Roger Zelazny's The Dawn of Amber

by John Gregory Betancourt

  The Dawn of Amber

  Copyright © 2002 by Amber Ltd. Co.

  An ibooks, Inc. ebook

  ibooks, Inc.

  24 West 25th St.

  New York, NY 10010

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  eISBN: 1-59176-505-6

  Print ISBN: 0-7434-5240-2

  This text converted to ebook format for the Adobe EPUB

  This one is for Roger Zelazny—

  the one true Lord of Amber.

  For Warren Lapine—

  visionary and friend.

  And for the millions who have journeyed

  to Amber and the Courts of Chaos—

  you have made all this possible.

  PROLOG

  ONE YEAR AGO

  felt the world around me bend and sway like the branches of a willow in a storm. Strange colors turned, mis­shapen geometries that couldn’t possibly exist but somehow did, drifting like snowflakes, patterns within patterns within patterns. My vision brightened then dimmed, repeatedly, and in no perceptible rhythm.

  Come . . .

  A voice . . . where? I turned, the world kaleidoscoping.

  Come to me . . .

  The voice pulled me on.

  Come to me, sons of Chaos . . .

  I followed the sound across a land of ever-changing design and color to a tower made of skulls, some human and some clearly not. I stretched out my hand to touch its walls, but my fingers passed through the bones as though through fog.

  Not real.

  A vision? A dream?

  A nightmare, more like it. The thought came from deep inside.

  Come . . . the voice called to me.

  I gave in to the sound and drifted forward, through the wall of skulls and into the heart of the tower.

  Shadows flickered within. As my eyes began to adjust to the gloom, I could make out a stairway of arm and leg bones that circled the inside wall, climbing into a deeper darkness, descending into murky, pulsating redness.

  I drifted down, and the redness resolved into a circle of torches and five men. Four of them wore finely wrought sil­vered chain mail of a design I had never seen before. They held down the limbs of the fifth man, who lay spread-eagled on a huge sacrificial altar, a single immense slab of gray marble threaded with intricate patterns of gold. His chest and stomach had been opened and his entrails spread across the altar as though some augur had been reading the future from them. When the victim shuddered suddenly, I realized the men were holding him down because he was still alive.

  I reached instinctively for my sword. In any other time or place I would have rushed them, decency and honor commanding me to try to rescue this poor victim. Only he isn’t real, I told myself. This was some sort of vision, some kind of fever dream or premonition.

  I forced myself closer, staring at the dying man, trying to see his face. Was it mine? Did this vision predict my fate?

  No, I saw with some relief, it wasn’t me on the altar. His eyes were a muddy brown; mine are blue as the sea. His hair was lighter than mine, his skin smoother. He was little more than a boy, I thought, maybe fourteen or fifteen years old.

  “Who are you?” I whispered, half to myself.

  The suffering victim turned his head in my direction.

  “Help me,” he mouthed. He seemed to be staring straight at me, as though he could see me.

  I reached out for him, but my hand passed through his body and into the stone of the altar. Had I become some sort of ghost? A powerless creature forced to watch atroci­ties unfold around me, with no power to act?

  I pulled my hand free. A mild tingling, like the return of blood after circulation had been cut off, shot through my fingers, but nothing else. I couldn’t help him.

  The young man turned his head away. He shuddered again, but though tears rolled down his cheeks, he did not cry out. Brave and strong, I gave him that.

  “Have courage,” I whispered.

  He did not reply, but his body began to shake and his eyes rolled back in his head.

  Again that wild, uncontrollable rage surged inside me. Why was I here? Why was I having this vision? What could it possibly mean?

  I looked at the soldiers, searching their faces for an explanation, and suddenly I realized they were not human. Their slitted eyes glowed a faint red behind their helms. Nasals and cheek guards concealed most of their features, but could not hide the faintly iridescent pattern of scales around their mouths and chins. I had never seen their like before. They must have the blood of serpents in their veins, I thought, to kill one so young in such a horrible manner.

  The victim on the slab gave one last convulsive shud­der, then lay still. They released him.

  “Lord Zon,” one of the soldiers croaked.

  Something stirred in the darker shadows by the far wall. Slitted eyes, much larger than the soldiers’ and set a foot apart, opened, then blinked twice. As the creature shifted, torchlight glinted off its metallic-gray scales and the sharp talons of its four spindly limbs.

  I felt a sudden chill, a blind panic that made me want to run screaming from this tower. Yet I steeled myself and held firm in my place, facing it, knowing this to be a true enemy—the enemy of all men.

  Yes, it said. The creature did not speak, but I heard the rumble of its words clearly in my head.

  “He is dead.”

  Bring me the other son of Dworkin.

  A shock of recognition went through me. Dworkin! I knew that name. But it had been such a very long time since I had seen him. . . .

  Calmly, two of the serpent-soldiers turned and left the tower through a doorway set deep in the shadows. The re­maining pair pulled the young man off the slab and dragged him to a small hole in the floor. They rolled him into it, and he plunged into darkness. I did not hear him hit the bottom.

  A moment later the other two returned, half carrying, half dragging another man between then, this one older than the one who had just died. He wore the tattered remains of a military uniform, but I did not recognize the design, and his face and hands were bruised and dirty. Still he bucked and fought, kicking and biting, struggling franti­cally to free himself. He almost threw off the serpent-sol­diers several times; he was strong and determined not to be taken easily.

  Instinctively, my hand sought my sword again. I wished I had the power to help him. But I remembered how my hand had passed through the body of the last victim and knew I could do nothing but watch.

  The two soldiers who had disposed of the young man’s body rushed forward, and together the four of them managed to heave the newcomer up onto the altar’s slab. All four leaned on his limbs heavily, holding him down despite his valiant efforts to free himself.

  The serpent-beast in the shadows stirred, immense scales sliding across the floor’s stones. I heard a laugh that chilled my heart.

  Son of Dworkin. You will help me now.

  “Never!” the young man yelled. “You’ll pay for this!” And he followed with a string of obscenities.

  Then he raised his head defiantly, staring at the giant serpent, and the flickering torches revealed his features for the first time.

  My features. For he had my face.

  I could only gape. How was it possible? Was this nightmare some premonition of things to come? Would this Lord Zon capture me, drag me here, too, and read the fu­ture from my guts?

  Drifting closer, like a phantom, I peered down at the man. I had to get a better look, had to know more about who he was and how he had gotten into this situation. If this really was some future vision of myself—

  Fortunately neither the soldiers nor their serpent-m
as­ter seemed aware of me. I might have been some spectral figure wandering through their nightmare world, unseen and unheard, forced to witness atrocities beyond all hu­man suffering but unable to stop them.

  And yet, I reminded myself, before his death, the first victim had seen me. How? What did it all mean?

  As I continued to study the man with my face, I began to notice small differences between us. Like the boy before him, he had brown eyes to my blue. But despite our eye colors, there were many uncanny similarities between us. The high rise of our cheekbones, the shape of our noses and our ears . . . we could have been brothers.

  Or father and son.

  My father is already dead, I told myself. This cannot possi­bly be him. Could it?

  No, my father would have been much, much older. This man looked about my own age.

  Tell me of Dworkin, the voice in my head commanded. Where is he hiding? Where else has he spread his tainted blood?

  I felt my heart leap. Dworkin again. What did my for­mer teacher have to do with all of this?

  The man on the slab spat at the creature, then de­clared, “I have never heard of Dworkin. Kill me and be done with it!”

  Let him go, I thought desperately, dreading what might come next. Whatever you are, you’re looking for me, not him. I’m the one who knows Dworkin!

  The serpent-creature didn’t hear me. Talons lashed out from the darkness, seized the man, and ripped his chest and stomach open like cheesecloth. I gasped, stunned. The prisoner screamed and kept screaming. With a quick motion, the creature pulled his entrails across the altar’s slab like an offering to the dark gods.

  Blood sprayed in the air and hung there, forming a cloud, a shifting pattern like the snowflakes of color outside the tower. But this pattern was different, somehow—I could see holes where it was incomplete, jagged, and somehow wrong.

  Come to me . . .

  The serpent-creature writhed, body undulating before the pattern in the air, working its foul sorcery. Rings of light burst from the floating droplets of blood, spreading out through the walls of the tower, disappearing into the greater void outside.

  Come to me, sons of Dworkin . . .

  The air over the altar filled with a spinning lacework design, with strange turns and angles. The hanging drops of blood flattened, rippled like waves of the sea, then grew clear. Each one offered a tiny window into what must have been hundreds of different worlds. I stared at them, the breath catching in my throat. Some had red skies; some had the familiar blue one. Oceans raged in one; mountains moved like sheep in a pasture in another; fires rained down from the sky in a third. In still others I saw towns of strangely dressed people, or what might have been people. Still more showed virgin forests, others empty expanses of desert, or grassland, or thundering rivers.

  Come to me, princes of Chaos . . .

  Like bubbles bursting, the windows began to disappear. The pattern that held them together was breaking apart. I realized the man on the altar slab was nearing death.

  Suddenly the last of the tiny windows vanished and beads of red spattered onto the floor, an unholy rain. Coughing, spitting blood, the young man on the altar be­gan to jerk and spasm uncontrollably. Finally, he lay still. It hadn’t taken him more than a minute or two to die.

  The serpent-creature hissed in anger and disappoint­ment.

  Continue searching.

  “Yes, Lord Zon,” said the soldier who had spoken before.

  I moved closer, peering into the shadows, trying to see this Lord Zon more clearly. Somehow, I knew the creature was my enemy. It wanted me spread on its slab, my blood sprayed into the air and held up in that strange, flawed pattern that offered glimpses of other worlds.

  “Who are you?” I whispered.

  Like the first victim, Zon seemed to hear me—or sensed my presence. Eyes glinting like ruby chips, it turned, peering this way and that.

  Who is there? it demanded. Speak!

  I remained silent, drifting backward, willing myself invisible. Zon’s slitted eyes suddenly focused on me. It gave a hiss, and a forked tongue flickering from its lipless, scaled mouth.

  You. You are the one.th

  “Who are you?” I demanded. “What do you want of me?”

  Death!

  Its talons reached for me—

  —and suddenly I sat up in my bed, drenched in sweat, heart pounding like a hammer in my chest, shaking all over but unable to recall what had terrified me so. A dream—a nightmare—some sort of horror . . .

  I sucked in a deep breath, held it, listening beyond the canvas walls of my tent to the nighttime sounds of a mili­tary camp. Boots on gravel, soft whinnies of horses, the scritch-scritch-scritch of whetstones sharpening steel knives and swords, a distant “All’s well!” call from sentries on patrol.

  Home.

  Safe.

  Everything seemed normal.

  And yet . . . and yet, everything had changed, though I did not know how or why.

  Reaching out in the darkness, I wrapped my fingers around the cool, smooth hilt of my sword. Tonight, for no reason I could name, I wanted it close at hand.

  ONE

  THE PRESENT

  heavy pounding on the door downstairs roused me from sleep.

  “Obere!” came a distant shout.

  Damnable timing. I squinted into near darkness, frowned. The hour lay somewhere between midnight and dawn, and blades of moonlight slid between the window shutters, cutting an intricate pattern of light and darkness across the checkered quilt. Off in the night I heard plodding hooves and creaks from some passing merchant’s wagon, and from farther off still the distant baying of packs of wild dogs as they scavenged the battlefields a mile to the north of Kingstown.

  The pounding on the door resumed. Feigning sleep wouldn’t work; somehow, King Elnar’s agents—probably that all too efficient Captain Iago—had tracked me down.

  I tried to sit up and found a soft arm pinning my chest. Helda hadn’t yet heard a thing; her breathing remained deep and regular. I half chuckled to myself. Too much wine, too much love. She would sleep through the sacking of Kingstown, given half a chance.

  As gently as I could, I slid out from under her, leaving the warm sweet smells of perfume and sweat and incense that filled her bed. I made a reassuring murmur at her puz­zled sound and quickly gathered up pants, shirt, boots, and sword.

  Damnable timing indeed. My first night alone with Helda in nearly two months, and King Elnar couldn’t wait till dawn to summon me back. Price of being one of his right-hand men, I supposed. Still, Captain Iago—or whoever the king had sent to find me—might have had the sense to let me stay lost at least a few hours more. It was seldom enough we had time to rest, but since the hell-creatures had been quiet now for nearly a week, King Elnar had granted me a night’s leave. I had tried to make the best of it, drinking my way through Kingstown’s half dozen tav­erns before joining Helda at her house to continue a more private celebration into the late hours.

  Carrying my belongings, I padded quickly down the steps. First things first. I had to halt that racket before the whole town was up in arms. The hell-creatures had driven us back steadily over the last six months, and with the front lines of the war close to Kingstown, King Elnar’s troops now policed the streets—not that they needed much attention, since three-quarters of the inhabitants had fled. No need to rouse the night watch for a mere summons back to camp. I sighed, half in apprehension. What calamity had befallen us this time? Something bad must have happened to drag me back in the middle of the night. Had our scouts spotted new enemy movements? Or perhaps the hell-creatures had mounted another sneak-attack on our supply lines?

  The pounding ceased as I rattled back the bar and flung open the heavy wooden door.

  “By the six hells—” I began.

  My curse died away unfinished. It wasn’t Captain Iago—or any of the other officers under King Elnar’s com­mand. It was a stranger, a thin little man of perhaps forty with long black hair tied behin
d his head and a sharp gleam in his eye. He raised his lantern and peered up at me.

  “Obere?” he demanded.

  I towered a good head and a half over him, but that didn’t matter. He had a powerful presence, much like King Elnar—the sort of man you instinctively looked at whenever he entered a room, or listened to whenever he spoke. He was clean-shaven, dressed in red-and-gold silks with a strange rampant-lion crest stitched in gold and silver thread on the blouse, and I caught the scents of dressing-powder and lavender.

  “Maybe,” I said cautiously, feeling for my sword’s hilt, wondering who he was and what he wanted. “You are . . . ?”

  “It is you!” he said, grasping my arm. “The years have changed you—but it is good to see you alive!”

  “Who are you,” I demanded, shrugging off his hand, “and what in all the hells do you think you’re doing here at this hour?” No matter who he was, I did not appreciate be­ing awakened from my much-needed and much-deserved rest. It was one thing to receive the king’s summons and quite another to be roused by a stranger.

  His voice was quiet. “Has it been so long you no longer know me?”

  “I have no idea who—” I began. Then I paused and looked at him. Really looked at him.

  “Uncle Dworkin?” I whispered. It had been ten years since I’d last set eyes on him. He had worn his hair cropped short in those days, and he had seemed much, much taller.

  Dworkin smiled and bowed his head. “The very same.”

  “What—how—”

  He waved me to silence. “Later. You must come with me, and quickly. I have sent for a carriage. I assure you, this cannot wait. You will come with me. Now.”

  It was a command, not a suggestion.

  I gave a bark of a laugh. “Go with you? Just like that?”

  “Yes.”

  “I can’t. I’m due back at camp in the morning. I’m no longer a child, Dworkin—I have duties and responsibilities you cannot imagine.”

  “It is a matter of life and death.”