【正文】 I decided it was time to take a walk. A long one. I had often noticed that his fondness for me tended to increase as an inverse function of my proximity. He gave me a fancy riding crop for a goingaway presentto hasten the process of affection, I suppose. Still, it was a very nice cropsilverchased, beautifully tooledand I made good use of it. I had decided to go looking for an assemblage of all my simple pleasures in one small nook of Shadow. It was a long rideI will not bore you with the detailsand it was pretty far from Amber, as such things go. This time, I was not looking for a place where I would be especially important. That can get either boring or difficult fairly quickly, depending on how responsible you want to be. I wanted to be an irresponsible nonentity and just enjoy myself. Texorami was a wide open port city, with sultry days and long nights, lots of good music, gambling around the clock, duels every morning and inbetween mayhem for those who couldn39。t wait. And the air currents were fabulous. I had a little red sail plane I used to go sky surfing in, every couple of days. It was the good life. I played drums till all hours in a basement spot up the river where the walls sweated almost as much as the customers and the smoke used to wash around the lights like streams of milk. When I was done playing I39。d go find some action, women, or cards, usually. And that was it for the rest of the night. Damn Eric, anywayl That reminds me again . . . He once accused me of cheating at cards, did you know that? And that39。s about the only thing I wouldn39。t cheat at. I take my card playing seriously. I39。m good and I39。m also lucky. Eric was neither. The trouble with him was that he was good at so many things he wouldn39。t admit even to himself that there were some things other people could do better. If you kept beating him at anything you had to be cheating. He started a nasty argument over it one nightcould have gotten seriousbut Gerard and Caine broke it up. Give Caine that. He took my part that time. Poor guy . . . Hell of a way to go, you know? His throat . . . Well, anyhow, there I was in Texorami, making music and women, winning at cards and jockeying around the sky. Palm trees and nightblooming wallflowers. Lots of good port smellsspices, coffee, tar, saltyou know. Gentlefolk, merchants, and peonsthe same straights as in most other places. Sailors and assorted travelers passing in and out. Guys like me living around the edges of things. I spent a little over two years in Texorami, happy. Really. Not much contact with the others. Sort of postcard like hellos via the Trumps every now and then, and that was about it. Amber was pretty much off my mind. All this changed one night when I was sitting there with a full house and the guy across from me was trying to make up his mind whether or not I was bluffing. The Jack of Diamonds began talking to me. Yes, that is how it started. I was in a weird frame of mind anyway. I had just finished a couple very hot sets and was still kind of high. Also, I was physically strung out from a long day39。s gliding and not much sleep the night before. I decided later that it must be our mental quirk associated with the Trumps that made me see it that way when someone was trying to reach me and I had cards in my handany cards. Ordinarily, of course, we get the message emptyhanded, unless we are doing the calling. It could have been that my subconsciouswhich was kind of footloose at the timejust seized on the available props out of habit Later, though, I had cause to wonder. Really, I just don39。t know. The Jack said, Random. Then its face blurred and it said, Help me. I began getting a feel of the personality by then, but it was weak. The whole thing was very weak. Then the face rearranged itself and I saw that I was right. It was Brand. He looked like hell, and he seemed to be chained or tied to something. Help me, he said again.I39。m here, I said. What39。s the matter? . . . prisoner, he said, and something else that I couldn39。t make out. Where? I asked. He shook his head at that. Can39。t bring you through, he said. No Trumps, and I am too weak. You will have to e the long way around.... I did not ask him how he was managing it without my Trump. Finding out where he was seemed of first importance. I asked him how I could locate him. Look very closely, he said. Remember every feature. I may only be able to show you once. Come armed, too. . . . Then I saw the landscapeover his shoulder, out a window, over a battlement, I can39。t be sure. It was far from Amber, somewhere where the shadows go mad. Farther than I like to go. Stark, with shifting colors. Fiery. Day without a sun in the sky. Rocks that glided like sailboats across the land. Brand there in some sort of towera small point of stability in that flowing scene. I remembered it, all right. And I remembered the presence coiled about the base of that tower. Brilliant. Prismatic. Some sort of watchthing, it seemedtoo bright for me to make out its outline, to guess its proper size. Then it all just went away. Instant off. And there I was, staring at the Jack of Diamonds again, with the guy across from me not knowing whether to be mad at my long distraction or concerned that I might be having some sort of sick spell. I closed up shop with that hand and went home. I lay stretched out on my bed, smoking and thinking. Brand had still been in Amber when I had departed. Later, though, when I had asked after him, no one had any idea as to his whereabouts. He had been having one of his melancholy spells, had snapped out of it one day and ridden off. And that was that. No messages eithereither way. He wasn39。t answering, he wasn39。t talking. I tried to figure every angle. He was smart, damn smart. Possibly the best mind in the family. He was in trouble and he had called me. Eric and Gerard were more the heroic types and would proba