Bathsheba’s Diary part 19: The Doom!

In The Doom that Came to Amber

5^th Snake 3658 – dawn

When we get back to the castle, Asmark is summoned. Half an hour later I am summoned to discuss our next move.

Random has decided to treat with the Mirans regarding the rewriting of the Universe that Dark wants – given the circumstances, we don’t have any other choice. When the family council are assembled, this is announced – a few look surprised, don’t know why myself but I suppose I’ve been thinking the same thing for a while.

Asmark is delegated to go and talk to Rupert nicely and a meeting is arranged. I volunteer to make sure he gets there and back, pulling a handful of mounted guards as we go down Vine Street.

Rupert is waiting for us at the bottom, looking very pretty in his black and silver. Posey twat!

In order to assist the negotiations as far as possible, I keep my mouth shut and let Asmark do his stuff. The upshot is: they provide the sacrifice, we provide the venue and there is a lot of dickering over numbers attending – apparently those not there will ‘never have existed’. For some reason, they don’t want Alaric anywhere near the place. We conclude our business, having hammered out a deal and go and hassle Random again – well, Asmark does, I go back on duty in the infirmary.

The thing which used to be Danesh has escaped, no-one knows where. If this ritual thing doesn’t work I will have to hunt him down and kill him.

I should have let him die before.

Forgot to mention, Aylwin’s discovered another budlet on the family tree – Montford’s sister, the regiment mascot, apparently, called Falasia.

The End of The Universe ritual thing is finalised – I get to trump Merlin, various others are designated to trump various obscure offshoots of the family. No-one wants to trump Rinaldo but the consensus is he’ll probably be with the Mirans anyway.

I spend the night on duty, making a list of those I want to take with me – I can’t take the entire Palace Guard, much as I would like to, so choose 6. Fallan is one of them – incident with the relief column notwithstanding, he’s a mostly dependable officer.

6^th Snake 3658

Before dawn, we all gather – I’ve included Lord Grimm and family as well as Helga (who told me flat she was coming with me) in my party. There’s a lot of people here – at a rough guess, a couple of hundred.

We climb up Kolvir – I walk Briar rather than ride her, she’s nervous enough as it is. Then we go through to the Primal Pattern. I’d forgotten about that. The world goes electric monochrome (if that makes sense) – I can hear people screaming and smell burning, but it seems unreal. Unfortunately, it wasn’t – non-family are suffering first-to-second degree burns, including Helga and the Guards – one of them quite bad. Someone helps him along and we keep going.

At the assigned place, around a stone with engraved channels in it, we gather – Amberite and Miran. Dark (I presume) and Mira are there, as is Alaric – he’s the executioner, nobody cares if he gets cursed I suppose.

There are people streaming through from the Pattern behind us, one of them is actually on fire. I recognise him vaguely – he’s the incompetent ambassador from the Courts of Chaos (can’t remember his name), the one I shot by mistake with a Pattern-gun the last time we were gathered on Kolvir. Guess it really isn’t a lucky place for him. The odd thing is, as he’s trying to beat out the flames, he dislodges a blue crystal pendant from round his neck, which breaks as it hits the ground.

Exploding out from the shattered pendant, like a super-compressed party popper, is an unexpected figure – everyone’s favourite relative, Corwin. He looks a lot thinner, and not very happy. Solves the riddle of where he’s been, anyway.

Dark starts pontificating, and it’s not long before we realise it’s Dworkin – somebody’s theory was right, then. From under a cloak (he never could resist showing off), he pulls a burka-clad figure – from the size of the hands and general physique, it’s a woman – and arranges her on the altar-stone. Alaric lifts the veil and then goes absolutely white – ironic, they managed to find someone Alaric cared about, apart from himself. He pulls her off then takes her place – from the back somewhere, I hear Julian yell in negation, as he throws people out of his way to try and get to Alaric.

Smoothly, almost nonchalantly, Alaric cuts his own throat. As his blood flows down the stone grooves into the cup, most of us look at each other, and at Dworkin. The question is almost audible as everyone thinks; “Was that supposed to happen?” Apart from Julian – I didn’t know he knew words like that, let alone express them publicly. Dworkin doesn’t seem to be fazed by this, though, and hands round the cup. We all take a sip, including non-family, then he starts on the ritual.

He is good at it, must be said. He calls up the Unicorn – not that the undulating tentacled thing which turns up looks much like one, except for a horn which appears and disappears – as each shoe is fitted, it seems to ‘fix’ the shape of a unicorn’s leg onto the form. The last shoe is fitted and the transformation now runs up the rest of the form, forcing it into the familiar shape of the Unicorn.

Then the redrawing begins – Dworkin starts in the middle and, as he works outward, I feel as though we are all moving away, faster and faster, like dots on the surface of a vastly expanding balloon. Faster and faster, movement without moving, I travel inexorably into the unknown. Alone.

I wake, suddenly, alone. A merciless sun beats down from a cobalt sky onto a sere and dusty land, horizon shimmering with heat haze.

This is the new universe.

I stand up.

I am alone.

Again.

Or should that be, still.