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decided to cut through the dining room rather than pass the library entrance again. The music carried for
some distance thereafter, and I wished , I'd learned a spell of Mandor's for capturing sounds in precious
stones, though I'm not sure how the Jewel of Judgment would have taken to containing "Wild Man
Blues."
I was planning on walking up the east corridor to the point where it intersected with the north one in
the vicinity of my apartment, turning left there, and taking the stairs up to the royal suite, knocking on the
door, and returning the Jewel to Vialle, whom I hoped I could get to take a rain check on explanations.
And if not, I'd rather explain to her than to Random anyway. I could leave out a !ot that she wouldn't
know to ask me. Of course, Random would catch up with me with questions eventually. But the later, the
better.
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But then I was going right past my father's rooms. I'd brought along the key so that I could stop in
later, for what I considered obvious reasons. Still, since I was already on the spot, it would be more
time-effective. I unlocked the door, opened it, and stepped inside.
The silver rose was gone from the bud vase on the dresser. Odd. I took a step toward it. There
came a sound of voices from the other room, too soft for me to distinguish words. I froze. He might well
be in there. But you don't just go bursting into someone's bedroom, especially when it's likely there's
company present-particularly when it's your father's room and you had to unlock an outer door to get
where you were. Suddenly I was extremely self-conscious. I wanted to get out of there, fast. I unbuckled
my sword belt, from which Grayswandir depended in its not-quite-perfect fit of a sheath. I did not dare
bear it any farther but hung it from one of the garment pegs on the wall near the door next to a short
trench coat I hadn't noticed before. I slipped out then and locked the door as quietly as I could.
Awkward. Was he really coming and going with some regularity, somehow managing to avoid
notice? Or was some sort of phenomenon of an entirely different order in progress within his quarters?
I'd heard an occasional rumor that some of the older chambers hadsub specie spatium doorways, if one
could but figure how to activate them, providing considerable extra closet space as well as private means
of entry and egress. Something else I should have asked Dworkin about. Maybe I've got a pocket
universe under my bed. I'd never looked.
I turned and walked quickly away. As I neared the corner, I slowed. Dworkin had felt that the
presence of the Jewel of Judgment on my person was the thing that' had protected me from the Pattern,
had it really tempted to harm me earlier. On the other hand, the Jewel, worn too long, could itself do
damage to the wearer. Therefore, he had counseled me to get some rest and then pass my mind through
the stone's matrix; in effect creating a recording of a higher power of the Pattern within me along with
some measure of immunity to assaults by the Pattern itself. Interesting conjecture. And that's all it was, of
course: conjecture.
When I reached the cross corridor where a left would take me to the stairway or a right back to my
rooms, I hesitated. There was a sitting room diagonally across the way, to the left, across from Benedict's
seldom used rooms. I headed for it, entered, sank into a heavy chair in the corner. All I wanted to do
was deal with my enemies, help my friends, get my name off any shit lists it currently occupied, locate my
father, and come to some sort of terms with the sleepingty'iga . Then I could see about the continuance
of my interruptedWanderjahr . All of which, I realized, required that I now reask myself the now
near-rhetorical question, How much of my business did I want Random to know?
I thought of him in the library, playing a duet with his near-estranged son. I understood that he had
once been pretty wild and footloose and nasty, that he hadn't really wanted the job of ruling this
archetypal world. But parenthood, marriage, and the Unicorn's choice seemed to have laid a lot on
him-deepening his character, I suppose, at the price of a lot of the fun things in his life. Right now he
seemed to have a lot of problems with this Kashfa-Begma business, possibly having just resorted to an
assassination and agreed to a less than favorable treaty to maintain the complex political forces of the
Golden Circle at an even level. And who knew what might be going on elsewhere to add to his troubles?
Did I really want to draw this man into something I might well be able to handle myself with his never
being any the wiser, or ever even bothered, concerning it? Conversely, if I did draw him into my affairs, it
seemed likely that he might well lay restrictions on me which could hamper my ability to respond to what
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