City of Light (The Traveler's Gate Trilogy) (16 page)

Olissa pointed to Simon with the bottle’s corked tip. “Exactly! So this power needs something to hold it. You see where I’m going with this? It needs a room to contain it. And the room needs to be separate from other rooms, so that the two different powers don’t start mixing together.”

“So the oil is like the mask,” Simon said, “and the room is like the bottle. How about the guardian?”

With a self-satisfied smile, Olissa tapped the bottle’s cork. “You need a way to get to the olive oil. Defeating a guardian is like pulling out the cork. But you’ve got to do it in the right way. You can’t fight them all. It’s got to be something that resonates with the nature of the shape and the nature of the room.”

“You can’t just
duel
your cork,” Andra added, in mock seriousness. “Don’t you see? It makes complete sense…” She dissolved into laughter as Lycus shook his head wearily.

“I see,” said Simon. It was mostly true. “So who’s the room guardian for your…gallery?”

Olissa slapped the mask and the bottle down on the counter, a little harder than necessary. “We don’t have one. Not yet. The Eldest said there were ‘more pressing vacancies to be filled.’ So we’re stuck here with a room nobody can use and a power nobody can call.” She waved up at the wall, where the four complete masks hung in a row. “I even tried to get Erastes to do it, but he turned me down.”

“Can you believe that?” Andra said. “It’s like he doesn’t want his skin to turn to leather and his bones to steel.”

Simon had never thought about that before. Were all the guardians fated to end up like Chaka or Benson? Did they turn from ordinary humans into artificial constructs? Would that happen to Valin?

He almost asked Otoku, but he had more urgent concerns at the moment. “So, are you done with the original? I’m going to work for the Queen, and I need it.”

Olissa frowned. “You never gave us the original. I’ve been working from my notes, but I still haven’t quite managed to recreate what yours can do. I suspect yours can draw more power from Valinhall, but it doesn’t have the safety measures in place that mine do. But I’d be able to know that for sure, if you would let us borrow yours…”

Simon chuckled awkwardly. “Sorry, it seems to have run off. You don’t know where it is, then?”

Olissa looked like she couldn’t decide whether Simon was making fun of her or not. “Isn’t that it, right there?”

She pointed at Kai.

Kai stood with his hands at his sides, staring up at the four masks with his head cocked. He didn’t seem to be listening.

“Where?” Simon asked.

Lycus slid off his stool and marched up to Kai. “He’s got it right here,” he announced. Then he pulled the mask from Kai’s belt.
 

Kai had been carrying it the entire time. He had made sure to stand where Simon couldn’t see it.

Simon let out a heavy breath and took the mask from Lycus. “Why, Master?” He tried to keep a lid on his frustration.

Kai shrugged, still staring up at the masks. “My little ones asked me to keep it from you. Maybe if they would speak to me, I would hold their secrets longer.” His head slid from one side to the other, slowly, until it flopped onto his left shoulder. “They were right to try, I think, but they were too late. Is there a worse date than too late?”

Why didn’t you tell me Kai had the mask?
Simon demanded silently.

Oh, sure, let your dolls solve all your problems for you,
Otoku responded.
I was going to tell you before, but that noisy rock interrupted.

You could have told me at any point since then. ‘Hey, Simon, I found the mask.’

But that would have made your life so easy. How boring is that?

C
HAPTER
N
INE
:

I
NSIDE
E
NOSH

It had been over a half an hour, and Indirial still hadn’t returned with Simon. That meant that he had spent better than an hour inside Valinhall. What was he doing in there? Thanks to him, Leah had been forced to spend most of the last half-hour explaining to a group of seven Travelers why her urgent mission wasn’t departing immediately.

Overlord Feiora was dressed in what, for her, must have passed for armor: she wore a dark leather breastplate, and hardened leather of a matching shade shielded her shins and forearms. Beneath that she wore a chainmail shirt that came down to mid-thigh, and an iron-and-leather cap that must have served in place of a helmet. Eugan rested on one of her padded shoulders.

The clothes underneath Feiora’s chain mail and leather armor were, of course, black.

Leah had never seen an Avernus Traveler prepared so practically for combat. It wasn’t a full suit of armor; any foot soldier in the Overlord’s service would have been better equipped. But the fact that she had
anything
on to defend her from a knife or a random sword blow suggested that she didn’t suffer from the same affliction that got most Travelers killed: arrogant reliance on their powers.

I’m not wearing any armor,
Leah thought.
I’m sure I’ll be fine. My powers have protected me for a long time, why should they stop now?

Leah paused, considering that thought for a moment. Silently, she resolved to bring some armor on the next mission.

Grandmaster Naraka was looking much more herself now, after a change of clothes and a series of baths. She wore the traditional dark red robes of Naraka, with sleeves that left her scarred wrist bare, and a pair of specially ordered scarlet spectacles perched on her nose. Leah had ordered the woman’s arms bound together with a double knot of rope. That should allow her enough freedom that she wouldn’t hinder the group as they marched through Naraka, but would still keep her from performing any of the complex hand gestures that summoning her Territory required.

Just in case that wasn’t enough, she had recruited five loyal Travelers with the sole purpose of keeping an eye on the Grandmaster through the whole mission. There was a team of three Tartarus Travelers—all women, which was a rarity; usually Tartarus Travelers mixed genders in their teams—and two Naraka Travelers. Those two had paled when she had explained that they were supposed to guard
the
Grandmaster Naraka. They hadn’t taken their eyes from the old woman since they first entered the tent, and their branded hands twitched every time she so much as yawned.

In Leah’s mind, the two of them had already earned a reward.

The team of Tartarus Travelers was there as a contingency plan, in case it came to a combat situation. It was intended to be a routine mission, she had explained, but if things went wrong she would be more comfortable with three Tartarus Travelers to back her up.
 

And in the absence of any other orders, the three of them were to take Grandmaster Naraka’s remaining hand off if she so much as snapped her fingers. Leah’s father had never believed that you could have too many security measures in place, and she intended to take that lesson to heart.

Of course, she still needed the pair of Valinhall Travelers. Their preparations would go for nothing if the daylight burned away while Indirial and Simon wasted their time in the House. Where
were
they?

So she stood in awkward silence with an old lady, her five prison guards, and an impatient Overlord who insisted on asking every five minutes why they even needed Indirial for routine intelligence gathering, why they couldn’t go without him. And better yet, she implied, if they could go without Leah.

She would have a headache before they made it into Naraka, she could feel it.

Leah had exchanged her red dress for something she would have been more likely to wear as a villager in Myria: a brown skirt and off-white blouse. The fabric likely cost less than a good meal in Cana, and the outfit made her look like a milkmaid, but she had forgotten how comfortable it was.

It wasn’t a disguise, though. The weapons she carried with her made certain of that. She held the Lightning Spear in her right hand like a walking staff, and wore her crown on her head. Not for the symbol of status, but so that she could call on its power without having to summon it in a foreign Territory, which would take far too long.

If Indirial takes too much longer, I
will
leave without him. We’ve got a schedule to keep.

As if that thought had summoned the Overlord from Valinhall, a sword blade appeared in midair. It began to slice down slowly, tearing open a Gate in the exact same place that Indirial had opened one in the first place.

Simon and Indirial stepped through the Gate, both of them in their black cloaks. Indirial released his blade, letting it vanish, and Leah actually
saw
it shimmer and appear on a wooden rack in Valinhall’s entry room.

The Gate zipped back up in reverse, bottom to top, and vanished as if it had never been.

“Welcome back,” Leah said, instead of ‘What kept you?’

Simon nodded to her. “Your crystal’s broken.”

It would take her six weeks of work to carve another one of those. “How exactly did that happen, Simon?”

Simon raised his eyebrows. “I can honestly say that I didn’t do it.” As usual, she could read nothing else of his expression.

There was that headache again.

Overlord Feiora made a disgusted sound. “What were you doing in there, Indirial? We could have left without you an hour ago.”

It was an exaggeration, but Leah agreed with the sentiment.

Indirial did not smile, or smirk, or sigh, or make a joke. He turned and looked Feiora in the eye. “I met someone I didn’t expect,” he said, in a flat voice.

Something terrible had happened, she could see it in him. He hadn’t reacted that badly when he’d found her father’s corpse.

She looked at Simon in a silent question. He shook his head. What did that mean? Did that mean she shouldn’t ask questions about it, or that it was too terrible to discuss? Or even that nothing significant had happened, and Indirial was just in a bad mood?

“I’ll expect a full report from you later, Indirial,” Leah said, keeping her tone businesslike. “But now we have a schedule to keep.”
 

The Overlord remained expressionless, but he snapped an order at the Naraka Travelers. “Traveler Mikael, we need a Naraka Gate. Lead the way.”

One of the Travelers, a young man, saluted and marched out of the tent, gently steering Grandmaster Naraka in front of him. His partner followed, as did the three Tartarus Travelers. Overlord Feiora strode out afterwards, shooting a glance back at Leah, but she was rushed out by Overlord Indirial. His cloak streamed behind him like a dark flag, and for once it seemed to suit him.

Simon started to follow, and Leah walked along with him.

“What happened in there?” she whispered. “I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen him like that.”

Simon opened his mouth as though he meant to explain, but after a moment he closed it. “I’m not sure I should tell you,” he said at last.

Leah arched an eyebrow at him, and he sighed.

“Valin’s back,” he said, and a shiver of alarm ran through her. Valin, the deadly Incarnation that had been bent on killing her and her entire family? The man that they had only managed to defeat when Simon and Indirial had both risked their lives, and she had managed to catch him in a Ragnarus binding? That Valin?

“Turns out he wasn’t dead,” Simon said. “Or maybe he was dead, and the Eldest brought him back. I don’t know. But he’s in the House now.”

Given the fact that Simon wasn’t inside Valinhall right now, fighting the Incarnation, that meant that they had either already defeated Valin, or else determined that he wasn’t a threat. Indirial looked far too upset to have won a recent victory, which meant that Valin must be safely contained.

And
that
opened up a whole new world of possibilities.

“Is he…himself?” Leah asked.

Simon shrugged. “I don’t know. By the time I met him, he had spent twenty-five years as an Incarnation. But Indirial and Kai are treating him like he’s the same guy, and he hasn’t snapped and tried to kill us all. Not yet, anyway.”

As they walked, Leah turned her eyes to the east. A dome of red light covered the city of Cana, her home and birthplace. It shone like a smoldering crimson sun rising from the horizon.

As always, she wondered about the Ragnarus Incarnation. Who was it? Why were they keeping the city imprisoned?

Was it the ancient Incarnation, as had been sealed beneath the Hanging Tree for over three centuries? Could it be her brother, Talos? Or was it her father?

Before, she had seen only two ways to deal with Incarnations: seal them, if possible, and earn a grace period during which no one else could successfully Incarnate. If that wasn’t possible, they could be killed, usually with great difficulty, though it would open up space for a new Incarnation.

If Incarnations could be killed and
then
returned to their Territory, even as the shadows of the people they once were, might that be a third option?

Maybe they could not only stop the Incarnations, but save them.

The thought haunted her all the way to the nearest Naraka waypoint, until they stepped through into the Caverns of Flame.

At that point, she forced herself to stop considering the question over and over. The other members of the team didn’t need her distracted, they needed her focused and alert.

She would work on the problem when she got back.

***

Simon had only Traveled through Naraka a handful of times, but he always left with burning eyes and a piercing cough. As he stumbled out of the orange Gate, he wiped the back of his hand across his eyes, trying to clear them. There was no way to escape the smoke in that Territory; it stung, it stunk, and now the acrid stench gripped his clothes in a tight fist.

Never let me go back there,
Simon sent to his doll.

Oh, get yourself together,
Rebekkah said.
Whining never helped anything.

Simon let out one more deep, wracking cough.
I’m serious. We can walk if we have to, I can’t handle Naraka.