A single step brought it within range of the firelight, and I spilled coffee when I beheld that face. We had never met, but I had seen his likeness in many places in Castle Amber.
“I understand that Oberon died in redrawing the Pattern,” I said.
“Were you present at the time?” he asked.
“No,” I replied, “but coming as you do, on the heels of a rather bizarre apparition of Dworkin, you must excuse my suspicions as to your bona fides.”
“Oh, that was a fake you encountered. I’m the real thing.”
“What was it then that I saw?”
“It was the astral form of a practical joker-a sorcerer named Jolos from the fourth circle of Shadow.”
“Oh,” I responded. “And how am I to know you’re not the projection of someone named Jalas from the fifth?”
“I can recite the entire genealogy of the royal House of Amber. “
“So can any good scribe back home.”
“I’ll throw in the illegitimates.”
“How many were there, anyway?”
“Forty-seven, that I know of.”
“Aw, come on! How’d you manage?”
“Different time streams,” he said, smiling.
“If you survived the reconstruction of the Pattern, how come you didn’t return to Amber and continue your reign?” I asked. “Why’d you let Random get crowned and muddy the picture even further?”
He laughed.
“But I didn’t survive it,” he said. “I was destroyed in the process. I am a ghost, returned to solicit a living champion for Amber against the rising power of the Logrus.”
“Granted, arguendo, that you are what you say you are,” I replied, “you’re still in the wrong neighborhood, sir. I am an initiate of the Logrus and a son of Chaos.”
“You are also an initiate of the Pattern and a son of Amber,” the magnificent figure answered.
“True,” I said, “and all the more reason for me not to choose sides.”
“There comes a time when a man must choose,” he stared, “and that time is now. Which side are you on?”
“Even if I believed that you are what you say, I do not feel obliged to make such a choice,” I said. “And there is a tradition in the Courts that Dworkin himself was an initiate of the Logrus. If that is true, I’m only following in the footsteps of a venerable ancestor.”
“But he renounced Chaos when he founded Amber.”
I shrugged.
“Good thing I haven’t founded anything,” I said. “If there is something specific that you want of me, tell me what it is, give me a good reason for doing it and maybe I’ll cooperate.”
He extended his hand.
“Come with me, and I will set your feet upon the new Pattern you must follow, in a game to be played out between the Powers.”
“I still don’t understand you, but I am certain that the real Oberon would not be stopped by these simple wards. You come to me and clasp my hand, and I will be glad to accompany you and take a look at whatever it is you want me to see.”
He drew himself up to an even greater height.
“You would test me?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“As a man, it would hardly have troubled me,” he stated. “But being formed out of this spiritual crap now, I don’t know. I’d rather not take the chance.”
“In that case, I must echo your sentiment with respect to your own proposal.”
“Grandson,” he said levelly, a ruddy light entering his eyes, “even dead, none of my spawn may address me so. I come for thee now in a less than friendly fashion. I come for thee now, and this journey shall I hale thee amid fires.”
I took a step backward as he advanced.
“No need to take it personally…” I began.
I shaded my eyes as he hit my wards, and the flashbulb effect began.
Squinting through it, I saw something of a repetition of the flensing of Dworkin’s flesh by fire. Oberon became transparent in places; other places he melted. Within him, through him, as the outward semblance of the kind passed away, I saw the swirls and curves, the straits and channels-black-lined, geometrizing abstractly inside the general outline of a large and noble figure. Unlike Dworkin, however, the image did not fade.