by Wight, Will
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.
Rebekkah glared up at him from his left hand, but that was her usual expression. Her long red hair was tied back in a single braid, and she wore a brown shirt and brown pants, belted with a length of rope. She was dressed like one of the poorer villagers…in clothes much like the ones Simon himself had worn, in fact, before he came to the House.
Will Alin be in this city? Rebekkah asked. She had never met Alin, but she devoured Simon’s stories about him. He was afraid he knew why.
Probably, Simon allowed. But we won’t see him. If we run into Alin, that means the plan went horribly wrong.
So when everything goes wrong, then you’ll get to fight him?
Simon tucked Rebekkah into a pocket of his cloak. Why do you want me to fight him so much? I don’t want to.
He deserves it, Rebekkah said, no room for doubt in her voice. I can’t wait to see you punch him right in his face.
Simon didn’t want to imagine that the plan might fail so badly that they would run into Alin and have to fight him, but he tried to picture it. What would he do? Simon had once promised that he would personally put a stop to Alin, if he let the Elysian Incarnation take too much control.
He had never much liked Alin, and he was more than willing to oppose the Incarnations. But it felt like he had made that promise a long time ago.
Did he even want to fight Alin?
The Wanderer’s words echoed in his mind: What do you want, Simon?
He wasn’t sure. But at least this trip would let him know if Alin deserved to die. Maybe that would help him decide.
“Eyes up, Simon,” Indirial said, in a softer voice than normal. Simon took a deep breath and shelved his thoughts, looking around at the Naraka waystation.
Like always, the way in and out of the Territory was marked by a fifteen-foot-tall obelisk of black stone, marked with twisting golden runes. This room, built around the obelisk, had once been made of ordinary stone. Simon could still see the rough pattern of the rock in the metal of the wall.
The whole building had been turned to gold. Gold walls led to an arched ceiling, supported by crossing beams that were also made of gold. The only feature in the room not turned to gold were the high windows, and those were now blue.
The Incarnation of Elysia had lived here for a long time.
Overlord Feiora’s raven circled the room, searching for hidden watchers. Indirial, as the plan required, had rushed out of the Gate and subdued the guards. He had done so before Simon had even staggered out of Naraka: one human guard lay bound and gagged on the stone, tied with strips of cloth. The other, an inhuman thing that looked like a cross between a dog and a blue-skinned lizard, lay sprawled on its back, apparently unconscious. Tentacles twitched as it drew a shallow breath.
Indirial knelt down and pulled the wadded cloth out of the man’s mouth. The guard started to scream, but the Overlord punched him in the throat.
It didn’t look like he used much force. It was more of a tap than a punch, little more than poking him in the neck with a couple of knuckles. The man choked on his scream, struggling to draw a breath.
“Don’t try that again,” Indirial advised, giving the guard a friendly smile.
You see? Rebekkah sent. At least someone knows how to handle his problems the right way.
“I’m not going to help you,” the man whispered through a hoarse throat, once he caught his breath. “I can’t.”
“Yes, he can,” Overlord Feiora said. She was peeking out the door, not looking at the prisoner, but her raven fluttered down to land on Indirial’s shoulder. “I can’t quite see it clearly, but he knows what we need to know.” The raven stared into the guard’s eyes and let out one soft, subtly threatening sound, like a mewling growl.
Indirial nodded to Feiora. “You heard the lady,” he said pleasantly. “Let me ask you a few questions, and you can decide whether to answer, okay?”
The guard nodded, eyeing the raven.
“How many guards are outside?”
“None,” said Feiora and the guard at the same time. The man jerked as if she had slapped him, and he strained against his bonds to look at her.
“Can she…I mean, can she see into my…” he swallowed.
Indirial chuckled. “Now, don’t scare yourself. She probably looked outside. I would recommend that you don’t pay any attention to her or to the bird, okay? Just focus on me.”
The guard nodded weakly.
The raven lowered its beak so that its eyes were as wide as possible. The captive visibly struggled with himself, trying to keep his head turned to the side, before he looked the raven in the eyes.
The bird let out a very slow, very deliberate caw.
The guard shivered, and Simon didn’t blame him. He was growing a little scared of the bird, and its gaze wasn’t even directed his way. He could only imagine how much worse it would be to meet head-on.
“That’s a little unusual, is
n’t it?” Indirial asked. “Only two guards. It was my understanding that the Grandmasters assigned two inner guards and four outer guards, all Travelers. Am I wrong?”
The guard hesitated.
“Reassure him,” Feiora said, staring out of a window.
The man jerked against his bonds again, and Indirial placed a hand on his shoulder. “Hey, don’t worry. I’m working with the Grandmasters. Isn’t that right, Grandmaster Naraka?”
Simon stepped aside, revealing the still-open Naraka Gate behind him. The two Naraka Travelers stood on either side of the Gate with their hands outstretched, holding it open and steady. A foul wind blew from within, carrying the scent of woodsmoke, sulfur, and distantly burning hair, but it was much more pleasant than actually being in the Territory.
Grandmaster Naraka stood directly in front of the Gate, her three Tartarus guards arrayed behind her. Even the Naraka Travelers holding the Gate didn’t take their eyes from the Grandmaster for more than the time it took them to blink.
She smiled like a kindly grandmother. “That’s right, son. It’s okay, you can answer them.”
The guard’s forehead furrowed. “Why is her hand tied?”
“That’s for her own safety,” Indirial said smoothly, drawing the man’s attention back to him. “Don’t worry about that. Now, go ahead and tell me.”
Simon noticed that he didn’t explain how having a one-handed woman bound by ropes could possibly be for her own safety, but the guard seemed soothed. Simon stepped back in front of the Gate, to prevent the man from noticing that the Grandmaster was under heavy guard.
“Eliadel said the Travelers were needed elsewhere,” the guard practically whispered. “Most of the Territories are guarded on the other side, but he doesn’t think we’re in danger. He tells us we’re secure. He says that a lot.”
“He’s afraid,” Feiora murmured. “He’s very afraid of speaking, but he’s even more afraid of keeping silent.”
Their captive didn’t seem surprised at her statement this time, but his shoulders slumped.
Indirial nodded, bringing the guard’s attention back to him. “When you say Eliadel, you mean Alin, son of Torin?”
The man glanced from side to side, fearfully. “Don’t call him that. He’s Elysia now. You have to call him that, or Eliadel, or the King. You can’t call him…his name.”
Simon couldn’t help it; he had to ask. “Is that what Alin wants?”
The guard flinched at the name, but he answered. “Not Eliadel, exactly. He’s never told us what to call him. But the ones in the gold armor…they’ll fight you if they hear you being disrespectful. No one ever wins a fight with the gold ones. And the silver ones always hear, and they’ll tell the gold ones…”
He seemed to realize what he’d said, and he forced a smile. “Not that I’m unhappy! Far from it. We have plenty of food, and we’re safe. You understand? We’re safe from the Damascans.”
His smile slipped away, and a dawning horror crept into its place. “Wait a second…you’re not…”
“Damascan?” Indirial asked with a laugh. “Nope, I’m afraid not. We were on a long mission with the Grandmaster, and now we’re back. Imagine our surprise when we came back and found the city occupied by a new force. We assumed it was Damasca, but you’re saying Eliadel himself took over? What happened to the other Grandmasters?”
Simon couldn’t help but admire the way the Overlord maintained control of the conversation. He deflected attention, forcing the guard to respond to him instead of the other way around, and he smoothly distracted the man from thinking about the inconsistencies in his story. Indirial had actually struck first upon leaping out of the portal, and somehow he had gotten his victim to overlook that. Not to mention that, if they had been on a long-term mission in Naraka, this would be their first time coming into the real world. How would they know the city was occupied?
But the guard seemed to invent something in his own mind that satisfied him, because he kept talking. “You want my advice?” His voice lowered, as if he were afraid of spies and traitors even in a sealed room. “Take the Grandmaster and run! Go now. You’ll have to take that…blue thing with you,” he nodded to the twitching creature lying next to him, “because I can explain its disappearance better than I can its death. But you’ll have to hurry, or she’ll end up like all the other Grandmasters.”
“What happened to them?” Naraka snapped.
“Their heads are spiked on the city gates,” the guard said softly.
Grandmaster Naraka made a ‘pfah’ sound and waved his comment away. “Old news. I saw Helgard there months ago.”
The captive shook his head. “Not just Helgard. All of them. Everybody except Asphodel, Avernus, and Endross, and I heard they were dead already. Grandmaster Tartarus tried to lead a rebellion a few months in, but he couldn’t fight his way through the Red District. Eliadel dueled him personally, and he had his silver eyes show everyone in the city how it ended.” The guard shuddered. “I don’t even know why. I liked the city well enough the way it was.”
He seemed to hear his own words, and put on another bright smile. “Not as much as I like it now, of course.”
“He hates it,” Feiora said, still watching the window.
“I could have told you that,” Simon muttered.
“He doesn’t let anyone leave, does he?” Indirial asked. Simon more or less knew the answer to that; Damasca hadn’t heard from anyone in Enosh for six months, at least before Grandmaster Naraka showed up.
“We have everything we need here,” the guard said without hesitation. “There’s plenty of food in the Green District, he opened new wells all around town, and…something…takes all the trash at night. All you have to do is leave it outside. And we can’t go out after sundown, because it’s not safe. But the Damascans were planning on destroying the whole city! The Grandmasters told us so before Eliadel took over. They can’t do it now that he’s here, right?” The man sounded almost pleading. “He’s the one who killed their king.”
“That’s right,” Indirial said, as soft as a knife being drawn. “He is.”
Indirial stood up and walked over to Overlord Feiora. “Well?” he asked.
Feiora shook her head. “Images, fragments, it’s all jumbled up. I’ll make sense of it, in time, but I say we go take a look for ourselves. I’ve been looking through this window the whole time, and I haven’t seen another soul. He can’t make things invisible, can he?”
Indirial glanced at Simon, who shrugged. “I don’t think so. Everything I’ve seen from Elysia has glowed pretty brightly, but he can probably do a lot of stuff I don’t know about.”
Overlord Indirial strode over to the bound guard. “Thank you, you’ve been very helpful. If Eliadel asks you any questions, tell him that a Grandmaster made you talk.”
The guard’s eyes widened. “Wait, no! Don’t—”
Indirial shoved the ball of cloth back into the man’s mouth, then placed his hand on the man’s forehead. His eyes rolled up into his skull, and he fell limply on the ground.
“How did you do that?” Simon demanded.
The Overlord grinned. “Unorthodox application of a lesser-known Valinhall power. It wasn’t meant for this, but you won’t go far in life without a little creativity.” He turned to the Naraka Gate. “What do you think?” he called. Grandmaster Naraka started to reply. “No, not you. Our esteemed leader.”
Leah stepped out from behind the edge of the Gate and walked into the room. She wasn’t wearing her crown, but she did hold the tall Lightning Spear in one hand. “I think he’s got a tighter grip on the city than we thought,” she said.
“Worse than I had imagined,” Grandmaster Naraka muttered.
“Given that information,” Leah went on, “we need to make this even faster than we’d planned. We can always come back if we need to. Simon and Indirial, hoods up. When your…shadows run out, come back here immediately.”
‘Shadows?’ It wasn’t quite accurate, but Simon liked
the way it sounded. He should use that.
“Feiora, you stay here. You can send Eugan out, but keep him absolutely safe.”
“Of course!” The Overlord sounded offended at the suggestion that she might do anything else.
Leah turned back to the guards. “The two Naraka can stay here. Tartarus, take the Grandmaster into this room, but stay away from the windows and do not, under any circumstances, take her anywhere out of this room. If I see her heading anywhere else, I will kill her and anyone with her. Do you understand?”
The three Tartarus Travelers saluted.
“I will be—”
“…standing right there,” Indirial finished for her. “Prepared to jump straight back into the Gate at the first sign of anything unusual.”
Leah made an unpleasant face. “Yes, thank you, Overlord Indirial. You plucked my very words from me.”
Indirial swept her a bow.
“I will, however, be using a scrying lens to follow your progress in the city,” she went on. “It will be difficult, given what your shadows do to my scrying, but I’ll manage. Perhaps I will see something you miss. If I notice anything urgent, I will send you a signal.”
“What kind of signal?” Simon asked. He felt they should be as forewarned as possible, just in case.
“Depending on the circumstances,” she said, “it will probably sound like my voice shouting, ‘Oh, seven stones! Simon, run, there’s a huge slobbering beast about to eat your face!’ Would you prefer an explosion?”
Simon cleared his throat. “No, thanks. That’ll be fine.”
“Then if we’re all done with questions?” She looked around the room, meeting the eyes of Indirial, Simon, Feiora, and Eugan. They all nodded at her gaze, even the raven.
“Go quickly, and return safely,” Leah said. Simon flipped up his hood, and Indirial did the same.
The door swung open for a brief moment. From the outside, it might have looked like happenstance, maybe a gust of wind. Anyone who didn’t look directly at it might have missed the motion entirely, at least until they heard the door shut.
