The Chaos Crystal (19 page)

'I told you, Kinta —' Cayal began.

'Not from you,' she cut in, turning her attention to Kentravyon. 'From him.'

The immortal looked quite shocked to be singled out. 'Me? Why me?'

'Because you're the one who claims to know about these rifts to other worlds, Kentravyon,' Kinta said. 'You're the one who's saying that opening one will destroy Amyrantha. I want to know how you know that.'

'Lukys is the one you need to talk to. He knows more about it than I do.'

'Lukys isn't here,' Kinta pointed out. 'And even if he was, you're the one who claims to be God.'

Declan watched Kinta warily, glad he wasn't on the receiving end of that stare. Although of the four immortals here she commanded the least power, she was not — he decided — someone to be trifled with.

'I
am
God,' Kentravyon agreed simply.

'Which brings up another interesting question,' Cayal said, looking at Kentravyon thoughtfully. 'Who made you God, anyway?'

Declan shook his head at the futility of trying to get a rational explanation from a madman suffering delusions of divinity.

Tides, a few hours ago this man was giggling like a
schoolgirl, trying to catch fish with his hare hands.

Declan was about to mention this aloud when Kentravyon said, 'Of course, if Coryna hadn't started looking for a way to transfer her consciousness into a younger body, things might have turned out differently. We wouldn't have half the immortals we've got now for one thing, and Lukys wouldn't be so anxious to find a way to be rid of them all.'

Declan, Kinta and Cayal were all silent as they digested that unexpected statement. It was Declan who finally asked the question they all wanted answered.

'Who are you, Kentravyon
...
really?'

'And who, in the name of the Tides,' Kinta added, 'is Coryna?'

CHAPTER 19
 

My name was not always Kentravyon. To be honest, I can't remember what it was originally. I was made immortal as a youth. I might look like a mature man now, but that should give you some notion of how long I have been alive. You, who've not collected so much as a wrinkle or a grey hair in eight millennia, can't imagine what it must take for an immortal to age. Lukys is even older than I am and was little more than a lad when he met the Eternal Flame. Coryna and Maralyce — well, they are the oldest of us all.

I know what you're going to say, Declan. The Eternal Flame is a lie. You were made immortal with nothing more than a falling beam in a burning building. But it's an old habit to call it that. Fire — and fire only — is what makes us. It is the process of immolation that makes us immortal.

Provided — so we've discovered — you have the right ancestors, of course.

And that makes it difficult, you know, because it's next to impossible to keep track of these things. Mortals flash past us like sparks in the night from a fire stoked into life. You plan to keep track. You know your seed is strong with a life-force no mortal can match. But you can't stay in one place for too long, or people start to notice you. So you move on, never really sure which child is yours
...

Until young Declan here — and it was a stroke of luck, not planning, that he learned the truth. Even so, it's rare for one of us to push the matter so far. It is no

easy thing being immortal and those of us who understand that would not willingly bestow godhead on another unless there was a compelling reason to do so. Lukys tells me he was going to let you live and die in peace. But you found a fire without help from us, and discovered our secret.

Except there is no secret about who we are. We are what
you
will become.

By 'we' I mean those of us not of this world. There were five of us who stepped through the rift during the last King Tide. Me, Maralyce, Pellys, Lukys
...
and Coryna. There were more of us, once, but only six of us inhabited the last world we called home. Tameca stayed behind when we left it. Like you, Cayal, she'd had enough. It was her time, she believed, to die. She held the rift open for us, and the last one through almost never survives. So you see, Lukys is not lying to you about that. If you anchor the rift, you'll more than likely not survive the closing of it.

The rest of the immortals who make up that silly Tarot the mortals of this world have invented are of this world, which is something we try to avoid as a rule. We haven't even been here that long. Although by your standards, at any rate, I suppose we have. So a certain mixing of the bloodlines is inevitable. It's not good that there are so many immortals here. That's part of the reason it's time to move on.

So, we're not who you think we are. We came here before there were people, before there was much of anything, really. Tides, the ham-fisted way you amateurs found to make the Crash made us cringe. You have no concept, none of you, of how to truly manipulate the stuff of life, or the patience to sit back and wait for it to happen. The game is one that requires infinite patience. To set something in motion, tweak it a little here and there, until you have a whole world that is so finely crafted, so gloriously interconnected, that every living thing on it is

interdependent on every other living creature. That's not science — it's art.

That's
what it is to be God. But none of you understands that. Yet.

And your stupid power games. Tides, we watch Syrolee and her family jostling to rule some backward kingdom and it makes us want to weep — not for the power they seek, but that they are willing to settle for so little. They seize an empire and think they're kings. With a little more finesse, they could be true gods.

Like me.

But I digress. You asked about Coryna
...
or Coron
...
whatever you want to call her. She has many names on many worlds and on most of them she is a goddess. I don't know how long she has been alive, but I do know this much — she has been alive long enough for her to worry that she is growing old.

I'm not sure what started her worrying about it. Perhaps she thought if her beauty faded, Lukys's heart might start to wander. I can't imagine why she'd be concerned about that. There is no limit to what Lukys will do for Coryna, no length to which he is not prepared to go, no sacrifice too great, no deed so foul that he'd not perform it willingly if she commanded him.

I've witnessed many great love affairs in my time, more than a few that became legend on their worlds, but there is nothing in either the mortal world or fiction to compare with the dedication Lukys has for his lover. You need to remember that, children, because even when you
think
he's helping you, everything he does, every thought he has, every move he makes, is in some way connected to her.

I include my own ice-bound incarceration in that. You thought you were helping to contain me because I'm insane, I suppose. Lukys tells me that's the story he fed you all. Truth is, Lukys was more interested in what a few thousand years in the ice would do to an immortal.

My social experiments with xenophobia and monotheism had little to do with it, other than giving him a plausible excuse to co-opt you to his cause. This time, in order to gain your cooperation to channel the power he needs, he's offering Cayal a chance to die. 1 don't doubt for a moment that he intends to honour his promise, mind you. But it's not the only reason. The true reason is Coryna.

Remember that — nothing Lukys does is ever for the reason you think it is.

And that includes coming to Amyrantha. Lukys said this world would be easier to manipulate, but it was Coryna's fear of growing old that brought us to Amyrantha, not anything else we might have gained from coming here.

The last world we inhabited was nothing like this one. It was warm and vibrant and we treated it like our personal playground. We built creatures to keep us entertained — from the tiniest insects to behemoths the size of sailing ships. Not in the clumsy way you constructed the Crash, but with finesse — with the smallest of changes on the most minute level and then we let nature take its course. It was indescribably diverse and beautiful, our immortal playground, and we lived in relative peace with it and each other for a very,
very
long time
...

And then we grew bored. It happens
...
always happens
...
and we started to recall worlds before this one, and what it had been like to have creatures made in our own image to interact with
...
someone other than ourselves to talk to. The veneer of paradise began to fade once we began to recall what that was like.

We started to hunger for another challenge.

We weren't really planning to move on, that I recall. We were just fidgety and bored and talking about it really, but then the Tide came in and it was going to be a King Tide and Coryna reminded us that

if we didn't move now, we'd not be able to move again until the next King Tide and that might be a thousand or a hundred thousand years away.

So we dusted off the Chaos Crystal, opened the rift, and stepped out on Amyrantha.

We brought enough creatures and vegetation with us to get things moving on this world without having to start again from scratch, and before long — at least by our definition of
before long
— we had a world able to sustain human life. After that we did what we always do — we let nature take its course.

I'll admit we didn't leave
everything
to chance. We all contributed our own seed to create our very own race of mortals made in our image, so in a way, every human on Amyrantha is descended from one of us. The spark is dim in some, but in others it burns a little brighter. I suppose that's the reason we ended up with so many of you. After the accident in Cuttlefish Bay that resulted in Syrolee, Tryan, Elyssa, and the rest of them, it became apparent that our carelessness had created a pool of potential immortals who were going to cause us problems if we didn't limit their numbers. Tides
...
and then Diala started trying to make them
deliberately,
and things got really messy there for a while.

We thought about stopping her, but Lukys advised against it. I know Maralyce was all for it, and so was Pellys. At least until Cayal cleaved his head from his shoulders. It's not the first time he's done that, either, which is why he's such a simpleton. Each time a little less of him grows back, I fear. And if you'd bothered to ask about the consequences, Cayal, we could have told you the danger you were courting by trying to decapitate an immortal. But you didn't ask, did you? Too busy playing the noble friend and hero to stop and think about the consequences.

Tides, there is nothing worse than a well-intentioned immortal.

Anyway, after the others were made immortal and Diala started her minion-making, we worried what it would mean if we revealed the truth about the Eternal Flame — which was Engarhod's idea, I believe. He took what Lukys told him about fire making him immortal quite literally. The flame that Cayal extinguished in Glaeba started out as a remnant of the ship destroyed near Jelidia several thousand years before, I believe; the same flame that burned down the brothel in Cuttlefish Bay.

Lukys was living in Cuttlefish Bay. He was on that ship to Jelidia because of Coryna.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. I was talking about how the story of the Eternal Flame got started. Cayal had his tantrum and rid us of the Flame eventually, which was a blessing to those of us who knew the truth, and that was the end of any new immortals for a while. That you are here now, Declan, and can trace your ancestry, means Lukys is tampering again, trying to make a new immortal.

That is because of Coryna, too.

And he has Maralyce helping him, I don't doubt, even though she'd probably deny it. Her devotion to Coryna, while not as obsessive as Lukys's love, is every bit as strong. If Lukys needed Maralyce's help to make more immortals, she'd have given it, if it meant restoring Coryna.

You see, Maralyce is Coryna's twin sister.

I'll tell you something else you may not realise. Declan, you were never going to be made immortal — not because Lukys was feeling generous, but because you're male. Lukys is looking for a female body — young, beautiful and worthy of his queen. Whatever he told you, Declan, whatever web of lies Lukys wove to convince you, he never intended to make you immortal. The truth is, you were out of contention from the moment you emerged from the womb and someone announced, 'It's a boy!'.

Which brings me to Coryna again, and how she was afraid of growing old.

We'd speculated in the past — any number of times — on the possibility of transferring one's mind into a different body, and once Lukys got the idea, he started to study the practicalities of it. When he announced he thought he had the problem solved, Coryna decided she'd like to try it. I suppose it gave them something to aim for. A hobby, if you like; a puzzle that would fill their waking hours for countless eons to come
...

I know what you're thinking; I can see it in your eyes. If we're already immortal, we already have bodies that cannot be harmed. What purpose would there be in changing form? You only think that way because you are defined by the brief time you've been alive. Live for a few million years more, and then start to wonder if there is anything else to be experienced. Then you'll begin to understand the allure. Decide you'd like to spend time as a different gender — just to see what it feels like. Or perhaps experience the world as an animal. Or a creature adapted to an environment so unlike the one you are used to that your very perception of the universe is altered.