“Basically, it amounts to repairing the Pattern.”
“All right,” he said. “Say you succeed. The enemy will still be out there.”
He gestured toward Garnath and the black road.
“Someone gave them passage once.”
“The enemy has always been out there,” I said. “And it will be up to us to see that they are not given passage again-by dealing properly with those who provided it in the first place.”
“I go along with you on that,” he said, “but that is not what I meant. They require a lesson, Corwin. I want to teach them a proper respect for Amber, such a respect that even if the way is opened again they will fear to use it. That is what I meant. It is necessary.”
“You do not know what it would be like to carry a battle to that place, Benedict. It is-literally-indescribable.”
He smiled and stood.
“Then I guess I had best go see for myself,” he said. “I will keep this card for a time, if you don’t mind.”
“I don’t mind.”
“Good. Then you be on with your business about the Pattern, Corwin, and I will be about my own. This will take me some time, too. I must go give my commanders orders concerning my absence now. Let us agree that neither of us commence anything of a final nature without checking first with the other.”
“Agreed,” I said.
We finished our wine.
“I will be under way myself, very soon now,” I said. “So, good luck.”
“To you, also.” He smiled again. “Things are better,” he said, and he clasped my shoulder as he passed to the entrance. We followed him outside.
“Bring Benedict’s horse,” Ganelon directed the orderly who stood beneath a nearby tree; and turning, he offered Benedict his hand.
“I, too, want to wish you luck,” he said.
Benedict nodded and shook his hand.
“Thank you, Ganelon. For many things.”
Benedict withdrew his Trumps.
“I can bring Gerard up to date,” he said, “before my horse arrives.”
He riffled through them, withdrew one, studied it.
“How do you go about repairing the Pattern?” Ganelon asked me.
“I have to get hold of the Jewel of Judgment again,” I said. “With it, I can reinscribe the damaged area.”
“Is this dangerous?”
“Yes.”
“Where is the Jewel?”
“Back on the shadow Earth, where I left it.”
“Why did you abandon it?”
“I feared that it was killing me.”
He contorted his features into a near-impossible grimace.
“I don’t like the sound of this, Corwin. There must be another way.”
“If I knew a better way, I’d take it.”
“Supposing you just followed Benedict’s plan and took them all on? You said yourself that he could raise infinite legions in Shadow. You also said that he is the best man there is in the field.”
“Yet the damage would remain in the Pattern, and something else would come to fill it. Always. The enemy of the moment is not as important as our own inner weakness. If this is not mended we are already defeated, though no foreign conqueror stands within our walls.”
He turned away.
“I cannot argue with you. You know your own realm,” he said. “But I still feel you may be making a grave mistake by risking yourself on what may prove unnecessary at a time when you are very much needed.”
I chuckled, for it was Vialle’s word and I had not wanted to call it my own when she had said it.
“It is my duty,” I told him.
He did not reply.
Benedict, a dozen paces away, had apparently reached Gerard, for he would mutter something, then pause and listen. We stood there, waiting for him to conclude his conversation so that we could see him off.
“. . . Yes, he is here now,” I heard him say. “No, I doubt that very much. But-“
Benedict glanced at me several times and shook his head.
“No, I do not think so,” he said. Then, “All right, come ahead.”
He extended his new hand, and Gerard stepped into being, clasping it. Gerard turned his head, saw me, and immediately moved in my direction.
He ran his eyes up and down and back and forth across my entire person, as if searching for something.