"Come back. Leave it, son. It's been far too long. Can you hear me?"
The voice grated at my ears like a buzzing mosquito, and I slapped it away, cursing the interruption. My hand met solid flesh. "How dare you interfere with me?" I roared. "You will be a smear on the face of the deep!"
Lamplight pierced the darkness, glaring in my face. On the floor by my feet sprawled a man grimacing, a rapidly darkening bruise on his forehead. But his eyes did not leave my face. "What is your name?" he said. "Speak your name."
"My name …" I was trembling, my body clenched into such a knot that my teeth ground against each other, and my skin felt like to rip. Easy to see why my fist throbbed. The room wavered and shifted. … No black glass floor … no columns of ice . . . no man-high torches . . . just soft chairs, green carpet on a tile floor, a brick hearth with its spitting fire, and an injured man….
"Demonfire, Father!" I uncurled myself and started to get up.
"Answer him!" Paulo stood beside me, something . . . a poker . . . raised over my head. "Say it."
I held up my hands. "Gerick … of course, my name is Gerick." And as I said it, the world settled a little further into its more familiar pattern.
My father's head sagged to the floor.
"Stars of night, Father! Forgive me."
Paulo heaved a sigh, threw down his poker, and together we lifted my father into his chair. I was not much help, as I could not stop shaking. "I'm sorry. Your head … we need something. . . . Gods, I'm sorry." My tongue fumbled at finding the right words.
"A little bruise is no matter," he murmured. "But you … we were afraid we were losing you. Almost an hour we yelled and shook you. You were scarcely breathing. I thought you were going to burst."
"I'm all right." I sank to the floor at his feet, trying to regulate my breathing and slow my heart.
Paulo poured wine for my father. "Do you want something?" he asked me. "Ale? Saffria?"
I shook my head. Nothing would taste proper or settle for a while. I just wanted to get this over with. "There was a place in Zhev'Na called the Vault of the Skull…"
The Vault was a stone chamber buried under the fortress, I told them. It lay close to the Chamber of the Oculus, where they kept the Great Eye, the largest of the spinning brass rings. In the vault were kept the Lords' greatest artifacts of power: the three smaller versions of the oculus, one for each of the Lords, a large bronze map of Gondai called an avantir, and the gold and brass earrings. Every Zhid wore an earring, its sharp spike thrust through the earlobe and locked securely on the other side. I had worn one from the day I pledged my childish fealty to the Lords, though mine, of course, had been unique. Jewels of ruby, emerald, and amethyst linked me directly, constantly, to the minds of the Lords until the day I became one with them.
But in the Vault of the Skull were hundreds of the common ones: the gold that were given to the commanders, and the brass for the ordinary warriors. Everyone had seen the earrings worn by the Zhid, but no one in Avonar could have known they were linked to the Lords through the avantir, a broad, cast-bronze map of Gondai that was played by the Lords as a musician might play his harp.
Paulo had brought a damp towel for my father to hold on his forehead. Regrettably, I had no scrap of sorcery left in me to chill the thing and help keep down the swelling.
My father leaned forward in his chair. "So they used the oculus to gather the power, focus and enlarge it, and then used the power to manipulate this avantir."
"That's right," I said. "Everything necessary for the Zhid to know would be communicated from an avantir through the earrings: the battle plan, the tactics, who should be taken prisoner, who was to be turned. Everything."
My father grimaced as he shifted the wet towel. "But we always examined the earrings when we took prisoners and never found the slightest enchantment on them. We thought them only a talisman, like a battle flag or a badge on a tunic."
"There would have been no trace," I said, shivering. Paulo grabbed a blanket and threw it over my shoulders. I felt no warmth from the fire. "As soon as a warrior was captured, the connection to the avantir was severed. It's why you could never learn anything valuable from a captive Zhid. They really didn't know much of anything. Only the Lords and their generals knew."
"And when we destroyed the Lords . . ."
". . . all connections would have been severed. The oculus that Radele used to control me—Notole 's—was destroyed at the same time. Mother saw it happen. Witnesses have told Ven'Dar that the fortress crumbled at the same moment. The temple, the statues, the Great Oculus . . . supposedly all the magical artifacts were destroyed along with it. That makes sense. The statues and the Great Oculus could not have outlasted the Lords. Their substance was so intimately bound with the Lords' existence."
The black stone statues of the enthroned Lords had been so large three men could have stood in the carved palm of Ziddari's hand. I could still feel what it was like to inhabit the one made to my likeness . . . the huge, heavy, solid sensation, as if my bones were granite, my flesh impenetrable. The sense of permanence … of power …
When my nails bit into my flesh, I forced my fists to unclench.
"So what does it mean that these things are happening?" said my father, watching me. Worried.
I could not stop trembling, nor could all the wine in Avonar have diluted the foul taste in my mouth. "They had three avantirs, Parven's the master. At least one of them must have survived, and someone out there knows what it is and has power enough to use it. You have to understand—that would be a great deal of power, equivalent to that the Lords derived from using the Great Oculus."
"Earth and sky!" My father stared at me. Paulo's eyes were on me, too.
"It's not me doing it this time," I said, smiling at them. A weak effort it seemed, as their shocked expressions didn't change. "I promise. And it's not D'Sanya. I went looking for the answer to her, too …"
At every echo of D'Arnath's name, I had been filled with hatred so bitter I could have clawed the sun from the sky. The Lords would have eaten the king's flesh if they could have gotten their hands on him. By the time I was one with them, the malevolence that filled their minds at the mention of him left no room for other thoughts.
". . . and so I had to go back to the beginning to remember the story," I said. "When D'Arnath's warnings were proven right on the night of the Catastrophe, the Lords focused all their fury and frustration on him, and when the king set himself and his heirs the sworn duty to stand between them and the power they craved—the hunger for power made insatiable by their workings—they swore everlasting revenge. And so they set out to trap one of his children."
I closed my eyes and allowed myself to believe. "Every element of D'Sanya's story was confirmed. Her year of safety while they tried to bargain her. The two years of abuse and degradation …"
She had told me only part. They had treated her like an animal, using every humiliation a depraved mind could think of, every demeaning task, constant taunting … in a systematic attempt to destroy her identity … to destroy her soul. That she had survived with so much human feeling … so much compassion … such appreciation for beauty … and any power at all… was a wonder beyond telling.
". . . and then they buried her in a stone chamber and did not let her die, planning to wake her every few years, allow her to remember who and where she was, and force her to do whatever they desired before burying her again. They wanted D'Arnath to go to his death knowing that his child would live forever in torment. Father, she was their prisoner. . . ."