The Immortal Prince Read Online Free

nothing in Warlock felt compelled to offer himself up to his master.
    Maybe it wears off, he thought, this need to serve the suzerain. It was a thousand years since they’d been heard from last. Not since the last Cataclysm.
    Or perhaps it’s Low Tide. Warlock had no way of knowing the moods of the Tide Star. He was of a race created by magic, not one able to sense or wield it.
    He was still pondering the mystery when another sound coming from the distant guardroom caught his notice. The faint scraping of a chair, the scuff of leather against stone, mumbled apologies, a promise to return…One of the warders getting ready to do his rounds.
    Warlock glanced through the bars but there was no telltale flicker of torchlight heading his way yet. He took a step back, however, long experience having taught him how threatened the guards were by his mere presence, let alone any stance they judged to be overtly aggressive.
    He didn’t mind that they feared him. If anything, it gave him some small sense of self in this place designed to sap all trace of spirit from a creature’s soul—Crasii or human. Knowing the guards considered him dangerous meant he was still alive; still capable of action. Warlock would rather have died than spend a lifetime cowering in the corner of his cell.
    Booted footsteps against the flagstones alerted him to the approaching guard, even before he saw the light coming around the corner of the narrow stone passage. He could tell by the scuffing rhythm of his walk that it was Goran Dill, the garrulous, fat corporal fond of ale and collecting orchids. It was a strange hobby for a prison guard, the corporal readily admitted, but he was always willing to chat to his charges, as if by befriending them, he somehow lessened the danger to himself. Warlock had wanted to respond that it was a strange hobby for any man, but no sane prisoner upset one of the few even remotely decent guards in this hellhole, so he’d smiled and nodded and tried to sound interested as Dill explained about colours, variations, and habitats of flowers he’d only heard about and never seen.
    One does what one must to survive in this place.
    The light grew steadily stronger as Goran Dill approached. Warlock smelled him long before he came into view. The man reeked of stale sweat, dirty leather and the faint perfume of the flowers he so adoringly tended.
    When he reached the cells, Goran raised the hissing torch and squinted through the flickering light into the gloom.
    â€œCan’t sleep, eh, dog boy?” he remarked, when he caught the shine of Warlock’s eyes in the torchlight.
    â€œNot with that racket going on across the way,” Warlock replied, jerking his head in the direction of the cell where the groaning suzerain was incarcerated.
    Goran cocked his head and listened for a moment. The man was babbling incoherently again in some foreign tongue that neither the Crasii nor the guard understood.
    â€œHow long’s he been groaning and mumbling like that?”
    â€œAll night.”
    The guard shrugged. “Should’ve died when he was supposed to. Then he wouldn’t be having these troubles.”
    Goran’s lack of sympathy was hardly surprising and Warlock knew exactly how he felt, but he needed to sleep and that wasn’t going to happen with a man screaming in agony across the hall.
    â€œCan’t you give him something?”
    â€œWhat do I look like? A flankin’ pharmacist?”
    â€œKnock him unconscious, then,” Warlock suggested. “Better yet, let me in there for a minute or two. I’ll shut him up.”
    Goran seemed amused. “Yeah…right…there’s an idea. I’ll let you at him, eh, dog boy? And how would I explain him being dead in the morning?”
    â€œTrust me, Corporal Dill, of all the things that you may or may not have to explain in the morning, your friend across the hall there dying isn’t among