“To return to conjecture, Eric must have stayed his hand at the last moment, desiring my death, but not wanting it traceable to him. So he transported me through Shadow to a place of sudden, almost certain death—doubtless to return and say that we had argued and I had ridden off in a huff, muttering something about going away again. We had been hunting in the Forest of Arden that day—just the two of us, together.”
“I find it strange,” Benedict interrupted, “that two rivals such as yourselves should elect to hunt together under such circumstances.”
I took a sip of wine and smiled.
“Perhaps it was a trifle more contrived than I made it sound,” I said. “Perhaps we both welcomed the opportunity to hunt together. Just the two of us.”
“I see,” he said. “So it is possible that your situations could have been reversed?”
“Well,” I said, “that is difficult to say. I do not believe I would have gone that far. I am talking as of now, of course. People do change, you know. Back then . . . ? Yes, I might have done the same thing to him. I cannot say for certain, but it is possible.” He nodded again, and I felt a flash of anger which passed quickly into amusement.
“Fortunately, I am not out to justify my own motives for anything,” I continued. “To go on with my guesswork, I believe that Eric kept tabs on me after that, doubtless disappointed at first that I had survived, but satisfied as to my harmlessness. So he arranged to have Flora keep an eye on me, and the world turned peacefully for a long while. Then, presumably, Dad abdicated and disappeared without the question of the succession having been settled—”
“The hell he did!” said Benedict. “There was no abdication. He just vanished. One morning he simply was not in his chambers. His bed had not even been slept in. There were no messages. He had been seen entering the suite the evening before, but no one saw him depart. And even this was not considered strange for a long while. At first it was simply thought that he was sojourning in Shadow once again, perhaps to seek another bride. It was a long while before anyone dared suspect foul play or chose to construe this as a novel form of abdication.”
“I was not aware of this,” I said. “Your sources of information seem to have been closer to the heart of things than mine were.”
He only nodded, giving rise to uneasy speculations on my part as to his contact in Amber. For all I knew, he could be pro-Eric these days.
“When was the last time you were back there yourself?” I ventured.
“A little over twenty years ago,” he replied, “but I keep in touch.”
Not with anyone who had cared to mention it to me! He must have known that as he said it, so did he mean me to take it as a caution—or a threat? My mind raced. Of course he possessed a set of the Major Trumps. I fanned them mentally and went through them like mad. Random had professed ignorance as to his whereabouts. Brand had been missing a long while. I had had indication that he was still alive, imprisoned in some unpleasant place or other and in no position to report on the happenings in Amber. Flora could not have been his contact, as she had been in virtual exile in Shadow herself until recently. Llewella was in Rebma. Deirdre was in Rebma also, and had been out of favor in Amber when last I saw her. Fiona? Julian had told me she was “somewhere to the south.” He was uncertain as to precisely where. Who did that leave?
Eric himself, Julian, Gerard, or Caine, as I saw it. Scratch Eric. He would not have passed along the details of Dad‘s non-abdication in a manner that would allow things to be taken as Benedict had taken them. Julian supported Eric, but was not without personal ambitions of the highest order. He would pass along information if it might benefit him to do so. Ditto for Caine. Gerard, on the other hand, had always struck me as more interested in the welfare of Amber itself than in the question of who sat on its throne. He was not over-fond of Eric, though, and had once been willing to support either Bleys or myself over him. I believed he would have considered Benedict‘s awareness of events to be something in the nature of an insurance policy for the realm. Yes, it was almost certainly one of these three. Julian hated me. Caine neither liked nor disliked me especially, and Gerard and I shared fond memories that went all the way back to my childhood.