Dawn was a stark, brutal affair in Torlenia. The sun didn’t tenderly warm the land as it spread gentle fingers across the sky. It strode over the horizon, searing the landscape as it went. The chill of the desert nights buckled under the relentless onslaught of the rising heat, wilting all but the sturdiest of creatures.
The immortals, being the sturdiest of all creatures, still felt the heat, but other than vague discomfort, it had little effect on them. Immortal skin didn’t burn, their bodies refused to dehydrate. It irritated rather than debilitated them, and—as it turned out—tested their ingenuity. Cayal was admiring one such example of Tide Lord ingenuity as dawn burned away the night, revealing the desert in all its stark and barren splendour.
To Cayal’s surprise, Lukys lived permanently in Torlenia, these days. They’d travelled here in leisurely style, a journey that had taken almost a month. When he got here, he discovered the Tide Lord had built himself a villa carved out of the sandstone in the low hills on the very edge of the Great Inland Desert near the city of Elvere. Even more impressive, he’d designed a way to cool his palatial home by forcing what little breeze there was out here in the desert through narrow vents tunnelled through the walls of the house that were hung with gauze soaked in water from the natural spring underneath the house, which he also channelled through the same vents. With the Tide on the way back, there was no need to rely on the vagaries of the wind any longer. A steady breeze blew through the vents, cooling the house as the sun clawed its way across the sky, immolating any promise of relief.
Cayal studied the vent high on the wall of the atrium, appreciating the cool air tumbling from it, wondering when Lukys had mastered the finer points of architecture and engineering. The house was large and well furnished, showing signs of long habitation. It seemed odd to find Lukys so domesticated, particularly as he’d apparently acquired—along with all these other worldly possessions—a rather attractive young wife.
“I’m rather proud of my cooling system. It’s ingenious, don’t you think?”
Cayal turned to find Lukys walking into the atrium, dressed in a loose wrap, similar to those the natives wore in Magreth before it was destroyed. His feet were bare on the cool, blue tiles, and he was carrying two glasses full of juice, beaded with condensation.
“I’m surprised by it, actually,” Cayal replied, accepting the juice. It was thick and pulpy, pale green and delicious. Cayal wasn’t sure what fruits it was made from, but apparently Lukys had chosen his wife for more than her spectacular body. He’d also dispensed with the rule about women wearing a shroud in the presence of any man not a member of their family, which Cayal was grateful for. He found speaking to any woman concealed from head to toe by those wretched shrouds a disturbing proposition.
“Why are you surprised, Cayal?”
“You never struck me as the sort to put down roots, Lukys,” Cayal said. “And yet here you are, as settled as any mortal. A house, a wife…Tides, you haven’t got a couple brats hiding out the back, have you?”
Lukys smiled. “I’m not all that fond of children. But don’t tell Oritha that. She thinks I can’t wait to start a family. She believes I just have…emotional issues to deal with first.”
“Does she know you’re immortal?” he asked as he followed Lukys to the terrace, wondering how the young woman might have reacted to the news.
“Of course not. She thinks I’m a gem merchant from Stevania.”
He sat down next to his old companion on the elegantly wrought marble bench, already warmed by the rising sun. “You haven’t been married that long, I take it?”
“A couple of years. I found her in Ramahn. She’s the youngest of five daughters. Her father couldn’t wait to be rid of her.”
“You don’t love her?”
Lukys laughed at the very idea. “Tides, Cayal! Surely you’ve learnt better than that by now? When was the last time you were stupid enough to fall in love? She loves me, that’s what’s important.”
Cayal took a long drink from his glass to avoid answering the question, certain any discussion about his love life would attract nothing but the older man’s derision. “What made you decide to take a wife again after all this time?”
“I’m studying something important.”
“What are you studying that requires a wife? Marital bliss?”
The older man seemed amused. “I just decided if I was going to take time to work on this thing, I might as well be comfortable. Oritha is very pleasant to look at, runs my household efficiently and keeps me company when I’m in the mood.”
“You could get all that from a Crasii.”
“Only if bestiality was my particular hobby, which it’s not. Besides, with a Crasii I could never be sure I haven’t got a Scard lurking around, waiting to slit my throat while I’m asleep one night in a futile attempt to rid the world of an evil Tide Lord.” He leaned back and took a sip of his juice. “No thanks, Oritha is everything I need in the way of companionship at the moment.”
“So she’s really a replacement for your pet rat,” Cayal concluded.
Lukys smiled. “Do me a favour, would you, and don’t repeat that in front of my wife. She was actually quite glad to see the end of Coron and it was hard to explain to her how long we’d been together.”
“What happened to Coron, anyway?”
“I told you,” Lukys reminded him. “He died.”
Cayal leaned forward and placed his glass on the low railing on the edge of the terrace. “You haven’t told me how.”
Ignoring his guest’s impatience, Lukys finished off his drink before answering. “Has it never occurred to you, Sparky, in the depths of your relentless, self-obsessed depression, that your futile quest for a way to end your own life is a dire threat to the rest of us?”
“It’s my existence I want to end,” he said. “It’s not a threat to anyone else.”
“But if you succeed in dying, then the rest of the immortals can be killed, too. Effectively, we’ll cease to be immortal.”
Cayal remained unmoved. “I really don’t care, Lukys.”
“You might not care, Sunshine, but you need to be aware that others do. Hard as I know you find this to grasp, some of us don’t mind the idea of living forever. If our immortal brethren thought you might actually succeed in your insane desire to commit suicide, they’d go to a great deal of trouble to stop you.”
“But if what you’re telling me about Coron is right, you have succeeded, Lukys. Why aren’t you battening down the hatches and preparing for the siege?”
He shrugged. “Because nobody knows about it, yet. And I’m counting on the fact that you don’t plan to spread the news.” Lukys rose to his feet, looked out over the desert for a time and then turned to look at Cayal. “In fact, I’m willing to wager anything you name that you’ll keep it quiet.”
“You seem very certain of that,” Cayal replied with a frown. Since he’d first confided his desire to put an end to his insanely long life to Lukys, more than a thousand years ago, the older man had taken to teasing him about his morose outlook, “Sparky” and “Sunshine” being some of the least offensive names he had for the Immortal Prince.
“I am,” Lukys told him confidently.
Cayal gave an exasperated sigh. “You’re going to make me ask why, aren’t you?”
“Oh, yes, I most certainly am.”
“Very well, Lukys. Why are you so certain I won’t shout how to kill an immortal from the rooftops to anybody who’ll listen, as soon as you tell me what it is?”
“Because we’ll need quite a few of the others to do it,” Lukys replied. “And if they knew what you were up to, none of the others would help. You’re not going to say a word.”
“Then how do I get them to help me die?”
“By doing the thing we do best, old son. Lying about it.”
Cayal shook his head doubtfully. “So you intend to share this news with me, only provided I agree to lie, cheat and manipulate several other Tide Lords into helping us do me in?”
“You always were a sharp lad,” Lukys remarked. “A bit unstable, perhaps, but you never lacked for intelligence.”
“What’s in it for you?”
Lukys looked wounded. “My desire to help an old friend isn’t enough, Cayal? Nothing more. I swear.”
“Bullshit,” Cayal retorted pleasantly.
He treated Cayal to an ingenuous smile. “Would you believe I’m motivated by idle curiosity?”
“Not for a moment. What do you intend to get out of this, Lukys, other than my death?”
“Very well,” the older man replied after a moment. “I want to be God.”
“I thought we’d decided immortals who want to be God were a really bad idea, Lukys.”
“Did we?”
Cayal nodded. “The name Kentravyon leaps to mind.”
“Ah, but there’s a difference between me and that lunatic,” Lukys said, sitting on the edge of the railing. “I want to be God, Kentravyon thought he was God.”
“There’s a difference?”
“Absolutely! I know I’m not God, Cayal. I’d just like everyone else to think I am. Kentravyon, now…he believed he really was God. That’s what made him so unstable.”
“And you think killing me will somehow prove to everyone that you’re a god?”
“Better than that,” Lukys said, shaking his head. “By killing all the other immortals, I’ll prove I’m the God.”
Cayal stared at him for a moment, remembering Medwen’s warning thousands of years ago in the chilly darkness of Brynden’s castle that Lukys had his own agenda and it probably included ruling the entire galaxy.
“Let me get this straight. You want my help to kill me and all the other immortals?”
“In a nutshell,” Lukys agreed.
“You’re a maniac.”
“Only from a certain perspective.”
“What makes you think I’d have anything to do with such an idiotic plan?”
“Why do you care, Sparky? If you’re dead, what matter is it to you what happens to the others?”
“They’ll try to stop us.”
“Only if we tell them what we’re doing.”
“Suppose they realise you’re trying to kill them?”
“I was planning on keeping that small but pertinent detail a secret, you know.”
Cayal studied Lukys for a moment and then shrugged. Lukys was right. What did he care? “Why not?”
Lukys smiled. “I had a feeling you’d say that, Sparky.”
“Hence the reason you came looking for me,” Cayal concluded, Lukys’s sudden desire to seek him out after all these years starting to make sense. “How do we do it?”
“You don’t need the details just yet. First we need at least another three immortals. And they have to be of the nine. A lesser mortal hasn’t got the power to get the job done. This will require the power of a Tide Lord.”
“Any ideas?”
“I thought I’d ask Maralyce first. She’s always been fond of you.”
Cayal frowned, unable to imagine Maralyce agreeing to anything that involved working in concert with another Tide Lord. She didn’t care enough for the others, one way or the other, to do anything about removing them, either.
“What if she says no? Who does that leave? Brynden? He and I haven’t been on speaking terms since Kinta and I…well, she’s not speaking to me, either, for the same reason. Pellys is too unreliable. Kentravyon’s still doing his icicle impression in Jelidia. That just leaves Tryan and Elyssa. I can’t imagine any circumstance where Tryan would lift a finger to help me. As for Elyssa, she’s—”
“Had a crush on you for eight thousand years,” Lukys finished for him.
Cayal gave Lukys a baleful glare. “You cannot be serious.”
The older Tide Lord looked at Cayal for a moment and then raised a questioning brow. “How badly do you want to die, Cayal?” Lukys asked.