FicWad

Chapter 9 – Off to See the Wizard

Merlin Barimen-Sawall! The name spun in Sarah’s head as she hurriedly worked to make herself as presentable as humanly possible to meet that great unknown in the ‘outside world’. Arthurian legends and old wizards naturally came to mind at his name, but aside of the fact that he was a formidable sorcerer in his own right, the mythological stereotypes and their limited scope couldn’t be further from the truth: Merlin was relatively young, for starters - a computer techie, graduate of UC Berkeley. Merlin was the illegitimate son of Lady Dara Sawall (nee Helgram) by Amber’s Prince Corwin, who was in turn son of King Oberon, who was son of the mad Dworkin of Chaos who was chosen consort of the Unicorn and co-creator of Amber, and – as far as anyone could tell – Order. In short, Merlin was a rather ‘modern’, smart, savvy man with powerful connections on both sides, and, from Mandor’s accounts of him, a fairly nice guy to boot. At least as far as native Chaosians were concerned. Perhaps it was just a remnant of her earth-thinking, but it seemed to follow even out here that extreme levels of power tended to make people go a little funny; it just went with the territory.

She was definitely concerned that Mandor had felt that this level of preparation and presentation was necessary just to meet him! Of course, she didn’t have the full details of this plan of his, either; there was definitely more going on here than she had been told but for once she was fully aware of it. Sarah thought of Sofi then and sighed, pinning that stupid-looking costume brooch to her sumptuous, Sawall-blue evening gown. She knew she was going to be ruing the fact that she had had no taste as a child for the rest of her adult life if she had to keep displaying the thing like this; even the physical shape had completely resisted the changes of her initial hellride here. It was going to look gaudy and cheap forever. Perhaps it would be less bothersome if the item were actually useful; it had tested positive for considerable latent power but Suhuy had concluded early on that it was too unstable for her use under any normal circumstances. Still, she had to keep it with her anyway. The gown was almost nice enough to distract from it, though; it had an oval neckline and short, puffed sleeves – the most skin she’d shown for the better part of a year (she felt almost exposed despite how modest it really was) – a lightly fitted bodice, and just piles of flowing satin in the skirt. If it had been any poofier it would have been reminiscent of…nope she wasn’t going there. Not right now. Too much else to think about.

Sarah had had plenty of practice magically disguising her visage and had gotten markedly quicker and more confident of the process, but it was still mildly annoying to have to mentally labor so hard at an action that was second-nature for those around her who could literally change their real bodies in seconds. It took ten of the proscribed thirty minutes to complete this process alone, but soon Sarah was examining her handiwork in the sizable mirror at her vanity. She had never cared for the more demonic-looking shapes, and after extended debate over a long period of time, Lord Suhuy had finally settled on a compromise: dragons. It didn’t matter what kind - the result didn’t even have to look fearsome (although the trait was considered more attractive by Chaosian standards of beauty) - as long as it was big and reptilian, it was acceptable. She had actually never told him of her brief daytrip in Lizard Land, that this had been the first cloaking spell she had seen on herself, that she had liked the effect. Perhaps Mandor had mentioned it to him. Speaking of Mandor…

Double-checking that she had everything with her one last time, Sarah exited her apartment and descended the staircase with great care; it still sort of threw her senses that she felt no different physically if she closed her eyes but her feet looked almost twice as large as usual, not to mention differently shaped; she could just see her altered, pointed toes sticking out beneath the skirt as well as a finned tail swishing slightly every now and then behind her. Walking like this could be tricky if she paid too much attention to the illusion.

Mandor had only been waiting a few seconds in the library when he saw an immaculately gowned ice-blue water dragon emerge from Sarah’s apartment. It was fully scaled but sleek, with webbing between the elongated silver-clawed fingers and toes as well as about the head. There were fins here and there on her arms, and delicate gills in the sides of her neck fluttered open as she breathed. The face had the necessary saurian beaked maw, but the shape was possessed of a kind of feminine grace, and the sizable reptilian eyes were a striking deep blue.

“Not bad at all,” he nodded appreciatively as she awkwardly picked her way down the stairs. “Sawall-blue eyes may be over-gilding the lily a bit, but the gills are a nice touch.” Once she reached the floor, he made a quick circuit around her to make sure all was as it should be, that she hadn’t missed any details, and was genuinely pleased with the result. At least she had been paying attention during those lessons.

“Thank you,” Sarah replied quietly, eying the floor a little self-consciously. She had noted that he was also dressed to the hilt: the lavishly ornate deep-blue evening jacket ensemble again – it had to be the nicest thing he owned. “You know, I hadn’t planned on saying anything about this the first time I saw you wearing that jacket, but your…uh…shadow-counterpart, owns something very, very similar,” she smirked, remembering.

“Oh, really,” Mandor sounded oddly amused. “How did it differ?”

Sarah met his eyes again. “It was shinier, just coated in glitter – that thing was almost blinding!” she laughed.

Mandor just closed his eyes momentarily, shaking his head with a small lip-smile. “The man is clearly more circus showman than he ever was a sorcerer – I’m rather sorry I gave him half a chance there - but I gather that particular quality could come in handy considering his ‘subjects’,” he idly quipped.

His observations were cut short at the sudden appearance of a smallish golden ball of light that just materialized out of nowhere not five feet from where they stood; Mandor sensed its’ presence and glanced over. “Ah, here he is, right on time!”

Sarah’s enlarged eyes widened at the thing hovering there in disbelief. “That’s Merlin?!”

“Hardly,” the light answered for itself in a pleasant male register, “although I guess you could say I inherited my Dad’s voice.”

“Sarah,” Mandor interjected with a wry smirk, “allow me to introduce you to Merlin’s most celebrated invention, The Ghostwheel, or Ghost for short. I won’t trouble you with any attempts to explain his mechanical operation – the prospect alone is enough to give me a headache – but suffice to say he is an extremely complex artificial intelligence computer. He was originally designed to catalog and index Shadow, but he has also proven rather capable of providing reliable, near-instantaneous transport to anywhere in the universes, like a virtually limitless trump that could easily pass the Shadow Earth Turing test, I am told. He has a large set of physical components, but Merlin has made a way for him to operate almost independently of his more mundane parts via his own trump.”

“Amazing,” Sarah shook her head, astounded.

“Thank you,” Ghost answered cheerily, then hovered closer to her. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Sarah. I’d like to talk with you sometime if my Dad allows it but right now we’d better hurry; he’s expecting you.”

“Hello to you as well,” Mandor addressed it dryly. “Are you ever going to deign to acknowledge my existence again or do you intend to just keep ignoring me indefinitely?”

“Dad says I must respect you, for you are my uncle in a sense, but I still don’t trust you, not after what you tried to do to him. I am only obligated to transport the girl to the palace. You can get there easily and quickly enough yourself from here; it’s not that far.”

“I see,” Mandor replied, trying not to smile. “What did I tell you?” he turned to Sarah. “Something in common already!”

The light jab hurt a little but Sarah supposed she sort of deserved that one. But there wasn’t much time to ponder the odd piece of information Ghost had dropped right beforehand; the light had zipped down to the floor and drawn a glowing golden line about three feet across, then shot into the air and made three more straight lines, creating a portal doorway in the middle of the room!

“Just walk through me, Sarah,” Ghost prompted her.

“Wait,” Mandor interrupted, “will you at least allow me to see exactly where you are taking her?”

“Of course,” Ghost answered seriously, briefly panning the view out slightly so the destination could be better seen: it was the middle of a dark-colored but opulent hallway. The place was huge.

“All right, I know where that is,” Mandor nodded. “Go ahead, Sarah; stay right there and wait for me. Try not to speak to anyone who passes or even make eye-contact if you can possibly help it. Ghost, would you mind keeping an eye on the young lady until I can get there since you refuse to allow me similar passage?”

“You really don’t ever leave her alone, do you?” Ghost replied so bluntly it caught Sarah off-guard. “But of course I’ll keep her company. Come on, Sarah – nice cloaking spell, by-the-way, did you make that yourself?” he complimented her as she strode through the shining gateway. She turned around just in time to see Mandor ignite like Baked Alaska as he commenced the shift up into his elemental green fire form.

“See you in five,” the flame-being said, then the portal imploded back into Ghost.

“I know Mandor Sawall seems friendly enough but I don’t trust him,” he warned Sarah, “I never really did to begin with; I guess you could call it instinct, although I technically don’t have anything analogous built into me.”

“What happened?” she asked quietly; there was no one about, but the last thing she wanted to do was draw attention to herself when she wasn’t even entirely sure of where she was! The hallway had a distinctive curve to it as well as an upward slope to the left. The outer wall was sleek and black like a perfect sheet of obsidian, and was slanted slightly inward. The floor at her feet was diamond-tiled onyx. There was a vague light filtering in through the near-black glass wall, but it was drowned out by more nearby sources of light, namely thick candelabras with stalactites of deep red wax, that ran along the ceiling at regular intervals, which was very high and terminated in an elongated acute angle.

“He tried to control my Dad to get him to take the throne a few years back – him and Suhuy Swayvil and the Lady Dara. He meant to plant a magic ring on Dad, but Dad knew it for what it was somehow and never put it on. He’s forgiven Mandor, but I’m still leery.”

This piece of confidence was something of a surprise; Sarah hadn’t been aware that this branch of the family was so close to the royal succession! Perhaps they had tried the claim due to his adopted father; there was some Swayvil on that side, but, to be honest, Sarah wasn’t really sure just how the process worked here. Nothing in Chaosian life was more stringently enforced and furiously complex than the pecking order of the nobility and the rules governing succession to the Throne of Chaos. While the traditional father-to-son was the law of the land, more often than not there were so many assassinations immediately following the death of the High King that picking a successor from the remaining men left standing became an arduously academic task - there were no less than six old families strong enough to gamble for it; Sawall had historically ranked second behind Swayvil. Sarah would have required several detailed family trees side-by-side for comparison to make any sense of the mess that far down the line. At any rate, beyond what was in the history books, no one really ever discussed the ‘runners up’ – the topic was considered gauche.

“I think I’m beginning to understand,” Sarah smiled a little bitterly. “Mandor gave me a magic ring, too, but I wore mine for eight months straight until I was tipped off about it – but please don’t tell him that!” she hastily added, suddenly afraid that she had said too much.

“I understand. Don’t worry; I’m only answerable to my Dad. Can I see it?”

Sarah hesitated.

“I won’t touch it; I just want to analyze the spell. It has to happen anyway.”

“…I guess that would probably be alright,” she said guardedly, gingerly fishing out her trump deck from a hidden slit in the side of her skirt. Opening the pouch, she showed him the ring crammed into the bottom, stone-side-up. “I can’t even touch the thing without the Logrus or I just instantly put it on! Can you see well enough or should I try to take it out?”

“I can see it fine where it is. I scan four separate spells wound tightly into the helix formation of the stone, but it would take my Dad to unravel them: the compulsion to wear it that you just mentioned, one that would lessen psychological shock and certain magical sensations, one that would encourage trust, and one to keep tabs on the wearer’s location and basic vitals and transmit the information to the one who set the spell – interesting, that part works just by proximity; it’s still functioning.”

Sarah was surprised it was that simple, remembering the dark blue line she had seen running up her arm to her heart when she stood on The Revealer for Suhuy. Alright, so there was a tracking spell, but – really – not much else. “There isn’t anything in there that would engender affection?”

“No, why?”

She only shook her head, looking away. “Just curious.” She carefully put the trump pouch back.

“I think I know why you asked. People tend to like Mandor in spite of themselves; Dad still does even. Speaking of my uncle, was there anything else you might want to ask me before he gets here? He should be arriving any minute now.”

“I don’t suppose there’s any chance of getting breakfast that quickly; I had to sort of skip it this morning.”

“I may be able to assist you - hang on.” Ghost pulsed and flickered for a moment, then suddenly said, “Hold out your hand.”

Sarah presented one of her thin, clawed appendages, having absolutely no idea what to expect. The little ball of light dropped a white pill the size of a large multivitamin into her upturned blue-white palm. She eyed it a bit dubiously. “What is this?”

“It’s a Jetson Breakfast.”

Sarah stared at Ghost. “You can’t be serious! You’re telling me this is real?”

“Yep – nano-dehydrated eggs, bacon, toast and orange juice. Bon appetit!”

Her incredulous gaze dropped back to the tiny object in her altered hand. Even if it was (or had been at one time) technically food, she felt rather unsure of just how her digestive system would react to something this concentrated-down. “…not to sound ungrateful, but I think maybe I’ll just wait for lunch.”

“No offense taken; it was only a suggestion. Pocket it anyway – might come in handy later. It’ll keep.”

“Thanks, I think,” she said quietly, stowing it away in the trump pouch. Really, she needed to get a small purse.

In seconds, a taller, green-flaming Mandor strode into the hallway through a portion of the left-hand wall between what appeared to be a bizarre floating aquarium inside the membrane of a bubble and an abstract sculpture representation of the Serpent of Chaos; there was a fair amount of art in here, scattered about.

“Am I interrupting, Sarah?”

“Not exactly,” she ruefully quipped.

“Well,” Ghost interjected awkwardly, “I guess I should be returning to Dad. Until later, Sarah!”

“Bye, Ghost!”

He winked out.

Mandor smirked at the automaton’s speedy exit. “Did he say anything interesting?”

“A couple of things,” Sarah replied guardedly.

Mandor just nodded. “I’m certain you’ll hear plenty before this day is over. Shall we? I’d offer my arm, but…” he gestured to the flames licking and crackling away; Sarah could actually feel considerable radiant heat coming off of him. “I normally use my ape-form for social visits that require it, but you still have bad memories associated with that one, I believe.”

Sarah couldn’t meet his glowing, green gaze. He started off up the hallway at a relatively quick pace and she had to work to keep up.

“You haven’t told me yet where we are and I didn’t want to ask Ghost for fear of sounding ignorant.”

Mandor’s fiery eyes flicked briefly over his shoulder. “We are in the Thelbane, the palace of the High King of Chaos and the meeting quarters of our parliament, the Council,” he said definitively. No wonder they were dressed up! “Merlin will be with the Council hearing cases for a while longer today, but he squeezed an interview with you into his schedule because I asked him. I am affording you the singular opportunity to make a very powerful and sympathetic ally here. You require a liaison in the Courts – that much is non-negotiable; which of us it should be has a bit of leeway, however. You need to be on your very best behavior; it is essential that you make a favorable first-impression. If for any reason he is displeased with you, he never need see you again. He was not even obligated to honor my request, let alone provide you safe transport here; you must be sure to thank him properly. Once again I will warn you against looking anyone in the eye,” – they had just passed a couple of ferocious-looking demon-formed guards in black plate armor – “there are those who frequent the High King’s Court who make my psychic ability look like a cheap parlor-trick, and could read you like an open book in a instant.”

Sarah only half-comprehended the true depth of what Mandor was so rapidly telling her and for once it felt terribly vital that she be able to understand it completely even though she couldn’t; it was like jumping into the middle of a story with only guesses for the background information. Perhaps Merlin would be more forthcoming.

They had reached a pair of large, ornately carved red doors – they were so huge they ran straight up to the tall ceiling. Sarah swallowed in anticipation and apprehension. Whatever was on the other side of those ominous doors was their destination; she could feel it. The doors automatically opened slowly inward at their approach.

“We have to pass through the Throne Room to reach him,” Mandor quietly hissed instruction. “Walk a full pace behind me and keep to my right. You will address the High King as Your Exalted Excellency, and nothing else. And address no one else. Is that understood?”

Sarah nervously nodded assent. Mandor turned and momentarily bent to look her in the eye.

“Just let me do the talking. You’ll be fine,” he whispered, quirking one of his secretive smiles; it did nothing to calm her nerves.

Sarah took a deep breath and dared a quick glance into the gallery before studiously fixing her gaze to the polished black floor right in front of her: the immense circular Throne Room was filled with a nightmarish menagerie of creatures that could’ve been taken straight out of a Hieronymous Bosch painting! She felt and looked like a painfully innocent parody; these people were the real thing – all claws and fangs and horns and fur, individual lightning storms, fires, blizzards. Hideous faces and leathery wings abounded; she could only differentiate gender by clothing alone in many cases, and sometimes not even then! She felt their terrible collective scrutiny as Mandor entered the hall bold as brass once he was announced, and she carefully followed behind him as directed. There was much whispering but she could only catch a word here and there. That harrowing walk felt like it lasted forever; her heart was pounding in her throat by the time they reached the raised dais, the staired high throne of unmoving fire, and the lavishly-robed demon-formed figure seated upon it. Mandor bowed low and Sarah curtsied practically to the floor (at least the dress was large enough that she could get away with just doing a deep plié.)

“Your Exalted Excellency,” Mandor’s voice rang about the room – the acoustics made this place almost an echo chamber – “may I present to you a recent recruit from deep in the Order-shadows, whom I have seen trained for your service. My greatest hope is that she should prove useful to you.”

The figure on the throne sighed deeply, then spoke. “Very well. You may withdraw, Lord Mandor.”

Mandor bowed once more and stayed in this posture as he commenced a measured backward retreat. Sarah began to get up as he passed her but he whispered, “Stay.” He then turned and strode quickly out of the room; the doors made an ominous-sounding quiet boom as they closed.

What the heck had just happened?! Had he just left her here? Sarah did her best to keep her breathing from getting shaky; they only looked like monsters. Most of them, anyway.

To complete her surprise, the High King addressed her – “Your native tongue is American English?” – in American English!

It actually took her a moment to mentally shift gears. “…yes, your Exalted Excellency, but I have scarcely used it since my arrival here. I can converse adequately in Chaosian Thari, would this better please you.”

What she had just told him was obviously the truth from her choice of vocabulary and grammar alone, considering her age.

“Actually, I would prefer to converse with you in English,” he continued easily. “I get little opportunity to practice my own anymore and it’s gotten far rustier than yours. This also affords us a certain level of privacy: no one else in this entire hall can understand a single word I am uttering at present. Don’t be afraid; you may speak freely with me. Please rise.”

Sarah stiffly got back to her feet, unable to shake the sense of lingering strangeness. The longer she heard the High King speak, the more she was certain that his voice was familiar but she was simply too nervous to place it.

“I suppose I am at your disposal, your Exalted Excellency,” she continued, bewildered, “but to be perfectly truthful with you, I thought I was being brought here to meet Lord Merlin Sawall-”

She was cut off by a handful of sudden gasps and it was all she could do to not look about her. Sarah had the terrible sinking feeling that she had just unwittingly committed a deadly faux pas within seconds of opening her mouth!

The figure on the throne quietly laughed, shaking his head. “Mandor didn’t even tell you, then. I suppose it would’ve brought up more questions than he would have cared to answer. The man you are seeking is addressing you right now.”

Sarah automatically looked up in shock despite the warning – he was smiling (she guessed that was a smile; it was a little too sharp to look friendly in her book) and he rose to his feet.

“But perhaps we should have this conference elsewhere. Hold tight.”

He raised his right hand and Sarah braced herself for a transport – a bright flash of light ripped through the room; she jumped slightly and found herself now in a much smaller room, albeit still circular, with all the walls made of the dark glass. Looking up she realized that they must be in the uppermost room of the Thelbane; the inside of the spike of the top was in sight! There was a circular metal table and deep purple cushioned office swivel chairs about it. No visible light source but plenty of light – she was used to this by now – the rest of the scant furnishings were in a sort of modernist-industrial style.

“Have a seat anywhere, Sarah,” Merlin gestured widely to the chairs. “This room just drives a few of my nobles up the wall, which is precisely why I chose to decorate it like this,” he mentioned offhandedly, “it’s fun to be able to rattle certain troublesome individuals occasionally – one of the few perks of the job, really. Now, I can tell that you put a lot of thought and effort into that cloaking spell but you’re definitely beginning to show the strain of holding it up. Go ahead and drop it; you won’t be needing it anymore today. I’ll shift down, too.”

Sarah pulled the release on the illusion and sagged back in a chair in relief as it dissolved away; she had never had to sustain one for so long! To her surprise, Merlin seemed to be taking his time shifting into his humanoid form; she had gotten used to seeing Mandor and even ancient Suhuy perform the same maneuver in seconds. He noted her curious attention.

“I know, even with the extra power at my disposal it still takes me longer to do this; has to do with being only half-Chaosian. It’ll be complete in about another minute.”

Sarah nodded mutely, politely looking away. She still couldn’t make heads or tails of what was going on here but at least she appeared to finally be in the presence of someone who wasn’t afraid to speak and deal plainly.

“There,” he finally announced – Sarah looked back up just in time to see him adjust his belt in a few notches before sitting down across from her. Merlin Barimen-Sawall looked like he might be in his early thirties for real; there was a marked lack of age in his expression, his bearing. He had medium-length dark brown hair, warm brown eyes and a short, well-kept beard and mustache that made him look just a touch older than he was. His tunic was a deep violet, same shade as the chairs – obviously his heraldic coloring. It was probably just the enforced period of isolation but he struck Sarah as remarkably handsome. He was studying her as well, although perhaps with more concern than interest. After a moment longer he just shook his head.

“I still can’t believe you made it through that imperfect Logrus in one piece, let alone all the rest of what you’ve been doing since. Non-Amberites can survive the Broken Pattern – even a handful of humans have – but what you unwittingly accomplished is just flat-out unheard of. Of course I’ve heard most of your story already – at least the version brother Mandor was willing to relate to me – but I want to hear your side, especially in light of how things went down at the end there. He tells me you have a magically charged artifact that corroborates as evidence in your plaint against him that he has been controlling you. Is this true? I have personal reason to suspect you’re probably onto something here. It’s okay to tell me the truth; nobody’s going to get hurt, I promise.”

Sarah felt rotten: her guardian had all but incriminated himself to give her the chance to work with someone she might get along with better, someone nearer her age, who was at the top of the social ladder, no less. Then she almost slapped herself for thinking that: he was just trying to hand her off gracefully because she had become too dangerous!

He wouldn’t hesitate to dispose of you…She hated that Jareth seemed to know him this well, although he seemed to have a certain amount of reason to hate Mandor himself and was subsequently out to ruin his reputation when and where he could. It still didn’t feel good, though, especially after all that time they’d spent together, all the stuff they’d done. Even if parts of it had been a little on the subversive side… She sighed, staring at the table.

“I know what I’m about to ask is going to sound completely insane to you, but… do you think he’ll ever forgive me?”

She dared a glance up; Merlin was trying very hard not to smile. And failing miserably. He leaned back into his chair, gripping the armrests.

“Let me put it this way: the last time he and I tried to kill each other in earnest – when it was over, he invited me over to his place for lunch and I stayed of my own freewill as his guest for an entire month. It was one of the better visits we’ve had in recent years. The point being, I think he’s simply too smart to hold a grudge; they usually don’t serve him well. Does that answer your question?”

“I think so,” she nodded quietly, thoroughly embarrassed.

“That admission alone would be enough proof for me, but can I see the ring he gave you, please?”

“Of course – be my guest,” she said, getting out her trump pouch and sliding the whole thing across the table to him. “It’s in the bottom – be careful; the compulsion’s really bad.”

“Don’t worry, I know what I’m doing,” he reassured her, opening the pouch and looking inside. “There you are.” Raising the back of his right hand, Sarah noticed the oddly angular ring he wore upon his middle finger; she had been standing too far away to see it clearly the first time. A bright strand of energy suddenly shot out of it and levitated Mandor’s ring out of her trump pouch! She watched, fascinated, as it turned in midair and the beam locked onto the black stone. Merlin closed his eyes, probably the better to concentrate.

“…oh yeah, I can definitely see how you would get that impression – something like this would really color your thinking, possibly even keep you from thinking too much. But it’s actually ambivalent on the whole, a multipurpose device, some of which had a halfway decent motive in construction, but it’s all too mixed together now, and besides I’m getting some weird readings off the outside of it, almost like someone else tried to influence the thing. I can turn off the compulsion and trust spells for you right now and clean the rest of it up, but the others might even serve you well in the future; the anti-trauma spell most likely saved your sanity right up front and could be a godsend if you’re ever under serious duress again. I’ll add a lynchpin spell so you can turn on and off the tracking device and show you how to operate it later.”

He went quiet again as a few more glowing lines came out of his ring and intersected with Mandor’s. Sarah couldn’t tell what was happening but something clearly was because every so often she would hear a light noise like someone clinking against crystal. After some time the lines receded and he opened his eyes again; the ring dropped and he caught it.

“There, that should be significantly better. I want you to try it again right here and now and tell me what you feel,” he instructed, shoving it back across to her.

Sarah had to fight down her nerves, bracing herself to undergo the spell once more, only this time with an almost complete stranger; life had definitely made her gun-shy around this kind of stuff. Hesitantly, she forced herself to touch it…and nothing happened. Letting out a breath she hadn’t even realized she’d been holding, she carefully slid it onto her ring finger – and felt the immediate difference. In fact, all she could actually feel was the trauma-reducer, and now that it was pretty much by itself she could better feel it for what it really was. The effect might’ve been comparable to a mild tranquilizer, only without the fatigue. She had to warily admit that such a thing could have its uses if her life continued to be this weird; it was sort of like having a panic button.

“It’s definitely calming but I still don’t think I’d want to wear it all the time, given the choice,” she pronounced, easily removing it again.

“Good; that’s exactly what I was hoping for. If you felt that you’d really needed it I would’ve had to reconsider what I’d had in mind for…you have something else in here?” he noted the tiny bulge remaining in the leather of her trump pouch.

“Oh, yeah,” Sarah laughed, remembering. “I really like your Ghostwheel – oh, I nearly forgot! Thank you for the lift here; it was really appreciated. It’s not easy for me to be outside in this world, apparently.”

“It’s not just you – normal humans can’t be outside here without serious protection – and you’re welcome,” he smiled; he had a really good one in his human form, Sarah reflected. “I like him, too. Ghost is probably the nicest person I know, which is both elating and depressing since I basically made him from scratch. What were you saying about him?”

“He found that thing for me somewhere; I’d hesitate to guess. It’s allegedly an entire breakfast, extremely condensed down into pill form. I was too busy attempting to best my guardian earlier this morning to really eat; Ghost tried to help. I wasn’t sure if it was safe to take, but he said it would last and pressed me to keep it. What do you think?”

Merlin dug it out to examine it; his expression wasn’t quite as disbelieving as Sarah’s but he did look slightly bewildered. “I have to admit with some embarrassment that I would have never thought of this by myself. I sure wouldn’t take it with less than 20oz of liquid – it would suck up all of your gastric juices otherwise – but something similar could very well solve the ration problems we’ve always experienced with our troops in the field. There are too many regions of desert and wasteland at the far edges out here and for significant portions of the run between Chaos and the Order shadows; supply issues have always slowed us down in the past.” He replaced it in the pouch and slid it back over to her. “I’d take it with a really big glass of water but it should actually work. Save it for a rainy day, though. Mandor says you’re from New York?”

“Just north of the City, yeah.”

Merlin summoned and reached into a black void Sarah had grown rather accustomed to seeing, and, after a short time, extracted a brown paper bag, followed a few seconds later by two small coffees - creamer and sugar already added - the blue design on the paper cups heart-wrenchingly familiar. He passed her one along with a foil-wrapped sandwich that turned out to be a bagel-and-schmear. She smiled wanly, nostalgic.

“Thanks. My mom used to get me this exact same breakfast when she used to take me downtown, before she… she’s an actress,” she covered, letting her hunger take over as she dug in.

“I know; I’m sorry. My parents have never seen eye-to-eye, either. It will get easier for you, though. Speaking of hard, do you have any idea just how difficult it is get a decent cup of joe out here?” he laughed. “Darn college for getting me started on this stuff,” he observed, taking a good swallow of his own.

“I’d been meaning to ask,” Sarah managed between bites, “just how in the world did you ever wind up going to a Shadow Earth college in the first place? Surely there’s higher education to be had out here?”

Merlin sighed, staring off into space. “I never even met my biological father until I was eighteen, and then it was at Patternfall. He disappeared shortly after the signing of the treaties; nobody seemed to know where he was, and once I had passed my initiation with the Logrus I made up my mind to try and find him. It was logical to use Shadow Earth as a base of operations; most of the royal family of Amber frequents it like a vacation home from time-to-time and Prince Corwin had lived there continuously for no less than nine centuries – albeit under unfavorable circumstances, but that’s another story. I felt he was bound to return eventually, and in the meantime I set about immersing myself in the culture of his most recently chosen country of habitation – yours – and then got interested in computer science while I was there. I had nothing better to be doing; I was the bastard son of a noblewoman, so far down the…oh, what’s the word again,” he struggled a moment, but quickly remembered, “the totem pole, at the time, that it hardly mattered to anyone back home what I did. So I bettered myself – ran track for Berkeley, got a masters degree in computer engineering, had a failed serious relationship with dire consequences – the whole lot. I finally located my father years later but it wasn’t on Earth, and now he’s disappeared on me again. I know that he cares – he’d even take Mom back still if she’d forgive him (though she never will) – but I think he’s been cooped up in one place long enough that he’s gotten wanderlust, and frankly considering what he’s been through I don’t blame him at all. But that’s the real reason I went there, that and general curiosity of how the other half live, I suppose, being half-Amberite myself. And the degree has certainly served me well; Ghost has nearly completed cataloging the Chaos-side of Shadow for me and he’s working on the Order-side now with King Random’s limited permission, with the proviso that I have to willingly share the information should it ever become necessary for defense.”

“I still don’t understand how you got to be king, though,” Sarah took a sip of coffee; she didn’t drink it very often back home, but this wasn’t half-bad. “Ghost dropped something about Lord Mandor trying to compel you to take the crown and failing. How did it happen?” Seeing Merlin cross his arms and raise his eyebrows, Sarah was suddenly afraid she may have just crossed a line; he had been so easy-going with her she had almost begun to forget just who she was addressing. “Forgive me for bringing up a touchy subject, your Exalted Excellency,” she hastily apologized, hoping it wasn’t too late, “I didn’t realize it was since it was presented so casually to me.”

She literally held her breath until she saw the muscles in his arms relax again as he sighed himself with a rueful lip-smile.

“Remind me to have a little chat with Ghost; he needs to learn who it’s appropriate to bring these things up with, although he was probably just noting what he saw as an analogous similarity aloud. Well,” he took another sip of his own coffee, “the aftermath of old Swayvil’s death was a politically-charged bloodbath over the period of a few months - which I’m rather grateful I missed out on for the most part by being detained by my own problems, far from the Courts. I told you I was so far down the list I didn’t even think of my absence; I returned to discover that on top of the expected… ‘house-cleaning’, shall we say, no less than twenty-three noblemen had been assassinated in order of succession.”

Sarah nearly chocked on her coffee, glancing up at him in horror.

“And you thought election years were bad news,” he quipped, trying to downplay it a little.

“Who did all of that?!”

“Probably a collection of agents from all the major houses, most likely including mine as well by proxy. Nearly all of the murders were impossible to pin on anyone – usually is when this sort of thing happens.” He watched her innocuously for a beat, then continued. “Although, thinking back, I’m nearly certain that Mandor personally took out the second-to-the-last ahead of me, and right at Swayvil’s state funeral, no less; the guy was one of the pallbearers – took a Chaos-blade dagger to the back. I mean, they were both right down front - it was just too clean and professional - and he was acting a little strangely afterwards. There’s a very specific high-skill manner for thrusting that particular blade so that the victim doesn’t even feel it enter; they just hit the floor, which is exactly what happened. When the last guy ahead of me in the succession got tripped by somebody else and took the dive over the Pit with the casket I got the hell out of there fast, believe you me – I was next! Although I suppose as long as we’re opening this jar of leeches I should mention that it really should’ve been Mandor next, not me. It should be him in here talking to you; the crown’s his by rights but he removed himself from the lineup ages ago. Probably saved his life; he was too smart to try and grab the throne personally.”

Sarah leaned back into her chair, astounded. The man she had been living with, eating with, fencing with, joking with – was the rightful High King!!! As well as an active murderer… she shuddered just thinking about it. The effects of the ring nothing; she was beginning to seriously doubt that she had ever really known Mandor Sawall at all.

Merlin knew that look. “I can’t justify his actions for him, but you need to realize that my hands aren’t exactly clean, either, Sarah, although in my own defense those that I’ve hurried along to the Abyss were actively trying to kill me. It’s something I’m not personally proud of, but it’s unfortunately a pretty common state-of-affairs for us. Mandor is very cool-headed and long-sighted; he’s not about to knife just anybody without having what he would consider a very good reason. Advancing the position-in-life of his favorite brother – who would have inherited next-to-nothing otherwise - made the cut, apparently,” he added quietly, looking away before continuing. “Of course, why risk being the target on the throne when you can rule just as effectively from behind it? That was the general idea – that he and others directly benefited as well.” He looked dead into Sarah’s eyes; for a moment she saw the Chaos-ness in his expression. “I accepted it on my own terms, apart from any of them. If I hadn’t, it would’ve been my crazy little brother Jurt, and most likely insurrection and another messy war with Amber. My personal freedom wasn’t worth more than people I loved on both sides getting hurt, to say nothing of all the shadow-worlds inbetween. I was the only one here who gave a shit about Order, about all of us! And in the end the Logrus Herself backed my ascension to the Throne. That’s why!”

It nearly seemed as if he was trying to convince himself and not his intended audience; a second later he deflated a little. “I didn’t mean to get on a high-horse like that,” he exhaled in lieu of apology, running a hand through his hair, “I’ve just been facing down that question for several years now from people with far less friendly intent; this reaction is starting to get automatic and I can’t afford for it to be.”

Sarah knew then that she was witnessing a very private battle, one being waged within a man willing to sacrifice himself to sustain the system.

A model Chaosian, in other words.

“But I’ve rattled on for far too long about me,” he interrupted her thoughts, “when we’re really here to talk about you.”

And they did so, in depth, for the next half-hour, going over everything from bits of personal history that Mandor had left out to her training and personal arcane strengths and weaknesses, as well as her previous impressions of both her tutor and her ‘guardian’. The thought of his elder brother having a ward at all, let alone one thrust upon him by the Logrus from an Order-based shadow, was simply too novel for Merlin; the man had had virtually no practical experience with children of any age since his own step-brothers had been small, but unsurprisingly he seemed to have thrown himself heartily into the role and honed it to precision as he had honed so many talents and abilities throughout his long life. Even with the extra detrimental knowledge she had just acquired about him, Sarah was having a surprisingly hard time not getting emotional recounting what seemed to her good times spent in the Chaos lord’s company. She was rather careful not to mention her misadventure with the Goblin King; she just calmly waffled over the information as best she could, and, to her profound relief, the High King didn’t press her on it.

An odd impression was slowly forming in the back of Merlin’s mind the longer he listened to her, mulling over a wild theory Mandor had suggested to him about her during his initial call this morning, and at length he spoke his mind.

“Sarah,” he rocked back in his chair again, steepling his fingers, “what I’m about to say to you should not be as much of a shock as it would have been once, now that you have considerable knowledge of the nature of Shadow and that which lies at each end, which you have mostly acquired at the hands of my formidably capable uncle. Both he and Mandor are of the same mind as to why you survived your initiation into the Logrus in the first place, and hearing your story firsthand I am inclined to agree with them: you made it because your original is an Amberite, most likely living in the city of Amber herself or at least the Golden Circle city-states in nearby shadows. In fact, it may be why you were chosen. Mandor did not tell you how many of your doubles he found before choosing the one that seemed most like you in physiognomy who was willing to take your place, and they got more numerous the closer he ventured to Amber. There is only ever one explanation for having that many.”

“My…original!” The thought alone made Sarah’s heart race; she suddenly wished she hadn’t had that caffeine!

“It’s no secret that we on the far edge have been collectively suffering from the power shifting too far toward Order since Patternfall, and while many plans to pull it back toward us have failed for numerous reasons since (and I have to admit to being one of them; a few of the proposed plots were too extreme to remain stable and had to be nipped in the bud, so-to-speak) there has been the constant threat of the Pattern pulling it even further out of balance by any number of means, even by gaining new initiates. My late grandfather Oberon Barimen was… how shall we say, prolific, and his illegitimate children are still being discovered. My Amberite aunts and uncles on the other hand have discovered birth control for the most part, but my cousin Martin was the result of such a mistake. It is certainly conceivable – sorry, Sarah, I didn’t mean to pun that badly – but I think you know what I’m driving at. Chances are it’s a new player we’re not even aware of as yet, a girl even younger than you when one figures in the necessary time-difference from Shadow Earth, probably about ten years old, maybe even younger. If the Logrus is going to this kind of trouble to recruit one of this child’s shadows, only the powers know what might be on the verge of happening out there. A significant tip right now could be catastrophic for us all. I am not seeking victory or glory, but stability here – know that.”

“But how do I fit into all of this?” Sarah asked, bewildered and feeling very small, like a playing piece. ‘You’re going to be used badly, little girl…don’t be used blindly.’ Perhaps Jareth had known what he was talking about.

“I honestly don’t know, but I’d like to, and I can think of one rather obvious way to find out. Of course, this would be contingent on your switching loyalties from Lord Mandor over to me – the Crown – and being willing to prove it by performing a relatively easy job for me first: bring me the broomstick of the Witch of the West!”

At Sarah’s dazed, shocked expression, Merlin laughed.

“Nah, I’m just messing with you a little, I couldn’t resist. Heard you like ‘The Wizard of Oz’, too. Actually, I’ve been dying to say that to somebody who would get it ever since my coronation!”

Sarah smirked that she had been taken in so easily; he really was fairly young. Then the piece of intelligence suddenly struck her as very bizarre. “Wait a minute – Lord Mandor doesn’t even speak English, let alone visit Shadow Earth! How in the world had he ever even known about that?!”

“He didn’t,” Merlin answered simply, “he literally picked that from your mind the day he met you. I’ll have to float him a Thari edition; he’ll read anything.”

“So I gather,” Sarah quietly noted, looking down at her lap.

“Oh, that’s right, you were camped out in his library. I’m sorry that situation played out like it did, but in all seriousness I’m offering you the chance to have a bigger role and, hopefully, more autonomy in this game.”

“Doing what?” she asked cautiously, meeting his eyes again; he smiled.

“I’d like for you to be a spy for me in Amber.”

Sarah nearly laughed, then realized he wasn’t joking this time. “Oh my gosh, you’re not kidding! But what about the peace treaties?”

Merlin shrugged and finished his coffee. “We still spy on them, they still spy on us – it’s something modern civilized countries do,” he pointedly glanced at her with a decidedly good-natured spark of mischief in his eye. “I’m not asking you to break into Castle Amber and steal state secrets; I’m asking you to locate a preteen girl who in all likelihood looks and thinks quite a lot like you do, figure out what she’s up to, and report back so I have a better feel for just what precisely I’m trying to anticipate here. The probable danger level is very low; I wouldn’t even consider sending you otherwise. And I can ensure that if for any reason you do get into trouble no harm can possibly befall you. Will you at least think about it? As soon as we’re finished here I have to go and have a serious heart-to-heart with my dear older brother and try to convince him that I’m doing the right thing as far as you’re concerned. Just between ourselves, I think getting you away from those two may not be such a bad idea; this is a clean, honorable way to do it that neither of them could possibly refute just due to my rank alone if nothing else.”

Sarah seriously mulled over the implications of what he was asking her. “How long would I be in Amber?”

“Ten days tops – anything longer would look suspicious to the general populace. It is not uncommon for people from the Golden Circle city-states to take short vacations in Amber, if not come there to work; you would be posing as one of them. You still want to become an actress, right? Think of this as work experience. You’d be outfitted for the part appropriately and everything; I can even get a dialect coach to give you the rundown on the differences in Amberite Thari – it’s mostly a matter of inflection of certain words, but there are about a dozen common words that are completely different and you’ll have to learn them. But regardless of your potential success or failure, I intend to send you home immediately afterwards; I gather this was more-or-less what Mandor had had in mind also, although with rather different aims. Beyond that, there’s no rule or law that says you can’t use your Chaos-based powers on Shadow Earth, albeit very discreetly. Were I you, I’d take a geology or archeology major in college; you should be able to locate and dig up pretty much anything you set your mind to. Or, if you’re actually serious about pursuing the arts as a living and not just a hobby, you could make a bucket of real diamonds out of a few bags of charcoal briquettes and invest them overseas, at which point I might be willing to aid you as your first patron; my father has some excellent standing contacts in Belgium who are used to doing business with him without asking too many questions – with just a few minor shifts I can easily pass for my old man,” he smiled rakishly. “But I won’t just do it so you can kick back – you would have to be actively working at becoming an actress, do you understand me?”

Sarah nodded enthusiastically, wide-eyed; she was near tears. It was all too wonderful – she could afford Julliard and not even have to work during college!

“In any event, you don’t have to decide for a few more years – I want you to finish your basic education first – but if all goes as I think it will, I’ll be calling on you when you turn eighteen to see what you want to do with your life.” He suddenly stopped. “Mandor seriously didn’t mention any of this?”

She shook her head no.

“Well, he probably didn’t want you getting distracted prematurely while you were still in training, but I think at this point you should at least be made aware of the option. Which brings us to another crucial topic: who to trust when you get back to Earth. Great power, great responsibility, blah blah blah – the point is, you can’t go freely blabbing about all of this stuff as well as your having magical powers to just anybody you please for what I hope are rather obvious reasons, not least of which is the off-chance that an Amberite spy could single you out if you make enough ruckus. The harder part of this unfortunately is deciding who to trust; in all seriousness, I think the only person who might be safe enough would be whom you intend to marry, should you ever choose to do so. I made the mistake of not even trusting that person – a girl I met in college – and I lost her, ironically enough, to Jurt, who wasn’t afraid to tell her everything. But it can be a hard call. Nobody warned me; I’m warning you.”

“I’m sorry.”

He shrugged it off. “I was young and stupid; it happens. At any rate, you should be pretty well set up once you get home. There’s no foreseeable reason for you to have to trek all the way back here unless you miss me,” he smiled teasingly, “and if I ever do need to get messages across to you, I can do so easily using the Ghostwheel once I know where you live. That is, if you accept,” he added tentatively.

Sarah looked away and lightly bit her lower lip, thinking; it was a heck of a proposition. She knew that her answer would probably be yes – it seemed to be the fastest way out of Dodge and, from what she had seen, Merlin seemed a lot more honest and open; she felt pretty safe dealing with him. But she couldn’t help but feel sort of wildly incompetent for the job he had in mind for her. If only she knew more about what she would be expected to do there, how to really go about the operation! If only there was more time! But of course there wasn’t.

“I’m leaning toward a ‘yes’, but I’d feel a lot more comfortable about this if I had better details. I’m afraid you might be really overestimating whom you’re working with here, your Exalted Excellency,” she laughed a bit nervously.

Merlin smiled, shaking his head. “You’re selling yourself short – you’re perfect for what I have in mind – but I totally understand. I wouldn’t dream of sending you into a situation like that without making absolutely certain that you knew beforehand what you needed to do. Go ahead and think it over,” he stated, standing; Sarah rose as protocol demanded. “I shouldn’t be too long in speaking to my brother; I already briefed him thoroughly before I even allowed him to bring you here. At the very least I’m not about to let him get away with just dropping you off like a sack of potatoes; he’s going to hear my mind on this. There’s no reason we can’t all deal with this situation as rational adults. Do you need anything else quick before I leave? I’m just parking you in here for right now; I’ll be coming straight back just as soon as I’m finished.”

“No, I’ll be fine,” Sarah began, but changed her mind, “but now that you mention it, I can’t help but notice that the exterior walls here are translucent if not transparent, but it’s been so brightly lit in all the rooms I’ve been in so far… is it possible to look out?” she screwed up the courage to ask. “I’ve only seen drawings of this place, and the view from the pinnacle of the Thelbane has got to be incredible. If there is one.”

Merlin smirked, nodding. “The glass is nearly black, but you should be able to see something if we extinguish the lights. You’d be alright with being alone up here in this room in the dark?” he asked, not totally believing that she would be.

“If I can turn the light back on myself; I’ve grown pretty accustomed to this type over at Mandorways. Can anyone operate them or only just you?”

“Anyone with training: make like you’re pulling down on a cord or chain that’s attached to an electric lamp,” he prompted her; Sarah did so and they were immediately plunged into darkness…but it wasn’t total, she gradually realized. “Just do it again when you want it back on,” she heard his voice. “I promise I’ll be back soon.”

The silence that followed was palpable. He was gone.

She was alone.

Sarah fought down an involuntary shiver; this place felt downright alien compared to even the magical living quarters and various shadow worlds that she had gotten used to over the previous months. She tried to write off the reaction as being due to the relative smallness of the chamber (which truthfully might’ve been part of it – that coupled with the lack of obvious ventilation), but really it was the knowledge of where she was actually standing. Before Earth formed, before Amber and Order came into being, this tower had been here - the Thelbane, the black Needle of Chaos, a beacon of intelligent life at the very knife-edge of existence. Just standing here felt like stepping back in time by at least a billion years, suddenly thrust into the extreme distant past. She took a steadying breath, then felt her way over to the thick, dark glass wall. Merlin had been right; it was rather difficult to see through, not unlike wearing dark sunglasses at night, but after about a minute or two her eyes began to adjust to the liminal lighting conditions…
_____________________________________________________________________________________________

While he had been born and raised in the Courts proper, Merlin Barimen-Sawall still had enough Order in his blood to make using the Ways inside the Thelbane fairly uncomfortable (which really said something about just how delicately tentative ‘reality’ was this close to the Pit); fortunately, his increased knowledge of the practical uses of his spikard (the unaffiliated power source Sarah had witnessed him utilizing) effectively allowed him to bystep the problem completely. In moments he joined Mandor in the sitting area of one of the formal reception rooms further down the tower.

Upon seeing the shimmering in the air that signaled an immediate trump-in, Mandor rose from the black marble bench he had been occupying next to the immense ornate fireplace - his own form still ablaze with green light - and bowed low as Merlin materialized.

“Was the human child to your liking, your Excellency?”

He was doing everything just right, but there was a good-natured teasing in his fiery gaze as he straightened up again. Noting Merlin’s choice of casual human-form (lazy, but he was the King) he quickly commenced his own shift down. Merlin walked over to join him with a half-disbelieving expression on his face.

“You have got to teach me your trick with women one of these years.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You all but kidnapped this teenage girl, dragged her all the way across the universes, practically imprisoned her in your villa, and forced her to undergo some of the most difficult training in the known worlds! Through some whim of fate she finds out she’s being set up, she confronts you about it, you abandon her here, and do you know what the first question she had for me was the moment we were alone together? Did I think you would forgive her! When you first told me of this mess, I fully anticipated having to deal with a Stockholm Syndrome victim. Well, I just finished questioning that poor kid thoroughly; she doesn’t display a trace! The affection she feels toward you is genuine, natural even! How in Chaos did you pull that off?!”

Mandor dropped his gaze. “It was truly the simplest thing in the world, your Excellency,” he gave answer quietly. “I took better care of her than she had ever had, even in her supposedly ‘normal’ existence. She required filial structure for personal stability; I accommodated her need. None of this is really much of a secret, Merlin,” he added frankly, making conspiratorial eye-contact, “although in my defense, a man blessed with your visage hardly has need for an arsenal when dealing with the fair sex. Nevertheless, since you are now my liege and you ask it of me, I will tell you: pay scrupulous attention, but don’t smother; remember all the details, but in particular the trivial ones; carefully discern what they actually require to thrive and provide it well; introduce special surprises on occasion, but timed at interval so the events don’t lose their specialness; give generously of yourself and your time whilst keeping in mind the previous warning of oversaturation – don’t allow your presence be taken for granted, either; the same goes for making them feel special. You should be able to improvise from there,” he gave his signature, crooked smile.

“And that’s precisely the other side to this situation that doesn’t wash; you’re usually scarily prepared for everything,” Merlin countered, going to sit down by the fire himself; Mandor followed suit. “I know you. I know you well enough to know that you could have easily erased the memory of that disastrous confrontation this morning and done it so cleanly that she literally would have never known about it. It seems even stranger in light of just how meticulously you’d kept her up until this point, especially since I know you did it to her at least once prior; I could tell from the way she described what was left of the incident. What happened?”

For all his legendary grace and charm, there were times that Mandor Sawall simply turned in on himself, shutting his proverbial shell like an oyster. This was one of those rare occasions; he quietly stared into the flames, as motionless as if he had just become a statue to go with the marble bench.

“Oh, no,” Merlin groaned with a small rueful smile, “it was that once a decade when your heart goes soft on you right when you can’t afford for it to, wasn’t it?” No response was an affirmative; that was genuinely embarrassing. An oddly revealing parallel thought suddenly hit Merlin and the smile dropped right off his face in amazement. “That’s why you never tried for the Throne yourself! Even if it hadn’t been me in the way, you still wouldn’t have done it! This propensity actually scares you.” It was a statement, not a question.

The statue of a man seated next to him smiled a little wanly in acknowledgement. “It would appear that you know me too well, little brother; I shall have to be more cautious of you in the future.” Such a statement would be construed as negative elsewhere, but in the Courts this was high praise indeed. “At any rate, it’s not the strongest of traits for an aspiring ruthless dictator; in fact it could easily prove fatal.” His gaze flicked over to him. “How are you holding up, Merlin?”

General paranoia unfortunately was the hallmark of true maturity around here and for good reason. Merlin was painfully aware that his elder brother would just as soon play him as that human girl he currently had up in his conference room. It was just the way things were done. For a brief moment he wished that they were younger once more; he and Mandor had once been close friends. But, as had just been pointed out, this was no place or position for sentimentality.

“There haven’t been any major feuds between the Houses lately and our side of the universe is still standing. I guess I’m handling it alright,” Merlin quipped; Mandor smiled knowingly and nodded – good, he was willing to back down. To business, then.

“Have you given any further thought to my hypothesis about the girl?”

“Oh, you’re probably onto something, but in the absence of her original and DNA testing all we really have is guesswork. It stands to reason, though. From what I know of Amberite bloodlines, the genetics are so dominant that any offspring will invariably resemble the royal parent completely regardless to the appearance of the other partner, so I suspect we can narrow it down a little. I think we can rule out Deirdre and Eric; if Aunt Deirdre had ever had any kids you can bet she would’ve brought them around no matter who had sired them – she was pretty progressive – and Uncle Eric was too busy being a power-hungry megalomaniac for any woman to be actually interested in him.”

“Even…”

“Nope, not the type,” Merlin brushed the suggestion off. “Come to think of it, neither is Julian; as far as I can tell, his only interests are his hunting, his dogs, and his troops in the Arden forest. And Gérard’s never shown much interest in women, either. You know I wonder about some of these guys...”

“And then there’s your old man. You don’t suppose…” Mandor raised one snowy eyebrow.

“As we would say on Shadow Earth, ‘once bitten, twice shy’,” Merlin smiled bitterly. “I think Dad learned his lesson the hard way. And that goes double for Uncle Benedict.” Merlin’s mother Dara was Benedict of Amber’s great-granddaughter via a carefully staged Chaosian hook-up plot; Merlin himself was a successful product of the continued breeding experiment. “That leaves Caine; he’s probably our best bet, really. He traveled extensively with the navy in the Golden Circle and had numerous mistresses – definitely his father’s son. If this situation ever comes to the point that we have to legally pursue it with King Random, Uncle Caine would be a relatively safe tack to try; even in the royal house, libel laws are significantly reduced for the dead.”

Mandor seemed to nod assent. “And what of Sarah?”

Merlin’s gaze turned cold. “Yes, about her. I know to you she’s just another shadow to do with what you will, but I really don’t appreciate your treating her like chattel to be bartered off. It’s bad enough that I have to put up with this behavior from the powers but I’m not about to let it stand in my immediate family if I can help it. I’ve offered her a job; if she accepts it, I am going to get her as far away from here as possible as quickly as possible, especially considering the fact that anyone with any less of a heart could simply use her as a weapon without any regard for her as a person at all. Even if she doesn’t accept, I’m sending her straight home; she’s known more than enough to basically handle her Logrus powers safely for over two months now. I’ve just managed to quietly undo some of the psychological conditioning damage you two have inflicted on her, without her knowledge; I’m not about to allow her to accrue any more. Do I make myself clear?”

“Infallibly clear, your Excellency.”

Once again the delivery was just dead-on, but the accompanying expression read ‘no matter how big and important you may get, you will always be my little brother.’ And, of course, Merlin hated it, but what were siblings for?
_____________________________________________________________________________________________

The darkened tableau on display from the tip of the Needle was nearly black-and-white, stripped of all hue, although the effect was largely the work of the glass. Sarah reflected that if nothing else, the slowly rotating bands of color above them (barely distinguishable from here) should lend a little pigment, but, to be honest, she wasn’t certain that particular law of nature functioned here, either.

It was really a moot point. At least a hundred floors down from where she stood, nearly at far as the naked eye could see, sprawled the great City of Chaos. More like the dim barrio of Chaos, she thought: small, vague structures peopled by beings that would’ve seemed blurry in good light, it was all horribly indistinct. To further confuse matters, perspective kept playing wild games on her. Distance had no meaning – they could’ve been Matchbox-scale or gigantic, near or far; perceptible reality kept juggling as if it couldn’t make up its mind. Or wasn’t allowed to. The scene was starting to make her feel giddy and lightheaded; she moved on to a different side of the room. More of the same, but only to her right-hand side; beyond any vestige of civilization lay a black, rocky plain, flickering with luminescence, that stretched on forever. Upon closer inspection, the larger rocks were slowly drifting about aimlessly of their own volition, the mountains behind them sliding away to the left! That’s what Mandor was trying for! Sarah suddenly thought; her journey here felt like it had happened in another lifetime; she had nearly forgotten.

She knew what had to be on the other side of the room now that she had her bearings, but she almost didn’t have the nerve to look. Quickly chastising her own cowardice – it was now or never – Sarah forced herself to cross the small room, nearly tripping over a chair. Sheesh it’s dark in here. Carefully approaching the glass, she briefly wrestled with the idea of putting on the ring, then settled for a compromise, digging it back out of the trump pouch and just holding it. If she needed it, she’d have it. With the artifact firmly clasped in her left hand, Sarah took a deep breath and peered out.

And nearly sank to her knees! Forcing herself to inhale, she slowly sat down where she stood, staring wide-eyed: the broad cobblestone street known as the Plaza at the End of the World led out to an immense cathedral complex made entirely of static red flame – the Cathedral of the Serpent – and the cathedral sat at the very edge of the Pit of Chaos! The bottomless, circular crater ran for miles and miles in all directions. Sarah swallowed her pride and shoved the ring on; it brought surprisingly little relief but she was loath to take it back off again. Out there, just beyond this barrier, was The End of everything, darkly pulsing and flowing, the borders crumbling away; in a few more epochs, the Cathedral would be consumed by the very thing it had been erected to honor. There were moving figures out there as well in the Plaza, no more distinct than those in the City – no, wait, a few of them were, but what they were precisely was difficult to gage from way up here. On this side of the dome of the sky there were stars, though, so many of them you could cry, dancing and shooting about the heavens in never-ending variation…

Sarah started when the light suddenly came back on; she briefly shielded her eyes against the brightness.

“That view is usually hard for outsiders to handle the first time,” she heard Merlin say, then saw him reach down his hand to her; she took it and he slowly brought her back to her feet. The fact that she was wearing the ring had not gone unnoticed. “If you would allow one minor adjustment?” he asked permission, gently taking her left hand. Sarah was still shaken enough that she quickly assented. Thrusting his consciousness into the spikard, Merlin raised his own ring and touched it to hers; seconds later she exhaled in relief and he let go of her. “There. Now you can view the great Abyss as we do when you wear that thing.” He pulled out a chair for her and she gratefully sat down, recovering herself. It didn’t feel like he’d zoned her out or even changed her mind; it just felt like he’d stuck the proverbial finger in her ear and zapped her with about a hundred years worth of experience with the Pit! True enough, it was physically dangerous to play around the edge, but beyond that it wasn’t really that imminent of a threat. At least not right now…

“Thanks…I think,” she said as he took a chair beside her; she ventured a glance at the glassy wall across from them; it was opaque black once more. “How did it go?”

“Oh, about as well as it was going to. I didn’t really get much resistance; I didn’t expect any. Of course, Mandor is all in favor of your moving up in the world, or at least that’s how he couches it,” he smiled jadedly. “I still hope you’re going to choose for your own sake, though. If you don’t want to do this I completely understand; you’ve been through a lot already - I can send you home today if you want – but if you want to stick around and help, the effort would definitely be appreciated. I think there’s a reason you’re here but I’m going to let this be your call. What do you want to do, Sarah?”

Home! He hadn’t even mentioned that before…although the more she thought about it she quickly understood why; he had wanted to make sure she was really listening to what he had to say first. If the option had been granted to her when she initially arrived in Chaos, she would have taken it without a second thought. But she was in too deep now; it felt like chickening out to get this far and balk without ever knowing what it had all been for. And even though it probably wasn’t healthy, she had to admit that she was curious, too. And the king had just guaranteed her safety. Shara can hold down the fort a while longer, she thought with a smirk; it hadn’t even been two months on Earth. She looked Merlin squarely in the eye.

“Count me in.”

He smiled broadly and extended his hand. “Welcome to the purple team,” he shook hers warmly. Colorful confetti suddenly rained down directly over her head, accompanied by the sound of noisemakers; Sarah glanced up in surprise and spotted a familiar glowing ball of light. “The sentiment is appreciated, Ghost, but you could’ve chosen a more tactful way to display it,” Merlin lightly reprimanded him, still smiling.

“Sorry, Dad,” Ghost’s eerily similar voice responded as he floated down to join them.

“Oh, you’re fine. As long as you’re here, could you run on down to the main Sawall holdings, check on which Ways don’t venture outside, and make a map of them for me?”

“Sure thing, Dad – be right back!” He winked out.

“Sorry about that,” Merlin brushed confetti off Sarah’s shoulders, “for as intelligent a being as he is, sometimes Ghost is still just a big kid.”

Sarah laughed as she shook the rest out of her hair. “That’s not necessarily a bad thing. I think he’d be pretty scary if he didn’t have a sense of humor.”

“You’re not the only one. Anyway, due to the extreme time-difference between the Courts and Amber, there’s going to be a short layover before I can send you; it won’t be mid-morning there until tomorrow. I intend to put you up at the Ways of Sawall for the night; you’d be too conspicuous here at Thelbane. That will give us adequate time to get you sufficiently prepared and to make sure everything necessary for the trip is in order. I’ll use the Ghostwheel to get you into the city and instruct him to discreetly follow you; in the unlikely event that you are in any serious physical danger he can trump you away instantaneously, but I’m hoping it won’t come to that – nothing obvious if it can possibly be avoided, this is a covert reconnaissance mission. If you get arrested for looking suspicious in the wrong place – it happens now and again with a few of our less-experienced agents – show the soldiers this ring and request to be brought before King Random,” he instructed, holding out a thin, sinuous black metal band with a polished cabochon of deep amethyst, which had literally just appeared in his hand.

Sarah didn’t move.

“I know, you’re getting a collection, but I promise there’s nothing on this one. Go ahead and check it out; I won’t be offended.”

Sarah still hesitated. “…uh, my version of the Logrus barely shows up anything beyond a geologic survey.”

Merlin just nodded. “Then use mine.” A perfect copy of the true Logrus suddenly flared between them and he held the ring up to it for her. Sarah’s eyes widened slightly upon seeing the thick, bright-blue field of raw power coursing and flowing about Merlin’s hand, but, true to his word, beyond the natural properties of the stone the ring was inert. He banished the Sign and held the thin band out for her again; this time she accepted it. “It just shows that I personally sent you and as such you have legal protection. Random will be pissed but he’ll let you leave the city in one piece. If you’re questioned, go ahead and answer the king but don’t volunteer more information than you have to.”

“How can you be so sure they’d let me go if I’m caught? Wouldn’t it make more sense to keep political prisoners?”

“Our mutual treaties forbid such action unless active violence is involved or – powers forbid – we are openly at war once again; the High King of Amber has a reputation to maintain. Besides, he’s one of my favorite uncles – killer drumming talent, I wish you could watch him perform just once.”

Sarah just smiled, shaking her head. “Your Exalted Excellency, do you know what a soap opera is?”

“Where did you think all that ludicrous material filters down from?” he laughed. “And you can drop the ‘Exalted’ bit; unless it’s a really painfully formal occasion, everyone else does, too. I’m a little young for it yet. In private I’d be fine with just Merlin, but I really shouldn’t let you get into the habit.”

“…Merlin the Just?” Sarah ventured playfully.

Merlin quietly chuckled; she was definitely a kid, but she was a good kid. “Just for that I’m going to insist on ‘your Exalted Excellency’. One last thing: I can have Ghost trump you straight over to Sawall when he returns, but depending on how you felt about it I was going to offer you the option of a fast aerial tour of the City on the way over, courtesy of Gryll – I am right in thinking you have met him?” – she nodded – “I know it doesn’t make up for all the time you’ve spent nominally confined by my elder brother, but it seemed a good start at making reparations– and you would have more freedom of movement at the Ways of Sawall during your brief stay there.”

“Not to seem ungrateful, your Exalted Excellency, but you do remember that I’m human, right? I can’t breathe out there!”

“You can’t breathe out there unaided,” he corrected her, forming a Logrus portal; in seconds he had an odd, small gray bundle in his hands. The portal closed. “The Barimen family attorney Bill Roth is a human my old man befriended on Shadow Earth and later hired. He’s never had need to come here yet but I have always been prepared for the contingency.” He unfolded the gray cloth: inside was a full-face gasmask of sorts. “This was specifically designed for our atmosphere, but the filter is only good for about fifteen minutes max before it has to be cleaned again – more than enough time for your purposes today but still not long enough for what I had initially had in mind. We’re still working on an easily replaceable cartridge, but the original prototype is definitely functional, should you care to try it.”

Before Sarah could respond, she was interrupted by Ghost’s return.

“Got it!” he announced cheerily as a medium-sized scroll dropped onto the table with a light bounce. Merlin stood up and unrolled it, examining it carefully. After about half-a-minute’s intense scrutiny he sighed, sounding frustrated. “Well, it isn’t as much of the complex as I’d hoped, but at least it’s more that three rooms, and unless I’m mistaken…yes! You do have access to the art gallery! Let me double-check here quick.”

Sarah watched in wonder as a tiny part of the map rose off the paper and expanded in size, the detail growing with it, until it was about half the size of the original map below; Merlin turned the paper over and brought the image back down, superimposing it onto the back. Procuring a red marker from nowhere, he proceeded to cross out certain passageways here and there, but not many. He only hesitated once, but whatever it was he must’ve decided was fine for he did nothing then, quickly moving on. Soon, he gave the whole one final cursory glance-over and nodded in satisfaction.

“Getting hopelessly lost in the art gallery at least once is practically a rite of passage growing up Sawall, but you have neither the time nor the constitution to handle all of the Ways. If you stick to the areas I’ve enclosed you should be fine. It can still be pretty easy to get turned around in there, though. If you get to the point that you can’t figure out where you are, just walk backwards until you reach the painted jabberwocky skeleton and hang a left – you should come right out into this hallway…here,” he flipped the map over and starred the spot. “And your quarters for the night would be here,” he circled a generous suite layout toward the top-left. Viewed in this manner, the Ways of Sawall resembled nothing so much as a series of burrows, even though one would probably never perceive it as such in real life. “You shouldn’t have any problems at all with room service; they’re accustomed to scrupulously following orders to the letter without asking any questions. Mandor personally sacked nearly half of Gramble’s old staff when he came into his dukedom because they didn’t meet the standard of living he demands,” the king rolled his eyes.

“Speaking of Mandor, he’s okay with me being there?” Sarah tentatively asked.

“He doesn’t have much of a choice if he wishes to retain the High King’s good graces,” Merlin wryly smiled. “Besides, he’ll be too busy organizing the dinner party I’ve ordered him to throw tonight to have the leisure to object to your presence, let alone pay you any attention today so long as you can stay out of his way. Your other chief complaint I believe had been social isolation; I think I understand why he thought it was necessary, but that doesn’t mean I agree with his methods. A different order of cloaking spell – one which confuses the wearer’s own energetic waves topically so that they cannot be deciphered by anyone else – should suffice for the remainder of your stay, and with your leave I would like to set it up at once. Such a device is relatively harmless and I can design it to naturally dissolve two days from now Chaos-reckoning, enough time to get you safely out of the country, as it were. Any requests for dinner? It’s really your going away party even if we can’t openly say so.”

Sarah thought about it for a minute, noting that the king was taking advantage of this brief pause in the conversation to set up the basic framework for the energetic disguise spell; she almost didn’t have the nerve to interrupt him and wound up waiting until he actually stopped what he was doing to look at her. She could sense the incomplete, invisible components hovering above them, waiting for the few omitted key-words to complete the spell and drop it down about her.

“Well?”

“Are there any other women on your guest list? I haven’t so much as seen one in the better part of a year, let alone gotten to talk – no, wait, I guess that’s not entirely true,” she sighed, “but it’s not really the same. Maybe I’m just being unduly specist here.”

Merlin nodded in understanding. “I assume you’ve heard the old Earth adage about ‘the female being deadlier than the male’ at least once or twice. The axiom certainly rings true in our own species, but I have a small favor I can call in – I haven’t seen Gilva in ages and she did promise to help me if I asked her nicely,” he momentarily closed his eyes, smiling at some private memory Sarah could only guess at. He opened them again, the expression definitely playful. “I have to warn you up front she isn’t exactly the girly-girl type, but I can trust her not to freely gossip and her code of honor in impeccable. As long as you’re pleasant and unwaveringly courteous you should find her rather interesting company.”

There was something in his expression, his slight suppressed smile, that practically screamed that there were reams of information on this lady that he was deliberately withholding from Sarah. She nearly had misgivings about asking him in the first place, but his reaction seemed to her a good-natured almost joking secrecy, like he intended for whatever it was to be a surprise. She smirked.

“Thank you, your Exalted Excellency,” she inclined her head slightly, perfectly nailing Mandor’s light mock-bow.

“My pleasure, Sarah – no, really, this gives me a great excuse to talk to her myself. This stupid business of being king takes up way too much of my downtime as it is. Speaking of which, as much as I have enjoyed this time spent in getting to know you a little, it’s past time I returned to my regular duties; the Council is awaiting my presence downstairs. Now, I’ve postponed this decision for you as long as I possibly could, but it’s time now: how do you wish to be conveyed to the Ways of Sawall?”

Sarah logically knew this interview had to end sometime – the king had been more than generous in granting her an extended interview like this – but she hated the thought of heading back out into that stark, harsh world all by herself. She hesitated, mulling something over.

“Hang on a sec,” she said, quickly rising and going over to the near window behind them, casually extinguishing the lights as if she had been performing these small magics her entire life. Ghost still glowed in the reflection as she waited for her eyes to adjust.

“What is she doing?” she heard his Merlin-like voice whisper.

“Shh, get down here,” his real counterpart responded; the ball of light dropped and vanished – probably concealed in the king’s considerable robes-of-state.

The alien grayscale tableau rematerialized for Sarah, with the gaping Abyss still adorning the end of the Plaza. But this time she could handle it; she was a little surprised to find the prospect of seeing it even closer-up exciting, like a thrill-ride. It might be a physically hostile environment but there was life out there. That settled it.

Merlin squinted momentarily as the lights suddenly came back on; Sarah turned to face him with a huge grin on her face.

“I wanna fly. Let’s do this.”

“All right! Glad that adjustment helped,” the king beamed at her, “but first things first.”

Making a few odd-looking gestures with his arms, he uttered four unconnected words in that old-dialect Thari she had only heard Suhuy use occasionally, but hard as she tried she couldn’t seem to make sense of them this time even though she knew they sounded familiar.

“Finished,” he announced, folding the map back up small enough to fit into her trump case and handing it over to her. “Feel anything different?”

“…no.”

“Good, that means it’s sitting where it’s supposed to and not invading your inner energy fields any. I’ll send for Gryll presently but you need to be wearing something far more utilitarian for this. Here,” he handed her a folded long-sleeve blouse, footed leggings and snug-looking ankle boots – all pulled out of nowhere in an instant; the extreme level of the king’s personal power was positively sobering. “Mandor gave me your measurements just in case; these should fit.”

Sarah fingered the sleeve of the fine silk blouse, curiously eying the distinct shade of dark blue; the rest was black. “I thought you said I was on the Purple Team now.”

“Even as the king I’m not about to unnecessarily ruffle feathers over a single day-and-a-half; it’s all in the family,” he noted wryly. “You can change behind there,” he gestured to a black lacquered partition that hadn’t been there two seconds ago. “I’ll have your dress sent on ahead of you – you’ll still need to wear it for tonight.”

Sarah hurried with her bundle behind the provided privacy screen and commenced fishing for the zipper on the back of her evening gown. She could hear Merlin speaking to someone she couldn’t hear responding – obviously a trump call – but soon enough she heard the unmistakable, gravelly odd voice of the old demon the king had known personally since early childhood. It had taken Sarah a very long time to drop her trepidation about this, but having known Sofi for what she actually was had helped immensely. They had become a species like any other to her. Soon enough she was finished changing and was braiding her long hair back as she stepped out into the open again.

“Little Earth-shadow, we meet again!” Gryll hailed her in Thari, his bright eyes well-noting her change in livery. “Ready to leave the ground, I hear?”

“Not quite,” Merlin intervened – slipping back into his native tongue – motioning for Sarah to join them. The king fitted the gasmask over her face personally, making absolutely certain that the straps were perfectly snug, that there were no possible gaps that unfiltered air could enter from around the edges. “Are you all right in there? Is it uncomfortable at all?”

“Nope – fine,” Sarah’s slightly muffled voice sounded from inside as she gave the okay signal.

“Begging your Excellency’s indulgence,” Gryll grimaced (it was really the best he could smile), “while the burden you have assigned me will be comfortably light, unless I increase my bulk this will not be an easy ride for her. If I may,” he gestured to one of the stuffed chairs at the round table.

“Of course,” Merlin conceded at once, “take what you need.”

Sarah watched in dumb amazement as the demon literally engulfed the chair – it just absorbed straight into his body! – and grew in height and girth until he was nearly six feet tall!

“Now there is sufficient mass for you to grip and sit astride,” Gryll commented to Sarah, kneeling. “Climb up onto my back and secure your arms about my shoulders,” he instructed, and she did so, feeling the rough scales beneath her thin leggings, the palms of her hands. His proportionally huge bat-like wings had a very slight waxiness to them (it might’ve been a kind of ‘sweat’; these creatures exuded a handful of substances that helped to protect their bodies from their harsh natural environment.) “Ah! You wear a disguise to go out into the world,” he remarked as she mounted, “it is invisible to my eyes but I sense it at this closeness.”

“That would be my doing,” Merlin commented, “and you’re not to breathe a word of this flight to anyone, not even my to uncle, do you understand?”

“Of course, Merlin – oh, forgive me – your Excellency! Your new title still sounds strange to these old ears after all those years of casual addresses.”

“It’s alright,” Merlin shrugged it off with a fond smile. “Just do one long loop of the Cathedral and the City, then take the filmy into Sawall proper here,” he reproduced one section of Sarah’s map as a holograph between them in midair; the demon nodded and the map vanished. “Now, I know you normally enjoy doing this but no dive-bombing the Pit of the Abyss this time.”

“But your Excellency!” Gryll protested, “the updrafts! They’re simply perfect for-”

The king just frowned, a hand on his hip, narrowing his eyes.

Gryll sighed, crestfallen. “Yes, your Excellency.”

“Hey, if it’s any consolation, the girl just about passed out seeing that thing for the first time a few minutes ago,” Merlin quipped good-naturedly, “just don’t scare her beyond my extrapersonal coping abilities; she wouldn’t be doing this at all without a little direct assist from yours truly.”

“Oh, very well,” Gryll gave a quick glance over his shoulder at the young humanoid who would in all likelihood be clinging to him for dear life as it was. “How do you wish for me to embark?”

“Just use the emergency exit right above us,” Merlin looked up into the spire. Gryll commenced flapping his large, leathery wings and Sarah inhaled as they lifted off the floor, headed toward the dark, glass ceiling. “Have fun, Sarah! I’ll see you again tonight!” the king called up to her just before they reached the apex of the Needle…

And suddenly they were free! Free as the cool wind rushing past, rippling through her blouse and her hair, free as the proverbial bat out of hell they sped up higher then cruised at altitude, the alien landscape and remnants of civilization splayed out far below them. From this perspective, it almost reminded Sarah of a deep-sea thermal vent on Earth: far beyond anything imaginably inhabitable, there was suddenly bizarre, profuse life there at the very end of existence. The sleek Thelbane glinted darkly in the Technicolor light that phased in and out of precisely half the anti-Copernican dome of the heavens, the bright chromatic bands close enough together here that one could see them all at once, churning and sifting like sand in a bottle near the ‘pole’. The other half of the sky was a wildly alive night; the stars were not only dancing up here but shooting right past them occasionally like tiny comets no larger than beach balls, leaving dazzling trails of stardust in their wake! Were they truly that high up? It was remarkably difficult to visibly gauge physical distance in true Chaos. There was still a lot of black down there but this world was anything but dark; the barren, rocky plain she had spied from the tip of the Needle was pulsing with a fluorescent, phosphorescent glow in a myriad of colors as it and the Shifting Mountains continued their lazy drifting patterns.

They were flapping steadily toward the Cathedral of the Serpent, and Gryll flew loop-de-loop about those spires of perfectly frozen flame, making his passenger laugh and holler. As he skirted the Abyss, Sarah could finally see the interior of the Cathedral: the half that faced the Pit was completely open to the world, with immense amphitheater-style seating inside, the altar and pulpit at the very edge, illuminated by its own gold-and-red light. On the far side of the Pit, running as far as the eye could see, was the legendary Field Beyond Good and Evil, although it was really only remarkable due to the interred remains of the late king of Amber, Oberon Barimen; even from way up here, his showy gold-inlaid catafalque could clearly be seen with the naked eye. He had refused interment in the Abyss, as was customary in Chaos, and his by right being the son of Chaos lord; in an oddly urbane way, the usual practice wasn’t unlike burial-at-sea.

Gryll had been edging out just a little over the Pit now and Sarah took a gulp, finally daring a real first glance downward, automatically tightening her grip on him as she did so. If the sight of the Rim had been hard to handle without magical intervention, the view full-on with it was still almost overwhelming. Down there, down, down, down forever, swirling and writhing in every shade of black were destruction and creation, the ultimate death and the components of the first primordial forms of life, all churning together in a violently turbulent whirlpool of unimaginable raw power in perfect silence. Her own power came from that awe-inspiring, terrifying locality, manifested by the Logrus. It was the most sobering moment of Sarah’s young life.

“Look over there!” Gryll suddenly shouted back at her, pointing to one of the parts of the edge of the Pit across from them. It took Sarah a moment or two to be able to focus against the swirling shades, but soon she could just barely make out…demon-formed Chaosians in mountain climbing gear?!

“What the…”

“Pit Divers,” Gryll announced with a distinct note of disgust, clucking his literally forkéd tongue – it nearly made a sound rather like someone snapping with both fingers simultaneously – “trying to dig treasures out of the Serpent’s Jaws. Some people simply have no respect,” he shook his head. Then gave a peculiar, sharp laugh. “Hang on tight!”

And started to glide faster, right across that black, gaping void!

Sarah gasped, wide-eyed. “Merlin forbade this!”

“The High King forbade only dropping suddenly with you onboard,” the old demon replied slyly, gaining speed in a controlled descent until they were well within the top section of the Abyss itself. Coming up to the cliff-edge, Gryll suddenly shot straight up alongside, goosing the divers from behind with an ear-splitting screech that made Sarah’s own ears ring! In seconds they were past the lot of them, heading aloft once more, beyond the divers shaking fists and imaginative epithets. Higher and higher and higher they sped; Gryll’s wings were audibly buzzing, beating as fast as a hummingbird’s.

“Reach upward with one hand as far as you can,” he yelled back with a quick glance behind at her; his fanged, pained-looking grimace said it all.

With extreme care, Sarah dared to let go of him with her right hand, stretching her arm up straight. It was notable that the outside temperature here never varied in the least regardless of where they were – not quite temperate, always a little on the cool side; only the stars were genuinely warm. But they were on the ‘day’ side of the heavens, on a seeming collision course with the sky itself! Sarah briefly wondered if it was possible to crash through to the other side, then quickly forced the thought out of her mind; it was simply too easy to manipulate shadow like that out here!

Gryll eased up on a dime and commenced soaring straight again – but Sarah’s hand was in the color! It felt like some substance between mist, light, and… gelatin, maybe? It was only slightly warmer than the air about them. Even at this she failed to realize what he was really doing until they reached the next band… and the green stuff trailed into the red! Sarah gasped at the effect, then laughed, waving her hand back-and-forth, making the human equivalent of a jet-trail! She was suddenly reminded of photographs she had seen of the planet Jupiter, with all that flowing gas, those visible fluctuations. Perhaps those storms were caused by nothing more than some alien creatures out for a lark.

Soon enough Gryll was descending again, soaring low over what Sarah had dubbed the Barrio of Chaos, following the aforementioned filmy – a ribbon-thin band of gray that reeled one into a desired destination (the small, daily-use version of the infamous Black Road), but she was hardly paying attention to the dark undercity and the rough commerce stemming from the aptly named Black Zone; that streak she had made in the very sky was still visible, albeit starting to break up where it had started. She was beginning to feel a bit lightheaded by the time she suddenly found herself indoors once again; they had rather abruptly come through the wall just above a fireplace into a large open hallway with very few features, save a rather nice black marble floor with a long runner of plush deep-blue carpeting, a magnificent staircase leading up to seemingly nowhere (same carpeting, dark wood banister), and a peculiar mirrored alcove at the far end of the room with a watermelon-tourmaline pillar in the center of it. The flames behind the grate were regular-colored but they were braiding about themselves like thick ribbons.

Gryll circled once to slow his speed and finally touched down on the carpet in the center of the room, crouching so that Sarah could more easily disembark. She felt a bit woozy as she did so, but didn’t even realize why until Gryll immediately leapt to his feet and commenced tackling the straps on the gasmask, gingerly picking them loose with his long, sharp claws. Sarah reached back to help him; once the last one was released, she wrenched the mask off of her face and gasped a full, clean breath of air! Panting in relief, she turned the mask over in her hands and immediately spotted the problem: the outside filter was now completely caked over in a very thin, bright yellow mud-like film, still moist from her own respiration!

“Do not touch it,” Gryll cautioned as he stretched his wings, noting her interest, “the substances would burn even your skin at that concentration. Are you otherwise feeling fine? You seem to have made the journey in one piece.”

Sarah honestly couldn’t tell whether or not he had been joking just then. She also belatedly noticed that he had already shrunk to just her height. Technically these creatures were carnivorous, but really they could absorb just about anything and eventually break it down for fuel, if not nutrition.

“Better now. Thanks for the lift in.”

“It was amusing, Sarah. Perhaps our dark roads shall cross again.”

And with that he spread his great gray wings and zipped straight through the ceiling!

The all-too-familiar quiet stillness of the hallway settled over her: she was completely alone again in a strange, huge building. But for how long? It felt odd after all those tedious months of relative social isolation that just the thought of accidentally running into anyone at all made her uncomfortably nervous. Writing it off as rather justifiable paranoia at this point, she quickly dug Merlin’s map out of her trump pouch and sat down right where she was on the carpet to examine it. She had known that Mandor had relatively shielded her from this aspect of life in the Courts during her stay at Mandorways, even making false doors for her ease of use while she learned about the tentative nature of the patched-together Ways. The genuine article was in here, however, and dealing with it on her own for the first time was a bit daunting. Every single room in this complex had multiple Ways leading in and out of it and most of them jogged outside briefly in nearby shadows, sometimes two or three times, before one reached one’s destination. And not all of them were in the walls, either; some were hidden in the floors and ceilings and a handful were perfectly invisible right in the middle of a room. She was going to have to be exceedingly cautious of how she moved about in here until she could get her bearings (which was probably going to be never; she simply wasn’t going to be here long enough to truly get comfortable with the system.) Upon closer inspection, Sarah realized that the blueprints were positively riddled with instructional notes – thankfully in a legible hand – but some of the directional symbols more resembled a play diagram for American football than a floor plan. For the great hall alone (she figured that’s where she was):

‘Sink through floor here to reach fifth level up, front corridor.’

‘Do not take the stairs – they lead to Lady Dara Sawall’s private wing and an active volcano.’

‘Take the wall right of the fireplace to access inner dining hall, but walk backwards to reach it, never forward (shortcut.)’

‘Four turns clockwise about the pillar will lead to the second level hallway living quarters.’

Guess I’d better figure out how to get to my room first, she thought, stiffly stretching her legs as she got up. That had been quite a haul in getting here, to say nothing of her extreme physical exertion this morning. Granted, she wasn’t feeling as beat up as she probably should’ve all-considered, but she was plenty fatigued as it was. Careful to stay on the carpeted walkway, she made her way over to the mirrored alcove and stepped inside. Counting off, she promenaded about the pillar the proscribed number of times clockwise – it was like being in the middle of a kaleidoscope – until she reached the desired hallway. Double-checking the map (this was nuts), she practically hugged the stone castle wall to her right to avoid getting sucked into a different Way along the other side, then turned sharply straight through the wall right before the tapestry –

And into the rooms she would be occupying for the night. Okay, so it wasn’t really as bad to navigate as it seemed, it would mostly just take getting used to. Obviously the Ways of Sawall had not all been built and/or patched together at once due to the extreme differences in the décor, and, indeed, styles of construction: the entrance was opulent, palatial, near-modern; this wing could’ve been a part of somebody’s castle from Shadow Earth’s middle ages Europe. The room she had been assigned was round and spacious; it might’ve been a tower but there was no real way of knowing. There were no windows, but colorful, thick tapestries depicting various outdoor scenes – the Chaosian outdoors, that is – festooned the otherwise dull walls. A large, ornately carved stone fireplace provided not only heat but also light, although there were real taper candelabras here and there – this was definitely the old section, then. The bed was king-size, though, and there was a small worktable on one side, nearer the light, and a standing wardrobe on the other; she put the gasmask down on the table, careful not to let the side with the yellow goo touch the polished hardwood. The wardrobe proved to be almost entirely empty; her evening gown was hung up nicely in the center rack, however, with a pair of rather delicate-looking shoes that matched just off to the side. Along with her travel clutch.

“Mandor,” she quietly sighed, feeling the smooth leather. He was clearly determined to be a gentleman to the end, even if she wasn’t sure of the precise ends he was trying for anymore. Thinking back to some of the things he’d said right before their duel, the idea that he had been actively trying to hurt her oddly didn’t wash. The man was capable of wielding Primal Chaos as a weapon – what in Chaos would he need her for? And it would have been Lord Suhuy who had taught him that. Looking at it now in hindsight, while the fact that someone with the proper training could destroy her like that was still terrifying, it wasn’t logical at all that the terror had latched onto those two, Mandor in particular. It really was weird. Sure, he was still a big control freak, but had he ever actively tried to harm her? Suhuy had obviously been in the process of psychologically conditioning her to work for Chaos, but Mandor turned up practically nil on that count. Why had she done all that? It made no sense. That alone was more than slightly worrying. She was about to shut the wardrobe door when she felt a single, distinct tug. Toward the clutch. She knew that feeling for what it was by now, but this time it wasn’t a hard compulsion, just a little push.

‘Open me.’ All right, Sarah thought a bit guardedly, summoning up her version of the Logrus on the odd chance that she would have to quickly interpose it between herself and whatever was planted in that small leather purse, but upon looking inside she dismissed Her; it was only a note, which read:

Sarah, by now you should have been briefed by His Exalted Excellency as well as instructed on how to conduct yourself about here. Should you require anything at all, merely pull on the silk cord hanging by the bed. I am aware that the prospect of interacting with other people will be exciting for you, but you must refrain from introducing yourself to anyone, including your linguistics tutor, who is scheduled to give you lessons at one-thirty (one quarter turning retrograde) this afternoon – be in your rooms then. Supper will be served in the indoor dining hall at seven sharp linear; be dressed for the occasion and on your very best behavior. The High King expressly intimated that it is only a semi-formal event in spite of his august presence there, however, so you needn’t worry about disguising your physical appearance; all the other guests are to be human-formed as well. I shall see you then.

~ Mandor


It wasn’t the warmest of correspondences but neither was it terribly cold and formal (for him). It was about as could be expected, she guessed, from someone she had just emancipated herself from. At least he didn’t sound angry or hurt – that was something. She folded the note back up and replaced it in the clutch, shutting the wardrobe door. What time was it now? It took Sarah several moments to spot the room’s Chaos clock: it was an old-fashioned dark wood affair with about a dozen different time keeping pulleys and mechanisms that just blended in perfectly between the two zhind-hunting scenes along the far portion of the wall.

Not even 10:00?! She groaned in exhaustion. The bed looked awfully inviting and she decided to take advantage of the fact that it was still so early. Kicking off her small boots, she was asleep almost as soon as her head hit the pillow. Sweet oblivion…
_____________________________________________________________________________________________

Dreams in this place were as strangely fragmented and drifting as the land itself; Sarah could only reproduce bits and pieces later upon waking: floating between nowheres in a Technicolor sky on a gray, gauzy walkway that fluttered in a breeze she couldn’t feel; fantastical monsters that made a sensual dance of devouring each other in a macabre circle-of-life; flying along on the back of an enormous metallic angel as the sky spliced apart again and again in their wake, each time revealing a new world; a kaleidoscopic hallway constructed entirely of mirrors on all sides, including the ceiling and the floor, presenting many images of herself, but all looked slightly different from in her a myriad of ways - at the very end, standing behind the far glass, had been the full length image of a man attired in a black and silver historical-looking military costume. He had shouted something at her, but it only came across as gibberish that didn’t even sync up with his lips, like a badly dubbed foreign language movie. She had stopped having true nightmares ages ago and was used to the bizarre cabaret that her brain concocted for her nightly now, but upon waking that last vision made her think hard; it had seemed… different from the others. Was it of someone she was supposed to know? Or would know shortly? It wasn’t unheard of to have prophetic or spiritually communicative dreams in Chaos, but she had had yet to have one personally as far as she knew. Mentally stashing away the face for later (dark hair, pale skin, indeterminate age but probably older, handsome but coldly hardened, a jaded expression in his green eyes, far greener than any she had ever seen) she got up and availed herself of the amenities in the hidden bathroom, which was thankfully modern if a bit antique. The clawed feet on the tub looked real – taxidermied – as if they had actually belonged to some creature at one point in time, but she tried not to think about it; the soak felt too good on her sore muscles.

Ordering lunch proved a bit more awkward, between the way that the serving woman kept trying to feel out Sarah’s possible title (instinctively sensing her to be the alien invader that she was) and the fact that Sarah had to keep pretending not to notice the large, retractable stinger imbedded in the roof of the woman’s mouth (it was unnervingly visible every time she spoke!) But at least the service was fast and efficient – she returned with Sarah’s order not five minutes later – and the food was Mandor’s level of superb. Given the fact that this was a high aristocracy segment of the populace, he had to have had an eccentric reputation for not letting anyone else near the kitchen. If there even was one.

Lunch was quickly followed by the afore-promised linguistics tutor: a severe, dour-faced, stern, middle-aged taskmaster with decidedly blue-gray skin, uniformed in plain Sawall livery. He made Lord Suhuy Swayvil look positively indulgent and easy-going by comparison. The session was extremely intensive and lasted a grueling four linear hours with no appreciable breaks beyond physical necessity. Granted, the man seemed to know his work inside and out, but he displayed so little personality that Sarah seriously wondered whether he could stand his own company; even his vocal inflections (while technically accurate) sounded mechanical, fake. By the end of the ordeal, Sarah nearly cheered at the sight of his back as he disappeared at last through the outer wall of the chamber, his arms loaded up with his textbooks and her exercise sheets; even though it was only to be the one lesson, he had insisted on grading her to empirically demonstrate to his superior that she had attained sufficient progress – he could’ve been referring to any of them, really, but she was only too happy just seeing him leave to ask.

An hour-and-a-half before dinner…well, give or take a little, she thought, turning around and checking the clock as she flexed her overworked fingers and wrist. Time didn’t seem to pass as cleanly here as it did at Mandorways, either; the very hands of the clock seemed to suddenly advance and retreat in small increments for no discernable reason other than petty annoyance. It was still sufficient time to do a little more exploring, though. But she didn’t want to risk accidentally running late, either…

Sarah quickly decided on dressing for dinner before heading out again. Adjusting the position of her makeshift trump hollister down (it had to be slung lower to be accessible through the hollow pocket of her skirt), she donned the lavish evening gown once again and fixed her hair nicely before going out the…wall (it wasn’t really a door.)

Merlin was right in that there weren’t very many places that she could physically go, but what was probably the best destination in the compound was on her list – about half of it, anyway. The Maze of Art in the Ways of Sawall was a legendary collection even by these people’s standards, a museum-sized display that boasted impressive pieces from every conceivable era, and included works both by well-known Chaosian artists as well as works culled from some of the best artists of the Black Zone in several different sets of shadows, and beyond. It was practically expected for any visitor to the Sawall holdings to attempt to navigate the maze at least once; guides could be had for a nominal fee, but only those unafraid of being labeled green novices ever availed themselves of the service. Often enough, visitors from other houses came calling for this purpose alone – hardly any had ever been turned away. As with much of the estate, many of the ways cobbled into the Maze were off-limits to Sarah (which was a shame; many of the shadows traversed in the gallery had been specifically chosen for artistic merit as well.) Still, fairly large portions were open to her yet according to the back of her map; it was just a matter of getting there…

Taking precisely fourteen long strides further down the large, high-ceilinged castle hallway, Sarah suddenly veered through the left wall, swallowing her trepidation as she descended a rounded floating staircase without walls (the place was pitch-black with the exception of the generously-sized blue-glowing stairs that rather resembled a certain type of tree fungus), abruptly coming out into a sitting room not unlike Mandor’s library in décor, only smaller and without the shelving. There was a certain spot in the carpet if only she could…yes! Feeling the tension that signaled the presence of a transport area, she stepped cleanly into it and was instantly whisked away to the late Gramble Sawall’s favorite installment in the art gallery: the Sculpture Garden.

It was technically impossible to gauge the size of the hall with any accuracy due to the fact that time-space itself had been elaborately folded in its making and the place shifted regularly of its own volition to vary the displayed set of sculptures that a viewer saw on any given day. Considering its age, the content as well as the concept seemed surprisingly modernist to Sarah. The Garden was dark, with only strategically-placed floor lighting to illumine the installation pieces to their best advantage. It was far from stuffy in here; a light, clean breeze was coming through from somewhere. Chimes tinkled faintly from further in. The floor appeared to be an integral part of the exhibit: there were no perfectly straight sections – it curved and undulated, there were even stairs in certain areas. Most of the art leaned toward the abstract - organic shapes, mechanical, strangely compelling combinations of both – the kinds of images that only made sense to the subconscious mind. Even the recognizable sculptures were simply breathtaking, like a gigantic house of playing cards constructed almost entirely of clear glass; most of the pieces were immense, making the viewer feel miniature by comparison. A felled tree looked almost lifelike in detail save that it had been painstakingly cast and hammered out of solid silver. After wandering a while, Sarah suddenly registered that she was now walking on what should have been the left wall! Only it had become the floor a turn back… She couldn’t help but think of the Staircase Chamber in the heart of Jareth’s castle, how he had been able to walk on all surfaces in there. If she had only had the faith, would she have been able to do it, too? Toby had. Never in her life would she forget the sight of her baby brother staring down at her from where he had been sitting upright-but-upsidedown on the ceiling!

While a white crescent-carved bench with stylized flowers along the sides looked inviting – it was positioned so a viewer could enjoy a very intricate perpetual motion machine that appeared to be directly affected by no less than four separate sources of gravity – Sarah knew she didn’t have much time here and really wanted to see as much of the gallery as she could, and so she took a series of curves that brought her right-side-up back out into the art maze proper. Briefly shielding her eyes from the sudden brightness of a more normal level of illumination, she saw that she was in a long hallway that was just covered in elaborate floor-to-ceiling tapestries and fabric arts in a wide aesthetic variety, the styles running the gamut from historical primitive to true-to-life portraiture to deconstructed modern works in every fibre not under the sun; all were mixed together. Carefully sensing along the right wall, she came to a way that lead into a relatively small (albeit high-ceilinged) room devoted to a single item: a real jabberwocky skeleton that had been splatter-painted garishly in orange, blue, and yellow. It was the infamous room Merlin had mentioned that contained a shortcut out should she need it; at least she knew how to find it now. Checking her bearings against the map, she headed through a different wall into another wing of the gallery, a hall with an assortment of small sculptures and paintings. It seemed a safe assumption to make of Chaosian taste that while beauty was in the eye of the beholder (and the delicate variety was definitely appreciated), many things that she herself would consider ugly or grotesque were prized as more daringly beautiful.

For as impressively awe-inspiring as this place and its collections were, she still couldn’t help feeling a little bit depressed from the total lack of any natural light in any of the areas in which she was permitted. It was like living underground. And even when there was light, time – in particular time-of-day - felt entirely arbitrary, which was as physically bewildering as it was freeing. The illusion of the passage of time had been downright fake at Mandorways so she wouldn’t feel completely overwhelmed by the phenomena; this was far more alien than any arctic summer or winter on Shadow Earth. It was neither at once.

“Where there’s hardly no day and hardly no night,” she sang in English on a whim, looking at a surrealist rendering of a hellride on canvas. It was so bizarre but ‘Mary Poppins’ just felt terribly apropos here, right down to the casual world-jumping.

To Sarah’s complete surprise, she actually heard what sounded like a faint male voice singing in response from further down the corridor past the bend -

“From the Needle of Chaos, oh what a sight…”

- in English! She stopped cold. Was someone else in the gallery? It was possible if not probable, but according to Mandor almost no one in these parts knew any conversational English at all, let alone tunes from an American Disney film! The words had been altered but the melody was correct. She waited a moment.

Silence.

“Hello?” she called aloud in English, her voice echoing down the chamber. Silence again.

Then she heard the whistling – it was coming from the left corridor – then it stopped: whoever it was had just done the first four bars of ‘Chim-Cheree’! Quickly turning the corner and continuing down the hall where it had seemed to emanate from, she followed up with the next four bars herself, then waited. The voice answered immediately, continuing the song, and this time she rapidly paced towards the source, which appeared to be getting closer from the slight increase in volume. She was about to enter a grove of trees hammered out of various metals when her mind was suddenly flooded with the image of Merlin; he was trumping her.

“There you are!” he exclaimed, looking relieved, “I was starting to get worried you were going to be late for dinner. Where did you get off to?”

“The art gallery,” Sarah answered a bit embarrassedly; she had been so thoroughly engrossed that she had completely lost track of the time!

Merlin merely looked up for a moment with a good-natured half-smile. “All right, come on,” he held out his hand for her; she took it with regret and allowed herself to be pulled through into an elegantly furnished dining room. There was background lighting coming from somewhere – everywhere, it seemed – but it was soft, accented by the immense blown-glass chandelier floating above the table; the piece was a work of art to rival any in the Sculpture Garden, with a variety of differently-shaped hands all holding the candles. There were about three-dozen other people in the room besides them, all dressed impeccably formal but, to Sarah’s profound relief, all of them looked human enough that she wouldn’t be fighting the impulse to either stare or completely avoid eye-contact all evening. “I made Lord Mandor hand over his trump of you,” Merlin added very quietly as he pocketed it; her sudden appearance, and by the High King’s own hand no less, had attracted more than a few marking glances. “In exchange, he requested your own trump of his library at Mandorways be returned to him. He assured me it’s nothing personal, just a basic security measure since you’re going away, and frankly I’m inclined to believe him; he’s never even given out a single key to any of his mistresses. You can just give the trump to me; I’ll make sure he gets it before I leave here tonight.”

“Oh…right. Of course,” she replied, feeling just a little blindsided as she got out her trump pouch and extracted the card of a place that had been for all intents and purposes her home for over half-a-year. It was oddly a little bittersweet to lose it. “Did either he or Su – Lord Suhuy, want any of the others back?” she corrected herself. No casual addresses in here.

“Nope, just that one. But as long as we’re shuffling the decks, here, take one of mine; you may need it before this business is over,” he smoothly passed her a trump facedown; she accepted it with a curtsey.

“Thank you, your Excellency.” The omitted ‘Exalted’ garnered a look. “I thought I was supposed to be discreet and not draw undue attention to myself,” she answered it slyly.

“Oh, go on, mingle already,” he playfully shooed her off, “just remember you’re an international woman-of-mystery here.”

“Got it,” she gave a small smile with another curtsey and, taking her leave of the king, turned away to examine the room; as tempting as it was to try to strike up a conversation with some of these people, she knew it would be almost too difficult to carry on without knowing what was safe for her to even talk about, let alone not giving her name, and she quickly decided against it, walking over to the far wall to examine the large painting there instead, which she assumed was a family portrait (assumed, for the figures were all demon-formed.) She picked out Mandor’s octopal ape immediately, standing behind and to the left of an old, gnarled creature seated on a deep-blue backed chaise-lounge, holding a goat-headed lady’s thin, scaly fingers; Mandor’s two gorilla-like right hands were resting on the back behind old Gramble Sawall. Something that could’ve been a young Merlin knelt by the other side - down front but distinctly apart from the others – while two little imps squatted cheekily on the floor at their mother’s feet, one looking far more annoyed than the other at having to sit still for so long, its tiny arms crossed as it glared accusingly at the artist. That one has to be Jurt, she thought, so the other must be Despil. Behind the chaise on the other side was a human-formed figure of a woman; she was standing in near-profile with one delicate ivory hand on the back of the lounge, but she faced completely away from the viewer, revealing only a cascade of thick, wavy blonde hair. Mandor’s mother? Probably. None of the adults were smiling, but Merlin had snuck in just a whisper of one. The tableau was terribly formal and imposing, as it had obviously been painted to be.

Sarah suddenly felt a light hand on her shoulder and automatically glanced back – it was Mandor!

“Studying our family portrait for incriminating clues?”

The statement could have been harsh or accusatory, but from his tone of voice she could tell it was only a tease. Sarah was speechless for a second but quickly recovered herself.

“It’s a very good likeness. When was it done?” she turned back to look again. It almost made her feel strangely guilty, the degree to which she still felt perfectly at ease in his company even now.

“A little over twenty-five cycles ago, Chaos-reckoning. The artist would be pleased that his work is still occasionally appreciated,” he offered graciously, along with his arm, escorting her to the table. “This spot shall be yours this evening,” he pulled out one of the high-backed cushioned chairs for her, pushing it in as she sat down; he’d placed her at about mid-table on the right-hand side – not bad at all, considering who all seemed to be present. She had been on the verge of thanking him when his attention abruptly shifted.

“Lady Hendrake, so glad you could make time for our little frivolities,” he bowed elegantly over the hand of a rather tall woman – she was nearly his height – with strong sensual features, dark-brown eyes, and fiery auburn hair that was pulled back tight in a low twist-bun.

“It is hardly every day that His Excellency invites one to a private dinner, and with such a distinguished host, no less,” the woman responded in a distinct alto register with a slight smile as Mandor straightened and pulled out the chair to Sarah’s right, “although I must confess I feel more than a little underdressed for the occasion.” Coming from a human, the observation would have sounded utterly ludicrous: she was wearing a gorgeous black-and-white sleeveless gown that showed her well-toned muscles to their advantage.

“When one gets a halfling for a king, one must be prepared to accommodate the other half occasionally,” Mandor quietly joked with a light lip-smile as the lady deposited herself in the chair.

Hendrake! Gilva Hendrake?! Sarah thought with almost shock during this small exchange. The family was definitely important enough to have at least nominal representation at any formal event, but Hendrake was also the most famous (or infamous) of the ‘war houses’ of Chaos; the women trained right alongside the men, no exceptions! It was small wonder Merlin had been so smilingly tight-lipped about her; he had just deliberately seated Sarah next to a highly-cultured Amazon! The woman had likely fought at Patternfall!

“But Lord Mandor, who is this charming young lady you have me seated next to?” she asked with a rather knowing smile, glancing at Sarah. Merlin had to have told her beforehand; she was simply going through the motions to be courteous.

“Lady Gilva Hendrake,” Mandor uttered barely above a whisper, leaning in between them, “may I present to you my ward, Sarah,” his neutral expression leaning toward one of warning; Gilva caught it and simply nodded once, as if to say, ‘don’t worry, your secret’s safe with me.’

“A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Sarah,” she said just as quietly in her lower register, reaching across under the table and giving Sarah’s right hand a light, conspiratory squeeze with a tentative smile. “Lady Dara could not join us this evening?” she addressed Mandor again. “I am surprised that she would want to miss an event like this.”

“Lady Dara is currently indisposed elsewhere, but I will send along your salutations and good wishes.” He shot Sarah a fast, pointed look before moving on to greet his other guests. Whatever had been done to ensure that his conniving stepmother was currently out-of-the-way was directly his own doing. Sarah hoped that he had just found some interesting phenomenon or somesuch in a distant shadow to keep her preoccupied and that the woman wasn’t experiencing the magical equivalent of being tied up, gagged, and locked in the closet. She wasn't about to ask, either, but in any event this would mesh pretty cleanly with Merlin’s impressions of the man: Mandor was willing to go to great lengths to protect and promote the interests of those he was interested in.

Gilva leaned in closer, watching him go. “So, that suave, silver fox was your mentor in the ways of Chaos, eh?”

Sarah nodded, still feeling just a little overwhelmed. Gilva let go of her, straightening back up.

“We’ll just have to see how your table manner measures up,” she warmly teased her, taking a sip from a wine glass that had literally just appeared at her place-setting. While Sarah still had her reservations, she had to admit the lady seemed good-hearted enough, albeit a little on the intimidating side. The fact that Merlin was willing to personally vouch for her was something, though. A frosty glass of water appeared at Sarah’s own place-setting – almost like a cue – and she took a drink herself.

Only seconds later, the chair to her left slid out and down plopped a rather dashing-looking young man who could’ve been in his twenties. He had neatly tousled black-blue hair and sea-green eyes, and was wearing a close-cut suit that was mostly black but with deep-blue accents. He looked terribly familiar to Sarah but she couldn’t place him fast enough. It didn’t really matter; he addressed Gilva first. Of course.

“Lady Gilva, it’s nice to see you as always,” he bowed slightly from where he was. He nearly sounded as young as he looked.

“Lord Despil,” she acknowledged him. “We often don’t see you at all at court. Is it business or the Sawall reticence that keeps you away?”

“Both, I guess,” he smiled, looking down a little self-consciously for a moment with a quiet laugh, and Sarah immediately understood the king’s choice on this one: Despil Sawall – Merlin’s second-youngest half-brother – was as shy and retiring as the as the youngest, Jurt, was fiery and rash. His gaze shifted, catching Sarah’s eyes. “And this would be Mistress Sarah.” He raised her left hand and actually kissed the back of it, making her smile and blush. “A pleasure. Please just call me Despil.”

“Watch your protocol, my lord,” Gilva had the nerve to reprimand him, “she’s younger than she looks.”

“We do want for her to feel welcome here,” he replied slyly, relinquishing her hand before turning away to briefly greet his neighbor to the left.

Okay, this crazy night is definitely making it into my journal, Sarah thought; she hadn’t bothered to keep one since she had arrived in Chaos, having no idea how it would hold up in shadow-travel (let alone the risk of either of her mentors reading it) but she was mentally storing up reams of information from her sojourns and experiences out here. What she had already would fill volumes.

Merlin had gone to stand at the head of the table; suddenly everyone was raising their glasses in toast and Sarah raised hers, too.

“To Chaos and her active dealings in the outer worlds,” he said loudly enough that the whole company could hear, “may they be peaceful for them and profitable for us!”

“To Chaos!” reverberated through the room. Sarah toasted it with those next to her and drank as well. It still felt sort of strange, but not as strange as it had the first time under that brilliant red canopy of leaves.

To Chaos.

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(Incidental music: funky little computer groove for the Ghostwheel - Trash80 'Pain Fade Down'; looking out at Chaos from the Thelbane - Uroboros Choke, Nailed to the Sky, 'Checkmated' (the old one with the lyrics if you can find it); flight over Chaos - same album, 'Bread, Death, Sex & Masks'. Just love some of Steve Devaney's soundscapes.)