The Prince of Exiles (The Exile Series) (61 page)

“Not a chance,” Davydd hissed, coming to his feet. He was bleeding from multiple wounds on both his face and arms – his armor was dented in a number of places as well, and he looked much the worse for wear.

“GO!” He roared at them, the rage boiling up inside him, needing to be released. He saw that the Fox was coming forward with a smile.

“I killed two Guardians and a guardsman, I have their strength,” the Prince hissed at the two Rangers, “you need to go. You need to tell Autmaran what is happening, you need –”

“Lorna,” Davydd said, breaking through his speech. “Take them through the doors and come at the guards from the other side.”

She nodded, and left, running to the group of Kindred nearby.

“We’re not leaving,” Davydd said. The Prince gritted his teeth and growled low in his throat, but made no further protest.

They turned and faced the Prince of Foxes, standing side by side, Valerium swords drawn. Tiffenal watched them, seeming not the least bit worried about anything that was happening.

He doesn’t need to be
, Raven thought,
as long as he holds the Talisman it will all work out in his favor.

Tiffenal left the dais, turning his back on them, and perusing the room. Lorna and the Kindred had broken down and left by the door they’d come through, leaving the chamber empty but for the cries of the dying men that littered the floor. As Tiffenal walked, the stolen
sambolin
swung about his neck, hypnotizing, glittering in the dim light of the chamber. He walked over to the Guardians that the Prince had left alive.

“Not very effective after all,” he mused.

And then he killed them, his short sword swirling in a blur of motion.

The Prince flinched but made no move to go forward. He and Davydd needed to do this together – Tiffenal was nearly two centuries old. He’d had a lot of time to practice with those swords, and even with his added strength the Prince didn’t know if he was a match for the man.

“So brother,” Tiffenal said, turning back to face them with a wide grin, “you’ve turned against the Empire! How delightfully unethical of you.”

“
Unethical?”

Davydd moved forward, and the Prince was barely able to hold him back before he launched himself at the man, which was no doubt exactly what Tiffenal wanted.

“This city of yours teems with filth and corruption,” Davydd screamed, red eyes wide and deadly. “And you stand there and question the morality of the
one
Child of the Empress who fights against it?”

“Quiet now,” said the Fox, his golden eyes glowing, his half-burned face still turned toward the Prince, “or I will have to silence you.”

“He has a point brother,” the Prince said, stepping forward, putting himself between Davydd and Tiffenal and at the same time trying to get close enough that the Talismans would begin to offset. How close did he need to be? They must already be interfering with each other somewhat – he’d been able to wound Tiffenal when he’d thrown the dagger. But would it be enough to kill him?

“Ah yes,” said Tiffenal, “but here you are to kill me. Is that really
moral
of you? Killing your own brother? That might be the only thing you’ve done that I haven’t.”

The Prince stopped dead, suddenly unable to move.

“What
is
immoral?” Tiffenal asked, his golden eyes hypnotizing. “Why do you believe that killing a man is something that shouldn’t be done? They all die eventually. Not a single person outside of the Empress and her Children will live forever. Not a single person besides you of course.”

Again, that bone-chilling smile sent shivers down the Prince’s spine, and the cold comment, offbeat and shockingly, unexpectedly true made him waver.

“Don’t listen to him!” Davydd hissed.

And then Tiffenal flowed forward, making straight for Davydd. The Prince reacted as quickly as he could, and still he wasn’t fast enough. One of the short swords lanced out and caught Davydd on the wrist, knocking the Valerium blade from his hand. Tiffenal turned inward, the opposite way one would expect, and threw Davydd over his shoulder in a rolling move that sent the Eshendai flying through the air. He crashed in a heap just before the throne and immediately bars inscribed with the Bloodmage hammer-and-sickle sprang up around him, holding him in place. Another trap.

The Prince raced forward to engage his brother, but Tiffenal beat aside his thrust and spun away, putting distance between them once more.

“I know you brother,” said Tiffenal, still circling, staying just outside the Prince’s reach.

“I know you and you are not what they have made you out to be. You are not this strange,
noble
hero. You are the villain … you have always been the villain, since before you were born. Even now, in your Exile, you bring death to the Empire just as it was foretold. And your friend here tells me that
my
city is immoral … that my pet pleasures are immoral … why? Because you simply haven’t the stomach for them? Because you aren’t accustomed to the sight of blood?”

The Prince felt a sickness rising in the pit of his stomach, and a feeling of dread. He realized numbly that he had stopped moving, had stopped trying to get closer to Tiffenal, and was now just listening. Listening to words that struck him like icy daggers, digging deep into his mind and worrying away at the holes his nagging doubts had already chewed in the arguments he had so carefully crafted for himself.

“Well believe me when I tell you that as time goes on and you watch the world move around you,” said Tiffenal, no longer smiling, “you will find yourself bored as I did. You will find yourself unable to see life as anything but a continual prison, from which you wish you could escape. You will see all you have ever loved crumble and die around you, assuming Mother or the other Children don’t manage to strike at you in the night. You will spend eternity running from the shadowed dagger of an assassin. Every man, woman, and child that you come to love – yes, even that young woman who tore you away from us – will die and leave you. Blood is all you will see brother. Death, and destruction, and pain. That is all the world is – and you come to me and tell me that my city, the place where all that is true about life is worshiped, that it is
I
who have mistaken? That it is
I
who am immoral? I, who am the truest representation of this world? I am what my Mother made me, as are you, as are we all!”

Raven felt himself falling, and then a painful jolt as he cracked his knees against the marble floor. His sword lay forgotten by his side, dropped from his numb hands. It all seemed so hopeless.

“And you say I am
immoral
,” hissed Tiffenal, walking toward him now. “I take pleasure in the same things that life takes pleasure in. I kill, as does the world. Things die – as you know so well. What is life but a collection of memories? What is pain but a bundle of sensations? I, unlike the common masses that believe they will be rewarded for their virtues in life by the Immortal Empress, I know that this is all that will ever be. I know that I will never die! I know that life only continues for me, that I am one of the privileged few – so why can I not take joy in that which pleases me? Why is it
immoral
to kill? GIVE ME A REASON BROTHER!”

The Prince looked up, the world spinning around him, and realized Tiffenal was staring murderously down at him.

“This is the question you ask the people you torture,” the Prince said, suddenly understanding. “This is what no one has ever been able to tell you.”

“Well done brother,” Tiffenal said, unsheathing a dagger, a long, cruel thing, like a spike of steel that gleamed white as bone in the harsh light of the chamber. “And I mean that sincerely too, you’re the first of the Children to guess it. Not even Geofred could see it … him with all his foresight. So mindful or the future, yet so woefully inept at reading the present.”

Tiffenal took another step forward, almost within striking range.

“All men die. And who is there to judge me? Who is there to judge you? To judge anyone? The Seekers spread their religious dogma about the Empress, they tell all of the Commons that she is the Immortal Goddess, and they all believe it … but in the end, she is no different from us. If she is a god, are not we too? And if we are not gods, do we not have the right to do as we please? We have the power to decide life and death. We have power – to what other purpose should it be put but to satisfy our own ends? And if I kill a man – who shall strike me down? I have killed thousands of men, as you well know. I’ve raped women by the hundreds. Men as well, though that’s less to my liking. Yet here I stand, unbowed, unbeaten. If there were another God, or any God, would I still be here? Would I be able to control fate as I do? There is no such power, you know it as well as I. You harvest the very
souls
of the men you kill! You are more immoral than I shall ever be … you, in full knowledge of the pain you cause, kill to serve your own ends. If I am immoral, are not you too?”

Tiffenal took one last step forward, and the Prince looked up into his brother’s face, that cruel mask of mingled hatred and pleasure; the horrible look of dark happiness that came from knowing life contained horror and reveling in his ability to take part in it.

“What is hope but the deluded denial of the hardships of this world? What is loyalty but fear called by another name? What is
love
but the delusion that another person’s presence will stop the pain of living?”

Leah crossed his mind then, unbidden, and then so too did Tomaz, his truest friend. The image of Autmaran was next, the vision of him standing on the ancient Forum floor, speaking about the world the Kindred would make together. And finally Elder Goldwyn, looking him in the eye, telling him to be the Prince that could change everything. He looked up.

“I can’t answer any of your questions,” he said quietly, and Tiffenal’s smile widened. The Fox was sure he had won. “But I believe in a world where those questions do have answers, a world the Kindred see in their dreams.”

Tiffenal’s smile became a disgusted snarl of contempt.

“I’m going to change the rules,” said the Prince, “and the world we make together will be better than any world the Children could have torn apart.”

And then there was a crash of sound as a metal bar fell to the ground and a blurred shape, blinding white, flew across the room to sink into Tiffenal’s side.

The Prince of Foxes screamed, a sound like claws ripping though the fabric of eternity, and the Prince of the Veil felt something inside him clang violently, a harsh cacophony that rang in counterpoint to his brother’s cry.

The trap the Fox had set to hold Davydd broke; the rest of the bars fell and the young man ran forward, racing so quickly it looked as though he was barely touching the floor, his red eyes full of murder. He held out his hand and pulled, as if on an invisible chain, and in response the sword buried in the Fox’s side freed itself and flew to the young man’s hand.

Tiffenal staggered back – out of the reach of the Prince, and, the veins in his blackened, burned face glowing like burnished gold, swung wildly at Davydd just as he came in range, connecting by pure chance with the young man’s arm.

The sword he was holding hit the weak point of Davydd’s armor, and there was a sharp
crack!
sound as bone broke and the white Valerium blade dropped from the Eshendai’s hand and skittered toward the Prince, the sound of it drowned out by the scream of pain that issued from Davydd’s throat.

The Prince, eyes still clouded with confusion, grabbed for his sword, felt his hand grasp a wired hilt, and raised the blade to his brother’s throat. He was inside the immediate reach of the Fox Talisman – he was close enough that Tiffenal’s luck would have no effect now.

“Yes,” Tiffenal said, golden eyes hypnotizing the Prince, “kill me. Come! Slay me, take my life, see through my eyes. Maybe then you’ll understand the true meaning of life, the true meaning of power. There is no such thing as morality – there is only this, here, reality, and the terrible horrors that we commit in the name of gaining power, in the name of preventing pain.”