I would have to find out who it was, quickly—and he was not yet ready to tell me, of course, knowing nothing of my present motives. A liaison with Amber could be used to hurt me or benefit me in short order, depending upon his desire and the person on the other end. It was therefore both sword and shield to him, and I was somewhat hurt that he had chosen to display these accoutrements so quickly. I chose to take it that his recent injury had served to make him abnormally wary, for I had certainly never given him cause for distress. Still, this caused me to feel abnormally wary also, a sad thing to know when meeting one‘s brother again for the first time in many years.
“It is interesting,” I said, swirling the wine within my cup. “In this light, then, it appears that everyone may have acted prematurely.”
“Not everyone,” he said.
I felt my face redden.
“Your, pardon,” I said.
He nodded curtly.
“Please continue your telling.”
“Well, to continue my chain of assumptions,” I said, “when Eric decided that the throne had been vacant long enough and the time had come to make his move, he must also have decided that my amnesia was not sufficient and that it would be better to see my claim quitted entirely. At this time, he arranged for me to have an accident off on that shadow Earth, an accident which should have proven fatal but did not.”
“How do you know this? How much of it is guesswork?”
“Flora as much as admitted it to me—including her own complicity in the thing—when I questioned her later.”
“Very interesting. Go on.”
“The bash on my head provided what even Sigmoid Freud had been unable to obtain for me earlier,” I said. “There returned to me small recollections that grew stronger and stronger—especially after I encountered Flora and was exposed to all manner of things that stimulated my memory. I was able to convince her that it had fully returned, so her speech was open as to people and things. Then Random showed up, fleeing from something—”
“Fleeing? From what? Why?”
“From some strange creatures out of Shadow. I never found out why.”
“Interesting,” he said, and I had to agree. I had thought of it often, back in my cell, wondering just why Random had entered, stage left, pursued by Furies, in the first place. From the moment we met until the moment we parted, we had been in some sort of peril; I had been preoccupied with my own troubles and he had volunteered nothing concerning his abrupt appearance. It had crossed my mind, of course, at the time of his arrival, but I was uncertain as to whether it was something of which I might be expected to have knowledge, and I let it go at that. Events then submerged it until later in my cell and again the present moment. Interesting? Indeed. Also, troubling.
“I managed to take in Random as to my condition,” I continued. “He believed I was seeking the throne, when all that I was consciously seeking was my memory. He agreed to help me return to Amber, and he succeeded in getting me back. Well, almost,” I corrected. “We wound up in Rebma. By then, I had told Random my true condition, and he proposed my walking the Pattern again as a means of restoring it fully. The opportunity was there, and I took it. It proved effective, and I used the power of the Pattern to transport myself into Amber.” He smiled.
“At this point. Random must have been a very unhappy man,” he said.
“He was not exactly singing with glee,” I said. “He had accepted Moire‘s judgment, that he wed a woman of her choosing—a blind girl named Vialle—and remain there with her for at least a year. I left him behind, and I later learned that he had done this thing. Deirdre was also there. We had encountered her along the way, in flight from Amber, and the three of us had entered Rebma together. She remained behind, also.”
I finished my wine and Benedict nodded toward the bottle. It was almost empty, though, so he fetched a fresh bottle from his chest and we filled our cups. I took a long swallow. It was better wine than the previous. Must have been his private stock.