The Crimson Vault (The Traveler's Gate Trilogy) (51 page)

It fit. It all fit. He couldn’t think of a reason why Damascan royalty would want to infiltrate an ordinary village, but she had done it. Maker, how she must have been laughing at his attempts to save her. To protect her.

She must have been laughing at them for years.

Laughing at him.

Something cold and hard grew in Alin’s chest, and he threw up two walls of intersecting green plates, one on either side of Leah, trapping them in a corridor. The Damascan soldiers outside dumped Simon to the ground, shouting and pounding on the walls of green light. He didn’t hear them.

“Give me one reason why I shouldn’t drag you to the Grandmasters right now.”

Leah just looked at him. She didn’t seem scared. She gave him a one-handed shrug, as if to say,
What can I say?

Rage and shame flared up, searing cold and smoldering hot. He seized her by the shoulders, wanting to shake her.

“Talk to me!” he demanded.

Her blue eyes went cold, and she raised one hand, snapping her fingers once.

A tanned, muscled forearm wrapped around Alin’s neck, keeping him in a loose chokehold.

“Release the Heiress,” a man behind him said. He sounded calm, almost pleasant. His arm showed a tattoo wrapping up the wrist, like a black chain.

Alin took a deep breath and removed his hands from Leah’s shoulders. He shouldn’t have gotten violent with her anyway.

Why not?
A voice whispered in his head.
She’s the enemy.

“Release me,” Alin said. The arm around his neck didn’t move.

And Leah
still
didn’t say anything. She just watched.

“Fine.” Alin touched the golden power of Elysia, tapping into the force just beyond sight, and blasted a gold light behind him.

The man behind him staggered back, and Alin turned to walk past him. He had been gone from the Grandmasters too long.

The man with the chain-wrapped arms looked to be in his forties, with dark hair and tan skin that made him look like a villager. He wore a dark cloak like Simon’s, but underneath, his shirtsleeves had been cut off to show his tattoos.

He smiled broadly, rubbing his chest. “You really got me there!” he said. “Good shot. But I’m afraid I can’t let you leave until Her Highness gives the signal.”

Alin wasn’t feeling very tolerant just then. He summoned a globe of gold energy and blasted the man, intending to knock him over backwards.

The energy shattered on a pale green breastplate, splashing harmlessly in the air several inches from his chest.

Maker,
Alin thought.
Not another Valinhall.

The Valinhall Traveler stuck his hand out, summoning a long, curved sword that was chipped and pitted as though it was one or two good cuts from breaking.

Alin extended his hand, ready to summon his own gold sword. It wouldn’t do him much good against Valinhall, but there were other things he could summon, just as long as he survived the first round of combat.

The Traveler looked behind Alin and abruptly relaxed, letting his sword vanish. “That’s all I needed,” he said pleasantly. “Have a nice day. Next time you deal with a member of the royal family, though, try to have some better manners.”

Alin glanced back, where Leah stood, impassively staring at him. Had she commanded the Valinhall Traveler to back off?

That’s the least she should have done, seeing as she set him on me in the first place,
Alin thought.

He swept past the black-cloaked Traveler, ignoring him.

All the way back to the Enosh Travelers, he all but shook with rage. She had humiliated him. He had considered her a friend, had even risked his life to save hers, and now…

Wait. Did Simon know?

He must. That would explain why he was fighting for Damasca in the first place.
 

Had he known all along?

The idea of the two of them with their secret, laughing together at his ignorance, felt like a knife twisting in his guts.

But as painful as the thought was, he couldn’t believe it. Simon was almost foolishly straightforward; he wouldn’t have kept a secret for any longer than he had to. And he couldn’t imagine Leah keeping a secret from him and then sharing it with
Simon,
of all people.

Simon must have learned her identity recently, just as he had. But if that was true, then why was he fighting for her?

It was clear that Alin and Simon needed to have a long talk, fairly soon.

First, Alin would break into the royal palace in Cana, burning the Hanging Tree and setting an Incarnation loose on the city.

On Leah’s home.

A dark, ugly part of himself took a measure of satisfaction from that thought.

When he pushed his way back through the trees to see the Ragnarus Gate still hanging there, he knew something was wrong. The silver doors inside had been thrown open, and the screams, shouts, and explosions of a battle between Travelers sounded within.

They had gone ahead without him, and they had found enemies within the Vault.

Good,
Alin thought. He needed something to fight.

***

Alin stepped through the Gate and into the Crimson Vault.

The air grew immediately cooler, like a deep cave, and it carried the tang of metal. Roars and flickers of light came from within the Vault itself, past the silver doors, which had been thrown wide.

He hurried inside, his golden boots ringing on the stone with every step. On either side of him, the wall was carved with shelves. Each shelf held something new, gleaming in the light from crimson torches: tentacles reached up out of clay jars, staves twisted in their racks, swords whispered secrets to him as he passed.

Each shelf had a label in gold beneath it, but he didn’t slow to read any of them. The battle had pressed on, deeper into the Vault, and he couldn’t afford to delay any more than he already had.

As he ran deeper, he began to step over the occasional body. A girl in the buckskin uniform of an Avernus Traveler had a gaping hole in her chest. There was no hope for her. A few feet later he almost tripped over an old man in Naraka robes. He was still breathing, though unconscious, so Alin gave him a quick dose of rose light. It might not make any difference, but it might be the difference that kept the man alive.

He saw two or three more bodies, each one from Enosh, without a single enemy corpse among them.

That worried him. But even worse were the glimpses he caught of the fight at the end of the Vault.

The hall to either side of him was wide enough, as it could easily fit five people walking side by side, but after about a hundred paces of walking it opened into a huge round room, easily hundreds of paces from wall to opposite wall. The weapons displayed on these shelves were massive—entire statues, spears the size of pine trees, mirrors big enough to reflect a cathedral—and on the far wall, another portrait of the one-eyed king from the doorway glared down on everyone.

In the vast space at the center of the Crimson Vault, the half a dozen Travelers remaining from the Enosh assault team did battle.

Gilad hurled pale orange screaming fireballs with one hand as, with his other hand, he directed a titan of living ice that had three hearts visible through its translucent rib cage.

Grandmaster Naraka put her hand out in front of her and nearly collapsed from obvious pain as a glowing orange claw tore itself from midair, pulling the rest of its monstrous body straight from Naraka. The creature appeared to be made entirely from smoke and orange flames, and it hunched under its own weight, the backs of its shoulders scraping the ceiling. It looked like a man merged with a dragon, of all things, and as Alin watched it leaned forward and roared its defiance at someone Alin couldn’t see.

Grandmaster Avernus was all but invisible in a swarm of birds flying around her in a black tornado, and the mental screams they emitted gave Alin a headache even from fifty paces away.

The rest of the Travelers summoned glowing mists, floating blue skulls, living thornbushes of ravenous obsidian, or even more exotic things that he couldn’t name.

And it all seemed centered on one man.

Before Alin could join the other Enosh Travelers, a spear blasted through the ice giant’s head like a ballista bolt crashing through a glass-paned window. The resulting avalanche of ice buried Gilad, who barely had time to throw up his hands before he was entombed beneath his own summoned creature.

Grandmaster Naraka’s flaming giant took that opportunity to bring both of its clawed hands down on the lone enemy, but it seemed unable to penetrate the figure’s raised shield. The shield was broad and black, with a gold rim around the edge, but it seemed to be made of wood. Alin would have thought the creature of flame and fury would shred it like so much paper, but it just hammered away, roaring impotently.

A second later, the spear blasted through the fire-beast’s chest, and then immediately again at Grandmaster Avernus.

Not surprisingly, her birds did her no good. The spear hit her with such force that it carried her body all the way across the room, pinning her to the stone wall only a few feet from Alin.

Alin stared at her for a second or two, horrified, before he forced himself to move. Unlikely as it was, maybe some quick healing could save the Grandmaster’s life.

The spear moved, scraping against the stone wall, before it pulled itself free and hurtled back into the fight of its own accord.

Grandmaster Avernus flopped to the ground. Her long, gray hair was in disarray, and for the first time she didn’t look like she had everything under control. She seemed lost. She opened her mouth to speak, but her strength left her, and she died before he could do anything more than summon some rose light.

Behind him, Alin heard more crashes and explosions, along with the Enosh Travelers yelling at one another in evident panic.

Then he turned and, for the first time, got a good look at their enemy.

King Zakareth the Sixth stood in the center of the Enosh Travelers, a gold-headed spear in one hand and a huge black shield in the other. He wore armor of black and gold, with huge decorative rubies here and there. Over his head rose a tall, spiked, black-and-gold crown with a single ruby above his forehead.

He should have looked ornamental, like a statue, or a fanciful painting of a warrior-king long after his reign had ended.

He didn’t. He looked like he could stand alone against an army of titans and not expect a single scratch on his breastplate.

Only one thing confused Alin. He knew very little of the King of Damasca, but he had heard stories. Supposedly, the man was supposed to have a red eye that allowed him to see the hearts of men, spirits, or the future, depending on which version of the story you heard.

King Zakareth had one good eye, but his other was covered by a black eyepatch. Maybe he hid the red eye beneath the patch?

Regardless, he was smearing the Enosh Travelers all over the floor. It was about time that Alin became involved.

As he watched Zakareth skewer a huge summoned cat with his spear and smash a Traveler into unconsciousness with his shield—showing agility that, by rights, he should have lost forty years past—Alin wondered what exactly he could be expected to do. Obviously the King had the full might of Ragnarus behind him, and he was more than a match for almost a dozen fully trained Travelers from Enosh. Alin had every confidence in his own abilities, but what was he supposed to do against that?

Of course, Elysia had other powers. Supposedly the City of Light contained the counters and complements to each other Territory.

And the doors were unlocked. He could go, right now, and take so many powers from his Territory that King Zakareth would bow to
him
. He could end this war in the time it took him to Travel to Elysia and back.

You stop controlling the power,
Rhalia had said.
The power starts controlling you.

Alin struggled for a moment, but he had made his decision when he left the Rose District without opening any of the other doors.

He would fight this battle with the power he had earned. If he died…well, if he died, then at least he wouldn’t lose his mind and Incarnate. He could rest easy knowing that, at the very least, he wouldn’t endanger his former allies.

Not that he was in any hurry to die, if it came to that.

Alin knelt and pressed his palm to the floor tiles, reaching out to the golden power of Elysia in almost—but not quite—the same way he would have tried to make a Gate.

“Marakos,” Alin said. “It’s time.”

A golden rent, very close to a Gate, appeared just above the floor like a frozen bolt of lightning. Marakos appeared, his wolf’s jaws parted in a canine grin, his golden staff clutched in one hand.

He adjusted his sash as he came through, casting a quick glance at the battlefield. “Please tell me I get to fight the spearman in the middle,” Marakos said. “He looks like a
real
challenge.”

“Have at him,” Alin said. The wolf snarled in what Alin thought was glee, running off with bestial speed to clash with King Zakareth.

Alin remained kneeling on the floor for a moment, trying to catch his breath. Calling the various powers of Elysia was tiring enough, but summoning someone was always an order of magnitude higher.

With most of the Enosh Travelers dead or unconscious, King Zakareth was left with four opponents: Marakos, who whirled his staff with savage enthusiasm, Grandmaster Naraka, the Asphodel mist-binder that Alin had met earlier, and Heir Talos.

Without his sword, Talos had taken to fighting with what seemed to be a jeweled staff, though from what Alin could tell he mostly used it to deflect his father’s spear.

Finally, with enough strength to walk, Alin began to move closer.

He was just in time to hear the royal Heir whine.

“Where is it, father?” Talos screamed. “Where have you hidden it?”

King Zakareth leaped over a tendril of mist and splattered a fireball on his shield, parrying Marakos’ staff with his spear in the same motion.