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Cailin talks with Rainbow inside his head. Rainbow declines to give Cailin his body back.
Jean, Norton, Titania, Faythe, and ex-Suhuy pretending to be Ilk are in Detroit. Jean wants to get Norton to take a look at Silver Lyra.
Ilk looks around at those who made it back out of the hole to the Sea of Chance. About fifteen or sixteen entities went in, and about twenty entities came out.
People start trying to identify each other. Ilk offers to verify the identity of anyone who raises a Logrus signature. One shouts, "You can't make me!" and zots another person magically, who fries. Another entity raises powerful magical shields.
Ilk - "That was an offer, not a demand."
Two of the entities do so, and Ilk recognizes and publicly identifies them as Guild representatives. They turn and look at the shielded guy, then gang up on the one who opened fire. Ilk starts draining power from the one that they're attacking.
The battle goes on, in separate little pig-piles.
House Cara galumphs up, and starts pouring recycled beer onto one of the piles.
Beldin, Shannon, Duncan, and Hubert are on the roof of House Cara.
Ilk greets them. Beldin says, "Ilk? Is that you?"
"Yup"
"Can you prove it?"
Ilk Logrus-pulls a stein of some truly nasty liquor that only upper-level House Cara members can handle out of House Cara and drinks it, despite being tendri'd out.
[Some observers may have believed that the proof actually entailed Logrus-pulling beer out of a Pattern-covered House; but they would have been incorrect - Ilk is still trying to keep his somewhat improved resistance to Pattern under wraps, to avoid discomforting the Amberites.]
The proof is accepted, and Beldin tells Ilk that Marial sent House Cara, because it was the Old Lords most likely to handle the fight well. She told him to tell Ilk that the next wave was more subtle, but that she has it under control. Ilk probably couldn't have handled it.
The battle continues.
Hubert jumps off the building, pulls his sword, walks up to one of the Old Lords, says, "I know you", and sticks it with the sword. The Old Lord gurgles and falls over. Ilk points out that you aren't supposed to kill the ones you recognize; you're supposed to kill the other ones. Hubert claims that guy killed his mother. They discuss it briefly, and then the blade melts -- it's a vengeance blade.
Time passes.
There is now a ring of Guild heads who have begun to re-acquire their original shape, and a few beings in the middle of the ring. The zotting guy is now almost out of power. The one who is shielding is still in the center. He's doing much better.
Beldin turns to empty air next to him and asks Ilk if the good guys are on the outside and the bad guys on the inside. Beldin says that the guy on the inside is going to nova soon. Ilk examines his shields; they look like Cailin's. Ilk raises a voder near the shielding guy.
"Cailin?"
For a moment, Cailin is looking out of another set of eyes that are his, and there is a pitched battle raging around him. He can hear Ilk urgently calling him. Cailin argues with Rainbow for a while. Rainbow can't see any of Snarsht's tracks in Cailin's brain, and has no idea what he is talking about.
For a few separate moments, the shielding guy has Cailin's signature. Then it is becoming Cailin entirely.
Cailin is there in the battle again, calls out, "Rainbow", and finds himself back in his own head.
Rainbow steps out of the shielded guy who has occasionally looked like Cailin. Cailin is now seeing double. He now seems to have complete control over his body, and he's also seeing out of some other body that Rainbow just stepped out of.
Ilk and Rainbow chat. People identify and stop attacking Rainbow. Ilk asks about the person standing next to Rainbow, and Rainbow identifies Cailin to Ilk. Cailin shouts, out loud, "It's not me! Don't say that!"
Cailin realizes that he has been Jeaned, probably by Rainbow.
They chat. Ilk warns Cailin not to overfill and go nova. Cailin experiments for a bit, then transfers power to the other him in Cataan.
Beldin looks at Cailin in amazement.
Cailin - "What are you looking at!"
Beldin - "Power!"
Cailin - "What is is with people and this power thing!"
Ilk - "Well, there are ... fifteen Old Lords simultaneously smiting you and you're just absorbing their power."
Cailin - "They can stop!"
One of the proto-Old Lords nearby says, "Traitor!", manifests a blade, and attacks Cailin. Hubert, who is still standing inside the circle near Cailin, draws a blade and defends Cailin.
Cailin complains to the Old Lords who are attacking him that they were just recently allied and conducting an invasion together. They say that he didn't identify himself, and tell him to join them on the outside of the circle. Cailin walks to the outside of the circle; none of the Old Lords raise a hand against him.
[Hubert isn't being attacked by the circle - the Old Lords have aim]
[Well, ever since the great toilet seat war a few thousand turnings ago...]
Hubert screams, covers his face with one hand in what looks like a semi-religious manner, and trumps out.
Cailin concentrates five percent of his power on the guy that Hubert was attacking. Most of it splashes. The Old Lords look at him askance - he should have better aim than that. Some of the power got through and discomforted him somewhat. Cailin focuses down and starts cutting through his shields. When Cailin gets through, the body just explodes into a cloud of black greasy vapor.
Beldin jumps off the roof of House Cara, walks over to Cailin, and reaches a hand out in greeting. He doesn't tap Cailin, but congratulates him -- he hasn't seen a colloidal explosion like that in ages. Beldin is even more impressed when he finds out that Cailin just used raw power instead of a specialized spell.
Beldin asks Cailin if he is interested in taking on an apprentice. Once Beldin explains that Coral had prophesied that Beldin would tow back the Spiral, Cailin takes him as his apprentice. Cailin also recruits Beldin into House Moonlight. Shannon and Duncan are recruited into the House as well.
Ilk turns to Cailin. "So, congratulations on becoming an Old Lord!"
Cailin turns towards Rainbow. "I'm not an Old Lord, am I?"
Rainbow responds. "Did you leave your signature in the Sea of Chance?"
Cailin - "Damn - technicalities count?"
Rainbow - "Yup. But that means that you were already an Old Lord."
Cailin grumbles. Rainbow seems somewhat distracted.
Cailin turns to Rainbow and bows. "Thank you for sparing me."
Rainbow demurrers the thanks. "A reckoning will come." Cailin starts to leave, and is told that he needs to stay and finish smacking the new Old Lords. Cailin says that Rainbow is leaving.
Rainbow - "Yes - I have a daughter to save."
With the help of Beldin and Cailin, all but one of the other ones ends up dead or otherwise non-corporeal. The last one seems to be able to manage everyone pig-piling on him, and eventually Rainbow turns towards him and says, "I think that's enough."
One of the other Old Lords pulls that one aside and starts explaining the rules and ranks to the new one.
Rainbow gives a version of the talk to Cailin.
The other briefing given is much longer, and ends with, "And if you don't like it, the hole is over there."
The Cailin that is in Cataan can contact Titania; the Cailin that is not cannot. [The one in Cataan has the Faerie artifact]
The Cailin near the hole has the multi-armed blue base form; the one in Cataan has a base form of a blob.
Jean experiments with withdrawing from a body, and actually succeeds, where he always failed before. The body is still alive, but mindless. Jean chats with Dworkin, then sends the unlife zombie marching off into shadow.
Jean concentrates on looking out of a body's eyes and pulls out of it. He is hovering over the body, and is slowly dissipating - it might take a turning or so. He can't go into the other bodies - they're full - but he can go back into the body he came from.
Dworkin helps Jean move several bodies and saucers to Toram's lands. When Jean pulls out of the saucers there, he goes into the scale. Other Jeans greet the saucer, and it responds.
He doesn't have to try to go into the scale, it just opens its door to him. And in the scale, he's not dissipating at all. However, Jean has to concentrate on the ghostly ones to move them and keep them from dissipating, except when they're in the scale.
Jean starts training Jean-less saucers. They're smarter than most of the natives from his grey zone, but he wouldn't want to give them complex directions.
[The de-Jeanned saucers are compared to college freshmen, as opposed to the "high school freshmen" from Corwin's shadow Ri'ik that he used to invade Amber.]
Jean tries to move the scale. He thinks that it can move, but needs help. He experiments, and determines that he needs to push on it from the inside and the outside in a coordinated fashion.
There are now many ghostly bodies inside the scale. The awareness that is inside the scale is different from Jean in the scale, almost like head people inside himself. It is the ghostly ones that are doing the moving from the inside, not the general perception that was there before. The ghostly Jeans can leave the scale at will, and help push from the outside.
Jean moves the scale into the dungeons below House Swayville.
Jean plans to conduct an experiment in the presence of the scale to see if a dying Jean near the scale goes into the scale and keeps its memories, or dies and forgets normally.
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