by Wight, Will
During the half-second in which the door was open, two Valinhall Travelers, one raven, and a glassy Lirial crystal the size of a marble passed through without a sound. An observant watcher may have noticed a flicker of shadow, a wink of reflected light.
Then the door slid softly shut.
CHAPTER TEN:
STORIES IN THE CITY
Alin wrenched open the violently purple door and glanced inside. One of the native inhabitants of the Violet District stood within, on top of a wooden table. It looked like a giant ball of fuzz, as though someone had rolled up a bundle of wool, dyed it violet, and given it stick-thin arms and legs. A pair of clear, comically large eyes bulged from its head.
The furry creature was holding a dinner plate over its head, its spindly arms stretched high. It looked like it had climbed up on top of its table for greatest height, so that it could smash the plate on the ground.
It gave Alin a wide, bright smile. “Traveler! It disturbs me to see you, but I will smile as though I am pleased! I hope you have a pleasant day, as long as I am not in it! Please, leave me to my own business!”
It said all that in a chipper voice with a pleasant smile. Alin cast a brief cloud of Silver Light inside, found that the purple fuzz-ball was the home’s only occupant, and pulled the door shut. He wouldn’t have understood before, but now the Violet was a part of him. Honesty at all times, that was the Violet way, even at the cost of compassion, mercy, or understanding.
Behind him, through the closed door, he heard something shatter. As though a plate had crashed to pieces on the ground.
Rhalia’s Gate still drifted beside him, keeping pace with his shoulder. He could have let it close and open it again, but the nature of Elysia was such that it preferred to open only once a day. When he could respect the rules, he would.
“Are you sure it was in the Violet District?” Rhalia asked.
Alin shook his head, letting Violet honesty have the reins. “I can’t be sure. It might even have been my imagination, but I thought I had glimpsed something with the Silver Light. Just for a second. It’s either here or in the Blue District.”
Rhalia hovered in Elysia, her legs crossed under her, sitting three feet above the ground. She swept a lock of golden hair behind her ear. “It’s worth looking into, then, sure. But please, try not to antagonize the people.”
She’s right, said the Rose Light. We don’t want to scare anyone.
“I’m not antagonizing them, I’m conducting an inspection. They will accept it, as they were ordered.” While Alin walked, the Enosh citizens to either side of the street bowed at the waist when he passed. He paid that no more attention than to the stones at his feet, which transformed when he walked by. Each cobblestone on which he stepped turned from a shade of purple or violet to bright white, as if his footprints were soaking them in paint.
Both the respect of the people and the transformation of the city were not unusual, to be noted or commented upon. They were natural reactions to the Incarnation of Elysia, and he accepted them as such.
Rhalia sat cross-legged in the air above Elysia, her hands resting in her lap. Her gold eyes were far away. “Alin,” she said distantly, “can I tell you a story?”
You would be wise to listen, the Silver Light told him.
We have the time, the Green said.
But I don’t want to hear it, Alin thought. None of the powers of Elysia liked that very much, so he relented.
“Of course,” he said. The Rose Light was not pleased with his tone.
Rhalia let out a slow, even breath. “When I was a girl, the Elysian Travelers were in charge. They supervised all the other Territories, and whenever an Incarnation broke through into our world, they were the ones to take care of it.”
Alin pulled open another violet door, revealing a woman sitting in a chair, holding a dripping shirt above a wooden tub. Her eyes went wide as she saw him, and her head jerked as though she were stopping herself from looking for a way out.
He shook his head at the foolish fears of humans, shut the door, and moved on.
“Back then, there were two ways to become a Traveler of Elysia,” Rhalia continued. “You could be trained to do it, if you met the compatibility tests. Or, sometimes, you were born to it. That was very rare; I was the first in a hundred years to call power from Elysia without any training at all.”
Only one hundred years? The Silver Light wondered. Then why did it take over three centuries for the next natural Elysian Traveler to show up? Was it a bad run of luck, or did something change?
Alin cast a flicker of silver light in through an open window, found no one inside the house, and kept walking.
“The Master Travelers trained me quickly. Too quickly, some said, but they agreed that my nature would bend me toward virtue and keep me from corruption.” Sadly, she shook her head. “You’d think I would have done better, but it seems that some lessons you do have to learn twice.”
She thinks you were a failure, the Violet Light whispered, but he managed to ignore it.
The next house he didn’t have to check; he could sense two more Elysian creatures inside. Not only would they have warned him if any intruders had violated their home, they would probably ask him to leave if he stuck his head in. So he didn’t bother.
“It was a time of great change,” Rhalia said, still staring off into the distance. “Discord and dissent grew into a war. One by one, the other Elysian Travelers died. Until, at last, I was the only one left.”
Rose-pink compassion swelled up in him, and he had to speak. “I can’t even imagine how hard that must have been.”
Rhalia twirled in place, gently, which was the first time Alin had seen her do so all day. Normally she spun and danced and whirled around in midair all the time, until it made him dizzy. Maybe she was focusing too much on her bitter memories.
“It…wasn’t so bad,” she said. “I had a sister, you see. Cynara.”
At that, Alin had to shove down some bitter memories of his own. He had practically been raised by his three sisters.
And how did you repay them? the Orange Light asked. You abandoned them, so two of them died. At least Ilana is safe.
She’s safe, but you’re not doing your job, the Red Light barked. You picked the lazy option, letting someone else take care of her. That should be your responsibility.
You’re afraid you can’t do it, the Violet Light whispered.
And Alin shoved all of that down, floating on a cushion of pink comfort and green patience until he had his emotions under control once again.
“She wasn’t a Traveler,” Rhalia continued. “Not at first. She was a fighter, a mine-worker, and a leader. She had an amazing sense of justice.” Rhalia shook her head. “It wasn’t something I could appreciate until I had spent enough time in Elysia, but she never let a wrong pass when she could right it. She never saw someone hurting without trying to help them. She would have made a wonderful Naraka Traveler.”
For the next two houses, Alin levitated their locks out of the way using Orange Light on the inside. He pushed Silver Light through the doors, frightening two human families, but finding no trace of anyone who didn’t belong. Had he been mistaken after all?
The Green and the Red both told him to have patience, to keep working. He would know whether or not he was wrong after he finished searching.
Rhalia bobbed up and down in midair, sounding thoughtful. “I’ve often wondered if my sister would have done a better job in my place. She probably would have. I couldn’t handle being the only Elysian Traveler, you see. It was my responsibility to lead the Travelers, to banish every Incarnation, to save everyone…and I couldn’t do it. Often I failed, and the blame fell on me.”
Her voice held the faint echo of pain, and once again the Rose Light begged him to make it better.
This is her wound, Alin and the Silver said at once. I can’t share it.
“I drew more and more power,” Rhalia said softly. “Even when I wasn’t ready for it.”
The remark stung. She had clearly directed that at him, and she wasn’t being subtle about it. She did try to warn you, the Violet Light pointed out. If only you had listened—
Alin shut off its voice and shoved Silver Light in a broad sweep down the street. It wasn’t nearly as accurate or detailed as if he had pinpointed a single house at a time, but he saw no silhouettes of a man holding a sword against a child’s neck, felt no flares of pain or panic. It seemed, at first glance, that everything in the Violet District was as it should be.
“It finally occurred to me why I was having such problems,” Rhalia said. She had stopped sitting in midair and started drifting back and forth, from one side of the Gate to the other, like a pacing ghost. “It was because no one was in charge! There was all this chaos…and I was sure it was up to me to impose order. I stopped banishing the Incarnations.”
Now she had his full attention. He stopped walking, and mentally ordered the Gate to swing around so that he could face her head-on. “What did you do with them?” he asked.
She met his shifting eyes with her golden ones. “I bound them to serve me, each according to its nature.”
Where did she get the power? Alin wondered.
The Silver and Violet Light both laughed. You know the answer, they said.
“You became an Incarnation,” he said, and as soon as the words left his mouth he knew them for truth.
“My sister begged me not to,” she said softly.
“But…” Alin struggled to form his thoughts into coherent words. “I am Elysia, now. I thought a Territory could have only one Incarnation at a time.”
Rhalia smiled a little. “And so it does. With time back in my Territory, my status as Incarnation faded away. Now I am no longer Incarnation nor Traveler, but something…more limited.”
Alin imagined himself in her position. Letting his power fade away, becoming a shadow of what he was now? He’d rather die.
“I see,” he said, to keep the conversation on track. “What were you saying about your sister?”
“She tried to stop me with words, and even with force, but I was beyond her then. She gathered up others to oppose me, and they followed her. But I would not listen to reason.” She took a deep breath. “When I was at last out of control, Cynara searched for darker weapons to bring a stop to my rampage.”
“Did she?” Alin asked.
“After years of searching she found them in an old Territory. A place that we of Elysia had forbidden years before, on the grounds that it was too dangerous. The Crimson Vault.”
Alin’s hand automatically jerked toward his pants pocket, beneath his armor, where he kept the Seed of the Hanging Tree. Its power burned him, every day, begging to be used, pulsing in opposition to the light of Elysia, but he kept it with him. If someone stole it, they could use it as a weapon against him.
Especially if it made it into Leah’s hands. Leah, or one of her family…
“Are you one of Leah’s ancestors?” Alin asked.
Rhalia frowned. “Leah?”
Oh, right. She’s never met Leah. “One of the Damascan royal family. She’s a Ragnarus Traveler.”
Rhalia spread her hands and shrugged. “As you would imagine, I haven’t kept up with this world since I sealed myself in the City. But I do know that my sister made some sort of bargain with the Founder of her Territory.”
Founder? Alin wondered, but Rhalia kept talking.
“One result of that bargain was the Hanging Trees, which can seal Incarnations at the cost of blood. But I heard rumors that Cynara may have also bound the Territory to her own bloodline. If that’s true, then yes, I would be distantly related to Leah.”
Alin stood at the center of the Violet District. The people in the streets hurried away from him, afraid of meeting his gaze, and the purple cobblestones steadily bleached themselves as he stood still. Thoughts whirled in his head; Rhalia’s story blended with his own. She had made some mistakes, and he had to make sure he didn’t repeat them.
“So your sister betrayed you,” Alin said at last. The Orange Light agreed with him.
Rhalia smiled a little and drifted through a circle in midair. “She fought me in the streets of Cana. We were evenly matched for a while, but I knew she couldn’t pay Ragnarus’ costs forever. I was content to wait. And then she planted one of those Hanging Trees.”
Alin almost shuddered, thinking of the bloody, carnivorous trees that had feasted on the sleeping Incarnations for centuries. He would have shuddered, except that he was beyond such petty reactions.
“I knew that the Trees meant living death,” Rhalia continued. “So I opened a Gate to Elysia and bound myself inside.”
His mind violently rejected the idea. Elysia called to him, it sang to him silently every day, begging him to step through a Gate and rejoin his Territory once and for all. But he knew what it would mean for him. He could feel it. Once he returned to the City of Light, he would become a part of its fabric, never to leave again.
Just like Rhalia.
“I thought I was getting the best of Cynara,” Rhalia said. “She had given her life to her Ragnarus weapons, and all I’d sacrificed was my freedom. I had planned to wait until the next natural Elysian Traveler came along, and train them to take my place.”
She sighed. “But it wasn’t long at all before the fog in my mind lifted, and I realized what I had done. What I had become.”
You’re a monster, the Violet Light whispered.
Rhalia’s eyes shone like gold coins. “I became a monster.”
Don’t walk the path she did, the Silver Light said.
“I don’t want you to walk down the same path I did, Alin.”
Think about what you’ve done to these people, the Rose Light begged. Alin glanced around, at the fear in the citizens of Enosh. They didn’t love him. They cringed away from him.
“Think about what you could do to these people,” Rhalia said. “Think about what you will do, when you lose control.”
The Gold Light shone, comforting and powerful, in the back of his mind, like a new sun hanging out of sight. Don’t be afraid, it said. A truly brave man would face the truth.
“You don’t belong here,” she said.
You don’t belong here, the Light agreed.
Alin stared past Rhalia, through the Gate, at the shining silver-and-gold walls of Elysia. Behind those walls, the tops of the city rose: red brick towers, gold monuments, silver spires, gleaming amethysts the size of warehouses. A column of light rose from the peak of the city to pierce the sunset sky.
His heart ached for the City. It was where he belonged, he could feel it.
But if he took that one step inside, he would never leave.
Alin took in one deep, shuddering breath, and the spell was broken. He took a step back and turned his back on Rhalia, walking away. Silver Light spun at his command, flashing into every window, through every cracked door. It raced and flew through the entire city, spreading out, giving him a vague sense of everything in Enosh, tying him with tiny webs to every person in the city.
“Not yet,” Alin said, his voice cold. “I still have work to do here.” The very idea of Grandmaster Naraka blackened his thoughts, and the Incarnations were still loose. Leah was likely doing her best to keep them contained, but could she really handle it? Not as well as he could, he was sure.
No, he wouldn’t make Rhalia’s mistakes.
He would do better.
“There are nine virtues in Elysia,” Rhalia said. “They’re all important, but there is one which provides them all with context. Only one virtue that gives the others meaning. And you don’t even understand it.”
Alin marched toward the Blue District, his boots ringing on the stones. “I don’t need to hear about the White Light, Rhalia. I think I’m done with stories for today.”
“Then why is the Gate still open?” Rhalia asked softly. “Why do you carry me around with you every day, if you don’t—”
He slashed a hand
across empty air, and the Gate vanished.
Time to get back to work, the Red Light said.
He almost hoped he did find some intruders in the Blue District. In this mood, he would enjoy doing something clear-cut, something that was undoubtedly the right thing to do. Like protecting his city from invaders.
***
Before he made it to Enosh, Simon had wondered if they would find anything. What were they even looking for, aside from ‘something wrong’? Unless they saw Alin actively dismembering a citizen, how were they supposed to know if he’d done anything?
It didn’t take him long, running through the streets of Enosh, to figure it out.
The city looked completely different than when he’d last seen it, both because of Alin’s presence and because of his reconstruction efforts. They were in the all-blue section of the city, which he had heard someone call the Blue District.
He clung to the side of a wall, fingers braced with Benson’s steel, and watched a mother and her daughter cling to one another and shake as a shapeless blue mass, dangling six-foot tentacles, drifted down the street as though it were underwater.
He stood in the shadow of a doorway, his hood drawn and Nye essence running through him, watching one man beat another bloody with a shovel. A boneless blue lizard the size of a dog flowed up to him, hissing, but he dropped his shovel and held his hands up.
“Mercy,” he said, in a lazy drawl.
The reptile sniffed him, flicked out a tongue, and then flowed away, leaving the bleeding victim on the street.
As soon as the blue creature of Elysia was out of sight, the man had picked up his shovel once more and continued his beating. None of the bystanders said a word; they went about their business.
Once Simon had shoved the attacker’s unconscious body into a nearby shed, along with the scraps that had once been a bloody shovel, he moved on.
Under normal circumstances, he could hold his Nye essence for about two minutes. It seemed like longer, under the effects of the essence, and he could stretch that out if he used it less, or burn through it quicker. But he figured two minutes was a good deadline.
