"When I see that locket, I will kill Simon de Gobignon at once."
"That is good. Now, in a little while you will wake up. And you will not remember anything I have said to you about the locket and about killing Simon de Gobignon. You will forget all about it until you see the locket again. And then you will strike."
"Yes, Maestro."
Daoud went back to the throne and sat down. He slipped the locket's chain over his head and dropped the silver disk back inside his tunic. Sordello slumped in his kneeling posture like a figure of wax that had been placed too close to a fire.
Daoud waited patiently, and in a few moments Sordello raised his head, his eyes bloodshot but alert.
"Will you let me visit paradise again soon?" His memory had gone back to the moment before he drank the drug.
"Not very soon," said Daoud. "But serve me well, and it will happen again." He could not make Sordello wait a year, as the Hashishiyya usually did with their initiates. But it must be a wait of some months, or the experience would lose its magic. And in months his work in Orvieto might be done.
And then again, I might still be here ten years from now.
"Tell me what I have to do, Maestro."
"Serve me faithfully, and from time to time, when it pleases me, you will visit paradise. Disobey me or betray me—we will know instantly if you do—and when you least expect it you will find yourself in hell. Not the one we created for you last night. The real one."