Aylwin’s Diary part 12: Rinaldo – Excommunications – Hall of Mirrors – Rebellion

In The Doom that Came to Amber

28^th Bull

Asmark contacts Bleys first thing. I cannot go through; the Trump goes dead as soon as I touch it. Mira is behind this in some way. Bitch!

Khitan and I set out for Lion Abbey; he has prepared himself a shield marked with an elder sign, in all but detail the same one that I know. Once we get near to Lion Abbey, Khitan scrys the place, in some way reaching out. I have not seen such sinuous arm movements since I watched the most agile dancer in P’theen.

We arrive at the abbey: squatters, scruffy and dirty occupy the place. An old woman is cooking something (someone?) and chanting spells in Arabic over the evil smelling mess. A girl tries to sell me corn dollies.

By the chapel waits a young man, well but strangely dressed, in gold! My senses scream at the wrongness, a severe attack of the creeps! In a circumspect exchange of greetings he says that he is here because he was called, we just admit that we were sent.

We explore the accommodation block: all the wooden fittings are gone, obviously to the squatter’s fires. They have even started to take up the floorboards. Khitan is looking for the escape sigil he created here before but it has worn out. We step into a corridor and the young man is there again. He starts the conversation by indicating the chapel, which we can see out of the window, and saying that he can look through it. I use Pattern-sight to do the same; beneath it lurks a knot of dark power. More disturbing still is the lad, without illusion he is just a smear of something, tentacled, writhing, crawling…watching!

Despite his disturbing appearance he is conciliatory, and assures us that he likes the world the way it is and that it is amusing to meet people like us. He likes the form he is in and the sunlight (bless) and wants to keep them. He tells us that we do not need to fear one another, how nice. He is the herald and the messenger and wants to keep his job (which requires two sides or there is nowhere to be messenger to). He admits to finding Alaric ‘worrying’, which I find more than worrying whichever way you take it.

By the Unicorn! He wants to cut a deal!!!!

He offers us a gift; it is in the gypsy caravan one and a half miles down the road. He called the gypsies here to be his servants but there is some thing there that we might find useful. Since we have no way of making a quick exit (I can neither run nor Trump) we withdraw in a dignified manner.

We find the caravan tilted into a ditch, Khitan can climb inside, he finds a strange set of trumps all in a mixture of styles which seem strangely significant. We return to Kashfa and an inn. Khitan spreads the Trumps so that I can see. I know most of these faces, all that time in the gallery and library has paid off.

Morwaith contacts me; it’s like talking to him from the bottom of a deep well, I yell at him that Khitan will contact him. Khitan does so; forewarned, Morwaith actually accepts the call and comes through.

He is apparently on a quest to find the real Jewel of Judgement, which can repair the rifts. He has the theory that Trumps move you through ‘between’ and are thus dangerous. The Unicorn is the child of something and Chaos and is bound with the Pattern. He is none the less intrigued by the new set of Trumps.