I extended the card.

“Martin, who is this?” I asked.

“The man who made these extra Trumps,” he said. “He drew one of himself while he was about it. I do not know his name. He is a friend of Dara’s.”

“You are lying,” Random said.

“Then let Dara tell us,” I said, and I turned to her.

She still knelt beside Benedict, though she had finished bandaging him and he was now sitting up.

“How about it?” I said, waving the card at her. “Who is this man?”

She glanced at the card, then up at me.

She smiled.

“You really do not know?” she said.

“Would I be asking if I did?”

“Then look at it again and go look in a mirror. He is your son as much as mine. His name is Merlin.”

I am not easily shocked, but this had nothing of ease about it. I felt dizzy. But my mind moved quickly. With the proper time differential, the thing was possible.

“Dara,” I said, “what is it that you want?”

“I told you when I walked the Pattern,” she said, “that Amber must be destroyed. What I want is to have my rightful part in it.”

“You will have my old cell,” I said. “No, the one next to it. Guards!”

“Corwin, it is all right,” Benedict said, getting to his feet. “It is not as bad as it sounds. She can explain everything.”

“Then let her start now.”

“No. In private, just family.”

I motioned back the guards who had come at my call.

“Very well. Let us adjourn to one of the rooms up the hall.”

He nodded, and Dara took hold of his left arm. Random, Gerard, Martin and I followed them out. I looked back once to the empty place where my dream had come true. Such is the stuff.