“I’ll transfer you up there.”
“No, that would not be too politic. Or polite either. I’d better go knock on the door and get admitted properly this time.”
“How do people know when to knock and when to go on in?”
“In general, if it’s closed, you knock on it.”
“As the dwarf is doing?”
I heard a faint knocking from somewhere outside.
“He’s just going along, indiscriminately banging on doors?” I asked.
“Well, he’s trying them in sequence, so I don’t know that you could say it’s indiscriminate. So far all of the doors he’s tried have been to rooms which are empty. He should reach yours in another minute or so.”
I crossed to my door, unlocked it, opened it, and stepped out into the hallway.
Sure enough, there was a short guy moving along the hallway. He looked in my direction at the opening of my door, and his teeth showed within his beard as he smiled and headed toward me.
It quickly became apparent that he was a hunchback.
“My God!” I said. “You’re Dworkin, aren’t t you? The real Dworkin!”
“I believe so,” he replied in a not unpleasant voice. “And I do hope that you are Corwin’s son, Merlin.”
“I am,” I said. “This is an unusual pleasure, coming at an unusual time.”
“It is not a social call,” he stated, drawing near and clasping my hand and shoulder. “Ah! These are your quarters!”
“Yes. Won’t you come in?”
“Thank you.”
I led him in. Ghost did a fly-on-the-wall imitation, became about a half inch in diameter, and took up residence on the armoire as if the result of a stray sunbeam. Dworkin did a quick turn about the sitting room, glanced into the bedroom, stared at Nayda for a time, muttered, “Always let sleeping demons lie,” touched the Jewel as he passed me on his return, shook his head forebodingly, and sank into the chair I’d been afraid I’d go to sleep in.
“Would you care for a glass of wine?” I asked him. He shook his head.
“No, thank you,” he replied. “It was you who repaired the nearest Broken Pattern in Shadow, was it not?”
“Yes, it was.”
“Why did you do it?”
“I didn’t have much choice in the matter.”
“You had better tell me all about it,” the old man said, tugging at his grisly, irregular beard. His hair was long and could have used a trim also. Still, there seemed nothing of madness in his gaze or his words.
“It is not a simple story, and if I am to stay awake long enough to tell it, I am going to need some coffee,” I said.
He spread his hands, and a small, white-clothed table appeared between us, bearing service for two and a steaming silvery carafe set above a squat candle. There was also a tray of biscuits. I couldn’t have summoned it all that fast. I wondered whether Mandor could.
“In that case, I will join you,” Dworkin said.
I sighed and poured. I raised the Jewel of Judgment.
“Perhaps I’d better return this thing before I start,” I told him. “It may save me a lot of trouble later.”
He shook his head as I began to rise.
“I think not,” he stated. “If you take it off now, you will probably die.”
I sat down again.
“Cream and sugar?” I asked him.