Author's Note: Well, I decided to continue with book four instead of starting the sequel. Once again Lian/Imrahil/Vieraneth is trying to make the whole book about himself and once again it's going in directions I didn't intend. It isn't supposed to be a full-book-flashback to Lian's past, but damn it if he isn't trying to make it one.
Warning: contains animal death, self-harm/attempted suicide (...sort of?) and Lian being creepy.
"When he passed me in the restaurant," he said at last, "I had a curious impression. It was as though a wild animal – an animal savage, but savage! you understand – had passed me by."
"And yet he looked altogether of the most respectable."
"Précisément! The body – the cage – is everything of the most respectable – but through the bars, the wild animal looks out."
-- Agatha Christie, Murder on the Orient Express
The first son of Princess Hartanna and Prince Consort Mihasrin was born in the middle of summer. He was a strange baby, rarely crying and never smiling. As he grew older he smiled more, but no one ever saw him laugh or cry. His parents never noticed anything wrong with him. His older relatives -- aunts, uncles, and his half-brother -- did. If they tried to mention it to the boy's parents they'd be laughed at or told to mind their own business. So most of his relatives shrugged and dismissed their worries. Every family had at least one member who was slightly odd. It didn't mean there was anything truly wrong with him.
His half-brother Gilreon was the exception. He looked at Imrahil and knew there was something terribly wrong here.
The trouble was, if someone came up to him and asked him point blank what was wrong, he couldn't give an answer. It was a hundred tiny things, all unremarkable on their own but which added up to something sinister. It was the way Imrahil as a toddler had a terrible temper but no he never showed any negative emotion stronger than mild disapproval. It was the way he stared at blood as if it was the most interesting thing he'd ever seen. It was the way he was abnormally fond of hunting. It was the moments when Gilreon met Imrahil's eyes and saw nothing behind them -- or rather saw something so incredibly dark and ancient it was more comforting to think he saw nothing. It was the way he seemed to lower the temperature of a room just by walking into it. It was the way he occasionally caught Imrahil staring at him with a cold, calculating look that belonged on an adult's face, not an adolescent's.
It was almost a relief when the mask fell away. It was proof that Gilreon hadn't imagined it all.
No one in Kelthír Palace would ever forget that day. A month ago Uncle Vadhleo had given Imrahil a rabbit. It was an adorable little thing that always reminded Gilreon of a lokmor flower[1]. Imrahil had smiled and thanked his uncle for the present. He'd taken care of it and seemed fond of it.
On a bright, cheerful morning a maid went out to the garden and found Imrahil kneeling on the ground. He held a carving knife and his hands were soaked with blood. The rabbit lay dead in front of him. Its chest was sliced open.
~~~~
"Why did you kill the rabbit?"
Gilreon had never seen his mother so shaken. In the background his stepfather looked like he'd seen a ghost. Imrahil was the only person present who behaved as if nothing was wrong.
"I wanted to see what would happen," he said in his usual calm, even voice.
That voice had always unsettled Gilreon. He'd never been able to explain why before. Now he knew. It seemed to belong to someone much older than Imrahil. It was better suited to an adult than a child.
"You can't go around killing things just to see what will happen!" Mihasrin snapped. He was even paler than normal. He held onto his chair's arms like a drowning man would hold onto a rope, and his hands were shaking.
Imrahil blinked slowly. "Why not?"
~~~~
The first son of Princess Hartanna and Prince Consort Mihasrin was born in the middle of summer. A good omen, according to Saoridhin superstition. The priests and soothsayers told his parents that his birthdate meant he would have a long, peaceful life, and he was probably the reincarnation of a well-respected ancestor. Those remarks were reflected in his kelros-name Kirvoki[2] and erlor-name Imrahil[3].
Tradition and superstition said that children born in summer were warm and sunny people who felt things strongly. It was strange, then, that Imrahil always felt cold.
For as long as he could remember he had never known any warmth. His skin was cooler than his cousins' and no amount of blankets or heating spells would ever warm him. And he had never felt anything strongly in his life. It was as if there was a wall somewhere deep inside him and all his emotions were on the other side of it. He could feel them faintly but not like other children did.
His cousins cried and laughed at a moment's notice, threw tantrums when things didn't go their way, declared undying devotion to each other one day and deadly enmity the next. Imrahil never felt any of that.
"What a well-behaved little boy," strangers would tell his parents.
"We've never had a minute's trouble with him," his mother would say proudly. "He's a perfect little angel."
Some less polite adults would praise his behaviour, then remark on his eye colour. "Of course silver is a nice colour, but... well, his eyes are such a vivid silver."
Imrahil took note of everything that was said about him. He paid close attention to what made adults praise him and what made them slightly... not nervous exactly, but uncomfortable. And then he avoided the things that made them uncomfortable and did only the things that made them happy. His eye colour unnerved people, so he avoided eye contact unless he wanted to unnerve them.
His cousins and playmates dismissed him as an unbearable stuck-up little prig playing at being older than he was. He knew on an intellectual level that their comments were rude and should hurt him. But he didn't feel anything at all. They were unimportant and could do nothing to him. All that mattered was staying on good terms with the people who were important. His parents thought he was the perfect son. He had to keep playing that part. He had to be better than perfect.
Only one person looked at him and knew he was acting. Gilreon was in an odd position. Imrahil didn't know where exactly to classify him. He was technically the same generation as Imrahil and his cousins, therefore not worthy of notice. But he was over five hundred years older than Imrahil and therefore technically an adult who should be impressed by his "perfect" half-brother. He wasn't impressed. He watched Imrahil constantly, waiting for him to slip up. It was exhausting and it made Imrahil want to scream and throw things and claw at Gilreon's eyes until he stopped watching him--
At some point in his childhood Imrahil reached an age where his bones felt too heavy and his skin felt too tight. Light hurt his eyes. His teeth seemed too sharp and too blunt at the same time, and his tongue tied itself in knots when he tried to speak. The sun was too hot and it blazed down on him relentlessly. Imrahil just wanted to lie down somewhere and sleep. But his parents insisted on taking him to visit his great-aunt, and the perfect son would never complain.
That visit stood out in his mind for what happened before they left. His great-aunt cut him a slice of cake, but her hand slipped and the knife was sharper than she thought.
Imrahil stared at the blood dripping onto the table and couldn't take his eyes off it. He felt as if he had been hungry all his life and only knew now what he was hungry for. The blood was so bright and so red and he.
Was.
So.
Hungry.
He stood rooted to the spot for what felt like an eternity but must have been only a second. Then his mother shooed him out of the way as she offered her aunt a handkerchief. Imrahil staggered over to the window. His teeth were sharp against the inside of his mouth and his gums hurt.
~~~~
There was a legend in Saoridhlém. When the gods created immortals, an evil god meddled with the creations and turned some of them into monsters that hungered for the flesh or blood of their own kind. There was no way to tell who was a monster. They could be born from ordinary immortals. In some cases ordinary immortals could become monsters. But there was no way to turn a monster into an immortal. When a monster was discovered, it had to be killed.
Imrahil lay awake all that night. He wasn't afraid, or upset, or even particularly surprised. He felt somehow as if he'd been reminded of something he'd always known. All that remained was to find out what to do with his new knowledge.
~~~~
He didn't really want to hurt the rabbit. He just wanted to find out if he reacted to its blood in the same way. And once he cut it he couldn't stop.
~~~~
"Why did you kill the rabbit?"
"I wanted to see what would happen."
"You can't go around killing things just to see what will happen!"
"Why not?"
~~~~
The answer, it turned out, was that if Imrahil killed animals he would never be considered the perfect son again. It was so much more comfortable to be considered "perfect" than to have people mutter "there's something wrong with that boy", and he knew the latter would happen if he stopped playing his part.
So he behaved normally for years, while he quietly began experimenting with different sorts of magic behind his parents' back. A small secluded clearing in the forest behind his house was the perfect place to test spells on various plants and animals.
He didn't intend to start studying necromancy. He just wanted to make a bird obey him. And it was so much easier to kill the bird and puppeteer its corpse than to let it live and have to fight against its will to escape.
When he released his control on the bird it flew back up into the tree overhead and squawked indignantly down at him. Imrahil blinked. He'd snapped its neck. It had been dead and shouldn't be moving around without his magic controlling it. He reached out warily with his magic and found the bird was both alive and perfectly healthy. There wasn't so much as a fracture in its neck.
This required more investigation.
~~~~
Imrahil didn't feel pain as much as ordinary immortals did. All the same, he felt some mild trepidation about the prospect of cutting open his own wrist. He took a glass of jarage before he picked up the knife.
(Sometimes he wondered what would happen if he drank blood. Would he stay the same or become a ravenous monster? He had no way of finding out except by trying, and he wasn't ready to take that risk yet.)
The knife had been sharpened this morning before he "borrowed" it from the kitchen. It sliced through his skin easily. He watched the blood stream to the ground with mild curiosity. It turned out that the sight of his own blood didn't produce any sort of reaction.
He willed the wound to close. Before his eyes the skin knitted itself back together. There wasn't even a slight scar to show where he had cut.
I never heard of dark magic being used to heal, he thought. Then he had another thought. I wonder if I can use it to keep myself alive.
In hindsight it was a terrible idea. It was where everything went catastrophically wrong. But he had just succeeded in healing a potentially fatal injury, and the thought of death didn't frighten him.
He willed his heartbeat to stop. It slowed. It faded. It stopped. Minutes passed and he was still alive in spite of his lack of heartbeat. Then he willed it to start again. Slowly it returned to normal.
Imrahil stood up and walked around to make sure he wasn't suffering any side effects. Apart from a slight numbness in his chest he felt perfectly fine.
Now, what in the world was he to do with this new power?
Chapter Footnotes:
[1] lokmor flower = A white flower similar to a dandelion puff.
[2] Kirvoki = Means "tranquil" in Saoridhin.
[3] Imrahil was the name of a well-respected former emperor of Saoridhlém (the current empress's great-grandfather nine times removed).