“Corey” (that was how I’d named myself), “I’d like to sail with you one day,” he said. “I hadn’t realized you were skipper of your own vessel one time.”
“Who knows?” I told him. “You were once a captain yourself, weren’t you?”
“How’d you know?” he asked.
Actually, I’d remembered, but I gestured about me in reply.
“All these things you’ve collected,” I said, “and your fondness for the charts, Also, you bear yourself like a man who once held a command.”
He smiled.
“Yes,” he told me, “that’s true. I had a command for over a hundred years. That seems long ago . . . Let’s have another drink.”
I sipped mine and sort of put it aside. I must have gained over forty pounds in the months I had spent with him. Any day now, I was expecting him to recognize me as a member of the family. Maybe he would turn me in to Eric if he did—and maybe not. Now that we’d established this much of camaraderie, I had a feeling that he might not do it. I didn’t want to take the chance and find out.
Sometimes as I sat tending the light I wondered, “How long should I stay here?”
Not too much longer, I decided, adding a drop of grease to a swivel bearing. Not much longer at all. The time was drawing near when I should take to the road and walk among Shadows once again.
Then one day I felt the pressure, gentle and questing at first. I couldn’t tell for sure who it was.
I immediately stood stock still, closed my eyes and made my mind go blank. It was about five minutes before the questing presence withdrew.
I paced then and wondered, and I smiled when I realized the shortness of my course. Unconsciously, I had been pacing out the dimensions of my cell back in Amber.
Someone had just tried to reach me, via my Trump. Was it Eric? Had he finally become aware of my absence and decided to try locating me in this manner? I wasn’t sure. I felt that he might fear mental contact with me again. Julian, then? Or Gerard? Caine? Whoever it had been, I had closed him out completely, I knew that. And I would refuse such contact with any of my family. I might be missing some important news or a helpful call, but I couldn’t afford to take the chance. The attempted contact and my blocking efforts left me with a chill. I shuddered. I thought about the thing all the rest of the day and decided that the time had come for me to move on. It wouldn’t do for me to remain this close to Amber while I was so vulnerable. I had recovered sufficiently to make my way among Shadows, to seek for the place where I had to go if Amber were ever to be mine. I had been lulled into something close to peace by old Join’s ministrations. It would be a pain to leave him, for in the months of our association I had come to like the old guy. so that evening, after we’d finished a game of chess, I told him of my plans to depart.
He poured us two drinks then raised his and said, “Good luck to you, Corwin. I hope to see you again one day.”
I didn’t question the fact that he had called me by my proper name, and he smiled as he realized that I hadn’t let it slip by.
“You’ve been all right, Jopin,” I told him. “If I should succeed in what I’m about to try, I won’t forget what you did for me.”
He shook his head.
“I don’t want anything,” he said. “I’m happy right where I am, doing exactly what I’m doing. I enjoy running this damned tower. It’s my whole life. If you should succeed in whatever you’re about—no, don’t tell me about it, please! I don’t want to know!—I’ll be hoping you’ll stop around for a game of chess sometime.”
“I will,” I promised.
“You can take the Butterfly in the morning, if you’d like.”
“Thanks.”
The Butterfly was his sailboat.