I stumbled, recovered.

WHold that ty'iga!” I cried, and the Ghostwheel aasl past me followed by Mandor's balls.

I was the next thing out into the hallway. I turned left and started running. A ty'iga may be fast, but so am I.

“I thought you were supposed to be protecting me!” I shouted after her.

“This takes precedence,” she answered, “over your mother's binding.”

“What?” I said. “My mother?”

“She placed me under a geas to take care of you when you went off to school,” she replied. “This breaks it! Free at last!”

“Damn!” I observed.

Then, as she neared the stairway, the Sign of the Logrus appeared before her, larger than any I'd ever summoned, filling the corridor from wall to wall, roiling, sprawling, fire-shot, tentacular, a reddish haze of menace drifting about it. It took a certain measure of chutzpah for it to manifest like that here in Amber on the Pattern's turf, so I knew the stakes were high.

“Receive me, oh, Logrus,” she cried, “for I bear the Eye of the Serpent,” and the Logrus opened, creating a fiery tunnel at its center. I could somehow tell that its other end was not a place further along my hallway.

But then Nayda was halted, as if she had suddenly encountered a glass partition, and she stiffened into a position of attention. Three of Mandor's gleaming spheres were suddenly orbiting her cataleptic form.

I was thrown from my feet and pressed back against the wall. I raised my right arm to block whatever might be coming down on me, as I looked backward.

An image of the Pattern itself, as large as the Logrus Sign, had just put in an appearance only a few feet behind me, manifesting about as far in that direction from Nayda as the Logrus was before her, parenthesizing the lady or the ty'iga between the poles of existence, so to speak, and incidentally enclosing me along with her. The area about me near the Pattern grew bright as a sunny morning while that at the other end took on the aspect of a baleful twilight. Were they about to reenact the Big Bang/Crunch, I wondered, with me as an unwilling momentary witness?

“Uh, Your Honors,” I began, feeling obliged to try talking them out of it and wishing I were Luke, who just might be able to swing such a feat. “This is a perfect time to employ an impartial arbitrator, and I just happen to be uniquely qualified if you will but reflect-”

The golden circlet that I knew to be Ghostwheel suddenly dropped over Nayda's head, lengthening itself downward into a tube. Ghost had fitted himself within the orbits of Mandor's spheres and must somehow have insulated himself against whatever forces they were execting, for they slowed, wobbled, and finally dropped to the floor, two striking the wall ahead of me and one rolling down the stairway ahead and to the right.

The Signs of the Pattern and the Logrus began to advance then, and I crawled quickly to keep ahead of the Pattern.

“Don't come any closer, fellows,” Ghostwheel suddenly announced. “There's no telling what I might do if you make me even more nervous than I already am.”

Both Power Signs halted in their advances. From around the corner to the left, up ahead, I heard Droppa's drunken voice, raised in some bawdy ballad, coming this way. Then it grew silent. Several moments passed, and he began singing “Rock of Ages” in a far, far weaker voice. Then this, too, was cut off, followed by a heavy thud and the sound of breaking glass.

It occurred to me that I should be able, from a distance such as this, to extend my awareness into the Jewel. But I was uncertain what effects I might then be able to produce with the thing, considering the fact that none of the four principals involved in the confrontation was human.

I felt the beginnings of a Trump contact. “Yes?” I whispered.

Dworkin's voice came to me then.

“Whatever control you may have over the thing,” he said, “use it to keep the Jewel away from the Logrus.”

Just then a crackly voice, shifting in pitch and gender from syllable to syllable, emerged from the red tunnel. “Return the Eye of Chaos,” it said. “The Unicorn took it from the Serpent when they fought, in the beginning. It was stolen. Return it. Return it.”

The blue face I had seen above the Pattern did not materialize, but the voice I'd heard at that time responded, “It was paid for with blood and pain. Title passed.”

“The Jewel of Judgment and the Eye of Chaos or Eye of the Serpent are different tames for the same stone?” I said.

“Yes,” Dworkin replied.

“What happens if the Serpent gets its eye back?” I inquired.

“The universe will probably come to an end.”

“Oh,” I observed.

“What am I bid for the thing?” Ghost asked.

“Impetuous construct,” the voice of the Pattern intoned.

“Rash artifact,” wailed the Logrus.

“Save the compliments,” Ghost said, “and give me something I want.”

“I could tear it from you,” the Pattern responded.

“I could have you apart and it away in an instant,” stated the Logrus.

“But neither of you will do it,” Ghost answered, “because such a focusing of your attention and energies would leave either of you vulnerable to the other.”

In my mind, I heard Dworkin chuckle.

“Tell me why this confrontation need take place at all,” Ghost went on, “after all this time.”

“The balance was tipped against me by recent actions of this turncoat,” the Logrus replied-a burst of fire occurring above my head, presumably to demonstrate the identity of the turncoat in question.

I smelled burning hair, and I warded the flame.

“Just a minute!” I cried. “I wasn't given much choice in the matter!”

“But there was a choice,” wailed the Logrus, “and you made it.”

“Indeed, he did,” responded the Pattern. “But it served only to redress the balance you'd tipped in your own favor.”

“Redress? You overcompensated! Now it's tipped in your favor! Besides, it was accidentally tipped my way, by the traitor's father.” Another fireball followed, and I warded again. “It was not my doing.”

“You probably inspired it.”

“If you can get the Jewel to me,” Dworkin said, “I can put it out of reach of both of them until this matter is settled.”

“I don't know whether I can get hold of it,” I said, “but I'll remember that.”

“Give it to me,” the Logrus said to Ghost, “and I will take you with me as First Servant.”

“You are a processor of data,” said the Pattern. “I will give you knowledge such as none in all of Shadow possess.”

“I will give you power,” said the Logrus.

“Not interested,” said Ghost, and the cylinder spun and vanished.

The girl, the Jewel, and everything were gone.

The Logrus wailed, the Pattern growled, and the Signs of both Powers rushed to meet, somewhere near Bleys's nearer room.

I raised every protective spell that I could. Behind me I could feel Mandor doing the same. I covered my head, I drew up my knees, I—

I was falling. Through a bright, soundless concussion. Bits of debris struck me. From several directions. I'd a hunch that I had just bought the farm and that I was about to die without opportunity to reveal my insight into the nature of reality: The Pattern did not care about the children of Amber any more than the Logrus did about those of the Courts of Chaos. The Powers cared, perhaps, about themselves, about each other, about heavy cosmic principles, about the Unicorn and the Serpent, of which they were very probably but geometric manifestations They did not care about me, about Coral, about Mandor, probably not even about Oberon or Dworkin himself. We were totally insignificant or at most tools or sometimes annoyances, to be employed or destroyed as the occasion warranted—

“Give me your hand,” Dworkin said, and I saw him, as in a Trump contact. I reached and—

–fell hard at his feet upon a colorful rug spread over a stone floor, in a windowless chamber my father had once described to me, filled with books and exotic artifacts, lit by bowls of light which hung without visible means of support high in the air.