The Chaos Crystal (3 page)

'Arkady
...'

'You think while you sat in here, nursing your wounded pride, feeling guilty about what was done to me, that life came to a grinding halt? There's a whole world out there you know nothing about, Papa. The Tide is on the rise; the immortals are trying to take over the world. A couple of them are trying to take the Glaeban throne. There's a few more lining up to take over Caelum. Torlenia will be in the hands of a Tide Lord before the year is out. One of them wants to kill himself and doesn't care who he takes with him in the process. Oh, and it turns out Declan is one of them too.'

She could see her father drawing back at her harsh tone, but she didn't care. She was done with his self- pitying depression. 'So, who would you rather I married, in hindsight? The duke who made me rich and comfortable for a while, but whose downfall saw me sold into slavery as a whore? Or the troublemaker who, last I heard, was headed to Jelidia to meet up with the rest of his immortal brethren — where they've just released a madman from confinement so they can

find a way to kill the Immortal Prince. All of which doesn't augur well for the rest of us, because I suspect nothing short of breaking the world in half is going to put an end to him.'

Bary Morel stared at her in shock. 'You're not making any sense, Arkady.'

'Unfortunately, I'm making a lot more sense than I'd like,' she replied. 'And if you want to do something useful, instead of sitting there begging me to forgive you for being such a terrible father, why don't you help me figure out a way out of here?'

Bary shook his head. 'There is no way out of here, Arkady.'

'Not if you think like that, there isn't,' she agreed.

'They will leave us here to rot,' he said. 'I know that for certain.'

Arkady had learned the hard way that nothing was certain. 'I don't think so, Papa. They'll come for us, sooner or later.'

'They?'

'Perhaps I should have said
he'll
come for us, sooner or later. That's why you're here, you see. He's planning to use you to get at me.'

Her father shook his head in confusion. 'Who are you talking about?'

'The new Duke of Lebec, Papa,' Arkady said, glancing toward the entrance to the chilly tower cells, as if by naming him, she might be calling him here. Thankfully, the door remained closed, as it did every day unless it was time for their meals to be delivered. 'Stellan's former lover and the man responsible for the death of the King of Glaeba. The immortal Tide Lord, Jaxyn Aranville.'

CHAPTER 2

The whole world seemed to shudder whenever another cathedral-sized chunk of ice broke off the ice-shelf and crashed into the freezing black waters of the southern ocean. The feline Crasii, Jojo, stumbled and took an involuntary step backwards, even though she was some distance from the edge and — at least for the moment — in no immediate danger. 'It's getting worse.'

Declan turned his attention from Jojo to glance at the Tide Lord who had spoken, concerned to see her forehead creased with a frown. Arryl seemed uncomfortably worried about this unseasonal melting of the glacier.

'Tide's coming in fast,' she said. Arryl wasn't, Declan was quite certain, referring to the water.

They had come here this afternoon, to the very edge of Jelidia, to witness the ice continent disappearing before their very eyes. Filled with an odd mixture of unease and guilty delight as the Tide continued its surging return, Declan had suggested the outing earlier in the day. On reaching the coast, he'd found his worst fears realised. The rising Tide was affecting more than the immortals; more than a newly- minted immortal discovering the true meaning of a rising Tide for the first time. The whole of Amyrantha was starting to feel its influence.

Declan still couldn't quite believe the turn of events that had brought him here to this icy cliff with a clutch of legendary immortals as his companions. Not so long

ago he had been a nobody, his only claim to importance his role as the King of Glaeba's spymaster. But for an accident of fate — a fire in Lebec Prison in which he should not have been caught — Declan might have lived and died ignorant of his immortal heritage. But the flames had consumed him and that's when he discovered that he wasn't just Declan Hawkes, slum- child made good. He was the son, and the great- grandson of two powerful immortals whose bloodline was stronger than the flames, stronger than anything. He wasn't the bastard get of a Glaeban whore. He was a Tide Lord.

'Shouldn't we be moving back a little, my lord?'

Declan stopped pondering his strange fate long enough to glance over his shoulder at the fearful Crash waiting behind them. Being out on the ice with the Tide Lords — who were immune to the vagaries of the weather — meant Jojo was forced to wear a coat. He could tell by her sour expression how much she hated wearing it, almost as much as she despised wearing boots. Her feet must be cramped, he guessed, and there was nowhere to rest her tail comfortably under the weight of the long fur jacket protecting her from the cold. But Jelidia was a bitter place. Even though it was summer here, and Lukys insisted it was getting warmer — a fact that seemed to be borne out by the ice breaking crashing into the ocean — it was still a bitterly
cold
place. So Declan insisted she wear the coat outside if she wanted to remain in their company. The feline shifted position again, undoubtedly wishing her masters would get over their fascination with the disintegrating coastline and return to the palace.

Not that the palace is much warmer,
Declan thought, turning back to watch the breakup of the ice- shelf, although these days it was hard for him to tell. Declan had gained immortality, but along with that, he'd lost the ability to feel temperature extremes. It

remained to be seen how many other things he'd lost the ability to experience.

'Bet she wishes we were back in Senestra,' he remarked to Arryl. The poor creature had no option but to do as the Tide Lords commanded. But Declan wasn't sure if that meant the Crash had also lost her ability for wishful thinking.

Arryl shook her head, sparing the shivering feline a brief glance. 'She's not missing Senestra one bit.'

'Really?'

'I think you'll find she's never been happier.' 'How do you figure that?'

'The feeling of fulfilment she's enjoying simply by being in the presence of true immortals is enough to mitigate the worst discomfort.' Arryl frowned. 'Even the awkwardness of wearing boots. That's the tragedy of them, you know. That's the true weakness bred into them when they were created.'

'Tell her to strip off and stand there until we're done, if you don't believe Arryl,' Taryx suggested, stepping forward until he was right on the very edge of the cliff. The ice was raw and jagged where it had broken away and the ice behind it already riddled with hairline fractures that would soon expand to crack even more of the ice-shelf from the main ice-sheet. Taryx studied the cliff edge for a moment and then straightened, turning to look at Declan. 'She'll happily freeze to death with a smile on her face, if you command her to.'

The immortal leaned over to stare at the crashing ocean once more, ignoring the bitter wind that whipped his dark hair around his face. He wasn't as powerful as the other immortals, but he effectively ran the palace and certainly kept it intact. Taryx's gift was manipulating water. The ice-wrought Palace of Impossible Dreams remained standing and functioning, thanks to him. Declan wondered why he was doing nothing now to prevent the ice from breaking away from the coast,

because if it kept disintegrating at this rate, in a few weeks the palace itself would be in danger.

'Might be a close thing,' Taryx remarked loudly after a time, almost as if he had heard Declan's unspoken question.

'What?' Arryl asked in confusion. 'The Crasii?'

Taryx shook his head. 'I mean the Tide coming in. Thing's
...
happen .
..
when the Tide comes in this fast.'

Declan was afraid to ask what that meant. But he asked anyway, keenly feeling his ignorance about all things magical. 'What things?'

'Things too horrible to mention,' Kentravyon called in a rather dramatic tone. Tempting fate, he sat on the edge of the cliff a few feet away, his legs dangling over the rim as if he didn't have a care in the world.

'What
things?' Declan repeated impatiently, more than a little fed up with these immortals and their cryptic responses to perfectly reasonable questions.
Why does immortality make things worse, rather than
better?
he wondered.
Why does it seem to bring only
cynicism and narcissism? Why all the sarcasm? Why doesn't it bring enlightenment? Or detachment from the material world? Some sort of universal awareness not available to mortal man?

Tides, will I be like them in a few hundred — a few
thousand —
years?

A dark-haired, unremarkable looking man, Kentravyon was carving something from a chunk of ice he'd picked up on the way here, unconcerned, it seemed, about the imminent danger he was in if the ice beneath him crumbled into the ocean. Declan could feel him using the Tide to carve his statue, rather than more traditional tools, and from where he stood, it seemed to be taking shape as the head of a human.

'Things
...'
Kentravyon said with a shrug. 'Cold places get colder, hot places get hotter
...
the rains move and deserts with them. Islands sink, mountains

move, other lands arise
...'
As he spoke, little chips of ice flew randomly off his sculpture, hitting the other Tide Lords standing nearby, eventually prompting Arryl to ask what he was doing. She didn't seem surprised to hear about the effect of the rising Tide. But then, this wasn't the first time she had experienced one, so it wasn't the novelty for her that it was for Declan — if
novelty
was a word one could use to describe the potential disruption and perhaps destruction of all human settlement on Amyrantha.

"What are you doing?" Arryl asked.

'Creating the face of God,' Kentravyon told her, yelling to stop the wind snatching away his words.

'How do you know it's the face of God?'

Kentravyon shrugged. '1 just get rid of all the bits that don't look like me.'

That remarked evoked a sour laugh from Taryx who addressed the other two loudly to be heard over the wind, saying, 'And to think, I thought being mad meant being inconsistent.'

Kentravyon tossed the ice carving aside and climbed to his feet, turning to face the immortal who'd dared to insult him. 'I am not mad. It is the rest of
you
who are misguided.'

'I don't think I'm God,' Taryx said.

Not yet,
Declan thought, wondering if Kentravyon's delusions were the eventual fate of all immortals and one of the reasons Cayal was so anxious to die. Unbidden, another doubt crept into his mind.
Will I think the same way someday?
The notion scared him a little.
Will I one day find myself sitting on
the edge of a disintegrating glacier, whittling away my time, thinking I'm omnipotent?
Declan glanced westward, to the ice-cliff some distance away, where a lone figure stood silhouetted against the overcast sky, his cloak billowing out in the harsh wind coming off the ocean until it was almost horizontal. Kentravyon noticed the direction of Declan's gaze and smiled.

'You don't want to die, either, I hope,' Kentravyon said, peering at him curiously. 'No.'

'Cayal wants it so bad he can taste it. I rather think that makes
him
the crazy one, not me.'

Declan tore his gaze from Cayal's lonely silhouette to look at Kentravyon. 'We're not allowing for the possibility that you're
both
lunatics, then?'

'You will come to accept the wisdom of my truth eventually,' Kentravyon told him, with the sage air of someone who knew something nobody else did. 'The Chaos Crystal will show you the way. As it always does.'

'Assuming we ever find the damn thing,' Taryx said, frowning.

'It's in Glaeba somewhere.'

Declan looked at Kentravyon in astonishment. 'You
know
where it is?'

Kentravyon shrugged. 'It was stolen by the Cabal several thousand years ago. Not long before these other ungrateful sods here, ganged up on me and put me on ice.' He glared at Arryl and Taryx for a moment before returning his attention to Declan. 'I'd made a few mortal enemies by then, as well as immortal ones. They mistakenly thought they could use the crystal to destroy me.'

'The irony, of course,' Taryx added, 'being that far from destroying any immortal, by losing the damned crystal they made certain we could never be gone from their lives.'

Kentravyon turned to look at the Immortal Prince in the distance with a scowl. 'Not going to be happy if I find he's managed to drown it at the bottom of one of the Great Lakes with his little tantrum over that wretched child.'

Declan realised the Tide Lord was referring to the legend about the Immortal Prince, and how his tears of grief over the death of his mortal daughter, Fliss, had

supposedly flooded the massive rift valley separating Caelum and Glaeba, turning it into the Great Lakes. He wondered what they'd do if the talisman they sought
was
buried at that bottom of the Great Lakes of Glaeba. The waterways were as large as an inland sea.