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Pattern Run

"Let's not split up just yet," Henry interjected. "It'll be easier to move the children with more than one adult at all events, and this place is not safe. I have not forgotten those ghost-things outside. Rowan, would you care to accompany us until you are safely gone from this place?"

The charm was back, an easy confident charisma that clung to him like cologne.

"So far as the basement, certainly," she replied. "After that -- it depends on your plans for the immediate future and what I may learn down there. But you can brief me on that while we're en route."

Bess shook her head. "I got on just fine before you, and I don't see why you want to waste so much time. It was a long trek to wherever you went before, the children would be quite worn out if we took them there, and left completely alone if we waited until after. In this event I think it's safer to split up."

Henry's eyebrows rose. Even though he had heard Bess give her own opinions a few times before he was still unused to being contradicted by women. "It may be a better idea to take Rowan to assay a different version of the Pattern - the one in the sea, perhaps, or the one in the sky. As she suggested, the former denizens of this place may return at any moment. The more pertinent issue, however, is that I do not know what you did to stop those flesh-eating ghosts before. Would my steel stop those things if we were to meet up with you later?"

"If we're going to fall back, I'd move to a different tier of Shadow altogether. For meteorological reasons, sea is safer than sky, if we have to stick close, through neither would have been my first choice," said Rowan.

"Very well. But I want to speak to Grace again before we go into Shadow..." Henry pursed his lips.

"Who's Grace?"

"Bess' mother, and the mother of Eric's children," Henry said. "You'll like her."

Rowan said, "If there's time, I'd like to look for two things in my old rooms. I'd stashed a few volumes of a combination diary/lab notebook in my quarters at Clarissa's villa, but there were both missing volumes and missing pages in one of the the critical ones. And there's a ring I want."

Henry looked amused. "As you wish. Because of her theft of the Jewel from you, I think it likely that Clarissa is in possession of your missing notes, but it will harm nothing to look - if Fiona's chambers are undamaged. There was a fire here, but when I cannot say. It was after Eric's death. Bess, if you feel certain you can gather the children alone, I think you ought to do that. Rowan, you can go to your old rooms and see if you find anything of interest. I will inform Montparnasse of our departure and we can all meet up in the throne room." He thumbed through his Trump deck, found the Trump of Eric, looked at each of the women and then handed the card to Rowan. "If you have need of me, use this. I wish I had another for Bess, but she does not really know how to use them in any event." He looked at Bess. "If you have need, call for me."

"I'll assume that Mom isn't really comfortable being this far on the current side of Ygg and guess that I might find something useful. If I don't find it in 20 minutes, I'll guess that I'm not finding it without spending more time than is safe. Barring misfortune, I'll see you in the throne room in half an hour."

Bess frowned. "Well, where are your rooms located? If they're near where I stashed the kids, we could all stick together. To answer Henry, the only way past the wights is blood magic."

The blonde answered, "Still on this floor, about halfway up the eastern wall. Fiona's rooms and Corwin's shared a wall."

For the first time, she looked Bess square in the face. "Are you a civilian, or do you have something in common with Henry and me?"

The word civilian on lips so much like Fiona's caused Henry to chuckle, and he turned away to hide this, taking a quick turn around his quarters. Rowan's comment about finding something useful in her rooms made him wonder if there might be anything of interest here. He doubted it, as Grace had had his clothing, and the vampires might have been through any number of times, but it was worth a try.

Bess stared right back at her. "Civilian? What the hell do you mean by that? I've been in the middle of this fucking warzone for sixteen years, fighting creatures that I don't have a chance against one on one, saving and protecting who and what I can against vampires and worse. If you mean am I some kind of weird construct, the answer is no. I'm the daughter of Eric's mistress, if that helps. And I was Prince Caine's woman for a while."

"If you're Eric's daughter, then you're not a civilian -- at least, not in the sense that I meant it." Her tone was matter-of-fact, a simple statement. "Those of the royal family, at either end of reality, have the potential to do things that others cannot. Fiona may not have trusted anybody but Brand and Bleys farther than she could have thrown them, but in the short term, I'll take all the help I can get. Welcome aboard, niece."

"I'm not Eric's daughter," Bess said carefully. "I'm Eric's mistress' daughter. And Grace has led me to believe that biologically, I am not even that. I was Caine's woman, that is about all."

Rowan's cheeks flushed. "My misunderstanding -- I took you to mean Eric's daughter with his mistress."

She paused. "At any rate, if the children you referred to are elsewhere on this floor, let's go. Otherwise, I'll meet you two in the throne room in thirty minutes, unless trouble arises. If you two stay together, we're a Trump call away."

Bess chuckled. "Hey, it's all right. I was more of an adopted kid, but given what happened to Richard and Livia, I'm sort of relieved to be."

Henry had stiffened and moved to position himself between the two women when he heard Bess' tone, and he had the strange feeling he'd done something like that before - but Rowan's calm reply relaxed him. "I'm afraid that Bess is not Eric's daughter," he said. "Although she would be no dishonor to me if she were."

And although... these were new memories... he could remember Bess as a little girl, only a few months younger than Richard... She'd been like a daughter to Eric, although she was not his - or Grace's, either...

He hid his surge of emotion by changing the subject. "Caine's woman? When did that happen?"

"When I was fourteen," Bess smiled a little, remembering. "I miss him."

"Fourteen?" Henry choked on the word. "That little bastard."

He moved around the room again, taking one final look in drawers and things. He came to his fireplace and a thought made him pause. Slipping a stone from the inside of the fireplace, he reahed inside, expecting papers... There were none, but...

Something small and cold. He took it out, looked at it. The ring was too small to be Eric's - in fact, it had to belong to a woman - a small woman, perhaps even a child. It was silver and unadorned, except for an inscription that he could not read in the dim light.

He slipped the ring into his pocket.

"The kids are in the wing with the green tiling," Bess said.

Rowan answered, "Same floor, just around the corner. You're welcome to stay with me if you like; I'll otherwise just be a few moments." She cracked open the door carefully, then gave a careful glance each direction down the hall.

Henry began to say something, but closed his mouth and simply followed, loosening his blade in its scabbard.

It may be difficult to skulk while wearing high-ish heels, but Rowan somehow managed. No more than five minutes had elapsed before she arrived at the remains of Fiona's rooms. Surprisingly, the door was still closed.

And not only closed, but unlocked. For now, nobody was visible down the hall, either -- it seemed that the thirty minute estimate would be right on the mark.

Fiona's rooms seemed to have been turned upside down and then put back together. They were cleaner than they ever were when she lived there, and emptied of almost anything that might have had her handwriting on it. However, all her little items of power, potions, full laboratory, and even her Pattern earrings were still there.

A few choice words escaped her lips, ones that Henry might have been surprised to learn she knew. As she went over the desk, a small platinum ring, carved with a knotwork design and set with a simple garnet struck a familiar chord. Gently picking it up, she moved to put it on. She seemed to be taller than Fiona had been, if the dresses in the armoire were any measure -- either that, or Fiona had worn her clothes much more revealingly. In any event, the ring fit smoothly and comfortably over the index finger of her right hand.

Two earrings followed, made from sections of the Pattern near the Second Veil. Their purpose escaped Rowan at the moment, but anything based of the Pattern was an object of power in its own right. A pendant shaped like a shield, enamelled with the arms of House Barimen, completed the collection. She found a small knife in the lab, and threw it into the handbag.

The empty bookshelf met with a new round of cursing, invoking entities from both poles of reality. If there was another place she might have left notes or journals, it was lost in the gaps in her memory.

Her business for the immediate term complete, she again cautiously poked her head out the door to look for unwanted company.

Bess said, "It's all clear, but I know we're being watched."

The swearing had amused Henry, partially because he was chauvinistic and partially because he was not used to seeing Fiona lose her cool. But he had stood in the hallway and kept watch as Rowan checked her rooms.

"Ready to go then? Had some luck, I hope," he said.

"Definitely. Let's get out of here before we get caught. At least one of these will take a little while to charge up well, anyway.

"I need to hit a Broken Pattern before we get much further. The thought of Tir gives me the willies, but how safe is the Faiella-Bionin, or Rebma itself for that matter?"

Bess sighed. "Well, let's grab the children before we get too far ahead of ourselves. And be on the lookout right now, I swear we're being watched."

She paused. "Rebma's a shambles. The Witch-King, Martin, made a large resistance to the Quincunx. La Conta tore Rebma down around his ears and sent Il Diavolo down to kill anyone he could find. They bled Martin out on his own Pattern, or so I hear. Shame, really, the man had world-class guts. Anyway, last I heard, the surviving natives aren't very friendly."

"Further out into Shadow, then. Either of you have a suggestion for a safe place, or should I try to walk our way back to Mom's place, blind?"

Bess shrugged. "I'm not exactly an initiate of the Mysteries, but Arthur of Faolteth is supposed to have a Hall of Monsters- paintings that go to places or people. He might have a way to get you to somewhere safe- and Faolteth is just across the Sea."

"I don't know what is left of the nearby Shadows," Henry said. "Before we leave Amber, however, I need to speak to Grace... Our list of allies is at present far too short." A thought occurred to him. "Bess, is John Sablecloak still in Amber city?"

"Yes," Bess replied, and her voice warmed momentarily. "John's still in Amber, and thank the Unicorn for that. We'd be in worse trouble if it weren't for him."

Rowan's only response was, "Wherever we're going next, let's go there quickly. By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes, to quote a writer from brother Corwin's favorite shadow."

"The children," Henry said, and headed in that direction. As they moved, he said, "I would like to see John before I leave the city. He was a good ally as I remember it, and a good man."

Bess nodded and led them down the hallway. Before her fingers touched the door, however, her brown-green eyes widened. "There's something wrong," she whispered. She drew her belt knife in one fluid moment and opened the door fast, so that it slammed with a resounding sound against the wall behind it.

The room was dyed red. The bodies of all the children lay mangled, torn apart. Just near the door, upon a small desk, was a vase holding a single white lily. A card next to it read, "Turnabout is fair play, bitch. ~Parnelis"

Bess screamed and picked up the vase, hurling it across the room where it shattered upon a portrait of Julian. She muttered under her breath in a hoarse, sobbing voice, "I'm going to kill you going to kill you kill you..."

As Henry stared at the dead children, a wave of horror washed over him, leaving behind a horrible feeling of emptiness. This was his fault. He had kept them here too long, had let his desire to rule and remake Amber blind him to the danger of leaving the children alone for any length of time...

As the vase broke, he turned in surprise, looking at Bess with wide eyes and envying her anger. But now, for Henry, the anger would not come. There was only that terrible emptiness. He took two steps toward Bess, put his arms around her and felt his right hand coming up to stroke her hair. He wasn't thinking about it, it was an automatic gesture - and maybe he'd done it before? Did that matter? Did any memories matter in the face of this awful mortality? He remembered seeing battlefields before, remembered sentencing men to horrible deaths for mutiny or desertion. That had never bothered him overmuch. The sight of Bleys' headless body had been troubling more for its connotations than for the actual violent act.

But these were children...

"Yes, Elizabeth," he said finally. "I think that killing her would be a very good idea."

Bess had stiffened at first at the touch, and then sighed and relaxed into it.

The degree to which Rowan maintained her sangfroid surprised even her. "If you want my help, it's going to have to wait." She paused. "And if you want Grace and Sablecloak to stay alive, might I suggest getting them out of the city? Time enough to come back later, after you've been able to assess your losses."

She made no move toward the door of the room, instead waiting for one of the others to take the lead.

Bess said, "They've survived in the city for as long as this has been going on. Why would they be in more danger now? I'll mention it to Mother, but I think she'll prefer to stay and protect the rest of the citizens."

The blonde gestured eloquently. "This looks personal. Grace, at least, is connected to you personally. Thus, she's a logical target for the next round."

"No," Henry said coldly. "Grace is a formidable woman, and anyone cowardly enough to take their revenge out on children will avoid anyone who might be able to challenge them. John, also, will be utterly safe. But I cannot allow this... If you wish to leave, you are of course under no compulsion to remain with us, Rowan. But I will not see such atrocities unpunished. Not here, not in Amber itself."

It makes us look weak, he thought but did not say.

Rowan said, "I agree with you that such atrocities should not go unpunished, brother. But this seems a move calculated to provoke a response at a time and place of this Parnelis' choosing -- my few memories of Eric suggest that he would have responded immediately, falling into the trap as baited here. Besides, at present I am not quite the ally I could be.

"My suggestion is instead to gather and prepare your allies, and to exact retribution at a time and place of your choosing. I've been around for perhaps thirty-six hours or so, subjectively. At least according to Clarissa, who I won't deny I owe a bad turn or two right now, I've got three or four days left before the Pattern runs out of juice to keep me together, if I don't get a boost from something before then. So when I say that my next stop is a Broken Pattern, it's a matter of personal survival."

Henry was nodding. His expression was sour, even angry, but the bloody light in his eyes was fading.

"What's that?" Bess said suddenly. She was staring across the room at the painting of Julian against which her violent dispersal of flowers and glass fragments had struck. Some of the pieces had torn a bit of the canvas, and it was obvious that there was some sort of niche behind it.

"If this is whose room I think it is," she added, and slipped under Henry's arms, still pale with fury, to tilt the painting. "Right," she said, with a grim smile. "I believe you, Miss Rowan, were concerned about not having a pack of these cards..." She withdrew a deck of Trumps. "And this is even more interesting..." Bess reached into the niche almost up to her elbow. She came out with a black leather harness fitted with spring-loaded knives of almost every variety.

"The family cards are always useful in the right hands. The deck that I lost when Mom snatched my purse, and with it the Jewel, had a few cards from the other side of the family. Those, I suppose, I'll have to do without for now."

"Thought this had to be Caine's room," Bess said almost fondly, "when I saw that funny wine rack on the far wall." Almost immediately, Bess began unlacing her bodice.

If Bess will take it, Rowan steps in to help her get into and adjust the harness.

Henry glanced away as Bess began undressing, checking for other items of interest in Caine's quarters. "I can... be persuaded... to postpone my vengeance," he said quietly. "Until such a time as I have the manpower to hold the Castle, to repair it, to make Amber whole again." Suddenly he laughed, and the laughter was strained, bitter, self-mocking. "I've never run away before. Not a very pleasant feeling, is it?"

"That depends on how you define 'running away,' brother. As for repairing the castle, it's a laudable long-term ambition. Don't bite off more than you can chew, though."

"Some thoughts: Being able to repair the castle will probably require disposing of the architects of this mess, without spilling more blood on the Primal. If they're half as cunning as I've been led to believe, that will be tricky without more, maybe much more, in the way of resources."

"From there, the question is restoring the Pattern to stabilize Reality. The notebooks I got to look through back at Mom's suggest that baby brother Brand believed the existence of a Pattern was a metaphysical necessity. Even thinking about the metaphysical theory involved makes my head hurt blindingly, so I'll assume that Fiona believed Brand on this count. Repairing the Pattern required the Jewel, currently in Mom's custody."

"Knowing how to repair the Pattern is something else entirely. Unless I can find the rest of my journals and notebooks, that will probably require talking to either Dad or Dworkin. Mom suggested to me that Dad was too stubborn to die even if you killed him. Somebody else I met at Mom's place has said that Bleys and Fiona were keeping Dworkin locked up someplace, but where has currently been devoured in the Swiss cheese that is my memory."

"And without losing me in more of this esoteric talk," Bess put it, gazing at a Trump she had shuffled out of the deck, "I just stare at these things and they... open up a communication?"

And then her lips parted... "Oh," she said softly.

Instinctively, Rowan stepped in, reaching out to place one hand (her left) into Bess' line of sight, seeking to break the contact before too much could be learned by the person on the other end. Her other hand was reaching for the knife she'd picked up earlier, closing around the handle. A tickle of a notion -- a method of escape -- flitted briefly across the back of her memories, but was gone before she could identify it.

At the same time that Rowan tried to break the contact, Henry took a step to the side, ending up standing behind Bess, and placed a hand on her shoulder.

Rowan felt a weird tingling run up her arm. She wasn't sure that with her present strength she had the mental clout to close a Trump contact she wasn't involved in. Or possibly there was some other reason why the attempt didn't work.

The tingle jerked her arm back, involuntarily.

Henry was looking into the surprised, sun-tanned face of John Sablecloak.

"Eric?!" he exclaimed. "How can this be possible?"

Relief flooded Henry. "It isn't, not completely," he said. "I am less than Eric, although I do have his memories. I can explain better in person. I am here with Bess Blackwell, who you see, and a woman named Rowan, a ghost of my sister Fiona. May we come to you?"

Only a slight shift in the line of Rowan's shoulders telegraphed the decrease in tension. On hearing Henry's words, she shot him a look that expressed a desire for speed.

John nodded. "Yes, yes, of course you may. I apologize in advance for the mess." He held out his hand. "This will work best if you take my wrist, Bess, and Fiona and Eric can lay their hands upon your shoulders."

Henry flashed his signature smile and nodded in return. He glanced at the woman who was almost his sister and said, "Rowan, if you'll put a hand on Bess' shoulder, we'll all go to see our brother John. That'll give me a chance to speak to him, and get you closer to your goals as well. What do you say? Will you travel with me a bit further, this time of your own will?"

"Certainly, though you'll have to explain to me how he fits onto the family tree. Fiona thought she had all of Dad's various offspring accounted for, even the ones from the wrong side of the sheets. That name isn't ringing a bell -- though that might just be Swiss-cheese memory."

Her right hand stretched forward, grasping the brunette's left shoulder, leaving space on the other side of her niece for Henry to do likewise.

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