I nodded. It was unfortunate, but family etiquette as well as the balance of power required that I answer his questions before asking any of my own. He was my elder, and I had—albeit unknowing—intruded in his sphere of influence. It was not that I begrudged him the courtesy. He was one of the few among my many relatives whom I respected and even liked. It was that I was itching to question him. It had been, as he had said, too long.
And how much should I tell him now? I had no notion where his sympathies might lie. I did not desire to discover the reasons for his self-imposed exile from Amber by mentioning the wrong things. I would have to begin with something fairly neutral and sound him out as I went along.
“There must be a beginning,” he said then. “I care not what face you put upon it.”
“There are many beginnings,” I said. “It is difficult . . . I suppose I should go all the way back and take it from there.” I took another sip of the wine.
“Yes,” I decided. “That seems simplest—though it was only comparatively recently that I recalled much of what had occurred.”
“It was several years after the defeat of the Moonriders out of Ghenesh and your departure that Eric and I had a major falling out,” I began. “Yes, it was a quarrel over the succession. Dad had been making abdication noises again, and he still refused to name a successor. Naturally, the old arguments were resumed as to who was more legitimate. Of course, you and Eric are both my elders, but while Faiella, mother to Eric and myself, was his wife after the death of Clymnea, they—”
“Enough!” cried Benedict, slapping the table so hard that it cracked.
The lamp danced and sputtered, but by some small miracle was not upset. The tent‘s entrance flap was immediately pushed aside and a concerned guard peered in. Benedict glanced at him and he withdrew.
“I do not wish to sit in on our respective bastardy proceeding,” Benedict said softly. “That obscene pastime was one of the reasons I initially absented myself from felicity. Please continue your story without the benefit of footnotes.”
“Well—yes,” I said, coughing lightly. “As I was saying, we had some rather bitter arguments concerning the whole matter. Then one evening it went beyond mere words. We fought.”
“A duel?”
“Nothing that formal. A simultaneous decision to murder one another is more like it. At any rate, we fought for a long while and Eric finally got the upper hand and proceeded to pulverize me. At the risk of getting ahead of my story, I have to add that all of this was only recalled to me about five years ago.” Benedict nodded, as though he understood.
“I can only conjecture as to what occurred immediately after I lost consciousness,” I went on. “But Eric stopped short of killing me himself. When I awakened, I was on a shadow Earth in a place called London. The plague was rampant at the time, and I had contracted it. I recovered with no memory of anything prior to London. I dwelled on that shadow world for centuries, seeking some clue as to my identity. I traveled all over it, often as part of some military campaign. I attended their universities, I spoke with some of their wisest men, I consulted famous physicians. But nowhere could I find the key to my past. It was obvious to me that I was not like other men and I took great pains to conceal this fact. I was furious because I could have anything that I wanted except what I wanted most—my own identity, my memories.
“The years passed, but this anger and this longing did not. It took an accident that fractured my skull to set off the changes that led to the return of my first recollections. This was approximately five years ago, and the irony of it is that I have good reason to believe Eric was responsible for the accident. Flora had apparently been resident on that shadow Earth all along, keeping watch over me.