ddd

From everywhere, a cacophony sounded. High-pitched squeals filled the air
far above me, each one a clarion call from those who would do me harm. The world nearby
was no less alarming - pillars of leather and cloth thundered around me, the vocal rumbling
of their owners at once loud beyond comprehension and perfectly clear in my ears.

"A shilling to the one who slays the warlock!"

About me, hopefully offering at least some scant concealment, blades of grass towered
above me like spires of green jade. They were all that stood between me and the owls and
hawks and men and hounds. For a hundred yards in every direction - a massive distance for
a humble brown rat - the grass extended, with no cover in sight more appealing than simple
weeds. I sighed inwardly; I may lie undetected for the time being, but I knew the men around
me were wise to my tricks. Make a break for the forest, and how likely was it that I would
make it unscathed? A mind well-used to calculating escapes placed my bets on about 30 feet
before I became acquainted with a boot or a crossbow bolt.

My side twinged. Assuming a new form had sealed the skin over my ribs, but beneath it a wide
gaping wound told the tale of an English sword-blade. 30 feet, I thought, a little more soberly.
A tenth of the distance between me and the inviting treeline of the forest, but there was another
path I could take for 30 feet. For a Prince of Amber, there is always a path.

I've recuperated from some pretty grievous wounds, but I've never had the pleasure of learning
whether an outright crushing will kill me. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but how does it
feel about rodents? I took a deep breath, feeling my tiny little lungs fill with unsatisfying
Shadow air. A Prince of Amber does not prevaricate, does not delay.

I darted from my hiding place - swiftly, though not overly so. Steady progress is my aim, I thought.
It's not a race (Yeah, sure it isn't.) I nosed through blades of grass and into slightly different
blades of grass, hearing as I did so the hue and cry of my pursuers, magnified a hundred times by
my tiny ears.

A massive boot's shadow darkened my world a moment before it landed with a crash. It worried me how
much raw instinct went into avoiding it - I had spent far too much time in this form of late. I'd
learned firsthand what that can do to you, and I had no intention of experiencing it again. Ignoring
the blood pounding in my ears, I scurried resolutely onwards. The grass was all delicate spirals and
helixes now, and bright scarlet. The voices of my pursuers were deeper, bassier; I increased my
pace, just a little.

This time, I felt the shift as the world changed. My pursuers were gone, and so was the grass. 25 feet.
I suddenly felt sick - too drastic a jump, taken too quickly. Not wise to get careless in circumstances
like this, Lopt. I concentrated as I ran, this time not on the world around me, but on my own body. Once upon
a time, it had been the body of a Prince of Amber. Now it was a little more, or perhaps a little less.

A few seconds later, a rat the size of a small cat was scurrying along the cracked red earth of this new
Shadow, the sun beating down on its brown fur. Then it was bigger yet. After thirty seconds, it was not
scurrying on all fours so much as loping, ape-like, across the desert.

After two minutes, something very much like a man lay on the baked mud, groaning and sweating and clutching
at his side, crumpling his clothes. Charcoal grey was predominant there, along with red - both a deep crimson
and the ochre of the dust that soiled my finery. And finery it was, reminiscent of the Renaissance on one of
the Shadows I had spent some decades on - it was a look I've always had a fondness for. Contrasting with an
undershirt the color of rosewood, a grey doublet, pants and cloak muted the palette. It was finished with silver
buttons at my sleeve and a silver brooch where my cloak met at the throat - in the shape of a coiled and convoluted
serpent devouring its own tail. Even sullied with Shadow dirt, garb fit for a Prince.

I rose and dusted myself off. As I walked through the desert and the landscape twisted and changed around me, I cursed
Shadow and my own weakness - not for the first time, nor for the last. Stone obelisks, hundreds around me, blinked into being, then vanished.
Night fell in an instant, and the moon wheeled overhead. Two moons, now three. Then it was day, a red sun shining in a green
sky. I walked, and it all cycled for a while. I paid it little heed; the destination I had in mind was bound to take a long
journey to reach.

After only a few minutes, though, I stopped. A blue sky hung over my head. Not the pale robin-egg blue of most of the Earths
I had spent any length of time in, but a deep blue, majestic and heavy. Tears sprang to my eyes unbidden, and despite myself
I took another step. A sun hung in the sky now - a brilliant, beautiful sun of fallow gold.

Amber.

The word sunk through my mind like a red-hot coal through snow. I had done such a job of distracting myself, through Shadow and
Chaos both. Thief, courtier, privateer - where and what hadn't I been, over the past century? Yet still it burned there. That
impossible sky, those beautiful spires of brass, the vitality that crackles in the very air you breathe. They were burned into
my mind indelibly, into my very blood.

A forest sprung up around me as I walked. It was not the Forest of Arden, I knew, even though I recognised the trail I walked on.
A trail I had wandered hundreds of times in my childhood. This was not the True Earth, not yet. Even this proximity, though, was
enough to chill my blood, while at the same time setting my heart racing. My mind went with it. If nothing had changed, returning
to Amber was certain death. I did not leave without cause, and there were no doubt those who would not welcome my return. Images of
my half-brothers' faces flashed through my mind. Insulted, irritated, jeering, vengeful - that is how I remembered Vayn, Creyna,
Artair. Those were the faces they turned towards me.

As I turned it over in my head, I was scarcely aware my feet were moving. The wrath of my dear siblings, no matter how dire, was
inconsequential. My decision had been made for me the second the beautiful sky had come into view. I walked, and each step charged
the air with an electric hum. With each footfall, the light became softer, the trees stood straighter, their leaves blossomed a deeper
green. Each step took me closer.

Closer to Amber.