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?'
'Was that his name? I suppose it was him, then. I mean, there's only the two of you here, isn't there?'
Tiji stared at Pellys in horror, almost too afraid to ask the next question. Shadows cast by the flickering
light of the torches set in the walls around them made it hard to read his expression. 'What ... what happened to him?'
'I don't know,' Pellys said with a shrug. 'Took it into his head to walk back to the coast in a blizzard, near as I can tell. Got snippety about someone leaving. Arryl will know. She was quite upset when they brought him back. Frozen solid he was.' The Tide Lord grinned. 'Looked like a funny statue. You know, like those performers they have at carnivals, where a person pretends they're carved of marble and then changes position when you're not looking?'
Tiji couldn't speak, couldn't even think straight. Tides, is that why Azquil never came looking for me? Because he really thought I'd left?
Had he gone in search of her in the frozen wasteland surrounding the palace and perished in the attempt to stop her leaving?
She didn't wait for any more details. She turned and fled toward the stairs leading to the upper levels of the palace, determined to find Azquil, or somebody who could tell her what had happened to him.
CHAPTER 53
The coast of Jelidia came into view very quickly. After days channelling the rising Ti
de so constantly it set Declan's blood on fire, the icy cliffs of the continent appeared on the horizon, increasing in size with alarming speed as they raced toward the coast. The speed the immortals had achieved with the streamlined boards they'd commandeered from the children playing on the beaches near Denrah had proved to be spectacular. Even with a detour to collect Diala, Ambria, Lyna and Medwen in Senestra, they had raced across the world, taking days to complete a journey that would have otherwise taken them months, had they not been riding the Tide.
There was some heat from the friction, admittedly — enough that Warlock and Stellan complained about it every time they stopped — but they reached Jelidia in a matter of days. And nobody actually burst into flame.
It was still dark when they made landfall, the aurora illuminating the night sky in a spectacular dance of green and blue light, as if the lights were tuned in to the music of the universe, dancing to a celestial orchestra only the stars could hear.
And every one of the immortals was edgy, fractious and ready to explode at the slightest provocation by the time they arrived.
Warlock and Stellan had kept their distance, once they clambered off the boards they'd ridden to Jelidia. Warlock had ridden with Declan and Stellan had been perched behind Kinta. Although Desean seemed wary,
the Scard seemed to be genuinely afraid of their collective mood. Declan didn't blame him. He could feel the rage, the lust, within himself, and knew that if he was feeling it, the others were too.
That was going to make working together almost impossible.
'Tides, let's not do that again for a while,' Medwen said as she stumbled off the board she'd been riding with Jaxyn. He climbed off and collapsed into the snow, flat on his back. Beside them, the ground sizzled as the heat of their board melted the surrounding ice. In the background, the only other sound was the sea crashing against the cliffs as it threw itself at this continent-sized fortress of ice in an increasingly successful attempt to wear it down.
Exhausted, his whole body bristling like a lightning rod looking for somewhere to discharge, Declan fell to his knees, for the first time in his life in complete agreement with another immortal.
'I forgot what it feels like to do that at High Tide,' Tryan agreed, looking as wobbly as Declan felt. He was taking deep, heaving breaths, as if he'd run all day and was on the brink of collapse.
And it was High Tide. Or if it wasn't, then the peak was awfully close. Even after he'd let the Tide go, it still hummed along Declan's skin, waiting for him, calling to him, seducing him, tempting him into diving back into its delicious embrace.
Tides, is it any wonder they can't help using magic when the Tide peaks. It seemed like a criminal waste not to do something with all this power.
Of all the immortals gathered on the icy shore, only Brynden seemed to be taking it in his stride. Even Tryan was looking a little green. Engarhod looked positively sea-sick, Syrolee was decidedly seedy and Kinta seemed quite pale. Ranee and Krydence were uncharacteristically quiet and Ambria and Lyna looking exhausted. Diala was still on her feet, but
Declan could see her trembling with the effort to appear unaffected.
'You must all try to recover quickly,' Brynden told them, as he abandoned his board and turned to look south, 'I fear they have already started.'
'I can't feel a thing,' Tryan said. He sounded calm but although he had stopped gasping, he was visibly trembling.
'This is why I fear they may have started already.'
'There was no barrier around the continent,' Ranee said, sinking to his knees.
'That could just mean they weren't expecting anybody,' Ambria said, pushing herself up on her elbows. She had to move sideways a little to avoid her clothes being soaked by the melting snow around her rapidly cooling board. The other boards were doing the same, burning long steaming holes in the snow where the Tide Lords had abandoned them.
'Or it could mean that with the crystal here, they couldn't set one,' Brynden suggested.
Tryan nodded thoughtfully, rubbing his chin. 'You know, that could explain why we were never able to set a barrier around Caelum.'
Jaxyn sighed. 'And here I was, Try, thinking you hadn't done it just because you were incompetent.'
'You never set one around Glaeba, either,' Declan reminded him, for the first time wondering — if the Tide Lords could do such a thing — why Jaxyn had never tried to protect himself with one when he was trying to establish himself in Glaeba. 'Maybe, if you had, Diala wouldn't have been able to sneak up on you the way she did, and end up married to Glaeba's king.'
'He was always going to lose,' Diala pointed out with a smug smile in Jaxyn's direction, looking rather pleased that everyone was being reminded of how easily she had outsmarted Jaxyn. 'I made my move before the Tide came back. It wouldn't have made a difference what he did.'
'And I'm sure it's something you'll happily gloat over for eons to come,' Tryan said. 'In the meantime, shouldn't we be getting a move on?'
Declan wondered if Tryan's impatience had to do with the fact that they were discussing Jaxyn's woes or simply because the discussion wasn't focused on him. Whatever the reason, it was an excellent suggestion. Declan felt as if his veins were on fire. He had to keep moving or he'd go insane. Maybe Tryan was feeling that way too.
Brynden also seemed anxious to keep moving. Perhaps his calm demeanour was more of an act than he was letting on.
'We should get going,' he agreed, taking Kinta by the hand. 'Because at the very least, if Lukys hasn't set a magical lookout, he will have set a physical one. It will be light soon. We need to reach the palace before dawn.' He turned to the mortal and the Scard. 'Are you two up for this?'
They both nodded, neither of them suffering the Tide-induced fatigue the immortals were suffering. They, after all, had merely ridden the Tide as passengers. 'We'll be fine,' Stellan said.
The rest of them nodded in agreement, perhaps too exhausted from swimming the Tide to argue the point. Declan studied the odd group — dressed in a variety of styles more suited to the climates they'd come from than the icy landscape in which they now stood — hoping that a dozen immortals who didn't particularly want to work together was going to be enough to save the world from a handful of immortals quite dedicated to destroying it.
CHAPTER 54
Curse that stupid lizard for being so foolish, Tiji thought as she ran.
She bolted up the carved ice stairs, running straight past the storerooms, her aching hunger forgotten. When she reached the main part of the palace, she found it deserted. There was hardly a soul around.
A quick check of the common areas proved just as fruitless. Frantic now, she turned for the wing where Lady Arryl's room was located. Perhaps Azquil was in there. Pellys was a half-wit, after all, even if he was immortal. He was probably mistaken. Mixed up. Even playing a joke on her. He tormented and killed small creatures for amusement, didn't he?
Tiji never got as far as the guest wing, however. She heard noises on the upper level when she reached the foyer. Following the unexpected sound of laughter, she ran up the stairs to the dining hall from where the noise seemed to be coming. To her astonishment, she discovered every Crasii in the palace gathered there, partaking of a massive feast.
Tiji skidded to a halt at the entrance, wondering why, with such a feast laid out, it was the palace servants consuming it, not the immortals.
'What's going on?' she asked, looking at the table piled with food as she walked into the hall. To her it seemed as if all their supplies had been used up for this one spectacular banquet.
The canines ignored her, too busy demolishing the full oxen — shipped here some months ago and
stored frozen in the ice below the palace for the servants to eat — which should have fed them all for months.
'We thought you were dead, Scard.'
Tiji turned to find Jojo looking up at her from her place at the foot of the table. Her hands and mouth were bloody from the barely-cooked slab of ox-steak she was devo
uring.
A wave of hatred washed over the chameleon, which she forced under control. Much as she would like to have ripped holes in the fur of this wretched feline who'd help trap her in the ice, Tiji's more urgent need was for information.
'What's going on here?'
'Lord Lukys arranged a feast for us. Told us we could eat everything. He is a truly wonderful master, Lord Lukys.'
Her search for Azquil temporarily forgotten, Tiji looked around the room at the score of other Crash busily tucking into their only food supplies like there was no tomorrow. 'Why would he tell you to do that? We're in the middle of nowhere. What's happens when this is all gone? What will we eat then?'
The feline shrugged. 'Our lords will provide for
us.'
'With what?'
'It is wrong to question your masters, Scard.' 'They're your masters, Jojo, not mine. Have you seen Azquil?'
'Not since the day he ran away,' the feline told her without any visible emotion. 'That was your fault, you know. If you hadn't gone outside to sulk, he'd never have gone looking for you.'
'I never went anywhere. You knew where I was, Jojo. You knew why, too. Why didn't you say something to Azquil?' She choked back the tears that were threatening to undo her. 'Why didn't you stop him?'
'Lord Lukys told me not to.' Jojo looked so puzzled as to why anybody would question such a thing, that Tiji — even while trying to contain her distress over the news about Azquil — actually felt an instant of pity for her. The feline had no free will when it came to the wishes of the immortals.
Worse, she didn't even understand what free will was. There was no point railing at her, no point in trying to apportion blame.
And no possible way anything Jojo said or did could be trusted.
'Do you know where Lady Arryl is?'
'She's down in the fire chamber with Lord Lukys and the others, I suppose.' The feline frowned, and rose to her feet so that she was eye to eye with Tiji. 'Shouldn't you be down there too?'
'No,' Tiji said, backing away.
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