Chapter 101: Talking Treason

"We've been sitting on the fence for far too long."

Then We Are Decided - Jesus Christ Superstar

            They were a subdued and sorry-looking lot, the Rangers that we had managed to capture during the skirmish. Many of them had been wounded, and despite Julian's attempts to keep as many alive as possible, a quick count told me that about half of the original forty soldiers wouldn't be returning to their homes. We bound the survivors with their own belts and straps torn from their uniforms and started dragging them into the castle courtyard, where Janice kept an eye on them. They didn't give us any more trouble, though.

            At one point, while Julian had been busy, I had taken a moment to try and Trump Fiona, since it was the quickest way to find out whether she was okay or not, but unfortunately there had been no reply. Janice, who had been watching me careful as I had made the attempt, a large piece of two by four in hand in case there had been indications of things going wrong, wanted to know whether Fiona might be blocking my call, but there was simply no way for me to tell. There was nothing for it but to try again later and hope for some kind of response.

            Meanwhile, I explained to Janice about Julian's request for some assistance in determining what had caused his men to act in the manner in which they had. He had confirmed my impression that he actually knew most of them either by face or by name, although he did mention that for the most part these men belonged to different units and regiments. He was quite convinced that they had somehow been compelled to take up arms against us, and Janice readily agreed to help and find out the who and how, a slight smirk on her face to indicate that she didn't mind having even more Amberites in her debt. While she set to work on some spells, I fetched us some wine and bread from the kitchens, the staff still being missing and all. When I returned she had already finished, and her findings were somewhat inconclusive. Or rather, they were conclusive in determining that the Rangers had not been acting under any kind of spell or any other form of magical compulsion.

            Julian began a brusque interrogation of some of them, but to little avail. Their answers to his questions - like whose orders they had been following, what those orders had been, and why they were not with their usual units - were all vague and rather evasive, and in the end we learned nothing beyond the fact that their coming here had been commanded from up high. As I took a swig of wine, I noticed that they were all rather bleary-eyed, more than I would have expected them to be after their defeat. So, I asked Janice whether she would have been able to detect something like hypnosis.

            "No," she said, studying them once more. "I'm only able to check them for signs of magical tampering, so I can't rule out the use of any other methods. Hypnosis could be a possibility here, or they could be under the influence of some chemical substance. I do get the feeling, though, that there is some other kind of influence at work here."

            "Well, that leaves checking them through a direct mental contact, doesn't it…?"

            As soon as I had voiced the suggestion, I knew the others would agree and I also knew who'd be expected to have a go at this. So, I cautiously selected a prisoner who had received a fair number of wounds before he had succumbed, feeling certain that his physical condition would probably affect his mental abilities too. He didn't even try to look away, as I stared deeper and deeper into his eyes, grasping, reaching, until finally…contact!

            A thousand mental eyes stared back at me, blinking as one. Suddenly, I was very, very glad that my approach had been such a cautious one, for I knew this entity, this collective mind. I had come up against it before as it had tried to breach the Shadow walls around Cardane and force an entrance for the huge army following behind. I'd also spoken to the individuals who had been left after the blast of the living Shadow Storm had cleared the controlling influence from their minds, and I'd listened to their tales of how they had been completely taken over by it, functioning only as little cogwheels in its giant machinery. They had also given me this hive-mind's name: Kreel.

            Knowing it for what it was, I quickly threw up some mental defenses and hastily withdrew to safety. I didn't think it would have been able to take control over me that easily, but it did feel stronger than it had felt in Cardane, before, and I didn't want to take any chances. Blinking once or twice, I met Julian's questioning stare and muttered: "This is bad. This is so very bad." Before I said anything else, however, I had us move out of earshot of the captives. No reason to let them know anything beyond the fact that I was aware of who they were.

            As I explained about the Kreel and their link with Lothair and the Enemy, I could sense Julian's mood beginning to darken. I told him there was little we could do for his men right now, for while the few people who had been involved in the battle for Cardane had been restored to themselves, the circumstances had been so extreme that they could not easily be duplicated. I could only conclude that this situation was currently veering as much away from 'good' as was possible.

            "I wonder how my Rangers could have been infected," Julian mused, frowning darkly at the wounded captives in the courtyard.

            "Well, the Kreel don't seem strong enough to pose a potential threat to either you or me, or even to Janice here," I said, "but as for the avarage citizen of Amber… And as soon as it's got its foot in the door, well, it wouldn't be too hard for it to spread out among the ranks, I think. These soldiers were all part of different outfits, weren't they?" Meaning the Kreel would be even much more widespread than we could have imagined.

            "There must be some other thing that limits its potential for taking over innocent people," Julian said. "If there weren't, it would have been much easier simply to send one single unit to take you out. Perhaps some people are safe from its influence."

            "Perhaps it has just been trying not to get noticed too much. Maybe that's why it hasn't tried to get every single Amber citizen under its control yet. Then again, I guess if it really would have been able to do the whole-scale takeover thing, it wouldn't have been worrying about any of us noticing anyway."

            "Well, the Kreel's presence would explain some of the recent disturbances in Amber, though, as well as the growing influence of the Democratic Movement." He was referring to the group in which Boadice's sister Yaslin had been involved. I recalled Random telling me that they had continued their actions even after Yaslin had disappeared. Julian confirmed Random's beliefs that their local support had been growing lately. He looked at me sharply and said: "This is a first real step towards actually proving that Amber is under attack."

            "Forget about a first step," I replied, "this is plain and simple proof. However, nice though it is to have some proof of an attack, who are we going to present it to?"

            Julian sighed a bit dramatically. "It is true that my brother has been far from decisive lately," he said with clear disapproval.

            "Far be it for me to pretend to know everything," I said, "but I have a feeling the situation may be even worse than that."

            "Are you saying that he may be part of this hive-mind too? That he may be under the Kreel's influence?"

            "No, I don't think so. We would have noticed."

            "Well, we can always throw him unto the Pattern," Julian said grimly. "That ought to sever any kind of mental link."

            "I think anyone who'd been in Trump contact with him would have noticed if something had been going on, and I certainly didn't. Still, the whole attack here just now tells me that something fishy is going on."

            Julian nodded. "It was suggested quite plainly that those other troops were under Random's orders, but of course that doesn't have to be the truth."

            "If not him, who else?" I insisted.

            "It's either Random or Benedict. At least, those are the only two who can claim to be higher in rank than me."

            "Only one of them knew that we were here," I said, "and there's something else too. Before the attack we had discovered that all the other people were missing from the castle. Since we haven't found any piles of bodies lying around, I'm still thinking that someone must have ordered them to evacuate and go somewhere where the danger might not be so imminent." I left the thought unspoken that whoever had evacuated these people had obviously been aware that an attack had been coming.

            "I see," said Julian. "I think, in any case, that my dear brother will have some explaining to do. The problem, of course, is that, being the King, he doesn't have to explain himself to anyone. Still, this greatly heightens my already growing sense of unease about the whole situation. Perhaps the good of Amber does require certain steps to be taken…"

            Uh-oh, I didn't much like the sound of this. "What kind of steps would that be?" I asked, keeping my tone innocently neutral .

            "Do I have to spell it out for you?" he said sharply.

            "Please do," I replied, smiling pleasantly. Best to have this completely out in the open.

            "Come now," he spat, clearly annoyed, "you are a member of the Family, after all. Not even you could be so naïve." He took a deep breath and regained something of his usual composure. "Ordinarily, I'm not one to be the first to voice such sentiments, but in this case…" He regarded me sternly, then apparently he reached some kind of conclusion. "Hold on a minute," he said, taking out his Trump deck and starting to shuffle through it. Patiently and, despite the seriousness of the matter, secretly a bit amused, I waited till he had found the card hed been searching for, and I looked on as he established contact. It wasn't all that surprising when a few moments later Caine stepped through to join us. They had always been said to be relatively close, no pun intended.

**

            While I fetched some quick lunch for him too, Julian quickly explained the situation to his brother. "And what is this young man's position in all of this?" Caine asked when he had heard everything.

            "I have the feeling," Julian said before I could reply, "that he's still in the phase where he's trying to figure out what to do."

            "Well, it's simple really," Caine said to me with an evil smile. "The choice is yours: are you for us or against us?"

            "Good question," I said, flashing a smile in return. "Who's  'us' in this particular case?"

            "The two of us, for starters," Julian said, indicating Caine and himself. Oh yeah, all those rumours about the two of them being bossom buddies hardly seemed to have been exaggerated.

            "When you really think about it, it is for the good of Amber," Caine said, and Julian nodded his agreement.

            "I think my first priority is Amber itself," I said hesitantly. I didn't want to antagonize them right away, but I wasn't about to jump unto their little conspiracy bandwagon either.

            "Then we are decided," Caine said happily, drawing his own conclusions.

            "I wouldn't say that," I interjected hastily.

            "Look," he said patiently, as if explaining something very simple to a slow pupil, "Random is clearly aware of this whole situation. What happened here proves that he knew that you were going to be attacked. Agreed? This means that he knew that this Kreel thing was out to get you, and unless it has extremely good sources of information, Random is also the most likely person to have told it where you could be found. Meanwhile, he keeps up appearances by sending in some secret reinforcements, because he doesn't quite like the possibility of you getting killed in the upcoming engagement. What does all of this tell us? That he is most definitely in league with parties that I for one don't want him to associate with. Quite simply, he is not acting for the good of Amber."

            "It also tells us that he might not be acting of his own free will on certain counts," I argued. "If he were, and he had sent such a company of Rangers out to keep me from doing what I had to do, I don't think he would have been bothered to send in some other, completely nameless contingent just to defend me."

            "But then what exactly is his game?" Caine demanded. "At the moment he is just withholding any and all orders that might stir Amber into action. We are still not officially involved in the war, and it doesn't look like that's going to change anytime soon.

            "However, we could simply put him to the test: we just present him with what has happened here, in such a way that he doesn't seem to be involved himself. No, we just use it as proof that we're under attack. Then his options should be simple: if he does draw the conclusion that it is time to act and consequently gives the order to become involved in the larger battle, he's on the right side, and if he still insists on sticking to his current policy, saying that our story is not sufficient evidence to warrant any form of action, he is not." Well, that was a simple way of looking at it. Somehow I didn't think it would be so clear cut.

            "It might be more interesting," I ventured, "to try and find out why he would be in league with the Enemy at all. If he's not acting of his own free will, as I've already suggested, then what is it…"

            "…That they have promised him?" Julian cut in abruptly. "What could they have offered him that's more important than the Throne of Amber? The Throne of the whole Universe, perhaps?"

            "Who says that they have offered him anything?" I snapped, slightly annoyed. "They could also have threatened him somehow."

            "He always was a weakling," Caine said with the hint of a sigh, "that much is true."

            "Hold on there a minute," I said, annoyance flaring into anger. "You were there as well when we were trying to defend Cardane against the Enemy. You have seen what they're capable of. We only managed to get out of that one by the skin of our teeth."

            "Enough!" Julian barked, banging his fist on the large kitchen table. "It doesn't matter what it is that they've done to him. He ought to be strong enough to resist anything they might try. If he isn't, he's not worthy to be King of Amber."

            There. It had been said. The feeling had been aired. There was no going back now. I cast a sideways glance at Janice, who was standing guard near the kitchen door, keeping one eye on the prisoners and both ears on our conversation. There seemed to the merest hint of a smile around her lips, as if our antics were in some way amusing. I guess they must have seemed so to an outsider. Caine was smiling too, I saw. Despite all his theories and arguments, he hadn't actually been the one to talk treason first, I realised, leaving that rather to his easily angered, more inflexible brother.

            "You know," he said, as if reading my mind, "perhaps Random just wants us to relieve him from power. He's always complaining about how he doesn't really want to be King, after all. Perhaps he just doesn't want to make the final decision, so perhaps he expects us to do it for him."

            "That's all very well," I said, "and I don't want to argue over details, but we did all swear an oath to him, didn't we? That's an oath of fealty to our King we're talking about here."

            "But also to Amber itself," Caine murmured.

            "I have sworn my loyalty to the King of Amber," Julian said sternly, "and if the person that goes by that title doesn't conduct himself like a true and proper King, my oath loses its meaning. If Random were to act like a true King of Amber, I would support him all the way, but since he continues to hide himself like the weakling that he is, he is not a true King. You are not going to defend his policies, are you?" he spat at me defiantly.

            "Oh, certainly not." I was as much in favour of Amber's current inactive stance as they were, but I doubted whether an uprising against Random would be the right solution. "The question is," I continued, "how much of it is Random's policy, and how much of it is being dictated to him."

            "Well, if he let's others dictate what Amber should and should not do, he is not acting like a King of Amber either. It would never have happened in Oberon's days. But alright," he added, calming down a little, "information is always useful. If we know how they are able to control him, we could use that to our own advantage."

            "We should be discussing who else we are to involve in this," Caine said. "And who do we want to take over in Amber?"

            "That would be plain, I should think," Julian replied. "We should do so ourselves, of course." The grin they exchanged once again showed me how happy they were just to be plotting again to gain the Throne of Amber. It was just like old times for them. Except that it wasn't, really.

            "So," Caine said, "to repeat my question: are you for us or against us?"

            "It still depends on what you're planning to do," I replied.

            "Alright," he said, eyes twinkling, "what do you want us to do?"

            "First of all, I want some clarity. I want to know exactly what's up with Random. I want to know how far the Kreel has managed to infiltrate Amber."

            "I think we can all agree on that," Caine said.

            "Those issues should be addressed first," I insisted. "I don't want to start playing musical chairs around the Throne, while the Kreel is busy sawing off its legs." This time they exchanged a sigh. Just when they were already having so much fun. Still, they had to admit that I had a point.

            "Whatever we do," Julian said, "we should take prompt and immediate action. We can't leave it lying around much longer."

            "In itself the idea of confronting Random with the recent battle here in Ayland is a good one," I said, "but that doesn't mean we have to tell him everything. I'd say that we should be more reticent towards our King in any case. However, if I were simply to go back to Amber and report on this on my own…"

            "Why did the Enemy want to attack you here anyway?" Caine suddenly wanted to know, but I had anticipated that question.

            "Oh, they had their reasons," I replied airily, making it plain that they wouldn't draw this information out of me that easily.

            "Okay," Caine continued, skipping back to the original subject, "Random doesn't have to know about the three of us having been here, does he? And I assume he will expect you to report to him in any case, won't he?"

            "Yes. If that sergeant and his men were indeed acting under his orders, he's bound to hear what happened anyway."

            "But what if that had been arranged by Benedict?" Julian wanted to know. "That's still a possibility too."

            "That would be quite an interesting situation," I said, "for Benedict wasn't the one who knew that I was here."

            "There are always ways to find out about such things. If Random was behind it, I would have no problems with taking steps against him, but if it was Benedict…" If the situation were not so serious, this would have been funny in a twisted sort of way: Julian had more fear and respect for his eldest brother than for his King.

            "If it was Benedict… what?" I asked, failing to see where he was going. "If Benedict had indeed sent those nameless soldiers to help me, then our problems may be even bigger than we thought, for that would imply that Random is completely collaborating with the Enemy."

            "But if Random told the Kreel where to find you," Julian continued, a bit hesitantly, "and Benedict arranged your defenses, it would still mean something…" Then he added more firmly: "It means that we know far too little of what is really going on!" That was something that we all could agree on, although I guess Caine would never say so out loud. He had his reputation to think of.

            "So, you will go and confront Random, will you?" he said to me.

            "That seems the best idea, especially since…" And suddenly the penny dropped. We had been so busy arguing over treason, that I hadn't stopped to make a connection between what had attacked us and why we had been attacked. "Alright," I said, "the reason for them to come after us was Fiona." That got their interest alright. In but a few words I explained what had happened

to her in Quendor, which for some reason didn't seem to surprise them at all, and how Janice and I had been busy trying to reverse her condition. "It seems like an important thing to know," I added, "what with such a large Kreel influence in Amber. Random was the only other one who knew what we were up to."

            "And you told him where you were going to do this, did you?"

            "He insisted." I shrugged. At the time it had seemed he had a right to know

            "Still, someone could have followed your tracks to Ayland," Caine said.

            "Well, nothing's impossible I guess, but it wouldn't have been easy." He nodded. This wasn't somewhere out in Shadow, and he could very well see why they would want to prevent me from curing Fiona's mental condition. Hell, their current silent invasion of Amber might very well have been the reason for Aurelia to do this to her in the first place.

            "How is she now?" Julian asked. I admitted that I didn't know. She could be fine, or she could be in worse trouble than before. I got the impression that Fiona wouldn't have been their first choice for an ally anyway, but there was no denying her competence, and her mental prowess would be sorely missed in dealing with the Kreel. For a moment, Caine suggested contacting Bleys, but that suggestion was quickly dismissed. They decided that while I would go and face Random, Julian would try and fathom how far the Enemy had infiltrated his army, and Caine would do the same thing for Amber city and the castle. He also mentioned the possibility of finding some way to discern those people who now belonged to the Kreel from the ones who were still clean, so to speak, and I expressed my interest in anything he might come up with.

            "The problem is that they're now on their guard," Caine said. "They know you are aware of them now."

            "That's true," I mused. "It is interesting, though, that they were willing to take that risk. It could be all too crucial to get Fiona to join us."

            "Then we shall have to find some way to convince her."

            There was a polite cough to draw our attention to Janice, who had been following our entire exchange with interest. "Perhaps I can assist in some manner," she said. "I wasn't sure before, but I get the feeling that I can sense some kind of signal, if you will, going out to these people." She nodded towards the prisoners in the courtyard. "I can only be certain if I test this in a wider area. It's something you only become aware of when you really focus on it, but I think it has something to do with the Power emanating from the Crystal Spire."

            "That would not be entirely unlikely," I muttered.

            "There's more," she said, a bit more grimly. "I also think, but I can't be sure yet, that there must be one of these Spires very close to Amber. Considering how strong this Kreel feels and how far they seem to have come with infiltrating Amber, they have to have a source of Power that is very near." As they would. Trouble never comes alone, does it?