John Betancourt: The Dawn of Amber

“I did,” I said. “I have lived my whole life without the Logrus.”

“And look where it has gotten you,” she said bitterly. “You would be dead now if Father had not saved you.”

“No,” I said. “I survived a year of fighting against the hell-creatures without the Logrus, or Dad, or you . I survived my whole life without once drawing on its power. I still cannot use the Logrus, and I am the one who survived today’s battle.”

“And… Locke and Davin?”

I swallowed, looked away. “I’m sorry.”

She began to cry. I put my arm around her.

“I’m not about to give up,” I said softly. “I’m not about to lie down and die here, trapped like an animal. Out of every life a little blood must spill. It makes us stronger. We will survive.”

“You do not know any better,” she said after a minute, and with some effort she regained control of herself and dried her tears. “The war is already over… we have lost.”

“Our enemy wants us to believe that. I don’t.”

She looked at me, puzzled. “I do not understand.”

“You’re thinking like a woman of Chaos. Your first impulse is to reach for the Logrus… and when it isn’t there, you think you’re crippled.”

“I am crippled! We all are!”

“No, you’re not!” I fumbled for the right words. “Look, I’ve never drawn on the Logrus. Not once in my whole life. You don’t need it to use a sword. You don’t need it to walk or run or laugh or dance. And you don’t need to see the future to live. People get by just fine without the Logrus. They always have and they always will.”

“Not real people,” she said. “Just Shadowlings…”

“Am I a Shadowling?”

She hesitated. “No… but—”

“But nothing! Forget the Logrus! Forget it exists! Think of what you can do without it… find ways to fight, ways to escape, ways to confuse and deceive our enemies. Dad says you’re the smartest of us all. Prove it.”

Her brow furrowed, but she did not argue any more.

I crossed to her table, gathered all her Trumps into a single stack, and put them back in their little wooden box. Had a fire burned in the fireplace, I would have cast them into it.

“Don’t look at your Trumps again,” I said in a firm voice. “Promise me?”

“I promise,” she said slowly.

“Keep your word,” I told her. Then I kissed her on the forehead. “I will send someone with food. Eat, then go to sleep. Something will occur to us sooner or later. Some way to win the fight… the war.”

“Yes, Oberon,” she said softly. “And… thank you.”

I forced a smile I didn’t feel. “Don’t mention it.”

As I left her room, I found my mind suddenly racing. She had given me an idea, with her stubborn clinging to the power of the Logrus. I knew the Logrus had become useless. Something had cut off Juniper from its power, isolated us, left Dworkin and all the rest of my family powerless. Without the Logrus, they felt like cripples.

Our enemies depended on that.

Talking to her had given me an idea… an idea so crazy, I just thought it just might work.

I sent servants running to the kitchens to prepare a hot meal for Freda, then went back toward Dworkin’s workshop. Again the guards let me pass without question.

I strode straight to the door, found it standing open, and an impromptu war conference going on inside. Conner, his head and shoulder wrapped in blood-stained bandages, stood inside with Titus and our father. The jumble of experiments had all been dumped onto the floor or shoved into the corners, and maps now covered every single table.

“—not going to work,” Conner was saying heatedly.

They all grew silent as I entered.

“I know I’m interrupting,” I said, “but get out, both of you. Now. I have to speak to our father alone. It’s important.”

“You get out,” Conner said, bristling. “We’re working.”

“Go,” Dworkin said to them both. “We are not accomplishing anything. Get some sleep; we will talk again later.”

Conner looked like he wanted to argue, but finally gave a nod. Titus helped him stand, and together they limped out.

I shut the door after them, then barred it. I didn’t want to be disturbed again.

“They are trying to help,” Dworkin said. “You cannot lead the whole army yourself. You are going to need them.”

“Forget the army,” I told him. “Aber showed me something of what goes into making a Trump. You incorporate the Logrus into it, making it part of the image. Right?”

“In a way. Yes.”

“You’re supposed to be good at it. He said so.”

“Yes. I made thousands of them in my youth.”

“I want you to make me a Trump, right now. But instead of the Logrus, I want you to use the pattern within me.”

He raised his bushy gray eyebrows. “What?”

“You’ve seen it,” I said. “You said it’s in that ruby. You know what it looks like. If it’s so different from the Logrus, perhaps we can use it to get away from Juniper. It took me to Ilerium, remember.”

“Yes.” He stared, eyes distant, envisioning something… perhaps the pattern within me, the pattern he had seen deep within that jewel. “What an interesting thought.”

“Will it work?” I demanded.

“I don’t know.”

“I want you to try.”

“It may be possible,” Dworkin mused aloud. “If…”

He didn’t finish his sentence, but rose and fetched paper, ink, and a cup full of brushes. After clearing a space on one of the tables, he sat and began to sketch with a quick, sure hand.

I recognized the picture immediately: the street outside Helda’s house. He drew burnt-out ruins where her home had been, with only the stone chimney still standing.

“No…” I said. “I don’t want to go there. Anywhere else, please!”

“You know this street well,” he said, “and that will help you concentrate. It is the only place we have both been recently.”

“Ilerium isn’t safe!”

“It should be by now. Time moves a lot differently between these two Shadows… a single day here is almost two weeks there.”

“What about my pattern?” I asked. He hadn’t drawn the image the way Aber had, starting with the Logrus in the background, but went straight to drawing the street. “Don’t you need to work it into the picture?”

He gave a low chuckle. “You begin to see the difference between Aber and me,” he said. “Aber does not understand why the Trumps work. He doesn’t want to understand. Instead, he slavishly copies my own early efforts, when I painted a flat representation of the Logrus as part of each card, behind the image. It helped me concentrate. The Logrus does not actually need to be part of the card… but it does need to be foremost in the artist’s mind as he creates. It shapes the picture as much as the human hand. They are, after all, one and the same.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You do not need to. That is my point!”

He dipped his pen in the inkwell and finished quickly. The image was sketchy, little better than a simple line drawing, with the faintest hints of shape to the background. But despite the lack of detail, it had an unmistakable power that I could feel as I gazed upon it. A power which the Logrus Trumps no longer held.

I concentrated on the scene, and it swiftly grew more real… colors entered… a deep blue sky… black for the burnt-out foundations to either side… blue-gray cobblestones littered with broken red roof tiles… and suddenly I looked out onto the street in late afternoon. Not a single building still stood, just fire-blackened chimneys by the dozens. Neither man nor beast stirred anywhere that I could see.