“Thanks, brother,” I said.
“Ill met by moonlight.” said Deirdre.
“You could still be tied to a stake,” said Random, and she did not reply.
We lay there a while longer and three men entered the campsite and looked about. Then two of them bent down and sniffed at the ground.
Then they looked in our direction.
“Weir,” whispered Random, as they moved in our direction.
I saw it happen, though only in shadow. They dropped to all fours and the moonlight played tricks with their gray garments. Then there were the six blazing eyes of our stalkers.
I impaled the first wolf on my silver blade and there was a human howl. Random beheaded one with a single blow, and to my amazement, I saw Deirdre raise one in the air and break its back across her knee with a brittle, snapping sound.
“Quick, your blade,” said Random, and I ran his victim through, and hers, and there were more cries.
“We’d better move fast,” said Random. “This way!” and we followed.
“Where are we going?” asked Deirdre, after perhaps an hour of furtive movement through the undergrowth.
“To the sea,” he replied.
“Why?”
“It holds Corwin’s memory.”
“Where? How?”
“Rebma, of course.”
“They’d kill you there and feed your brains to the fishes.”
“I’m not going the full distance. You’ll have to take over at the shore and talk with your sister’s sister.”
“You mean for him to take the Pattern again?”
“Yes.”
“It’s risky.”
“I know. Listen. Corwin,” he said, “you’ve been decent enough with me recently. If by some chance you’re not really Corwin, you’re dead. You’ve got to be, though. You can’t be someone else. Not from the way you’ve operated, without memory even. No, I’ll bet your life on it. Take a chance and try the thing called the Pattern. Odds are, it’ll restore your memory. Are you game?”
“Probably,” I said, “but what is the Pattern?”
“Rebma is the ghost city.” be told me. “It is the reflection of Amber within the sea. In it, everything in Amber is duplicated, as in a mirror. Llewella’s people live there, and dwell as though in Amber. They hate me for a few past peccadilloes, so I cannot venture there with you, but if you would speak them fair and perhaps hint at your mission, I feel they would let you walk the Pattern of Rebma, which, while it is the reverse of that in Amber, should have the same effect. That is, it gives to a son of our father the power to walk among Shadows.”
“How will this power help me?”
“It should make you to know what you are.”
“Then I’m game.” I said.
“Good man. In that case, we’ll keep heading south. It will take several days to reach the stairway … You will go with him, Deirdre?”
“I will go with my brother Corwin.”
I knew she would say that, and I was glad. I was afraid, but I was glad.
We walked all that night. We avoided three parties of armed troops, and in the morning we slept in a cave.