The Crimson Vault (The Traveler's Gate Trilogy) (8 page)

He kept chuckling. “Look at you. I didn’t stop you from going anywhere, but you just watched. I bet you never even thought about going to help him, did you?

She opened her mouth to defend herself, but realized she had nothing to say. She couldn’t even think of a good lie.

Talos clapped her on the shoulder, smiling fondly. At that moment, he actually looked like a proud big brother. “There’s nothing to be ashamed of, Leah,” he said. “You made the right move, and now one more piece has been taken off the board. As for you opposing me in the succession…”

He shook his head, his expression so sad that he looked like a grieving saint. Behind him, Lysander smirked.

“Don’t,” Talos said. “You’re not a match for me, and I like you. Either work with me, or stay out of my way.”

When Talos and his Overlord left, Leah stayed where she was for a moment, thinking. Then she walked over to the corner of her room and reached up to the wall behind the chair where Talos had been sitting.

In the corner of the wall and ceiling rested a crystal so clear it was almost invisible. Leah sat down in the chair, the crystal in her lap, and drew a spark of power from her Source in Lirial.

Deep within the recording crystal, an image began to form: the back of Talos’ blond curls, Lysander’s receding hair, and Leah herself, sitting on the bed. The crystal had recorded everything that happened in the room since she had activated it, just before Talos walked inside.

She controlled the view with her mind, sending it back to watch her brother’s every move, to listen to his every word. There were clues hidden in everything that had happened here today, and she intended to find them.

One thing, at least, had become clear: Talos was a danger. He had at least one Overlord in his pocket, and the fact that he wasn’t hiding their arrangement suggested that he had an agreement with at least one more. He obviously had no consideration for the safety of the Damascan people, planning as he was to assassinate the King during war preparations.

He had to be stopped. And Leah would be the one to stop him.

C
HAPTER
F
OUR
:

R
EBIRTH

Kai looked down the corridor to his left, which was filled with darkness and dust. The thick sandstone blocks of the walls looked no different than the ones surrounding him. He looked back: more darkness, lit occasionally by flickering yellow quartz embedded into the walls. A pile of dust on the floor marked the last golem to attack him on his way here.

He looked to his right to see an identical passageway, also dark, likely hiding a dozen golems.

“I am hopelessly, deliriously lost,” Kai said to himself. Or, at least, he thought it was to himself.

A figure of shadows and black cloth stepped from the darkness. He was hunched and hooded, his robes a black that had faded with age until it could almost be called gray. He had each of his hands tucked into the opposite sleeves, as though he was about to bow. Every inch of his flesh was hidden by black.

Of course, the Nye had no flesh. They were nothing but shadows and clothes, all the way down to the essence that gave them life and power.

Kai had always found that somewhat creepy.

“You are only lost if you are not where you wish,” the Eldest Nye said. His voice was harsh and grating, though soft, like a hairbrush dragging through gravel. “Where do you wish to be, young dragon?”

“Not as young as I once was, Eldest of the Nye,” Kai said. His voice had taken on the singsong voice he used when he was amused or annoyed. He hoped the Eldest assumed he was amused.

The Eldest chuckled, which was truly disturbing. “Come at last to claim your birthright, have you?”

He wasn’t about to have that conversation, at least until Mithra was in his hands. The Eldest knew the answer, anyway.
 

“Honored Eldest, I thought you couldn’t leave the House.” Kai started walking down the corridor as he spoke, more out of a desire to be doing something than out of any conviction that he was heading the right way. As Kai walked, clusters of yellow quartz embedded in the walls flared to life, casting the halls in a dim golden light. When he got too far away, the lights farthest behind him winked out, so only the sections of the hall where he needed light were illuminated.

The Eldest followed. When he stood next to a glowing quartz, he looked ordinary, his dark gray cloak fully visible. But when he stepped into shadow…
It was as though he stepped
through
shadow instead. There were perhaps twenty paces between each quartz-light, and the gaps between were filled with darkness. But when the Eldest left one pool of light, he appeared immediately in the next one, seemingly not having crossed the shadow between.

Kai wondered what would happen if the lights failed entirely. He missed his dolls very much right then.

The Eldest finally decided to speak, perhaps in response to Kai’s earlier question. “Many of the Nye cannot leave the House. They are bound to it too closely. But as the Eldest of my kind, there is little I cannot do. Little I do not see.”

Kai made a curious noise in his throat, as though he was only mildly interested, but that was the most terrifying thing anyone had told him in years.

The thought inspired a surge of anger. Why should he pretend that the Eldest didn’t bother him? He had obviously intended to frighten Kai, or he would have remained hidden. Why should he tiptoe around the Eldest’s anger, pretending not to be frightened?

He knew why, of course. The Eldest could be terrifying, when he chose. But at the moment, Kai didn’t care. Both of them knew that Kai hated the Eldest, so why act otherwise?

“Why did you decide to haunt me, Eldest?” Kai asked.

The Eldest laughed again. Twice in one day—something horrible must have happened to put the Eldest in such a good mood.

“The son of Kalman,” the Eldest said, “has faced his Overlord. Some four weeks past.”

Kai turned sharply, looking straight into the Nye’s hood. “Is he alive?”

“No.”

Kai drew in a breath. He had only ever agreed to train Simon once Caela had told him of Indirial’s unfortunate offer, and he had never agreed to help Simon hinder the sacrifice. In fact, he had withheld information that would have made Simon’s job much easier. He had made his choice over twenty years ago, after all. He would be a hypocrite if he changed his mind now.

But maybe, if he had just told Simon what he knew, the boy would still be alive.

Surprisingly, Kai actually felt a wash of guilt at the thought. Then it occurred to him that Azura was free, with Simon’s death. Maybe his dolls, his beloved little ones, would finally take him back…

He felt guilty for that, too. Why should he? The dolls were his, after all. But the feeling did not go away.

The Eldest shook his head, sadly. “Yes, it is a tragedy,” he rasped. “His wife has taken over his realm. From what I can see, she is far better organized than her husband, though she is not a Traveler.”

For a moment Kai stood, uncomprehending. Then a surge of anger swept through him, and he summoned a scimitar from the Valinhall armory. The sword flashed into his hand, and he swept it into the Eldest’s neck.

The Eldest ducked, almost casually. He cackled as he did.

“The boy survived,” the Nye continued. “But he has killed many Damascan Travelers. He is wanted throughout the Kingdom. If only he had someone to guide him. To protect him. If only the few remaining Dragons had their leader.”

The Eldest was trying to rile him, for some reason, and the worst of it was that he was succeeding. Kai needed to put a stop to it.

“Where is Mithra?” Kai asked.

The Eldest shrugged. “At the center of the temple. You know that better than I.”

Kai pointed the scimitar at him. “Where?”

The Nye’s shoulders shook with silent laughter. He walked over to a blank stretch of dark sandstone wall, and placed one black sleeve against it.

“Here,” the Eldest said.

Kai banished the scimitar, letting it fade back into the armory. Then he called steel and reached back to the armory, but not for the scimitar. He needed something bigger.

The war-hammer was made entirely of mirror-bright Tartarus steel, so that it gleamed like a star in the dull yellow quartz-light. The Dragon’s Fangs themselves were made of Tartarus steel, which was all but unbreakable. This hammer was so massive that Kai felt its weight, even with Valinhall’s power flowing through him. He called stone, feeling his skin tighten as the shield settled over him.

“It will be good to have our leader back,” the Eldest said.

Kai swung, putting all the power he could summon into the blow. The wall exploded, filling the corridor with a noise like a mountain collapsing and blasting a cloud of dust, pebbles, and shrapnel into the hallway. Some of the rocks—a few the size of Kai’s fist—bounced off his impervious stone-shielded skin.

But there wasn’t as much debris as he expected. He wondered at that for a moment before he realized that most of the wall had been blown out. Into the room on the other side.

Through the ragged hole in the wall, Kai saw an enormous square room, tiled in bright blue and so tall that he couldn’t see the ceiling. It was lit entirely by those yellow quartz crystals, which had flared to life as soon as the wall opened up.

The room held very little besides tile and glowing quartz, just a pedestal about waist-high on Kai. A sword levitated over that pedestal, point-down, revolving slowly in midair.

The sword reminded him so much of Azura that his heart ached. It woke other memories, too, but those were even less pleasant.

Mithra, the thirteenth Dragon’s Fang and the final sword forged by Valin the Wanderer, was only a few inches shorter than Azura’s seven feet. No one without the power of Valinhall could wield it. The blade was slightly curved along its entire length, and sharp on only the outside edge. That was where its resemblance to Azura ended.

Where Azura’s hilt was wrapped in black, Mithra’s was wrapped in gold. A finger-thin line of pure gold also ran up the center of the blade, from hilt to tip. Kai knew from past experience that the gold was seemingly of one piece with the steel around it.

Kai had asked about that, one evening long ago.
Master, how did you get the gold into your sword?

Valin had smiled gently and run a hand down the flat of his blade.
This gold is special. I found it long ago and far away, in a city of light
.

He had a thousand stories about his “city of light,” and he would use them to keep the children entertained for hours. Of course, that was before he had killed King Zakareth the Fifth, before the Dragon Army was broken.

Kai looked at Mithra, shining golden in the light.

It wasn’t Valin’s sword anymore.

The Eldest gestured, as though saying something, but the explosion of the wall still rang painfully in Kai’s ears. He didn’t mind. At least he didn’t have to listen to the Nye’s words anymore.

Kai turned back to the Eldest, gesturing at his ears and shrugging helplessly. The Eldest folded his arms like a sulky child. That did much to improve Kai’s mood.

When he turned back to Mithra, a fifteen-foot boulder stood in his way.

As he watched, the boulder grew arms, slamming one down at Kai’s head. Only decades of training in the House allowed Kai to meet the blow, swinging his hammer up to meet the stone fist just as it would have crushed his skull into jelly. The war-hammer smashed into the fist, knocking it to the side just enough that it slammed into the tiles instead of reducing Kai to paste.

The boulder grew a second arm. Then short, stubby legs. Then a head poked its way out of the enormous sandstone body.

An amethyst gleamed like a single eye on the golem’s forehead.

Kai still couldn’t hear much, but he was sure the Eldest was laughing.

He dodged the golem’s fist a second time, just as his stone power ran out. Great. Now even a single blow would probably prove fatal. Even though Benson’s steel provided Kai with some defense, making his body resilient enough to withstand its own increased strength, it did very little to prevent him from being cut. So, without his stone-shield to defend him, a single flying shard of the tile could be enough to open Kai’s throat.

The golem sent a series of heavy, crushing attacks that Kai only narrowly dodged.

This would be a perfect time for a magical, wind-reading doll
, Kai thought.

Kai slipped to one side, avoiding a kick. He used the hammer to deflect another blow, then sidestepped the next. As the golem recovered, he walked backwards several steps.

He needed a running start.

Kai ran forward and launched himself into the air, steel-powered legs sending him up and over the golem’s head. Kai lifted his hammer. It raised two stone arms, crossing them over its forehead, protecting the heartstone.

Exactly as Kai had predicted. He didn’t need to defeat the golem. He just needed to get past it.

Kai landed on the golem’s crossed arms and pushed off, behind the golem, landing on the pedestal holding Mithra.

The golem turned and roared as it realized its mistake, amethyst eye gleaming.
 

Too late now,
Kai thought. He banished the hammer, sending it back to Valinhall. Then he closed a hand around Mithra’s hilt.

There were only two ways to dismantle an Ornheim golem: the first, and usually the easiest, was to take out the golem’s heartstone. Each golem was animated and controlled by a carved gems located somewhere in its body. If you found the right gem and destroyed it, the golem would fall to pieces.

The wolves earlier had each had three heartstones on their faces, serving them as eyes. Kai hadn’t been sure which heartstone was the controlling one, and he hadn’t cared to find out. So he had opted for the second method of destroying a golem: brute force.

If the golem’s body was broken, the heartstone had nothing to animate.