Sign of the unicorn (14 page)

After that, everyone made a point of mentioning that he would be remaining in the palace overnight, presumably to indicate that no one feared anything Brand might have to say in the morning-and especially to indicate that no one had a desire to get out of town, a thing that would not be forgotten, even if Brand gave up the ghost during the night. In that I had no further questions to put to the group and no one had sprung forward to own up to the misdeeds covered by the oath, I leaned back and listened for a time after that. Things came apart, falling into a series of conversations and exchanges, one of the main topics being an attempted reconstruction of the library tableau, each of us in his own place and, invariably, why each of us was in a position to have done it, except for the speaker. I smoked; I said nothing on the subject. Deirdre did spot an interesting possibility, however. Namely, that Gerard could have done the stabbing himself while we were all crowded around, and that his heroic efforts were not prompted by any desire to save Brand’s neck, but rather to achieve a position where he could stop his tongue-in which case Brand would never make it through the night. Ingenious, but I just couldn’t believe it. No one else bought it either. At least, no one volunteered to go upstairs and throw Gerard out. After a time Fiona drifted over and sat beside me.

“Well, I’ve tried the only thing I could think of,” she said. “I hope some good comes of it.”

“It may,” I said.

“I see that you have added a peculiar piece of ornamentation to your wardrobe,” she said, raising the Jewel of Judgment between her thumb and forefinger and studying it.

Then she raised her eyes.

“Can you make it do tricks for you?” she asked.

“Some,” I said.

“Then you knew how to attune it. It involves the Pattern, doesn’t it?”

“Yes. Eric told me how to go about it, right before he died.”

“I see.”

She released it, settled back into her seat, regarded the flames.

“Did he give you any cautions to go along with it?” she asked.

“No,” I said.

“I wonder whether that was a matter of design or circumstance?”

“Well, he was pretty busy dying at the time. That limited our conversation considerably.”

“I know. I was wondering whether his hatred for you outweighed his hopes for the realm, or whether he was simply ignorant of some of the principles involved.”

“What do you know about it?”

“Think again of Eric’s death, Corwin. I was not there when it occurred, but I came in early for the funeral. I was present when his body was bathed, shaved, dressed-and I examined his wounds. I do not believe that any of them were fatal, in themselves. There were three chest wounds, but only one looked as if it might have run into the mediastinal area-“

“One’s enough, if-“

“Wait,” she said. “It was difficult, but I tried judging the angle of the puncture with a thin glass rod. I wanted to make an incision, but Caine would not permit it. Still, I do not believe that his heart or arteries were damaged. It is still not too late to order an autopsy, if you would like me to check further on this. I am certain that his injuries and the general stress contributed to his death, but I believe it was the jewel that made the difference.”

“Why do you think this?”

“Because of some things that Dworkin said when I studied with him-and things that I noticed afterward, because of this. He indicated that while it conferred unusual abilities, it also represented a drain on the vitality of its master. The longer you wear it, the more it somehow takes out of you. I paid attention after that, and I noticed that Dad wore it only seldom and never kept it on for long periods of time.”

My thoughts returned to Eric, the day he lay dying on the slopes of Kolvir, the battle raging about him. I remembered my first look at him, his face pale, his breath labored, blood on his chest. . . . And the Jewel of Judgment, there on its chain, was pulsing, heartlike, among the moist folds of bis garments. I had never seen it do that before, or since. I recalled that the effect had grown fainter, weaker. And when he died and I folded his hands atop it, the phenomenon had ceased.

“What do you know of its function?” I asked her.

She shook her head.

“Dworkin considered that a state secret. I know the obvious-weather control-and I inferred from some of Dad’s remarks that it has something to do with a heightened perception, or a higher perception. Dworkin had mentioned it primarily as an example of the pervasiveness of the Pattern in everything that gives us power-even the Trumps contain the Pattern, if you look closely, look long enough-and he cited it as an instance of a conservation principle: all of our special powers have their price. The greater the power, the larger the investment. The Trumps are a small matter, but there is still an element of fatigue involved in their employment. Walking through Shadow, which is an exercise of the image of the Pattern which exists within us, is an even greater expenditure. To essay the Pattern itself, physically, is a massive drain on one’s energies. But the jewel, he said, represents an even higher octave of the same thing, and its cost to its employer is exponentially greater.”

Thus, if correct, another ambiguous insight into the character of my late and least favored brother. If he were aware of this phenomenon and had donned the jewel and worn it overlong anyhow, in the defense of Amber, it made him something of a hero. But then, seen in this light, his passing it along to me, without warnings, became a deathbed effort at a final piece of vengeance. But he had exempted me from his curse, he’d said, so as to spend it properly on our enemies in the field. This, of course, only meant that he hated them a little more than he hated me and was deploying his final energies as strategically as possible, for Amber. I thought then of the partial character of Dworkin’s notes, as I had recovered them from the hiding place Eric had indicated. Could it be that Eric had acquired them intact and had purposely destroyed that portion containing the cautions so as to damn his successor? That notion did not strike me as quite adequate, for he had had no way of knowing that I would return when I did, as I did, that the course of battle would run as it had, and that I would indeed be his successor. It could just as easily have been one of his favorites that followed him to power, in which case he would certainly not have wanted him to inherit any booby traps. No. As I saw it, either Eric was not really aware of this property of the stone, having acquired only partial instructions for its use, or someone had gotten to those papers before I had and removed sufficient material to leave me with a mortal liability. It may well have been the hand of the real enemy, once again.

“Do you know the safety factor?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “I can give you only two pointers, for whatever they may be worth. The first is that I do not recall Dad’s ever wearing it for long periods of time. The second, I pieced together from a number of things that he said, beginning with a comment to the effect that ‘when people turn into statues you are either in the wrong place or in trouble.’ I pressed him quite a bit on that, over a long period of time, and I eventually got the impression that the first sign of having worn it too long is some sort of distortion of your time sense. Apparently it begins speeding up the metabolism-everything-with a net effect that the world seems to be slowing down around you. This must take quite a toll on a person. That is everything that I know about it, and I admit that a large part of the last is guesswork. How long have you been wearing it?”

“A while now,” I said, taking my mental pulse and glancing about to see whether things seemed to be slowing down any.

I could not really tell, though of course I did not feel in the best of shape. I had assumed it was totally Gerard’s doing, though. I was not about to yank it off, however, just because another family member had suggested it, even if it was clever Fiona in one of her friendlier moods. Perversity, cussedness . . . No, independence. That was it. That and purely formal distrust. I had only put it on for the evening a few hours before, anyway. I’d wait.

“Well, you have made your point in wearing it,” she was saying. “I simply wanted to advise you against prolonged exposure until you know more about it.

“Thanks, Fi. I’ll have it off soon, and I appreciate your telling me. By the way, whatever became of Dworkin?”

She tapped her temple.

“His mind finally went, poor man. I like to think that Dad had him put away in some restful retreat in Shadow.”

“I see what you mean,” I said. “Yes, let us think that. Poor fellow.”

Julian rose to his feet, concluding a conversation with Llewella. He stretched, nodded to her, and strolled over.

“Corwin, have you thought of any more questions for us?” he said.

“None that I’d care to ask just now.”

He smiled.

“Anything more that you want to tell us?”

“Not at the moment.”

“Any more experiments, demonstrations, charades?”

“No.

“Good. Then I’m going to bed. Good night.”

“Night.”

He bowed to Fiona, waved to Benedict and Random, nodded to Flora and Deirdre as he passed them on the way to the door. He paused on the threshold, turned back and said, “Now you can all talk about me,” and went on out.

“All right,” Fiona said. “Let’s. I think he’s the one.”

“Why?” I asked.

“I’ll go down the list, subjective, intuitive, and biased as it is. Benedict, in my opinion, is above suspicion. If he wanted the throne, he’d have it by now, by direct, military methods. With all the time he has had, he could have managed an attack that would have succeeded, even against Dad. He is that good, and we all know it. You, on the other hand, have made a number of blunders which you would not have made had you been in full possession of your faculties. That is why I believe your story, amnesia and all. No one gets himself blinded as a piece of strategy. Gerard is well on the way to establishing his own innocence. I almost think he is up there with Brand now more for that reason than from any desire to protect Brand. At any rate, we will know for sure before long-or else have some new suspicions. Random has simply been watched too closely these past years to have had the opportunity to engineer everything that has been happening. So he is out. Of us more delicate sorts. Flora hasn’t the brains, Deirdre lacks the guts, Llewella hasn’t the motivations, as she is happy elsewhere but never here, and I, of course, am innocent of all but malice. That leaves Julian. Is he capable? Yes. Does he want the throne? Of course. Has he had time and opportunity? Again, yes. He is your man.”

“Would he have killed Caine?” I asked.

“They were buddies.”

She curled her lip.

“Julian has no friends,” she said. “That icy personality of his is thawed only by thoughts of himself. Oh, in recent years he seemed closer to Caine than to anyone else. But even that . . . even that could have been a part of it. Shamming a friendship long enough to make it seem believable, so that he would not be suspect at this time. I can believe Julian capable of that because I cannot believe him capable of strong emotional attachments.”

I shook my head.

“I don’t know,” I said. “His friendship with Caine is something that occurred during my absence, so everything I know concerning it is secondhand. Still, if Julian were looking for friendship in the form of another personality close to his own, I can see it. They were a lot alike. I tend to think it was real, because I don’t think anybody is capable of deceiving someone about his friendship for years. Unless the other party is awfully stupid, which is something Caine was not. And-well, you say your reasoning was subjective, intuitive, and biased. So is mine, on something like this. I just don’t like to think anybody is such a miserable wretch that he would use his only friend that way. That’s why I think there is something wrong with your list.”

She sighed.

“For someone who has been around for as long as you have, Corwin, you say some silly things. Were you changed by your long stay in that funny little place? Years ago you would have seen the obvious, as I do.”

“Perhaps I have changed, for such things no longer seem obvious. Or could it be that you have changed, Fiona? A trifle more cynical than the little girl I once knew. It might not have been all that obvious to you, years ago.”

She smiled softly.

“Never tell a woman she has changed, Corwin. Except for the better. You used to know that, too. Could it be that you are really only one of Corwin’s shadows, sent back to suffer and intimidate here on his behalf? Is the real Corwin somewhere else. laughing at us all?”

“I am here, and I am not laughing,” I said. She laughed.

“Yes, that is it!” she said. “I have just decided that you are not yourself!

“Announcement, everybody!” she cried, springing to her feet. “I have just noticed that this is not really Corwin! It has to be one of his shadows! It has just announced a belief in friendship, dignity, nobility of spirit, and those other things which figure prominently in popular romances! I am obviously onto something!”

The others stared at her. She laughed again, then sat down abruptly.

I heard Flora mutter “drunk” and return to her conversation with Deirdre.

Random said, “Let’s hear it for shadows,” and turned back to a discussion with Benedict and Llewella.