FicWad

(Prelude music: Tori Amos, Native Invader – ‘The Reindeer King’)

Chapter 1 – Speak of the…

Changing places of residence has to be one of the most universal of cultural human experiences – at least in technologically-developed countries in the western hemisphere of Shadow Earth – the necessary steps so predictable that they should be tedious to the participant. And yet the activity is still so often an emotionally fraught affair, sifting through years or even decades’ worth of life; sorting, boxing, and relabeling one’s memories, re-evaluating the past, and leaving bits and pieces of it behind.

It took a very strong act of will for Sarah Williams not to just wallow in the nostalgia and keep all her old toys and games: whatever was deemed unsuitable for her little brother Toby’s creative (yet often unintentionally destructive) play, she had donated to the Salvation Army. Upon the approach to the building, she had very nearly turned her car down a different side street, away from the loading dock, but she had forced herself to think of a little girl who would be overjoyed at receiving her old dolls and girly picture-books, and backed in, opening the trunk so the boxes could be retrieved.

It wasn’t quite the same thing as preparing to leave a place never to return again even to visit, but moving out of her childhood home to go away to college when she had never lived anywhere else was enough of a traumatic experience for Sarah in spite of how excited she was to be attending Syracuse in the fall. Man, had that decision ever taken a long, haggling conference-style trump-call meeting between her, King Random, and King Merlin. Amber’s liege had proven unwilling to shell out enough money for her to go to Julliard or NYU, especially considering the fact that he would benefit very little from her education in any future service to Amber; the idea was almost too complicated by the fact that she was publicly known to be an enemy spy, but in the end he had agreed to finance her tenure at Syracuse, and at Merlin’s cajoling threw in a generous housing and living expense allowance – enough that she could afford her own apartment without roommates, just a couple blocks away from campus! She could concentrate fully on her studies without the distractions of stupid dorm parties or part-time work. Granted, she would be buried up to her eyeballs in work come the beginning of her freshman semester, between the core requirements and the credits for both of her majors, but this was still a huge step toward personal freedom – the price apparently being slavery in academia, but still it was a heck of a start.

It had proven significantly more difficult for Sarah to reassimilate back into her native world after her sojourn in Chaos and her adventures in Amber and Shadow than even she realized it would be. So many of her small uses of Logrus power had become unconscious reflex that it was likely a very good thing that it didn’t work anymore, or she would’ve had a lot more to explain than a few odd gestures and peculiar mumbled words (although she did learn pretty quickly that the ‘it’s from a role-playing game’ excuse could be used liberally to explain a multitude of mildly odd behavioral discrepancies.) But while certain behaviors gradually faded into the background, she had found the Amber-centric worldview far harder to consciously shake off. She simply knew too much about the nature of ‘reality’ now – or at least something that could influence what passed for it on this shadow. Military conflicts, the stock market crash of ’87, bizarre crop circles appearing in England: she couldn’t help but wonder what was really happening at the epicenter of Order, to trigger all these things ‘out here’. It was like a cosmic version of the Butterfly Hypothesis: the proverbial ripple in Amber could make a hurricane on Earth. She couldn’t help but wonder about Shara’s New Yark, too; was that awful crash only a recession where her co-shadow lived? Sarah had finally learned from King Random that Sarilda actually seemed to be doing fairly well in her new life circumstances, all-considered, even though sometimes her father Prince Julian would catch her trying to harbor some serpent or other, hidden in their camp in the Arden Forest, trying to make a familiar from a dangerous species! Apparently old habits died slow with Sarah’s original as well, although for all the prince’s aggravation over the situation, brainwashing from birth seemed a far more reasonable excuse for unwanted behavior than just petty, childish rebellion.

And Merlin had been right, too: Sarah couldn’t tell a soul a single thing about any of this, and it did suck – not family, not friends, not guys she dated. Nobody. She’d held off even trying to date until her junior year of high school just to rub the choice in Karen’s face (they still didn’t see eye-to-eye on everything), but her past really was the proverbial 600-pound gorilla in the room and she simply couldn’t ignore it no matter how badly she wanted to; her discomfort always wound up showing through and she could never explain it away. And that feeling always got her started thinking about an even more alienating topic: her literal 600-pound Chaosian silverback gorilla with the extra arms and legs – with Princess Fiona adoring all that muscle and fur! It wasn’t quite as bad as the giant ape winding up with the blonde in ‘King Kong’, but it was definitely on the approach on the kink-meter. She hoped they were at least happy, wherever they’d wound up. Mandor had yet to contact her again.

In a way Sarah felt older than everyone she knew, even if she wasn’t that much more mature. What in the world was there to have in common that didn’t seem shallow and fleeting – even cosmically provincial – compared to the possibilities that lay beyond her world? The arts still seemed a decent candidate in that direction, however, and her tastes and friends had followed accordingly… but there was still a certain degree of personal separation. What was Láre doing these days? Was she introducing the Theatre of the Absurd accompanied by interpretive dance to the undersea audiences in Rebma, City in the Bay? Did she still wonder on rare occasion what had happened to ‘S’Aiya’?

Yep – Sarah just knew too much to ever comfortably fit into this plane of existence ever again. At least her inbred studying habits from Mandorways were serving her well: that she had apparently attained such a prestigious-looking scholarship to such a well-known arts college had almost seemed natural to her parents at this point. In a sad way it was going to be a relief to be getting away from all of this, to go somewhere where nobody knew her, where she could try to start her life over. Or – failing that – at least have some different life experiences.

She surveyed her cleared-out bedroom one final time and gave it a sad half-smile. While she hadn’t entirely lived up to her private threat to goth the place up, she had painted over the dated wallpaper with a nice, soothing blue and gradually replaced the almost embarrassingly nursery-like motif with a more polished old-world-antique look that frankly baffled her stepmother, yet got her father’s quiet approval: who were either of them to say what kind of woman she would grow up to be? As much as she had worshipped her birth-mother growing up, as Sarah edged toward adulthood it became painfully obvious just how immature and self-centered the woman actually was, only wanting to interact with and be affectionate toward her daughter when it suited her – almost feline behavior, really, just like a finicky house cat. It helped Sarah to deal with her by mentally couching it in these terms: Linda couldn’t help the way she was wired any more than Sofi could… and she found herself thinking of the demoness, too, sometimes, wondering what unfathomable places she haunted now, who she was eating for breakfast…

Of course, none of this prepared her for Linda’s death – but then again, there isn’t much in a relatively peaceful life that can psychologically prepare one to deal with a homicide. By all eyewitness accounts it had been a freak accident, just one of those things that can statistically happen living in a big city like New York: her mother had been fatally shot by a bullet which had been fired a quarter-of-a-block away at someone else and ricocheted off a lamppost straight into her head, killing her instantaneously in a crosswalk. The funeral had only been three months ago, and Sarah’s remaining parents had told her that she didn’t have to move out just yet if she didn’t feel up to it, that it was alright to start college the semester after, but to their surprise she had insisted anyway.

It was just time to move on.

Toby almost ran into her, tearing down the hallway in a mad dash just because he could, with that huge grin on his little face; Sarah was going to miss him, annoying little brat that he was, especially now that he had started nominally talking.

He has to take after Karen, she thought ruefully: the type just had to keep making more of its own; the deliberate species-metaphor had not ended with her mother. She caught him on his way back, lifted him off his feet, and gave him a big bear-hug, which he struggled against mightily and in vain. Shoofing his strawberry-blonde hair (definitely his mother’s boy), she finally let him squirm free and escape back to his room as she headed down the stairs with her final box, and on out of the house to her car, where her parents were waiting to say their goodbyes. She’d known this would be hard for her father, but even Karen was looking a little misty and couldn’t pass up the opportunity to tell her what a fine young lady she was becoming – and that they were proud of her.

Pulling out of the driveway, watching their waving forms rapidly receding in the rearview mirror, she turned the corner, drove about half the block – then gunned the engine like a Prince of Amber, pulling into the main road that led to the highway and out of town: she had done it – she was free! A whole month before classes started, all to herself! Plenty of time to get settled in, to see the sights and familiarize herself with the campus, to go be crazy for at least a couple weeks, doing anything, anywhere she damn well pleased! The feeling was glorious as she merged out onto the highway, heading north. Almost wishing it was autumn already…

No – concentrate on the road! She quickly admonished herself; as tempting as it had been to try it out on certain occasions, Sarah had deliberately neglected the potential powers she had obtained from mentally (spiritually?) traversing the Pattern inscribed in the Jewel of Judgment, at best hoping to be able to remain a neutral player in whatever cosmic game was afoot by refusing to invoke either power, at worst terrified that she could get lost shadow-walking alone with no one to so much as look for her! The Ghostwheel’s step-by-step walkthrough of how to get to New Yark and back to her old house again was still sorely tempting, though. Maybe she’d finally muster the nerve to try it out, now that she wasn’t expected anywhere; there had to be a time-differential involved since the place was several shades closer to Amber by Ghost’s reckoning, but there was no conversion table anywhere in the instruction manual (although there were a few rather odd directives that seemed to be more for the writer’s amusement than anything practical or useful, leading her to suspect that it was possible for a sufficiently developed AI to evolve a sense of humor.) Oddly enough, quashing this tendency to ‘shift’ had been the hardest thing about learning to drive for Sarah – and she could well understand why Random Barimen preferred shadowruns in this fashion; the process would feel… well, ‘natural’ was probably too strong of a word… smoother, this way, provided one could maintain a decent driving surface.

Many thoughts crowded her mind on the hours-long trip up to Syracuse, more than a few occupied by Mandor Sawall, of that first drive (wow, had that ever been crazy), occasioned by some of the scenery – one of the worlds they had rolled through that day had looked a little like this… No - eyes on the road. At one point she flipped on the radio on a whim and tuned it to the local heavy metal station for distraction, remembering a very different car-ride…

Sarah’s new apartment was a one-bedroom affair on a third-floor walkup with a tiny attached living room, but it was rather nicely spaced for what it was, with a kitchenette that actually had a small range and oven along with the other appliances, for which she was rather grateful; she certainly wasn’t going to starve on her allotted budget, even if she wasn’t going to be eating like Escoffier just yet. An elevator would’ve been nice, but the king of Amber had made teasing noises about spoiling her chances for physical exercise with so much time spent sitting and studying; as it was, she’d gotten plenty of it over the last few days of the move.

Chucking the heavy parcel in her arms onto the neo-classical-style burgundy couch along with her purse, Sarah collapsed into the long cushion beside the parcel for a moment before commencing to unpack the pile of boxes that already occupied most of the room, digging for one in particular that had contents she had been saving for just this occasion…

“Ah, there’s the Precious,” she hissed like Gollum from The Lord of the Rings, laughing at herself as she hauled the Chaosian black leather backpack out from under the pile of clothes she’d deliberately hidden it in… and breathed an unexpected sigh of relief that the contents had made the journey in one piece, that nothing had happened to it. Irritatedly brushing her momentary paranoia aside, she unzipped the left outer side pocket that she’d stashed the rest of Mandor’s magically infused truffles in, almost reverently extracting the small white box and carefully lifting the lid. She had only ever eaten that one the night of his wedding, and had deliberately mentally set aside two of them for her college finals if the stress got to be too much to handle, but that left one more…

She had nearly consumed it already the night she was told of her mother’s untimely death, but somehow the thought of self-medicating away those initial feelings was surprisingly repugnant to her and she had quickly put it back, only licking the residue from her fingers – waste not – and then wound up hitting the unsweetened baking chocolate squares in the pantry, the resultant craving was so bad! Even in Mandor’s somewhat inebriated state, he had clearly formulated each of these to be exactly one dose.

Celebration, however, was another matter entirely, and speaking of which… The aroma alone was enough to make her openly salivate, that alien perfume already doing wonderful things to her head – but she forced herself to close the box.

Later, she firmly reprimanded herself; she still had plenty of things to be doing, among them finally getting this finely-crafted book carrier ready for some serious use! Setting the truffles aside on the coffee table, she proceeded to haul out the full contents of what had been weighing the thing down: arcane schoolwork, strange books mostly in a strange language (she put re-reading the Thari-language novel on her to-do list), as well as the peasanty, natural-looking leather carryall she’d used undercover in Amber – which was still serviceable, too, she mused, taking that out as well; it might even work as a large purse. The green-leather journal she had purchased in the True City had been rapidly filled cover-to-cover with her adventures, but the magically-enhanced pen had kept on scribbling on any surface it came into contact with! Sarah could never get the thing back under control without her Logrus-generated power (for that was what this item appeared to be sympathetic to), and in the end she’d wound up duct-taping the daylights out of it and then heavily taping it to the inner wall of her closet; it had been nominally free in the bag just now and was still struggling against its bindings! She’d been too embarrassed to ask Merlin about it – mainly because she hadn’t had the opportunity to talk to him alone whenever they did talk – but even at that, she reflected that she probably should’ve, and resolved to bring it up the next time he contacted her no matter what.

The enchanted object continued to flip itself around on the floor like a beached fish as she finished emptying the carryall…

And forgot to breathe for a second or two.

Oh my gosh, how did I not remember that?!

For below the shadow-warped, twisted ruin of that overnight bag Mandor had initially supplied her with (and she kept as a keepsake, a reminder), was Jareth’s crystal! The artifact had clearly reverted back to it’s more ‘natural’ state after such a long time, the ‘forgetting-fruit’ spell which had been active within it expired ages ago, along with her own imprint when she made it look like one of Mandor’s metal spheres. But the magic itself – the power behind it – remained; she could feel it!

But… it wasn’t quite right, she slowly realized, turning the object over again and again in her hands. It didn’t feel the same – not in a bad/malevolent way or anything, just… well… almost Patternish. She suddenly froze at the thought – and its implications.

An imprinted power item… compatible with the Sign I now bear?!

Carefully carrying it and the carryall into the bedroom, she sat down on the side of the bed and experimentally balanced it on her fingertips, rolling it back-and-forth over them as she had seen the Goblin King do in what felt like a different lifetime, with the mattress safely beneath just in case she dropped it… which didn’t seem would be the case – it was almost eerily physical easy to do this! Was Jareth still the Goblin King, she suddenly wondered, or had he finally succeeded in escaping the grasp of the Fixed Logrus? Like many things she privately pondered anymore, there was no way of learning that, either.

Or maybe…

She brought the crystal up to eyelevel – remembering that he’d shown himself capable of scrying with them too, and concentrated on her memory of him, letting her eyes gently unfocus as her mind reached out…

A surge of light seared out of the object! Sarah gasped, dropping it to shield her eyes: it had become as bright as a star!

Shit! She forced herself to breathe, bracing for… nothing. Nothing untoward happened. Alright, how do I turn this stupid thing back off? she sighed.

But even with her eyes closed and covered, she could still tell that the extreme luminescence had strangely shifted position, that it was even bigger and brighter than before, if that were possible. Carefully peeling her fingers away from her eyelids, which were still squinted shut as hard as they would go, she suddenly beheld a humanoid form through them, like an angel without the loose robe, the form of a glowing translucent woman, whose eyes burned like blue stars!

And the Patternish feeling in the room had been amplified all the way up physical presence…

Shit, Sarah observed once more. Too late to put the proverbial – and possibly literal – genie back in the bottle now. She shielded her closed eyes with her hands again, but more in the manner of a visor. “Sorry if I bothered your Eminence playing with that trinket,” she addressed the stranger in Thari, gesturing with her elbow to where she’d felt the crystal bounce on the mattress. “You can take it with you or I can destroy it if that’s what you want done here,” she tentatively tried; now she knew what unwanted attention from ‘on high’ felt like!

The epic-sized figure half-floating off the floor in front of her uttered a deep sigh that sounded – and felt – like a light, cool breeze had just blown through the room!

“Brave little shadow,” the hallowed apparition whispered in American English, “so quick to be rid of your Creatrix.”

Sarah felt the back-fingertips of an immense hand gently caress her cheek: an almost unbearable amount of mental and emotional stimuli screamed through her system at so simple a contact – colors and images and music and so much raw joy that she almost broke down and sobbed! And yet… Sarah swallowed, hauling back hard on her reactions.

“Forgive me if this is rude or anything,” she tried again, in English, “but… would you mind terribly lowering your wattage down, please? Either that or I’m gonna need some really strong sunglasses to do this – I’m about to go blind here!”

To Sarah’s relief, the supernatural light receded quickly until it was just a faint glow. Uncovering and opening her eyes, it still took a minute for the ‘snow blindness’ to recede, for her vision to adjust to the much saner light-level. The uncanny translucent figure before her stood over seven feet tall, lightly muscled yet sans external genetalia, but the face, framed by long spectral hair that appeared to be slightly floating, was unmistakably feminine, so painfully beautiful that Sarah couldn’t bear to look at Her. Those unearthly irises were still shining a brilliant cobalt blue, like lit-up jewels!

“Uh – thanks,” Sarah started again awkwardly. “To what do I owe this honor, then?”

The conscious scrutiny of those eyes abruptly bore down on her like a physical weight!

“I demand your service,” the Lady’s rich alto voice enveloped the too-tiny-feeling bedroom! “You have attuned yourself to my Power and used it before this with no thought of fealty or even repayment with bodily service, which is the very least a mere shadow such as yourself could offer. I have given you your existence twice now – I saved you during the attuning because it suited my purposes to do so. You owe me your very being. I have come to collect what is mine.”

Sarah’s mind and pulse were both racing at this point! The full implications and possibilities made her head reel! What in the great and mighty cosmos could the Pattern Herself possibly want her for?! At least She didn’t want her dead – not right away, at any rate – or she would be already, Sarah reasoned. What was dead-certain, however, was the fact that she was cornered with no chance to defend herself: a mere shadow such as she was had no chance to even run like a rabbit from what was, for all practical purposes, a goddess!

No – a Power, a still-rational part of her brain corrected, surprising her; she thought momentarily of Sarilda’s Dark Lady…

“Think you the Darkness would yet save you from my Light?” the Voice boomed, shocking Sarah present – of course She could read her mind! “The Abyss saves no one, not even those who have given their all – body, mind, spark – to her work. Your original’s mother was no exception.”

It took Sarah a few seconds to truly process what had just been said to her – and when she did, her eyelids slammed closed like doors as bitter tears instantly spilled from them: if Tekla Aricline had been killed, then Sarah’s mother… and Shara’s, and… it was too much to bear, too terrible to even comprehend!

The Hand again touched her face, but this time Sarah’s own tears became like a soothing rain.

“My sister has never tolerated the repeated failure of lesser beings, as I have and do,” She informed her gently. “I know not how she died, for it happened not in Order, merely that she did; her piece was removed from my lover’s game-board – an ‘accidental’ lost play by his opponent, of course.”

Sarah’s eyes flew open, then widened. The Pattern’s lover… Dworkin?! But that mean that Suhuy…and that stupid game?!

“I knew you had knowledge of the nature of our reality, or I would have said nothing.”

Was that just a hint of a smile in Her voice?! Sarah dared a fast glance upward: the smile widened. The Bright Lady was simply too beautiful to exist!

“Fear not – I work to protect those I claim as my own.”

“Well, that’s… good to know, I guess,” Sarah allowed, slowly nodding, “but… why are you here now and not three years ago? If you don’t mind my repeated asking?”

“Nearly as brash as your original,” the breeze came again as the Lady slowly paced away three inches off the floor.

Even her feet are perfect…

“Yet she still withdraws from Me when I would hold her fast and rid her of the Darkness that binds her soul. But she is young, and knows not what she does.” She turned again; the room was only large enough for Her to take two full strides in one direction. “I have many rebellious offspring, little shadow, but none of them has disappointed me more than Corwin,” – She uttered that name with such deep love and profound regret. “From the moment he first set foot on my Pattern to walk Me, I knew that he was special. I orchestrated all that befell him in Order – yea, all – to forge his spirit, to sharpen his wits, to toughen his hide, to strengthen his heart. To make him king in Amber. But at the critical moment, his faith in Me failed, and he used My own power against Me in a moment of doubt, to create something monstrous. He forced me to give birth to an unwanted bastard son – a second Order which competes dangerously with my own.” She stopped and looked right at Sarah; those shining blue eyes were on fire. “He must be brought to account. You have impeded Me once in this also,” she pointed accusingly, “by bringing about the destruction of my messenger before he could complete his duty – and now I must resort to something else. And for this, as well as for your undeserved imprinting, I choose to use you.”

Sarah might have had a bone to pick on one count back there, but she wasn’t about to openly argue with one of the Powers incarnate! Still, even at that, she couldn’t quite shake the oddness of her present scenario. Not that she had anything to compare her current situation to, of course, but her gut was telling her that something felt off…

“Alright, so even granted that I might owe you something-”

“Everything,” the larger-than-life figure insisted, arms crossed.

“… okay, have it your way,” Sarah cautiously continued, “but you still haven’t explained why you didn’t demand this ‘service’ of me any sooner. And what makes you think that I’m so qualified to do whatever-it-is you have in mind? Surely you’re aware that I wasn’t even a decent spy in Amber! Aren’t there something like a couple-dozen more of your real superman-and-woman offspring wandering around out there that would do anything for you in return for a little power and recognition?”

The temperature in the room took a sudden nosedive; Sarah’s teeth were almost chattering as frost intricately laced over the walls, the furniture!

“Do not be disrespectful of My Person, and so gain My wrath,” the Lady icily replied… but then the frost began to melt a little as she sat down beside Sarah on the mattress to the girl’s shock, barely indenting at all! There was a coolness that came from her, like the ocean in springtime. “I require you because of what you are. I still feel your hesitancy. Very well – I will show you.”

She laid her perfect-yet-large translucent left hand over Sarah’s right one –

And suddenly they were standing on a windswept mountaintop pinnacle in the middle of the night!

“D-did you just-”

“Peace, it is only a vision. Yet. Look up.”

In spite of the directive, Sarah deliberately looked all about her instead: down a little ways on the southwest side of the mountain was Castle Amber, lit up by torchlight! She’d swear to it! And far below that was the City, and the farms and the ocean-

She found her gaze jerked up forcefully, as that huge Amberite moon rose over the far eastern horizon, far beyond the sea caves and the strand, beyond Reality itself. The sky was perfectly clear (and Sarah gradually noted that she physically felt nothing, even if she was seeing slight movement about her), but as the moon slowly climbed, something spectral was beginning to take shape and form above them, out over the ocean – something large – and once the silvery disc showed her full face above the water’s edge, an unearthly and very long translucent staircase partially solidified directly before them as Tir-na Nog’th resolved into clarity like a developing photograph, fabled reflection of Amber in the Sky, the Ghost City, a perfect yet colorless copy of the True World, as Rebma was below the sea. Sarah’s knowledge of the place was admittedly scanty, for little was known of Tir-na Nog’th in Chaos, save that the place was occasionally of oracular value (although the visions one saw there could just as easily tell lies, wish-fulfilling truths, or some combination of all three), and – according to an unnamed ‘source’ (which could have only been the traitorous Prince) – a decent copy of the Pattern also lay within, unguarded by any corporal being. The little they did know was sort of a moot point, however: only those of the blood of the Unicorn – those imprinted with the Pattern – could even mount the staircase without their feet falling through the magic and moonlight from which the place was fashioned once a lunar cycle on the full of the moon. Tir-na Nog’th’s current inhabitants seemed to vary depending on the psyche of the Barimen whose eyes beheld it at the time, and even this phenomena hardly mattered from a practical point-of-view, for the ghosts could not see Substance without the direct use of the Pattern apparently, which rendered the visitor to this ethereal realm as much of a phantom to the ‘locals’ as they in turn were to the True World. Yet all that was present in the physical world below appeared to be analogous above…

“You know of this place,” the Voice at Sarah’s side uttered definitively as she stared upward, toward the shining outer walls.

“I know enough to think you’ve still got the wrong girl if you think I can go beyond that third stair made of rock – you and I related by cosmic incident alone, according to your… Lover… but not by blood.”

With a flash of heat the vision abruptly ended; Sarah blinked, dazed at suddenly being in her apartment again in mid-afternoon! The moisture still in the room instantaneously evaporated.

“Have I ever made a poor judgment?” the Lady asked with frightening hauteur, standing to her full intimidating height! “Know you another shadow-being who has set foot on Me and lived? Or one of Substance – of My blood – who can hold that which is powerful in Tir-na Nog’th in their hands, for it is less ghostly than they? Even I may not touch that which I seek to use, for it would be absorbed into Me and lost forever!”

Sarah eyed the glowing apparition really dubiously. If there was one thing she’d learned from her previous experience, it was not to trust the Powers – either of them. “Just what is it up there that you want so badly, your Eminence?” she asked levelly, standing up herself to face Her, crossing her own arms, “and why?” She fully expected to be assaulted by the elements in general for taking a stand for herself like this, but she wasn’t about to allow herself to be bullied, either!

To her complete amazement, the Bright Lady closed Her eyes momentarily. “The Dreamstone,” she breathed – there was a crystalline resonance to the words. “Corwin is currently rebelling, attempting to make himself likened even unto Me, but he is still my grandson, and at present I would bring him home to Amber. He does not come willingly, nor listen to Me, nor repent what he has done and is doing. The Dreamstone can compel him to come, to make him see the error of his ways, to restore him to Myself, to repair the needless damage he is causing Me. Therefore, I require it.” She opened the fathomless sea of Her eyes. “I need you.”

Sarah almost drowned in them before looking away. So… no matter what she chose to do or not do, it obviously didn’t change the fact that she had been made a playing piece on that infernal chessboard – a rook, as she recalled – and since she was still alive, she reasoned (correctly) that she must still be in-play… for Dworkin now, apparently, until further notice! She sighed, remembering Mandor’s only half-joking line about ‘fighting for the Blinding Light’ … and for the first time realized what precisely that dig was actually about!

It’s not only the Darkness that can make it hard to see…

Fine. But if she was going to be roped into this crazy operation, then she was getting some answers first. “Does it take a long time to climb that staircase you just showed me? Or to get around in the City, for that matter? How am I even supposed to find this thing?! Do you know where it is?”

The Lady took a decidedly deep breath, but She didn’t appear put-off by the rational questioning; that was something. “As to your first query, I know not; Time rarely obeys Me in Tir-na Nog’th – this is simply a part of its nature as a counterbalance to Substance. As for the Stone, it has no prescribed or fixed location, but this is no hindrance. All you must do is consciously seek it with your whole mind, and you will be drawn thence. The moment you lay eyes upon it, seize it – wherever it may be – and come straight back down to the mountaintop; there will be no time for idleness. None will be able to hurt or stop you; you will be perfectly safe so long as you return before the sun rises. If you follow my instructions, you may accomplish this task with ease.”

Sarah kept turning her own unease over in her mind: there was something about this that bothered her – beyond the obvious – but what was it? It was like something she couldn’t quite remember…

“Will taking that artifact away from where it belongs hurt Tir-na Nog’th?”

“No, for it will be returned to its rightful place on the next full moon. Time runs slowly in Amber; there will be sufficient.”

What was it?! Sarah wracked her brain, asking more questions to buy herself time. “How am I supposed to get it out to the Argent Pattern? I’m not a good-”

She nearly crumpled like a leaf under that withering glance!

“Do not name the aberration in My presence! I Myself will escort you for half of the distance – beyond that point My incarnated form may not journey, for my missing consciousness in Amber will begin to weaken the capital of Order. This is also why I could not attend to him, to this, as soon as I wished; my attention has been required elsewhere. I can also make the rest of the way relatively simple for you to follow. Once you have arrived, invoke the Stone and summon the prince – he then can be made to bring you both back to Amber, where I may deal with him.”

How could she be missing this?! It was like something hidden in plain sight! “Why do you make your Pattern-ghosts capable of suffering, of pain?” she tried, thinking once again with unsettling regret on the… previous messenger; talk about unfair!

“Why not ask Me why you feel pain, little shadow,” She responded gently, “or why My children seem to delight in hurting each other? A simulacrum is only as good as its reactions, would you not agree? I can assure you that one’s principal, Brand Barimen, is far beyond feeling anything at all, having consigned his soul to the Darkness and not to Me. Ask Me whether I feel pain.”

She was so close, she could feel it! “What will happen to… that place, if I succeed?”

“You know perfectly well what will happen – you are merely stalling. Let us be away.” She opened Her great arms – and they were suddenly draped in a gauzy gray substance, like a robe. All of Her was. Sarah felt her body being drawn magnetically forward…

“Wait! Just answer the question! Please!”

The arms dropped to Her sides, but the grey remained. “Very well: I will absorb the renegade power and establish a tenth incarnation of My Pattern there, perfecting six shadow-copies not in Amber. All will be wiped clean. If Corwin has been rash enough to build there, his city must be destroyed, and those within that populate it, if he will not surrender them to the Change.”

There it was – Sarah had a feeling somehow that she’d just heard it without recognizing it in that last statement. Of course there was plenty of reason to object anyway. She took a fearful sliding step back, toward the door (like that was going to do her any good,) shaking her head. Grabbing the non-glowing crystal off the mattress.

“I wish I could help you – I really do – but you’re gonna have to find or make yourself another patsy to do your dirty work for you. And I know you probably don’t think like this, but as far as I’m concerned people are people are people, regardless of who or what they’re made out of! So unless you’re going to just physically force me or mesmerize me or something anyway, I’m sorry, but I’m not doing it – I just can’t! I-”

The right translucent hand raised and Sarah suddenly found herself inside a miniaturized whirlwind… something was swirling about her counterclockwise, taking on substance and form, going faster and faster and faster until she was so dizzy that she nearly collapsed to the floor!

The movement abruptly stopped. As the room more gradually slowed in its reeling, the new figure stepped cautiously into her line of vision.

It was herself!

“Sarah,” the lady addressed her in a reproving tone, “meet your fetch.”

Sarah’s eyes could’ve popped out of her head! She saw herself timidly wave ‘hi’ with a bashful little smile. She frantically searched her double up and down: there were no discernable visible differences between them at all beyond the translucency, and that was saying something because her soul was naked as a jaybird! The phantom looked back at the Bright Lady in askance – unselfconscious as Eve – yet obviously uncertain as to her current condition!

“Be thou not dismayed, wandering spirit – come, cover thyself in My power,” She smiled down benevolently upon the double, taking her into Her embrace, granting her opaque solidity before releasing her again; the eyes were even more lucid now. The fetch’s current expression made her look exactly like Sarah! Her physical counterpart was stunned.

“I must have willing conscious cooperation for this,” the Lady addressed Sarah again. “I am taking a part of you with me – this much is nonnegotiable. Whether it is your body with your full intellect yet residing in it, or your soul – which is significantly more fragile, yet who will more easily obey her Maker – I leave up to you. I have no further time for this; the full moon will shortly rise in Amber. Decide.”

Shiiiiit. The sentiment had become the chorus of a song that she had long grown tired of. Why oh why oh why couldn’t the universe just leave her alone? It wasn’t like she’d been deliberately going out of her way to piss off the Powers. Much. Recently… oh, alright, fine, maybe she did have this coming, but… I just had to suggest coercion. She eyed herself. Herself stared back hopefully, starting to look a little cold. I can’t do this, Sarah thought irritatedly. Not to me.

“Alright, put me back together, your Eminence,” she sighed, shaking her head. “You got me.”

Clothing from her own closet spontaneously appeared on the fetch, making Sarah jump slightly.

“It occurs to me that you are prone to worry over whether anyone on your home shadow will notice your absence like this. I believe I shall use her as your place-card holder until you return. She shares all of your memories, thoughts, and feelings if not your complete will, and upon re-merging with her you will automatically process all that has happened while you were away. Far simpler than trying to find a different shade to take your place and then relinquish it later. I swear on Myself that it shall be so.”

As much as Sarah hated the blackmail approach, she had to warily concede that the Lady might’ve been onto something there. Her parents were doubtless going to check in on her at least once, just to make sure she was settling in all right. This was going to be so hard, though, and on many different levels, her current metaphysical predicament being only one item in a veritable shopping list. Maybe there would be a way to just reason with Prince Corwin, if he was anything like his ghost… she resolved to try, given any chance at all.

“Don’t you dare eat those truffles until I get back,” she teasingly warned herself, trying not to cry. “We’ll eat them together – I promise. I’ll come home just as soon as I can.”

Her fetch nodded. “I believe in you,” she whispered. It was a highly peculiar sensation, but Sarah couldn’t shake the sudden feeling of familiarity that unexpectedly washed over her, but immediately dismissed it. Of course I’m familiar to myself! On instinct, though, Sarah went to touch her double’s arm, who was now wearing Sarah’s new ‘Phantom of the Opera’ tee-shirt; apparently God did have a sense of humor. Or, rather, goddess…

But the Lady stopped her. “Not yet – you would fuse prematurely,” She kept them apart by what felt like anti-magnetic force! “Come,” She beckoned to Sarah, who well-noted the look of pure, euphoric devotion on her fetch’s face – for the Lady, making room for Sarah to pass by. The large cloaked arms opened again to embrace her…

“Wait a minute – are you sure you really want me to go there dressed like this?” She grabbed the emptied carryall off the bed and shoved the crystal into it quick before anything else could happen, shouldering it. It was all she had time for. Maybe it would come in handy.

The Bright Lady smirked – the particular iteration of the expression looked familiar, also, but for a much more obvious reason, strange as it was to think about: family resemblance.

“None will so much as sense your presence unless I will it. And your shoes are serviceable enough.”

It was true: Sarah had put on athletic sneakers that day, counting on having to do a lot of lifting and climbing with the move, and they were new enough that they still had decent tread on the soles.

There’s obviously going to be no getting out of this, she thought resignedly, bravely stepping forward. Massive arms enclosed about her – it was so freaky that she could still see her dresser by the near wall, straight through that spectral body! Which was gradually beginning to take on a stronger luminescence again; Sarah shut her eyes against it. The Bright Lady of Order smelled like clean air, like fresh snow up close, yet the apparition was physically warm now, more like a person. The huge right hand caressed Sarah’s hair and conscious thought suddenly fled her mind: all was sweetness and gentleness and that holy Light.

“Take a deep breath,” the Voice instructed, and the girl’s body obeyed-

And the world, the Lady, and Sarah’s own physical form were sucked through a furious storm of color, sound and other stimuli, swirling and crackling all about them! She was incapable of breathing, of exhaling, of shutting her eyes, as she was assaulted by the mind-warping sensation that her own body was being stretched out, yards longer than it ever should’ve been! She was too thin to live, to survive this, yet on and on and on then flew, millennia screaming by in seconds, faster than the Light-

They were standing still, the static night sky pinned above with countless pricks of light, the sounds of surf far away in the distance below. Sarah was in such a state of shock that she had yet to exhale.

The hand rested against her forehead for a moment – and she abruptly snapped out of it, gasping, blinking many times, still not quite registering where she was, her brain still too frazzled to compute it… but another stroke eased away that frission as well, as the Lady stepped back from her. In Her light Sarah beheld the three stone stairs – at the top of Mount Kolvir! It felt like waking from a nightmare! Only to find that the dream wasn’t quite over yet…

“You are obviously too frail to travel as I do,” the apparition suddenly spoke up; She illuminated the peak, the scrub foliage, like a blue lantern. “I swathed your form with My own, but the strain was still almost too much for your shadow-body to absorb. Any further travel will have to be performed physically, especially once you carry the Stone. I merely sought to shorten the first leg of your journey.”

Sarah almost didn’t hear Her: her eyes and ears still felt like they were underwater – likely from the extreme pressure changes she had just endured – but even that troubling stimuli paled to a footnote in comparison to what was gradually shaping and coming into focus a quarter-of-a-mile into the heavens directly above them, with a wavering, shimmering staircase forming before her like Jacob’s Ladder. She knew that fantastical Amberite moon had to be rising for this to be happening, but at present she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the phenomenon.

Oh my gosh… Gleaming turrets, shining walkways, ghostly gardens, grand walls and halls and the City all about it. Tir-na Nog’th, city of legend even in Shadow, called Land of the Young – of the fairies – on Shadow Earth. The risers had ceased to visibly tremble, taking on a clear solidity as the rest of the panorama finished coming into focus, settling into being. Sarah hadn’t even seen this spectre the last time she’d been in the True City, having been there at the wrong time of the lunar cycle. If any sight could make a hardened skeptic believe in the supernatural, this place just might do the trick.

“It is safe to ascend now,” the Voice behind her nearly made her jump, she’d been so visually enthralled, and she automatically looked back – and had another surprise: the Lady had collapsed down to the size of a normal human woman – albeit a tall one – cloaked in Arden green, draped in a pristine white dress, Her long-flowing hair just as bleached, Her skin a flawless ivory. The irises of Her eyes were still deep-blue. “Seek the Stone and only the Stone; be not distracted by anything or anyone else. You must not fail – I let you live for this very night, for this task, yet know beforehand that I would not ask this of you if I did not believe it possible for you to perform. Be careful – the City draws the unwary into deeply personal visions, and before they realize it the sun is rising to dissolve the very ground upon which they stand. I am sending you tonight while the sky is clear and the weather fair, with no clouds to make dangerous shadows or breaks in the walkway, in the streets.”

The real physical danger of the situation finally came over Sarah with all the force of a bucket of ice-water; she trembled at the sudden thought of falling miles to her death into the sea of Amber far below! There wasn’t even a guardrail on the staircase!

“N-no disrespect, your Eminence, but-”

“Go!”

No sympathy would be forthcoming from this quarter, obviously. And if she wanted to ever get back home, to say nothing of getting her soul back… She hadn’t noticed much of any difference in that department at first, but now that she was a long ways away from it a terrible hollowness had settled deep within Sarah, and it could only be from one thing. There was nothing for it. Steeling her nerves, she crossed the small distance to the rock risers and walked up the first three, staring in almost disbelief at the fourth, at what she had to do.

“Do not stare at them for too long,” she heard behind her, “and be not troubled by the distance. Concentrate on being there, then on the item.”

It was better than no advice at all. Sarah took a deep breath (man, her ribs were still sore) and tentatively placed her right foot on the fourth ghostly stair. It felt solid enough…

One small step for a woman… Her left foot joined it: she was firmly standing on midair, three feet off the ground! Maybe this is going to be okay. Well, here goes nothing – come on, feet. Shifting her gaze heavenward, Sarah bent her whole will – which had, ironically, been honed and strengthened by the ‘wrong side’ – on gaining the archway into the City at the top. The ascent was not unlike the Faiella Bionen – Stairway of Rebma – save that these risers were of even length and depth, running straight up into the night. In just a few strides she seemed to have traveled much further than should’ve been physically possible, not unlike walking up a rising escalator. Carefully increasing her pace, keeping her eyes trained on the gate, Sarah reached the City in what only seemed like a few minutes.

But time gets screwed with here, too, she reminded herself as she stepped up onto the platform and through the arch, past the unseeing armored guard. Or, rather, he just didn’t see her: the whole of the Ghost City teemed with graceful, colorless spectral activity, an eerie counterpart to the life that went on far below during daylight hours, the only major difference being that the figures often appeared and disappeared, visually blurred or occluded with trailers of bright mist, right in the middle of their activities! It was as if Amber itself had a memory, and was dreaming of all who had walked its streets for business and pleasure over the long millenia of its existence. If an analogous locale had existed in Chaos (which was actually debatable, for a similar mirage was visible from certain locales far from the capitol of Disorder, at a horizontal distance, way out over the Abyss, yet it was completely inaccessible, disappearing upon the direct approach) beachball-sized stars would’ve been whizzing about their heads, the black spike of the Thelbane scraping against the ceiling of the dome of the heavens! As it was, the Order-sky constellations were almost as dim as they were in Sarah’s hometown, the moon so bright and distinct that she could make out specific features with the naked eye for moments at a time; it was too intense to directly look at! She wished she still had those high-powered binoculars Mandor had let her borrow once, only with a glare-shielding filter… Mist swirled before her… and suddenly she was standing facing a section of the outer wall in front of an odd-looking telescope that stuck out over the guardrail, not unlike the standing binoculars that were installed on the Empire State Building for tourists! She was just stepping up to inspect the coin slot – Three-obol pieces only, drat – when she remembered herself.

The Dreamstone! But where? Sarah felt phantom hands whisk her away, guiding her along fogged-in streets, moon-drenched gleaming alleyways, past ghosts bartering goodness-knows-what, enacting all the pageantry of the living with all the reality of a black-and-white silent movie. The pervasive silence of the place was profound, as was the changing and warping of visual perspective. Silvery mists came and went, splicing up what should’ve been a straightforward hike to the Main Concourse, winding her up on Temple Street’s doppelganger instead – past the shops, past the theaters, and into one of the galleries; Sarah hadn’t ever seen this one before, and entered out of curiosity. All the art covering the walls was in grayscale also, mostly formal portraiture in here. Unknown lords and ladies stared down at her, or off into the distance, or even at each other – were the eyes moving? But not all the faces were of Amberite origin, strangely: she also saw faces she vaguely remembered from that banquet in the Ways of Sawall in what seemed like ages ago, humanesque-yet-inhuman features in so many modes of semi-modernist dress. Gilva Hendrake – a drawn sword in each hand – appeared not in an evening gown, but rather in a skimpy skintight leather armor from the neck down… or was that her skin?!

No! Sarah remembered – her mind was drifting too much already! The Dreamstone – where is it? What is it?

The whole gallery blurred away in a silvery fog; when it cleared again, she was in a stately formal Japanese-style rock garden, its tall, lanky, kimonoed keeper carefully raking the pebbles: it could only be Prince Benedict, slowly moving photograph of Oberon’s eldest surviving son! Sarah had never laid eyes on him before, recognizing him more from his hobby than anything else (he was obsessed with Shadow Earth’s Far East), yet it seemed oddly fitting that he was in this place, for his own belief in the Unicorn was more like a self-made variant of Shinto-Buddhism. The unseen forces that propelled her blew her by him – he almost seemed to sense her in passing, pausing before continuing with his moving meditation. She jogged through two different gardens, which were simply splendid in the moonlight, lush blossoms heavily dewed in quicksilver, along a footpath that led up to the side steps, through an open doorway and into the Castle via the northwest guardroom, which unfortunately brought back some bad memories. Strangely enough, rather than seeing some poor soul trussed and jeered at, the scene that greeted her eyes was one of celebration, with many tankards raised in free drinking – and huge, muscular Prince Gérard was among the soldiers, slapping one on the back in high spirits so hard that the man nearly toppled to general laughter!

What in the world? She was practically shoved through the room and the adjacent small hallway so fast that she nearly tripped over her own feet! The pressure let up on a dime the moment she entered the Great Hall.

A great feast was in progress here, the long trestle-tables that filled the hall seated to capacity with picturesquely-attired lords and ladies, high-ranking merchants and knights in armor and livery, festive banners draping the high ceiling, moonlight washing brightly through the row of high-set beveled windows in the western wall that overlooked the musicians’ loft, lighting up the immense marble-laden room as if it were midday! Even colorless and vaguely translucent, the sight of all that food being greedily devoured by the ghosts was enough to make Sarah hungry; the artistic medium of the place, so-to-speak, was beginning to lose its strangeness by overwhelming exposure on an immense scale.

I wonder… She’d never heard of any proscriptions against this: Sarah approached the nearest table to the left and attempted to pick up a small fruit tart that was balanced on one of the silver serving trays… but her hand passed cleanly through it! Oh! The shock sort of woke her up again – it was far too easy to get sucked into this dream!

She also belatedly realized that the moon – which had risen normally in the east – was now in the west, and sinking fast: she had to hurry! How could so much time have gone by so quickly?! Forcing herself to remain calm, she began to covertly scan about the room… then remembered that no one could see or hear her no matter what she did, and so she freely strode among them. If the artifact was here – no, it had to be here! But where?

‘Seek the Stone…’

Sarah felt her steps magnetically pulled along, forcing her to approach the slightly raised dais in the front of the Hall, near to where she had entered. The king’s table. She fully expected to see Random there – or perhaps even old Oberon, if this was a shadow of the past, perhaps one of the old king’s numerous weddings – but the figure she saw seated at the head of that table literally sent shivers down her spine…

It was Mandor! But he was dressed in neutral colors, for his finery was many shades of gray, not his usual black-and-white… and Vialle sat to his right! It was exactly as if he had become Random Barimen himself! Quickly scanning the table – which was perfectly packed with royals (some of whom she knew perfectly well to be dead), still only half-believing what she was seeing – she spotted the other end of this peculiar masquerade: Random, seated much further down the table, wearing Mandor’s cut-and-stark-non-colors (technically correct even here), with his own elder half-sister Fiona cooing in his ear! He had one of Mandor’s metal spheres in his left hand (it shone almost with its own light) and he appeared to simply be fidgeting with it – an act Sarah had never seen Mandor do – as if something on his mind was bothering him… but then he leaned over and gave his ‘wife’ a peck on the neck! Sarah quickly turned from him, not caring to see anymore of the bizarre tableau, turning her attention instead to the ‘king’. Under any other circumstances, just the sight of Mandor like that would have instantly made her nostalgic for some of their better times, but she had been put in his way for a reason here… and that reason currently hung from a heavy silver chain about his neck, the large stone mounted on it glinting and refracting the eerie light like a colorless opal.

Oh, for- she inwardly spluttered. Of course.

She had been sent here to retrieve a shadow-copy of the Jewel of Judgment! That thought alone made her seriously pause. Even if this place would suffer no lasting harm as long as the Stone was returned punctually – which she swore she would one way or another, now that she knew – what would happen to her, to Tir-na Nog’th, right now, if she took it, as the Bright Lady believed she could? A power item was a power item no matter where it lay, influencing what was about it! Would the ghosts be able to see her, or, failing that, see the necklace apparently flying away by itself – and give chase? Running for her life from a whole city of phantoms, and who knew what else beside…

The slant of the light coming in through the windows had altered visibly even as she pondered this. There was no more time to think. The die was cast. She swallowed her misgivings and her fear and stepped right up to the outline of Mandor, grabbed the Stone with both hands, and, yanking the necklace clean over his head, turned, making a mad dash back out the way she had come in, not about to look behind until she saw a ghostly crossbow bolt fly harmlessly through her at waist-level: the entire Castle guard was bearing down upon her! She screamed and a few more arrows shot in her direction, but way off their mark.

They still can’t see me, she finally realized, but they can hear me! Now…

Mandor’s spheres – Random’s Spheres? – figure-eighted on past her before boomeranging back to their owner, apparently useless against the threat! She briefly thought of making a stand to address them, to explain what was going on to quell the rather understandable level of panic and ire, but she quickly decided that nothing she had to say would make a lick of sense in such an alternate reality! To say nothing of the fact that she still couldn’t hear them!

On she raced with unnatural speed, through the fog banks, through the strangely disjointed streets, the moonlight dimming and the first strands of color leaking across the eastern horizon, making the blocks of connected medieval-style housing about her waver, drilling little holes into the dream like laser beams! She had to make it to the stairs! The guarded arch at the outer wall lay ahead of her, open and inviting – but its sentry caught her by the arm this time! Black terror flooded her nervous system with epinephrine as she tried to wrench herself free of his vice-like iron grip, looking up to see-

Dworkin?! The usually-tiny hunchbacked ancient sage was a six-foot-tall, muscular, dark-haired young man in this place, the Unicorn emblazoned on the tabard he wore over a scalemail tunic! But the animal depicted was black!

“Mind how you play the game with us this time, my little rook,” the familiar voice addressed her in Thari – he could definitely see her! “Things are not always as they seem in the world below, either. And there will be no safety net to catch you should you fall anywhere – in Amber, in Shadow, in Tir-na Nog’th! Now hurry!”

She gave him a wide-eyed frantic nod of assent and he released her, letting her leave the City, drawing the large, heavy-looking two-handed broadsword that hung from his belt, as if to fend off her pursuers! The trailers of pre-dawn were tearing across the sky now, taking out risers at random in their wake! Sarah took them as fast as she dared – the flight was a lot narrower than the Faiella Bionen – jumping where she had to to miss the gaps, which were widening and multiplying by the second! Amber’s ocean showed through the void darkly, straight through the remaining steps, more and more clearly as the solid risers began to squish beneath her pounding feet like thick gelatin! Any minute now the whole thing would collapse, with her yet a third of the way from the ground!

But the Bright Lady was still down there, Her angelic eyes fixed aloft on Sarah, full of loving concern. Bold as brass – as what She was – She approached the dying staircase Herself and pounded the edge of the fourth wavering stair with Her fist, the result being that all the remaining risers suddenly took on a 45-degree tilt; Sarah screamed in surprise as she lost her balance and fell backward, sliding like greased lightning down the remainder of the space, shooting off over the stone steps like a human hockey puck, tumbling to a halt against some low bushes in the grass below! The Lady was immediately at her side, concern still painting Her beautiful features!

“Are you unharmed? I would assist you to stand, but I can no longer touch you, nor directly use My power to help you, while you carry the Stone.”

Sarah slowly, sorely, sat up, gradually catching her breath as she took in the wonderful Amber sun rising steadily over that painfully blue ocean far below them, sending the sky into gorgeous spasms of pink, peach and lavender, searching for that illusive shade of cerulean-turquoise that was considered sky-blue in this place. The Lady nodded, silently handing her human companion a water canteen she must’ve produced out of nowhere, and the girl drank deep, not realizing how terribly thirsty she was until just this moment!

“It is indeed strange how few even think to take provisions with them to Tir-na Nog’th,” Sarah’s companion casually noted, seating Herself on the grass also, “almost as if they fear the dreams and symbols that wander those courts could possibly make food or drink unfit for consumption somehow. A needless superstition.”

The Ghost City, its Castle and inhabitants had already vanished like the night-vision they were; Sarah almost couldn’t bring herself to believe any of it had been real! Except for why she was here in the first place - and with Whom.

“It didn’t seem like I was there more than fifteen, twenty minutes maybe,” Sarah mused aloud more to herself than to present company.

“You must have seen something which interested you, or you would not have been up there for so long. Here – eat,” She handed her a simple cloth sack, which contained a small loaf of wholegrain bread that smelled of honey, a think slice of a mild white cheese, and a handful of fresh blackberries. The Lady ate nothing, yet Sarah noted that she was discreetly eying the grass as if that was breakfast but she was choosing to skip it.

She must normally graze in her… equine form, Sarah realized. It was a very weird thought – but then again, she’d seen weirder, she conceded, digging in. The Lady probably thought She was being polite in abstaining in front of a mere shadow-person who might not take too well to the incongruity.

The Lady suddenly turned to her with a little smile. “You are accustomed to the idea of shapeshifters, having received your… training, in the world of the enemy,” She was quick to reprove the thought, “but such physical ‘laws’ do not apply to Me. I am visible in many forms because in truth I have none, though conscious habits may develop from the various conceits. I require nothing external to exist. And were it not for the burden that you now possess, I could easily carry you thence where you must go upon my back in my ‘equine form’, as you so quaintly think of it. As things stand, once we are clear of the Arden Forest, I will procure a vehicle for you of a type you are accustomed to driving since you have not been taught to ride any form of beast – I will not willingly pollute this place,” She added with a slightly affected air as she stood again, leading the way down the mountain by the northbound trail, with Sarah stiffly coming to her feet, stretching her legs, following in her train. The going across the crest was rugged, with lots of mid-sized rocks and rough ground foliage to navigate, soon to be supplanted by thick stands of sharply fragrant spruce as they picked their way down the mountainside. “Put it on – it may physically aid you until we achieve level ground!” the Lady called back to her; She did not have to mention what.

Sarah had stashed the Dreamstone in the now-empty sack, and put that in the carryall; it had felt a little strange just to hold the artifact bare in her hands, and she reasoned that there was no sane purpose to advertising that she had the thing – anywhere – but the real prospect of wearing it, even for a short enough time for the activity to be reasonably safe, made her more than a little uneasy, even if she was technically attuned to its original. Still, one would assume that the Lady knew that, too – knew what she was about when it came to powers associated with Her directly… Sarah stopped walking a moment, balancing her right foot against a rock, and opened up the bag, the bundled fabric, easing out its rarified contents. Unlike the incredibly expensive-looking gold chain and setting of the true Jewel of Judgment (which was a ruby as big as a human eye), the setting of the unearthly chunk of smoothed opal was forged of pure silver, not merely sterling, and the thing still weighed a ton in her hands – which fairly tingled as she carefully slipped the chain over her head…

The moment the Stone touched her chest the whole world altered: color leached out of the landscape – still present, but severely overexposed, like a picture that had been in the sun for too many years. Creatures that looked like faeries of some kind – tree sprites, maybe – clung to the spruces that surrounded them, their skin a perfect match to the tree bark and hair like needles, black eyes blinking, curious, feral as squirrels. Everything in the distance had a certain blurry sheen beyond about twenty feet in front of her…

“Oh, stop gawkin’ already an’ just take the stupid stairs!” a gruff-yet-familiar voice addressed her – Sarah instantly looked down to her left: it was…

“Hoggle?!” she exclaimed in surprise. “What are you doing here?”

But it was as if the dwarf couldn’t see or hear her; he trudged along on his stubby little legs with his pump spray can of fairycide, letting the tree-sprites dumb enough to get close to him have it! Sarah’s vocal protests went completely ignored like she wasn’t even there! It was just like…

Just like being in Tir-na Nog’th, she thought soberly. Closing her eyes for a couple of seconds, she opened them and looked back. The dwarf and sprites had vanished. Yet before her – if she could believe her senses at all at this point – was a gracefully curving opalescent staircase, both wide and banistered… that wound from precisely where she stood back-and-forth, all the way down to the forest floor! She deliberately closed her eyes and silently counted to ten before opening them again.

It was still there – shimmering, pristine, inviting. But better to be safe than sorry.

“Your Eminence!” she yelled through cupped hands on ahead down the trail. “What do you make of this?” She had lost sight of the Bright Lady some minutes ago, she now realized with some embarrassment; she had been too distracted by the strange phenomena to keep walking!

Her jaw practically hit the ground as she saw the Lady levitate up to the staircase’s midsection, laughing!

“Well done, little shadow!” She praised her, floating over the banister, landing neatly on the risers! “You have earned the right to continue your journey on an easier path for the time being!”

Sarah took a deep breath and grasped the sparkling rail, walking out into the unknown.