The Chaos Crystal (53 page)

'Was there a human woman with them?' Declan wasn't sure he wanted to know the answer to that question. His last word of Arkady was when she traded the Chaos Crystal for Warlock and his family's freedom. He still had no idea what had happened to her after that, but given Cayal's fascination for her, it wasn't hard to imagine he'd invited her along for the return to Jelidia. But would she go with him? Arkady had sworn to have nothing to do with either Cayal or Declan ever again. Would she change her mind? Had she been
forced
to change her mind?

'There may have been a woman with them, Hawkes. I didn't ask.'

Brynden turned to look at her oddly. Putting his fears for Arkady aside, Declan wondered if this was also the first time Kinta had shared this news with him. 'Do you know for certain that they've found the Chaos Crystal?'

'Would there be any point in returning to Jelidia without it?' Warlock asked.

Nobody answered what was, essentially, a rhetorical question.

There was a moment of tense silence and then Brynden turned to Declan. 'In light of this information, if we are to do this, we don't have a moment to waste. Where have you arranged for everyone to meet?'

'In Denrah,' Declan told them. 'It's a deep-water anchorage port on the north coast of Chelae. Lyna left Glaeba for Senestra to speak with Medwen and Ambria some time ago, and will meet us back there if she can; otherwise she'll head straight for Jelidia. Desean will give Tryan, Syrolee and the others the exact location of the meeting once they've agreed to help.'

Brynden nodded, satisfied, it seemed, with the arrangements. He looked at Warlock. 'Are you coming with us, Scard?'

Warlock's hackles were up and his tail was high enough to betray his true feelings, but the Scard gritted his teeth and nodded. 'Will 1 follow you to Jelidia for the chance to see an immortal do something useful for a change? Tides,' the big canine growled, 'I wouldn't miss that for the world.'

CHAPTER 48

'Tell me you love me, Cayal.'

The Immortal Prince sighed and dutifully responded, 'I love you, Elyssa.' ,

She turned to look at him in the darkness, her expression sceptical. They were sitting side by side on the steps leading up to the poop deck of the sailing ship they'd commandeered in the Chelae Islands. The night sky was clear and icy and sprinkled with stars, so bright here in the southern ocean one could read by them, even on a moonless night. The air was chilly but neither immortal really noticed it. If fact, were it not for the heavy coats worn by the crew — and the occasional iceberg they carefully sailed past — Cayal probably wouldn't have guessed they were approaching Jelidia at all.

Elyssa had found him here, looking for some peace, no mean feat on a ship barely large enough to contain the three masts whose sails billowed and snapped above them, let alone three powerful Tide Lords champing at their confinement. Not that being a Tide Lord was of much use to anyone on board at present. Cayal could sense hardly anything on the Tide.

The reason Elyssa had found him was a consequence of that. The dampening effect of the Chaos Crystal meant that for the first time in several thousand years — as Kentravyon had warned — another immortal was able to sneak up on him.

'I know you're lying, Cayal.'

'Then why do you keep asking me?'

She shrugged and slipped her arm through his, snuggling up to him as if she was cold and needed his body warmth. 'I keep hoping one day you'll mean it.'

'Well, they say that where there's life, there's hope,' he said, staring out at their silvery wake trailing behind them in the starlight, rather than looking at her and risk her seeing his true feelings reflected in his eyes. 'Given you can't die, you must be fairly brimming with it.'

As usual, she seemed to take his remark for an attempt at humour, not the snide comment he meant it to be. 'You'll love me when I look like her,' Elyssa predicted. Or perhaps it was just that she knew him well enough not to rise to his taunts. And he knew her well enough to know she was referring to Arkady.

'At the very least, I'll know how to tell if the transfer has worked,' he told her.

'How?'

'She'll be talking to me again, if you're the one inhabiting her body.'

Elyssa smiled. 'Yes, I noticed your precious little Ice Duchess seems rather cool toward you at the moment. Why, Cayal? Did you break her heart?'

'You know, I honestly don't know the answer to that question. I'm not sure what I've done. Or that I'd even understand it if she told me. She's a complicated woman, is Arkady.'

'I think she's an arrogant, stuck-up little bitch myself,' Elyssa informed him with a smile. 'And if it wasn't for the fact that I have a use for her, I would have tossed her over the side as soon as we left Glaeba and the Tide take her. I'm still not convinced we shouldn't. There must be another human woman around I can use. One that's less trouble.'

'But we need her to carry the crystal,' Cayal said, a little alarmed that Elyssa was entertaining such murderous thoughts.

'Not any longer,' she said. 'Now we're on our way to Jelidia
...'

'And at the mercy of the elements because we can't use Tide magic,' Cayal reminded her. 'What happens if we run into a storm? If the ship is endangered, we're going to need someone to hang on to the crystal.'

'Any mortal man in the crew could do that.'

'If we're caught in a storm severe enough to endanger this ship,' Cayal said, 'I'd just as soon the crew was busy trying to keep us afloat, thank you very much.'

She laughed. 'Why? We can't drown, silly.'

'No, but that wretched crystal would sink like a stone if we lost it overboard. Particularly as it's, well, you know
...
a
stone.'
He smiled at her then, deciding it was time to get her mind off killing Arkady. 'Besides, you want a beautiful body to inhabit, don't you? Even you have to concede they don't come much more beautiful than our regal Glaeban duchess.'

Elyssa pouted at him for a moment, and then squeezed his arm while giving him a conspiratorial smile. 'She's not
really
a duchess, you know. She's actually a slum-bred, common-born physician's daughter.'

'And your mother was a whore, when it gets down to it.' Cayal laughed suddenly, as it occurred to him why Elyssa so desperately wanted to get married, even though he had professed his clear intention of killing himself the first chance he got, leaving her a widow. 'Tides, that's what this engagement is all about. You want me to legitimise your royalty.'

'Don't be absurd.'

'You do too!' he said, disentangling her arm from his so he could turn and look her in the eye. 'You want to be a real princess and I'm the only prince you can extort a wedding out of, so you want to marry me and get a proper title. Tides, Elyssa, Kordana's been dead and gone for eight thousand years, so I don't know what you think my title is worth. And your mother was calling herself the Empress of the Five Realms for

a couple of thousand years before that. Don't you think that title's stuck yet?'

'The key phrase in that statement is "calling herself Empress",' Elyssa pointed out grumpily. 'Tides, but I hate it when you mock me.'

He shook his head in amazement. 'If it means so much to you, why not find some poor mortal prince to marry you and give you a crown?'

'I'm not beautiful enough. I'm always the one passed over for the pretty girl.' Her tone was even more petulant than her words.

'You're an immortal Tide Lord, Elyssa. You can have anything you want at High Tide.'

Elyssa shook her head. 'Tide magic won't make someone want you, Cayal; you know that better than anybody. And I don't need to tell you how it works with Syrolee, either. The power
always
sits with her.' Cayal listened to her with a growing sense of alarm. It was a little frightening that she still felt so bitter, even after all this time.

'Syrolee seems to be happy to let Tryan share the power in Caelum.'

'Only because she couldn't figure out any other way to take the throne than have Tryan marry Princess Nyah. Or Nyah's mother, as it turns out, after the child disappeared.'

'So why do you stay with them?'

'I told you why.'

He rolled his eyes. 'Ah, yes
...
Everyone else disappoints you eventually, don't they? How does your thinking go? "If they're mortal, they die on me. If they're immortal, they just let me down".' He shook his head. 'Did it ever occur to you, Elyssa, that even the most beautiful woman in the world becomes excessively unattractive when she's wallowing in self- pity?'

She jumped up from the steps and turned to face him, her hands on her hips. 'Self-pity? You're accusing

me
of wallowing in self-pity? The coward who wants to kill himself because he can't bear the thought of being bored? Tides, but you have a nerve!'

'At least I'm sure I'm doing the right thing.'

'Only because you won't let yourself contemplate the future,' she shot back. 'You're such a flanking fool, Cayal.'

'Maybe I am. But I've seen the future, Elyssa,' he said. 'And I'm not in it.'

She was unimpressed. 'Oh, so now you're prescient, are you? When did you acquire
that
talent?'

He shrugged. 'Probably about the same time it occurred to me that we're
true
immortals,' he said, feeling the sudden need to explain himself to someone who might have a slight chance of understanding. 'Haven't you figured it out yet, Lyssa? We're not like the characters they put in children's stories who are immortal right up until they change their mind. Or until they're killed in single combat — a battle some noble hero is destined to win because his heart is true, or some such nonsense. The power to destroy one of us is the stuff that unmakes worlds. Short of lopping off my head and becoming a simpleton like Pellys, I don't see any other way out.'

'What of this new world Lukys is leaving for? Doesn't
that
intrigue you?'

'It might have. Once. But we only get a King Tide every few hundred thousand years. No matter how intriguing this new world of his might be, I don't think I want to risk finding out I really couldn't care what the new one is like, when it's too late to do anything about it.'

Elyssa couldn't think of an answer to that, so she swore at him in a very unladylike manner and headed below, leaving the Immortal Prince and his frustrating, infuriating logic behind her, which was exactly what Cayal had been hoping she'd do.

Even though he'd managed to drive her away, Cayal's discussion with Elyssa did nothing but unsettle him more. He could feel the Tide rising and with it, his uneasiness. And his uneasiness bothered him. He'd always imagined the closer he got to the end of his interminable existence, the more serene he would become, the more content with his path. He'd never felt this ill at ease before, even when waiting in Lebec Prison for the headsman to call his name. He couldn't fathom why, with eternal peace beckoning, he wasn't feeling calm, but jumpy and uncomfortable.

Elyssa had gone below, no doubt looking for Kentravyon to complain to. Perhaps the madman would sympathise with her. Even insanely obsessed with his own divinity as he was, Kentravyon was probably a better conversationalist right now. And the chilly night with its distant blanket of stars was no comfort either.

'Gonna be another cold one.'

Cayal glanced up from where he was sitting on the steps to the sailor manning the helm. He stood behind the wheel, feet planted firmly apart, rolling almost imperceptibly with the movement of the deck as if he was bolted to the boards along with the wheel.

'Looks like it,' Cayal agreed in a non-committal tone. He was restless, unsure what he was looking for, but certain it wasn't a dialogue about the weather with some random sailor who happened to be stuck on the late watch. Climbing to his feet, Cayal headed below before the sailor could attempt to engage him in further conversation.

The passageway below the poop deck was narrow and dark, the door to the owner's cabin he shared with Kentravyon at the end of the companionway. The only two other cabins in the stern above the waterline were opposite each other; the cabin on the right allocated to Elyssa, the other to Arkady.

On impulse, he knocked on Arkady's door, hoping she wasn't yet asleep. Or if she wasn't, she'd not start asking questions about the identity of her late-night visitor through the door, forcing him to answer so loudly he'd alert Elyssa to the fact that he was seeking entry into Arkady's cabin in the middle of the night.

After a moment, the door opened. Although she'd not questioned who it was at this late hour, Arkady did not seem happy to see him. 'What?'

'Can I come in?' he asked softly, glancing over his shoulder toward Elyssa's door.

Arkady didn't miss the direction of his gaze. She thought about it for a moment and then sighed and stood back to let him enter. She was still dressed, although the fur coat Jaxyn had given her to wear in Glaeba was draped over the narrow bunk, where clearly she intended to use it as an extra blanket.

'It's late, Cayal, and I'd like to get some sleep,' she said as she closed the door behind him and then leaned on it. 'What do you want?'

'I just wanted to talk.'

'Go talk to your cabin mate.' She pushed past him and walked over to the small cabinet beside the bunk where she splashed water on her face from the washbowl. Her voice sounded odd, but that could have been because she'd been trying to sleep and he'd disturbed her.