It wanted me to repair this particular image of itself, to mend this Broken Pattern, by walking it, bearing the Jewel of Judgment with me. This was how Oberon had repaired the damage to the original. Of course, the act had been sufficiently traumatic to kill him…
On the other hand, the King had been dealing with the real thing, and this was only one of its images. Also; my father had survived the creation of his own ersatz Pattern from scratch.
Why me? I wondered then. Was it because I was the son of the man who had succeeded in creating another Pattern? Did it involve the fact that I bore the image of the Logrus within me as well as that of the Pattern? Was it simply because I was handy and coercible. All of the above? None of them?
“How about it?” I called out. “Have you got an answer for me?”
There was a quick pang in my stomach and a wave of dizziness as the chamber spun, faded, stood still, and I regarded Jurt across the expanse of the Pattern, the big door at his back.
“How’d you do that?” he hollered.
“I didn’t,” I replied.
“Oh.”
He edged his way to his right till he came to the wall. Maintaining contact with it, he began moving about the Pattern’s periphery, as if afraid to approach any nearer to it than he had to or to remove his gaze from it.
From this side I could see Coral a bit more clearly, within the fiery hedge. Funny It was not as if there were a large emotional investment here. We were not lovers, not even terrifically close friends. We had become acquainted only the other day, shared a long walk about, around, and under the town and palace, had a meal together, a couple of drinks, a few laughs. If we became better acquainted, perhaps we would discover that we couldn’t stand each other. Still, I had enjoyed her company, and I realized that I did want to take the time to get to know her better. And in some ways I felt responsible for her present condition, through a kind of contributory negligence. In other words, the Pattern had me by the balls. If I wanted to free her, I had to repair it.
The flames nodded in my direction.
“It’s a dirty trick,” I said aloud.
The flames nodded again.
I continued to study the Broken Pattern. Almost everything I knew about the phenomenon had come to me by way of my conversation with Jasra. But I recalled her telling me that initiates of the Broken Pattern walked it in the areas between the lines, whereas the image in the Jewel was instructing me to walk the lines, as one normally would the Pattern itself. Which made sense, as I recalled my father’s story. It should serve to inscribe the proper path across the breaks. I wasn’t looking for any half assed between-the-lines initiation.
Jurt made his way about the far end of the Pattern, turned, and began to move toward me. When he came abreast of a break in the outer line, the light flowed from it across the floor. The look on his face was ghastly as it touched his foot. He screamed and began to melt.
“Stop!” I cried. “Or you can find another Pattern repairman! Restore him and leave him alone or I won’t do it! I mean it!”
Jurt’s collapsing legs lengthened again. The rush of blue-white incandescence which had fled upward through his body was withdrawn as the light retreated from him. The expression of pain left his face.
“I know he’s a Logrus-ghost,” I said, “and he’s patterned on my least favorite relative, but you leave him alone, you son of a bitch, or I won’t walk you! You can keep Coral and you can stay broken!”
The light flowed back through the imperfection, and things stood as they had moments before.
“I want a promise,” I said.
A gigantic sheet of flame rose from the Broken Pattern to the top of the chamber, then fell again.
“I take it that is an affirmative,” I said.
The flames nodded.