The Lightning Wastes (The Traveler's Gate Chronicles: Collection #3) (7 page)

And she would be the first. She would not let her people pay a price that she could not afford herself.

She reached out to take the seeds, but he pulled back his fist.

“So eager, all of a sudden,” the Old Man said. “You must first satisfy my price.”

Cynara glared at him, wondering—not for the first time—if his own weapons would work against him. “You may have my life. That’s all I have to give.”

He stroked his beard thoughtfully. “Well…not quite.”

Anger finally burst through her, sharp and hot. “This subject is closed!”

“You could rule when Elysia is deposed.”

“And become a tyrant worse than she could ever be!”

“Not a tyrant. A queen. An immortal queen, commanding a united land.”

Cynara stood, putting herself face-to-face with the Old Man’s crimson eye. “I will pay whatever price I must to keep my daughter and her kingdom safe. But that does not include becoming a monster. I would put her in even more danger than the threat of Elysia. I have put one amount on the table, now take it or begone.”

The Old Man’s red eye flared, and his gray grew suddenly piercing. “I see that I cannot sway you. Very well. You have forsaken life eternal, and Ragnarus will drink the last of your blood.”

She snatched the seeds from his hand.

“I hope you choke on it,” she muttered.

A horn drifted to her on the wind, sweet and pleasant as an angel’s song. Her heart turned to ice.

Asphodel and Endross remained motionless, waiting on the plains. They would be used as reinforcements for the primary assault. An assault that, she knew, would be coming any minute now.

The armies of Elysia had begun to move.

***

Cynara finally found her daughter racing through the twisting streets of ruined Cana. They had been searching for each other.

The fourteen-year-old girl collapsed into her mother’s arms, shaking uncontrollably. “I heard the horn. Everyone else is in hiding, but I had to find you.”

Cynara the First pushed her daughter out to arm’s length, the better to get a look at Cynara the Second. The girl had the same blond hair and piercing blue eyes as the rest of her family, and she was just as gangly and awkward as her mother had been at her age.

She smiled at her daughter, pushing a handful of eight seeds into the confused girl’s hands. “Take these. Plant them in bloody ground, then lure the Incarnations close. The Tree will bind them. They need to be fed, one life per year.” Their hunger would grow with time, but they were just a temporary measure anyway. Hopefully Cynara the Second would do what the First could not, and find another way to deal with the Incarnations for good.

The girl took the seeds, confusion plain on her face. “Mother, why…why don’t you…”

Cynara grabbed her daughter tight, hugging her one last time. “The others will follow you. I’m taking the easy way out, I’m afraid. I’m only dealing with one Incarnation. You’ll have to take care of the other eight.”

“Wait, please, I don’t—”
 

She placed a single kiss on her daughter’s forehead. “Rule wisely, Cynara the Second. May your reign be longer and more fruitful than mine.”

A terrifying screech sounded overhead, and Cynara spun, summoning the Lightning Spear into her hand. Its blade was worked with gold, its hilt black wood, with a bright ruby set into its head.

“Run, daughter,” Cynara said. There was a moment of hesitation, and then the slap of feet on stones as the girl ran.

Just in time. Something like a bright blue jellyfish the size of a horse swung up the side of a broken building, then scuttled like a spider down toward Cynara. At the same time, an animated suit of gold armor hauling a giant halberd came dashing down a side street, roaring a wordless war cry.

Cynara stepped forward, hurling the Lightning Spear. She felt the price immediately: her body was wracked with indescribable pain, as though her every bone had been shattered at once. The spear itself flew with a hundred times the force she had used, striking the charging armor like a thunderbolt and blasting it to red-hot shards of smoking metal.

The blue jellyfish made a wet, sticky, whistling sound and leaped, its tentacles curling in midair. The Spear was already on its way back to Cynara’s hand, but she couldn’t throw it again in time. So she raised her other hand.

The red wand drizzled sparks of red light, like glowing crimson tears.

Flexing her will, Cynara triggered the power of the Bleeding Wand.

With a shriek, the Wand’s power blasted forward. A wave of crimson light devoured the jellyfish, but it didn’t slow. It continued forward until it hit the side of a three-story tower, which instantly dissolved and blew away as featureless gray dust. The tower stood for a second on three legs instead of four.

Then, with a great roar, the side of the building slid away. Rubble crashed into the street with a sound like an avalanche.

Cynara stood in the middle of a broken street as the Lightning Spear smacked back into her waiting palm. The bill for the Bleeding Wand would come due later, but she never thought she would be willing to pay it. The Wand devoured the user’s sanity with every use. In time, it would leave her a cackling madwoman eager to blast everyone to dust.

She’d never planned to use the Wand, but it was amazing how different the world looked in the face of her imminent death.

A woman’s voice, sweet and clear like the chiming of a crystal bell, sounded from behind her. “Your Territory is an abomination, Cynara. It thrives on blood and death.”

Cynara turned, a crimson weapon in each hand, to face the golden-haired Incarnation of Elysia.

“I’m not the one who destroyed this country, Rhalia.”

Rhalia’s eyes were cool, like a pair of gold coins. “Sometimes a mother must be rough with her children to show them the right way.”

She didn’t look monstrous, like many of the other Incarnations Cynara had seen. She wore a simple white robe, belted by a golden sash, and her skin was still clear and as pale as it had ever been. Her bare feet drifted six inches above the ground, with not even an orange glow to give her away, but Rhalia had always been skilled with the Orange Light. Even before Incarnation took her.

Cynara couldn’t help it: she let out a peal of laughter. “You see yourself as a mother, now? That’s how you justify wholesale slaughter?”

“Those who follow me are safe and secure. I’m building a paradise.”

“You’re filling a graveyard.”

Rhalia called a globe of golden light into one hand. The other writhed with knots of twisting blue. “Then let your grave be the last.”

The Incarnation thought she was being clever, but Cynara was ready for her. She sidestepped, blasting at the ground where she had been standing a moment before. The cobblestones disintegrated, as did the tentacles of blue light that had been waiting beneath them.

Rhalia had never been very good at setting traps.

Cynara hurled the Lightning Spear at Rhalia’s chest. It blasted through the orb of Gold Light that the Incarnation had just thrown, slamming into a hexagonal plate of Green Light just in front of Rhalia’s dress.

The Green Light cracked, and Cynara intended to follow up with a blast from the Wand to break the shield, but the spasm of pain from throwing the Lightning Spear caught up with her. She shook, just once, but then the moment passed.

A cushion of Orange caught her feet, dragging her up toward the sky. The Spear hadn’t returned yet, so Cynara called a different weapon into her empty hand: the Lonely Dagger. Its red-streaked blade sliced through the Orange Light as though it had physical substance, and Cynara twisted in midair, landing in a crouch.

The Lightning Spear met her outstretched palm, and she hurled it again, blindly. Pain shuddered her body, but she was more worried about the Dagger’s price.

She could summon it and use it freely, but the minute she banished it back to Ragnarus she would forget someone. The longer she kept it here, the more important the person she would forget.

After a moment’s thought, Cynara banished the Dagger. As useful as it would be to keep around, there were a few people she wouldn’t want to forget. Not on the day she died.

She wasn’t sure what memories she had lost—that was the nature of the cost—but she only had the Dagger out for a few seconds. In the incredibly unlikely event that she survived this day, some minor noble was going to be very offended when she forgot him or her completely.

Rhalia deflected the Spear with a wall of Green, and Cynara realized that she had a chance. She scrambled over to the section of road where the cobblestones had shattered, baring earth.

This was the third time the city of Cana had been invaded. Twice in the last year. Enough blood had been spilled in this city to soak the soil.

Or so she hoped. If it hadn’t, the Hanging Tree wouldn’t take root, and she would die at the Elysia Incarnation’s hands.

Frantically, she dug at the dirt with her bare hands, pressing one of the seeds down and sweeping some soil over it.

Red light flared underground, shining through the thin layer of earth. Cynara’s heart unclenched.

Rhalia held a sword of gold light in one hand now, but she stared at the ground, uncertain.

“What is that?” she asked.

Cynara didn’t call the Lightning Spear to return. She left it lying on the ground like a piece of debris. She dropped the Bleeding Wand to one side. “I win,” was all she said.

She was covered by a dozen cuts, some of which wept freely. In the case of her left arm, a piece of flying debris had sliced her deep.

Cynara pinched the wound together, sending a drop of blood onto the ground above the seed. The earth trembled. Rhalia raised a hand to hurl golden light.

Then a tendril of red erupted from the ground, wrapping around Cynara’s wound. She could feel blood flowing from her into the Tree, weakness taking over her body. It wasn’t painful, but neither was it pleasant.

“What did—” Rhalia began, but she was interrupted by the rising of the Hanging Tree. It rumbled as it rose, little more than a sapling in size, but menacing still. Its leafless limbs whipped blindly at the air, and Cynara saw that they were covered in tiny thorns.

The root around her hand was not. It was smooth, almost gentle, as it drew upon her blood for power.

Rhalia, sensing danger, flared Orange Light at her feet and began to fly away.

The Hanging Tree didn’t let her.

Thorny branches seized her around each ankle, dragging the Incarnation closer and closer to the ground, even as she strained to fly away. She turned, hacking branches with her sword of yellow light, but the branches kept growing back, kept reaching.

Cynara’s arm had grown cold, and she was feeling dizzy. It wasn’t so bad that she would die, she supposed. Not for such a good cause. But her daughter would be alone. She was only fourteen; what if the lords and ladies didn’t listen to her? What if she couldn’t rebuild? There was every chance that she would be killed before she could get the Trees planted. Would their new nation of Damasca ever escape its birth pangs?

Rhalia dropped her sword, evidently having switched to a new tactic. Even as she was dragged backwards, scraping across the ground, she held out her palms.

A golden portal opened in front of her. A Gate, leading into the City of Light.

It was beyond anything Cynara had ever imagined. Graceful walls of gold and silver rose from a flower-strewn field, and towers of every color stretched almost to the sunset-colored sky.

Red Light—of her own generation, not from Ragnarus—twisted around Rhalia’s limbs. With her newfound strength, she tore free of the Hanging Tree.

It wouldn’t last, Cynara could see that. The Tree was already reaching for its Incarnation, and it would catch her before she got too far.

But it was enough. Rhalia crossed the border of her gate, into the fields of Elysia.

The thorny branches recoiled, unable to cross from one world into another. That was interesting; the Old Man had never mentioned that the Trees wouldn’t work in a Territory. That must have been why he had insisted on her planting them here.

Cynara’s dizziness had grown so that she could barely stay upright, and her vision was beginning to fuzz at the edges, but she still fixed the Incarnation with a smile. “Good enough. Stay sealed in that world or this one, Rhalia, it means nothing to me.”

Rhalia shrugged, the motion more graceful than it had any right to be. “I would say I got the better of this little exchange. I keep my life, while you have parted with yours.”

Cynara couldn’t stay standing any longer. She collapsed, landing hard on her knees. She barely felt the pain. “I can think of greater prices.”

“I am eternally patient,” the Elysia Incarnation said. “I can wait forever. You should have stood with me, sister.”

Then the shining Gate closed, and the last thing Cynara saw of her older sister was a pair of golden eyes. Eyes that used to be a blue as bright as her own.

Her vision was fading quickly, but as far as she could see down the road and into the city, red roots were erupting from the cobblestones, seizing creatures of Elysia and draining the life from them.

All over the city. Does the Tree’s influence really stretch that far?
She hoped it would be enough to keep the other Incarnations away, until her daughter had a chance to drive them into a corner and seal them for good.

Her thoughts drifted to Cynara the Second, as she fell onto her back, staring up at the clear winter sky. For the first time in years, she felt some measure of hope. Her daughter had the seeds. She had the key to the Crimson Vault.

Maybe the Incarnations wouldn’t be the end of this world after all.

My life was a small price to pay.

Then everything went black.

***

It was difficult to open a Gate from the other side, not to mention expensive. Abominably expensive. But every once in a while, the Old Man felt it was worth it.

The Ragnarus Gate formed, opening directly beside Cynara’s body, sprawled across the shattered street. A root of the Hanging Tree was just uncurling from her wrist.