Tea in the Sahara

Brennan lets the conversation between himself, Raven and Ambrose wind down before stretching his arms and his back, saying, "We should probably head out. I'm not too sure of the time differential, but I'm not thrilled at leaving them unattended any longer than necessary. This was necessary, though."

He calls a page to efficiently get him back into his breastplate, conveniently giving Raven a chance to send any final messages or make any final arrangements as necessary.

Raven wrangles a page of her own, to get that bag that was being packed for her, but that's really the extent of her final business.

Once that's done, and they're both ready, Brennan draws out a card of Amber and focuses on it. He brings Raven through with him, and they find themselves in the courtyard of Amber. Brennan permits the guards Caine has stationed there to approach and do whatever it is they're going to do, within reason. He does raise an eyebrow when he sees the King's flag flying over the castle, but other than raising an eyebrow to Raven, doesn't say or do anything about it.

Raven eyes the flag, somewhat curious what the king they last saw in Xanadu is doing in Amber now, but shrugs in response to the raised eyebrow. They've got other places to be; hopefully the king is doing king things.

If and when the guards have waved them through (and if Raven does not object) they walk outside the courtyard and at least out of view, before Brennan stops and works his Sorcery. To Raven's eyes it appears that Brennan does... something, by reaching out and grabbing... something in thin air with his hands and pulling it to one side, like a curtain. Although, from his posture, his stance, and the visible effort he puts into it, it would be a curtain with heavy lead lining, weighed down by anchors. What actually parts like a curtain is reality itself, or as much of reality as Amber still possesses. The interior of a tent is visible on the other side.

Brennan motions Raven to go through, and he'll follow after.

Raven watches this with a kind of wary curiosity - she's seen it once before, but only once, and most of what she's seen of sorcery has been a lot of big, flashing events. Explosions. Towers being rebuilt. That kind of thing.

She steps through at Brennan's nod, with a healthy respect for the edges of the hole, and quickly moves far enough out of the way (without leaving the tent) to give him plenty of space to follow.

This shadow is warmer and less humid than Amber or than Xanadu, and the clothes that were appropriate for a winter's day in either are perhaps overmuch for the climate of the tower. The tent is lit by a lantern, and looks ideal for one warlike noble traveling alone. There is no one in the tent at the moment.

Outside the tent, somewhere, a horse whinnies.

Brennan follows after Raven, and lets the Veil snap shut behind him. As always, he resists the urge to look behind him when it happens.

To Raven, he says quietly, "Welcome to the outside of Fiona's Tower. Three Moonriders, can't miss 'em. One legendary Sir Firumbras," he holds his hand well above his head to indicate Firumbras' height. "Can't miss him, either. About a half a dozen, ah, make that closer to a dozen knights, mostly Ruby. Mounts for all including one talking horse," he concludes. "No one tried to Trump me so hopefully all is still well...."

He pokes his head outside the tent flap, looking for Dame Jennet.

There's a beat of pause while she takes that list in, and then Raven says, "And a talking horse. All right. There's at least not sounds of battle - not a bad thing, aye?"

Brennan shrugs. "We'll find out. And the horse is easy to miss. There's a story there I haven't had time to tell."

It's evening and she's sitting by the fire. She sees Brennan, and waits for him to wave her over or approach. She seems relieved to see there are two Amberites returning from where Brennan went.

Brennan does indeed wave her over. "Dame Jennet, I believe you know my cousin, Captain Raven."

He doesn't directly ask for a report, or his Trumps back, but he clearly expects all of those things.

"Not sure we've met," Raven says, "so well met, Dame Jennet."

And she leaves it at that, because she was in the navy long enough to know when someone else is expected to report in.

Jennet hands the Trumps back to Brennan. "Well met, Captain Raven. I have a cousin in the fleet, and you're well thought of, especially by ensigns who like to daydream that they are also secretly Princes of the Realm."

Raven smiles at that.

She turns to Brennan. "Quiet here, and you've been gone for a few hours, as best we an keep time with this sky. The moon riders and Sir Firumbras are doing some rock climbing on flying rocks.

"I think they are trying to get close to the skeleton of a giant beast that's lying in the sand field. No idea why they can't wait until light, my Lord.

"No one has approached the tower, or from the tower."

Brennan hides it well, but he's relieved that nothing has gone catastrophically wrong in his absence-- it would ultimately have been his fault, and he really did not relish the idea of explaining that to Fiona. Or to Random.

"Good," he says, taking back the Trumps and putting them in their case. 'Well done. You're relieved-- tell Korbie he's up, and get some rest. And probably they're doing it now, because I intend to leave as soon as it's light enough to travel."

She nods, and being both officially and mentally relieved, heads for her tent.

Brennan looks at the whirling rocks with a weather eye considering, but ultimately disappointed. "It's too bad we can't just ride those things halfway to Ghenesh, if not farther. But the horses would never put up with it."

He looks over at Raven, "Well, shall we go feign polite interest in what they're doing?"

Raven eyes the floating rocks, snorts, and says dryly, "Sure. Chasing some sight-seers looking for a corpse around some floating rocks in the dark sounds like a great time. Dumb question time - where are we, exactly, besides 'Fiona's Tower'?"

Dark is relative. The land is lit without a sun, and they're farther out than sailors go, because the seas are unpredictable long before shadow unpredicatability becomes dangerous. This is closer to dangerous. The light ebbs and flows and has no source so shadows and perspective are odd. It's also hard to figure out the passage of time.

Maybe the giant flying rocks are a clock.

Brennan heads back briefly to his tent, and grabs the spear that he'd left propped upright within. Just in case. Then they head at a meandering pace toward the Moonriders, or toward the carcass.

"What kind of answer are you looking for?" he asks. "This is Shadow. It's where Fiona's Tower is. You can tell by the sky that we're far from anywhere Ordered, but not quite so far that we're in the Courts of Chaos. Why are we here? Because for most of the trip, I was letting the Moonriders lead so I could observe them, and I noticed that we were in a place similar to this. So I bid them let me lead, and I took us here. I could as easily have headed for the Plain of Towers, where Signy is from, but it would have been farther, and I think in the wrong direction, and the hospitality there is lacking."

"Been there," Raven says. "You ain't wrong about the hospitality."

The large rocks move sedately, taking sweeping curves and slow arcs that never quite hit each other. They never quite end, but larger and slower rocks are all further afield. There might even be more beyond the ones they see, because the land is clear enough for them to pass. If so, it's not a thing that happens every day.

As the rocks go further in, they get smaller and faster, in proportions that make them look like an object lesson in mass times accelleration. Near the center there are fastballs, closer in there are bullets, and it's unclear where or if it ever stops.

In the area of horse-sized rocks the Moonriders are leaping between stones, timing their leaps and landings so that there is always a rock beneath them, albeit not always the same rock. They are laughing.

They are moving towards a skeleton of a giant beast, which seems to have fallen from a height.

Raven is quiet for a stride or two, clearly thinking it through, and then continues, "I guess I was wondering if it's a landmark because it belongs to someone or if there's something special about the place besides that it's someplace Princess Fiona lives. 'Course, now that I say that out loud, that's one of those 'which came first' riddles, aye? It's a weirder place than I was expecting, that's all. Pretty sure nowhere we ended up when the Vale was lost had floating rocks and whatever's going on with that sky, and everywhere I've been since has been chasing after monks or dealing with somebody's bad choices nearer to home. But I also got a lot of information crammed in my head in a pretty short time, and I'm thinking some of it needs something to latch on to before it's more than just something I was told. And this place being weird because it's - far from Order? I think that might be one of those things."

"Ah, I see," Brennan says. "As far as I know, not a landmark unless possibly from a distance. The live action orrery of boulders isn't a death trap, but it's not exactly throwing out the welcome mat, either. But really, you'd have to ask Fiona why she picked this place. She probably had at least half a dozen reasons, and she might even be willing to explain some of them.

"As for the general weirdness, yeah, it can take a while to get used to. I had an easier time than most, since I used to visit my grandmother's Court as a child, and Court Clarissa is..." Brennan just spreads his hands rather than trying to describe it. "The good news is that the Pattern is a sort of a natural, passive defense against the milder forms of it. And the more you travel, the more you'll understand, and the more you'll be able to control that defense. That was my experience, anyway, and I had no training at all."

Brennan thinks a bit, then says, "Time permitting-- and if we don't pass it on the way to Ghenesh-- we should take a side trip to the Tree on the way back, the biggest inflection point between Order and Chaos. It's a good reference point to be familiar with."

Raven nods at that. "Wouldn't mind at all. More landmarks ain't going to hurt me. I was raised in Amber - dockside tavern brat. Didn't see much I'd really call 'weird' until people started playing games with who was on the throne, and a lot of that weird was trying to kill us. And then the Vale got lost, and it wasn't so much that the weird we ran into was trying to kill us - well, some was - as it was that we just wanted to go home and the weird didn't really help." She shrugs a little, her expression wry. "As you said - I'll get used to it, along with everything else I've gotta get used to at this point. I'll take any tidbits about the Pattern stuff you want to share, though. Jerod taught me, between Xanadu and Gateway, and Conner showed me a few things as a refresher, but there ain't one way to run a ship and I'm pretty sure it's not going out on a limb to say there ain't just one way to do all of this stuff either."

"In almost all respects, you're right. The big exceptions to the more-than-one-way principle are Don't Stop On The Pattern, and Don't Deviate From The Pattern. Those'll just get you killed. For the rest, subject to later revision: The universe is real, which means that it can reach out and kill you, but also that it's an object of study with its own rules. That's my take on the Redhead tradition. But mastering the Pattern itself, and then using it, that's a matter of will and determination and practice. This is why the Redheads, to our eternal annoyance, are not automatically better at everything than everyone. (Don't tell Bleys.) But it also means that mastery is filtered through our own temperaments, histories, and psychologies. Which, circling this long roundabout comment back to where I want it to go, means this: Do ask people for their insights, their tricks, their discoveries. If nothing else, you might find someone can do something you thought was impossible. But do be willing to experiment when those tricks don't work for you, or if no one has the trick you're looking for.

"Aside from that, my tentative plan for when we're on the road again is to let our new best friends take up the lead again. As near as I can tell, what they're doing is not so different from how Amber's navy sailed the Golden Circle seas, by taking advantage of pre-existing Shadow paths. It's just on horseback, and you have new senses to keep track of it, and they haven't been here before so there's no obvious way for them to know which paths to take. But it's fundamentally different from what we usually do, which doesn't need a path at all."

"Sounds not too different from what we were doing on the Vale," Raven observes. "Didn't have the first clue how to get home, so we took any Shadow path that looked at all familiar, and if there weren't any, we basically flipped a coin." She snorts. "Hopefully they're not flying quite as blind as we were."

The rocks are now longboat sized, and flying at a more-than-sedate pace above them. A well timed jump and a quick scramble and Brennan and Raven could be the latest rock-riders of the tower plains. The Moonriders are a few rings in, riding faster and smaller rocks.

Raven eyes the passing rocks until there's one she feels is appropriate. And then, with a, "Up'll be a better vantage on what they're doing," she'll see about getting on her chosen stone.

Brennan waits until Raven makes the jump, then follows adroitly.

Brennan and Raven pull themselves up onto a passing longboat-stone. It's glowing, slightly, as are all the other rocks, their gear, the dragon skeleton, and the moonriders. Sir Firumbras is with them, and waves at Brennan.

This could be steered. In some ways it's the exact opposite of a filmy, but it's possible that they are related.

Clarify: Are Brennan and Raven also glowing?

Their clothes are, slightly. It's hard to tell if they are or if it's just reflections from everything being weird. They are probably glowing, but not as much as everything else.

Regardless, Brennan takes the measure of this floating viking longrock he's found himself aboard, nudging it this way and that in the manner of a filmy, and then more or less gently as he sees how responsive it is. He expects it to be less responsive on this side of the Tree, and because of its composition, but one never knows. This close to the Tree, he's also alert for any sense of personality behind it, whispering instructions to it if it seems effective.

It is less responsive than a filmy. As with a longboat, it seems to have inertia and be slow to turn. Unlike a longboat, it seems to avoid collisions and be likely to turn to avoid them. Brennan thinks he could cause a collision by sheer willpower, but it seems unpredictable. The stones have no obvious traits of being alive, other than motion.

Brennan is careful to nudge it side to side, front and back (or faster and slower) and-- critically important-- up and down. How responsive (if at all) is it in the up and down?

Technically, up and down are the hardest directions, because slower or faster doesn't seem to be possible. It's frighteningly easy to introduce pitch, yaw, and roll, and tricky to get them to completely stop.

When he thinks he's got its measure, Brennan calls out to Raven, "I think I can steer us. Gonna need a spotter and a navigator, if we're going to do this."

Raven has used the nudging as an opportunity to figure out the balance points on the rock and has found one where she'll be pretty stable. "Aye, I've got you - it's not so different from what I'm used to. Should I keep an eye out for our next ride?"

Raven's sea legs do wonderfully for getting her flying-rock legs underneath her. She could fight on one of these, if she needed to.

"Either to a new rock, or just a path to drive this one directly to target, whichever seems faster. Assume a constant velocity, unless I bust out a much bigger Sorcery than just guiding this thing," Brennan says.

"Aye, well, warn me before you do that? Ain't a fan of the ship being the one staggering around like it's the second day of a shore-leave bender instead the sailor." Raven pauses, and then shrugs. "Ship, rock, whatever. How're you steering it, anyway?"

What Raven sees of other rocks is not dissimilar to the rocks they saw from below. The closer to the center, the smaller and faster the rocks go. The rocks going closest to the dragon's corpse are the size of a small carriage, which are quite a bit smaller and faster than the boat. Raven can see that there are some rocks that are spinning, and she guesses that they were the ones that the moon riders jumped off of. There are several rocks that look as if they were in recent collisions. They have very sharp edges where the rock broke apart.

The rock, as far as Brennan can tell, is set to maintain a fixed distance from something. When it goes up or down, the line to the center stays about the same. Brennan can make it break the rule, but only by focusing. When he stops trying to control it, it drifts back towards the orbit was previously in.

There are just so many elegant ways Brennan can think of to cheat this system with minor to moderate applications of Sorcery, and only with great effort does he restrain himself from doing so.

"Short answer: Sorcery. These are distant relatives-- metaphorically speaking-- to a common mode of transport in my Grandmother's Courts, called filmies. Inasmuch as there's a standard toolbox for Sorcerers, which there isn't, really, filmy command would be in it. It was only a bit of trial and error to work out the basics. Longer answer," he shrugs, "I'd probably have to teach you how to do it yourself."

"Pretty sure," Raven says after a moment, "that I've ridden on one of those. While we were in Gateway - Brita was steering the thing. And I ain't forgotten your offer. Still thinking that over. Mostly still chewing on what sorcery's actually useful for besides blowing things up and rebuilding giant towers," she finishes with a shrug of her own and a sort of apologetic glance at Brennan. "And weird flying carpets. Which is most of what I've seen."

The rock continues to fly just like rocks don't fly in normal shadows.

On another rock, Sir Firumbras has settled on a novel mechanism of getting his rock to go faster by breaking it in two. Small fragments shoot off at high speed, and Firumbras' remaining segment drifts quickly into a pattern with similar smaller and faster rocks.

It's only effective if you're going inward, but it is effective. The moon riders laugh, and keep on jumping from rock to rock. They don't seem particularly concerned with reaching the destination, just with the activity of the moment. Some of the rocks are tumbling wildly, as if they've intentionally added spin to them.

"Good for quick entrances and exits, too, if you know the right Principle," Brennan says. "What did you expect it to be good for? What did you want it to be good for?"

Raven snorts. "Things I can't do with my own two hands without a little time and the right bits and pieces," she says readily, and then shrugs. "And things that ain't so much like... I dunno. Cutting the sleeves off your best shirt so the girls'll look at your arms? Seen plenty of flash and fancy. Impressive stuff, but ain't really how I like to do things. Let's see how willing this thing is to get closer to the center, aye? Slide on into that next row in."

"Ah, I see. Step closer to the center of the rock, and be ready," Brennan says.

"The noticeability is somewhat the nature of the tool. Part of the Pattern's function is to define, or at least stabilize, rules and separations. So many applications tend to play within the existing rules of a place and aren't necessarily remarkable. If I use Pattern to break an egg, maybe someone trips and no one thinks much of it the next day. Sorcery, in its lesser applications, changes the rules. If I use Sorcery to put the egg back together again, that tends to make an impression."

Brennan uses the time spent talking to cast a working of Space which simply tweaks the distances from any point inside the rock to any other point, making those distances smaller, with the end result of the Sorcery (hopefully) being that the rock smoothely contracts into the right size to slip into the next inner track.

"Having been around for Jerod dropping a comet on a place, working in the rules ain't always quiet, either," Raven says as she moves towards the center of the rock. She sounds thoughtful, like she's working her way through an idea as she goes. "Edan did something while we were chasing down those monks in the tunnels - something I'm guessing was sorcery, with some glowing nuts, so we could find 'em easily. That seemed more interesting to me than..." She pauses and then snorts. "Well, flying around, cackling like a madman, and turning a tower into so much burning rubble just to get at one person. Which aye, I've seen. Recently."

This rock seems to be glowing more brightly than its fellows. And vibrating. But holding steady at the new size.

Brennan thinks he could take the rock all the way in like this.

Brennan concedes Raven's point and even amplifies it: "And Sorcery could break an egg by just giving it a little nudge off the table, rather than by exploding it in place. But as a general observation, Sorcery's inherent visibility isn't a bad rule of thumb. I'd like to hear more about what Edan did, though, if there's anything to tell. I confess, I don't understand his style of sorcery as well as I do most of the rest of the Family's. I think that's because the part I do understand is Bleys' training, and the part I don't is through his mother's side, and I've never met her."

Brennan takes another quick glance at the hunk of cavorite they're floating on with the third eye and then full Astral vision, just to make sure he's not putting any unexpected stress on it that would cause it to explode. Because while that's a good trick, this is not the rock he'd want to explode.

Brennan glances at the rock. He sees that it's under unexpected stress, but it probably means that the rock will return to its prior size some time after his spell stops. Probably not immediately after, and probably not catastrophically, but eventually the laws here will reassert.

"Bearing in mind I ain't got the first idea what he actually did, sure." Raven considers. "Had I think four of 'em? Had them in his hand, they started glowing, and then they flew off to go float around the heads of the men we were chasing. Caught on fire about the time they got there. Speaking of - do we need to give this thing a minute before we move farther in, or were you meaning it to glow more?"

Brennan thinks about that for a bit, as he surveys the rock. "I can see some... roundabout ways I might get something like that to work, but Edan's method probably works better and is probably inaccessible to me. Just a guess. Sorcerers invariably have different toolboxes, and some tools are just better for some jobs. A little creativity can stretch one of those tools a good long way, but there are points of diminishing return. Which is why I take Pattern seriously, too. And fighting and philosophy.

"As to the glowing, it's doing that on its own. Sorcery doesn't last forever, usually, and in about a watch this thing is going to expand back to its original size, probably rapidly. But I think we can move farther in. Bear in mind we can go the other way, too, so there's the possibility to take a shortcut to ring even farther in than the target, if you think it will help."

"I was mostly interested in seeing what they were up to," Raven admits, a little wryly, "which looks like mostly creating shrapnel and hazards right now. Ain't opposed to going against the flow, but that's likely a lot more work for both of us, and as long as they're playing out there, I don't see a reason we have to rush. Let's move farther in, though, see if we can't catch up a little."

"Hold on."

Brennan makes it so. His first attempt uses a slightly different tactic-- instead of using Space to change the size of the rock, he uses Space to decrease the distance of the rock to the center of the orrery directly. He does this (or tries to) gingerly, to see if this is having the desired effect (speeding up) and the expected side effect (shrinking of its own accord.)

If the rock doesn't speed up immediately with a simple change of distance, he'll abandon that attempt and do what he did before and just shrink the rock as he did before. No point in getting rear-ended by a flying hunk of cavorite.

The rock shrinks and glows more brightly and goes inward. It's now nearly the size and orbit of the rocks that the Moonriders are riding, but a ways back from them. They see you and start moving towards you.

Sir Firumbras breaks another chunk off his rock and it's now pretty small, especially compared to him. It's going disturbingly fast, although he doesn't seem to consider it dangerous.

"Looks like we're about to have some company," Raven comments, nodding in the direction of the Moonriders. "I'm good with letting them come to us if you are."

Brennan watches the Moonriders hop from rock to rock, impassively. It is a perfectly calculated impassivity that masks a private meditation on how terrible-- terrible!-- it would be if one of those rocks suddenly shrunk and swerved inward just before one of the Moonriders landed on it. But he doesn't follow up on that thought.

"All right. I'm going to take this in one more lane, and we'll see what they have to say." By Brennan's lights, that is splitting the difference-- speeding up means the Moonriders have less distance to travel, but also that they're closer to Firumbras' speed.

"How do you want to be introduced?"

Raven shoots Brennan a faintly puzzled look. "By name's fine, captain's fine - both is fine. I'll probably answer to 'bosun' still, if someone shouts it loud enough. There some reason that's a question?"

"Captain and/or cousin is what I was getting at," Brennan says. "Cousin implies a few questions, which omission only defers.

"And they're just as much in information-gathering mode as we are, I think. In their position I'd be quite curious as to just where you fit into the scheme of things. But they've been almost excessively well-mannered through the trip back to Ghenesh," he frowns, "and I'm not sure which impulse is going to carry the day-- pointed questions, or wait-and-see, or somewhere in between. So the question was a bit of a word to the wise. But aside from that, I tend to take introductions seriously, maybe excessively so," Brennan admits, "so it behooves me not to accidentally wrong-foot you as soon as I open my mouth."

"Ah, that." Raven shrugs a little. "I'm not against you mentioning that I'm related, but I don't have an answer for 'em if they ask how and I'll tell 'em that if they ask. I have an idea, but that's not a thing that's up for discussion with anybody but those it concerns right now. Anything I need to know about how they know you?"

Brennan nods. "Understood. And they're not fools, so when I don't give you orders like I do the Knights, they'll probably assume Family no matter what we say. As for me, they know the outlines: Brennan, son of Brand, son Oberon, all that stuff. They know that Brand and I... did not see eye to eye on a number of subjects but they don't know the details, because the details cut pretty close to things that only Oberon's descendents are allowed to know. Or at least, they don't know it from me. Everything else has been improvisation."

The Moonriders work their way back. Brennan would consider it aimless weaving and bobbing, but they seem to always find the right rock to be on to make progress.

Eventually they get close enough to Brennan's rock (henceforth known as Brennan's Rock) and are riding on a rock almost directly in front of them. "Permission to come aboard, Sir Brennan?" says Sir Argalia.

"Sir Argalia," Brennan says, in both greeting and introduction. "Sir Vigil, Sir Unsheathed," he nods at each in turn, so Raven knows who is who.

"Captain Raven," Brennan completes the Amber side of the introduction. The emphasis on 'captain' is very slight, but just audible enough to indicate that it's Raven's decision, as captain of the rock.

Raven nods in greeting to each introduced Moonrider. "Nice to meet you, Sirs. Aye, come aboard. There's room enough, though we're like as not going to get a bit cramped if we keep heading towards the center."

The three Moonriders leap aboard one by one. Each imparts spin along a different vector as they jump, moving the next moonrider into an ideal position to jump. The rock, which is ahead of Raven's Rock, ends up with an interesting combination of pitch, yaw, and roll.

It's hard to see how the Moonriders actually jump. You saw them jump, but you also saw them there and then here. It bears studying.

"I must congratulate you on your excellent solution to the flying rock problem. I never would have thought to resize the rock, unless it were like Sir Firumbras."

Sir Vigil smiles as well. "We approached the tower no closer than the flight of rock's distance. The skeleton, when we reach it, may confirm our theories about where we are."

Brennan inclines his head to accept the congratulations, but does not pursue that topic further. There is really no graceful way to say, "It seemed like the obvious approach," in this context.

Instead, he glances over at the skeleton. Are they close enough to make out any details? "And what theories are those?" he asks.

"Legend has it that Prince Random once came to steal a prisoner from a sorceress' tower, and defeated the dragon guardian of the place but was in turn driven off by the Brass Legions. This place, with the rocks and the tower, looks like it. We want to see if that is the dragon killed by your King."

Raven likewise glances in the direction of the skeleton, and then turns her attention back to judging a gap on the next row inwards and keeping an eye on the extra-twisty rock in front of them. "Seems like a challenging landmark to get to," she observes.

Unsheathed looks at it and bobs his head from side to side, considering. "It is and it isn't. We wanted height and to avoid the possibility of learning in an unfortunate way that the spinning patterned raised or lowered itself. That's why we chose not to just walk under the rocks." "Also, Sir Firumbras might've had issues, and we didn't want him to suffer the mythical dragon's fate," adds Sir Argalia.

Sir Vigil nods. "I have a conjecture that these stones are predecessors of a sun for a shadow where light and energy are diffuse, and that eventually all the stones will break apart, fall inward, and coalesce. I don't think it's anything we need to worry about in the timeframe of our visit, but it's interesting to imagine what the end-state of all this will look like."

Brennan glances toward the skeleton in some puzzlement. "Interesting," Brennan says. "But unless there is a trick of perspective, that is much smaller than the Dragons of my experience." They may or may not have any way to know this, but when Brennan thinks 'Dragon,' his mind always turns first to things like the Dragon of Arcadia, or the Dragon that bore Oberon's casket.

He is sufficiently intrigued by the notion that the skeleton is a Dragon, or at least draconic, that he takes a glance and then hopefully a longer look, at the remains of it in the Astral. But safely-- not looking directly at either the Tower or the remains at first, as they are the most likely things to be bright enough to damage his eye. Brennan is skeptical that this is a Dragon, but he's not taking chances.

Raven nods slowly. "Haven't seen many dragons, myself," she volunteers. "I was told you Sirs are working your way home - this a landmark you were looking for, or just an interesting thing to see while you were here?"

"Strange creatures, dragons. So many places have them. Always legendary, not mundane. And size seems a matter of choice rather than destiny for the most impressive ones. Are they large enough to eat the sun? Perhaps. And at the same time, do they walk the earth, or turn into men and live as them for entire lifetimes. I once heard of a monk who was sent to assassinate a man in his hotel room, only to find that it was really one of the Dragons of Bel'kwinith.

"Naturally, he turned on his patron for this." Sir Vigil shrugs. "Was there a dragon in a hotel room? You'd have to ask the monk.

"Or the dragon," adds Sir Unsheathed.

"What dragons have you seen, Captain?" asks Sir Argalia.

"None in a hotel room," Raven says dryly, as she notes them sailing past the question she'd asked. "There was a place we sailed through, when my ship was lost, that had small ones. Smallest I saw was maybe this big?" She spreads her hand maybe two and a half feet apart. "And they ranged up to the size of horses. The little ones were like birds - that's why we saw the first ones; bloody things liked playing in the rigging - but the bigger ones, the folks there trained 'em up like hunting dogs or falcons." She considers for a moment. "And there was another place that said they had dragons. There were things up on those cliffs that breathed fire down at anyone that went close, I'll say that, and if they were dragons, they'd have been huge. Bigger than a ship, at least. But I never could tell if there was actually a dragon up there or if it was somebody's clever trick to keep anyone from getting into that cavern."

Sir Argalia nods politely. "They are all those things. And a story of a dragon is often more useful than an actual dragon. It's both easier and harder to control."

Raven nods at that. "Aye, and about as easy to ignore, if someone's really set their mind to doing it."

Brennan busies himself with moving the rock closer to their target, while listening to the conversation. His preferred strategy would be to shrink the rock down as far as feasible. If that happens to bring their rock closer to the center than the dragon skeleton, so that they can gain ground rapidly before expanding the rock again and slowing down, that would be ideal because it is the advantage Brennan's maneuvers have over Firumbras'.

Is that feasible, or would it make the rock too small for all five inhabitants?

Brennan can make the rock quite small indeed, at the cost of room for social distancing. The smaller the rock, the faster it goes. No one has to step off (or fall off), but it's starting to be more like surfing than sailing. The moonriders all seem to be quite adept at windrock surfing. Perhaps they're naturals.

Brennan is catching up to Firumbras quite rapidly, but, the giant continues whacking pieces off his rock.

Brennan continues to convert the viking longrock into more of a skiff, as he weaves in and out of the traffic lanes. He'll take whatever help he can get from Raven as a spotter, which will free him up to be more precise with his sorcery.

The rock skiff sails majestically along, picking up speed as it loses size. It looks to be another 10 minutes to the dragon's remains when the rock catches up with Sir Firumbras, and he's close enough to shout over.

"Hello, Sir Brennan, I see you found another companion while we were scouting. Have you ever seen such a magnificent beast as that ahead? Can you imagine it hunting?"

It's gigantic, and it looks as if it has been battered by rocks of all sizes. And possibly shoved by them.

Sir Argalia looks forward. "If it's the dragon we've heard of, It had been stabbed in the eye before it was killed."

"Sir Firumbras," Brennan says, as he pulls up along side his rock. Then, "Captain Raven," by way of mutual introduction. "I can imagine it hunting, and I know some people who wouldn't mind hunting it right back, actually."

Brennan surveys the remains with a weather eye, and tries to reconstruct what happened during the battle that killed it.

Brennan can't be sure sure, but at some point it was lifted up like a turkey in a helicopter and dropped from altitude. The head is half buried under the body. The body looks like it's been hit by a number of flying rocks, only some of which preceded onward.

It doesn't seem to have been eaten by anything, or at least not by anything big.

"Sir," Raven says to Firumbras, nodding in greeting. "Pretty sure I've got some thoughts on how it'd hunt. We met a sea-creature once that was about that size - not a dragon, but an octopus. Stalked us for a while, and took a nibble out of a sail and the rails before it decided we weren't food. Can't say it was something I enjoyed being on the prey end of."

She also eyes the remains, looking for what it was stabbed with - if it's still there - and just how far the rocks have pushed that body.

"Well met, Captain!" says Firumbras. "You're just in time. I'm going to look at yon beast."

"We should debark in 1.5 degrees," says Unsheathed, "for the optimal path to the head."

Firumbras swings down and drops to the ground.

When Brennan judges they've come around by 1.5 degrees, he makes the jump. He really wants to get a good astral look at the thing, but refrains since he's not sure the flying rocks will be visible to that sight and doesn't want to end up with a face full of flying flint. He'll trot alongside Firumbras, occasionally taking a look up to see if there are any aerial predators large enough to have picked this thing up and dropped it, because this doesn't seem like Random's style at all.

Raven briefly contemplates whether, as captain, she should stick around on the glorified stone canoe until everyone has jumped, since they're basically abandoning ship, and then shrugs to herself and jumps down after Brennan. It's not really a ship; it's also not actually sinking - and could start un-shrinking at some point, maybe in a hurry - and it's probably a nicety to not sandwich the Moonriders between the two of them like it's on purpose, given the history of Moonriders and Amber.

There's a sort of aborted gesture where Raven probably would have habitually shoved her hands in the pockets of a coat she's not actually wearing when she lands, and then she follows the other two towards the giant skeleton, looking around at the ground-level view of all the rock acrobatics with curiosity.

The ground is made of fine, gritty sand that doesn't move beyond the normal vagaries of flowing sand, although perhaps it drifted down from the floating rocks or the result of impacts amongst them in the past.There are smooth, wide furrows in the ground, matching the paths of the rocks above.

"I wonder which came first?" asks Firumbras.

He's hurrying, and keeping a very careful watch for rocks. He's also 3 feet taller than Brennan and the moonriders, so any kind of impact would affect him first.

Brennan views the partially skeletonized dragon corpse astrally, and it's just so much dead body and doesn't have any signs of life beyond whatever has been eating it.

Closer and less magical viewing shows that the dragon couldn't possibly fly, it has tremendous bony spikes at various joints, and it was apparently struck in the face by a speeding bus. Given the locale, probably a bus-sized rock.

Sir Argalia is on the spinward side of the dragon. "It's been hit a number of times, probably here on the ground. You can see where it was pushed along. Is there a sword embedded in the skull? We should recover it if it's there."

Raven has seen shadows where whaling is an industry, and the vast body and the stench of decay remind her of that unpleasant sort of business. Although this sky-whale looks like it would've had a lot of fight in it.

When Argalia mentions recovering the sword, he looks at him and asks, "Why? What are you going to do with it?"

He isn't sure if he's opposed to it, but the idea strikes him as odd, so he asks.

Sir Argalia shrugs. "Legendary things should be preseved. And the skull is too big to carry."

"If it was still in there when that thing got hit in the face," Raven observes, "it ought to still be in there somewhere."

With an ear for the answer of Brennan's question, she moves over to the head and inspects it. From upwind, if possible.

Sir Firumbras comes with Raven and starts picking up and tossing rocks. When they get to the floating level, they take off for the appropriate position in the orbits.

Sir Firumbras can toss some reasonably large rocks.

After some time searching and clearing rocks, they reach a rock that is seemingly stuck in the ruins of the crushed eye socket of the monster. Firumbras can't get a good grip, but it's the most likely place for a sword to be.

Brennan shrugs, satisfied with the answer. He doesn't offer to shrink the skull down for them. But since they mentioned the skull, he has another related thought and inspects the skeleton for a piece of bone, the size of two or three fists stacked one on top of another. Something vaguely similar in size and shape to the stones he took from the crack in the floor of Amber's Pattern chamber. If this thing is big enough, one of the vertebrae might be sufficient, although he'd probably have to crack it apart later to get the shape he wants. If one of those will fit, Brennan looks for a suitable piece, and a way to get one loose. It'll probably involve prying it off with his spear. If not one of the vertebrae, he'll look for something else similar. He is mindful of the results of Firumbras' experiment.

Brennan finds something reasonable and can cut it out, although the skeleton has lots of remaining connective tissue along the spine. It's not a neat package that would go well in a pocket Brennan wished to use in the future.

Raven, who has been more moving rocks as though she's moving cargo across a ship deck then tossing them up into the stony circles above, frowns at the bigger rock for a moment. "Make some space to the side," she suggests to Sir Firumbras. "And I'll do the same on the other side. We ought to be able to shove enough to rock this thing back out of the hole. Should be able to see if it's worth putting in the work to move it the rest of the way once we do, if we get some light in there."

And she'll move to do so, clearing enough space next to the skull to be able to push when Sir Firumbras is ready. If they can get it rocking side to side, adding a little backwards effort to the pushing should walk it back out of the socket. Hopefully.

Firumbras grunts and moves to the side. Raven stands along what used to be the beast's muzzle. Or beak, or nose. It's hard to say. The body is mostly stripped away, but there are bits of muscle and sinew under her feet. And a jaw full of teeth as well.

The two of them manage to rock move the boulder and Raven definitely sees a glance of metal in the ocular cavity when several things happen at once.

When Brennan hacks off the tail of the creature with his spear (or knife or sword). At the same time, the rock rolls enough out of the eye socket to return to its prior path, which it takes to like a flying rock.

Raven instinctively dodges back and falls into the skull's mouth. While she lands safely in the muck in the remnants of the mouth, the whole thing seems to be moving.

Upwards.

Raven swears, and then snorts and mutters, "Of course. Rocks fly here - why not bodies, too."

And then she gets up and evaluates options to get into the eye socket (or at least out of the mouth). If there's an easy and not-likely-to-cause-much-injury way over the teeth and onto the snout, she'll take it; if there isn't, then her sword is getting pressed into service as both hammer and chisel to break through the roof of the mouth and into the eye socket. They've put far too much effort into finding this bloody sword at this point, but she's here and she might as well finish the job.

Hopefully the body doesn't float too high before then.

Raven sees the sword, through the eye socket and firmly in the mouth. It is some work to free the hilt from where the rock hit it, but not impossible. She can pull the sword free from the jaw as well. It's nice, but not remarkable.

Much of the dead creature's body is translucent, and Raven can see the ground below her. If she had the mouth open, she'd feel safe to jump, except for the flying high-speed rocks between her and the ground.

Brennan takes a step back and looks upward at the ascending corpse, with annoyance. That thing is big enough that it might get steamrolled by more cavorite rocks, with Raven inside it, so Brennan makes sure that doesn't happen-- he'll alter the trajectory of any threatening stone (by shrinking or expanding it) away from a collision course.

Is the tail starting to float, too?

Yes, but it's not in as much of a hurry as the skull. Brennan keeps the skeleton from being further struck by rocks. It's easy, as long as it ascends slowly enough.

Then, Brennan puts two and two together, twice, and comes up with a pair of fours and a mixed metaphor.

His eyes narrow, slightly. "Sir Vigil," he asks, "Can you kindly keep an eye out for grackleflints?"

"I'll, ah, keep a vigil," he replies.

Sir Firumbras looks startled by the reference. "A what?"

Great, Brennan thinks, he's found the one Moonrider in Shadow with a sense of humor.

Raven, muttering curses under her breath because there's not really a pleasant option here, secures the sword to her person so it's not in her hands and then starts looking for a way to get out of the mouth in the most expedient way possible. Jumping will suck, but there's no telling where this thing is going to float to, and she'd really rather not expand the definition of what's sailable through Shadow to 'corpse falling slowly upwards.'

The inside of the mouth under the forked tongue is soft tissue, while the teeth look to be quite sharp. Perhaps the best exit is to cut straight down. That sounds more likely than "through the remains of the throat and gullet."

And cutting down is significantly less like being eaten. Raven starts cutting a hole.

The hole is cut, or at least a slit is. Once Raven gets through the skin, the bottom of the mouth rips, which seems surprising for a translucent crystalline corpse, and she falls right out. It's all she can do to hang on to the sword from the eye socket.

Brennan sees the activity in the Dragon's mouth and waits for Raven to jump-- when that happens, he manipulates gravity to soften the fall.

Falling takes longer than Raven expected and doesn't lead to her sudden death, but rather a gentle landing near Brennan.

The Moonriders are talking to themselves, except for Sir Vigil. "Sir Brennan, I see your Bronze Legionaries approaching. Are they welcome or enemies?"

Brennan doesn't look like he takes much satisfaction in being right.

"They're not enemies yet, but look alive. Probably coming to investigate their dead friend," he says, with a glance at the receding grackledrake skeleton. Brennan is not holding onto the tail.

"How many, do you reckon? And can we make it back to the camp before the Legion reaches it, or us?"

If the answer to that is yes, Brennan gets everyone moving back to camp.

You could, but it might be a struggle. Or a race. They are persistent but not fast. You probably couldn't do so in a seemly fashion.

They are further away, on the bowl of the flying rock region, and have mounts. But they have no flying rocks.

"They're welcome to it," Raven says dryly. She moves a few steps to the side, angling so that any of the stench of dead, rotting thing that might still be clinging to her after that little ride will hopefully be blowing away from the others, and holds up the blade. "Sirs?" she says to the group of Moonriders. "This the sword you were looking for?"

"Thank you, Captain, in all likelihood, yes," says Sir Argalia.

Raven will offer to show them the sword, but she's not overly invested in keeping it if they want to take it from her.

However that plays out, Brennan judges relative distances and speeds, then looks at Raven, Firumbras, and the Moonriders: "I am not letting my Knights meet the Bronze Legion alone," he says simply.

He sets off at something between a trot and a jog to make it back to camp before the Bronze Legion.

The Bronze Legion doesn't seem in any hurry, and sets off at a pace to meet Brennan definitely after he's reached the camp.

Sir Argalia looks at the dragon, floating upwards, the tower, and the rocks. "We should join him. Sir Firumbras, Captain Raven, shall we hurry or walk?"

Sir Firumbras defers to Raven.

At the Camp, Brennan arrives comfortably before the Legion.

Raven shakes her head. "We should hurry," she answers. "Ain't fair to leave him to be the only officer in the greeting party."

And she's on board for whatever they're thinking of as hurrying - be that jogging or using the overhead rock highway.

It's agreed upon and they set off. Sir Firumbras sets off at a giant's pace, and the Moonriders do unusual things with their personal space to walk at a leisurely pace but covering significant ground. It's uncanny and somewhat painful to watch. It makes Raven's eyes water if she stares too long at it.

Raven can keep up, but it's not trivial.

When Brennan arrives at camp, He goes to find Sir Korbie, who he left in charge after he got back. Hopefully the Knights have already seen the approaching Bronze Legion. Regardless, he makes sure they are in order, armed, armored, and properly arrayed: Not for battle, per se, but in alert and ready.

As the legion approaches, Brennan wants to see how many they are, what their composition is, etc. He'll scry if he has to.

It's a mounted party of Grackleflints, led by an officer in armor. They defer to her. The armor has elbow spikes, but the rider doesn't appear to move like the other Grackleflints.

And he tells Tenacity to make sure his banner is ready to raise if needed. It's in his tent.

Raven and party arrive before the Legionnaires and come to Brennan to meet this new challenge.

The Bronze Legion waits until everyone has had adequate time to arrive before coming across the the final distance to being within close range of Brennan and his troop.

The lead figure raises her visor and smiles broadly at Brennan. "Hello, sweeties! Do you know what happened to my Gracklebeast?"

It is Brennan's grandmother (and Raven's great-grandmother).

Raven, who isn't entirely sure who this is, defers to Brennan to answer. (And because the good captain was in plenty of trouble for this kind of thing as a child, she is not drawing attention to the fact that she's holding a sword and covered in gunk.)

When Brennan realizes who is approaching (which is before she raises her visor) Brennan relaxes into a heightened state of readiness, and uses that time to compose and control his face: From neutral wariness to a bleysing, radiant smile at this surprise Family reunion.

"Grandmother!" he says expansively. "What a pleasant surprise! Was that your creature? Poor thing. I wasn't here to see it, but it seems to have ventured into the orrery quite some time ago, and been smashed by its components.

"But where are my manners-- May I present to you my cousin, Captain Raven, my friend Sir Firumbras of Paris, and the Moonriders Sir Argalia, Sir Vigil, and Sir Unsheathed." He turns his head to those assembled, "You are in the presence of Queen Clarissa."

The introduced knights bow; three of the four do so gracefully.

Clarissa regally nods towards the knights. "Yes, poor thing. He's never not come back to the mountain before, after dying. We were afraid some permanent harm had come to him."

Clarissa dismounts, and her legionaries do as well. She hands the reins of her horse (it's effectively a horse, for all practical purposes) to a Grackleflint.

"Captain," she said, "I hope to hear more from you. Including how you're related to my grandson."

She looks over to Brennan again. "Do you have someplace more comfortable to sit and talk, or shall I conjure a picnic for us all?"

"Our camp is available," Brennan gestures behind him, "but it's just that-- a place to rest a few hours before continuing our journey."

Brennan's tent is larger than is strictly necessary to bed down for a night (whatever that means, here) in case he needed to have a private conversation with Raven or Firumbras or one of his Knights, but three is probably the most it would seat comfortably.

Brennan expects she will opt for conjuring a picnic, but, you never know.

Raven gets a thoughtful look when Brennan starts talking, but by the time actual introductions happen, she's worked her way backwards up the family tree, done a little mental math, and settled on the realization that this is yet another person she's related to. Probably by blood in addition to marriage.

She gives a polite bow. "Still working out the finer points of that, Your Majesty."

"How exciting! And what are you a captain of?" She's taken off her helmet and handed it to one of her soldiers, and the armor looks like it's less armor-y somehow.

"A ship in the Navy, ma'am," Raven answers briefly.

She nods. "My late husband was very fond of Navies. What do you call your ship?"

"The Vale of Garnath, ma'am."

"A lovely place, we used to hold picnics there. I had no idea it was also a ship."

Clarissa follows Brennan into camp and starts casting a spell. In no time, a picnic basket comes up from beneath the ground, and the rocky ground starts to look more like a meadow, but only when Brennan and Raven aren't looking at it. Clarissa asks the knights for assistance spreading out the picnic blankets, and she herself sets up a parasol and a lounge chair.

The parasol, like everything else in this shadow, generates its own light.

Brennan gestures subtly to the Knights not to comply. There is a principle, here, and the principle is that the Knights of the Order of the Ruby are no one's to command except the various Knights Commander, and the King. Brennan will himself assist, using a variant of the same trick he used to change the orbits of the rocks: He works the Principle of Space to expand the blankets, with enough finesse to expand the blankets rather than the threads, the weave, or the patterns. Alas, this does not make them flying carpets.

The knights are confused at first, but seem content when Brennan takes care of things with magic.

Raven, on the other hand, will help if it looks like there's something for her to do non-magically. Otherwise, she's just watching (/not watching?) the decorating of the area with wary bemusement.

Brennan does not consider himself to be in command of Raven, and so does not interfere with or reject that help.

Queen Clarissa asks Raven to pour the wine into the glasses on the table. There wasn't wine just a moment ago. Or glasses. Or a table. It occurs to Raven that Clarissa manages to both look and act like Princess Florimel. It's hard to say if it's an elaborate joke of some sort, but it's notable.

"Now, I haven't seen you since our last picnic, Brennan. How are you? Still a father?"

"Yes, grandmother, I am still a father and plan to remain one for the foreseeable future. Ossian is well-- I saw him not long ago. I'm very proud of him, for all that I can scarcely take any credit for his raising. And I am well enough-- work is excellent therapy, so I throw myself into the defense and preservation of the Realm and of Order. It is what I have made myself for, after all, and I enjoy it."

"Oh, that's quite nice. Your grandfather always favored the problem-solvers. Does the realm need a lot of defending? I was under the impression that it was just stoically existing."

Raven's not quite sure how much of this is humoring a grandmother - her personal experience is lacking - and how much is that there's a problem, but she knows an undercurrent of something being up when she encounters one. "How many are you meaning to join the picnic, ma'am?" she asks, but she's looking to Brennan for cues when she does.

Clarissa looks back at her mounted troop. "Oh, the Grackleflints don't eat. Not food anyway. Just pour one for me and all of your friends."

Brennan shrugs in response, although not disrespectfully per se. "The realm is stoic because that's the only thing it can be. But it endures, in large part, because Oberon was a problem-solver and favored the same. I expect I could do worse than to emulate him. As for problems, we're still just off the cusp of one," out of politeness, he does not mention Brand directly, "and that calls for a certain attentiveness."

Since the Moonriders are part of this gathering, Brennan declines for the moment to get into specifics.

Clarissa nods. "Just don't become him. He was a singular man, but had singular flaws. As to the land, if it's stoic, that's because he wanted it that way."

Raven glances around for a rough headcount of not-Grackleflint people, and then determinedly doesn't count how many empty glasses are on the table as she starts pouring, because she's not entirely sure that number is going to come up the same each time if she counts it more than once. She fills glasses with the efficiency of someone who spent their childhood in a tavern and got pressed into work now and then when things were particularly busy.

When Raven thinks she's got enough glasses filled for her headcount, she will deliver a glass to Clarissa with a polite, "Your Majesty."

"Thank you, Captain." There's a second lounge chair beneath the parasol now. Clarissa gestures towards it. "Now, we are likely cousins as well. My grandfather is Prince Benedict of Amber and Avalon. How many ways are you related to Oberon? That's how we count in the family."

A grackleflint is carrying a tray with the remaining drinks to deliver to the assorted knights and Moonrider knights. Somehow he has found and put himself in a tuxedo.

Raven sits on the lounge chair, but she doesn't exactly settle into it comfortably. "Not sure, ma'am," she says politely. "I was assuming it was the once, even if it ain't quite been proved how yet, but I keep forgetting that my idea of what a family tree's supposed to look like might be a little bit too plain."

The chair looks uncannily like one that Raven remembers.

Clarissa smiles and leans in to sip her champagne. She looks as if she could be on the French Riviera, rather than outside of a wizard's tower next to a giant collection of flying rocks. "Well, perhaps I can help you with that. Who are your parents? Brennan didn't forget to send out birth announcements again, did he?"

Raven shakes her head. "So far as I know, ma'am, he ain't on the list of people who could be my father. My ma is from Rebma," and there's an apparently there that she doesn't actually say, even if she's thinking it, "and I don't know that she's related to all this at all other than being in Amber at the right time and then raising me there."

"I would be as surprised as anyone else," Brennan says.

Other than slight annoyance at being told-- again, unbidden!!-- not to turn into Oberon, Brennan is quite enjoying this exhibition of interrogation and stonewalling techniques. He contents himself with a small sip of his drink.

"Well, it would at least be a pleasant surprise," she says, and sips her own champagne. She turns back to Raven. "Have you spent much time in Rebma? I visited a bit, early after dear Obie and I get married."

"No, ma'am," Raven answers. "I've sailed over it more times than I care to count, been in a few battles over it - but that's about it. We didn't travel much when I was a kid, and I only found out about her being from Rebma about the same time I found out about this side of the family. Ma and I didn't talk much about that kind of thing."

"And I had never visited Rebma until well after Raven's birth," Brennan adds.

She nods. "It's pretty, in a damp and underlit way. It reminded me of some of Amber. The locals were not very good at magic, except for the yogiforms."

Shifting topics, or trying to: "May I ask what brings you out all this way?"

She smiles at Brennan, and it reminds him of Paige. She doesn't say 'I thought you'd never ask', but she might as well have said that. "Things are unsettled on the frontier. People who should be staying still," she says, not looking directly at the Moonriders, but not not looking at the Moonriders, "are in motion. The legion likes to be prepared, and part of preparedness is intelligence gathering." She looks at the tower. "It's not the best place to bring outsiders, unless you have plans for them that they might be unaware of."

Brennan smiles and looks just like himself as he does it. "It is hard to argue against the wisdom of the Legion," he agrees. "Is General Emil with you? Edan sends his regards.

"I have no plans for this place other than to rest for the equivalent of a night before moving on, and no plans for my new companions except to escort them safely back to Ghenesh," he says. Whether Brennan is more concerned with keeping the Moonriders safe, or keeping things safe from the Moonriders goes unexamined in that statement. He turns to the Moonriders, who have been oddly quiet through this discussion, as if inviting them to reveal their own hidden plans.

Clarissa nods, perhaps slightly sorry the Moonriders are not to be the subject of a pre-planned but inevitable betrayal.

"Emil has other duties today, but I shall tell him you asked after him. Please pass my love to Edan. And remind him that I would be delighted to hear about his children directly from him, rather than from my daughter. Hypothetically."

Brennan gives her an odd glance at that, but the message-- if possibly garbled-- came through: Edan's going to have to bring the new baby. "Consider the message relayed, grandmother. And if you could be so kind as to whisper to the General that there may be opportunities for information sharing, I would be grateful." Brennan doesn't quite whisper that last comment himself, but he does time it so that it doesn't burst forth into an inopportune lull in the Moonriders' separate conversation.

Raven also glances in the direction of the Moonriders, though she keeps her mouth shut. Mostly in hopes that if she doesn't draw attention back to herself, she's not going to have to come up with increasingly more creative ways to not say, 'look, I might be your great-grandchild, but it's not proven yet and I don't want to go around saying that until he and I are both comfortable that it's true.'

Clarissa puts two and two together and decides they provisionally equal Edan, but she doesn't admit it yet.

She looks pleased. "I thought you looked like you were from Lintra's line. You can name-drop her in the right circles and associates of the Helgrams will assist you. Mind you, there are those who are not friendly."

She drinks most of her glass of champagne. Somehow it doesn't empty. "We shall dedicate our little picnic to informally welcoming you to the family. It's best to be optimistic, my dear."

The Moonriders and a few of the knights are explaining Queen Clarissa to Sir Firumbras, so maybe Brennan does want to bring them into this conversation instead of that one.

Raven opens her mouth to respond, pauses, and then shuts her mouth and blinks a couple of times as she rethinks what she was about to ask. "Ah. Ma'am?" she says finally. "I've gotta ask. Both your guesses for who my da might be so far have been your grandsons, if I'm remembering what the Admiral went through for me right. Is there a reason for that - something you know? Or is it just..." She shrugs a little. "I don't know, the company I'm keeping?"

The Queen looks her over. "Directness. Very nice. Well, I have to preface this with a bit of the difference between my Grandfather's people and my Grandmother's people. Two people, by the way, that I cannot begin to imagine getting on at all. It was a legendary romance, but each of them were like that."

She sighs. "I don't know if I get my romantic streak from them or if I just cultivated it naturally. In any case, the maternal line is one of answers that are never "true" or "false", but more likely to be 'prickle' or 'boom'. Or something less comprehensible. Sometimes I have senses that aren't part of the orderly Amber calendar of causation.

"So I could, perhaps, take you to those places and know. Or I could ask all my sons and grandsons until they told me, but I think they'd consider that a bit too... grandmotherly.

"And I could just smile mysteriously and pretend to know. Sometimes, getting your bluff in is all it takes. Isn't that right, Brennan?"

She waits for an answer, but not very long.

Brennan's smile is an enigmatic smile.

"Do you want to know? Because sometimes I can take a person to my daughter's magical lab in my summer tower and just prove it one way or another. Now can be sometimes. Would that help you?"

Brennan chooses his moment carefully, catches Raven's eye and shakes his head very subtly and deniably, in the negative. It'd be hard to spot unless you were looking right at him instead of Raven.

Raven's eyebrows raise, just slightly, when Brennan shakes his head, but this is maybe not the time to nod in acknowledgement, so she doesn't. "Don't think I need you to, ma'am," she says instead, slowly. "I know who, and we've talked, but I think he and I were both wanting to get a little something more than just Ma saying it's so." She snorts and adds, "I maybe have some trust issues there. But if you're sure enough to be grilling me and any possible fathers about it - well. I feel a little better about it. Makes me think that proof is probably just going to be a formality. It's also one he ought to be there for.

"And begging your pardon, but I'd still rather not name a name, because I'm pretty sure there's some niceties that ought to be followed when telling people and I don't know exactly what those are. Really not used to having a family bigger than me and Ma yet, so I'm not going to go around claiming anything he's not comfortable with folks knowing yet. I'd also rather you stop guessing grandsons before you guess the right one," and she gives Clarissa a wry sort of smile, "because the list of ones you haven't named yet ain't long enough to come up with a really good way to not answer yes when you get there."

Clarissa smiles, as if she's scored points in a game. "I shall be pleased to find out eventually, and not spoil your surprise. But I know how I'm going to be placing my wagers."

Raven nods her head slightly and says, "Ma'am," in acknowledgement, though it sounds more resigned more than anything else.

She turns to Brennan. "Your tall friend has something disjointed about his aura. It's like he's a portrait painted with the opposite hand." She looks up. "Where did you find him?"

"Therein lies a tale," Brennan says, happy to be off that topic for the moment, "but it come with the burden of context. Bear in mind I have this all second hand."

He motions Firumbras over, and the other Moonriders as well, re-introducing them as necessary.

"Bleys or Fiona might have mentioned some of this already. Some time ago, my cousin Cambina and Random's Queen Vialle took an un-announced trip to Tir-na Nog'th-- somewhat unusual, since Vialle is blind and the trip would be extraordinarily dangerous for her. They did not return. Cambina's body-- hers only-- washed ashore in the Bay afterward. Falling from that height into water is as bad as falling to the ground." Brennan's voice is mostly unemotional, but the recitation of facts is precise, his jaw set, and his eyes are flat like ancient bronze turned to green; strong feelings run silent and deep.

"I don't know where he got his information, but shortly after that King Random led an expedition to find and recover Queen Vialle. He was successful, but since I wasn't there, I'll skip to the conclusion: They found Queen Vialle with the Moonrider High Marshall holding a shadow of the King and a cousin-- not Cambina-- in chains. Events transpired leading to the recovery of Queen Vialle and that Chain, but not anyone else.

"So. Now the Chain has entered the story, obviously an object of some Power. Brita was part of the rescue party, and Brita was part of the group that later investigated the Chain. My friend, Sir Firumbras, was at the other end of that Chain at some undetermined distance in time and space."

Brennan realizes, after he starts, that it is likely that no one here has heard that entire story, even the streamlined version he gives, so he tells it to all of them, not just to Clarissa. And he watches for reactions.

Raven has some questions, but she doesn't voice them yet. There's clearly a lot left out there, but given the odd company - well, they can ask first, if they're going to.

Clarissa looks both sympathetic and somewhere between angry and annoyed. "I was sorry to hear about that," says Clarissa, not saying who her sources were. "The Queen of Air and Darkness is a dangerous enemy, and she's actively working against our family." She clearly remembers Cambina.

The moonriders stiffen at that title, and Clarissa looks to them. "Noble knights, I hold you blameless, in this at least.I am sure that when an accounting of the deeds is at last complete, your slate will be honorably clean. Nevertheless answers need must be had."

It occurs to Brennan (and perhaps Raven) that if anyone is in danger of becoming Oberon, it's Clarissa. That was a King-worthy speech, and one that might just chip away at the connection between them and their liege. But it was a long-term play, at best.

Brennan's face retains that military-grade lack of expression that so many of the Royal Family learn from older members. He is not as willing to pronounce them blameless as Clarissa does, but not so hostile to these three individuals-- yet-- that he casts blame upon them personally. He reserves judgment; he also sees pretty clearly what Clarissa is trying to do, and lets the seeds take root, if they will, without his interference.

The idea of slightly scary great-grandma trying to get the Moonriders on the side of Xanadu doesn't bother Raven at all.

"Sir Firumbras, what can you tell us of the chains that bound you"? She smiles up at the very tall knight, or very small giant knight, however he might be described.

Firumbras nods. "I knew of it, beforehand. I had no idea what it could do. It was a magic chain of binding, was all I knew. But it's tied to time magic, and maybe has some tie to where the Moonriders get their extra time from." The moonriders look at him blankly. "It's definitely a powerful artifact, if for no other reason than it's been magic for thousands of years and kept me elsewhere until I was extracted."

Clarissa nods. "We are on our back foot with her. We need to know more about her objectives and methods." She looks grim. "On a first pass, we need to stop her from killing any more of our kinfolk. The chain should be investigated."

"I seek justice for Cambina, Grandmother, and seek to defend my Family. I, too, believe those roads both run through the Chain," Brennan says. "Sir Firumbras, I understand that this topic may be sensitive, but I must ask: Can you tell us anything of how you came to be bound by the Chain?"

Sir Firumbras nods. "I have heard the fell deeds done with it, but had not heard of all the harms upon its length. Some say it was the anchor-chain of a Fey ship that foundered when the chain was unbound by a sea witch. Other say it bound a god and was left behind when he was freed. It has no heft, but has proven unbreakable. And it can cross shadow. Its legend was mighty, for only the truly desperate would use it.

"It was not considered cursed, but rather fated. Most people would rather be cursed."

"And what do you mean about where the extra time comes from?" Raven asks.

"Oh, have the Moonriders not demonstrated their special talents for you yet?" She turns towards the three knights. "Come them, Sir Argalia, would you be so kind as to tell my young kinswoman what I mean?"

Raven opens her mouth, and then almost immediately shuts it again. And then she scrubs a hand down her face, which only sort of hides the kind of expression that suggests a great many exasperated profanities running through its wearer's mind, and says wryly, "Ma'am, I think I'm maybe starting to understand what 'too grandmotherly' means."

And then she schools her features and makes a hopeful, if transparent, attempt to shove the conversation onwards without dwelling on having the fact that she's not really a man thrown out casually. "I was mostly curious about the time coming from somewhere."

If the Moonriders are so good as to actually demonstrate something, Brennan will watch carefully with Astral vision. Call it professional chronomancer curiosity.

Sir Argalia looks at Raven, and then back at the Queen. "Your pardon, your highness, I have only just met your kinsperson." He turns to Captain Raven. "Captain, there is a skill that we hold as part of our knightly order, that we cannot teach to outsiders, which allows us to correct the past. When it's done on a second of time, it just looks like I knew where to be." He shrugs.

"It's also how we're navigating between the shadows. We move ahead on several tracks, and if it doesn't change, we come back an try again a few paces on."

He pauses. "I'm not a priest or scholar, so I can't tell you how or what it means. It's not without cost, but it's quite useful."

Clarissa nods. "The time has to come from somewhere, my child."

"And the other ability?" Brennan asks. "The temporal displacement? That does not seem like an application of correcting the past."

Brennan looks like he has more to say or ask, but decides against leading questions, at least for the moment.

"What do you mean about cost?" Raven asks. "For that and for what he's asking," with a head tilt towards Brennan, "if it's true there too."

Sir Argalia looks at Sir Brennan, "I really do not know the principle, but I can tell you how it was described to me. It is something like a slingshot, in that we can push a thing back through time.

"It has significant risks, not the least of which is sending an enemy into the past with foreknowledge of your actions. They teach of Sir Impulse, who pushed a foe back a century and found that his enemy had then spent a century preparing for the moment after he was pushed back." The tactical disadvantages of that are clear, which may explain why they don't use the skill that frequently.

"As to the costs, magic works all have some, if only in terms of the source of the power. It can tire you if you are using magic to lift and throw. And it can age you if you use magic affecting time. If you were to look at a rider's personal chronology, they would seem to have passed more time than a person who was transposing in the natural linear fashion." He looks at the other Moonriders.

Sir Unsheathed speaks up. "Magic without cost is magic with a hidden cost, and it is unclear who will pay for it and when."

"Quite," replies Clarissa. "Best to know."

Having been born specifically to be the price of a magic ritual, Brennan can only nod in sage agreement with that.

"Not a sorcerer," Raven volunteers, "so if I'm asking something really basic, that's why. Is it -- if you're always going to seem like you've been around longer, does that mean you're always using time? You don't ever... put it back?"

"Indeed," Brennan says. "If the time comes from somewhere when you range forward, does the time also go somewhere when you send someone back in time?"

"It doesn't work like that," says Sir Unsheathed. He's trying to figure out how to explain this and doesn't seem confident he can. "It wouldn't work, because there's no future to send yourself to until it happens."

Clarissa agrees. "It's worse than that. It stands a reasonable chance of causing a probablistic reflection which could be a serious problem for both the caster and the subject. You could easily erase yourself or worse.

"Not that it would even mean anything when one can just walk to a shadow where time runs differently.

"Did you learn the Principle of Time, Brennan? What warnings were you given by your teachers?"

Brennan forces his eyes not to narrow, and he is profoundly tempted to answer, "That the hardest thing about Time is doing it." But he keeps Corwin's quip in his back pocket. For now.

"Two times at the same place is better than two places at the same time," is what he actually says. "The interference patterns are entirely different, which is of course the whole point of the game. You really don't want to interfere yourself out of reality." He chooses not to divert the conversation into a discussion of anisocrhonal shadow-cones.

"But I'm not talking about sending time forward, per se, to a future that doesn't exist. Merely musing on whether sending someone back results in extra time at all."

Raven is clearly thinking about what's been said, frowning a little as she tries to figure out how the time is coming and going.

Clarissa returns to her teaching mode. "Using Moonrider methods, one sends a person or oneself backwards in time, and some of that affects the caster, but not fatally, because it would hardly be a learnable magic if you aged yourself enough to kill you.

"Now, you're considering a more traditional Sorcerous approach, which uses power from the magical reserves available to a sorcerer to effect the change. You might take a ten-day to work the spell, unlike the Moonriders, who sacrificed power and versatility for speed and combat capability. It's a common trade-off but leaves one inflexible."

The moonriders smile, slightly unsure of what's just been said. Sir Argalia looks over at Queen Clarissa. "Will you accompany us to Ghenesh, Your Highness? The Doorkeepers of the Gates of Knowledge would love to discuss such matters with you."

She laughs. "They weren't very receptive the last time I was there."

She turns to Brennan and Raven. "Is that where you children are going?"

"I always did prefer the classical, generalist approach to things," Brennan says. "And yes, Grandmother, we are escorting them back to Ghenesh. Wouldn't want to take you out of your way, though, especially if you came all this way to see Fiona."

Raven pretty much follows that explanation - she thinks - but even if she had more questions, she's very sure of who's in control of the conversation at this point and apparently they're moving on. So she just nods in agreement.

Clarissa smiles. "I came to find my gracklebeast, which you had so smartly freed just before I arrived," she says, casually re-writing history to suit herself. "I'm sure you'll enjoy a trip to Ghenesh. It's so scenic. Do try to avoid their Vinayaka Caturthi celebrations. They can get a bit... boisterous."

"We shall provide our guests with secure rooms for the festival, should it be on when we return," replies Sir Argalia.

Clarissa looks pleased. "That should solve it. Brennan, do you know if your aunt is in residence? I should stop in, if she is there."

"If you don't my asking, sirs," Raven says, "what - or who - does the festival celebrate?"

To Clarissa, Brennan says, "I don't know. She wasn't when we arrived, but that was some time ago and since I wasn't planning a long delay I haven't inquired again. She might be." Which is, actually, true-- Brennan expects that the Tower will pretty high on Fiona's priority list for any number of reasons.

Sir Unsheated blinks once. "It's the festival of Ghenesh. It's the local god of the people who were there before we came. The festival involves large animals. The Ghenishi are impressive beasts."

Clarissa nods. "Taller than houses, and wandering the streets. There are contests involving running with them." To Brennan, she adds, "I'll send a Legionary to knock."

"I could try to call her," Brennan offers.

She brighten. "That would be handy. Let her know I've arrived.: She smiles at him. "Just don't tell her I was early. I prefer that she think of me as practically perfect."

To Sir Unsheathed, Raven says, "Thanks. Just was curious - we saw a lot of festivals when my ship was lost."

"Well, if you're going to be lost in shadow, I suppose you might as well look for a way home at nearby festivals. At least it was likely interesting.

"But don't go outside during the Vinayaka Caturthi unprepared. You might enjoy meeting the Gheneshi, but possibly not their worshippers.

Brennan draws the Trump of Fiona from his pack and concentrates on it, game faced and silent.

Brennan's Trump call slides off Fiona's mind like glass.

"Couldn't fit the ship through most of the festivals we saw," Raven says, shrugging. "It was more 'stopped for supplies, found a festival.' But I'll remember that, if it turns out we're there during that festival."

Clarissa takes the opportunity to send a Grackleflint for more glasses from her saddlebags.

Sir Unsheathed laughs at Raven's comment. "I imagine even the Vinayaka Caturthi would be disrupted by a ship from Amber sailing through the holy processional, but you might need to add tusks to the front of the ship."

"It wouldn't be the only not-Navy-approved thing we stuck on the ship to make do while we were lost," Raven says dryly.

Brennan looks up, catches Clarissa's eye and shakes his head: No answer.

Clarissa doesn't look surprised. "Well, that's not unexpected. I know my late husband was inordinately fond of those things, but they can be so irritating. And they don't explain themselves when they fail."

She drinks the last of her champagne and looks at the sky -- it's somehow darker as if "evening" or "units of time" had much meaning here. "I would love to stay, or take you up on your kind offer to accompanying you to Ghenesh, but I have pressing duties elsewhere. Will you forgive me for leaving on such short notice?"

Sir Unsheathed bows, and it's as if he has no bones. "It will be our misfortune not to be able to spend more time with you, your Majesty."

"You flatter me, Sir Unsheathed. Perhaps you could visit me in Clarissa sometime. I would love to hear more of your theories of how the world works." She turns to Raven. "My dearest cousin, decendant and/or niece, it has been a pleasure meeting you as well. You should also come visit me. Perhaps with your father."

Clarissa stands, and the knights stand as well.

Brennan heroically ignores the courtly flattery and other forms of BS suddenly flying about the picnic as he, too, stands to see his grandmother off. "We would not dream of drawing you from your duties, Grandmother."

Raven also rises to her feet. "Aye. It was nice," which is the politest she can come up with on the spot in place of phrases like 'slightly confusing' and 'completely in over my head,' "to meet you, ma'am. I'll keep that visit in mind."

As before, the Knights of the Ruby are *not* to help clear away the picnic. Brennan will do it himself if necessary, and of course Raven and the Moonriders may do as they will. They are not Brennan's to command; the Knights of the Ruby are.

Raven's not entirely sure this picnic isn't going to leave when Clarissa does, but she'll take her own glass and any of the Moonriders' glasses back to the table where she'd picked them up in the first place, at least.

The picnic trails after her, as if running towards her saddlebags, like schoolchildren running to get on a bus after a particularly adventurous field trip.

Brennan does hope to draw Clarissa off at least a few steps for a few moments, to deliver some private words of farewell... because he is her grandson.

Raven is left standing with two sets of knights, neither of which are entirely sure they understand what just happened.

As he bends to kiss her cheek, he murmurs, "Thank you for that, Grandmother. That was elegantly done with our guests, the Moonriders."

Clarissa doesn't directly acknowledge the compliment, but she seems pleased. "They're difficult company, usually. I hear young Random has one in his new place. I wonder if yours know she's there?"

She reaches into a pouch at her side, and pulls something out. A card. "The mountain. Home of the Bronze Legion. If you'd like the card as a way to leave Ghenesh, you are welcome to come to me."

"Grandmother, this is quite a gift. I hope it does not come to that, but... it might." He receives the card from Clarissa, inspecting it lightly, not enough to activate it. Does he recognize the artist?

He does not. It's familiar in the way that it has to be to be a viable trump. It doesn't have some of the more dramatic stylistic embellishments that his father was wont to use. If it's one of his cousins, it was an early work, while they were still learning.

"Or if it does, I may allow them to think they can keep me against my will. There is value in observing an adversary, when they think you are at their mercy. I'll make sure the card is safe, though."

"Please do. The Mountain is a fortress and would take steps to defend itself, but best not to cross that Rubicon if we don't have to. Make sure to announce any guests you bring with you in such a visit." It's unclear if Clarissa means that The Mountain is figuratively a particularly large and sessile Grackleflint or if that is literally true as well. She isn't known for clarifying.

"Understood," he says, tucking the card into his Trump case. "I don't recognize the style or the artist, though. Who drew this?"

Clarissa watches as the picnic readies itself for travel. "You don't recognize the hand? Dara's boy, the one with M name that I never can remember. Merlot." She pauses, thinking. "No, that's not it. Merlin is his name. It was a gift from him."

"...Merlin," Brennan figures out the name at the same time as Clarissa does, saying it with her. "I think you mean Merlin, yes. No, I didn't recognize the hand, but I probably should have. I've seen other samples of his work."

"I'm sure he's improved since then. He's had enough time to practice. Or he could've made enough time, which is the same thing. It's functional without being... overly artistic."

Brennan pauses, frowns, lets the unlikely chain of associations form fully in his mind before saying anything: Merlin, therefore shapeshifters; grackleflint mountains, therefore grackleflints. "Actually, there is something I can give in return, that I should have thought to mention before: Someone is out there forcibly transforming things into fake grackleflints. I'm not sure who, or to what end, but it seems the sort of thing that would pique your interest, or Emil's."

Brennan will summarize the rest of what he knows: Meeting Lorides and the by-then dead not-grackleflint after their escape, and Brennan's sorcerous investigations into its origins. He still has the sketch of what the thing looked like previously, and shares that.

Clarissa listens and looks at the sketch. "This is unexpected and annoying news. If someone wanted a way to discredit the Bronze Legion and the grackleflints, this would be a first step."

She looks vexed. "I shall need to investigate this. And you say that horse-shaped person was there? Have they always been a horse? May I speak to them?"

She does not say 'May I rip open their mind and read their memories?', so at least there's that.

"Yes. We delivered his people from captivity, in exchange for him delivering Firumbras to Ghenesh," Brennan says. "And he is his own horse, as he would be the first to tell you. I'm not going to tell him he can't talk to you."

Raven stops eying the retreating picnic and turns to the Moonriders and Sir Firumbras. "Seems like that," and she gestures in the direction of Brennan and Clarissa, "is going to take a bit longer than I was thinking it would. Seeing as we got cut short earlier, was there anything else you wanted to look at on that sword?"

"It seems inert. I'm sure our experts back in Ghenesh would like to have a look though."

Lorides is summoned and seems put out that he missed the picnic. He's less annoyed after he's spoken with Clarissa. Clarissa gets what little information Lorides has, and then departs, with her guard.

After a moment, Brennan is left alone with his knights, his enemies, his giant friend, a morally questionable talking horse, a campsite at the base of his Aunt's Sorcerous Tower, a stonework orrery, a fractured sky, and his cousin.