One might think it a blessing to be lost in the past when the present is so dreadful. But deep in the core of my being, in the small part of me that knew the days I lived were but memory, I was frantic. This punishment would not end as my wardress believed. The Lords had designed the oculus. If I were to lose myself in the Lords' memories, I would learn how to control it, how to use the oculus to grow power and get free. But by that time the Three would live again in me.
Fight it , said that resilient core, you can choose as you have chosen before . But the memories flowed freely, choking me, drowning me. . . .
"How fare you, Lord?" Like the balm of rain on parched earth, the woman's voice cooled the scalding river that had flowed from my extremities for an eternity.
Darkness swallowed the glare of desert noonday. Here in the real world, even the sinuous streams of color from the oculus were scarcely visible. I must be going blind again as I had when I was twelve; the oculus burned away the eyes of those who dwelt in its shadow, hungering for its use. And the bonds on my limbs and head were no longer my only restraints. I lay in some kind of trough shaped to my form. Panic choked me. I could only gargle an answer.
"Do you feel your tomb, Lord?" Soft fingers traced a line through my hair and along my arm where I felt the new constriction. "The shellstone grows well. Only a week gone and already it reaches for your ears. No sound after that. Never again. And here"—tender sadness flowed through her fingers pressing on my throat— "only a few days more and the first layer will enclose your neck. When it covers your face, you will feel neither the movement of the air nor a human touch ever again. No light. No sky. Never again will I have to look on your eyes and see the truth of your black heart. Ah, Vasrin Creator, give me strength."
"Kill me." My parched voice sounded like the dry gourd rattles the Drudges used to celebrate a victory of the Lords. Fear forced the words through the barriers of her enchantment. "The oculus . . . madness . . . will make me the thing you hate . . . please . . ."
"You are what I hate!" She was sobbing. "And you made me love you. I spoke to your kind father and discovered how you gulled him as well! Did you cause his horrid illness so you could get close to me? I told him that you were trying to kill him by destroying the hospice. I told him you were dead."
No! Father!
While I yet reeled from her news, her fingers brushed my feet, my wrists, and my forehead, setting them on fire again.
Hold on . . . you can choose your path. You are a man now, not a child.
But still the visions came. . . .
A caravan brought a new crowd of Dar'Nethi captives to the encampment, fresh from our victory in Erdris Vale. The new slaves cowered in their collars and slave tunics, lamenting their vaunted power. Always delicious to watch as the truth settled into their spirits. I/we lined up twenty of them in the warriors' courtyard in front of the rest. I stepped down the row and commanded each to kiss my
boots, slitting the throats of three as a price of one man's refusal. Not the impertinent man's throat, of course. I/we never allowed slaves to escape their fate with disobedience.
As I dismissed the slaves, a small ragged figure blundered into the courtyard, carrying an armful of weapons-broken ones, it appeared—and dangling scraps of chain. I would have thought the person a Drudge —a single mind-touch revealed no Dar'Nethi power —but she wore flapping brown rags, not proper Drudge attire. She stopped and gaped at the scene as if the courtyard was not at all what she expected. When she spotted me, she backed away. Her shock and terror were so ordinary, they weren't even amusing .
"Yervis!" I called. "Clean up this mess." We couldn't have such oddments wandering the fortress uncontrolled.
The warrior posted in the corner of the courtyard trotted toward me, only now noticing the quivering interloper. At my gesture, he spitted the creature on his lance. I turned away. . . .
That wasn't right. Nothing like that had ever happened. I shuddered and grabbed hold of a scrap of reason, pricked awake by the discontinuity.
My eyes opened to complete darkness. To immobility, not paralysis. To a stricture that pressed on my throat with every dry swallow. I tried to cry out, but my mouth, stiff and crusted like plaster, produced no sound. Panic threatened to undo me.
Breathe. Inhale. Feel. You are alive. Your name is Gerick. . . .
A whisper of air moved above my face—the oculus, of course, spinning out my corruption. The place smelled of old stone and the dirt that accumulates in unused cellars and dungeons. I tapped a knuckle on the table, hoping the sound might give me a sense of my prison's size, but the movement caused the pin in my palm to burn and send its scalding wave up my arm. Fighting off visions, I forced myself to lie absolutely still so as not to trigger the rest of the pins, an effort that required every scrap of self-discipline I had ever learned.
So move your mind, if you daren't move your body . I extended the fingers of my soul outward, as I did when soul weaving. There… someone ! Carefully I eased into the soul I found … and fled right back out again. Breathe… don't move… hold on… it's not your fault ….
But I jerked and the poisonous enchantment engulfed me again, dropping me into more days of war and cruelty. Deep in my true self, though, I knew more of the truth. I was buried in Zhev'Na. And the poor dying wretch whose soul I had touched had stumbled into the ruined fortress in search of treasure, only to be speared by a warrior who had stepped out of my dreams. Living.
D'Sanya visited me again, weeping as she tormented me with talk of love and light, air and sky. She was happy that I was mute, saying she could not bear to hear my voice as it made her think of a man she had once loved. When she touched my bonds and left me, I fought to hold on to my conscious mind.
Alone in the dark. I could hear the echo of my own breathing now; the shellstone had covered my left ear. I could no longer feel the brush of air on my left arm, only a warm stillness. What would it be like when the stone covered my face? I forced that thought aside and did not move.
If I could just endure for a few days … a few weeks. Someone would come for me. Surely my father would not believe I was dead. Surely. Paulo would not believe it . . . not until he saw my corpse. My mother would guess where I was; she had unraveled much more difficult puzzles. But what if they came when I was dreaming?
If I had possessed more capacity for fear, the consideration that my own dreams might kill my rescuers would have overflowed it. Don't move. Don't panic. Don't think . It could be weeks until they came. It could be a lifetime.
I prayed for an earthquake to bring the roof down to crush my head. I prayed for starvation or thirst to kill me quickly. But they didn't and they wouldn't. She would have seen to that. Always the oculus burned in my mind, speaking to me of power. Gather power enough and I could escape this place. . . .
Father . . . help me!
Over and over my father had assured me that I was strong enough and decent enough to withstand the lures of the Lords' power. But he lay in D'Sanya's hospice, and if he stepped over the wall she had forged with her devilish oculus, he would die in agony far worse than anything I was experiencing. It wasn't fair. He had already died in torment. Burned alive . . . how had he borne it?