executed a cut. It felt right. It felt perfect. It felt as if enormous power lay behind its every movement.
'Thanks,' I said, and the echo of laughter came and went.
I raised my pad and opened it to the appropriate page, hoping it was a good time to make the call. I regarded the lady's delicate features, her unfocussed gaze that somehow indicated the breadth and depth of her vision. After a few moments, the page grew cold beneath my fingertips, and my drawing took on a 3-dimensional quality, seemed faintly to stir.
'Yes?' came her voice.
'Your Highness.' I said. 'However you may perceive these things, I want you to know that I have intentionally altered my appearance. I was hoping that-'
'Luke,' she said, 'of course I recognize you-your own Majesty now,' her gaze still unfocussed. 'You are troubled.'
'Indeed I am.'
'You wish to come through?'
'If it is appropriate and convenient.'
'Certainly.'
She extended her hand. I reached forward, taking it lightly in my own, as her studio came clear, banishing gray skies and crystal hill, I took a step toward her and I was there. Immediately, I dropped to my knees, unclasped my swordbelt and offered her my blade. In the distance, I could hear sounds of hammering and sawing.
'Rise,' she said, touching my shoulder. 'Come and be seated. Have a cup of tea with me.'
I got to my feet and followed her to a table in the corner. She took off her dusty apron and hung it on a peg on the wall. As she prepared the tea I regarded the small army of statues which lined one wall and bivouacked in random cluster about the enormous room-large, small, realistic, impressionistic, beautiful, grotesque. She worked mainly in clay, though a few smaller ones were of stone' and there were furnaces at the room's far end, though these were cold now. Several metal mobiles of unusual shape were suspended from ceiling beams.
When she joined me again she reached out and touched my left hand, locating the ring she had given me.
'Yes, I value the Queen's protection,' I said.
'Even though you are now a monarch yourself from a country on friendly terms with us?'
'Even so,' I said. 'So much so, in fact, that I wish to reciprocate in part.'
'Oh?'
'I'm not at all certain that Amber is aware of recent events to which I have been party or of which I have knowledge, which may affect her welfare. That is, unless Merlin has been in touch recently.'
'Merlin has not been in touch,' she said. 'If you have information vital to the realm, though, perhaps you ought to give it to Random direct, He's not here just now, but I could reach him for you via Trump.
'No,' I said. 'I know he doesn't like me at all or trust me, as his brother's killer and a friend of the man who has sworn to destroy Amber. I am sure he would love to see me deposed and some puppet on the throne of Kashfa. I suppose I must have things out with him one day, but this isn't the day. I've too much else going on just now. But the information transcends local politics. It involves Amber and the Courts of Chaos, the Pattern and the Logrus, the death of Swayvill and Merlin's possible succession to the throne in the Courts-'
'You're serious!'
'You bet. I know he'll listen to you. And he'll even understand why I told you. Let me avoid him this way. There are big events in the offing.'
'Tell me,' she said, raising her cup.
So I did, including everything Merlin had told me, up through the confrontation at the primal Pattern and my flight to the Crystal Cave. We went through the entire pot of tea in the process, and when I was finished we just sat for a time in silence.
Finally, she sighed.
'You have charged me to deliver major intelligence,' she said.
'I know.'
'Yet I feel it is but a small part of much greater developments.'
'How's that?' I asked.
'A few small things I have heard, known, guessed at, and perhaps dreamed-and a few, I suppose, I simply fear. Hardly a coherent shape. Yet enough, perhaps, to query the powers of the earth I work with. Yes. Now that I have thought it I must try it, of course. At a time such as this.'
She rose slowly, paused, and gestured high.
'That shall be the Tongue,' she said, and a draft stirred one of the mobiles causing it to produce many tones.
She crossed the studio to the righthand wall-small figure in gray and green, chestnut hair down to the middle of her back-and ran her fingers lightly over the sculpted figure that stood there. Finally, selecting a broad-faced statue with a narrow torso, she began pushing it toward the center of the room. I was on my feet and moving in an instant.
'Let me do that for you, Your Highness.'
She shook her head.
'Call me Vialle,' she said. 'And no, I must position them myself. This one is named Memory.'
She placed it below and somewhat to the northwest of the Tongue. Then she moved to a knot of figures and selected a thin one with slightly parted lips, which she placed to the south on Tongue's compass.
'.And this is Desire,' she stated. Quickly locating a third-a tall, squinting figure-she placed it to the northeast.
'Caution,' she went on.
A lady, her right hand boldly extended, went to the west.
'Risk,' she continued.
To the east she positioned another lady, both arms spread wide.
'Heart,' she said.
To the southwest went a high-domed, shaggy-browed philosopher. 'Head,' she said.
…And to the southeast a smiling lady-impossible to say whether her hand was raised in greeting or to deliver a blow.
'Chance,' she finished, fitting her into the circle which had come to remind me both of Stonehenge and of Easter Island.
'Bring two chairs,' she said, 'and place them here and here,'
She indicated positions to the north and south of her circle.
I did as she'd said, and she seated herself in the northern-most chair, behind a final figure she had placed: Foresight. I took my place back of Desire.
'Be silent now,' she instructed
Then she sat still, hands in her lap, for several minutes.
Finally, 'At the deepest level,' she said, 'what threatens the peace?'
From my left, Caution seemed to speak, though the Tongue chimed his words overhead.
'A redistribution of ancient powers,' he said.
'In what manner?'
'That which was hidden becomes known and is moved about' answered Risk.
'Are both Amber and the Courts involved?'
'Indeed,' answered Desire, from before me.
'Ancient powers,' she said. 'How ancient?'
'Before there was an Amber, they were,' stated Memory.
'Before there was a Jewel of Judgement-the Eye of the Serpent?'
'No,' Memory responded.
She drew a sudden breath.
'Their number?' she said.
'Eleven,' Memory replied.
She grew pale at that, but I held my silence as she had instructed.
