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“When in Mar?” Perl’s voice is strange.

“When the moon waxed.”

Silently, Perl turns to Damon. Damon says it softly. “I was born when it waned.”

“Lukas is the oldest Darek?” Elric says, sounding amazed.

“This, this cannot be,” says Perl. “The warrior, the thief. They are first and second, it is in the writings of my father.”

“Actually no,” Jemel says, sounding the most in control of his wits out of anyone who has yet spoken. “The writing does not say the warrior is born before the thief. Simply that the warrior is born of a whore from Ib and the thief of a washerwoman. A whore from Ib, a washerwoman, a mummer of Archilla, a Lady of Fanost and, I suppose, the Immurite. The order in which the Five Fae Princes were born was never important.”

Hearing that stated so simply, Damon thinks how strange it is that Perl knew all of this years before he was even born. Perl knew all that was to come. Perl found these five women and put them in his father’s path.

“But my father always claimed I was his eldest son. His first born,” Damon says.

Suki nods. “I think he saw it that way. He loved Black Eyes. He went into the night when he knew her time was near. He saw you delivered from her into the world.

He cared for your mother far more than he cared for mine. She delivered Lukas on a pile of rags in the laundry at the Rose Palace and went back to work. Lukas was more than a moon old before your father knew of him. To Prince Rafus, you were his first born.” Suki sighs, as if what she speaks of is painful, old wounds, long forgotten, but never fully healed. Lukas. Lukas and his mother.

Damon reaches out and takes her hand. “Please, what happened? Tell me how Lukas came into this world. Or what you can of it.”

“I was six turns when my mother became pregnant with my brother. And she told me that the father of her child was Prince Rafus. But she was full of woe. She loved Rafus. But she knew his heart would never be hers. For he loved a whore called Black Eyes who was also pregnant with his child. My mother knew Rafus would never care for her child the way he delighted in the babe growing in Black Eyes’s belly. So she did not even tell him of hers. Perhaps to protect herself from that. He had lain with her but once and then showed no interest in seeing her again, for he had met his great love. All the while she was pregnant she resolved never to tell him the child was his. But a little less than a moon’s turn after Lukas was born, she heard that Black Eyes had died delivering her child. So she changed her mind and told Rafus of her own babe. I think she thought he would delight in this son and a mother not dead. But he was so deep in his grief for Black Eyes. He had her buried in the fields north of the Gleam, and he would spend his days there mourning her with his infant son in his arms. He did not welcome my mother when she came to him with news of Lukas. He bid her leave and raise the child with me. He acknowledged Lukas as his blood before the Rose Council, but he did not ask to see the child. He was kind enough to us. In his way. He provided for us. But he raised Damon as a prince. He was never so interested in Lukas. I don’t think he ever asked when the babe had been born.”

“He declared Lukas to the Rose Council in Mulce,” Perl says. “Doroth told me. All thought he was declaring a child who had just been born, not one he had only just discovered.”

“So Rafus lied?” Elric says to Suki. “Lukas’s own father lied to him about this?”

“Lukas was seven turns when he went to live with Prince Rafus in the Tower of the Heir,” Suki says. “When our mother died. I never saw him after that. If my mother had told him this story before, he does not remember. Rafus raised him as Damon’s younger brother by a moon. I suppose he wanted the child of his favoured woman, his great love, to be his first born son. Whether he knew this was false, I do not know.”

Damon sits down heavily and sighs. Suki’s statement, that he is not his father’s eldest son, should be foremost in his mind. But it is the other details that strike him more. His father always called Black Eyes his great love. But Damon had always thought that love stemmed from Black Eyes giving him a child, after his marriage to Karo had been fruitless. But perhaps that was not the case. Perhaps his love for Black Eyes was truly about the woman Damon’s mother was. And his love for her was so great that he proclaimed Damon’s birth as his first child, even when he discovered he had another son, born of a washerwoman he had lain with only once.

Damon wonders what Lukas would make of this if he were here. Would he be pleased to hear he was older than Damon, or heartbroken at his mother's mistreatment?

But what strikes Damon the most deeply is knowing that Rafus was there at his birth. That he left in the night to be beside her bed as Damon came into the world. And that his mother has a grave in the fields north of the Gleam. His father took him there as a babe. He feels Lyr’s hand on his shoulder and turns to look at him. Lyr’s face is blurred and Damon realises his eyes are full of tears.

Lyr pulls Damon into his arms. This grief is old. It should not feel so sharp.

The moment breaks when Harok stands up suddenly. Damon looks up at him. His eyes are black.

Tobi screams. “The demon,” he cries, voice stricken. “It has him too.”

But Harok shakes his big head, reaching out a hand to Tobi. He takes him by the shoulder, but as he does so, his mouth opens strangely, as if he is not in full control of what he is doing. He speaks in Artemian. “Brothers mine. I will allow one of you to enter the zhilvar. The Lordling. Only him. Send him to me.”

Elric stands. “That’s Lukas. I must go to him.”

“Absolutely not,” says Damon. “Ur-Durik gets what he wants by giving men what they want. He is offering you what you want in order to use you.”

50

ELRIC

Elric stares out of the window at the forest. They have been trying to find a way to get into the strange mist covering the zhilvar all day without success. And for what purpose if they managed it? To kill Lukas.

According to Harok, Lukas will be able to control the demon for some time as it gets used to his body. But they have no idea how long. The demon wants to open the vault. The vault is in the zhilvar. How long can Lukas stop it from happening?

Elric feels sick.

He cannot have lost Lukas again. He simply cannot.