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Suddenly, Dalt opened his right hand and let it drift back, as his right foot performed a huge semicircular step to his rear and his left arm moved forward, leaving him in a left-handed European en garde position, from which that massive arm and matching blade immediately extended, performing an inside beat upon Eric's blade followed by a lunge. Eric parried as his right foot crossed behind his left and he sprang backward. Even so, I saw a spark as his guard was creased. He feinted in sixte, however, dropped his point beneath the parry that followed, extended his arm in quatre; raised himself and his blade into something resembling a stop-thrust targeting the left shoulder as the parry crossed, turned his wrist, and slashed Dalt across the left forearm.
Caine applauded, but Dalt simply brought his hands together and separated them again, executing a little hopstep as he did so, leaving him in a right en garde position. Eric drew circles in the air with the point of his weapon and smiled.
“Cute little dance routine you have there,” he said.
Then Eric lunged, was parried, retreated, sidestepped, threw a front kick at Dalt's kneecap, missed, then moved with perfect timing as Dalt attempted a head cut. Switching to the Japanese himself, he spun in to the larger man's right, a maneuver I'd seen in a kumatchi exercise, his own blade rising and falling as Dalt's cut swept past. Dalt's right forearm went suddenly wet, a thing I did not really notice until after Eric had rotated his weapon, blade pointing outward and upward, and, the guard covering his knuckles, had driven his fist against the right side of Dalt's jaw. He kicked him then behind the knee and struck him with his left shoulder. Dalt stumbled and fell. Eric immediately kicked him, kidney, elbow, thigh-the latter only because he missed the knee-set his boot upon Dalt's weapon and swung his own about to bring its point in line with the man's heart.
I had been hoping all along, I suddenly realized, that Dalt would kick Eric's ass-not just because he was on my side and Eric wasn't, but because of the rough time Eric had given my dad. On the other hand, I doubted there were too many people of such ass-kicking prowess about. Unfortunately, two of them stood on the other side of the line I had drawn. Gerard could have outwrestled him. Benedict, Master of Arms at Amber, could have beaten him with any weapon. I just didn't see us as having much of a chance against them all, with Caine thrown in for good measure-not even with a ty' iga on our side. And if I were suddenly to tell Eric that Dalt was his half brother, it wouldn't slow his thrust by an instant, even if he believed me.
So I made the only decision I could make. They were, after all, only Pattern ghosts. The real Benedict and Gerard were somewhere else at this moment and would in no way be harmed by anything I did to their doubles here. Eric and Caine were, of course, long dead, Caine being the fratricidal hero of the Patternfall war and subject of a recent statue on the Grand Concourse, on the occasion of Luke's assassinating him for killing his father. And Eric, of course, had found a hero's death on the slopes of Kolvir, saving him, I suppose, from dying at the hands of my father. The bloody history of my family swam through my head as I raised the spikard to add a footnote to it, calling again for the wave of incineration that had taken out two of my Hendrake kin.
My arm felt as if someone had struck it with a baseball bat. A wisp of smoke rose from the spikard. For a moment, my four upright uncles stood unmoving. And my fifth remained supine.
Then, slowly, Eric raised his weapon. And he continued to raise it, as Benedict, Caine, and Gerard drew theirs. He straightened as he held it before his face. The others did the same. It looked strangely like a salute; and Eric's eyes met mine.
“I know you,” he said.
Then they all completed the gesture, and faded, faded, turned to smoke, and blew away.
Dalt bled, my arm ached, and I figured out what was going on just moments before Luke gasped and said, “Over there.”
My line of fire had gone out some time ago, but beyond the mark it had left, where my faded kinsmen had just been standing, the air began to shimmer.
“That will be the Pattern,” I said to Luke, “come calling.”
A moment later the Sign of the Pattern hovered before us.
“Merlin,” it said, “you certainly move around a lot.”
“My life has become very busy of late,” I said.
“You took my advice and left the Courts.”
“Yes, that seemed prudent.”
“But I do not understand your purposes here.”
“What's to understand?”
“You took the lady Coral away from the agents of the Logrus.”
“That's right.”
“But then you attempted to keep her from my agents as well.”
“That, too, is correct.”
“You must realize by now that she bears something that contributes to our balance of power.”
“Yes.”
“So one of us must have her. Yet you would deny us both.”
“Yes.” “Why?” “It's her whom I care about. She has rights and feel
ings. You're treating her like a game piece.”
“True. I recognize her personhood, but unfortunately she is become both.”
“Then I would deny her to both of you. Nothing would be changed, in that neither of you has her now, anyway. But I would take her out of the game.”
“Merlin, you are a more important piece than she is, but you are still only a piece and you may not dictate to me. Do you understand?”
“I understand my value to you,” I said.
“I think not,” it responded.
I was wondering just then how strong it really was in this place. It seemed obvious that in terms of energy expenditure, it had been necessary for it to release its four ghosts to be able to manifest itself here. Dared I oppose it with every cha
Finally, how might this affect the Pattern's attitude toward me?
(... if you are not eaten by something bigger, come tell me your story one night.)
What the hell, I decided. It is a good day to be listed a la carte.
I opened all the cha
It felt as if I had been jogging along at a good clip and a brick wall had suddenly appeared six inches before me.
I felt the smash and I went away.
I lay upon a smooth, cool stone surface. There was a terrible rushing of energies in my mind and body. I reached into their source and took control of them, dampening them to something that didn't threaten to take the top of my head off. Then I opened one eye, slightly.
The sky was very blue. I saw a pair of boots, standing a few feet off, faced away from me. I recognized them as Nayda's, and turning my head slightly, I saw that she wore them. I also saw then that Dalt lay sprawled several yards off to my left.
Nayda was breathing heavily, and my Logrus vision showed a pale red light about her vibrating hands, menacing.
Propping myself upon my left elbow and peering about her, I saw that she stood between me and the Sign of the Pattern that hovered in the air perhaps ten feet away.
When it spoke again it was the first time I'd heard it express anything like amusement: “You would protect him, against me?”
“Yes,” she replied.
“Why?”
“I did it for so long that it would be a shame to fail him when he really needs it.”
“Creature of the Pit, do you know where you stand?” it asked.
“No,” she said.
I looked beyond them both at a perfectly clear blue sky. The surface upon which I lay was a level area of rock, perhaps oval in shape, opening onto nothing. A quick turning of my head showed that it seemed bitten out of a mountainside, however, several dark recesses to the rear indicating the possibility of caves. I saw, too, that Coral lay behind me. Our stony shelf was several hundred meters wide. And there was movement beyond Nayda and the Sign of the Pattern. Luke had just hauled himself up into a kneeling position.