But there was a second memory-trace—Ammaerln's. I had crossed a galaxy to come to Foster, and with me, locked in an unmarked pewter cylinder, I had brought Foster's ancient nemesis.
I had given it life, and a body.
Foster, once Rthr, had survived against all logic and had come back, back from the dead: the last hope of a golden age....
To meet his fate at my hands.
"Three thousand years," I heard my voice saying. "Three thousand years have the men of Vallon lived mindless, with the glory that was Vallon locked away in a vault without a key."
"I, alone," said Ommodurad, "have borne the curse of knowledge. Long ago, in the days of the Rthr, I took my mind-trace from the vaults in anticipation of the day of days when he should fall. Little joy has it brought me."
"And now," my voice said, "you think to force this mind—that is no mind—to unseal the vault?"
"I know it for a hopeless task," Ommodurad said. "At first I thought—since he speaks the tongue of old Vallon—that he dissembled. But he knows nothing. This is but the dry husk of the Rthr ... and I sicken of the sight. I would fain kill him now and let the long farce end."
"Not so!" my voice cut in. "Once I decreed exile to the mindless one. So be it!"