The man moved forth from his shadowy alcove, slowly carefully, flowing along the far wall. At least he did not seem interested in walking the Pattern. He moved to a point almost directly opposite its beginning.
I had no choice but to continue my course, which took me through curves and turns that removed him from my sight. I came to another break in the Pattern and felt it knit as I crossed it. A barely audible music seemed to occur as I did so. The tempo of the flux within the lighted area seemed to increase also, as it flowed into the lines, etching a sharp, bright trail behind me. I called an occasional piece of advice to Jurt, who was several laps back, though his course sometimes brought him abreast of me and close enough to touch had there been any reason to.
The blue fires were higher now, reaching up to midthigh, and my hair was rising. I began a slow series of turns. Above the crackling and the music, I asked, How’re you doing, Frakir? There was no reply.
I turned, kept moving through an area of high impedance, emerged from it, beholding the fiery wall of Coral’s prison there at the Pattern’s center. As I took my way around it, the opposite side of the Pattern slowly came into view.
The stranger stood waiting, the collar of his cloak turned high. Within the shadows which lay upon his face, I could see that his teeth were bared in a grin. I was startled by the fact that he stood in the midst of the Pattern itself-watching my advance, apparently waiting for me-until I realized that he had entered by way of a break in the design which I was headed to repair.
“You are going to have to get out of my way,” I called out. “I can’t stop, and I can’t let you stop me!”
He didn’t stir, and I recalled my father’s telling me of a fight which had occurred on the primal Pattern. I slapped the hilt of Grayswandir.
“I’m coming through,” I said.
The blue-white fires came up even higher with my next step, and in their light I saw his face. It was my own.
“No,” I said.
“Yes,” he said.
“You are the last of the Logrus-ghosts to confront me.”
“Indeed,” he replied.
I took another step.
“Yet,” I observed, “if you are a reconstruction of myself from the time I made it through the Logrus, why should you oppose me here? The self I recall being in those days wouldn’t have taken a job like this.”
His grin went away
“I am not you in that sense,” he stated. “The only way to make this happen as it must, as I understand it, was to synthesize my personality in some fashion.”
“So you’re me with a lobotomy and orders to kill.”
“Don’t say that,” he replied. “It makes it sound wrong, and what I’m doing is right. We even have many of the same memories.”
“Let me through and I’ll talk to you afterward. I think the Logrus may have screwed itself by trying this stunt. You don’t want to kill yourself, and neither do I. Together we could win this game, and there’s room in Shadow for more than one Merlin.”
I’d slowed, but I had to take another step then. I couldn’t afford to lose momentum at this point.
His lips tightened to a thin line, and he shook his head.
“Sorry,” he said. “I was born to live one hour-unless I kill you. If I do, your life will be given to me.”
He drew his blade.
“I know you better than you think I do,” I said, “whether you’ve been restructured or not. I don t think you’ll do it. Furthermore, I might be able to lift that death sentence. I’ve learned some things about how it works for you ghosts.”
He extended his blade, which resembled one I’d had years ago, and its point almost reached me.
“Sorry,” he repeated.
I drew Grayswandir for purposes of parrying it. I’d have been a fool not to. I didn’t know what sort of job the Logrus had done on his head. I racked my memories for fencing techniques I’d studied since I’d become an initiate of the Logrus.