City of Light (The Traveler's Gate Trilogy) (5 page)

As he called the power of the key, the Valinhall armory opened its doors.

Simon swung Azura one-handed at the Incarnation's side. As expected, the length of dark ice whirled in the air, spinning itself around to intercept the Dragon's Fang. His blade's edge bit into the frozen surface.

In the same instant, Simon brought his left hand forward, a spear in his fist. He had initially tried to use a second sword in his left hand, but the Dragon's Fang was so long that it made wielding any other weapon difficult. A spear was one of the few weapons that Simon could use at the same distance as Azura.

The spearhead sliced through the Incarnation's pale-furred chest, driving into her ribs. The blade scraped on bone, and dark blue blood oozed down the front of her stomach.

Simon pulled his spear out and hopped back, landing on his good leg. He was forced to use Azura like a club, knocking enraged Helgard creatures away as they tried desperately to reach the one who had wounded their Incarnation. He hurled the spear as an albino wolf-man tried to charge him. The weapon pierced the creature's belly and sent it tumbling to the ground.

He turned, clutching Azura in both hands, to keep the Incarnation in view.

The wound would have been fatal in a human: there was a ragged hole torn in her chest, its edges dark and weeping. But Helgard didn't act injured. She hardly seemed to notice that he had stabbed her. She simply stood staring at him, puzzled.

When she spoke, there was blue blood in her mouth, staining her teeth, but her words were perfectly clear. “Who are you, Simon, son of Kalman? What do you feel? Why do you fight? Where do you come from? Your leg must pain you. It should be agonizing. What keeps you standing on it? Tell me
everything
.”

Leah hadn't mentioned this when she briefed him on the nature of Helgard. She had emphasized the ice and wind and the vicious creatures native to the Territory, but she hadn't talked about how curious the Incarnation would be.

“Why do you care?” Simon asked, because he was supposed to stall for time. He had hoped that he would be able to stall by inflicting a crippling injury on the Incarnation, but that seemed out of the question. Now he was back to talking.

The black bar of ice hung over the Incarnation's head like a doorframe.

Helgard's icy eyes flashed with an internal blue-green light. “I want to know who you are. When I understand you, I will save that information. I will savor it. Even when you are long dead, Helgard will remember, and to me, you will live on.”

“Why don't we sit down and talk about it?” Simon suggested.

The Incarnation remained motionless, but the black bar of ice spun over her head like a staff in invisible hands. “I know you have allies here, and you clearly want to wait for them. I do not blame you, but that would be an unforgiveable delay. Step into my Territory, and we can talk for years. After your purpose has been served.”

“What purpose?” Simon asked, keeping a wary eye on the Helgard creatures surrounding him.

Below you!
Gloria called desperately, and Simon jumped.

Not high enough. Normally he would have been able to clear ten feet from a flat jump, with Benson's steel flowing through him, but he made the mistake of pushing off from the ground on his injured leg. He made it three feet into the air before a column of solid ice reached up from the snow beneath his feet and snagged him around the ankles.

Simon struck at the ice with Azura, but more flowed up, steadily covering his hips, his ribs. The cold seeped into him, sharp and biting, leaving a complete absence of feeling behind.

“You were fighting my partners before,” the Helgard Incarnation said, gesturing to the pack of white, furry creatures around her. “You have not faced me yet.”

Simon raised one arm to try and throw Azura at her, as a last-ditch effort, but the ice grew to cover his right arm.

It did not, however, cover his left. He was able to slip that hand into his cloak, searching through the internal pocket. His fingers, trembling from the cold, brushed past Gloria's soft hair until they finally found something broad, smooth, and flat.

The object felt like a shallow, metal bowl, almost as cold as the ice now surrounding him. With an unsteady hand, he managed to pull it out.

It was a mask.

The left half of the mask was made of rough, black iron, and the right half of mirror-bright Tartarus steel. The two halves were joined in the middle by a jagged line where the two pieces had been welded together by Caius and Olissa Agnos. The eye slits were simple lines that didn't seem wide enough to offer a full range of vision, and there was no hole for the mouth. Nor were there any straps or clasps to hold the mask onto the wearer's head, though Simon knew from experience that the mask would bind itself to him even without any visible means of support.

He fumbled with cold, clumsy hands at the mask, trying to press it onto his face. Even confronted with imminent capture by an Incarnation, Simon couldn't ignore his fear. The last time he had used this mask, he had almost Incarnated himself. Even after using it successfully, once he had removed it, he had collapsed. It had taken him a full day to be able to walk again, and over a week until he could call any powers from Valinhall safely.

He had promised himself that he wouldn't use this mask unless he absolutely had to. But surely this counted as an emergency, didn't it?

Gloria gasped in Simon's head.
Simon! Put that back!

You want me to let the Incarnation take me?
Simon snapped. Why wouldn't his fingers work? His left elbow was frozen, and he strained his neck trying to push his face against the back of the mask.

It would be better if you died,
Gloria said quietly.

Better for who?
Simon wondered, but he stopped grasping at the mask. In theory, he would choose death over Incarnation. At least if he died, he wouldn't hurt anyone else.

But that was much harder to remember when it looked like he would soon freeze to death. Or, if Helgard lived up to her promise, he would die as a captive to a mad Incarnation. He would rather end his life here, in battle.

The Helgard Incarnation ran a hand over one of her horns, watching him. A patch of cloudy ice had formed over her wound, and Simon could see hints of her blood within. “Don't worry so much,” she said softly. “I'll take care of everything.”

A black form streaked over the snow behind her, like a flash of dark lightning, and Simon's icy prison shattered.

It's about time,
Gloria complained.
You have
no
idea
the trouble I went through trying to keep him from doing something crazy.

“Sorry,” Indirial said out loud. He pushed back his hood and flashed Simon a bright grin. “Looks like I made it in time.”

Simon was barely able to move through the cold. His body seemed to do nothing but shiver, no matter what he wanted. Still, he managed to give Indirial a weak smile.

The Helgard Incarnation didn't look shocked; she raised white eyebrows curiously. “I didn't feel you. Why is that?”

Indirial turned his smile on her, raising his hood. He let out one breath that shimmered with the colors of the moon.

Nye essence.

He seemed to vanish, then he was standing behind the Incarnation, raising his sword—Vasha, a Dragon's Fang almost as long as Azura, but chipped and cracked along the entire blade, as though he had slammed the sword repeatedly against the side of a mountain. He brought it down against the side of her blue-skinned neck.

The blade met black ice. Helgard glanced from side to side in evident confusion before spinning around to look Indirial in the eye. “Remarkable,” she breathed. “I didn't feel you there at all.”

“Amazing, isn’t it? And I look great in black, too.”

Helgard cocked her head, confused, but Indirial didn’t explain. He just reversed Vasha so that the blade pointed behind his back. The Overlord thrust backwards, impaling the serpentine dog that had tried to rush him while he was distracted. The creature swallowed cracked steel and choked on its own blue blood.

Simon pulled his own hood up, still shivering from the cold, and called Nye essence again. He was running out, but he had enough to help him escape.

The Incarnation turned to Simon, and her icy eyes widened. “Where did he go?”

This was a trick Simon had learned from Indirial, and it had certainly come in handy through a whole autumn and winter hunting Incarnations. While you wore a Nye cloak and called their essence, you were all but invisible to all supernatural detection. Leah couldn't stand it—she couldn't monitor his and Indirial's status while they were fighting in their cloaks, because she could only catch glimpses of them through her Lirial lens.

The power had several drawbacks. Travelers could see them with their eyes, and the cloaks only activated when the hood was up. Simon preferred to fight without wearing the hood, because it had a tendency to flop down and cover his eyes. He had learned to deal with it for the sake of partial invisibility, but it still irritated him. How were you supposed to fight with a black cloth falling down and cutting off your vision every thirty seconds?

When the Nye essence wore out, he would be perfectly visible again, but until then Simon had a few moments. One of the things they had learned, that even Indirial hadn't known, was that the cloaks gave Incarnations no end of trouble. The Incarnation would be almost blind to their movements. As long as the essence lasted.

Simon rolled out of the way and watched Indirial fight the Helgard Incarnation while he waited for the feeling to come back into his limbs.

Vasha struck at Helgard's side, then when that was blocked by her floating black ice, Indirial used the opportunity to step in closer, sweeping a leg underneath the Incarnation's. A blast of snowy wind literally picked Indirial up and tossed him backwards, but he twisted in midair and caught himself against the canyon wall with his feet, leaping back down at Helgard, his Dragon's Fang clutched in both hands.

The silver blade flashed again, and a chip of ice flew into the air.

 
You poor thing
, Gloria murmured sympathetically.
You don't need to worry. Indirial will take care of her, so you lie back and rest.

That was all Simon needed to climb back to his feet. There was no way he would lie back and let Indirial do all the work.
 

His left leg still felt like it was being stabbed, his skin stung all over from contact with the ice, and he couldn't seem to stop shivering. More importantly, his Nye essence was fading: he could only see Indirial's movements as a blur, as he tried to slip a thrust or slash past the Incarnation's whirling frozen bar.

But he had a few seconds left, and he intended to use them.

Indirial landed in a crouch, his blade falling down at the Incarnation's head. It sunk into the ice and stuck there for an instant.

Simon had managed to make it a few feet closer to Helgard, but for once he was glad of Azura's awkward length. He summoned it into his hand, lunging on his good leg and stabbing straight into the Incarnation's unguarded back.

The black bar swung behind her, knocking Azura away, but not before he managed to score a blue slice across Helgard's skin.

The snow erupted underneath him, tossing him backwards, but he had enough Nye grace left to land on his feet and catch a glimpse of Indirial throwing a summoned hatchet and hitting Helgard in the shoulder.

Three whirling razors, like snowflakes the size of wagon wheels, buzzed out of nowhere and converged on Indirial. He slipped underneath them, and they flew past one another, each skirting the other by mere inches.

Helgard gestured, and snow fell by the ton toward Indirial. At the same time, another blue-skinned bear roared and sprung at Simon, and it was all he could do to hold it off with his steel-enhanced strength. Azura fell to the snow.

Then a second blue bear crashed into the first. Both of them roared, slashing one another with their claws and rolling around in the snow. The air seemed to grow even colder as they scratched and cut and bit with animal ferocity.

Simon looked up to see Leah, in a crimson coat and the long red dress she always wore when she was acting as Queen of Damasca, directing half a dozen Travelers in the white-and-blue coats of Helgard. They twisted their fingers into nimble shapes, muttering inaudibly as they opposed the will of their Territory's Incarnation.

Leah looked down at Simon, her dark hair caught up in a red, fur-lined hood. Her blue eyes were sharp. She mouthed something to him, and Gloria translated.

She says, 'Get on with it,'
the doll related. She chuckled.
Oh, she is cheeky. What a wonderful young lady.

Simon scanned the white landscape, looking for Indirial. It had looked like he was on the verge of getting buried by a summoned avalanche, but if anyone could have escaped, it was the Overlord of Cana.

And there he was, his hood up, bursting out of the snow with Vasha flashing against the Incarnation's bar of dark ice.

The Helgard Incarnation didn't seem like she was inclined to pay attention, though. A shadow crossed her face as she saw Leah. “Ragnarus,” she said, her voice grating audibly. The wind howled, and the snow seemed to shift and hiss around Simon in tune with the Incarnation's anger. “This is not the opportunity I had hoped.” She turned back to Simon. “We will speak again, Simon, son of Kalman.”

Then something appeared in her hand. It looked like a sheet of paper, as though someone had torn a single page out of a book and written a single character on it in bright red ink. She pressed the paper against the air, where it stuck as if it had been glued to a wall. The Helgard Incarnation tore open a Gate in a flash of swirling red light.

Helgard didn’t look like Simon had imagined. He would have expected more ice.

The Gate opened onto a rough-hewn cavern dominated by silver doors, carved with an ornately detailed portrait of a one-eyed, bearded old man. On the rock walls around the doors, a pair of torches burned an unnatural crimson.