For all these years my father had tried to convince me that the guilt with which I lived was not mine, that because I had been so young and inexperienced, I could actually have done very little evil on my own. But when the memories are a part of you, you cannot easily separate the things you actually did from the things you only remember. And now I needed to reduce this vague barrier even further, to explore that part of myself where I could not distinguish Gerick from Ziddari or Parven or Notуle. The Three. The Four.
As I called on my senses to prod the memories awake, it was as if I entered a long tunnel, and the light that was my current life—the healthy one that my parents and my friend Paulo and my trusting Singlars had so generously returned to me—slipped farther and farther behind me, rapidly dwindling into a pinprick until all I could see was midnight. I remembered midnight. . . .
The hour had come. I was to go to the Lords in their temple. Smokes . . . fumes . . . the stench of burning slaves . . . burning Dar'Nethi . . . drifted through my windows. . . .
Pleasure seeped through me, prickling my skin like a feather. Smell is the most vivid of the senses, the most evocative of memory … of obscene pleasure. I remembered the day of my change. . . .
I/we stood inside the whirling oculus, my body on fire with the joining, with the tearing down of my mind's walls, with the infusion of darkness like acid in my veins, with the impossible bloating of my power. As my human eyes were torn away, our heightened senses encompassed all of Ce Uroth: the sounds of battle and torment, the feel of the lash on recalcitrant flesh, and the smells. . . .
Call them what you will. The smells of Zhev'Na are the savory incense of victory: the fragrance of the slave pens where D'Arnath's grovelers lie rotting in their own filth . . . the sweet perfumes of blood and putrid, broken flesh after a battle exercise . . . the exudation of fear that flows with the sweat of the damned—the Zhid, the Drudges, the Dar'Nethi, all who stand in subservience to us. The smells hang thick on the hot desert air. A heady brew. Taste it! Let the stench fill our nostrils, seep into our pores, for this is our desire, and nothing . . . nothing . . . will stand in its way.
Pleasure . . . such groaning, writhing pleasure in the scent.
The withered hand caressed my mind. Welcome to your
new life, Dieste. Survey your/our domain through the cold, blue-white gems that perfect your sight. See the camps of the soulless ones as far as these immortal eyes can travel, leagues upon leagues beyond the horizon, tents fluttering in the hot wind like the wings of locusts, swarms ready to descend upon the fields of Avonar and devour them. What delight it is to turn a weakling into a perfect warrior —to rip away his soul and eat it, to lick the blood from his cringing flesh, to crush the softness and hear his screams fade into whimpers of helplessness, to grind the bones of his life under your foot, and build them up again into a creature of your own design. To see a man turned, so that a flick of your thoughts will cause him to mutilate his wife of fifty years, or to whisper commands that force a woman to strangle her newborn infant and relish her infamy. What can compare with power over the souls of your enemy ?
Push harder. Keep looking. What do you seek here in the pleasures of the past?
In the tents are the thousands of our commanders, each one a weapon to be controlled, each one ready to lead his troops into battle to devour the soft lands, to wrest the final victory from the blight of dead D'Arnath's grip. The war plans are drawn . . . centuries in the making. The circle of D'Arnath's control has grown steadily smaller and soon it will be obliterated. The power is at hand. The boy/I, our Fourth, will bring the power, for he is D'Natheil's spawn, Lord of Avonar and all Gondai, Lord of Chaos. He/I will fit the key in the slot and unlock the fountain of discord that wilt be our feast, that we may take our fill of the horrors we feed on, so that our will may be unleashed upon every world. . . .
Further. Deeper. Go back before the hours of our joining. Parven of the amethyst eyes sits his black stone chair in the Hall of Thrones, the shapeless stars cold in the void overhead. Without voice, he speaks, and I remember. . . .
Today's assault… the Dinaje Cliffs, the last stronghold of the Dar'Nethi's western penetration. Take the cliffs and they have no shelter, no refuge. On the dune seas we can
pick them off at leisure . . . the bodies sun and desert do not devour first. The decisions have been made, the warnings sent, the avantir made ready . …"
The avantir . . . remember . . . broad as a tabletop, a bronze mime of the land from mountain to watercourse, from plain to pebble. . . . How is it used to touch the thousands … to direct the commanders? I remember a battle morn. …
So which of us shall play the music of the avantir this day? Sister Notуle? No? Well, indeed you will have occupation enough with the storm —a charming notion to complicate a battle. You, Brother Ziddari, are you ready to play your own sweet music of war after so long away? I'll guide you . . . the plan is set . . . just touch the device here and here. . . . We'll bring the boy here soon enough and teach him how to play. He's done well in the desert. Charmingly cruel. Now, brother, draw the power through the Great Eye and into the avantir, so it echoes in the Vault of the Skull. . . .
The avantir was so clean . . . requiring inordinate power, of course, but making it so easy to bring death in a thousand forms. Always precise as I/we wished.
Now to the other matter . . . D'Arnath and his child.
. . . D'Arnath the Tormenter . . . the Imprisoner . . . the Unjust. . . vengeance everlasting . . .
Deeper. Not the man himself, but his child . . . the girl . . .
. . . Could we have but made him immortal, so he could know his pain forever . . .
. . . He knew, brother . . . his petty triumphs were never more than ash in his mouth . . .
. . . Even when he dwells in the realms of death, the King of Pride shall feel our victory . . . such hatred as we bear cannot be bounded . . . to rape his world is to rape his child . . . to use his child, to ravage her, is to ravage him . . . destroy him. . . .
Time . . . time . . . hurry . . . What did I/we do with her? Think of the girl . . . the captive … go back, if you must … all the way back to the beginning. . . .
We have her! The pride of this king's blood is too stout a liquor for his children's veins . . . it makes them fools. Thou art wise, O King, to keep thy sons close. . . . But this soft one will rend thy heart and mind and soul. Keep her safe, Brother Ziddari . . . for now. If he refuses to bargain, then we shall force her to live under the knife. . . .
. . . Damnable insolent man . . . if he will not give, then we must raise the wager to induce him. . . .
We flaunt her.. . bargain her… but the proud bastard will not bend. . . .
Everlasting be thy torment, King of Deserts, Prince of Rubble, Sovereign of Corpses! So be it! We will degrade thy innocent. . . use her talents . . . break her. . . destroy her . . . but thou shalt take no comfort from her death. We will bury her, but she will yet live, undying for as long as we breathe the air of this prisoning world you have left us. We shall unmake her and remake her in our image, our daughter, not thine. Woe and ruin will be thine only grandchildren. If knowledge could stretch to five thousand years, thou wouldst know she was yet in our hands . . . our undying captive, subject to our whim . . . Before and after thy death, even until the world's ending, thou shalt curse the day she was conceived for the reiving of her. . . .