The Guns of Avalon by Roger Zelazny Page B

believe that the situation would ever occur. And no one of us really knew all of his duties and responsibilities, his secret commitments. As distasteful as I found the admission, I was coming to feel that none of us was really fit to take the throne. I would have liked to blame Dad for this inadequacy, but unfortunately I had known Freud too long not to feel self-conscious about it. Also, I was now beginning to wonder about the validity of any of our claims. If there had been no abdication and he did indeed still live, then the best of us could really hope to do was sit in regency. I would not look forward-especially from the throne-to his returning and finding things otherwise. Let’s face it, I was afraid of him, and not without cause. Only a fool does not fear a genuine power that he does not understand. But whether the title be king or regent, my claim on it was stronger than Eric’s and I was still determined to have it. If a power out of Dad’s dark past, which none of us really understood, could serve to secure it, and if Dworkin did represent such a power, then he must remain hidden until he could be employed on my behalf.
    Even, I asked myself, if the power he represented was the power to destroy Amber itself, and with it to shatter the shadow worlds and capsize all of existence as I understood it?
    Especially then, I answered myself. For who else could be trusted with such power? We are indeed a very pragmatic family.
    More wine, and then I fumbled with my pipe, cleaning it, repacking it.
    “That, basically, is my story to date,” I said, regarding my handiwork, rising and taking a light from the lamp. “After I recovered my sight, I managed to escape, fled Amber, tarried for a time in a place called Lorraine, where I encountered Ganelon, then came here.”
    “Why?” I reseated myself and looked at him again.
    “Because it is near to the Avalon I once knew,” I said.
    I had purposely refrained from mentioning any earlier acquaintanceship with Ganelon, and hoped that he would take a cue from it. This shadow was near enough to our Avalon so that Ganelon should be familiar with its topography and most of its customs. For whatever it was worth, it seemed politic to keep this information from Benedict.
    He passed over it as I thought he might, buried there where it was beside more interesting digging.
    “And of your escape?” he asked. “How did you manage that?”
    “I had help, of course,” I admitted, “in getting out of the cell. Once out- Well, there are still a few passages of which Eric is unaware.”
    “I see,” he said, nodding-hoping, naturally, that I would go on to mention my partisans’ names, but knowing better than to ask.
    I puffed my pipe and leaned back, smiling.
    “It is good to have friends,” he said, as if in agreement with some unvoiced thought I might be entertaining.
    “I guess that we all have a few of them in Amber.”
    “I like to think so,” he said. Then, “I understand you left the partly whittled cell door locked behind you, had set fire to your bedding, and had drawn pictures on the wall.”
    “Yes,” I said. “Prolonged confinement does something to a man’s mind. At least, it did to mine. There are long periods during which I know I was irrational.”
    “I do not envy you the experience, brother,” he said. “Not at all. What are your plans now?”
    “They are still uncertain.”
    “Do you feel that you might wish to remain here?”
    “I do not know,” I said. “What is the state of affairs here?”
    “I am in charge,” he said-a simple statement of fact, not a boast. “I believe I have just succeeded in destroying the only major threat to the realm. If I am correct, then a reasonably tranquil period should be at hand. The price was high”-he glanced at what remained of his arm-“but will have been worth it-as shall be seen before very long, when things have returned to normal.”
    He then proceeded to relate what was basically the same situation