House of Blades (The Traveler's Gate Trilogy) (15 page)

He would almost certainly have to fight once he reached the bottom of the stairs. Most likely he would be risking his life. But what choice did he have? An image of Leah in chains rose up in his mind, and he swallowed his fear. If he was going to do anything useful to save his people, he had to move forward. There was no other option.

Simon left the door open for the light and moved slowly down the stairs, sword lifted in front of him. He was halfway down when the sounds from below ceased, as though whoever or whatever waited below had sensed him coming.

“Hello?” Simon called out. “Who’s down there?”

There were a few wooden chuckles, and a relaxed voice called up: “Don’t worry, kid. We don’t bite. Most of us don’t have the equipment for it, to tell you the truth.”

The casual tone eased Simon’s tension somewhat, though he didn’t lower his sword. He had learned never to let his guard down too much in this house.

When he finally set his foot down on the floor at the bottom of the stairs, unnatural blue flames ignited all around the room, revealing the basement in a wavy light that made Simon think of being underwater. The flames were cupped by tall black torches, which lined the walls every few feet. The room was a long rectangle that stretched away from him, and the torches were interspersed with bulky black shadows that crouched next to the lights. After a moment, Simon recognized them as suits of armor on pedestals.
 

At the far end of the room, an obsidian chair gleamed in the blue half-light. No, not a chair; a throne. It was plain and undecorated, but it had a huge sense of weight. On it, with one leg draped casually over one arm, sat a skeleton.

At least, Simon thought it was a skeleton at first. But it shone as if it had been covered in, or made entirely out of, metal. It wore a wide-brimmed hat tilted to cover one eye socket, and the other blazed blue, as if one of the torches that lit the room had been placed within its skull.

The skeleton jumped up from the throne—Simon drew in a breath and took a quick step back—and then it swept a jaunty bow. “Lovely to meet you, kid. The honorable Benson, at your service.”

“Uh, my name is Simon. Kai told me to come down here and then come back up, so...”

“Right, then!” Benson clapped his metal hands together with a sound like a handful of knives clashing. “Of course, you’ll have to have a go at the boys, first. Just to see if you can handle it, you understand.”

“What? Have a go?”

“Sure, yeah. You know. Fighting, and all that. Unless you’d rather dance a turn or two instead.”
 

Benson cackled a laugh. Simon began to dream of a day that Kai would explain something
before
sending him headfirst into it.

From the side, a deep voice, like a bear awakening from hibernation, rumbled forth. “I’d rather dance a turn or two. If you were wondering.”

Simon cast his eyes everywhere to try and figure out who was speaking. He spotted a helmet twisting on metal shoulders before he realized that the speaker was one of the suits of armor.

Somehow, it didn’t come as much of a surprise.

Benson made a dismissive gesture towards the armor that had moved. “Ah, shut it, Borus. Nobody asked you.”

“Who am I fighting, then?” Simon asked. Benson cackled again and waved his arms. With an enormous creak and a jangle of metal, all of the suits of armor stepped forward as one and turned to face him. As if controlled by one mind, they raised enormous weapons—maces, axes, broad cleaver-like swords—up to a ready position.

Simon’s hands were moist on his sword, and the temptation to dash back up the stairs was almost too much to take. But he took the fear and shoved it to the back of his mind. His master obviously thought he was ready for this. Kai must have passed this training himself.

Therefore, he would move forward.

He crouched on the balls of his feet, assuming a low ready stance with his sword angled in front of him. The air between him and the iron giants trembled with tension.

“All right,” Simon said. “Let’s go.”
 

“Dancing?” said Borus.

***

In the first few moments of the fight, Simon was almost overwhelmed by his own instincts. His mind screamed at him that he was facing two dozen opponents, all much bigger and stronger than he was, and the panic nearly got him killed.

But after the initial fright, as well as a few near misses from shovel-sized axes, he realized that this actually might be easier than winning his supper from Chaka.

The suits of armor and their weapons were too large for the narrow room, and there were so many of them that they crowded each other. He would only face, at most, two at a time, and even those would get in each other’s way. One tried an overhand swing with a sword that caught on the decorative spikes covering another’s shoulder; the gap that created was more than wide enough to allow Simon to slip under the armor’s elbow and thrust his blade into where one of the armor’s kidneys would have been.

Or at least, he tried to. The sword screeched and scraped against the armor, but failed to make a dent.

Another swung a mace at his head, and Simon stepped back to avoid it. He would be seriously injured if one of the attacks connected, but they were almost comically slow. As long as he kept moving, he would be in no real danger.

He tried an overhand slash at the helmet, but of course the blow just rebounded off.

“Interesting strategy,” Benson said, “attacking the opponent’s strong points. I never would have thought of it.”

Simon dodged another couple of attacks, then tried what he probably should have done from the beginning. He slipped his sword up under the shoulder of one suit of armor, stabbing it into the weak point under the shoulder joint, where the armor was thin.

The suit shuddered and crashed to the ground, as if the energy animating it had failed.

Benson cackled and crashed his bony hands together again. “Bravo. Twenty-three more to go.”

Simon fell into a rhythm, avoiding the slow, heavy attacks and waiting for an opening until he could slide in a single strike. Two more armors went down.

Then he made a mistake.

He stepped in too close as he aimed for underneath an arm, and a heavy iron fist came down on his shoulder. Once. Twice. It felt like his shoulder had shattered like a dropped glass. He took up his sword in his left hand and raised it, but the armor’s next blow snapped it in half. A shard from the broken blade flew towards his eye; he flinched, and it slashed across his temple.

He looked up with blurring eyes and saw the fist coming down on his face.

“Stop it, Borus,” Benson called out.

The iron gauntlet froze not quite two inches from Simon’s forehead.

“I’m glad,” Borus rumbled. He pulled his fist back and stood up straighter; all the other suits followed. “Your two-step is good, but your waltz could use a little work.”

Simon looked up at him, dazed.

“Honestly,” Benson said, “I never know what he’s talking about either.”

***

After a quick visit to the imp-infested healing tub, Simon walked back into the garden to see Kai. He rolled his shoulder, trying to work out the stiffness in the newly restored joint.

Kai sat in the grass next to Chaka. His legs were crossed, hands on his knees, head bowed, with Azura resting against his shoulder. His doll Lilia lay in his lap. Next to him, Chaka sat in the exact same pose.

Simon had seen this before. Apparently it was Kai’s “meditation position,” whatever that meant. Simon supposed he would find out at some point in his training.

“Kai, sir. I’ve come back.”

“And how did it go?” Kai asked. He didn’t open his eyes. Or maybe he did; the white hair in his face made it hard to tell.

“I managed to defeat three of the iron armors before I was taken down,” Simon said. He supposed that wasn’t bad, but of course Kai would have been able to do better.

“I see.”

“What was I supposed to learn?”

“If you had learned it,” Kai said, “you would know. Try again tomorrow.”

Simon held forward the shattered remnants of the weapon he had bought, secondhand, from a desperate merchant’s guard. It felt strange, letting the weapon go. “In that case, I’m going to need another sword.”

“Then you’ll have to go get a spare.” He hesitated a moment, then added, “Good luck.”

C
HAPTER
E
IGHT
:

R
ISKS
AND
R
EWARDS

As it turned out, the armory was filled with traps.

Simon recalled his first visit to the armory after opening the door and dodging a dart launched from the opposite wall. This time, another dart followed just as he relaxed and stood up, forcing him to dodge again.

That hadn’t happened last time. Someone had to have changed the trap...unless the trap changed itself. That was a depressing thought.

The room was lit by a bright, white light, though Simon could see no source. The light gleamed off weapons of every size, shape, and description, filling the room wall-to-wall and stretching back so that Simon could barely see the far wall. A rack of spears a hundred paces long stood against one wall, arranged from shortest—a spear that was scarcely longer than Simon’s forearm—to the longest, which had to be fifteen feet tall and looked as wide around as his neck. Axes of a thousand different shapes stood on individual wooden stands all around the room. Bow staves, some made of horn, some of a dozen different types of wood, and one that looked to be forged entirely of metal, sat in barrels near the door, with coils of bowstring on pegs nearby. Suits of armor—chain, plate, leather, snake scales, animal hides with shaggy fur still attached—were arranged on pedestals against the wall to the right, and Simon made sure not to step too close. They might come to life.

Every step deeper into the armory sprung some new trap. A tripwire he hadn’t noticed caused a giant axe to come swinging down for his head. One innocent-looking tile was actually a switch that opened up a chasm in front of him; if he had taken one more step, he would have fallen in. He thought he heard growling from the bottom.

It wasn’t nearly as hard as it should have been to build up his courage and keep going. Simon realized some part of him was growing used to constant, unpredictable, mortal danger. He wondered if that was a good thing.

Of course, the rack of swords rested against the back wall, as far as could be from the entrance. It stood right next to the rich wooden door leading into another room, deeper in the House. Simon hesitated, his hand hovering between the hilt of a new sword and the door handle. He had conquered the armory, hadn’t he? Surely a peek inside this room wouldn’t hurt anything.

He grabbed the door handle and tugged on it, just a little. Nothing happened. The door stayed firmly shut. He pushed, and again the door didn’t budge. Maybe he could ask Kai for the key.

Then again, there could be a thousand fiery snakes coiled up just beyond the door, waiting for a single crack so they could spring out and sink their burning fangs into his flesh. In this place it very well could be that, or even something worse. He shook his head to clear it. He really was getting overconfident, if he was trying to recklessly march ahead into an unknown danger. To keep himself distracted, he seized a sword from the rack. This new room could wait until he had conquered all the rooms before it, including the skeleton’s basement.

Armed with a new sword, he marched back down to Benson. This time he suffered two fractured shins after defeating only a pair of the black armors. His trip up the stairs and back to the healing bathtub was one of the most agonizing experiences of his life, and he came close to asking Kai to take him back to the real world.

But he didn’t.

He settled into a new routine: wake up, challenge Chaka for breakfast, train with Kai all afternoon, then back to the basement before dinner. In time, he grew stronger. Faster. He could swing a sword all day, now, and barely feel it, and he shrugged off minor injuries as unworthy of his attention. Sometimes he could challenge the walking suits of armor twice a day, taking down seven or eight each time before he was defeated.

He was making progress, certainly, but not enough. Not nearly enough. After a month of repeating the same pattern, he cornered Kai after dinner and demanded to know what he was doing wrong.

Kai chuckled. “The little mouse is getting hungry, so he asks why he cannot swallow a tree whole. Like anything else worth doing, it takes time.”

He held Otoku in his left hand, and he bent his head closer, listening. He cradled her carefully to avoid wrinkling her red dress.

Otoku whispered in his ear, just on the edge of Simon’s hearing, but Simon barely gave it any thought. Amazing what he could get used to, with time.

Kai nodded along with the whispers. “Yes. Good point. Otoku says that there is one rule in this house, above all others: what you want, you must earn.”

“But what am I going to earn?” Simon knew his voice was too angry, but he went on. “If I can beat all of the suits of armor, and that skeleton besides, what have I earned? I’ve just proved that I’m better than they are.”

Kai nodded slowly, head tilted like a bird’s, and then he rose to his feet.
 

“You have my apology, little mouse. I have failed you. I have been leading you around by the hand, instead of leaving you to find your own way. And for that I am sorry.”

And then he began to walk. Not back, through the bathroom and towards the hallway and the exit, but forward. Into the far door that Simon had never seen open.

“I have earned my way through fourteen rooms of this house,” Kai said. “I will make my way through, room by room, at a pace I feel you should be able to manage. If you can find me, then we will travel together. If you do not find me in two weeks, I will consider you dead or a coward. In either case, I will remove you from Valinhall.”

“What are you saying?” Simon cried. “You can’t just leave me here!”

Kai continued as if he had not spoken, his long-legged strides eating up the grassy plains as Simon hurried to follow. “The door to the library will unlock once you have mastered the skeleton in the basement. I will wait in the library for a time. If you do not catch me there, I will move on.”