Time Under Chaos | TimeUnderChaos / AnAlteredRealityForJohann browse

Continued from Making Repairs

It seemed to have been a long long time. A long dark time in a dark pit ...

But now there was light. And small sounds. And even faint smells ...

His head felt as though he'd drunk several pints of bourbon immediately before clearing out a mosh pit with his face, and it was with a certain trepidation against treacherous Light that he opened his eyes.

Johann was half recumbent on a padded surface, facing out onto a spectacular view of a blue-green and cloud-etched planet hanging against a starfield. The air had the flat, recycled feel of an atmosphere that had been run through scrubbers enough to pull all the character out of it. His left temple throbbingly informed him that it probably hadn't been bourbon, though a mosh pit was still a distinct possibility. There was the sound of even breathing, and, as he opened his eyes, a slight rustle of cloth from his left. Under it all was an almost subliminal hum, as of machinery operating far away. And then, when he moved, a clinking, and he realized his limbs felt heavier than they should have.

Johann's thoughts quickly solidified from confusion to escape. He closed his eyes, resumed breathing as if he were asleep, and as quietly as possible probed his chains with his hands to see how much slack he had in them, whether he was chained to the chair, etc.

He knew there was someone there, but sought to give no sign of it.

There was a chuckle from that same spot to his left. "Too late, Cousin, I saw you." Larissa. "Whether you believe it or not, you're free." A pause. "If you can give me reasonable assurance you won't do something I'll regret, I'll finish what I started on those manacles."

"Eh," he grunted as he turned towards her voice and eyed her suspiciously as he offered his manacled wrists up.

If not for her distinctive eyes, he might not have recognized her. Her hair was cropped short, and she was wearing unadorned, near-military clothing. "Hmm. I suppose that's good enough, from you," she said.

Larissa rose, and he saw that she was wearing her sword, though there was an unfamiliar device near the hilt that looked ceramic. "Diamond drill," she told him, opening a small case to show him the tool within. "If you try to take it from me, I shall be very cross and you can chew the damn things off for all I care." She moved toward Johann slowly, giving him plenty of opportunity to retreat or otherwise change his mind.

Johann had the steady, overly-relaxed posture of an animal, or trained martial artist. His eyes watched her intently as she went to work, and it seemed as if he was ready to explode into action if she made some unspecified move he didn't like.

The scream of the drill chewing through the fused pins made conversation impossible. Larissa worked carefully, ignoring Johann as she braced and drilled each cuff in turn. Then she quite deliberately turned her back to him as she dropped the bit from the chuck and cleaned off the metal shavings with a cloth from the tool case. She offered him another scrap of cloth over her shoulder. "Here. Metal splinters are nasty, especially in freefall."

He strongly considered bludgeoning her from behind, but he was still off his game from the blow to the head, and there could be any number of minute cameras in this place. Some might feed into her fancy electronics.

He accepted the rag, absently wiped at the filings before discarding it in a pile with the chains, then walked to the door. Naked as the day he was born, he tried the door to see if it was locked.

It was indeed locked, and Larissa, now sitting on the corner of the couch among the discarded chains, accepted his dirty look with equanimity. "At least put some pants on first," she told him, indicating the shelf from which she'd fetched the drill. It also held a neatly folded coverall, and a box labeled 'dermal analgesic.'

Johann glanced at the coveralls, noted they were not bluejeans, and paid them no more mind.

Larissa sighed. "Suit yourself, then. I won't detain you further if you want to leave," she said, "but I am going to follow you until you've convinced yourself this," she gestured at the panorama out the viewport, "is real."

She had stopped looking at him, and was instead gazing wistfully out the window. "Stick to fast-time shadows, please," she said, rising. "Events are moving quickly in Amber, and the sooner you're recovered, the better." She hesitated. "I...have some ideas in that direction, when you're ready to hear them."

He gave her a vaguely confused look, then turned back towards the door while gently rubbing the lump on his temple. His vision wasn't doubled, and though he felt terrible, he didn't think he had much of a concussion.

Noticing his confusion at the one thing he should have known above all others, Larissa frowned, but touched her wristband, and Johann heard the muffled thunk of solenoids in the door activating. A light on the panel next to it flicked from red to green.

He mashed at the buttons, eventually finding the one which triggered the door rather than the light dimmer or temperature controls, and stepped through it as soon as it opened. Then he was off at a light jog.

Larissa shook her head ruefully, already seeing Bleys's half-smiling "I told you so" look, and jogged after her naked cousin. She waved off baffled station personnel, none of whom seemed to realize how close they were to death.

Larissa's wishes to the contrary, Johann did not immediately seek out pants, thus the looks he got running through the station continued to garner a variety of responses. Soon, he reached a bank of lifts, and once inside he closed the door behind him and selected another floor. Before reaching his destination, however, he stopped the lift and started to explore the station layout from its display terminal.

With some 'creative' use of the menus, he found a long disused software back door and started to reprogram the lift's controls. He had good fundamentals in mathematics and logic, and what he wished to achieve wasn't especially complicated, but it would take him some time.

Amused despite herself, Larissa watched her cousin's progress through the station's computer, alert for anything dangerous to the station's crew, but otherwise giving Johann his head.

Eventually, his mess of code was ready, and he set it loose. His head had been clearing, but the sudden acceleration which floored him undid a good bit of that. Still, it was exhilarating to be pressed against the ceiling. Meanwhile, the elevator indicated to the various door sensors that it had simultaneously arrived on every floor. All doors opened, and there was no clear indication of where Johann had gotten off.

As it happened, it was near the maintenance access to the pressurized hangar bay. Unsavory characters were dissuaded by Johann's obvious lack of valuables and aggressively feral countenance as he inspected the maintenance roster. One ship, it seemed, was what he was looking for. It had been impounded for smuggling-- and presumably, not offering up a sufficient bribe. He grabbed the largest gravity wrench on hand and walked out into the hangar.

As he neared the ship in question and started to work at the restraining boot with the business end of the wrench, two security officers approached him.

"Oi... you best not be messing with that shite," one said as he produced a truncheon which could potentially become electrified.

"Ahhh... Charlie? I'm not so sure... the missus is expecting you back, and there is a match tomorrow... he isn't worth it..."

"This nutter?" the first guard scoffed. "I'll fix him right up..." he said as he stepped forth, his club sparking.

Not looking away from his work with the wrench, Johann kicked the security man in the knee. It wasn't especially hard, but was well placed, and sent the guard tumbling... on top of his neural-stun baton.

Johann finished with the bolt, scooped up the first guard's radio, and made an almost universal upward gesture towards the second with a pair of fingers. The more cautious fellow grabbed his comrade's shoulders and made a hasty retreat as Johann boarded the smugglers shuttle.

A short unscheduled takeoff later, Johann was off the station and learning how to intimidate an artificial intelligence. The AI, too, was concerned by his prominent display of generative bits, but Johann showed no sign of caring.

Larissa called Bleys from the pilot's chair of her own ship. It was quite improbable that Johann would outrun her sensor range, so she was letting the autopilot do the driving.

"He's forgotten about the Pattern--I didn't hit him that hard. Just how much subjective time could Mandor have pulled him through?" Larissa sipped from a tumbler of clear liquid that was probably not water. "And do you think beating him over the head with the Sign would jog his memory?"

"It depends how Mandor had it jogging before," said Bleys. "I suspect he kept him in sprint mode.

"As for time ..." He shrugged. "It's relative, I could show you fear in a handful of dust. I suspect he lived through a thousand years of hell while barely an hour passed in the dungeon. Mandor set out to break him, Rissa. And Mandor is very, very good."

She slouched and threw a leg over the arm of the chair. "I'll haul him back before trying my little experiment, anyway. A couple of days ought to give him the chance to shake off the fog."

"It may take longer than that," said Bleys. "I'd be very careful what you're unleashing on the universe, Rissa."

"Let the very foundations of the universe tremble. I am weary of the world as it stands now," Larissa responded coldly, but her eyes were sad.

"I am musing on the king my cousin's wreck, and the king my father's death before him," she continued, more softly. "Whatever Johann is today, yesterday, he was right. All Shadow feared Amber militant once, Uncle. Let them do so again. Whatever the price, I will pay it in full.

"Those better than I have done so already," Larissa finished, almost to herself.

Bleys gave the faintest of sighs.

"Amber Militant was never its most stylish face, you know. Or its most successful one. But you go chasing your little lost lamb and I'll return to my studies."

"I've never been concerned with style," Larissa retorted, "and we've certainly not reaped a bountiful crop of success by peacefully sowing the fields these last hundred years.

"But, unlike certain foolhardy and currently insane family members, I don't insist everyone be of my mind, and since parallel processes converge on a solution faster..." She shrugged and knocked back what was left in her glass. "Too bad the family isn't what I'd consider a trusted network," she finished dryly.

"Oh," Larissa added, hand poised over the comm switch, "if you're going after Aunt Fi at some point, or meeting her with the getaway car, so to speak, I'm in." She shut the connection without giving him a chance for an uninformative response.

After that, she watched the other ship on the sensor readout, mystical senses alert for a flare of Pattern energies, and played blackjack against the computer while Johann went about his business.

Johann's chosen vessel, a 'free trader,' had inherent passive and active stealth capabilities, which made it difficult to track in the first place. When Johann started to time his course corrections with the arrival of charged radiation from solar flares, and directed his ship into the chaotic asteroid belts of the system, rich as they were with independent wildcat miners, it became all but impossible to discern his exact location.

After reaching the belt, Johann set to work. In a bit of transference/projection/paranoia, Johann took out some of his aggressions on the ship's AI, disemboweling its electronics and reprogramming it from the firmware up to be a 'shadow' of his mind. It was an extension of the learned principle that the only one he can trust is himself.

There were no bursts of Pattern energies, or distress calls from the miners.

"I'm sorry to interrupt, Captain, but I have lost the target vessel," the ship's AI said apologetically to Larissa.

"Mmm. Hit anything coming out of the belt with active sensors. Also, double down." Larissa had turned off the gravity and was floating parallel to the floor, one foot hooked under a console.

"Ma'am, I don't mean to be contrary, but there is no way to know the asteroid belt was the vessel's destination. 15. House draws. 18. House stands."

"He's paranoid. He's on the run. Therefore, he's in the asteroids. Hit me."

"Yes, Captain. 24. Bust. 19. Congratulations, ma'am."

After a few hours, Larissa took a nap.

Time passed, with little sign of Johann in-system. Security patrol vessels made a cursory attempt to locate the ship stolen from impound, but the disreputable reputation of the station was well earned, and they soon gave up.

Eventually, tales started to circulate out of insular communities of the miners-- of vessels found floating with all but a full load of valuable ore in the hull, with the crew (and perhaps a few other items) missing, and the ship's AI irreparably trashed.

Larissa, however, had a keener mind than the station personnel. She could discern a pattern in what Johann was taking-- apart from his apparently homicidal removal of crew and AI-- he was stealing what he would need to construct his own personal nuclear weapons program. Big ones. Planet-crackers, perhaps even nova bombs...

After a few days of silence from Johann, Larissa had abandoned her personal watch for a constant stream of data routed to her apartments in the space habitat that floated serenely (and expensively) in one of the planetary Lagrange points. She was not pleased, but also not surprised by the news that trickled in over the course of a month. <<You're thinking too small, dammit,>> she said angrily to Johann, though even had he been there to hear, he wouldn't have understood Tradespeak.

Freefall removed the need to make herself comfortable, so Larissa merely closed her eyes and brought the curves of the Pattern to mind. On the planet below, Bleys was a brilliant presence in her awareness. She sought outwards for Johann's dimmer light, still the work of only minutes. Finding an Initiate in a single Shadow was barely even an effort, as the Pattern pointed to its own the way a compass needle pointed north.

Johann had been eating a half-rack of ribs when she scried. A carriage-sized atomic weapon sat half-assembled behind him. The ship's AI and he had been playing a rather involved game of Go on an expanded grid, though he still eschewed spoken imput and he was still very naked apart from the data input bracelet on his left forearm.

As soon as Johann sensed the Pattern in the room, he stood up with a start and sent the table--and his meal--drifting off as struck objects were wont to do in zero gravity. He snarled wordlessly and angrily punched an alphanumeric sequence into his terminal.

Larissa sighed, and concentrated briefly. Her electronics linked to those in his stolen vessel, the stealth communications countermeasures all improbably failing at once. "I told you I was going to be keeping an eye on you, Johann. I'm not going to let you blow up a planet, or the primary. I like this Shadow."

He growled, made an unmistakable two-fingered gesture, then rubbed his chin meditatively for a few moments.

Reaching some sort of conclusion, he kicked off from the ground, mantling and kicking his way to the crate he sought. Out came a small gas canister with a pressure fitting, and after injecting something from the same crate into his bicep Johann started to spray a noxious gas towards where Larissa's voice had originated.

Then he repeated the gesture and waited for her to die.

"You are making this difficult--which ought to make you happy, at least," Larissa said mildly. "It's FTL radio, not a gateway, so save your energy.

"Now," she continued, businesslike, "I checked in not only to give you fair warning that you don't get to blow up anything larger than, oh, say, a moon, but to see if you're willing to try something ill-advised in an attempt to regain your equilibrium."

Johann produced a sound from his teeth which would make any dentist flinch, and caused the display along one wall to indicate a rapidly decrementing counter.

"Ah, so you are willing to try something ill-advised," Larissa said. "That's not quite what I had in mind, though. Don't go anywhere." Larissa shifted her attention, and made a rather substantial tweak to physics in Johann's area of space.

"There. I just broke physics. Nuclear reactions don't work around you anymore." A pause. "I was going to be more subtle and render all the isotopes in your trigger charges stable, but I don't want to tire myself out--you're handling that quite well without my help.

"At any rate. Your air isn't in any danger of depletion for quite some time, and we appear to be at something of an impasse." Larissa sighed. "A month clearly wasn't long." She sighed again.

"Johann, no matter what you remember, all the centuries--it's only been a few days in Amber. It was less than half a day before I pulled you out of the dungeon. The real world is moving quickly, and none of us can afford to play about in Shadow. What will it take to bring you back to yourself?" The question was obviously rhetorical.

With the ship's main power cut by the elimination of all nuclear processes, Johann's AI had crashed and his vessel was now lit by only emergency lighting.

"Liar," Johann replied venomously, and unhelpfully. He tore the data terminal from his wrist and threw it across the room, shattering it. He produced a sharpened metal bar lashed to a hilt made from the end of a femur such that the bumps at the end formed the pommel.

"Where did you get--don't tell me; I don't want to know," Larissa said resignedly. "So. Which part exactly did you think was a lie?"

"Merlin's c***-polisher... where're you, when I'd tried to make it right? When Mandor was to die, when Achilles strapped me to the wheels of his Chariot, when the Redcoats burned Boston, in the salt mines... Liar," he accused as he lanced his thigh and started to paint the bulkhead in rough strokes of his own blood.

"That's not an insult where I come from," Larissa informed him.

"Merlin's yard is poxy," Johann snapped.

The pause may have been for Larissa to roll her eyes. "I was there, briefly, in a mental hospital, with Islain. Which is why I know you trust all of us even less than you ought. Morgan was there before us--you recognized him then, before the mind magics had fully taken root." Her voice was sad.

"I won't stop you Trumping out," she said, "but I will catch up with you. I have questions, about the Pattern. You might be able to answer them--there are few of us left who could."

"Damien could," he sneered, continuing to paint. Johann was not Dworkin, who could suggest Cabra in a few lines of charcoal, but his own crimson work was still that of a master.

"I do not care to have Damien knowing a thing more about my activities than is absolutely necessary," Larissa sniffed.

"If there were still a way to walk the Pattern, would you do it? To knit your mind back together?" she asked abruptly.

"'Swat I told Morgan to-do," he slurred absently, though more from distraction than blood loss, as the cuts he had made were superficial.

"Told Morgan what?" she demanded. "If you weren't lucid at the time, he wouldn't have been able to follow--he lacks the metaphysical background." That was Larissa at her detachedly technical worst.

Johann tapped his temple absently with the butt of his knife. It was now clear he was deliberately painting to make it difficult to discern what it was until he had nearly finished. "'e's a lying f-cker," Johann complained.

"And I said she wasn't dead."

"Well, one, yes, we all are, two, what makes you suspect that, and three, we've had the same idea, I think, and I'm willing if you are," Larissa said, trusting Johann to be sane enough to work out the antecedents.

"I'll show you," Johann replied sinisterly as he continued to paint. Larissa was somewhat taken aback when she saw that it was the lines of her own face that he was painting.

"Johann, don't," Larissa said urgently. But there was more sadness in her voice than anger or fear.

He moved with the blinding speed and commitment of an Amberite, thrusting the knife into his own heart as he said "I Curse you Larissa..." but as he spoke the words something seemed wrong to him... part of it had the familiarity of well-worn leather, but at some point it broke from its course.

<<You idiot,>> Larissa said, and widened the gateway. She pulled the unconscious and bleeding man through, globules of blood lazily undulating in microgravity in his wake. The alarm she triggered with an eyeblink brought medics in seconds.

"Why do I bother?" she asked a vine wrapped around one of the air ducts, (both for decoration and for oxygen exchange.)

A chime on her console suggested that someone was wanting to talk to her.

<<Oh, of course,>> she muttered. "Yes? Unless your name is Bleys, I'm indisposed."

"Then we must account it fortunate my name is Bleys then," said the owner of that monicker, his face becoming visible in the reader. He was, if anything, looking sleeker and more self-satisfied than when she had last seen him. "Has your little protege managed to blow himself up yet? I gather he has failed in his attempt to take out a considerable portion of an uncaring universe."

"Darling Johann has stabbed himself through the heart, apparently in an effort to make me rue the day, or some such," Larissa told him, turning the pickup so that Bleys could see the medical team at work. "He should be patched up and ready for further foolishness in a week or so."

"I'm calling to tell you that my researches are leading me elsewhere. In other words, I have to go away for a little while. Will that present a problem?"

"It might." Larissa frowned, considering. "If you want to be present when I toss Johann onto the Pattern, you'll need to hold off briefly, or pop back in a few days. 'Informed consent' be damned; the dear boy just tried to kill me three times in a row."

"Mmm," said Bleys. "Which Pattern do you have in mind?"

Larissa paused and thought very rapidly. The question threw Johann's cryptic statements into relief, and a puzzle piece she hadn't quite had time to consider in the few minutes between the conversation and Johann's suicide attempt fell into place. "We've missed the full moon in Amber, haven't we? Unless we can catch the last night?"

"It will be a while before it appears again," said Bleys. "Several years, from this Shadow. However ... what about, as a temporary measure, a Broken Pattern?"

"Hmm." Larissa again paused to consider. "That's a possibility. They're too weak to harm him further, and they might help. There's one in Aegypt, unless you know of somewhere more convenient."

"I wouldn't say convenient," said Bleys thoughtfully, "but if you're up to a short hellride, my researches should be taking me to an interesting Shadow where there's rumoured to be a rather ... unusual Broken Pattern.

"You might want to pack protective clothing for you both."

"'Protective?' ...Hot? Cold? Liquid ammonia at five atmospheres?" Larissa asked. "When do we head out?"

"Be prepared for temperature extremes," said Bleys. "We'll leave when you're ready. I already am - but then I'll be holed up in a monastery in the middle of the desert.

"I won't be exploring volcanoes."

"Chivalry is dead," said Larissa, deadpan. "I'll have my fetching summer wardrobe and the problem child packed in a few hours," she continued with a glance at Johann and his attendants. "I'm beginning to understand your generation's tendency to abandon its children in Shadow. Hopefully this will work well enough that he'll go bother Mandor or Damien for a while.

"Until then?" she said with a slight interrogative rise, to give Bleys a chance for a last comment before she cut the connection.

Bleys raised a glass of something brilliantly coloured in her direction.

"Until then," he said.

The blue-eyed lady in Suite 3 was known to be eccentric (which is what the insane get to be called when they have enormous amounts of money) and thus the station concierge did not so much as widen his eyes when the bizarre shopping list from her address arrived at his terminal. Larissa's account was correspondingly debited, and a few vacuum-packed pouches made their way onto her shuttle by the time the medical crew had certified Johann as stable to travel. She handled convincing the station owners not to report her apparent homicide attempt herself. Johann not being a customer, it was not a difficult endeavor.

It was thus with a minimum of hassle that she made it to Bleys's door, Coirann driving and an unconscious and rather pale Johann strapped into the rear passenger seat of her ground car.

"They have laws about transporting unconscious persons here," she informed her uncle. "Barring emergencies, there is apparently a presumption of criminal motive."

"How very unenlightened," commented Bleys. "Next time we should pitch on a shadow that sees abduction as a privilege that people pay highly for. That should make your life easier."

"Are you implying that being abducted by me is not a privilege?" asked Larissa with suspicion.

"Now - we take the spaceport out. I've arranged a delightful planet-hopper, kittted out for a wealthy playboy who swallowed one pretzel too many. It should transmogrify into a rather large dragon somewhere out beyond the third moon."

He managed to say this with a remarkably straight face.

"Will the dragon have a wet bar?" Larissa replied. "Anyway. You can sit next to Coirann, or next to Johann. I know which I'd pick."

"Thanks," said Bleys. "You and I can travel First Class - where there'll be a bar. Coirann can look after Johann in Economy. That's the rigging under the belly. Quite safe - and some interesting background noise."

This earned him a dirty look from the woman he was consigning to babysitting detail. Coirann got them to the spaceport with a minimum of pedestrian casualties, largely because the car's onboard AI overrode the worst of her driving.

The ship Bleys had arranged was, to put it mildly, sybaritic.

"We should stop on the way out and make sure Johann's ex-ship isn't programmed to blow up the sun or some such," Larissa said in the first class lounge, after having tied Johann to his bunk (and almost having to repeat the performance with Coirann to convince her to stay with him.) "Besides, there's a painting aboard I want to retrieve."

Bleys looked pained. "Isn't it equally likely to be programmed to blow up anyone who attempts to interfere?" he objected. "I mean, I like this Shadow, and I'll miss it if it's pulverised for the sake of Johann's twelve-step programme but after all ... we can make another."

"I said there was a painting I wanted to retrieve," repeated Larissa from the bar cart. "I'll handle the probabilities. You can spend the time coming up with new and exciting ways to program the massaging jets in the whirlpool. Coirann would be delighted to help, I'm sure."

The hellride was ... hellish.

In the end, the first dragon they travelled with turned out to be the sort of spaceship that used gravity as a propulsion, using slingshot trajectories around the moons to hurl themselves into the stomach churning lurch of wormhole jumps, followed by long decelerations before they could build up speed again. Bleys advised Larissa to study the improbability of the physics involved during the boring bits (as opposed to the utterly terrifying bits) and spent his own time locked in his cabin, engaged in his own studies.

Larissa leaned over the rail and watched the vacuum boil (or other activities suited to the Shadows through which they were passing) most of her attention on her mystical perceptions of the forces at work. It made her rather dreamy, and though Larissa didn't walk into any bulkheads, Coirann did manage to take her for rather a lot at the poker table and became unbearable as a result--at least until the next bad patch hit, at which point she was too busy suffering to be insufferable.

But that phase gave way to an increasing series of leaps that took them from the battered spacecraft to a vast dragon, to something that resembled the belly of a whale (at least in the annals of popular fiction) as they travelled through underwater caverns in seas of bilious green slime, to an open speedboat (Bleys let Coirann take the wheel--once. After that he said grimly that he'd never known anyone NOT of Amberite blood wilfully make a hellride worse before, and took the wheel himself). Finally, as they drew up to a beach of black rock, where the smell of sulphur hung heavy in the air, they were in a rather sleek submarine, painted to resemble a long (and curiously rigid) fish.

Some two hundred miles to the north, a range of volcanoes could be seen.

Coirann, who since the speedboat episode was rather determinedly ignoring Bleys (an activity requiring most of her attention), had gone above and jumped to shore as soon as she was able, and could now be seen through the portholes prowling the beach and drying off from her brief swim.

"She doesn't actually know how to drive, you realize," Larissa murmured, watching as Coirann skipped rocks over the waves. A larger number than could be accounted for by chance bounced off the hull of their vessel with a series of thunks.

"Nothing to it," said Bleys breezily. "Accelerator, brake. Wheel. Turn left, go left. Turn right, go right.

"It was her failure to concede there could be any speed below white-knuckle screaming that was a little unnerving.

"Anyway, my sweetest niece, this is where I must say farewell to you all. See that tall twisted tower, sticking up like a half melted jagged tooth? That and some esoteric volumes are my destination. Call for me on your way back."

"I am your 'sweetest niece,' aren't I?" Larissa mused. "How depressing for you."

"You want the third volcano from the right, the one emitting all that pretty purple smoke. The Broken Pattern is there - until the next eruption, at least. Each time it gets more and more unwalkable..."

"You do know how to show a lady a good time," Larissa told him dryly. "I'll be leaving Coirann with you, since she won't be able to keep the pace I'm going to set. She's not nearly as useless as she pretends to be, really."

Bleys winced. "That adds a whole new conviction to my wish that you return soon and safely. How are you proposing to transport the...ah...patient...without her help?"

Larissa frowned at him. "Scry the location--a Broken Pattern won't be hard to find--and open a Pattern gateway to the closest stable point. Then I stick Johann back in his Shadow Pocket and jog the rest of the way...sprint if it's close." She shrugged. "It'll take what, a day and a half, at the outside? ...Barring metaphysical complications about which you should feel free to inform me."

"It's a Broken Pattern," said Bleys. "Earnest discussion has raged--at least between Fiona, Brand and me--as to the best way to walk a Broken Pattern. Brand, our rebel, held it should be walked along the cracks. Gave it ... I don't know ... that certain edge. Fi--who's always been a little conformist at her core--wanted it walked avoiding the cracks. Hold to the straight and narrow, and hop over the cracks when you encountered them."

"And you thought?" Larissa prompted. "And did any of you ever try, either way?"

"Have you ever heard of Random's sister, Mirelle?" said Bleys. "She conceived a violent affection for Brand, would do anything for him. She was, of course, very young.

"Afterwards we could never agree on whether it was because she had walked on the cracks, whether it was because she had stumbled and set her foot on the plain path, or whether it was simply that she was too young or the Pattern was just too broken.

"At all events, it gave us all a marked distaste for further experimentation."

"I...see," Larissa said. "Well, I'll claim the moral high ground in that Johann is already an Initiate."

"I'm not sure how you'll be persuading Johann to do one or the other."

"Perhaps I'll go first. He'll follow, especially if I stand in the center and act like I'm Doing Something. It's like dealing with a particularly bloody-minded teenager," she said, shaking her head.

"Hmm," said Bleys. "My belief is that he'll watch you, then turn away and set about turning the active volcanoes into the sort of thermal explosions that will rip apart this Shadow. You wouldn't care to plant some seismic measuring devices so that I can be forewarned, would you?"

"Point. I suppose I'll just dump him on the start, three-quarters conscious."

He looked at her, suddenly intense.

"It's my belief that it's not about how you choose to walk the Pattern. It's how you walk the Pattern, cracks or not. Mirelle was young and scared, and we were almost as young and feckless. You are neither. I have faith in your abilities to walk it."

"I don't plan on walking the blasted thing," she said. "Unless you want a firsthand report, in which case you'll have to ask nicely." She grinned. "Compliments are a good start."

He smiled back. "I thought I already had. There's not many of our family that I'd've stuck my neck out so far for."

Larissa's wicked grin softened. "You had to pick one inside an active volcano?" she teased. "All right, I shall provide firsthand details. Possibly from both methods--I'm curious now."

Larissa bade her uncle farewell with a kiss and left him to make a few preparations. Ashore, she enlisted Coirann's help to stuff the unconscious and consequently floppy Johann into an aluminized suit (and, in passing, enjoin Coirann to behave herself.) She climbed into her own without help, a production which involved shooing off Coirann, at least until she needed the back zipped.

Locating a reasonably comfortable rock, Larissa sat and brought the Pattern to mind. She cast the Lens out over the Shadow, toward the strangely warped Pattern energies that roiled in the volcanic range. Narrowing her focus was simple, and she examined the purple smoking caldera for a ledge that would support her weight, and Johann's once she pulled him out of the shadow pocket. She took her time, wanting to err on the side of caution, since she was justifiably dubious that even Amber blood would protect one against lava.

Having found an outcropping that suited her purposes, Larissa opened the gateway, and a blast of heat radiated through the portal and across the beach, waves of convection shimmering over the black stone. Coirann retreated, shielding her face, and Larissa stepped through....

And found herself on the ledge, as she had imagined. It was narrow and insecure, but seemed prepared to hold her weight for the moment. She was a little over two thirds of the way up, and looking down she could see where lava flows had shaped and formed the slopes. It seemed from this close an examination to be some type of stratovolcano, composed of many layers of hardened lava, tephra, and volcanic ash but, this close, Larissa could see that the mineral elements were differently constituted here, so the resultant rock was not the black of basalt that she had seen in other Shadows, but rather a rich, deep blue, shading off into purple at one end of the spectrum and a pale sea-green blue, like the copper carbonate, at the other. And then she realised that this stone was, to some extent transparent, its transparency limited by its colouration rather than be any opacity within the rock.

Turning to the mountain, then, she began to realise that she could, to a limited extent, look through it to the central conduit and even, to a yet more limited degree, look down. There seemed to be a glowing light down there, perhaps the magma chamber itself. But the light did not seem as pure and uninterrupted as she had imagined.

A better view of this phenomenon might be obtained either by climbing to the lip of the caldera and looking down, or by finding one of the old branch pipes that had broken to the surface and climbing through the walls, as it were.

Larissa overlaid her mental map of Kolvir with what she could see of the volcano. The deep glow seemed to correspond to where the Pattern should be, which meant the magma pipes ought to match roughly with the network of caves that riddled Kolvir.

Cautiously, she began to descend the slope, testing each foot- and handhold carefully before trusting it with her weight. Descents were always more perilous than ascents, and she wished briefly for Shapeshifting while hanging one-handed from the rock face and considering her next move.

She reached the mouth of one of the branches with no injury to anything more vital than her pride, and dropped lightly to the floor of the passage. The headlamp on the helmet of the heat suit obstinately refused to work in this Shadow, and she didn't dare tweak physics so close to the confluence of the unstable forces in the volcano.

The human eye is more sensitive than most people realize, and the Amberite eye even more so. Once the daylight was lost entirely in the twisting of the passage, Larissa stood in the darkness until her eyes adjusted to the faint glow that emanated from the pit of the caldera and made it this far out into the tunnels. That, and the increasing intensity of the heat on her face through her open visor, made it simple, if not relaxing, to ensure that she was working her way more deeply into the volcano.

The further forward she went, the more the light from the magma at the bottom of the chamber increased as she went forward, refracted and reflected by the glassy walls of the volcano. But it was not until she emerged from the tunnel and looked down into the heart of the volcano that she appreciated the enormity of the task before her.

There was the Broken Pattern. It seemed, at first glance, to be floating on top of the magma, and as the fiery forces of the volcano expanded and contacted, so too did the Pattern, to the point at which cracks appeared and disappeared, according to the shifts of the magma.

And then Larissa realised - the Pattern was not floating on top of the magma: it was a seal, a barely adequate seal, holding it down.

<<Should have gone to Aegypt,>> she muttered, flipping down her visor.

Watching the expansions and contractions of the Pattern, Larissa considered. She had sped up the time rate in the shadow pocket to let Johann heal, but that meant she might have misjudged in one direction or the other, and he might still be unconscious, or wide awake and clawing the walls--and not wearing his heat suit.

<<Well, that'll motivate him,>> she decided. Larissa freed her sword in case Johann decided going through her was a better choice than chancing the Pattern, and, as gently as she could under the circumstances, opened the pocket and dumped Johann onto the start of the Broken Pattern.

A naked blond man holding pieces of what had been a hospital bed frame in each hand rolled out and onto the balls of his feet, his left foot falling upon the start of the Pattern and the right shiv evaporating as he dropped it onto the Design to regain his balance.

Johann was struck, at first, not by the sight or sensation of burning skin, but of the smell, and the sound of his sweat boiling even as the first sparks started to rise from the broken pattern. With something that might have been deja vu, or memory, he turned and regarded the fractured Design. He heard the rumbling as he took his first steps, and over the volcanic indigestion exclaimed, perhaps rhetorically, "Volcano?" followed by creative cursing, no doubt because his feet were being slowly cooked. Still, sweat was pouring off of his body, and the Liedmenfrost effect (as well as thick calluses) would buy him some time.

<<Wouldn't have been a problem if you'd stayed in your damn heat suit,>> Larissa muttered, and leapt after Johann onto the start of the Pattern. She didn't think it would last much beyond him reaching the center, and did not want to be caught in the eruption. Being roasted by magic lava did not seem as though it would be much improvement over being roasted by the mundane sort.

Johann's mind went back to the first time he'd walked the Pattern. The night his mother died. The night Gerard was killed, though he'd only known him by reputation. The night he'd met Damien as his own person, rather than Captain Darling... or, he'd thought that the man he'd met had been the real one. Everything was so confusing... but he did recall Damien's words, now, from what was from so many lifetimes ago...

"I shall take you to Tir, so that you may claim your Birthright as a Son of Amber," Damien said, with a certain emphasis which indicated a special meaning to 'Birthright' and 'Son of Amber.'

"You mean that glowin' city in the sky? How? Birthright?" Johann asked as he sent a dusting of ground brick, mortar, and dirt down onto Damien's head.

"I know you're Caine's son, Johann... no need to keep that quiet from me. We are cousins of the Blood. All of Amber's Royals must each walk the Pattern in turn, to prove their blood and worth. Once they have done so, those who survive acquire a mastery over all the Worlds. On nights of the full moon, Tir becomes solid... so long as no clouds pass over the moon and the Pattern there, in the basement of the castle in the sky. You step on at the beginning, and you don't stop. Repeat that back to me," Damien urged as he pulled himself over the top of the roof.

"Captain Darling?" Johann asked, worried at this talk of 'if he survived.'

"Actually, it is Damien. Darling was my nom de guerre, and this war is over," Damien replied with only a hint of exasperation. Rather than prompt him again, he watched the streets and waited for Johann's soft reply.

"We're going to Tir, where I'll go to the basement of the castle there. I walk onto the Pattern?.. and don't stop..."

As he had done then, he put one foot in front of the other. This time, there was more of a 'spring' in his step. This man was not the boy he once was.

More attuned and more prepared, Larissa was not subsumed by the rush of memory, though she quite clearly heard Eric's voice saying "It's time," and felt Islain's hand in hers and the dungeon steps beneath her boots, cold and solid and almost seeming more real than thin rocky crust she stood on now. She kept her attention in the present, forcing old ghosts back and watching Johann for any signs of faltering.

Johann was not running along the Pattern, a good sign... though he was in obvious discomfort, he was husbanding his strength. Pattern walks were not gentle things in the first place. As Johann started to encounter breaks in the Pattern, he didn't know what to do. For the time being, he could step over them. Johann neared the first veil, and the promise of reliving lifetimes of torture almost gave him pause, but he knew that to stop was to die... and the pain of pausing did impel him onwards.

The sparks flared up, and from Larissa's perspective Johann passed through and continued on without pause. To him, however, it seemed to take minutes to push through the curtain of fire. And then he was through, and the burdens of memory were upon him. Shadow Earth, Victor Earth, Amber, Arden... the rise and fall of the one great romance of his life, which had ended on the docks, and whose ending was at least half his fault.

Then the tortures. Prison camps. Mental asylums. High-gravity arctic prison worlds. Abandonment to starvation in the desert by unworthy companions. The Pattern illuminated these memories, this eternity of spirit-crushing torture, as false... but it also seared them again into his mind. A certain clarity returned, allowing him to look back on the wreck of his mind. Madness, for some, was an escape... one he had now been denied by this echo of Dworkin's masterpiece. Larissa saw Johann stop, right before the second veil, and stare longingly into where the caldera shone through right off the path.

At first, Larissa thought he had been stymied by one of the cracks, which were becoming more frequent and wider as the two progressed, amidst louder rumblings from the depths. Then, just before the darkness of the First Veil closed around her, she realized what Johann was thinking, and all but ripped the Veil to tatters in her haste to close the distance between them. This Broken Pattern yielded before her in a way the Real thing never had, and the part of her mind that never stopped thinking about such things wondered if she could somehow bind the broken fragments together into something stronger.... She shook her head to clear it, and looked to see if Johann had taken the Second Veil yet.

He hadn't moved, though he looked like he might be preparing to jump.

<<Not after all the trouble I've gone through for your sorry hide,>> Larissa muttered, and jumped a crack that suddenly opened before her, landing in a shower of sparks. It gave her a queasy feeling that she passed off to the analytical part of her mind, while still another part was busy remembering a similar jump that had ended with her sword in a demon's chest.

She flipped up her visor. "Amber is not yet free, Johann," she called.

"I've stabbed my lover in the back, literally and by choosing Amber over him... and he has done the same in response. I tried to kill Mandor, and loused that up-- no doubt Father is still snickering darkly over how badly I played that one, how my sensitivity, my lack of subtlety, brought about failure. I've been tortured such that I can't describe it. Amber would be better off without me, and I don't wish to live with these... memories..."

"That's the most you've ever said to me at one time." Larissa moved a few steps closer to him along the Pattern, sheathing her sword as she went. "I need you, Johann. You're not a liability--just flawed, like all of us. Look at me--I spent a century moping and ignoring reality in the hopes that things would solve themselves, and what have I got to show for it?"

Johann's head turned, and his feet shuffled a bit closer to the veil to insure they didn't fuse to the spot. Larissa could see his face was twisted in pain, his eyes still glimmering with the tears which had run down, and now hung to, his face.

"That's just it... a century, and still nothing. Chaos forever," he said as he moved again, but still he eyed the leap he might take.

"'Nothing?'" Larissa took another step. "Johann. Dear Johann. I am here, now, out in Shadow standing in the middle of a damn volcano reasoning with a suicidal naked man because you inspired me--and others. I was not alone in freeing you, and I am not alone in this Shadow. Not 'nothing.'"

Johann, terse as ever, grumbled unintelligibly and struggled with the veil. Perhaps he found the sparky curtain less taxing than arguing with Larissa... perhaps he needed to move his feet while he could still walk.

On the other side, the memories were easier, but the going became increasingly difficult. There were more gaps, Johann's strength was fading, but he was making progress... from Larissa's perspective, it would not be long until Johann reached the Final Veil, but then, she was a much more accomplished initiate and so found retracing the route less taxing. Also, she hadn't eschewed clothing.

Larissa caught up to him in the filigree. Its delicate threads were wrong, knotted in places, absent in others. Her fingers itched to reach for the weave and straighten it, to smooth the gnarls and close the gaps, to put things back the way she knew they should be.

Johann moved so slowly. She matched her pace to his, and it felt like an eternity between footfalls. There was nothing to do but sift through the memories the Pattern dredged up. Tradespace and the sensation freefall, and of the cold running in her veins like ice water just before hibernation took hold. That first Shadow walk with Eric. That first damn horse. The family, like a slideshow. Benedict on the battlefield, sweating and panting, but unmarked. Flora, her sleek blonde head close to Larissa's as they reviewed a seating plan, her perfume like a caress. Gerard, smiling, always smiling. Brand, haloed in the afternoon light from the window of his studio, also smiling, but there was a menace in it. Had that knife edge been there all along?

It was Brand's smile and green eyes that hung in her vision like the Cheshire Cat, as the two of them reached the Final Veil.

The flames that flickered either side were not the cool blue flames that they remembered. These were orange and red flames of searing heat - and the Final Veil in front of them felt like a metal door, tempered to red hot, verging on white heat. Beneath them, the ground was rumbling and cracking ominously ...

With a snap of her wrist, Larissa flicked off a glove. It fell onto the Pattern and burned instantly in a brilliant flare. She grabbed Johann's bare shoulder, sweat slick beneath her hand, and hissed as a wave of his pain washed over her. ~Just stay on your feet,~ she told him, and he felt the psychic pressure of the Broken Pattern fade slightly as her mind shielded his.

Johann tensed, considered resisting, then swiftly disregarded the idea. He husbanded certain parts of his mind, but her words came through clearly. ~Damn, wish I had my trumps... what now?~

Larissa did not press toward whatever it was Johann wanted to keep private. ~Push through the Final Veil, if you think you have the strength for it.~ The cool regularity of the true Pattern backed her thoughts. ~If not, how quickly could you open a Trump contact?~

~I do... fast~ came his thoughts. Connected as she was to his mind, she could tell that each word was invested with much meaning, as was suggested by his usually terse speech.

Johann reached out, closed his eyes and partially turned his head, then surged at the final veil with what strength remained to him. If it was truly as physical a barrier as it appeared to be, he felt he was the member of his generation most suited to pound it down. Brute force was something he was good at.

Larissa maintained their mental link, and he felt, rather than heard, her chuckle, warm and reassuring, as she picked up his train of thought. Her mind buoyed his, lending him psychic strength for this last obstacle.

And the Veil yielded to him ... and he was plunging through to the other side.

But behind him, Larissa felt - and saw - the Veil blaze up with fresh fierceness. Her support for Johann had sapped so much of her own strength and endurance ... and the very ground beneath her feet was rocking.

Johann stumbled through and seared his palms, causing him to wonder where along the way he had lost his second shiv. He was quickly on his feet again, shifting his weight as one would on hot sand. His energy was nearly gone, but he could hold out for a short time thanks to Larissa's help.

Larissa held her Trump of Bleys ready. She had no illusions about her ability to open a contact with any speed...but Johann was a Trump Artist. The trouble arose in that he was a Trump Artist on the other side of a fiery mystical barrier.

Though more than her pride was at stake in the matter, that pride would have been enough. The only consolation in dying on a Broken Pattern would be not having to face anyone afterwards. She marshaled her remaining strength for a frank exchange of views with the thing over who was in command, and calmly stepped forward into the Final Veil.

And Johann was through ... through the veil and in the centre ... one more step, and he would leave the veil behind ...

Then he realised that Larissa's strength, Larissa's voice in his mind was fading, fading fast ...

He cursed, and reflexively extended his hand palm first towards Larissa. It was a pre-rational, instictive action, but perhaps he could help her break through the barrier physically as she had helped him psychically.

Besides, he'd been suicidal all of a minute ago.

Deep in the flames of the Veil, Larissa was barely aware of her cousin's mind, save as a rapidly-diminishing thought she couldn't spare the effort to pursue. But acting on an impulse that was perhaps not entirely her own, she reached out her hand--reflexively her ungloved right one, the one holding the Trump.

And their hands met in the blazing light of the final trump ... with a shock of recognition, a thrilling that throbbed and shuddered in their veins ...

For a second, for an infinity, they were one entity - and the Pattern saw them as such in its brokenness, and bonded them together ...

Then the veil was past and they were standing, handfasted, in the centre of the Pattern and it began to be subsumed in the molten lava that rose all around.

Their eyes met as their minds already had, pain and fatigue forgotten. Knowledge from each clicked into a united whole as the Pattern melted around them. Faster than either could have alone, they reached a decision, and disappeared.

Continued in The Mandate of Heaven