Sign of the unicorn (10 page)

“Yes. Look down, Corwin,” he said, feeling me stir, glancing up, meeting my eyes. “All that I need to do is open my hands.”

“I hear you,” I said softly, trying to figure a way to drag him along with me if he decided to do it.

“I am not a clever man,” he said. “But I had a thought-a terrible thought. This is the only way that I know to do something about it. My thought was that you had been away from Amber for an awfully long while. I have no way of knowing whether the story about your losing your memory is entirely true. You have come back and you have taken charge of things, but you do not yet truly rule here. I was troubled by the deaths of Benedict’s servants, as I am troubled now by the death of Caine. But Eric has died recently also, and Benedict is maimed. It is not so easy to blame you for this part of things, but it has occurred to me that it might be possible-if it should be that you are secretly allied with our enemies of the black road.”

“I am not,” I said.

“It does not matter, for what I have to say,” he said. “Just hear me out. Things will go the way that they will go. If, during your long absence, you arranged this state of affairs-possibly even removing Dad and Brand as part of your design-then I see you as out to destroy all family resistance to your usurpation.”

“Would I have delivered myself to Eric to be blinded and imprisoned if this were the case?”

“Hear me out!” he repeated. “You could easily have made mistakes that led to that. It does not matter now. You may be as innocent as you say or as guilty as possible. Look down, Corwin. That is all. Look down at the black road. Death is the limit of the distance you travel if that is your doing. I have shown you my strength once again, lest you have forgotten. I can kill you, Corwin. Do not even be certain that your blade will protect you, if I can get my hands on you but once. And I will, to keep my promise. My promise is only that if you are guilty I will kill you the moment I learn of it. Know also that my life is insured, Corwin, for it is linked now to your own.”

“What do you mean?”

“All of the others are with us at this moment, via my Trump, watching, listening. You cannot arrange my removal now without revealing your intentions to the entire family. That way, if I die forsworn, my promise can still be kept.”

“I get the point,” I said. “And if someone else kills you? They remove me, also. That leaves Julian, Benedict, Random, and the girls to man the barricades. Better and better-for whoever it is. Whose idea was this, really?”

“Mine! Mine alone!” he said, and I felt his grip tighten, his arms bend and grow tense.

“You are just trying to confuse things! Like you always do!” he groaned. “Things didn’t go bad till you came back! Damn it, Corwin! I think it’s your fault!”

Then he hurled me into the air.

“Not guilty, Gerard!” was all I had time to shout.

Then he caught me-a great, shoulder-wrenching grab-and snatched me back from the precipice. He swung me in and around and set me on my feet. He walked off immediately, heading back to the gravelly area where we had fought. I followed him and we collected our things.

As he was clasping his big belt he looked up at me and looked away again.

“We’ll not talk about it any more,” he said.

“All right.”

I turned and walked back to the horses. We mounted and continued on down the trail.

The spring made its small music in the grove. Higher now, the sun strung lines of light through the trees. There was still some dew on the ground. The sod that I had cut for Caine’s grave was moist with it.

I fetched the spade that I had packed and opened the grave. Without a word, Gerard helped me move the body onto a piece of sailcloth we had brought for that purpose. We folded it about him and closed it with big, loose stitches.

“Corwin! Look!”

It was a whisper, and Gerard’s hand closed on my elbow as he spoke.

I followed the direction of his gaze and froze. Neither of us moved as we regarded the apparition: a soft, shimmering white encompassed it, as if it were covered with down rather than fur and maning; its tiny, cloven hooves were golden, as was the delicate, whorled horn that rose from its narrow head. It stood atop one of the lesser rocks, nibbling at the lichen that grew there. Its eyes, when it raised them and looked in our direction, were a bright, emerald green. It joined us in immobility for a pair of instants. Then it made a quick, nervous gesture with its front feet, pawing the air and striking the stone, three times. And then it blurred and vanished like a snowflake, silently, perhaps in the woods to our right.

I rose and crossed to the stone. Gerard followed me. There, in the moss, I traced its tiny hoofmarks.

“Then we really did see it,” Gerard said.

I nodded.

“We saw something. Did you ever see it before?”

“No. Did you?”

I shook my head.

“Julian claims he once saw it,” he said, “in the distance. Says his hounds refused to give chase.”

“It was beautiful. That long, silky tail, those shiny hooves. . .”

“Yes. Dad always took it as a good omen.”

“I’d like to myself.”

“Strange time for it to appear. . . All these years . . .”

I nodded again.

“Is there a special observance? It being our patron and all . . . is there something we should do?”

“If there is, Dad never told me about it,” I said.

I patted the rock on which it had appeared.

“If you herald some turn in our fortunes, if you bring us some measure of grace-thanks, unicorn,” I said. “And even if you do not, thanks for the brightness of your company at a dark time.”

We went and drank from the spring then. We secured our grim parcel on the back of the third horse. We led our mounts until we were away from the place, where, save for the water, things had become very still.

Life’s incessant ceremonies leap everlasting, humans spring eternal on hope’s breast, and frying pans without fires are often far between: the sum of my long life’s wisdom that evening, tendered in a spirit of creative anxiety, answered by Random with a nod and a friendly obscenity.

We were in the library, and I was seated on the edge of the big desk. Random occupied a chair to my right. Gerard stood at the other end of the room, inspecting some weapons that hung on the wall. Or maybe it was Rein’s etching of the unicorn he was looking at. Whichever, along with ourselves, he was also ignoring Julian, who was slouched in an easy chair beside the display cases, right center, legs extended and crossed at the ankles, arms folded, staring down at his scaley boots. Fiona-five-two, perhaps, in height-green eyes fixed on Flora’s own blue as they spoke, there beside the fireplace, hair more than compensating for the vacant hearth, smoldering, reminded me, as always, of something from which the artist had just drawn back, setting aside his tools, questions slowly forming behind his smile. The place at the base of her throat where his thumb had notched the collarbone always drew my eyes as the mark of a master craftsman, especially when she raised her head, quizzical or imperious, to regard us taller others. She smiled faintly, just then, doubtless aware of my gaze, an almost clairvoyant faculty the acceptance of which has never deprived of its ability to disconcert. Llewella, off in a comer, pretending to study a book, had her back to the rest of us, her green tresses bobbed a couple of inches above her dark collar. Whether her withdrawal involved animus, self-conscious in her alienation, or simple caution, I could never be certain. Probably something of all these. Hers was not that familiar a presence in Amber.

. . . And the fact that we constituted a collection of individuals rather than a group, a family, at a time when I wanted to achieve some over-identity, some will to cooperate, was what led to my observations and Random’s acknowledgement.

I felt a familiar presence, heard a “Hello, Corwin” and there was Deirdre, reaching toward me. I extended my hand, clasped her own, raised it. She took a step forward, as if to the first strain of some formal dance, and moved close, facing me. For an instant a grilled window had framed her head and shoulders and a rich tapestry had adorned the wall to her left. Planned and posed, of course. Still, effective. She held my Trump in her left hand. She smiled. The others glanced our way as she appeared and she hit them all with that smile, like the Mona Lisa with a machine gun, turning slowly.

“Corwin,” she said, kissing me briefly and withdrawing, “I fear I am early.”

“Never,” I replied, turning toward Random, who had just risen and who anticipated me by seconds.

“May I fetch you a drink, sister?” he asked, taking her hand and nodding toward the sideboard.

“Why, yes. Thank you,” and he led her off and poured her some wine, avoiding or at least postponing, I suppose, her usual clash with Flora. At least, I assumed most of the old frictions were still alive as I remembered them. So if it cost me her company for the moment it also maintained the domestic-tranquility index, which was important to me just then. Random can be good at such things when he wants to.

I drummed the side of the desk with my fingertips, I rubbed my aching shoulder, I uncrossed and recrossed my legs, I debated lighting a cigarette. . . .

Suddenly he was there. At the far end of the room, Gerard had turned to his left, said something, and extended his hand. An instant later, he was clasping the left and only hand of Benedict, the final member of our group.

All right. The fact that Benedict had chosen to come in on Gerard’s Trump rather than mine was his way of expressing his feelings toward me. Was it also an indication of an alliance to keep me in check? It was at least calculated to make me wonder. Could it have been Benedict who had put Gerard up to our morning’s exercise? Probably.

At that moment Julian rose to his feet, crossed the room, gave Benedict a word and a handclasp.

This activity attracted Llewella. She turned, closing her book and laying it aside. Smiling then, she advanced and greeted Benedict, nodded to Julian, said something to Gerard. The impromptu conference warmed, grew animated. All right again, and again.

Four and three. And two in the middle . . .

I waited, staring at the group across the room. We were all present, and I could have asked them for attention and proceeded with what I had in mind. However . . .

It was too tempting. All of us could feel the tension, I knew. It was as if a pair of magnetic poles had suddenly been activated within the room. I was curious to see how all the filings would fall.

Flora gave me one quick glance. I doubted that she had changed her mind overnight-unless, of course, there had been some new development. No, I felt confident that I had anticipated the next move.

Nor was I incorrect. I overheard her mentioning thirst and a glass of wine. She turned partway and made a move in my direction, as if expecting Fiona to accompany her. She hesitated for a moment when this did not occur, suddenly became the focus of the entire company’s attention, realized this fact, made a quick decision, smiled, and moved in my direction.

“Corwin,” she said, “I believe I would like a glass of wine.”

Without turning my head or removing my gaze from the tableau before me, I called back over my shoulder, “Random, pour Flora a glass of wine, would you?”

“But of course,” he replied, and I heard the necessary sounds.

Flora nodded, unsmiled, and passed beyond me to the right.

Four and four, leaving dear Fiona burning brightly in the middle of the room. Totally self-conscious and enjoying it, she immediately turned toward the oval mirror with the dark, intricately carved frame, hanging in the space between the two nearest tiers of shelves. She proceeded to adjust a stray strand of hair in the vicinity of her left temple.

Her movement produced a flash of green and silver among the red and gold geometries of the carpet, near to the place where her left foot had rested.

I had simultaneous desires to curse and to smile. The arrant bitch was playing games with us again. Always remarkable, though . . . Nothing had changed. Neither cursing nor smiling, I moved forward, as she had known I would.

But Julian too approached, and a trifle more quickly than I. He had been a bit nearer, may have spotted it a fraction of an instant sooner.

He scooped it up and dangled it gently.

“Your bracelet, sister,” he said pleasantly. “It seems to have forsaken your wrist, foolish thing. Here-allow me.”

She extended her hand, giving him one of those lowered-eyelash smiles while he unfastened her chain of emeralds. Completing the business, he folded her hand within both of his own and began to turn back toward his corner, from whence the others were casting sidelong glances while attempting to seem locally occupied.

“I believe you would be amused by a witticism we are about to share,” he began.

Her smile grew even more delightful as she disengaged her hand.

“Thank you, Julian,” she replied. “I am certain that when I hear it I will laugh. Last, as usual, I fear.” She turned and took my arm. “I find that I feel a greater desire,” she said, “for a glass of wine.”

So I took her back with me and saw her refreshed. Five and four.