“I'll be okay,” I said. “It's really nothing.”

Did it mean that I was, as they say, my own worst enemy? I hoped not. I didn't really have time to go through therapy, not when my life depended on so many external things as well.

“A penny for your thoughts,” Jasra said sweetly.

“They're priceless,” I answered. “Like your jokes. I must applaud you. Not only did I know nothing of this at the time, but I didn't make any correct guesses when I did have a few facts to rub together. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

“Yes,” she said.

“I'm pleased there came a point where things went wrong for you,” I added.

She sighed, nodded, took a drink of wine.

“Yes, it came,” she acknowledged. “I was hardly expecting any recoil from such a simple bit of business. I still find it hard to believe that there's that much irony running around loose in the world.”

“If you want me to appreciate the whole thing, you're going to have to be a little more explicit,” I suggested.

“I know. In a way, I hate trading that vaguely puzzled expression you're wearing for one of delight at my own discomfort. On the other hand, there may still be material able to distress you in some fresh fashion on the other side of it.” .

“Win a few, lose a few,” I said. “I'm willing to bet there are still features of those days that puzzle you.”

“Such as?” she asked.

“Such as why none of those April thirtieth attempts on my life succeeded.”

“I assume Rinaldo sabotaged me some way, tipped you off.

“Wrong.”

“What, then?”

“The ty'iga. She's under a compulsion to protect me. You might recall her from those days, as she resided is the body of Gail Lampron.”

“Gail? Rinaldo's girlfriend? My son was dating a demon?”

“Let's not be prejudiced. He'd done a lot worse his freshman year.”

She thought a moment, then nodded slowly.

“You've got a point there,” she admitted. “I'd forgotten Carol. And you still have no idea-beyond what the thing admitted back in Amber-as to why this was going on?”

“I still don't know,” I said.

“It casts that entire period in an even stranger light,” she mused, “especially since our paths have crossed again. I wonder..?”

“What?”

“Whether she was there to protect you or to thwart me-your bodyguard or my curse?”

“Hard to say, since the results came to the same thing.”

“But she's apparently been hanging around you most recently, which would seem to indicate the former.”

“Unless, of course, she knows something we don't.”

“Such as?”

“Such as the possibility of a conflict developing between us again.”

She smiled.

“You should have gone to law school,” she said. “You're as devious as your relatives back in Amber. I can be truthful, though, in saying I have nothing planned that could be taken that way.”

I shrugged.

“Just a thought. Please continue with Julia's story.” She proceeded to eat several mouthfuls. I kept her company, then discovered I could not stop eating. I glanced at Mandor, but he remained inscrutable. He'll never admit to magically enhancing a flavor or laying a compulsion on diners to clean their plates. Either way, we did finish the course before she spoke again. And I could hardly complain, considering.

“Julia studied with a variety of teachers after you two broke up,” she began. “Once I hit upon my plan, it was a simple matter to cause them to do or say things which would disillusion or discourage her and set her to looking for someone else. It was not long before she came to Victor, who was already under our tutelage. I ordered him to sweeten her stay and to skip many of the usual preliminaries and to proceed to teaching her about an initiation I had chosen for her-”

“That being?” I interrupted. “There are an awful lot of initiations around, with a variety of specialized ends.”

She smiled and nodded, breaking a roll and buttering it.

“I led her myself through a version of my own-the Way of the Broken Pattern.”

“Sounds like something dangerous from the Amber end of Shadow. “

“I can't fault your geography,” she said. “But it is not all that dangerous if you know what you're doing.”

“It is my understanding,” I said, “that those Shadow worlds which contain shadows of the Pattern can only hold imperfect versions and that this always represents a hazard.”

“It is a hazard only if one does not know how to deal with it.”

“And you had Julia walk this-Broken Pattern?”

“My knowledge of what you refer to as walking the Pattern is restricted to what my late husband and Rinaldo have told me of it. I believe that you follow the lines from a definite external beginning to an interior point where the power comes to you?”

“Yes,” I acknowledged.

“In the Way of the Broken Pattern,” she explained, “you enter through the imperfection and make your way to the center.”

“How can you follow the lines if they are broken or imperfect? The real Pattern would destroy you if you departed the design.”

“You don't follow the lines. You follow the interstices,” she said.

“And when you emerge... wherever?” I asked.

“You bear the image of the Broken Pattern within you.”

“And how do you conjure with this?”

“Through the imperfection. You summon the image, and it is like a dark well from which you draw power.”

“And how do you travel among shadows?”

“Much as you do-as I understand it,” she said. “But the break is always with you.”

“The break? I don't understand.”

“The flaw in the Pattern. It follows you through Shadow. It is always there beside you as you travel, sometimes as a hair-fine crack, sometimes a great chasm. It shifts about; it may appear suddenly, anywhere-a lapse in reality. This is the hazard for those of the Broken Way. To fall into it is the final death.”

“It must lie within all of your spells then also, like a booby trap.”

“All occupations have their hazards,” she said. “Avoiding them is a part of the art.”

“And this is the initiation through which you took Julia?”

“Yes.”

“And Victor?”

“Yes.”

“I understand what you are saying,” I replied, “but you must realize that the broken Patterns are drawing their power from the real one.”

“Of course. What of it? The image is almost as good as the real thing, if you're careful.”

“For the record, how many useful images are there?”

“Useful?”

“They must degenerate from shadow to shadow. Where do you draw the line and say, 'Beyond this broken image I will not risk breaking my neck'?”

“I see what you mean. You can work with perhaps the first nine. I've never gone farther out. The first three are best. The circle of the next three is still manageable. The next three are a lot riskier.”

“A bigger chasm for each?”

“Exactly.”

“Why are you giving me all this esoteric information?”

“You're a higher-level initiate, so it doesn't matter. Also, there is nothing you could do to affect the setup. And finally, you need to know this to appreciate the rest of the story.”

“All right,” I said.

Mandor tapped the table, and small crystal cups of lemon sherbet appeared before us. We took the hint and cleared our palates before resuming the conversation. Outside, the shadows of clouds slid across the mountain slopes. A faint music drifted into the room from somewhere far back along the corridor. Clinking and scraping noises, sounding like distant pick-and-shovel work, came to us from somewhere outside-most likely at the Keep.

“So you initiated Julia,” I prompted.

“Yes,” Jasra said.

“What happened then?”

“She learned to summon the image of the Broken Pattern and use it for magical sight and the hanging of spells. She learned to draw raw power through the break in it. She learned to find her way through Shadow-”