The Chronicles of Amber

Only cowards choose the safe path.

I had known what my answer must be even before Dworkin told me of the risk. I wanted power. I wanted magic of my own. After seeing what Dworkin and the rest of my family could do, how could I step back now?

I swallowed hard. “I want to try it.”

Dworkin let out his breath. “I will not fail you, my boy,” he said softly.

He held up the ruby. I gasped as it caught the light, sending flashes of color dancing and slashing around the room.

Holding the jewel higher, at my eye level, I found it glowed with an inner light. I leaned forward, wanting to fall into its center like a moth is called by an open flame.

“Look deep inside,” Dworkin continued. His voice sounded as if he were standing far away. “Fastened within it is a design… an exact tracing of the pattern within you. Gaze upon it, my boy—gaze and let your spirit go!”

A shimmer of red surrounded me. The world receded, and light and shadow began to pulsate rhythmically, shapes and forms seeming to appear, then vanish.

As though from a great distance away, I heard Dworkin’s voice: “Follow the pattern, my boy… let it show you the way…”

I stepped forward.

It was like opening a door and entering a room I never knew existed. The world unfolded around me. Space and time ceased to have meaning. I felt neither breath in my lungs nor the beating of my heart; I simply was. I did not need to breathe, or see, or taste, or touch. When I reached for my wrist, I felt no pulse… I felt nothing at all.

Lights glimmered, moved. Shadows flowed like water.

This isn’t real…

And yet it was. Before me, behind me, to the sides and all around me, I saw the lines of a great pattern. It blazed with a liquid red light, curves and sweeps and switchbacks, like the twisted body of some immense serpent or dragon. It held me transfixed within it, just as I held it within me, and together we balanced perfectly. I felt a calm, a harmony of belonging.

“This way…”

I felt a hand on my shoulder, pushing me on. I took a step.

“Dad?”

“Yes. I am here. I have projected myself inside the jewel, too. Come. Move forward, onto the pattern. Walk its length. I will be withyou…”

I stepped forward, heading for the pattern. This was no mere distortion of the Logrus. It was separate, different, and yet… two parts of some greater whole.

Distantly, as though in a dream, I heard Dad’s voice talking to me. I could not make out the words, but the tone nagged and insisted. I had to do something… go somewhere… 

So hard to concentrate. And yet I knew there was something I had to remember… something I had to do… 

“Forward,” said the voice. “Do not stop.”

Yes. Forward.

I moved on, into the pattern, following the glowing red light. At first I found it easy, but it grew steadily harder as I progressed, like wading through mud. The light pushed at me, trying to drive me back, but I refused to give up. I thought. I would not stop no matter what happened.

And abruptly the resistance ceased. I moved easily down the trail. The light, clear and brilliant, lit the path. Around the turn, forward—another turn—

The whole of my life flashed before me, but strangely vivid—all the places I’d been, all the people I’d ever met.

My mother—

Swearing to serve King Elnar—

Sword lessons on the town green—

Our house in Piermont—

Fighting the hell-creatures—

Dworkin as a younger man—

The path curved and again grew difficult, and I found myself straining for every inch, forcing myself forward. I would not stop. I could not stop. The lights ahead beckoned. Images of my life flashed and danced through my mind.

The beach at Janisport—

King Elnar’s crowning—

Fishing on the banks of the Blue River—

The women I had known before Helda—

The battle of Highland Ridge—

In bed with Helda—

Mustering troops for battle—

For some reason, I seized upon the image of the battlefield. Here King Elnar had fought the hell-creatures to a standstill. Here we had known our first real victory in the war against the hell-creatures.

In my mind’s eye, I still saw our troops again rallying valiantly to the king, swords and pikes raised, screaming their war-cries—

And, reaching the center of the pattern, where it had wound in upon itself—

—I staggered across mud and matted grass, then drew up short, half gagging on the stench of death and decay. Bodies of men and horses lay all around me, rotting and covered with flies. A low buzz of wings came from the corpses.

I looked up. It was late afternoon on a dark, overcast day. A chill wind blew from the east, heavy with the promise of rain. It could not remove the stench of death, however.

Slowly I turned in a circle. The battlefield stretched as far as I could see in every direction. There had been a massacre here, and I saw uncountable hundreds, perhaps thousands of bodies, all human, all dressed in King Elnar’s colors.

From warmth to cold, from dry to damp, from the safety of a castle to the horrors of a battlefield in an instant. What had happened? How had I gotten here?

Dworkin’s ruby… 

I remembered it now. I had seen the fields outside of Kingstown while gazing into the jewel. Somehow, it had sent me here.

But why? To see the destruction?

I covered my mouth and nose with my shirt tail, but it did little to hide the stench. Slowly, I turned full circle, taking in the horrors around me.

These men had died at least four or five days ago, I estimated. Broken weapons, a burnt out war-wagon toppled on its side, and fallen banners caked with mud and gore spoke to the magnitude of the loss. King Elnar’s army had been destroyed, and from the number of bodies, probably to the last man.

A cold drizzle began to soak my hair and clothes. The stench of carrion grew worse. Carefully I began to pick my way among the bodies, looking for the king, for anyone I knew.

I shivered, suddenly, soaked to the skin. Then I forced myself to look at the battlefield, at all that remained around me. Birds and dogs and other, less savory carrion-eaters had worked on the corpses for several days, but I didn’t need to see faces to recognize them.

All had been human.

I climbed onto the burnt-out wagon’s sides, my fingers growing black and greasy from the char, and when I stood above the battlefield I saw the true scope of the disaster.

The battlefield stretched as far as I could see. Proud banners lay in the mud. Swords, knives, pikes, and axes by the score lay rusting on the ground. And everywhere, piled or singly as they had fallen, lay more bodies.

No one, not wife nor child nor priest, had come to sing the funeral songs and bury the dead. I did not have