The Palace of Impossible Dreams

by Jennifer Fallon

  Arkady hesitated and then nodded. She’d not heard him threaten anyone like that before and wasn’t sure enough of herself to test his mettle.

  “Of course. I’m sorry.”

  “So you should be,” he agreed grumpily. “Now fetch the next wretched animal or we’ll be here all night.”

  Chapter 25

  “He just gave it to you?”

  Azquil nodded, staring at the three precious bottles of creamy-coloured tonic sitting on the bench in the small cottage outside Watershed Falls where they’d been staying these past few weeks, waiting for the swamp fever to settle. “He barely even glanced at the nacre I offered him, and there was a fortune in the pouch. Said to consider it a gift from the Senestran Physicians’ Guild.”

  “Does the Senestran Physicians’ Guild usually do things like that?”

  “Not so’s you’d notice. Mostly they go about cursing our very existence, telling everyone we’re a pestilence responsible for all the woes in the world.”

  “Perhaps this doctor is different,” Tiji suggested.

  “Maybe,” Azquil said, not convinced. “His makor-di seemed nice enough. But he struck me as being just as stuck-up and disdainful of the Crasii as the rest of his kind.”

  Tiji smiled reassuringly. “Well, whatever his motives, you have the tonic. Now we can take it back to the villages the suzerain . . .”

  “Please don’t call them that.”

  “Very well, the villages the Trinity can’t get to in time, and help them too.”

  He smiled. “Yes, we can. Only we aren’t going anywhere, Tiji. I will deliver the tonic with Tenika. You have to stay here. You’re not immune to the fever.”

  “But if I catch it now, you have the tonic . . .”

  “We don’t know how well the tonic works.”

  “I’m prepared to take the risk.”

  “I’m not,” Azquil said, looking at her so intently Tiji’s skin began to flicker.

  He looked at her like that a lot, and in the close confines of the cottage, it was somewhat problematic. She was intensely aware of him. And knew he was aware of her. His skin tone flickered too, whenever they accidentally touched, either in the cottage or when they walked to the village. If they stopped along the way, apparently by accident Azquil always seemed to be standing next to something bright—a flower or a brilliantly plumaged bird—as if the reflections off his silver skin would make him brighter to look upon.

  Tiji knew little to nothing about the mating rituals of her own species, but she didn’t need a lecture in the birds, the bees and the lizards to tell when a male chameleon was coming on to her. The idea excited her and terrified her all at once. Until now, the only male of any species she had ever felt any sort of affection for was Declan Hawkes. Her feelings for Azquil were nothing like the feelings she’d had for her human master, though. This felt primal. Exciting. And right.

  “You don’t have to watch over me all the time, Azquil,” she said.

  “I do,” he said. “It’s my job. And even if it wasn’t, I’d want to.” He hesitated, the silence laden with unspoken tension, and then he smiled even wider. “Have you ever been swimming in a hot spring?”

  Tiji looked at him oddly, wondering at the abrupt change of subject. “No.”

  “Would you like to? There’s one not far from here. And I’ll have to leave tomorrow to take the tonic to the Outpost, so tonight is our last chance to have a bit of fun before I go.”

  Tiji wasn’t game enough to ask Azquil to define exactly what he meant by a bit of fun, but the idea of spending the evening in his company was a decidedly pleasant one.

  “I’d like that.”

  “Good! I can show you how to catch Genoa moths.”

  “What’s a Genoa moth?”

  “The best tasting treat on Amyrantha.”

  “You eat them?”

  He nodded. “Sure we eat them. What did you think? We were going to read poetry to them?”

  “How do you cook them?”

  “Well . . . you don’t,” he said, looking at her with a puzzled expression. “That’s what makes them taste so good. And I swear, there’s nothing like the feeling of moth wings fluttering in your mouth in that moment before you bite into them.” He sighed with pleasure at the very thought of it, and then looked at her in surprise when she didn’t seem to share his enthusiasm. “Don’t tell me you’ve never eaten a Genoa moth?”

  “I’ve never eaten any sort of moth,” she said. “Or any sort of insect, come to think of it. Are you serious? You eat them raw?”

  Azquil shook his head sadly. “Oh, Tiji, what have they done to you? How can you not have eaten an insect until now? That’s the staple food of our diet here.”

  “I thought you’d been cooking meat stews.”

  “Well . . . stewed insects . . . yes. What did you think it was? Chicken?”

  “It tasted like chicken.”

  “We’ve been eating all manner of six-legged creatures ever since you arrived,” he informed her. “Tides, what do you normally eat?”

  “Well, you know, meat . . .”

  He pulled a face. “You mean you don’t mind the dead flesh of animals, but you’re worried about eating live insects? Tides, at least if they’re alive, you know they’re fresh. Who knows how long a cow has been dead before a human eats it? We’re not carrion eaters, Tiji.”

  She looked at him doubtfully. “You don’t lie in wait on rocks and catch them with your tongue too, do you?”

  He laughed and offered her his hand. “Of course not. We trap them, same as humans trap rabbits. Come on.”

  “Humans don’t trap rabbits, bite their heads off and then eat them while they’re still squirming,” she pointed out, taking his hand, a little less enthusiastic about an outing with Azquil now she’d discovered it might involve eating live insects. “Where are we going?”

  “To have a swim in the hot spring,” he said, “and then we’ll find a nice, sun-warmed rock to lie on, light a fire, stare up at the stars for a while, and wait for the moths to come to us, at which point, trust me, I will introduce you to delights you have never experienced before.”

  Warily, Tiji let Azquil lead her out into the gathering darkness that was filled with the sound of singing insects, thinking the delights she had never experienced before—the ones she was looking forward to, at least—had not, even in her wildest dreams, involved swallowing live insects whole.

  “Do you suppose there are other Tide Stars besides ours?” Tiji asked.

  She was lying on her back staring up at the sky, letting the warm air dry her silver skin. The night was scattered with stars, shining like sprinkled ice-chips in the darkness. Against her back, the day’s stored heat from the large flat rock they lay on seeped into her, the warmth both relaxing and seductive. The springs burbled in the distance and the warm air was damp, reeking faintly of sulphur, its comforting sound almost drowned out by the chirruping of the myriad nocturnal insects inhabiting the wetlands.

  “I don’t know,” Azquil replied, lying beside her, also staring up at the crystalline sky. A few feet away, their small fire crackled, a beacon calling out to the insects of the wetlands to come hither and meet their doom. “Maybe all Tide magic comes from our sun.”

  “What about the hot springs?”

  “What about them?”

  “Where do you suppose the hot water comes from?”

  “Underground volcanoes, probably,” he suggested. “That’s what Lady Arryl says, anyway.”

  “How would she know?”

  “She comes from Magreth. They had hot springs there too, she told me. It was the volcanoes that warmed the water, so I suppose we have the same thing underground around here, somewhere. Only I hope they’re a little safer than the ones in Magreth.”

  Tiji shook her head, uncomfortable with the casual mention of an immortal she instinctively despised. “It wasn’t volcanoes that destroyed Magreth, Azquil. It was a Tide Lord. You know . . . like the ones you seem to be such g
ood friends with.”

  “We’re friends with Arryl, Medwen and Ambria, because they are friends to us. Why can’t you accept that?”

  She sighed, wishing Declan was here to explain it. He knew why they couldn’t be trusted. And he could articulate it so much better than she could. “We’re probably never going to defeat the immortals, are we?”

  “That’s why we need to find a way to live with them,” he said. He rolled onto his side to look at her, resting his head on his hand. “Your skin looks very pretty that colour, you know.”

  Without her realising it, her silver scales had taken on the mottled brown hues of the rock they lay on. As soon as he brought it to her attention, however, the colour flickered and vanished.

  He smiled apologetically. And he was looking at her like that again . . .

  “I’m sorry, I’ve embarrassed you.”

  “No . . . really, I just . . .” Tides, I’m turning into a blabbering fool . . .

  “Shhh!” he whispered, cutting her off before she could make a complete fool of herself. He placed a gentle finger on her lips and mouthed the words: don’t move.

  Tiji lay rigid, wondering if they were in some sort of danger as Azquil carefully leaned across her still damp body, his arm outstretched. He stayed like that for a long time, still in a way only a creature with reptilian blood could manage, his body pressing down on hers. Not knowing what he was doing, or why he was doing it, Tiji lay rigid beneath him, waiting for something to happen.

  Unexpectedly, it did. Azquil’s arm shot out as he grabbed at something, then he sat up with a triumphant expression. “Got one!”

  She pushed herself up and stared at him. “You got what?”

  “A Genoa moth! See.” He opened his hand to reveal a large moth nestled in his palm. The colour of its wings was hard to determine in the darkness, perhaps dark blue or brown, but they were marked with two distinct, lighter coloured elliptical circles on each wing that made it seem as if there were two eyes staring out of the creature’s back. Its pale body was slightly thinner than Tiji’s little finger and about as long. It quivered fearfully in Azquil’s grasp. “The Tide’s gift to the chameleon Crasii.”

  “You’re not seriously going to eat that, are you?”

  He grinned, his slightly pointed teeth white against his handsome silver face. “Come closer. I’ll show you how.”

  “It’s disgusting.”

  “It’s delicious.”

  With a great deal of trepidation, Tiji leaned forward. Azquil lifted the moth to her mouth. Certain she was going to choke on it, she resisted opening her lips, but Azquil’s encouraging smile—and the almost irresistible desire to do whatever it took to impress him—finally coaxed them open. Azquil gently slid the moth into her mouth, sideways, so only one of its large wings touched her tongue, which tingled with exquisite sweetness as the acid in her saliva reacted with the moth’s wing.

  Shocked and delighted by the sensation, the moth’s thick body wiggling against her chin, Azquil slipped the other wing into his own mouth until they were separated by nothing more than the moth’s delicately ribbed torso. Giddy from the sensation of the dissolving wing on her tongue, her body tingling, Tiji moved even closer, inadvertently crushing the insect between them. The heady sweetness of the moth’s wings were bland compared to the creature’s meat, which tasted like nothing Tiji had ever experienced before. Hungrily, urgently, she licked at Azquil’s face, as he licked hers, anxious not to waste a precious drop of the moth’s sweet nectar.

  As their tongues met, and before she had time to register what was happening, hunger for a taste of the crushed moth turned to hunger for each other. Their licking turned to kissing. With Azquil soon astride her, Tiji willingly lay back down on the warm rock, intoxicated by the heat and whatever strange freak of nature had turned the juice of a relatively common moth into an aphrodisiac of almost irresistible power. Her skin flickered through every colour she was capable of imitating, as did Azquil’s skin, which simply added to her arousal. Azquil rubbed his body against hers, their scales hissing with a soft sibilant sigh, the vibration of scale on scale almost too sensitive to bear.

  His tongue flickered over her scales, as the rising heat of her body seemed to sharpen the effects of the moth’s juices. Murmuring sweet nothings, Azquil slid down her body, delivering such exquisite torture with his flickering tongue as he went that Tiji wanted him to stop almost as much as she wanted it to never end. When he finally reached between her legs she cried out in delight, not sure if this was love, or simply lust, or even if she was hallucinating under the effects of an intoxicating moth, simply living out a fantasy in her mind that was too delicious to be real.

  Then he moved and was kissing her mouth again and Tiji felt the sharp pain of being entered for the first time. And then she knew that not only was this real, but it was wonderful, and for the first time since coming to the Senestran wetlands she felt as if she’d found her true home.

  Chapter 26

  “Tides! Will you look at that!”

  Cayal glanced across at Oritha—or at what little he could see of her under her furs—and then turned back to look at what she was so excited about. On the glittering white horizon, a building had appeared . . . or perhaps materialised out of thin air would be a better description. It hadn’t literally done that, of course; it just seemed as if, as they topped the rise of the snowy, gently sloped plain they were traversing, a palace made of crystal had suddenly appeared before them.

  “Look!” Pellys said, his eyes lighting up with almost as much delight as Oritha’s. “Lukys’s Impossibly Dreaming Palace.” He slapped her resoundingly on the back, almost knocking her over. “I knew Lukys was clever.”

  Oritha staggered under the force of Pellys’s blow and then turned to look at Cayal once she’d regained her balance. “Why does he insist on calling my husband Lukys? His named is Ryda.”

  “Pellys is easily confused.”

  Oritha frowned, not entirely convinced. Cayal didn’t blame her for looking at them oddly. Immune to climatic extremes, he wore a shirt, leather trousers, boots and a summer-weight coat that did little more than soak up the stray snowflakes floating on what passed for a gentle summer breeze in this frozen landscape. Pellys was barefoot and bare-chested, oblivious to the cold, the ice or the snow.

  “Do you think he’s expecting us?” Oritha asked their guide.

  Struggling a little to restrain the dogs pulling the sled carrying Oritha’s luggage, Taryx turned to her and nodded. “Of course, my lady. That’s why he sent me to meet you.”

  That was the only reasonable explanation Cayal had heard out of Taryx for two days. Immortal like Cayal and Pellys, Taryx wasn’t a Tide Lord. His power was limited, his one strength the ability to manipulate water in all its forms, which—given Lukys had apparently constructed a palace made of ice—might explain what he was doing here in Jelidia.

  It didn’t explain what else he might be doing here, though.

  Taryx was an opportunistic little bastard, and he usually latched on to whichever Tide Lord seemed most likely to prevail during a High Tide. Of course, since his affair with Elyssa, and that whole business with creating the Crasii, he wasn’t all that welcome in the halls of the Emperor and Empress of the Five Realms. In fact, his most recent playmate, if Cayal remembered things correctly, was Jaxyn. Last High Tide, the two of them had been inseparable.

  “Did you do that?” Cayal asked, jerking his head in the direction of the ice palace on the horizon.

  “Most of it,” he said. “It was Lukys’s idea. And he helped me with the really heavy stuff. He can wield more power than me.”

  “You called him Lukys too,” Oritha said with a frown. “My husband’s name is Ryda.”

  “Of course, that’s who I meant, my lady. Shall we? I’m sure you’d like a closer look at your new home.”

  Oritha nodded and took her seat in the sled once more. Pellys, who’d been itching for a chance to drive the sled, snatched the reins from
Taryx. Before he could protest, however, Cayal laid a restraining hand on Taryx’s arm. “Let him do it. It’ll keep him occupied.”

  Looking more than a little doubtful, Taryx nodded reluctantly and stepped back to allow Pellys to drive the sled forward.

  “Didn’t expect to see you here, Taryx,” Cayal said as they watched the sled careening toward the distant palace. “What’s going on?”

  He tore his eyes from the sled and looked at Cayal. “What do you mean?”

  “Is Lukys up to something?” It was a silly question. Lukys was always up to something.

  Cayal believed Lukys had found a way for him to die, and needed several Tide Lords to help him accomplish the task. Lukys had told him as much back in Torlenia. That was much of the reason Cayal had brought Pellys here. He might be simple and more than a little dangerous, but he could wield the full power of the Tide, as could Kentravyon. Cayal had assumed the only reason Lukys risked waking up that madman, was for the same reason.

  Taryx’s presence here spoke of other plans afoot. Lukys didn’t need Taryx to wield the Tide. He could do little more than freeze water, or make it steam. Lukys didn’t need him to build his ice palace for him, either. He was more than capable of doing that on his own. No, Lukys was playing his own game here, and Cayal wasn’t at all sure helping him die was the Tide Lord’s ultimate goal.

  Taryx shrugged off the question and headed in pursuit of the sled, saying, “Why don’t you ask Lukys?”

  Cayal strode after Taryx, annoyed at his evasiveness. “I will.”

  “Then that’s all right then.”

  Cayal fell into step beside him. “How did you meet up with Lukys again, anyway? I mean, it’s a big world. Odd that you just happened to stumble across him.”

  “I didn’t find him,” Taryx said. “He found me.”

  Cayal absorbed that news silently. Lukys had sought him out too.

  “Thought he’d lost his mind, to be honest, when he asked me to come down here and help him build a palace made of ice.”