Chapter 19 #2
“No. He was wrong, initially. By the time I met him, my father had realised this. After his first visit to Vylenor he understood he must have made many errors in his assumptions about what he had read. The five fae princes could not be reborn simply by any mortal man siring babes with a fae. It is far more complex. He needed to know more. He had developed his powers, including a very strong gift for prophecy. A lot of what I originally knew about what needs to be done to defeat Ur-Durik comes from him and what he wrote down of his prophetic visions while he lived. He had come to realise he was only partially correct. I was needed. I was meant to ensure the five fae princes were born and met their destiny. He charged me with this mission. I am bound to complete it. It is the reason The Aeons ensured I was sired.”
“And so that is what happened,” Kerik says carefully.
“You are half mortal. The shame of the ice court. So when you were found with Seridil, found kneeling for a mortal, it was seen as proof that you were the aberration the Queen of the Timeless Court had claimed you were. A deviant thing, tainted by mortal blood.”
It makes Perl’s breath catch to hear it laid out like that. But it is nothing he does not know. “Correct,” he says again. “But it was still merely rumour. Exeinil had insisted for years that Sefi’s claims — and my name — were lies from the Timeless Court meant to undermine her power.”
He’s sitting on the bed beside Kerik. When this conversation began, he’d had his arms around him, wrapping him in fur, but as they’ve been speaking, he’s moved away, allowing Kerik to hold the furs around himself.
But they’re still sitting close. It is so strange.
This closeness with someone. Not the proximity, although that is part of it, but the intimacy.
To speak like this about the weight of his history.
How he came to be. The sacrifices that had been made just so he would be here.
Just so he would do the work that must be done.
“If he left before you were born, how did you come to meet your father? Did you reunite with him after you left this place?” Kerik leans over towards the table to pick up the flask and refill his cup of spicewine.
As he moves the fur slips from his shoulder, revealing a flash of sweet, honey-coloured skin.
He’s naked under those furs, Perl thinks. Somehow he’d forgotten that.
Perl takes a breath to steady himself and ensure his voice comes out evenly.
“No. I met him here. After he fled Vylenor, he wanted to go back to Attar, but the Sarelik revolution had occurred while he was in Faerie. He was too bound to the Hevelikar dynasty to be safe in Azuria. And his long life would have been heretical to the Dareks as magic against the will of Zai. So he went to the Waste and remained there for a century. That was where he wrought Iceheart, remaking the only one of the five swords that had been destroyed in the battle with the Bellator. And it was where he truly fell victim to the affliction that befalls so many mortals who claim fae magics. Madness. He had hoped to avoid it by extending his life, trying to acquire power slowly, but alone, in the Waste, thinking only of his need to save the world from the return of the Bellator, his mind began to break. He became desperate to return to me and let me know about my mission. So he came back to Vylenor.”
“He did that ritual again? The one that takes a hundred years?”
Perl shakes his head. “No. There is another way in. He learned of it when he was here. The blood door. It is a similar way of travel to the salt door we used, but it does not require fae blood to travel through it. It harnesses power in a different way. I believe the fact my father knew of the blood door was the reason Sefi thought I ought to be killed as a babe. It is a complex piece of magic, though less complex than creating the bridge. It involves creating a door with blood, not salt, but it can only work if there is an anchor on the other side of the door to rip power from. Another being that shares the blood of the door’s creator. ”
“You? Your father could create a blood door to travel back to Vylenor because you were already here?”
Perl nods. “He returned one hundred years ago. Using me to anchor his blood door. Magics that rip power from another fae are quite taboo. The blood door is a cursed piece of magic that is said to doom all who create one. And perhaps that is true because my father is here still. You have seen the cage that hangs in the centre of the dome in the Ice Hall?”
“That’s your father. In that cage surrounded by flames? Is he alive in there?”
“I suppose. But not in any way we would understand to be living. It is a punishment for treachery. Called the eternal death.”
“A hundred years ago?” Kerik says, thinking. “And that is why you left? Because your father returned and Exeinil put him in that cage?”
“In a way, yes. But I also had to leave. And I do not blame Exeinil greatly for what she did. She had already done so much to protect me. Batraous was the reason her beloved little sister was taken from her. She had raised me from a babe and grown fond of me. My father came back to demand I was given to him so I could go out into the mortal realm and complete a mission the fae considered abhorrent. She had no choice. She had to destroy him in a terrible and public way. But by the time she executed him, it was too late. He had already given me my mission. I left Vylenor while his cage was still being raised to the dome of the Ice Hall.”
Kerik looks at Perl and swallows, face so earnest and empathetic it makes Perl want to weep.
But he does not weep. He continues the story.
The whole story, knowing now he must tell all of it.
“I left Vylenor. I am sure it seemed as if I did so because of the horror of what had been done to my own blood father. But in truth, I had been charged to complete his work. I knew I had to do it. It was my purpose. I traveled to The Waste and found the place where my father had lived. A terrible desolate shack in one of the harshest places in the world. I spent years there, reading and deciphering his writing. Learning the truth about my kind and the fate they had abandoned mortal men to. What I found in The Waste were details of how Ur-Durik would return. But what I did not find were the details of exactly how the five fae princes would defeat him. I went south and I searched the Ivory Palace in Ceruleum, the old seat of the Hevelikar, but found nothing. I knew my father had also spent a lot of time in the hidden libraries of the Rose Temple, which the Dareks had razed to build the Rose Palace, although much of the lower levels remain. I discovered some of my father’s writings in an archive, but not all of it.
And to fully understand, I needed the Books of Alios.
But there was no sign of these books anywhere I searched.
Eventually I discovered that the Books of Alios, along with other sacred texts had been taken by the Hevelikar when they fled east.”
Kerik looks at Perl as if he is slowly realising something. “Did you find them?”
“Many years had passed since the revolution. Only one of the Hevelikar line remained in Jur-Mattan. I thought a descendant of the Hevelikar would be willing to help me with my work. And allow me to read the Books of Alios. I was desperate, I suppose. I knew I did not have long to prepare for Ur-Durik rising. But she was angry when I told her the five fae princes would come from the Darek line. Understandable, I suppose, they were her great enemies. She told me Sarelik Darek’s name meant demon.
That he had been given that name in the Amber Forest by Ur-Durik.
I think that may be true, but my father’s writings still assured me the five fae princes would be born of that line.
I did eventually convince her, but she still refused to give me the Books of Alios.
Asking instead that I give her magic so that she might work for the cause alongside me.
And I did so. She had fae blood, it was possible to awaken her power.
Although harder than it has been for you.
After that I spent time in Jur-Mattan, at Blackstone Castle in Pellex, and then I returned to Attar, working to find others who would be part of what must come.
And put things in place to ensure the princes were reborn of the Darek and Hevelikar lines.
While I was gone, she found ways to increase her power.
She had seen my father’s writings. There was much in there about what could be done by a mortal who wished to wield magic.
I believe those instructions were meant to give power to the Magician, but she used them on herself. ”
“What did she do?”
“I fear she went mad before my eyes. But she remained devoted to our cause. I think because of this and my loyalty to my father, I overlooked things that I should not have done. Darker practises than even my father would have attempted. But I wanted to help her. She wanted more power and I thought that it would only help my cause to give it to her. Her powers are too great. She created a vessel.”
“A vessel?” Kerik frowns.