Chapter 19
PERL
Perl slides an arm under Kerik’s knees and lifts him up, carrying him out of the ice cell.
He emerges to cheers from the parlour.
Kerik stirs and murmurs to the leather covering Perl’s chest, “Take me to bed. I’m so cold.”
Perl kisses him on the head. “I will. You can rest now.”
Exeinil rushes up to him in a swirl of silk. “My favoured,” she gushes. “Truly, what a thrall.”
“This was too much,” Perl says through his teeth. “He barely survived it.”
“But it did survive it.” Exeinil strokes a hand along Kerik’s arm. She looks up at Perl and her eyes dance with tears. “And who could doubt now that you are truly one of us.”
Perl narrows his eyes at her. “I’m taking him to my chamber. Send some spicewine and furs.” He walks out of the hall.
In his chamber he tumbles Kerik onto the bed. The spicewine is already there, steaming in a flask on the table. There are four large furs on his bed, two glossy black and two softer and pure white.
Perl raises the chamber’s temperature and lowers the ice light with a wave of his hand. Kerik coos softly as Perl wraps him in the furs, before fetching the spicewine and joining Kerik on the bed, putting the flask to his lips.
Kerik splutters at first, spitting the blood-red liquid onto the white fur, but after a moment he understands and drinks his fill of the hot wine.
When Perl puts the flask aside, Kerik is looking at him with his dark eyes wide. He looks more lucid than he has since Perl left him in the ice cell. “Perl,” he says and his voice is sweet, all his cocky bravado gone, “can I ask you something?”
Perl smiles. “Anything. After what you just did for me, anything.”
“Who are your parents and why does your name mean shame?”
The question hits Perl like a slap. His voice is shaky when he says, “How did you…?” Because, although he was not surprised when Kerik learned one of his secrets, this other is one that the Ice Court is forbidden to speak of.
When he enhanced Kerik’s abilities to speak Magaar with magic, he intentionally did not give him any words of Old Magaar.
He did not want Kerik to understand the meaning of his name.
“Diamanda,” Kerik says softly. “When she brought the spicewine. If she had offered it to me I would have taken it. I was desperate. I would have done anything for that wine. But she did not offer it. Instead she told me that you needed me. That I was here to save you. And she told me to ask you about your name.”
So that was what Diamanda meant when she said she was going to encourage Kerik when she took in the spicewine.
Perl swallows.
Kerik is looking at Perl, awaiting his answer. Even Perl himself could be punished for saying a word about his father. But he said he’d tell Kerik ‘anything’, and he chooses to be bound by that before the laws of the Ice Court.
“In Old Magaar, Perlash-zeren-ai means the shame of the Ice Court and the Ice Fae.” It hurts to even say it. More than the lowering had hurt. The greatest pain faekind had inflicted on Perl had been done to him when he was a squawling babe.
“I know,” Kerik says. “And I know Queen Sefi named you. But why? Why did she do that?”
“Because, Sefi knew I was born of a great transgression. I was a great shame. I am. My father was not fae. He was a warlock,” Perl swallows, “a mortal warlock. He was from Azuria, from Attar. He lived during the early days of the Hevelikar, Five hundred years ago. I believe he was a philosopher to the rulers of the time. Perhaps you know his work? His name was Batraous.”
“Batraous?” Kerik says as if there is perhaps a distant memory.
“You have heard of him?” Perl says. It lifts his heart a little to think his father might still be remembered.
Kerik nods. “There was a philosopher during the days of the Hevelikar called Batraous. I think there may be a likeness of him in the Hall of Statues.”
“There could be. I have not seen that. But I would like to. After this, when we travel to Attar. Perhaps you can show it to me.” Perl wonders, as he speaks, if they will ever make it out of the Ice Court.
Every moment they spend here seems to wrap him tighter into its grip.
But he says, “My father studied the ancient texts in the Rose Temple that told of the great legends of the Bellator. Principally, The Books of Alios, the books written by the Artemian monks telling the history of the creation of the Bellator and the wars between them, mortals, Bellator and the fae. He gained favour with the Hevelikar by popularising these stories and the connection to the Hevelikar line. But he also discovered a great secret in these books: the fact that one of the Bellator survived, and remained hidden in the Amber Forest. He understood the hidden messages in that text, explaining that Ur-Durik would rise again and that the only way to stop him from releasing the Bellator from the vault under the forest, where they are imprisoned, was for the five fae princes to be reborn and stop them, just as they had before. And when he discovered this, he came here, to Vylenor, for help. It took him many years, first to complete the trials required for a mortal to even gain access to the fae realm. However, it damaged him. Some think that by the time he even entered the fae court his mind was broken.”
“How did he even get here? I thought there was no way a mortal could get to the faerie realm alone?”
“There are ways. Mortals cannot use a salt door without a fae to take them through it. But there is another way to get through the wards. However, it is almost impossible for mortals to use it, for it involves a ritual that takes a hundred years to create. But my father studied magic to lengthen his life and by doing that he could create a bridge into Vylenor. Creating the bridge is an extremely complex and arduous ritual, even without the length of it.”
“He worked for a hundred years just to get into Vylenor?” Kerik sounds suitably shocked.
“He was desperate. He thought the fate of the world depended on him making contact with the fae.”
“And he did. He got here and sired you. So who was your mother?”
“My father came here, in part, because he thought that he would be the one to sire the children who would become the fae princes. A man the old texts he studied call the origin. For that he needed to lie with a fae who could be his Lurella. Lurella was the fae who was mother to the first five fae princes. He did not realise what he was asking would be considered an aberration.”
“Vane told me that the fae think the mortals traitors who deserve their fate.” He looks at Perl with a clearer expression on his face. “So what you are doing, trying to help mortals fight Ur-Durik, it is treachery to the fae?”
Perl nods. “My mother is seen as a great traitor, just for helping my father. And if the truth of what I were doing here were known, it would be seen the same way. I would be guilty of a far greater crime than my previous one.”
Kerik reaches out and takes Perl’s hand. His flesh still feels frozen. He says nothing, but Perl can tell learning this truth has made Kerik see him differently. It is strange how learning Perl’s most shameful secrets seems to only make Kerik respect him more.
“But there was one of the fae who agreed with my father and wanted to help him. My mother. Her name was Irmeena. She was the younger sister of Sefi and Exeinil.”
“So your mother was of the royal line? Exeinil is your aunt? Vane is your cousin?”
“Yes. Although such things are far less important in my world than in yours. The identity of my father defines me far more than my mother’s blood. But it means my mother was very much high fae. And the fact that Exeinil loved her is the reason I live now.”
“What happened to your mother?” Kerik says, sounding as if he already knows.
“She was sentenced to death by Sefi-qui-areti-ai, her sister, my aunt — The Queen of the Timeless Court and, at that point, the Queen of Ulla too — for her treasonous action of coupling with a mortal of another sex.” Perl says it dryly.
As if it means nothing. And in truth it didn’t mean much.
He had never met Irmeena in any real sense.
She was long dead before his earliest memory formed.
Kerik is looking at him with his mouth a little open. He looks better than he had when Perl had carried him into the chamber. He has more colour in his face. The warmth and the wine and furs have revived him.
Perl says, “I was allowed to live. As a babe I was ripped from my mother moments before she was beheaded by Queen Sefi. Exeinil took me as her ward and Sefi allowed it, but she insisted I was named so that no one would forget the terrible act that had sired me.”
“And your father? Where is he now?”
“He managed to flee before I was born. My mother helped him. She must have done. Perhaps she meant to escape with him and failed, I suppose I will never know. But he gained the power to do so from somewhere.”
“Did you ever meet him?”
Perl nods. “Actually, yes.”
“And he told you about the five fae princes. This mission you are on? Did your father task you with it?”
Perl looks at Kerik a little surprised. Although, he supposes it is not so difficult to piece that together.
Kerik knows Perl’s mission involves ensuring the five fae princes are ready to face their destiny and Perl has just told him that his father had been attempting such. “Yes,” he says. “Correct.”
“And he thought he was going to sire the five fae princes with your mother? But you are not one of the five fae princes.”