“Why not?”
“You have to make the ascension, then you have to walk to the palace and make your way down to the Pattern. That takes time, even in Tir-na Nog’th-especially in Tir-na Nog’th, where time tends to play tricks anyway. For all you know, you may have a hidden death wish slowing you down. I don’t know. Whatever the case, he would have commenced walking the Pattern by the time you arrived. It may well be that he would be too far into it for you to reach him this time.”
“He will probably be tired. That should slow him some.”
“No. Put yourself in his place. If you were Brand, wouldn’t you have headed for some shadow where the time flow was different? Instead of an afternoon, he could well have taken several days to rest up for this evening’s ordeal. It is safest to assume that he will be in good shape.”
“You are right,” I said. “I can’t count on it. Okay. An alternative I had entertained but would rather not try if it could be avoided, would be to kill him at a distance. Take along a crossbow or one of our rifles and simply shoot him in the midst of the Pattern. The thing that bothers me about it is the effect of our blood on the Pattern. It may be that it is only the primal Pattern that suffers from it, but I don’t know.”
“That’s right. You do not know,” he said. “Also, I would not want you to rely on normal weapons up there. That is a peculiar place. You said yourself it is like a strange piece of Shadow drifting in the sky. While you figured how to make a rifle fire in Amber, the same rules may not apply up there.”
“It is a risk,” I acknowledged.
“As for the crossbow-supposing a sudden gust of wind deflected the bolt each time you shot one?”
“I am afraid I do not follow you.”
“The Jewel. He walked it part way through the primal Pattern, and he has had some time to experiment with it since then. Do you think it possible that he is partly attuned to it now?”
“I do not know. I am not at all that sure how the process works.”
“I just wanted to point out that if it does work that way, he may be able to use it to defend himself. The Jewel may even have other properties you are not aware of. So what I am saying is that I would not want you to count on being able to kill him at a distance. And I would not even want you to rely on being able to pull the trick you did with the Jewel again-not if he may have gained some measure of control over it.”
“You do make things look a little bleaker than I had them.”
“But possibly more realistic,” he said.
“Conceded. Go on. You said you had a plan.”
“That is correct. My thinking is that Brand must not be allowed to reach the Pattern at all, that once he sets foot upon it the probability of disaster goes way up.”
“And you do not think I can get there in time to block him?”
“Not if he can really transport himself around almost instantaneously while you have to take a long walk. My bet is that he is just waiting for moonrise, and as soon as the city takes form he will be inside, right next to the Pattern.”
“I see the point, but not the answer.”
“The answer is that you are not going to set foot in Tir-na Nog’th tonight.”
“Hold on a minute!”
“Hold on, hell! You imported a master strategist, you’d better listen to what he has to say.”
“Okay, I am listening.”
“You have agreed that you probably cannot reach the place in time. But someone else can.”
“Who and how?”
“All right. I have been in touch with Benedict. He has returned. At this moment, he is in Amber, down in the chamber of the Pattern. By now, he should have finished walking it and be standing there at its center, waiting. You proceed to the foot of the stairs to the sky-city. There you await the rising of the moon. As soon as Tir-na Nog’th takes form, you will contact Benedict via his Trump. You tell him that all is ready, and he will use the power of the Pattern in Amber to transport himself to the place of the Pattern in Tir-na Nog’th. No matter how fast Brand travels, he cannot gain much on that.”