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Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 16:25:56 -0500
Dear Paula,
Well, part of Dairmaid's plot to kill Corwin would probably involve not
getting caught. He pulled it off with Nagataka, after all, but then again
Nagataka wasn't making a lot of friends at the time. Dairmaid's biggest fear
was that Benedict and his Men in Black would return to Amber and launch an
efficient and effective investigation, just on the principle. But luckily the
evidence has been neatly dispensed with, and as far as I know, exactly three
people know how Nagataka really died: Dairmaid, Moire, and Moire's general,
Ips. And we ain't talkin'.
Caine and I discussed various plans of revenge -- turns out Corwin was the
one who attacked Caine, for no readily apparent reason. Caine was against
killing Corwin -- death is too permanent for his tastes. I, on the other
hand, didn't want to just rough him up and let him live. What's to keep
Corwin from hunting me down and killing me at his leisure, then? Well,
Caine said that HE might object. (Yet another touching moment between
Prince and squire.) One assumes that the same would apply if Dairmaid killed
Corwin and the family came after him.
But killing Corwin is off the agenda, for the moment. Dairmaid's temper has
cooled a bit. He had three days to mull things over while Caine recuperated,
and he's come to the conclusion that, while he COULD murder Corwin in some
tricky way, that isn't really SPORTING. And if you're trying to make a point,
you'd kind of like your subject to KNOW that a point is being made. And once
they get the point, killing them is unnecessary -- even counter-productive.
But if you do make the point, then you've also made an enemy. And there you
are. So maybe Dairmaid will just remind himself that HE knows he could kill
Corwin, and that's good enough. Well, it's not really, but, as always, there
are other things going on.
Oberon, using the Jewel, made a big general announcement : he was going to
destroy Amber, and we (the family) would be taking our rightful place as
a House of Chaos. HAH. Whatever. Morgan discussed this with Oberon, he
explained that Benedict and possibly Gerard would be left behind in Amber
to guard the Pattern, but they were completing the destruction of the Castle.
To cement alliances, Oberon has granted certain family members to other
houses of Chaos. These are a few of the younger (weaker) family members
who disappeared when waves of un-reality kept washing through Shadow --
we figured they were snagged by Chaosites. I think Lazarus was almost
grabbed, too. Maybe it was Oberon after all.
Well, Llewella and Morgan were unable to prevent Oberon from stopping Eric.
I mean literally. He was frozen -- paralyzed. Oberon said he might make
a statuary of dissenters. Llewella trumped Oberon and then chucked his
trump card onto the Pattern. It did bad things to Grandpa. When Morgan
took the Jewel, Eric was freed. But now they're worried because, while
Oberon got pretty fried, the psyche that remains isn't enough to account
for a person. Morgan's bodyguard, a demon named Kamow (sp?) was sent to
distract Oberon (SPLAT! Dead demon), and he's gone missing, though Morgan
can still detect him distantly through his trump so he's not dead (Okay,
okay. SPLAT! Seriously wounded demon). Morgan thinks Oberon may have
taken Kamow's body, or gone elsewhere. (Perhaps into a house plant, Eric
suggested. HELP! I'm being psychically dominated by a geranium!)
Meanwhile, Caine was thoroughly disgusted by Oberon's announcement. Once
again, Dairmaid practiced the fine art of Elder Manipulation and got
Caine mad enough to DO something, instead of just laying around on the
Island of Beautiful Women and kvetching about it. So we returned to the
fleet that Caine had left after Corwin started sticking holes in him, and
prepared to destroy Corwin's army, thereby getting back at Corwin AND stop
the destruction of the Castle (at least temporarily.) Dairmaid recalled
that there were a few folks in Corwin's camp who probably weren't subscribers
to Oberon's New World Order. While Caine trumped Lazarus, Dairmaid trumped
Gerard. Gerard didn't like the idea of us bombing the army -- too many
innocents dead already, and these men were effectively on Caine's side . . .
So he told Dairmaid to tell Caine that if he bombed the camp, Gerard would
personally give him the beating of his life. That might be fun to watch,
but Caine called back his forces. Gerard said he would take care of Corwin,
which it seems he did by dispensing with Corwin (which probably wouldn't
be hard since Corwin thought he was just a harmless old man) and taking
his shape. It freaked Caine out when somebody trumped him who LOOKED like
Corwin but FELT like Gerard (recall that Caine's a trump-guru). He was
majorly disturbed until Dairmaid explained that Gerard's a shapeshifter.
It took Caine a while to digest that. It was kind of privileged information,
but I think Caine can keep a secret, and he was seriously disturbed by
the ideal that Gerard would/could eat someone's brain.
Well, poor Prince Caine was having a hard day, and Dairmaid picked the
wrong time to criticize the Navy's lack of girls and cold beer, so Caine
did something . . . something . . . inhuman.
In my last synopsis, I mentioned that Princess Dori had been taken prisoner
on one of Caine's ships. Well, of course, it was THIS one, but neither
Dairmaid nor Britt knew that. Caine suggested that Dairmaid should make
himself useful by interrogating this prisoner they'd picked up trying to
enter Amber. And he gave Dairmaid a slip of paper to give to the guards.
The sparkle that returned to Caine's eye indicated that he was up to something,
but Dairmaid would NEVER look at a message he'd been told to carry. So
he delivered the note, which said he was not to be released from the room
for an hour, and blithely strode into sixty minutes of living hell. Dori
hadn't had anyone to talk to for almost a whole day. I think she must be
a shapeshifter -- no normal human could go that long without taking a breath.
But Dairmaid did discover that Dori had tipped off Benedict. And that the
fake Benedict was Oberon. I THOUGHT SO! I DID I DID I DID! LONG LONG
AGO I HAD IT FIGURED OUT! REALLY I DID! I must trust my instincts more.
Ugh. What a book. I should learn to be more brief.
Take care!
Britt
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