Then let the clouds part and the darkness pour down from the sun . .
.Nothing
…and a sound of running water from a small stream, next gully.
I had to halt. My head was throbbing; my hands were shaking. I reached out and touched the rock wall to my left. It felt solid enough. Rampant reality. Why was it treading all over me?
And how had I gotten here?
And where was here?
I relaxed. I slowed my breathing and adjusted my energies. The pains in my head subsided, ebbed, were gone.
Again I began walking.
Birdsong and gentle breeze . . Flower in a crannied nook
No. And the first twinge of returning resistance…What sort of spell might I be under, that I had lost my power to walk in Shadow? I had never understood it to be something that could be taken away.
“It’s not funny,” I tried saying. “Whoever you are, whatever you are, how did you do it? What do you want? Where are you?”
Again I heard nothing; least of all an answer.
“I don’t know how you did it. Or why,” I mouthed, and thought. “I don’t feel as if I’m under a spell. But I must be here for a reason. Get on with your business. Tell me what you want.”
Nada.
I walked on, continuing in a halfhearted fashion my attempts to shift away through Shadow. As I did, I pondered my situation. I’d a feeling there was something elementary that I was overlooking in this entire business.
…And a small red flower behind a rock, next turn.
I made the turn, and there was the small red flower I had half consciously conjured. I rushed toward it to touch it, to confirm that the universe was a benign, essentially Merlin-loving place.
I stumbled in my rush, kicking up a cloud of dust. I caught myself, raised myself, looked about. I must have searched for the next ten or fifteen minutes, but I could not locate the flower. Finally, I cursed and turned away. No one likes to be a butt of the universe’s jokes.
On a sudden inspiration I sought through all my packets, should I have even a chip of the blue stones upon my person. Its odd vibrational abilities might just somehow conduct me through Shadow back toward its source. But no. Not even a speck of blue dust remained. They all were in my father’s tomb, and that was it. It would have been too easy an out for me, I guess.
What was I missing?
A fake Dworkin, a fake Oberon, and a man who’d claimed to be my father all had wanted to conduct me to some strange place-to compete in some sort of struggle between the Powers, the Oberon figure had indicated, whatever that meant. The Corwin figure had apparently succeeded, I reflected as I rubbed my jaw. Only what sort of game was it? And what were the Powers?
The Oberon thing had said something about my choosing between Amber and Chaos. But, then, it had lied about other things during the same conversation. The devil with both of them! I didn’t ask to get involved in their power game. I had enough problems of my own. I didn’t even care to learn the tales to whatever was going on.
I kicked a small white stone, watched it roll away. This didn’t feel like something of Jurt’s or Julia’s doing. It seemed either a new factor or an old one which had transformed itself considerably. Where had it first seemed to enter the picture? I guessed it had something to do with the force which had come rushing after me on our attempt to reach Coral. I could only assume that it had located me and this was the result. But what might it be? It would first, I supposed, be necessary that I learn where Coral lay in her circle of fire. Something in that place, I presumed, was behind my current situation. Where then? She had asked the Pattern to send her where she ought to go. …I had no way now of asking the Pattern where that might be-and no way at the moment of walking it, to have it send me after her.