The Chaos Crystal (15 page)

The Rodent still hadn't figured out who he was or what he could do. So he was clinging to what he did know, trying to convince himself as much as the others that he still retained his humanity.

Good luck with that,
Cayal thought.

Helping others to help himself. Poor sod didn't realise yet that even now, he was turning into what he most despised. He was already helping others in order to help himself. Such was the selfishness of all immortals.

By dawn, Cayal had desalinated the two wells that had supplied the village before its destruction by the rising water. It was a simple matter really. Tide magic was elemental and separating salt from water was a relatively uncomplicated task.

He had little time to savour his good deed, however. With the sky already beginning to lighten, the air crisp with the chill of the departing night, Cayal turned and headed for the temple, wondering how

Kentravyon had fared. Cayal had not checked on him for hours. Nor had he heard anything. The wounded were there, according to the villagers sheltering on the escarpment. Maybe
...

Cayal's thought was cut short by an enraged scream, followed by a crash so powerful it made the ground shake. He traded a surprised look with the lad who had been sent to show him the location of the wells amid the wreckage of the little town. He looked up in time to see a block of masonry tumbling down the cliff above him. The large granite block crashed and bounced down into what was left of the devastated village.

'Look out!'

Cayal looked up. A second massive block was almost on them. Reflexively, he redirected it with the Tide, forcing it to make a sharp turn to the left. It tumbled down to land harmlessly in the water near the stumps of the town's single wooden jetty.

Cayal swore savagely for a moment and then broke into a run, scrambling up the cliff face until he reached the top. The scene that greeted him was completely unexpected. Kentravyon stood in the middle of the wounded — perhaps forty or fifty of them laid out in neat rows — confronting a very furious Declan Hawkes who looked utterly enraged. This surprised Cayal, because he'd assumed the blocks hurtling off the cliff had come from Kentravyon.

'Tides, you almost flattened me, you fool!' he exclaimed, walking into the centre of the temple. If these people had built it on Kentravyon's command, they must have done it eons ago. The place was a ruin, barely more than a few moss-covered pillars holding up a fading memory of the past. 'What the hell is going on?'

'He killed them.'

Cayal stared at Declan for a moment and then looked around at the unnaturally silent wounded

laying about the ruins. Every one of them was silent, their arms crossed over their chests, their eyes open and staring, as dead eyes always were. It was only then that he realised what Hawkes meant.

'I eased their pain,' Kentravyon corrected, as the dreadful truth sank in. 'And this ungrateful whelp is abusing me for it.'

Cayal looked around, frowning. 'They're all dead, Kentravyon.'

'Gods are a lot easier to venerate if they're easing their worshippers' pain, not contributing to it. That's what you said. That's what I did. Their pain is eased. They will suffer no more.'

Cayal glanced at Declan. He could feel the barely leashed anger from where he was standing, which was worrying because the Rodent was fair trembling with the Tide, the ripples he was making on it both erratic and dangerous. They'd stopped here to let the Tide go, and ended up using it even more. If Cayal was feeling the strain, Hawkes — so unused to the sensation — would be feeling it tenfold.

'Say "I told you so", Rodent, and you
will
regret it.'

Declan shook his head, his fists clenched by his side so tight his knuckles were white. 'What do we do?'

Cayal shrugged. 'Get out of here before someone comes to check on the wounded, is my suggestion.'

'But he's killed them all!'

'All the more reason to get the hell away from here.'

Kentravyon shook his hand. 'We're not going anywhere until this disrespectful nobody apologises.'
'Apologises?'

Hawkes's refusal to give Kentravyon what he wanted infuriated the older Tide Lord. Cayal felt the Tide surging around him. Another block of tumbled masonry was suddenly hurtling across the ruin, over the neat rows of the dead Kentravyon had so carefully laid out.

Cayal ducked reflexively as the boulder flew over his head to land far below in the water behind them. Some of the survivors — who'd probably come to see what all the fuss was about — were in a panic. There were screaming people running everywhere. Cayal wasn't sure if they were panicking over the flying masonry or the dead they were beginning to discover.

It was time to leave. But neither of the other two seemed to realise that. The Rodent was too angry, Kentravyon too full of divine indignation.

This is why I want to die.

The thought flashed through his mind, reminding him of the countless times he'd seen this very situation before. The details might be different, but the result of two opposing Tide Lords, both thinking they were in the right, was always the same and always bad for any mortal unfortunate enough to be in the vicinity.

Possessing the only clear head amongst them, Cayal looked around for something large and flat to take the place of their rug. Their magic carpet — as Hawkes insisted on calling it — was back on the beach south of the town. For what Cayal had in mind, he didn't have the time to retrieve it. Another block hurtled past him and crashed into what little was left of the village below. There Cayal spied something that might suffice, that might even perform better than their missing rug.

Cayal turned his back on the warring immortals, and then, using the Tide, he lifted a large — albeit somewhat tattered — section of thatched roof that had been standing on its edge against the cliff, displaced by the tidal wave. He jumped off the cliff as it rose from the ground, leaping aboard the roof-section and soared out to sea. He felt a surge on the Tide behind him
...
or rather, a confused series of them. Kentravyon and Hawkes were settling their differences. Hawkes was using raw power and absolutely no finesse to divert the blocks and send them back the way they'd come.

Cayal's blood sang with the Tide, and for a moment he remembered what it was to want this, not to dread it.

And then he pushed the thought aside, skimming the tattered roof-section out over the water so far the land became a blur of the horizon. Once he was far enough out to be lost to sight, he banked to the left, heading back toward the coast in a wide circle that would bring him around behind the other two Tide Lords. There was no way to stop either of them feeling Cayal's manoeuvring on the Tide, but hopefully Hawkes would keep Kentravyon distracted long enough for Cayal to reach them.

The water sped beneath Cayal in a grey-blue blur that soon changed to a rushing green smear as he reached the coast and headed inland.

With the wind rushing through his hair — he wasn't wasting Tide power on protecting himself from the elements — Cayal banked again, heading back to Blackbourn, riding his thatched roof like the children of the Chelae Islands, riding the waves off the beach of their homeland. He could feel the other immortals in the distance, battling each other on the Tide. It felt like a fairly even fight, which meant the Rodent was managing to hold his own. The thrum of the Tide cantillated through him, the exhilaration of riding it so wantonly enough to make him forget the reason he was here. Then another surge on the Tide, erratic and dangerously close, reminded him of his purpose. Cayal banked his thatched platform again and headed back toward the coast; back toward what was left of the village of Blackbourn. And Kentravyon.

The mad Tide Lord didn't see him coming. He had his back to Cayal and, in any case, was too engrossed trading missiles with Hawkes, who was proving to be a disturbingly quick study when it came to manipulating the Tide. Cayal bore down on him, catching sight of the ruined temple on the cliff top as he approached.

He was barrelling toward Kentravyon at a dangerous speed, determined to reach him before he had time to register what was happening. At the last minute, Kentravyon must have noticed the disturbance on the Tide behind him. He glanced over his shoulder in time to register shock as the roof-section took him in the back of the knees, knocking him off his feet and backwards onto the thatching. Cayal sped on, aiming the roof at the Rodent next, but the Rodent wasn't as stupid as he looked. He could see Cayal coming and he threw himself onto the platform as it approached, rather than be barrelled over by it as they passed.

Kentravyon struggled to sit up as they climbed into the morning sky at a speed that soon took them far from the Stevanian coast. Cayal could feel Kentravyon's irritation, feel him drawing the Tide to himself to retaliate, the Rodent's equally furious response building up in reply. Before the mad immortal or the dangerously inexperienced Rodent could do anything about it, however, Kentravyon's fist connected squarely with Hawkes's jaw. He fell backward, arms and legs flailing, as he tumbled from the platform and into the icy water beneath.

Cayal slowed his thatched craft and banked again, looking at Kentravyon in surprise. Then he shook his head in wonder.

'All the power of the Tide is yours to command, Kentravyon, and you decide to take on another Tide Lord with your
fist?'

Kentravyon was grinning, unable to quash the exhilaration he was feeling from swimming the Tide. He was on his knees, still trying to find his balance on the thatching. 'It worked, didn't it? He wasn't expecting it. He's let the Tide go. And he needed cooling off. Not handling this at all well, if you ask me.'

Cayal realised Kentravyon was right. The shock of someone belting him in the face had had the desired

effect on Hawkes. Cayal glanced over the side and spied the Rodent bobbing up and down in the water, no longer swimming the magical Tide, too preoccupied, apparently, with treading water on the more mundane one.

'He's going to be pissed at you, Kentravyon.'

'He already was.'

Kentravyon had a point. Cayal glanced down at Hawkes again and then grinned. 'Wonder how long it would take him to find us again if we left him down there?'

For a moment, Kentravyon grinned back at Cayal like a conspirator. 'I'm game if you are.'

Cayal considered the very tempting prospect of leaving the Rodent down there, bobbing in the ocean, thousands of miles from anywhere significant. Then he sighed and began to lower their thatched platform toward the water. 'We'd better not,' he told Kentravyon. 'For one thing, we need him to open the rift when we get back to Jelidia. For another, he's likely to decide to solidify the sea, or something equally disastrous, so he can walk back to dry land. Amyrantha isn't quite ready for another Cataclysm just yet.'

Kentravyon looked at him askance. 'You're willing to destroy the planet in order to take your own life, Cayal, but you're worried about another Cataclysm? And people call
me
the crazy one.'

'You're worse than the Rodent. And you said you didn't know for certain that opening the rift will destroy Amyrantha,' Cayal said, getting a little tired of everybody's constant attempts to make him feel guilty about wanting to die.

Kentravyon didn't answer him. They'd reached the water and Hawkes was swimming toward them, looking very unhappy. Cayal leaned forward and helped him clamber aboard.

'Enjoy your dip?' Cayal asked, not sure what Declan was planning to do next. He hadn't taken hold of the Tide again, which was reassuring.

He wasn't pleased, though, and his jaw was bruised, although it was healing as they spoke. Kentravyon must have hit him hard.

'That was your idea of helping, was it?'

'You two were randomly throwing granite blocks around,' Cayal reminded him. He levelled the platform and began to move it over the wavetops toward Torlenia. 'You ready to move on now ...
God?'

'You mock me at your peril, Cayal.'

'No, I don't, Kentravyon. Although it would be nice to think you really were as divine as you think you are.'

'Why do you wish for that? Even now, knowing I am God, you do not worship me.'

'No,' he agreed, taking a seat on the thatching. 'I don't. But that's not because I don't believe that
you
believe you're God. It's because if you really
were
God, Kentie, my old friend, we wouldn't have to go to all this trouble because you'd already have the power to help me die.'

Kentravyon didn't answer him. Hawkes said nothing either, as they sped east. He just sat there, dripping and glowering, and wrestling — Cayal had no doubt — with his own internal demons.

CHAPTER 16

'She's gone!' Lyna announced, slamming the door behind her.

Jaxyn looked up from the map he was studying in what had once been the elegantly decorated study belonging to Stellan Desean. He was still debating the best way to approach Caelum. Should he concentrate his forces on Cycrane, or spread them thinner and attack even more of the coastline simultaneously? It was a tricky problem. And he certainly wasn't in the mood for Lyna, whose role as his fiancee was becoming increasingly irrelevant. Soon he would be in a strong enough position to be rid of her entirely.