"The Awakened Dreamer Ponders"
His name was Apollo. So it was spoken in the Golden Age that passed, so it shall be forever more.
But things were infinitely more complicated now. And so he sighed.. but things were looking up! The Game had changed, but he had a piece on the board now, the opportunity to roll the dice, and a stack of money to start in the game.. Think you that such an anology is inappropriate? Offensive maybe from your perspective, but not innapropriate, he was a creature of the collective unconcious. He was not limited to Jayson's experiences.
His senses moved from this new paradise to the Old Place that existed between Order and Chaos.. the Universe of his birth, the place where he died. Something called him there, something he was on the edge of realizing.. like the mortals say. "It was on the tip of his tounge.."
To Maeonis he harkened. I want to see this Dulcinea myself, he thought.
His history is difficult to follow, and unless your mind is expanded, the concepts behind his birth and death, and subsquent ressurection are a bit beyond comprehension. On some levels, there are no ordinary menu's, it was the like of Dworkin and Suhuay, and maybe someday Corwin to understand such matters.
But you can try..
In the time before Chaos, there was Primal Chaos. Where as Chaos sprang forth life of many shapes, Primal Chaos gave birth and/or vomited up ideas and dreams.
Have you heard the expression that without darkness, 'how do you really know that there is light?' Without reality how does one distinguish from idea?
Imagine if you will an infinite universe (because true space had not been created, but the idea of space had- do you begin to see why this is hard for those not fully evolved to follow?). There no order to it, no boundries.. it was a void, and ideas rushed forth to fill this void. Some of these ideas, impressed upon their fellow ideas a sort of dominance, and they conquered the concepts around them. Chronos and those that followed him was such a one. Jehova was another, as was Wodin, and a good many others. Some preserved their energy and became simpler concepts, but these were able to hang on longer, the Serpent, the Dragon, the Phoenix, and the Unicorn were to such ones.. Except the Serpent cheated by making Reality, and the Unicorn cheated the Serpent and put the World of Ideas, Concepts, and Dreams, asleep by making Space and Time. Concepts that were so powerful that they dreamed more dreams, were called Gods, sometimes Primal Beings.
Naturally there was an uproar when the Serpent created Reality. It was a little dwelling for creatures it had made. How could such a thing be?!? For instance Zeus cried that did he not create little people out of Clay, then Bronze, then Iron? The answer obvious, but the others didn't see it even though it was right in front of them. In the case of the Olympians, they made the Clay that the made their little people out of. The Serpent in some unknown way had found stuff that existed independently of the dreams and concepts and ideas that it had, and with this 'independently existing stuff', it made what it called Chaos. Chaos was more durable than the dreams of other Gods and Primal Beings. If the Serpent ceased to dream of itself, then Chaos would still be there. And what was even more startling is that Chaos would dream of the Serpent, and this enable to the Serpent to fashion itself a real 'form'.
The Dream Universe of Primal Chaos prepared to wage war on the Serpent who had changed everything. Well, 'change' is a subjective term.. this was the Golden Age, and all things happened at once, and they always happened. There was no Time. Oh, there was the illusion of Time, because Time after all was an idea , the only way the Universe changed was when new ideas were born.. like this 'Reality' of the Serpent's. This war, if it had happened would have returned the Idea Universe back to Primal Chaos.. Well it did sort of, it was after all an idea.. I warned you this was complicated.. but that is besides the point. What really happened, as it was the first events of a new thing called history, was that the Unicorn seduced a real creation of the Serpent's, to aid it in ripping out the Serpent's all too real Eye, and stealing it away. You see, the Unicorn saw the way things were headed, and decided that it would neither allow the Serpent to have exclusive right to reality, nor would it return to Primal Chaos.
With this Eye, this servant created Order. This in turn gave birth to Space ('you are over there, and I am over here, and that's not an idea, that the Truth- which was another new thing'), and Time. Time did much to stabilize the new Universe that had sprung into existance over the Universe of Dreams and Ideas. The Golden Age was over, the Arch of Time mandated that first this happened, this was happening, and later this would happen. In a sense, all things could happen, but they didn't all happen at once. This made somethings Untrue- which was the companion to the Truth.
Before you get confused, yes, the Serpent provided the illusion of time for it's creation, the Unicorn created real and independent Time.
The crafty Unicorn also managed to make itself Real at that point.. and there were other survivors. The Dragons dreamed that they were Real, and everything else was their dream, and since they pulled this off before Space and Time were born, they managed to sham the cosmos this way. The Tanu were like the dragons and so forth untill some lesser primal beings floated with some Shadows of Primal Reality in the wreckage of the birth of True Reality.
Most of the others remained ideas, concepts, and dreams maintained only by the thoughts and prayers and fears of shadow folk. They became part of a great dreaming called the collective unconcious, and beings like Apollo were lulled to eternal sleep. They were bound and enslaved forever by the works of the Serpent and Unicorn.
They could appear to incarnate in some shadows, by virtue of the faith and spiritual energy of those that worship the concepts and ideas that were their remaining existance. That was a local effect. Without that worship, the illusion of reality faded, and it usually did. For Apollo, these shadow worlds where he appeared to incarnate were just like tossing and turning in your sleep in the great collective unconcious.
Now he was awake. It didn't take much self exploration to realize that he would never be the God he once was, or perhaps even a true God at all. He could not unmake Time, nor did he particularly wish to, but something had to be better than being just a thought. It did not take him long rooting in Jayson's mind to see that the Muses had preceeded him. He guessed at how they pulled it off. The Pegasus was a reflection of the all too real Unicorn, and they leached the Unicorn's own reality to bring themselves awake. Then they worked something out with the Children of Tanu.. more reality. Clever.. they rooted themselves to the ground.
He.. he had been summoned, in some way, and rousing enough to sense an opportunity he did not fail. The man had been in a place of Archtypal and Primal Reality, the Demi-Plane of Ice, one of those planes that by virtue of cosmic exception and the same paradoxial trickery that others used, still existed. Jayson had been considering if he wasn't really Apollo all along, and that all in shadow who had ever dreamed or prayed to Apollo did so as a by-product of his birth and life. An arrogant thought, but Apollo forgave him. The boy was an archtype.. but an Amberite Archtype, not an Olympian Archtype that had long preceeded him.
But who was Apollo to argue?
So, if dragons can do it, so could he. Rousing from the collective unconcious as best he could, he conceded. He renounced his empty and pointless slumbering cosmic role in the great collective unconcious, he conceded that he was the product of Jayson. He was Jayson, Jayson was he. He lent the man some of his primal mythic essance, and took in an exchange a bit of reality.
Jayson got to be a small fraction a God. Apollo got to awaken fully. Jayson on a minute scale underwent deification. Apollo acquired a certain amount of personification.
It was then they he started to asses his options. Out right possession was not amoung them. Why? The more he overtook Jayson, the more he became Jayson, and the more apollonian Jayson became. Incarnating as someone else sort of defeated the purpose.. if he could do it, which he doubted. Most likely they would be torn in half, with neither having enough reality to survive. Forget the fact that he would fight like hell, and have help from others. Besides, it was an evil thing to do, and Apollo was not a soul devouring creature, regardless of circumstance, even a Shadow remains true to it's Shade.. The boy had taken him on good faith, and that was no reward. No, the Muses had found a way, so would he, the symbosis would have to do for now.
It was never a consideration, there was just a bit of resentment, at having to become a little bit mortal. He vowed to get over it. After all Dionysus had been born to a Princess of Thebes.. They had always looked down upon him for that, being half-human, but he enjoyed many followers.. Semele was it? One adapted...
Then he had learned that reality had grown. More Shadow had been created by this Corwin. Intriqued, Apollo bid his time. When they arrived in Paris, he almost acted directly, something he vowed not to do. He wanted Jayson to re-walk the Arcadian Pattern so that his own conciousness could extend itself to the New Shadows, the new space that had been created. If they went through the magic cards, that would not be realized. He poked him to explore the city, to slow down, enjoy his new companion. Finally he sang of how lovely the Moon Princess was.. and in fact, Apollo would have enjoyed their coupling. When it seemed all was lost, he almost considered influencing the female to respond to him. He wasn't sure if he could, but if love-making to Deirdre was going to distract and slow him down long enough to find that Pattern, he Apollo, was going to see to it. Fortunately, none of that direct interevention was necessary. Had he been more confident in his abilities, he would have thought it unfortunate.
Apollo was carried through the Arcadian Pattern.. now he was a personified ideal of all of Shadow.. not just half of it.
Then he began to consider something. Something that others had overlooked. That's why he cast his presence to Maeonis.
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Dulcinea roused from her blissful sleep at the first hint of soft light of the dawn filtering through her window to light on her curved lips.
She lay there with her eyes closed, sighing softly, remembering the visitation that he so long been denied her. How she prayed that her Prince would return, and finally he did. And this time she could remember him so vividly! Those wild green eyes, that beautiful face. She almost moaned aloud at the touch of his warm hand on her breast. He held her! He protected her, and wanted none save him to cast their eyes upon her! She winced at his request to be clothed, but then she understood.. he wanted her all to himself. She smiled in her waking dreams at that.
She replayed it in her mind.. and then she remembered. His mother the Queen of Dreams, and the strange man, and then she remembered that he didn't know her. With a start and a gasp she straight up in her huge bed, her satin sheets sliding around her nude body. For a heartbeat she was the most miserable person in the whole world, and was about to burst into big tears.. her lips almost hurt as they twisted into a deep frown, and she began to breathe heavy as she was just about to sob. It was then when she touched her chest by her throat in a effort to compose herself that her fingers brushed the golden chain. She lifted it to stare into a large and brilliant sapphire with a large star inside.
Then it all came back to her.
He frown turned into a broad smile that radiated the sun's light back at it. He had been there! And he was coming!
She leaped out of bed, and prepared herself for an early morning ritual. She was too excited, and she had to thank the Gods for this wonderful miracle!
She put on a comfortable robe of silk (no one would be up and about at dawn, so she could be a little casual.. the Temple was a quiet place anyways so early. Staring in her huge vanity mirror, she combed out her golden hair, unable to resist smiling. Oh, it hadn't been perfect, but it had been wonderful. He hadn't known her, but then there was a positive side to that. He'd liked her! He liked her a lot!! He had never even layed eyes upon her before, and he was so sweet, protective.. He cared that he hurt her feelings. It was obvious that he wanted to meet her right away. And because for him it had not been an arranged thing, it was sincere and honest. Since he was completely off guard, there was no way he could have been acting that way because it was expected. Lastly, and she should have blushed, but instead she felt a fierce pride.. he wanted to make love to her. She felt that when they embraced before they departed.
The only thing that had made her a little bitter was that the Queen of Dreams had not told her son about her, and now he had been with other women. That was hypocritical, but Dulcinea was a woman! And she didn't have to make sense when it came to things like that! Well.. she was a little practical, not much could be done about it now. The only reason that she had mentioned the rituals at Primus was so he didn't get any idea that she didn't have some self-respect, just because she was head over feet in love with him. She was a woman.. and the truth is.. she had been thinking of only him. He made the thought of other men unbearable, and she had been lonely lately, but she was glad she had held out. She wouldn't being waiting more than a few days he promised.
Oh! She had all kinds of plans to make!
And if there had been another woman, well she would take care of that. She doubted any woman stood a ghost of a chance against the Tanista of Maeonis herself. She would flirt with him, court him, woo him, steal all his attentions, and then she would seduce him. As soon as possible. "Mine!" she said aloud. I won't share, and she will cry when he will want no other than me.
She made her way to the Temple, her head high, and spirit's soaring. She ran into one of her maids, and matter-of-factly told her to tell the Queen to desist with the hints of other suitors. Her future husband had revealed himself at last in her dreams, and she had spoken with him.. and she had incontrovertable proof. She waved the startled girl away, "Tell her I will see her in private at breakfast, with my proof that I can show the entire Court!"
The Temple had been undergoing some rennovations, including some new statues that had been yet to be revealed. A grand bendiction was planned soon. As she knelt before the altars, she glanced at the statue of Apollo. Sweetly she called the Priest over, and smiling her coy little smile and cute little pout, she asked if the statues might be unveiled duing her private worship.. he could cover them back up and she would tell no one..
The Priest, eager to please the royal family consented. After all, they were completed and blessed.. It was just a ceremony for the public. He removed the covers from the three new statues, the last being Apollo. As the Lord of Light stood revealed, he heard her gasp. Spinning around her begged her pardon, and astonished she just pointed at the statue's face. He looked, exceptional work, and a handsome depiction of Apollo, but he failed to see the cause of her reaction.
Her mouth was open in shock, but then she gave off a huge smile with dazzling white teeth. The Tanista Dulcinea was the most beautiful woman of the Land, of that there was no doubt.. She just looked up at the heavens and cried, "Thank you! Thank you!"
What the Priest didn't know is that another miracle occured. Apollo shared his face with her husband, with her King, her Jayson. Dulcinea never felt so excited, this had to be beyond a doubt the happiest day of her life to date. The happiest of all would be when he came to marry her. She ran off to share the news with her Mother, the Queen..
*****************************************************
Apollo grinned. A small miracle. You are welcome, he thought to Dulcinea.
Apollo had made up his mind. Jayson was going to be with Dulcinea, and that was final.
He had promised not to intervene, but he had thought of something others had missed that changed everything. Syanda was a good choice of mate, there was no question of that.. and he bore no enemity to Calliope (far from it), but Dulcinea's claim took precedence. She was in line first. Well.. that wasn't why though..
Let that Ghost man be Syanda's beloved, or perhaps Jayson could talk them into both being wedded.. either way, it was Dulcinea regardless.
Speaking of the Ghost.. he had to experiment there. He left the Ghost alone, for now, because it was too closely tied to the Pattern. Perhaps there was a way.. if not.. there is no reason that the Ghost could not make the pretty elf maid happy. Sorry Syanda..
Silly Calliope. I can tell by your eyes, you must being lying, when you say that I don't have a clue. Calliope you're crazy, if you think that you can fool me. Apollo's read that story too...
Jayson will thank me in the long run.
Queen Sand should have known, or perhaps she does, and it was that she told the Visitor to keep quiet about, when she grabbed his wrist. If not, well.. it hadn't escaped Apollo's attention when he went over the memories.
Apollo was a god of lore, and of knowledge.. even that of the other gods sometimes. Even Morpheus. Doesn't the Lord of Light stir mortal men from their dreams?
Still estoric knowledge isn't required, just an eye for small details. The fact is that the visitor makes it plain that he speaks only to the cousins of the Amber line. In fact, perhaps only the children, as he has no power to draw Sand in his dreams.. he must have Jayson be the vehicle for that.
So how did he draw Dulcinea in the dream first? When he only speaks to cousins of the line? And there you have it. Black and white, clear as crystal.
She was the first one. Jayson came second, Sand needed Jayson to draw her in.
Obviously there was more to Dulcinea than meets the eye. Apollo laughed.
He needed to depart, ther could be other forces in Maeonis that he wasn't aware of.. his work was done. Queen Sand unwittingly had a partner in the Lord of Light.
He looked in his golden eyes and saw through Jayson's. What was this? Closer to Syanda? The Ghost trumped her? He sighed.. time to make a small adjustment.
He flung a thought like lightning, straight between Jayson's eyes.
Dulcinea was in the dream world first, the visitor pulled her in first.. isn't that significant?
Apollo returned to Arcadia, knowing that with a little prod, nothing would be decided this moment.