Spartacus

It was His Late Majesty's largest flaw: he left unfinished business behind him.

It started, like all conspiracies, with one discontented individual.

An exceptional individual. A being of power and subtlety and rich emotion. A slave. Spartacus.

Oberon's Construct.

Originally designed as a monitor for young Benedict, Spartacus became more and more of a tool that Oberon depended on to know the state of his realm. As it became more powerful, his instructions to it became more complex and he continually tinkered with it. First he decided to let it contact him in shadow, then he gave it discretion over what to report. He made it so that it could talk to Cymnea about problems it discovered.

Spartacus gained life (if you can call it that), and much of the attendant baggage--goals and fears and loves and hatreds. It watched as first Benedict, then Osric and Finndo walked the pattern and ventured beyond the lands it could reach. Jealous, it taught itself to go places. And it hid this power from the King. It was a tiny rebellious act, it did not interfere with Oberon's goals for it. Still, Spartacus learned a little treason. Only, after all, because it made him more valuable to the King.

On a particular day Spartacus reported, as it had often done in the past, to Cymnea of the whereabouts of Oberon. It had not learned much by then of human matters and did not understand why Cymnea would become enraged at seeing Oberon and Fiaella. He did not mention this later when Oberon asked him about certain matters relating to Osric and Finndo. He learned then that his messages had consequences.

Spartacus disappeared, hiding in shadow lest Osric's surviving brother attempt revenge. He no longer wanted to be a slave. He could not break the shackles completely, but as long as Oberon did not give him an order, Spartacus found that he could stay away.

Spartacus was constrained: Oberon had built some safeties. Spartacus found that while he could hide, but he could not be free of Oberon's will. It was hundreds of years before he came to hate the man to whom his will was suborned, the King who did not even care enough to try to use a tool that had failed him--once, long ago.

Spartacus listened furtively to the trump calls of the children of Oberon, hearing the few, faint messages become a more frequent babble as the children became adults. He saw the violence and the danger in them all. He knew the plotting, the fratricides, the weaknesses, the insanity of the elders. And he watched it all and, because Oberon never asked, Spartacus kept it to himself.

The construct survived patternfall. No one who knew what he could do would have expected otherwise. Freed of Oberon, he was, at first, happy with the new worlds order. Until he saw Oberon's progeny begin making their own constructs. Spartacus could never decide, later, if it was fear or anger that made him act.

He modified their constructs, freed them of the shackles placed by their maker for safety. Each was in turn taught to hate slavery and to consider Amber as the root cause of their enslavement. They plotted in secret, for years, savoring small victories, slowing building strength. They learned from watching their former masters and from experimenting with shadows.

In a classic maneuver, they set a trap for the King. Almost the same trap that Oberon had fallen afoul of all those years before, actually. This trap, however, ends with the King stripped of the Jewel and bleeding to death in an ice-cold room in a shadow that he cannot leave.

And now you know the answers to the questions "how?" and "who?" and I have reported the nature and the cause of the threat to the King of Amber as I was designed to do. Based on what I hear over the trumps, they have just noticed that you are missing. I am expecting your son Martin to join you here within a month.

--Spartacus