Each of the gifts was the same in a way. The iron-like wood hid a thousand tiny perfect crystals in its pores; the ugly fruit pit masked a miniature sculpture finer than any woodworker’s creation. The dish of sand had been only a piece of the ordinary desert, but presented in an unexpected way, intriguing. And the mirror… There my speculation came to an abrupt halt. My chest ached. Why a reflection of me?
CHAPTER 40
I had to know who it was. I had to know what someone was trying to tell me and why it hurt so much when I looked at those stupid things laid out on my table. It became a fever in me to know. I tried to read the minds of all the slaves and warriors in my house, but I didn’t have power enough. I needed the kind of power I used in my sessions with Notole. For days I would jump at any word from the Lords, hoping it would be Notole’s summons. At last it came. Tonight, my Prince. A special night tonight.
When I went to the Lords’ house, I didn’t usually go through the temple, that huge room with the giant statues and the roof of stars and the floor that was like black ice. Most of the time I took a side door that led more directly to Notole’s workrooms or to Parven’s bare stone chamber where I studied maps and strategy with him. But on this night they summoned me to a new place.
The chamber was buried in the very heart of the Lords’ house, down a long tight stairway and through a winding passage that seemed to turn in upon itself. The room was so dark that it was impossible to see how large it was, or what was in it. Embedded in the floor was a glowing circle of deep blue, and suspended above it was an oculus, not the size of my hand, like the ones I’d used with Notole, but one that was taller than me. The blue light reflected off the dull brass of the ring.
“Welcome, young Lord.” The Lords were there waiting for me.
“… such a pleasure…”
“… to have all of us together again. A special night tonight.” Ziddari laid his hands on my shoulders and gazed down at me. His black robes made his body fade into the darkness, so that all I could see were his ruby eyes and the gold mask that was grown into his skin. “Time has flown by us so quickly.”
“You’ve done well,” said Parven, coming up behind Ziddari, his wide, pale forehead reflecting the purple glow of his amethysts. “We had such doubts when Ziddari brought you to us. ‘So young,’ we said. ‘So untried, and only a little more than a year’s turn to prepare him.’ How foolish were our doubts. You have taught us the strength of your word. You have proven…”
“… that you are capable of understanding the truth of the world and leaving behind your childish past. You have seen that our interests are the same, and that rigor and discipline can build strength.” Ziddari had taken up from Parven again. “As you’ve no doubt surmised, we’ve kept secrets from you. But you’ve not shrunk from any of our teaching, and so.. -.”
“… the time has come to reveal to you our most precious secret, and to prepare you for your initiation that comes five days hence.” Notole led me to the verge of the wide blue circle scribed on the floor. The huge oculus was so close I could have reached out and touched it. “This will not be easy, as nothing in your life has been easy. You will have to give up things of value, as you have already done, but the rewards… they’re what your blood burns for, even now.”
They were right. As the ring started to spin, my heart was racing with hunger and excitement; my breath came quick and shallow; heat radiated from my face and arms. For so long only scalding water or blazing sun had made me warm, but sorcery was far better. Faster and faster the ring spun, snatching the red and green and purple light of the Lords’ masks and the blue glow from the floor, weaving them into a giant ball of light. With Parven and Notole to either side of me, and Ziddari behind with his hands on my shoulders, I used my inner eye to penetrate the orb as they had taught me, and I was no longer in Ce Uroth…
… but in a land just emerging from winter, faint traces of green poking up amid the brown stubble of farmland… a muddy road churned up by wagon wheels and horses’ hooves. Up ahead was a party of bedraggled prisoners, roped together and slogging through the mud. Mounted soldiers guarded fifty men and women, filthy and wretched and filled with… oh, incredible… such vile, unbounded hatred. The soldiers cut loose one of the prisoners, threw a rope about his neck, and dragged him through the muck. In moments, he dangled from the branch of a tree. His feet jerked. The soldiers laughed. “There’s the king’s justice for you. Anyone else want to complain?”
A few prisoners growled and strained at their bonds. Some wept. Some just stared at the soldiers and the dead man swinging from the tree. The soldiers lashed the prisoners, especially those who showed their anger, and soon the party was moving down the road again…
Who were these people? Yet, even as my mind asked the question, I knew the answer. The prisoners cursed in the tongue of Valleor, and the soldiers wore the red dragon of Leire-King Evard’s men. People of my own world! Loathing-huge and powerful and terrible-seethed in their hearts. No Zhid, no Dar’Nethi, not even the Dar‘Nethi slaves could summon half so grand a hate as these soldiers and their captives…
And it is all yours, whispered Notole through the jewels in my ear. She pulled back the layers of my thoughts, exposing the gaping emptiness inside me. Take it.
I drank deep. Burning, cutting, drenching, drowning… power seeped into my pores and filled my belly and my lungs until I was breathing black fire. It ate its way into my bones. Everything I had ever experienced was made unimportant.
I could not just call down lightning, I could create it. I could make a thousand warriors turn their swords upon themselves all at once. I could blast the stones of Zhev’Na into rubble and rebuild the fortress according to my whim, a thousand times over if I chose.
“This is what your father would forbid you,” said Ziddari. His voice rang clear, while visions danced in my head. “This is what D’Arnath and his Heirs have judged too dangerous for us to attempt, because they were too cowardly and too weak to control it. This is the heritage they would deny you. Yet, even this is but a small taste of what is possible. D’Arnath created his enchanted Bridge and swore his oath to bind us, to imprison our skills and our power in his own weak-willed frame. But you, our young Prince, when you come into your power, you will set us free.”
Power raged within me, stretching and pulling and swelling. Nothing had ever hurt so much; nothing had ever felt so marvelous. I wanted to scream and cry out the wonder of it, but my chest was filled with fire.
Come with me, said Notole. She touched my hand, and I was released to ride the airs of Gondai beside her. I glimpsed the far boundaries of the Wastes, where the hard red plains yielded to the green softness of Dar’Nethi lands. We journeyed past the work camps and farmsteads of the Drudges, flat, endless fields of no more interest or variation than a Drudge’s mind. We traveled the wild oceans, and I called up winds that flattened trees and storms that made whole islands sink beneath the waves. For hours or days we examined rocky, ice-glazed pinnacles. Then we dived into deep places where bare stones formed natural fortresses far larger than Zhev’Na, where lakes were filled with molten rock, and where grew gigantic beasts with towering fangs and razor claws, who fled in terror at my word.