The Palace of Impossible Dreams (18 page)

“And he
is
waiting for you,” Cayal said, trying to placate him. “I just got muddled up where he is at the moment. I was wrong about the place, that's all. He's not here. He's gone to Jelidia.”

“What's in Jelidia?”

Nothing but trouble
, Cayal was tempted to reply.

“A palace of extraordinary beauty,” Oritha told Pellys, smiling in anticipation. “Ryda assures me the home he has waiting for me there is so beautiful, it's impossible to imagine it, even in a dream.”

Cayal turned to Oritha with interest. “Lukys isn't planning to come back to Torlenia at all?”

“I gather not.” She clutched his arm reassuringly. “You needn't be concerned, though. The letter he sent me and the instructions for finding the new palace quite specifically extend his hospitality to you, Lord Cayal. He states, in fact, that you should bring any other members of your family who are willing to aid your endeavour to our new home in Jelidia, as soon as you can.” She turned and smiled warmly at Pellys. “That would include you, my lord.”

Pellys elbowed Cayal none too gently. “She called me
my lord.
”

“I heard,” Cayal muttered distractedly, trying to imagine what Lukys was up to. He doubted he'd relocated to Jelidia because he'd tired of the desert heat. And if he was just going down there to check on Kentravyon, why go to all the trouble of building a house down there?

“Did your husband's letter mention any other members of . . . the family?”

She shook her head. “No, my lord.”

“I want food,” Pellys said. “I'm starving.”

“You only think you're starving, Pellys,” Cayal told him, and then he smiled at Oritha, who was looking at Pellys with a rather wary eye. “Some refreshments wouldn't go astray, though.” He wasn't hungry or thirsty, but food and drink would give both Pellys and Oritha something to do while Cayal thought this through.

Oritha bowed again. “Of course, my lord. Please, make yourselves at home. I'll arrange dinner.”

“I like her,” Pellys announced, dropping onto one of the couches in the main hall, as Oritha withdrew. He stretched luxuriously and looked around. “This is a nice place. And she's going to cook for us. Glad you told me not to kill her.”

“I told you not to kill
anything
,” Cayal reminded him, taking a seat on the couch opposite. “Do you want to go to Jelidia with her to see Lukys?”

“It's cold in Jelidia.”

“You don't feel the cold, Pellys.”

“But it's all full of snow and ice. There's nothing to see down there. And nothing to do. Although breaking glaciers might be fun.”

“I'm sure it will be. And by the sound of it, Lukys has set himself up quite nicely down there. New palace. New everything, probably.”

Pellys grinned. “The Palace of Impossible Dreams, that's what Oritha called it.”

Cayal nodded, thinking that wasn't what Oritha had said at all, but if it made Pellys a little more cooperative, he'd happily go along with the name.

“Sounds like a grand place for a visit, actually.”

“Will you come too?”

Cayal's first instinct was to say no, but he thought better of it. There were any number of reasons why he should accompany Pellys and Oritha to Jelidia, not the least of which was that Oritha might not survive the trip otherwise. Pellys's fascination for watching things die had not changed with his beheading. The only difference was that before he was decapitated,
Pellys at least had some shred of conscience, which meant he usually confined his fascination to small animals and other creatures whose life could be counted as cheap. Pellys's regenerated brain had lost its moral compass. He had no conscience any longer; no frame of reference for what might be good or evil.

For Pellys the world just
was
and that's all he seemed to know or care about.

Besides, Lukys's presence in Jelidia bothered Cayal greatly. The letter Lukys had left with Oritha for Cayal on his last visit had stated: “We need at least five of us to do this, Cayal, and we're going to have to do it when the Tide peaks. I can convince the other two, but you are the only one on Amyrantha who can convince Elyssa to join us.”

Does the five Tide Lords he mentioned include that psychotic bastard, Kentravyon?

Kentravyon's madness was so much worse than Pellys's ingenuous savagery. Pellys was driven by childlike curiosity. Kentravyon, on the other hand,
knew
he was an evil bastard; worse, he positively
revelled
in it. That's why—for once—when it came time to do something about him, they'd all agreed the world would be better off with Kentravyon immobile, powerless and tucked out of the way, somewhere safe and isolated. Like Jelidia.

Except now Lukys was down there, possibly waking him up.

Do I want to die so badly
, Cayal wondered,
that I'd inflict Kentravyon upon the rest of the world after I'm gone?

Or was Lukys's plan, more than just a way to help Cayal die, also a way for him to be rid of a few enemies?
After all, if Lukys has the means to kill one immortal, why not kill a few more while you're at it?

“Well?” Pellys demanded, when Cayal didn't answer him immediately. “Are you coming to Jelidia with us?”

And if Lukys is preparing to take out a few other immortals in the process of helping me die, what does he have against poor Elyssa, that he'd be so insistent on her joining us?

“Yes, Pellys,” he said, deciding this mystery needed to be cleared up before he allowed Lukys to manipulate him any more than he already had. “I'm coming to Jelidia with you.”

“How are my babies doing today, Cecil?”

Warlock approached the bed, carrying Elyssa's tea. When he reached her side, he handed the cup to her with a subservient bow.

He hated that she called them
her
babies. He hated fearing for every breath they took, wondering when she was going to come for them. He hated that Boots was barely speaking to him, she was so fearful for them. He hated the names Elyssa had given them. They'd softened them—Dezi for Despair, Tory for Torment and Missy, for Warlock's pride and joy, his daughter Misery—but it didn't lessen the horror of what the Immortal Maiden had done by naming them so cruelly.

And as if to rub salt in the wound, Elyssa asked him the same question every day.

Every day he answered the same way. “They're doing fine, my lady.”

“You tell Tabitha Belle, she's to look after them well for me.”

“I'll make certain she does, my lady.”

He handed her the tea, taking small comfort in watching the immortal suffer her own pain. Sunlight streamed into the bedroom, the lake visible in the distance through the windows leading onto the balcony. The view was spectacular, but he doubted Elyssa was aware of it. She seemed rather more interested in the young man in bed beside her, dark-haired, well-muscled and handsome. He was sprawled across the bed in a tangle of sheets, his neck twisted at an odd angle. His lips were tinged blue, his skin unnaturally pale, his chest unmoving. There was no telling how long he'd been dead. A few hours at least.

Elyssa must have taken her pleasure from him—or her twisted version of it—sometime during the night.

If she was lucky, in this wing of the palace nobody but the Crasii, who were compelled to obey her, would have heard anything amiss.

This was not the first time Warlock had encountered a similar scene in the Immortal Maiden's bedroom. There'd been hell to pay the last time. Until they'd secured the throne, Syrolee was adamant her children not do anything to expose their true identities, but with little Princess Nyah still missing, Elyssa was growing impatient. She had started taking young men to her bed and then punishing them for her suffering.

Engarhod had delivered a severe dressing down to his stepdaughter over the last incident, which paled in comparison to the slapping about her mother gave her. It astonished Warlock to watch these immortals interacting. He would have thought that after thousands of years, Elyssa would have found the courage to defy her mother, particularly as it was Elyssa who could wield the Tide with impunity, not Syrolee. The Empress of the Five Realms could work a little magic, sure enough, but Elyssa and Tryan were full-blown Tide Lords. Why they continued to toe the line, going along with every scheme their mother concocted over the eons, remained an unsolved mystery that was almost as old as the Tarot which charted the story of these inexplicably complicated beings.

But there was something new, and quite unexpected, that Warlock had learned about Elyssa. Something he suspected the Cabal didn't know—and would never know unless they contacted him soon.

The
Immortal Maiden
was more than just a title, more than just a name on a Tarot card.

It was its own special curse.

A virgin when she was made immortal, the curse of constant regeneration had an unexpected consequence for the young woman. Every time Elyssa made love, her hymen must be broken yet again. And then it would immediately begin to heal itself, an excruciatingly painful process in and of itself, without the added torment of being abraded by the thrusting urgency of a lover. Warlock had heard her screaming the night she'd killed the last young man she'd taken to her bed, just as he'd ignored her quiet sobbing while he and Speckles cleaned up the mess and removed the body before anybody discovered the handsome young baker's assistant missing from the kitchens.

This young man, Warlock didn't know. But he'd suffered the same fate as the last one. Whether out of pain or rage, Elyssa had snapped the poor lad's neck. Perhaps in the throes of passion, or maybe afterward, as she writhed tormentedly on the bed, her lover unable to comprehend her suffering or the reason for it, but finding himself blamed for it nonetheless.

Her eyes were red-rimmed and swollen, which meant she'd only just finished weeping. She saw the direction of Warlock's gaze and shrugged fatalistically. “Would you get rid of him for me, Cecil?”

“To serve you is the reason I breathe, my lady.”

She accepted the tea and sighed. “Mother's going to be furious when she finds out.”

“May I be so bold as to inquire where you . . . acquired him, my lady?”

“In the city. In a tavern near the lake. I don't remember his name.”

“Did anybody see you with him, my lady? Anybody who might recognise you from the palace?”

She shook her head, her eyes narrowing suspiciously. “What are you suggesting, Cecil? That I say nothing about this?”

Warlock hesitated before he spoke. He was treading on very dangerous ground here. But this was the rush Declan Hawkes spoke of—that feeling he got from knowing something everyone else doesn't. The way his heart pounded because of the danger. The way the hairs stood up on his back because he knew something that might make a real difference. “Your lady mother's rage was a thing to behold the last time this happened, my lady. But Lord Tyrone showed us what to do, so Speckles and I could dispose of the last . . . problem . . . without discovery. Perhaps, in this case, we might be able to do the same to spare you any undue suffering?”

The immortal studied him for a moment and then smiled. “I knew I did the right thing, insisting on keeping you. Will you say anything about this to my mother or my brother?”

“If they ask me, my lady, I will have no choice. But if they have no reason to ask . . .”

Elyssa nodded, smiling at him. “You're a good boy, Cecil. I'll see you're rewarded for this.”

“To serve you is the reason I breathe, my lady,” he replied, and then he bowed and backed out of the room, so he could go fetch Speckles and cover up a murder.

“You
hid
the body for her?” Boots exclaimed when Warlock told her about the incident later that night in the chilly privacy of their bare cell.

He nodded unhappily, not sure if she could see his expression in the darkness. “We weighted him down with rocks and tossed him into the Lower Oran.”

Her eyes were shining in the darkness, wide and horrified. “Are you
mad
?” she hissed.

“Quite the opposite, Boots. Elyssa now believes I am totally her creature. This has made things much safer for all of us.” He looked down, smiling at Dezi and Tory who were sleeping off their latest feed. The males were curled up in the small, warm hollow under the blanket, between their
parents. Missy was suckling contentedly at Boots's breast, cradled in her mother's arms.

“You helped a suzerain commit murder,” Boots said. “You needn't sound so proud about it. Or try to make it my fault.”

“I'm not proud,” he told her. “I'm sick to my stomach over it. But Elyssa has to believe I'm hers, Boots, body and soul. If she ever tires of me, she'll let Tryan have us both and if Tryan ever got a hold of the pups . . .” He didn't have to say more. Boots knew as well as he did that Elyssa's particular fetish for murdering her lovers like a spider killing its mate was nothing compared to the stories of how much pleasure Tryan took from feeding Crasii pups to his hunting dogs when he was training them to tear apart a kill.

“Have you told the Cabal about this?”

He shook his head. “I don't even know who they are. Hawkes said someone would make contact with me, but nobody has.”

Boots snorted with contempt. “Typical. They make all these great plans to get intelligence so they can halt the rise of the Tide Lords, and then forget to figure out a way to get the information out.” She changed Missy to the other breast and once she was sucking contentedly, added, “Not that you've much to tell them. Other than where the bodies are hidden.”

“I've more than that to tell them. With the little princess still missing, Syrolee is moving to have her declared dead.”