Chapter 28 Damon
DAMON
SANGLORA MANOR, ATTAR
Damon sits at the small table in the room beneath the eaves of Sanglora. Candles and fires are lit in the middle of the night.
Lyr sits on Damon’s lap. He has come around from his swoon, but he is still shaky with fear. Damon can feel it. Lyr’s flesh under his hands through the thin fabric of the chiton. Usually, to feel Lyr’s body is sweet. But not now.
What precisely Lyr fears, Damon knows not.
But over the past moons Lyr has become more and more controlled by his growing dreads.
He has bad dreams, Damon knows, far more bad dreams than he tells Damon about, leaving him hollow-eyed when waking.
And even when Lyr wakes shaking in the night and Damon rouses beside him to pull Lyr into his arms and whisper sweetly against his raven-wing hair, Lyr often refuses to speak of the nature of his night terrors.
Damon does not know how he can soothe him. He is attacked in his dreams by the ghosts of things that happened to him before he ever met Damon. Damon cannot change Lyr’s past.
And Lyr cannot look at Perl. For his part, Perl does not seem to want to look at Lyr. Although neither of them has said why. When Damon asked Perl if he had met Lyr before he said, “Not exactly.”
“And what do you want with me?” Damon says.
Perl gives Lyr the tiniest of glances. “Jareleezi has Kerik.”
Damon feels Lyr stiffen on his lap. He wraps his arms tighter around him. “Jareleezi. The witch who tormented Lyr?” The last Hevelikar.
“Yes. Please, I need your help to rescue him from her.”
Damon feels it like a deep pull. A hook lodged in his stomach.
A line that will drag him to his destiny.
This, then, is how it will be. Fate. He will have to go to her.
Lyr has always believed this an inescapable fact.
Damon has always disagreed. After so long bound to the control of others, he now considers himself a man who decides his own path.
He has listened to his desires. And the greatest of those desires is to protect Lyr.
He has long decided he will never go near that witch, unless it is to take her life.
“And why does she want him?” Damon says stiffly.
Perl takes a breath. “She wishes to defeat Ur-Durik. She has enacted some magic on you by way of Lyr, to draw you to her. She believes that you will lead your brothers to her so you can join with her to defeat Ur-Durik. All except Kerik. Kerik’s role is that of the Magician.
She intends to drain Kerik of his power and replace him. ”
“She wants to defeat Ur-Durik…Was she right?” Lyr says, in a small but insistent voice.
“Right?” Perl looks at Lyr. Although Damon thinks he does not want to.
“Was she right about needing to use me to defeat Ur-Durik? What she did to me, was it righteous?”
“It was in the service of defeating the demon, at least, at the start." Perl says cautiously. “But… I fear she lost her mind amassing power for our cause and because of that, what she did to you could not be called righteous.”
“Your cause,” says Damon. “Yours and hers?”
“Once, I worked with her. And,” Perl swallows visibly.
He looks very small and pale in the dim, low-ceilinged room.
“Because she was a Hevelikar, I believed our causes were aligned. I assisted her to awaken her magic. I,” Perl stops and swallows again.
“I told her about body scrying. I thought that with a Klishian she could—”
Perl’s statement is cut off as Damon stands, lost in a sudden surge of rage. He shoves Lyr from his lap, his chair falls back with a crash and in the next moment he has Perl against the wall by the throat.
Elric, watching from the door to his own chamber, screams, “No! He can do magic.”
But Damon barely hears it. “You,” Damon snarls in Perl’s face. “You told her to take Lyr. You knew what she was doing to him?”
“I knew,” Perl says, quite plainly.
Damon stares at Perl. He ought to snap this creature’s neck. He does not. He takes his hands from Perl’s throat and lets him slump back against the wall.
“To defeat Ur-Durik,” Lyr says softly. And as he speaks, Damon realises Lyr has come over to them and stands beside him. “You were doing what you thought you needed to do to defeat the demon.”
“Yes,” Perl says, voice rough as he catches his breath.
“Truly, I did not know she would be so brutal. But I cannot say I did not suspect. I was desperate for information, I thought scrying might help, I was wrong. The magic she invoked was so dark it only took her to more and more terrible places.” His voice cracks fully then, into sobs.
“I fear she will kill Kerik after taking his power from him. And I fear also, I have doomed us all. We cannot defeat Ur-Durik without the Books of Alios, and because of me, they are lost.”
Damon doesn’t know what to say. His blood is so high. His urge to fight and kill so close to the surface. But Lyr is beside him, speaking softly. He knows Lyr like he knows himself and he is sure, Lyr does not want him to hurt Perl, no matter the part Perl might have played in what was done to him.
Lyr says, “Jareleezi took the Books of Alios to Ismagaar.”
“She did not.” Perl shakes his head. “Years ago, when I first encountered Kerik, he was being sent to Jareleezi by Chancellor Vindar, a bargain struck for those same books although I doubt she would ever have handed them over. But when she realised I had hidden Kerik from her she destroyed them.”
“So they are gone?” says Lyr. “And those books are needed to defeat Ur-Durik?”
“Correct,” says Perl. “It will be all the harder to do what we must without them.”
Elric stands up, “I’m going out,” he says.
Damon turns to look at him. His milk-coloured skin looks paler than ever. “No,” Damon says.
Elric looks back at Damon with a hard expression. “Lukas is gone. Trysta too.”
“Trysta?” Damon glances at the closed door to Trysta’s chamber. “You do not think they have…” Damon trails off. But Lukas had made it quite clear what he wanted to do in Attar. Damon had bid him no. He knew that would not be enough to hold Lukas back for long. And Trysta? Would she defy him?
In any other situation, Damon would have sworn that Trysta’s loyalty to him was unshakeable. But to kill Selim?
“I know they have,” Elric says. “Lukas told me as much before he left.”.
He will get himself killed, Damon thinks. Lukas will get himself and Trysta killed. But what he says to Elric is, “Very well. Go. Find him. Be cautious.”
Elric leaves and Damon looks back to Perl. “So you have lost Kerik?” he says, wondering if he will have any brothers left at all by the end of this night.
“Yes. I must rescue him. I must take you with me.”
“Take me where? What do you want me to do?” What choice does he have?
“We must retrieve Kerik to even have a chance of defeating Ur-Durik. We need to discover where Jareleezi has taken him. To get that information we must go to Ceruleum. To visit Doroth Zain in the Bride house. He works for our cause. And he holds there our greatest source of information about what we must do next.”
Doroth Zain. Damon swallows. “I know that. He has aided me before. But he is the High Word of Zai. Can we be sure that we can trust him? He charged me go to Ismagaar. To that witch.”
“He believes,” Perl says, “that you will retrieve the Books of Alios if you go to her. He does not know that she destroyed them. I never told him so. But other than that he knows the truth of the matter. Zai is…” Perl pauses.
“The God that is worshipped in the Azurian Empire is Ur-Durik. Zai is simply an old word for demon king from the Bellator’s own language. ”
Damon doesn’t know what he can say to that. He is no true devotee of Zai, but he has known Zai as the one true God all of his life.
Quietly Lyr says, “Zai is a demon? It makes a lot of sense.”
Perl looks at Lyr, still wary of him, but gives him a small nod of agreement. “Indeed. I have recruited useful people to our cause over the years, where I could. Doroth Zain, along with Princess Karo have worked tirelessly to assist me.”
“Karo?” Damon says, “My father’s first wife?”
“Yes,” says Perl. “She married Rafus, because we knew he would be the father of the five fae princes reborn. Her role was to ensure he sired them.”
Damon is starting to wonder who else in his life has been part of this scheming, moving people around like gaming pieces to ensure this demon will be defeated. “Karo? Karo ensured I was born? And Lukas, Tobi, Kerik and… there is another, isn’t there?”
“Correct. We knew exactly how to bring you forth. We had the writings of Batraous, my father, that explained how the princes would return. He had the gift of prophecy.”
“Batraous, the Hevelikar philosopher, is your father? But he lived a thousand years ago?”
“Five hundred. And he was more warlock than philosopher. But he had many gifts, including long life. He sired me two hundred years ago. My own mother was of the fae.”
Damon shakes his head, slowly. “And these people you have brought to your cause always believe you? They always agree to help you fight a demon? Princess Karo agreed to this?”
“I am quite particular about who I choose. And Karo agreed to marry your father on one condition. That when Ur-Durik was rising, and his part was done, she would kill him.”
“Kill my father? Karo wants to kill my father. You promised her this?” Damon doesn’t know how he should react to this confession. For all Rafus’s faults, a father ought to expect certain things from his son.
“It is done. Rafus is dead.”
“No,” Damon says. “I would know if he was dead. Killed by his own wife.” But he knows this is a strange thing to say. He has not seen his father since he was exiled. He knows his father believes him dead.
As Damon speaks, bells start to chime outside. Low and steady. Death bells. Almost as if they are answering. Peeling out the truth of Perl’s claims. But bells like that would not be rung for Rafus, even if what Perl is saying is the truth. Those bells mean…
Damon feels a deep dread in his belly. Bells rang like that when Erond died.
And if they are ringing now does that mean Lukas succeeded? An emperor is dead. If Selim is dead and Rafus too Damon knows what that means. Atticul will take the throne. Atticul who knows that he lives.
He needs to leave Attar. Inez too.
That hook in his guts is tugged once more.
Footsteps racing up the stairs make him jump up. Enforcers? So soon. Damon stands. He puts his hand on the Amber Blade, moving so he is between the door and everyone else.
Elric bursts into the room, face stricken.