“How?”
“Nobody’s succeeded in killing him yet.”
Declan smiled. “You’re going to get yourself in trouble making comments like that around these people, Slinky.”
“Lady Arryl will protect us, my lord,” Azquil said. “As will you, I suspect.”
“Of course he will,” Jojo said, staring at Declan with devoted eyes. “The Tide Lords protect us because to serve them is the reason we breathe.”
“It might be the reason you breathe, kitten,” Tiji said. “But some of us aren’t so devoted to the cause.”
The feline glared at the two chameleons—something she did a lot, Tiji noted with concern—and stepped protectively between them and Declan.
“You are Scards. Abominations who should not be allowed to live. Both of you.”
“That’s enough, Jojo,” Declan informed her, putting his hand on her shoulder to restrain her. “These chameleons are my friends and you will treat them with the same respect you would treat any immortal. Is that clear?”
The feline immediately backed down, dropping to her knees on the snow before her master. “To serve you is the reason I breathe, my lord.”
“Harm a single scale on either of those two,” he added sternly, “and I’ll give you a reason not to breathe.”
It concerned Tiji a little to see how quickly Declan had learned to use the Crasii compulsion to his advantage, even if he was using it to protect her and Azquil. Is this what happens when you find you can command anyone to do anything? You find reasons to do it just because you can?
Jojo didn’t seem offended or upset by the order, although it was clear she considered the two reptilian Crasii prey rather than family. She nodded and rose to her feet. “To serve you is the reason I breathe, my lord.”
“You may go.”
She bowed awkwardly, unaccustomed to the furs, and then turned and hurried down the slope after the sled.
Tiji waited until she was out of earshot and then looked at Declan with a frown. “I think you’re starting to like that whole ‘To serve you is the reason I breathe, my lord’ nonsense.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“To serve you isn’t the reason I breathe.”
“I learned that long ago, Slinky.”
She searched his face, hoping he meant it. “Don’t let them change you, Declan.”
“I won’t,” he promised. “Now, come on. The Palace of Impossible Dreams awaits us.”
Tiji smiled at Declan, forcing an enthusiasm she certainly didn’t feel for this venture. And then she let Azquil take her hand and together the three of them headed down the slope to where the other immortals were waiting.
Chapter 70
If Declan had thought Lukys’s ice palace was impressive from a distance, it was quite overwhelming close up. About an hour after they’d first spied it, they entered the Palace of Impossible Dreams through an archway that opened into a cavernous chamber from which the rest of the palace seemed to emanate.
A rush of warm air greeted them as they entered, although Declan thought the warmth an illusion. A number of Crasii slaves hurried out to attend them, as if the visitors were expected. Although he was searching for it, Declan couldn’t sense another presence on the Tide to indicate Lukys, Kentravyon or Pellys was in the vicinity. The canines brought them hot drinks and warm shawls and eyed the new Crasii warily. Taryx had disappeared with the sled, presumably to release and feed the dogs.
Jojo hissed as a canine got too close, baring her teeth warningly.
“Settle down,” Declan ordered the feline he was now apparently the master of, looking around with interest. Although he’d been warned about this place, he wasn’t quite prepared for the scale of it. It was beyond huge. It was majestic. And it was pointless. As Arryl had asked when they first spied the palace, why build it here, where there’s nobody to admire your handiwork?
“Cayal! You’re back!”
They all turned at the sound of a female voice. Descending the carved-ice stairs was a young woman, dressed in a long woollen dress and a glorious white fur coat that seemed to be made from the skin of a Jelidian snow bear. Declan wondered why he was surprised. No snow bear was going to harm an immortal. Lukys could have taken the skin off the bear while it was still breathing and complaining about being skinned alive, and wouldn’t have come to any lasting harm.
The young woman stopped before their disparate group and curtseyed elegantly. She was Torlenian, of all things—at least Declan assumed she was because she addressed them in that language—but she was smiling in welcome and he figured this must be their hostess, Lukys’s young wife, Oritha.
Cayal bowed politely to the woman, turning on his most charming smile. “Oritha, how nice to see you again. Allow me to introduce Lady Arryl and . . . Declan Hawkes.” Then he turned to the others, adding, “This is Lukys’s wife, Oritha.”
She smiled. “You do insist on calling him that, don’t you, Cayal? Are the other ladies not with you, Lady Arryl? My husband told me to expect several ladies.”
“My sisters declined your husband’s generous invitation, my lady,” Arryl explained with the glib ease of a practised liar. “They have responsibilities in Senestra not easily abandoned, even for someone as persuasive as your husband.”
That was diplomatic, Declan thought, wondering why they were bothering to go through the motions with this woman, even if she was mortal. Given whom she was married to, it seemed a fairly inane charade. Surely, she must know what was going on here.
Oritha turned her welcoming smile on Declan. “And you, my lord? We were not expecting you; however, I’m sure my husband will be delighted to receive you.”
“Where is your husband, my lady?” Cayal inquired. “And Lord Pellys? Lord Kentravyon?”
“They’ve gone hunting snow bears,” she explained with a smile and a shrug that spoke of fond tolerance for her husband’s quirks. “Lord Kentravyon gets . . . fractious, if he’s confined for too long.”
“Then I imagine they’ll be gone for a while.”
“Not too long, I hope. We expected you some time ago, so I know Ryda doesn’t like to stray too far from the palace.”
“Ryda?” Arryl asked, a little confused.
Declan’s heart skipped a beat.
“It’s the name of our host,” Cayal explained. “Didn’t you know? He’s a Stevanian gem merchant, by the name of—”
“Ryda Tarek,” Declan finished for him, with the sick feeling he had stepped off the edge of a chasm and into an abyss.
Declan woke the following morning to a Tide that felt like the sea during a storm. He had gotten used to the feel of Arryl and Cayal on the Tide. It was easy to tell them apart. Cayal was much stronger than Arryl. Her calming presence was easily distinguishable from the roiling power that was Cayal. But this morning it was different. This was more than the presence of a few Tide Lords, like Cayal, Arryl and Taryx.
This was a maelstrom.
Lukys, Pellys and Kentravyon were here.
Declan wasn’t sure what to do. Since learning the identity of Ryda Tarek, he wasn’t even sure what to feel. A part of him wasn’t even surprised. He’d had his suspicions in the past that the fifth member of the Pentangle was an immortal. Maralyce had told him it was possible, even told him of Lukys and Cayal doing such a thing once before with the Holy Warriors.
But it had never occurred to him, even after he’d met Ryda Tarek in Tilly Ponting’s parlour in Herino, that he was dealing with the immortal Lukys.
The immortal who may or may not be my father.
There was a certain inevitability on that point, Declan feared. It all fitted together too well for his existence to be the result of random chance. Although Cayal was right when he said it was possible some other Tide Lord had wandered through Glaeba. That he’d spent the night with a whore who just happened to be a Tidewatcher’s daughter and conceived a child with her, was beyond improbable.
And the only Tide Lord who knew Maralyce had even borne a child, was
Lukys. He told them as much in Tilly’s parlour when he was posing as a member of the Cabal, explaining to them how he thought Cayal had found a way to die and the Cabal should be helping him along, not hindering his progress.
Foremost expert in the world on the Tide Lords, Tilly had called Ryda Tarek. Not hard to understand why, when you discovered the reason.
Declan felt the Tide surging around him and realised there was nowhere he could hide. If he could feel the others, they could feel him.
And one of them was getting closer . . .
Declan turned to face the entrance of his magnificent—albeit icy—chamber. There were no doors here, just lots of ante-rooms and corridors that gave a semblance of privacy, however false.
Privacy was an illusion too, he supposed, when you could feel each other on the Tide.
Jojo was standing at the door on guard. He suspected she’d been there all night.
“You can stand down now, Jojo,” he told her. “Go and get something to eat. And rest.”
“But there’s someone coming, my lord . . .”
“I know. I can feel him. Go. I’ll be fine.”
She wasn’t happy with the order to abandon him, but bowed to his wishes nonetheless. “To serve you is the reason I breathe, my lord.”
Jojo left and the approaching turbulence drew nearer. He knew Lukys was there even before he appeared. He had time to brace himself; time to marshal his thoughts and hopefully not give away too much on the Tide. Declan squared his shoulders and took a deep breath, even as the thought occurred to him that it was a pointless and stupid thing to do because he was immortal now. Taking a deep breath wasn’t going to make the slightest difference to anything.
“You’re angry,” Lukys said as he stepped into the chamber.
He was alone, dressed much the same as he had been when Declan met him the last time in Herino. He looked no older than thirty-five, with that strange combination of dark skin and pale, pale eyes. Declan tried to see some common feature between them, but physically they could not be more unalike.
No “hello, son” or “I’m sorry.” Just “you’re angry.”
Declan glared at him. “Not without just cause, I would have thought.”
Lukys stepped further into the room, eyed Declan up and down critically for a moment and then shrugged. “Would an apology help?”
“Not a lot.”
“Then I won’t waste your time or mine giving you one.”
“You’re admitting you’re responsible, then?”
Lukys shrugged again and thrust his hands into his pockets. “Responsible? Hmmm . . . let me see . . . am I the reason you’re living and breathing? Absolutely. Did I seek out Maralyce’s child to find what had become of him? Of course I did. Even if I hadn’t discovered he’d very conveniently sired a daughter of loose morals and child-bearing age, I’d have gone looking for him. Your grandfather was a Tidewatcher, Declan. He could feel the Tide returning long before the rest of us could. I’ve always found it an advantage to know it’s on the turn, long before my immortal brethren get wise to the fact. I like to be prepared, you see. But did I make you immortal? Well, no. You managed that all on your own, son.”
Lukys’s bald-faced admission was bad enough, but there were holes in his story Declan wanted filled. This all seemed a little too glib.
“But that meant you would have met Shalimar as a young man. How come he didn’t recognise you when you signed up with the Cabal as Ryda Tarek?”
Lukys walked as he spoke, running his finger over the icy walls as if it intrigued him far more than their conversation. “Ryda Tarek is more than one man. I believe your grandfather thinks of me as the great-grandson of the Ryda Tarek he met when he was younger. You know . . . I’ve learned everything from my father . . . my family passed on all the knowledge to me . . . that sort of thing. Besides, I’ve only met him a few times and they were decades apart. It wasn’t hard to convince him I was a different man each time we met. How is he, by the way? The returning Tide must be paining him greatly.”
“He’s dead.”
Lukys had the decency to look sorry about it. “That’s a pity. I liked him.”
“He’d have killed himself, had he known he’d brought an immortal into the Cabal.”
“It wasn’t his fault. He was just easily fooled.”
“You fooled them all.”
“They wanted to be fooled, Declan.” He kept walking as he spoke, circling Declan ever so subtly, like a fox honing in on its prey. “Every member of your wretched Cabal likes to believe they’ll be the one to find the answer. You can’t blame me for offering them a little hope.”
Declan had to turn to keep him in view. “Then you do know the way to kill an immortal?”
Lukys nodded. “I can effectively put an end to an immortal, yes.”
He had a bad feeling effectively putting an end to an immortal wasn’t quite the same thing as killing one, but at this point, Declan wasn’t going to argue semantics. Besides, there was something else he wanted to know.
“Were you planning to make me immortal yourself?”
Much to his surprise, Lukys nodded without hesitation. “I was,” he agreed, “right up until I came to Herino the last time and met you. After that, I decided to let you live a long and happy life and die of natural causes in your old age. You have to understand, I never knew for certain if immolating you would make you immortal. I figured being more than half immortal would give you a fighting chance, but it’s such a rare thing, there was no way of being certain, until you faced a traumatic death. I just decided not to take the risk.”
“And having gone to all that trouble to create a more-than-half-immortal child, what made you change your mind about going the rest of the way and making me immortal?”
“Well, you, of course,” the immortal said. “Tides, I fathered a bastard on a whore, Declan. You were supposed to grow up in the Lebec slums, learn how to survive, how to lie and cheat and steal, how to keep your head down and your wits about you, that’s all. That would have made you the perfect immortal companion. You weren’t supposed to have friends in high places who’d find you respectable work. Or get recruited by the Cabal and be sent to work for the King’s Spymaster. You certainly weren’t supposed to have the wit to wind up in such an exalted position, yourself.”
Lukys’s reasons for rejecting him struck Declan as being almost comical. “So you decided you’d wipe your hands of me because I made something of my life?”
“I decided to wipe my hands of you because you’re dangerous, Declan Hawkes. You managed far too much, in far too short a time, with nothing but your own cunning and intelligence to rely on. I wasn’t going to complicate matters—or make things worse—by giving you immortality and access to the Tide.”
“And yet here I am,” Declan said.
Lukys smiled and held his hands up helplessly. “Which just goes to show you that even the best laid plans can go awry.”
“You bastard. Did you never wonder what your little experiment might do to me?”
“What can I say, son? Other than to remind you that sometimes it’s easier to beg forgiveness than ask permission?”
“Which might help, if I thought for a minute you were begging forgiveness. And would you stop calling me son?”
“Does it bother you?”
“It makes me ill.”
That seemed to amuse Lukys. “You’ll get used to it. Don’t suppose you’re interested in calling me father?”
Declan didn’t even bother to dignify that suggestion with an answer. There will never come a time, Declan silently swore, when I will willingly call you father.
“Well . . . perhaps it’s a bit early for that.”
“What about the Cabal?”
“What about them?”
“You took them all for a ride, you evil son-of-a-bitch. I’ll bet you were laughing at us the whole time you were sitting there listening to us trying to make plans to deal with the immortals.”
“On
the contrary, Declan, my boy, I have been their salvation. Thanks to me, and you too I might add, they’ll achieve what thousands of years of Pentangles have been unable to even get close to. I will give them what they crave—a dead immortal. How exactly does that make me evil?”
“You’re using them.”
“And giving them what they want in the process. Tell me again how that makes me evil?”
Declan shook his head as he began to realise there was no easy way to argue with this man. “So what happens now?”
“Well, we try to kill Cayal, of course. That’s all the poor boy has wanted for the past millennium or so. I’m a little surprised he’s been able to rope you into this venture, actually. But glad. You’ve a lot to learn, but Tides, boy, you’ve got power to burn. And that’s something I wasn’t expecting.”
“Suppose I change my mind? Suppose I decide to leave?”
“Where will you go?”
When Declan couldn’t answer that, Lukys put his hand on his shoulder, smiling. “You’re home, Declan. Much as you despise me, much as you think every immortal who ever drew breath is evil incarnate, you’re one of us now.”
Declan shook him off angrily. “I don’t belong here.”
“You don’t belong anywhere else, son. And you know what the irony is? The more you despise what you are, the more you have to stay.”
“How do you figure that?”
“Because I’m the only one who can offer you a way out.”
That was painfully true. If Lukys could kill an immortal, if it took a half-dozen other immortals to make it happen, he had no choice but to stay.
“So let’s do it, then. Kill Cayal. Kill me.”
“Ah . . .” Lukys said, sitting himself down in the large padded chair opposite Declan. “I would, but there’s one teensy little problem.”
“What problem?”
“Before we can kill anybody, my angry young friend, we have to find the Chaos Crystal.”
EPILOGUE
The Warden looked about the icy, triangular cell, nodding with approval. Although it had been cleaned three times now, the faint stench of stale urine still permeated the walls, but nothing short of demolishing Lebec Prison was ever likely to alter that state of affairs. Other than the smell, however, everything seemed in order. There was fresh bedding on the pallet, a clean bucket in the corner and a small stool under the high, barred window that looked out over the exercise yard. The prisoner in the adjoining cell ignored the preparations going on in the rest of the tower, cleaning his fingernails with the end of a stray stalk of straw from his mattress.
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