The Chaos Crystal (58 page)

It was then that Cayal realised Oritha was lying on the altar, hands crossed over her breast, apparently peacefully asleep.

'Put the crystal by her head,' Lukys instructed Arkady. She was looking askance at the young woman laid out on the altar, but made no comment. Cayal wasn't sure if that was because she didn't care, or simply didn't want to know what had caused the woman's state.

Cayal wasn't nearly so confused about his feelings on the subject, isn't that your wife?'

Lukys nodded. 'Beautiful, isn't she?'

'What's she doing here?' Cayal had quickly deduced she wasn't sleeping. Whatever Oritha was doing on that altar, he doubted she was doing it willingly. 'Dead.'

'She's not dead,' Lukys scoffed.

'She's preparing for the transfer,' Maralyce said, smoothing the young woman's hair with a gentle hand. 'If there's any resistance at all, the transfer won't work. In this state, she's so deeply unconscious she won't feel a thing.'

While they were speaking, Arkady carefully placed the glowing red skull near Oritha's head and stepped back, her task completed. She looked very relieved. 'Now what?'

'Now we wait for the Tide to peak,' Lukys said.

'How long will that take?'

'Not long, I hope,' Maralyce said. 'It pains Oritha greatly every time we're forced to bring her around again. She's not immortal yet, and the freezing process will eventually harm her if we don't move soon.'

'What happens to me?' Arkady asked, looking around at the three of them.

'You should probably say your goodbyes, my dear,' Lukys said with a benevolent smile.

'You're going to let me leave?' Arkady asked, looking a little surprised.

'In a manner of speaking,' Lukys agreed, putting his arm around her shoulder. 'Why don't we go back upstairs so we can discuss the arrangements?'

Lukys led Arkady away from the altar, his arm still around her shoulder like a generous uncle offering a favoured niece a special treat. Cayal watched them leave, watched them disappear into the eerie green-lit maw of the entrance to the stairs, a little puzzled by Lukys's words. He turned to Maralyce. 'What's he talking about? Making arrangements?'

'He's just being nice to her, Cayal. You know how Lukys operates. Nobody ever knows what's about to happen to them.'

'What's he going to do to Arkady?'

Maralyce rolled her eyes. 'Tides, boy, do you have to ask?'

Cayal stared at her for a moment, and then he cursed under his breath as he realised what she was telling him. Cayal took off at a run, slipping on the icy polished permafrost floor as he bolted after Lukys and Arkady.

He was too late, of course. By the time he reached the top of the stairs, Arkady was already unconscious, barely breathing, laid out on the floor.

'Tides, what have you done?' he demanded of Lukys, sliding on his knees the last few feet to reach Arkady.

'What you asked,' Lukys said. 'I've done the same to her as I've done to Oritha.' 'I never asked you to do that!'

'Elyssa will never believe you intend to keep your promise otherwise, Cayal,' Lukys said with infuriating logic, 'I'd have done it down in the chamber, but now the crystal's down there I didn't want to risk it.'

'You could have warned her.'

'What purpose would that have served?'

None,
Cayal realised, but there was no point in saying so. He bent over her and kissed Arkady on the lips. They were already icy and faintly tinged with blue. Then he looked up at Lukys. 'Will she be all right?'

'Of course she will,' Lukys promised. 'We'll lay your girl here out next to Oritha on the altar, and Elyssa will stand there and channel all the Tide you need to die, and she'll never be any the wiser.'

'Until she wakes up on the new world and realises nothing has changed.'

'Not my fault if it doesn't work,' Lukys said with a shrug. 'I'm not even sure it will restore Coryna.'

'You won't really put Elyssa's mind into Arkady's body, will you?'

'I hardly think, given everything else that will be happening when we open the rift, that I'll have the time. Do you?'

That wasn't exactly a resounding denial, but Cayal figured it would have to do. He was sorry about only one thing, however. Lifting Arkady's unconscious body into his arms so he could carry her back down the stairs to the Tide chamber, he really wished he'd taken the time to tell her he was sorry.

CHAPTER 52

Tiji survived on ice-melt and anger for the first few days of her confinement. She paced her cell furiously, planning all manner of dire fates for Lukys and Taryx and all immortals in general, for sealing her up in here. When she tired of that, she started to wonder why they hadn't killed her outright.

For reasons far too complicated to go into now —
reasons you cannot begin to understand — for the time being I want you alive, little Scard.

That's what he had said.
For the time being I want
you alive.

Tiji tried to figure out what Lukys meant by that, but she really had no idea. And why, if he wanted her alive, did he not just leave her in the palace, waiting on Lady Arryl? She was no threat to him there.

You'll stay here until I need you again. Or until I
don't
need you. At which point you'll be free to share
the fate
of
your friends once we have departed Amyrantha.

Was Arryl planning to leave too?

Tiji knew they were intending to open a rift that would lead to another world. She'd heard them talking about it
...
well, overheard them, actually. And then, when she presented her case to Lady Arryl, Lukys had admitted it outright.

But there was something decidedly suspicious about the whole affair. Oritha's calm acceptance of the near-death state Lukys kept inducing in her so he could perfect his technique was downright creepy. Did he

really mean to take her across a world-bridging rift to start a life with him on another world?

Admittedly, Lukys seemed fond of Oritha, but she was hardly worth this much effort.

No person was, human, Crasii
or
Scard.

Such were the troubled thoughts that occupied Tiji as she paced her icy cell, wondering why she hadn't suffocated yet. The cavern seemed to be sealed but there must be fresh air coming from somewhere. Or maybe Lukys had done something magical to the air in here, ensuring it never got stale. Fortunately, when they caught her, she'd been wearing the fur coat Arryl had given her — she never ventured from her chamber without it — so she hadn't frozen to death. Yet.

Nobody came to look for her. At first, it distressed her to think Azquil was so accepting of the Tide Lords' lies that he would believe their ridiculous story about her deciding to leave the palace and strike out on her own. Of course, her last words to Azquil: Go
wait on
your precious immortals! You care more about them than me, anyway! I'm leaving this wretched place!
probably hadn't helped matters much.

But still
...
you'd think he'd have a cursory look
around after I went missing, if nothing else.

Surely, despite her oft-stated intention of leaving this place, he didn't believe she would be foolish enough to pack up and go, without so much as a goodbye?

I mean, seriously, where does he think I'd go?

There was no ship waiting at anchor on the coast to spirit her home, assuming she could even make it that far without freezing to death. She wasn't even sure where
home
was, any longer. She didn't belong in Glaeba. She knew that now. But she wasn't sure she belonged in the Senestran Wetlands either, worshipping the wretched immortal Trinity.

Tides, it was so unfair.
Ever since that moment, thousands of years ago, when the immortal Elyssa —

driven by equal measures of anger and jealousy — had magically forced a piglet through a pregnant human woman's skin, into the woman's womb, and then finally into the child she was carrying, the Crasii had been torn between the opposing forces of self- preservation and the immortals. Tiji's race, like all the other magically-blended species, had been bred to serve the Tide Lords, a compulsion impossible to defy by all but the rare few like Tiji — and Azquil, if you believed his assurances
...

Right now, Tiji didn't believe a single word her mate had told her. Even with all the noises he made about following Arryl to Jelidia of his own free will, it seemed the immortal had more claim on Azquil than his mate. He'd not come looking for her. Even though he claimed to have a mind of his own, here she was, stuck in this icy prison with no hope of rescue, all because of Azquil.

Tiji's pacing brought her back to the translucent ice wall that separated her from freedom. Although she paced up and down it endlessly, she had given up trying to claw through it. It was too thick — although not so thick she couldn't make out shadows passing in the hall outside. But it was too dense to allow any sound to carry through the ice. Too thick for anybody to notice her and discover she was trapped.

I am such a fool.
Azquil had the right of it. Toe the line. Give the Tide Lords what they want. Don't do anything to upset them. Tiji hated living like that.

And look what her defiance had gotten her — a frozen cell and a long slow death from starvation. Because nobody was coming to get her. Ever.

Tears of despair welled up in the little Crasii's eyes. The end was going to be long, slow and painful, because she had water here and could survive for weeks on that. But the hunger would get her in the end. The hunger and the loneliness.

There were other things that might bring her undone, just as slowly and painfully, but Tiji never got to wonder what they were, because right about the time she decided things probably couldn't get much worse anyway, a shadow appeared on the other side of the ice wall. A moment later, the wall of ice trapping her inside this frozen cell splintered with a deafening crack.

A few moments after that, several large chunks of ice separated from the wall and fell away to reveal a Tide Lord standing in the opening.

Tiji's heart lodged in her throat, but she stood her ground. If she was going to die, at least she was going to face death like a Scard, and not like a snivelling Crash lackey, without the wit to know any better.

She braced herself as the Tide Lord leaned forward into the cell, studied her for a moment and then looked around curiously.

'Tides, little one,' Pellys said with a concerned frown. 'Aren't you Arryl's pet? How long have you been stuck in here, all on your own?'

Tiji stared at him in confusion. 'A
...
a while, I think. I'm not sure.'

'You should get back to her right now. She'll be wanting you to get back to work.'

It was then that it dawned on Tiji that Pellys had no idea she was a prisoner. Apparently — except for Taryx who'd aided him — Lukys hadn't told anybody she was down here. Not even the other Tide Lords.

'Um
...
I should be getting back, I suppose,' she agreed, afraid to do or say too much else in case it gave her away.

She had nothing to worry about, however. Pellys stared at her for a few moments longer, a little puzzled by the whole affair, and then he stood back from the splintered opening to let her out. Tiji hurriedly climbed through, relieved to find there was no sign of anybody else in the torchlit corridor outside.

'Where is everybody?'

'Down in the chamber,' Pellys told her. 'The Tide's peaking. I could feel it on the roof. I came down to tell them. Did you want to see?'

'Um
...
no thanks. How did you know I was stuck in the wall?'

'I saw your shadow moving behind the ice.' He grinned. 'You looked like a goldfish swimming in a bowl. How did you get in there?'

Tiji stepped back warily. Even she knew of Pellys and what he liked doing to goldfish, 'I'm not sure,' she lied. 'Do you know where Lady Arryl is?'

'Down with the others getting ready to open the rift, I suppose. They're going to seal the chamber soon.'

'Seal it? Why?'

'So the Tide doesn't leak out, of course, silly,' he told her, looking at her as if she was a bit dim. 'Why else?'

Tiji didn't have an answer to that. And she certainly didn't care enough about what the Tide Lords were up to, to ask for clarification.

She forced a smile. 'Well, thanks for letting me out, my lord. To serve you is the reason I breathe and all that. But I need to be getting back to my
...
er
...
job
...
You know, serving the mighty Tide Lords.'

Pellys nodded in agreement. 'Arryl will be glad she found you again. She's been really sad since the little lizard died.'

'I didn't die, Lord Pellys,' she said. 'See? I'm here! Alive and well because you found me.'

'I don't mean
you,'
the Tide Lord said. 'The little
boy
lizard.'

Tiji's scales suddenly felt like they were standing on end. 'The boy lizard? You mean Azquil?'