Through the bars of my visor, I looked down upon it-charred-seeming, desolate, and smelling of decay. I lived inside my visor these days. The men looked upon it as an affectation, but my rank gave me the right to be eccentric. I had worn it for over two weeks, since my battle with Strygalldwir. I had put it on the following morning before I trounced Harald to keep my promise to Lorraine, and I had decided that as my girth increased I had better keep my face concealed.
I weighed perhaps fourteen stone now, and felt like my old self again. If I could help clean up this mess in the land called Lorraine, I knew that I would have a chance at least to try what I most wanted, and perhaps succeed.
"So that's it," I said. "I don't see any troops mustering."
"I believe we will have to ride north," said Lance, "and we will doubtless only see them after dark."
"How far north?"
"Three or four leagues. They move about a bit."
We had ridden for two days to reach the Circle. We had met a patrol earlier that morning and learned that the troops inside the thing continued to muster every night. They went through various drills and then were gone-to someplace deeper inside-with the coming of morning. A perpetual thunderhead, I learned, rode above the Circle, though the storm never broke.
"Shall we breakfast here and then ride north?" I asked.
"Why not?" said Ganelon. "I'm starved and we've time."
So we dismounted and ate dried meat and drank from our canteens.
"I still do not understand that note," said Ganelon, after belching, patting his stomach, and lighting his pipe. "Will he stand beside us in the final battle, or will he not? Where is he, if he intends to help? The day of conflict draws nearer and nearer."
"Forget him," I said. "It was probably a joke."
"I can't, damn it!" he said. "There is something passing strange about the whole business!"
"What is it?" asked Lance, and for the first time I realized that Ganelon had not told him.
"My old liege, Lord Corwin, sends an odd message by carrier bird, saying he is coming. I had thought him dead, but he sent this message," Ganelon told him. "I still do not know what to make of it."
"Corwin?" said Lance, and I held my breath. "Corwin of Amber?"
"Yes, Amber and Avalon."
"Forget his message."
"Why?"
"He is a man without honor, and his promise means nothing."
"You know him?"
"I know of him. Long ago, he ruled in this land. Do you not recall the stories of the demon lordling? They are the same. That was Corwin, in days before my days. The best thing he did was abdicate and flee when the resistance grew too strong against him."
That was not true! Or was it?
Amber casts an infinity of shadows, and my Avalon had cast many of its own, because of my presence there. I might be known on many earths that I had never trod, for shadows of myself had walked them, mimicking imperfectly my deeds and my thoughts.
"No," said Ganelon, "I never paid heed to the old stories. I wonder if it could have been the same man, ruling here. That is interesting."
"Very," I agreed, to keep my hand in things. "But if he ruled so long ago, surely he must be dead or decrepit by now."
"He was a sorcerer," said Lance.
"The one I knew certainly was," said Ganelon, "for he banished me from a land neither art nor artifice can discover now."
"You never spoke of this before," said Lance. "How did it occur?"
"None of your business," said Ganelon, and Lance was silent once again.
I hauled out my own pipe-I had obtained one two days earlier-and Lance did the same. It was a clay job and drew hot and hard. We lit up, and the three of us sat there smoking.
"Well, he did the smart thing," said Ganelon. "Let's forget it now."
We did not, of course. But we stayed away from the subject after that.
If it had not been for the dark thing behind us, it would have been quite pleasant, just sitting there, relaxing. Suddenly, I felt close to the two of them. I wanted to say something, but I could not think what.
Ganelon solved that by bringing up current business once more.
"So you want to hit them before they hit us?" he said.
"That's right," I replied. "Take the fight to their home territory."
"The trouble is that it is their home territory," he said. "They know it better than we do now, and who knows what powers they might be able to call on there?"
"Kill the horned one and they will crumble," I said.
"Perhaps. Perhaps not. Maybe you could do it," said Ganelon. "Unless I got lucky, though, I don't know whether I could. He's too mean to die easily. While I think I'm still as good a man as I was some years ago, I may be fooling myself. Perhaps I've grown soft. I never wanted this damn stay-at-home job!"
"I know," I said.
"I know," said Lance.
"Lance," said Ganelon, "should we do as our friend here says? Should we attack?"
He could have shrugged and equivocated. He did not.
"Yes," he said. "They almost had us last time. It was very close the night King Uther died. If we do not attack them now, I feel they may defeat us next time. Oh, it would not be easy, and we would hurt them badly. But I think they could do it. Let us see what we can see now, then make our plans for an attack."
"All right," said Ganelon. "I am sick of waiting too. Tell me that again after we return and I'll go along with it." So we did that thing.
We rode north that afternoon, and we hid ourselves in the hills and looked down upon the Circle. Within it, they worshiped, after their fashion, and they drilled. I estimated around four thousand troops. We had about twenty-five hundred. They also had weird flying, hopping, crawling things that made noises in the night. We had stout hearts. Yeah.
All that I needed was a few minutes alone with their leader, and it would be decided, one way or another. The whole thing. I could not tell my companions that, but it was true.
You see, I was the party responsible for the whole thing down there. I had done it, and it was up to me to undo it, if I could.
I was afraid that I could not.
In a fit of passion, compounded of rage, horror, and pain, I had unleashed this thing, and it was reflected somewhere in every earth in existence. Such is the blood curse of a Prince of Amber.
We watched them all that night, the Wardens of the Circle, and in the morning we departed.
The verdict was, attack!
So we rode all the way back and nothing followed us. When we reached the Keep of Ganelon, we fell to planning. Our troops were ready-over-ready, perhaps -and we decided to strike within a fortnight.
As I lay with Lorraine, I told her of these things. For I felt that she should know. I possessed the power to spirit her away into Shadow-that very night, if she would agree. She did not.
"I'll stay with you," she said.
"Okay."
I did not tell her that I felt everything lay within my hands, but I have a feeling she knew and that for some reason she trusted me. I would not have, but that was her affair.
"You know how things might be," I said.
"I know," she said, and I knew that she knew and that was it.
We turned our attention to other subjects, and later we slept.
She'd had a dream.
In the morning, she said to me, "I had a dream."
"What about?" I asked.
"The coming battle," she told me. "I see you and the homed one locked in combat."
"Who wins?"
"I don't know. But as you slept, I did a thing that might help you."
"I wish you had not," I said. "I can take care of myself."