15.   Jasra of the Broken Pattern.

 

The door softly closed behind Rinaldo.  It was of course time to contact her mother, but Scarlet was just sitting there sipping the remaining wine, her mind swarming with questions.  There were some answers too, but not very many.  Rinaldo was very nice.  As for his little plot, he was right of course – she would have done the same thing in his place, they were both children of Amber after all…  And the cause seemed worthwhile – apparently much bloodshed had been prevented.  Not to mention there was an undeniable flattering aspect in this affair – the trumpets, the honor guard… the Princess Scarlett of Amber.  No one paid her that much respect in Amber…  Perhaps they should have…  She knew that most relatives had remained neutral during that old war between Uncle Bleys and Eric the Usurper, so there must have been some legal justification for it.  But then, her mother was the firstborn in Clarissa’s bunch, not Bleys!

 

So Rinaldo was the one who had killed Caine.  The assassin was not named in her history textbooks and now it was clear why – would be rather embarrassing to admit that a Prince of Amber had been murdered by a King of a Golden Circle Shadow and nothing had been done about it.  The books also mentioned that Merlin himself had barely escaped death in those times.  Was it Rinaldo’s revenge too?  Or Jasra’s?

 

Jasra…  A Shadow girl who had somehow risen so close to the seat of ultimate power…  Not born into it like Scarlett’s mother, but having had elbowed her own way by her wits and determination.  She knew Fiona’s memory was a very long one – no wonder she had never spoken of this branch of the family – she was still mad because of Mandor…  There was another thing mother and she had never spoken of – the men in Fiona’s life, yet there must have been many in all these millennia, and now the curtain stirred like in a gust of wind for just a glimpse perhaps.  Mandor, and then Krigon, the Magistrate…  He used to be much higher before your mother put a spell on him.  Just exactly when did that Krigon’s voyage to Amber take place?  And when and where was the photograph taken?  And what happened afterwards?  Jasra would know.  This and many, many other dark secrets…

 

She shivered as her thoughts took a new turn.  Was it really possible that Elekra was a child of the Pattern?  That was not what mother had said.  Would Jasra actually know more or Fiona just did not deem worthwhile to mention this theory?  The talks of the Pattern being sentient were not something entirely new to Scarlett; they had floated in Amber since the times long gone, their origin apparently having had been a mysterious explosion in the Castle shortly after the Patternfall War.  But she also knew that no one of those who mattered took them seriously, with a single exception of Merlin.  Yet Jasra had spoken of it as if a given fact, and had taken it even further, and indeed there were so many things impossible to explain otherwise.  Like Tatuine…  No one, of the Blood or not, could possibly survive a touch of a lightning bolt, not to mention actually grabbing it…  And those visions Ele had whispered about in the hospital – the other side of the Pattern, she had called it…  But wait, did not Ele say there was an agent of some House of Chaos on Tatuine?  Then it was all reported to Mandor!  No wonder Jasra knew of their little adventure beforehand.  What a can of worms!  That might well explain an assassin on Jubba’s palace roof.  She has means to do things discretely.  Perhaps her thinking that it had been her mother’s agents who had tried to eliminate Elektra on Tatuine, and that Fiona’s role in the healing had been a part of an elaborate cover-up was very wrong.  So many loose ends around Elektra…  And now the sect in the Death Alley…

 

Scarlett could not help giggling as she glanced once again at the grotesque picture that Rinaldo had left on the table.  She heard the rumors of course, but a whole cult of Elektra?  And whoever came up with this idiotic image in the first place?  She saw now why Fiona wanted Ele to appear with Random – that of course would put an end to this imbecility once and for all.  Yet the initial ludicrousness that had swept through her mind at the thought of Elektra as a sort of messiah was slowly being replaced by an odd, hollow doubt.  What she had seen of her cousin on Tatuine was not only awesome, it was very frightening.  Once again her thoughts were interrupted by knock on the door, this one very soft as if just scratching – perhaps Rinaldo was back to pick up the ugly caricature.  But it was not he.

 

“Care for a night cup?“ Jasra sauntered into the room without even waiting for an invitation.  “There’re gotta be some cordials around, there always are,” she muttered rummaging through one sideboard after another – there were three of them in the spacious sitting room of the suite, large, elegantly curved, six-legged mahogany sideboards with inlaid satinwood tops.  “Ahh, knew there’d be Chamborde around!”  She produced a stocky round decanter filled with a dark aromatic liquid and carried it back along with two small but long-stemmed glasses, plunking her booty right next to the empty bottle left by Rinaldo, and flopping into the armchair he had been sitting in a while ago.

 

“Looks I’m not the first visitor tonight.”  She leaned back, her long fingers fiddling nervously with the belt of her navy blue negligee, which was way too short, way too skimpy and rode way too high on her thighs as she crossed her legs.  It seemed she had one too many already.  Scarlett silently poured and politely brought the glass to her lips feeling she had already had enough.  Jasra did not touch hers though.  Her eyes were on the caricature trump, which was still on the table.

 

“He could’ve asked me, you know…  These things have been circulated in Amber for quite a while now.  There seems to be a whole cult among lower classes awaiting the coming of Elektra.  Wonder why.  Guess not everyone’s happy under Random, contrary of course to what we’re expected to believe.”  She chuckled.

 

She was not tipsy, as Scarlett had thought originally, but rather she was deadly tired and apparently not from the intricacies of the state dinner.  The makeup was gone, and there were hard lines on her face and circles under her eyes.  Scarlett slowly realized that she felt much sympathy for Jasra, though it was most probably her minions who had tried to kill Ele on Tatuine.

 

“I hope you enjoyed your visit to Kashfa and shall come back in the near future.  I’m, on my part, very happy that you’ve stopped by.  You must go back to Amber as soon as possible, perhaps even tonight, and take a message to your mother.  I want her to come to my little place at the Keep of the Four Worlds.  There’s much to discuss.”

 

Scarlett kept silent, still holding the glass to her lips, as she did not really know what to say.  It was somewhat doubtful that her mother would take orders from anyone, and surely not from Jasra.

 

“Your mother and I… hmm… we don’t get along very well, which is most regrettable,” Jasra continued.  “True, old rivalries die hard.  But it’s really childish of Fiona to still hold a grudge…  I’ve tried everything, even asked Deirdre to interfere, though she wouldn’t.“

 

Scarlett almost dropped her glass looking at her with round eyes in total bewilderment.  No one had seen Deirdre since the Patternfall War!  She would not answer Trump calls either, or so Scarlett had been always told.  Could Jasra possibly know where she was? 

 

“There’re three of us… hmm… witches,” Jasra smiled weary.  “Fiona of the Pattern, Dara of the Logrus, and I of the Broken Pattern.  Now and then, we’ve our little differences of course, but nothing of… ugh... universal importance.  We must stand together in times like these.  There seem to be… hmm… disturbances.  The Trumps don’t work as reliably as they used to, that’s except for the Logrus Trumps – those still work fine.  Fiona must know this by now, as well as I do.  The resources either Power commands are vast but not unlimited, so the explanation would be that the Pattern directs all but a fraction of its energies elsewhere.  In other words, it’s up to something.

 

“Yes, I know you Amberites don’t believe in the Powers being sentient… or shall I say you’re in the state of denial.  Quite understandable – it must be hard for gods to suddenly find themselves in the role of pawns.  But trust me, they are.  And there’re three of them now – including Corwin’s pattern – which is why all the rules have changed.  The Pattern seeks to destroy Corwin’s pattern completely, as one kind of order wouldn’t tolerate a different one.  That’s where it’s energies go.  But it still doesn’t have enough for the task, because it also must keep the Logrus at bay…”

 

Scarlett felt doubts vanishing from her mind, being slowly replaced by belief in what she was hearing.  Six times had she accompanied her mother to Corwin’s pattern.  Six times had she witnessed Fiona’s attempts to walk that pattern only to fail each time to even set foot upon it.  Now she could see the reason for her mother’s interest and perseverance.

 

Jasra picked up her glass and took a small sip, “We believe, the Pattern devised a plan to gain access to an additional major source of energy.  Just how much did your mother tell you of Elektra?”

 

We believe?  Of course it was not the Kashfan government she meant.  And the way she referred to the Pattern seemed more as if to an adversary.  The room was quite warm but Scarlett could not help shivering, as she was certain now that Jasra spoke for His Majesty Mandor, King of Chaos, who, in turn, was the voice of that mysterious entity revered and despised in Amber at the same time – the Logrus.  Yes, she would return to Amber forthright.   However, she would depart at dawn, and with her valued horses, for it would not do for a Princess of the One True World to snub a Cousin who rules a Kingdom of the Golden Circle by leaving via a midnight Trump.

 

Jasra agreed, though somewhat reluctantly with Scarlett’s plan to leave in the morning.  “Tell you mother this”, she said, her voice earnest but gravely serious.  “Each broken Pattern is a source of considerable energy.  The true Pattern plans to absorb them all as it’s already done with one, with Merlin’s help.  That will give it a definite upper hand against either Corwin’s pattern or the Logrus.  The Logrus cannot possibly allow that because there’s a possibility that the struggle between the patterns is just a diversion and it is the real target of both.  If the Pattern begins to absorb the broken ones, the Logrus will initiate an all-out attack, which may very well result in the destruction of Amber.

 

“The only way to prevent it is destroying Elektra.  She’s the means to accomplish the end, conceived by the Pattern and born of it especially for this purpose.  I know Brand’s story about her mother walking the Pattern while pregnant, and he seems to believe it himself.  But Brand’s a man.  I’m a mother, as you’ll be too one day, and what kind of a mother would risk her child’s life for just traversing Shadow?  It was the Pattern itself manifested as a mortal woman who saved Brand and Deirdre from the Abyss, nursed Brand to health, and carried his child.  That Pattern walk was just a fine-tuning.  Fiona must come to the Keep so we could figure out a way to destroy this creature – and let’s pray we still can.”

 

Her mother’s words rang in Scarlett ears.  There’s never been anyone as precisely synced with the Pattern, as she is.  So Jasra could be right after all.  Most probably she was, and she seemed so genuinely concerned to prevent a disaster.  True, Amber had won the Patternfall War, but also true that things had been very good for the last 50 years, and were the Chaos to attack now – it might turn out differently this time…  The hard lines on Jasra’s face were of worries, not of age, yet she was probably no younger than mother, and Fiona had been around for millennia even in Amber time.  And now they expected her, hardly of age, to carry the weight of saving the Universe on her shoulders?  This was simply not fair!  She sighed deeply.  All she had wanted was an adventure.

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