Drawing back the drapes, he stared out for a time. He got to his feet, stepped over the room's other occupant, and made his way to the window. The Jack of Diamonds began talking to me. He had called me, and it was quite possible that I would be cutting his throat by letting anyone back in Amber in on the fact that he had gotten the message out. So I suppressed my impulse to yell for reinforcements. 'Not the ones in charge of memory, I hope.' Depends on what you want most at the moment. I mean, ask me another time and I might say one of the others. Well, maybe soaring has a little edge - in gliders, balloons, and certain variations - but mood has a lot to do with that too, you know. With me, Corwin, it's drumming, being up in the air, and gambling - in no special order. While sex heads a great number of lists, we all have other things we like to do in between. 'Plenty of noble Amberites around with possible motives. I wanted to be an irresponsible nonentity and just enjoy myself. That can get either boring or difficult fairly quickly, depending on how responsible you want to be. This time, I was not looking for a place where I would be especially important. It was a long ride - I will not bore you with the details - and it was pretty far from Amber, as such things go. It could have been that my subconscious - which was kind of footloose at the time - just seized on the available props out of habit. Ordinarily, of course, we get the message empty-handed, unless we are doing the calling. I decided later that it must be our mental quirk associated with the Trumps that made me see it that way when someone was trying to reach me and I had cards in my hand - any cards.

Also, I was physically strung out from a long day's gliding and not much sleep the night before. I had just finished a couple very hot sets and was still kind of high.

I had decided to go looking for an assemblage of all my simple pleasures in one small nook of Shadow. Still, it was a very nice crop - silver-chased, beautifully tooled - and I made good use of it. He gave me a fancy riding crop for a going-away present - to hasten the process of affection, I suppose. I had often noticed that his fondness for me tended to increase as an inverse function of my proximity. Dad was still around, and when I noticed that he was getting into one of his grumpy moods, I decided it was time to take a walk. And there I was, staring at the Jack of Diamonds again, with the guy across from me not knowing whether to be mad at my long distraction or concerned that I might be having some sort of sick spell.Īnyway, I was here in Amber some years ago. Some sort of watch-thing, it seemed - too bright for me to make out its outline, to guess its proper size. And I remembered the presence coiled about the base of that tower. Brand there in some sort of tower - a small point of stability in that flowing scene. Rocks that glided like sailboats across the land. It was far from Amber, somewhere where the shadows go mad. Then I saw the landscape - over his shoulder, out a window, over a battlement, I can't be sure. He had been having one of his melancholy spells, had snapped out of it one day and ridden off.

Later, though, when I had asked after him, no one had any idea as to his whereabouts. Brand had still been in Amber when I had departed. I lay stretched out on my bed, smoking and thinking. I closed up shop with that hand and went home.

Angry gorilla