Sign of the Unicorn

«Because you would not have sat still long enough to hear the rest of what I had to say. You would have dashed off to put her under restraint, discovered that she was gone, roused all the others, started an investigation, and wasted a lot of valuable time. You still may, but it at least provided me with your attention for a sufficient time for me to convince you that I know what I am about. Now, when I tell you that time is essential and that you must hear the rest of what I have to say as soon as possible - if Amber is to have any chance at all - you might listen rather than chase a crazy lady.»

I had already half risen from my chair.

«I shouldn't go after her?» I said.

«The hell with her, for now. You've got bigger problems. You had better sit down again.»

So I did.

CHAPTER 10

A raft of moonbeams… the ghostly torchlight, like fires in black-and-white films… stars… a few fine filaments of mist…

I leaned upon the rail, I looked across the world… Utter silence held the night, the dream-drenched city, the entire universe from here. Distant things - the sea, Amber, Arden, Garnath, the Lighthouse of Cabra, the Grove of the Unicorn, my tomb atop Kolvir… Silent, far below, yet clear, distinct… A god's eye view, I'd say, or that of a soul cut loose and drifting high… In the middle of the night…

I had come to the place where the ghosts play at being ghosts, where the omens, portents, signs, and animate desires thread the nightly avenues and palace high halls of Amber in the sky, Tir-na Nog'th…

Turning my back to the rail and dayworld's vestiges below, I regarded the avenues and dark terraces, the halls of the lords, the quarters of the low… The moonlight is intense in Tir-na Nog'th, silvers over the facing sides of all our imaged places… Stick in hand, I passed forward, and the strangelings moved about me, appeared at windows, on balconies, on benches, at gates… Unseen I passed, for truly put, in this place I was the ghost to whatever their substance…

Silence and silver… Only the tapping of my stick, and that mostly muted… More mists adrift toward the heart of things… The palace a white bonfire of it… Dew, like drops of mercury on the finely sanded petals and stems in the gardens by the walks… The passing moon as painful to the eye as the sun at midday, the stars outshone, dimmed by it… Silver and silence… The shine…

I had not planned on coming, for its omens - if that they truly be - are deceitful, its similarities to the lives and places below unsettling, its spectacle often disconcerting. Still, I had come… A part of my bargain with time…

After I had left Brand to continue his recovery in the keeping of Gerard, I had realized that I required additional rest myself and sought to obtain it without betraying my disability. Fiona was indeed flown, and neither she nor Julian could be reached by means of the Trumps. Had I told Benedict and Gerard what Brand had told me, I was certain that they would have insisted we begin efforts at tracking her down, at tracking both of them. I was equally certain that such efforts would prove useless.

I had sent for Random and Ganelon and retired to my quarters, giving out that I intended to pass the day in rest and quiet thought in anticipation of spending the night in Tir-na Nog'th - reasonable behavior for any Amberite with a serious problem. I did not put much stock in the practice, but most of the others did. As it was the perfect time for me to be about such a thing, I felt that it would make my day's retirement believable. Of course, this obliged me to follow through on it that night. But this, too, was good. It gave me a day, a night, and part of the following day in which to heal sufficiently to carry my wound that much the better. I felt that it would be time well spent.

You've got to tell someone, though. I told Random and I told Ganelon. Propped in my bed, I told them of the plans of Brand, Fiona, and Bleys, and of the Eric-Julian-Caine cabal. I told them what Brand had said concerning my return and his own imprisonment by his fellow conspirators. They saw why the survivors of both factions - Fiona and Julian - had run off: doubtless to marshal their forces, hopefully to expend them on one another, but probably not. Not immediately, anyhow. More likely, one or the other would move to take Amber first.

«They will just have to take numbers and wait their turns, like everyone else,» Random had said.

«Not exactly,» I remembered saying. «Fiona's allies and the things that have been coming in on the black road are the same guys.»

«And the Circle in Lorraine?» Ganelon had asked.

«The same. That was how it manifested itself in that shadow. They came a great distance.»

«Ubiquitous bastards,» Random had said.

Nodding, I had tried to explain.