by Wight, Will
“Kai would trade Mithra for Azura if Simon so much as suggested it,” Valin said at last. “He’s practically begging for the chance. He won't be a problem, as long as we can get Azura to agree.”
The Eldest put his sleeves together and bowed, unintentionally mimicking Simon's gesture from moments earlier. Or maybe it was intentional; Valin had never been able to understand any of the Nye, much less this one.
“I will consider your words, Master,” the Eldest said at last. “Now, I must go. I suspect the son of Kalman is searching for me.”
“What does he want?”
The Eldest shivered, his many layers of cloth and shadow rustling. “A seed of that which imprisoned you.”
Valin felt like he'd been dunked in a bath full of ice water. “Burn it. Cast it out. Get Kai to open the Nexus, and hurl it as far away from us as you can.”
“I'm not so certain that would be a...permanent solution,” the Eldest said. “Besides, I believe it was you who advised me to let the boy make up his own mind.”
Valin wrestled for a moment with his own rage, with the Incarnation of a warrior Territory rising up in his mind, before he could make himself relax. The Eldest was right. Simon had the right to decide, and it seemed that he was even friends with that Ragnarus girl. Maybe he could persuade her to destroy it.
“You're right,” he said at last. He forgot, sometimes, that this wasn't his Territory any longer. He was nothing more than a passenger.
The Eldest glided toward the door, and then paused. “I respect your motivations today,” the Nye said. “But do not oppose me too often. I can just as easily return you to the state in which I found you.”
Valin grinned and raised his sword in a salute to his old friend. “I might say the same to you.”
After the Nye vanished, Valin put himself through a few more sword forms. He wanted to fit in as much exercise as he could before he died again.
His steps felt lighter, and he found his smile lingering. He had a new student to train, a Territory to rebuild, and an old friend to outwit in a lethal contest.
Life didn't get much better than that.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN:
CAPTURE
In the House's entry hall, Indirial placed his sword onto its rack. Vasha's cracked blade gleamed in the lamplight, reflecting Feiora's irritated expression.
“What are we still doing here, Indirial?” she demanded. “You said he would show up.”
“Relax. I know where he is. There are a few ways in and out, so I don't know exactly where he'll pop out, but this is a pretty safe bet.”
She paced restlessly up and down the room. “They've been alone for too long now. I didn't fully complete the transfer process, so they could have ended up practically anywhere! We need to do something.”
Just to show her that he was capable of relaxing, Indirial walked over to a plush sofa, sat down, and propped his feet up on a table. “It hasn't been as long as it feels. You know how this works. I'm sure Eugan is fine, and I know Leah is.” That was one of the major purposes of the Damascan royal family's trial: every Heir and Heiress was sent off to live essentially on their own, teaching them self-reliance and practical survival skills. Leah would be well-prepared for surviving in Avernus, especially with Eugan as a guide.
Not to mention the fact that, in direct combat, a Ragnarus Traveler could eat any number of Avernus tribesmen alive. As long as she was willing to pay the price.
“What if she's not?” Feiora demanded. “Are we supposed to bring the crown to Adessa, hm? Or how about her older sister?”
“Feiora,” Indirial said, “I'm as eager to act as you are. You have to understand that there is nothing we can do! A couple of hours ago, Simon was too weak to lift a fork, let alone a Dragon's Fang. And with the way his chains had grown, I wouldn't be surprised if he’d Incarnated the second he tried to open a Gate.”
“I still don't see why—” she began, but Indirial gently spoke over her.
“I can only take you two places. The Latari Forest, or straight back to Enosh. That was the last place I opened my Gate. Simon, on the other hand, opened his Gate exactly where we want to go. Even if I did take you to the forest and you Traveled from there, it would take you, what, a whole day to get where you're going? And that's if they're there. It makes far more sense to wait.”
Indirial had made the argument before, but he didn't blame her for her agitation. Avernus Travelers shared a bond with their birds that he didn't fully understand, but they became almost dangerously overprotective when their advisors were in danger.
Besides, he knew how he would feel if his family had been trapped in another Territory. He had almost dissolved in panic when he found out how Cana had been sealed, thinking his wife and daughter were inside, until he remembered that they'd left the city before Enosh attacked. They waited for him even then, safe in Leah's camp. Well, as safe as anyone was, with the Incarnations loose.
“How long has it been for them, in Avernus?” Indirial asked, mostly to make conversation.
“It's hard to say, exactly,” she said. “Avernus is like Helgard, in that the flow of time fluctuates in patterns. Unlike Helgard, though, Avernus is notoriously hard to predict.”
Indirial nodded along. He had learned this years ago, but for her sake he tried to look studious and alert. The longer he could keep her talking, the more patiently she’d wait for Simon.
“If it's been one night outside, in Avernus it could be...half that. A quarter. Less. Or perhaps as much as seven-eighths, I can't say for certain.”
Indirial smiled as though that solved the matter. “See? For them, it's barely been any time at all.”
“Far too much time,” Feiora began, but she stopped when a rug lifted in the center of the room. It bulged evenly in the middle, as though a door had been opened beneath it. Which was, of course, exactly what had happened.
“Hey,” Simon called out. “Is there somebody out there? I don't want to call steel right now.”
Indirial leaned down and tossed the rug out of the way, then gave Simon a hand up. He had climbed up a ladder that stretched all the way down into the bowels of the Territory, well out of the reach of the light.
“Thanks,” Simon said, then he looked suspiciously from one Overlord to the other. “What are you doing here?”
“Waiting for you,” Indirial responded. Then he saw Simon slip something in his pocket. Something that had been hidden in his hand. “What have you got there?” he asked, but Feiora shouldered him aside.
“I already told you what we want!” she said. “Open a Gate to Cana!”
Simon looked at Indirial. “Oh, that's right. You opened the Gate from Enosh, didn't you?”
Indirial turned and lifted Azura's gleaming blade from its rack. Since he hadn't called steel, it took him both hands. “If you would, sir.”
He hesitated to take his sword. “I don't want to call steel right now.” He pulled the collar of his cloak aside, revealing black chains that were starting to retreat down his back. “Is there any other way...”
“No, there isn't,” Indirial said, as gently as he could. “We do need you to do this.” His own chains wrapped around his midsection, and he was reluctant to call any more power. Simon's were in even worse shape, but there was no other choice. He hadn't heard from Denner in weeks, not that being unable to contact Denner was in any way unusual, and Kai had retreated back to the deep rooms, where Indirial was reluctant to follow.
More importantly, he had no idea where Kai's Gate would come out. That left Simon.
To his credit, Simon didn't hesitate any further. He seized the blade with one hand, and the chains on his back began to creep upward as he called steel.
Simon had gotten faster at opening Gates; it only took him half a minute to slice open a portal leading straight into the inside of a tent that Indirial recognized from the camp outside Cana.
Feiora stepped through without a word, and Indirial followed. “Thanks, Simon. Report back here af
ter another night, and we'll see what we can do about finding these Incarnations.”
The boy had already placed Azura back on its rack and released his steel; he sagged in place, just strong enough to remain standing. He nodded to Indirial before the Gate vanished altogether.
Feiora was already gone, no doubt to open a Gate of her own to Avernus. Indirial couldn't blame her.
But he had his own work to do.
The first thing he did was inform all his officers and high-ranking Travelers that he had returned, which was a visible relief to them. It wasn't often that two Overlords and the Queen vanished for almost a full day after heading out on what was supposed to be a short-term scouting mission.
Next, he asked about the team of Travelers who had been assigned to guard Grandmaster Naraka during his disastrous mission to Enosh. To his shock, they were all unharmed, and the Grandmaster was back in custody. She had escaped long enough to close the Gate and then seal the waypoint somehow, which even the two Naraka Travelers working together couldn't undo.
The three Tartarus guards, meanwhile, had clubbed the Grandmaster over the head and bound her with chains “so tight she couldn't sneeze without picking three padlocks.” They had remained in Naraka until the seal on the waystation dissipated, at which point they'd glanced through the Gate and seen the building in rubble. At that point, wisely, they had trekked back to the camp and informed their superior Travelers.
They all five seemed anxious that Indirial would blame them for what happened; on the contrary, he complimented their quick thinking and devotion to their duty. It was his fault that he had allowed the Grandmaster as much freedom as he had, not theirs. He thought of himself as somewhat of an expert at fighting Naraka Travelers, and he'd never seen one seal a waystation completely. He hadn't considered it possible.
After that, he indulged himself by spending half an hour describing to Grandmaster Naraka, in detail, the punishments she had earned by endangering the Queen. Justice would catch up to her at last, and there was something poetic about that.
He spent the next two hours poring over reports. Nothing of significance had happened while he was gone, but everyone under his command had to tell him that, in triplicate and signed if possible. With that taken care of, mostly, his next priority was to help find the Queen. He and Feiora had agreed that she would take care of that, and since Leah was in Avernus, Indirial should technically have deferred to the other Overlord. But the situation was volatile enough with all the Incarnations missing; they couldn't afford a missing monarch as well.
However, he could allow himself a short stop on the way. The sun had just set, so Nerissa and Elaina would be sitting down to eat. Perhaps he could grab a bite or two.
He ducked into his family's tent, already grinning. “Here I am, back from the dead!” he called. “It took two Incarnations and a...”
The gold medallion he wore grew cold against his chest. Danger… Korr whispered.
Korr, his advisor, rested inside the black gem at the heart of his medallion. Korr wasn’t the most talkative advisor of the thirteen, and he only gave advice when he thought it would be needed.
A violet flame, visible only to Indirial’s eyes, burned inside his tent. He turned, and for a moment he couldn’t accept what he was seeing.
It wasn’t the inside of his tent. It was a swirling window onto another world, its red edges wide enough to scrape the edge of the tent.
Indirial looked onto a cavern lit by rough scarlet torches. A pair of silver doors, each carved with half of the face of a one-eyed king, had been flung open, giving him a look inside the Crimson Vault.
Without hesitation, he backed out of the tent. Leah had not opened this Gate, and that meant that someone else had. He would bet everything he owned that it wasn't one of the remaining Heiresses—one of them still exiled to Lirial, the last he'd checked, and the other gibbering and weeping in an Asphodel asylum—and that left only one possibility: the Ragnarus Incarnation.
The camp was under attack, and his family had been the first victims.
His heart burned to go inside, to kill whoever he needed to kill to get his wife and daughter back. No Territory was as good for fighting Travelers as Valinhall, not even the Crimson Vault.
But the fact that this Gate had been left open inside his tent meant that this attack, or at least its initial stages, had been aimed at him personally. He wasn't enough of a fool to give the enemy what he wanted.
“We're under attack!” he bellowed, as loudly as he could, as he emerged from his tent. “Incarnation in the camp! Raise the—”
A violet flame burned to life in the corner of his vision: Korr’s warning. Something white and gleaming streaked toward his stomach, so fast that the human eye could barely track it.
So it was a good thing he'd called Nye essence the instant he recognized a Ragnarus Gate.
Summoning Benson's steel, he slapped the projectile out of the air with the flat of his hand. It looked and felt like an oblong ball of ice, and it still tore through the tent next to his after he knocked it aside.
“Fascinating,” the Helgard Incarnation said. She stood outside his tent, curly white hair flowing behind her spiral horns. The emerging starlight shone on her blue skin, and her glacial eyes were curious. “Is that reaction time something that you learn in your Territory, or a power you are granted? Does it work if you are caught completely off-guard?”
Vasha shimmered like an illusion and appeared in his hand, phantom chains crawling across his flesh. “Return your captives,” said the Overlord of Cana.
Helgard ran a hand down the white fur that covered her like a dress. “Don't worry, they're completely—”
Indirial lunged. He didn't have to move far, considering Vasha's length, and then he brought his blade down diagonally across the Incarnation's body. A bar of black ice spun into being, meeting the Dragon's Fang with a nearly unbreakable surface.
He had expected that. He bore down with all the power he could draw from Valinhall, every drop of liquid steel he could summon from Benson's blue-lit basement. His strike didn't cleave the dark ice in half, but the force of his blow drove the ice downward. Vasha, with a bar of dark Helgard ice on the end, slammed into the Incarnation's left shoulder like a hammer.
Bone crunched, and she tumbled down and away, coming to a halt five paces away. Her white fur was speckled with dark blue blood.
“That wasn't a yes,” Indirial called. She wouldn’t have died from a hit like that, so she got the message. He raised his voice once more, blue-white mist puffing out of his mouth as his Nye essence drained. “Incarnation in the camp! Travelers, to me! Incarnation in the camp!”
Soldiers boiled out of the nearby tents, but most of them had the good sense to keep their distance. Distantly, he heard a horn as his warning was picked up and spread throughout the camp. Then another horn, and another.
Soon, he would be surrounded by allied Travelers. He only had to stall until they got here.
He could do it. He had fought this Incarnation before, and even though he didn't think he could kill her, he could certainly stall until backup arrived. At which point they would capture this Incarnation and find out where she was keeping his family.
Assuming nothing else went wrong.
Danger! Korr hissed.
He turned to see a slight flash out of the corner of his eye, little brighter than a reflection of moonlight off a spearhead. He spun, swinging the flat of Vasha's blade toward the light.
It was like a star the size of his fist, speeding at him out of the darkness. The light exploded when it hit his sword, instantly searing his hand and sending him stumbling backwards, almost knocking the Dragon's Fang from his hand with the force.
A second Incarnation strode out of the darkness. It was another woman, this time made entirely out of smooth crystal that flowed as she walked. Loops of silver wire wrapped her limbs and neck loosely, then tightened around her torso in a solid sheet of armored metal. Her body was almost completely tra
nsparent, but her eyes were the more typical milky-white crystal that Indirial associated with her Territory. She wore a slight smirk, and three more of those stars orbited her head in a pale halo.
“Lirial, I presume,” Indirial said, calling ice. His body flooded with cold even deeper than the steel and Nye essence could account for, numbing all his injuries at once. Even the tearing burn in his right hand subsided to a dull throb, so he didn't drop his blade.
“Valinhall, is it?” she said. “In my day, we didn't—”
Indirial jumped backwards, propelled by all the steel he could draw. He felt a little ridiculous doing it—Valin had always warned them against unnecessary acrobatics—but when he reached the height of his jump, he flipped in the air.
He landed on top of the Helgard Incarnation, driving Vasha down into her chest. If he had one chance of surviving this fight and going on to find his wife and daughter, he had to eliminate one of the Incarnations early. He stood practically no chance against two of them, but one-on-one he could at least draw out the battle until reinforcements arrived.
The point of his Dragon's Fang met a shield of black ice.
Helgard's glacial blue eyes snapped open, her wounds already beginning to freeze over. To his eyes, slowed by the Nye essence, she seemed to drift to her feet, stretching slowly with a series of disgusting cracking sounds, as if her bones were snapping back into place.
He flipped up the hood of his cloak and swung Vasha overhand at her neck, taking advantage of the fact that she wouldn't quite be able to see him.
Two of Lirial's white stars blasted into the ground on either side of him, and the third crashed into his back. She had cast all three at him in the hopes of hitting him, since she couldn't pinpoint him exactly.
It had worked, but fortunately he'd anticipated her.
Instead of slamming into his unprotected back and pushing him forward into the Helgard Incarnation, the third star crashed into a plate of ghost armor and dispersed.
He turned and ran at Lirial. His initial strategy had been to overwhelm Helgard while she was injured, but since that obviously wasn't working, he would take out the weakest link in the chain first. Lirial was like Avernus: no matter how powerful the Traveler, they wouldn't be as useful in battle as most of the other Territories. He should be able to at least drive her off, keep her separated from her ally.