House of Blades (The Traveler's Gate Trilogy) (44 page)

Not much chance that he would escape this canyon alive, but Leah and Alin would get to safety. That was what mattered. The surviving captives had made it out, and the one who captured them in the first place was dead.

Everyone was going home.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-T
HREE
:

A
FTERMATH

358
th
Year of the Damascan Calendar

24
th
Year in the Reign of King Zakareth VI

The Day After Midsummer

Alin hobbled toward his rooms, covered in a frankly ridiculous number of bandages. If he took off his clothes, leaving only the bandages, he would still be decent for company. He looked like a body prepared for burial.

None of his wounds were that serious, anyway. Sure, when he had first returned to Enosh he had been covered in such a collection of burns, scrapes, and bruises that the Asphodel healer had called him ‘seared and nicely tenderized.’ But the people of the city—the Travelers, at least—had treated him as if he were suffering from half a dozen life-threatening injuries.

Not that he had any right to complain. The Enosh Grandmasters had been torn between relief at his safe return, fury that he had risked himself in such a way, and delight that he had managed to kill an Overlord in the bargain. It made meetings with them very confusing, such that at times he didn’t know if he was being scolded, praised, or condemned.

The real problem, to them, was that he showed no signs of repentance. In his mind, the situation was very simple: he had taken a risk and it had paid off. Spectacularly, in his opinion. The man ultimately responsible for the deaths of at least a dozen Myrian villagers had paid with his life. Alin had heard that Malachi’s wife Adrienne was managing the realm, though the Kingdom would soon appoint another Traveler as a replacement Overlord. Even so, the world was undoubtedly better off without Malachi Daiasus.

So no, Alin did not regret what he had done.

Except for one thing.

At Alin’s repeated insistence, Grandmaster Avernus had sent out fliers scouting the wilderness between Bel Calem and Enosh. Within a day, the fliers had found the canyon where they suspected Simon had died.

With every speck of his remaining authority, Alin had demanded to ride out and see the site himself. The canyon itself was filled in with rubble, but the bowl-like depression at the end was even worse. It was packed with corpses and worse. The sandy ground was littered with empty armor, shattered rocks, torn and charred bits of flesh.

Alin had walked among them, surrounded by a half a dozen Avernus Travelers on huge white eagles, each prepared to fly him away at the first sign that one of these apparently lifeless bodies wasn’t. He had seen Narakan flame-walkers torn up in grisly piles next to nameless beasts of razor-sharp steel from Tartarus and mounds of bleeding stone from Ornheim. The canyon walls had been cracked and pitted, ravaged with black burn scars, and the piles of alien corpses were dotted with something worse: human bodies. Travelers, maybe a dozen all told, lying up on the canyon walls or smashed and crumpled among their summoned beasts.

They were all dead, most decapitated or impaled. On top of that, no one had seen a body matching Simon’s description, nor any of the gold-armored Elysian bears. The canyon bowl was a layered chaos of grisly parts, so that it would take weeks to sort everything out, but some of the Avernus fliers had very sharp eyes.

Alin had felt a great surge of hope when they had failed to find a body, but the Grandmasters spoke more realistically. Even the most careful search could fail to find a body on a battlefield like this, they said, and when Travelers were involved the situation got much more complicated. They could easily have been taken into Ornheim or Tartarus and died there. Or worse, they could have been taken back to Cana alive.

He had refused to listen to them at first, but as the days stretched on with no word, he grew less and less convinced. What if Simon really was dead?

If so, he had died in Alin’s place. If Alin was really full of valor and patience and whatever the other Elysian virtues were, he should have been the one to stay and die for the other two. But he hadn’t done it. Simon had.

Simon had sacrificed himself for Alin, but Alin hadn’t been willing to do the reverse. In truth, he hadn’t even thought of it; he had been too focused on getting back to Enosh. That was the thought that gnawed at him, waking and sleeping.

Until he pulled open the door to his bedroom and saw that it was filled with bears. Three white bears, each covered in golden armor.

They had shredded his bed, pulled his curtains down, and one of them gnawed on his most comfortable chair.

One of them made a sympathetic sort of whining sound when he saw Alin, and they all three padded over toward him.

Alin laughed.

***

Leah strode into the interior of Ragnarus still wearing the simple brown peasant costume that had been her uniform for the past two years. She liked to be better prepared for these meetings, but her father’s orders had been explicit: as soon as possible, he had said, which meant as soon as she could be alone.

She stood in front of a stone wall, with heavy wooden torches burning an unnatural crimson at the far right and the far left. Taking up most of the wall was a pair of silver doors, closed now, and carved with the face of a one-eyed bearded man who scowled in disapproval. Only those descended from the first King of Damasca, those of his blood, could open the Gate to get to the Territory, but that wasn’t enough of a restriction for this place. It demanded a higher price.

Leah scowled to see the doors closed. He should have left the doors open for her. But then, her father probably thought it would be good for her to pay the forfeit herself. It would strengthen her, he’d say, or some such nonsense thing.

With one motion, Leah pulled a knife from her belt and slashed it across the pad of her thumb. The cut burned, but she had endured worse already today, and likely would tomorrow. She pressed the blood to the center of the door, into the old man’s beard.

In truth it didn’t matter where on the door she put her thumb, so long as her blood made contact with the silver. But she liked to imagine she was messing up the man’s beard. As a child, she had pretended that was why he was scowling.

The doors swung soundlessly open, revealing a long hall lit only by those oppressive crimson torches. This hallway was made almost entirely of marble—walls, columns, and shelving alike—and it stretched over a hundred paces to the back, where another portrait of the one-eyed man glared out from the far wall. The marble was probably white, though in this light it could have been red and no one would ever have been able to tell the difference.

Between the columns on either side of the hall stretched marble shelves, each labeled in gold. And sitting on these shelves were weapons.

Racks and racks of weapons the color of blood, each hungering for use. Crying out for life.

Leah hated this place.

Two men stood in the middle of the hallway, not speaking to one another. The first was Indirial, her father’s oldest confidant and most trusted servant, who leaned with his arms crossed against one of the marble shelves. Indirial was supposedly in his fifties, but he seemed at least ten years younger, and fit for that. He wore a medallion openly on his chest—a gold coin with a nearly black amethyst embedded in the center—and tattooed chains snaked up his arms to above his elbows. He always cut the sleeves off his shirts, to keep those on display.

Today, he wore a black cloak tied loosely around his neck. He kept the hood thrown back, and the cloak fell open enough to keep his bare arms in full view.

That combination, the black cloak and the chained arms, struck something in her memory.

When Indirial saw her, he flashed a grin, though he did not relax his stance. Indirial was always cheerful, and always vigilant.

“Your Highness,” Indirial said, bowing very slightly at the waist. Overlord of Cana, and second only to the King himself, Indirial needed bow to no one. That he did so anyway did not lessen his authority.

“Indirial,” Leah said, bowing back. She didn’t need to bow either, but she liked to match his manners. “You’re looking well. How is your daughter?”

“Won’t put the sword down,” Indirial said with a laugh, “despite everything I tell her. In spite of my best intentions, I think we’ll make a swordswoman of her yet.”

Leah smiled; it was easy to do, with Indirial. One tended to forget that he would kill anyone his King commanded him to without hesitation. Even, should it come to that, the King’s daughter. “My condolences,” Leah said, “and congratulations.”

Indirial laughed again, but the sound died out quickly, and neither of them picked the conversation back up. Leaving Leah no choice but to turn to the second man in the room.

A muscular man of sixty-two, he held a spear in both his hands, holding it up to the light and inspecting it as though all of Ragnarus’ weapons were not flawless. He appeared not to have noticed that anyone else was in the room, though Leah knew that in this case appearance deceived. His hair was entirely gray, his clothes worn casually, though they were expensive enough to buy a herd of horses. A thick scar ran from the top of his left eye socket to the bottom. The injury that had given him that scar had taken his left eye as well, and left something in its place: a smooth, round stone that gleamed bright red even in this ruddy light.

Zakareth the Sixth, King of Damasca and Cana, Lord of the Morning and Evening Star, turned to stare at his daughter. One eye was sharp and blue—the same blue as her own—but the other burned with scarlet flame.

She wanted to shiver, but self-control and long training kept the impulse in check.

“Father,” Leah said, bowing much more deeply than she had for Indirial.

“Report,” Zakareth said, his voice deep as a thunderstorm. He returned his gaze to the spear in his hands.

“I spent two nights in the wilderness with the Elysian boy,” Leah responded. “We returned to Enosh this morning with the news of Malachi’s death. Some treated him like a hero, while others seemed to think of him as an irresponsible child.”

Zakareth ran a hand down the wooden shaft of his spear. “Did you sleep with him?”

Leah hesitated, sensing danger. “No, sire.”

“A pity. He would have trusted you, then.” He closed his real eye, studying the length of the weapon with his ruby replacement. “And why didn’t you kill him?”

She tried very hard not to let the smallest drop of sweat onto her face. Sometimes he took sweating as an admission of guilt. Not always, but often enough. “I was afraid it wouldn’t be wise. And your orders said only to keep an eye on him.”

Zakareth nodded slowly, not looking at her. He gave no sign of what he thought about her answers. Suddenly he reversed the spear, grinding its point into the marble floor.

“Yesterday was midsummer,” Zakareth announced. “Malachi died midsummer’s eve. In the chaos, no one thought to water his tree on the ninth day. I Traveled to Bel Calem this morning and performed the sacrifice myself, but it was late. You know what that means.”

Leah shuddered and nodded.

“This year, of all years,” Zakareth continued. “When the Incarnations shake their cage and all the Territories tremble. The sacrifice is late. And now we are missing an Overlord, while all Enosh gathers for war behind their Rising Sun. Tell me, since you know him, is he as dangerous as they think he is?”

“I don’t think so,” she responded. “But he is growing. I hesitate to think what he will be like in a year. And in five years, I think he might really become a threat.”

Zakareth spoke softly, but his gaze pinned Leah to the floor. “If he’s not dangerous, then how did Malachi die? He was childish sometimes, but not weak. And you were there, in the same house when he was killed.”

“There was another one,” Leah put in quickly. “A second one.” She shot a glance at Indirial, gauging his reaction. “A Valinhall Traveler. He summoned a sword that looked like most of ten feet long, and had chains of shadow on his arms. Just like yours.”

Indirial leaned forward, a smile creeping onto his face. “Really? Did he find one of the lost swords, or did someone hang up their steel at last?”

Leah shook her head. “I can’t be sure. But I’ve seen myself that he is both strong and extremely quick. Malachi had to face him before the Elysian arrived.”

“And he’s still alive?” Indirial mused. “Exciting. New blood after all this time. I look forward to meeting him. Maybe I can talk him out of siding with those maniacs in Enosh.”

Leah shot a glance at her father. “I don’t think Simon cares about Enosh,” she said. She hoped Zakareth didn’t read too much into that. If he started thinking Leah could be used as leverage against both the Elysian Traveler
and
a new Valinhall Traveler, well, she would never get her life back.

“Simon?” Indirial said. “Is that his name?”

“Yeah. Simon, son of Kalman.”

Indirial swallowed his smile. A strange expression passed over his face: shock, pity, maybe regret. “He lived in Myria, didn’t he? Before he became a Traveler.”

Leah stared at Indirial before answering. How in the world would Indirial know
Simon
, of all people? Sure, maybe if they had met in their Territory, but Indirial had seemed surprised to hear that there was another Valinhall Traveler around. Which meant that he must have met Simon somewhere else. And how had
that
happened?

“Yes,” she said finally. “His mother was killed by Cormac during the collection of the sacrifice. How do you know him?”

Indirial’s eyes hardened. “I was there when his father died. He was killed at the edge of the Latari Forest by a pair of Travelers. Travelers from Enosh. They killed him and tortured his wife into insanity, all for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Simon has more reason to hate Enosh than anyone.”