The Immortal Prince (25 page)

“I'm honoured, your grace,” Cayal announced with a mocking bow when Arkady arrived at the prison for her interview.

“Honoured by what?” she asked, as Timms placed her chair in the corridor between the cells. She was tired after the ball last night and knew there'd be consequences resulting from her absence at the palace for breakfast, but for some reason, she couldn't stay away. Although she told herself the urgency of her mission had increased tenfold due to the king's visit and the news that Cayal had been disowned by Caelum, the truth was much more straightforward. Despite telling herself over and over that she didn't believe a word of it, Arkady wanted to hear the rest of Cayal's story.

She wanted to know how he became immortal.

“The king is here in Lebec,” Cayal reminded her. “And yet you've eschewed his royal company for mine. I'm flattered.”

“Don't be.”

“Wasn't the famous King's Ball held last night?”

“How did you hear about that?”

“We're not completely cut off from the outside world in here,” he said, leaning against the bars. “Are we, gemang?”

“The guards spoke of the king's annual visit,” Warlock informed her, rising to his feet. He was such a huge beast, easily one of the largest canines Arkady had ever seen. But he seemed so gentle. So civilised; even under the constant provocation of his aggravating cellmate. Arkady found it hard to believe Warlock was here because he'd killed a man with his bare hands. “They spoke of the ball held in the king's honour each year.”

“What else do the prison gossips say about the king?” she asked curiously.

“They say he's a right old bore,” Cayal replied. “And that you were wearing quite a stunning red dress.”

Arkady's eyes widened in surprise.

Cayal smiled. “You look worried, your grace.”

“I am, a little,” she admitted. “I can't imagine how you know what I was wearing last night.”

“Same way I heard about the king. Magic.”

Arkady smiled suddenly. “Magic, eh? I think there's a far more likely explanation.” She glanced over her shoulder at Timms, who for once was showing no inclination to reach for his truncheon. “Your wife is a seamstress for Lady Kardina, isn't she, Mister Timms?”

“Yes, your grace.”

“And she was undoubtedly on hand last night to sew Lady Kardina into her gown, and still there when her ladyship returned home in the early hours of this morning, when her extremely fashion-conscious mistress would have described every dress she'd seen last night in great and glorious detail, including mine. I imagine the news travelled from her, to her husband to you. Hardly magic, Cayal. Just good, old-fashioned gossip.”

“Tides, are you such a killjoy about everything?”

“It's one of my more endearing traits, I always thought.”

He smiled at her as Arkady realised with alarm that she was all but flirting with him.
Idiot,
she told herself sternly. “So, are you willing to tell us more of your tale?”

“Have you spoken to the Warden about us getting some fresh air?”

“I'm meeting with him after we're done here this morning.”

“So you want the next instalment on credit.”

Arkady sat down and opened her satchel, the act of searching for her notebook giving her an excuse not to meet his eye. “I suppose you could say that.”

“Why should I trust you?”

“Why shouldn't you trust me?” she asked, looking up. “You expect me to take you at
your
highly suspect word. It's only fair, don't you think, that you return the favour?”

Cayal thought on that for a moment, and then he shrugged. “Fair enough. I'll take you at your word.”

“That's very big of you,” she couldn't stop herself from retorting.

“Don't take your sore head out on me, your grace,” he chuckled, amused for no reason Arkady could explain.

“I do not have a hangover.”

“No,” he agreed thoughtfully. “I don't suppose you do. You probably never drink to excess. You probably don't do anything to excess, do you?”

“Whether I do or not, it's hardly any of your business.”

“Is it hard work, being so perfect all the time?”

She met his eye evenly. “Actually, I find it's no work at all.”

Cayal held her gaze without flinching. “Good answer. You really are quite the clever one, aren't you?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Modest, too.”

She sighed impatiently. “Are you actually going to tell me anything this morning, Cayal, or just stand there trading insults?”

“Why? Have you someplace better to be?”

“The King and Queen of Glaeba are currently guests in my home,” she reminded him. “Believe me, there are
plenty
of other places I could be.”

Plenty of other places you
should
be,
an accusing voice in her head reminded her.

Cayal bowed dramatically. “Then we are
truly
honoured by your presence, your grace.”

“As you should be. You were telling me how you met Arryl, the Sorceress,” she reminded him, her pen poised to take notes. “Please continue.”

Cayal turned his back on her, leaning against the bars. “I told you already—Arryl wasn't a sorceress. She can barely sense the Tide, let alone wield it.”

Arkady sighed, wondering if he would ever falter, even slightly, in the telling of this wild tale. She'd been hoping to shake his story, trip him up in a lie, but he never seemed to miss a single detail. “Can't all Tide Lords use magic?”

“Arryl is merely immortal. That doesn't make her a Tide Lord.”

“It does according to the Tarot.”

“And haven't I spent hours trying to convince you that your precious Tarot is about as useful as tits on a melon, Arkady? We've had this discussion before. You don't listen very well, do you?”

She ignored the jibe, still hoping to expose a crack in his story. “So all Tide Lords aren't immortal?”

“All immortals aren't Tide Lords,” he countered.

“What are they, then?”

He shrugged. “Just immortal.”

Arkady raised a brow curiously. “
Just
immortal.”

Cayal looked over his shoulder at her. “It takes all kinds, Arkady, and even immortals need friends. That's what Diala used to do, you know, although she'd deny it if you accused her of it—make new friends.”

“You called her the Minion Maker.”

“Minion…friend…in Diala's world there's not a lot of difference.”

“Is that how you became immortal? Are you one of Diala's minions?”

Cayal snorted contemptuously. “She wishes…”

“Then how
did
you achieve immortality?”

He pushed off the bars and turned to look at her. “You mean other than having my name enshrined in the annals of everlasting superstition and stupidity by being named as the first card in your wretched Tarot?”

“Yes,” she agreed with a faint smile. “Other than that.”

“I asked for it.”

“Why?”

“Immortality's a bit like a sure bet at the races, my lady. It seems like a really good idea at the time. It's not until you've lost everything you ever owned that you start to wonder about the wisdom of gambling.”

“So you've rethought your position?”

“I've had eight thousand years to rethink my position.”

“Too much reflection can be a dangerous thing,” she warned.

Cayal nodded solemnly in agreement. “More dangerous than you know, my lady.”

“Then how about a little less reflection and a little more information?” Arkady suggested. “You were telling me how you travelled the world looking for redemption.”

“Did I say that?”

“Words to that effect.”

“Then I suppose you'll want to hear the rest of it…”

It took time, but I healed completely from the attack, even my teeth were restored. I knew it was the result of something the priestesses had done to me. I'd felt them working their magic, even in the semi-conscious depths of my pain, but every time I questioned Arryl about it, she simply smiled and told me to thank the Tide for my blessings.

Strange, don't you think, that it never occurred to me—or Arryl, for that matter—that there was anything unusual in the notion I could feel the magic? In hindsight, I'm certain she said nothing to Diala about it. I would never have been offered the chance to become immortal by Diala if she thought for a moment that I might one day be a threat to her.

Diala was after minions, not masters.

Arryl, on the other hand—the one you insist on calling the Sorceress—was the very definition of sweetness. She and her sister, Diala, kept vigil over the Temple of the Tide. It was an impressive white marble edifice perched on a cliff top overlooking a dazzling waterfall that tumbled endlessly into a narrow lake, on the shore of which the emperor's palace was built. She'd been on her way back to the temple with her entourage when she found me lying on the road, left for dead by my attackers. Her men had lifted me into her litter while she walked the rest of the way back to the temple, so I could rest.

Arryl and Diala are like night and day. The eldest by seven years, Arryl is sweet, pure even. When I first met her, I wondered if she'd taken a vow of charity, or some such thing, which seemed the only way to account for her generosity. She cared for me, nursed me back to health with herbal poultices, her silky voice and one or two miracles.

In contrast to her sister, Diala is a seductress. I'm sure you've heard the Crasii claim bitches give off a particular scent when they're on heat that male Crasii can smell. I'm here to tell you those who claim it aren't mistaken. She only had to be in the room for me to start thinking of her, even when I was still drifting in and out of consciousness.

This was in those long-distant days, remember, when I was still ignorant of the true power of the Tide—naive as a newborn fool for all that I had killed a man.

In Kordana we'd never embraced the worship of the Tide Star very enthusiastically, although we'd certainly traded with those who did. We Kordians were a pragmatic lot and worshipped little other than our own ingenuity. Even so, every nation on Amyrantha I have ever visited has worshipped the Tide in some form, at some point in their history. Some nations prayed directly to the sun itself, others have had much more formal church hierarchies and referred to the Tide as God. They've even worshipped us on occasion, sometimes as Tide Lords, other times naming us gods, which some among us find rather gratifying. But one way or another, the people of Amyrantha have always understood that all life comes from the Tide Star. At least they did back then. You shun the worship of the Tide as ignorant superstition now, but in those days people knew they owed the Tide Star their allegiance and they behaved accordingly.

In Magreth, however, they claimed a closer connection than most. They claimed to hold a piece of the Tide Star, which was the reason I had come here.

The Eternal Flame, a small fire that was never allowed to go out, burned on the white marble altar of the massive Temple of the Tides. The flame came from the Tide Star itself, Arryl told me, retrieved from a burning fragment of meteorite which had fallen into the frozen wastes of Jelidia more than a thousand years before, brought to this land by Engar. He had established the Empire of Magreth and then built a temple to house the holy flame, awarding it credit for his victory. The current Emperor Engarhod and his wife Syrolee, the empress, were his direct descendants, according to Magrethan folklore, and worshipped as demi-gods because of it.

I paid little attention to what Arryl was telling me, mostly because halfway through her tale, Diala had come into my room to replace the flowers with fresh ones and my attention immediately fixed on her.

I couldn't understand my fascination with the younger priestess. Arryl was by far the prettier and kinder of the pair, and I was still pining for Gabriella. She was the reason I was here, after all. I was looking for a noble quest, not a sexual conquest. But it was Diala, not Gabriella, I dreamed about; Diala whose face haunted my increasingly erotic dreams; her sinfully voluptuous body beckoning with every slight movement, no matter how innocuous. It was Diala's smouldering green eyes, filled with the promise of indescribable passion, that I yearned to see fixed on me with the same craving as my eyes fixed on her.

Arryl was not unaware of my attraction to Diala and considered her sister to be the one at fault. I discovered this when I stumbled across them arguing about me in one of the long corridors that encircled the main hall of the temple, several months after Arryl had rescued me from the side of the road.

“I'm sick of this, Diala,” I heard Arryl complaining to her sister, just before I rounded the corner.

“Sick of what?” Diala asked, sounding full of wounded innocence.

I stopped, wondering at her response, trying to imagine about what the sisters might be arguing.

“You know what I'm talking about.”

“No, sister dear, I don't. Among all the great powers the Tides have bestowed upon me, telepathy doesn't seem to be among them.”

“Neither does common sense,” Arryl retorted. “And you know exactly what I'm talking about. I don't want it to happen again.”

“I haven't done anything to him. And I haven't done anything
with
him, either.”

“But you're thinking about it constantly, and he's affected by your lust. Tides, even the mice around here are probably breeding more prolifically, with the heat you're giving off.”

“Now you're exaggerating.”

“I wish I was!”

Diala laughed. “Oh, come on, Rilly. I can have a bit of fun, can't I? And he's very pretty, don't you think? Now that I've fixed him up.”

“You shouldn't have done that either,” Arryl scolded. “He hasn't stopped asking questions since he woke up. Broken bones might heal, Diala, but teeth aren't supposed to grow back and scars don't miraculously disappear. Are you
trying
to give away our secret?”

“Actually, I'm still trying to figure out why we're keeping it a secret at all, but that's an argument for another time. What is it you wanted of me, sister?”

“I want you to leave the boy alone.”

“He's a man, not a boy.”

“By our standards, Cayal is a boy,” Arryl corrected.

“By
our
standards?” Diala sneered. “He's twenty-six, Arryl. In that hovel you and I were born in, that would make him a village
elder.
”

“And you the village idiot,” Arryl shot back. Then she added in a more conciliatory tone, “Please…just let him be, Diala. You know the rules.”

“Oh, and if I
break
them? What are you going to do?
Tell
on me? Now I'm really frightened.”

I heard Arryl sigh patiently. “Syrolee has good reason to insist on her rules. You agreed to them when you became a Priestess of the Tide.”

“That was before I realised she was using the Tide to create her own personal empire. Forever is a long, long time, Arryl. She can't think she's going to be allowed to dictate to us for that long.”

“Talk to Syrolee yourself, if you disagree with her,” Arryl suggested. “In the meantime, leave Cayal alone. Let him heal and let him leave. He's not for you because he's not one of us. And please, don't call me Rilly. You know how much it irks me.”

I heard footsteps on the tiles, heading away from me after that. Guessing the conversation was over, and intrigued by what it might mean, I was about to move off when I heard Diala add in an irritated voice, obviously not meant for anyone but herself, “He's not one of us, eh,
Rilly
? Well, I can remedy
that
minor inconvenience easily enough.”

I heard her footsteps fading into the distance a moment later, but I stood in the shadow of the great pillars for a while longer, wondering what they were talking of. I should have seen the danger signs, but I fear the greater part of me was basking in the knowledge that the priestess Diala—the desire for whom filled my every waking moment as well as my dreams—was lusting after me, almost as much as I was lusting after her.

 

The atmosphere in the temple changed subtly after I overheard the sisters arguing. It might have been because I was now acutely aware Diala was paying attention to me, or it might have been the undercurrent of tension that flowed back and forth between the two women. Meals became tense, the conversation laden with double meaning. If Arryl noticed something amiss, she said nothing, perhaps content her warning had been enough.

But I hadn't been warned about anything, I reasoned, and I couldn't take my eyes off Diala. I took to following her around the temple—surreptitiously, I thought—even when she climbed down the rocks near the cliff to wash her long dark hair, her body outlined in exquisite, tormenting detail by the folds of her white wrap, which was all but transparent when it was wet.

I thought I might go mad, I wanted her so badly. I had never wanted any woman, not even Gabriella, the way I desired Diala, which is odd, because somehow, I still believed my mission in life was to perform some great task that would see me restored in the eyes of my sister and my beloved.

Strange how a man can find room in his heart for such diametrically opposed beliefs, but I managed it, and without ever noticing the conflict.

As is usually the case with eavesdropping, though, I was left with more questions than answers. I didn't understand what Arryl had meant by breaking the rules or the relationship between the empress and the temple. No member of the Imperial family came to worship. Never even sent so much as an offering, for that matter. In fact, the only contact between the palace and the Temple of the Tides, that I was aware of, in all the months I'd been there recuperating, was the day Arryl returned from the palace and found me lying on the road and a visit some months later from Engarhod's son, Rance. He'd just returned from Senestra and stopped by to deliver some spices Arryl had requested he find for her in his travels.

I didn't understand much of anything, really, but I did think I'd worked out the “he's not one of us” remark. It wasn't a racial thing. With Arryl's blonde hair and Diala's green eyes, neither woman was a native of Magreth—that much was certain. I assumed she meant I wasn't a follower of their religion. I didn't understand their ways. As a priestess, Diala had a responsibility to the Tide Star, after all, and I was little more than a foreign pagan.

But time was passing and even through my lusting for Diala, I knew the day was fast approaching when Gabriella would marry my brother and be lost to me forever. I know you'll think me strange for still believing I had any right to her affection. There I was, panting after Diala like a dog after a bitch on heat, imagining I had a future with Gabriella. I can't explain it and I have no intention of trying to justify it. That is how it was.

I never, not even for a moment, imagined anything could go wrong with my grand plan to redeem myself and be allowed to return home. By then, you might think I'd begun to learn the stupidity of such a blind optimism, but I hadn't. Maybe that's why the Tide made me immortal. Perhaps it knew it would take an eternity for me to learn that bitter lesson and was determined to see I had the time in which to do it.

Diala didn't laugh at me when I broached the subject of a noble quest with her. I'm sure, knowing her as I do now, she must have burst something internally trying to stop herself from exploding with mirth when I went to her so full of earnest hope, but to my face, she nodded and smiled and made all the right noises in all the places I expected to hear them. I explained my case most eloquently, I thought, putting forward all my well-thought-out arguments about finding a task that would prove to the Queen of Kordana that I was a worthy subject, and to my beloved Gabriella that I was worthy of her love.

Diala barely hesitated before agreeing to help me.

“The Emperor of the Five Realms would welcome such a worthy supplicant,” she informed me gravely. “And I'm sure he can aid you in your quest. But you'll have to go through the cleansing ceremony first before you can be admitted into his presence.”

“What does that involve?”

“We'll have to do it in the main temple,” she said, rising to her feet. There was no sign of Arryl. I wasn't sure where she'd gone but she was nowhere to be found. Later—much later—I realised her absence was the only reason Diala agreed to my request. Had Arryl been anywhere in the vicinity of the temple, she would have stopped Diala and my life would have followed a much different—not to mention infinitely shorter—path.

The temple was empty—tall, cavernous and majestic; its walls open to the gentle Magrethan climate. Only the burning vessel on the altar was shielded from the wind. As we entered the temple, Diala took my hand and led me to the altar.

Unafraid, and with no inkling of what was about to happen, I followed her, expecting a sermon about the spirit of the Tide Star or some such thing, perhaps even a repeat of the story of Engar bringing the Eternal Flame back from Jelidia. But when we reached the altar, Diala didn't say a word. She stopped and turned to me. Smiling, she slipped her arms around my neck, stood on her toes and kissed me with all the wanton abandon of a well-paid Lakeshian whore.

I was too stunned to question the reason for such a blessing. Without a thought, I pulled her to me, kissing her as if I might be able to devour her whole. I'd been lusting after her for so long I wanted to throw her down on the temple floor and take her, there and then. But Diala had done this before—so I discovered later—and knew precisely what she was doing. With the mere touch of her velvety and dangerously knowledgeable mouth, the press of her body against mine…that alone gave her all the power over me she needed.