The Chaos Crystal (16 page)

But for now, he was required to humour her. 'Who is gone, my dear?'

'Your precious little duchess.'

Jaxyn swore under his breath and pushed the map aside. 'How long?'

'Since she fled? Only an hour or two, I gather.' She crossed the room and then stopped at the desk, putting her hands on the edge of its polished surface and leaning forward until she was only a few inches from his face. Lyna's breath frosted as she spoke. Impervious to the weather, like all immortals, Jaxyn hadn't bothered to light a fire and the room was icy. 'I warned you it was stupid to let them have the run of the palace.'

He didn't move, or even lean backward. 'I believe you merely remarked it might be unwise.'

'Turns out I was right, however much you want to quibble about semantics.'

'Did the old man go with her?'

Lyna nodded. 'Of course. She'd not leave him behind. Family loyalty and all that. Tides, she's as tiresomely loyal to her family as any one of Syrolee's clan.'

'Then they won't have gone far. In fact, I can pretty much tell you where they'll be heading.' He rose to his feet, forcing Lyna to move back.

She was sceptical of his boast. 'You think you know your little duchess so well?'

'I know her history,' he said, walking around the desk. 'She has few real friends she can turn to, particularly within reach of the palace.'

'She's long gone, Jaxyn. You've lost your leverage and any use she might have been in bringing her husband to heel, because you're always thinking with your cock instead of your head.'

The temptation to slap Lyna was almost overwhelming. Fortunately, Jaxyn understood the futility of such a gesture, despite the momentary gratification he might have gained from it. He stayed his hand, sneering at her instead.

'She'll be back in the palace by nightfall,' he said, crossing the elegant rug to reach the door. Jerking it open, he turned to his increasingly unnecessary fiancee. 'And now, if you don't mind, I'm busy.'

'Want some help getting them back?'

'They won't get far in this weather.'

Lyna glanced at the two tall windows flanking the fireplace and the clear skies beyond. The day was a rare one in Glaeba — bright and clear, although there was little warmth in the winter sunlight. 'There's nothing threatening about the weather.'

'Not yet there isn't,' Jaxyn agreed. And then he smiled. He couldn't help himself. 'Give me an hour, and then we'll see how far they get.'

* * *

Jaxyn was as aware as any other Tide Lord of the danger of messing with local weather patterns. It was that, as much as his desire to remain undetected, that had forced him to be so cautious when he froze the Great Lakes. Although it was necessary to freeze the lakes in order to facilitate his invasion of Caelum to rid himself of Syrolee and Engarhod — and the threat of having two equally powerful Tide Lords, Elyssa and Tryan, residing on the same continent at High Tide — he had done it very slowly.

This was a somewhat different situation. He didn't need a big storm. Just a very small and localised one and, while it would have consequences elsewhere, they were nothing he couldn't deal with.

One of the Crasii grooms brought his saddled horse around from the stables, its shod hooves clacking loudly on the cobblestoned pavement at the front of the palace, as Jaxyn drew on the Tide. It was not enough to alert any other immortal — except Lyna who was in the vicinity and knew the reason for the storm — but enough to make storm clouds gather overhead with unnatural speed. He had done much the same the day he called up a localised storm to sink the royal barge, killing King Enteny and Queen Inala. He turned the horse for the gates and set off at a trot, the temperature already dropping.

With the sky darkening as he rode, Jaxyn's storm ran ahead of him, heading for the one place he was sure Arkady and her father would take shelter — Clyden's Inn; home of that annoying one-armed miner- turned-tavern keeper. A place where it was easier to find a rumour than a meal. The only place near Lebec Palace Arkady and her father might reasonably reach in a couple of hours on foot.

He might be wrong. Arkady and her father might have headed across country to the city, but he doubted it. Arkady had it in her to traipse across the countryside through knee-deep snow, but her father

wasn't a young man. Although Jaxyn had healed him after his suicide attempt — and by default probably restored his health to the best it had been in years — he'd been incarcerated for a long time. Bary Morel didn't have the stamina to handle a cross-country flight and Arkady would not risk him failing or succumbing to hypothermia.

No, Jaxyn reasoned,
the safest haven is also the
easiest to reach. Clyden's Inn.

By the time the crossroads came into sight, the storm, localised though it was, had already whipped up a frenzy of sleet, rain and ice. Visibility was down to a few feet. Wind-driven snow sliced almost horizontally across the road. The wind-chill factor was bordering on fatal to any mortal caught out in the storm. The trees beside the road bent over so far they seemed to be bowing to Jaxyn as he rode past. For a fleeting moment, he wondered how much collateral damage he was causing. Would the storm abate when he was done, and expose fields littered with dead Crasii caught in the tempest?

Jaxyn hoped not. It would be damned inconvenient to lose skilled farm workers just to retrieve Arkady and her wretched father from a tavern.

The inn and the countryside around it were suffering badly from the blizzard when Jaxyn arrived. He dismounted, extending his magical protection to include his mount. He didn't want the horse dropping dead, leaving him no choice but to walk back to the palace. As he approached the door, the wind howled around the walls of the inn. The air was white and the Tide tingled along every nerve he owned. Perhaps, if Arkady
was
here, he'd be able to relieve the tension by using her to assuage his lust. The thought wasn't as attractive as it might once have been. Arkady's value to Jaxyn, in the current political climate, required her to remain whole and unharmed. This was the main reason he'd agreed to house arrest for her and her

father in the palace. Raping her to ease a momentary urge would rob him of his bargaining chip. Stellan had already surprised Jaxyn once with the lengths he was willing to go to when he felt betrayed. Who knew what he'd do if he found Arkady harmed by the lover he was still smarting over?

A loose corner of the inn's shingled roof was banging relentlessly in the wind as he reached the door, accompanied by a swirl of icy sleet. He hammered on the door with his fist, but it remained determinedly closed. That told Jaxyn a great deal. Mortals would not leave a lone traveller out here in this blizzard to die.

Which meant they must know the traveller banging on their door
couldn't
die.

And that meant there was something or someone inside they wanted to protect from him.

Jaxyn took a deep breath. The Tide surged around him. The wind picked up and the temperature dropped even lower, the sleet falling so hard and sharp now that it scoured the bark from the unfinished logs from which the inn was constructed. A moment later, the loose corner of the roof ripped off, exposing the beams underneath. He thought he heard a scream coming from inside the building, but he might have imagined it. In any case, no matter how desperate, their mortal cries for help would be torn away by the wind before anybody could hear them.

'I know you're in there!' he called, using the Tide to amplify his voice so they would hear him over the screaming wind.

There was no answer, but he was hardly surprised. And in a way, he was glad of it. With the Tide nearing its peak, the exhilaration of allowing the magic to sing through his veins was something he hadn't experienced fully for a thousand years. This is what it was to be a Tide Lord. This was the glory of it, the seduction of omnipotent power.

Without another word, he blew the inn door off its hinges, exposing the interior of the tavern to the storm. He stepped inside and glanced around. There were several wizened old miners cowering in one corner, the one-armed tavern keeper, Clyden Bell, standing in the other, his arm protectively around a lad of about fifteen, who was wearing an apron and a look of abject terror.

There was no sign of Arkady or her father.

'I know you're here, Arkady,' he called, as another piece of the roof let go, allowing the sleet and ice into the taproom. 'Come out now and I won't kill anyone!'

There was no response. Jaxyn wondered if he'd misjudged Arkady. Had she outwitted him again? He was on the verge of believing she might have, when the tavern-boy gave the game away by shouting at him, 'They're not here! We haven't seen them!'

'I didn't ask if you'd seen
them,''
Jaxyn said with a smile as another part of the roof let go. Clyden Bell seemed terrified, the young lad even more so. The miners in the other corner were paralysed with fear.

'The boy dies first, Arkady,' he called again. 'But only after I've used him to assuage my need. Are you going to listen to his screaming while I take my pleasure, or come out here and stop it?'

'Lay one hand on the lad
...'
Clyden began, stepping forward bravely.

Jaxyn never heard the end of the threat. He picked Clyden Bell up without a thought and slammed him into the stone fireplace so hard he could hear the old man's bones shattering even over the storm. 'Lay one hand — that's quite amusing, coming from you.'

The young lad cried out in horror as Clyden's limp body dropped to the floor. Jaxyn ignored him for now. He held his arms out wide, calling out into the storm that was, bit by bit, un-roofing the inn. 'Look what you've done now, Arkady. All this death, doom and destruction. It's your fault. You made me do it.'

'Liar.'

He turned to find her standing behind him. Arkady and her father must have been hiding beneath one of the tables near the door. He smiled and let the storm go; even a Tide Lord needed their wits about them when dealing with this woman. Her father slowly climbed to his feet beside her as Arkady stepped forward.

Drenched and frozen though she was, she seemed uncowed. Arkady slapped his face with considerable force, her eyes glistening with unshed tears.

'Again,' he said with a leer, as the wind died down now he'd let go the Tide. 'Harder.'

'You make me sick.'

'And you made me ride all the way out here to find you,' he said, glancing at the pale, shivering figure behind her. Bary Morel seemed resigned, the fight drained out of him by the cold. 'Can't have done the old man any good. And now you've gone and killed your old friend, too,' he added, glancing over his shoulder at Clyden's body and his weeping apprentice. 'And after you gave me your word you'd be good.'

Arkady had no answer to that, which disappointed him a little and made him angry. His blood was tingling as the Tide drained away, his skin itching, his flesh crawling with the need to release the tension.

For a long, considering moment, he stared at Arkady, debating the need to keep her whole against his need to relieve himself.

Prudence won. Barely. He needed Arkady whole and unharmed, and despite his threat, he wasn't so far gone that some unwashed tavern-boy offered much of an alternative.

Jaxyn drew the Tide to himself again, wrapping Arkady and her father in bonds of air — a technique that took enough concentration to stave off his carnal needs for the time being. Without another word he forced both of them out of the door and into the storm

which was dissipating almost as quickly as it had gathered.

With these two walking behind his horse, it would take an hour or so to get back to the palace. An hour drawing on the Tide to keep them bound. An hour to relish the Tide and bask in its magical glow.

And when he got back to the palace
...
well, it was a good thing Lyna was there.

Perhaps it was time she earned her title as his betrothed.

CHAPTER 17
 

It took a week to cross the ocean from Stevania to Torlenia. The three Tide Lords took turns riding the Tide, keeping their thatched vessel skimming over the waves. Declan's blood was constantly on fire from the strain of it, but he was growing accustomed to the feeling. As Cayal had said when they first let Declan ride the Tide to keep their magic carpet afloat:
It gets
predictable. It even gets tolerable. But it never gets better.

Declan had discovered that for himself in the past few days. Although he felt as if raw lava was running through his veins, he'd' also found some point at which it became bearable. Somehow, you just had to step away from it and let it go.

It was that, or lose your mind,
he decided. He stared at Kentravyon out of the corner of his eyes, still
numb
with what the madman had done. Although they hadn't spoken of it again, Declan saw those lines of dead laid out in the ruined temple every time he closed his eyes.

It was a good thing sometimes, he decided, that immortals didn't need to sleep, and with it, face their dreams. Or their nightmares.

Declan was contemplating this interesting phenomenon as he rode the Tide toward the Torlenian coast, the smudge of brown on the horizon growing rapidly larger in the distance as they sped toward it. Both Kentravyon and Cayal were lying on the thatched roof beside him — Cayal on his back with his arms