The Hand Of Oberon
Chapter 5

    I kept the light away from my face, kept my voice low.
    "Not quite," I said. "Not quite."
    He sighed.
    "You remain unconvinced."
    He looked forward and cocked his head, peering down at me.
    "Why must you spoil things?" he said. 
    "I've spoiled nothing."
    He lowered the lamp. I turned my head again, but he finally got a good look at my face. He laughed.
    "Funny. Funny, funny, funny," he said. "you come as the young Lord Corwin, thinking to sway me with family sentiment. Why did you not choose Brand or Bleys? It was Clarissa's lot served us best." 
    I shrugged and stood.
    "Yes and no," I said, determined now to feed him ambiguities for so long as he'd accept them and respond. Something of value might emerge, and it seemed an easy way to keep him in a good humor. 
    "And yourself?" I continued. "What face would you put on things?"
    "Why, to win your good will I'll match you," he said, and then he began to laugh.
    He threw his head back, and as his laughter rang about me a change came over him. His stature seemed to increase, and his face luffed like a sail cut too close to the wind. The hump on his back was diminished as he straightened and stood taller. His features rearranged themselves and his beard darkened. By then it was obvious that he was somehow redistributing his body mass, for the nightshirt which had reached his ankles was now midway up his shins. He breathed deeply and his shoulders widened. His arms lengthened, his bulging abdomen narrowed, tapered. He reached shoulder height on me, then higher. He looked me in the eye. His garment reached only to his knees. His hump was totally resorbed. His face gave a final twist, his features steadied, were reset. His laughter fell to a chuckle, faded, closed with a smirk.
I regarded a slightly slimmer version of myself. 
    "Sufficient?" he inquired.
    "Not half bad," I said.
    "Wait till I toss a couple logs on the fire."
    "I will help you." 
    "That's all right."
    I drew some wood from a rack to the right. Any stall served me somewhat, buying reactions for my study. As I was about the work, he crossed to a chair and seated himself. When I glanced at him I saw that he was not looking at me, but staring into the shadows. I drew out the fire-building, hoping that he would say something, anything. Eventually, he did.
    "Whatever became of the grand design?" he asked.
    I did not know whether he was speaking of the Pattern or of some master plan of Dad's to which he had been privy. So, "You tell me," I said. He chuckled again.
    "Why not? You changed your mind, that is what happened," he said.
    "From what to what-as you see it?"
    "Don't mock me. Even you have no right to mock me," he said. "Least of all, you."
    I got to my feet.
    "I was not mocking you," I said.
    I crossed the room to another chair and carried it over to a position near the fire, across from Dworkin. I seated myself.
    "How did you recognize me?" I asked.
    "My whereabouts are hardly common knowledge." 
    "That is true." 
    "Do many in Amber think me dead?"
    "Yes, and others suppose you might be traveling off in Shadow." 
    "I see." 
    "How have you been feeling?" 
    He gave me an evil grin. 
    "Do you mean am I still mad?" 
    "You put it more bluntly than I care to." 
    "There is a fading, there is an intensifying," he said. "It comes to me and it departs again. For the moment I am almost myself-almost, I say. The shock of your visit, perhaps . . . Something is broken in my mind. You know that. It cannot be otherwise, though. You know that, too."
    "I suppose that I do," I said. "Why don't you tell me all about it, all over again? Just the business of talking might make you feel better, might give me something I've missed. Tell me a story."
    Another laugh.
    "Anything you like. Have you any preferences? My flight from Chaos to this small sudden island in the sea of night? My meditations upon the abyss? The revelation of the Pattern in a jewel hung round the neck of a unicorn? My transcription of the design by lightning, blood, and lyre while our fathers raged baffled, too late come to call me back while the poem of fire ran that first route in my brain, infecting me with the will to form? Too late! Too late . . . Possessed of the abominations born of the disease, beyond their aid, their power, I planned and built, captive of my new self. Is that the tale you'd hear again? Or rather I tell you of its cure?"
    My mind spun at the implications he had just scattered by the fistful. I could not tell whether he spoke literally or metaphorically or was simply sharing paranoid delusions, but the things that I wanted to hear, had to hear, were things closer to the moment. So, regarding the shadowy image of myself from which that ancient voice emerged, "Tell me of its cure," I said.
    He braced his finger tips together and spoke through them.
    "I am the Pattern," he said, "in a very real sense. In passing through my mind to achieve the form it now holds, the foundation of Amber, it marked me as surely as I marked it. I realized one day that I am both the Pattern and myself, and it was forced to become Dworkin in the process of becoming itself. There were mutual modifications in the birthing of this place and this time, and therein lay our weakness as well as our strength. For it occurred to me that damage to the Pattern would be damage to myself, and damage to myself would be reflected within the Pattern. Yet I could not be truly banned because the Pattern protects me, and who but I could harm the Pattern? A beautiful closed system, it seemed, its weakness totally shielded by its strength."
    He fell silent. I listened to the fire. I do not know what he listened to.
    Then, "I was wrong," he said. "Such a simple matter, too . . . My blood, with which I drew it, could deface it. But it took me ages to realize that the blood of my blood could also do this thing. You could use it, you could also change it-yea, unto the third generation."
    It did not come to me as a surprise, learning that he was grandsire to us all. Somehow, it seemed that I had known all along, had known but never voiced it. Yet . . . if anything, this raised more questions than it answered. Collect one generation of ancestry. Proceed to confusion. I had less idea now than ever before as to what Dworkin really was. Add to this the fact which even he acknowledged: It was a tale told by a madman.
    "But to repair it. . . ?" I said.
    He smirked, my own face twisting before me.
    "Have you lost your taste to be a lord of the living void, a king of chaos?" he asked. 
   "Mayhap," I replied.
    "By the Unicorn, thy mother, I knew it would come to this! The Pattern is as strong in you as is the greater realm. What then is your desire?" 
    "To preserve the realm." 
    He shook his/my head.
    " 'Twould be simpler to destroy everything and try a new start-as I have told you so often before." 
    "I'm stubborn. So tell me again," I said, attempting to simulate Dad's gruffness. 
    He shrugged.
    "Destroy the Pattern and we destroy Amber-and all of the shadows in polar array about it. Give me leave to destroy myself in the midst of the Pattern and we will obliterate it. Give me leave by giving me your word that you will then take the Jewel which contains the essence of order and use it to create a new Pattern, bright and pure, untainted, drawing upon the stuff of your own being while the legions of chaos attempt to distract you on every side. Promise me that and let me end it, for broken as I am, I would rather die for order than live for it. What say you now?"
    "Would it not be better to try mending the one we've got than to undo the work of eons?"
    "Coward!" he cried, leaping to his feet. "I knew you would say that again!" 
    "Well, wouldn't it?" 
    He began to pace.
    "How many times have we been through this?" he asked. "Nothing has changed! You are afraid to try it!"
    "Perhaps," I said. "But do you not feel that something for which you have given so much is worth some effort-some additional sacrifice-if there is even a possibility of saving it?"
    "You still do not understand," he said. "I cannot but think that a damaged thing should be destroyed-and hopefully replaced. The nature of my personal injury is such that I cannot envision repair. I am damaged in just this fashion. My feelings are foreordained." 
    "If the Jewel can create a new Pattern, why will it not serve to repair the old one, end our troubles, heal your spirit?" 
    He approached and stood before me.
    "Where is your memory?" he said. "You know that it would be infinitely more difficult to repair the damage than it would be to start over again. Even the Jewel could more easily destroy it than repair it. Have your forgotten what it is like out there?" He gestured toward the wall behind him. "Do you want to go and look at it again?" 
    "Yes," I said. "I would like that. Let's go." 
    I rose and looked down at him. His control over his form had begun slipping when he had grown angry. He had already lost three or four inches in height, the image of my face was melting back into his gnomelike features, and a noticeable bulge was growing between his shoulders, had already been visible when he had gestured.
    His eyes widened and he studied my face.
    "You really mean it," he said after a moment. "All right, then. Let us go."
    He turned and moved toward the big metal door. I followed him. He used both hands to turn the key. Then he threw his weight against it. I moved to help him, but he brushed me aside with extraordinary strength before giving the door a final shove. It made a grating noise and moved outward into a fully opened position. I was immediately struck by a strange, somehow familiar odor.
    Dworkin stepped through and paused. He located what looked to be a long staff leaning against the wall off to his right. He struck it several times against the ground and its upper end began to glow. It lit up the area fairly well, revealing a narrow tunnel into which he now advanced. I followed him and it widened before too long, so that I was able to come abreast of him. The odor grew stronger, and I could almost place it. It had been something fairly recent. . .
    It was close to eighty paces before our way took a turn to the left and upward. We passed then through a little appendix like area. It was strewn with broken bones, and a large metal ring was set in the rock a couple of feet above the floor. Affixed thereto was a glittering chain, which fell to the floor and trailed on ahead like a line of molten droplets cooling in the gloom.
    Our way narrowed again after that and Dworkin took the lead once more. After a brief time, he turned an abrupt corner and I heard him muttering. I nearly ran into him when I made the turn myself. He was crouched down and groping with his left hand inside a shadowy cleft. When I heard the soft cawing noise and saw that the chain vanished into the opening I realized what it was and where we were.
    "Good Wixer," I heard him say. "I am not going far. It is all right, good Wixer. Here is something to chew on."
    From where he had fetched whatever he tossed the beast, I do not know. But the purple griffin, which I had now advanced far enough to glimpse as it stirred within its lair, accepted the offering with a toss of its head and a series of crunching noises. Dworkin grinned up at me.
    "Surprised?" he asked. 
    "At what?"
    "You thought I was afraid of him. You thought I would never make friends with him. You set him out here to keep me in there-away from the Pattern."
    "Did I ever say that?"
    "You did not have to. I am not a fool."
    "Have it your way," I said.
    He chuckled, rose, and continued on along the passageway.
    I followed and it grew level underfoot once again. The ceiling rose and the way widened. At length, we came to the cave mouth. Dworkin stood for a moment silhouetted, staff raised before him. It was night outside, and a clean salt smell swept the musk from my nostrils.
    Another moment, and he moved forward once more, passing into a world of sky-candles and blue velours. Continuing after him, I had gasped briefly at that amazing view. It was not simply that the stars in the moonless, cloudless sky blazed with a preternatural brilliance, nor that the distinction between sky and sea had once again been totally obliterated. It was that the Pattern glowed an almost acetylene blue by that skysea, and all of the stars above, beside, and below were arrayed with a geometric precision, forming a fantastic, oblique latticework which, more than anything else, gave the impression that we hung in the midst of a cosmic web where the Pattern was the true center, the rest of the radiant meshwork a precise consequence of its existence, configuration, position.
    Dworkin continued on down to the Pattern, right up to the edge beside the darkened area. He waved his staff over it and turned to look at me just as I came near.
    "There you are," he announced, "the hole in my mind. I can no longer think through it, only around it. I no longer know what must be done to repair something I now lack. If you think that you can do it, you must be willing to lay yourself open to instant destruction each time you depart the Pattern to cross the break. Not destruction by the dark portion. Destruction by the Pattern itself when you break the circuit. The Jewel may or may not sustain you. I do not know. But it will not grow easier. It will become more difficult with each circuit, and your strength will be lessening all the while. The last time we discussed it you were afraid. Do you mean to say you have grown bolder since then?" 
    "Perhaps," I said. "You see no other way?" 
    "I know it can be done starting with a clean slate, because once I did it so. Beyond that, I see no other way. The longer you wait the more the situation worsens. Why not fetch the Jewel and lend me your blade, son? I see no better way."
    "No," I said. "I must know more. Tell me again how the damage was done."
    "I still do not know which of your children shed our blood on this spot, if this is what you mean. It was done. Let it go at that. Our darker natures came forth strongly in them. It must be that they are too close to the chaos from which we sprang, growing without the exercises of will we endured in defeating it. I had thought that the ritual of traveling the Pattern might suffice for them. I could think of nothing stronger. Yet it failed. They strike out against everything. They seek to destroy the Pattern itself."
    "If we succeed in making a fresh start, might not these events simply repeat themselves?"
    "I do not know. But what choice have we other than failure and a return to chaos?"
    "What will become of them if we try for a new beginning?" 
    He was silent for a long while. Then he shrugged. "I cannot tell." 
    "What would another generation have been like?" 
    He chuckled.
    "How can such a question be answered? I have no idea."
    I withdrew the mutilated Trump and passed it to him. He regarded it near the blaze of his staff.
    "I believe it is Random's son Martin," I said, "he whose blood was spilled here. I have no idea whether he still lives. What do you think he might have amounted to?" 
    He looked back out over the Pattern.
    "So this is the object which decorated it," he said. "How did you fetch it forth?" 
    "It was gotten," I said. "It is not your work, is it?" 
    "Of course not. I have never set eyes on the boy. But this answers your question, does it not? If there is another generation, your children will destroy it."
    "As we would destroy them?"
    He met my eyes and peered.
    "Is it that you are suddenly becoming a doting father?" he asked.
    "If you did not prepare that Trump, who did?"
    He glanced down and flicked it with his fingernail.
    "My best pupil. Your son Brand. That is his style. See what they do as soon as they gain a little power? Would any of them offer their lives to preserve the realm, to restore the Pattern?"
    "Probably," I said. "Probably Benedict, Gerard, Random, Corwin. . ."
    "Benedict has the mark of doom upon him, Gerard possesses the will but not the wit, Random lacks courage and determination. Corwin . . . Is he not out of favor and out of sight?"
    My thoughts returned to our last meeting, when he had helped me to escape from my cell to Cabra. It occurred to me that he might have had second thoughts concerning that, not having been aware of the circumstances which had put me there.
    "Is that why you have taken his form?" he went on. "Is this some manner of rebuke? Are you testing me again?"
    "He is neither out of favor nor sight," I said, "though he has enemies among the family and elsewhere. He would attempt anything to preserve the realm. How do you see his chances?"
    "Has he not been away for a long while?"
    "Yes."
    "Then he might have changed. I do not know."
    "I believe he is changed. I know that he is willing to try."
    He stared at me again, and he kept staring.
    "You are not Oberon," he said at length. 
    "No." 
    "You are he whom I see before me." 
    "No more, no less."
    "I see. . . . I did not realize that you knew of this place."
    "I didn't, until recently. The first time that I came here I was led by the unicorn." 
    His eyes widened.
    "That is-very-interesting," he said. "It has been so long . . ." 
    "What of my question?" 
    "Eh? Question? What question?"
    "My chances. Do you think I might be able to repair the Pattern?"
    He advanced slowly, and reaching up, placed his right hand on my shoulder. The staff tilled in is other hand as he did so; its blue light flared within a foot of my face, but I felt no heat. He looked into my eyes. 
    "You have changed," he said, after a time. 
    "Enough," I asked, "to do the job?" 
    He looked away.
    "Perhaps enough to make it worth trying," he said, "even if we are foredoomed to failure." 
    "Will you help me?"
    "I do not know," he said, "that I will be able. This thing with my moods, my thoughts-it comes and it goes. Even now, I feel some of my control slipping away. The excitement, perhaps. . . . We had best get back inside."
    I heard a clinking noise at my back. When I turned, the griffin was there, his head swinging slowly from left to right, his tail from right to left, his tongue darting. He began to circle us, halting when he came to a position between Dworkin and the Pattern.
    "He knows," Dworkin said. "He can sense it when I begin to change. He will not let me near the Pattern then. . . . Good Wixer. We are returning now. It is all right. . . . Come, Corwin."
    We headed back toward the cave mouth and Wixer followed, a clink for every pace.
    "The Jewel," I said, "the Jewel of Judgment . . . you say that it is necessary for the repair of the Pattern?" 
    "Yes," he said. "It would have to be borne the entire distance through the Pattern, reinscribing the original design in the places where it has been broken. This could only be done by one who is attuned to the Jewel, though." 
    "I am attuned to the Jewel," I said. 
    "How?" he asked, halting.
    Wixer made a cackling noise behind us, and we resumed walking.
    "I followed your written instructions-and Eric's verbal ones," I said. "I took it with me to the center of the Pattern and projected myself through it." 
    "I see," he said. "How did you obtain it?" 
    "From Eric, on his deathbed." 
    We entered the cave. 
    "You have it now?"
    "I was forced to cache it in a place off in Shadow."
    "I would suggest you retrieve it quickly and bring it here or take it back to the palace. It is best kept near the center of things." 
    "Why is that?"
    "It tends to have a distorting effect on shadows if it lies too long among them."
    "Distorting? In what fashion?"
    "There is no way to tell, in advance. It depends entirely upon the locale."
    We rounded a corner, continued on back through the gloom.
    "What does it mean," I said, "when you are wearing the Jewel and everything begins to slow down about you? Fiona warned me that this was dangerous, but she was not certain why."
    "It means that you have reached the bounds of your own existence, that your energies will shortly be exhausted, that you will die unless you do something quickly." 
    "What is that?"
    "Begin to draw power from the Pattern itself-the primal Pattern within the Jewel." 
    "How is this achieved?" 
    "You must surrender to it, release yourself, blot out your identity, erase the bounds which separate you from everything else." 
    "It sounds easier said than done." 
    "But it can be done, and it is the only way." 
    I shook my head. We moved on, coming at last to the big door. Dworkin extinguished the staff and leaned it against the wall. We entered and he secured the door. Wixer had stationed himself just outside. 
    "You will have to leave now," Dworkin said.
    "But there are many more things that I must ask you, and some that I would like to tell you." 
    "My thoughts grow meaningless, and your words would be wasted. Tomorrow night, or the next, or the next. Hurry! Go!" 
    "Why the rush?"
    "I may harm you when the change comes over me. I am holding it back by main will now. Depart!" 
    "I do not know how. I know how to get here, but-" 
    "There are all manner of special Trumps in the desk in the next room. Take the light! Go anywhere! Get out of here!"
    I was about to protest that I hardly feared any physical violence he could muster, when his features began to flow like melting wax and he somehow seemed much larger and longer-limbed than he had been. Seizing the light, I fled the room, a sudden chill upon me.
    . . . To the desk. I tore open the drawer and snatched at some Trumps which lay scattered within it. I heard footsteps then, of something entering the room behind me, coming from the chamber I had just departed. They did not seem like the footsteps of a man. I did not look back. Instead, I raised the cards before me and regarded the one on top. It was an unfamiliar scene, but I opened my mind immediately and reached for it. A mountain crag, something indistinct beyond it, a strangely stippled sky, a scattering of stars to the left
    . . . The card was alternately hot and cold to my touch, and a heavy wind seemed to come blowing through it as I stared, somehow rearranging the prospect.
    From right behind me then, the heavily altered but still recognizable voice of Dworkin spoke: "Fool! You have chosen the land of your doom!"
    A great clawlike hand-black, leathery, gnarled-reached over my shoulder, as if to snatch the card away. But the vision seemed ready, and I rushed forward into it, turning the card from me as soon as I realized I had made my escape. Then I halted and stood stockstill, to let my senses adjust to the new locale.
    I knew. From snatches of legend, bits of family gossip, and from a general feeling which came over me, I knew the place to which I had come. It was with full certainty as to identity that I raised my eyes to look upon the Courts of Chaos.