The Dawn of Amber by John Betancourt

Author:John Betancourt [Betancourt, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: sf_fantasy
Published: 2011-10-04T10:31:15+00:00

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.

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