The Dawn of Amber tdoa-1

by John Gregory Betancourt

  “Before we can proceed,” Dworkin went on, “I must check something. It will only take a moment…”

  He crossed to a table cluttered with wires and tubes and beakers, crystals and glass spheres and copper pots—the cast-off paraphernalia of a wizard or alchemist, as far as I could tell. He rummaged among the bits and pieces, tossing first one then another aside, muttering to himself.

  “How long have these feuds been going on in the Courts of Chaos?” I asked.

  “Longer than anyone can remember. The Courts are ancient.”

  “How old is that?” King Elnar’s family had ruled in Ilerium for nearly a thousand years,

  “Every family in the Courts can trace their lineage back through the generations,” he said, “to the man who first recognized the Logrus for what it was. His name is lost to us, but it is known that he created if from his own blood and magics that came to him in a vision. He built it, and then he went through it. Once he completed the journey, when he discovered he had the power to move through Shadows, he forged an empire that still stands. Every one of his children went through the Logrus as they came of age, and they in turn gained the ability to walk among Shadows, becoming the first Lords of Chaos and begetting all the noble houses and the great families that still hold power in the Courts. Thus has it come down through the generations to us, to you and me and all the rest of our family.”

  “How many generations?” I asked. “How many years?”

  “It could be ten thousand. It could be more. Who can say? Time has little meaning for those who travel in Shadows…”

  It seemed inconceivably ancient to me. A ten-thousand-year-old blood feud…

  “How many of these great families are there, anyway?” I asked. “And how many Lords of Chaos?”

  “There are hundreds of houses, though many are minor, like our own. The Lords of Chaos must number in the thousands. King Uthor himself keeps the Book of Peerage, where all the bloodlines are detailed, from the greatest house to least. Should any of us survive the coming war, we should annotate it. I… did not provide anyone in the Courts with the details of my children born in Shadow.”

  That piqued my interest. “What of me? Did you tell them of me?”

  “No.”

  “And yet they found me anyway. How is that possible?”

  “Yes, they did find you.” He paused, frowning. “An interesting question. You should have been safe in Ilerium. Nobody in the Courts knew of you.”

  According to Aber, Dworkin had spoken often of me to Locke and Freda and the other members of our family. That’s how I’d been found. I knew without a doubt that we had a traitor in our midst—someone who had given away my name and location.

  But who? Locke? Freda? Aber? One of the others? I swallowed, picturing them one by one. I couldn’t see Blaise or Pella betraying me, somehow. Davin, perhaps?

  Still searching, Dworkin continued, “There is a science behind the Logrus. A reason it works. It creates a kind of mental shortcut, a way to hold its image in your mind without trying. That is the key to moving through Shadows.”

  “Are there other ways? I thought the Trumps—”

  “Yes, there are other ways through Shadow, and there are… legends, I supposed you would call them… of at least one other device which had similar properties, though it was lost or destroyed generations ago. The Logrus is all we have. I do not yet know why, but it makes some of us better able to manipulate Shadows than others.”

  “And you’re one of the best, I suppose.”

  “Me?” He chuckled. “Perhaps it seems that way to you, but in truth, compared to some of the great Lords of Chaos, I am still but a clumsy child.”

  I shrugged. Clearly he underestimated his own abilities. Our journey in his horseless carriage, in which he had laid a series of traps for anyone following, had impressed Freda greatly, and I didn’t think that was an easy accomplishment.

  “You said I’d need to get ready for the Logrus. How? Is there some training I need? A new skill?”

  “You need strength and stamina and determination,” Dworkin said. “When I went into the Logrus nearly two hundred years ago, it almost killed me. I lay feverish and near death for two weeks, and weird visions filled my mind. I dreamed of a new kind of Logrus, one with a different kind of pattern, and finding it has become one of the goals of all my work and research.” He gestured grandly, taking in this room and the ones beyond, “In fact, the more I think about our enemies, the more I think this new pattern may be the cause.”

  “How? Did you actually create it?”

  “No… but I spoke openly of it when I was young, and I know it brought me undue scrutiny. After all, if I had created a new Logrus… a new source of power over Shadows… who knew what abilities it might confer on me!”

  “And you think someone is trying to kill you and all your children,” I said, “to prevent it.”

  “That is one possibility,” he admitted, “though a dozen others have occurred to me as well. Locke’s mother is from a powerful family. They opposed our marriage… and took insult when I left her and kept our offspring.”

  “It was your right,” I said. “Locke is your first-born and heir apparent. Of course he had to stay with you.”

  “Valeria did not see it that way.”

  “Ah.” I nodded. Never underestimate the power of love. More than a few wars had been fought in Ilerium over less. And mothers are not always rational when their sons are involved.

  Now we had two possible causes for the attacks, a disagreement with Locke’s abandoned mother, and Dworkin’s vision of a new pattern. And he had admitted there were more.

  I found the idea of a new Logrus intriguing, though. If he made it, and if it worked the way the original worked, it could easily threaten the whole stability of the Courts of Chaos. Dworkin could set himself up as a king. And if his Logrus, too, cast Shadows, created whole new worlds in its image…

  I shivered. Yes, I could see how anyone with a high position in the Courts of Chaos would feel threatened by it—perhaps threatened enough to want to kill even me, poor bastard son that I was, ignorant of my heritage and abandoned on a backwater Shadow with no way to escape.

  “Tell me more about this new Logrus,” I said.

  Dworkin paused for a heartbeat, scratched his head, and crossed to the other worktable, where he began his search anew.

  “I have come to believe that the reason I had so much trouble walking the Logrus is because it did not quite match the one within me. They are close as first cousins, but not the same. And this new one has begun to emerge in my children, too. Freda has it. Aber and Conner, too. But not Locke, alas, poor boy… or perhaps he is the fortunate one. Ah!”

  He pulled what looked like a silver rod studded with diamonds from the jumble, then turned and motioned toward the far corner of his workroom. A small machine full of glass tubes and wires and tiny interlocking gears stood there. I had barely noted its presence before, in the midst of all the other more impressive looking devices. At its center sat a high-backed chair with armrests.

  “This is what we need,” he went on. “Sit there. We will start at once.”

  “What is it?” I asked dubiously. “Start what?”

  “I must see the pattern contained within you,” he said. “Sit. Make yourself comfortable. It takes but a few minutes, and it will tell me how hard or easy it will be for you to walk the Logrus.”

  It seemed sensible enough, and yet some instinct made me hesitate. For an instant I had a vision of an altar with a dying man spread upon it, strange patterns floating in the air above him, and then it was gone. Alanar. I recognized the man from Freda’s Trump. What did this little flash of memory mean? Why had I glimpsed a dead man?

  A coldness touched my heart. A panic. I did not want to be here right now.

  “Sit,” Dworkin commanded.

  “I don’t like it,” I said warily, taking a step back. “I don’t think this is a good idea.”

  “Nonsense, my bo
y.” He took my arm and propelled me forward. Almost by reflex, I sat in the chair. “I have done this to all your brothers and sisters… and to myself. It is necessary.”

  He stepped back, raised that rod, and pointed at me. I half flinched, expecting a brilliant flash or a burning beam of light—but nothing happened… or at least, nothing seemed to happen. No sounds, no lights, no growl of thunder. The only sounds came from the bubbling cauldrons in the fireplace.

  I discovered I had been unconsciously holding my breath, and I let it out with a sudden gasp. Apparently I’d been concerned over nothing. The metal wand either didn’t work or didn’t hurt. I relaxed.

  “Just a minute more,” Dworkin said.

  “What is it doing?” I asked.

  “Tuning itself to the forces within you,” he said. “Hold still. Do not get up.”

  He made a few adjustments to the rod, and suddenly the machine around me came to life with a whirring and a creaking of wooden gears. I must have jumped three feet. Turning my head, I peered up into the intricate machinery. Blue sparks ghosted across its surface as wheels and cogs turned. It began to hum like a kettle about to boil.

  Dworkin stepped forward and inserted the silver rod into a hole in the center of the mechanism, and at that moment I felt a strange probing in the back of my head, almost like the start of a headache, but not quite. Without warning, memories sprang forth then vanished, images from the whole of my life, the early times with my mother, later years with Dworkin, and even my service with King Elnar. I glimpsed Helda and a dozen other women I’d loved before her.

  The images jumbled together in no particular order. Faster and faster they came, and the humming noise of the machine became a deafening whistle that cut through my soul.

  Cities and towns—battles and grueling marches—festivals and high holidays—my seventh birthday, when Dworkin gave me my first sword—fighting the hell-creatures—childhood games in the streets—faces of people I’d long forgotten—

  Slowly, in the air before me, a pattern began to form, full of elegant sweeps and curves, loops and switchbacks, a twisting geometry like something I might have seen long ago in a forgotten dream. Blue sparks drifted around me. Through everything I could just make out Dworkin’s form, hands raised as he traced the pattern between us with his fingertips. Where he touched it, it took on a ruby glow.

  Still the memories surged, more faces, more battles, more times long gone. Faster and faster they came, all blurred together now, and the whistle in the back of my head became an unimaginable screech of sound that tore through my skull. My eyes burned. My skin crawled. I tried to leap out of that seat, to get away from Dworkin’s machine, but I couldn’t move my arms or legs. When I opened my mouth to beg Dworkin to stop, the only sound was an agonized scream.

  The machine was killing me.

  I tried to block it from my thoughts, but it only hummed louder. Squeezing my eyes shut, I felt my thoughts shredding, the memories fleeing, all thoughts now impossible, only pain—pain—pain—

  I gasped like a fish out of water, tried to breathe. Blackness fell like a stone.

  Chapter 9

  I dreamed.

  Flying… floating… drifting… I saw snake-headed monsters and an ever-shifting tapestry of worlds…

  Ilerium, under the thrall of hell-creatures…

  The Courts of Chaos, just like on Freda’s card, the air overhead pulsating with those weird lightning-patterns, while all around me the buildings moved like living creatures and corners turned in on themselves with angles that couldn’t possibly exist but somehow did…

  Then worlds of vast deserts, endless oceans, and virgin forests where no man had or ever would set foot… Come…

  Deserts and swamps…

  Cities buzzing with movement like the hives of bees… Wind-scoured rocks with no sign of water or life… Come to me…

  I felt a chill, a remembered feeling of hate and loathing surging up inside. That voice—I had heard that voice before!

  Come to me, sons of Dworkin…

  Against my will, I found myself drawn forward like a moth to its flame. I soared through blackness, through vast cold and dark distances, to a world of strange colors. Patterns turned in the air, odd shapes and geometries that drifted like snowflakes, patterns within patterns within patterns. My vision began to brighten, then dim.

  Slowly, I turned and discovered a tower built entirely of skulls. A grim shock of recognition swept through me. I had been here before, I thought, long ago.

  Come to me, sons of Dworkin…

  I could not resist the voice. Like a phantom, I passed through the tower’s wall. A stairway of arm and leg bones circled the inside wall, ascending into shadows, descending into a murky, pulsating redness.

  I drifted down. The redness became the flickering glow of torches. They showed an eerily familiar scene, guards in armor who surrounded an immense stone altar. And on that altar a body lay chained and bleeding…

  Taine!

  Though his face had become gaunt and gray, and he looked ten years older, I still recognized my new brother from the Trump in Freda’s deck. He had a dueling scar on his left cheek just as Aber had drawn it. And he had Dworkin’s face… more so now than when his portrait had been done.

  Naked and blood-smeared, he lay spread-eagle on the stone slab. But he lived. As I stared at him, I saw his chest rising and falling steadily.

  His arms and legs had been heavily chained, and dozens of long, shallow knife wounds—some days or weeks old, some clearly fresh—marred the smoothness of his arms and face. His captors had made an effort to keep him alive, I thought. While clearly painful, none of the wounds appeared life-threatening. The real risk would come later from infection.

  Blood still seeped from the most recent wounds, but instead of falling toward the floor, drops of scarlet floated up around him, lazily drifting through the air. As I watched, first one then another flattened, spreading out and becoming miniature windows into other worlds.

  In many of those windows, I glimpsed Juniper and the army camp that surrounded it.

  They’re spying on us, I realized. No wonder someone knew to send Ivinius to kill me. They see everything that happens.

  Suddenly everything in the tower grew flat, muted, distant. The colors washed out; the world around me began pulling back like a sudden outrushing tide. The tower of skulls—this world of strange geometries—receding into darkness—

  Abruptly I found myself back in my body. It was a shock, like leaping into an icy lake, and I gasped.

  “Drink…” a voice commanded.

  I sat up, sputtering, liquid fire in my mouth and throat.

  “What—” I tried to say. It came out as a muffled “Waaa.”

  Opening bleary eyes, I found Dworkin crouched over me. He held a small silver cup, which he pressed to my lips. This time when he poured, I tasted brandy, old and smooth.

  What had he done to me?

  My whole body ached and refused to obey my commands. My hands shook. When I tried to push him away and sit up, I flailed like a fish out of water.

  “Taine…” I gasped.

  Dworkin jerked, spilling the brandy all over us both.

  “What?” he demanded. “What did you say?”

  I took a deep breath and summoned my strength. Raising one hand, I pushed him away. My limbs felt numb and weak, like all the blood had drained from my body and been replaced with lead. Rolling over onto my hands and knees took intense effort, but I managed it.

  The room swayed dangerously. Grasping the edge of the closest table, I stood.

  “Where… ?” I tried to ask. It came out more or less right.

  “Give yourself time to recover, my boy,” he said. “You went through a difficult test.”

  I frowned. “Yes… I… remember.”

  As I sat on the edge of the table, trying to recover my sense of balance, he pressed the cup into my hands. Gingerly I took another sip.

  “I know what I did was… dif
ficult for you. But it had to be done.”

  “What… had to be done?” I levered myself up on my elbows, sick and dizzy inside.

  “I looked within you, within your essence. Turned you inside out, saw what needed to be seen, then put you back together.”

  “My head hurts.” Groaning a little, I pressed my eyes shut and rubbed them. What felt like thousands of little needles piercing my skull resolved itself into the sort of headache I’d only had after a night of cheap rot-gut and too many women.

  “Oberon…” He hesitated.

  I forced open my eyes and gazed blearily up at him.

  “You said something just now. It sounded like a name.”

  “Taine,” I said, remembering my dream.

  “What about him?”

  “He’s hurt.”

  “Where?”

  “It was just a nightmare.” I shook my head. “I can barely recall it.”

  “Try,” he urged. “Taine… you saw him?”

  “Yes… in—in a tower made of bones, I think.” I frowned, trying to recall the details. “I heard a voice… a serpent’s voice. They had Taine on an altar.”

  “They? Who are they?”

  “The guards… hell-creatures… but not like the ones in Ilerium…”

  “And Taine was alive? You are sure of it?”

  “Yes. I think… they needed his blood for something… it dripped up!”

  “Go on.” He spoke softly. “What were they doing with his blood?”

  “I don’t know…”

  “Think! It is important! Try to remember!”

  I half closed my eyes, trying to see the tower in my mind’s eye, blood dripping into the air. “They were looking for us, I believe. I saw Juniper in a window made of blood… I think.”

  I shook my head, the dream-images slipping away, elusive as will-o’-the-wisps. In another minute they would be gone.

  Dworkin sank back on his heels. “Blood drips toward the sky in the Courts of Chaos,” he said numbly. “You have never been there. You could not possibly know…”

  “It couldn’t have been real,” I said.

  “I think it was. And if you saw Taine… then he is alive! That is good news. I had given up hope.”