The Lightning Wastes (The Traveler's Gate Chronicles: Collection #3) (2 page)

Between the ostentatious furniture and the soft lighting, the scene almost looked like it belonged in an attic, covered in dust. She ran a hand along the top of a desk. It was spotlessly clean, and had been recently polished. She'd only entered Valinhall a handful of times before, and she had never caught a glimpse of anyone doing housework. Perhaps the House cleaned itself. Or maybe this was how they trained Travelers: by forcing them to dust the furniture.

“Excuse me,” she called into the hallway, which extended out beyond the entry hall. “Is anyone there?”

She felt distinctly uncomfortable, calling into a foreign Territory like this. Who knew what sort of creatures she might awaken? Then again, she had never seen anything here that looked remotely dangerous. Indirial and Simon always spoke as though the House was the most deadly Territory of all the eleven known to man, but she had yet to see it. It seemed quite comfortable, to her.

When no one responded, she marched forward, into the hall. Doors stretched down the hall on either side of her. To her left was a door with a single small circle; to her right, a door with a huge circle orbited by three small circles. Some way of distinguishing the bedrooms, she supposed, but she had never gotten a look inside one of these doors. She had no idea which one was Simon's. Maybe she should just knock on each one separately, and see if someone answered.

Just as she had raised her hand to knock, the door on the far left opened, and a woman stepped out. She had a pair of goggles pushed up her forehead, tied around the back of her head with a leather strap. They looked almost like Avernus flight goggles. Her long auburn hair was bound back with a rag, and she wiped her hands with a similar rag. She looked like a miner's wife, more than anything else, though Leah knew she had some job here in Valinhall. She wasn't entirely clear what the job was, no more than she could remember this woman's name.

Her eyes grew wide, and she immediately fell to her knees, prostrating herself on the ground. “Your Highness! We were not expecting you.”

“You may stand,” Leah said wearily. She got sick of having to order people to stand; wouldn't it be much easier if they stood by default, and then she could order them to kneel if that was what she wanted? “I'm looking for Simon.”

“Of course, my Queen, of course,” the woman said, scrambling to her feet. She tried to smooth her hair, realizing she held a dirty rag in her hand, and stuffing the rag into her pocket. “I'll have to wake him up, though. He's been fighting like a madman. Spends hours deep in the House, comes back bleeding so badly that he can barely make it into the pool. The imps are going to get him one of these days, I swear they are. Maybe you can talk him out of it, Highness.”

“Perhaps,” Leah said. Imps? She wasn't sure what the imps were, though she had heard about Valinhall's healing pool before. “Which room is his?”

The woman hesitated. “I'm sorry, Your Highness, but it might be better if you waited in the entry hall. I'll fetch him for you.”

“I've woken him up before,” Leah said, and the other woman frowned.

“Have you, now? I had wondered why...well. You're that Leah, are you?”

Leah cleared her throat. “Yes, I probably am.”

The woman nodded as though she had just figured out the solution to a difficult puzzle. “Well, now. That explains some things. I always think I know that boy better than I do, but he never talks about himself. He always makes you ask.”

She chuckled, and Leah laughed politely along.

At exactly which point did I lose control of this conversation?

“So, which bedroom...” she said, trying to steer the woman back on track.

“Ah, yes. This way. I know you said you could handle it, but you might want to stay in the doorway.”

Handle what?
Leah thought, but then the other woman was pushing on one of the doors, the one marked by a large half-circle above two smaller circles.

Inside was a bedroom just as well appointed, if not as large, as any of the rooms in the royal palace in Cana. The bed was a huge four-poster, with a bedside table on each side and a mirror against one wall, next to a washbasin. The only aspect of the room that Leah didn't approve of were the shelves built into the far wall, so that they were the first thing anyone in the bed would see upon waking.

The shelves were covered in dolls. Dozens of little girls’ dolls, wearing every sort of clothing from a villager's brown shirt and pants to long, flowing court dresses. They had blond hair, and black, and white, and red, and every color Leah had ever seen on a human being.

And they were all staring, with painted eyes, straight at Leah. As though they had been positioned that way all along.

“I see the dolls are doing…well,” Leah said. She knew how useful they could be, but she still couldn’t help a little shudder when she saw them looking at her. “Does he have to keep them right there in the bedroom?”

The other woman shrugged. “It's Kai's thing, I think. I’m sure he put them there. Anyway, I don't question Travelers.”

Simon lay, shirtless and sound asleep, amid the cloud-soft whiteness of the bed's blankets. He was all tangled up in a sheet, as though he had tried to escape and the sheet had grabbed him and pulled him back. She always thought of him as small, and he would never be much more than her height, but he had put on a surprising amount of muscle in such a short time. If she hadn't known better, she wouldn't have recognized him.

Instead of walking over to shake him, as Leah had expected, the woman cupped her hands to her mouth. “Simon!” she yelled. “Company!”

Leah barely saw it happen. First Simon was tangled up in the sheet so thoroughly that she was sure it would take a seamstress and a pair of gardening shears to get him loose, then he was across the room, inches in front of her, with a knife in his fist. The gleaming point of the steel pressed against her collarbone.

She choked down a scream and stepped back, proud of herself for not falling over backwards.
“What do you think you're—”
she demanded, but she stopped herself.

Standing there in front of her, Simon woke up.

He blinked a few times, let out a little half-yawn, and noticed her for the first time. “Leah? Why are you here?” Then he saw the knife in his own hand, and his fingers jerked open. The knife clattered to the floor.

“Ah! Sorry. I didn't...they try to kill me in my sleep. All the time. It's a habit, I'm sorry. Are you hurt?”

Leah shook her head, too numb to speak. He had almost stabbed her in the chest before he even realized who she was.
Wait. Who, exactly, tries to kill him in his sleep?

Simon frowned at the other woman. “Mistress Agnos, how did you get in here?”

“Like this,” Mistress Agnos said, miming twisting a doorknob and pushing the door open. She watched the two of them with a little amused smile on her face. “You should keep it locked. And I told you to stand back, Your Highness.”

“So you did,” Leah said sourly. “Simon, I need someone to guard me while I go to Endross. We'll be in a Territory where it rains lightning, and we'll probably be surrounded by dozens of Travelers that want to kill me. I need someone to keep me alive and unharmed until we get back. Will you do it?”

Simon glanced down at himself, then at her, and his face flushed. “Uh, let me get a shirt on first.”

“That would be best.”

***

It took Simon a few minutes to get ready, but he eventually emerged, wearing his hooded black cloak and carrying a doll. This one wore her long red hair tied back in a tail, and her outfit was nothing more than a plain villager's shirt and pants. He held the doll in the crook of his elbow as he followed Leah out through Indirial's Gate.

“Come back and visit us, Your Highness!” Mistress Agnos called, from back in the entry hall. Leah gave a noncommittal smile and wave. She was actually a little wary of the other woman, who seemed to swing between utter deference and a sort of motherly concern. It was disconcerting.

Helene Rhode, the Endross weather-worker, was waiting for them. She was perhaps forty years old, with the bright green eyes characteristic of some Westerner blood. Her sandy blond hair was cut close to her scalp, and she had a horizontal scar across one cheek. Most noticeably, she had a weapon strapped to every inch of her clothes. An unstrung crossbow hung from a harness at her right hip, opposite a one-handed infantry sword. She had buckled a dozen knives across her chest, on the outsides of her thighs, and on the insides of her boots. The hilts of two long knives, almost swords, poked up from her shoulders.

Thanks to the time fluctuation between Valinhall and the outside world, Leah had only been gone two or three minutes, but during that time Indirial had evidently found her in the camp and sent her to the command tent. The man did work fast.

I thought she was a weather-worker, not a walking armory,
Leah thought, but she kept it to herself. Helene probably expected anyone she came across to mention the weapons, so Leah would maintain the upper hand by saying nothing about them.

“Helene Rhode, I presume,” Leah said.

Helene tilted up a silver flask and took a drink before answering. “You need someone to show you around the Wastes, am I right?”

“That's correct.”

“Fifteen years I've been working in Cana, keeping the worst of the storms away. Ten years before that, I was guiding merchant caravans across Endross, trying to keep them alive. Don't you worry, I'll get you wherever you want to go.” She flashed Leah a grin that looked more like a lioness baring her teeth than a smile.

Leah nodded as though she had expected no less. “You'll do perfectly, then. I need the Endross Travelers of Damasca to stop ignoring their duties and return to their posts. I don't know who needs to make that happen, but you will take us to them, and I will deliver my commands in person.”

Helene took another swig, arching an eyebrow at Leah over her silver flask. “Is there a reason you're going in person, Your Majesty? No offense meant, but wouldn't you be better off sending a lackey?”

“I can delegate anything that does not involve my duties as a Traveler of Ragnarus,” Leah said, half-truthfully. The full truth was that she needed as much authority here as possible, and she didn't have an Overlord to represent her in this matter. It would be easier and faster to do it herself.

“You think this will involve Ragnarus?” The Endross Traveler sounded uneasy.

“It will if our friends don't cooperate.” In reality, if Leah had to rely on her crown to force the Travelers to obey her, she would have already lost. She was hoping to do this without relying on any of her Ragnarus weapons.

Not that she wouldn't bring them anyway, of course.

Helene nodded to Simon, the first time that she had acknowledged his presence. “And him? I thought you were going to get a bodyguard.” He had quietly walked over to the map table and sat his redheaded doll next to him. They appeared to be studying it together.

“My bodyguard. That's right.”

“Not to overstep my bounds, but wouldn't it be better to bring along another Traveler? Between you and me, I think we can handle most trouble, but I don't think a boy with a sword is going to do us any favors.”

“I am a Traveler, actually,” Simon said. He sounded totally calm, but Leah knew that he must have been irritated, or he would have left the question for her to answer.

“Oh really? Which Territory?”

Simon met her eyes evenly. “Valinhall.”

Helene shot Leah a puzzled look. “Where?”

Oh, of course.
Sometimes Leah forgot that Valinhall's existence wasn't common knowledge. “The same Territory as Overlord Indirial, Helene.”

“Overlord Indirial? Really? I always thought he was just a weird Tartarus.” She shrugged. “Well, the older you get, the more you learn, I guess. Now then, boy, what's with the doll?”

Simon looked down at the doll and back up, and Leah got the impression that they were having a silent conversation. “She wants me to tell you that her name's Rebekkah,” he said. He winced and added, “She would also like me to punch you in the face.”

Helene grinned her lion's grin once more. “I'd like to see that play out, Valinhall.”

Leah stepped in between them and gave Simon a cold look. He shrugged and pointed to Rebekkah, who seemed to have the slightest glare on her face. “That's enough. Helene, can you take us where we need to go?”

The Endross Traveler buckled her flask next to her crossbow and spread her hands. “I can take you to the main outpost. It's not hard to get there from here, actually. I don't know who's in charge there, but whoever it is, you'll probably have to fight them.”

“Excellent,” Leah said. “That's why I brought a bodyguard. Lead the way.”

Helene swept out of the tent, Leah followed, and Simon walked behind them, muttering softly to his doll.

***

Leah learned something that day.
 

She learned that she hated Endross.

It had taken them an hour of walking to reach the place where Helene had decided to open a Gate. Leah wasn't sure whether this was simply the closest place she could open a passable Gate, or whether this took them somehow closer to the main Endross outpost. It was supposed to be accessible from Cana, and they had walked directly away from Cana to open the Gate, but distance could be strange in Territories. An hour's walking west in the outside world could put them two hour's distance east in a Territory. Or a thousand feet up. It all depended on the Territory and the nature of the Gate.

In this case, Helene stopped by a cactus and an unremarkable stretch of scrub grass and announced, “This is it.” She then spread her hands, opening one of the swirling, violent thunderstorms that Endross Travelers used as Gates. It hung horizontally in the air, a lightning-filled shadow roughly in the shape of a round doorway.

Helene stepped through without hesitation, obviously trusting that the other two would follow. Simon waited for Leah to follow. Leah glanced at him, hoping to see him nervous, so that she could offer support and make herself feel better. No luck. Simon looked back at her curiously. He even raised his eyebrows, silently asking if she needed anything.