Dalen's Journal, Part Four

This room feels like a prison. I know that Random's offer of a room was more for sanctuary, but I have a deep-seated distrust of this place and the people in it. The King has been more than kind and his wife, the Queen, supremely generous -- It is difficult to put aside old fears, especially when new knowledge reveals them to be well founded.

I've had the servant bring me cocoa, it's not as good as Desra's and it's not helping me sleep. Perhaps I could have Desra stay with me. She'd enjoy it, thought the Rose would suffer in her absence, and I am not, obviously, always around. I seem to be out of Amber more than I am in it these days.

Ah, clarity, Dalen. Try for clarity.

The visions don't seem to be stopping. I both hope and fear that they will stop. What they bring is fear and loathing and grief as vast as the eternal. Yet they also reveal pieces of truth. I believe they are what has happened, not what will be (unless events repeat themselves -- a horrifying thought, that). A dream which I share? A racial memory? A linked memory? All are possible -- and I have no way of knowing yet which they are. I thought that I should write them out and see what review offers -- while they are still clear in my mind.

* A field, bountiful with the current crop. People laboring in the field. A large, "Pattern-like" construct -- three dimensional -- appears in the sky and begins to burn everything it comes across. Charring, erasing, eradicating. It brings with it death. Out of the literal ashes a handful of people, clad in white armor, arise. They are the core of what will become ... resistance? Revenge? Restitution?

* A series of brief flashes - Spinning mists, a thin, light-haired man on horseback, a feeling of regret and determination ... Spinning cages of light, sensed more than seen, poking, adjusting ... A fierce sense of exhilaration, the feeling of infinitely fast movement, sensing the terrain moving and shifting beneath me.

* A large hall, fixtures fine but faded, unimportant. Sudden shift, sitting before a fire, cup in hand, a finely dressed man across from me. Some part of me recognizes him as Lore, and the "me" in the vision does as well, though the recognition is of a different type. The me who is there smiles, but only with my lips. Watching, there is fear, controlled ... and determination. I need this creature and I will be the master. A conversation plays over and over again. I cannot catch the words but sense that each carries a minor variation as I might replay a battle, and just change this or that element to see the results. Eventually, the images become more and more blurred, fade and I am myself again.

* Flashes, like a string of pearls in the darkness, images warped, moving jerkily and too fast. -FLASH- Riding, the wind whipping past me as I give the beast its head, a blade of this silver metal in one hand, the view through my visor. Smoke and stone around me, moving too fast to focus on. A face, small -- young. A quick thrust of the blade, neat, efficient. The children are the hardest, it is easier to just act and not think. -FLASH- Flames, a building burns, screams from those trapped within, at my orders. I wrap myself in grim determination, but the screams are very loud. -FLASH- A man with silver hair, familiar. There are questions in his eyes as they gaze at me. I know mine are hard, cold and his eventually turn away. I remind myself that when the final Victory is won, none of this will matter. Will never have mattered.

* The picture is blurred, distorted, as seen through a warped mirror. -- Running through a field, the grass is strange -- blue, and like felt -- but at the same time, familiar. The light comes from everywhere, the sky a green glow. I am content, but there is a strange energy in the air, like before a lightening storm. It makes me nervous and I head home.

The wind picks up, stronger and stronger. I reach my home and see my mother running out to meet me. Suddenly she stops, her reaching hand extends and turns rough ... brown ... scaly bark moving down and covering her body ... branches rip through her clothing. I collide with the tree, unable to break in time, scratching at the bark, trying to dig through to my mother whom I know must be inside. I look up just in time to see the ragged remains of her shift catch in the wind and blow away.

* Clear, the images are strong, and ride with a feeling of dread that brings bile to my throat -- I walk through the city, strange buildings like a child's fantasy. I pay them little mind, they will be gone in a month. Suddenly the little stomach flip that signals emergence, but you know this to be impossible ... the Olaei are not prepared ...

Shock, emergence, rolling across the ground, seeing pieces of buildings rolling around me, but fading just as quickly. They cannot survive here. Sitting up, bruised but still strong, surrounded by a world fading to white, trees, houses, rocks all losing form and melting into the primal. In some of them, the fading reverses, the colors gather and forms emerge. Some just sit, some look around with eyes blank and unseeing. And some, the worst, just scream and scream and scream ...

I know what happened to some of them. I suspect what happened to the others. I also know how I fit in, at least in theory ... though what I am to do is still as unclear as ever.

The first thing to do is to keep alive. Harder than it sounds.

The second thing is to see if I can contact Theron. He supposedly has something for me. That goes along with keeping my appointment with Michael. He supposedly has information for me. Several "supposedlys" there.

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Sh'shari ... Half-sister, aunt, evil twin? None of the above? Survivor of the cataclysmic restructuring of the Vitae by Pattern all those centuries ago. One of the original Moonriders -- or child of one. Someone who remembers all that was being stripped away, becoming other, unbecoming. Someone who wants an eye for an eye, a world for a world. She does not understand that even if she eradicates Amber, it will not bring back those who were destroyed, nor ease her heart. She will become what she hates the most -- just like the Sunset Lord.

There is something which I don't understand -- The creation of the Primal Pattern certainly caused what I saw in the last of my visions. The unmaking, altering, changing of the world as it was. But that is different than the Pattern which incinerated everything down to ash. What if -- by way of the hypothetical -- when the "Fire Pattern", as Aaron calls it, was created it was what wiped out the Moonriders? Are they the same people who lived in the Vitae? Perhaps not. Perhaps we have a case of "The enemy of my enemy is my friend."

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Further supposition -- If the Fire Pattern WAS the cause of the destruction of Ghenesh, then the Sunset Lord may be the one who caused it to come into being. Dworkin caused the Primal Pattern to come into being, but not necessarily the Fire Pattern. If it is true that the Fire Pattern was not created by Dworkin, then the Sunset Lord is someone else ... and therefore there is another child that Sh'shari is looking for. Someone who has not yet accessed the Pattern ...

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