Luke, Dalt,
Delwin & Sand – Bathsheba’s Appraisal
in Brave New Worlds
Dalt according
to Dalt
Bathsheba
quickly learns that Dalt is a man of few words and
those words he does use have relatively few syllables.
The first trait reminds her of Benedict, the second doesn't. His communication
skills, outside purely military usage, are mediocre. He has no airs or graces
as far as Bathsheba can judge.
As far as
Bathsheba can tell, Dalt is a surprisingly simple
soul. Not thick, merely uncomplicated, which is not the same
thing. Since she says it's a good thing to get to know each other, he
gives her a précis of his life story. She doesn't think he's hiding anything
important or embellishing.
His mother, Deela, was a local freedom-fighter who's depredations in
and around Eregnor eventually led Oberon to lead a
small force of troops against her. She was captured and taken back to Amber,
where she was locked up.
Somehow she
escaped, she never told Dalt how, but not before
she'd been raped by Oberon. Dalt was the result. With
her hatred of Amber even hotter than before, she resumed her fight against the
oppression of the Unicorn religion and frankly, after her rape, her methods
were very unpleasant.
Dalt's relationship with his mother was short and
also problematical; she was killed in battle by Bleys a few years later when Dalt was only 6. As soon as he was old enough, Dalt swore revenge and continued the fight and has been
doing so more or less continuously for nearly 600 years.
Because Eregnor had few forces compared to Amber, or even Begma or Kashfa, Dalt's methods were those of the freedom-fighter. He
adopted the cognomen 'The Lion of Eregnor'.
He frankly got
no further than his mother ever had. Over the centuries his methods had moved
from being like hers when she died to something a lot softer, mainly because he
saw for himself that such methods were both unpleasant and counterproductive.
Because of this,
his popularity improved to the point where the people of Eregnor
regarded him as their saviour, come to finally achieve freedom from Amber
oppression and a return to their own forms of worship.
About a hundred
years ago, he found himself in a position to raise almost all of Eregnor and actually march on Amber. He made his plans
carefully, ensuring Sapphire would turn a blind eye to his passage, and his
ranger corps proved up to the job of keeping Julian at bay for the short
passage through
To cut the story
short, his men, suffering heavy losses, fought their way through to Kolvir, where Benedict finally met and stopped him on the
Western Approaches. Dalt fell off Kolvir
with Benedict's sword through him. He washed up on a beach to the south and
crawled in to the undergrowth to die, but somehow his phenomenal healing powers
kept him alive, almost against his will.
Somehow Dalt recovered but it took him a long time and even longer
for his confidence to return. His entire army was annihilated, barely a handful
made it back home. With its men folk decimated, Eregnor
spent decades at the mercy of Sapphire, Begma and Kashfa while Dalt drowned himself
in drink. Instead of being its saviour, Dalt had
proven a curse.
Decades later,
it was Luke (apparently 'Rinaldo' is Luke's official Kashfan name but he prefers to be called Luke by his friends
- it's like Edward VIII being called David and Edward
That was in
3640, over the last 2 decades Dalt and Luke have
worked together on a lot of projects, including rescuing Luke's mother, Queen Jasra, from some prison in shadow, and Luke's recent coup d'etat in Kashfa. Dalt says Luke is the straightest guy he knows. If all
Amber Royals were like him, Dalt would have nothing
against them.
Dalt had thought to continue his one-man war
against Amber but Luke convinced him he could get his objectives through
negotiation rather than war. Basically, Luke got Dalt
to agree to dropping the war in return for autonomy
for Eregnor. He would also give up his personal
vendetta against Bleys in return for freedom of worship in Eregnor.
What Dalt now wants to do is to seek out Eregnor,
if it still exists, and ensure these promises are kept. Of course, he
understands this may take a while and he's aware that he owes Luke a lot. Luke
tells him that Bathsheba's OK and Dalt's seen nothing
to tell him otherwise.
Delwin & Sand
Delwin is nowhere near as strong as Dalt, nor as quick, physically. Bathsheba
thinks he's about as strong and as enduring as her but he can't challenge her
in the warfare department.
Where Delwin does excel is in the mental department, Bathsheba
quickly recognises that he's very shrewd indeed. When asked, he describes
himself as a 'dilettante technician', whatever that is.
Sand is softer
than her brother, nowhere near as abrasive, though Bathsheba gets the feeling a
couple of times that she's amused at Bathsheba's manners. In some ways she
reminds Bathsheba of Fiona, a similar sort of elegance and economy in her
actions, though she's much taller. Unlike her brother she took over the rule of
Corillaine as heir to her mother (such things pass
from mother to daughter there) and she's entirely involved herself in Corillaine ever since.
Each begins the
story at the beginning and are near enough similar. They were born in the
fairytale realm of Corillaine, Delwin
the elder. Their father was an adventurer from a Far Realm who married their
mother, Harla. Delwin and
his sister grew up believing themselves to be their father's only children so
it was a bit of a shock when Prince Julian and Prince Gerard discovered their
father's secret family after a couple of centuries.
Apparently
Julian and Gerard discovered Corillaine while
searching for Corwin, doubtless becoming confused in the tracking down of
concealed brothers. Metaphysics is like that. But once the cat was out of the
bag Oberon took his new Queen and family to Amber.
Unfortunately, Harla never really settled in Amber and died less than 50
years later. While she'd lived, Oberon had granted the usual package of
privileges to Corillaine but very soon after her
death, (indecently soon, in her children's opinion), he withdrew all privileges
and compounded the offence by steadily removing all her appointees from office,
replacing them with Amberites.
After a couple
of years Delwin and Sand withdrew from Court and
retreated to Corillaine. Sand believes their father
deliberately drove them away but Delwin really
doesn't know. What they both agree on is that, from the moment Oberon returned
to Amber, it was like seeing their father change. In Corillaine
he'd been charming, smiling and always straightforward; in Amber he'd turned in
to a scheming politician. Looking back on it, he'd probably always been that
way but was able to abandon that side of himself in Corillaine.
Sand thinks he
might have regarded himself as 'on holiday'. She once overheard her mother
questioning Oberon about why he came to Corillaine
and his answer implied he was trying to get over something bad in his personal
life, perhaps the death of a previous wife. (Bathsheba knows his previous wife
was Kilda of Ghenesh, whom he walled up alive in the
dungeons after she and her kids rebelled.)
Once back in Corillaine, Delwin and Sand made
a point of remaining aloof from their elder brothers and sisters. They'd had a
taste of what they were like and wanted nothing more to do with them. It might
have been different if their father had ever tried to make contact but they
never saw him again. Sand was upset that they weren't invited to the funeral.
When contact did
come it was from Brand, but since they recalled he'd been no more pleasant than
any of his brothers (he'd tried to seduce Sand and turned nasty when she'd
refused) they gave him short shrift. To be fair, he had apologised for his
earlier behaviour and apparently held no grudge for the refusal. He promised to
talk to them again but the next they heard of him, he was dead.
It was only
quite recently, a year or two ago, that Luke contacted them using a pair of
trumps apparently drawn by his father. Since he had no history and did not
attempt to beguile them in to supporting a putsch on the throne, they at least
listened to him. A year ago he visited Corillaine and
remarked how relaxing and peaceful he found it, comparing it favourably with
the pressures of his home in Kashfa.
Delwin talks of taking his sister back home once
the shadows open up again but Sand isn't sure if Corillaine
even exists. It was a fairytale world on the shores of Dream and it's possible the nearness to that Far Realm has preserved
it but she holds only a little hope.
One thing both Delwin and Sand had worked out for themselves
was that bad things were going down in Amber. Sand had read the cards and
expected trouble so neither were too surprised when
Luke trumped them. Since he's the only member of the family who has ever been
halfway decent to either of them, naturally [Sand says] they wound up with him.
In Kretas, their respective domiciles are the
Sand reckons
she'll probably remain in place but in her experience Delwin
is a bit of a wanderer and a tinkerer and will
probably be out and about most of the time. Luke, of course, still has his
father's trumps of both of them. Sand would like to paint Bathsheba sometime
soon, if she permits?