Sign of the Unicorn, chapter 9

Spoiler alert: This post is part of an in-depth discussion of Sign of the Unicorn by Roger Zelazny, which will inevitably reveal key plot points. I recommend reading the book first. It's short, I promise.

---

With the help of Corwin and the other Amberites, Grard and Random rescued Brand from his tower prison, but he was stabbed in the process. They try to piece together who was responsible for trying to silence him, but after their meeting, Corwin too was stabbed by an unknown person in his room.

He woke up in his house on Earth, where he got help for his wound from his lawyer friend Bill Roth, who found him and drove him to the hospital. There Bill filled Corwin in on some of his own backstory, still missing from his memories due to his amnesia. He had been committed to a sanitarium by his brother "Brandon Corey" and a psychiatrist, "Hilary B. Rand," but he escaped the day he had his car accident. Bill also revealed that he suspected Corwin was not exactly human.

Corwin has recovered from his wounds enough to move around on his own. He receives a Trump call from Random informing him that Brand is awake and wants to talk to him. So (surprising a nurse in he process) he teleports to Amber.

Brand tells Corwin his own version of events. It was generally assumed that Eric had killed Corwin, so Oberon declared that a fratricide would not succeed him. Brand and two other siblings conspired to consolidate their own claim to the throne. First they arranged for Oberon's disappearance. Co-conspirator Bleys went to Shadow to raise an army, in case the plot could not be accomplished bloodlessly. Caine agreed to give them safe passage to Amber on the sea. However, in the end he remained loyal to Eric, who had declared himself the defender of Amber.

Meanwhile, Brand had also discovered that Eric was hiding Corwin on Earth. Corwin being alive complicated his own plans, so Brand arranged to keep him out of the way: first by having him committed, but he escaped. So he arranged his "accident." Bleys was the one who shot out Corwin's tire, and Brand rescued from the car and phoned the police and reported the accident anonymously.

Finally, Brand and Bleys's third co-conspirator is also revealed as the attacker: Fiona.

This was not quite the story I expected. As I said last time, having your brother committed is not the most up-front way to protect him. I hadn't anticipated Brand having his own claim to the throne and, like Eric, needing to keep Corwin out of the way. So it turns out Brand isn't so nice, even if he and Corwin are presently on good terms—surprising, considering what was just revealed. Maybe Corwin doesn't think Brand had any intent to harm him.

Brand's revelation that Fiona was his attacker is a bit underwhelming. Until two chapters ago, she was only a background figue. It's sort of like Hercule Poirot gathering all the main characters together in the study, just to tell them the murderer was a random burglar who found the door unlocked. As a reader, I don't have enough investment in her character to feel strongly about this one way or the other.

Bleys's role in the coup was to be the one to take the throne, while Brand and Fiona co-ruled as a triumvirate. Way back in Nine Princes in Amber, Bleys allied with Corwin in his first attack on Amber, without abandoning his own claim to the throne. If I'm reading the timeline correctly, Brand had already disappeared and Fiona was lying low. So Bleys continued to press his own claim without them, and Corwin's re-emergence was simply a matter of (in)convenience.

Brand said that he was imprisoned in the tower by his "associates." Meaning who? Did Bleys and Fiona turn on him? Or was he allied with the deformed human-ish things that kept him locked up?

Obviously, there is more to Brand's story, and Corwin hints it will be revealed in Chapter 10, on Sunday.