«Small blessing,» I responded, and I pushed my foot a couple of inches farther downward. Finally, I sighed. «Nope, Fi. I can't.»
I read the disappointment in her features.
«I was hoping,» she said as I drew back, «that someone other than Corwin might be able to walk it. His son seemed the most likely choice.»
«Why is it so important that someone walk it? Just because it's there?»
«I think it's a menace,» she said. «It has to be explored and dealt with.»
«A menace? Why?»
«Amber and Chaos are the two poles of existence, as we understand it,» she said, «housing as they do the Pattern and the Logrus. For ages there has been something of an equilibrium between them. Now, I believe, this bastard Pattern of your father's is undermining their balance.»
«In what fashion?»
«There have always been wavelike exchanges between Amber and Chaos. This seems to be setting up some interference.»
«It sounds more like tossing an extra ice cube into a drink,» I said. «It should settle down after a while.»
She shook her head. «Things are not settling. There have been far more shadow-storms since this thing was created. They rend the fabric of Shadow. They affect the nature of reality itself.»
«No good,» I said. «Another event a lot more important along these lines occurred at the same time. The original Pattern in Amber was damaged and Oberon repaired it. The wave of Chaos which came out of that swept through all of Shadow. Everything was affected. But the Pattern held and things settled again. I'd be more inclined to think of all those extra shadow-storms as being in the nature of aftershocks.»
«It's a good argument,» she said. «But what if it's wrong?»
«I don't think it is.»
«Merle, there's some kind of power here, an immense amount of power.»
«I don't doubt it.»
«It has always been our way to keep an eye on power, to try to understand it, to control it. Because one day it might become a threat. Did Corwin tell you anything, anything at all, as to exactly what this represents and how we might get a handle on it?»
«No,» I said. «Nothing beyond the fact that he made it in a hurry to replace the old one, which he'd figured Oberon might not have succeeded in repairing.»
«If only we could find him.»
«There still hasn't been any word?»
«Droppa claims that he saw him at the Sands, back on the shadow Earth you both favor. He said he was in the company of an attractive woman, and they were both having a drink and listening to a music group. He waved and headed toward them through a crowd, and he thought that Corwin saw him. When he got to their table, though, they were gone.»
«That's all?»
«That's all.»
«That's not much.»
«I know. If he's the only one who can walk this damned thing, though, and if it is a menace, we could be in big trouble one day.»
«I think you're being an alarmist, Aunty.»
«I hope you're right, Merle. Come on, I'll take you home.»
I studied the place once more, for details as well as feeling, because I wanted to be able to construct a Trump for it. I never told anyone that there had been no resistance as I had lowered my foot, because once you set foot into the Pattern or the Logrus there is no fuming back. You either proceed to the end or are destroyed by it. And as much as I love mysteries, my break was at its end and I had to get back to class.
Power.
We were together in a wood within the Black Zone, that area of Shadow with which Chaos holds commerce. We were hunting zhind, which are horned, short, black, fierce and carnivorous. I do not much like hunting because I do not much like killing things I don't really have to. However, it was Jurt's idea, and since it was possibly also my last chance to work some reconciliation with my brother before I departed, I had decided to take him up on the offer. Neither of us was that great an archer, and zhind are pretty fast. So with any luck at all nothing would get dead and we'd have some chance to talk and perhaps come away on better terms at the end of the hunt.
On one occasion when we'd lost the trail and were resting, we talked for a long time about archery, court politics, Shadow and the weather. He had been much more civil to me of late, which I took for a good sign. He'd let his hair grow in such a fashion as to cover the area of his missing left ear. Ears are hard to regenerate. We did not speak of our duel, or of the argument that had led up to it. Because I would soon be out of his life, I felt perhaps he wished to close this chapter of his existence in a relatively friendly fashion, with both of us going our ways with a memory we could feel good about. I was half right, anyway.
Later, when we had halted for a cold hail lunch, he asked me, «So, what does it feel like?»
«What?» I said.
«The power,» he answered. «The Logrus power - to walk in Shadow, to work with a higher order of magic than the mundane.»
I didn't really want to go into detail, because I knew he'd prepared himself to traverse the Logrus on three different occasions and had backed down at the last moment each time, when he'd looked into it. Perhaps the skeletons of failures that Suhuy keeps around had troubled him also. I don't think Jurt was aware that I knew about the last two times he'd changed his mind. So I decided to downplay my accomplishment.
«Oh, you don't really feel any different,» I said, «until you're actually using it. Then it's hard to describe.»
«I'm thinking of doing it soon myself,» he said. «It would be good to see something of Shadow, maybe even find a kingdom for myself somewhere. Can you give me any advice?»
I nodded. «Don't look back,» I said. «Don't stop to think. Just keep going.»
He laughed. «Sounds like orders to an army,» he said.
«I suppose there is a similarity.»
He laughed again. «Let's go kill us a zhind,» he said.
That afternoon, we lost a trail in a thicket full of fallen branches. We'd heard the zhind crash through it, but it was not immediately apparent which way it had gone. I had my back to Jurt and was facing the forward edge of the place, searching for some sign, when Frakir constricted tightly about my wrist, then came loose and fell to the ground.
I bent over to retrieve her, wondering what had happened, when I heard a thank from overhead. Glancing upward, I saw an arrow protruding from the bole of the tree before me. Its height above the ground was such that had I remained standing it would have entered my back.
I tamed quickly toward Jurt, not even straightening from my crouch. He was fitting another arrow to his bow.
He said, «Don't look back. Don't stop to think. Just keep going,» and he laughed.
I dove toward him as he raised the weapon. A better archer would probably have killed me. I think when I moved he panicked and released the arrow prematurely, though, because it caught in the side of my leather vest and I didn't feel any pain.
I clipped him above the knees, and he dropped the bow as he fell over backward. He drew his hunting knife, rolled to the side and swung the weapon toward my throat. I caught his wrist with my left hand and was cast onto my back by the force of his momentum. I struck at his face with my right fist while holding the blade away from me. He blocked the punch and kneed me in the balls.
The point of the blade dropped to within inches of my throat as this blow collapsed a big piece of my resistance. Still aching, I was able to turn my hip to prevent another ball-buster, simultaneous with casting my right forearm beneath his wrist and cutting my hand in the process. Then I pushed with my right, pulled with my left and rolled to the left with the force of the turn. His arm was jerked free from my still-weakened grasp, and he rolled off to the side and I tried to recover - and then I heard him scream.
