Guardians Of The Keep tbod-2

by Carol Berg

  The slave would have been a masterful teacher. But if I asked for him, I would honor him, and therefore he would die. Sooner or later it would happen. And it didn’t seem at all fair to take such a man’s dying out of his own hands.

  The days flew by. Notole taught me to take the world’s troubles for my own use. Such things existed-fear, hate, anger, pain-and I could do nothing about them, so I couldn’t see anything wrong with using them to my advantage. Once I came of age and controlled my own power, then perhaps things could be different.

  The Lords still said nothing about the effects of what I was doing, only that light might bother my eyes after long nights working with Notole. After each session, I would sleep for most of a day, then go back to Vruskot and training until Notole called me to her again. Just as a test, I commanded my slaves to obtain a looking glass for me. I’d been having my slaves braid my hair into many thin plaits as Isker warriors did, and I said I wanted a glass to see how it looked. They groveled and claimed there were none to be had in Zhev’Na.

  But the crude gift from my unknown benefactor told me the important tale. For a while, my eyes indeed turned back to normal every time. But soon they kept a muddy gray tint. And then they stayed black, and the center of them was bottomless darkness that became a little larger each time. It got to where I couldn’t go about in the noonday, but only in the morning or the late-afternoon light. I kept the draperies drawn in my apartments and moved my riding lessons to after dark.

  I was afraid of what was happening, but I couldn’t stop. There was still so much to learn. Notole had promised that just before my anointing she would show me yet another source of power, more rich than those I already used. It was the greatest secret of the Lords, she told me, known to no other in the universe. I had to keep going until then.

  I had been so caught up in my training that I’d given little thought to the puzzle of the gifts, but late one afternoon, as I sat bored in my dim apartments, waiting for the sun to go down, I decided to look at the things again. Something new had been left in the box-a scrap of paper with hundreds of tiny holes pricked in it. I almost laughed, it was so odd. If the earlier objects had been indecipherable, then this one was totally impossible. I could see no pattern to the marks. I was on the verge of crumpling it up, when a hot blast of wind allowed a stray sunbeam to penetrate the draperies and shine through the jumble of pinholes, casting a reverse shadow on the wall, like a compact universe of stars in a tiny square shadow of a sky.

  Stars! That’s what it was! The paper converted the barren sunlight into stars-but not the stars of Ce Uroth that hovered behind the ever-present dust haze. There was the Watcher, the thick band of the Arch, the Bowman aiming his true arrow toward the Swan… the stars of northern Leire, the stars I would see from the towers of Comigor.

  I hadn’t thought of home in so long. I tried to remember it. Gray towers, not angular and thin like those that faced me across the courtyard, but stout and thick, stained with six hundred years of smoke and weathering… sturdy walls with five round towers, built to hold the garrison in safety for uncounted days from any threat that might ride across the heath. Inside the main doors were the black and white floor tiles, and the rainbow light that arched down from the tall windows of the entry tower… so beautiful…

  “Maybe they’re just to look at,” the Leiran boy had said.

  I took out the stone with the clear vein in it and held it up close to my face and my brightest lamp. The light hurt my eyes, but I needed to see these things. The vein led deep into the blue-gray stone, a secret passage allowing light to penetrate the cool darkness and reveal the secrets of the stone that would otherwise lay hidden. Deep in the heart of the stone were delicate patterns of yellow and green and blue, arranged in spirals and sunbursts and flowery splashes, a tiny garden of color.

  Each of the gifts was the same in a way. The iron-like wood hid a thousand tiny perfect crystals in its pores; the ugly fruit pit masked a miniature sculpture finer than any woodworker’s creation. The dish of sand had been only a piece of the ordinary desert, but presented in an unexpected way, intriguing. And the mirror… There my speculation came to an abrupt halt. My chest ached. Why a reflection of me?

  CHAPTER 40

  I had to know who it was. I had to know what someone was trying to tell me and why it hurt so much when I looked at those stupid things laid out on my table. It became a fever in me to know. I tried to read the minds of all the slaves and warriors in my house, but I didn’t have power enough. I needed the kind of power I used in my sessions with Notole. For days I would jump at any word from the Lords, hoping it would be Notole’s summons. At last it came. Tonight, my Prince. A special night tonight.

  When I went to the Lords’ house, I didn’t usually go through the temple, that huge room with the giant statues and the roof of stars and the floor that was like black ice. Most of the time I took a side door that led more directly to Notole’s workrooms or to Parven’s bare stone chamber where I studied maps and strategy with him. But on this night they summoned me to a new place.

  The chamber was buried in the very heart of the Lords’ house, down a long tight stairway and through a winding passage that seemed to turn in upon itself. The room was so dark that it was impossible to see how large it was, or what was in it. Embedded in the floor was a glowing circle of deep blue, and suspended above it was an oculus, not the size of my hand, like the ones I’d used with Notole, but one that was taller than me. The blue light reflected off the dull brass of the ring.

  “Welcome, young Lord.” The Lords were there waiting for me.

  “… such a pleasure…”

  “… to have all of us together again. A special night tonight.” Ziddari laid his hands on my shoulders and gazed down at me. His black robes made his body fade into the darkness, so that all I could see were his ruby eyes and the gold mask that was grown into his skin. “Time has flown by us so quickly.”

  “You’ve done well,” said Parven, coming up behind Ziddari, his wide, pale forehead reflecting the purple glow of his amethysts. “We had such doubts when Ziddari brought you to us. ‘So young,’ we said. ‘So untried, and only a little more than a year’s turn to prepare him.’ How foolish were our doubts. You have taught us the strength of your word. You have proven…”

  “… that you are capable of understanding the truth of the world and leaving behind your childish past. You have seen that our interests are the same, and that rigor and discipline can build strength.” Ziddari had taken up from Parven again. “As you’ve no doubt surmised, we’ve kept secrets from you. But you’ve not shrunk from any of our teaching, and so.. -.”

  “… the time has come to reveal to you our most precious secret, and to prepare you for your initiation that comes five days hence.” Notole led me to the verge of the wide blue circle scribed on the floor. The huge oculus was so close I could have reached out and touched it. “This will not be easy, as nothing in your life has been easy. You will have to give up things of value, as you have already done, but the rewards… they’re what your blood burns for, even now.”

  They were right. As the ring started to spin, my heart was racing with hunger and excitement; my breath came quick and shallow; heat radiated from my face and arms. For so long only scalding water or blazing sun had made me warm, but sorcery was far better. Faster and faster the ring spun, snatching the red and green and purple light of the Lords’ masks and the blue glow from the floor, weaving them into a giant ball of light. With Parven and Notole to either side of me, and Ziddari behind with his hands on my shoulders, I used my inner eye to penetrate the orb as they had taught me, and I was no longer in Ce Uroth…

  … but in a land just emerging from winter, faint traces of green poking up amid the brown stubble of farmland… a muddy road churned up by wagon wheels and horses’ hooves. Up ahead was a party of bedraggled prisoners, roped together and slogging through the mud. Mounted soldiers guarded fifty men and women, filthy and wretched and filled with… oh, in
credible… such vile, unbounded hatred. The soldiers cut loose one of the prisoners, threw a rope about his neck, and dragged him through the muck. In moments, he dangled from the branch of a tree. His feet jerked. The soldiers laughed. “There’s the king’s justice for you. Anyone else want to complain?”

  A few prisoners growled and strained at their bonds. Some wept. Some just stared at the soldiers and the dead man swinging from the tree. The soldiers lashed the prisoners, especially those who showed their anger, and soon the party was moving down the road again…

  Who were these people? Yet, even as my mind asked the question, I knew the answer. The prisoners cursed in the tongue of Valleor, and the soldiers wore the red dragon of Leire-King Evard’s men. People of my own world! Loathing-huge and powerful and terrible-seethed in their hearts. No Zhid, no Dar’Nethi, not even the Dar‘Nethi slaves could summon half so grand a hate as these soldiers and their captives…

  And it is all yours, whispered Notole through the jewels in my ear. She pulled back the layers of my thoughts, exposing the gaping emptiness inside me. Take it.

  I drank deep. Burning, cutting, drenching, drowning… power seeped into my pores and filled my belly and my lungs until I was breathing black fire. It ate its way into my bones. Everything I had ever experienced was made unimportant.

  I could not just call down lightning, I could create it. I could make a thousand warriors turn their swords upon themselves all at once. I could blast the stones of Zhev’Na into rubble and rebuild the fortress according to my whim, a thousand times over if I chose.

  “This is what your father would forbid you,” said Ziddari. His voice rang clear, while visions danced in my head. “This is what D’Arnath and his Heirs have judged too dangerous for us to attempt, because they were too cowardly and too weak to control it. This is the heritage they would deny you. Yet, even this is but a small taste of what is possible. D’Arnath created his enchanted Bridge and swore his oath to bind us, to imprison our skills and our power in his own weak-willed frame. But you, our young Prince, when you come into your power, you will set us free.”

  Power raged within me, stretching and pulling and swelling. Nothing had ever hurt so much; nothing had ever felt so marvelous. I wanted to scream and cry out the wonder of it, but my chest was filled with fire.

  Come with me, said Notole. She touched my hand, and I was released to ride the airs of Gondai beside her. I glimpsed the far boundaries of the Wastes, where the hard red plains yielded to the green softness of Dar’Nethi lands. We journeyed past the work camps and farmsteads of the Drudges, flat, endless fields of no more interest or variation than a Drudge’s mind. We traveled the wild oceans, and I called up winds that flattened trees and storms that made whole islands sink beneath the waves. For hours or days we examined rocky, ice-glazed pinnacles. Then we dived into deep places where bare stones formed natural fortresses far larger than Zhev’Na, where lakes were filled with molten rock, and where grew gigantic beasts with towering fangs and razor claws, who fled in terror at my word.

  Yet this is but the beginning, whispered Parven through the jewels in my ear. Come with me…

  And Parven took me into the mind of a Zhid warrior, not just to read his thoughts or mold his dreams, but to replace his identity with my own. I could feel the heat of the desert sun on my shoulders as I marched onto the training ground. I recognized the faces of my cadre and felt the brush of fear when my commander stared at me with his pale eyes and ordered me to be the first to meet the challenger who waited there. But while I knew and felt these things from the other, it was I who controlled his body and reacted in his place. My hand raised his sword, and my eyes analyzed his opponent’s opening moves for any weakness. My skill directed his combat under the harsh sun, and I felt the hot surge of victory when the sword bit into the slave’s flesh and struck him down. When I tired of the first man and left his body, choosing another to be my host, the first warrior fell dead. I worried that I had made a mistake. No, no, young Lord, whispered Parven. Use them as you wish. Like the rocks and the rats and the dirt beneath your feet, their lives exist only to serve you.

  And now imagine, young Prince, that this was possible in that other place-the place where you fed on passions so much more vivid than our own-the place holy D’Arnath has forbidden us to go. Imagine the variety, the endless wonders that would await us…

  “Enough,” said Ziddari. “Bring him back. We said we would tell him all, and so he must know what it is he chooses.”

  With a word and a touch, Notole brought us back across the blazing noonday desert, past the warriors’ encampments, through the fortress walls and into darkness-utter, complete darkness. I thought for a moment that I’d been left alone in some other place, but I felt the Lords behind me and beside me as they had been. The orb of light had vanished along with the blue circle, yet I could still sense the spinning and feel the cool rush of air on my hot face. I turned to Notole but I couldn’t see her emerald eyes, nor Parven’s amethysts, nor Ziddari’s blood-red rubies. I could see nothing at all.

  “Do not be afraid, young Lord,” said Ziddari. “It is an inevitable effect of your activities-as you have surely guessed from your previous experiences. Your desire has made you accept these limitations. The effects become somewhat more severe as you progress. But you need not worry, because we can provide a remedy.”

  Something was slipped over my head and fitted to my face. I saw flashes of light, which relieved me greatly. When the hands fell away, I could see again, but in a way far different than before. We stood in the throne room, the place where I had spoken to the Lords for the first time. Like the temple, it had a floor of black glass, a ceiling that was an image of the night sky, and tall columns all around.

  Along one side was a curved dais and on it the human-sized thrones where the Three had sat while I pledged them fealty. Today, the columns and the thrones and everything else in the room seemed angular, as if each curve in their design had been broken into short segments that only approximated its actual shape. The brass ring appeared as a thousand-sided figure, the blue circle in the floor another.

  Slowly I reached for my face, suspecting what I would find, but Notole and Ziddari grabbed my hands before I could do it. “Come with us first.”

  They led me through the twisting passages, and up the curved staircases into the main part of the keep. Seeing the world this way took some getting used to-everything with angled shapes, the edges gleaming with blue-white brilliance though the colors lay flat and dull. But we passed a slave, and in the moment I gazed on him with my false eyes, I knew his name was K’Savan and that he had grown up in a village called Agramante, about fifty leagues from Avonar. He was in the throes of despair. I could have named his cousins to the tenth degree and recited everything K’Savan knew about them. And I could tell that he looked on my masked face with horror and loathing; he would slay me with joy if he were not under the Lords’ compulsion of obedience.

  “You see,” said Ziddari. “Useful, eh?”

  We passed other slaves and Drudges, and nothing about them was hidden from me. When we came to a black door so massive that it would take a troop of warriors to open it, Notole nudged me forward. I swung the door open with a thought, and we walked into the temple of the Lords.

  Something was changed here, too. The false sky hung above us. The black mirrored floor lay beneath our feet. The Three were there, enthroned as before, giant-sized, though lifeless this time, for the Three were also with me, shepherding me toward the far end of the row of statues. Something huge and new sat in the dark beyond Ziddari’s image, covered with a purple drapery.

  My heart pounded and my stomach clenched as Ziddari waved his hand and the drapery fell to the floor. It was me. In the same dull black stone as the other three. Larger than life, so that I could have climbed up and stood in my own hand. I was to be a Lord. They hadn’t lied about it. And while I gazed up at the image of my face, my hand crept to the gold mask I wore and felt the diamonds that looked
out from it. “And what must I give up besides my eyes?” I asked, surprised that my voice was steady.

  “Very little that you’ve not already forsworn,” said Ziddari. “Small matters of your past. Your personal quarrels might come to seem trivial beside the grandeur of possibility. These barriers of thought you have built to keep us out will crumble and fade. Your mind will not be truly separate, but one with ours, and so our joined purposes and desires may loom larger than your own. But your power will be unmatched, and everything you could ever imagine will be yours.”

  “I’ll never use my training in battle, will I?”

  “Not in your own body,” said Parven. “No need to risk such a thing. We’ve made it so that none of the three of us may bear a weapon, and it would be the same with you. No one in any world is a danger to us save one of ourselves. And, as you have seen, we have better ways of enjoying the joys of combat. But we envision you submitting to the discipline of physical training for many years, until you have reached your full growth and have made yourself a skilled body that you are comfortable with. This is for your own safety, as well as the advantage it will give you when commanding armies or using other bodies for your pleasure. The choice is yours, of course.”