The Gods of Amyrantha (2 page)

'Really?'

'Really,'
she said. 'It will be my pleasure, in fact when my friends arrive to free me, to recommend they show you all the
mercy
you showed me.'

'If
your friends arrive,' he replied gamely.

'Oh, I think you can be sure they will,' a deep voice behind him announced.

Startled, Balen turned to discover a stranger standing in the entrance to the forge. He was a big man, wearing leather armour, a dark crimson cloak caught up in a jewelled brooch on his right shoulder.

'Kentravyon!' Lyna called as soon as she saw him, although Balen needed no introduction.

He backed up against the forge. There was no hope he could defeat an immortal, certainly not a Tide Lord as powerful as Kentravyon, but he might be able to distract him long enough for the others to get away.

'You have hurt my friend,' the immortal said, walking toward him.

'It was ... We only meant...'

'I know what you meant to do,' Kentravyon said. He didn't sound angry. He sounded calm. Almost disinterested. 'You were trying to find a way to kill us, weren't you?'

Balen nodded as he felt the warm stone of the forge against his back. It was too late to run now. He had nowhere else to go.

'It must be hard for you to deal with the notion of immortality,' the Tide Lord said as he moved closer. 'I can appreciate that.'

His tone was far more reasonable than Balen might have expected. He allowed a glimmer of hope to flicker

in his soul. Perhaps the rumours he'd heard about Kentravyon were just that. Rumours ... nothing else ...

The Tide Lord stopped before him. He smiled, and reached up with both hands. Balen leaned back from him, but the immortal didn't try to strike him. He took Balen's face between his hands with a gentleness that shocked him, smiling beatifically.

'Poor, poor mortals,' he whispered softly, seductively. 'You so badly want what we have, don't you?'

Balen couldn't answer. Kentravyon's gloved hand caressed his face. The world seemed to retreat. Even Lyna's whimpering faded into the background ...

Kentravyon leaned forward and kissed him on the mouth and then he pulled back and smiled at Balen. 'I forgive you.'

Balen sagged with relief. 'My lord ...'

'And because I forgive you, I will save you from witnessing what I'm going to do to your family. And your village. And anybody else who thinks they can torment their gods.'

It was the look deep in the immortal's eyes as much as his words that panicked Balen. There was forgiveness, sure enough, but it was forgiveness without reason. Balen struggled to break free, but the Tide Lord held him fast, moving his hands until his thumbs pressed against his eyelids.

Slowly, Kentravyon pushed down against Balen's eyes, until the pressure was unbearable. Balen heard someone screaming and realised it was his own voice. The pressure grew worse until he could stand it no more. The left eye collapsed a moment after the right, blood streaming from his eye sockets, his screams tasting salty as the blood mixed with his tears.

Kentravyon let him go and he collapsed to the floor, sobbing not only for his own torment, but the pain of impending death.

This was just a precursor, he knew. He did not have much longer to live.

In the distance he heard a lock rattle and realised Kentravyon must have released Lyna from her cage. A moment later a foot slammed into his ribs. He grunted with the force of it, rolling onto his side to avoid a second blow. The world remained black, his ruined eyes nothing more than a gelatinous goo leaking out of his bloody eye sockets.

'Bastard!'

'Now, now, Lyna ... that wasn't very nice.' Kentravyon's voice was still calm ... soothing even ... 'I'm going to kill the sadistic little prick.' 'No, my dear, you're not.' 'He cut off my hand!'

'And you
will
be avenged,' the Tide Lord promised. 'But your tormenter must
know
you are being avenged, my dear, or he cannot achieve redemption.'

'How's he going to know anything?' she demanded of her saviour impatiently. 'You put out his eyes.'

'But he can still hear us,' Kentravyon said.

Balen whimpered in fear, but not for himself.

Tides, please let my family be safely away from here ...

The Tide ignored his plea. His family were still in the house, he soon discovered; the villagers asleep in their homes, unaware of the danger he had brought down upon them in his arrogance.

He couldn't see them, of course.

But as he lay by the forge, feeling it grow cold, he discovered Kentravyon was right.

He could — and did — hear their screams as they died.

PART
I

'Twixt tide and tide's returning 

Great store of newly dead, — 

The bones of those that faced us, 

And the hearts of those that fled.

— White Horses,
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

CHAPTER 1

Only someone looking very closely would have noticed the chameleon Crasii standing against the elaborately detailed mural. The stylised hunting scene lined the west side of the Ladies Walking Room and ran the length of the vast Caelum Royal Palace's third floor. The room was a long narrow promenade, built to afford the ladies of the court a place to exercise in during the long Caelish winters, when the palace was snowbound for months at time. Fortunately it was summer now; otherwise Tiji would have risked hypothermia standing naked as she was, blending in with the mural so she could listen in on the conversations of those who chose this favourite concourse to discuss affairs of the court.

Tiji resisted the urge to scratch an itch on the side of her nose, falling into the unnatural stillness unique to her kind as the door opened at the end of the hall. As she'd hoped, the Queen of Caelum's guests had arrived. The Grand Duchess of Torfail and her children let themselves into the room, checked the door was firmly closed and then walked further along the hall until they were closer to where Tiji was, blending with the wall so completely she had ceased to exist as a separate entity.

'The queen has given us an answer,' the grand duchess announced, as they approached.

'And?' her daughter prompted. Dressed in a hooped gown similar to her mother's made from heavily brocaded silk, even Tiji considered the

daughter plain. She had pale eyes and dark hair braided in the elaborate fashion currently in favour in Caelum. Being completely hairless herself, Tiji often wondered how humans coped with all that grooming and washing and tying it out of the way every day, certain even a small amount of hair would have driven her mad.

'And she said yes,' the duchess announced. She glanced at her son and smiled. 'Looks like you're getting married, dear.'

The young man was unfairly pretty, dark haired and perfectly formed, with eyes the colour of twilight framed by long dark lashes. He seemed to be about twenty or so, his beauty marred, however, by the scowl he wore. 'Tides! Do I have to?'

'It's the quickest way to secure the throne,' his mother shrugged.

'She's a wretched
child,
mother.'

'That wretched child becomes queen as soon as she marries,' his sister reminded him. 'That makes you king if you're her husband, you know.' She added the last bit, no doubt, to aggravate her sibling.

The young man seemed quite annoyed. 'They'll expect me to sleep with her.'

As they talked, the group neared Tiji. The sister smiled nastily. 'Surely you're not objecting on
moral
grounds, Try?'

This was the closest Tiji had been able to get to the grand duchess and her family in the month since she'd been sent to infiltrate the Caelum palace. It was rumours of their arrival that had brought Tiji to Caelum in the first place. Declan Hawkes had learned that after Glaeba's potentially disastrous refusal to unite their crown prince with Princess Nyah, the heir to the Caelish throne, another contender had appeared on the scene. Declan had wanted to know who it was, so Tiji was dispatched from Herino and sent north to discover the truth behind this new offer.

The truth was before her now. Tiji was glad of it, too. Caelum was a cold, miserable place and when she was using her chameleonic abilities, she couldn't wear clothes to protect her body from the elements. The sooner she learned what this lot of grasping foreigners were up to, the sooner she could head home.

'I'm objecting on the grounds that the Tide is on the turn and I don't see why we need to keep up this ridiculous charade.'

Almost at the same time the young man spoke, Tiji's skin began to prickle. A feeling akin to nausea washed over her, threatening her concentration, and with it her camouflage. The trio drew closer, the danger with them. The sensation was sickening, and familiar, although she was a child when she'd felt it last. That was back in Senestra, before she'd met Declan Hawkes.

This feeling was the reason she
worked
for Declan Hawkes.

Suzerain.

That this trio were not who they claimed was no surprise to Tiji. When Declan heard the Grand Duchess of Torfail had made an offer for her son to wed Princess Nyah, he'd been instantly suspicious, certain there was no such place as Torfail — in Caelum or anywhere else on Amyrantha — let alone a grand duchy attached to it. But Declan had been expecting at best some ambitious grifters, at worse agents of a neighbouring country trying to mess with the Caelish succession by providing a contender of their own.

He wouldn't be expecting three immortals seeking to take the throne of Glaeba's closest neighbour, any more than Tiji was.

Quashing the fear and nausea all Scards felt in the presence of the immortals, Tiji forced herself to concentrate.

'It's easier this way,' the older woman was saying. 'And faster. You marry the child, she takes the throne,

you become king, then I can call the others back, and we're set for the next three hundred years. Why go to the effort of trying to achieve the same thing by force, when the only work you have to do is smile nicely and not terrify the little brat until after the wedding?'

'It's humiliating,' her son complained. 'I command the Tide, for pity's sake. I shouldn't have to work for anything.'

'One whisper of the Tide returning and all of a sudden ordinary work is humiliating?' the plain young woman laughed. 'Tides, Tryan, a century ago you were hiding out in Parve, pretending to be a cobbler.'

Tryan? Tides, it's the Empress of the five Realms!

Tiji forced her racing pulse to slow, afraid if she let her dread get the better of her, she'd let her camouflage drop, a mistake that might result in her instant annihilation. She had to remain a part of the wall' for as long as this took. It was critical she survive to take this news back to Glaeba.

'I've no time for your bickering,' Syrolee snapped, before Tryan could respond. 'You'll both do what you have to, and that's an end to it. Have either of you had word from your brothers?'

Elyssa nodded, but she was smirking at Tryan. 'A messenger arrived this morning while you and the queen were negotiating. Krydence has heard a rumour that Cayal might be in Glaeba.'

Tryan rolled his eyes in disgust. 'Tides, that's all we need.'

'It's just a rumour, Tryan.'

The young man eyed his sister speculatively. 'One you'd like confirmed, I don't doubt.' ' 'What's that supposed to mean?' Elyssa demanded. 'As if you didn't know.'

'Tryan, leave your sister alone. Has there been no word from Ranee or Engarhod?'

'Last I heard Ranee was so far south he was almost in Jelidia,' Tryan reminded them. 'He could be anywhere.

As for Engarhod, he's more likely to contact you than either one of us.'

Syrolee nodded in agreement. 'As soon as he gets word the wedding is going ahead, I'm sure he'll be here.'

'But I'll be king,' Tryan pointed out.

Syrolee's eyes narrowed. 'What do you mean?'

'I mean, mother dear, I'll be King of Caelum. Not you. And certainly not Engarhod. If I have to take this child to my bed to stake a claim on this wretched throne, I'm not giving it away. I'll have earned the damn thing and you're not bringing Engarhod here and unseating me just because you like being empress.'

Syrolee scowled at her son for a moment and then forced a smile. 'Let's take this throne first, dearest, before we start arguing about who's going to sit on it. You both know what you have to do. I expect you to do it.'

With that, the Empress of the Five Realms turned on her heel and strode the long length of the Ladies Walking Room, slamming the door behind her.

Tiji held her breath, waiting for the others to follow, but it seemed the siblings weren't done squabbling yet.

'Look on the bright side, Try,' Elyssa suggested. 'Nyah's only ten years old. She's too young to notice what a lousy lover you are.'

'At least I've
got
a lover.'

Elyssa's eyes narrowed. 'Don't you dare ...'

'Or you'll what?' Tryan asked. When Elyssa didn't seem to have an answer, he smiled. 'Maybe Cayal
is
in Glaeba, Lyss. Maybe he'll finally come looking for you. I mean ... Tides, it's been how long since you saw him last? He must have screwed everything else that walks on Amyrantha, by now. I'm sure he'll get around to you eventually.'