'You're going to live,' Flora said, lowering my wrist from taking my pulse. 'Care to tell me your story now?'
'They just found us in the hall?' Luke asked. 'The Hall of Mirrors was nowhere in sight?'
'That's right.'
'I don't want to mention any names yet,' I said.
'Corwin,' Luke said, 'Did the Hall of Mirrors show up a lot when you were a kid?'
'No,' I said.
'Hardly ever, when I was growing up either,' Flora said. 'It's only in recent years that it's become this active. Almost as if the place were waking up.'
'The place?' Luke said.
'Almost as if there's another player in the game,' she responded.
'Who?' I demanded, causing a pain in my gut.
'Why, the castle itself, of course,' she said.
The Dawn of Amber
The Dawn of Amber
2002
John Gregory Betancourt
The first in a trilogy of prequel novels, fully authorised by the estate of Roger Zelazny. In Roger Zelazny’s AMBER universe there is only one true world, of which all others are but Shadows. In the ten book saga that he created readers learnt that Amber was not the first true world; rather, it was the Courts of Chaos. The saga chronicled the adventures of the royal family of Amber, culminating with the world-shaking battle between champions from Amber and Chaos. Zelazny did not have the chance to create the origin of Amber and its royal family, or reveal other key information that is alluded to before he died. THE DAWN OF AMBER trilogy will expand the ‘Amber’ universe and answer the important questions left open, including how Amber was created and why. The events in the trilogy will precede those in the existing novels, but will follow some of the same, immortal characters. Finally fans of the series will discover why it was necessary to create Amber, how Chaos and Amber came to be at war, and the true nature of the universal, sentient forces that Amber and Chaos represent.
Prolog
I 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.
A voice… where? I turned, the world kaleidoscoping.
The voice pulled me on.
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
A vision? A dream?
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.
I forced myself closer, staring at the dying man, trying to see his face. Was it mine? Did this vision predicting 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.
