Sword training occupied the morning, but I found it difficult to concentrate on anything but sorcery. But Notole didn’t call me that day, and when I spoke to her, she said she was not available for teaching.

I waited almost a week, the hunger for sorcery burning in me like a fever. At last she called, and I ran across the courtyard and down the stairs to her den, hoping she would open the purple velvet bag and pull out the brass ring. She did.

That day we let our minds travel through the Zhid encampment outside the fortress walls. A troop of warriors was being punished by their commander for lax discipline. The warriors’ anger at the punishment and their desire for revenge was eating away at them as they labored in the desert, but they dared not rebel. With Notole’s help and her oculus, I drank deep of their fear and hatred, and it tasted better than the first sip of water after a desert march. I was bursting with power.

We practiced control that day-holding objects, stacking them, making them move in precise patterns, and controlling the thoughts of others. The Drudges were easy; they were so dull and afraid, I could make them think anything I wanted. The Zhid were more challenging. Their minds were filled with so many things: war and strategy, fighting skills, and scheming about their fellow warriors and their superiors. I had trouble trying to intrude on their minds, but eventually one of the house guards had a fearsome nightmare in the middle of the day, thanks to me.

It was far into the night when I went back to my rooms. I worked on sharpening my sword, ate a meal, and cleaned myself up. Only then did I pull the wooden square out of the box and look into the polished bit of metal. It had happened again. This time the area of black was larger than the normal colored part of the eye. It didn’t hurt. My eyes just looked strange… but no one but slaves or Drudges were going to see them.

My eyes were normal again the next day, and I almost brought the question about them to mind, but I decided against it. The Lords might not let me continue with Notole’s lessons if it kept happening.

Another long week went by before Notole called me to her again and set the oculus spinning. On that day, we watched as the Dar’Nethi survivors of a Zhid raiding party were sealed into their slave collars. An immense surge of power filled me as I listened to their screams. I felt like a volcano, huge and rumbling and dangerous.

“This time we will travel beyond the walls of the fortress and see what we can find for entertainment,” Notole said. She put out the candles, so that the only light in the room came from the emeralds in her golden mask and the green-and-gold orb of the oculus that hung over our heads. I was quivering with the power dammed up inside me. When she took my hands in her dry, withered fingers, she had to speak only one word and our minds came free of our bodies.

I could see everything, just as if I were flying. We soared through the vast temple of the Lords where the three giant statues sat under the roof of stars, and we passed through the walls of the Lords’ house and looked down on the courtyards, crawling with slaves and Drudges and warriors. We sailed into the noonday and called up a whirlwind that turned the air red as it picked up sand, blasting the desert encampments and scouring the cliffs. Warriors and slaves looked like ants crawling on the desert. When I was little I had sometimes dropped grasshoppers and beetles into anthills to see what would happen; now I could do the same with people. So I picked up a few slaves in the whirlwind and deposited them behind the Zhid lines, and I sucked Zhid warriors into the wall of sand and dropped them amid the slaves. Notole laughed, but we didn’t stay to watch them sort it out. Instead we soared into the vast emptiness of the Wastes. Notole showed me how to call up lightning, and for hours I practiced blasting rocks to rubble and setting thorn bushes afire.

Enough, young Lord, Notole said at last, still laughing inside my mind. Save some adventures for another day. We’ve only begun.

Still excited, I left the Lords’ house and walked across the barren courtyard to my house. Lightning… I had called down lightning! I couldn’t wait to do it again. For the moment, I was so tired… I rubbed my eyes and stumbled a bit. The courtyard was very dark. When I stuck out my hand to catch my balance, I realized I was about to crash into the Gray House wall instead of walking through the gate. Squinting, I felt my way along the wall to the gateway. As I went inside, I looked back over my shoulder. The torches over the Lords’ gate were lit, only the fire wasn’t orange and bright. The flames looked like gray veils blowing in the wind.

My skin went cold. And when I thought of some of the things I’d done that day, my stomach felt queasy. I ran into my house, stumbling up the stairs and tripping on a footstool in my room, even though the lamps were lit. I screamed at my slaves to stop staring at me and draw me a bath. When I was alone, I held the mirror in the dim circle of light cast by my largest lamp. My hand was shaking so hard, I had to lay the mirror down and bend over it.

Almost my entire eye was black. Only a narrow rim of white surrounded the deep black holes, two bottomless wells boring right down into the depths of my soul.