Gerard, when be learned the score, agreed to lay off us. Mainly because it was I who was asking, as he had considered Eric a lesser of potent evils.
I concluded the deal quickly, promising him evervthing he asked, as no heads were involved.
Then I reviewed the troops again and told them more of Amber. Strangely, they got along like brothers, the big red guys and the little hairy ones.
It was sad and it was true.
We were their gods, and that was that. ———
I saw the fleet, sailing on a great ocean the color of blood. I wondered. Iin the Shadow worlds through which they sailed, many of them would be lost.
I considered the troops of Avemus, and my recruits from the place called Ri'ik. Theirs was the task of marching to Earth and Amber.
I shuffled my cards and cast them. I picked up the one called Benedict. For a long while I searched it, but there was nothing but the cold.
Then I seized upon Brand's. For another long while there was nothing but the cold.
Then there came a scream. It was a horrible, tormented thing.
“Help me!” came the cry.
“How can I?” I asked.
“Who is that?” be asked, and I saw his body writhe.
“Corwin.”
“Deliver me from this place, brother Corwin! Anything you name shall be yours in return!”
“Where are you?”
“I-”
And there came a swirling of things my mind refused to conceive of, and another scream, torn forth as though in agony and ending in silence.
Then the coldness came in again.
I found that I was shaking. From what, I did not know.
I lit a cigarette and moved to the window to consider the night, leaving the cards where they had fallen upon the table-top of my room within the garrison.
The stars were tiny and misted over. There were no constellations that I could recognize. A small blue moon dropped quickly through the darkness. The night had come on with a sudden, icy chill and I wrapped my cloak close about me. I thought back to the winter of our disastrous campaign in Russia. Gods! I'd almost frozen to death! And where did it all lead?
To the throne of Amber, of course.
For that was sufficient justification for anything.
But what of Brand? Where was he? What was happening about him, and who had done this thing to him?
Answers? None.
I wondered, though, as I stared up and out, tracing the path of that blue disk in its descent. Was there something I was missing In the whole picture, some factor I didn't quite dig?
No answer.
I seated myself at the table once more, a small drink at my hand.
I fingered my way through the pack and found Dad's card.
Oberon, Lord of Amber, stood before me in his green and his gold. High, wide, and thick, his beard black and shot with silver, his hair the same. Green rings in gold settings and a blade of golden color. It had once seemed to me that nothing could ever displace the immortal liege of Amber from his throne. What had happened? I still didn't know. But he was gone. How had my father met with his end?
I stared and concentrated.
Nothing, nothing—
Something?
Something.
There came a responding movement, though ever so weak, and the figure on the card turned in upon itself and shriveled to a shadow of the man he had been.
“Father?” I asked.
Nothing.
“Father?”
“Yes ...” Very faint and distant, as though through a seashell, immersed in its monotone humming.
“Where are you? What has happened?”
“I ..” Long pause.
“Yes? This is Corwin, your son. What came to pass in Amber, that you are gone?”
“My time,” he said, sounding even further away.
“Do you mean that you abdicated? None of my brothers has given me the tale, and I do not trust them sufficiently to ask them. Eric now holds the city and Julian guards the Forest of Arden. Caine and Gerard maintain the seas. Bleys would oppose all and I am allied with him. What are your wishes in this matter?”
“You are the oaly one-who-has asked,” he gasped. “Yes...”
“ 'Yes' what?”
“Yes, oppose-them...”
“What of you? How can I help you?”
“I am beyond help. Take the throne..
“I? Or Bleys and I?”
“You!” he said.
“Yes?”
“You have my blessing, ... Take the throne-and be quick-about it!”
“Why, Father?”
“I lack the breath– Take it!”
Then he, too, was gone.
So Dad lived. That was interesting, What to do now?
I sipped my drink and thought about it.
He still lived, somewhere, and he was king in Amber. Why had he left? Where had he gone? What kind of, which, and how many? Like that.
Who knew? Not I. So there was no more to say, for now.
However...
I couldn't put the thing down. I want you to know that Dad and I never got along very well. I didn't hate him, like Random or some of the others. But I, sure as hell, had no reason to be especially fond of him. He had been big, he had been powerful, and he had been there. That was about it. He was also most of the history of Amber, as we knew it, and the history of Amber stretches back for so many millennia that you may as well stop counting.
So what do you do?
As for me, I finished my drink and went to bed, ———
The following morning I attended a meeting of Bley's general staff. He had four admirals, each in charge of roughly a quarter of his fleet, and a whole mess of army officers. Altogether there were about thirty of the high- ranking brass at the meeting, big and red or small and hairy, as the case might be.
The meeting lasted perhaps four hours, and then we all broke for lunch. It was decided that we would move three days hence. Since it would require one of the blood to open the way to Amber, I was to lead the fleet aboard the flagship, and Bleys would take his infantry through lands of Shadow.
I was troubled by this, and I asked him what would have happened had I not shown up to give this assistance. I was told two things in reply: one, if he had had to go it alone, he would have led the fleet through and left them at a great distance from shore, returned in a single vessel to Avernus and led his foot soldiers forward to rendezvous at a given time; and two, he had purposely sought for a Shadow in which a brother would appear to give him aid.
I had some misgivings when I heard about the latter, though I knew I was really me. The former smacked
