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“He is here,” Harok says. “He is…”

“He is here,” Lukas says. Perl looks at him. His eyes flash black. He stares back at all of them, his gaze resting on Damon for a moment, before he turns, races forward, grabs Atticul’s body, ripping the chains away and hoisting it up onto his shoulder with a strange strength, before he bolts. Out of the hall.

“Bastard!” Elric shouts. He goes to run after him, but Harok moves faster, pulling away from Tobi and racing across to grab hold of Elric. “No, Lordling. No,” he says in heavily-accented Artemian.

Damon is running across the courtyard, following Lukas into the zhilvar. Perl is right behind him. But before Damon reaches the edge of the zhilvar it fills with a strange mist, closing around Lukas like thick smoke, heavy and grey. Damon gets to the edge of the mist, but when he tries to step into it, he cries out in pain. Blisters rise on his arm as if he has plunged it into poison.

Baffled, he tries again. Again the mist stings his skin.

Perl watches horror struck. They cannot get into the zhilvar. They cannot get to Lukas. Ur-Durik has reached the vault.

49

DAMON

Damon quickly has to give up his attempts to force his way into the zhilvar, the mist stings like lye. He cannot will his body into it. Beaten, he returns to the Sacred Hall and the baffled faces of all his company.

The Great Irgorye seems recovered. The Shard, Perl confirms, is still inside him, but gained power when Atticul was so close.

Harok tells his side of it in steady Ambolk, Perl providing the translation. “The Shard inside me was angered to discover it was not whole. I think before it encountered the better part of itself, it believed it was a whole demon. Now it is quiet. Quieter than before. Perhaps it is humbled to learn such.” He gives Damon a small smile.

Harok knows, like they all do, that the condition of the Shard is a minor issue.

Perl says, “We can be sure Ur-Durik left Atticul when his body died. As for where it went. It does seem likely it went into Lukas. However, we cannot be certain and with the Shard silent there is no way to confirm that. Perhaps Lukas ran for some other reason.”

“What other reason?” says Elric sourly. He is perched on Harok’s lap. From the look of him, he has been sobbing in Harok’s arms all the time Damon was fighting to get inside the zhilvar. He has a cup of mead in front of him, half empty.

“But how,” Damon says to Harok. “How can it be inside Lukas?”

Beside Harok is his mother. A tall woman in green robes. She says something in Ambolk and Perl supplies, “She says he is not a king. It should not be so.”

Inga, the leader of the Mortingales, leans forward from further down the table. She has one arm bandaged, no doubt an injury from the battle and seeing it, Damon feels a vicious stab of guilt that he was not there. There were many injuries and deaths, he knows. And through it all, he lay abed. “What about being the leader of the Mortingales?” she says.

“Was he your leader?” Damon asks. He is sure if Lukas was the leader of a band of outlaws he would have crowed about it endlessly. “I thought that was you?”

“Abel, my father, who was leader before me, told Lukas he would succeed him if he made a pact with the Plumians, which he did. If he claimed to be leader, I would not block his way.” She leans back.

Damon looks around. Could that be it? Lukas is some kind of outlaw king and that was enough for Ur-Durik, with nowhere else to go?

It is Suki, Lukas’s sister, who speaks next. She is standing close to Elric, holding his hand. “It is not that,” she says. “It is something far simpler than that. I understand that when you banished the demon from Atticul with the five swords you protected Harok, as Irgo of the Amber Forest, Umbert as Atticul’s named heir and you Damon, as there is a question over who Atticul’s true heir must be. But you see, if one of Rafus’s bastards could be Atticul’s heir, then that bastard son is Lukas, not you Damon.”

Damon frowns at Suki. “What do you mean?”

Perl, standing behind Kerik’s chair, says, “Damon is Rafus’s eldest son.” But then he pauses. He thinks for a moment. “Black Eyes and Suza both became pregnant with Rafus’s progeny at the same time. But Black Eyes delivered her son, Damon, a moon before Lukas was born.” He pauses again, as if searching his memory. “I was not in Attar at that time, I was in Jur-Mattan with, with Jareleezi. But I was in touch with Doroth. He told me of the first son born and then he told me of the second.” Perl pauses, a strange look on his face, as if he is unsure of these facts. Perhaps because they came from Doroth. “But why would Doroth lie about such a thing? What could he gain?”

He looks at Damon. “When was Lukas born?” Perl says.

“The eighth year of Emperor Erond’s reign.”

“What moon,” says Perl, face pale.

“Moon of Mar,” Suki says.

“As was I,” says Damon, slowly.

“I was told Lukas had been born during the moon of Mulce,” Perl says.

“It was Mar,” Suki says. “I was there. I held him bloody and squawling, still bound to our mother.