The Chronicles of Amber

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 them, 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-master 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. Dworkinagain. 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 knowsDworkin!

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.

Cometo 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 isthere? 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.

“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…