City of Light (The Traveler's Gate Trilogy) (36 page)

She would have to screen the Incarnation's words appropriately.

“We have that knowledge today,” Leah said. “That's why we sealed you here. If you seal an Incarnation back into its Territory, they fade away, and we earn a period of time during which no other Travelers can take its place.”

The Incarnation of Avernus held out both hands, palms-up, and moved them up and down as though imitating weights on a scale. She had talons instead of fingernails.

“Hmmm...” she said. “True, but incomplete. An Incarnation
is
part of its Territory, no matter where she is. That's why, when she walks around outside, the world around her shapes itself to resemble her Territory. The Unnamed World seeks to correct a mistake.”

“What mistake?”

“The Incarnations are not meant to exist in the Unnamed World,” Avernus said firmly. “They never were. Incarnation only happens to Travelers who upset the balance, and only because they draw too much of their Territory's power into themselves. Through Incarnation, they become part of their Territory, which means they are supposed to stay
inside
that Territory. Do you understand?”

Leah thought she did: Travelers in the outside world should rarely be able to Incarnate, except under certain specific conditions. However, she saw at least one flaw in the argument. “If that's true, then why are there so many Incarnations running around in the Unnamed World?”

The Incarnation shook her head. “I wondered that for years. What do you know about the history of the Incarnations that Queen Cynara sealed?”

“Led by the Elysian Incarnation, they attacked the young nation of Damasca,” Leah said. “They were encouraged to gather as much support from their Territories as they could, so that the Damascan Travelers wouldn't be able to oppose them...”

Leah trailed off as if she had finished, but in reality she had been struck by a sudden thought. She'd always imagined the ancient Incarnations as monsters from long ago, like mythological monsters that mothers used to frighten their children into behaving. Even after she found out what the sacrifice was for, and that the Incarnations were in fact sealed beneath most Damascan cities, she'd still thought of them as impossibly distant.

Now, it was striking her for the first time that she was sitting directly across from an ancient Incarnation. This woman had actually served under the first Incarnation of Elysia, marching against Queen Cynara the First and, later, was personally sealed by Cynara the Second.

Avernus smiled a little, as though she knew what Leah was thinking. Maybe she did. “I was a young Strigaia, a simple fortune-teller. A group of people approached me, saying they worked for the Elysians. They claimed they could teach me a way to see farther, to sense more, to grow closer to Avernus than I'd ever dreamed. I didn't trust them at first, but they seemed respected by the older Travelers, and some of my teachers even encouraged me to study with them. So I did.”

She took a sip of tea, and then sighed regretfully. “It took me only a few months to Incarnate. When it first happens, you're almost overwhelmed by your new instincts. I lashed out mentally, and I'm afraid I crushed the minds of quite a few bystanders whose only crime was to be standing near me. But, above all, I struggled to get back to my Territory. Those teachers, the supposed Elysians, stopped me. They held me back.

“When my mind was my own again, they explained to me that, if I returned to my Territory, I would be trapped. I didn't want to go after hearing that, so they found it easy to persuade me to join with Elysia. I want what Avernus wants: true community, on an honest and open level, nothing hidden. Complete loyalty and dedication...They said I could achieve that among all the Avernus Travelers, and even including some Travelers of other Territories. We would be one, and I would get a chance to understand people I had never met.”

The Incarnation's face crumpled up, either in disgust or in suppressed tears, Leah wasn't sure. She tilted her head back and drained her teacup in one shot.

Silently, Leah pulled apart the Incarnation's story. It fit the facts, but it would be easy for her to craft a lie that Leah couldn't possibly see through. With events that happened so long ago, what objections could she have?

Above anything else, she was sure that the Avernus Incarnation wasn't giving her this information out of the goodness of her avian heart. She was building up to something, and Leah had to find out what it was.

“I suspect the other eight had similar stories,” Avernus continued. “Well, perhaps not Elysia, but certainly the other seven. What about the modern Incarnations? Valinhall, Ragnarus, that second Endross Traveler?”

“Ragnarus is an ancient Incarnation,” Leah said, confused. “It was sealed before you were. Isn't that right?”

Avernus rubbed her forehead with a taloned hand. “I get ahead of myself, I'm sorry. Valinhall and the second Endross, then.”

“No. No, we're not going to switch topics because you think the timing isn't appropriate. Tell me what you were going to say about the Ragnarus Incarnation. Is it my brother? My father?”

Leah held her breath, fearing and hoping. If it was her father, that meant he was alive—in a manner of speaking—and that she could deal with him. If Talos had somehow survived and Incarnated...well, at least killing him would be easier than dealing with King Zakareth the Sixth.

The Avernus Incarnation sighed. “Your father.”

She nodded, too sick to say anything. It was one thing to suspect, but quite another to have her fears confirmed at once.

“I'm sorry, Leah. I truly am. But please, concentrate on the questions I asked you. Why did the Valinhall Incarnation and the second Endross give in? What happened to them?”

Leah answered automatically, her mind still focused on her father as an Incarnation. “Valinhall was the one who created the Territory. His name was Valin. If I recall correctly, he Incarnated because he had some sort of personal vendetta against my grandfather. Or perhaps because he opposed the system of sealing the Incarnations under the Hanging Trees, I'm not completely sure.”

Avernus was chewing on her bottom lip, a surprisingly human gesture from a woman with two sets of wings. “The Founder of Valinhall became an Incarnation? I thought the two were mutually exclusive...would it make him more powerful, I wonder, or simply unique?” Abruptly she shook herself, and all the feathers on her body ruffled at once, then flattened. “I apologize. But notice that, either way, he was driven to Incarnation in order to oppose the reigning trend of keeping us sealed. Indirectly, he Incarnated because we did. And the other Endross?”

“He was a follower of the ancient Endross Incarnation. When we killed the first one, he saw his chance to become, as his own followers believed, a demigod. There were almost a dozen of them trying anything they could to transform, and he was the first to succeed.”

The Incarnation pointed at Leah with a taloned finger. “That's it. You see? He intentionally chose to do it in order to imitate an Incarnation he'd already seen. There is a pattern at work here, not simply unfortunate chance.”

Step by step, Leah worked it through in her mind. If the Avernus Incarnation was telling the truth—and for the sake of argument, she had to assume that was the case—then at least eight of the original nine Incarnations had been
lured
to transform outside of a Territory.

The Avernus Incarnation leaned in, her hawk’s eyes sharp on Leah. Her wings had stretched out now, so that the white and the emerald feathers were actually pressing against the canvas of the tent. “You see it,” she stated, with absolute certainty. She folded her wings back in and crossed her legs, wearing a smug smile. Idly, Leah noted that her feet were complete bird talons.

“Why would anyone do this?” Leah asked. “Who benefits from creating wild, murderous Incarnations instead of allowing them to serve their Territory?”

 
Avernus raised her teacup to her lips, realized that it was empty, and tossed it behind her. It landed on the ground with a tinkle of broken porcelain. “No one, as far as I know. But that’s not what happened, is it?”

Behind her, a pair of hands reached in underneath the canvas. They scooped the shattered teacup into a dustpan and then quickly retreated.

Leah spoke her thoughts aloud. “The Incarnations were born here, instead of in their Territories. There was a war, and they were sealed.”

“So for three hundred years…”

“…we haven’t had to deal with any Incarnations,” Leah finished. The implications were unsettling.

“When the Incarnations exist in our own Territories, we advance our own goals, even at the expense of foreign Travelers,” Avernus said. “Many Incarnations would destroy outposts, waylay or deceive merchant caravans, or seduce Travelers into their service. So who benefits from nine Territories free of any Incarnations?”

Leah thought of the single, dominating factor that had allowed Damasca to prosper and flourish under her family for the last three-and-a-half centuries. They didn’t need an intricate system of roads or communication, because messages and goods passed through Territories. They never had to fear drought or plague, because they could always get their crops from Avernus or Asphodel. Their borders were secure from all but Enosh, because the ways in and out of each Territory were secured by semi-permanent outposts. Until recently, the Overlords had been kept in line because only the royal family could deal with the Hanging Trees…and the creatures sealed beneath their roots.

If anyone turned a profit from Territories that were easier to control, it was Damasca.

At last, Leah answered the question.

“I do,” she said.

C
HAPTER
N
INETEEN
:

C
REATING
I
NCARNATIONS

Indirial hadn’t eaten in two days. He hadn’t slept. Neither he, nor his wife, nor his daughter had been given a drop of water. None of his bones had been broken, and he wasn’t bleeding badly enough to endanger his life. The Incarnations were very careful to preserve him as they kicked him, taunted him, sent phantom noises into his mind, lured his eyes with illusions, tore his skin and bruised his flesh…

And through it all, King Zakareth sat on his throne and watched. Indirial didn’t think the man had moved in forty-eight hours. He sat on the ruby throne of Damasca, leaning on his elbow. Watching.

“Don’t be a coward, Indirial,” the King said. “Face the challenge and overcome it. Fight for freedom. Earn it.”

Every few hours he would make similar announcements, appealing to the Valinhall philosophy of fighting for what you wanted.

He didn’t realize that Indirial was already fighting. Not for his own desires, but to keep his enemy’s plan from succeeding. He was fighting not to call on his powers.

He’d been forced to draw on Valinhall to stay conscious, to see through illusions, to burn poison from his veins, to deflect a spear launched at his daughter. Now, as the Ornheim Incarnation lifted him in one rocky fist, preparing to drop him one more time to the floor below, he could only feel one thing: the black chains wrapping around his throat.

They were too close. His time was almost up. It was a miracle that he’d lasted this long without going over the edge.

Ornheim dropped him, and he fell.

When he hit the tiles, he heard the damage to his body more than he felt it. It sounded like a solid, meaty
crunch.
Maybe he had finally reached the point where he was too numb to feel anything else. If so, he thanked the Maker for it. That meant death was close; he could die with a clean conscience.

His neck was twisted around against the tiles. Not enough to snap his spine, no matter how much he wished that were the case, but enough to force him to stare at Nerissa and Elaina in their cages. Nerissa had stopped whispering words of encouragement yesterday, when she had apparently lost her voice. She sat huddled in her cage now, her ice-white eyes strangely blank and locked on him. Even Elaina had stopped fighting, though both her fists were scraped and raw from where she’d hammered on the bars of her dangling cage. Her eyes were closed, but she jerked and whimpered at every sound.

They wouldn’t survive him long. That was what the King had promised, and Indirial didn’t doubt that he meant it. Once Indirial was dead, Zakareth had no reason to keep Nerissa and Elaina alive or around. He would either execute them and toss their bodies out as refuse, or leave them here until they died. Indirial prayed for the former.

King Zakareth held up one hand, and the Ornheim Incarnation froze. It looked like one of the Territory’s golems, but intricately carved with the detailed features of a tough older man, his skin lined with years. The Incarnation was made out of a fine white stone, with lines of every color running through him. In other circumstances, Indirial would have called this creature beautiful.

“Get back to work,” Zakareth ordered. The Incarnation rumbled deep inside its stone chest, glaring at the King with what Indirial recognized as restrained hatred. Its marble fists slowly closed, with a sound like grinding gravel.

He almost expected Ornheim’s eyes to be gemstones—that was the tradition in Ornheim golems. Instead, they were far more bizarre for looking disturbingly human, as though someone had imprisoned a man’s eyes in a statue. The effect was doubly disconcerting when they shone with hot rage.

But the King rapped his staff down on the floor, and Ornheim simply bowed at the waist and walked out, its footsteps crashing on the tiles.

Indirial let himself relax against the floor. Maybe he would be able to snatch a few minutes of sleep, or at least fade into unconsciousness to forget the damage to his body. If he was lucky, the King would lose his patience and execute him while he slept.

Zakareth gestured again, and a stream of silver mist flowed in the doors.

Indirial struggled weakly, thrashing and trying to persuade his body to move. He almost pushed himself up, but his arms were too weak.

Is it worth calling steel?