Peter’s Diary part 11: An Unwelcome Guest at the Funeral

In The Doom that Came to Amber

26^th Day of Bull

I am told that this is the date. I cannot be sure, nor, to be honest, do I care. What has happened to me since I last wrote in this diary is such that matters of hours and minutes seem a frippery.

I returned from Faerie with no expectations, but a bushel of questions. Lord Morwaith… Morwaith had said that the arrow was a formation of Truth, and this combined with the ditty the Faerie had spoken to me weighed heavily on my mind. On my return, I was summoned to the presence of the Lord Regent with those of the Blood who had travelled in embassy. There we were asked of the poems – some answered and some did not. Then all were given leave to depart save myself, and Lord Julian asked me what I knew of the Arrow?

We fenced, and I think it no small measure of my skill that I was not completed overwhelmed by his questions, though I will admit with no shame that he learnt more than he gave. And then he came to a decision and took me to a place of power, the weight that lies in the ground of the mountain and where a delicate dance may be done, if one has the endurance to dance the measure to the end.

I survived!

I woke elsewhere. This room is not mine, though it contains my few possessions – the bronze and silver blade leant carefully against a wall, and my few clothes laundered and folded. I ached all over, worse than the dawn after the battle of Erith’s Ruin, though the ache faded far quicker than it had then.

I felt … different. My arms moved with sureness, even through the weariness that enfolded me, and my vision was clearer. I felt awake, with the clarity of thought and vision that supping on the finest Faerie wines can bring, but without the corresponding loss of control that so often follows to the hilarity of the Court. The linen sheet felt rough against my skin, and I felt almost as if I could count the number of threads in the weave as I rolled over to stand.

Maelgwin, Captain of the Third Watch for the Eastern Gate, was calling my name from outside the door – not shouting, as he would have done to wake me normally, but a strange, almost respectful tone. He was to escort me to lunch, he said, were I awake. I washed and dressed, and pausing only to pick up the arrow, I joined him.

I was in the wrong corridor, though I had known this from the room. Instead of being down with the servants, I was as best I could tell in the better quality guest quarters in the Palace. The look on Maelgwin’s face bespoke urgency, but again he forbore from slapping my back or pulling my arm. Looking at the arrow, which weighed heavily in my hands, I begged his leave to deposit it somewhere safe before I be accosted for carrying it around the palace. He nodded, and we headed for the lowest armoury – the safest place I was aware of in the Palace save the room where the Pattern was.

The guards there treated me with an odd mix of deference and contempt – their orders, they explained, came direct from the Regent, that none should deposit anything in the armoury save with his direct permission. I bowed at this, for I would not attempt to press any soldier to disregard his orders (though I might remember his name and face for the next time I needed a buffoon in the background of a story …)

Maelgwin lead me to lunch, and it is a matter for my exhaustion that it was only as I stepped over the threshold that I realised that he had shown me to the Family dining room instead of the servants’ one. As I stood there gawking on the step, I was asked what I wanted, and bereft of wits, I casually mentioned to no-one in particular that I had walked the Pattern and therefore had the Blood of Amber in my veins.

The scions of Amber train in a school at least as deadly as that of the Faerie – the reactions that those present might have had to such news did not show on their faces or in their mannerisms. The Princess Flora was gracious in her acceptance of my presence, and those others I knew a little better, Asmark, Aylwin and Alaric congratulated me. The Princess Bathsheba was, as I have come to expect, more reserved, though I have it on good authority that she too may have been fatigued, having returned from another tryst at dawn. I was too tired to press the issue, however, and she did offer her congratulations also.

The talk at lunch was of the death of the Archpriest of the Unicorn and a vision which named Morwaith as his heir. Aylwin received a note which caused him some consternation and some time shortly afterwards he informed myself and Asmark that we were to learn the art of walking in Shadows from him that very afternoon. I begged leave to attend to a small matter before I joined them.

I went directly to Lord Julian’s apartments, choosing not to deal with his curmudgeon of an aide. Knocking directly on his door, I sought permission to place the arrow into the lower armoury. Lord Julian seemed distracted, and scribbled permission on a sheet of paper, congratulating my foresight. As I took the paper and he turned once more to his duties, I caught the whiff of brandy on his breath.

Thinking much of this I joined Asmark and Aylwin in Aylwin’s chambers. He created a bridge of moonbeams and we walked through to the land called Minjoninita that I had visited immediately prior to the embassy to Faerie.

There, Aylwin showed us the truth that all the Faerie know – that the worlds we live in are but dreams, and that the stuff of dreams may be changed. However, like the fabled Wind Dancers of the Kosheen archipelago, who walk through dreams as easily as they sail the seas, one must tread lightly, and change things a little at a time, for fear of damaging the dream of the world in which you walk.

We started with a flower.

I told a story of a flower, walking forward as I did, building the flower which appeared into a wreath, and the wreath into a cortège, and the cortège into a procession and then we were in a different world. We returned, as I subtracted each change as easily as they had been added, and we stood in the sun of Minjoninita again. Aylwin walked us to a world, and Asmark walked us to a world, and then we walked faster and harder, the changes more rapid and brutal, the strain on us heavier.

And then Aylwin told us of one more thing that those with the power to walk through dreams have, and that is of finding. Concentrate on a thing you wish, and walk, and you will find it. Or you will find something so near its twin that you cannot tell the difference.

“And can you find Truth this way?” I asked, under my breath.

The dagger of silver and bronze will have to suffice.

We returned to the Palace and I freshened myself before going to see Her Majesty, Vialle.

I was shown into her presence as so many times before I had been, but there was a different taste in the air. I told her of my Pattern walk, and she showed complex emotions on her face, though sadness was uppermost. She told me of her husband, and of the complexities that being one of the Blood entailed. She talked of secrets; things, that I do not understand why, they passed her lips. She said her husband thought that Aylwin’s father was Julian, even though Fiona has acknowledged him as her child. She said that Random was certain that none of his brothers would sully themselves with a woman of Faerie, scared that doing so would geld them. She said that Random had not wanted to marry her, and that when drunk he would, in the beginning, compare her with his past conquests.

And the sadness in her voice stretched my heart to near breaking, and I told her a tale of a Faerie Embassy, to lighten her spirits, but it failed. She bade me goodnight, whispering that the stories were coming to an end, and I, unable to argue, left.