The Gods of Amyrantha (28 page)

Cayal couldn't tell if he was lying. 'Shouldn't we have marked the location of the cave, or something?'

'With what?' Lukys asked. 'A big red X?'

That made Cayal smile. 'I suppose that would rather defeat the purpose of hiding him, wouldn't it?'

'Rather,' Lukys agreed, and then he turned his gaze from the distant horizon and looked at Cayal. 'Have you given any more thought to my suggestion?'

'Which one?' Cayal scooped up a handful of burning sand and let it run through his fingers. 'You've suggested everything from suicide to creating some sort of interplanetary rift so you can move between worlds since I've been here, Lukys. Could you be a little more specific?'

'I was referring to which of our brethren you plan to approach to aid you in your noble quest for annihilation.'

Cayal let the sand dribble away completely before he answered. 'I thought I'd take your suggestion and ask Maralyce.'

Lukys stared at him for a moment and then smiled knowingly. 'Not willing to ask the fair Immortal Maiden for her aid? I thought you
wanted
to die?'

'Not that badly,' Cayal replied with a grimace.

His answer seemed to amuse Lukys. 'Then maybe you're not as suicidal as you think you are, Sparky.'

Cayal was silent for a moment, trying to decide which was worse, getting involved with Syrolee and her wretched clan again, or facing the prospect of eternity.

It was a surprisingly difficult decision.

'Well?' Lukys asked after a time.

Cayal shook his head. 'I think I'd rather go on living than do what I suspect I'd have to do to secure Elyssa's cooperation.'

'Well ... Maralyce I suppose is worth a try, but she'll probably say no.'

'Why? She likes me.'

'No,' Lukys corrected. 'Maralyce doesn't like you, Cayal, she dislikes you marginally less than the rest of us. That's a long way from being willing to help you die.'

'You don't think it's worth asking her then?'

'Let's just say I'm not confident of your chances.'

'Who should I ask then? Brynden?' Cayal smiled sourly. 'If I tell Brynden I want his help to die, he might oblige. Tides, it's not as if he hasn't tried to kill me before.'

Lukys shook his head. 'I think you're wasting your time, Cayal, but if you must...'

Cayal thought about it for a moment longer and then nodded, thinking it was time to put the unfinished business between him and the Lord of Reckoning behind him.

'Yes,' he said. 'I think I must.'

Lukys smiled. 'Well, I suppose the idea has some merit. And I can't think of anybody who'd be happier to see an end to you. Maybe, if you ask him nicely, he'll agree. And as you say, it's not as if he hasn't tried to do you in before.'

'I keep getting blamed for that,' Cayal complained. 'The last Cataclysm wasn't my fault, you know.'

'Brynden threw a meteorite at you, for pity's sake,' Lukys said. 'For stealing his woman, wasn't it?'

'Exactly! It was Brynden who tossed that bloody great ball of rock into the ocean, not me.'

'I think the stealing-his-woman part is the reason you traditionally get the blame for it.'

'I didn't steal her ... Tides, it wasn't even my idea. Kinta was the one looking for a way to get his attention.'

'Ah, yes,' Lukys sympathised. 'That terrible, wicked woman who led the innocent young prince astray. Poor you ... just dragged along for the ride, weren't you?'

'I didn't say that. I just said I wasn't entirely to blame. And I never forced Kinta to leave Tenacia with me. In fact, I wasn't even the one who suggested we leave. She did. Until she got it into her head that we should run away together, Brynden didn't even know what was going on, and I was quite happy to keep it that way, thank you very much.'

'You really do have an interesting, if somewhat arcane, code of honour, don't you?' Lukys remarked. 'You resent being blamed for the consequences of stealing Kinta from Brynden, yet you happily admit to sleeping with her behind his back. Don't you think your sin was in the act of commission, not the act of getting caught?'

'Sin?' Cayal asked with a raised brow. He worried when people started throwing around the word 'sin'. It led to all sorts of nasty things that frequently got out of hand. 'Tides, you're not thinking of starting a religion too, are you?'

'Haven't the time at the moment,' Lukys said with a shrug. 'Although I have been giving the matter some thought.'

'And you decided it was too much work, I hope?'

'On the contrary. I long ago decided the only way to do it efficiently was to make a big splash so you get everyone's attention and then vanish — preferably with some vague promise you'll return — leaving everybody believing you've gone on ahead of them to paradise, and then just sit back and watch the fun begin.'

'What fun?'

'The fun of self-delusion,' Lukys said. 'That's what faith is all about, Cayal — believing in something so profoundly you'd devote your entire life to it without any proof that it actually exists. Worse than that, it's believing without the
need
for proof. It's believing, even when confronted with definitive proof that you're wrong. A truly effective religion doesn't need gods parading around every year on feast days to assure the peasants they're still on the job. That's what brought Kentravyon down, you know, and the reason Syrolee and her tribe never last much beyond the most recent Cataclysm. Their religions require the physical presence of their gods to maintain them. A truly effective religion needs nothing more than a promise of salvation. It'll outlast the others by a thousand years.'

'You know what I think?' Cayal said, scooping up another handful of sand. It was almost too hot to touch, this close to the surface, but he barely noticed. 'I think you've spent far too much time thinking about this.'

The older man smiled. 'Well, I don't have your wide range of hobbies to keep me entertained, Sparky. I have to do something to banish the boredom.'

Cayal looked up, a little confused. 'My wide range of hobbies?'

'Yes ... you know ... trying to kill yourself ... stealing other men's wives.' 'They're not my hobbies!'

'Aren't they?' Lukys stared at him with those pale, all-knowing eyes. 'Tell me, honestly, old friend. How long has it been since you slept with another man's wife? Not counting mine.'

'I haven't slept with your wife,' he protested.

'Of course you haven't. Yet. But that's more lack of opportunity that lack of intent. Anyway, I told her the reason you're suicidal is because you're impotent. She feels very sorry for you. Now answer the question. How long has it been? A century? A decade? A year? Less than that, perhaps ...'

Cayal looked away, refusing to answer. Lukys laughed. 'Tides, it's only been a matter of months? I was wrong, Sparky. It's not a hobby for you, at all. It's a way of life!'

'You see, that's why I want to die, Lukys,' Cayal grumbled. 'I've had all I can take of you. Speaking of which, other than telling me we need some of the others to help, you're being very cagey about the details of this miraculous cure for immortality you claim to have discovered.'

Lukys leaned back on his elbows, stretching his sandalled feet out in front of him, relaxing as if he hadn't a care in the world. 'I'm not giving you the details because I don't intend to be killed myself.'

'Why should you be killed?' Cayal laughed sourly. 'Is it
dangerous?'

Lukys scowled at him. 'You know, jokes like that are much of the reason why I'm willing to help you find a way to kill yourself, old boy.'

'There aren't words for the depth of my gratitude.'

'Don't take that tone with me, Sunshine. You're the one who wants to die.'

'So tell me how.'

'There's no need, just yet.'

'And when will there be a need, do you suppose?'

'When I say so.'

Cayal didn't answer, angry at Lukys's intransigence on the matter, and deeply suspicious of his motives.

The older man could tell he wasn't happy. He reached across and patted Cayal's shoulder. 'Take heart. The end is nigh. But we'll do it my way or we don't do it at all. I don't care how you manage it, but you get me another couple of Tide Lords. Ones with the same sort of power you and I can wield and I'll give you the death you're so eager to embrace, Sparky. But until you have the others committed to our cause, I'm not telling you a damned thing about the how. Only that I can.'

CHAPTER 27

It took Tiji hardly any time at all to confirm that the Imperator's Consort was one of the missing immortals.

There was no special trick to it. Any Crasii who came with few feet of a suzerain knew it instantly. Her species was created for it, specifically designed to recognise and serve their masters — every canine, every feline, even those wretched, unsociable amphibians. Of course, Tiji was a Scard, which meant she lacked the normal Crasii instinct to serve them, but she hadn't lost the ability to identify one from across a crowded room.

She couldn't fail to recognise the sickeningly familiar prickle that washed over her skin as soon as she'd followed Arkady Desean into the consort's presence.

Tiji had slipped unnoticed into the reception hall behind Arkady when they arrived and had taken up a position in the shadows of one of the twelve tall columns supporting the room's impressively decorated domed ceiling. As the two women hedged around the real reason they were both here, speaking of fabrics and old friendships, Tiji let her skin blend with the murals around her, until she became all but invisible. A surface such as this was easy to mimic, although it required her to stay absolutely still to maintain the illusion. Plain backgrounds were harder to duplicate, but once you had them, it was possible to move without being detected.

No such luck here.
Tiji sighed as she settled in to wait, realising that if Kinta used this hall as her main

living room, she may well have to wait until after dark before she could risk leaving the seraglium. That was really going to be a nuisance, she decided, because now she'd identified Kinta for what she was, her job was done. Tiji had other plans and other places to be.

For one thing, she wanted to do some sightseeing in the Crystal City before anybody thought to revoke her diplomatic status and send her home.

As was often the case when one was trying not to think about standing still, Tiji started to itch in the most inconvenient places. To take her mind off it, she turned her thoughts to escape. Now she'd confirmed Chintara was a suzerain, her task was escape the palace undetected so she could return to the Glaeban embassy and report her intelligence to the Duchess of Lebec.

Looking around using only her eyes without moving any other part of her body — a skill it had taken years to master — she decided the prospects weren't good. Like Arkady, Tiji had entered the royal seraglium through the front door, which was located inside a guarded and sheltered courtyard. It might be possible, she mused, as the duchess and the immortal chatted like old friends, to slip out of the hall, jump the fountain-fed pool on the other side of the room, slip into the gardens she could see through the open doors and go over the wall, but Tiji really wasn't sure what might be on the other side. If she'd known which wall faced onto the street, she could be over it in a matter of seconds. But there was no way to be certain. Although she'd questioned her at length regarding the royal palace and its surrounds, Lady Desean hadn't really known what lay beyond the outer walls of the seraglium. She couldn't even say which walls connected the seraglium to the rest of the royal complex.

You see, Declan, this is what happens when you send amateurs to do a job,
Tiji grumbled silently, as

Kinta ... Chintara ... or whatever she was calling herself these days, ordered tea for herself and her guest. Several more slaves — human slaves, interestingly — came running at her command and gathered up the bolts of cloth, so the ladies could sit down.

Tiji couldn't really make out what the two women were saying from her position by the column, but she could read their body language. Chintara seemed tense, almost excited ... her mood — oddly enough — reflected like a mirror in the stiff way Arkady was seated on the edge of the couch. Both women were apprehensive, Tiji could see that, no doubt for entirely different reasons.

The explanation for Arkady Desean's nervousness was easy to figure out. Here she was, sharing tea and small talk with an immortal — something the duchess was quite accustomed to, by all accounts — but clearly something she wasn't at ease with. Had she been so polite, so ladylike, Tiji wondered, when she was sharing tea and small talk with the Immortal Prince?

And was that all they shared?

Truth be told, the only reason Tiji had ever suggested there might have been something else going on between the duchess and the Immortal Prince was to get a rise out of Declan, but as she thought about it, she began to wonder.

Arkady Desean — by human standards, at any rate — was an extraordinarily beautiful woman. If you believed the rumours, it was her remarkable beauty that saw her elevated from a penniless physician's daughter to a duchess. The Duke of Lebec, even with his unconventional tastes, had been struck by her charms. Tiji was fairly certain Declan Hawkes was utterly spellbound by them.