19.   The Transfer (From Elektra’s Memoir).

 

It was well after midnight when I took my worshippers back to the tavern and issued orders as strict as I could possibly master to keep their mouths shut till the time comes.  I was already familiar with the Castle library well enough to have no problem in teleporting back.  There, under the vaulted ceiling, across display cases holding trump decks and odd curios, I settled to think, having pulled my legs under me, on the same oversized leather couch that was a site of my cabinet appointment.  I saw all too well now why such importance was placed on my appearance with Random during his birthday celebrations.  I still had no idea of the roots of the weird cult of me, nor of the origins of the ugly caricature – and neither did my worshippers – but somehow, without ever suspecting it, I had a vast following in Amber.  That was of course until they see real Elektra… next to Random.  Not as it would ever occur to me to underestimate my Aunt, but Fiona’s filigree had more layers than I could have possibly imagined.

 

So the problem was to avoid appearing with Random.  Unfortunately, I had already given my word and breaking it would not be beneficial at all in respect to my position within the family, as no doubt Random had already taken care of informing everyone.  Which meant the whole festivities must be cancelled.  I saw only three ways for that to occur – a major war, a death in the family, or a natural disaster.  Starting a war was far beyond my means.  Assassinating a relative was repulsive to me though most of them I was yet to meet.  Also it seemed a rather poor solution – Random would have doubtless made me to attend the funeral.  So a natural disaster…  But how?  If we have ever been taught anything, we have been taught that the Pattern powers do not work in Amber, they just never tell us why.  The textbook explanation of Amber being ‘too real for magic’ is a complete nonsense of course – in the old times, when the Jewel of Judgement was around, it seemed to do ‘magic’ in Amber just fine.  So why not the Pattern?  I had thought long and hard on these matters for quite a few years, and I felt I knew the answer.  Dworkin had needed the Jewel to draw the original Pattern, so had Corwin to draw his.  I had no doubt that the Jewel was some kind of a storage device where the Pattern blueprints were kept and as such could not do anything that the Pattern could not do.  So it is not that the Pattern does not work in Amber – it is that we just do not know how to ask it.  Another textbook fact is that electricity does not work in Amber either – and that is also wrong because thunderstorms do occur and can even be artificially created by a Jewel adept.  So if one thinks long enough to put these two and two together…

 

My idea had been a rather intuitive one for the lack of knowledge at the time.  An electric current is composed of a number of frequencies, so perhaps the Pattern blocks some of them in its close proximity.  As the brain waves emitted when one talks to the Pattern are no more than a bunch of electric frequencies, some are also blocked and the Pattern does not hear.  The Jewel, however, does, because one talks to it using a different set of frequencies – that is why even a Pattern adept must be specifically attuned to the Jewel.  And how does one get attuned to the Jewel?  By invoking an image of the Pattern contained in it.  I was certain that the same result could be obtained by standing in the center of the Pattern and mentally running though its image in one’s mind, and yet for a long time I kept putting off actually trying it for some deep mysterious fear inside me.

 

Years later, I found out that Jasra’s researchers had come up with basically the same theory, although much more detailed in respect to the electric current.  Armed with equipment and expertise far exceeding mine, they actually figured out the allowed frequencies, so they could run all kinds of fancy electric circuitry at the Keep of the Four Worlds.  Much later yet, when studying physics in Copenhagen on Shadow Earth, I learned of quantum mechanics and energy levels and such and understood that the Pattern distorted space-time matrix around it so in its proximity the fundamental universal constants, such as Planck constant, were modified.  This distortion is what Jasra’s people learned to measure, though it never occurred to them to apply their findings to the Pattern communications.   

 

But returning to the girl in the old library rapidly sinking into darkness in flickers of the last candle – she simply ran out of options.  So there I went, along the dark empty halls, passing the Grand Dining Room and down by the seemingly endless staircase – to the Pattern chamber.  I have never learned what happened to old Roger.  This time a less inquiring guard did not delay me for long though, just dutifully wrote my name into a thick book – the second and the last time the name Elektra appeared in there.  I had only walked the Grand Pattern of Amber twice before, but both of my walks had been very easy.  Not this time.  The resistance started as soon as I made the first step and was only amplifying from there.  I could hardly move my legs along the sparking hissing line.  I felt tears rolling down my cheeks as I struggled to make another step, enormous sadness growing inside me.  By the Second Veil I could hardly move an inch at a time, the sparks having risen to my waist.  I knew there was no way back after one had stepped on the Pattern, but I also knew that I was special to it, so I stopped and made a step back, then another one.  The resistance seized almost immediately the whirlwind of sparks dropping down to my ankles.  The Pattern did not want me to proceed with my plan.  I did not doubt that it would let me walk back, actually that was what it was encouraging me to do, but there was no return.  I started again in the forward direction.  The resistance did not resume as if the Pattern had realized my resolve and given up on trying to stop me.  But I knew both of us were weeping.

 

In the center, amidst the bluish glow, I closed my eyes and started walking the Pattern again this time in my mind.  Nothing happened for quite some time, then when I made it to the center in my mental walk as well…  There was a clicking sound and then the light of a sun exploding in my head and then pain and then agony.  I felt as if my living brain was taken apart neuron by neuron and then reassembled…  I do not know how long it lasted, most probably just a few seconds, perhaps even less.  When I came to, I was on the floor in the center, the Pattern glowing with much less intensity than before.  My whole body was shaking unstoppably, and I felt very weak.  I had expected the Pattern would try to upload its information in the same way it would have done into the Jewel.  I just had not expected it would be so painful.  Whether or not I was able to receive it all or only some part of it I did not know.  I did know that my idea was correct, and it worked.

 

After teleporting back to my suite, I tore off my clothes soaked with sweat and ran to the bathroom.  A full bath would have been in order, but I did not want to wake up the maids and there was some water left in the basin.  I mechanically glanced into a large wall mirror, blinked a few times at the reflection… and screamed in anguish – my hair had turned completely white.  I twisted my body in front of the mirror examining myself from all angles, but it was still my body, young and firm, and with no hunchback.  Just the hair.

 

As if in a dream, I splashed my face with cold water, walked back to the bedroom, and curled in my bed.  I had full control of the Pattern – in Amber, outside of Amber, wherever – so from now on, for all practical purposes, I myself was the universal power, which should have been well worth my price.  Yet somehow I did not feel so.  There must have been enough spells to restore my hair, but I had never known any – all I could do was to cry and call to the Pattern.  But it did not answer.  All the answers were within me now, as well as the Pattern itself.  So I cried some more and I made a soft rain outside for the whole Amber to cry with me.

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