Chapter 7
PERL
Back in his chamber, Perl throws Kerik down on the thrall bed.
He can still feel the anger-powered magic pulsing through every part of him.
He really needs to get it under control.
It has been a long time since he has allowed himself this kind of reckless power. He is not used to what Vylenor can do.
Kerik looks up at him, sprawled in the sleeping shirt. It’s ridden up his thighs and several of the ties have come undone down the front. He looks quite magnificent. Debauched. Perl shakes himself.
“I’m sorry,” Kerik says, raising his palms defensively. “I couldn’t sleep. I was bored.”
“You couldn’t sleep?” Perl spits down at him. “After this day. I was exhausted.”
“You forget," Kerik says, his usual cocky tone returning. “I’ve been asleep for five years under your curse. I’ve had all the rest I need for half a lifetime.”
“It wasn’t a curse.” Perl scowls. “And give me back that ring.”
Kerik pulls the Silence for Secrets from his finger and holds it out.
Perl snatches it. It’s warm from Kerik’s skin, faintly buzzing with its power like a living thing. He turns it over in his hands. “How did you know how to use this?”
“I don’t know,” says Kerik. “I didn’t know what it did. I just put it on and it made me invisible. Or, invisible until I went into Vane’s chambers..”
Perl lets out an exasperated huff of breath. Where to even begin? He looks around the room. “And you unlocked my door. How did you do that?”
Kerik shrugs against the thin blankets of the thrall bed. “I don’t know, exactly. I just did what you did. Waved at it and I suppose I thought about what I wanted to happen.”
Perl narrows his eyes and stares at Kerik. He tries to reason with what he just heard. Is it really so impossible? Kerik has fae blood. Kerik is fated to be the Magician. Perhaps that old magical ring was enough to rouse the magic inside him.
Before now, Kerik had not seemed like any kind of fated Magician. So much so that Perl had wondered if there had been a mistake. But what even was the natural temperament for magic in a mortal?
Then he realises something else and that thought gives him a more immediate feeling of dread.
“Vane’s rooms are warded with a very specific protection.
I could feel it when I walked in. My own magic was too strong to be nulled by it but he has warded his rooms against magic created by fae from Ulla. ”
“I know,” Kerik says. He sounds quite petulant. “That was how he could see me when I was in his quarters. He didn’t tell me so at first though. He let me stand there while he played with his pillow slaves.”
Perl nods. That sounds like typical Vane, but that is hardly the point. His next breath is shaky. “And your glamour was created by me. A fae of Ulla. He would have been able to sense it easily.”
“I know that too,” Kerik says again with a frustrated tone, like he thinks Perl is patronising him, telling him things he already knows.
He doesn’t realise the significance of having his glamour removed.
He says, “He took the glamor off me and I could barely speak or understand Magaar. He mocked me for it. But at least I can speak some Magaar. Actually my Magaar is quite proficient for an Azurian.”
“Please,” Perl says, “that is not the point. The point is, he saw you. I have disguised the way you look.”
“No you haven’t,” Kerik says. “You said you did not need to as I am already a pleasing specimen that a fae would select for a thrall.”
“My changes were small. But I changed your eyes. The glittering in your eyes. The sign of your fae blood. Did he look at your eyes?”
Kerik shrugs. “I suppose. He was peering at me in that unnerving way you creatures look at me. Do you think he desires me?”
Perl ignores this. “If he saw the glitter in your eyes, he may know what you are. Who you are. And if he tells anyone that you have fae blood… I have explained how the fae feel about mixing our blood with lesser creatures. If it became known you were related to the Hevelikar.”
“I am no Hevelikar,” Kerik spits back. “The Hevelikar are traitors.”
“Still,” Perl stands from the bed. “Even if he knows it is likely that Vane will not tell anyone immediately. He will keep the information and decide the best way he can use it for himself. If I can move fast, we can be gone before he chooses to reveal it. Revealing who you are would get us both killed, but that matters not if we are long gone.”
“Then perhaps we should leave.”
Perl shakes his head. “We cannot. I do not have enough magic yet for us to leave. Creating another salt door needs a lot of power. It took me five years to amass enough in Ismagaar.”
“Five years?” Kerik’s mouth drops open in shock. “We have to remain here five years before you can get us back? Surely Vane will have us both killed before then.”
“Of course not,” Perl waves a hand. “That would be quite ridiculous. No, it will take around a day to gain enough power here in Vylenor. Enough time to get the sword and leave. And I know Vane. He will wait. He enjoys playing games more than anything. So long as we are careful around him.”
Kerik looks at Perl. His brown eyes look strangely large. He bites his full bottom lip. “Very well, Master. I will do as I am bid. What do you require of me now?” He says making his last offer with a suggestive wink.
Perl scowls back, snapping, “Sleep. Sleep and do not wander again. Do not even wander in your dreams. On the morrow, at the Silver Ball I will ask Exeinil for a boon and when she grants it I will ask for Iceheart, the sword and we will leave this place and nothing here will be of importance to us.”
“Are you sure she will give you this sword if you ask for it? If it is such a great magical weapon?”
“She does not know the truth of the sword. It’s true purpose was never known to her or any of the fae here.”
“Very well,” says Kerik. “But will the sword help me to do magic?”
“I believe it will. It will focus your power. I did not expect your magic to awaken without it.”
“But it has,” Kerik preens.
“Yes. I believe that is clear. At least something good has come from your disobedience tonight.”
“Can you teach me more magic?”
Perl leans forward. “Kerik Darekul, have you any idea what would be done to us if it were discovered that I were teaching my mortal thrall to do magic. Bad enough that Vane thinks I granted you a magical token. Now, please, it’s the middle of the night. Let us sleep.”
Perl waves a hand to turn down the ice light.
He lies back on the bed. Leaving Kerik to take the one on the floor.
“Will you though?” says Kerik in the dark. “Will you teach me?”
“Go to sleep.”
“Yes, Master.”
When Perl wakes it takes him a moment to remember where he is.
He is home. He is in Vylenor. The worst place in the world.
Nevertheless he feels good for having slept in its rich energy. He stretches. It’s been a long time since he felt the comfort of having a surplus of magical power in his body.
He notices he is in his own bed. He rolls over to find Kerik is lying in the thrall bed on the floor. Did they decide to switch places or was he merely so tired that he climbed unthinking into his own bed to sleep?
Perl looks down at Kerik. He has kicked off the thin blanket and is sprawled there in only the sleeping shirt. Perl lets his gaze slide along Kerik’s body. His bare legs are quite muscular. He is built like a warrior. Almost as big as Damon. A warrior magician. Whoever heard of such a thing?
But perhaps a warrior magician is what is required to defeat Ur-Durik.
Magic requires power to work.
In the faerie realm such power is easily available, crackling in the air.
When fae lived all across the lands of Ismagaar, Azuria and beyond the power was there too.
But when the Bellator sunk Pia and Prim they destroyed much of the magical power in what became the mortal realm.
Now it is only present in a few pockets.
In the Amber Forest and on the remaining Islands of Klish.
In those places it is possible for mortals to harness it, in some weak forms, if they are adept or if they have fae blood.
But there is an alternative to pulling magic from the air.
Magic can be done by pulling power from oneself.
It’s an exhausting practice, one Perl only does when he is forced to by circumstance.
But if the magician himself were strong, physically, and could use that strength…
Perl wonders if that is the key to defeating Ur-Durik.
If that is the power Kerik will wield. Magic driven from his own strength.
“I was thinking,” Kerik says, breaking into Perl’s thoughts.
Hearing Kerik speak makes Perl notice how strange it is, to have someone here, simply here with him all the time. Here when he wakes. Talking.
“Thinking? Really?” Perl says. It comes out harsher than he means it.
But Kerik does not notice or does not care. “Vane’s thralls all dress in hip cloths and you did say I would have to wear thrall clothing. I don’t want to show you up in those shabby breeches. What would you have me wear, Master?”
“It would be best if you wore a hip cloth while you are here. I have some.”
“You mean the ones in your dressing chamber?” Kerik says with a smug expression.
Clearly he is enjoying revealing that he examined that room too while Perl slept.
“I think all of those would be far too small to cover my cock. Although,” Kerik’s smirk grows wider, “I think they would fit you very well.”
“Those hip cloths aren’t mine, they’re for thralls. When I lived here before I took thralls like any other noble fae.”
“Like Seridil? Vane told me he used to be yours.”