recruting people aren't so nice. He's looking for his children and I have to help him."

     "I think I might know something to appease him a little bit," I said, slightly smiling.

     "What? How? Where are you? Never mind, I'm coming through." I cautiously took the hand, or rather claw she extended and guided her through. She glanced around the room, apparently recognised it as being Adrian's, shortly regarded Alexa's still unconscious figure, and then turned back to me. I tucked her Trump away and took out Taureth's. However, all my neat  little plans of being the one to reunite Ornach with his eldest son fell through as soon as contact was established... for Taureth was already in conversation with a tall, impressive-looking, bearded man who resembled him so much that he simply had to be Ornach.

     "Oh," I said, sounding a little disappointed, "I see you've already found each other." Taureth nodded with a look of slight surprise, and we broke contact again.

     "Who's that?" Boa asked, indicating the Trump.

     "Taureth," I replied, "but it seems he's already found his father." The name was immediately familiar to her.

     "Dorian," she exclaimed happily, "I'd hug you, if I weren't so sharp." Well, she was grateful to me, that was something at least. To make sure that she really owed me one, I told her what I knew about Ornach's other children as well, complete with the description of their prison-Trumps and their personalities as Nisse had described them to me. Boa was simply ecstatic and she very nearly did hug me. Ordinarily I wouldn't have minded as much, but like this she wasn't all that tempting.

     At Boa's question I explained to her who Alexa was, complete with her whole position as the only remaining member of her House and her current wounded state. Boadice was able to arrange another suite for me with a door leading to a neighbouring suite where Alexa could recover under my watchful eye. As an alternative Boa suggested taking care of Alexa herself, an offer which I gracefully declined, ignoring her knowing smile. After having seen me settling in Boa suggested we all catch some sleep; nothing very much would be happening in the next few hours anyway, and especially Adrian looked as if he needed it. I wasn't all that sleepy myself, but I could do with some time to think, so I watched Boa leading Adrian off to his chambers and then settled down to watch over Alexa.

     It was really another fine mess, this whole situation. I hadn't talked about it with Taureth yet, but I realised that with the Logrus being almost non-active there was very little chance of him working on the problem of the Curse. Ergo, the Logrus had to be repaired in some way. Question was: how? I hadn't the foggiest idea myself. Perhaps we would need the Jewel of Judgement for this, since it had also helped to restore both Patterns, but then there was the problem that the Jewel was probably still in Amber, with no way of getting to it. Sigh. There didn't seem to be too much I could do to resolve the situation.

     Perhaps I'd better try and help Adrian find his lost fiancee. He could do with some assistance, and Boadice's problems, interesting though they were, were her own. I figured I had helped her enough for now, and it was nice to have someone in your debt, especially a fellow Amberite. No, Adrian was in deeper, and I especially worried about him being able to stand up to both Bleys and Fiona. It might be a problem for all of us younger Amberites in the Courts, I guessed. One Elder is hard enough to face down, let alone two who were as close as Bleys and Fiona. Maybe we shouldn't try it on our own, though. Maybe we should get together and present some kind of allied front. After all, there were five of us here, and even though cooperating with someone like Alexander would be difficult, I knew that we would be able to do it if need be. I decided to talk the matter over with Murlas first, though; he might have an entirely different take on the whole affair, and perhaps even some other plans.

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