FicWad

Chapter 11 – Away from the Drain

Light: sweet, bright warmth and the fresh briny smell of the very first saltwater ocean in the universes – Sarah nearly wept upon the moment of her arrival in Amber, the immediate stimuli was so moving; it was simply too beautiful after being shuffled through shadow upon shadow of largely uninhabitable harsh alien worlds for all those long months. She just closed her eyes and lifted her face and arms up to the sun like some growing thing, breathing deep, reveling in the feel of the ‘natural’ thermal radiation again. Even Merlin had had to admit that her long sojourn in Chaos had rendered her skin tone so pale that she would be instantly singled out of the fair-weather crowd here, and he had temporarily darkened her complexion slightly until her own more normal coloring had a chance to redevelop. She suddenly felt a light shiver shoot down her spine that immediately jolted her alert, a very distinctive feeling she had long come to associate with magic work…but the feeling passed just as abruptly as it had hit her, and she quickly dismissed it as the delayed reaction of jumping the complete spectrum of all existence in one go. Looking about her, she appeared to have been trumped into a back service alleyway somewhere. She had to get moving.

“Sarah!” She heard the tiny whisper practically inside her left ear – it was the Ghostwheel. “Are you still handling the transition okay? I brought you out as gently as I could, but there’s still the risk of the fatigue catching up with you.”

“Doing alright, I guess,” she whispered back. “Where are we?”

“We’re currently in the Harbor District; it makes logical sense that you would be coming from this direction if you had just arrived by boat, but you shouldn’t tarry here long – the neighborhoods are pretty rough. Here are your identification papers and the money for your stay.”

Sarah felt a sudden extra weight in the bag she carried.

“The currency is Begman to back up your story. You’ll have to have it exchanged for Amberite drachms, but any of the banks on the Concourse will do it for you – that sort of thing’s done all the time in the city, nothing unusual about that. I’ll run on ahead and check out the inns and signal you as to which one might be best suitable for our purposes here; most of them are taverns with rooms for rent upstairs, but there are two or three that might be safer for a girl traveling alone further up the hill. Other than that errand I will be staying close-by at all times, but you must refrain from speaking to me in public if at all possible – looks far too suspicious. Follow me!”

And a single ray of sunshine shot off down the alley and around the left corner! Sarah jogged up to the edge of what had to be Harbor Road and commenced the long climb up the hill towards the middle of the city, tracing the telltale sundog Ghost had left in his wake. The City of Amber itself was obviously very old but beautiful to her Order-biased way of thinking; if the general structure and layout reminded her of anything it might’ve been pictures of the remaining Shadow Earth construction dating back to the Middle Ages in Europe. The streets in this sector were cobblestoned, often with no sidewalks, and from the organic debris she had to keep stepping around every now and again this was clearly a horse transportation society – easily confirmed as a darkly bearded man on horseback wearing a 17th century riding habit trotted neatly past her in the direction of the harbor; he tipped his three-corner hat to her in passing. Most of the homes and businesses lining the road were built very close together and were only one or two stories high, with none passing three – as many flights as most would care to climb on a regular basis. Harbor Road twisted and turned with smaller adjacent side streets forking away for some time, but presently there was an off-angled crossroads with actual street signs and Sarah, still following the light, turned off Harbor up Smith Street, which was somewhat bigger. The names were not arbitrary; the clanking of beaten metal rang out in the cool of the morning. There were no less than four independent foundries lining this corridor alone and there was definitely some smoke rising from the ironworks farther over, but it was mostly being blown out to the sea - an unexpected large gap in the buildings suddenly revealed Amber’s sea and Sarah had to stop to look. She had never in all her life seen water so blue, currently calm with the sun sparkling down, the distant tiny shape of a lone brig steadily sailing its way toward the horizon and the unknown. A large flock of white seabirds wheeled in the open sky out there, so distant and far down that only the faint echo of their cries could be heard from up here, and a bit further out, in the sky…but it couldn’t possibly be…

“This your first time to our city, miss?”

Sarah spun around to see who had addressed her – it was one of the smithies across the street in his workyard, cobbling a set of horseshoes. He was dark-haired with a slight beard – it would’ve been difficult to guess his age – and he was fairly covered in soot from the forge, as much a part of his uniform as his protective leather apron and thick work gloves.

“Yes,” she managed the word well enough, carefully wandering over; the simple affirmative was completely different in Amberite Thari.

“You see that dragon out there?” he gestured with his hammer toward the gap in the buildings and Sarah nodded, wide-eyed – she had been right! “That blasted thing’s been circling east and south of the harbor for weeks now, won’t move on, like she’s hunting something,” he continued; his accent sounded distinctively odd to Sarah’s ears and she did her best to remember it. “Course, them up at the Castle say she’s harmless enough to us, but I’ve never seen one stick around for so long doing nothing and I’ve seen plenty over the years from my small vantage point here. You take my advice and avoid the beach. They never come up this far away from their normal food sources, though; we should still be safe in the City.”

“Thank you,” Sarah also managed casually – the basic exchanges and colloquialisms were where most of the linguistic differences lay. “I’m just on my way up to the Concourse right now.”

He nodded approval. “Should you need anything metal mended – even something as small as a belt buckle – you remember who steered you right,” he smiled, gesturing upwards to the iron-lettered sign above the yard: it read ‘Fabrion Iden and Sons Metallurgy’ and beneath, ‘Specializing in Horseshoes, Chainmail Armor and Assorted Small Fineries.’

“I will,” she smiled in return, starting off again. “Good day!”

“Safe journey!”

And he resumed his work; she could hear him hammering again as she paced away. More people were passing her in the street in various modes of mostly simple medieval dress, but many were headed in the same general direction as she was, pushing wooden handcarts of small wares and fresh produce and flowers, all headed to market it would seem; she was casually greeted often. Perhaps strangers weren’t all that strange here; she could hear snippets of not only Thari in at least a half-dozen lesser dialects but even one or two languages she couldn’t understand at all. In a weird way it made her unexpectedly homesick for New York City. She had known that Amber was a very important commercial hub for the nearby shadows, but she hadn’t really given much though as to what in consequence the place was really like. At least some of the locals seemed friendly enough – in the more decent parts of town, anyway.

Yep – right down to neighbors yelling at each other out the windows, she thought with a smirk, glancing up at a second-story window and a woman with a squalling baby on her hip, who was shouting at a shopkeeper across the street for making so much racket at this time of the morning: he was a clockmaker. Many people in this sector lived above their shops, rows upon rows of them, mostly basic furniture and home goods where she currently was but more and more daily and specialty items graced the display windows the closer she got to the center of the city. Sarah turned left onto West Vine, then took a right on Weaver Street – the going was all uphill, and while her shoes were obviously sturdy enough to handle it, she wished the soles were a little better padded; the cobblestones made for tough hiking if one was unused to it. Weaver was every bit as colorful as the name would suggest, with bolts of fabric of every description and use and a few simple finished items crowding the shop windows; she could hear well-seasoned haggling going on just inside. The foot traffic had to temporarily part to make way for a closed carriage – it was a splendid affair, black with gold trim and terribly ornate, with the curtains drawn closed. A black team of horses and an equally resplendent coachman dressed in 18th century style completed the fairytale-esque transport; they were headed east toward the upper-class residences. In spite of the high ostentation, barely anyone apart from her paid it the slightest attention; the real business of life for most of the citizenry was going on right here.

Or, rather, on the Concourse – this had to be it; the winding, curving streets had been gradually widening out for some time now, but Weaver suddenly emptied into a long straight stretch that was easily as wide across as a six-lane Shadow Earth highway and bustling with traffic both pedestrian and equestrian, the broad sidewalks teeming with vendors and stalls. The Concourse was at least four modern city blocks long, possibly longer; the end nearer to Sarah terminated in an arched open gate of sorts with an armored guard standing just inside – he wore a shirt of scale maille over a simple uniform and a short sword, the Unicorn on the Field of Green emblazoned upon his large, rectangular ornamental shield, which he was leaning against at present. Not far from the gate was a full-size marble statue of a lightly bearded man in fine, old-fashioned navy regalia, posed with his arms clasped behind his back, ostensibly gazing out to sea through the arch. She carefully wandered closer to read the engraved inscription below it on the columned pedestal: ‘Prince Caine, Son of Oberon the Mighty, Son of the Unicorn – Savior of Amber’. The far end of the great street, on the other hand, culminated in a lengthy guarded causeway that led up, up, up…

… to the Palace! Castle Amber was built on and directly into the side of Mount Kolvir, the first upthrust of Order; the Pattern itself was supposed to be buried within its depths. The mountain range continued north of the coastline and the forest. Only part of the front of the fortress and two of its five towers were visible from that steep approach, the pale-colored stone shining brightly in the full morning sun. The castle had been constructed to withstand physical and – amazingly – magical attack: atop each of those towers, hidden from view at ground-level, were immense globes that were sympathetically attuned to the Missing Left Eye of the Serpent (what Amberites called the Jewel of Judgment), a large ruby in possession of the king that not only carried within its faceted depths the model of the Pattern, but allowed the wearer to literally wield it, as close as any here came to directly using their chosen power – infinitely harder on body and soul than working directly with the Logrus (as risky as that was.) The city had actually been directly attacked on a number of occasions in the past – even besieged by two irate Princes during the recent interregnum – but the castle had withstood all invaders; even in the Courts this was spoken of in awed whispers. Sarah had heard from Lord Suhuy accounts of sheets of real lightning falling on those in battle here, not from that hallowed blue above but directly from the castle and the king! And that was only the beginning of what could be done with the Jewel.

In spite of this considerable show of power, under more normal circumstances there was hardly any need for rule by force. The general populace was patriotic to a fault, well understanding that peace and prosperity had to be maintained here at the Center of Order, or disorder and anarchy would flourish in countless worlds that emanated thereof, including their immediate neighbors, shadows that skirted Amber so closely that trade routes by sea had been established by the Princes time out of memory – the Golden Circle – hence the ruse of Sarah traveling here from the closest of these. Begma (even similar in name) had been on open good terms with Amber for eons and their merchant ships anchored in Amber’s harbor almost daily; if she had come in truth in one of them, only the captain of that particular vessel and the Begman Embassy would be immediately aware of the fact. Which meant that, in a seething crowd such as this, Sarah was pretty much at liberty so long as she didn’t do anything too crazy, rash, or stupid. Chances were that her Fixed Logrus-based powers wouldn’t even work here; the close proximity of the true Pattern would mostly cancel them out. No danger of a spell accidentally going off like there would’ve been with a true Logrus initiate. Maybe Merlin really did know what he was doing sending her here.

A woman of ‘stature’ sauntered by right in front of her, walking a long, thin, green-and-gold dragon the size of a greyhound on a gold chain leash! The creature ‘sniffed’ Sarah with its long forked tongue as it fluidly ambled by. The lady herself looked as if she had just walked straight out of one of the girl’s storybooks, wearing a lush lilac satin gown with long flowing sleeves, draped hennin headdress and all, and Sarah had to really work not to gawk…then unexpectedly found herself thinking of her old mutt back at home and smirked. She would never again be able to hear the name Merlin without thinking of all of this. Could her sheepdog tell that Shara was different, she suddenly wondered? Hopefully the girl was getting along with him all right and giving him lots of love and attention in any event.

Sarah snapped to attention at the sudden report of a hunting horn – the sound instantly made her blood go cold by instinct: she knew that horn somehow! But she was not given the luxury of time for further thought on the matter as she and all the other traffic in the middle of the Concourse were hurriedly herded to the sides of the road by more armored soldiers she had not spotted before, followed by the sound of many horses galloping closer. Without warning, a full cavalcade burst onto the Concourse from one of the larger side streets from the west, charging by them at full-speed up toward the causeway and the castle! All the men were armored similarly in long scalemail coats, but these also wore brass helmets that looked almost ancient Greek or Trojan to Sarah, complete with the protective nose guards. The lead figure wore no headgear at all, however, and his scale-armor had a decorative white glaze baked onto it. He rode by so quickly Sarah saw him for only an instant, but that one glimpse was sobering: he was handsome as a wolf, but looked far deadlier than any beast of prey, his pale blue eyes much colder than Mandor’s even when he had been angry, his long dark hair flying behind him like a flag. And that was no ordinary horse he was riding, either: the beast was huge, higher than a Clydesdale, with a steel-gray mane and dead-looking black eyes – it ran more like a machine than any animal! In another second the entire company was gone, swallowed up into the castle grounds, and people were allowed back on the street again, but Sarah just stood there transfixed, staring at where they had been, her heart still pounding.

“It has often been remarked that outsiders never forget the first time they see a prince or princess of Amber in the flesh,” a deep male voice resounded from her immediate right – one of the guards had been standing beside her and she hadn’t even noticed him! He was equipped as the rest, but he had just removed his helmet, revealing his salt-and-pepper shoulder-length hair; he was obviously in the process of growing old in the service of his country. Whether he had been there before or if he had just somehow come with the riders she couldn’t honestly remember. “This is your first time to our city?”

Sarah nodded, not trusting what her voice would sound like at the moment, doing her best to remain calm. The man looked friendly enough, but having to deal even this casually with the ‘law’ here - and so soon to her arrival - definitely set her nerves on edge.

“Rest assured, for as exciting as our capital may be at times, the danger of being trampled on the Concourse is a very rare occurrence! Something must be brewing in the Arden Forest to bring his Highness Prince Julian thus so swiftly and with so many. We may hope to the Unicorn that it only portends a new dangerous kind of shadow-beast with unusually thick hide or scales, and they have merely come for munitions – it would not be the first time, but only the second. Where do you hail from?”

“Begma,” Sarah answered him, careful to sound calmer than she felt.

“No wonder you look shaken!” the man suddenly remarked with a little concern. “Things like this seldom happen in such a quiet rural land! You have only just arrived, then?”

“Yes,” Sarah replied, starting to feel a little more nervous again, wishing there was some way of evading this well-meaning keeper-of-the-peace, seeing none.

He pressed on. “And where is the rest of your company? Have your parents journeyed here also or are you come here visiting relatives?”

“Neither – this is a short pleasure-trip for me sponsored by my father; I just turned sixteen,” she effortlessly lied. Actually, come to think of it, that last statement might have been true; she had no idea of how to calculate her real physical age anymore with even the small amount of shadow-traveling that she had done!

The guard smiled broadly, nodding, and Sarah nearly collapsed in relief that he seemed willing to buy it. “Then you must be sure and check in with your embassy – which is just there up the street,” he pointed a relatively short distance up the Concourse; she could make out the flags, “and you can exchange your currency there,” he pointed out one of the banks just a little further on on the opposite side of the street. “How long are you to be with us?”

“Only a few days.”

“Well, if for any reason you find yourself in trouble or even if you just have a question, feel free to approach any of us – it’s what we’re paid for. You’ll find us stationed every other block along the Concourse and every three or four blocks elsewhere in the city. As long as you avoid the waterfront neighborhoods, even traveling as you are alone, you should be safe enough.”

Every other block?! Sarah thought in dismay, but she outwardly thanked the guard nicely and without further ado melted into the crowd, heading for the bank instead of the embassy. While she had assumed that Amber’s active army certainly guarded her borders by land and by sea, Sarah had had no idea that the city itself was so heavily patrolled! If she didn’t know any better, the country might superficially resemble a police-state in this manner, but she had to remind herself that keeping peace and order here was paramount to everything, literally. The other people she saw in the street appeared to take the obvious military presence in the stride, if they gave them any notice at all. Some were casually passing the time of day with them. At least this section of Amber seemed low-crime; those patrols had to be boring. It still didn’t sit well with her that any activity that might even nominally be considered unusual was bound to be spotted instantaneously by at least one of them. She would have to be outrageously careful here.

Once Sarah felt certain that she was no longer being watched, she slipped into the bank. Her heart was in her throat as the teller asked for her identification and she had to hand over her forged papers as well as her fake currency; they looked real enough to the staff that no one so much as batted an eye, however, and soon her coin purse was filled with solid-silver drachms (the gold standard ‘stater’ would have looked too odd for her supposed station-in-life, even though it would have meant carrying less of them – she had been warned of this.) Making change here would also be somewhat more complex than the straightforward decimal system she had been accustomed to in Shadow Earth America, so only dealing with half the currency cut down on that difficulty as well. She was just stepping out of the door when she heard a faint, familiar whisper in her right ear: Ghost was back.

“I thought you were likely to come here! I believe I have located an inn just a block east of Temple Street that we can use for our base of operations. This way!”

And once again Sarah found herself chasing after her own private sunbeam. At least the streets weren’t so severely uphill any longer but this was still one heck of a climb! Cutting a jog across Vine Street (the central one; it was broken into three unevenly-placed sections) Sarah turned off right and made her way down nearly a third of the riot of color and close activity that was Temple Street in late morning and sunny weather, past the novelty shops and theaters with their brightly painted signs, refined art galleries and circus-like street buskers, hanging another left onto East Vine. She was definitely starting to flag a bit on the approach to the three-story inn; just beyond it was the beginning of the ritzy, residential part of town with literally palatial estates winding back up into the hills and the eastern borders of the forest. She had just hiked almost all of the way across town in one go and was ready to get off her feet for a while, to say nothing of downing at least a couple glasses of water!

“The third-floor rooms are cheaper,” Ghost suddenly whispered, “and the guests the proprietress has currently are on the first and second floors only. Ask for a top floor room, facing the city,” he rapidly instructed as she trudged past rose bushes and large box planters lining the spacious approach, through the unlocked door beneath the sign that proclaimed the name of the establishment –The Red Rose – replete with the aforementioned emblem painted true-to-life on either side of the beautifully flowing Thari script. If the building looked antique and possibly more than a little weatherworn on the outside, the inside of the lobby was bright and inviting with an eclectic assortment of flamboyantly bohemian décor from several Shadow Earth centuries and practically every country imaginable, all thrown together in a deliberate, artistic mishmash. And behind a short bar counter sat a middle-aged woman who was dressed rather like a stereotypical eastern-European gypsy: brightly-colored dress, ear and arm bangles, her chestnut hair mostly tied back in a headscarf. She was knitting something but quickly set it aside on a low shelf behind the bar upon seeing Sarah enter the room.

“Good day, miss!” she hailed her, wiping her hands clean on a wet towel, standing up. “And what’ll be your pleasure?”

“Water,” Sarah panted, falling into one of the dark-polished, armed barstools, “and one of your third-floor rooms.”

“Gracious! Did you just run all the way here from the harbor?” the woman asked amazedly, pouring out a tall glass of water from a stoneware jug and sliding it across to Sarah, who was only too grateful to have her own ‘story’ already made up, and she simply nodded, gulping the cool liquid down her parched throat.

“Wanted to make sure I got a good place to stay first,” she took the liberty of adding to the woman’s tale, gesturing for another.

The proprietress just laughed, filling her glass again. “We’re not quite that busy, miss, although the beginning of the tourist season is certainly upon us. This is your first visit to Amber?”

Sarah nodded again, draining only half of it this time

“And are there more of your company following at a more measured pace?”

“It’s just me.”

The woman’s eyebrows went up briefly, but she smiled readily enough, bringing out the registry log, opening it and getting a quill pen and a bottle of ink. “If you would just fill this out for me, please,” she turned the thick tome towards Sarah, placing the writing implements in front of her. “How long do you plan on staying?”

“Let’s say seven days to start,” Sarah carefully replied, dipping the quill. She had been taught to use calligraphy pens at Mandorways – it was easier to write Thari script with a variable nub – but this was comparatively a little more difficult. She managed it well enough, though, scribbling down her alias.

“And where are you visiting us from? Where’s home?”

“Begma,” Sarah answered without missing a beat, quickly running over the spiel in her mind, still entering her fake legal information, “by the coast. My father’s a shipwright.”

“Pretty country,” the woman nodded assent, “but even the capital city there has far less crazy hustle-and-bustle than this, am I right?”

Sarah had initially wondered at the choice of such a close shadow for her alleged home at first, but she was beginning to perceive that being from a far less urban world would give her sufficient cultural excuse for any naïveté or social faux pas she might accidentally commit here whilst gaining her bearings. She finished the form with her false signature and turned it back to the proprietress, who had added the price of her stay to the sheet while Sarah had been writing. This inn alone was going to cost her nearly half of the money Ghost had given her; hopefully the location would be worth it. She paid the full amount upfront; it had included daily breakfast and a small prepaid bar tab worth just a few drinks (standard practice, apparently, even for someone her age – sixteen years old was a legal adult here – and she didn’t want to look weird by turning it down even though she had no plan to use it.) Once this was done, she was shown up to the rooms.

“Which view would you prefer? The estates, the ocean, or the city, as if I had to ask?” the proprietress smiled knowingly over her shoulder as they mounted the second flight of rough, wooden stairs.

“The city,” Sarah agreed. “One can see Temple Street from here?”

“Right you are, miss,” the proprietress walked down the branching corridor to the left once they gained the landing and unlocked a certain door, showing Sarah inside.

The bedroom was small but clean and well-appointed, with a twin-sized bed shoved up against the near wall and a dresser beside it; a small, plain, round wooden table and a rose-tinted velvet-cushioned chair were on the opposite side of the room. Large-paned windows set in the wall opposite the door revealed the world below; they currently stood fully opened outwards, airing the room. The lady’s taste was evident up here as well: bouquets of dried roses festooned the ceiling, perfuming the small space, and while the crazy-quilt on the bed looked hand-stitched from wild scraps of this and that, the dresser could’ve been Polynesian, the oil lamp upon the table Victorian floral!

“The water closets and washrooms are shared per floor, but as you are currently my only top floor guest you have it all to yourself for the time being, but be aware that this can change; it’s just at the end of the hall,” the proprietress went back out and walked down, showing her. Sarah hadn’t given this mundanity much thought, considering that even ancient Chaosian strongholds appeared to have some form of standard plumbing, but really she was probably lucky to be somewhere here that had it, albeit limitedly. The facilities were definitely old-fashioned but serviceable. “Is all to your satisfaction?”

“Oh – yes.”

The proprietress produced a large key ring from a side pocket in her bright gauzy skirt and extracted an old skeleton key from the set, handing it to Sarah. “While this inn observes no curfew, I do expect my guests to be quiet at odd hours. Other than that, you’re fairly free to do as you wish here – within reason, of course,” she smiled. “I can well guess this place cost you dear, but you’ll find the location and amenities worth the price,” she assured as they headed back to her room. “If the crowd out there on Temple gets too overwhelming in the evenings, you just let me know and we’ll scrape together supper for you as well,” she added confidentially, sounding rather like an indulgent aunt; Sarah nodded demurely with a small smile – she had been right in her reasoning. “If you need anything at all, you’ll almost always find me right downstairs; I don’t leave the premises much anymore. We also host informal artistic soirees most evenings in rotation in the main room downstairs. Are you creatively inclined yourself, miss?”

“Well, I am taking acting classes-” Sarah just barely managed to stop herself in mid-sentence – she had nearly finished, ‘at my high school’!

“Oh, wonderful! Well, improv night is three nights from today this turning: would you consider joining us?”

“Perhaps, if I’m not busy elsewhere,” Sarah smiled.

“Of course. This is your first big outing; you don’t want to spend it all cooped up at the inn,” the woman nodded understandingly. “Well, I’ll just leave you to get settled in, then. Hope you enjoy your stay,” she added, closing the door on her way out.

Sarah listened as the woman’s footsteps retreated down those unvarnished wooden steps; when she couldn’t hear her anymore, she collapsed onto the small mattress with a huge sigh of relief – she was in!

“All clear?” she whispered, assuming Ghost was somewhere nearby.

“Close the windows and we can speak quietly,” came his tiny whisper in her left ear. Sarah got back up and crossed the small room, pulling back in the windows and latching them fast, taking in the view as she did so. The inn was positioned uphill somewhat from Temple Street, and while some of the buildings along that eclectic artsy boulevard were tall enough to obscure her view, she could actually see quite a lot of the strip from up here; it was a surprisingly good vantage point.

“And draw the drapes as well – we’re not the only ones with a rooftop view,” Ghost cautioned a little more loudly; she did so and suddenly the oil lamp burst into light, only it was technically still unlit. It was her companion.

“I’ll have you know this place wasn’t cheap,” Sarah said, walking over to the table, sitting down, “we’ve already blown almost half our budget on room and board alone!”

“Not so loud!” Ghost hissed in caution. “These old walls are pretty thin. I know, but it wouldn’t have been safe to put you up by yourself at a lot of the other inns; some of them looked pretty seedy, and the lofts to let above Temple wouldn’t have been much better and far more haphazardly kept up. Lock the door, too,” he added. “I doubt we’ll be walked in on, but better safe than sorry. Bring your bag over here while you’re up.”

“Who made you head of this operation?” Sarah asked him half-teasingly, doing what she was bade.

“Dad,” Ghost answered rather matter-of-factly. “He ordered me to take care of you in Amber, to protect you. I am expressly acting on his wishes.”

“I’m not a little kid,” Sarah rolled her eyes, sitting down at the table, “I don’t have to be constantly supervised.”

“I’m aware of that, but I hate to disobey him. I’ll try to be less pushy – my necessary mode of operation here wasn’t very well defined.”

“Alright,” Sarah sighed, “didn’t mean to be on you, either. What did you need with the bag?”

“If you would kindly take out your purse and empty its contents onto the table, please – here put this beneath so it doesn’t make so much noise,” he asked far more politely, just before a wad of thick, burgundy velvet appeared in front of her on the table.

Sarah folded it in half and spread it out flat, then carefully laid out her remaining coins upon it. She hadn’t really had the leisure to look at the currency at all before, but she did so now, having just received a little small change downstairs, so most of the denominations were now present: a few remaining dekadrachm, one tetradrachm, and some mixed obols (odd fractional coins of lesser value.) All were cast in solid silver but in varying sizes and thicknesses, the smallest being smaller and thinner than an American dime. They were struck uniformly with a dancing unicorn along with the denominations on the reverses, but the face-sides varied significantly. Most were emblazoned with a fairly young-looking, clean-shaven male profile along with the Thari markings for ‘Random I, King of the One True World,’ but others that looked more worn sported a very different visage: a full-bearded man in late middle-age who looked rather more like classical busts of Zeus – Oberon, Son of the Unicorn, the first king. And on one lonely hemiobol, almost too small for her to make out clearly without a magnifying glass, was yet another male profile of indeterminate age with a well-kept mustache and beard. He almost looked similar to Corwin in certain aspects, but he was definitely more handsome; she could just barely make out his name – Eric. The rest was far too minute and rubbed to be legible.

“That one’s a portrait of my granddad’s older brother, my Uncle Eric,” Ghost clarified. “I never got to actually meet him; he died some years before I was made, defending this very city against the first shadow hordes out of Chaos early on in the War. He was a pretender to the throne – genuinely crazy, power-hungry, and cruel, by the accounts – but he met his end nobly enough. Nobody speaks of him anymore and Uncle Random’s been having these coins withdrawn from circulation for pretty obvious reasons. You might pocket that one – it should be worth some real money someday,” he suggested, and Sarah put it aside of the rest with a smirk. “Monetarily-speaking, though, you’re not as bad off as you might think; real shopping can get expensive in the City, but a lot of the street vendors and sidewalk cafes are actually pretty cheap, and I would advise you to eat at them – you’ll be asked less questions dining there, too. One purchase you will need to make today is a good warm wrap of your own choosing; even though it’s the beginning of summer here, it can still get fairly chilly at night since we’re just up from the coast, and such an article will be imperative if you’re going to be out and about after sunset. Once you’ve had a chance to get around some today, you’ll have a much better feel for how much you need to set aside for basic expenses and then you’ll be free to spend the rest at your discretion. Most of the galleries are either free or near-free – good artists get private patronage here – but the theaters cost a little more for the good seats, so consider yourself forewarned. Also, don’t ever carry more than three dekadrachm on your person at any given time now that you have a place to stash the rest; in spite of the heavy ‘homeland protective force’ presence in the City, there are still a handful of very skilled pickpockets out there. And what you do have, don’t carry obviously; secret it in your clothing.”

Sarah considered the prospect for only a moment before coming to the universally secure hiding spot for a woman – and put two dekadrachm down the front of her dress, wedged between her chest and the inner lining – then folded one more behind the seam in the waist, depositing the rest quietly back into the purse. She got up and went to hide it behind the mattress, lifting it back…only to discover a few foreign coins someone else had left behind there!

“Ghost, look at these!” she motioned him over; the light darted across the room to hover just above her right shoulder. They bore the three-quarter-angle visage of a proud, crowned beauty, but the engraved script was too worn to read.

“That’s old currency from Kashfa, much farther out in the Golden Circle, back when Lady Jazra was still in power there – no one you need to worry about,” he added just a little too hastily. It may well have been someone that Ghost had been worried by in the past, but Sarah had no doubt that he actually meant what he’d just said. “They’re not worth much. You can spend them if you want to, I guess; their owner is probably worlds away from here by now and not likely to return any time soon. But it’s your call.”

Sarah added them to her own stash, then put that where they had been: it was so well-buried that the first set hadn’t even been noticed by whoever had made up the room. Or it meant that the sheets hadn’t been changed since then – ew. She would double-check before sleeping in there tonight.

“Beyond that – just have fun. Be aware of your surroundings. I’d say ‘be on the lookout’, but I think that’s mostly my job: I’ll be actively scanning girls of approximately the correct age everywhere you go. If she’s here, this should be easy.”

Sarah’s eyes widened. “What?!”

“What’s amiss?” Ghost’s kindly, Merlin-esque voice suddenly sounded terribly concerned. “Was it something I said?”

Sarah forced herself to simmer back down. Merlin. This had been the plan all along. She gave a humorless laugh, sitting down on the side of the bed.

“The only reason I’m here is because you need me as a genetic template. The king doesn’t really need me for anything,” she chewed out a little bitterly.

“Ah,” Ghost observed quietly. “Perhaps I wasn’t supposed to tell you that. I thought we were all on the same page. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“It’s not your fault,” Sarah sighed, reassuring him, looking down at her lap. “I just thought for some stupid reason that he’d be different from the others, that’s all.”

“My dad doesn’t use people callously or maliciously, if that’s what you’re implying,” Ghost calmly defended him, “although I may not be able to say as much for my other aunts and uncles on either side. Maybe there’s more to this operation than he’s told me; it wouldn’t be the first time. And even if you were only here for such a simple reason, look around at where you are! Billions of your species have lived their entire lives without ever knowing that this place even exists! I myself owe part of my genesis to the Pattern of Amber – portions of it are literally inscribed on my circuits in various points. Up until just this year everything you have learned - everything you have known of life – has had its origin in this very City. Wander, learn, enjoy! Just being here is a blessing not afforded to many shadow-beings - well, not comparatively-speaking, anyway.”

Sarah gave a light scoff, raising her eyes a moment…then conceded, nodding: he was probably right. Of course he was right – he was the smartest machine in the known universes! Are there shadows of you out there? she briefly wondered, idly studying the soft, jewel-toned quilt, tracing the embroidery.

“Cheer up; lunch is on me,” Ghost said hopefully - and a few extra drachms dropped to the mattress beside her. “There’s a good mid-price restaurant called The Pit just a couple blocks downhill from here.” He winked out and the drapes looped back of their own accord. “Amber’s waiting. Come on.”

Then there was silence.

Sarah sat gazing out of her window for a moment. That really and truly was the most beautiful blue sky in existence out there, not a single cloud at the moment, just a perfect, brilliant-crystalline turquoise. The golden liquid sunlight would fill this room in the afternoon and evening with its supra-earthly radiance and warmth.

Oh, stop being such a crybaby, she inwardly admonished herself, you couldn’t really expect him to leave something this important entirely up to you. Actually, the more she thought about it, the more this entire jaunt just looked like an attempt to boost her morale toward Chaos before sending her home – pretty logical, especially for a guy in Merlin’s position. So, he was basically covering his bases; fair enough. Unless…

Oh screw it, I’m gonna just go have some fun, she thought resignedly, getting back up, fetching her leather carryall from the table, locking up the room and heading to the washroom before going back out. Whatever was going down here, chances were good that she had a few days ahead to get her ducks in order. And then a potentially embarrassing conundrum suddenly hit her.

“Ghost?” she whispered once the door was closed, “what day is it today here?”
_____________________________________________________________________________________________

It was a sunny sixteenth day of the ngan of Posya in the approximate anno of 2394.6 d’L // (nowhere else – not even in the Courts – is the general populace so painfully aware of the fluctuations in time due to the flowing pull of Shadow that dates are only ever approximated) that Sarah Williams of Shadow Earth ventured forth into the original ‘City-by-the-Bay’, Amber, in all her glory and crazy activity, even busier than usual at the beginning of the good weather season. Sarah kept following Ghost’s subtle directional hints, finally getting to walk downhill for a bit, doing her best to remember the order of the storefronts that they were passing. ‘The great pageant of life’: these words seemed to actually mean something here, but perhaps it was only the cultural shock of being in a place where even the average person’s work was not only their livelihood but also their individual source of pride and passion. If there was drudgery to be found, it was not on display. Shopkeepers openly hawked their wares in the streets, sometimes to the extent of jokingly one-upping their competitors to their faces! Quick-portrait artists plied their trade along the sidewalk and jugglers and musicians performed for tips. There was a one-man monologue in progress in front of the Crown Theater – a living advertisement for the night’s drama – that had attracted a small crowd, some of whom appeared to be protesters from a smaller theater company farther back up the street!

To say nothing of how the general public was dressed: Temple was a walking, breathing costume shop! Clothing from nearly every Earth era except the 20th century, alongside styles of many other shadows, were all on constant parade as if it were perfectly commonplace to look like one had just popped out of a time machine from an alternate universe! The level of stimuli was nearly overwhelming, but presently Ghost headed west onto an unmarked side street that was significantly less busy, just at the crest of a fairly steep hill; starting downward, there was a large decorative fountain smack-dab in the middle of a…traffic circle? Was that what those were called here? It featured a large copper dragon, patina-green with age, that was…yes, ‘peeing’ in the fountain! Sarah stopped in her tracks as the far-reaching implications hit her and it was all she could do not to laugh aloud: some Amberite artist with a puerile sense of humor had unwittingly touched off a long series of varyingly puerile sculptures throughout probably thousands of shadows, including Jareth’s!

Jareth…

Ghost was signaling the correct building across the turning to the left and Sarah rued that she didn’t have an American quarter to add to the extensive collection of exotic coins at the bottom of the pool - heck of a place to make a wish!

The dining was al fresco with a light, refreshing breeze coming up from the sea-cliffs, the local cuisine rustic yet excellently prepared, but now with the initial trauma of getting here off her back, Sarah couldn’t stop thinking of Ghost-Corwin. She hated to entertain the possibility, but there was a rather good chance that his cynical outlook on his own predicament was well-founded. How could she even get back there now? Had she blown her one shot at liberating him because she had been reading the wrong books at Mandorways? And what about Jareth? He may have been an egotistical prick, but he wouldn’t have told her all that stuff if there wasn’t any practical way of pulling it off, would he? It didn’t make sense. There had to be an answer – the Goblin King would’ve attempted it himself ages ago, but his hands were pretty effectively tied. She nearly flushed in humiliation at the memory of just how well he’d played her initially, how he’d managed to intimidate her in a place where he was virtually powerless. Whatever happened or didn’t happen here, she wasn’t ever going to let Jareth get the better of her again: ‘fool me thrice and I’m just a fool.’ The trumps were obviously going to be of no help in this case, not if she’d be trumping straight into a trap of some kind in that dungeon. Chaosian shadow-pulling was probably out, too; the trap would work in reverse and that would be that. Even with her more physical brand of Logrus power, she seriously doubted she could bust her way in; such a trap would have to be able to absorb or reflect any normal attack. It would take someone far stronger, far faster, than she could ever hope to be to even have a chance at saving that version of Corwin.

Of course, there was one rather obvious candidate at hand who could easily fit those requirements - the Ghostwheel – but she was really uneasy about confiding this in him and for good reason; he seemed to not always understand what was to be kept confidential from who and why, to say nothing of the fact that he probably reported all of his actions back to his ‘dad’. It was actually pretty thoughtful of Merlin to have programmed such a capacity for perceiving pseudo-nuclear relationships into his computer, she reflected; it gave Ghost a sense of belonging, a surrogate family if you will, where otherwise his existence could’ve proven unbearably lonely – the only being of his kind with absolutely no one or nothing to relate to. It felt almost Biblically unethical to potentially compromise his relationship with his literal creator in any way, shape, or form.

It didn’t keep him from noticing that she was troubled by something, though; on the way back up to Temple, he led her aside into a deserted alley and confronted her.

“Something’s been eating at you for an hour,” he whispered in her ear. “I thought you missed being around other humans. Was it the young man who hit on you as he rode by? Granted, he was a bit forward and rude, but surely the incident shouldn’t have triggered this level of brooding. I know brooding; my dad’s a world-class brooder. I’m trying to pick it up myself.”

Sarah had to stifle a laugh, moving toward the wall so she wouldn’t be as visible to any potential passersby. “Would you be terribly offended if I refused to tell you about this? I promise it has absolutely nothing to do with our mission here; it’s a completely different matter, but I don’t want you getting into trouble on my account. If I haven’t worked it out by the time you need to take me back home, I might tell you then. Is that alright?”

Ghost was silent for a couple beats before responding. “It doesn’t involved anyone I care about, does it?”

The query sounded innocent enough, but it almost scared her to death, thinking of the immense, inhuman power that lay behind it. “I don’t think so,” she finally replied, “at least I think it’s highly unlikely.” She didn’t feel comfortable saying anything more; it would lead to too many more questions that she couldn’t answer. Another few tense seconds passed.

“All right, Sarah,” he pronounced in his more usual tone-of-voice, “I think I trust you. It’s sweet of you to be concerned for my own welfare, but be aware that I’ve faced off against both the Pattern and the Logrus and come out on top both times on my dad’s behalf,” he boasted cheerily. “I seriously doubt there are few conundrums I could not directly solve for you, if not aide you with,” he added confidently, his faint light leading back out into the street, turning onto Temple.

And there it is, Sarah thought a bit ruefully: Ghost would put himself through anything, risk anything – even his own being – for the man who’d made him. If he thought for even a second that she was withholding information that Merlin would want to know, she would be dealing with a caliber of trouble that was unique in the known universes, who had seemingly unlimited resources… although it would probably only amount to instantaneously finding herself in the king’s presence again and forced to give a full confession on the spot. But that would be enough. Ghost-Corwin had briefly intimated that a woman in the Ways of Sawall was directly responsible for his imprisonment; who else could it be but Lady Dara, Merlin’s mother? No – a thousand times no. This was a problem she had to avoid dragging the House of Sawall into on pain of death – most likely her own for making the scandal of detaining a Prince of Amber in peacetime even nominally ‘public.’

Ghost abruptly interrupted her consternated reverie. “Do you think you can find your way back to the inn from here?” his familiar whisper sounded in her right ear. “Blink once for yes, twice for no.”

The directive was so stereotypically ludicrous Sarah had to bite back a laugh… and made a very long, single blink.

“Good. I’ll work in close vicinity, but I won’t talk to you again until we’re back at base.”

And, for all practical purposes, Sarah was left to her own devices on one of the most unique streets in any world – Temple, once home to Amber’s official houses of worship, now entirely devoted to arts and revelry; the shrines had been relocated to the countryside in the attempt to be closer to their Patron.

Well, almost all - there was a small grotto-style shrine to the Unicorn sculpted into a building alcove that Sarah had missed seeing on her way down; the crowd must’ve been in the way. It was a rather simple, clean-looking affair, a high-relief of their Patron rearing on Her hind-legs carved in white marble, with a crowd of small, white votive candles lit at the base, garlands of fresh flowers strewn about it. There was something surprisingly moving about its presence here, unostentatious, welcoming to stranger and citizen alike, not unlike a small Earth shrine to the Buddha or the Virgin Mary. Sarah had started to walk closer to examine it when the even more familiar darkness of the Logrus lashed out at her internally in protest! It only took Sarah a moment to shake her head free of the confusion, catching her breath. Clearly one could not easily be chummy with them both - obvious, really; she’d simply had no idea the repellence would be that visceral! Instead, she ruefully smiled at the Unicorn in passing and kept right on walking; it was almost amusing in a weird way to think that she was now one of those things that probably couldn’t enter a Unicornian church.

Scratch seeing any temples here off the list of things to do, she thought, feeling the warning presence of the Logrus recede again. Secular tourism it is. The aftermath of the incident passed surprisingly quickly, shoved out of her conscious attention by so much other active stimuli vying for it every which way. She couldn’t resist window-shopping, stopping inside some of the family-run stores to peruse their exotic goods at her leisure: fine china with jaw-dropping designs; haberdasheries stocked with clothing every bit as wild as what was on the street; tapestries that could have rivaled some of the Sawall collection…hold it, a couple of these were Chaosian-made! Sarah nearly did a double-take upon seeing them, but a careful inspection showed that she was right – and the distance of the import showed on the price tag; she politely declined and moved on. She did find a nice evening wrap for herself – an undyed wool cape with a capacious hood and a neck closure clasp in the shape of a stylized dragon in pewter - that was within her budget (she had been sorely tempted to pick up one that had been dyed ‘Amber green’ with a tree-of-life clasp, but it had clashed too severely with her dress.) Coming up to the cross-street that the inn was on, she paused a moment, then kept on hiking up Temple; the regular walkers here had to be in excellent shape. Her fencing training was certainly coming in handy now with all of that leg muscle work; without it she would’ve been toast, although her calves were starting to burn a little as it was. She stopped briefly at one of the aforementioned street vendors for a shaved ice and just people-watched for a little bit. Once one got over the extreme eclecticism of style, it was truly a major marketplace like any other: some people trying to look cool (or, here, probably ‘hip’), some just trying to hang onto their children, most simply going about their business – not really that intimidating, at least up here. And what did it all address but the seemingly universal needs and wants of life: food and drink, clothing and household goods, intellectual and emotional stimulation.

And a good laugh – she was just getting up to leave a tip and continue on when she heard the sound of a crowd erupting into raucous laughter a half-block away on a small side street to the west and she had to go investigate. To her surprise and delight, the cause of the merriment turned out to be an honest-to-god jester - harlequin outfit and all - seated at a small table outside of a tavern; he was obviously worse (or better) for wine and had decided to give anyone passing by an impromptu performance – many were lingering to hear his act. It was difficult to accurately gauge his height, but from how he appeared seated he had to have been a little guy – with a very loud voice. In fact, he was doing a standup comedy routine and he was actually pretty good…and then it dawned on Sarah that he had just seamlessly segued into an old Saturday Night Live skit! What the… Studying his face a bit harder, she noted that there was something decidedly alien about him, not totally human as she would categorize it.

“Excuse me,” she quietly asked a woman wearing a cream-colored toga standing next to her, “but I’m new in town. Who is that man?”

“No one save the king knows his real name or even where he’s from,” she replied quietly, “but Droppa MaPantz is the best of the best – his Majesty’s own jester. He is allowed to travel to distant lands for fresh material, although we rarely get to hear it. The man’s a right lush, Unicorn bless him,” she remarked, turning back to watch, “but I suspect someone with that many jokes and twists of logic dashing about in his mind like a pack of wild ferrets can’t rest easily in his own company, if you understand my meaning.”

“I’m afraid I do,” Sarah sighed, watching Droppa crack up with his audience. She was all too aware of the concept; a couple of the actors in her mother’s troupe were that way, too, only for a slightly different reason – been too many characters. She waited to hear the payoff of the story he was currently telling, then slipped away again.

The afternoon was simply gorgeous, but it had finally started to heat up; she simply had to get out of the sun – and easily located the first of the free art galleries on the strip. If the general populace on this side of town had been a bit unnerving initially, the art here was positively jarring: the capital of Order was the very last place she ever would have expected to find psychological surrealism! Had King Random been trading cultural notes with his half-Chaosian nephew?! Whatever the source of the influence, surrealism was everywhere, or at least visual distortion of the familiar; room after room of hellride-style flux assaulted the senses, some pieces simply breathtaking, others just a little too familiar for comfort. At length, these slightly gave way to simpler themes, but all were rendered in photorealistic style, mostly scenes of rural revelry and religious festivals, but a few attempts at members of the royal family were in the mix: equestrian portraits of several princes, Prince Benedict and Prince Eric heroically portrayed in huge oil paintings of different battles, and a rather godlike portrait of the late King Oberon that towered over the viewer, storm clouds gathering behind him, lightning fairly flashing in his eyes. There was one rather haunting wall-length rendering of the Unicorn keeping the Darkness at bay all by Herself – Sarah quickly passed it by, not caring to contemplate what it really signified.

The hours passed quickly and soon it time for her to procure her own supper from the street vendors: she chose a simple repast of empanada-like meat pies, fresh grainy bread and grilled seasonal vegetable kabobs, with sweet yogurt for dessert. Sunset had been dazzling; the stars were just starting to come out one by one as she was finally trudging back to the inn, worn out enough for one day. Phosphorescent globular lamps lined the street now – or, rather, she simply hadn’t noticed them before – and while they provided sufficient illumination, they were yet dim enough that the full night sky could be seen in its true glory from here. By the time she was in her room again, the celestial tableau was fully visible, more stars than she had ever seen in her life on Earth, the moon a bright, thin silver sickle way up high. The sight suddenly made her homesick, but homesick for the shadow-world that Mandor had made for her, oddly enough, with its irregularly orbited pastel moons and its fantastic view of the infamous dancing heavens of Chaos. That, too, was a sight she would never forget. Amber’s universe, by comparison, was lovely, idealized, but stationary and lifeless, downright ironic in a land where the prevalent belief system embraced wholesale animism. She walked up to the window and looked out into the teeming world below, up again at those bright stars, and wondered where Mandor was right now, what he was doing. Whether he thought of her at all.

Sarah should have asked herself this question upon her arrival in Amber, when that totally incongruent prickle ran up her spine, for it was the direct result of Lord Mandor’s… attention. In truth, by the time she was pondering this in Amber, three weeks had already flown by in the Courts and life at Mandorways had returned to normal (such as it was): the specially patched ways connecting the library to the gymnasium and a spare bedroom had been set to rights in their usual configuration, the physical doors and blocking spells along the walls removed. Sarah’s play and practice shadows were dismantled or left to go to seed, to revert to their natural states. Various minor repairs had been quietly attended to. It was as if she had physically never been there in the first place, a fact that would have genuinely put Sarah off a bit – but there was no harm in her not knowing. She had, however, continued on in the Chaos lord’s peripheral thoughts far more frequently than he had planned on, the result of some mildly disturbing information that he had deduced shortly after her departure from the Courts – a factor they had not initially taken into account but much could hinge upon. Once he had adequately seen the King on his way back to the Thelbane and made plans to visit him later in his private, social capacity (he had another menu to prepare, perhaps something that would trigger nostalgia in Merlin; he needed to keep his little brother’s ear bent towards him if not entirely his heart), Mandor had headed back to his demesne, in mind to do a little experiment of his own. Merlin had inadvertently mentioned DNA testing to determine the lineage of Sarah’s original, totally unaware that there was a way to discover some rather basic information arcanely. Really, the boy had come to rely far too heavily on that spikard, a fact that quietly rubbed salt into the psychological wounds of his foster brother’s botched-up scheme; his bespelled spikard would’ve been a huge success.

But the current question at hand would be almost amusingly simple to answer, in part because the method was so old-school that Mandor hadn’t had need to utilize it since he was being tutored himself; Merlin had probably never even been taught it at all. He returned to Sarah’s apartment just in time to stop a maid from chucking the girl’s hairbrush, which had been left behind along with a good number of things in her forced haste; he retrieved it along with her sketchbook and her books from shadow before retreating to his sorcerous laboratory. What he was about to attempt could potentially have some voodoo-like sympathetic side effects that he would have to negate before proceeding very far. Crossing the small-sized, circular room to his black-painted worktable, Mandor magickally ‘cleared’ the space fresh, then, seating himself on the only stool in the room, removed a single long, dark hair from the brush, casting the rest along with the brush safely into the small but blazing fireplace, waiting a few moments for the flames to fully engulf it. He quieted his mind and performed a simple severing spell on the remaining hair-strand, so that what would follow would no longer affect Sarah personally – and she felt it from that far away!

Opening the small ventilation window in the wall just above the table, Mandor proceeded to set up various beakers and burners from a stone shelf built into the side wall, along with a tray of various compounds in jars and test tubes, gradually putting into motion the complex alchemal operation for converting the hair into a single drop of blood; this accomplished, he then propped up two sizable mirrors in front and back of the new specimen, which rested on a tiny, thin silver spoon probe clipped onto a solid-gold stand. Muttering a long string of archaic Thari words under his breath, he used the Logrus to reach straight through the mirror in front, farther and farther away, the full distance to the very first reflection beyond the reflections, the one that proceeded all the others, not a reflection at all, in fact – and grabbed that probe, hauling it through to Chaos…there! It was in his left hand! The difficult portion achieved, Mandor put the mirrors and Sarah’s specimen aside, repeated the severing spell on the fresh specimen from the true girl (one could never be too careful with these things), then lit a normal, mundane candle and held the new probe a few inches above the flame, just enough to warm it. Unlike the blood of living things from practically anywhere else, the blood of a true Chaosian was highly flammable when exposed to air, catching even more quickly with heat; most who died in battle literally incinerated from wounds that otherwise might’ve been treatable. It was simply a physical liability they all had to live with.

The blood sample merely dried on the probe. Mandor exhaled in relief: Sarah’s original was Order-based only. After another ‘clearing’ to neutralize the powers still functioning in the items he had been working with just now, he replaced the accoutrements of his magick back in their small shelves on the wall to his left, carefully wiping Sarah’s specimen on a shred of cloth and burning it in the grate, setting aside the hot probe with the dried blooddrop on a metal tray to cool before cleaning it. The suspicion that the girl could have been yet another scion of Amber with a Chaosian parent had been genuinely unnerving - the whole thing was starting to look like a breeding experiment they were not privy to at the very least: Merlin, Merlin’s cousin Rinaldo via Brand the Traitor, Merlin’s mother Lady Dara, and now a fourth, this one completely unrelated? Mandor held a distinct dislike for mysteries that did not include him in the planning. Thankfully his fears appeared to be unfounded.

He was just preparing to quit the room when a small sound from the table caught his attention and he turned back: the probe on the tray had just emitted a miniscule puff of smoke…and a little flame followed, burning of its own accord as it rose and floated away out the open window! Mandor’s eyes widened at the implications: the fourth hybrid indeed - and another female at that!

Which could only mean one thing at this stage of the game: The Blacklist. The worst crimes committed in or against Chaos by Chaosians were usually punishable by exile; death was hardly a threat – it was practically looked upon as a final sacrament by the pious. The Chaosian mind was as naturally repulsed by Order, static physics and certain strains of logic thereof, as those Orderborn were usually sickened or maddened by Chaos; just being denied that constant state of flux, the flow of life and the world as they knew it, was usually almost unbearable. Since Chaos’ loss in the Patternfall War, both sides had entered into treaties specifically forbidding the other from criminal acts in and near their respective capitals and environs. Peaceful espionage had run on unabated, but such a breach as this – an unauthorized breeding experiment of royal-Amberite caliber – was not only illegal as sin, but a direct threat to that very peace if officials in Amber ever caught wind of it. There were probably close to two-dozen exiled Chaosian nobles off in Shadow at this point – it was surprisingly easy to lose track of them, what with the extreme differences in the flow of time - but none had ever tried to inhabit the Order-shadows as far as the Golden Circle! Unless…

Mandor latched the small window shut again, then turned on his heel in the direction of the Thelbane in all due haste. Regardless of what was going on out there, the king had to be made aware of the risk now. At least time was on their side – or, rather, they could accomplish vastly more within it. Amber had no such advantage. A well-orchestrated strategic attack on their ancient enemy was one thing, but an unsupervised rogue operation was a liability neither side could afford now, not with the treaties in place. A loose player could be dangerous for them all.