Chapter 104: Benedict's Decree

"The first lap is finished

But the race isn't run

It's only just begun…"

Regeneration - The Divine Comedy

            So, we approached Benedict. Or at least, I did, since Caine and Julian figured that their brother may be more inclined to listen to our story if it came from a slightly more neutral source, being me in this case. Fortunately, Benedict was still awake, and when I had given him a quick glimpse of who the "we" were who wanted to discuss the situation in Amber with him, he allowed me to pull him through the Trump contact with just a silent nod. Quietly he waited for me to finish reweaving the shields so I could start expounding our point of view to him. He was clearly not committing to anything yet before he had heard everything we had to say. And Julian and Caine were still waiting for me to act as our emissary too.

            "We have become convinced," I began, "that the current situation in Amber is very, very worrying to say the least. Some things have been happening lately, and indeed events even have been transpiring this very night, that have given us the firm impression that some form of action has to be taken."

            "What information do you have specifically." Benedict asked me calmly, "aside from the fact that Random does not want to take any action yet?"

            "Have you heard of the Kreel?" Of course he had, and he agreed that the news that they had been quietly thriving and breeding in Amber was reasonable cause for worry. Once I started questioning Random's current policies, he required some stronger evidence, however, so I told him about the Ayland situation, with Julian corroborating my story. I thought I detected a faint smile on Benedict's face when we mentioned the "insufficient rank" part, but it was just a fleeting one. He appeared to agree with us that this constituted enough evidence, albeit circumstantial, to warrant further action.

            "That being the case," he said after a moment's reflection, "is it Vialle, or Ruby, or the both of them? Do you have any idea?" Damn, he was sharp! Fortunately, neither Caine nor Julian were in a direct position to see my expression, so I tried to give Benedict a swift, but meaningful look to indicate that I indeed knew something more about this, but that this knowledge wasn't to go any further.

            "There's no certainty as yet," Caine mused, "but it's a distinct probability."

            "Its certainly more probable than Random being under their direct control himself," Julian concurred. "And it's always been clear what his weakness is."

            "So, you believe this to be sufficient reason to remove the rightful King of Amber from his throne?" Benedict asked sternly. This was the big one, the crucial turn.

            "If it's to be a temporary measure," I replied, "then, yes."

            Benedict regarded me pensively for a moment that stretched well beyond the borders of uncomfortability. His voice was level and stern when he spoke again. "If what you have told me is true," he said, "I see a possible way of resolving this within the boundaries of Amber Family Law. However, there will be two requirements. First of all, there has to be clear and direct proof of the situation. In other words, you will have to supply evidence to the fact that either Random, Vialle, their daughter, or all of them are under the Enemy's direct control.

            "Secondly, a minimum of two thirds of all members of the Family that have been officially acknowledged as such have to consent to the proposed course of action. And when I say a minimum of two thirds, I mean that to me this represents but a bare minimum and that I would rather require more than this. However, I will be lenient when it comes to certain relatives, such as Florimel, whose position is rather in question at the moment. I won't allow a coup of just a select few relatives, though.

            "Any procedures for deposing the King that adhere to Family Law will be able to count on my support. In those circumstances the oath of loyalty even allows for it. Family Law is quite clear on this point. There is a precedent, although most of you will not be aware of it." Well, I certainly wasn't, and I didn't try to mask my surprise. "Some other time," Benedict said, "There's no time now for such details." Fair enough. I knew better than to push him.

            Curtly, Benedict gave us an outline of how he thought we ought to proceed, although he fortunately left us enough room to present our own thoughs and ideas. First we would have to obtain the proof we needed, and this quite simply meant that we had to get both Random, Vialle, and Ruby away from Amber. Should we obtain sufficient evidence, then the three of us would have to Trump every member of the Family separately and present our case to them. Everyone would then be required to Trump Benedict and give him their vote in favour of our procedure or against it. As the eldest of all, Benedict would remain as a final arbiter, tally the votes, and pass the final judgement.

            There was, of course, the question who exactly were to be counted as full Family members. Although it seemed that having walked the Pattern was the prime criterium, a certain clear level of Family participation on their part was also important, so people like Yaslin (still a wanted criminal), Brand (still officially dead), Dalt (outspoken enemy of anything Amberite), and Sand and Delwin (cast out of the Family a long time ago) would not have any roles to play. Some others whose position wasn't entirely clear, like Boadice and Murlas, would be allowed and indeed required to cast their vote, though. The status of Charles and Elayne was brought up too, but I told them how Charles had accepted his position as son of Corwin, so if Corwin had indeed acknowledged their kinship, the both of them would be counted as full relatives.

            More interesting still was the matter of what would happen if we were right and if we could both obtain the necessary proof and sway a majority of the Family. I told Benedict of my proposal for him to take up the Regency as a temporary measure until Random would be fit to return as King and, as was to be expected, he was not exactly thrilled by the idea. He first wanted to know whether it was possible to release people from the hold of the Kreel, and I explained that this had been done before, albeit under exceptional circumstances. Keeping people free from further Kreel involvement was an altogether different matter, and would require at least some working method of detecting them. This we could work on later, though.

            Benedict silently contemplated the matter for a while, casting his eyes from one to the other. "As you know," he said,  "neither Kingship nor Regency holds much attraction to me, but in this particular situation I have to agree that any other choice would lead to too much internal friction. There are no other good candidates that would not immediately raise all kinds of vehement objections. Do not expect, by the way, that my nomination will be backed by each and everyone."

            "Well," I said, "if someone objects, they will simply have to come up with a more suitable alternative."

            "Very well. I shall phrase the proposal accordingly: under the current circumstances I shall take on the Regency of Amber, until a situation may be established where the external influence on Random has been removed and will not be resumed. For all military decisions, I shall rely purely upon myself, but for civilian matters I shall make all decisions after consultation with both Julian and Bleys, at least if both of them are willing to agree to this. Both of them will have an equal say in all things civilian, which in my book should lead to a stable situation. All final decisions are up to me, however, and the final responsibility will be mine alone.

            "Agreed?" He looked at each of us in turn, and we nodded. "Alright then, I'll be awaiting the results." And with that he left us to deal with the mess.

            One thing Caine, Julian, and I quickly agreed upon was that we needed some other people to help us with the first step of getting Random, Vialle, and Ruby out of Amber. I thought it most important to find some people who could either help us to shield our targets from the Enemy, or who would be able to transport us quickly in and out of Amber, or preferably both. However, it seemed that the real powermongers were in short supply: Fiona was a far from likely bet, Bleys was out of the question, and as a matter of fact I would be third on the Family list, at least according to Caine and Julian. Murlas too was briefly discussed, but quickly discounted because of his obvious loyalties to Chaos.

            Caine cautiously stated that he might be able to deal with Ruby or Vialle, power-wise, although he thought that Vialle would be the safer bet for him. He still thought that we would need some purely physical back-up too, however, at which I mentioned Justin. For one thing, I was sure I could easily convince him to help us, since I knew who had been responsible for bringing the Kreel into Amber in the first place. Also, and this was the part I mentioned to my uncles (or uncle and father - oh well…), Adrian had once officially offered his services as little Ruby's protector, and I felt that Justin would easily be swayed to take on this resposibility in his late double's name. They could only agree with me, but then Justin was a fairly safe bet anyway.

            Caine then mentioned Deirdre as a possibility, but I had to disagree. Not that I thought my mother would not help us or indeed would not be able to be of any help to us, but I had some worries about the way we were going to have to persuade all of our other relatives. If most of us would be too closely associated with our side in the struggle for the throne, it would still seem too much like some kind of twisted coup. In other words, we needed some people from the other side of the fence.

            They agreed with me up to a point, of course, but it wasn't surprising that my tentative suggestion to contact Bleys after all didn't go down well. Sigh. Well, maybe Caine was right and maybe I was still too naïve in certain respects, but I just thought that with Bleys on our side it would be so much easier to convince all the others. Caine said he could see my point of view, but both he and Julian vehemently argued that it would be impossible to recruit Bleys for our mission. His mind was closed, they said, and if we were to approach him and he would refuse to help us, he would know what we were up to and might even try to make our lives more difficult by taking some steps of his own. My arguments that Bleys was probably neither aware of the real state of affairs in Amber nor of the fate that had befallen his sister Fiona did not convince them either.

            "The risk is simply too great," Caine said. "I think Bleys will be the toughest hurdle to take at this point. However, I do agree with you that it would be a good idea to find someone who is, shall we say, known to be both relatively neutral and rather above suspicion. Someone like Llewella or Gerard would qualify, I guess. They may perhaps be more easily convinced to assist us, and in turn they would be of great assistance in persuading Bleys later on.

            "If we were to approach Bleys now, however, I'm afraid he will be more likely to think that it is some kind of scheme of ours to lure him away and to try and imprison him somehow. Which is, after all, what I would be likely to do." I gave him a disapproving look, but he remained unperturbed.

            "Look," Julian said, "if our roles had been reversed and Bleys had approached me with the same story, and I had known as much as I figure him to know now, I would never have believed it either. I would simply think it to be a plot of his as part of the struggle for the throne. Believe me, I know my brother."

            "Well," I sighed, not trying to hide my disappointment, "if that's the way you all think…"

            "Yes," Julian said firmly, "that is exactly the way that we think."

            "Then we will have a really hard time trying to convince him, even if we have all the evidence, for he will never believe any of us."

**

            We thought a bit about this dilemma and whether there was anyone who Bleys would at least be more likely to listen to. Fiona was right out, of course, but Boadice might be a more viable option. After all, he had officially adopted her as his daughter. On the other hand, neither of us were really sure that she would be more inclined to help us, and there were some other complications. There was, for instance, still a rumour going around that she had been the one to spring Brand from his dungeon cell. Her trustworthiness was rather in question here, but ultimately I felt that we had to ask someone close to Bleys, and if we were to concentrate on the fact that Vialle and Ruby might be in danger I reckoned we could get Boadice to join us. After all, she had been visiting with the Queen quite a lot, or so I had gathered from the castle rumours.

            With Boadice and Justin decided upon, Caine proposed that Gerard would be the third and last person we would approach at this stage. He would probably agree to go along and keep an eye on everything we were doing, and he also had quite a few medical skills which might come in handy when dealing with the Queen and her daughter. Also, he would lend us further credibility when it came to presenting our case to the rest of the Family. Between the six of us, we thought we would be able to manage. Since I was better acquainted with both Justin and Boadice, they suggested that I'd better contact both of them, while they would concentrate on getting Gerard's help, which ultimately could be a bit trickier.

            Caine warned me to be careful not to trust Boadice too easily, or at least not until the matter with Brand had been clarified. He thought it not at all unlikely that she had been Bleys's pawn in this, but I said that I would simply ask her to explain the rumours away. For all I knew she might simply have been acting on Random's orders, as a way of getting Brand out of Amber and away from the Enemy. The Unicorn knew he had been giving some other strange and secretive orders lately.

            Of course, I decided to Trump Justin first. I couldn't immediately get a contact, though, so I persisted and persisted until he finally accepted the call. He was dressed in one of those horribly blue and pink Galorian dressing gowns and was regarding me blearily from the confines of a rather small bathroom. From his still sleepy mind I caught a fleeting image of myself tapping insistently on some kind of windowpane, and I realised that this must have been the dream image that had woken him.

            "Justin," I said, "I need your help. It is very important and needs to be done quickly."

            "Actually," he replied, suppressing a yawn, "there is already something else I'm supposed to be doing."

            "This is something that you cannot refuse me," I said firmly, adding a brief mental flash of the communication we had shared earlier that evening. That seemed to shake him fully awake.

            "You'd better come through," he said.

            There was just about enough space for the both of us in the bathroom, and I proceeded to explain to him about our immediate plan and the consequent steps, should our suspicions about Vialle and Ruby prove right. Naturally, he did not remember about Adrian having been Ruby's Protector, but when I reminded him of this, he agreed that he would simply have to come along and help us.

            While we were busy talking, the door behind Justin suddenly swung open, revealing the rather unexpected, although not unwelcome, sight of Sereva Baccaran's naked figure.

            "Oh," she said, looking from me to Justin whilst rubbing the sleep from her eyes, "I thought I heard someone. Well, never mind me." She turned back towards her bed, closing the door behind her. I couldn't help but pass a meaningful look to Justin, to which he could only smirk and shrug. Ah well, it didn't really have anything to do with the matter at hand, I guess.

            Now that he was fully awake, Justin had some other thing on his mind that he felt he needed to tell me first. Having heard our theories about Vialle and Ruby, he became convinced that both of them had been taken over by Kreel. Apparently, the dream image of my tapping on his windowpane had been the last in a series of brief flashes, one of which had been the image of the Queen and her daughter shrieking in pain. Without being asked, he told me about some of his other dream fragments too. One had been the image of Rhanda, a girl he knew who hailed from the Mirror World, lying in a pool of black blood, while another had been a scene of battle between various robot-like structures, which featured a woman in some kind of form-fitting blue and green battle armour swinging a huge blade against these robots. This last bit strangely seemed to remind me of some of the animated cartoons I had seen on television back on Shadow Earth, many, many lifetimes ago. Then Justin had had a vision of Julian and Bleys in close combat, clearly engaged in a life-and-death struggle, followed by the sight of a crystal clear blue sky in which increasingly more and more black dots started to appear. Finally, there had been Corwin, bloodied and obviously badly wounded, holding Grayswandir and being silhouetted against a dark background, and a closing image of some black-scaled creature coming towards Justin with a sword in hand. I had to admit that most of these visions seemed to make little sense to me, although they generally seemed to be expressing a growing feeling of doom. The one of Vialle and Ruby was spot on, of course, but I didn't say so to Justin. The truth would come out soon enough.

            Justin quickly slipped back into the bedroom, which indeed appeared to be Sereva's, to get properly dressed, returning a moment later in the tartan he had been wearing at the party. We decided that we'd better try and Trump Boadice together, although it didn't seem such a good idea to do so from our current location. So, quickly and discreetly, Justin guided me through the bedroom and out into the corridor. I couldn't help but nod and smirk at Sereva once more, though. Naturally, two of the little servant pixies that seemed to infest most of Galoria spotted us as we left her room, making certain that all kinds of rumours would be circulating within the hour. It would just add to my already quite colourful reputation, I guess.

            Back in my guest quarters, we tried to reach Boadice together, but there was no response. Since she had not been at the party, there was no telling where she might be, but mindful of the way I had just got through to cousin Justin in his sleep, I decided to persist in concentrating on her image. Finally, after at least several minutes, a contact opened, and it immediately became clear why she had been trying to keep us out, for she was in quite a state. Boadice sat huddled on the floor, dressed in some drab and seemingly ill-fitting clothes, and looking as if she had gone through several weeks without any sleep. She was so weak and tired that her mental defenses were like a slowly melting thin sheet of ice. As she eyed us with some feeble display of suspicion, I held back a little, and Justin did the same, so as not to invade the privacy of her own thoughts.

            "I see I don't have to ask you how you are doing," I said with a slightly worried expression. She shook her head weakly. In this state she wouldn't be much help to us at all. However, I had the feeling there was something I could try to get her back on her feet again.

            "Listen Boadice, we've got quite a situation here that requires immediate action, and your help would be greatly appreciated."

            "I'm not in any position to give anyone any help," she sighed, "whatever the situation may be."

            "Where are you at the moment?"

            "Some place in Shadow that is safe for me." She gave me a pleading look. "And I would dearly like just to go to bed and sleep. I promise to Trump you back when I…"

            "No," I said firmly, and she cringed a little. "What we are planning on cannot wait. I can see that you're currently in no shape to help, but there is something I might be able to do to remedy this. However, I would have to be close to you, physically speaking. Now, I don't mind coming through to you for a moment, if that's alright." She didn't respond right away, which made me think that this wasn't such a good suggestion. "Or you can come to us for a bit," I added.

            "But…," she protested weakly, "I am at the moment wanted in Amber…" Well, now that she had brought it up herself…

            "Yes, I wouldn't mind hearing some kind of explanation about that, if at least you have one. In any case, we are both willing to hear you out on this." She still hesitated, though, clearly caught between bringing us to her secret hide-away, wherever that might be, or having to trust us by coming through herself. "Boadice," I said reassuringly, "if you are worried about your safety, I give you my word that we shall not harm you in any way should you come through to us. We shall simply tell you what it is that we are planning to do, and if you don't want to help us you will be free to leave."

            "And my presence there will not be relayed to other people from Amber?" she asked.

            "No, that won't be necessary."

            "Well, that's not quite true," Justin cut in. "But let's say that it will not happen without your permission." That seemed to suffice for her.

            "And you are in a safe place?" she persisted.

            "Well, at the moment it is," I replied. "You could say that it is quite neutral territory." We gave a her a quick glimpse of the scenery.

            "Galoria," Jestin said, and I added: "My room."

            Boadice heaved a great sigh, before feebly mumbling: "Well, I guess so…" She briefly nodded to someone else who we couldn't see, indicating that she would be leaving, and then she stumbled to her feet. Now that she was standing up, I could see that the clothes she was wearing did indeed not fit her at all, as if they had been tailored for some other woman who was both shorter and somewhat stockier than our cousin. She extended her hand and I grasped it, pulling her gently through the Trump link.

            When she had arrived at our end, however, I decided immediately to try and help her recover some energy. I didn't let go of her hand and started concentrating on the trigger that would release the wholesome energy that was now being generated by my altered Curse. A soft orange glow appeared around me and began to ooze slowly towards my cousin's hand. When she noticed this, she flinched and tried to pull herself free from my grasp, but she was too weak and I would not let her go. There was a desperate look in her eyes, but also some resignation, as if to say that it was natural for her to have trusted the wrong person once again. Well, I would prove her wrong this once.

            As the energy reached her hand she struggled some more, crying out: "Dorian, don't!"

            "Boadice," I sighed, "this is only to make you feel better." She wasn't convinced, not by half.

            "Justin," she cried, looking at our cousin, "you gave me your word."

            "Yes," he replied calmly without making any move to intervene. "Dorian did so too." He nodded in my direction. Bless him for having at least a little faith.

            "Yes," I muttered, "so did I."

            "Let go of me…," Boa struggled ever more weakly.

            "No, Boadice," I said soothingly, trying to calm her down, "you're no use to us if you're in such a sorry state. We need your help. This concerns Vialle and Ruby."

            That appeared to clinch it for her, or perhaps she had simply given up, for she stopped trying to resist and let the orange glow engulf her. And it worked too, just as I had hoped it would. I could see her regaining her strength within mere seconds. When I felt that she had recovered sufficiently, I finally let go of her hand, thus breaking the energy flow. She stumbled one or two steps backwards, the orange glow lingering around her for a moment and then dissipated, leaving her fully recharged and even a little bit flushed and excited. I had sensed before that the healing energy had some eroticising effects, which was to be expected considering the source. However, I knew how to deal with it and I had been expecting it, which could not be said for Boa. The sultry glances she was no casting at both of us were tell-tale signs of this. I saw that Justin was sporting a broad grin. Although I didn't think he had been able to tell what exactly had occurred, he was experienced enough to spot the side effects.

            "I would have appreciated it," she breathed, "if you could have explained this to me a bit earlier."

            "I know," I said, "but it's not exactly something I like to discuss, if you catch my drift."

            "Yes," she agreed and breathed a husky sigh. She spotted a dressing gown similar to the one Justin had been wearing earlier hanging from a hook on my bathroom door, quickly got it and put it on, thereby becoming a little bit more decently dressed. "So," she said, "what is it that you required my help for?"

            "No," I replied calmly, "not yet. I feel I have shown a sign of my good faith, so now it's your turn. Before we go any further I want to hear what you have to say about the rumours that are circulating concerning you and Brand. As far as I know no public accusations have been cast yet, but it is important that we clear this up beforehand, for it will undoubtedly come to play a role in the later proceedings."

**

            "Alright," Boadice answered, "I shall tell you, but only on the condition that you will not pass it on to anyone else without my say-so. It reflects rather badly on me, you see."

            "Even worse than the current rumours?" I asked. "It's said that you sprung Brand from his dungeon cell, killing several Amber guards while you were at it."

            "No," she said, "that isn't how it happened." Then, promising to be as concise as possible, she started telling us of her mother, who had lived her whole life in a society with very strict rules for women. Being confined like this, she had sought the only form of rebellion that was open to her, and to put not to fine a point to it, the result was that neither she nor Boadice were really sure who Boa's father really was. Nor did the possible candidates for that matter, being Bleys and Delwin. So, the long and short of it was that Boa had ties with both of her possible uncle-fathers or father-uncles, and she owed both of them some allegiance. At least, that had been the case until recently.

            A short while ago she had been approached by Delwin with some story of him being in ever increasing danger and needing some kind of special sword that had been stored somewhere in the Castle dungeons by the rest of the Family. Since he had no direct way of getting there himself, he had asked Boadice to help him reach the dungeons, which she had done, figuring the sword story was more likely to be an excuse for him wanting to walk the Pattern. She had forgotten about Brand being there too, though. When she had Trumped Delwin, he had come through, only to bring in Jasra, knock Boa unconscious, and apparently free Brand. Boadice said that she didn't know anything about guards having been killed, having only come to again once they were firmly back somewhere in Shadow. As far as she knew, Brand was still there with Delwin, and she made no secret of the fact that she was more than a little upset with her father-uncle. As she saw it, while this story remained a secret, she would still be in a position to go back to that place and perhaps try and bring Brand back to Amber again, something which she would not have been likely to do if she still felt any kind of obligation towards Delwin. Justin and I agreed that we would not tell anyone else about this as long as it wouldn't become immediately relevant. I guessed it safe to assume that Delwin had little or nothing to do with our current problems concerning Random. And as for Boa's entire story, it sounded so unlikely that it had to be true. If she had really taken the trouble to lie to us, she would have been able to come up with a better tale.

            While Boadice had been talking, I had noticed that my eye kept straying towards her left thigh, and I slowly realised that my attention wasn't drawn there because of my cousin's curves, nice though they might be. I remembered having noticed the bulge of a pocket on her skirt in that spot earlier on, and the realisation struck me that there was some kind of object stashed there that radiated a lot of power. It was something magical, I could tell, and it even seemed to have little links of power to places in other Shadows. I couldn't remember having ever seen anything like this before, and I put the thought away for later investigation. The fact that Boadice had not mentioned anything about it told me enough, and while I was curious I didn't want to antagonize her needlessly.

            Briefly I told her much the same story as I had told Justin, about the Kreel and everything. Surprisingly, she had not had a run-in with the Kreel yet, although she recalled having found some coins in the Mirror Reality in Sherwyn, which had been the Enemy's headquarters at the time, on the side of which had been the credo: "In Kreel We Trust." As I told her the rest of it, she nodded, and finally she agreed quite easily to help us, saying that it was a vastly superior plan to choosing between Julian and Bleys. I didn't mention our considerations about her raising our credibility with her remaining father, for I figured her bright enough to reach such conclusions herself.

            Boadice momentarily found some privacy in the bathroom to Trump the person who had been with her before and tell them she was okay, after which I Trumped Caine. He informed me that they had been able to convince Gerard at least to come along with us. Gerard was very suspicious and could hardly believe that our story about the Kreel was true. Still, our team was now complete, which was one positive thing at least.

            Boadice was at first a bit reluctant to face our uncles, but fortunately I was able to soothe her fears so that she could come through with us. Caine regarded her presence fairly levelly, while Julian graced her with a nod, a smile, and a glance at the robe she was still wearing. Gerard, however, frowned, looking from Boa to Justin and me, and back and forth, until he demanded that we explain ourselves, meaning of course the Brand thing. It seemed that Gerard had received orders after all to bring Boadice back to Random, although he might be willing to postpone such actions in the light of our current endeavour. With some trouble Justin and I managed to convince him that Brand wasn't really the issue here, especially since he still seemed to be caught in his Fabian persona, and that we really needed Boadice's assistance, both for the first and second stages of our plan. He still grumbled a little, but at least het let the matter lie for now.

            The next hurdle was trying to convince Gerard that the Kreel were both real and very much in Amber. I think it helped that Justin was there to argue our case, for I believe that he was the one who Gerard was most likely to trust. Still, as a final measure I had to offer to take him to Cardane to meet the people who had once been under the Kreel's influence, even though it would waste precious time. The offer itself was enough to swing him around, though, and he thanked me for having made it.

            Julian had already told him the story of Ayland, and Gerard agreed that it might be sufficient cause to act. However, he was quite firm in his insistence that he'd be the one to check firsthand whether there was really anything wrong with either Vialle or Ruby.

            "I simply do not want anyone else to lay a hand on them before I have had a chance to see what is going on," he said, brooking no objections. "If all of this is really true, I shall support you whole-heartedly. However, it is possible that my presence is only necessary to add to your credibility, so I shall be the one to assess the situation for myself, and I shall not allow anyone to try and manipulate me." He glared around the room, making clear that all of us would have to work hard to earn his trust here.

            Well, that left us with the fact that we had to find some way of detecting the Kreel influence that had to be both fast and reliable, since we would have to apply it while we were still in the castle. I admitted that we had had only one stable method of detection, but that the person in question was now out of circulation. However, Gerard himself came up with the solution to our problem: he said he knew of some diagnostic spell that would allow him to gauge the level of brain activity in a person. He had even performed such a spell on Ruby once before, at Random and Vialle's request. Ruby was a normal, healthy Amberite baby, and it was clear to him that her level of brain activity would differ widely from that of the Kreel. So, if he could perform the spell and his findings were vastly different from before, he would be inclined to believe our story to be true. He said that performing the same spell on Vialle would have little effect, since she was far older and her brain was infinitely more complex than her daughter's. However, if the spell on Ruby yielded the results that we thought it would, it would be interesting to see whether the results of the spell on Vialle would yield the same results, for that might indicate that their minds were one and the same.

            Gerard added that it would help if the subjects of the spell were asleep, for it would dimish the chances of being detected. This meant that we would have to find a way to get into the Royal Bedchambers. Fortunately, Boadice seemed to remember that Vialle had quite steadily stuck to breastfeeding her daughter, which meant that Ruby would probably be sleeping quite close to her own chamber. I ventured that I would be able to get us in and out of the Royal Quarters using the Pattern, although I was unsure of how quickly they would detect this and react to it. Of course, there were still some wards that had been placed there by Fiona, but I felt confident that I ould be able to deal with them. After all, Fiona had been absent for a while, so their maintenance would be lacking.

            The plan would be then for me to take us in, after which Gerard would cast his spell on both Ruby and Vialle. He said it would take him only a minute or so to get the results, so there was a slight risk of the Enemy trying to stop us, but there was no other way to deal with this. Presumably, the others would have to defend us from any attacks. If our theories were correct, we could then quickly take both the Queen and her daughter away, after which Random would immediately be fetched as well.

            The next obvious question was where we should take them to. Somewhere in Shadow wasn't an option, since the three of them, being Real, would shape the Shadows around them and, therefore, the Enemy would be able to find them. Boadice suggested the Courts of Chaos, but Julian was vehemently against this, and I didn't think it such a good idea either, considering that that would be likely to be the next battlefield.

            That left us with either Sherwyn or Galoria. Both were possible, but there were some considerations for the future that had to be made here, as Julian so rightly pointed out. He drew our attention to the fact that what we did within the Family would at least have to be explained to the citizens of Amber too. If we indeed succeeded in deposing Random, we had to do it in such a way that a future return could still be possible. Sending him to Sherwyn might give us some trouble, since Sherwyn, being generally on good terms with Amber, would have few qualms about extraditing the deposed king if such a request were made. Galoria, on the other hand, was officially neutral, and would not so easily grant such requests.

            Justin objected, however, that he had not thought it would come to an official deposition of the King, for that would be fairly irreversible. Julian agreed, but added that this need not be the story we would tell the outside world. Point was that we just needed to find some place where Random would be relatively safe with his wife and daughter. We certainly did not want to accuse him in some kind of trial, we simply wanted him out of the way with as little contact with Amber as possible. Personally, I added that I thought it likely that once Random had been removed from office the Enemy would lose interest in him and his direct family, which would make him relatively safe in Galoria despite the obvious Archai presence.

            In the end, however, most people seemed to favour Sherwyn over Galoria, and Justin  was asked to Trump Corwin and ask for his permission to bring Random there, since it was still his kingdom we were talking about. A couple of minutes after Justin had left the room he Trumped me, having apparently gone through to his father to discuss the matter. Unfortunately, Corwin insisted that no Kreel were to be brought into Sherwyn. Since I had to admit that there would be no easy and immediate way of releasing Ruby and Vialle, this seemed to rule out this option. The others still saw it fit to argue a little over Galoria, since it wasn't the ideal location either, but ultimately I just put it to them that we didn't have any other choice. The good thing was that I had already spoken to Alexander about Galoria's policy on political asylum, so I was fairly sure this could easily be arranged. Also, I didn't think we  needed to go to Queen Myrthe; cousin Alex was enough of a power behind the throne to be able to make such decisions.