CORWIN

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question. . .
Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"
Let us go and make our visit....
And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea....

I grow old . . . I grow old . . .
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

-T.S. Eliot,
from the Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Key 9. This man was very tall. Heavily muscled, black-cloaked, his cloakpin cast in the shape of a silver rose, he stood by the Cerberean lighthouse whose light cast one sharp beam far out to sea, casting violent shadows over the scarred, pain-filled features of his face. He bore a silver sword, and his hair was long and thick, and there was a hint of silver in his long beard. It was said that there was madness in his green eyes, but all that the artist had drawn there was sorrow.
Driven mad by the death of Deirdre, Corwin refused to believe that his Pattern had been destroyed and spent years searching in Shadow for it. Finally the Queen ordered him captured and imprisoned for the declared reason that he might do some damage to himself or others. Recently, however, he has escaped, and rumors place him at or near the Cerberean Lighthouse. Rumors also cast doubt on his madness and point at some other, more sinister cause for the Queen's "protection."