Page 90

“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.”