Chapter 2
KERIK
TWENTY FIVE YEARS LATER
Kerik Darekul finds himself sitting at a table in what appears to be the kitchen of a small keep.
There are walls of greyish stone. Through several small windows the view is of nothing but dark.
A fire burns in a wide hearth. Several candles dance on the table.
The air smells of smoke and dust. It is a mean place.
The table before him is plain scrubbed wood.
Books and papers are strewn across it suggesting it is used for scholarly work more often than for preparing or consuming food.
Kerik's nose wrinkles at the thought. He was never a fan of book learning.
Kerik’s hands are behind his chair. Bound behind the chair. He’s wearing old, worn clothes he doesn’t recognise, simple wool breeches and a linen shirt.
He has no idea where he is or how he came to be here. It feels to him almost as if he woke from sleep to find himself in this room, upon this chair
A tall man sits opposite him. A very striking tall man, dressed in black.
A strange black leather outfit that is high on his neck and with narrow sleeves that cover his arms to the wrists, laced tight by way of leather thongs threaded through silver hooks.
Jewels on his pale hands sparkle in the candlelight; silver rings on most of his fingers.
On his left hand the rings are joined together in an elegant web of chains that connect to a silver cuff around his wrist.
His long hair, moonlight-pale like his skin, is caught in a braid that snakes over his shoulder, so long the end of it vanishes below the table’s edge.
Kerik blinks at him. He looks very serious. Pompous.
When Kerik dredges his mind for his last memory, he remembers being in the Rose Palace, but he feels sure that was long ago, perhaps even years ago.
Where has he been since then?
Before he can ask a single question, and he has very many, the striking, serious man says, “Would you like some tea?” He pushes a cup across the table toward Kerik. Steam rises from it.
Kerik looks at the cup, then at his captor.
He doesn’t look as if he’d be much use in a fight.
Limp as a fading flower. Kerik could beat this man unconscious with his bare fists if he wasn’t bound to this fucking chair.
“How am I meant to drink that?” he says with a sour curl of his lip.
Although his mouth is very dry and the truth is he would love some tea.
The man’s voice is cool as he returns, “Your bindings are enchanted. They will allow you to move your hands and arms to drink the tea, just not rise from the chair or hurt me or yourself.”
Kerik frowns, because this sounds quite ridiculous, but when he moves his right arm he finds he can easily bring it around the chair to reach for the teacup, while his left hand still seems to be firmly held in place.
When his right arm is in view, there do not appear to be any ropes or chains holding it, but he feels as if something is.
Something he cannot see. He feels a little queasy at the thought.
He decides instead to focus on the tea. He brings the cup to his lips and takes a sip.
It’s warm and good. It soothes the ache in his parched throat.
Where is he?
He glances at the dark windows again. Somewhere cold. Somewhere in the north. Ceruleum? Somewhere near there in the Northern wilds?
He looks at the man again as he swallows. “So you practice magic. Magic is against the will of Zai.”
“Yes. However we are not in Azuria if the strict laws of the Empire concern you.”
Not in Azuria? So not Ceruleum?
Where the fuck is he?
Kerik takes another drink of tea. He is not sure what he ought to say. His head feels heavy and strange. His skin is oddly prickly.
“I’m sure you have many questions,” says the man.
“Questions?” Kerik sets down the cup and makes a scoffing sound. “Of course I have fucking questions! You’ve tied me to a chair.” He pauses. “If I ask you questions, are you even going to answer them?”
“I will do what I can,” the man says, acting as if this conversation is nothing out of the ordinary. Perhaps for him it isn’t. Perhaps he imprisons people all the time and deals calmly with their bafflement and anger when he offers them tea.
Kerik doesn’t know where to start. His first impulse is to snarl at his gaoler and ask him if he knows that capturing him like this will mean death. But curiosity takes precedence. “Who are you?” he says, his voice tight and angry.
“You can call me Perl.”
“Is that your name?”
“It’s a name that I use.”
“And you are skilled in magic.” Kerik stops and squints at the man and something extremely strange occurs to him.
He wants to push the thought away, but he cannot.
There is something about the man's stature, even sitting at the table, his bearing, his colouring.
He is pale, but oddly so. His skin and hair are the colour of milk and seem to shimmer slightly.
Kerik had thought it was part of his own hazy confusion, but it's not that. This man, Perl, looks strange in ways that are hard to define. And there’s something intensely precise about him.
The way he sits and moves and speaks all seem to be rigidly controlled.
Exact and tight as if he is carefully considering every single thing Kerik perceives about him.
This man is not a man at all.
“Are you a faerie?” Kerik says.
Perl nods. He does not seem offended by the question, although Kerik said it very much like an insult. “I am one of the fae, yes.”
The queasy feeling grows in Kerik’s belly. This situation is even worse than he thought. His captor is a faerie. A fucking faerie. No wonder he looks so frail and ill. He’s an abomination. A thing that all the laws of Zai say should not be.
Claiming faeries are real is frowned upon in Azuria, although not strictly heretical.
Many people still believe they existed once, long ago, before men ever came to these lands from The Cradle.
And there are a few people — simple minded types, mostly — who think they still survive in the far north, on the isles of Oria and Ulla.
But Kerik always knew this to be fancy. Or he did, until a moment ago, when he saw a faerie with his own eyes and knew exactly what he was looking at.
And all Kerik truly knows from the tales he was told as a boy of foul faerie creatures is that they are extremely dangerous to mortal men. And they can do magic. Kerik looks around the dim room. “Then where are we? Are we in your realm?”
“No. As I said, this is Ismagaar. The mortal realm.”
Ismagaar? How did he come to be in Ismagaar?
Hundreds of miles from his home in Attar?
Kerik lifts his cup again and drains it, wondering for the first time what might be in the tea he is drinking.
He remembers more from those old tales. Don’t eat or drink anything offered by a faerie.
But it's too late for that. What could it mean for him that he has already drunk a whole cup of this tea?
“What’s in the tea?” he says. “Magic? Something to make me obey you?”
Perl takes Kerik’s empty cup from his hand and places it down beside a silver teapot.
He lifts the pot and refills it. The tea is a plain golden colour.
“It’s simply bark tea from the Amber Forest,” Perl says as the steaming liquid splashes into the cup.
“I thought you might need it. Zakol. It’s very popular in Ismagaar although I do not think Azuria has the taste for it.
” He sets down the pot. There’s a small silver honey dish on the table that was hidden behind it.
Perl adds some honey to the tea and stirs.
“It needs a little sweetness to be palatable, I find.”
Perl offers Kerik the refilled cup.
Kerik looks at it. Is this the truth? This is simply some tea from the Amber Forest? His mouth still feels achingly dry. And whatever the tea truly is, he has already drunk one cupful.
As he reaches for the cup, he finds his invisible binding, once again, extending to allow it.
In a sudden rush of movement he dashes the cup aside, knocks it to the floor, and tries to lunge forward to grab Perl by the throat.
But he can’t. He certainly means to dive across the table, but all he manages is to shift on the chair, as something seems to wrap around his body, holding him back.
It’s all over in a moment, as if he did nothing at all. The air seems to hum, as if it is charged with something. Here and then gone.
“Please don’t do that,” Perl says, calmly offering the cup again. Although Kerik is sure he smashed that cup on the floor.
Kerik swallows a sour taste in his mouth, before lifting the cup and taking a swig. The tea seems to make his mind brighter.
So he cannot use force to escape this situation. No matter. He has his wits and the charms that have never failed him before. “How did I come to be here?” he says.
“This is the Starlight Tower, named for its position on the edge of the Starlight Sea. You have been in the tower for five years. Since I abducted you.”
Kerik can only stare back at Perl. He barely registers the word ‘abducted’ over the shock of hearing he has been here for five years.
“Five?” he says weakly. “Five years?” Five years and he doesn’t remember.
More magic. Has this filthy fucking faerie kept him asleep somehow for five years?
He can’t even comprehend that. He pushes the thought away. It’s impossible.
“Yes.” Perl sounds a little sad about it.
“You’re lying. I can’t have been here for five years. What about my mother? The Rose Court. Don’t they…? They’d come looking for me.”
“I believe they did. Over time. People have searched for you. But none searched here. You were never found. There are many rumours about what happened to you, but you are now assumed to be dead. Doroth Zain has commended you to Zai.”