The Crimson Vault (The Traveler's Gate Trilogy) (57 page)

Simon cleared his throat, focusing as best he could on
not
upsetting Alin. But he still needed answers. “Okay. That’s fine. How did you know I was here? I’m not even sure where
here
is, to tell you the truth.”

Simon forced out a laugh, but it probably sounded as nervous as he felt.

“I sensed you,” Alin said calmly.

His rainbow eyes shifted and glowed. More than that, the room filled with his presence. It didn’t physically get any brighter, but it
felt
bright, as though the light had been made solid and was pressing against Simon’s skin. Simon barely resisted the urge to back out of the room.

Without prompting, Alin turned back to the sun. “I wanted to be a hero so badly, Simon,” he said casually. “No, let’s be honest. I wanted people to
know
I was a hero. But I never acted very heroic. Not really.”

There was no way this was Alin. He would never say these things. If he did, he would never say them to Simon. And even if he could bring himself to do that, to bare his soul before Simon, he could never sound so…matter-of-fact about the whole thing. This was
Alin,
who could turn the story of the Lost Badarin into an entrancing epic with nothing but his voice. He filled every word with emotion.

At least, he had before. Now, he sounded as though he didn’t even care about what he was saying.

Alin turned and met Simon’s gaze with his hypnotic, shifting, rainbow-colored eyes. “Now I can
really
be a hero.” Finally, some emotion had returned to Alin’s voice, but it somehow made things worse. He sounded almost…hungry. “The Incarnations are tearing themselves free all over the country. They’re going to leave a trail of blood and death behind them. I can stop them.”

He turned back out to the window and smiled briefly, as though imagining himself blasting an Incarnation to pieces.

“Alin,” Simon said. He hesitated briefly, considering his words carefully, and then tossed his care out the window and said what he really thought. “You’ll stop them, okay, I understand that. But who’s going to stop
you?
I think…I think there’s something wrong with you.”

Alin stared off in the distance as though he hadn’t heard the question. His voice had died again. “The Incarnations aren’t the root of the problem. You have to pull up the problem at its root. People like the Grandmasters, they’re the problem. Yes. I’ll have to bring mercy to the Grandmasters as well.”

Simon wondered if he could call steel without Alin somehow sensing it.

Once more, Alin looked back to Simon, a wry smile on his face. For an instant, he looked like the boy Simon remembered from Myria.

“Keep my sister safe. And if it becomes necessary…” Alin shrugged, once again sounding apathetic. “Then I guess you’ll have to stop me. Who else is there?”

He stepped back up on the windowsill, spreading wings of orange light. An instant later, he was gone.

Simon barely waited for Alin to leave before summoning Azura and starting to cut a Valinhall Gate.
 

He supposed it could have been worse. He had already killed one Incarnation; what was ten more?

For some reason, he felt like crying.

When the Gate finally opened, unfolding into a vision of the Valinhall entry room, he scooped Ilana up in his arms and carried her through.

Behind him, the Gate to Valinhall zipped shut.

***

Leah looked around her at the plush couches, the gold-framed mirrors, the stacks of books and piles of scrolls. Even the furniture was masterfully carved and varnished, of a quality she would have expected from the royal palace in Cana. On the walls hung sword-racks; four racks on each of three walls, for a total of twelve. Only four of them were occupied.
 

One empty rack hung on another wall, but it stood alone. Briefly, she wondered why.

It didn’t matter, she supposed; she was simply taking in all the detail she could. After all, she didn’t think anyone in her family had ever gotten such a close look at the House of Blades.

Indirial stood nearby, talking strategy with an iron-haired captain she thought was named Erastes. The two of them leaned over a table that was hardly visible beneath spread-out maps and unraveled scrolls.

The white-haired Traveler, Kai, limped into the room. He leaned on a cane with his left hand, but he held something like an apple in his right.

When he saw Leah, he tossed her the fruit. She barely managed to catch it in both hands.

“You should eat,” Kai said gently. “Can’t have the Queen of Damasca losing her strength.”

That was possibly the most ordinary thing he had said to her since she had arrived the night before. Once she and Indirial had determined that there was no way back into Cana, he had brought her here. As he had put it, ‘To formulate a plan of attack.’

Leah took a bite of the fruit, but she almost spit it back out. It was
not
an apple. It was sweet, but also heavy and spicy, like someone had crossed an apple with some mild pepper. It wasn’t unpleasant, exactly, but the surprise alone had almost caused her to choke.

Kai looked at her from behind his shaggy hair and he let out an all-but-silent chuckle.

Leah arched an eyebrow at him and prepared to say something cutting, but a streak of light tore its way down from the ceiling, widening into a Gate.

Immediately Kai stepped back, leaving room for Simon to walk into the room.

In his arms, he had somehow balanced both his long Valinhall blade and a girl. No, not just any girl: Ilana.

Alin’s sister.

A cold wind swept through Leah, and she shuddered. She could think of only a few reasons why Simon would be carrying Alin’s unconscious sister through a Gate into Valinhall. None of them were good.

Kai immediately took the sword from Simon, pulling the blade away carefully and running his hand along the dull edge before placing it gently on a sword rack. That man had definite issues.

The captain, Erastes, took the girl from Simon.

“Bring her to my room,” Simon said wearily. “Make sure the Nye don’t get her. Thanks.”

Erastes looked like he was about to say something, but he glanced at Indirial and simply walked out of the room.

“What happened?” Indirial asked, his dark eyes sharp on Simon.

“I’ve got bad news,” Simon said simply.

Then he told them.

Leah carefully placed the rest of her fruit on a nearby table. She didn’t feel much like eating just now.

Alin, an Incarnation.

And just when she thought things couldn’t get any worse.

Simon seemed to notice Leah, and he frowned. “Leah. I mean…Heiress, Highness…whatever. Leah. What are you doing here?”

At the moment, Leah was too tired to deal with his mode of address. “We have plans to make,” she said.

“I thought you’d be in the royal palace,” Simon said. Oh, of course. He didn’t know.

Indirial spoke up. “We’d like to be, Simon. Unfortunately, there’s no way in or out of Cana. We think the Incarnation has things sealed up tight. We can’t even Travel in; Gates to Cana just won’t open anymore.”

“Oh,” Simon said. Then he frowned again and opened his mouth, but Leah forestalled the obvious question.

“We lost,” she said bitterly. “The Grandmasters got to the Tree in Cana. Maybe if it were any other year, it would have ended there. But with the sacrifice this year…”

Simon winced, as well he might; he had played his role in letting that disaster move forward.

No, it wasn’t fair to blame it all on Simon. It was more her fault than his, anyway.

“The Incarnation of Ragnarus rules Damasca now,” she finished.

“What about the King?” Simon asked. He didn’t mean anything by that, she knew. He had asked the question in complete innocence.

But it still hurt.

Quietly, Kai said, “You stand before the Queen of Damasca, little mouse.”

Simon was silent for a long time, but Leah didn’t look at his face. This had to be confusing for him, and she wasn’t sure what she would see there.

After a moment, Simon walked over and knelt before her. He even bowed his head, though he somehow managed to make it seem unbearably awkward.

“Your Majesty,” he said. Then he lifted his head and looked her in the eyes.

Strictly speaking, he shouldn’t have done that, but she allowed it.

“I’m sorry,” he said simply. “What can I do to help?”

Leah’s eyes swelled with tears, and she had to blink them away.

This is childish,
she thought. She hadn’t even liked her father.

But, in the past three days, she had lost her family, her home, and her country. She supposed she was allowed a tear or two.

Later. For now, she forced herself to answer Simon’s question.

Leah cleared her throat, making sure she sounded completely in control. “We think my brother Talos is in command of Cana, if the Ragnarus Incarnation let him live. For now, we need to focus on building up our support outside of the city. There are at least four Incarnations on the loose, and we need to deal with them. Once we do, we can find a way back into the capital.”

She hoped she sounded confident. She wasn’t. The plan was too vague; there was too much left to chance, too much that could go wrong.

But she knew one thing: she wasn’t going to leave Cana to suffer at the hands of the Ragnarus Incarnation any longer than she had to. As a Ragnarus Traveler and as a Queen of Damasca, it was her duty.

She would not let her nation down.

***

On the floor of the Crimson Vault, a man struggled for breath.

Why did he have to breathe at all? His lungs didn’t seem to want to inflate, but somehow his chest moved in and out anyway. It was slow, but also somehow mechanical, as though something was moving him outside his own body.

The armor,
he realized. There was something about the armor doing whatever it could to keep him alive. He should have taken it off before…

Before what? Who was he? He had a name…or at least he had, once.

Zakareth. That was it. That was who he was. Zakareth, just like his father, and his father before him.

Memory came drifting back, not in a single storm, but one gust at a time. He was the king. His son betrayed him. His daughter, left behind, not ready to be queen. His people, about to be slaughtered by the Incarnations.

Failure burned worse than the wound in his chest. That was his job: to keep his people safe from the dangers they couldn’t handle. The Hanging Trees had been handed down for generations, but
he
had been the one to let the prisoners escape their cage.

He had failed. And now, he couldn’t even relax into an easy death. He was fated to lie here and suffocate, or perhaps bleed to death all over the floor.

It’s no worse than I deserve,
he thought.
I’ve failed
.

In the polished blade of a nearby sword, he caught a glimpse of his face. His skin was pale and sunken. Half of his face was covered by an eyepatch, which hid his eyes empty, gaping socket. Truly, his was the face of a corpse.

Zakareth leaned back and waited to die.
 

For a while, the only sound was his own heartbeat.

Then he heard a ringing sound, like metal on stone. At first, he believed the sound was in his head, but it grew louder and louder until it ended right next to his ear.

With a supreme effort of will, Zakareth wrenched his gummy eyelid open once again.

The woman above him looked somehow familiar. Yes…he had seen her likeness on the portraits in the palace. One of his royal ancestors, though he didn’t have the presence of mind to remember which one.

He didn’t remember her looking quite like this.

Her skin was hard and blood-red, gleaming in the light like some kind of crimson metal. The long dress she wore was made of nothing but sweeping red light, somehow solid enough to remain opaque.

And her eyes. Her eyes were red flames, deep and bright enough to put the torches of Ragnarus to shame.

 
“I don’t let one of my bloodline die easily,” the Ragnarus Incarnation said. “Not here.”

Zakareth tried to respond, but it was everything he could do to keep his chest moving in and out.

“You’re in pretty bad shape,” she noted. “But I came to a realization, sometime during my three-hundred-year stay in a prison I built myself. Do you know what I realized?”

He tried to shake his head.

“Life,” she said, “is overrated. I’m ready to pass the torch, so to speak. And you have left so very much undone. Regret
burns
in you. I can respect that.”

She glanced back at the silver doors, which were slowly shutting in her wake.

“I’m almost sealed in here, now,” she said, though she didn’t sound very concerned. “The longer I stay, the harder it gets to leave. So believe me when I say this is a limited-time offer. Do you want the power to lead your people?”

He tried to speak past the sucking noises in his chest.

“You have it in you to be the greatest king that Damasca has ever known,” the Incarnation went on, in the same tone. “Not as great as some of the queens, of course, but impressive nonetheless. Strong. Reliable. Immortal.”

Once again, he couldn’t make a sound.

She leaned close, so that the blazing fires of her eyes seared his face. Her voice was unnaturally intense.
“What price are you willing to pay?”

Zakareth finally managed to get a lung full of air.

“Anything…” he said, in the weakest of whispers.

Ragnarus gave him a red-metal smile. “Good answer.”

In the reflection of the polished sword, Zakareth saw the fabric of his eyepatch curl, blacken, and burst into crimson flame.

THE END OF BOOK TWO

To Be Concluded In…

CITY OF LIGHT

(Book #3 of the Traveler’s Gate Trilogy)

Available When the Moons of Lirial Have Aligned

(Early 2014)