The Chaos Crystal (23 page)

Warlock hoped it was enough. He didn't know where Boots was, but what he did know was that if the Glaebans won this war, one of the first things victorious invaders did when taking over enemy territory was hunt down every enemy Crasii they could find and kill them. Even the pups. That might not happen now the Tide Lords were in charge
...
after all, a Crasii was compelled to serve any immortal they encountered. But Warlock wasn't prepared to take that chance. He was going to find his family and protect them. No matter what.

By morning, dawn had extinguished the pinpoints of light on the lake and the fifty or more canines responsible for digging the channels from the tar seeps to the lake were exhausted. The sticky black oil that bubbled out of the ground here — and in other sporadic locations along this side of the lake — was slowly working its way down into the channels Elyssa's workers had cut into the ice over the past couple of weeks. The past few days they had cut three shallow channels the width of a mattock blade about ten paces apart. The channels stretched north all the way along the ice past the city of Cycrane, where similar squads of Crasii had painstakingly dug connecting channels to allow the oil to flow along the ice.

The idea was Stellan Desean's, proving once again what a brilliant tactician the Glaeban duke was.

The Caelish could not hope to match the Glaebans' superior numbers, particularly when it came to fighting felines. But if felines had one weakness, it was their pathological fear of fire. Feline Crasii warriors might baulk at the stench of the oil channels, but Glaeban felines had probably never
seen
an oil seep, or the gooey — and highly flammable — black liquid that seeped from the earth and bubbled in small pools hidden in the foothills of Caelum, ready to trap any unwary animal or woodsman wandering by. The chances were good that even if they noticed the oil, they'd merely step over the shallow channels and continue on their way.

Warlock wasn't sure if the Glaebans had rested on the ice overnight or kept walking, but it seemed as if they hadn't moved as close as they might, had they marched through the night. In the daylight, there proved to be thousands and thousands of them in a long line stretching into the distance, their ranks too deep to make a guess at their numbers. Elyssa stood at the lakeshore by the head of the channel they'd cut leading from the oil seep, cursing the slow pace of the liquid, which seemed to progress at a snail's pace once it reached the ice.

'Will the channels fill in time, my lady?' Warlock asked, guessing the reason for her frown as she watched the sluggish oil flow.

'They'd better, Cecil,' she said. 'Or you'll be bowing to Lord Jaxyn by tomorrow evening. Tides, if only I could risk heating the oil a little. That would make it move.'

Warlock guessed she didn't want to draw on the Tide with Jaxyn so close. They could just make out a large podium with a red valance out on the ice in front of the Glaeban troops. It was towed on a sled by a phalanx of canines, and on it stood a number of human figures, surrounded by the flags of Glaeba snapping proudly in the breeze. Jaxyn had brought his

own stage with him, apparently. Or at least a platform from which to view and direct the battle. Besides the three men on the platform — whom Warlock assumed were Jaxyn and King Mathu, and perhaps a lackey — there were several women, only one of whom appeared rugged up against the cold. Warlock couldn't make out who they were from this distance. He supposed they were servants, or maybe Diala and Lyna — Jaxyn's immortal co-conspirators — here to watch the battle.

Perhaps the sight of so many Crasii dying in battle was their idea of entertainment.

'Can you not risk even a small amount of magic to speed the oil on its way, my lady?' Warlock asked, fearing he'd overstepped the mark by asking such a thing. It was important Stellan Desean's plan to scatter the Glaeban army worked. The truth was, Warlock found himself in the unenviable position of hoping his enemies would — if not win — then at least carry the day.

Maybe, if things get really chaotic, I can slip away.
Elyssa will think me dead in the confusion
of
the battle.

Warlock consciously stopped his daydream before it could go any further. He wasn't close enough to the battle to have any such luck, and the chances of Elyssa allowing him out of her sight any time soon seemed remote.

'If Jaxyn feels me swimming the Tide, he'll retaliate with everything he has. That's what he did the last time we argued over a throne.'

'My
lady?'
Warlock asked, hoping his question wouldn't make her suspicious.

'Fyrenne, Cecil. It was thousands of years ago, but Jaxyn hasn't changed much in the intervening years. It wasn't my fault, you know, although the others still blame me for it. Jaxyn just wouldn't let it be. The place was a burnt-out wasteland by the time we finished arguing about it.'

'He shall not defeat you this time, my lady,' Warlock assured her. 'You will prevail.'

Elyssa smiled at Warlock. 'Ah, Cecil, if only you had the wit to say that because you knew it to be true, and not because you have no choice but to believe it.'

Warlock was saved from having to answer her by the blare of a trumpet slicing through the chilly morning. Out on the ice, several heralds had stepped up beside the podium. They played their fanfare, which lasted a minute or two, and then a single sled broke away from the line upon line of feline warriors, most of whom were crouched down, rather than standing. It took a while for Warlock to work out the meaning of that, until he realised the felines were removing something from their feet. Whatever protection they'd worn crossing the ice, they did not intend to let it hamper their fighting. With their sharp retractable claws, a feline warrior needed no weapons at close range to gut her opponents, and their feet were as much weapons as their hands.

Whatever the outcome of the discussions with the envoy sent to meet the Caelish army, it was obvious Jaxyn intended his felines to fight this day.

'Perhaps if we widened the channel here, my lady?' Warlock suggested, looking at the thin black line stretching back toward the oil seep.

'Do you think it will help?'

'It can't hurt, my lady.'

Elyssa nodded in agreement. 'Have them start digging again, Cecil. We don't have long.'

Warlock turned and hurried up the short slope to where the foreman waited with his canines. They were freezing, Elyssa having forbidden any fires that might give away their position or their intentions — not to mention the risk of fire so close to an open oil seep. The foreman glared at Warlock, clearly resenting the large Crasii's favoured position with Elyssa.

'My lady wants the channel widened,' Warlock told him. 'The oil isn't flowing fast enough.'

The Crasii nodded with a frown, not pleased his orders were being relayed through a third party. But he turned to his workers, hefting his mattock. 'Well, lads, seems we don't have to stand around here freezing our tails off after all. Let's do as my lady wants and make this channel wider. Get to it.'

The canines quickly spread out along the channel and soon the thumping of mattocks pounding the frozen ground silenced any other noises coming from the surrounding forest. Warlock watched anxiously as they dug, willing the oil to flow faster, and after a time the canines' work seemed to be having an effect. As the volume in the channel increased, Warlock hurried back to where Elyssa was standing, watching the negotiations that preceded any war.

'Their envoy is heading back already,' she remarked, as Warlock stopped beside her. There was no need to report on the improved oil flow; Elyssa could see it for herself. Across the ice, the smaller sled Jaxyn must have dispatched in Warlock's absence was heading back toward the portable podium where the King of Glaeba and his retinue waited. 'The forms have been met, the offer for surrender rejected.'

A figure leaned down from the podium to receive the report from his envoy. The two appeared to speak for a moment and then the figure on the podium straightened, turned and said something to the others standing with him. Then he signalled the heralds.

Another trumpet blast cut through the morning, this one different, more strident, more urgent, than the last.

'And so, Cecil,' Elyssa said with a heavy sigh, as line upon line of Glaeban feline warriors rose to their feet and prepared to move forward, 'the Tide has not even peaked yet and, once again, we are at war.'

CHAPTER 23

Arkady pulled her fur coat a little tighter as the trumpets announced the order to advance. She stood at the back of the podium beside her father, behind the immortals, with Jaxyn's loyal Crasii bodyguard, Chikita, watching over them to prevent them trying to escape. The only other mortal standing on the war platform Jaxyn had commissioned for the invasion was Mathu Debree, the young King of Glaeba. To Arkady, he looked pinched and cold and uncertain. She could tell he was putting on a brave face to impress his wife.

Arkady had no sympathy for the young king. If he didn't want to be here, he could end this right now. He was the Glaeban king, after all, and if he ordered a withdrawal, Jaxyn would have to comply unless he was willing to completely blow his cover and reveal who he was.

But Mathu didn't have the spine to stand up to his wife, or the wit to know when he was being manipulated. So here they were, at war with their closest neighbour and ally for the most spurious of reasons, her husband leading the forces arrayed against his own countrymen — all for the entertainment of a handful of power-hungry immortals.

'Tides, I never thought I'd live to see this day.'

Arkady was forced to agree with her father, but didn't answer his muttered comment. She wasn't sure what to say to him about anything any longer. Things had not been the same between them since she'd asked Jaxyn to heal him and saved him from certain death.

Even worse', after their last failed attempt to escape and Clyden Bell's death, he had completely withdrawn from her. Arkady wasn't sure if that was because Clyden was dead, because she'd forced her father to live, or because he'd been forced to acknowledge that the Tide Lords were real.

Still, she understood what he meant. They were close enough to the shore to see the forces lining up against them. The Caelish army seemed pitifully few in number compared to the tens of thousands of felines Jaxyn had mustered and brought across the ice with them.

The delay frustrated Diala; Arkady could tell by the snide remarks she'd been making to Jaxyn on the way here. But the man couldn't be faulted for his tactics. He wasn't going to risk this invasion failing because he didn't have the numbers.

The felines rose to their feet and began pounding the ice with their spears, a rhythmic tattoo that reverberated through Arkady's bones. Felines were not fond of weapons as a rule, preferring to use their claws. The spears were for a series of single volleys designed to winnow the numbers of the advancing Caelish forces.

And to strike fear into the hearts
of
our enemies
with that ungodly racket,
Arkady decided.

She couldn't see Stellan from where she was standing on the platform beside her father, but she had no doubt he was out there somewhere, watching over the battle the same way Jaxyn was watching over it from this side. Arkady wished she'd had a chance to speak to her husband. There were so many questions she had for him. Questions about her father, questions about what had happened after he left her in Torlenia, questions about how Jaxyn had managed to frame him for the murder of the King and Queen of Glaeba, about how one of Glaeaba's favourite sons had found himself standing with the enemy. Her feelings for

Stellan were so ambivalent. On one hand she despised him for what he'd done — imprisoning her father to silence him while letting her believe the old man was dead. On the other, Stellan had been her friend, mentor and confidant for more than seven years. She knew him to be a loyal Glaeban, devoted to protecting the king. To find himself facing Glaeba's army as an agent for their enemies must be tearing him up inside.

As the trumpets faded, Arkady wondered if Jaxyn's earlier message to the Caelish queen, which was — essentially — a demand for instant surrender, included a note that Stellan's wife and father-in-law were among the Glaeban forces and things would go much easier on them if the advice to surrender was heeded sooner rather than later.

Jaxyn would not have expected his threat to change the minds of the Caelish, but by delivering the warning Stellan would know she was out here.

Is
Jaxyn hoping to distract Stellan by making him
fear for my life?

He'd misjudged Stellan badly if he thought that would work. This was the man who'd let his own father-in-law rot for seven years in gaol to protect his secret. Threatening to harm the wife he'd taken for the sake of appearances, or the man he'd imprisoned to ensure his silence, wasn't likely to sway him from his purpose now. Not with a couple of Tide Lords at his back equally determined to secure themselves a kingdom. Stellan might wish his wife no harm — Arkady was certain of that — but he wouldn't risk the greater prize to save her.

Arkady glanced over her shoulder — as casually as she could manage — at the drop from the podium to the ice beneath them. The distance was about four feet. She'd have to be careful not to twist an ankle when she jumped, or she'd not get more than a few steps before they recaptured her. And then there was the problem of her father. He was healthier than he'd been in years —