“Why?”

“Because you are sometimes appallingly naive, little brother, and I do not yet trust your judgment as to what is truly important.”

“I may starve to death before I finish,” I answered. Smiling crookedly, my step-brother Mandor raised his arms. While Jurt and Despil are my half brothers, borne by my mother, Dara, to Prince Sawall the Rim Lord, Mandor was Sawall’s son by an earlier marriage. Mandor is considerably older than I, and as a result he reminds me much of my relatives back in Amber. I’d always felt a bit of an outsider among the children of Dara and Sawall. In that Mandor was — in a more stable sense — not part of that particular grouping either, we’d had something in common. But whatever the impulse behind his early attentions, we’d hit it off and become closer, I sometimes think, than full blood brothers. He had taught me a lot of practical things over the years, and we had had many good times together.

The air was distorted between us, and when Mandor lowered his arms a dinner table covered with embroidered white linen came into sudden view between us, soundlessly, followed a moment later by a pair of facing chairs. The table bore numerous covered dishes, fine china, crystal, silverware; there was even a gleaming ice bucket with a dark twisted bottle within it.

“I am impressed,” I stated.

“I’ve devoted considerable time to gourmet magic in recent years,” he said. “Pray, be seated.”

We made ourselves comfortable there on the bridge between two darknesses. I muttered appreciatively as I tasted, and it was some minutes before I could begin a summary of the events that had brought me to this place of starlight and silence.

Mandor listened to my entire tale without interruption, and when I’d finished he nodded and said, “Would you care for another serving of dessert?”