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My audience was clad in silk and jewels or sparkling armor such as Athas has never seen, before or since. I, of course, was birth-naked and subject to intense scrutiny. Visions of grunting beasts and sweating slaves were thrust into my consciousness. Flame-haired Sielba ran her possessive passions over my body. She took me by surprise; I flushed with shame, not because I was a hot-blooded man, easily aroused, but because she meant me to be ashamed.
Only Borys of Ebe would have nothing to do with me. His contempt was complete. Dwarves interested him; my shame and suffering didn't.
"Can you walk?" Rajaat asked.
The War-Bringer stood on a beaten dirt path. Behind him stood a slender spire so amber bright that it seemed aflame, though the color was only the setting sun's reflection on pristine white stone. Myron of Yoram's cart rested beside the path. His flayed, tattered skin moved as he breathed, and his mewling echoed in my ears.
My legs would bear me, but I couldn't walk toward my savior without walking past that cart. I hesitated, summoning my courage. Gallard, Sielba, and the others mocked me; my shame was immense, but it wouldn't move my feet. Rajaat made a slight, two-fingered gesture, after which my strength or courage were of no importance: his will brought me to his side.
"Prepare a feast," the first sorcerer said, speaking to those magnificent men and women as if they were slaves.
He pointed at the cart where he'd restored me and where a mass of tall, crystal goblets instantly stood. I saw outrage flicker, then die, on their faces as, one after another, they started toward the cart. And all the while, Rajaat's steady control over me never wavered. It would be a king's age before I could seize the minds of so many mortals and direct them to separate actions. I cannot, even today, seize a champion's thoughts, nor can any of my peers, but Rajaat could hold us all... easily.
Rajaat was cautious with me. He turned me sunwise; toward the brilliant tower, away from the cart where Myron of Yoram lay. But there wasn't enough caution to spare me the understanding of what food, what drink, would be served at the impending feast. I braced myself against my savior's influence. My new body trembled like a smoke-eater's. Walk! Rajaat roared in my mind. Your destiny awaits.
What are you? I asked, shattering the wall, though my true question was: what will I become?
Rajaat intervened before I had an answer to either question. A cold, gray mist enveloped me. Walk! he commanded a second time, and with his will wrapped around mine, I entered the Gray.
I emerged in a small chamber where light flashed brightly and without warning. The floor beneath my bare feet was quicksilver glass, as cold as a tomb at midnight. A stride ahead, the quicksilver angled into a pool of still, dark water. The ceiling above me was a rainbow of colored crystals, six stones mounted in a ring around a seventh crystal that was darkness incarnate.
While I watched in mute wonder and awe, jagged streams of colored light pulsed from the crystals in the rainbow ring. Each pulse was stronger than the preceding one and brought the separate streams closer to a conjunction at the center of the dark crystal.
Watch, Rajaat told me, though I needed no encouragement.
A pinpoint of pure, colorless light sprang into being the instant the jagged streams touched. It swallowed the rainbow colors and began to swell, growing brighter as it did, until the dark crystal was filled with more light than my still-mortal eyes could bear. I closed my eyes, turned my head, and felt a faint concussion through my private darkness. When I opened my eyes again, the room was dark, as it had been when I entered it, and the jagged rainbow streams were no longer than my finger.
"The Dark Lens in the Steeple of Crystals," Rajaat whispered in my ear. "Do not ask what it is, how it was made, or where it comes from. In all the planes of existence, there is nothing that compares to it. Stand in the pool beneath it and become my greatest creation, my final champion."
My family did not raise a fool for a son. I didn't need questions to know that the gift Rajaat offered was nothing any sane man should accept. Yet I knew as well that I would not survive refusing it. I'd chosen death once before when I'd faced Myron Troll-Scorcher—and Rajaat had restored me. My life had become too precious to squander a second time. Stubbornness failed, and my legs took me forward, across the quicksilver and into the opaque water as the rainbow streams pulsed toward each other again.
"You will not regret this," Rajaat assured me.
"I already—"
The colored lights merged into a lance of pristine light that pierced my skull with fire. I screamed mortal agony and slowly began to rise. The Dark Lens burst open. Inside, it was exactly as high as a man, exactly as broad as his outstretched arms. When my heart was at its center, it sealed into a perfect sphere again. Rajaat's sorcery took many-colored shape around me. It became a pillar of light, lifting me and the Lens into the sunset sky.
What can I recount of my final mortal moments? My flesh became fire, my bones red-hot steel on the smith's anvil. Even my memories were reduced to flame and ash. Then, when there was nothing left but light itself, the Lens focused inward. Drawing substance from the dying sun, the risen moons, and the countless stars above our cloudless sky, Rajaat created his final champion.
My heart beat in rhythm with the world below me, and I rejoiced as immortality quickened in my veins. I saw Athas as I wished it could be: a bountiful paradise of flowering fields, green forests, white-capped mountains, and blue lakes and rivers, all bound together beneath a shifting lace of clouds.
Never! Rajaat shattered my vision. Athas does not belong to us! We are the unclean, the defilers. Our children are raised from dung. Our blood is filth. It is not for us to envision the future. You must cleanse the world so it may be returned to the pure ones. The blue world he had shown me earlier—the Athas of endless ocean and floating cities—supplanted my own vision. I looked closer and saw that the cities were populated with halflings, which astonished me because then, as now, halflings were not a city-dwelling race. Humanity's debt folk on your shoulders. It must be paid, Manu of Deche. It must be paid in full. Bands of sorcery tightened around me, commanding me to accept my destiny, to obey the War-Bringer, to revere Rajaat, my creator. I surrendered.
The bands loosened, and Rajaat had made his final champion. I cannot speak for the mistakes and flaws Rajaat claimed existed in my peers, but I knew my own even before the Dark Lens settled back into the rainbow ring atop the Crystal Steeple. I took the first sorcerer's gifts because I had no other choice, but I clung to the shards of my vision, a farmer's vision of a many-colored Athas.
And it was well that the seeds of my rebellion were already planted when the Dark Lens spat me out. There could be no secrets as I lay on the quicksilver glass, my translucent skin stretched taut over a star-flecked midnight skeleton.
"Arise."
Lightning fingers caressed me as I gathered myself into a crouch, then slowly stood. I stared at my black-boned hands. I wondered how I could see anything, but I dared not touch my face.
"Are you in pain anywhere? Do you feel the lack of any vital part of yourself?" Rajaat asked from the periphery.
"No, nothing hurts. Nothing's lacking," I answered slowly, realizing that he'd known my answers before he'd asked the questions. "I'm—" I sought words to describe the indescribable. "I'm hollow... empty. I'm hungry."
I met Rajaat's mismatched eyes and saw that he was gleeful. Then I remembered the feast. When my mind's eye touched the memory of Yoram's scorched carcass, my hunger swelled. Looking down, I saw a pulsing hollow beneath my ribs.
"What have you done to me?" I cried out recklessly, though Rajaat would have heard my thoughts had I tried to stifle my words and, in truth, I doubt that I would have tried.
