House of Blades (The Traveler's Gate Trilogy) (3 page)

“This is payment for the wood last week,” she said. “And an advance payment for fixing her door.” Leah walked by him, setting the basket down on top of his cabinet and beginning to unpack.

“I haven’t done enough work for this,” Simon protested. “This is too much.”

Leah shrugged without turning around as she folded his shirt and tucked it away into the cabinet. “I remembered who baked you the bread, by the way. My sister.”

“Sister?” He only vaguely remembered that Leah had a sister.

She gave him an amused glance out of the corner of her eye. “Rutha.”

“Right, right, Rutha.” A plain girl, quiet, Rutha usually followed in Leah’s shadow and said little. Simon had trouble picturing her. Leah had gotten all the good looks in that family.

“You can thank her, and everyone, tonight at the fires. Something’s happening. The Mayor and most of the men have left, and nobody told us why.”

“Really?” Simon felt a surge of irritation that no one had asked him to come along, but he quickly squashed the feeling. He would have refused anyway, to take care of his mother, and everyone knew it.

“Really,” Leah said. Task done, she brushed off her hands and picked the basket back up. She smiled at him on her way out and held the door open for him. “Are you coming?”

Simon glanced back at his mother before following Leah out. He couldn’t be around all the time. If Edina woke up, she would just have to fend for herself.

***

Alin’s voice, strong and confident, carried across the whole crowd. Simon had heard the story before, but he still found himself listening intently.

“Three doors, each identical, two guarded by ferocious creatures from the depths of Naraka. The Lost Badarin knew that only one would lead to the highest room of the tallest tower, where the princess waited. He had only one chance. So he turned to the owl in the golden cage.

‘What will happen if I enter the door on the left?’ the Badarin asked.

‘Feed me a mouse and I shall tell you,’ the owl said. So the Lost Badarin caught a mouse and fed it to the owl.

‘I see you enter the door on the left. You are torn, limb from limb, by creatures hungrier and more terrible than lions.’ ”

A little boy, seated on a log next to his mother, gasped. A few of the adults chuckled. There must have been thirty or forty people there, most seated on logs that encircled a huge bonfire. This had been the tradition as long as Simon could remember: the women and children sat on logs around the bonfire, trading stories, while the men stood in groups outside the firelight and pretended not to listen. Simon would have stood with the men, not sat with the children, had Leah not insisted he join them.

“The Lost Badarin searched and searched, then he finally found another mouse. He fed it to the owl.

‘What about the door in the center?’ he asked.

‘I see you enter the door in the center, and leave scarcely an hour later…in a dustpan,’ the owl said.

“Well, knowing what lay beyond two of the doors, the Lost Badarin entered the third. And very soon he knew he was in the right place, for the staircase seemed to never end. For a whole day and a whole night he walked up the stairs, heading for the highest room of the tallest tower of the evil Traveler’s entire castle.

“He finally reached the top of the tower, exhausted and out of breath. But he was glad, because he knew that he had finally reached the princess. He threw open the door…and to his horror, came face-to-face with the evil Traveler himself!

“The Lost Badarin had never seen anyone as hideous as this Traveler. He wore dirty robes, covered in mud and blood and other, stranger stains. His eyes were solid black, like rocks, and his hands were old and twisted. His beard reached almost to his knees, and it crawled with spiders and earthworms.

“The Traveler laughed, a cruel and evil laugh, and he began to speak horrible words, summoning unspeakable creatures to swallow the Badarin whole…”

Everyone was silent, even Simon, each of them hanging on Alin’s words.

“…but that is a story for tomorrow night,” Alin said, and everyone laughed.

Alin smiled and swept a bow, and all the women around the fire burst into applause. Simon shook his head and stirred up the fire with a stick. Alin might not have been the best storyteller in Myria, but he was certainly enthusiastic. Even some of the older men, who were not strictly supposed to listen to fire-ring stories any longer, clapped along with good grace from the edge of the fire’s light.

Storytelling had never been Simon’s gift, but whenever he watched Alin he wished it were otherwise. Story done, Alin sat down on a log next to Leah, who was one of the only girls present around his age. And, incidentally, the prettiest. Leah’s sister—what was her name again? Ruth? Rutha? Ruthie—sat on her other side, and she said something as Alin sat down that made him laugh.

Simon missed it, squatting as he was two logs away. He poked at the coals again.

There were a dozen similar fires all around the village of Myria, each inside—but well away from—the head-high wooden walls that encircled the entire village. The walls were mostly sharp sticks shoved into the ground and tied together, but they kept out most of the wild beasts that wandered down from the desert. They should even do a little to keep out heretics marching from Enosh in the west, but fortunately that theory had never been tested.

A horn-call drifted over from the gate, signaling riders returning. Several people around the fire gave each other relieved smiles, and Simon heard more than a few sighs as tension released.
 

The Mayor and most of his advisors had ridden out only a few hours before, taking many of the grown men with them, and they hadn’t told anyone why. It was enough to keep everyone left behind on edge, but now the trumpet call said they had returned. Everything would be all right.

The horn warbled and cut off before the end of the note, as if whoever was on watch-duty had dropped the horn. A few of the older women looked up in concern, but Simon wasn’t worried. It had probably been one of the younger boys on watch, and he would get what he deserved later for dropping the valuable horn in the sand.

“It looks like somebody kept the good wine for watch duty,” Alin said lightly, earning him several chuckles. Even Simon would admit he was good-looking: tall, strong, and vibrant, with hair of dark gold instead of the usual brown. More than that, he had an aura of radiant confidence that he carried with him like a torch. He never had to do his chores alone; one or another of the young villagers would always help him get his work done.

On the other side of the coin, Simon preferred working quietly, by himself, with as few others involved as possible. It was easier that way.

“Ladies, it’s been a pleasure,” Alin said, rising to his feet. “But if the riders are coming in, I should go meet them. Would anyone like to come with me? Leah?” He extended a hand to her. She blushed and took it, leading to some cackling from the rest of the circle.

Alin turned to Simon. “Simon? How about you?” That took Simon off guard. Why would Alin want him along on what could be time alone with Leah? He couldn’t think of anything appropriate to say, so he just tossed his stick into the fire and rose to join the other two.

With another wave to the circle in general, Alin set off, keeping Leah’s hand in his. Simon trailed awkwardly after.
 

They wound through the tangled mass of houses that formed the center of Myria, picking their way carefully over casks, tools, and sleeping dogs concealed by the dim light just before moonrise. The houses pushed and jostled together, most made of wood or baked clay bricks, no two alike. In places the homes were so close together that Simon had to turn sideways to squeeze between, but he barely noticed; he had grown up here, and he could find his way through this maze of houses hobbled and blindfolded.

“You had better be careful around my aunt,” Leah said to Alin, as soon as they were far enough away from the fire ring. “Soon she’ll have you married and settled, whether you like it or not.”

Alin laughed. “And what about you? You’ve got the whole village eating out of your hand.”

Great Maker above
, Simon thought.
If they’re just going to flatter each other all night, I’m leaving.

Alin was right, as far as it went: Leah really did have the whole village eating out of her hand, or near enough. She had come from Bel Calem only two years before, moving in with her aunt in the village. It was whispered that her mother had gotten herself killed, maybe even murdered by some criminal from the city. The bracelet Leah wore—silver, with a clear white crystal dangling from the chain—was supposed to be a memento of her mother’s. Simon didn’t know whether that was true, but it was a generally accepted fact that she never took it off, not even to sleep.

Her blue eyes should have been enough to set her apart, but Leah had the same natural charm as Alin; people welcomed her, accepted her, and treated her as warmly as if she had always been one of their own.
 

The other villagers often treated her better than they treated Simon, actually, though that didn’t bother him much. He rarely minded being left alone.

“Oh, how’s your mother, Simon?” Alin asked. “I haven’t seen her in a while.” Alin’s tone was polite and open, but Simon flinched. At the moment, his mother was likely lying on the floor of their home, soaked in wine and huddled in filthy blankets, probably murmuring nonsense to herself.

“She’s fine. Some days are better than others.”

Leah made a sympathetic noise and turned to look at Simon. “That must be hard, taking care of her by yourself,” she said. “I don’t know if I could do it.”

Pride warred with embarrassment inside Simon, and his tongue got caught in the crossfire. He mumbled something about it not being that hard, but he wasn’t sure it emerged as anything coherent. Alin opened his mouth to respond, but he was interrupted by a huge noise: a sudden crash and the screams of a crowd of men, accompanied by the pounding of several dozen sets of hooves.

It was coming from the direction of the village gate. Simon pushed past Alin and Leah, rushing to get free of the houses so that he could have a clear view of the gate. After a startled second, he heard Alin and Leah running after him.

Simon cleared the last house in the row just in time to see an arrow land inches from his head, cracking the baked clay bricks of a nearby wall. He tore his eyes from the arrow that had almost killed him.

As he had feared, the gate had been broken down, slammed flat into the ground. Riders on horses poured in through the broken wall, trampling the gate and two wet mounds that had to have been whoever was on watch duty. Some of the soldiers held torches, some swords, and some short composite bows meant to be fired from horseback.

Raiders. And, judging from the brown-and-purple cloths tied around the horses’ necks, not Enoshian heretics, but official soldiers of Overlord Malachi.
 

Simon stumbled backwards, knocking into Alin and Leah and pushing them back into the shadow of the houses. Why had this happened? What had Myria or its people done to anger their Overlord?

Leah stuck her head out from the corner of a house and stared at the soldiers. For a few seconds, she went completely still, like a deer about to bolt. Then she turned and grabbed Alin and Simon by their arms, pulling them deeper into the circle of homes.
 

“We’ve got to get as many people as we can out the back gate,” she said. “Tell everyone you can to run, not fight. They’ll butcher us if we resist.” Oddly, she didn’t look frightened. Her face had gone harder than Simon had ever seen it, and she burned with anger, as though these soldiers had somehow offended her personally. Well, he supposed that invading your hometown should be enough insult for anyone.

“Let’s raise a cry,” Alin responded. He was breathing heavily and his eyes moved everywhere at once, but his mouth was set in a firm line. “You two start running from house to house, and I’ll warn everyone still at the fires.”

“No one uses the north gate. Maybe we can go out there, circle around, and head for Kortan,” Leah said. Kortan was the closest village, though Simon had only been there three times. It was most of a day’s walk away, and he couldn’t abandon his mother.

“Simon, you—“

“My mother!” Simon blurted, and he started to run.

Dogs had begun to bark, and in several of the houses, people were emerging to find out what was going on. Behind Simon, Alin and Leah started yelling as loud as they could, trying to attract attention.

Simon rushed through the tangled knot of homes in a pattern he had memorized when he could barely walk. It would take anyone on a horse some time to penetrate this deeply into the village, and hopefully by then he could take his mother and be gone.

In a matter of minutes he reached his house, which was easily the worst-looking in the village. He had made the door himself when he was twelve, and it barely held together; the roof leaked, and many of the pale bricks in the wall were cracked and could use replacing. He tore open the door and stumbled inside, for once not feeling a surge of shame at the house’s appearance. He didn’t have time.

He passed the bundle of rags curled up near the door, stepping over them to reach the cabinet. Throwing the doors open, he rummaged around for his sword. He had hidden it here, he knew he had, but where? He finally found the sword wrapped up inside a dusty rug, where he had hidden it from his mother. She would have hurt herself on it by now, or else sold it.

The wooden scabbard was chipped and stained, and it didn’t quite fit; the blade rattled slightly when he picked it up. The sword itself wasn’t in any better condition, but he worked with what he had.

Eight years ago, he had sworn to protect his family. And now the time had come for him to keep that promise.

 
He buckled the sword around his waist, then moved over to the rags beside the door. He reached down and shook them vigorously. “Mother,” he said. “Mother, you have to get up!”

The rags stirred feebly, and a puddle of sharp-smelling wine rolled out.