The Immortal Prince (16 page)

Warlock had discovered that, among the less obvious drawbacks of incarceration, he wasn't allowed—for obvious reasons—a file with which to trim his nails. Left unattended they would grow and curl until his fingers became all but unusable. Out in the wider world, he'd always been able to file his nails down whenever they began to grow too long. Lacking a rasp, however, he was left with no choice but to use the rough granite wall to keep his nails trimmed. It was a slow and laborious process and he spent hours at it every other day, slowly wearing down his claws against the stone in a rhythmic, hypnotic motion that left his mind free to wander. And wander it did, usually outside these dreary prison walls to a place and time much happier than here.

“Tides, how long can you keep up that infernal scraping!” Cayal complained from across the corridor.

That was the other advantage of filing his nails against the stone. It drove the suzerain to distraction.

He glanced across the hall and bared his teeth in the gloom. “Long as I have to.”

The suzerain was sitting on his pallet, leaning against the wall. He glared balefully at Warlock. “Come High Tide, I intend to do something about you, gemang.”

“Would that be before or
after
I've licked your arse?” Warlock enquired.

“If you
don't
do what I command,” Cayal warned, “I'll have your filthy Scard corpse fed to the ravens.”

“You think I'm a Scard?” Warlock asked, abandoning his nail filing to squint at the suzerain curiously. The word was slang, short for “discard.” The discarded Crasii who didn't work out the way the Tide Lords planned, their foremost fault being the lack of any compulsion the suzerain had instilled in all their magically wrought slaves to obey their masters blindly and without hesitation. Of course, they'd killed any Scards they found without mercy, but there were some who'd escaped, smart enough not to let on that their obedience was merely a way of disguising their true natures until they had a chance to break free.

He was planning to ask Cayal more, ask why the suzerain thought he was a Scard, when he caught a whiff of perfume. Long before they heard her footsteps on the flagstones, Warlock knew Lady Desean was coming for her daily interrogation of Cayal. He could smell the strange human scent of her—jasmine soap mixed with clean sweat mixed with a hint of musky perfume mixed with a whisper of fear.

And desire.

The duchess probably wasn't even aware of
that
emotion, but Warlock could tell. On some level, certainly not a conscious one, something about the suzerain called to the baser side of Arkady Desean.
Cayal is a mystery and perhaps she finds that enticing
? Or maybe it was simply human weakness. The Tide Lords were very good at manipulating people. Even without Tide Magic to aid him, Cayal had had eight thousand years to polish his seduction technique.

“Your visitor is here.”

Cayal sat up straighter. “How can you tell?”

“I can smell her.”

“What does she smell like to you?” the suzerain asked as he climbed to his feet.

“A human,” Warlock replied unhelpfully.

Cayal smiled. “A canine with a sense of humour, eh? There's something they didn't plan to breed into your line, I'll wager. What's your pedigree, anyway?”

“Why do you care?”

“I'm curious.” Cayal shrugged, leaning on the bars to stare at him across the hall. “Besides, if you turn out to be a Scard, once the Tide turns, I'll be rooting out every pitiful bastard pup in your line and destroying him.”

“I am Warlock, out of Bella, by Segura,” he informed him proudly. “And there aren't enough of you to destroy my line, suzerain.”

“Don't be too sure about that,” Cayal warned. “It could take some time, granted, but we suzerain are quite fond of ventures that take a lot of time. Helps alleviate the boredom, you see.”

Warlock couldn't help himself—he smiled. “Is
that
why you're here rotting in a Glaeban gaol? To alleviate the boredom?”

“I've done stranger things for lesser reason.” Cayal shrugged.

Their visitor's footsteps were audible now, even to someone without the benefit of canine hearing. Cayal and Warlock waited for a few moments and then she appeared, bringing with her the only bright spot in the day of both the Tide Lord and the Crasii.

Arkady was wearing much the same as always, a long grey skirt and matching jacket, cinched at the waist and trimmed in velvet, over a high-collared white blouse adorned with delicate pintucking and small pearl buttons down the front. She was—as usual—carrying the battered leather satchel where she kept her notebook.

This woman dresses to hide her beauty,
he thought.

Warlock knew quite a lot about women's fashion. His mother had been a seamstress of some note in the service of Lady Bellobrina when he was a pup. He knew what women—particularly human women—wore when they were trying to attract a mate. The Duchess of Lebec dressed as if she was trying to drive them away. And yet he could smell the latent lust on her and it didn't match her outward appearance at all. She was a puzzle, this duchess who knew about the histories of the Crasii; this well-educated noble-woman who seemed to care about his kind far more than the average human. He wished, sometimes, that she were here to interrogate him and not that arrogant suzerain across the way.

“Good morning, Cayal. Warlock.”

“Your grace,” the Crasii replied politely. “Is it raining again?”

“Yes, it is,” she informed him. “Can you hear it in here?”

“I can smell it.”

She nodded and turned to look at Cayal. The suzerain was still leaning against the bars, watching her like a cat watches its prey while it debates the most entertaining way to torment it.

“Lady Desean.”

“Cayal.”

“What trick questions do you have for me today?” he asked. “Did you want to know what we do for fun? What immortals eat? Why we even bother to eat, given we're never going to die of starvation? Or thirst.”

“Do you know that for certain?” Arkady asked, curiously.

Cayal nodded. “Even tried it once. I got hungry and I got thirsty, but nothing much else happened. Didn't even lose weight. Did you know there are no fat immortals?” he added. “There're no skinny ones, either. Arryl speculates it's because immortality forces one's body into its optimum configuration and keeps it there. More efficient, that way, you see, and if nature is anything, it's efficient.”

“Arryl,” Arkady said, opening her satchel. “Arryl, the Sorceress. She's the one who convinced you to become immortal, isn't she?”

“
Convinced
?” Cayal repeated. “Don't know that I needed much convincing. Immortality seemed like a rather attractive prospect once, but no, she wasn't instrumental in my transition from mere mortality to this…higher plane of existence.”

“You'd think,” Warlock remarked from the gloomy depths of his cell, “that your higher plane of existence might have come better equipped than this.”

Arkady glanced at him with a smile. “I was thinking much the same thing, Warlock.”

Cayal's expression soured. “Oh, the world is just full of jesters this morning, isn't it?”

“If you think that's funny, wait until I show you this.” She put down the satchel and moved the chair a little closer to Cayal's bars, before taking a seat. She had something in her hands that at first glance, Warlock thought was a small book. Then she began to fan the pages out and he realised it wasn't a book, but a deck of cards.

“We're going to play cards?” Cayal asked, obviously as puzzled as Warlock.

Arkady shook her head. “These aren't playing cards.”

“What are they, then?”

“The Tide Lord Tarot.”

Cayal burst out laughing. “You're kidding!”

“This is all that's left of you and your kind, Cayal,” she mocked. “This is it. The historical record of the immortals. Quite pitiful, don't you think, to realise how the mighty have fallen so low?”

“Those cards are a load of superstitious old twaddle,” the suzerain scoffed.

“You're familiar with them, then?”

“I've been around for a long time, Arkady. There's not a lot I
haven't
seen.”

“My friend…the one who's expert in such things, says these cards tell the true story of the immortals.”

“Your
expert
friend is an idiot, if he thinks that.”

Arkady held up one of the cards for Cayal to see. “The first card of the Tarot, I'm led to believe. This is Cayal, the Immortal Prince. Here he is dressed in his colourful but ragged clothes, carrying a magnifying glass, a cat at his heels, a palace on a mountain in the background, a sun…”

“None of it is true,” Cayal objected.

The duchess was undeterred by his scorn. “According to Tarot legend, Cayal, the Immortal Prince, travelled the world endlessly in search of happiness and fulfilment. What was the magnifying glass for by the way? Tilly couldn't answer that.”

“It's all nonsense,” Cayal insisted.

“The second card is the Sorceress,” Arkady continued. She seemed amused by Cayal's reaction, rather than discouraged by it. “According to the Tarot, the next person you meet on your journey is Arryl.” The duchess consulted her notebook in her lap and began to read from it. “Possessed by the spirit of the Tide Star, Arryl raises one hand to the sun, and pointing the other at the ground, the Sorceress calls upon the power of the Tide Star. Magically, the ground opens up at Cayal's feet. In front of the Immortal Prince are all the possibilities in the universe laid out before him; all the directions he can take, every alternate reality…”

“What are you trying to prove?” Cayal cut in impatiently.

“That you're immortal,” Arkady replied pleasantly. “I thought you'd be glad to help.”

“This is ridiculous!”

“And claiming you're immortal
isn't
?” she countered with a raised brow. “Let's look at the third card, shall we. Diala. The High Priestess.”

“Spare me!” Cayal groaned, turning his back on her.

“Continuing his journey,” Arkady read from her notes, “the Immortal Prince comes upon a mysterious veiled lady lying on a bed set between two pillars and illuminated by the Tide Star. She is the soul sister of the Sorceress…”

“She's a slut,” Cayal corrected sourly.

“…seductive rather than persuasive, enticing rather than convincing. She uses her body where the Sorceress uses her mind to entrap the unwary…”

“As I said: a slut.”

Arkady kept on reading. Warlock was certain she was doing it to aggravate him.
What strange games these humans play.

“She is the High Priestess,” the duchess read on, “and she amazes Cayal by knowing everything there is to know about him: his thoughts, his hopes, his dreams,
and
his sins.
‘Since you know all my innermost secrets, my lady, perhaps you can guide me?'
he asks, sitting beside her on the bed.
‘The Sorceress showed me the myriad paths to infinite possibilities, but I don't know which road to take.'
In answer, the High Priestess produces an ancient scroll.
‘Everything you need to know is contained in this scroll, but you must give me something in return.' ‘What do you want?'
Cayal asks.
‘Your undivided attention.'
So, seating himself at her feet, the Immortal Prince listens to the High Priestess as she reads to him by the light of the Tide Star. When she is done, Cayal understands which path he must take—”

“Oh, for the Tide's sake, will you stop!” Cayal cried.

Arkady looked at him in surprise. “Why, Cayal? I thought you'd be delighted to know your history has been so diligently preserved.”

“That's not my history!” he snapped. “It's a fairytale. It happened nothing like that!”

“
It
being you becoming an immortal, I suppose?” Arkady asked. “How
did
it happen, then, if the Tarot is so wrong?”

He turned to glare at her, his blue eyes blazing. From his cell across the hall, Warlock rose to his feet, sensing a danger in him that he hadn't previously felt. Even Arkady could feel it. When she spoke again, her voice was gentle, conciliatory, soothing…

“Tell me the truth, then, Cayal.”

“What would be the point? You don't believe me.”

“I'll believe the truth.”

Cayal paced his cell, debating something within himself, and then suddenly he turned and grabbed the bars. “You really want to know, do you?
Really
? The truth?”

Arkady nodded. “The truth.”

“Then you'd better get comfortable,” he warned. “It's a very long story…”

If I had to point to a single incident—the one deed that set me on this path—it was the moment I killed Orin, son of Thraxis, in a duel defending the honour of some girl I'd never met until a few hours before and whose name, to this day, I still don't know.

I remember what caused the fight well enough. We'd been sheltering from a blizzard in Dun Cinczi on our way to Lakesh, me and two of my older brothers. We were on our way home for a wedding. My wedding. I was twenty-six years old and only two days away from marrying the love of my life, Gabriella of Kippen, and I resented every moment of the damned blizzard that forced us to break our journey.

Dun Cinczi was tucked into a small valley in the Hotendenish Mountains in northern Kordana. It belonged to a vassal of my sister, Queen Planice. The lord of the dun, Thraxis, was happy to open his hearth to travellers caught by the storm, particularly to those related to his queen. I was only a younger brother—there were eight older siblings between me and the throne—but we were near enough to the seat of power for Thraxis to treat us as honoured guests.

Thraxis's only son, Orin, and I had been friends since childhood, so we settled in for a pleasant evening around a blazing hearth quaffing vast quantities of mead with my brothers and the other men of the dun while the blizzard raged outside. From what I remember of it, the night turned into an impromptu bachelor party. Everyone was in fine spirits, boasting of their hunting triumphs and bragging about their conquests—highly exaggerated, I'm sure—of the opposite sex.

Orin was in the midst of one such lengthy and highly improbable boast when the last of the night's travellers blew in. I remember looking up as a gust of icy wind announced the arrival of a nervous young couple, bundled up in ragged furs.

Tides, it could get cold in Kordana…

The chilly blast was cut off as the door was slammed shut and we all turned to study the newcomers. They looked tired and wary of a hearth full of drunken strangers. The husband seemed particularly protective of his wife, who was unmistakably in the late stages of pregnancy. With a belly almost swelled to bursting and clearly fatigued from her journey, we made room for her around the fire as Thraxis's wife hurried in with a bowl of venison stew and a tumbler of what was—most likely—fermented mare's milk.

She ate her meal hungrily, the pregnant woman, sitting next to Orin, who studied her curiously for a moment and then placed his arm around her shoulder. We all thought he was just being kind, you know…offering her the warmth of his body to aid the fire in taking the blue from her lips. The woman might have been pretty; probably was, I suppose, given Orin's interest in her, but I couldn't say. I only remember her belly. And the furs.

Odd, isn't it? After all this time, how the little things still stick in your mind.

Anyway, the stories continued. The night wore on. We got drunker and the blizzard showed no sign of letting up. The young husband—I never learned his name, either—drank very little. He spent most of his time glaring at Orin, who was starting to act as if the wife was
his
woman.

Things came to a head when the young man rose to his feet and announced he and his wife would retire for the evening. I think the pregnant woman made to rise, but Orin pulled her down again beside him. He made some drunken declaration about her knowing a
real
man when she saw one. And then he announced she'd decided to spend the night with him.

Thraxis, who was probably more inebriated than all the rest of us put together, laughed uproariously at the proclamation. It was proof, he bellowed drunkenly, of what a great man his son was.
Look at him!
the old drunkard chortled.
Her belly's already starting to swell, and he's only been sitting next to her!

I must have been too drunk to notice the tension in the hall, at least until things had gotten completely out of hand. I still can't say what made me take notice. Perhaps it was the panicked look on the face of the young pregnant woman. It might have been watching Thraxis's wife trying to coax the girl from the fire, a move Orin thwarted by dragging the girl onto his lap as soon as he realised what his mother was doing.

It was at that point the husband tried to intervene.

Laughing at his objections, two of Thraxis's men held him back as he cried out, protesting Orin's possession of his wife. The young woman struggled, trying to get away, but she was held fast, despite her best efforts.

“
Help
me!” she begged, looking straight at me, as Orin pushed her down and began to tear at the furs in which she was swaddled. “For pity's sake, is there nobody here who'll help me?”

She screamed as Orin pushed the furs aside and ripped apart the laces on her shift, laughing as her heavy breasts were exposed.

Even with eight thousand years to wonder why, to this day, I still can't say what prompted me to intervene. I didn't know the girl and Orin was a lifelong friend. In hindsight, I doubt it was out of a sense of chivalry; in those days chivalry was a concept still foreign to humanity, something they took another few hundred years to think of. And it wasn't because I considered taking a woman against her will to be particularly wrong. Although my fiancée had been lucky—my engagement to Gabriella was a love match that suited both families so it had been allowed to proceed—there weren't many wives in Kordana who'd gone willingly to their marriage bed. Stealing the woman of your dreams and taking her by force passed for a national sport in the country of my birth. There wasn't even a word for rape in the Kordian language.

But something in the voice of the pregnant woman struck a chord. Before I knew what I was doing, I was on my feet. “Leave her alone, Orin.”

Orin took his mouth from her breast long enough to laugh at me. “Wait your turn, you greedy sod.”

“I mean it, Orin. Let her be.”

He looked up at me, astonished to realise I was serious. “Do you
challenge
me for her?”

“She's not yours to give or take, Orin,” I remember saying, or something like it. I'm sure it sounded terribly noble to my mead-fogged mind.

Whatever I said, it was enough to infuriate Orin. He pushed the woman aside and staggered to his feet. Everyone scrambled clear as his mother dragged her out of the way while the other women started removing anything that might break—the inevitable result of two men disagreeing about anything around Thraxis's hearth.

“You want her…you're going to have to get past me first!” Orin declared, shaking his fist at me. Even then, I don't think I appreciated how serious he was.

Or how serious I was, too.

“I don't want her,” I tried to explain, beginning to wonder—somewhere in the dark recesses of my addled brain—what I'd started. “And she obviously doesn't want you, either. Just let her be.”

“You can't tell me what I can and can't have in my own father's hearth!”

“Orin, this isn't worth fighting over…”

Famous last words,
I've often reflected in hindsight.

The details of the fight are still unclear. I was drunk. There were fists at first and not much damage being done, I think, given the amount of leather and fur we were both wearing…

And then I got in a lucky hit, belting Orin on the nose. I remember the spray of blood, Orin's howl of pain and outrage, the cheering circle of men, and the flickering light from the huge hearth, the smell of greased leathers, smoking timber and poorly cured furs…odd things like that. I remember Orin's furious bellow as he charged…

But I can't…not for the life of me…remember how the knife came to be in my hand.

Or how it finished up buried to the hilt in Orin's unmoving chest.

Shocked silence descended over the dun's hall when Orin fell. It wasn't as if nobody had ever shed blood on this hearth before. In winter, with the men cooped up and feeling fractious, it was almost a nightly occurrence in Dun Cinczi. But it was all in good fun. There were rarely any weapons involved.

Until tonight. I'd crossed that unspoken boundary, even if I couldn't recall exactly how I'd managed it.

My poor recall meant nothing to Thraxis. As Orin's mother fell to her knees beside her son, keening with despair, Thraxis roared out with the agony of his loss. The next thing I knew, I was being dragged from the hall and thrown into the icy meat store, the only door in Dun Cinczi with a lock on it.

I stayed there for three whole days, certain my punishment was freezing to death.

 

Solitude is an interesting companion. It is both enemy and friend, comforter and tormentor. I spent a lot of time in Dun Cinzci's meat locker trying to decide which. Fortunately, when I tired of solitude, I had guilt to keep me company. Guilt is an even more interesting acquaintance than solitude, let me tell you. Solitude is a harsh but essentially benign attendant. Guilt, on the other hand, is a living, breathing creature, cruel and remorseless. It eats you from the inside out; devours what little hope you have left. It feeds on you, growing stronger with every accursed replayed memory, every useless recrimination.

My guilt was a tangible thing, tinged with inescapable grief, Orin was my friend and I had killed him over some woman. What was I thinking? I didn't know her. There weren't words to describe how little she meant to me. Yet Orin was dead because I had leapt to the defence of a complete stranger. My stupidity was breathtaking, my guilt overwhelming, my future uncertain, every day spent in this icy meat locker another day closer to dying—I was convinced—either at the hand of Thraxis or of hypothermia, the former almost a welcome prospect given the nature of my confinement.

But death would have been too easy. The Tides had a far crueller fate in store for me, although it would be a while yet before I discovered it. The ultimate irony, of course, is that I would welcome it when it finally came, too foolish to recognise the danger.

So I froze, and I paced the small space between the hanging carcasses, and I fretted endlessly and on the fourth day, the door opened.

When I saw the silhouette standing there, I knew my life was in mortal peril. My guilt meant nothing. My remorse meant even less.

Orin's death would be avenged with mine, I was certain, and there was probably nothing I could do to prevent it.