“If you should get to see him again, give him my regards and my regrets.”
“Yes.”
“How fare my sisters?”
“Dierdre and LIewella remain in Rebma. The Lady Florimel has been enjoying Eric’s favors and stands high in the present court. I do not know where Fiona is presently.”
“Has anything more been heard of Bleys? I am sure that he died.”
“He must have died,” said Rein, “His body was never recovered, though.”
“What of Benedict?”
“As absent as ever.”
“How about Brand?”
“No word.”
“Then I guess that covers the whole family tree, as it stands at present. Have you written any new ballads?”
“No,” he said. “I’m still working on ‘The Siege of Amber,’ but it will be an underground hit, if at all.”
I reached my hand out through the tiny gate at the bottom of the door.
“I would clasp hands with thee,” I said, and I felt his hand touch mine.
“It was good of thee to do this thing for me. Don’t do it again, though. It would he foolish to risk Eric’s wrath.”
He squeezed my hand, muttered something, and was gone.
I found his CARE package and stuffed myself with the meat, which was the most perishable item. I ate a lot of the bread. to accompany it, and I realized that I had almost forgotten how good food can taste. Then I grew drowsy and slept. I don’t think I slept very long, and when I awoke I opened one of the bottles of wine.
It didn’t take as much as usual, in my weakened condition, to get me kind of high. I had a cigarette. sat down on my mattress, leaned back against the wall, and mused.
I remembered Rein as a child. I was already full grown by then and he was a candidate for court jester. A thin, wise kid. People had kidded him too much. Me included. But I wrote music, composed ballads, and he’d picked up a lute somewhere and had taught himself how to use it. Soon we were singing with voices together raised and all like that, and before long I took a liking to him and we worked together. practicing the martial arts. He was lousy at them. But I felt kind of sorry for the way I had treated him earlier, what with the way he had dug my stuff, so I forced the fake graces upon him and also made him a passable saber man. I’d never regretted it, and I guess he didn’t either. Before long, he became minstrel to the court of Amber. I had called him my page all that while, and when the wars beckoned, against the dark things out of Shadow called Weirmonken, I made him my squire, and we had ridden off to the wars together. I knighted him upon the battlefield, at Jones Falls, and he had deserved it. After that, he had gone on to become my better when it came to the ways of words and music. His colors were crimson and his words were golden. I loved him, as one of my two or three friends in Amber. I didn’t think he’d take the risk he had to bring me a decent meal, though. I didn’t think anyone would. I had another drink and smoked another cigarette, in his name, to celebrate him. He was a good man. I wondered how long he would survive.
I threw all the butts into the head and also-eventually-the empty bottle. I didn’t want anything around to show that I had been “enjoying” myself, should a sudden inspection be held. I ate all the good food he had brought me, and I felt surfeited for the first time since I had been in durance. I saved the last bottle for one massive spell of drunkenness and forgetfulness.
And after that time had passed, I returned to my cycle of recriminations.
I hoped, mainly, that Eric had no measure of our complete powers. He was king in Amber, granted, but he didn’t know everything. Not yet. Not the way Dad had known. There was a million-in-one shot that might still work in my favor. So much so, and so different that at least it served to grant me my small purchase upon sanity, there in the grip of despair.