There was no answer to that, so I said nothing. But it set me thinking as I lay there in the icy darkness, Medwen’s body curled into mine, her deep even breathing lulling me to sleep.
It was the first time I was forced to confront the notion that if I ever actually wanted to die, I had a serious problem.
Chapter 42
It was the early hours of the morning before Cayal finished speaking. Their fire had burned down to embers and both Arkady and the Crasii had listened to his tale entranced, heedless of the bitter wind that howled through the mountains.
It was Chikita who broke the silence, her tone awestruck. “You have spoken to the Mother, my lord?”
Cayal nodded. “Who, Elyssa? Of course.”
Arkady stared at Chikita in surprise, forcing herself to focus on what the Crasii was saying. She’d heard the Crasii refer to “the Mother” plenty of times, but the identity of the goddess the Crasii considered their maternal figure was one of those closely guarded secrets they refused to share, even with an outsider as trusted as Arkady. Confronted with such a startling revelation, she was disturbed to discover how much effort it took to concentrate on the disclosure. It was proving rather difficult to banish the image of Medwen lying beside Cayal while she slept with her head resting on his naked chest.
“Did you do it?” Arkady couldn’t help but ask.
“Do what?”
“Find Medwen’s child?”
Cayal hesitated and then shrugged. “Not exactly.”
Cayal leaned forward, poking at the embers of the dying fire. It was impossible to read his expression in the darkness, but she could sense his reluctance to go on. “If I’ve learned one thing since becoming immortal, Arkady, it’s that it is far easier to destroy a friend than an enemy.”
“And much easier to be cryptic than give a straight answer, too, I’ve noticed.”
“I just meant I hung around with Rance and Krydence for a time,” he told her, throwing another branch on the coals. “Probably longer than I should have, truth be told. Fact is, it wouldn’t have made a difference to Medwen. By the time I got there, her child was already dead.”
“So how did you get revenge?”
“I helped put a stop to Crasii farming, for one thing. Eventually.”
“But not the Crasii,” Arkady remarked, glancing around at the felines surrounding them. Although the rain had stopped and the fire had dried her off, Arkady was still freezing and she envied them their fur coats. Their eyes shone in the darkness, watchfully, warily, as if they were waiting for her to try something. She wondered what they thought of Cayal’s story. If he was telling the truth—and the felines obviously believed he was—he must be shattering a few of their illusions about his kind. In Crasii legend, the Tide Lords were gods. There was no mention of a Tide Lord who refused to be a party to their creation. Or of other Tide Lords who might have actively opposed their creators.
The fire flared, sparks vanishing into the night, as Cayal coaxed it back to life. If he was worried about the effect his tale was having on the Crasii, he gave no sign of it.
“By the time we were done, there were enough Crasii around to continue the species without magical help,” he continued. “Actually, they’d reached that point long before I got there. When I arrived in Tenacia, Krydence, Taryx and Rance were well on their way to building their army. It was Syrolee and Elyssa who kept on experimenting.”
“With blending the races?”
He nodded. “They got really creative there for a while. I even had a talking horse called Bevali, once.”
“A talking horse?” Arkady smiled, certain he was teasing her now. “What happened to these remarkable talking horses? I mean, we still have the felines you claim the Tide Lords created, and canines and amphibious Crasii, even reptilian Crasii, although they’re rare. Can’t say I’ve ever been spoken to by a horse, though.”
“They were never really viable.” He glanced across the flames at her with a shrug. “Too hard to make and too difficult to manage when we did. The horses were Rance’s idea, but the others experimented with a lot of crazy mixtures, and not all of them logical. Some blendings worked and some didn’t. I don’t think the equines were infertile, but once you give an animal a chance to voice its feelings, you’ve overridden a large part of their natural instincts and in some species that’s just asking for trouble. I heard they wouldn’t breed because they were so attached to their human masters, they started to think they were human, too. The equines weren’t interested in their own kind. Not even for sex. Did you know we’re the only species that has sex for fun?”
“Do you include all the Crasii in that sweeping generalisation?”
“Yes.”
“But if they’re part human as you claim…”
“Chikita!” Cayal barked in reply. “Why does a female feline copulate?”
“Because she can’t help it,” the feline replied without hesitation. “The need comes on her with the heat and she must fulfil it. We must go on. We must breed. It is the way of things.”
“And feline males? Why do they mate?”
The young woman spat on the ground in contempt. “It is their function and they desire nothing more because they are animals.”
“There,” Cayal said, turning back to Arkady. “You heard her. It is the way of things. They must breed.”
Arkady was silent for a time, wondering why she had never thought to question Crasii sexual practices before. And why she was buying into this nonsense in the first place. She smiled. “You nearly had me there.”
He looked at her in surprise. “Pardon?”
“You nearly had me believing in magic.”
Cayal shook his head with a sigh. “I marvel at your ability to ignore the evidence of your own eyes, Arkady. You’re so set on what you think is real, you can’t accept the truth, even when it has its fingers chopped off, right before your very eyes.”
Cayal was wrong. Arkady wasn’t ignoring anything. She knew she was clinging to a myth, but she wasn’t ready to let it go just yet. Admitting the truth about Cayal would mean stepping through a door Arkady Desean wasn’t sure she had the courage to open. No matter how absurd, in light of all she had witnessed this day, it just seemed easier to hold on to her old reality rather than deal with the new one.
“If you’re telling the truth, Cayal, then I have to confront the notion that my world is based on a lie,” she admitted eventually.
“That’s not actually my fault,” Cayal replied with a shrug, and then without offering her any other opinion, he lay down, turned his back to the fire and promptly went to sleep.
The following morning, in a steady downpour, Cayal turned their party south, taking them even deeper into the mountains. The track they traversed was so faint, Arkady wondered if Cayal was imagining it. They were frequently required to dismount in order to get past the narrower, more dangerous sections of the slippery game trail he followed, but he kept onwards and upwards relentlessly, with the confidence of a man who knows exactly where he is going and what to expect when he arrives.
Protected by their pelts, the felines seemed unbothered by the icy rain that soaked Arkady’s skirts, finding every vulnerable seam with wet, icy fingers. She wasn’t dressed for trekking in the mountains. Her coat was a summer-weight, decorative garment, not meant to protect a body from the relentless rain or the harsh winds that whipped around the peaks of the Shevron Mountains, and her high-heeled boots were ill-suited to riding, even less appropriate for walking over rough ground, or climbing across narrow ravines.
Exhausted, her feet blistered, her thighs rubbed raw, her lips blue, her fingers numb, Arkady took a moment or two to register they had stopped, when Cayal finally called a halt to their progress just on dusk.
It was three days since they’d left Clyden’s Inn. Arkady had stopped trying to reason her way through her predicament. Survival demanded more of her attention now than idle philosophical arguments. She was too tired and too overwhelmed to worry about it any longer. Imm
ortals existed, she decided as she sank to her knees on the rocky plateau Cayal had chosen for their campsite, and Arkady couldn’t have cared less.
“Tides!” Cayal exclaimed, as Arkady collapsed. “Look at you! You’re frozen through! Why didn’t you say something?”
She looked up at him through eyes blurred with wind-driven tears. “Would you have stopped?”
Cayal didn’t answer her. Instead, he cursed impatiently and ordered the Crasii to care for the horses and make camp while he helped Arkady up and led her into the lee of the cliff behind them. There was a shallow depression in the rock face, not deep enough to be called a cave, but enough to offer some small relief from the rain. He drew her close and began rubbing her upper arms briskly, to stimulate the circulation.
“Your hands are so warm,” she remarked in surprise through chattering teeth, glad of the little bit of heat he was able to provide.
“Another advantage of immortality,” he shrugged.
“More of your body regulating itself?” she asked. “Like not getting too fat or too thin?”
Cayal stopped rubbing her arms for a moment and shook his head. He seemed amused. “You’re on the verge of passing out from exposure, Arkady. Don’t you ever stop trying to analyse things?”
She shrugged. “Sorry. I can’t seem to help myself.”
In reply, he pulled her close, wrapping her in his warm embrace. She closed her eyes and tried not to think about the cold. It was disconcerting to be held so intimately but she was too grateful for the unnatural warmth of his body to question its source. Over the top of her head, she could hear Cayal issuing orders to the Crasii to get a fire going.
When he was done with the Crasii and her teeth had stopped chattering, she looked up at him. “Where are you taking me?”
Cayal glanced down at her, still holding her close. “Why?”
“I have a right to know, don’t you think?”
He thought on that for a moment and then shook his head. “Not really.”
A part of Arkady wanted to push him away angrily, but the part of her that was just starting to thaw out resisted the temptation.
“They’ll find you, you know. My husband will already have his scouts out, scouring these mountains. We’ve left a trail a mile wide. The Crasii are not attempting to conceal our progress. A blind man could follow us.”
Cayal shrugged, unconcerned. “I’m not actually trying to hide, Arkady. Just find a place of strength from which to negotiate.”
She stared up at him, a little surprised at how much she wanted to believe him. “They won’t let you go, Cayal,” she warned softly.
He smiled down at her, supremely confident. “We’ll see.”
Arkady shivered as the numbness began to fade a little. Unconsciously, she tried to bury herself even deeper into Cayal’s embrace. She felt his arms tighten about her. Soaking up his unnatural warmth, Arkady closed her eyes again, letting his solid strength envelop her, and tried not to think about anything other than surviving this nightmare so she could return to her husband and her perfectly constructed life full of lies, as if, after what she’d done, there was even a slim chance such a circumstance was possible.
Chapter 43
At first, Warlock had no real destination beyond the city in mind. His release had been too sudden and unexpected to allow him time to make plans. He had taken his pardon and his few possessions and all but run from the high, bleak walls of Lebec Prison the moment they closed the gates behind him.
Despite the persistent, misty rain, the first thing he did was shed the prison uniform they’d made him wear these past two years. Clothes were a human foible, required because their hairless skins could not protect them from the elements. The Crasii rarely wore them, unless required by their masters to denote which house they belonged to, or in some cases, merely to match the decor. But Warlock was free now. He need wear clothes for no man.
Once he’d stashed his rough linen shift behind a rock on the side of the tree-shaded road, Warlock turned toward the distant city. As he walked, he wasted little effort trying to fathom the actions of the Duke of Lebec, or his unaccountably generous wife.
It wasn’t his problem.
Warlock’s problem now was that he was free in a country where his kind was only truly accepted as slaves. There was perhaps some small measure of shelter for him on the rough streets of Lebec, but no real chance of a future there. Even if he didn’t get into trouble directly, it wouldn’t take the authorities long to discover some unsolved crime looking for a suspect and find a way to pin it on the stray canine wandering the streets of Lebec for no other reason than his very existence disturbed them.
There was really only one thing for it, he decided after several hours as the city gradually resolved out of the rain in the distance. He was going to have to either leave Glaeba entirely or try to find Hidden Valley.
All his life, Warlock had heard rumours of a valley to the west of the Great Lakes, where the Scards of Amyrantha had found a home. When he was a pup, the threat of being denied entry to it had been used to frighten him into obedience. As an adult, he’d begun to wonder if the stories of a place where the desperate and dispossessed could find succour were true. Before they’d thrown him into his solitary cell on Recidivists’ Row, he’d heard other Crasii speak of it in the prison. Legend or no, Hidden Valley was the place to which they all dreamed of escaping. The belief was so pervasive, so universal, even among the other Crasii races, that Warlock had begun to believe it might—even in some small measure—be true.
He even had the name of someone they claimed could lead him to the Valley. Shalimar, the prison Crasii had whispered in awe. He knows the way. Find Shalimar, they hissed in the shadows. Get out of this place and find Shalimar.
He will lead you home.
Trouble was, nobody knew where to find this Shalimar character. He was nothing more than a name. Rumour had it, he lived in Lebec.
Not much to go on, admittedly, but a start.
A start that never got any further than Warlock wondering about it. He was in Lebec City for a mere four hours when they caught him again.
“Halt!”
Warlock froze and glanced about. The slums of Lebec were a crowded and filthy place, filled with people seeking work—qualified to do nothing the city desired but the most menial jobs—or those interested in not working at all. Used to the order of Lord Ordry’s household, even the severe but regulated loneliness of Recidivists’ Row, Warlock was overwhelmed by the chaos, by the noise, the smells and the fugue of unrelenting poverty that permeated the stinking streets of the city’s outskirts. Effluent flowed freely in the rain-filled gutters while human and Crasii children alike splashed in the puddles and dodged between the legs of their elders, ragged and thin, but strangely happy in their games.
It amazed Warlock how some people, particularly children, could find amusement, even glee, in the basest circumstances. Perhaps it came from never knowing any better.
It was almost sunset when they hailed him, the teeming streets filled with people returning home from their decent jobs while others headed out to partake in less savoury employment. People scurried by holding oiled cloaks over their heads against the downpour, others dressed in the faded finery so common among the whores and thieves of the city pushed past him as if he wasn’t there, trying to ignore the brewing altercation between the huge canine and the City Watch.
Slowly, Warlock turned to face the men who had hailed him, not doubting for a moment that he was the focus of their attention.
He’d suspected his inexplicable pardon was too good to be true.
The City Watchmen looked smart and extremely out of place here in the slums in their blue-and-green tunics. There were six men in the squad, all of them conspicuously armed with daggers and swords, one of them pointing a loaded crossbow directly at Warlock. It was a stupid thing to do, Warlock noted in some corner of his mind not afraid of death. A wild shot could easily take out an innocent bystander.
“Yes?” he enquired, with a calmness he didn’t feel.
“On your knees, dog!” the officer of the squad commanded, stepping up beside the man with the crossbow.
“I have done nothing,” Warlock pointed out, looking around. He wiped the rain from his face and wondered what his chances of escape were. They appeared slim. The guards were expecting him to make a break for it, the streets were crowded and nobody here, human or Crasii, owed him any favours.
“Who is your master?” the officer demanded.
Warlock carefully extracted his precious pardon from the belt pouch slung over his shoulder. He’d not let it go since Lady Desean had awarded it to him. “I am a free Crasii.”
The officer stepped forward, snatched the document from Warlock’s hand and then stepped back again, so the bowman had a clear shot. He unfolded the paper, read it through and then looked up, frowning.
“Warlock,” he said, “out of Bella, by Segura. You’re the one we’re looking for, I’d say.”
“But I have done nothing,” he protested as a matter of principle. Warlock knew the futility of resisting, but he felt compelled to protest his innocence, nonetheless. And he wanted to reach for his pardon. The rain was falling on it, blurring the ink in large spatters. If he stood there holding it long enough, his freedom might easily be washed away.
“Sure, you’ve done nothing,” the officer agreed sceptically, folding the pardon and slipping it into his coat. “That’s why we were sent to find you, I suppose?”
“And having found me, what do you intend to do with me?”
Warlock’s sharp hearing caught a hissed intake of breath at his insolence from one of the onlookers. He glanced sideways, catching sight of a female canine clutching a large woven basket to her chest, standing off to his left, watching the proceedings with intense interest. She was a well-formed creature with a reddish pelt under a simple linen shift—common attire among the city Crasii—from out of which a bushy tail hung low and unthreatening. She was hardly more than a pup, he judged, as her dark eyes filled with concern on his behalf. He barely had time to register that much before the squad moved in to surround him and the pretty canine Crasii was gone, replaced by an officer of the City Watch.
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