City of Light (The Traveler's Gate Trilogy) (11 page)

He brought his blade diagonally up, cutting across the Incarnation’s body.

As he had done before, Valin spun the bow around, knocking the sword aside. This time, Simon let it go.

He completely released the hilt of the sword, letting it fly out of his hands. And with his newly freed hands, he pulled his hood down over his forehead.

Nye essence flowed through him like a cold breath. It was waning already; he estimated he had, at best, half a minute left of increased speed and grace. But right now he wasn’t looking to enhance his reaction time.

Valin’s eyes flicked from side to side and his brow furrowed in confusion. His fingers began to draw back the string, but he didn’t know where to aim his arrow.

Simon stopped in front of him and thrust upward, putting all the force he could call behind a two-handed strike to Valin’s stomach. As he had suspected, the Wanderer had returned to being another Incarnation: relying on his eyes was the same as relying on the supernatural vision of his Territory. He must see Simon as little more than a shadow…which meant that he couldn’t react in time.

Valin’s body shuddered under the blow, and the force of it actually lifted his feet from the grass. He flew up and back, and Simon ran to follow, his Nye essence leaving him a little more with every breath.

The Valinhall Incarnation twisted in midair, his bowstring pulling back, a shining arrow sprouting to point in Simon’s general direction. Simon ducked, not only to dodge the arrow, but to scoop up one of the short swords that Valin had dropped. An arrow scorched the grass behind him, singeing the edge of his cloak, but he kept moving with a sword in hand. The last thing he wanted was Valin landing with a distance advantage.

As soon as Valin did hit the ground—perfectly balanced and on both feet, of course—Simon was already there, slipping to his side, driving the Incarnation’s own short sword up into his ribs.

He scored a hit. The blade bit flesh and, though it scraped along the ribs and Valin twisted, he had done some damage. If he could keep this up, he would not only escape with his life, he would have killed the Valinhall Incarnation a second time.

And then he could address the other questions that plagued him, such as: how could Valin have come back to life in the first place? Could it happen again? Had the Eldest not
noticed
that Valin could still call on his power as an Incarnation, or had he chosen not to say anything?

As the Wanderer’s blood sprinkled the grass, Simon shoved all the questions out of his mind. They could wait until later.

Simon drew back the blade and drove it in at another angle, trying to impale the Incarnation through his bare, chain-shrouded stomach. He exhaled as he struck, sending another puff of white mist from his lungs. The world moved noticeably faster, and he wasn’t quite agile enough to land his blow before Valin got his bow between his stomach and Simon’s sword. Simon still drew blood, but not nearly enough to drop the man permanently.

Simon didn’t glance back at the hourglass. He didn’t need to; only a few seconds had passed. He would either kill the Incarnation and pass, or die. In that light, failing to earn the ghost armor didn’t seem like such a problem.

Valin struck at Simon with the butt of his bow, forcing Simon to back off a step. He didn’t want to—his only hope lay in continuous attack—but if he had remained close, the Incarnation would have simply bludgeoned him to death and accepted his stomach wound in return.

But the Wanderer was pursuing
him
now, rushing at him and swinging the bow two-handed like a hammer, and now he was on the back foot again, forced to swing wildly and turn each of Valin’s attacks. If he had been using Azura, the Incarnation would have been too close, inside Simon’s reach. But maybe if he could find a way to back up and into Azura, he could scoop the longer blade up and use it to create exactly the right distance…

There was a sharp, burning pain on the backs of his thighs, and he stumbled and landed flat on his back. The rest of the Nye essence flooded out of his lungs in a starlight cloud, the world lurching back to normal speed.

Above him, the Incarnation’s black-and-silver eyes stared pitilessly into his own. One chain-shrouded arm drew back the steel cable, and a white arrow traced itself in midair, pointed straight at Simon’s chest.

“What do you want, Simon?” Valin asked.

Simon almost didn’t hear the question. He scrabbled backwards on his elbows, pushing his heels against the grass, trying instinctively to get away. Maybe if he could reach Azura, he could launch another attack, or even slip out of the room until his Nye essence recovered…

Valin drew the string of his bow back farther, and Simon froze. “
What do you want?”

“I want to live!” Simon blurted, trying to stay as still as possible even though he was propped up on trembling hands.

The Wanderer leaned over his bow, the mirrored circles of his eyes gleaming. “Why?”

Simon hesitated. Did Valin want an answer from him? What did he want to hear? How was Simon supposed to get out of this without a doll or the mask?

Valin made a disgusted sound and kicked Simon hard in the ribs, leaving a flash of pain that flooded Simon’s gut even through the steel. His body flipped over with the impact, landing face-down in the grass, and Simon curled up around his stomach.

He heard the creaking of a steel cord bending, and then something was burning his neck. It was actually burning, as though Valin had pressed a red-hot poker against the base of his skull. Simon squirmed, pressing his cheek into the soil to escape that horrible pain, but the Wanderer rested a heavy foot on Simon’s back. He simply couldn’t move enough.

He smelled char and smoke, and realized with horror that they must be coming from the burning hairs on his neck.

Simon couldn’t help but keep thinking of a way out. That was what he had made of himself. He’d spent almost two years of relative time inside Valinhall, and in all that time he had embedded in himself a core belief: death was everywhere, all the time, but there was always a way out.

He didn’t give up. But somewhere, deep in a place that he didn’t like to think about, he realized that this was the end. He couldn’t help but picture the arrow, burning through the base of his skull, leaving a mutilated corpse for the Nye to find. The Agnos family would eventually realize he had died. They might put up a headstone for him here…it had never occurred to him before, but he wouldn’t be buried next to his family. He would be here, in a Territory with only a handful of Travelers, and no one to remember him.

Would Leah care? Would Alin even notice? What about Kai?

Still, part of him kept thinking of tactics—
maybe I could summon a little Nye essence, maybe I could call the mask to me, maybe Azura will fly into my hands
—even as he squeezed his eyes shut and waited for the end.

Until an emerald light began to shine, like a green sun coming up, bright even through Simon’s clenched eyelids. The rolling light of the storm overhead was nothing compared to this, and he felt something like a cool wind against his head.

He looked up, turning his face up toward the source that radiated cold like a coal radiates heat, and saw a floating suit of luminous green armor. It drifted in midair, like a spirit all its own, and Simon could see the far columns
through
the breastplate.

The pressure on his back vanished, and Valin let out a huge breath. “Wow, that hurt more than I thought,” he said casually.

Then there came a heavy thud of a body collapsing.

C
HAPTER
S
EVEN
:

E
LYSIAN
R
ULE

359
th
Year of the Damascan Calendar

1
st
Year in the Reign of Queen Leah I

1 Day Since Spring’s Birth

Leah tapped her pen against the edge of her map, leaving a spot of ink. She had assigned a pair of artists to draw this map according to Grandmaster Naraka’s descriptions, and it was now their best information on the new layout of Enosh.

To say she had little faith in the map would be an understatement. She felt that they might have better luck navigating Enosh by flipping a coin at every intersection and hoping for the best.

Enosh had originally been divided into four quarters with the Grandmasters’ palace at the center. Each of the quarters was then subdivided into smaller blocks, for a city that was remarkably simple to navigate.

According to Grandmaster Naraka, Elysia was built in nine districts. Not evenly distributed, equal districts, like nine wedges of a pie. That would have been too simple. Some districts were long, others wide, some large, others small. And Alin had ordered reconstruction to try and replicate this layout in Enosh.

That, in itself, wouldn’t be so bad, but his very presence as an Incarnation had begun to reshape the world around him. They were forced to rely on a secondhand map of an ancient city, which was itself being rebuilt in the image of a
second
city that none of them understood…all while the city re-formed itself around the construction crews. Not to mention that they were sketching all this based on the eyewitness testimony of a hundred-year-old woman that Leah was still half-convinced was blind.

The map of the city looked like a pile of sticks dropped randomly inside a lumpy circle. There were a number of notes on the map, none of which made her feel better.

One annotation, at the end of a main thoroughfare, said:
Watch out for bats.

Another note, outside what had once been the city armory:
Whole building may be an illusion.

Another:
At noon, bridge dissolves into sugar.

He can see you from here. Travel through tunnels instead. Are there tunnels?

This could be the School for the Disobedient, or possibly a fish warehouse.

Street ends in turtle?

It was all a confusing, nightmarish mess, and that didn’t even count the numerous parts of the map shaded in gray, accompanied by the words “Unknown Area.” Those took up far too much of the city for her tastes.

Assuming any of this was accurate at all, there were a few constants even in a half-finished city like this. For one thing, the Naraka waystation couldn’t have moved in relation to Naraka, or it wouldn’t function. That put it inside the city walls on the north side.
 

“You understand that we’ll have to go in through Naraka,” Leah said with a sigh.

“Who says?” Indirial responded. He stood across the table from her, both of them underneath a canopy high overhead to keep off the sun. While she was bent over her map, Indirial had his long, cracked sword resting on the other half of the table. He carefully ran a rag down first one side of the blade, then the other, his sleeves rolled up to reveal tanned forearms marked to the wrist with black chains.

“It’s the only route that makes sense.” Leah tapped the waystation with the end of her pen. “We come in through here, and we know exactly where we’re going to end up. We’ve also heard that Alin spends most of his time in the southeast quarter of the city, personally overseeing the construction there. So this puts us about as far from him as we’re going to get. We’ll have plenty of time to show up, take a look around, and retreat.”

Indirial wiped the blade one more time, then turned his attention to the thread wrapping its hilt. “I could list all the things wrong with this plan, but I’m not sure you have the time.”

Leah sighed. “We’re taking the word of an avowed enemy…”

“Whose map
happens
to suggest that her own Territory is the best way into the city,” Indirial pointed out.

“…and we’re planning on heading into a hostile city controlled by the Incarnation of a Territory about which we know almost nothing,” Leah finished. “We don’t know anything about his motivations or goals, we have no reasonable expectation of his capabilities, and our map looks like it was scribbled by a blind child with the shakes. How am I doing so far?”

Indirial began reaching into his pockets, behind his back, into his boots, under his belt, even inside his cloak—which looked comfortable in this biting wind. Each time he reached in, he pulled out a knife or another small weapon, more exotic, that Leah didn’t recognize. One was a hatchet small enough to hold in one hand. Was he supposed to throw that?

The Overlord began oiling and wiping down each weapon, still talking. “There’s one thing that bothers me more than any of that, though.”

Leah raised an eyebrow.

“You keep saying
‘we.’
Do you think you’re going?”

She ticked off points on her fingers as she spoke. “Well, let’s see. I’m a Lirial Traveler, and as such best-suited for surveying and mapping the area. I have a personal connection with the Incarnation, as I spent most of two years observing him as a trusted friend. I lived for several weeks inside the city, and thereby familiarized myself with its original layout. Finally, I am your Queen, and I will accompany you if I wish.”

Leah was quite proud of that speech. For all of five seconds, until Indirial raised his head from his weapons and met her eyes. He didn’t speak sternly or angrily—he was still Indirial—but he wasn’t smiling.

“Your father always encouraged his children to operate independently. As Ragnarus Travelers, they were well equipped to deal with danger, and independent action fosters self-reliance and creative thinking. So he said. What happened to your brothers and sisters, Leah?”

She saw where he was going, and tried to head him off, but he simply kept talking.

“Your brothers are dead. One of your sisters was exiled for treason, and the other isolated to treat her incurable insanity. You are the last child of Ragnarus we have left, and risking yourself on a fact-finding mission is not only absurd and unnecessary, it is irresponsible.”

Coming from someone else, those words might have put Leah’s back up even more,
forcing
her to go into Enosh or else lose face. But coming from Indirial…