I thought back to my childhood, to some of the strange adventures for which this place had served as a point of departure. Gryll and I would come here, Glait slithering at our feet, coiled about a limb or riding somewhere amid my garments. I would give that odd ululant cry I had learned in a dream, and sometimes Kergma would join us, come skittering down the folds of darkness, out some frayed area of twisted space. I was never sure exactly what Kergma was, or even of what gender, for Kergma was a shapeshifter and flew, crawled, hopped, or ran in a succession of interesting forms.
On an impulse, I voiced that ancient call. Nothing, of course, happened, and I saw it moments later for what it was: a cry after a vanished childhood, when I had at least felt wanted. Now, now I was nothing-neither Amberite nor Chaosite, and certainly a disappointment to my relatives on both sides. I was a failed experiment. I’d never been wanted for myself, but as something that might come to pass. Suddenly my eyes were moist, and I held back a sob. And I’ll never know what sort of mood I might have worked myself into because I was distracted then.
There came a flare of red light from a point high on the wall to my left. It was in the form of a small circle about the feet of a human figure.
“Merlin!” called a voice from that direction, and the flames leapt higher. By their light, I saw that familiar face, reminding me a bit of my own, and I was pleased with the meaning it had just given to my life, even if that meaning was death.
I raised my left hand above my head and willed a flash of blue light from the spikard.
“Over here, Jurt!” I called, rising to my feet. I began forming the ball of light that was to be his distraction while I readied the strike that would electrocute him. On reflection, it had seemed the surest way of taking him out. I’d lost count of the number of attempts he’d made on my life, and I’d resolved to take the initiative the next time he came calling. Frying his nervous system seemed the surest way to ice him, despite what the Fountain had done for him. “Over here, Jurt!”
“Merlin! I want to talk!”
“I don’t. I’ve tried it too often, and I’ve nothing left to say. Come on over and let’s get this done-weapons, hands, magic. I don’t care.”
He raised both hands, palms outward.
“Truce!” he cried. “It wouldn’t be right to do it here in Sawall.”
“Don’t give me that scruples shit, brother! “ I cried, but even as I said it I realized there might be something to it. I could remember how much the old man’s approval had meant to him, and I realized that he’d hate to do anything to antagonize Dara here on the premises. “What do you want, anyway?”
“To talk. I mean it,” he said. “What do I have to do?”
“Meet me over there,” I said, casting my ball of light to shine above a familiar object that looked like a giant house of cards made of glass and aluminum, bouncing light from hundreds of planes.
“All right,” came the reply.
I began walking in that direction. I saw him approaching from his, and I angled my course so that our paths would not intersect. Also, I increased my pace so as to arrive ahead of him.
“No tricks,” he called out. “And if we do decide we can only take it to the end, let’s go outside.”
“Okay.”
I entered the structure at a point around the corner from his approach.
Immediately, I encountered six images of myself.
“Why here?” came his voice from somewhere near at hand.
“I don’t suppose you ever saw a movie called Lady from Shanghai?”
“No.”
“It occurred to me that we could wander around in here and talk, and the place would do a lot to keep us from hurting each other.”
I turned a corner. There were more of me in different places. A few moments later, I heard a sharp intake of breath from somewhere near at hand. It was followed almost immediately by a chuckle.