The Immortal Prince (40 page)

Then Maralyce turned and squinted at Arkady in the lamplight. “You're not his lover, are you?”

Arkady shook her head, more than a little taken aback by the question. “No!”

“Good,” the old woman exclaimed grumpily. “The last time he got excited over a girl, the whole damn world suffered for it.”

“Shut up, you old hag,” Cayal told her pleasantly.

“Shut up yourself, Cayal,” she retorted. “You'd better stir the fire up. Your little friend there's so cold she looks like she's freezing her tits off. You'll be replacing any firewood you burn, though,” she added, “so don't get too good a blaze going in here unless you plan to spend the next few days chopping wood.”

Cayal smiled. “Go dig for your wretched gold, you grumpy old hag, and leave us in peace. And never fear, I'll chop your wood for you, if you're too feeble to manage it yourself.”

There was a note of affection in Cayal's banter that even Arkady could hear, and Maralyce, for all her brusque and unwelcoming manner, was obviously aware of it. She wouldn't admit it though, at least not in front of a stranger. Instead, Maralyce grunted something unintelligible, lifted the sledgehammer from the table and left the cabin, slamming the door behind her.

Arkady watched her leave and then turned to Cayal. “What did she mean?”

“What did who mean?”

“Maralyce,” she told him, as he began to stoke the fire, certain he was deliberately misunderstanding her. “When she asked if I was your lover?”

“Nothing.”

“Are you actually capable of telling the truth?” she asked, curiously. “Is mendaciousness one of those ‘unexpected side effects of immortality' you're always telling me about?”

“I've never lied to you, Arkady.” Cayal continued to work on the fire, refusing to look at her. “I just don't happen to want to talk about it, that's all.”

“Was it so painful?”

This time he looked up, but he seemed vaguely amused, rather than angry. “Do you fancy sharing the intimate details of all your relationships with a virtual stranger?”

Arkady hesitated. She'd never actually been in love, not the way Cayal meant. But she'd had her share of sexual encounters and in that respect he was right. She didn't want to talk about them.

“I'm sorry. I shouldn't pry. I can't help myself sometimes.”

“I noticed,” Cayal agreed. “Hungry?”

“A little.”

“Let's see what sort of larder Maralyce keeps, shall we? I have to warn you, it may not be much. She forgets to eat, sometimes for years at a time.”

As it turned out, Maralyce had been eating quite well of late and there was more than enough for an ample meal in her larder. Cayal cooked up the last of the venison hanging in the pantry, chopping it into a stew, adding carrots and parsnips and a few other root vegetables Arkady hadn't eaten since she was a child.

The small miner's cabin was cosy, lit by brass lamps and the cook fire. Several thousand years was plenty of time to find and plug all the possible draught sources in a two-roomed cabin that would fit comfortably inside the dining room of Lebec Palace, she supposed. Her eyes heavy, Arkady could feel the cold seeping out of her as the hot food and snug cabin enveloped her in their simple, homely comforts.

“Go to bed, Arkady, or you'll fall asleep in your stew.”

It was dark outside, a soft rain pattering against the shutters. Her limbs felt weighed down with fatigue. “I suppose I should. You cook very well, by the way.”

“Years of practice,” he reminded her. “When you're immortal, eventually you get good at everything.”

“Is there anything you've yet to master?” she asked. It was so much easier not to argue about it.

“Death,” he replied unsmilingly.

“Besides that.”

“I've nothing left that I want to do.”

“Except die?”

“You're mocking me now.”

“I'm too tired to mock you, Cayal. I'm too tired to think.”

“Then go to bed. Maralyce won't mind your sleeping in her bed. She doesn't use it much.”

Too exhausted to argue, Arkady rose to her feet, weary beyond imagining, and stumbled into the other room, collapsing onto the fur-covered platform with relief. She took the time to unlace her boots and kick them off, discarding her jacket too, thinking the furs looked warm enough to keep her snug, even if she were naked. Closing her heavy eyes, strangely secure in the tiny cabin, Arkady pulled the furs up to her chin and drifted off to sleep.

 

Arkady wasn't sure what woke her. It was still dark, and although she was tired, the crippling fatigue she'd experienced earlier was gone. Silently, she pushed off the bed and wandered barefoot back into the other room. The lamps were extinguished and the fire had burned down low. Cayal was sitting on the floor by the hearth, staring into the flames. Carefully opening the door that separated the two rooms, she stopped and watched him for a time, his profile painted gold by the firelight.

“Is he handsome?”
Arkady remembered Kylia asking once.

Kylia would not be disappointed by Cayal, the Immortal Prince,
Arkady thought.

She must have moved, or made some sound that alerted him to her presence. He glanced up, hurriedly wiping his eyes.

Arkady was stunned to realise Cayal had been weeping.

“Cayal? Are you all right?”

He looked away, knuckling his eyes with his fists, embarrassed to be caught in such a moment of weakness. “Go back to bed, Arkady.”

She crossed the small room to the fire, squatting down beside him. “Cayal…”

“Leave me alone.”

“Is something wrong?”

To her surprise, Cayal laughed bitterly. “
Wrong?
Is something
wrong
? You really don't understand what happens when the Tide turns, do you?”

“Then explain it to me.”

“I have explained it to you, Arkady. You don't believe me.”

“I don't
want
to believe you, Cayal. There's a difference.”

“You're afraid,” he concluded, in a tone that struck Arkady as odd.

She nodded. “Is it that obvious?”

“In you? Not really. But it's the main thing that separates you and me, Arkady. You are able to fear.”

His arrogance was so predictable it was almost amusing. “And you're not afraid of anything, I suppose?”

“What is there to be afraid of?” He shrugged. “I'm immortal and all human terror has the fear of dying at its root.”

“That's an absurd generalisation!”

“Is it? Think about it for a moment. A person isn't afraid of heights as such—they're actually afraid of falling to their death. And nobody is really frightened of spiders, they're afraid of being bitten and dying from the bite. Even a child lying to his mother over the smallest little thing isn't lying out of fear he'll be caught. It's because he's afraid—deep down—of angering a parent. When your very survival depends on your mother's goodwill, losing her protection can be fatal.”

“And if you're
not
afraid of dying, you're not human anymore. Is that what you believe?” She studied his profile in the firelight, a little surprised to realise he was serious. “Do you think you're not human?”

“I know it,” he replied with bitter certainty. “Hell! I can even pinpoint the moment when the last shred of humanity I owned deserted me. Immortality doesn't confer forgetfulness on you, unfortunately.”

“And when was that?”

He shook his head. “It doesn't matter.”

“Yes, it does matter. You want me to believe you. So tell me something I
can
believe, not something you think I want to hear.”

“Like what?”

Arkady wasn't expecting that. She thought on it for a moment, as she sat beside him on the floor, and then remembered Maralyce's earlier comment about being Cayal's lover.

“Amaleta,” she said. “Tell me about Amaleta.”

“Why do you want to know about her?”

“Wasn't she supposed to be the great love of your life?”

“No.”

“But the Tarot says…”

He smiled wanly. “I thought by now we'd established that your Tarot cards are a load of flanking old manure, Arkady.”

“Then how did the story come about?”

He leant forward to stoke up the fire, the flames grabbing at the fresh firewood as he exposed the underbelly of red-hot coals to the air. “Same as all the others, I suppose. Someone took a grain of truth, passed it on to a dozen other people who got it arse-about and turned it into a legend.”

“Will you tell me what really happened?”

He eyed her sceptically over his shoulder. “Will you believe me?”

She nodded slowly. “Yes, Cayal. I think I will.”

He sat back on his heels. “Why do you want to know what happened to Amaleta?”

“I want to understand you.”

“Even if it means you may not like me after you hear that particular story?”

Arkady smiled. “What makes you think I like you now?”

Cayal studied her in the firelight for a moment longer. And then he said something that took her completely by surprise. “You remind me of someone I knew once, you know.”

“Someone you loved?” she asked, wondering why she would even think such a thing, let alone say it aloud.

Fortunately, Cayal didn't seem to think the question odd. “It was someone who betrayed me, actually.”

“Oh.”

With the fire blazing, Cayal sat himself down on the floor beside her again, smiling at her expression. “If it's any consolation, Gabriella was very beautiful.”

“But ultimately treacherous?”

“Yes.”

Arkady raised a brow at him. “I remind you of Gabriella?”

He nodded. “To a disturbing degree.”

She frowned. “I'm not sure how I feel about that.”

“Neither am I.” There was an uncomfortable moment of silence between them and then Cayal turned to stare at the fire.

Certain she'd gotten too close to something painful, she smiled apologetically, hoping to make a joke of it. “You were going to tell me about Amaleta. She didn't betray you too, did she?”

“Quite the opposite,” he said, looking into the flames. “I betrayed her.”

She wasn't expecting that. Gently, Arkady reached out and put her hand over his. “Tell me what really happened, Cayal.”

So he did.

You want to know if I loved Amaleta? I hope it's not going to disappoint you too much if I tell you I didn't. Tides, I never even slept with her. She was caught up in events that resulted in your wretched legend, surely enough, but she was the sideshow, not the main event.

My first meeting with Amaleta and its dire consequences began with another event, which at the time seemed far more important. It began with a proclamation, bland and heartless, made in the great hall of the rebuilt palace in Tenacia.

“The child has to die.”

I think I flinched when Syrolee spoke, closing my eyes, as she finally said aloud what everyone else in the hall was undoubtedly thinking. A whimper of protest escaped Arryl's lips, but the Empress of the Five Realms remained unmoved. Syrolee's bright, bird-like eyes fixed on each of us present in the vast hall, daring us to defy her.

By then, Syrolee had dispensed with the white powdered make-up she'd favoured when I first met her. These days her eyes were the focus of everyone's attention. Outlined in kohl and shaded with a glittering shadow made of crushed beetles' wings, they looked like two deep orbs of malevolent darkness set in a cruel, sallow face.

Funny the things you remember about the past. I recall the air in the hall was heavy with the scent of jasmine, making it hard to concentrate, which might be why it sticks in my mind.

“You'd kill an innocent child for the crime of being able to touch the Tide?” Diala asked.

I turned in time to see Diala appear at the other end of the hall. I remember what she was wearing, perhaps because she was dressed in the formal, flame-red robes she and her sister adopted for their order around that time. Her dark hair was caught up in a jewelled coronet, and bracelets of garnet and carnelian encircled both wrists. A surge of unreasonable resentment always wells up in me at the sight of her, which surprises me even now.

You'd think I'd be long past feeling anything for Diala.

“I don't recall anyone asking your opinion on the matter,” Rance remarked, as Diala strode the long length of the hall toward the empress and the small gathering around the throne dais. “Or inviting you to intrude upon a family gathering.” His voice echoed faintly off the marble pillars supporting the gilded dome high above us, giving it a resonance it didn't deserve.

“But I
am
a member of this unique little family, Rance,” Diala replied with a venomous smile. “We're all in this together. 'Til the end of time. I'm entitled to my opinion.”

“It's the irritating assumption that everyone
else
is entitled to it that seems to be the issue here,” Krydence remarked sourly.

Diala ignored him, stopping in front of Syrolee's throne. Engarhod was absent, but then the emperor often is when there are awkward decisions to be made. Somewhere between my immolation, the destruction of Magreth, and several peaks and ebbs of the Tide, the priestesses responsible for the Eternal Flame and the Empress of the Five Realms had had a falling out. I don't know the details, but there's no love lost between the women these days. Their animosity was such that Arryl and Diala had even gone so far as moving to another continent by then, taking the Eternal Flame with them. They were settled in Glaeba; their temple and the precious flame they guarded perched on the edge of a small hill overlooking the Great Valley.

Ironically, it was their presence in Tenacia that had precipitated this current crisis. A Scard attack on the caravan bringing Arryl and Diala to the palace via their grand tour of the major cities of Tenacia had been thwarted by magic, wielded not by a Tide Lord, but by one of our own—one of our mortal offspring. Given the carelessness with which we Tide Lords spilled our seed back then, it was anybody's guess whose child Fliss actually was, but that didn't lessen our problem. If anything, it made the decision to be rid of the child even harder.

Any man in the room might have fathered her.

Her parentage was the least of Diala's concerns. “On the contrary, Syrolee, this issue concerns my sister and me a great deal. We were there, remember.”

“An unfortunate accident I would have done a great deal to have prevented.”

Diala smiled, an edge of malice in her dark eyes. “How awkward for you, Syrolee. If the child had been killed in the attack, you'd never have discovered there was something wrong with her. The poor child survives it, and now you're going to kill her anyway.”

Arryl let out another wordless cry of protest. She looked haggard. Distraught. The only one among us displaying any obvious emotion, Arryl was perhaps the last of us left with any human compassion.

“We have no need of your help, Diala,” Elyssa declared. “Or your counsel.”

Poor Elyssa…I know she was responsible for the Crasii. I know she's a whining, vindictive little bitch, but you can't help but feel sorry for her. Even with all her power she never gets it right. That day, as I recall, she was dressed like her mother, somehow making the elegant drape of her gown look awkward and ungainly. Neither had she mastered Syrolee's trick with eye make-up. Her eyes just looked as if someone had blacked both of them with a fist.

But she'd gained a lot of confidence since the Crasii were created and now fancied her opinion held significant value.

“Don't you, Elyssa?” Diala asked, no more able to stand Elyssa than the rest of us who weren't actually related to her. “How many more have slipped by, I wonder? How many more of these abominations do you unknowingly harbour in the palace creche?”

“Fliss is not an abomination!” Arryl objected.

“She's actually quite talented,” Jaxyn remarked, from his seat on the edge of the dais. “It would be a shame to just destroy her out of hand.”

I frowned at Jaxyn's comment. Hearing that sleazy little reprobate defend the girl in question was vaguely ominous. Jaxyn had no interest in the child that I knew of. No more than any other man in the hall, at any rate.

“Syrolee is right, though,” Rance agreed. “If anything, knowing how strong Fliss might be merely reinforces the argument that the child should be destroyed.”

“What say you, O Immortal Prince?” Syrolee asked. She looked across the hall at me. “What do you think we should do with the child?”

I was listening to the argument from the balcony, hoping nobody would include me in the discussion. A futile hope, it proved. I turned to face them. “I think it would be foolish to kill her.”

Arryl stifled a whimper of relief at my words.

“Why?” the empress demanded.

“Because she can't actually harm us…not in the long run. Your fear is for your political position here in Tenacia, not that she might represent some sort of threat to the Tide Lords. Besides, this is the first time we've discovered a mortal child actually able to wield Tide Magic; one that we know of, at any rate. I think you should find out why, not just destroy her out of hand because she's different.”

“Her death can be made to look like an accident,” Rance suggested calmly. “It would certainly be better for all concerned if those pompous fools in Torlenia never found out it was deliberate.”

“Rance…
no
!” Arryl cried. “How can you even suggest killing a child in cold blood?”

“She's a mongrel, Arryl. The sooner you accept that, the better for everyone.”

Syrolee turned to her eldest stepson, looking for his support. “Krydence?”

He shrugged uncertainly. “I don't know what to advise. If the child really can wield Tide magic, then maybe Cayal is right. We ought to learn something about how this odd thing happened, I suppose.”

I didn't like the sound of that. Not only was it rare for Krydence to agree with me, the last time the Tide Lords had decided to “learn something about how an odd thing happened,” it resulted in the Crasii.

“If we're going to kill her, it'll have to be dealt with quickly and quietly,” Tryan suggested, leaning on the side of his mother's throne. Given a choice, he'd be sitting in Engarhod's empty place, and often did when his stepbrothers weren't around. We'd come to a sort of uneasy truce by then. I still hadn't forgiven him for what he did in Kordana, but there was now a chain of unstable islands where Magreth and their wretched palace had once been, so I figured we were pretty much even. “Krydence is right, Mother. We can't risk news of this reaching Torlenia.”

And Medwen,
was my unspoken addendum. We Tide Lords have long memories and this was a mere decade or two after Medwen's child was taken from her. The child was long dead, of course. She'd been impregnated with a Crasii as soon as she was old enough and died in childbirth. I'd been able to establish that much since arriving in Tenacia.

What I hadn't done was tell Medwen about it.

It was cowardly of me, I know, but how do you tell a mother something like that? It was easier to keep up the charade with Syrolee and the others that I'd heard about the Crasii and was interested enough in having a slave race to cater to my every whim to donate my seed. They believed me, too.

I suppose when you're essentially without morals of your own, it's easy enough to believe others are like that, too.

Did I sleep with numberless slave girls while I was in Tenacia with the sole aim of impregnating them so the Crasii farms could blend their unborn children with animals in Elyssa's bizarre experiments?

Certainly.

Could I tell you their names?

Not a one.

Did I rape them?

Probably, although I'm vain enough to think I'm a considerate lover and that I was able to make it a less traumatic experience than the others might have done. Besides, taking a woman by force strikes me as being far too much effort for the reward involved.

I don't know if it made the slightest difference to the women they sent me—none of whom was a volunteer—other than not being sent back to the farms covered in bruises, but it allowed me to live with myself, which is an important consideration when there is no alternative.

Regardless of how I've managed to justify what I did to myself since then, the fact is, when one is in Tenacia, one does as the Tenacians do. I was a spy, after all, and my cover included having to give the impression I fully supported this bizarre plan to create blended animal slave races and was willing to do whatever it took, to help the cause.

I did warn you this wasn't a particularly noble time in my life, didn't I?

I understood why they feared the news reaching Torlenia, all too well. Over something like this, Medwen's grief at the disappearance of her long-dead child would stir to anger and probably stir Brynden and Kinta along with it. Brynden is as powerful a Tide Lord as any of us, prone to championing noble causes and not too concerned about the cost in ordinary human lives in order to set things right. While I'm not suggesting for a moment that Syrolee or any of the others gave a fig about saving mere human lives, wars are messy, expensive and disruptive. Don't mistake our reluctance to fight for anything other than what it is—expedience.

We go out of our way to avoid wars because they're impractical.

I had my own reasons for hoping news didn't filter back to Torlenia, not the least of which was the fact that I'd come here two decades ago to gain intelligence for my friends and never actually returned with the information they wanted.

“We?” Arryl echoed. “When did this become
our
problem, Tryan?

You're the ones who caused this calamity, you and your sick experiments—messing with nature just to see what sort of beasts you can make.” Suddenly, she turned on me. “What about you, Cayal? Are you just going to stand by and let them kill an innocent child?”

I shrugged, wishing I'd had the sense to stay out of this argument. I could have ignored Syrolee's summons to the throne room. In hindsight, I probably should have. “Been to a Crasii farm lately? What's one more dead mortal, give or take?”

“But this isn't Crasii magic!” Arryl insisted. “Fliss isn't a deliberate blend of two species. She's a Tidewatcher! The only crime this child is guilty of—this child who happens to be the daughter of one of you, incidentally—is trying to do the right thing.”

“This child killed thirteen people, Arryl,” Syrolee reminded her.

“They were Scards, and she saved the life of every mortal in our entourage, too, don't forget that!”

Syrolee shook her head impatiently. “The mortals Fliss saved are of no consequence. The child threatens to undermine everything we've worked for. Cayal is right about that much. People believe the Tide Lords, and
only
the Tide Lords, can manipulate the Tide, and our power over them rests firmly on that premise. If word gets out a mortal has the same ability, our authority will be seriously eroded.”

I was tempted to point out the mortal belief that all immortals could manipulate the Tide was likely to be far more damaging if it got about that they couldn't, but decided to hold my tongue. I was a fool for coming here in the first place. No need to compound the error by getting caught up in the argument.

“Even if you think it foolish sentiment,” Jaxyn added, “if we
don't
kill this accursed child, Arryl, what in the name of the Tides are we supposed to do with her?”

“We
will
kill her,” the Empress of the Five Realms announced. “And then we test all the other children in the creche and kill any others who might display the same ability. Let that be the end of it.”

Syrolee looked at each one of us in turn, until we all nodded our agreement. Even Arryl agreed in the end. A trace of compassion she might have, but she still inevitably bows to Syrolee's wishes when it comes to the crunch, and probably always will. Diala's reasons for agreeing were somewhat different, I suspect. In truth, she probably cared little for the fate of Fliss. She just enjoyed the chance to argue with Syrolee whenever the occasion presented itself.