Daughter of Ancients

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.

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?

"I had to let it happen," he'd once told me, "to feel it, not trying to ignore it, but to accept it and embrace it . . . and the terror and despair right alongside. I told myself that this was my life, and if it was to have meaning, then that meaning would only be made manifest by experiencing every part and portion of it, even the very end."

I inhaled the sour air of my silent prison, the stink of my fear. The oculus spun, cooling my sweat. Did I have that kind of strength? Not to fight, not to endure, but to embrace?

Carefully I exhaled, trying to imagine that tiny plume of breath rising through a room of unknown size, leaking through its cracks and pores into the vastness of Gondai's desert. I imagined my mind floating upward with it, and from that lofty height I looked down upon myself and considered all that had happened to me.

The desert wind blew outside this chamber. The flat silver sun wheeled across the flat silver sky. I could not see or hear or feel these things. But I believed them. Accepted them.

The shellstone had crept to the corners of my eyes. Instead of shoving that marrow-deep dread aside, I inhaled and exhaled, breathing my fear, understanding that it was and would ever be a part of me. My only task was to explore it and see what it might reveal about the world. Next, consider thirst. . . .

I worked at this for hours. Eventually I moved— breathed too deep or trembled with fear or thirst or longing—and my visions came ravening. But eventually I fought my way out once more and worked again at experiencing and embracing my life and death, hoping to discover my place in the universe. The exercise gave me some semblance of balance, some semblance of peace to leaven my terror.

Unfortunately, upon each subsequent waking I found it more difficult to maintain my state of quiet, not less. The periods of control grew shorter and shorter, and the potency of my visions seemed multiplied by each respite, so that I worried that my efforts were speeding my inevitable disintegration. But I clung to this semblance of sanity, even when I felt the burning rush that signaled the onset of my dreams. Madness. . . .

As these cycles of unsleep and waking passed, something new began to grow inside me, an immense and subtle potency, half familiar, half strange, that filled the cracks and crevices of my flesh and spirit. After a while its sheer enormity itched my skin and stretched and strummed my idle muscles like harp strings. Power . . .

Delirious with terror, I lay in that everlasting darkness trying not to move for one more heartbeat, trying to delay the inevitable. It might take one hour or one day or one turning of Gondai's moon, but I knew I would soon be quite mad and quite invincible, Dieste the Destroyer, the Fourth and only Lord of Zhev'Na, and I would destroy D'Arnath's Bridge and everything it protected. How would I be able to embrace that?