“You know that is no ordinary storm,” I croaked. “If it were. I'd be thankful for the chance of getting a drink.”

“I know. I was speaking figuratively.”

I growled something vulgar and kept going.

Gradually, the vista before me enlarged. The sky still did its crazy veil dance, but the illumination was more than sufficient. When I reached a position where I was positive what lay before me, I halted and sagged against my staff.

“What is the matter?” Hugi asked.

But I could not speak. I simply gestured at the great wasteland which commenced somewhere below the farther lip of the plateau to sweep on for at least forty miles before butting up against another range of mountains. And far off to the left and still running strong went the black road.

“The waste?” he said. “I could have told you it was there. Why didn't you ask me?”

I made a noise halfway between a groan and a sob and sank slowly to the ground.

How long I remained so, I am not certain. I felt more than a little delirious. In the midst of it I seemed to see a possible answer, though something within me rebelled against it. I was finally roused by the noises of the storm and Hugi's chattering.

“I can't beat it across that place,” I whispered. “There is no way.”

“You say you have failed,” Hugi said. “But this is not so. There is neither failure nor victory in striving. It is all but an illusion of the ego.”

I rose slowly to my knees.

“I did not say that I had failed.”

“You said that you cannot go on to your destination.” I looked back, to where lightnings now flashed as the storm climbed toward me.

“That's right, I cannot do it that way. But if Dad failed, I have got to attempt something that Brand tried to convince me only he could do. I have to create a new Pattern, and I have to do it right, here.”

“You? Create a new Pattern? If Oberon failed, how could a man who can barely stay on his feet do it? No, Corwin. Resignation is the greatest virtue you might cultivate.”

I raised my head and lowered the staff to the ground. Hugi fluttered down to stand beside it and I regarded him.

“You do not want to believe any of the things that I said, do you?” I told him. “It does not matter, though. The conflict between our views is irreducible. I see desire as hidden identity and striving as its growth. You do not.” I moved my hands forward and rested them on my knees. “If for you the greatest good is union with the Absolute, then why do you not fly to join it now, in the form of the all-pervading Chaos which approaches? If I fail here, it will become Absolute. As for me, I must try, for so long as there is breath within me, to raise up a Pattern against it. I do this because I am what I am, and I am the man who could have been king in Amber.”

Hugi lowered his head.

“I'll see you eat crow first,” he said, and he chuckled.

I reached out quickly and twisted his head off, wishing that I had time to build a fire. Though he made it look like a sacrifice, it is difficult to say to whom the moral victory belonged, since I was planning on doing it anyway.

...Cassis, and the smell of the chestnut blossoms. All along the Champs-Elysies the chestnuts were foaming white...

I remembered the play of the fountains in the Place de la Concorde... And down the Rue de la Seine and along the quais, the smell of the old books, the smell of the river... The smell of chestnut blossoms...

Why should I suddenly remember 1905 and Paris on the shadow Earth, save that I was very happy that year and I might, reflexively, have sought an antidote for the present? Yes...

White absinthe, Amer Picon, grenadine... Wild strawberries, with Creme d'Isigny... Chess at the Cafe de la Regence with actors from the Comedie Francaise, just across the way... The races at Chantilly... Evenings at the Boite a Fursy on the Rue Pigalle...

I placed my left foot firmly before my right, my right before my left. In my left hand, I held the chain from which the Jewel depended-and I carried it high, so that I could stare into the stone's depths, seeing and feeling there the emergence of the new Pattern which I described with each step. I had screwed my staff into the ground and left it to stand near the Pattern's beginning. Left...

The wind sang about me and there was thunder near at hand. I did not meet with the physical resistance that I did on the old Pattern. There was no resistance at all. Instead-and in many ways worse-a peculiar deliberation had come over all my movements, slowing them, ritualizing them. I seemed to expend more energy in preparing for each step-perceiving it, realizing it and ordering my mind for its execution-than I did in the physical performance of the act. Yet the slowness seemed to require itself, was exacted of me by some unknown agency which determined precision and an adagio tempo for all my movements. Right...

...And, as the Pattern in Rebma had helped to restore my faded memories, so this one I was now striving to create stirred and elicited the smell of the chestnut trees, of the wagonloads of vegetables moving through the dawn toward the Hallos... I was not in love with anyone in particular at the time, though there were many girls-Yvettes and Mimis and Simones, their faces merge-and it was spring in Paris, with Gipsy bands and cocktails at Louis'... I remembered, and my heart leaped with a kind of Proustian joy while Time tolled about me like a bell... And perhaps this was the reason for the recollection, for this joy seemed transmitted to my movements, informed my perceptions, empowered my will...

I saw the next step and I took it... I had been around once now, creating the perimeter of my Pattern. At my back, I could feel the storm. It must have mounted to the plateau's rim. The sky was darkening, the storm blotting the swinging, swimming, colored limits. Flashes of lightning splayed about, and I could not spare the energy and the attention to try to control things.

Having gone completely around, I could see that as much of the new Pattern as I had walked was now inscribed in the rock and glowing palely, bluely. Yet, there were no sparks, no tinges in my feet, no hair-raising currents-only the steady law of deliberation, upon me like a great weight... Left...

...Poppies, poppies and cornflowers and tall poplars along country roads, the taste of Normandy cider... And in town again, the smell of the chestnut blossoms... The Seine full of stars... The smell of the old brick houses in the Place des Vosges after a morning's rain... The bar under the Olympia Music Hall... A fight there... Bloodied knuckles, bandaged by a girl who took me home

...What was her name? Chestnut blossoms... A white rose...

I sniffed then. The odor was all but gone from the remains of the rose at my collar. Surprising that any of it had survived this far. It heartened me. I pushed ahead, curving gently to my right. From the corner of my eye, I saw the advancing wall of the storm, slick as glass, obliterating everything it passed. The roar of its thunder was deafening now.

Right, left...

The advance of the armies of the night... Would my Pattern hold against it? I wished that I might hurry, but if anything I was moving with increasing slowness as I went on. I felt a curious sense of bilocation, almost as if I were within the Jewel tracing the Pattern there myself while I moved out here, regarding it and mimicking its progress. Left... Turn... Right... The storm was indeed advancing. Soon it would reach old Hugi's bones. I smelled the moisture and the ozone and wondered about the strange dark bird who had said he'd been waiting for me since the beginning of Time. Waiting to argue with me or to be eaten by me in this place without history? Whatever, considering the exaggeration usual in moralists, it was fitting that, having failed to leave me with my heart all laden with rue over my spiritual condition, he be consumed to the accompaniment of theatrical thunder... There was distant thunder, near thunder and more thunder now. As I turned in that direction once more, the lightning flashes were nearly blinding. I clutched my chain and took another step...