“Well chosen…”
“… we are honored…”
“… our young friend and ally. Come let me show you how to wear it.”
Ziddari took the jeweled token, and before I realized what he was doing, a sharp, hot pain stabbed my left ear. “There,” he said, before I could protest. I touched my earlobe, and the jeweled pin was affixed firmly to it like the bolt through a gate.
Now we can teach and guide you…
Help make you more than you are.
My hands flew to my ears. Parven’s and Notole’s voices were not in my ears, but inside my head.
Any question you have, just think it or speak it, and one of us will answer. Ziddari’s lips didn’t move. It was amazing!
They sent me back to my house after that. Sefaro and two other slaves were waiting at the door as always. They bowed as I walked through the gate and across the courtyard. When they straightened up, Sefaro’s eyes fell on the jewels in my ear. He laid his hand on the other slaves’ arms and nodded toward me. Their faces grew pale and their eyes wide when they saw, and all three of them dropped to their knees. I thought that their race must be weak and cowardly to be afraid of me just because I was a friend of their Lords.
Indeed it is a truth, Gerick. Dar’Nethi are soft and corrupt-afraid of their own enchantments, their own power-wanting every sorcerer to be as weak as they. They must be strictly controlled or they are worthless to anyone. We use them as slaves so that we can free our own kind to concentrate on battle. This was Ziddari whispering in my mind. Try them. See how they quake when faced with strength greater than their own.
“So they are sorcerers, too?” I said, just as if I was talking to him in person. That was a new consideration. I couldn’t imagine it. I pushed Sefaro with my foot, and he fell from his kneeling position into a heap on the floor. He didn’t move, just stayed there in the dirt looking up at me until I told him to get up. I would have melted with shame to look like that. “Why don’t they use sorcery to free themselves? Are they too cowardly even for that?”
The collars prevent them. They are Dar’Nethi, subjects of Prince D’Natheil. They and their Prince have forbidden us to grow and use our power efficiently. We use the collars to let them know what it is like to be crippled. It’s the purest torment we can offer them. And very just.
To prevent them using their sorcery did seem just. But I couldn’t help but remember how it was to be afraid all the time, and so later, when Sefaro came to unstrap my weapons and take off the silver chains and the fine suit, I told him that he did me good service. He bowed a bit, but didn’t ask permission to speak. I wondered if somehow he guessed that I’d thought about killing him when I was with the Lords.
When I went to sleep in my huge bed, I didn’t dream at all.
My life changed on that night, more clearly even than it had when I’d first come to Zhev’Na. One of the Lords was always with me, just at the edge of my thoughts-a voice in my head that wasn’t me. It seemed as natural as breathing or using the sorcery that could make toy soldiers march or flowers bloom whenever I wanted.
Sometimes the voice was very clearly one or the other of them. Notole whispered about grand things like how the universe worked and of magical power. Parven lectured me like a military tutor, teaching me attacks and defenses, and tactics and strategies that had been used in their thousand-year war. Ziddari was-well, Darzid-and he would talk about everything else, from how to treat slaves to the names of our enemies and our friends.
Sometimes I didn’t hear any voice, but if I thought of a question about swordplay, Parven spoke up, or if I wondered how to use sorcery to make my bath hotter, Notole answered.
Over the next few days the Lords began to teach me about the origins of the war with Prince D’Natheil, of how everyone in their land could do sorcery, only some were better at it than others. Notole told me how D’Natheil’s ancestors, most particularly the ancient Dar’Nethi king called D’Amath, forbade those who were better at sorcery from trying new things, or from doing any magic that everyone in the land could not do just as well. It seemed like a terrible injustice, like saying that Papa could not fight with a sword, just because he was better than everyone else.
Exactly, said Notole, inside my head. D’Arnath was afraid of losing his power to those with more talent. And still we struggle with the results of his cowardice. We fight to be allowed to use our talents as we wish. The Prince has inherited immense powers from D’Arnath, but he uses them to keep us in bondage, fearful that we will outshine his own family.
And, of course, in all this learning that I was doing, I found out that there was more than one world. I was living in the world called Gondai, while Comigor, and all the people and places I had ever known, were in the other one-the mundane world, they called it.
That, of course, is why sorcery is such a great evil in your world, said Parven. It doesn’t belong there. D’Natheil and the followers of D’Arnath call our works evil, yet what could be a greater evil than introducing sorcery where it was not intended? Great injustices resulted from it; learn the history of the heir and Rebellion and you’ll understand.
At first I was sad and a little bit scared to think I wasn’t even in the same world where I had been born, but that feeling went away quickly. The Lords were teaching me so many new things, and besides, I almost couldn’t remember Comigor any more, or the faces of anyone I’d known there, except the dead ones-Papa and Lucy. Those I remembered very well.
The Lords answered any kind of question except one, and that was anything about themselves. I wondered about their masks and why they wore them. I wondered why Ziddari had lived in my world for so long, and why he served as Papa’s lieutenant, and why he had saved me, when he helped kill all the other evil sorcerers who lived there. When I asked those questions, I could feel the three of them with me, but no one answered. Just as well. My head was bulging with everything I was learning-and it was all so easy. I never forgot anything they taught me.
A week or so after my meeting with the Lords, Darzid came to my house. Well, of course he was Ziddari, but he looked like the ordinary Darzid again. “I have an urgent matter to discuss with you, my young Lord-one best talked about in person, I think, though you have adapted well to our new ‘arrangements.’ ” We were standing on the wide balcony outside my apartments. Like every window and door in the Gray House, the balcony looked out over the desert. “Our first skirmish with Prince D’Natheil is about to occur, and in order for you to play your part in it, you must learn one of those bits of hard truth of which I spoke.”
For just a moment, I glimpsed the light of rubies in his eyes. He was very excited, and that made me excited, too. I wanted to get on with the war, now I had committed myself to be a part of it. “Have you ever wondered how you happen to have the powers of a sorcerer?” he said.