The Palace of Impossible Dreams (30 page)

She couldn't do that any longer.

Because there were no words to describe what Arkady was experiencing now.

The first gobie ant scouts had found them within the hour. They tickled as their tiny feet ran across her raw skin, seeking the fresh blood they could sense from the countless wounds inflicted on her flesh by the trunk's thick spikes. She only tried once to dislodge them.
That
had sent the spikes driving even further into her back, making her wounds bleed afresh. She didn't try it again.

The ants nibbled tentatively at her bleeding wounds, causing her irritation rather than pain, and then they disappeared. Arkady was faint with relief. It turned out the gobie ants weren't as bad as Azquil predicted.

Their audience dwindled after a time, as midday approached and people returned home for lunch. By mid-afternoon, the dying prisoners had lost all entertainment value and there was nobody there at all to watch them perish.

The sun climbed higher. Arkady's thirst had turned to desperation by the time her body stopped sweating, a sign of how quickly her dehydration was progressing. The sun scorched Arkady's skin. As sunburn competed with the stabbing spines in her back and legs, it was debateable which caused the most pain. She entertained herself with dreams of rescue. Jojo had been sent away, after all.

She would have gone for help, wouldn't she?

The immortals didn't specifically
forbid
her to say anything of their fate.

Isn't that what a loyal Crasii would do? Go for help?

Of course, the nearest help was probably at the Delta Settlement and that was hours away . . .

And who, in this Tide-forsaken country, would launch a rescue based on the word of a lone feline Crasii slave anyway?

Arkady was finding it hard to concentrate and she knew her dreams of rescue were just that . . . dreams . . .

Cydne had fallen silent some time ago, his cracked lips and parched tongue preventing him from keeping up his rant against these uncivilised wretches who didn't understand who he was and how important his father was. Arkady no longer cared what happened to him. It hurt too much to move her head to look at him, and in her mind he deserved everything he was getting anyway.

At some indeterminate point, someone offered her water. Arkady tried to open her eyes to see who it was, but the pain of even that much movement proved too much. Every muscle she owned was burning from the need to keep her body rigid and unmoving to prevent the spikes driving deeper into her flesh.

“Try to drink something.”

The voice was vaguely familiar. Arkady wondered if it was Jojo. Or maybe Pedy's mother? Her cracked lips hungered for the liquid, even while a detached voice in the back of her mind reminded her that to take fluid now simply meant delaying the inevitable.

Better to refuse and have this done with
, the voice in her head suggested.

Her parched throat disagreed. She lapped hungrily at the cool water, which all too quickly stopped flowing.

“I'm sorry,” her anonymous benefactor whispered. “I know you meant well. But that's all I can do for you . . .”

Arkady realised after a few moments that she was alone again, except for the softly groaning Cydne beside her. The pain had blurred into something so real, so solid, that she was able to step away from it.

The agony was still there, it was happening, but it was happening to somebody else. It made her torment bearable. It gave her the strength to tolerate it.

And then, just after sundown, the ants came back.

The first few ants had been a scouting party and when they came back, they came in force. She heard them more than saw them, felt them crawling over her feet and swarming up her body. Someone screamed. She supposed it was Cydne.

She wondered how he had the strength left.

When the first of the ants reached the stab wounds in her legs, Arkady
discovered a new definition of agony. Delirious, parched and sunburned to the point of blistering, she could feel the ants biting into the raw flesh of her wounds, feel them marching inexorably up her body, seeking other portals into the meat beneath her flesh.

She could no longer remain still. Arkady could feel every tiny set of pincers tearing the flesh of her bloody wounds apart. Every movement caused more damage, either by slicing the spikes deeper into her flesh, or by forcing desiccated muscles frozen in place by hours of inactivity into moving, which rubbed her sunburn raw . . . The fresh blood didn't run freely. By now, she was dehydrated to the point of delirium. The blood was sluggish, leaking from her skin like tree sap from an axe-cut trunk.

Arkady screamed. She screamed as the ants swarmed up her legs, as they bit into her back and across her belly. She screamed as they found her bleeding lips, the cuts on her shoulder and face Jojo had inflicted when she was trying to destroy the tonic, her open mouth, crawled into her dried-up eyes . . .

And then, out of nowhere, a wall of cold water slammed into her, as if a wave had risen out of the channel of its own accord to wash her tiny tormenters away . . .

A second wave hit with savage force, pushing her back onto the spikes, making her cry out, and then a third. She spat out a mouthful of the rank water along with the drowning ants, and then screamed anew as her arms, tied over her head for so long, were cut free and the agony of stillness replaced the anguish of movement.

Her throat was raw. Unable to speak, she collapsed into the arms of her rescuer as he cut away the ropes that bound her waist and feet. As least she
hoped
he was rescuing her. For all she knew, this was just part of their punishment and she'd been cut down simply to be taken somewhere else, so they could add another layer to her torment.

Perhaps the idea isn't to let us die yet, but to revive us and torture us all over again, and again, and again, again
 . . .

Arryl was here, after all, and she'd brought Cayal back from the brink of death. There was no real reason she couldn't do the same for Arkady and Cydne. Particularly if it meant she could arrange to have these callous murderers from Port Traeker tortured for days, even weeks, until they'd repented their sins sufficiently.

More likely
, Arkady decided,
I'm delirious.

She wasn't being rescued at all.
Maybe
, Arkady wondered, as she imagined
being doused with cool water again to rid her body of the last of the flesh-eating gobie ants,
I'm actually being devoured by them.

She'd stepped out of her body before to survive intolerable pain. This could easily be more of the same.

“Arkady . . .”

Tides, that's Declan's voice.

She knew now that she had to be delirious; wishing for something that could never be. Something that
would
never be. It was a pity really. Declan had loved her all her life. Until she'd been forced to put aside her own feelings to save her father by marrying Stellan, she'd never imagined spending her life with anyone else.

Funny, how at the moment of death, we can finally admit our deepest secrets, our most heartfelt desires, even if it's only to ourselves.

“Tides, Arkady, speak to me . . .”

There is truth in dying. Who'd have thought . . .?

If she was imagining this, if her fevered mind had created this illusion to distract her as the ants devoured her body, she decided she might as well enjoy it. Imagining Declan running to her rescue again—as he had so many times when they were children—was better than feeling gobie ants eating their way down to her bones with their tiny little pincers and their tiny little feet and the excruciating pain they brought with them . . .

I knew you'd come for me.
Arkady wasn't sure if she said the words aloud, or even if it made a difference. This was all in her dying imagination, after all . . .

“Tides, Arkady . . . I'm
so
sorry I didn't find you sooner . . .”

His words made no sense, and in any case, she didn't care, because they were followed by unimaginable pain ripping through her. It felt as if the ants had returned and were gnawing on her raw nerve endings.

The pain went on and on, wave after wave of it, until, even in her dying hallucination she couldn't take it any longer and she sought refuge in oblivion.

When Arkady's eyes fluttered open an indeterminate time later, a number of things struck her almost simultaneously.

It was night, she was no longer tied to the Justice Tree, she was parched, her throat so dry she could hardly speak . . .

And the pain had gone.

“You're awake.”

Apparently death wasn't so bad, after all. Languorously, Arkady turned in the direction of Declan's voice and smiled. The grass under her body felt cool, her skin supple and whole. There was no pain. Not so much as a twinge. She'd never felt better.

“Awake? No. I'm delirious. Or I'm dead. The latter, I think, given it's not hurting any more.”

Declan placed a cool hand on her forehead. It felt so deliciously real. She turned her face and kissed his palm. Perhaps the Crasii were right and there really was a heaven, and in her heaven it was cool and dark and Declan was there to look after her . . .

“You're not dead, Arkady,” Declan said, carefully extracting his hand. “But you might well be if we don't get out of here before someone comes down to check on you.”

That took a few moments to register. Pushing herself up on one elbow, Arkady stared at the vision of hope and wonder and began to doubt that this
was
a vision.

“
Declan
? Is that really you?”

He smiled. “Don't you know I'll always be around to haul you out of these terrible scrapes you somehow manage to get yourself into, Kady Morel?”

“Tides!” Arkady sat bolt upright, as the day's events crowded in on her along with the startling realisation that she wasn't actually dead. “Cydne!”

“You mean him?” Declan asked glancing over his shoulder.

There was little left of the Port Traeker doctor, at least that Arkady could see of him in the darkness. Although he appeared to move occasionally, it was the gobie ants that covered him completely which created the illusion. His eye sockets were empty and there didn't seem to be any skin left in the places where the mass of insects moved enough for her to see. Arkady looked away. Cydne deserved to suffer for what he'd done, but nobody deserved that fate . . .

“Why didn't you save him, too?”

Declan's expression hardened. “Isn't he the man who kept you as a slave?”

She nodded and looked away, unable to meet his eye.
Tides, how am I going to explain the last few months to you?

“Then he deserved to die,” Declan said with little emotion, although Arkady didn't really pay much attention, because when she tried to avoid his eye, she looked down at her bare breasts and realised that not only was she all but naked, but something else was missing.

“It's gone.”

He looked at her, puzzled. “What's gone?”

“My slave brand.” When he did nothing but look at her blankly, she added, “They branded me, Declan. With a branding iron. On my right breast. Here. And now it's gone. For that matter,” she added, holding her hands out, turning them over and over, examining them in wonder, “there's not a mark on me. Tides, you didn't ask Arryl to heal me magically, did you?”

“Arryl?” Declan repeated, looking puzzled. “Arryl
who
?”

“The immortal, Arryl, of course,” she said. “She was the one who condemned us to death. How did you get her to change her mind?”

Declan paled. “Arryl is
here
? In Watershed Falls?” He stood up quickly and offered her his hand. “We have to get out of here, Arkady.
Now.
”

She let him pull her to her feet, full of questions and things she had to tell Declan. About what had happened to her. About Cayal finding a way to die. About how she'd survived. About finding Tiji and the other chameleons . . .

And she wished she was wearing something more than a loincloth.

“But surely, we can . . .”

Declan held up his hand to silence her, as if he was listening for something. He stood like that for a moment, still as a reptilian Crasii, and then he grabbed her hand. “Trust me, Arkady, we need to get out of here before—”

“Before any other immortals find you?”

They both spun around as a third person Arkady hadn't known was nearby, answered his question. The woman who finished Declan's sentence was walking toward them from the direction of the village, carrying a torch which shed a circle of light around her and made the shadows all the more sinister for it.

Arkady stepped closer to Declan, expecting the woman to turn on her, but Arryl acted as if she didn't exist.

Her attention fixed on Declan, who, for some reason, didn't seem surprised.

Arryl raised the torch a little and studied him curiously. “Yes, I can imagine
you
would rather be gone before another immortal arrived.”

Declan remained silent.

“Although if you were planning to keep your presence in Watershed Falls a secret,” Arryl added, “it was foolish of you to call on the Tide.”

“I wouldn't have had to,” Declan replied cryptically, “if you weren't going about torturing innocent people.”

“What is she talking about?” Arkady whispered to Declan, but she might as well have been addressing Cydne's corpse for all the notice he was taking of her.

“Do you mean
her
?” Arryl asked, pointing to Arkady. “Tides, ask her how many innocent Crasii
she's
killed in the past few weeks, before you go accusing
us
of torturing innocents. Who are you?”

He hesitated, and then squared his shoulders a little. “My name is Declan Hawkes.”