“And I can do that?” I asked skeptically.
“Not now. Not yet. You must first master the Logrus. That, at least, is your birthright… by tradition, no one, not even King Uthor himself, can deny it if you ask. Of course, there is the problem of getting you to the Courts and back safely, without our enemy finding out and killing us. And once in the Courts, you must survive the Logrus. Not all of us do, you know. My brother died on his first attempt. It destroyed him, mind and body. It is not so simple a matter after all.”
“I want to try,” I said firmly. “You cannot show me this gift and then tell me I can’t have it!”
“In due time.”
“You’re playing games with me again!”
“Do I need to remind you of how many children I’ve already lost? It is not safe for any of us to leave here,” Dworkin said firmly. “Not now, not yet. Juniper is well defended for a Shadow, but beyond the lands we control, there are creatures watching us. They are waiting for a mistake… any mistake.”
“Then we’ll kill them!” I felt a yearning inside to be off, to walk the Logrus and gain the powers due me… the powers my father and brothers and sisters already possessed. “That crystal you used against the hell-creatures—you must have more of them.”
“It is not so simple. Some of these watchers are relatives. The Courts of Chaos are… unlike anything you can imagine, with your limited experiences. Struggle and conflict are encouraged there, and only the strongest wield any real power. I have been away too long and have now lost whatever influence I once may have held.”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
He folded his arms, looking away. “There are ancient codes of honor that are supposed to prevent death among us, among the Lords of Chaos. But out here in the deepest, farthest Shadows, those rules are often bent… or overlooked entirely. I am not important enough to try to demand observance of the rights and protections due me. But some of our enemies are very, very important, I suspect. And if they were to die—murdered or assassinated, whether by my hand, or yours, or our agents’—it would call the wrath of King Uthor himself upon us all. We could not survive it, not one of us.”
I frowned, not liking the sound of that. “Damned if we do, dead if we don’t. When we kill our enemies, it has to be in self defense.”
“Or it must look like an accident.” He sighed and shook his head slowly, and I realized he did not like the situation any more than I did. “After all,” he continued, “there is no harm in their watching us, or so they would say.”
“Spying on us.”
“Well, yes.”
“Then those hell-creatures in Ilerium—”
“They were soldiers drafted from another Shadow, sent to find and kill you, my boy. They are just the hands of our enemy… cut off the head and the body will die. It’s the only way, if we are to survive.”
“And this head… whose is it?”
“I wish I knew. It could be any of a dozen Lords of Chaos. My family has its share of hereditary rivals and blood-feuds. And I freely admit I have made mistakes over the years… my own list of personal enemies is larger than it should be. It could be any one of them.”
“Is that why you left the Courts?”
“One of the reasons. I thought they would forget me if I lost myself among the Shadows.”
I chewed my lower lip thoughtfully. His story pretty much matched Aber’s, and every word rang true. Sometimes, I’d found, just being alive was enough to make an enemy. I may have found my family… but I’d also gotten more than my share of trouble along with them.
“Before we can proceed,” Dworkin went on, “I must check something. It will only take a moment…”
He crossed to a table cluttered with wires and tubes and beakers, crystals and glass spheres and copper pots—the cast-off paraphernalia of a wizard or alchemist, as far as I could tell. He rummaged among the bits and pieces, tossing first one then another aside, muttering to himself.
“How long have these feuds been going on in the Courts of Chaos?” I asked.
“Longer than anyone can remember. The Courts are ancient.”
“How old is that?” King Elnar’s family had ruled in Ilerium for nearly a thousand years,
“Every family in the Courts can trace their lineage back through the generations,” he said, “to the man who first recognized the Logrus for what it was. His name is lost to us, but it is known that he created if from his own blood and magics that came to him in a vision. He built it, and then he went through it. Once he completed the journey, when he discovered he had the power to move through Shadows, he forged an empire that still stands. Every one of his children went through the Logrus as they came of age, and they in turn gained the ability to walk among Shadows, becoming the first Lords of Chaos and begetting all the noble houses and the great families that still hold power in the Courts. Thus has it come down through the generations to us, to you and me and all the rest of our family.”
“How many generations?” I asked. “How many years?”
“It could be ten thousand. It could be more. Who can say? Time has little meaning for those who travel in Shadows…”
It seemed inconceivably ancient to me. A ten-thousand-year-old blood feud…
“How many of these great families are there, anyway?” I asked. “And how many Lords of Chaos?”
“There are hundreds of houses, though many are minor, like our own. The Lords of Chaos must number in the thousands. King Uthor himself keeps the Book of Peerage, where all the bloodlines are detailed, from the greatest house to least. Should any of us survive the coming war, we should annotate it. I… did not provide anyone in the Courts with the details of my children born in Shadow.”
That piqued my interest. “What of me? Did you tell them of me?”
“No.”
“And yet they found me anyway. How is that possible?”
“Yes, they did find you.” He paused, frowning. “An interesting question. You should have been safe in Ilerium. Nobody in the Courts knew of you.”
According to Aber, Dworkin had spoken often of me to Locke and Freda and the other members of our family. That’s how I’d been found. I knew without a doubt that we had a traitor in our midst—someone who had given away my name and location.
But who? Locke? Freda? Aber? One of the others? I swallowed, picturing them one by one. I couldn’t see Blaise or Pella betraying me, somehow. Davin, perhaps?
Still searching, Dworkin continued, “There is a science behind the Logrus. A reason it works. It creates a kind of mental shortcut, a way to hold its image in your mind without trying. That is the key to moving through Shadows.”
“Are there other ways? I thought the Trumps—”
“Yes, there are other ways through Shadow, and there are… legends, I supposed you would call them… of at least one other device which had similar properties, though it was lost or destroyed generations ago. The Logrus is all we have. I do not yet know why, but it makes some of us better able to manipulate Shadows than others.”
“And you’re one of the best, I suppose.”
“Me?” He chuckled. “Perhaps it seems that way to you, but in truth, compared to some of the great Lords of Chaos, I am still but a clumsy child.”
I shrugged. Clearly he underestimated his own abilities. Our journey in his horseless carriage, in which he had laid a series of traps for anyone following, had impressed Freda greatly, and I didn’t think that was an easy accomplishment.
“You said I’d need to get ready for the Logrus. How? Is there some training I need? A new skill?”
“You need strength and stamina and determination,” Dworkin said. “When I went into the Logrus nearly two hundred years ago, it almost killed me. I lay feverish and near death for two weeks, and weird visions filled my mind. I dreamed of a new kind of Logrus, one with a different kind of pattern, and finding it has become one of the goals of all my work and research.” He gestured grandly, taking in this room and the ones beyond, “In fact, the more I think about our enemies, the more I think this new pattern may be the cause.”
“How? Did you actually create it?”
“No… but I spoke openly of it when I was young, and I know it brought me undue scrutiny. After all, if I had created a new Logrus… a new source of power over Shadows… who knew what abilities it might confer on me!”
“And you think someone is trying to kill you and all your children,” I said, “to prevent it.”