Out Of The Woods

...as it happened in what later turned out to be the blue shard of reality...

Julian's wards have come of age and are summoned to the royal presence on an important matter. King Eric informs them of some grisly murders which have taken place in the Golden Circle in distressingly high society. The situation is delicate because Kashfa and Begma are at each others throats again, despite Amber's best efforts with Bleys and Florimel as their respective ambassadors. In particular the tiny state of Eregnor which controls a vital pass between the two has a princess, Valentine, of marriageable age and whoever controls Eregnor...

Leaving the palace, Peregrine pauses to take his newly crafted Pattern crown of healing to his mother, the amnesiac Fiona under open house arrest. With heart in mouth, Perry gently places the crown on his mother's head. To his horror there is a flash of energy and she melts away, revealing that she was no more than a sorcerous simulacrum. Where then is Fiona?

The young scions, each of whom has recently had disturbing dreams, apply their talents to finding out the political situation and the actual information on the murders. Each victim had their neck broken by an inhumanly powerful twisting of the head, probably from behind. Conversations with Florimel, Bleys and Caine reveal little, except that Florimel is closely involved with Eric and has a rare and precious Chaos Jewel in what looks very like an engagement ring. Bleys is a dissolute wastrel. One victim was personal physician to Princess Valentine. They find that a page in his notebook has been carefully removed. Alice reveals strange powers by causing a mirror in the room to show images from the past including what was written in the note book, to whit that the good doctor had treated Princess Valentine after she had been intimately assaulted. The other victims were also in a position to have known something about this.

The team comes pretty much simultaneously to the conclusion that the murders were committed by their foster-father, Julian and that the rape was committed by Eric.

Fearful of confronting the king, the team of investigators begin seeking support. It is discovered that Bleys is in fact under some kind of horrible enchantment and that most of his soul is trapped in some other plain and is slowly being enmeshed in a smothering cocoon of power by invisible red spiders. The PC’s all join minds to cut loose Bleys’ soul from it’s spidery imprisonment. 

It is realized that the dreams were at least partially factual. 

Peregrine discovers that his mother is trapped somewhere behind a wall of red glass. Using Trump and Alice's mirror powers they establish contact with her to find that she is imprisoned in the Jewel Of Judgement and that Eric is opposing them in the Trump contact. Using the combined might of the assembled crew, mostly sustained by Piotr's incredible reserves of energy, they maintain the contact long enough for Peregrine to make physical contact and to smash the jewel with the Pattern crown. 

Pulling Fiona free shatters the Jewel and sprays everyone with shrapnel from the Jewel. Where it hit the walls of Bleys’ room it turned into blood, where it hit a warm Amberite body it was shards of gemstone. Weyland called Perry by trump, who passed Fiona through the connection for safe-keeping. 

Alice and Sharika (Cindy Henderson) dumped Bleys unceremoniously into his bed. You went en mass to confront Eric and found him unconscious in his rooms in the Castle with his hand blown off and shrapnel in his face and upper body. There was blood all over the walls of the room. Some his, some from the Jewel. 

Some PC’s then called Julian, while others got the King into the infirmary and things mopped up. Mallory (Kevin Clark) saw to setting up his pigeon (a loyal follower of Eric’s) for the serial murders, and arranged for the castle staff keeping quiet. Perry and Mallory each collected some fragments of the Jewel. 

Julian explained that Amber’s strength is related to the strength of the King, which was why Julian did his job and didn’t try to unseat Eric. Ditto why he’d sucked it up and done his job for Oberon without trying to toss over the old bastard. 

PC’s agreed to try to get Benedict to be Regent, and Sharika (Cindy) gave him the infamous ‘it’s you or Caine’ ultimatum. Benedict was installed as Regent. Eric is in coma in the infirmary. 

"So that leaves us all changed, and 'all' means you, too." She has a habit of talking to the Mirror-Alice as if she were someone else. "And your Looking-Glass world." She pauses, and absent-mindedly twirls a lock of her long straight hair in the fingers of her left hand. Mirror-Alice's right hand stays quite still. "Did your king die too? Shah Mat. Check Mate. The King is Dead."

"You really should be a little more careful," she says, and nods in the direction of the mirror-self's right hand. Mirror-Alice starts twirling a lock of hair. "People will notice that sort of thing."

"It was the Red King all along, you know, though he was a Black King too - but then black pieces are red pieces sometimes, aren't they? And the red spiders wove the blue Pattern-thread, tighter and tighter."

"It makes me rather relieved I never reached Eighth Square after all. I've read the books, of course. Shame I missed the candles shooting up like fireworks, but the rest of it doesn't sound very enjoyable. And if you get to be Queen, then everyone will come after you and try to put you in check, and that's why you have to run so fast. I don't run nearly fast enough yet."

"A girl from the Isle of Wight
Who travelled much faster than light
Set out from home one day
In a relative way
And returned on the previous night."

"Do you like it? It's not mine, you know, I heard it from one of the physicists at the Institute. The third line doesn't scan properly, but it's a pretty image."

"I don't know if I can return on the previous night. I went into a mirror's past, though. I didn't know I could do that. Do the reflections get stacked in mirrors like photon-thin layers, one on top of each other? If I learn how to peel them back, can I get into the days back into the mirror's beginning? Into their reflections, I should say. Into the past of Looking-Glass world. I expect most of the time it would be quite boring, just people walking backwards, it might look strange at first but it would certainly pall after a while."

"Pall. That's a funeral thing too. I hope King Eric's funeral is going to be really boring, that would be best for everyone. King Eric. Uncle Eric. I never called him Uncle Eric while he was alive. I'm glad I didn't."

"Poor Princess Valentine. If she could go back into a mirror past and not go to that royal hunt, do you think she would? But then who knows what would unravel. All those spider-threads…"

"And if I could go into the reflections of the past, could I get out again into our side of the past? That one time I came back to this side, and it was the present, you know. But it was hard, like pushing through treacle. Treacle with no taste, or molten glass with no heat. Where do the tastes and temperatures of the past go?"

"But you see, that's the thing. If I could step out of Looking-Glass world into the past of this side, it would be like lifting the pieces off the chessboard. Three dimensions check two, four dimensions check three. I wonder if that means one could ever have jam - yesterday's jam, I expect. You really would need to be able to run faster than light to get tomorrow's jam."

"It all depends, you see, on whether yesterday is really stored somewhere, or whether it keeps going out and out and out at the speed of light. Though the light that hits objects has to stop, of course. And if you have to run out to catch up with the past, then if you run in faster than light, perhaps you can get to the future. I wonder if there are any Slow Light Shadows out near Chaos somewhere, it would be interesting to test this theory."

"Anyway, Uncle Benedict has reached Eighth Square, though he didn't want to, and he's King Benedict now. And Uncle Julian turns out to be my Grandfather after all, and the King's assassin, the White Knight moving so unpredictably, jump ahead, jump left, and they'll never check you. King Eric tried to set him up so we would take him, good little pawns doing the King's work, but the pawns changed colour and check mated the King."

"Check Mate. Shah Mat. The King is Dead."

He's gonna make do real work. I'm sure he is. What're we gonna do about Aunt Florimel. I mean she was, like, in on from the start. I should twigged – sugared donuts. Then there was the hulking great ring as well. Mind you she pointed us at the right place to be, and its possible she could have been at least a little bit intimidated Eric. After all he did trap Aunt Fiona in the Jewell and did something really horrible to Uncle Bleys too, trapping him in the spider web thing, after stabbing him with that three sided blade. I found out what tired means. Not gonna to that again in any hurry. Hope I got all the Jewell bits out. Didn’t know that could explode, nasty. Of course there's still the dream. Walk the blue line wearing my eye where the Jewell would hang, dripping blood as if it had recently been torn from head. I still have know idea what possessed Eric to set us to catch him, mind you he made a couple of mistakes. Like not knowing our abilities. So even if he had removed the underlying page from the Doctor’s casebook (so we couldn't read the imprint) I’m reasonably sure he didn't think Alice could do anything with the mirror. Now that was freaky shit, stepping though the mirror into the past to get the missing pages. Must remember no mirrors in the inner sanctum. Indiana Jones at Hogwarts:"Snapes! why did have to be Snapes". don't even want to know how she did that. Oh that was weird too, when like Shar wanted me in on the connection to help people escape all she had to do was look at me. It was like I could almost read her mind. Or perhaps I just know her body language really well. I dunno they say twins are special. I wonder whose gonna be Crown Heir. That got her good. Whose gonna be Crown whatever? I said she would be coz she was older. She said me coz I was male. I said that didn’t matter I could be a princess if I tried hard enough. I must remember to take the hat off before an audience with the King, rather than during. He's gonna make me fix the door too. I know he will, or make me pay for it some way, some how. Perhaps I can hide out in the forest with Uncle Julian. I think I go off and have a quiet panic, I think Shar is trying to trick me into becoming Crown Prince.

When Perry has his chance to call Weyland, the smith says nothing, only puts out a hand to you and draws you through into a clean, warm room. The walls are of stone, and a thick rug of green with violets scattered over it covers the gleaming smoothness of a worn stone floor. A fire burns in the small hearth, more a carved out hollow in the stone. Rich tapestries depicting different woodlands flank it. There is a window with closed shutters. Over your head, stone vaults glitter with clusters of crystals licked into stars by the fire and the lamps in their wrought iron holders on the walls. There is an elegant dressing table which you recognize instantly as the one his mother used to have in the house where you grew up.

Fiona lies in a great four-poster bed with gauzy silk hangings. She had been bathed and dressed in a soft white night dress. Her hair has been brushed and braided. A basin of water and the damp cloth hung over it’s edge give mute testimony, along with the Smith’s rolled up sleeves, of his care for your mother. Snuggled in among the silk quilts and velvet coverlets she seems fully as frail as she was in your dream. Her cheeks are hollow, and you can see her collarbones too clearly above the curved edge of her nightgown. If her skin were any more white, it would be translucent.

Weyland seems… different. It takes you a moment to realize that his usually ragged hair has been combed back into a complicated plait, and his beard is neatly trimmed. Instead of his coarse, home-spun shirt he wears the fine linen of a great lord. It does not seem out of place.

"It has been almost a week, here, since you gave her into my keeping. At first I despaired, thinking she would never wake; but it was your blood that freed her, and now I believe that she waits for you to wake her."

Weyland sits down in one of the chairs beside the bed, and gestures to a chair on the other side. When you’re seated, he produces a small, sharp knife. You’ve seen it a hundred times. He picks his teeth with it, sometimes. "Give me your hand." The blade stings faintly as he cuts a small slash on your palm. His jaw tenses beneath his beard when he cuts your mother’s hand. He clasps your hand with hers. Her blood mingles with yours, and Weyland wraps his hands around the clasp. His hands grow warm, then hot. You can feel some kind of power, it runs sparkling in your veins, green and intoxicating as champagne, but you can’t place what it is.

"Now, Peregrine, call her. Be gentle, she’s likely to be disoriented."

You call her, softly, and Fiona stirs. Her eyes open slowly. The smile that touches her face is weak, wondering. For long moments she just looks at you. Except for a dream, she hasn’t seen you since you were a child. Tears swim in her eyes as her fingers curl around your hand. "I knew… if I could just reach you…" She pulls on your hand, drawing you to her, holding you as tightly as shaky muscles will allow. Your mother lets you draw back far enough to allow her look at you some more. When she sees Weyland hovering on her other side, the tears that have threatened slide down her temples.

He smoothes her hair, then leans forward to kiss her lips softly. The kiss lingers, and Fiona holds you against one side, while on the other she curls her fingers into Weyland’s hair. When Weyland draws back, she sighs and her eyes close; but it’s the deep-breathing stillness of exhaustion that over-takes her instead of the limpness of coma.

Last edited 08 April 2003