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"Now tell me ahout your wreck."
So I did. Out of whole cloth. What a disaster I detailed! Down to the snapping of the mainmast, yet.
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He patted me on the shoulder and poured me a drink. He lit the cigar he had given me.
"You just rest easy here," he told me. "I'll take you ashore any time you like, or I'll signal you a passing
ship if you see one you recognize."
I took him up on his offered hospitality. It was too much of a lifesaver not to. I ate his food and drank
his drinks and let him give me a clean shirt which was too big for him. It had belonged to a friend of his
who'd drowned at sea.
I stayed with him for three months, as I recovered my strength. I helped him around the place-tending
the light on nights when he felt like getting smashed, and cleaning up all the rooms in the house-even to
the extent of painting two of them and replacing five cracked windowpanes-and watching the sea with
him on stormy nights.
He was apolitical, I learned. He didn't care who reigned in Amber. So far as he was concerned, the
whole bloody crew of us were rotten. So long as he could tend his lighthouse and eat and drink of good
food and brew, and consider his nautical charts in peace, he didn't give half a damn what happened
ashore. I came to be rather fond of him, and since I knew something of old charts and maps also, we
spent many a good evening correcting a few. I had sailed far into the north many years ago, and I gave
him a new chart based on my recollections of the voyage. This seemed to please him immensely, as did
my description of those waters.
"Corey" (that was how I'd named myself), "I'd like to sail with you one day," he said. "I hadn't realized
you were skipper of your own vessel one time."
"Who knows?" I told him. "You were once a captain yourself, weren't you?"
"How'd you know?" he asked.
Actually, I'd remembered, but I gestured about me in reply.
"All these things you've collected," I said, "and your fondness for the charts, Also, you bear yourself
like a man who once held a command."
He smiled.
"Yes," he told me, "that's true. I had a command for over a hundred years. That seems long ago. . .
Let's have another drink."
I sipped mine and sort of put it aside. I must have gained over forty pounds in the months I had spent
with him. Any day now, I was expecting him to recognize me as a member of the family. Maybe he
would turn me in to Eric if he did-and maybe not. Now that we'd established this much of camaraderie, I
had a feeling that he might not do it. I didn't want to take the chance and find out.
Sometimes as I sat tending the light I wondered, "How long should I stay here?"
Not too much longer, I decided, adding a drop of grease to a swivel bearing. Not much longer at all.
The time was drawing near when I should take to the road and walk among Shadows once again.
Then one day I felt the pressure, gentle and questing at first. I couldn't tell for sure who it was.
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I immediately stood stock still, closed my eyes and made my mind go blank. It was about five minutes
before the questing presence withdrew.
I paced then and wondered, and I smiled when I realized the shortness of my course. Unconsciously, I
had been pacing out the dimensions of my cell back in Amber.
Someone had just tried to reach me, via my Trump. Was it Eric? Had he finally become aware of my
absence and decided to try locating me in this manner? I wasn't sure. I felt that he might fear mental
contact with me again. Julian, then? Or Gerard? Caine? Whoever it had been, I had closed him out
completely, I knew that. And I would refuse such contact with any of my family. I might be missing some
important news or a helpful call, but I couldn't afford to take the chance. The attempted contact and my
blocking efforts left me with a chill. I shuddered. I thought about the thing all the rest of the day and
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