Darkvision - Bruce R. Cordell [60]
Warian looked away, worry suddenly creasing his brow. Then he said, "I'm not contaminated, or at least I don't feel any different. If I'm free of this hypothetical taint, perhaps Shaddon is, too. I doubt he'd allow himself to come to any harm. He's the most accomplished mage this family has ever produced, if you can believe his claims."
Zel looked at Warian, calculation narrowing his eyes. "Yes, but if you were contaminated, would you know it? Would he?"
"Come on, you're just trying to spook me! Of course we'd know it. This could all be a minor glitch in the plangent program that you've blown up into your own personal conspiracy theory. It could be nothing."
"Or we could be going to face the man from whom all the contamination flows."
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Shaddon gazed into a massive crystalline boulder suspended on an iron chain.
It was the largest uncut stone his miners had ever discovered. His first thought was to use it as another crystal for his prosthesis project. But this particular globe of purple mineral proved far more significant than every earlier specimen he'd prized from the great dark.
Shaddon grinned so fiercely his face nearly split.
In this piece of mute stone, he had found untapped energy-energy eager to jump into all the previous mineral he'd cut to such exacting standards. The arrival of this massive sphere marked the transition where his prosthetics research graduated from sub-par replacements to superhuman relics. With this orb, he was able to fashion plangents.
The limbs, organs, senses, and even reasoning faculties he installed in plangents were superior to anything mortals were born with. He could truthfully claim the ability to make people better!
True, he had a few bad nights when the energy source fueling his plangents proved itself sentient. What had he unleashed?
Those fears had passed. This entity showed him advantages he'd never dreamed possible. With the great orb, he could seize absolute control over everyone who accepted a plangent implant.
In the two years since this great discovery, Shaddon's attitude had slowly migrated from vague unease to glorious satisfaction with his newfound power, despite a single downside. He pushed his mind away from that topic. His was the power of absolute mastery over a growing number of better-than-normal wealthy merchants, nobles, and other people of note.
Shaddon Datharathi reached out his artificial hand to change the focus of the colossal globe. Each rough facet glowed with an image, as if from a different viewpoint. Each image was, in truth, from the perspective of someone who had submitted to Body Shop improvements.
The plangents, who came to the Body Shop as rich, powerful elites, thought they were gaining membership in an exclusive club. It was true-in submitting to the implant, they gained the powers of a super-normal human, as promised. What they didn't know was that wearing a Datharathi prosthesis of recent manufacture put the wearer's soul in thrall.
Shaddon grinned even wider. He was the thrall master.
The project had exceeded his wildest hopes. His subjects of control continued to proliferate. Each offered him a new window on the world-and a new vessel that would accede to his utter bidding. Why not smile?
He giggled, the tone high and tittering. He watched from the eyes of a nobleman of the Kant family as he sneaked away to a tryst with a secret lover. Shaddon shifted his focus, and with only a twinge of pain, mentally propelled his senses into his thrall.
The next instant, he was the noble. He could feel the man's breath, feel his crystalline heart, move his hands, twirl his body, whatever he desired. He let out a hoot in the man's deep voice, then retreated back into his own body, leaving the nobleman turned around and confused about the moment of lost time.
Shaddon would have time enough for idle fun later. At the moment, he needed to ponder a recent development-his grandson