Something resembling a branch of coral shone faintly on a shelf across the room and a pale line of illumination occurred at the base of the closed door. I abandoned the lantern and crossed the room.
I opened the door as quietly as I could. The room it let upon was deserted, a small, windowless living place faintly lit by the still smoldering embers in its single, recessed hearth. The room's walls were of stone and they arched above me. The fireplace was a possibly natural niche in the wall to my left. A large, armored door was set in the far wall, a big key partly turned in its lock.
I entered, taking a candle from a nearby table, and moved toward the fireplace to give it a light. As I knelt and sought a flame among the embers, I heard a soft footfall in the vicinity of the doorway.
Turning, I saw him just beyond the threshold. About five feet in height, hunchbacked. His hair and beard were even longer than I remembered. Dworkin wore a nightshirt which reached to his ankles. He carried an oil lamp, his dark eyes peering across its sooty chimney.
'Oberon' he said, 'is it finally time?'
'What time is that?' I asked softly.
He chuckled.
'What other? Time to destroy the world, of course!'
Chapter 5
I kept the light away from my face, kept my voice low.
'Not quite,' I said. 'Not quite.'
He sighed.
'You remain unconvinced.'
He looked forward and cocked his head, peering down at me.
'Why must you spoil things?' he said.
'I've spoiled nothing.'
He lowered the lamp. I turned my head again, but he finally got a good look at my face. He laughed.
'Funny. Funny, funny, funny,' he said. 'you come as the young Lord Corwin, thinking to sway me with family sentiment. Why did you not choose Brand or Bleys? It was Clarissa's lot served us best.'
I shrugged and stood.
'Yes and no,' I said, determined now to feed him ambiguities for so long as he'd accept them and respond. Something of value might emerge, and it seemed an easy way to keep him in a good humor.
'And yourself?' I continued. 'What face would you put on things?'
'Why, to win your good will I'll match you,' he said, and then he began to laugh.
He threw his head back, and as his laughter rang about me a change came over him. His stature seemed to increase, and his face fluffed like a sail cut too close to the wind. The hump on his back was diminished as he straightened and stood taller. His features rearranged themselves and his beard darkened. By then it was obvious that he was somehow redistributing his body mass, for the nightshirt which had reached his ankles was now midway up his shins. He breathed deeply and his shoulders widened. His arms lengthened, his bulging abdomen narrowed, tapered. He reached shoulder height on me, then higher. He looked me in the eye. His garment reached only to his knees. His hump was totally resorbed. His face gave a final twist, his features steadied, were reset. His laughter fell to a chuckle, faded, closed with a smirk.
I regarded a slightly slimmer version of myself.
'Sufficient?' he inquired.
'Not half bad,' I said.
'Wait till I toss a couple logs on the fire.'
'I will help you.'
'That's all right.'
I drew some wood from a rack to the right. Any stall served me somewhat, buying reactions for my study. As I was about the work, he crossed to a chair and seated himself. When I glanced at him I saw that he was not looking at me, but staring into the shadows. I drew out the fire-building, hoping that he would say something, anything. Eventually, he did.
'Whatever became of the grand design?' he asked.
I did not know whether he was speaking of the Pattern or of some master plan of Dad's to which he had been privy. So, 'You tell me,' I said. He chuckled again.
'Why not? You changed your mind, that is what happened,' he said.
'From what to what-as you see it?'
'Don't mock me. Even you have no right to mock me,' he said. 'Least of all, you.'
I got to my feet.
'I was not mocking you,' I said.
I crossed the room to another chair and carried it over to a position near the fire, across from Dworkin. I seated myself.
'How did you recognize me?' I asked.
'My whereabouts are hardly common knowledge.'
'That is true.'
'Do many in Amber think me dead?'
'Yes, and others suppose you might be traveling off in Shadow.'
'I see.'
'How have you been feeling?'
He gave me an evil grin.
'Do you mean am I still mad?'
'You put it more bluntly than I care to.'
'There is a fading, there is an intensifying,' he said. 'It comes to me and it departs again. For the moment I am almost myself-almost, I say. The shock of your visit, perhaps... Something is broken in my mind. You know that. It cannot be otherwise, though. You know that, too.'
'I suppose that I do,' I said. 'Why don't you tell me all about it, all over again? Just the business of talking might make you feel better, might give me something I've missed. Tell me a story.'
Another laugh.
'Anything you like. Have you any preferences? My flight from Chaos to this small sudden island in the sea of night? My meditations upon the abyss? The revelation of the Pattern in a jewel hung round the neck of a unicorn? My transcription of the design by lightning, blood, and lyre while our fathers raged baffled, too late come to call me back while the poem of fire ran that first route in my brain, infecting me with the will to form? Too late! Too late... Possessed of the abominations born of the disease, beyond their aid, their power, I planned and built, captive of my new self. Is that the tale you'd hear again? Or rather I tell you of its cure?'
My mind spun at the implications he had just scattered by the fistful. I could not tell whether he spoke literally or metaphorically or was simply sharing paranoid delusions, but the things that I wanted to hear, had to hear, were things closer to the moment. So, regarding the shadowy image of myself from which that ancient voice emerged, 'Tell me of its cure,' I said.
He braced his finger tips together and spoke through them.
'I am the Pattern,' he said, 'in a very real sense. In passing through my mind to achieve the form it now holds, the foundation of Amber, it marked me as surely as I marked it. I realized one day that I am both the Pattern and myself, and it was forced to become Dworkin in the process of becoming itself. There were mutual modifications in the birthing of this place and this time, and therein lay our weakness as well as our strength. For it occurred to me that damage to the Pattern would be damage to myself, and damage to myself would be reflected within the Pattern. Yet I could not be truly banned because the Pattern protects me, and who but I could harm the
