Aber tossed the pole over to me, and with a shudder, I handed it to our father. We didn't have time to get another one.

Without hesitation, Dworkin turned and began to walk counter-clockwise around the Pattern, tapping his staff upon the stone, speaking words I could not understand. Magic, I assumed. Every now and then he gestured and waved the pole.

A wind suddenly came up, stirring the grass, then flattening it as it began to gust. Clouds appeared overhead, obscuring the sun. As darkness fell, lightning flickered like the tongues of serpents.

King Uthor's army of hell-creatures, marching into the wind, ducked their heads and leaned forward. First one, then the other banner broke and went flying off into the sky. Still they trudged on, advancing steadily, pikes held ready

I drew my sword.

Aber grabbed my arm. “Come back with me!” he cried. He held up a Trump showing the main hall in our house back in the Courts of Chaos. “We can't stay here!”

“We must!” I shouted. “Dad needs us!”

The winds seemed to be circling the stone, faster and faster. They swept up dust and dirt and grass and trees. Screaming, I saw one then the other of our geldings fly past. I could no longer see through the wall of wind to where King Uthor's army had been—and I did not know how they could have survived it.

I looked back to see what had become of Dad. He was still circling the Pattern, in the opposite direction of the wind. In the center of the stone, a golden whirlwind blew. As it touched the Pattern's lines, it swept away the sand, scouring the stone clean.

As the Pattern disappeared, I felt the stone underfoot begin to move. Surging up and down, like a boat on an ocean, I felt myself drifting.

Aber threw back his head and laughed, and I saw the true nature within him let loose.

“Feel it!” he cried. “Feel the power! Feel the strength of Chaos returning! This is what it must have felt like before the Shadows came!”

“No!” I screamed back, the howl of winds wild around me, noise in my head and blinding colors in my eyes. Beyond the stone, through the winds, I saw… stars. Stars that whirled and flew like fireflies in the night. The land and the ocean had vanished. The trees and grass—King Uthor's troops—all had disappeared. Only the stone remained, floating like an island in a sea of nothingness. The madness beyond howled through my body.

“This is the way it should be!” Aber said. He was in his element, a Lord of Chaos, born to revel in the constantly shifting universe. “Now and forever! Come back with me, Oberon! It's over! Dad has destroyed the Shadows!”

He still held the Trump in one hand, and he held his other hand out to me. I took a step toward him, then stopped. I shook my head.

“No,” I said. “My place is here, with Dad. You go.”

He took a deep breath, then nodded. He looked down at the Trump… and vanished.

Dworkin continued to circle the stone. Horrorstruck by the nightmare surrounding us, I could do nothing but cling to the hope that this was not the end, but the start of something new and greater.

He reached me and held out the staff. I resheathed my sword, then took it.

“Look!” I pointed.

A tall white unicorn stood at the heart of the stone, her head raised defiantly high. A ruby dangled around her neck on a silver chain. Occasional gusts of winds whipped her mane and tail, and when she turned her head, her eyes glinted deep red, like rubies, like the Jewel of Judgment.

Dworkin saw the unicorn and grinned.

“She is holding this place together for us!” he shouted. “We must begin! There is not much time!”

“What must I do?”

“Use your knife!”

I drew it. He stuck out his arm.

“Cut me!” he screamed over the howl of the wind. “Open my vein! Let the blood flow!”

“No“

“Do it!”

Taking a deep breath, I grabbed his wrist and gave it a quick slash—long but not deep. I did not want him to bleed to death. He must know what he was doing.

Dworkin grimaced, but made a fist. With blood pouring down his arm and dripping from his fingertips, slowly and steadily he began to walk backward, leaving a trail of blood. As it fell on the bare stone, sizzling and crackling like fat on a hot griddle, a glowing blue line began to appear. It burned with an inner fire, like nothing I had ever seen before.

I realized at once what he was doing… tracing a new Pattern, one that matched the Pattern within me, and within the Jewel of Judgment. He worked slowly and carefully, never slowing. And as he dripped blood, the Pattern burned deep into the stone.

Slowly the winds died. The storm abated. Still he walked slowly and calmly backwards, trailing blood, shaping the design. When at last he finished, when he stood in the center of the Pattern next to the unicorn, a terrible calm like nothing I had ever felt before came over the world.

Slowly, silently, Dworkin collapsed. In the blink of an eye, he was gone—and the unicorn with him.

Then the ground underfoot began to rumble and heave. I lost my balance and fell, over the side of the stone, into a darkness that never seemed to stop.

HERE ENDS BOOK TWO OF THE DAWN OF AMBER

Oberon, continuing his quest to learn the truth about his life and family, begins to master his new-found powers and build powerful alliances to protect his family. But enemies new and old rise before him, including a dark alliance that seeks nothing less than the complete destruction of the Pattern itself.

Survival is at stake, as Oberon races to build a kingdom. To do so, he must not only thwart the servants of Chaos, but cope with a father's who's gone mad, siblings who want him dead, and legions of invading soldiers! But first he must learn…

TO RULE IN AMBER

The final volume of the new Amber trilogy!