The second man opened Kemses’s gut; he pulled his entrails back into the hole, pressed a hand over them and fought that way until the skin closed. His broken arm he used to club his opponent until the bones snapped back together. When the third elf shattered his thigh I thought then he would be dragged to the fire but he wound his fingers in his opponent’s blouse and jerked him so close he could wrap the good leg around his hips: there the two of them struggled, tangled too close for either to reach the nearest bonfire.
By the fourth opponent, his magic seemed relegated to the healing of insult.
By the sixth opponent, the light in Kemses’s skin had been doused. He fought on pure will alone.
By the seventh, his wounds were healing so slowly they draped long tongues of blood and gore down his back and sides, down the front of his belly. In that final contest, he showed himself to be a presence... economical, relentless, burned to purity by the effort he expended merely to stay alive. Somehow he threw that seventh to the fire, leaving him to confront the final elf in the challenger’s train, a powerful male who flowed onto the arena’s ground with all the grace of someone rested and thirsty for revenge.
“Tornen e Ekadet,” Kemses said, leaning heavily on one of the fire poles.
The other snorted. “This is over, e Sadar. You know it. I left the strongest for last.”
“You don’t care at all that all of your sons and nephews are dead,” Kemses said, voice ragged.
“Of course not. They were troublesome. Why else request a line duel?” The male shrugged, lifted his spear. “If one of them had killed you, well. We would have Erevar. If you killed them all, well again. You have relieved me of their ambitious quarrels. This emphasis on family is old-fashioned, e Sadar. Where there is no death, there is no need for legacy.”
“Break,” Kemses said.
Tornen sighed. “If you must. You know you are merely prolonging the inevitable. Look at you, Kemses. And you have only the pitiful two humans left to feed from, and they’re well and truly depleted.”
“Still,” Kemses said.
The elf sighed and waved a hand. “Go to your pathetic pets. I’ve waited twenty years to do this. I can wait a little more.”
Kemses turned and limped toward his pet humans. Galen struggled to stand, but could not manage; the woman rose to her knees and reached for him.
“No,” he said roughly. “Not that. Just... hold me.”
“My lord,” she said. “Oh, please. You will die if we do not.”
“And you will die if I do,” he said.
“Death... comes to... all of us,” Galen said. “Let... ours have... meaning.”
Kemses suffered the woman’s arms around his hips, but did not come nearer.
“Please,” she said. “If you die, beloved... then the only safe place for the non-elven falls with you. Our deaths are as nothing against that tragedy.”
“I know,” Kemses said hoarsely. His head slowly fell until it rested against theirs, against their black curls. “I know. And still... I can’t. I can’t.”
“My lord,” the man said, struggling.
“No.”
The word, I discovered, had come from my mouth. As the three of them craned their heads toward me, I said, “Take from me.”
“You?” Kemses asked. “You don’t know what you offer.”
“Oh, trust me,” I said with a laugh. “I know. So come and get it before my will falters.”
“I don’t feed on the unwilling,” Kemses said.
“Damn it,” I said. “I’m too tired to argue with you. Stop being a martyr and come drink like every other elf.”
“Go!” the woman urged.
He glanced at her and the man, then heaved himself to his feet. I could feel the effort it took for him to move; my resolve hardened as he approached. I didn’t know when I’d become willing to let him do what those others had done to me at Amoret’s kennel. Perhaps it had been the woman’s despair at his injury, the man’s trust in his arms. Perhaps it was as simple as wanting to right the injustice of a man losing a duel to the death because his enemy’s entire family was allowed to fight him at once. I only knew as he drew nigh that what I did was right. This was mine to do. Had somehow always been mine to do.
Kemses e Sadar faced me. His silver hair had gone gray and lusterless with blood and sweat. His skin held no magic glimmer. What stood before me now was an ink wash of an elf, colorless and wan. “If you are certain,” he said at last.
“Yes,” I answered. “You... might find me difficult to feed from. And I’ll be sick afterwards. But it should work.”
Kemses said, “Then I accept, gladly, gratefully. Only tell me your name. I would know all the men and women who grant me their strength.”
“I am Morgan Locke of Evertrue,” I said. I pulled the pendant free of my blouse. “And I am the Red Prince of Serala.” Before he could object, I took his wrist and drew him into my arms and willed him to feel the magic bound in my blood.
Kemses choked on a groan and gathered me against his body, the weight of his head resting on mine, and there was a rushing in my ears. The snap and roar of the bonfires receded. The sepia-and-blood-tinted arena fell away. He stank of pain-sweat and exertion, of blood and spilled viscera and ranker things. What little clothing he wore barely shifted against my hands, adhered to his skin. The lank tresses of hair that fell forward to shield us did so in matted ropes. He surrounded me, became everything. My heart slowed... his raced... our breathing mingled, synchronized. And then I felt the peace of the communion...
...just before he took of my offering.
The demons screamed in my head and the thorns in my blood dug into me and I paid for that first sip in agony. Instantly he stopped, and my fingers shook against his back, dug into him.
“TAKE IT!”
“You’re dying!”
“I can’t die!” I cried, writhing. “Finish it!”
“Morgan—”
“Damn you, e Sadar,” I snarled. “I rank you! Finish it!”
Startled, he dropped his ghostly hands back into my spirit and combed the magic free, fought my blood for it, drank as a white explosion swept my sight to blindness and deafened me and my entire body howled. I slumped in his arms, felt him trembling. Hands caught me, lowered me to the ground as I began to convulse. I would miss the fight, but I knew he would win... because his passage bruised my senses, set them on glorious fire. His presence sang, and the world around him parted in joyful humility and no elf, no matter how fresh or how puissant, would match him now. I would not witness his triumph, but my hand would be in it all the same. I smiled before I passed out.
I woke to diffuse sunlight, a warm breeze and the scent of pennyroyal. My body ached in every particular and my skin felt raw and bruised, but my thoughts ran clear and unfettered and I was glad of that one mercy. Gingerly, I sat up on an elbow and formed a blurry impression of a small but airy room, of wind and clean sheets and an open door leading outside where palm-shaped shadows shimmered in the corner of my vision.
There was a night-table. Groping it revealed my glasses, and I had just set them on my nose when the interior door opened.
“Ah, you are awake.”
I squinted at my visitor. “Galen... yes?”
He nodded. His complexion had improved since I’d seen him last, having recaptured some of that nascent glow I had begun to associate with the magic of living things. “Are you well?” he asked. “Shall I find you food?”
The mere thought of food curdled my stomach. I was not so well as that, then. “Water, please,” I said. “Nothing else.”
“As you wish,” he said. “My lord would like to see you, if you feel well enough for it.”
“I’m in condition for that,” I said. I would have had to have been sicker by far to turn down an audience with the first elf I’d observed who hadn’t presented like an amoral monster.
Galen nodded and stepped back toward the door. There he paused. “Thank you,” he said. “For
my lord’s life.”
I tried to think of a response either pithy or appropriate and could only answer, “You’re welcome.”
He closed the door behind him.
I lay back down and closed my eyes, conserving my strength. Little doubt of it: I was exhausted, and I had no genets to assuage my aches and no poppy to cushion my mind. It would not be long before the pain and the nausea redoubled and I would have to find surcease in sleep or beg drugs from my host. What a humiliation. I sighed and turned my face from the door, trying to concentrate on the fresh softness of the breeze.
When the door opened next I expected Galen and the water, or perhaps a servant. I should not have been surprised to find Kemses there instead with a ceramic pitcher. He had a wholly different demeanor outside the arena; in this kind room, he seemed of one piece with the white sunlight, the light green shadows. Even the silver of his hair seemed to disguise hints of something green beneath, like the canescence of a plant’s most tender leaves.
He came to my bedside and drew up a stool, and there he poured me a bowl of water which I allowed him to help me drink. And then I fell back against the pillows and breathed against my own weakness.
“My lord,” Kemses said.
I smiled without opening my eyes. “And just like that you believe my story. On the strength of a piece of steel shaped like a pedigree and my word.”
“That alone, perhaps not,” Kemses said. “But you do not have a human’s magic.”
That made me look at him, brow arched. “If that were true, then Amoret’s human-keepers would surely have noticed it while they were feeding on me.”
He winced but did not look away. “It is not necessarily so, my lord prince.”
I lifted a finger to stop him. “I want to hear this,” I said. “But not before you stop with the “my lord” and “my prince.” I’m just Morgan. Morgan Locke.”
“You are definitively more than that,” Kemses said with the first trace of humor I’d heard from him. Sardonic.
“Maybe so,” I said. “But until I stop looking like this I’m just another human slave and you people are... well.” I stopped, discomfited, then found a crooked smile of my own. “Like gods, really. Capricious, vain and monstrous ones.”
That flinch was much harder. Kemses looked away. “Very well, Morgan Locke,” he said. “Tell me something. If you grab at a thing, do you not have a better chance of breaking it?”
“Yes,” I said, curious.
“And you do not sense the details of its surface quite so well as you would if you were to carefully lift it, run your fingers over its surface, cradle it.”
“No, of course not,” I said. “You’re saying that elves who rape their slaves aren’t going to sense any of the fine details of their magic.”
“Yes,” he said.
“I wouldn’t think ‘I’m an elf, not a human’ would be a fine detail,” I said. “Though I am of course no magical theoretician.”
Kemses laughed. “Perhaps not. But there is a layer of you that floats above that truth, easy to steal, easy to be sated on. And then there is a layer beneath the brambles, and there that truth resides. You are one of us. More than that, I think you are a great power, held in check or reduced, but... yes. I could imagine you a prince.”
“So is it by power alone that you choose your royalty?” I asked.
“It is by necessity,” Kemses said. “Those with the potential to be monarchs are born with the royal gifts, because the duties of the royalty require great power. Or they did, when we had kings instead of this thrice-damned council which accomplishes nothing but make excuses for new wars.”
I thought I could not imagine a system more ripe for abuse than a human monarchy until Kemses advanced this elven version to me. The notion of putting into power the most powerful person one could find, with no checks or balances... the thought was so appalling I was almost awestruck. The notion that I would have to rescue the elven king and set him loose on this already corrupt and depraved society horrified me.
And yet, I would have no cure from my condition otherwise. Unless...
“I don’t suppose, given that you could sense this in me, that you could undo this... ah... seeming I’m wearing?”
“Alas no,” Kemses said. “Whatever it is that poisons your blood and paints that facade on you, it is greater, far greater than my small ability to unravel. You would have to find an elven king for that. Or a sorcerer on par with Sedetnet.”
And then I narrowed my eyes at him. “If his power is equivalent to a king’s, why isn’t he king?”
“It is the wrong kind of power,” Kemses said. “He lacks the royal blood-gifts. Drink?”
I accepted the bowl, could actually hold it without his aid though my fingers trembled. “Explain,” I said. “Please.”
“The king’s duty is to move magic to where it is most needed,” Kemses said. “You must understand, in the beginning we considered ourselves wardens of the world. The magic we all generated was not ours to wield for personal gain. We released it gladly to the king, so that he could send it to where there was danger and need, to augment the power of the elves there in their struggles. That is a very specific talent, that ability to redistribute the magical energy of an entire people, and it comes only from the blood, rising in the blood. That is how a king is known. It does not matter how much power an elf wields. If he cannot tap into the power of all elves and balance it to need, he is no king.”
“How am I a prince, then, if I don’t have it?”
“You would not have the king-gifts,” Kemses said, “But the prince-gifts. They are similar, but not the same.”
“I cannot imagine I have these either.”
“I don’t know that you do not,” Kemses said. “I only know that you have enough potential in you to be capable of it. Whether the talent exists in you...” He shrugged. “We cannot know until you are freed from this binding that trammels you.”
I sighed. Of course it would not be so easy. “Where are my genets?”
“Sleeping with the others,” he said. “I can have them brought?”
“No,” I said. “Let them rest. They’ve been through a great deal, suffering my weaknesses.” I glanced at him. “I came for help.”
“I imagine you need it,” Kemses said. “And even if I had not owed you my life for the gift you made me in the arena, you would still have it for being very possibly my prince. Ask.”
“I need passage to Kesína,” I said. “Safe passage.”
“Easily granted,” Kemses said. “And provisions also if you have need.” He canted his head. “Is there something specific you seek? It may be safer for me to send someone for it directly.”
I sighed. “Somehow I doubt that.” I smiled wryly. “I’m off to find your king.”
Kemses froze. “The king lives?” he asked carefully.
“Sedetnet seems to think so.”
The elf swayed back on the stool, remaining there, as if feeling some slight repulsion from my presence. His countenance had taken on a closed air.
The king lives, the demons whispered in my ear and I closed my eyes, pushing them away. “I take it,” I said, “that this isn’t welcome news.”
“Quite the contrary,” Kemses said. His fingers flexed on the stool’s edge, one after the other, as if he played an arpeggio. “But I have long since ceased to hope. We’ve heard rumors before and they have always been false. The purported king was a fake, or it was just a way to rally more people to a blood-flag to start a new conflict. The council is always looking for reasons to start new conflicts.”
“I don’t entirely understand that,” I said. “Why? War is wasteful.”
“Exactly,” he said. “The more people are destroyed, the more land, the more resources there are for the rest of us.”
“I thought you were impossible to slay,” I said. “Certainly a battlefield doesn’t seem to offer the kind of nightmarish extremes necessary to really destroy one of you.”
“
It can happen,” Kemses said. “And if it didn’t, then it at least keeps the blood-flags focused on rending one another and not toppling the council.”
“And this council does what, exactly?” I asked.
“They elected themselves to replace the king when we came to exile here,” Kemses said. “Saying that since a king did not protect us from the catastrophe of humanity’s betrayal, that we should turn to other methods. And since no king rose to oppose them, they have remained. In theory they govern us, but in reality they tax us in money, land and humans, all of which they keep or squander.”
“It seems it is time to elect a new council,” I said.
He laughed then, shaking his head so that the sun slid up and down the fall of his hair, mazing my eyes. “Ah. Sometimes you seem very cynical, Master Locke... and other times, very naive indeed.”
I was reaching for the water, a retort on my lips, when the first tingle ran the length of my fingertips. Careful, I chafed them together and my teeth ached at their sensitivity. With a sigh, I set my glasses on the night-table and laced my fingers together over my chest, but that did not still their tremble. I closed my eyes and resigned myself to being humbled before my host.
“Is there—something is wrong.”
“I don’t suppose you have any opium,” I said, wry.
“I could contrive it,” Kemses said. “I did not take you for an addict.”
“Yes, well,” I said as my leg twitched, “you don’t know me very well.” And then the convulsions came and once again I paid for Kemses’s victory. His hands wrapped around my arms, burning my skin; his shouts deafened my ears. Soon enough I lost it all to a synesthesia of color and sound and drowned in the kaleidoscope, my world turned to stained glass and shattered.
The first impression that made sense, sense by itself, was the dark... and soon after, the dense scent of the poppy, heavy in the air like a scarf dragging across my face. The skin over my cheekbone felt too taut, stretched and raw and parched. The heat along my sides... the perfume of lilacs and musk.
An Heir to Thorns and Steel Page 22