And now imagine, young Prince, that this was possible in that other place-the place where you fed on passions so much more vivid than our own-the place holy D’Arnath has forbidden us to go. Imagine the variety, the endless wonders that would await us…
“Enough,” said Ziddari. “Bring him back. We said we would tell him all, and so he must know what it is he chooses.”
With a word and a touch, Notole brought us back across the blazing noonday desert, past the warriors’ encampments, through the fortress walls and into darkness-utter, complete darkness. I thought for a moment that I’d been left alone in some other place, but I felt the Lords behind me and beside me as they had been. The orb of light had vanished along with the blue circle, yet I could still sense the spinning and feel the cool rush of air on my hot face. I turned to Notole but I couldn’t see her emerald eyes, nor Parven’s amethysts, nor Ziddari’s blood-red rubies. I could see nothing at all.
“Do not be afraid, young Lord,” said Ziddari. “It is an inevitable effect of your activities-as you have surely guessed from your previous experiences. Your desire has made you accept these limitations. The effects become somewhat more severe as you progress. But you need not worry, because we can provide a remedy.”
Something was slipped over my head and fitted to my face. I saw flashes of light, which relieved me greatly. When the hands fell away, I could see again, but in a way far different than before. We stood in the throne room, the place where I had spoken to the Lords for the first time. Like the temple, it had a floor of black glass, a ceiling that was an image of the night sky, and tall columns all around.
Along one side was a curved dais and on it the human-sized thrones where the Three had sat while I pledged them fealty. Today, the columns and the thrones and everything else in the room seemed angular, as if each curve in their design had been broken into short segments that only approximated its actual shape. The brass ring appeared as a thousand-sided figure, the blue circle in the floor another.
Slowly I reached for my face, suspecting what I would find, but Notole and Ziddari grabbed my hands before I could do it. “Come with us first.”
They led me through the twisting passages, and up the curved staircases into the main part of the keep. Seeing the world this way took some getting used to-everything with angled shapes, the edges gleaming with blue-white brilliance though the colors lay flat and dull. But we passed a slave, and in the moment I gazed on him with my false eyes, I knew his name was K’Savan and that he had grown up in a village called Agramante, about fifty leagues from Avonar. He was in the throes of despair. I could have named his cousins to the tenth degree and recited everything K’Savan knew about them. And I could tell that he looked on my masked face with horror and loathing; he would slay me with joy if he were not under the Lords’ compulsion of obedience.
“You see,” said Ziddari. “Useful, eh?”
We passed other slaves and Drudges, and nothing about them was hidden from me. When we came to a black door so massive that it would take a troop of warriors to open it, Notole nudged me forward. I swung the door open with a thought, and we walked into the temple of the Lords.
Something was changed here, too. The false sky hung above us. The black mirrored floor lay beneath our feet. The Three were there, enthroned as before, giant-sized, though lifeless this time, for the Three were also with me, shepherding me toward the far end of the row of statues. Something huge and new sat in the dark beyond Ziddari’s image, covered with a purple drapery.
My heart pounded and my stomach clenched as Ziddari waved his hand and the drapery fell to the floor. It was me. In the same dull black stone as the other three. Larger than life, so that I could have climbed up and stood in my own hand. I was to be a Lord. They hadn’t lied about it. And while I gazed up at the image of my face, my hand crept to the gold mask I wore and felt the diamonds that looked out from it. “And what must I give up besides my eyes?” I asked, surprised that my voice was steady.
“Very little that you’ve not already forsworn,” said Ziddari. “Small matters of your past. Your personal quarrels might come to seem trivial beside the grandeur of possibility. These barriers of thought you have built to keep us out will crumble and fade. Your mind will not be truly separate, but one with ours, and so our joined purposes and desires may loom larger than your own. But your power will be unmatched, and everything you could ever imagine will be yours.”
“I’ll never use my training in battle, will I?”
“Not in your own body,” said Parven. “No need to risk such a thing. We’ve made it so that none of the three of us may bear a weapon, and it would be the same with you. No one in any world is a danger to us save one of ourselves. And, as you have seen, we have better ways of enjoying the joys of combat. But we envision you submitting to the discipline of physical training for many years, until you have reached your full growth and have made yourself a skilled body that you are comfortable with. This is for your own safety, as well as the advantage it will give you when commanding armies or using other bodies for your pleasure. The choice is yours, of course.”
“And what if I refuse your offer?”
“You will still be the Heir of D’Arnath, a friend and ally of the Lords. You may live out your limited span of years here, or make your home elsewhere if you wish. But we will expect you to aid us in our war as you have sworn upon your life and honor to do.”
“But the secret of the oculus…”
“… is only for the Lords of Zhev’Na and will be revealed only when you join us.” Ziddari held my chin in his hand and nodded his head toward my statue. “You were born to be one of us. I believe you know this to be true.”
“We are old and fixed in our ways. Your youth delights us,” said Notole, smiling and stroking my hair. “When you have lived your first thousand years, you will understand.”
“It gives us great pleasure to teach you,” said Parven, laying his hand on my shoulder.
“Do I have to decide now?”
“In five days, you come of age,” said Notole. “At first hour of that day you will be anointed Heir of D’Arnath. If you choose to become one of us, we must prepare you in the hour between mid-watch and the anointing. You will have no second chance. This decision is for all time.”
“I understand.”
“For now, we will take you back to your rooms and let you sleep. When you wake, this taste of your future will be but a memory, and all will be as it was. Look well upon the face of the world and see what matches the possibilities that are open to you.”
They took the mask away, and Ziddari led me back to my rooms and settled me in my chair. We ordered food. I was hungry, though indeed a lead weight sat in my stomach as I sat there blind.
“Are you wearing Darzid’s face now?” I asked Ziddari as we ate.
“Yes.”
“Why did you live in the other world? Why did you work for mundanes… a common soldier when you were a Lord of Zhev’Na?”
He laughed. “That’s a long tale, and over the next hundreds of years I’ll tell you the whole of it. In brief, one of us had to follow the Dar’Nethi J’Ettanne across the Bridge to protect our interests. Too late I discovered that, over a long period of time, the mundane world corrupts and confuses the memory of those born in this one. I suffered that indignity just as J’Ettanne and his Dar’Nethi did. Worse, in many ways. A wretched, despicable world is the land of your birth. As to why the task fell to me, rather than Notole or Parven… let’s just say I lost the toss.” More hatred than humor colored Ziddari’s laugh.