It had nothing to do with the fact that Brand had probably saved my life. I figured I had squared accounts with him by getting him out of that damned tower. No. It was neither indebtedness nor sentiment that caused me to cast about for ways to mislead Random or slow him down. It was the naked, frigid fact that I needed Brand. He had seen to that. My reason for saving him was no more altruistic than his had been in dragging me out of the lake. He possessed something I needed now: information. He had realized this immediately and he was rationing it-his life’s union dues.
“I do see the resemblance,” I said to Random, “and you may well be right about what happened.”
“Of course I am right.”
“It is the card that was pierced,” I said.
“Obviously. I don’t-“
“He was not brought through on the Trump, then. The person who did it therefore made contact, but was unable to persuade him to come across.”
“So? The contact had progressed to a point of sufficient solidity and proximity that he was able to stab him anyway. He was probably even able to achieve a mental lock and hold him where he was while he bled. The kid probably hadn’t had much experience with the Trumps.”
“Maybe yes, maybe no,” I said. “Llewella or Moire might be able to tell us how much he knew about the Trumps. But what I was getting at was the possibility that contact could have been broken before death. If he inherited your regenerative abilities he might have survived.”
“Might have? I don’t want guesses! I want answers!”
I commenced a balancing act within my mind. I believed I knew something that he did not, but then my source was not the best. Also, I wanted to keep quiet about the possibility because I had not had a chance to discuss it with Benedict. On the other hand, Martin was Random’s son, and I did want to direct his attention away from Brand.
“Random, I may have something,” I said.
“What?”
“Right after Brand was stabbed,” I said, “when we were talking together in the sitting room, do you remember when the conversation turned to the subject of Martin?”
“Yes. Nothing new came up.”
“I had something I might have added at that time, but I restrained myself because everyone was there. Also, because I wanted to pursue it in private with the party concerned.”
“Who?”
“Benedict.”
“Benedict? What has he to do with Martin?”
“I do not know. That is why I wanted to keep it quiet until I found out. And my source of information was a touchy one, at that”
“Go ahead.”
“Dara. Benedict gets mad as hell whenever I mention her name, but so far a number of things she told me have proved correct-things like the journey of Julian and Gerard along the black road, their injury, their stay in Avalon. Benedict admitted these things had happened.”
“What did she say about Martin?”
Indeed. How to phrase it without giving away the show on Brand . . . ? Dara had said that Brand had visited Benedict a number of times in Avalon, over a span of years. The time differential between Amber and Avalon is such that it seemed likely, now that I thought about it, that the visits fell into the period when Brand was so actively seeking information on Martin. I had wondered what kept drawing him back there, since he and Benedict had never been especially chummy.
“Only that Benedict had had a visitor named Martin, whom she thought was from Amber,” I lied.
“When?”
“Some while back. I’m not sure.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
“It is not really very much-and besides, you had never seemed especially interested in Martin.”
Random shifted his gaze to the griffin, crouched and gurgling on my right, then nodded.
“I am now,” he said. “Things change. If he is still alive, I would like to get to know him. If he is not…”
“Okay,” I said. “The best way to be about either one is to start figuring a way to get home. I believe we have seen what we were supposed to see and I would like to clear out.”