One of the first things a child of my father must learn is to know her own strengths … and her weaknesses. This is a necessary thing not just because it is wisdom in of itself, but because our siblings will inevitably make use of both our abilities and our liabilities in order to achieve their goals. It is not always a pleasant thing to discard our illusions, but it is necessary if one intends to survive long in Amber.
And if I am nothing else, I am a survivor.
I am Florimel, Princess of Amber.
You may have heard of me, but I doubt that little of what was said was complimentary.
I understand this. I would be a liar if I said that it pleased me (and of course you know I'm a liar), but I know the reasons for it. I cannot profess to have many virtues (not with a straight face, anyway), but I have always taken pride in the fact that I see who and what I am when I look in the mirror.
No matter how the Shadows try to lie for me.
Bear with me. Like so many of my siblings, I am in love with the sound of my own voice. I like to imply that my long centuries of existence have imparted to me wisdom unknown and unknowable to mortals.
Of course, that's a lie.
In my experience, time in of itself does not impart wisdom. Experience, yes. Knowledge—if one chooses to seek it. But wisdom …
I have known fools who have lived for thousands of years, and children who still had their baby teeth who were far wiser than I.
But I digress …
I was about to speak of my virtues …
The first of those, of course, is frank self-appraisal.
Yes, I am beautiful … but then as a daughter of Amber that is not particularly noteworthy in of itself. Deirdre with her long dark hair, with that pale skin, with those eyes that so many men had lost themselves in (including Corwin) was at least as lovely as me. And to those who were not of our family—to those she had no reason to guard herself against—she was the kindest of creatures.
I am too much my father's daughter to feign things I do not feel, and I never shared her compassionate nature.
So I never tried.
And after a time, no one expected me to.
There were times when I envied Fiona. She has beauty (again, like all of us) and also a sharp intellect. Her knowledge is deep, her words are subtle—she has that knack for saying just the right thing … the sort of cutting remark that never occurs to me until long after the conversation is over and it does me no good.
Understand. I am not stupid, but I could spend a thousand years of study and I would never be one tenth the sorceress that Fiona is. Everyone would laugh their asses off if I had ever once expressed a belief that I could ever be as intelligent or talented as Fiona.
Of course not. I am Flora, the least of Amber's princesses. The youngest of Oberon's daughters, and the one that could never aspire to be anything other than a pretty face.
And then there is Llewella. Sweet, tragic Llewella. Llewella, the just. Llewella the noble. Llewella who was too good for Amber … too pure to partake in the intrigues of the Royal Family.
Daddy respected her for that.
He did not express disappointment in her failure to serve Amber. He did not demand obedience or service from her. No … Llewella was not passive … Llewella was not weak … she was PURE.
As I never was.
Daddy made sure of that.
When I had just turned fourteen, Daddy took me on a shadow walk with him. I had yet to walk the Pattern myself, and until that time I had never been alone with my father for more than ten minutes. I imagined that I had said or done something that had finally made him take notice of me, and I fancied that now he would see to my instruction in the arts of Shadow himself …
He didn't.
No, Daddy taught me well that day, but not the lessons I had hoped for.
I won't go into the details of our Shadow Walk. It's not that I don't recall them—it's just something I try not to think about too much.
We wound up in some little shadow that had taken his fancy before. The king there was much like my father—bigger than life, charming when he cared to be—and I suppose he was handsome in his rude fashion.
Daddy gave me to him.
It was a swap, you see. Daddy badly wanted this king's daughter, and the only way that he could find a way into her bed would be if he gave the king measure for measure. My innocence for his daughter's. A fair trade, if you will.
I clutched at his arm. I clung to his belt as he seized the other poor girl's wrist and led her off. When entreaties and commands failed to compel my obedience, he slapped me.
No, let's be honest here.
He hit me.
I was still screaming for him when the king shut the door.
Later, after he had taken his pleasure from me, the king grew angry at me. He was angry that I had not been moved by his love making prowess. He was furious that I would not stop crying.
And like my father, he hit me.
He would have beaten me to death, I think, if I had not been a daughter of Amber. Even as a girl, even as a child, I had a strength that no shadow could hope to match—I learned that lesson that day too.
So did the king … though it was not a lesson that served him particularly well as I strangled him to death shortly after I realized that I could.
It was at that point that I decided that I wanted to live.
Sooner or later, the king's men would break through the door and they would find us. I could not yet walk in Shadow on my own. Daddy would be of no help to me—if he had not saved me before I had no reason to think he would do so now.
But I had one thing left to me. One faint hope.
When I clutched at Daddy's belt I had managed to steal one of his Trumps. I knew how to use one … it was one of the few things I had been taught.
The Trump I had? The Trump that I pinned my faint hopes of survival on?
Eric's.
