The King came. Both of them. Stood before me and laid their hands on my head. What I perceived through one eye was different, it lacked a definition to their form. Like seeing through badly shattered glass. Or perhaps, it was because I was dying. They spoke to me and when I made no response, spoke to each other. Their conversation went on as others joined them.
“Merlin, are you sure it’s safe? I know Vialle said it’s Raven but is it Raven with a human mind in a dragon form or a dragon with Raven’s mind lost inside? Do you have any spells to reach him? Or heal him?”
“I don’t know, Random. The kingdom hasn’t seen a dragon in thousands of years. I don’t know if he can order the change or Jurt holds the key. Dad, any ideas?”
“Ask Ghost,” returned Corwin. All three were present, if only the Master was here, he could take all his enemies at one fell swoop. Out of the corner of my left eye, a glowing wheel transfixed me. I thought it some celestial being come to bring me to hell for after all my deeds, I was surely not going to Elysium. It whistled and bathed a green light over me. Spoke.
“Dad, I’m sorry. Nothing I can do or know what to do. He’s dying, has maybe a few hours. Something pierced his heart and he’s lost almost all his blood. If he was human, he’d classify as one of the living dead.”
“No,” Merlin whispered. “No. It can’t happen. If I have to cede to Jurt to save him, I will.”
That made me rouse a little. If the King did that---he might as well finish me off so both realms would die. “No!” I protested and it heard me.
“Raven?” the halo asked. “You can hear me?”
“Are you a saint?” I asked it.
“Dad! He’s...talking to me!”
Voices broke out in excited bedlam. I went away until peace reigned. “Raven? Raven? Answer me, damn it! I can’t see if he’s still breathing!”
Curious. All of them were leaking water from their eyes. I shifted my focus towards the one wearing the glowing ruby jewel in place of her eye and was drawn towards it with an eagerness almost like hunger. She told me her name and that the Pattern and the Unicorn weren’t done with me yet. She took me inside the Jewel and we were standing inside the Pattern and the Logus at the same time.
“My name is Cora, Raven. Like you, I am born of the Pattern and Guardian of the Jewel of Judgment.”
“I won’t choose,” I said almost hysterically. “You can’t make me, you can’t let me die, it will destroy all the shadows and both real worlds, Chaos and Amber.”
“I know. I won’t ask you to choose one over the other. Your choice is simply this, do you want to live or die?”
I laughed until I cried. I wanted the peace of death after all I had endured and yet, I wanted also to live. To smell fresh cut grass, the scent of new mown hay, of autumn leaves. The texture of a woman’s lips, how fresh sheets felt against bath warmed skin. The taste of fuzzy purple fruit as its juice ran down my chin. The play of muscles beneath me as a horse galloped in joy because it could almost fly.
She brought me back to the ground with a simple touch. “Dworkin is my mentor, Raven and your great grandfather. It was he that created the Lighthouse of Cabra and the first Trumps. Even the Pattern itself was made from his blood. To save your life and your body, you must walk the Pattern alone without help from the Unicorn or the Logus. Once you pass, you can use the power to return to your own body.”
“Healed?” I asked.
“No. That you must do on your own with proper medical attention.” She was gentle. “Raven, the dragon body is almost gone. When it dies, if you haven’t completed the Pattern, you will also die.”
“How do I get there? My body is too weak to walk, let alone fly.”
“I will show you the way.” She picked up my hands and it was warm, human. Pointed me towards a hill and a cliff I recognized from my foray to assassinate the Amber General. It was Kolvan. My first steps took me right to its face and down the long marble staircase to the Pattern.
My body was so weak I was afraid I wouldn’t even make it to the first Veil, let alone force my way through its entire length. I checked to make sure I had no blood leaking from me to burn it, my skin was whiter than snow and my veins faint blue traceries under. I couldn’t raise even a bead of ruby liquid. When I looked back for the lady, she was gone. Raising my hand to my damaged eye, I stepped out onto the First Veil and it was as if I was wading through a fast moving stream that nearly knocked me off my feet. I looked down at my feet and saw only two, still swollen and sore from our forest run. I left faint footprints on the swirling, misty footing of the Pattern. Heaved a deep breath and pushed on. Faces appeared out of the mist and mocked me. Thrid soldiers reached for me and their phantom arms fell through me as if I too, was a phantom. They chased me and promised me a lifetime of pleasure if only I would defer to them. I ignored them though it was hard not to shiver in acknowledgment of what they had done to me. When the Master appeared, I nearly fell off the path. Cowered and hunched down almost to my knees and waited. I knew it was dangerous to stop but I could not pass him. He held his whip and his eyes promised an unending session of his kisses. The Green Lady smiled and urged me to have courage, the man of stone threatened me with sharp teeth and a slap on the back. I closed my one eye and felt for the way with my inner sense and my hands. To move forward took every ounce of courage I had left and I only knew I had passed him when Steen patted me on the shoulder and smiled. Not far now, boy, he whispered. You can do it. I asked him if he was free and happy now that he was gone from the Master. He told me that his shade was, no more torture or death awaited him, he could rest with his boys. I asked him if his soul was free or still bound. He said it had always been his, that the Master had not taken it. It had all been an illusion, a spell made to bind him in mental chains he would never break.
I made it through the Waterfall before I faced the next test. This one was the hardest, I was forced to relive the worst days of my life. A review of all my tortures and the foul deeds I had done for him. Even those days that I had spent in madness were laid bare before my eyes. I teetered on the edge of a mental breakdown again, I wanted to throw my hands over my ears and run howling from the path. I wanted so badly to step off the way and let the Pattern destroy me. I didn’t. I walked on, my legs trembling, my breath short and wheezing in distress, my bowels churning as they threatened to open and foul my legs. Before my eyes was the Final Veil and now, the effort to push through was almost more than I could muster. I fell onto my hands and knees, wanted so much to just plant my face into the mist and sleep. The Unicorn danced a tattoo beside me and let me use her legs to raise myself up. “Mother,” I whispered, the effort almost my last. “You are not to help me or it is all for nothing.” She became the woman I remembered from my dreams, tall and lissome with that healthy American look and such very dark green eyes. I saw my chin and cheekbones in her face and the grit and determination I lacked. She shook her head.
“Raven, you have the most obstinate courage I have ever seen. You endured two years of that vile creature and in the face of certain death, would not choose. Will you choose now, if I told you I could heal you, make your body as pure and perfect as it was when I conceived you?”
Softly, sadly, I said, “no.”
“You have passed the Pattern,” she said calmly and took my hand as I stepped out into the center. I could see Cabra, and earth, all the realms and shadows she had traveled with me before she died and left us. I saw Murphy born from her mortal body’s blood and bone in one of Ireland’s many henges, bound by ancient magic that had nothing to do with Amber or the Courts and so, was not bound by it. “You may go anywhere the Pattern can send you, anywhere your heart desires.”
I hesitated. “But not back in time.”
“Would you repeat the same lifetime over? You can’t change the past nor can you be the same person if you did. Jurt exists in the here and then, only by erasing him can you change the future.” She kissed me. “You are my son, in blood and bone, in magic and reality, in past and future. I love you now and for always, as long as the Pattern waits and the Unicorn exists.”
Before my eyes, she slipped into the white mythical creature and vanished. I closed my eye and saw only a soft whiteness. Thought only a moment and found myself back on the beach in my dragon body. It was night and the sands were lit by braziers so that I shimmered. It looked as if a million fireflies had descended on the place and made it a fairyland. Yet the air was somber and no smiles on any of the faces I saw around their fire pits. I breathed, a deep breath and felt an internal shifting. Saw the chest of the great dragon’s body fall and not rise again. Heard one of the watchers cry out in alarm. The big tent nearest me flapped open and men emerged at a dead run to clamber about me. I saw the two kings and both were shouting at the healer. The stone man whose name I remembered as Murphy stood back and was smiling. He opened his wings and flapped them, the noise so loud that it generated everyone’s attention.
“Murphy, are you smiling?” Merlin demanded, his face wet with tears. “He’s dead. My son is dead!”
“No,” the gargoyle said. “The dragon is dead. Raven is not. I am still here, if my master were dead, I would be too. I am bound by her blood to protect and aid him. Were he to perish, I would go back to the earth as dust from which I was created.”
“Where is he, then?”
Before their assembled eyes, the immense broken and quiet body of the dragon fell away to leave me in its place, sprawled in the same position and nearly in the same condition. I wasn’t aware of anything, Murphy told me it all later. How the man called Merlin shoved all the others aside and picked me up, ran with me to the tent and bullied the doctors to do something, anything to get me stable enough to take to a hospital. How Corwin, Random and my father trumped me to the finest medical trauma center in all the shades and bullied the staff to admit me immediately. Not that they wouldn’t have anyway, I was pale as a white-bellied fish with a blood pressure nearly extant and a great bloody hole in my chest.
I woke up a week later in a flat position on a bed too soft for my bones. Didn’t know where I was or who I was. Only knew that I hurt and when I moaned, a person in blue came in and did something that made it all float away in a lovely haze. Sometimes, I would open my eyes, there was a darkness over the other one and see a dark head bent over a tablet whose screen was brilliant and cast a glow on his face. It spoke to him and told him I was awake but before he could see me, I was gone again. I was vaguely aware of people rolling me this way and that, taking care of my body and feeding me through a tube. I drank through another but it all had a surreal feel to it as if I wasn’t quite there.
Time passed as slowly as it did when you had no control over it. The periods where I was lucid grew longer and longer, and with it, the constant pain. My chest hurt the worst, I was bandaged from my neck to my belly button, my ribs ached with every breath and there was a thing in my nose pushing air. My throat was sore as if some huge pipe had been shoved down it. My exploring hands found tubes and needles in various parts of me.
I moaned and the blue people came in and stuck me. I had them well trained, at the first sign of discomfort, they stuck me and I floated away. What bothered me greatly was the obstruction in my sight. When I tried to feel for my eyes, both hands refused to move up that way. It took me some time to realize I was tied so couldn’t move them. That my right eye was bandaged thickly and felt...odd. I was looking at things through a drugged haze and out of only my left eye. When it dawned on me that I was blind, I freaked out, cried in distress and it brought the blue people running. Words poured out of my mouth and they did not understand me. I heard their questions but my responses to them made no sense, not even to me.