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The Dawn of AmberTHE DAWN OF AMBER
BOOK ONE OF THE NEW AMBER TRILOGY
JOHN GREGORY BETANCOURT



PROLOG
ONE YEAR AGO
I felt the world around me bend and sway like the branches of a willow in a
storm. Strange colors turned, misshapen geometries that couldnТt 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 isnТt 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 predicting fate?
No, I saw with some relief, it wasnТt 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.
УWho are you?Ф I whispered, half to myself.
The suffering victim turned his head in my direction.