She looked puzzled.
"Perhaps you remember him. His name is Sefaro."
It is always a pleasure to astonish someone so proud as the Lady Seriana.
Chapter 22
"D'Sanya . . . please . . ." My tongue felt like a lizard, rough and too thick for my dry mouth. "Don't leave me with the oculus." Even before she had transported me through the quivering air of a portal to this unknown prison, I had been unable to see anything but the brass ring, the burning, nauseating swirl of purple-and-gold light that she had made the entirety of my visual world.
The determined chink of hammer on stone ceased. "You must have sufficient time to know the horrors you've wrought on Gondai. It is the only justice fit for a Lord of Zhev'Na. And only the oculus can focus my power enough to contain a Lord. Yet another crime to your tally: The hospice in Maroth will be delayed for months and months until I can make another one." Her voice stayed soft and calmly reasoned as she meted out her mad justice. "Now try to move your arm."
I lay on my back on cold stone, my arms straight at my sides. Indeed, some degree of control had returned to my left arm, paralyzed for this immeasurable time. A physical restraint about my wrist had replaced the enchantment, however, and I needed no prompting to test it thoroughly. But the struggle to break free of her binding was no more effectual than my protestations of love or my reasoned arguments had been.
I should have been prepared for her reaction to my revelation. No sooner had I told her that her thousand-year dream of redemption was a myth, than my scarred hands gave her evidence that I was the very architect of her ruin—I, the Lord of Zhev'Na. Her power was tremendous even without the oculus, and when she used the device to focus her rage, my meager defenses were smothered like a flea in an avalanche. I was soon hanging in the corner of her lectorium, listening helplessly as she prepared the first of my punishments. And what came after … I kept thinking, as far as I was capable of thought, that if I could only push her a little further, she might kill me outright. But goading had only made matters worse.
She patted my straining arm. "Good. Now to ensure that your attention stays on your crimes."
A sharp stab in my open palm sent a flood of fire through my right hand and wrist and up my arm. Odd images, fragments of memory—faces, book pages, a castle parapet—flashed through my inner vision, distracting me for a while from the hammer that was now chinking away on my left side.
"I would have confined you in Skygazer's Needle—a perfect prison—but I thought it more fitting that you lie here with the ghosts of your mentors."
Another stabbing pain, this time in the left hand. Another flood of fire. More images … so vivid . . .
Riding through the frozen fields and forests of Leire, clinging to Darzid's back on my way to Zhev'Na . . . a child filled with unchildlike hate . . . the winter air freezing my hands . . . my soul. . . .
The waves of enchantment from right and left clashed somewhere between my ribs, searing my lungs and threatening to stop my heart. I fought for breath. "Lady, what are you doing?"
Blood and flesh spattered on my face as I wielded the lash for the first time. I could not falter . . . could not show disgust. I was to be a Lord. Inflicting punishment was my right. My duty . . .
* * *
Scrabbling my way out of the insistent vision, I grasped at reality—the swirl of brilliance hanging over me and the chinking inevitability of D'Sanya's hammer as it forged my prison. Even if I had been willing to gather power in the way of the Lords, D'Sanya's enchantments had left me incapable of sorcery. That I had been able to aid Sefaro's nosy daughter and plant in her the compulsion to go to my mother was only a virtue of my soul weaving. D'Sanya's constraints did not seem to affect that talent, perhaps because she did not know of it, or perhaps a talent detached from a body could not be fully bound by physical constraints. But here, wherever we were, my feeble attempts to touch another soul came up empty. And I dared not enter D'Sanya. She was too strong. Too angry. More than half mad.
"D'Sanya, wait . . ." Chinking by my left foot. What was she doing to me? Every moment that passed made it harder to think clearly. Piercing fire blossomed in my foot and washed up my leg and through my groin and my gnawing gut.
As I climbed the jagged cliffs high above the war camps of my warrior Zhid, the desert sun seared my back. I was horribly thirsty, but I could not show weakness. . . .
A stab in my right foot. Leg, back, and belly flushed with the stinging enchantment. At the same time, the lower perimeters of my limbs and torso and the flesh at the back of my neck tickled as if an army of ants milled about beneath me, burrowing into my skin. The chinking hammer next to my ear tugged at a binding that crossed my forehead. . . .
I tightened the leather strap until it cut into the tanned flesh. We had bound the insolent warrior to four posts in the center of the encampment, where the sun could bake him slowly over the next days. Someone pressed a whip handle into my hand.
"They writhe so charmingly when the sand spiders burrow into their open wounds, do they not, young Lord?" Pleasure prickled my spine. . . .
Gasping like one drowning, I tried to escape that voice, those sensations.
The voice that whispered in my ear so seductively was Lord Parven's, as clear as on the day of my change. Visions . . . memories … so real . . .
"Lady!" D'Sanya had threatened to bury me alive, but terror rooted deeper than even so dread a fate exploded in my gut. My struggle drove her sharp pins deeper into my hands and feet, triggering relentless waves of fire. The Lords were five years dead, but if my soul weaving could give coherence to chaos and create the Bounded, what could it do to the memories I carried . . . and in the presence of the oculus, the very agent of my corruption? You will not escape the destiny we designed for you. You are our instrument. Our Fourth .
"D'Sanya, listen. To leave me with them . . . memories . . . the Lords . . . please …" I could not get out half the words. Lips and tongue flaccid. Numb. ".. . will break my mind . . . make them real . . ."
"Your pleas are false, Lord." Her breath tickled my ear. "The tongue of Zhev'Na is ever lying and must be silent. You must remember the crimes you've done and know that you will never be free of them. You will not sleep. You will not die. You will not forget."
An exquisite pain stung the center of my forehead, and I was engulfed by the past. …
"This land is called Ce Uroth . . . and it is indeed a barren land —stripped of softness and frivolous decoration, its power exposed for all to see." Lord Ziddari, dressed as always in impeccable black, smiled at me in his too-familiar way. "If he wants to accomplish his purposes, a soldier must be hard like this land, not decked out in a whore's finery, or wallowing in weakness or sentimentality. . . . This slave Sefaro will be your chamberlain. He —as all Dar'Nethi slaves —must have permission before he speaks or you must cut out his tongue. Command him as you will. Kill him if he does not please you . …"
The tale of my training in evil, of my childhood of fear, of the treacherous dreams of my youth played out unceasingly in my mind. I smelled the stink of the slave pens. My hands felt the solid give of human flesh as my sword pierced the bodies of my sparring partners, and my chest and back ached with bruises as my combat masters pummeled their teachings into me. My enjoyment of power grew into incessant craving. I lived my past again entirely, not as an observer but as participant, swept along like flotsam in a spring torrent, drowning in the raging current of profane memory.