The Palace of Impossible Dreams

The

PALACE OF

IMPOSSIBLE

DREAMS

Tor Books by Jennifer Fallon

THE HYTHRUN CHRONICLES

T
HE
D
EMON
C
HILD
T
RILOGY

Medalon
(Book One)

Treason Keep
(Book Two)

Harshini
(Book Three)

T
HE
W
OLFBLADE
T
RILOGY

Wolfblade
(Book One)

Warrior
(Book Two)

Warlord
(Book Three)

THE TIDE LORDS

The Immortal Prince
(Book One)

The Gods of Amyrantha
(Book Two)

The Palace of Impossible Dreams
(Book Three)

PALACE OF

IMPOSSIBLE

DREAMS

The Tide Lords:
Book Three

JENNIFER FALLON

A Tom Doherty Associates Book
New York

 

 

 

 

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

THE PALACE OF IMPOSSIBLE DREAMS

Copyright © 2008 by Jennifer Fallon

All rights reserved.

First published in Australia by Voyager, an imprint of HarperCollins
Publishers

Maps by Russell Kirkpatrick

A Tor Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

175 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10010

www.tor-forge.com

Tor
^®
is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

ISBN 978-0-7653-1684-4

First U.S. Edition: June 2010

Printed in the United States of America

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For Fliss
 . . .
welcome to the family

The

PALACE OF

IMPOSSIBLE

DREAMS

One thousand years ago
 . . .

Tryan studied the sorry line of prisoners standing on the edge of the cliff, wondering idly how much wind he would have to call up to blow them off, one by one, and onto the rocks that pockmarked the valley far below.

None of this would be necessary, of course, if they would just tell him what he wanted to know. Life was easier for everyone on Amyrantha when people did what Tryan wanted.

He turned and motioned Elyssa forward, noticing the slight hesitation before she did as he bid. Her interest in this little adventure was fading, he suspected; had been for a while—ever since the last time they'd met up with Cayal.

For now, though, she was still his sister and willing to play her part, even if it was less than enthusiastically.

“Which one should we kill first?” he asked, in a voice loud enough to be heard by the prisoners. A few whimpers of fear were all they dared, but he could tell his threats were having the desired effect. The twenty or so prisoners were chained together, after all, which meant he really only had to toss a few of their number off the cliff for all to be in peril.

“
We
?” Elyssa asked in a voice meant only for him. “Don't you mean which one
you
should kill? This is your idea, not mine. I want no part of this, Tryan.”

“One of them has the Chaos Crystal.”

“If one of these sorry mortals had the Chaos Crystal, you'd know it by now, I'm quite certain.” Elyssa cast her disinterested gaze along the line of naked men, women and children shivering in their chains on the edge of the precipice. “Tides, it's not as if one of them is hiding it in their pocket, now, is it?”

Tryan frowned and cast his eyes over the pile of personal belongings he had stripped from this small group of refugees. Other than their clothing, a few tools and weapons, and a set of tattered, but clearly beloved Tarot cards in a singed leather case, there was nothing to be found. No maps. No instructions . . .

Which meant one, or perhaps all of these Cabal members, had memorised
the location of the Crystal. Tryan was quite prepared to murder every man, woman and child, until one of them confessed who it was.

“One of you has something I want,” he announced to the group, studying their faces as he spoke, searching for some flicker of comprehension or a whisper of deceit; anything that would indicate one of these wretched humans knew what he was seeking. Trouble was, they all looked universally terrified, so it was a little hard to tell. “If you tell me what I want to know, I will let you live. If you don't . . .”

He let the sentence hang. They were standing with their backs to a cliff, after all. Terrified as they were, he didn't think he needed to belabour the obvious.

His prisoners remained stubbornly silent.

Tryan was losing patience with them. And he didn't have a lot to start with.

“One of you . . . perhaps all of you miserable creatures . . . knows the location of the Chaos Crystal. Tell me now, or . . .” He scanned the line of prisoners, his eyes fixing on a lad of about fourteen on the right. Thin, pale and shivering, the boy held his cupped hands in front of his shrivelled manhood, in a vain attempt at modesty. He was second from the end of the line, tied next to a plump and equally terrified fair-haired woman in her mid-thirties, who—given the protective way she was trying to shield him—was probably his mother. “. . . or
she
dies first,” he finished, pointing at the woman, while keeping his eyes fixed on the lad.

Tryan waited. The boy said nothing.

“Have it your way then.”

Tryan flicked his wrist, sending a violent gust of wind toward the line of prisoners. The woman screamed, staggering under the onslaught, loose stones under her feet tumbling from the cliff's edge as she scrabbled to maintain her balance. Several of the other prisoners screamed too, as their chains tugged them backwards.

Not the lad, however. He remained stony faced and unmoved by the threat of impending death, even with his mother barely holding her balance beside him.

Tryan stepped forward, annoyed at the lad's determination.

“I
will
kill you,” he said.

The boy slowly raised his head to meet Tryan's eye. What the immortal saw there disturbed him greatly. The boy was frightened witless, but an
edge of defiance lurked beneath the surface of his fear that no amount of threats or intimidation was going to pierce.

“You can't kill all of us,” the boy replied.

“Shows how little
you
know,” Elyssa muttered behind Tryan.

The immortal ignored the snide remark from his sister and took a step closer to the boy, convinced now that this defiant child held the key to the information he sought.

“You know, don't you?”

The boy shivered and trembled in the crisp mountain air, but his resolve didn't waver.

“There is nowhere you can run, boy,” Tryan warned, leaning so close he could feel the boy's warm breath on his face. “No place you can hide. No place I can't eventually find you.”

“There's one place you can't follow me,” the boy said in a trembling voice, his courage all the more impressive for it.

Tryan smiled coldly. “Is that what you think?”

The lad nodded.

“And where is this remarkable place I can't follow you?”

The child smiled at him then, his fear falling away, almost as if he had resolved some internal torment and was content with his decision. He squared his shoulders, glanced down the line at his fellow prisoners, looked the other way at his terrified mother, and then back at Tryan.

“You can't follow us into death,” the boy said.

Before Tryan could stop him, the boy stepped backwards off the precipice, taking the line of prisoners with him. His weight alone should not have been sufficient to drag the others with him. He was just a boy, after all. But they'd fallen, nonetheless. Or jumped. Allowing themselves to be pulled off the cliff like that amounted to the same thing. Nobody resisted. Nobody fought to stay upright or tried to cling to the edge. The wind he'd conjured to terrify them into compliance whipped away their screams on the way down.

Tryan was too stunned to react in time. He never thought to break their fall or had time to cushion it with air. Seconds later, the bodies landed some four hundred feet below him with a series of soft “thuds,” leaving the immortal standing on the cliff staring after them.

“Well,
that
plan worked a treat,” Elyssa said coming up beside him. She looked down at the pile of broken bodies for a moment and then at Tryan.
“Scared them into killing themselves before they could tell you anything, eh? There's an interrogation technique I've not seen before.”

Tryan turned from the cliff's edge. “Shut up, Elyssa.”

“Didn't exactly go the way you planned, then?” she taunted.

He glared at her angrily. “I told you to shut up.”

She shrugged and turned to look at the ruins of the refugee camp. “And I told you that if you want to find the Chaos Crystal, why not play nice and go ask Maralyce where it is?”

“Maralyce would have it by now if she knew where it was.”

“She's got a better idea than you, I suspect.”

Tryan stared at her. “What are you talking about?”

“She's not tunnelling through the Shevron Mountains for her health, you know.”

“Then we must find the Crystal first—before she finds it and gives it to Lukys.”

“Why?”

“Because he who controls the Chaos Crystal,” Tryan said, kicking a small box tiled in nacre over the edge of the cliff to join its foolish owner, “controls the Tide.”

He looked down at the pile of possessions he'd taken from the Cabal refugees, frowning, annoyed by how futile this whole exercise had been. They'd spent a useless hour searching their effects as he stripped them, to no avail. In a fury, he kicked at the pile, sending many of them drifting down after their owners.