Feeding titbits to Coron, Lukys smiled thinly, but Kinta was not amused. “There’s nothing voluntary in this, Cayal. This is institutionalised rape with the express intention of polluting the human race to create a sub-species of slaves.”
The silence that followed Kinta’s declaration was tense. She’s a formidable woman, as fair as Brynden, her eyes icy blue, her flaxen hair so pale it’s almost white. She can be very intimidating when she wants and now seemed to be one of those times. I looked around the table, frowning. “And what is it you expect me to do about it?”
“We’d like you to go to Tenacia and find out what’s really going on.”
I turned to my host. “Why doesn’t one of you go to Tenacia and ask?”
“It would be more believable if you were to go,” Medwen suggested. “Engarhod doesn’t like Brynden. Or Lukys.”
“I’m not exactly his favourite person, either,” I reminded them. “Does anybody remember Pellys and a certain ruined palace in Magreth they still blame me for?”
“But you are young, foolish and male,” Kinta pointed out, which I thought a bit rude given I was over sixteen hundred years old by then. “Even Engarhod will believe you heard what they were doing and couldn’t resist the opportunity to stand at stud.”
I looked at Kinta askance, wondering if she was simply being thoughtless, or deliberately trying to offend me. Telling me I was foolish seemed an odd way to elicit my cooperation, never mind the implication that I had nothing better to do with my time than satisfy my carnal needs.
I shook my head. “I can’t help you. Syrolee and Engarhod are still mad at me over what happened in Magreth with Pellys.”
“That was almost a thousand years ago.” Medwen shrugged. “They’ll be over it by now.”
“I’m sorry. I’m not buying into this. Besides, if Syrolee and Engarhod are involved then Tryan will be around, and it will be better for everyone on Amyrantha if I don’t have to deal with him.”
“You can’t hide from him forever,” Lukys suggested, cutting a slice of cheese for Coron and placing it on the table in front of him. The creature picked it up in his paws and began to nibble the cheese. Nobody at the table seemed bothered by Lukys sharing his meal with a rat.
“Actually, Tryan is hiding from me.” I looked around the table, wondering why I’d been chosen for this mission. As you may have gathered, I was well and truly over my fascination with noble quests by then. “Why doesn’t one of you go?”
I could understand why Brynden and Kinta weren’t welcome in Tenacia. Even why Lukys might prefer not to go, but Medwen, last I heard, had no particular argument with Syrolee and her family. I’d been surprised to find Medwen here in Torlenia, in fact. With no magical power to speak of or territorial ambitions of her own, she usually gravitated to wherever the greatest concentration of immortals was during High Tide, and that was often the Emperor and Empress of the Five Realms and their kin.
“I was in Tenacia,” Medwen announced flatly. “I left.”
I looked at her curiously. Medwen and I shared a cottage once—for about eighteen years during a Low Tide—posing as a married couple in a smallish village on the opposite shore of the Great Inland Sea. It had been a pleasant enough time. Like me, Medwen had taken Lukys’s advice to learn a trade or two that would see her through the hard times, and she’d become a glassmaker of some note by then. In the old days, before glassblowing became popular, core forming was the most common method of producing glass and Medwen was very good at it. As livelihoods went, it was among the most benign that I’ve ever known. I kept the forges hot and watched over the annealing process as the glass cooled, while Medwen created her delicate vessels around a mud-and-dung core she later broke up…you probably don’t need the details. But I’ll tell you one thing—those cores stank like a midden heap when they were heated…
Such peaceful serenity never lasts, though. People started to remark on how the pretty, dark-skinned glassmaker and her nice young husband hadn’t changed a bit in all the years they’d lived in the village. Women who’d purchased gifts for the birth of the first child were coming back to us to purchase gifts for their grandchildren and they remembered things like that. You can’t spend your whole life among mortals, never looking older than seventeen or twenty-five, without attracting attention.
Medwen and I went our separate ways when the speculation began to get a little too intense, with a vague promise to do it again sometime, even in another country, perhaps, where everybody had forgotten us. Medwen was keen to try her hand at faïence, you know…making ceramic glazed tiles. She needed someone to grind the quartz for her, but we never followed through with our plans. That pleasant interlude faded into memory, we’d both become involved in other things, and then the Tide returned and all bets were off.
But I still had a soft spot for Medwen and she was one of the few immortals I’ll go out of my way to help. Her flat tone of voice when she spoke of leaving Tenacia was something I knew well. There was more going on here, I thought, than Brynden, Lukys and Kinta worrying about the fate of some unknown Tenacian mortals currently being tortured to create these Crasii.
“What happened?” I asked Medwen.
“Rance convinced me to have a child.”
I didn’t answer immediately, wondering how Medwen could ever be foolish enough to let Rance convince her of anything, least of all to bear a child. That the father must have been mortal was a given. We all knew by then that there was no such thing as an immortal offspring.
“I wasn’t raped, if that’s what you’re thinking,” she added, taking my silence to mean—rightly enough—that I was afraid to ask how she’d fallen pregnant.
“I didn’t assume that you had been,” I assured her. “It’s High Tide.” Even without any significant magical power, no mortal man was going to lay an unwelcome hand on an immortal woman during High Tide and live to tell of it.
“The name of the father is irrelevant,” Lukys added. “Suffice to say he was a slave in Engarhod’s palace, Medwen mentioned in passing that she thought he was handsome, and that gave Rance the idea. He said she could have him if she agreed to have a child by him.”
I stared at Medwen. “And you said yes?”
Medwen smiled faintly. “He was very pretty, Cayal. Even prettier than you.” Then her amusement faded. “You don’t have to look to me like that. I know how stupid it was, but I did it, anyway. You should know being immortal hasn’t imbued a single one of us with any more common sense than we were born with.”
There was no arguing with that. I shook my head in despair. “So what happened?”
“In my eighth month, Rance came to me and suggested that if an immortal man could impregnate a mortal woman and blend an animal into the Tidewatcher foetus to create a Crasii, it should work the other way, too. He wanted me to allow him to blend a cat foetus with my unborn child. They’d been trying to perfect a part-feline warrior caste. I don’t know the exact details, because I didn’t hang around long enough to find out.”
“You refused?”
She glared at me. “Of course I refused!”
“So…what happened to the child?”
“She was born human,” Medwen assured me. “I made sure of that. And then Syrolee took her.” The pain in Medwen’s eyes was real, as was the despair in her voice. It was typical of Rance though, and most of the immortals. If you can’t hurt your enemy, hurt those they love.
Kinta picked up the tale when it became obvious Medwen was too upset to continue. “Syrolee refused her access to her child, so Medwen fled Tenacia and chanced into Lukys. He brought her here while we decide what to do. Your arrival has been most fortuitous.”
“You want me to find Medwen’s child?”
“I want her back,” Medwen declared.
“Oh…you want me to kidnap Medwen’s child.”
“It’d be handy if you found out whether or not they’ve managed to perfect that warrior caste of feline Crasii they were working on, too,” Lukys
suggested. “The Emperor of the Five Realms armed with an army of warriors with the killing capabilities of a cat and the ability to think like a human is a rather disturbing prospect.”
“A caste of warrior cat people?” I asked, shaking my head. It seemed such an absurd concept in those days. “What does one do with an army like that, anyway?”
“We think he has plans for them beyond Tenacia,” Kinta replied.
Brynden nodded in agreement. “We think Syrolee has her eye on the title of Empress of Amyrantha.”
“Why stop at a continent?” Medwen added sourly. “When you can rule the whole world?”
“But why bother?” I asked. “It’s High Tide. If they want to rule the world, there’s really nothing stopping them. Both Tryan and Elyssa can wield the Tide as well as Lukys or Bryn or I can. What do they need an army for?”
“To control the human population afterwards, perhaps?” Lukys suggested.
“It’s easy enough to scare any human population into doing what you want when the Tide’s up.” I shrugged, unconvinced. Then I glanced at the others and added, “We’ve all done it.”
“Not all of us,” Brynden corrected stiffly. “But I believe Lukys has the right of it. Respect inspired by fear is only effective when the reason for that fear is reasonably close by. Immortal they may be, but there aren’t enough of Engarhod’s clan who can actually use Tide magic effectively and they can’t be everywhere at once.”
“Build yourself a loyal army, however,” Lukys agreed, “one that is magically compelled to obey you, and you’re halfway there. A hierarchical power pyramid based on fear with the Tide Lords at the top and a willing army of killers at the bottom. Very efficient method of controlling a world, based on the well-documented mathematical principle that shit flows downhill.”
I couldn’t help but smile. “You always did have a way of putting things in perspective, Lukys.”
“Perspective being one thing sorely missing among our kind,” he agreed.
I rolled my eyes. “This from the man who thinks he can find a way to travel between the stars.”
Lukys stared at me, his blue eyes bright against his dusky skin. “You waste your immortality on trivial things, my lad. I’ve no interest in ruling a world when there might be a chance I can rule a whole galaxy.” He tickled the rat fondly. “Isn’t that right, old son?”
I looked at Brynden. “And what do you think, Bryn? Is there room, somewhere in your noble warrior ethic, for the notion of ruling a galaxy?”
“One cannot presume to rule others until one has total command of oneself,” the Fyronnese Tide Lord replied.
“One can redress an injustice, however,” Kinta added impatiently. “Even without achieving such a state of purity.”
Her comment gave me the first hint of the split that would eventually drive Kinta and Brynden apart, but I didn’t realise it then. Instead, I turned my attention to Medwen. “How long ago did you and Rance have your…unfortunate encounter?”
“Almost eleven years ago, now.”
“And nobody’s done anything about it yet?”
“We were waiting for the right time,” Medwen explained.
“And the right person,” Lukys amended. He raised his cup to me with a mocking smile. “The time has come I suspect, Cayal, our Immortal Prince, for you to do something useful.”
Much later that evening Medwen came to my room, sliding silently into the hard narrow bed beside me. We made love—out of habit, as much as desire—not saying a word until after we were spent. Medwen lay beside me afterwards, her head resting on my chest, and spoke idly of the years we’d spent apart, of things she’d done, places she had seen, people she had met. She said nothing of Tenacia, or the loss of her child. She didn’t have to. The fact that she was here in my bed was proof enough of her pain.
“Why?” I asked eventually, when she’d run out of things to say.
“Why what?”
“Why did you go anywhere near Tenacia?”
“I was bored.” She shrugged. “And regardless of what you think of them, you have to admit Syrolee and her clan know how to live in style.”
“You’re immortal. You could set yourself up as a goddess anywhere you wanted if you feel the need to be worshipped so badly.”
Medwen sighed in the chilly darkness. “But it’s so much work. And I’m not like you and Lukys. I can barely light a candle, even at High Tide. It’s much easier, don’t you think, to ride in the wake of someone who enjoys doing that sort of thing?”
I smiled faintly, glad for the warmth of an extra body. The thin blanket Brynden provided for his guests did little to ward off the cold. Although our bodies regulate themselves so we don’t really feel the cold much anymore—and I suspect that without immortal protection, we might well have died of hypothermia in Brynden’s icy castle—I still felt the cold grip of something. Perhaps it was my imagination, but I was glad of Medwen’s warmth, nonetheless.
“Why a child?”
I felt her shrug beside me. “I was lonely. I knew the child would die of old age eventually, but I wanted someone to love me, Cayal, even if it was only for a little while.”
“I love you, Medwen. You know that.”
“Only because I’m here in your bed. You’ll have forgotten about me by morning.”
Sadly, that was probably a fair comment. “But a child? Surely you didn’t think a baby would bring you anything but pain?”
“You had to be there, Cayal. It’s not that easy to explain.”
“What did the others say when they learned Rance had taken it?”
“Nothing much,” she told him. “At least not in my hearing. Engarhod was singularly unsympathetic. And Elyssa suggested it was my own fault.”
“So who gave birth to this cat creature Rance wanted?”
“Elyssa. I found out later that she’d birthed most of the first generation. I think she was tired of being pregnant, which is why Rance asked me.”
“Did someone finally order a mortal slave to sleep with her?”
I felt, rather than saw, Medwen smiling against my chest. “That’s a cruel thing to suggest.”
“But probably true.”
She turned in my arms, and looked up at me, her dark eyes glittering in the gloom. “Will you go, Cayal? Will you do as Brynden asks?”
“I want to talk to Lukys again first.”
“Why?”
“As I said at dinner, he has a way of putting things into perspective. You know…that skill we immortals sadly lack?”
“Do you trust him?”
I looked at her in surprise. “Don’t you?”
She laid her head down again so I could no longer read her expression. “I sometimes think he’s the most dangerous one of us all.”
I laughed softly. “Lukys?”
“He wants to rule the whole galaxy.”
“Every immortal needs a hobby, Medwen.”
She slapped my bare chest impatiently. “I’m not kidding, Cayal. This is serious. We point at Syrolee and Engarhod and roll our eyes at the way their family scrabbles for power every time the Tide turns. We even think Brynden and Kinta are a little odd for setting themselves up as gods in this dismal abbey, making a virtue out of grim austerity. But think about it for a moment. What does Lukys do with his immortality? He’s as powerful as any of you who can wield the Tide and yet he disappears for centuries at a time. He never stops trying to test the limit of his power. He doesn’t care about lording it over the mortal population, and he makes a point of helping every other immortal find their way, so we all end up thinking of him as our best friend. Why? Because he’s nice? Because he has a pet rat? Or because he wants immortal minions the same way Syrolee and Engarhod want their army of feline Crasii?”
“Lukys only cares about his astrology,” I disagreed. “He doesn’t want to rule us.”
“He’s trying to find a way to reach the stars,” she reminded me. “Not just study them. We have forever, Cayal. Eventually he may discover i
t, and then we’ll no longer be equals because while Tryan and Jaxyn and the rest of you with more power than sense are causing cataclysms on Amyrantha to amuse yourselves, he’ll be realigning the planets to suit his whim and there won’t be one of us with the knowledge or the ability to stop him.”
I tightened my arm around her gently, bending my head forward to kiss the top of her head. “What are you saying, Medwen? That I should forget Rance and your child and try to take down Lukys and his wretched rat instead?”
She shook her head, sighing. “No. I’m not sure what I’m saying. I just think we all put far too much store in Lukys’s opinion.”
“I’ll bear your warning in mind when next I speak to him, my lady.”
“Now you’re patronising me.”
“Sorry.”
“No, you’re not.” After a moment, she turned to look at me again, her expression fierce. “Bring me back my baby, Cayal.”
“If I can.”
“If you can’t, will you make Rance suffer?”
“It’ll be my pleasure.”
“How?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea.”
“He took my baby, Cayal.”
“I know.”
“He has to suffer.”
“I’ll make him suffer,” I promised, trying not to seem impatient with her demands. I knew Medwen was hurting, but she was wallowing a little too comfortably in her pain. Tides, it happened eleven years ago, an unsympathetic voice in my head was complaining. Get over it.
I said nothing aloud, however, and soon Medwen laid her head against my chest again, her dark hair tickling my nose. She was silent for a time—so long, I thought she must have drifted off to sleep. When she finally spoke, her question stunned me.
“Cayal,” she asked softly in the darkness, “do you ever wish you could die?”
I hesitated before answering. “I’ve never really given it much thought.”
“I never thought about it much, either. Not until Rance took my baby.”
The Immortal Prince Page 35
