The Palace of Impossible Dreams (24 page)

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.

“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.”

“But you came, anyway.”

Taryx shrugged. “Didn't have anything better to do. And with the Tide on the turn, the fun and games will start again soon. Elyssa's a bitch, Tryan's an animal, Jaxyn can't be trusted, Maralyce is a bore, Brynden's a self-righteous prick, Pellys is an idiot, Kentravyon is crazy and you're a pain in the arse. Really just left Lukys, this time 'round, if I was going to find a safe place to sit it out.”

“Lukys never was the type to keep minions.”

Taryx jerked his head in Oritha's direction. “Not the type to take a young wife and build her a palace in the middle of nowhere, either. But here she is. And here we are.” He looked at Cayal disparagingly, adding, “And who are you calling a minion, anyway? At least I
know
the limits of my ability. I can't hope to compete with you Tide Lords, and I'm smart enough not to try. But you? You're powerful enough to challenge any one of the others, and yet here you are, trudging along in the snow, just as I am, ready to do Lukys's bidding.”

There was little Cayal could say in response to that, so he remained silent, thinking it better to wait and ask Lukys in person what he was up to, because Cayal was starting to suspect his own death might prove to be a serendipitous side effect of Lukys's plan—whatever it was—rather than the main event.

Lukys greeted Oritha first, kissing her fondly and then asking one of his servants to show her to her quarters. Even more surprising was that the servants were Crasii; two score canines that Cayal could see. Lukys had never been fond of the Crasii. Cayal could think of no good reason why he'd have them here now.

They were greeted by a rush of warm air as they entered the palace,
although warm was a relative term. It wasn't really warm; it was simply the temperature inside the palace was somewhat higher than outside, the wind-chill factor reduced by the solid ice walls.

Lukys looked surprised to see Pellys, but he did nothing more than greet the Tide Lord warmly and ask Taryx to escort him to one of the guest suites. Taryx acquiesced without complaint. Pellys was too taken with this fabulous crystal palace to notice he was being fobbed off. As they left, Pellys's head swivelling in amazement at the towering ice walls, Cayal turned to his host.

“You have
guest
suites?”

Lukys nodded. “Of course. One never knows who might drop in.”

Cayal's eyes narrowed. “Of course. Because down here at the bottom of the world, we're at the crossroads of civilisation, aren't we?”

Lukys smiled. “More than you know. Come with me.”

Still no more enlightened than he had been when he arrived, Cayal did as Lukys asked and followed him through the grand main hall, along an icy corridor and up a set of stairs carved of ice which let out onto a narrow battlement.

“Never thought I'd see you with Crasii slaves,” Cayal said as they climbed the stairs.

“I don't like the way they were created, Cayal,” Lukys said, glancing over his shoulder. “There are other, much less traumatic ways of manipulating life into the shapes you want, without having to go to all the trouble of making Crasii. You just need to be rather more patient than Elyssa was. But that doesn't mean they don't have their uses.”

They reached the battlements and stepped outside, the whole icy vista laid out before them. From here, it was easier to get an idea of the scale of the place. It was huge. Far more than was needed for one man who'd sent for his young mortal wife. “And what's Oritha's purpose?”

“My wife?” Lukys looked surprised Cayal was questioning her place in all this. “I happen to like her, Cayal. There's nothing sinister in her presence here.”

“She thinks your name is Ryda Tarek.”

“That is my name. In the Cabal.”

Cayal stared at him for a moment and then shook his head with a thin smile. “You didn't . . .”

Lukys laughed. “Oh, yes I did.”

“You joined the Cabal of the Tarot?”

“I didn't just join it, Cayal. I'm a member of the Pentangle.”

“You are shameless.”

“Patient beyond description, more like it. Tides, this lot have got to be the most irritating bunch of would-be do-gooders I've ever had the misfortune to deal with. Probably because the Cabal is centred in Glaeba, these days. All that rain does something to their brains, I'm sure.” He smiled even wider, stopping on the narrow walkway to lean on the icy battlements while he admired the view. “Can you believe Jaxyn and Diala were living right under their noses and they never even noticed? Although they pegged
you
for what you are quick enough. But that could be because you, well,
told
them . . .”