The sun grew cherry-red far to my left. A pink desert spread beneath us…
Then it was dark again and the stars turned like a great wheel.
Then we were low, barely passing above the tops of the trees…
We burst into the air over a busy downtown street, lights on poles and the fronts of vehicles, neon in windows. The warm, stuffy, dusty, gassy smell of city rose up about us. A few pedestrians glanced upward, barely seeming to note our passage.
Even as we flashed across a river, cresting the house tops of suburbia, the prospect wavered and we passed over a primordial landscape of rock, lava, avalanche, and shuddering ground, two active volcanoes-one near, one far-spewing smoke against a blue-green sky.
“This, I take it, is a shortcut?” I said.
“It is the shortest cut,” Gryll replied.
We entered a long night, and at some point it seemed that our way took us beneath deep waters, bright sea creatures hovering and darting both near at hand and in the middle distance. Dry and uncrushed, the black way protected us.
“It is as major an upheaval as the death of Oberon,” Gryll volunteered.
“Its effects are rippling across Shadow.”
“But Oberon’s death coincided with the re-creation of the Pattern,” I said. “There was more to it than the death of a monarch of one of the extremes.”
“True,” Gryll replied, “but now is a time of imbalance among the forces. This adds to it. It will be even more severe.”
We plunged into an opening in a dark mass of stone. Lines of light streaked past us. Irrregularities were limned in a pale blue. Later-how long, I do not know-we were in a purple sky, with no transition that I can recall from the dark sea bottom. A single star gleamed far ahead. We sped toward it.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because the Pattern has grown stronger than the Logrus,” he replied.
“How did that happen?”
“Prince Corwin drew a second Pattern at the time of the confrontation between the Courts and Amber.”
“Yes, he told me about it. I’ve even seen it. He feared Oberon might not be able to repair the original.”
“But he did, and so now there are two.”
“Yes?”
“Your father’s Pattern is also an artifact of order. It served to tip the ancient balance in the favor of Amber.”
“How is it you are aware of this, Gryll, when no one back in Amber seems to know it or saw fit to tell me?”
“Your brother Prince Mandor and the Princess Fiona suspected this and sought evidence. They presented their findings to your uncle, Lord Suhuy. He made several journeys into Shadow and became persuaded that this is the case. He was preparing his findings for presentation to the king when Swayvill suffered his final illness. I know these things because it was Suhuy who sent me for you, and he charged me to tell them to you.”
“I just assumed it was my mother who’d sent for me.”
“Suhuy was certain she would-which is why he wanted to reach you first. What I have told you concerning your father’s Pattern is not yet common knowledge.”
“What am I supposed to do about it?”
“He did not entrust me with that information.”
The star grew brighter. The sky was filled with splashes of orange and pink. Shortly, lines of green light joined them, and they swirled like streamers about us.
We raced on, and the configurations came to dominate the sky fully, like a psychedelic parasol rotating slowly. The landscape became a total blur. I felt as if a part of me dozed, though I am certain I did not lose consciousness. Time seemed to be playing games with my metabolism. I grew enormously hungry and my eyes ached.
The star brightened. Gryll’s wings took on a prismatic shimmer. We seemed to be moving at an incredible pace now.
Our strand curved upward at its outer edges. The process continued as we advanced until it seemed we were moving in a trough. Then they met overhead, and it was as if we sped down a gun barrel, aimed at the blue-white star.
“Anything else you’re supposed to tell me?”