Someone was prodding me. I had survived - for this I was thankful. I
openned me eyes half expecting it to be Aurthur, but it was a
stranger. I was still on Tethys.
"Are you alright there?" asked the stranger.
My neck and head ached horribly. I was battered and exhausted, but I'd
recover.
"I've been better." I started to stand, but when the ground swayed
uneasily under me I choose instead to kneel for a moment. "What
happened?"
"I should ask you the same thing." he replied. "Who are you? You
look familiar. I'll bet you're one of my nephews."
Nephew of a moonman? It was hard to swallow (no really - my neck was
killing me).
"I'm Myrlyn." At this he seemed surprised. I stood up and held my
hand out for him to shake.
"Well how about that?" he laughed. "That's who I am too, Merlin of
Amber."
There was that "Amber" again. It seemed to have a ring to it. Korvan
had called me Simon of Amber. Maybe there was something to it. I
asked Merlin about it and he began to explain, but before we went any
further I asked Merlin if he would mind if I cast a harmless spell on
him. He agreed and I cast
Conduit of the Emotions.
Merlin operated basically from noble motives, though he was a bit
roguish. He genuinely liked me so far, but had killed Korvan more
because he personally hated him than to save me.
Merlin told me that the man who attacked me was from Logres and he
used the power of Logres to create all those magical forces and to
travel from Fallingham to this place, Chaos. Evidently Logres was not
the same city I was familiar with, we were not on Tethys, and most
importantly I would be powerless against Logres until I "walked the
pattern of Amber." I told him that my course of action was clear. I
wanted to walk to pattern as soon as possible.
He pulled out a card and was talking to someone through it. Since the
unusual was usual here in Chaos I was not surprised when the person
Merlin was talking to stepped through the card and out into our
presence. He introduced himself as Bleys. He was not the same Blaise
I knew from Cambridge. Was nothing the same here?
Bleys explained
Logrus (not Logres) and Pattern to me as such:
"Think of Logrus as a potato. If you cut the potato with a knife, the
edge you've cut is the Pattern."
It didn't sound as powerful as the full three dimensional Logrus, but
if this Pattern could ward off other Logrus sorcerers like Korvan I
would need to learn it.
Bleys took me through another card to see Random
, King of Amber, home of the Pattern.