MERLIN
How long does a man live, after all?
Does he live a thousand days, or only one?
A week, or centuries?
How much time does a man spend dying?
What does it mean to say 'forever?'
... I sought out the gravediggers
I went to the rivers where they burn
great painted corpses
little bony bodies
emperors still covered by
terrible curses
women snuffed out suddenly
by a wave of cholera.
There were beaches of the dead
and specialists in ashes.
When my opportunity came
to ask them many questions
They offered to burn me
It was all that they knew.
- from Y cuanto vive?
Pablo Neruda
This card depicted a handsome young man with short black hair and dead green eyes, lying in an alley in a pool of blood. The alley was dark and empty but for the graffiti on the walls, and the young man lay almost as if he had been crucified, arms spread wide, feet together. The most eerie thing about the image was the dying man's smile.
Merlin had stayed in Amber after Patternfall, mostly at his mother's request to attempt to help heal the breach between the other Amberites and Dara, and to help raise Sanjuste.
Random, once a close friend of Merlin, was heard to utter loud anti-Amber remarks in public, and Merlin was forced by the nobles of the palace, almost against his will, to challenge his friend to a duel. Random won the duel fairly, but since duelling was technically illegal in Amber, he was prosecuted by the young Sanjuste, angry at the loss of his father figure, for committing murder.