Is there anyone in this family who isn't trying to kill me? 
Tristan seems to be the only one willing to help, and I've never even met
him.  Even so, he didn't help much.  Just told me that Brand was after my
ass.  Well, no shit!  Like the fact that he keeps asking family members to
kill me wasn't a clue.  Still, I was hoping he'd be too busy to deal with
me personally.  The bastard almost ran me through!  He's obviously not
thinking about this very clearly.  If it was that easy, I'd've done the
same to him when I took the bloody Jewel away from him.  Even if he'd
succeeded, the Jewel would have teleported me away, just like it did when
Gabriel shot Eric.  Not that I intend to test this feature, if I can help
it.

	I hate Brand.  And not just because he's trying to kill me,
although that doesn't help.  It's because he's trying to destroy
everything I've come to know, so he can rebuild it in his own twisted
image.  And Gabriel thinks I should talk to him?  Gabriel is an ass. 
Going on about how he can't understand this petty conflict, and he's so
above it all.  Bullshit.  If he's so above this conflict, why did he help
Dad defeat Eric?  Eric had given him permission to stay in Amber, and, as
far as I can tell, Eric did nothing against him, other than be absent when
Julian beat the snot out of him.  But Gabriel joined the war against Eric
anyway.  Yep, that's staying above the petty conflicts.  Sanctimonious
asshole.  He actually tried to convince me that if I just gave Brand the
Jewel back, everything would be all right.  Like Brand wouldn't kill me on
the spot, and then use the Jewel to destroy everything else.  I'm glad
Gabriel was there when Brand tried to run me through.  Sure, Brand will
listen to reason.  Right.  Think maybe it's occurred to Gabriel that
things aren't that simple?  One can hope.

	In the meantime, I find myself bound for this other pole of
reality, the source of the armies that are attacking Amber.  Not a place I
particularly want to be, especially with the Jewel.  But if I go back
towards Amber, I risk passing Brand, assuming he decided to wait around. 
This is such a waste of time.  We need to destroy Brand's Pattern, and we
could have done so by now, if this damn family didn't spend so much time
fighting each other that they lose sight of the real problems.  No, they'd
rather try to steal the Jewel away from me than use it to fight Brand.  I
knew I couldn't trust Farad.  Couldn't he have at least waited until after
we'd dealt with Brand before making his power play?  No, of course not. 
That would require seeing beyond his own petty needs.  I suppose there's
one good thing about all of this.  If Brand gets the Jewel, he'll kill me,
so I won't have to watch him destroy everything else.  But that's not much
comfort at all.