Guardians of the Keep: Book Two of the Bridge of D'Arnath (68 page)

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.”

“And what if I refuse your offer?”

“You will still be the Heir of D’Arnath, a friend and ally of the Lords. You may live out your limited

span of years here, or make your home elsewhere if you wish. But we will expect you to aid us in our

war as you have sworn upon your life and honor to do.”

“But the secret of the oculus . . .”

“. . . is only for the Lords of Zhev’Na and will be revealed only when you join us.” Ziddari held my

chin in his hand and nodded his head toward my statue. “You were born to be one of us. I believe you

know this to be true.”

“We are old and fixed in our ways. Your youth delights us,” said Notole, smiling and stroking my hair.

“When you have lived your first thousand years, you will understand.”

“It gives us great pleasure to teach you,” said Parven, laying his hand on my shoulder.

“Do I have to decide now?”

“In five days, you come of age,” said Notole. “At first hour of that day you will be anointed Heir of

D’Arnath. If you choose to become one of us, we must prepare you in the hour between mid-watch and

the anointing. You will have no second chance. This decision is for all time.”

“I understand.”

“For now, we will take you back to your rooms and let you sleep. When you wake, this taste of your

future will be but a memory, and all will be as it was. Look well upon the face of the world and see what

matches the possibilities that are open to you.”

They took the mask away, and Ziddari led me back to my rooms and settled me in my chair. We

ordered food. I was hungry, though indeed a lead weight sat in my stomach as I sat there blind.

“Are you wearing Darzid’s face now?” I asked Ziddari as we ate.

“Yes.”

“Why did you live in the other world? Why did you work for mundanes ... a common soldier when

you were a Lord of Zhev’Na?”

He laughed. “That’s a long tale, and over the next hundreds of years I’ll tell you the whole of it. In

brief, one of us had to follow the Dar’Nethi J’Ettanne across the Bridge to protect our interests. Too late

I discovered that, over a long period of time, the mundane world corrupts and confuses the memory of

those born in this one. I suffered that indignity just as J’Ettanne and his Dar’Nethi did. Worse, in many

ways. A wretched, despicable world is the land of your birth. As to why the task fell to me, rather than

Notole or Parven . . . let’s just say I lost the toss.” More hatred than humor colored Ziddari’s laugh.

I was sorry I had asked him any questions. I wanted him to go. I had to think—a great deal. Five

days to decide whether I wanted to live forever and have all the power I could ever want, or if I wanted

to live out a human life span, risking an early death like Papa who was only thirty-seven when he was

struck down by the Prince D’Natheil. And what would I use to fill the emptiness inside me—the “fairy

dance” of the Dar’Nethi? I didn’t even know how to begin. It disgusted me to think of following the

practices of the coward D’Arnath, of the murderer D’Natheil. Or would I gain power as did the

Zhid—squeezing the life from rocks or rats or slaves? I could not have come all this way for that. No,

there was really no choice to be made.

But if I were to leave myself behind five days from this— I wasn’t stupid enough to think it was only

“bits of my past” that would be lost—I didn’t want to do it with unanswered questions. So I told Darzid I

wasn’t hungry any more, only tired.

“Then I’ll leave you. Sleep well, my young Lord.” He laid a hand on my head as he said it, and my

limbs suddenly felt like iron weights had been attached to them. As he stood up and walked across the

floor, I huddled in my chair, trying not to shiver. I was so cold ... it must be night. I fought his sleep spell,

because I knew that when I woke I wouldn’t have the power to do what I wanted, only my own weak

talents.

Slowly I let my mind steal through my house, and I touched a slave named Ben’Sidhe. He knew

nothing of strange articles left in the young Lord’s rooms. Another slave, Mar’Devi—the one who bathed

me—was filled with shame, not because of the task itself, but because he felt so degraded by it. He

believed he should accept his lot with better grace when so many of his brothers and sisters were bound

so much more cruelly. He knew nothing of stones or wood or the stars of Leire. One after the other I

probed each slave that lived in my house. None of them had taken care of my wounded arm, and none

knew of the mysterious gifts left for me to find.

Drudges were so dull and stupid, I might have skipped examining them, except that I was enjoying

myself; stealing thoughts was so easy now. My mind picked at one of them and then another. Astonishing

that Drudges were the cousins of the people I had touched in the other world. I laid them open and found

nothing—no spirit, no intelligence, no desire for anything better—until I touched the one who hovered in

the shadows beyond the stair, one who stood there shocked and horrified to see me blind, left in my

chair by a man she despised.

She tried to close her mind to me. Too late.

I tried to close my own mind to the Lords. Too late. I was scarcely awake, lulled into carelessness.

“Seri!” I jumped to my feet.

Vainly I tried to find my way to her, crashing into the table and then the bed, trying to draw an outline

of my room in my head so I wouldn’t kill myself trying to get to her—to tell her I knew what she had

been doing—to ask her all the questions that blossomed inside me like fireworks at a jongler fair. But

even as I floundered in the dark, the Lords descended on me.

The woman! He has discovered the woman in Zhev’Na! How is . . .

. . . it possible? Inconceivable! Dangerous!

Young Lord, beware. She serves the master of deceivers. We’re sending warriors to protect

you.

Ziddari, get back to the boy! The tigress is ready to pounce. Such danger to our young friend . .

. our plans . . .

With their shouting and jostling in my head, I hung onto the bedpost, shaking with the effort of staying

awake and splitting my thoughts into those the Lords could know, and those I needed to keep private.

“Seri! Run! They know you’re here.” I couldn’t have explained why those words burst out of me. “Hurry