Sign of the unicorn (12 page)

“No,” he had said. “I know that I did not do it, and that is all that I know. There will be no second chance for anyone else.”

With any one of us sustaining that sort of wound while in an otherwise sound condition, I would say that if he made it through the first half hour he would make it. Brand, though . . . The shape he was in . . . There was no telling.

When the others returned with the materials and equipment, Gerard cleaned Brand, sutured the wound, and dressed it. He hooked up the IV, broke off the manacles with a hammer and chisel Random had located, covered Brand with a sheet and a blanket, and took his pulse again.

“How is it?” I asked.

“Weak,” he said, and he drew up a chair and seated himself beside the couch. “Someone fetch me my blade-and a glass of wine. I didn’t have any. Also, if there is any food left over there, I’m hungry.”

Llewella headed for the sideboard and Random got him his blade from the rack behind the door.

“Are you just going to camp there?” Random asked, passing him the weapon.

“I am.”

“What about moving Brand to a better bed?”

“He is all right where he is. I will decide when he can be moved. In the meantime, someone get a fire going. Then put out a few of those candles.”

Random nodded.

“I’ll do it,” he said. Then he picked up the knife Gerard had drawn from Brand’s side, a thin stiletto, its blade about seven inches in length. He held it across the palm of his hand.

“Does anyone recognize this?” he asked.

“Not I,” said Benedict.

“Nor I.” said Julian.

“No,” I said.

The girls shook their heads.

Random studied it.

“Easily concealed-up a sleeve, in a boot or bodice. It took real nerve to use it that way. . . .”

“Desperation,” I said.

“. . . And a very accurate anticipation of our mob scene. Inspired, almost.”

“Could one of the guards have done it?” Julian asked. “Back in the cell?”

“No,” Gerard said. “None of them came near enough.”

“It looks to be decently balanced for throwing,” Deirdre said.

“It is,” said Random, shifting it about his fingertips. “Only none of them had a clear shot or the opportunity. I’m positive.

Llewella returned, bearing a tray containing slabs of meat, half a loaf of bread, a bottle of wine, and a goblet. I cleared a small table and set it beside Gerard’s chair.

As Llewella deposited the tray, she asked, “But why? That only leaves us. Why would one of us want to do it?”

I sighed.

“Whose prisoner do you think he might have been?” I asked.

“One of us?”

“If he possessed knowledge which someone was willing to go to this length to suppress, what do you think? The same reason also served to put him where he was and keep him there.”

Her brows tightened.

“That does not make sense either. Why didn’t they just kill him and be done with it?”

I shrugged.

“Must have had some use for him,” I said. “But there is really only one person who can answer that question adequately. When you find him, ask him.”

“Or her,” Julian said. “Sister, you seem possessed of a superabundance of naivete, suddenly.”

Her gaze locked with Julian’s own, a pair of icebergs reflecting frigid infinities.

“As I recall,” she said, “you rose from your seat when they came through, turned to the left, rounded the desk, and stood slightly to Gerard’s right. You leaned pretty far forward. I believe your hands were out of sight, below.”

“And as I recall,” he said, “you were within striking distance yourself, off to Gerard’s left-and leaning forward.”

“I would have had to do it with my left hand-and I am right-handed.”

“Perhaps he owes what life he still possesses to that fact.”

“You seem awfully anxious, Julian, to find that it was someone else.”

“All right,” I said. “All right! You know this is self defeating. Only one of us did it, and this is not the way to smoke him out.”

“Or her,” Julian added.

Gerard rose, glowered, glared.

“I will not have you disturbing my patient,” he said. “And, Random, you said you were going to see to the fire.”

“Right away,” Random said, and moved to do it.

“Let us adjourn to the sitting room off the main hall,” I said, “downstairs. Gerard, I will post a couple of guards outside the door here.”

“No,” Gerard said. “I would rather that anyone who wishes to try it get this far. I will hand you his head in the morning.”

I nodded.

“Well, you can ring for anything you need-or call one of us on the Trumps. We will fill you in in the morning on anything that we learn.”

Gerard seated himself, grunted, and began eating. Random got the fire going and extinguished some lights. Brand’s blanket rose and fell, slowly but regularly. We filed quietly from the room and headed for the stairway, leaving them there together with the flare and the crackle, the tubes and the bottles.

Many are the times I have awakened, sometimes shaking, always afraid, from the dream that I occupied my old cell, blind once more, in the dungeons beneath Amber. It is not as if I were unfamiliar with the condition of imprisonment. I have been locked away on a number of occasions, for various periods of time. But solitary, plus blindness with small hope of recovery, made for a big charge at the sensory-deprivation counter in the department store of the mind. That, with the sense of finality to it all, had left its marks. I generally keep these memories safely tucked away during waking hours, but at night, sometimes, they come loose, dance down the aisles and frolic round the notions counter, one, two, three. Seeing Brand there in his cell had brought them out again, along with an unseasonal chill; and that final thrust served to establish a more or less permanent residence for them. Now, among my kin in the shield-hung sitting room, I could not avoid the thought that one or more of them had done unto Brand as Eric had done unto me. While this capacity was in itself hardly a surprising discovery, the matter of occupying the same room with the culprit and having no idea as to his identity was more than a little disturbing. My only consolation was that each of the others, according to his means, must be disturbed also. Including the guilty, now that the existence theorem had shown a positive. I knew then that I had been hoping all along that outsiders were entirely to blame. Now, though . . . On the one hand I felt even more restricted than usual in what I could say. On the other, it seemed a good time to press for information, with everyone in an abnormal state of mind. The desire to cooperate for purposes of dealing with the threat could prove helpful. And even the guilty party would want to behave the same as everyone else. Who knew but that he might slip up while making the effort?

“Well, have you any other interesting little experiments you would care to conduct?” Julian asked me, clasping his hands behind his head and leaning back in my favorite chair.

“Not at the moment,” I said.

“Pity,” he replied. “I was hoping you would suggest we go looking for Dad now in the same fashion. Then, if we are lucky, we find him and someone puts him out of the way with more certainty. After that, we could all play Russian roulette with those fine new weapons you’ve furnished-winner take all.”

“Your words are ill-considered,” I said.

“Not so. I considered every one of them,” he answered. “We spend so much time lying to one another that I decided it might be amusing to say what I really felt. Just to see whether anyone noticed.”

“Now you see that we have. We also notice that the real you is no improvement over the old one.”

“Whichever you prefer, both of us have been wondering whether you have any idea what you are going to do next.”

“I do,” I said. “I now intend to obtain answers to a number of questions dealing with everything that is plaguing us. We might as well start with Brand and his troubles.”

Turning toward Benedict, who was sitting gazing into the fire, I said, “Back in Avalon, Benedict, you told me that Brand was one of the ones who searched for me after my disappearance.”

“That is correct,” Benedict answered.

“All of us went looking,” Julian said.

“Not at first,” I replied. “Initially, it was Brand, Gerard, and yourself, Benedict. Isn’t that what you told me?”

“Yes,” he said. “The others did have a go at it later, though. I told you that, too.”

I nodded.

“Did Brand report anything unusual at that time?” I asked.

“Unusual? In what way?” said Benedict.

“I don’t know. I am looking for some connection between what happened to him and what happened to me.”

“Then you are looking in the wrong place,” Benedict said. “He returned and reported no success. And he was around for ages after that, unmolested.”

“I gathered that much,” I said. “I understand from what Random has told me, though, that his final disappearance occurred approximately a month before my own recovery and return. That almost strikes me as peculiar. If he did not report anything special after his return from the search, did he do so prior to his disappearance? Or in the interim? Anyone? Anything? Say it if you’ve got it!”

There followed some mutual glancing about. The looks seemed more curious than suspicious or nervous, though.

Finally, then, “Well,” Llewella said, “I do not know. Do not know whether it is significant, I mean.”

All eyes came to rest upon her. She began to knot and unknot the ends of her belt cord, slowly, as she spoke.

“It was in the interim, and it may have no bearing,” she went on. “It is just something that struck me as peculiar. Brand came to Rebma long ago-“

“How long ago?” I asked.

She furrowed her brow.

“Fifty, sixty, seventy years . . . I am not certain.”

I tried to summon up the rough conversion factor I had worked out during my long incarceration. A day in Amber, it seemed, constituted a bit over two and a half days on the shadow Earth where I had spent my exile. I wanted to relate events in Amber to my own time-scale whenever possible, just in case any peculiar correspondences turned up. So Brand had gone to Rebma sometime in what was, to me, the nineteenth century.

“Whatever the date,” she said, “he came and visited me. Stayed for several weeks.” She glanced at Random then. “He was asking about Martin.”

Random narrowed his eyes and cocked his head. “Did he say why?” he asked her.

“Not exactly,” she said. “He implied that he had met Martin somewhere in his travels, and he gave the impression that he would like to get in touch with him again. I did not realize until some time after his departure that finding out everything he could concerning Martin was probably the entire reason for his visit. You know how subtle Brand can be, finding out things without seeming to be after them. It was only after I had spoken with a number of others whom he had visited that I began to see what had occurred. I never did find out why, though.”

“That is-most peculiar,” Random observed. “For it brings to mind something to which I had never attached any significance. He once questioned me at great length concerning my son-and it may well have been at about the same time. He never indicated that he had met him, however-or that he had any desire to do so. It started out as a bit of banter on the subject of bastards. When I took offense he apologized and asked a number of more proper questions about the boy, which I assumed he then put for the sake of politeness-to leave me with a softer remembrance. As you say, though, he had a way of drawing admissions from people. Why is it you never told me of. this before?”

She smiled prettily.

“Why should I have?” she said.

Random nodded slowly, his face expressionless.

“Well, what did you tell him?” he said. “What did he learn? What do you know about Martin that I don’t?”

She shook her head, her smile fading.

“Nothing-actually,” she said. “To my knowledge, no one in Rebma ever heard from Martin after he took the Pattern and vanished. I do not believe that Brand departed knowing any more than he did when he arrived.”

“Strange . . .” I said. “Did he approach anyone else on the subject?”

“I don’t remember,” Julian said.

“Nor I,” said Benedict.

The others shook their heads.

“Then let us note it and leave it for now,” I said. “There are other things I also need to know. Julian, I understand that you and Gerard attempted to follow the black road a while back, and that Gerard was injured along the way. I believe you both stayed with Benedict for a time after that, while Gerard recuperated. I would like to know about that expedition.”

“It seems as if you already do,” Julian replied. “You have just stated everything that occurred.”

“Where did you learn of this, Corwin,” Benedict inquired.

“Back in Avalon,” I said.

“From whom?”