Martinez followed us and started shooting as we stood admiring the night. Perhaps he’d decided Luke was not reliable or couldn’t deliver. Luke surprised me by drawing a weapon of his own and shooting Martinez. Then an even stranger thing happened. Luke called me by name-my real name, which I’d never told him-and cited my parentage and told me to get into the car and get the hell out. He emphasized his point by placing a shot in the ground near my feet. The matter did not seem open to discussion so I departed. He also told me to destroy those strange Trumps that had saved my life once already. And I’d learned on the way up that he’d known Victor Melman. . . .
I didn’t go far. I parked downhill and returned on foot. Luke was gone. So was Martinei s body. Luke did not return to the hotel, that night or the next day, so I checked out and departed. The only person I was sure I could trust, and who actually might have some good advice for me, was Bill Roth. Bill was an attorney who lived in upstate New York, and he had been my father’s best friend. I went to visit him, and I told him my story.
Bill got me to wondering even morc about Luke. Luke, by the way, is a big, smart, red-haired natural athlete of uncanny prowess-and though we’d been friends for many years I knew next to nothing (as Bill pointed out) concerning his background.
A neighboring lad named George Hansen began hanging out near Bill’s place, asking strange questions. I received an odd phone call, asking similar questions. Both interrogators seemed curious as to my mother’s name. Naturally, I lied. The fact that my mother is a member of the dark aristocracy of the Courts of Chaos was none of their business. But the caller spoke my language, Thari, which made me curious enough to propose a meeting and a trade-off of information that evening in the bar of the local country club.
But my Uncle Random, King of Amber, called me home before that, while Bill and I were out hiking. George Hansen, it turned out, was following us and wanted to come along as we shifted away across the shadows of reality. Tough; he wasn’t invited. I took Bill along because I didn’t want to leave him with anyone acting that peculiar.
I learned from Random that my Uncle Caine was dead, of an assassin’s bullet, and that someone had also tried to kill my Uncle Bleys but only succeeded in wounding him. The funeral service for Caine would be the following day.
I kept my date at the country club that evening, but my mysterious interrogator was nowhere in sight. All was not lost, however, as I made the acquaintance of a pretty lady named Meg Devlin-and, one thing leading to another, I saw her home and we got to know each other a lot better. Then, at a moment when I would have judged her thoughts to be anywhere but there, she asked me my mother’s name. So, what the hell, I told her. It did not come to me until later that she might really have been the person I’d gone to the bar to meet.
Our liaison was terminated prematurely by a call from the lobby-from a man purportedly Meg’s husband. I did what any gentleman would do. I got the hell out fast.
My Aunt Fiona, who is a sorceress (of a different style from my own), had not approved of my date. And apparently she approved even less of Luke, because she asked me whether I had a picture of him after I’d told her somewhat concerning him. I showed her a photo I had in my wallet, which included Luke in the group. I’d have sworn she recognized him from somewhere, though she wouldn’t admit it. But the fact that she and her brother Bleys both disappeared from Amber that night would seem more than coincidental.
The pace of events was accelerated even more after that. A crude attempt at knocking off most of the family with a thrown bomb was made the next day, following Caine’s funeral. The would-be assassin escaped. Later, Random was upset at a brief demonstration on my part of the power of the Ghostwheel, my pet project, my hobby, my avocation during those years at Grand Design. Ghostwheel is a-well, it started out as a computer that required a different set of physical laws to operate than those I’d learned in school. It involved what might be called magic. But I found a place where it could be built and operated, and I’d constructed it there. It was still programming itself when I’d left it. It seemed to have gone sentient, and I think it scared Random. He ordered me to go and turn it off. I didn’t much like the idea, but I departed.