The Chaos Crystal (27 page)

Stellan was speechless.
Tides, those poor creatures.

'Oh, don't look at me like that,' Tryan said. 'They're only animals, Desean. You'd not rather have me killing the good citizens of Caelum over this, would you?'

Stellan didn't know what to say. Nothing in his experience had prepared him for this. 'Isn't there something else — something less
cruel
— you can do?'

'Of course there is, but Jaxyn would just retaliate in kind and we'd be no better off than we are now. How long have you known who we are?'

'Since before I left Glaeba.'

'And you never said a word. I've underestimated you, Desean.'

'People often do,' Stellan replied with a helpless shrug. 'Why
can't
you do anything to stop this butchery? There are a half-dozen of you here and only two or three immortals on Jaxyn's side. Surely you can overwhelm them?'

Tryan considered Stellan for a moment before answering. When he did speak, he was much more forthcoming than Stellan expected. 'Of the half-dozen of us here, Desean, only my sister and I can wield the sort of power needed to put an abrupt end to this conflict, and we'd have to do it before Jaxyn realised what we were up to.'

'Do you fear he has spies among us?' Stellan asked, wondering if Tryan knew about Scards like Warlock.

But apparently the Tide Lord didn't fear mere mortals. He shook his head. 'He can feel us on the Tide, and I suspect the only reason he's limited himself to regenerating his felines up 'til now is because he can sense that Elyssa isn't close by, so he's in no danger of us teaming up against him.'

Stellan was confused. 'So you command the Tide and yet your powers cancel each other out? Where's the use in that?'

Tryan shrugged. 'I share your frustration, your grace, but believe me, unless we can take Jaxyn by surprise there is nothing to be gained by calling down the full force of the rising Tide, unless you plan to be lord and master of a graveyard once the battle is won. Clearly, you know something of us, but you need to understand that our power is elemental. I can't magically increase the size of our army, or make better weapons appear, but I can easily call up a wind that would blow Jaxyn's army back to Glaeba. Such a wind would likely kill our people and flatten Cycrane in the process and cause a natural disaster in somewhere like Stevania, on the other side of the world. But if you really want me to try
...'

'So there's nothing you can do,' Stellan concluded, turning back to watch the fight.
Tides, is there
anything worse than the sound
of
a dying feline? Other than hearing her dying over and over again?

'There's plenty I could do,' Tryan said. 'Just nothing that won't make things worse.'

'So
...
what? You're just going to let him win?'

Tryan seemed unconcerned. 'He hasn't won yet, Desean. We still have our human reserves to throw into the battle. Once we take the fight to the streets, Jaxyn may find the going a little tougher.'

Tryan's casual disregard for the feline lives already repeatedly lost this day left Stellan filled with impotent rage, not to mention a sense of futility that had nothing to do with this battle. The sick notion of making dead creatures fight on and on notwithstanding — even if a miracle occurred and they managed to carry the day — Jaxyn had brought the fight to Caelum. Stellan's main concern was — and always had been — the security of the Glaeban throne.

If these Tide Lords opposing Jaxyn were unable to protect Caelum from him, how were they supposed to help Stellan take back Glaeba?

'You do realise that it was Jaxyn who caused the Great Lakes to freeze?' Stellan said to Tryan, deciding to try a different tack. 'How is it he did that and you couldn't feel him using the Tide?'

'Because he was very very careful,' Tryan said. 'We'd have felt it if the lakes froze overnight, but they didn't. It took weeks. If Jaxyn was responsible for it, he was disturbing the Tide as little as possible in order to make it look natural.'

Stellan wished now that he'd confessed sooner to knowing the truth about the immortals. Perhaps then he could have said something about it. He might have warned Tryan and Elyssa that his contacts in the Cabal knew Jaxyn was responsible. Maybe then they could have done something to halt the freeze. Or melt the ice. Stellan didn't know enough about Tide magic to speculate what they might have been able to do, only that he probably should have said
something.

'Are you
sure
there's no way to melt the ice?' he asked.

'Not quickly,' Tryan said. 'And unless you took him by surprise, Jaxyn would find a way to retaliate.'

'But if two of you working together are more powerful than —'

'Then he won't try to fight us head-on. He'll do something else, like make the brains of every man in Cycrane explode out of his ears or something equally harrowing — something we'd have to stop melting the ice to counter. Tides, do you think we're like magicians from some children's story who stand there hurling lightning bolts at each other?' Tryan laughed sourly. 'If it were that simple, why would sorcerers need mortal armies to fight their battles for them?'

Stellan had been wondering the same thing. He gripped the balcony railing in frustration, a little

surprised to feel it trembling through his gloves.
Tides,
how much
of
this carnage is my fault?
he wondered.

Oh, Arkady, have I killed you too, with my
ambition?

The trembling increased. Stellan registered that fact about the same time that Tryan suddenly looked up, his expression confused and more than a little worried.
'What the ...?'

The immortal never got a chance to finish his question. Without warning, a crack boomed across the ice, so loud it sounded like the world had been sundered in two. For a moment, even the fighting stopped. And then Stellan saw what had caused the sound and gasped — a large fissure had appeared in the ice without warning or any logical explanation.

Down on the ice, Krydence and Ranee had the wit to call their troops back as soon as they realised the ice was about to go, but Jaxyn, further from the action, couldn't see what those higher up could see. The cracks spread like a virus, spider-webbing across the ice sheet, which seemed to be growing more translucent by the second.

'What's happening?' Stellan called to Tryan over the shout of panic engendered by the sudden orders to withdraw. The felines that had — until a few moments ago — been trying to claw their opponents to death, were now slipping and sliding on the bloodstained ice, trying to reach the shore. 'Is it Tide magic?'

'It's Tide magic, all right,' Tryan agreed, yelling to be heard over the ruckus. 'But it's not Jaxyn who's wielding it.'

'Then
who?'

Tryan must have known the answer, although he seemed disinclined to share it with Stellan. The immortal started cursing savagely.

And then the ice gave way.

For a time, even Tryan's curses were overwhelmed by the sound of breaking ice and the screams from

thousands of drowning felines. Stellan stared at the lake in horror. The cracks were spreading faster now and opening up to reveal the icy black water beneath, no longer needing magic to sustain their progress.

'Arkady!'
Stellan cried, but it was a useless, futile cry, lost amid the screams of dying Crasii.

With alarming speed, the splintering cracks reached Jaxyn's sledded podium. A few seconds later, it tipped into the freezing water, taking all its occupants —human and immortal — with it, into the dark icy depths of the Lower Oran.

CHAPTER 26

It was evening before Arkady was game enough to stop. She ran — or rather stumbled — over the rough terrain for most of the day.

Fear of pursuit shredded her nerves. Every snapped twig, every unexplained sound in the woods, had her jumping in fright. Even after almost a full day on the run, she still couldn't quite believe she'd managed to get away — or her good fortune that Jaxyn had appointed a Scard who happened to work for the Cabal to watch over her.

That wasn't the stroke of luck it had seemed at first, she decided on reflection, brushing the snow from a fallen log so she could take a seat on it to catch her breath and rest her weary legs. The Cabal made it their business to place Scard spies as close as possible to the immortals to keep an eye on them.

In all likelihood, Chikita's placement at Jaxyn's side had nothing to do with Arkady. The little feline was merely helping where she could, and only because at that moment in time, during the turmoil of battle, it wasn't likely to get her into trouble. She'd shown no inclination to help Arkady before the chaos of the invasion. In fact, nothing about the Scard's demeanour, right up until she let Arkady escape, gave any hint that she wasn't a perfectly well-behaved Crash, as subject to immortal whim as any other feline.

Whatever motives drove Chikita, Arkady wasn't going to pass up the only opportunity she had to escape. She was quite sure that as soon as Jaxyn was

no longer distracted by the battle, he would come looking for her. How she was going to stay out of his grasp when he did, was something she had no idea about just yet.

She tried hard not to think about leaving her father behind. She'd already grieved him as lost once, many years ago. The memory was just another invisible scar on a soul scored with more scars than she cared to count these days. Their abortive attempt to escape that had resulted in Clyden's death seemed to sap the last of his remaining spirit. By staying behind, she was free to do what she had to do in order to save herself. He'd known that. It was the reason he'd refused to escape.

One way or another Bary Morel was determined to sacrifice himself to save his daughter. Arkady had realised that when she found him in his room with a noose around his neck. Her attempts to prevent him from doing anything foolish hadn't stopped him, only made him more creative.

Of
course, Papa, your grand plan to nobly sacrifice
your own life to cover my escape will all turn out to be moot, because I'll probably freeze to death before sun- up,
she decided, looking around to see where she was.

With the daylight fading, the temperature was dropping rapidly. The sun was already sinking behind the mountaintops in the west. Arkady was exhausted, hungry and chilled to the bone, despite the fur coat she was wearing. Her feet were frozen, her shoes soaked; she could no longer feel her toes and she was sure she wouldn't survive a night in the open without the means to make a fire.

Arkady didn't have long before her situation moved from dire to critical. Without shelter or a fire, for sure she would evade capture by going to the one place Jaxyn couldn't follow: into death.

She had been able to assuage her thirst with snow, but had nothing else to sustain her, nor did she know enough bush-craft to find her own food. The woods

made her nervous. She'd grown up in the slums of Lebec and then spent the rest of her life in a palace. City streets held no surprises for Arkady Desean. Declan had taught her how to look out for herself as a child, which had stood her in good stead for her turn as a duchess. Negotiating the pitfalls of Glaeban high society proved surprisingly similar to facing the perils of the slums. But even as a slave in Senestra or in the stark deserts of Torlenia, she'd not been alone like she was now, in an unfamiliar environment where she didn't have the tools to survive.

Arkady knew there was a way to start a fire by rubbing sticks together, but making fire was not a skill she'd ever needed before. There was always someone around with a flint, or another fire from which one could borrow a hot coal. She wasn't so worried about eating. A person could go days without food if need be; she was prepared to sacrifice a full belly for freedom.

But freedom wasn't freedom if she was dead and with nightfall, that fate was a real possibility.

The overcast sky concealed the setting sun, leaving Arkady with no accurate notion of where she was, other than somewhere north of Cycrane. She'd only been out of the Caelish capital once before, and that was years ago, on her honeymoon, when Stellan's role as the king's personal envoy had brought them to Cycrane on official business. Nyah's father, the late Prince Consort of Caelum, had taken them to visit some ruins north of the city to see if Arkady knew anything of their origins. They'd made quite a day of it, with a picnic lunch and much laughter, interesting conversation and overtures of friendship. It was hard to believe that in such a short time, the two countries were now at war.

Although she wasn't sure of their exact location, she figured she must be close to the ruins by now. They were a short way inland from the lake, she recalled,

and probably the closest thing to shelter out here. Arkady glanced up at the sky, wondering how much daylight she had left. And what the chances were of finding shelter. She could see the rocky bluff that she recalled as being near the ruins, jutting out from the hillside just ahead of her. Perhaps, if she made her way toward it, she might have some hope of locating shelter. She didn't have long. In the short time since she'd stopped, it was already noticeably colder and she was no longer shivering, which she knew to be a bad sign.

Arkady forced herself to her feet and then froze at an unfamiliar noise. She strained to listen, certain she could hear a mewling cry that sounded nothing like the other forest noises she'd grown accustomed to this past day. She waited, wondering if she'd imagined it. For a time, she heard nothing. And then, just as she was on the brink of deciding she really
had
imagined the noise, she heard it again.