The Chaos Crystal (33 page)

Keeping her hand on the rough stone wall to help her balance, Arkady flinched at every icy step, wondering if she should have taken the time to put something on her raw and aching feet before venturing down here into the darkness.

But, pain aside, the historian in Arkady was fascinated by this place. She knew from her last visit here with Stellan — back when the world was a very different place — that it pre-dated history as the Glaebans or Caelish knew it. There was no long-lost culture they knew of that might have built it, and whatever decoration may have once adorned the building in its heyday had been painted onto plaster, rather than carved into the stone; plaster that had long ago disintegrated into dust, leaving only the masonry shell of the temple behind.

Arkady knew now that her incomplete view of history was the result of the many Cataclysms caused by the Tide Lords; that her world had a rich and varied history dating back thousands of years prior to the start of their limited knowledge. I
wonder,
she thought idly, as another giggle beckoned her forward into the darkness,
where would society be now,
if
our progress
hadn't been constantly interrupted by the internecine battles
of
the immortals?

Ironically, the mystery of this temple's very existence was one of the things — besides covering for her father — that had fuelled her interest in history, which had led her to studying the oral history of the Crash, which led to Declan asking her to interview Cayal, which led her to becoming involved with the immortals. In many ways, she had come a full circle. However, in a million years Arkady could never have imagined the path her life would take from that moment on, or the cost her seemingly innocent interest in history would exact.

'Missy? Dezi? Tory?'

The giggling stopped again at her call.

'Come on! I know you're down here. Where are you, you little rascals?'

The torch provided only a small circle of light in the darkness. She figured they couldn't be that far away, given she'd been able to hear them upstairs. Arkady took a further step and let out a yelp as she stubbed her toe on another fall of rock that must have been dislodged during last night's tremor.

Her eyes watering with the sting of yet another scrape added to her litany of aches and pains, she squatted down to examine the small rock fall blocking her way. As she did, she spied three pairs of eyes shining in the darkness off to her left. The fall had exposed another chamber on the other side of the wall. Somehow, the three pups had managed to find their way down here and crawl inside.

'Tides, how long was I asleep?' she muttered to herself. Then she forced a smile, putting on her very best coaxing voice. 'Come on, you three. Mama's waiting for you upstairs. Are you hungry?'

The pups giggled but made no move toward her. It was a foolish idea to think they would. They didn't know her. They couldn't speak. They couldn't understand a word she was saying. Arkady moved the torch a little closer. Although the chamber beyond gave the impression of being quite large, she doubted she could fit through the small hole the pups had found to enter it.

Arkady sat back on her heels to rethink the problem, moving the torch away from the entrance in case the pups were afraid of the fire. She jammed it between the stones off to her right, and turned to look at the pups again, surprised to discover the cavern where they were hiding wasn't completely dark at all, but lit by a soft blue light, although Arkady couldn't determine its source.

'Come on, sweetie,' Arkady coaxed to the nearest pup, not sure which one it was in the odd blue light. 'Come to Aunty Kady.'

The pup giggled again and rolled something toward her. Arkady had no idea what it was, but it proved to be the source of the strange blue light. She reached through the opening and scooped it up, surprised by the weight of it. As soon as Arkady touched it, however, the strange glowing object went cold and dead. She moved it closer to the light of the torch and let out a yelp of disgust. About the size of a small melon, it seemed to be made of polished quartz. And it was shaped like a skull.

'Oh, that's just horrid,' she muttered, but she turned back to the entrance to the cavern and held up the quartz skull. 'Is this what you want?' she asked, holding it just out of reach. 'Come on, then; come and get it.'

The pups were too young to understand what Arkady was saying, but they wanted their shiny toy back. The nearest pup — Arkady still wasn't sure which one it was — reached for the skull, which began to glow blue again as the pup approached. When Arkady pulled it away, the glow disappeared. Fascinated, she moved it toward the pups once more, and sure enough, the closer it got to the Crasii the more it began to shine.

Arkady was entranced, but she was also acutely aware that Boots was due back at any moment and would not be pleased to discover her pups had been allowed to wander down here on their own while Arkady was — quite literally — asleep on the job. But she understood what had fascinated the pups so much. The skull — its purpose, its age, or who might have crafted it — were all questions begging for answers. But not now. Not until the pups were safe. Putting aside for the moment the mystery of this strange artefact, Arkady held it closer to the entrance, the blue glow filling the chamber beyond as it neared the puppies.

'Here you go,' she called in a sing-song voice. 'Come and get the pretty skull. Come on.'

The pups probably weren't even listening to her, so spellbound were they by the shiny object beckoning them forward with its soft blue glow. They approached it warily, giggling a little in that odd way Crasii pups had of mimicking human children. 'That's it — come to the shiny skull. Follow the pretty light
...'

Dezi emerged first from the hole, so as a reward, Arkady let him hold the skull. The other two didn't seem to like that at all, and quickly followed their brother, scrabbling over the fallen stones to get to his prize.

'Ha! Gotcha!' Arkady exclaimed, grabbing Missy first, followed by Tory. The pups wriggled in her grasp, trying to free themselves, not so much to escape from

her as to get to the shiny skull their brother was holding. With some difficulty, Arkady managed to secure both pups under her left arm. She scooped up Dezi, glowing skull and all, glancing at the torch with a frown as she discovered she didn't have a hand free with which to hold it. Then Arkady glanced down at the puppy in her arms and realised she wouldn't need the torch while one of the pups had the skull.

'You hold on to that now,' she told Dezi, who was paying her absolutely no attention. 'Because if you drop that thing and break it and the light goes away, we're going to be stuck down here until your mother gets home.'

Dezi giggled in response, while the other two pups struggled in her arms, trying to get to the shiny skull. With the three of them balanced precariously in her arms, and their way lit by the eerie blue glow of the strange artefact, she headed back to the surface on her aching feet, wondering what was going to be harder —explaining to Boots what it was the pups had found, explaining
how
they'd found it, or trying to figure out exactly what it was.

Arkady took the time to rebuild the barricade once the pups were safely back upstairs in their furs. She left them playing with the glowing skull while she worked because it kept them amused, although she did have to intervene a couple of times when Missy became a little possessive of it and wouldn't share it with her brothers.

By the time Boots returned, the barricade was repaired, the pups asleep, and Arkady was sitting by the fire examining the skull, trying to glean some sense of its origin.

'Tides, you got them to sleep?' Boots said in a low voice as she descended the stairs. She was carrying two rabbits in one hand and a large knife in the other. From the look of her bloody mouth, Arkady guessed she'd already eaten her fill.

'I think they wore themselves out,' Arkady said with a smile. 'You had some luck, I see?'

Boots nodded. 'Not a lot out there to find, but it should see us through the next few days. Can you cook?'

Arkady nodded. 'I wasn't always a duchess, you know, Boots. Do you like cooked meat?'

'I used to,' she said, tossing the rabbits onto the floor by the fire. 'But ever since I got pregnant I seem to prefer it raw. I go by the name Tabitha Belle now, by the way, your grace. Not Boots.'

'I beg your pardon?'

'Boots is a slave name. I'm free now. Tabitha Belle is my
free
name.'

Arkady smiled at the canine's proud but slightly defensive demeanour as she declared her emancipation. 'Technically you're an escaped slave, Boo
...
Tabitha.
Being on the run and wanted for murder doesn't really qualify as freedom.'

'So you say,' Boots said a little huffily. 'What's that you've got there?'

'I don't know,' Arkady said, handing the skull to Boots, certain she was never going to be able to think of her as
Tabitha Belle,
a name much too pretty and, well,
girly,
for a creature as feisty as this canine. 'The pups found it down in
...
Well, it doesn't matter where — but they found it. It seems to glow whenever a Crasii touches it.'

Sure enough, as soon as Boots took the crystal from Arkady, it began to glow, but not quite the same shade of blue as it did when the pups touched it. When Boots held the skull, it had more of a greenish tinge.

'Do you know what it is?'

Boots shook her head. 'Never seen anything like it. What happens when
you
touch it?' 'Absolutely nothing.'

Boots frowned, turning the polished skull this way and that as she examined it. 'It's kind of morbid, isn't it? Maybe it's something to do with Tide magic'

'How do you figure that?'

'Crasii can't swim the Tide, but we can sense it. At least we can sense the immortals on it. Even Scards can do that, although it reeks something awful to us. You're just a mortal human, so you wouldn't even know the Tide was out there if someone hadn't told you about it. Maybe it's just reacting to how much sensitivity you have to the Tide.'

That was a plausible explanation, Arkady supposed, but it still didn't explain the
purpose
of the skull. 'It glowed blue when the pups touched it. Not green.'

Boots's frown deepened and she tossed the skull back to Arkady as if she was suddenly impatient with it. 'It's probably because they're younger. I don't know. I don't really care, either. You gonna do something with those things or not? Rabbits don't skin themselves, you know.'

'What should 1 do with the skull, do you think?'

'Give it to the pups to play with.'

'But it might be valuable.'

'Valuable to who? Let them play with it. It's not like they have much else —' Boots fell abruptly silent at the sound of someone calling out above them in the ruins.

'Hello?'

Boots looked at Arkady, her eyes panicked. 'Did you let the pups out?' she hissed. 'Did someone see you?'

Arkady shook her head. 'We never went near the surface,' she whispered back. 'I swear.'

'Hello! Is anybody here?'
The distant voice was muffled and sounded male, but not especially threatening. It might just be a passing fisherman from the lake or a woodsman, who'd caught a whiff of smoke on the air and had come to investigate.

'Stay here,' Boots ordered, turning for the door.

'No!' Arkady protested softly. 'I'll go.'

Boots looked at her askance. 'You can barely walk.'

'You have pups,' Arkady replied.

The canine hesitated and then nodded. Tossing the skull onto the furs beside the pups, where it began to shine a soft blue, Arkady quickly pulled on her stockings and damp shoes, ignoring the pain in her feet, tied up the laces, and stood up. Boots handed her the knife she was holding. 'Can you slit a man's throat if you have to?'

Arkady nodded. 'If I have to.'

'Then go. Get rid of him. Do whatever it takes.'

Arkady hefted the knife, a little surprised at the weight of it, and then tucked it into the waistband at the back of her skirt. 'I'll get rid of him if I have to promise to leave with him,' she said. And then, before she could think better of it, with the knife pressing against her back, Arkady turned and climbed the stairs to the surface.

The interloper proved to be male, certainly, but he wasn't human. He was Crasii, wearing a hooded jacket against the bitter cold, which obscured his face. Arkady found him poking about the main part of the ruin upstairs, calling out periodically, and making no attempt at stealth. Although there was nothing overtly threatening about his behaviour, he was huge and acting as if he knew there was somebody hiding here. She watched him for a time from the shadows and then edged her way around the hall, trying to put as much distance as possible between herself and the hidden entrance to Boots's lair, more than a little worried by the sudden appearance of this canine Crasii.

Despite her attempt to be stealthy, however, Arkady was still limping. A scrape of shoe leather on stone betrayed her. The canine's sharp ears picked up the sound. He spun around to look in her direction but Arkady was able to draw back behind a column before he caught sight of her.

'Is someone there?' the Crash demanded. Even more worryingly, he demanded it in Glaeban.