House of Blades (The Traveler's Gate Trilogy) (2 page)

Then it struck like a snake, the mist plunging into Edina’s open mouth. She inhaled roughly, like screaming in reverse, but she didn’t look in pain. At first she just looked stunned, as if she had seen Simon do something so bad that she was too surprised to punish him for it.

Then she sagged in place, going entirely limp and starting to collapse. Something caught her. Something invisible, like the strings on a puppet. Then those strings began to pull. Edina twitched violently, arms bending one way, neck stretching back farther than it should have. Her head moved side to side, jerking back and forth. Moon-colored mist swirled around her form, and Simon could have sworn he saw brightly colored flower petals drifting down around her.

The scarred man watched her sadly. Then he shook his head, turned, and walked over to his companion.

Simon choked down a scream. He had to help; he knew he had to help. But all he seemed to be able to do was hide in the cart and cry.

Kalman’s screams had stopped.

“I’ll get back to searching,” the man said calmly. “Will you be okay here?”

The woman turned her head and spat on the ground. “This is wrong,” she said. She looked disgusted, like she would rather be anywhere else, but she raised her red-marked hand toward Simon again.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

Then a burning hand grabbed her ankle.

His father had been burned so badly that Simon barely recognized him. All his clothes had burned away, his hair was gone, and his skin was a horrible reddish-black. Simon couldn’t look too closely, because he was afraid he’d throw up. His father was even still on fire in a few places.

But he wasn’t dead. He crawled forward, one hand on the robed woman’s ankle, pulling his body off the crushed and broken form of the fiery monster wasp. With an inhuman scream, Kalman heaved the red-robed woman off her feet.

She tumbled to the ground, but that seemed to have been the end of his father’s strength. He fell to the ground and didn’t move any more.

Simon held his breath and stared at his father’s body. He couldn’t be dead. He was just unconscious. He would sleep for a while and then get better. But Simon had seen people die before.

A new voice, a man’s voice, cut through the rain behind Simon. “I’ve never seen a man go more bravely than that,” the voice said.
 

Terrified, Simon turned to face whatever new horror was coming. He tried to hunch lower in the cart.

There was a third stranger in the forest now, standing on the other side of the cart from the two Travelers. He wore a fine black cloak, with the hood up, so Simon couldn’t see what he looked like, but he was sure he had never met this man before. From the depths of the hood, the man flashed Simon a wide smile.

How could he smile at a time like this? Did death make him smile?

The yellow-haired woman scrambled to her feet. “Did you know these people?” she asked.

The hooded man ignored her. “Are you hurt?” he asked Simon.

Simon shook his head, speaking through the tears. “My mother and father are hurt. Please, don’t hurt me.”
 

“We found them like this,” the scarred man said. He spoke calmly, as though telling a story. “If you could come over here and identify them for us, we would be more than grateful.”

The hooded man said nothing. He moved forward, around the cart, toward the other two strangers. As he walked, he extended one hand out into the rain. His long arm was heavy with muscle and bare to the shoulder, as though he had cut the sleeves off his shirt. A tattoo of a chain wrapped around his arm from wrist to shoulder, spiraling up like a snake wrapped around the trunk of a tree.

Suddenly he held a gleaming sword in his outstretched hand, even though he wasn’t holding anything just a moment before. Simon didn’t know much about swords, but this didn’t look like a very good one. It was chipped and pitted, as though he had spent years cutting wood with it.

The blade was long, though. Huge. And when they saw it, the other two strangers looked as frightened as Simon felt.
 

“Here he is,” the man said urgently. He raised his hands in front of him. “This is one of them!”

“Stop him!” The woman cried. Mist spun around the scar-faced man, and the woman began waving her glowing red hand again.
 

The hooded man stepped forward, and it was as though he moved so fast that he didn’t even need to walk. First he was ten paces away, and then he was right in front of the other two strangers.

A bright orange ball of flame flashed into existence only a pace from the hooded man’s chest, shrieking with a human voice. The hooded man batted the flame away with the flat of his sword, sending the fireball blasting into the dark forest like a bolt of orange lightning.
 

His sword flashed again, and the woman’s red-marked hand fell away. She gasped. Her other hand followed, and then the sword slid into her chest.

As the yellow-haired woman fell onto her face, she seemed surprised, not as frightened as Simon would have expected.

Not as frightened as he felt in that moment.

The scarred man did not shout or roar, or beg for his life. Instead, he calmly gestured, and the mist wrapped around the swordsman just as it had done to Simon’s mother. Not just one tendril stood up from the ground, though, but half a dozen, weaving up and climbing over the hooded man.

But this man just walked through the mist as if it were...well, as if it were mist.

The scarred man’s eyes widened, and he turned to run.

“If I had been frightened, that much mist might have killed me,” the hooded man said. “Maybe even driven me insane. I hear the Mists of Asphodel have that effect on some people. But guess what?”

Again, the swordsman moved so fast that Simon couldn’t see him. Then he was right behind the running man, and his chipped sword stuck into the other man’s back and out into the rain.

He was far enough away now that Simon almost didn’t hear what he said next. “I’m not afraid,” he said. Then he stepped back, pulling his sword with him.

The body of the big, scarred man joined the others on the ground.

Simon tried to be quiet, so the man wouldn’t notice and kill him next, but the hooded man didn’t even look at the cart. He knelt beside Simon’s father, holding two fingers to his neck and staring into his face.

Then the man sighed, shook his head, and walked over to Simon’s mother.

At some point the invisible rope holding her up had been cut, and she lay sprawled on the ground. At first, Simon was afraid she was dead, but as he watched she twitched like a dog having a bad dream.

The hooded man bent and scooped Simon’s mother up in both arms like she weighed no more than a pillow. He carried her over and tucked her gently into the back of the cart, next to Simon, pulling a corner of the tarp over her to keep her dry.

Simon latched onto his mother, pulling her away from the hooded stranger.

“Are you the Forest Demon?” he whispered through his tears.

The man flashed him another smile from within his dark hood. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

But he hadn’t said he
wasn’t
the Demon, so Simon kept crying.

“What’s your name?” the hooded man asked.

“Simon, son of Kalman.”

“Very pleased to meet you,” he said. “And this is your mother?”

Simon nodded.

The hooded man shook his head again. “I’m sorry. There’s nothing I can do for her. If it was just the body...but Asphodel attacks the mind. The spirit. It will be years before she recovers, if ever.”

A fresh wave of tears overwhelmed Simon, and he sobbed again. “I couldn’t do anything,” he said. “I just wanted to help, but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t move.”

The hooded man hesitated, as if trying to find the right words. “It’s not your fault, Simon. Not at all. But you can do something now, all right? I need you to take care of your mother for me. Can you do that?”

Simon nodded again.

“All right. Now, where do you live?”

“Myria village,” Simon responded, trying to clean his face off with the back of his sleeve.

“Myria village,” the man repeated. “That’s...a day or two northwest, I think. I can make it.” He glanced back at Simon and said, “I’ll make it.”

He didn’t seem to be talking to Simon, so Simon didn’t say anything.

Somehow the hooded man got the donkey moving, and Simon clung to his mother’s sleeping form as the cart rattled down the road. Simon had pulled the tarp off the goods, laying it over his mother and himself, keeping them as dry and warm as he could.

“Once you get a little older,” the hooded man called from the driver’s seat, “you should come back to the Forest, if you can. I’ll teach you how to make it so that Travelers never bother you again.”

“They were Travelers, then,” Simon said. He had hoped he was wrong.

“Yes.”

“Why did they hurt us?” Simon asked. He could feel a fresh batch of tears leaking out, and he sniffed, trying to hold back. He had to be strong now, to take care of his mother. Strong men didn’t cry.

“Nothing you did,” the hooded man said, “I promise you that. They were...looking for something. When we reach Myria, I’ll do what I can for you, help you take care of your mother as best I can. For a little while. But I can’t leave my forest undefended for long. Not now.”

Simon clutched his mother tighter. “It’s okay. I can take care of her.”

“I know you can,” the hooded man said.

I will take care of her
, he promised himself. He had been useless tonight, he knew that, but next time he wouldn’t be.
 

Next time, he would keep his family safe.

C
HAPTER
T
WO
:

S
ACRIFICES

358
th
Year of the Damascan Calendar

24
th
Year in the Reign of King Zakareth VI

51 Days Until Midsummer

Eight years later, Simon shoved his sword into the bottom of the cabinet, desperate to keep it hidden. He didn’t have much time.

His mother was waking up.

He had secretly bartered for the sword almost five years ago, trading a few old pots and a bottle of wine to a desperate Badari trader. It was a good deal, even for a sword as worn and poorly forged as this one, but his mother could never find out. He couldn’t trust her with it.

Edina screamed, thrashing around in her blankets, and he rushed over to keep her shoulders pressed against the ground.

He held her there, keeping his full weight against her body, as she screamed and cursed and spat into his face. It took a good ten minutes for her to settle down and her breathing to return to normal. Finally, after murmuring a few more times, she opened her eyes.

“Good morning,” Simon said. “How are you feeling?”

His mother coughed, reaching out to the side. Her hand groped blindly on the ground.

Simon moved the wineskin into her grasping hand. She seized it, raising it to her mouth and drinking thirstily.

After a moment, Simon put a hand on the wineskin. “Go easy,” he said.

With her other hand she had grabbed her walking stick, and she swung it now into the side of Simon’s head. Pain flared in his head, and he cried out.

“Who are you?” Edina croaked. Beneath her wild, matted hair, her eyes narrowed in suspicion. When she spoke, her voice creaked like a dungeon door. “Are you you? You look like my son, but are you? Are any of you who you are?”

Simon blinked the pain in his head away, gently taking the wine from her mouth. She was worse than usual today, which meant she would drink more, which would make her even worse. He would have to take care of her while she was still conscious and reasonably sane. “Why don’t we get you some dinner first?” he said gently.

She glared at him. “Breakfast,” she said.

“It’s almost sunset,” Simon pointed out. If she was interested in food at all, though, that was a good sign. Usually she insisted she wasn’t hungry right up until she shouted that Simon was trying to starve her.

“I’m not hungry anyway,” she whispered. Simon sighed.

His mother burrowed back into her blankets, clutching the wineskin to her chest like a little girl’s stuffed doll.

“Good night,” Simon said.

He had considered trying to keep her awake, but decided it wasn’t worth the effort. She would undoubtedly wake him up in the middle of the night anyway, and he could just as easily feed her then.

He glanced at the cabinet, where his sword waited for him. He debated taking it back out; he had only had a scarce fifteen minutes of practice today before his mother began thrashing and screaming. Not even long enough to break a sweat. Maybe he could head back out to his spot behind the village woodshed for some more practice; out there, it was close enough that he could hear his mother shout, but secluded enough that no one would notice the fact that he had a sword.

Behind him, the door creaked open. He turned to see Leah, daughter of Kelia, standing in his doorway holding a basket. She kept the door propped open with her shoulder as she slid inside.

“Eggs for you,” she said, without greeting him or asking permission to enter. “And a head of cabbage. Boez had some extra pins, so those are in there, and my aunt sewed you an extra shirt. There’s some bread, too, but I don’t know who sent it. You’ll have to return the basket, though.”

“Leah, I don’t need gifts.” He rose stiffly to meet her eye to eye. She was an inch or two taller than he, though, which stung his pride. His father had never had to look up to anyone.

“Thank you, but I can earn what we need,” Simon said.

Leah arched one eyebrow at him. Though she had the same tan skin and dark hair as everyone else in Myria, her eyes were a bright blue. She was only the second person Simon had seen with blue eyes; everyone else he knew, including Simon himself, had brown. But blue eyes somehow made her look even older, like she was a grown woman and Simon just a little boy who had stepped out of line.