House of Blades (The Traveler's Gate Trilogy) (29 page)

She would have to kill him, of course, if he did attack. But she hoped she wouldn’t have to.

Finally Malachi relaxed and closed his right fist, the one with the Naraka brand. Then he stepped back. Something seemed to drain from him and he was only Malachi again, weary and vain and a tad lazy.

“I apologize, Highness,” he said. “I was overwrought.”

Leah lowered her hand, letting Lirial’s power flood out of her bracelet. “You are forgiven.”

“But please, if you will allow me to ask, why? Just...why? What is your father thinking?”

Leah’s instinct was to put the Overlord off again, tell him something vague and unsatisfying. That was how she had trained herself to deal with these matters. But there was a look in Malachi’s eyes that said he genuinely wondered, truly cared, and that honesty demanded the same from her.

Unfortunately, she still couldn’t give him what he wanted.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. Malachi searched her eyes before he nodded, once.

And then one of the guards screamed.

A thorny red vine had snaked up the side of the balcony and wrapped around his wrist. The vine stretched as long as Leah’s leg but no thicker than a finger, and it looked like the brawny guard should be able to snap it with main strength, but he kept screaming, clutching to the railing with his other hand as though it took everything he had to keep from being pulled over the edge.

Suddenly the entire Tree was awake, every root and branch and leaf shaking at once. The whole was a deafening sound like a hurricane’s roar, and it scared Leah far more than she would have ever admitted. She pulled light into her bracelet again, calling out for Lirial, but she wasn’t sure where to strike.

Boez—or his body, since Leah still wasn’t sure whether or not the man was alive—was seized around the middle by a huge branch and pulled back into the leaves, until he vanished into the thicket. The action reminded Leah eerily of prey being pulled into the mouth of some giant beast.

More thorned vines crawled up the balcony, slithering toward the rest of them. The plants were slow enough that she would never be caught as long as she was alert, but paired with the guard’s screams, and with what had happened to Boez…

Leah stepped back hurriedly enough, preparing to summon something sharp and deadly from Lirial the instant these plants got close enough to touch. No sense in taking chances.

Meanwhile, Malachi had pulled the guard’s sword, and had it raised. Leah wondered if he would even be able to chop this Ragnarus plant with ordinary steel—and wondered at the same time what might happen to the seal if he did—but he didn’t bring the sword down on the branch.

In one smooth motion, Malachi chopped off the guard’s hand at the wrist.

The guard’s scream was almost lost in the ensuing roar from the Tree, which snapped the severed hand back into itself like a frog taking a fly.

They lost no time leaving the room and sealing it tight. The second Malachi cleared the rooms, he shouted new assignments for his troops: fourteen soldiers at the entrance with orders to maintain a vigilant twenty-four hour watch.

“And a healer!” Malachi called to his servants, who had rushed down the halls to find some soldiers. He and the uninjured guard were trying to bind the fallen man’s severed wrist with a torn strip of shirt. As Leah watched, blood splattered up and splashed on Malachi’s face. He seemed not to notice.

So Malachi tended to his servants personally, and with no concern for his appearance. That was a level of compassion Leah had never expected from the man.
 

Still, as she rested in her rooms at the top of one of Malachi’s towers, Leah could barely shut her eyes without visions of the bloody Tree intruding. The seal on the Incarnations kept them safe, and the blood of the sacrifices maintained the seal. But that Tree of Ragnarus had been...gruesome. Barbaric.

Leah had never questioned the necessity of the sacrifices before, but her Lirial training taught her to look at problems from every angle. This time, she did not like what she saw.

What power was this that kept them safe? Could it be trusted? And if this was what it took to get the Incarnations sealed, how much worse would it be if they ever escaped?

It was a long time before she fell asleep.

C
HAPTER
F
IFTEEN
:

P
LAYING
W
ITH
D
OLLS

Simon called Nye’s breath into his lungs, a rush of cool power that hummed in counterpoint to the steel flowing through him. He leaned back, letting Ansher’s arrow fly past his face. He felt the wind as it passed him, and the Nye essence slowed the scene so much that he could see the individual ripples in the arrow’s brown-and-white fletching as it brushed by his nose. He thought he could reach out and pluck it from the air, but he just watched as it flew by and buried itself in the wood of the wagon behind him.

Erastes thrust his sword forward in a move so smooth it would have done Kai proud. Simon twisted to one side, pulling the doll from his belt in the same motion. Carefully he placed her on the bed of the wagon, right next to Ansher’s arrow. He didn’t want her digging into his back while he fought, but neither would he risk her getting hurt.
Broken. He had meant broken, of course, not hurt.

Out of sheer reaction he turned, evading a return slash from Erastes that turned into a three-part combination pushing him away from the wagon. Heat on his back told him the older man was trying to maneuver him into the bonfire.

He could have dodged Erastes’ sword all night—or at least until the Nye essence ran out—but two soldiers joined him, moving to flank Simon on his right and left. On top of which, Ansher sent another arrow in his direction. Simon almost impaled himself on Erastes’ sword trying to dodge the missile.

Simon thrust his hand out and summoned Azura.

It appeared almost instantly this time, a seven-foot length of steel shining along its slightly curving surface. One of the soldiers stumbled back at its appearance, inches from a fatal stabbing, and the other took the opportunity to swing a sword down at Simon’s head. Simon swept Azura around in an arc so fast it looked like a solid sheet of shimmering steel. It sliced neatly through the soldier’s sword, sending the weapon clattering to the ground in two red-hot pieces.

He almost ran the man through out of sheer reaction, but something in him stopped. He was still strangely reluctant to kill these men. This was too different from training in the House, where everything was inhuman or else indestructible. The thought of actually ending a life, now that he was face-to-face with it, seemed almost incomprehensible.

Then Erastes was thrusting his sword at Simon’s ribs. He tried to get Azura in between them, but his blade was far too long, and he was forced to dodge and leap back to put some distance in between them. He brought Azura down, trying to force the captain back, but the man raised his sword to intercept. Simon waited for the Dragon’s Fang to cleave through this sword as it had done to others, but Erastes’ blade met his with a clang like two bells clashing.

And both swords stopped. The impact ran up the right side of Simon’s entire body, threatening to make him drop his sword. If not for his daily training with Chaka, he might have actually done so, which would have been both embarrassing and fatal.
 

Only now, with his blade still locked against Erastes’, did he notice something odd in the other man’s weapon.
 

It shone with a smooth mirror-brightness that no natural steel could match. Most swords had dings, dents, places where use in combat had scraped them up. But the steel of Erastes’ sword was flawless. Like Azura.

Simon stopped putting pressure on the older man and pulled his blade back. If he had pushed harder, he would have overpowered Erastes and split him down the middle, supernatural blade or no. But what was that sword? Was Erastes a Traveler as well? If so, why didn’t he use any other powers?

A blaze of pain burst in his left shoulder, and Simon screamed, twisting to avoid whatever was hurting him. Another soldier had snuck up behind him, and this one had a spear. He had scored a hit along Simon’s shoulder, probably aiming to skewer him through the heart.

Simon slashed Azura one-handed through the spear, slicing it neatly, but more soldiers rushed in to fill the gap, each carrying a long cavalry spear. Other foot soldiers poured in, threatening to drown him in sheer numbers.

Images filled his mind, of men reduced to meat, of blood flowing into the sand. He didn’t want that. But he wanted to die even less.

Overwhelming numbers pushed him onto the defensive, forcing him to keep up a constant circle of defense just to avoid being crushed.
 

Okay,
he thought.
Maybe I need some help
.

A smug female voice, distant as a whisper, answered.
All you had to do was ask
.

Despite his danger, Simon had to stare between the line of soldiers at the doll he had left sitting on the distant wagon.
You
can
talk. Why didn’t you say anything before?

Back, to the left
.

What?

A spearpoint sliced his skin just over his left kidney, and he barely managed to sidestep before it gored him. As it was, the spear still drew a line of fire across his left side.

Told you
, the voice continued.
Turn right
.

Simon followed the instructions this time and spun Azura to the right, slicing through another sword. And the top half of one soldier’s head. He collapsed to the ground in a limp spray, blood spurting from his exposed brain.

No!
Simon cried silently.
I’m trying
not
to kill them.

The doll sounded baffled.
Why?

I...I don’t know
.

A whispered sigh. Then,
Jump back. Over the fire.

Simon pushed against the ground into a ten-foot-high jump that easily cleared the bonfire. A trio of arrows swept through the space where his chest had been a moment before.

He landed in a half-crouch on the hard-packed dirt, waving Azura in front of him to keep his enemies back.
 

How are you doing this?
he asked the doll.

We hear the voice of the wind,
she responded.
We speak to you the words of the air, to keep you alive. This is how we advise you.

So...you tell me how to dodge?
Simon asked.

We speak the words of the wind,
she replied loftily.
How you interpret them is up to you. And my name is Caela.

Caela,
he thought to her.
Nice to meet you
.

Then he attacked.

He shattered another weapon, reversing his strike at the last second to take the spear’s owner across the chest with Azura’s dull side. The impact slammed into the man, sending him tumbling into the sand. It would probably injure him seriously, maybe kill him, but Simon felt better.

He knocked the next soldier off his feet with another reverse sweep of Azura, but that was the last chance he got. The rest of the soldiers with melee weapons backed off, and a line of archers stepped forward.

“Fire,” Erastes shouted. Twelve archers loosed an arrow at the same instant, all centered on Simon.

You have to stop worrying about their safety
, Caela sent. Simon drew as deeply as he could on the Nye essence, until it burned his lungs with ice, until it seemed as if he and the arrows both were all but frozen in midair. For some reason, it didn’t seem to affect the speed of Caela’s speech.

Not now, please,
Simon thought.
Help me out of this first
.

If I do, you’ll only die. Unless you’re willing to kill them.

I don’t want to,
he said.

Admirable. But childish. They’re enemy soldiers. This is a battlefield. If you hesitate, you will die. And then who will save your friends?

The arrows drifted closer. And though they appeared to float on a gentle breeze, Simon knew they would puncture him like a skewer through a roasting boar.
 

Please, just help me out of this
.

Then I want your promise that you’ll fight with everything you have,
Caela said. Her distant voice sounded firm.
The innocent people depending on you deserve nothing less
.

I promise
, Simon said. What choice did he have?

So Caela gave him his instructions. When the arrows got closer, he leaped, twisting his back and spinning at exactly the correct angle.

The fletching on one arrow brushed his arm, but that was all. He landed, and the Nye essence flooded out. He should have had a little while more, but he guessed he had used up the essence by drawing on it so deeply. For some reason, the steel remained as strong as always, giving no signs of running out. Maybe it would last longer now—he should ask Caela.

Simon heard some of the arrows clattering to the ground behind him as time resumed its normal course. The archers in front of him went pale in the face, like they saw their own deaths approaching, but their training held them and they brought arrows to strings for a second volley.

Simon didn’t give them a chance to loose.

He lunged, and his first strike shattered three bows. Two of their bearers crashed to the ground as Azura’s tip snagged their armor, but the third lost his hand at the wrist. His scream wrenched Simon’s spirit, but this was neither the time nor the place for regret. He stepped to the side and struck at the archers on his right. Azura pierced through the belly of the first soldier, but the two behind him dived away to safety.

That was when the more heavily armed soldiers stepped in with their spears and swords, leaving the bowmen to retreat for safety. Without essence, Simon wasn’t fast enough to dance with them as he had done before. But he was still as strong as all of them together.

He ruined them. He cut them down like a farmer harvesting wheat, and it tore him apart inside. Every time he sprayed blood in the air, Simon’s stomach twisted, but he did not let up. He spared anyone too injured to fight or those few who retreated, but the rest he killed.