The Chaos Crystal

by Jennifer Fallon

  'Does anybody actually think you're funny, Cayal?'

  He sighed. 'All right, he was here. At least he travelled with Kentravyon and me from Jelidia. He bailed on us about the time we decided to break the ice. I haven't seen him since the night of the battle in Cycrane.' And then he added, hand on his heart, 'I swear that's the truth, Arkady. May the Tide strike me down if I'm lying.'

  The Tide, of course, did no such thing. Even then, despite such definite evidence of his honesty, Arkady still studied him with intense suspicion. 'Why would Declan come back to Glaeba?'

  He was amazed she had to ask. 'Looking for you, of course. Why does that fool do anything?'

  'And you didn't feel the need to mention this minor detail before now?'

  He shrugged. 'I wasn't hiding anything from you, Arkady. You, well ... you didn't ask.'

  In typical Arkady fashion, she let that comment pass, worrying at the threads of the rest of his story like a dog chewing at a blanket until it unravelled. 'Why did he leave?'

  'Pardon?'

  'You said he bailed on you. Why? Why would he travel all this way with you and then leave?' 'I don't know.'

  'Yes you do,' she accused, hugging her arms against her body. Even through the furs she could feel the icy chill of the wind as they sped south on the water. 'Declan wouldn't have anything to do with your plans to break the ice and kill all those Crasii, would he?'

  Not much got past this woman, damn her. 'He wasn't fond of the plan, no.'

  'So where did he go?'

  Cayal was getting very tired of this conversation. He took her by the arms and turned her to face him, hoping to convince Arkady of his sincerity so they could move on. He was, by now, thoroughly fed up with all discussion relating to the noble intentions of

  one Declan Bloody Hawkes. 'I swear, Arkady, I really don't know where Hawkes went. Maybe he's off contemplating the meaning of life in a cave somewhere. More likely he's off trying to explain how he wound up immortal to all his fanatical old pals in the Cabal.'

  Arkady's eyes widened in surprise. 'What do you know about the Cabal?'

  Cayal smiled at her question. 'A damn sight more than the Cabal would like me to, I'd wager.' He laughed then, at her shocked expression. 'Tides, Arkady, do you think we're complete fools? Lukys has been a member of their inner council for years. That's one of the many ways he kept tabs on the progress of his son.'

  'I have to go to him.' She pulled away, trying to shake free of him, but Cayal held her fast.

  'Why?' he asked, drawing her even closer, his lips all but touching hers. 'The last time you saw Hawkes, you promised to hate him for the rest of your life.'

  'He came looking for me, Cayal.'

  'So what? I'm the one who found you.'

  She wasn't impressed by his argument. 'Purely by accident. You'd not lose a moment's sleep over my fate if I wasn't standing right in front of you.'

  Cayal loosened his grip on her arms and smiled, gently brushing away a windblown strand of hair that had escaped from under her fur hat and was whipping around her face. 'He thinks you're dead, Arkady. He knows you were out on the ice at the start of the battle. One of the reasons he wouldn't have anything to do with destroying it was his fear of something happening to you. Wherever he is now, he's already grieving your loss. And you have no way of finding him. You will, however, be dead in a heartbeat if you give Elyssa the slightest reason to suspect you're thinking of reneging on our deal.'

  Arkady nodded reluctantly, seeing the logic of his explanation, although she was clearly unhappy with it.

  'But he came looking for me, Cayal. I can't just leave here, with Declan thinking I'm dead.'

  'You'll see him again in Jelidia,' Cayal promised. 'He's sworn to help me die, remember? Even if he's devastated by grief over your demise, he won't pass up an opportunity to see an end to me.' At least he'd better keep his word, Cayal added silently to himself, because that smug little bastard promised to help and even with Elyssa's power, I'm not sure we'll have enough to open the rift without him.

  Arkady didn't seem completely convinced, but it seemed she'd run out of arguments. Cayal took her in his arms again and held her comfortingly, wise enough not to try kissing her. She was still too conflicted for him to try that yet. He was immortal, after all, with the patience of an immortal. And it was a long way to Jelidia. There would be time.

  Or perhaps not, he thought, when he glanced aft and spied Elyssa standing by the wheelhouse door, staring at Cayal and the mortal woman in his arms with a murderous gleam in her eye.

  Tides, he told himself unhappily, pushing Arkady away in a futile attempt to make it look as if he'd merely been comforting her, not making a move on her. Now I'm going to have to kiss Elyssa again.

  CHAPTER 44

  Declan Hawkes called a meeting of all the Scards in Hidden Valley the night after he arrived. There proved to be depressingly few in number by the time he had spoken to most of the inhabitants of the valley and tested their status as either true Scards or just hopefuls. Genuine Scards — Scards who were not magically compelled to obey the immortals, as opposed to those who had simply defied their human masters — were a rare breed indeed. Warlock was surprised to see how many families in Hidden Valley were now fractured like his. He and Boots were far from being the only Scard parents in Hidden Valley to discover they had pure Crasii offspring.

  The news did little to ease Boots's anger. And she was angry, more than anything else, about her pups being Crasii. It seemed so unfair to her that nature would punish them in such a cruel and arbitrary way. That others had been punished in a similar fashion did little to ease her pain.

  They had gathered in the common room in order to hear Hawkes speak. The room was warm, with fires going in both stoves at either end of the wooden longhouse and the press of bodies adding to the heat. But there was a chill in the air and it had nothing to do with the weather. It had to do with fear — a fear every Scard in the room was trying to hide behind a facade of proud indifference.

  Once Hawkes had finished explaining the situation, a heavy silence descended over the room as the Scards

  digested everything he'd told them. As far as Warlock could tell, the former spymaster hadn't held back or tried to soften the news about the rise of the Tide and the plans the immortals had for opening a portal to another world that was likely to destroy Amyrantha.

  But then he delivered the killing blow. The reason he was here in Hidden Valley; the grand plan he had for stopping the immortals from destroying the world. He wanted some of the Scards to go with him, into the very heart of the Tide Lords' stronghold, and stop them opening the rift.

  'You're placing an awful lot of faith in some of the most notorious immortals to ever curse Amyrantha with their presence,' someone called out from the back of the hall. 'How do you know this brilliant plan of yours will succeed, suzerain?'

  'I don't,' Hawkes told them. The immortal stench of him reached Warlock even several rows back from the table at the front of the hall where Hawkes sat with Lord Aleki Ponting. 'All I can tell you is that Lukys and Cayal are planning to open a rift that will likely tear a hole in the very fabric of reality. None but an immortal is likely to survive it, and even then it may kill a few of them. We can do nothing, if you'd prefer, but that just means you should make plans to enjoy your last few weeks in this life, because it's all going to be over once the Tide peaks.'

  'But you said this rift will kill immortals,' Boots called out.

  'Boots! No!' Warlock hissed at her, a warning she ignored.

  'That's what Cayal believes,' Declan agreed, turning his gaze on Boots. 'And what Lukys and Kentravyon have both confirmed.'

  'Then I don't get why you want to stop them,' his mate said, ignoring Warlock's whispered urging to be quiet and not draw attention to themselves. 'If the immortals want to die and they've found a way to kill

  themselves, then let them kill themselves, I say. I'm not going to miss them.'

  'Did you not hear the part about
the rift destroying the whole planet, Tabitha Belle?' Aleki asked.

  'But we don't know that for certain,' she said, a comment that evoked a number of murmured agreements and nods from the other Scards in the longhouse. 'For all you know, that's just a rumour the immortals have spread about to stop just this sort of discussion. Do you have any proof that opening this rift will destroy the world?'

  'Not solid, documented proof, no,' Hawkes was forced to concede.

  'So, based on your suspicions, the ravings of a mad immortal, and not much else that I can see,' Boots said, pushing her way to the front, despite Warlock's urging her to stay put and be quiet, 'you're going to try to prevent the very thing we've all been praying for. You have the only chance in the last ten thousand years to rid us of even one or two flanking suzerain, and you're going to try to stop them because of a rumour.'

  'What if it's not a rumour?' Hawkes asked. 'Will you be filled with quite so much righteous indignation, Tabitha Belle, when the world blows up in your face?'

  'My world blew up in my face the day I discovered my pups were Crasii,' she shot back, earning herself even more nods of agreement from the other mothers and fathers in the hall — feline and canine alike — suddenly faced with the same dilemma. 'My babies were born with the ability, no — the very will — to betray me. One of your kind could order my children to eat me alive, and they'd do it gladly, and then ask what more they can do to please their immortal masters, with my blood still dripping from their jowls. My world is already destroyed, Declan Hawkes. Don't you dare sit there, smelling like a suzerain, and tell me

  you want to stop the people who destroyed it, from destroying themselves.'

  There was a smattering of applause for Boots when she finished speaking. It came mostly from the mothers in the room. Mothers suddenly faced with the prospect that their offspring — as soon as they were old enough — might want to leave their home, seek out an immortal, and then betray the families who raised them in order to please the masters they couldn't help but serve.

  Warlock understood Boots's pain. He understood the principle for which she was fighting. He even agreed with it, up to a point. But he couldn't see the logic of allowing the immortals to tamper with such powerful forces of nature, if it meant they killed everyone else on Amyrantha along with themselves.

  Principles were something you could really only afford if you were, well, alive.

  'I realise the price, Tabitha,' Hawkes said when the applause died down. 'And if I thought for a moment that there was a way to kill the immortals and keep Amyrantha intact, I'd do it. As it is, I don't see how.'

  'It's not that you don't see,' the feline standing next to Boots said. 'It's that you don't know. Isn't it at least worth a try?'

  Hawkes looked to Aleki for support as the Scards murmured their agreement, but Lord Ponting either didn't want to help or couldn't think of anything constructive to say.

  'Why can't you do both?' Boots asked. 'Why can't you let them open the portal, kill a few Tide Lords and then close it down again before they do any permanent damage to our world?'

  Hawkes shook his head. 'Even if I could do that, what guarantee do you have that the immortals who survive will make your life any easier than the immortals we manage to kill?'

  'There are no good immortals, suzerain,' someone behind Warlock called out. 'It makes no difference which ones you kill, so long as you manage to thin out their numbers!'

  The gathered Scards agreed with that comment so wholeheartedly they burst into applause again. Hawkes was looking frustrated. Warlock thought he understood the newly-minted suzerain's problem. He'd come here for help, to find Scards who were willing to take on the Tide Lords — as they all believed they'd been trained to do — but here they were, when it came to the crunch, telling him, so what? Let the bastards kill themselves. We don't care.

  'Can you stop them, though?' Warlock asked, his deep voice cutting through the general chatter that filled the room as they applauded the sentiments of the last speaker.

  Hawkes looked straight at him, a silence descending on the hall as they all waited for him to answer. 'I think so.'

  'How?'

  'By countering them with equal force.'

  'But you say you've only got Jaxyn on your side, and that by the time you meet up with him in the Chelae Islands, hopefully he'll have brought Tryan along to help. Even assuming he can somehow manage to get Tryan and the Empress of the Five Realms onside after being at war with them so recently, including you, that's only three Tide Lords against — what?' Warlock did a quick count on his fingers. 'Cayal, Lukys, Maralyce, Kentravyon, Elyssa and probably Pellys. Against six? And you say they'll be amplifying their power through the Bedlam Stone. You haven't a hope in hell of stopping them. You won't even get near them.'

  'Getting near them isn't the problem,' Hawkes assured him. 'I can get into the ice palace. I can get into the chamber. Tides, they're expecting me to help.

  And I seriously doubt Pellys will be taking part in the ceremony, because he has no control over the Tide. Once I'm in the chamber, I can destroy the crystal. That means, if we can get Brynden on board, we're down to four against five, and given we'll have all the lesser immortals on our side — with the exception of Arryl and Taryx — it should be close to an even fight at that point.'

  'It's the bit where you say should that worries me.'

  'It's not as impossible as it seems, Warlock,' Aleki said. 'I mean, they have to find the crystal before —'

  'They have it,' Warlock cut in.

  'How do you know?' Hawkes asked.

  Warlock realised his mistake as soon as Declan asked for further details. Admitting how he knew that they had the crystal meant admitting how he'd been healed by the Immortal Prince. It meant admitting they'd been prisoners of the Immortal Maiden and had been let go. Warlock couldn't risk that happening. When they arrived in Hidden Valley, they'd told Lord Aleki the truth about how they escaped Caelum, right up until the part about meeting up with Duchess Arkady.

  Neither did they mention anything about how Warlock had nearly died, and how she'd bartered her own life for their freedom. He was certain the news they had been released by the immortals without any apparent harm, only to appear in Hidden Valley a few weeks later, would make them the object of mistrust and suspicion, perhaps even see them denied shelter here. Warlock and Boots had agreed there were some things that simply had to remain unsaid.

  And they would have — if only he'd learn to keep his big mouth shut.

  'Elyssa knows where the map is,' he said, carefully editing the truth to fit the story they'd given everyone when they first arrived in Hidden Valley. 'She has a map of its location. If not for being distracted by the

  war with Jaxyn, she'd have had it months ago. It's been what? Three, almost four weeks, since the battle on the ice? The chances are good that they'll have the crystal and be halfway back to Jelidia with it by now.' It was the best Warlock could do; the safest way to deliver the warning about the crystal without actually letting on how he knew they had it.

  'Even so,' Aleki said, 'you can't be sure ...'

  'Is it about this big?' Boots asked, holding up her hands to indicate the size. 'Shaped like a skull? Glows in the dark?'

  Aleki glanced at Hawkes, who shrugged. 'I suppose. I haven't —'

  'Then they have it already,' Boots said, as Warlock looked at her in surprise. All their secrets, all their late- night discussions were apparently meaningless.

  'How do you know?' Aleki asked.

  'The Duchess of Lebec traded our escape from Cycrane for it.'

  Now she's done it. Hawkes seemed flabbergasted, but not because they'd seen the Chaos Crystal, which — because of his near-death delirium — Warlock only vaguely remembered. 'Tides, you saw Arkady after the battle? Alive?'

  Boots nodded and answered for them. 'She found us hiding in some ruins north of Cycrane. That's where the pups found the Crystal. A couple of days later, your precious duchess tried to kill my mate wh
en he came looking for us, and then when the immortals arrived, she made Cayal heal Warlock and set us free in return for the crystal.' Boots looked around at the silent, concerned faces of the other Scards, who were all staring at her with deep suspicion. 'What? I told you all this when we arrived!'

  'You told us you'd escaped the battle in a rowboat after the ice shattered, Tabitha,' Aleki reminded her. 'You left out the bit about the immortals and the Chaos Crystal.'

  'It didn't seem important,' Boots said with a shrug. She pointedly didn't look at Warlock who'd warned her repeatedly — right up until he'd agreed to go along with it — that lying about their escape from Caelum would eventually bring them undone.

  'Well, it's important now,' Aleki said, and then he turned to Hawkes. 'And I think you have your volunteer, Declan.'

  All eyes in the room turned to Warlock. It took him a moment to realise why. 'Me? You want me to go? Tides, you are unbelievable! Absolutely not! I'm not going to leave my family unprotected again!'

  'You know what the crystal looks like, Cecil,' Aleki said in a reasonable tone.

  'It's a flanking glowing skull,' he shot back. 'Trust me, you won't miss it.'

  'You can identify the other immortals —'

  'Any Scard with a nose can do that.'

  'You've met them before, you've dealt with them,' Aleki continued.

  'And they know I'm a Scard,' he added. 'They'll kill me as soon as look at me.'

  'Brynden won't,' Hawkes said. 'And that's the main reason I need a Scard to help me. I have to contact Brynden and because of the magical barrier he's set around Torlenia, I can't do that without provoking a fight. But I can't send a Crasii in to deliver my request for a parley either, because a Crasii messenger can too easily be subverted by another immortal.'

  Warlock shook his head. 'You can't ask me to do this.'

  'Given your previous dealings with the immortals,' Aleki said, 'and that you've brought three Crasii pups into our stronghold, I'm not sure you're in a position to refuse, Warlock.'

  He was shocked at the suggestion. 'Are you saying I'm not a Scard? That I can't be trusted?'