City of Light (The Traveler's Gate Trilogy)

by Wight, Will

  Not for the first time, he wished he’d brought a doll. The inside of his head seemed a lonely place without one of them around.

  “Kneeling on air,” Leah muttered. “That’s a neat trick.”

  “Exactly!” Simon said. “Thank you. That’s what my dolls would have said.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, she gave him a strange look.

  In the sky, King Zakareth raised his staff and spear above his head. “People of Damasca! I have returned to you.”

  This time, there was a definite cheer from the camp below.

  “I have been away for some time, securing the city of Cana. At this time, the city is open to you. You may now return to your homes.”

  The cheering grew louder, accompanied by a series of quiet murmurs.

  “I regret to inform you that some of your friends and family, husbands and sons, wives and daughters, did not survive the war in Cana these past six months.” His voice hardened. “For make no mistake, there was a war. But I—and the loyal citizens of Damasca still in the city—have emerged victorious.”

  “A war against who?” Simon asked, but Leah’s tan skin was growing a shade paler with every word her father spoke.

  “The Incarnations now bend knee to me and me alone,” the King continued. “As should you. As will Enosh, very soon.”

  There was no cheering at this, but the confused murmurs intensified.

  “You all have followed my daughter for half a year, and for this I commend you. She is my Successor, and a worthy Traveler of Ragnarus. But now I have returned, and I have no need of Heirs or Successors. With the full power of the nine Territories, I will lead you against Enosh. I will never leave you, I will never fail you, and I will crush them at last.”

  As he spoke each word, the ruby glow grew brighter and brighter around him, until at last he was surrounded by a scarlet aura like the one that had sheltered Cana for months.

  The roar from the camp was almost deafening.

  Simon didn’t know what to make of half that speech, but the part about not needing any Heirs or Successors was fairly clear. “That’s it,” he said, reaching for Azura’s hilt. “We need to get you out of here.”

  Leah laid a hand on his arm, stopping him. Her eyes shone with anger.

  “He can follow me into the House,” she said. “Especially if he was the one who took Indirial.” Simon flinched at the idea that the Ragnarus Incarnation might have the Overlord of Cana under his control, but he had to admit that it seemed likely. “I need to Travel through the one place where he can’t follow me. Or won’t, at least.”

  She placed her palm flat against the empty air, and space bloomed into a swirling red Gate, opening onto a pair of silver double doors.

  Leah and her raven stepped into Ragnarus.

  “Find out what happened to Indirial,” Leah ordered, as she walked through the Crimson Vault. Her red dress blended in perfectly with the light. “See if you can get the Valinhall Travelers all together; we might need them. And find out what my father wants. It sounds like he intends to attack Enosh, and if that’s true…” She took a deep breath. “We might need to work with Alin.”

  Simon flinched at the thought, but he swept a bow anyway. He’d been working on that, and this time he thought he’d done a pretty good job.

  She turned slightly and smiled at him. “Not bad, Simon.”

  He straightened. “When I’ve done all that, how will I find you?”

  She shook her head, returning her attention to the silver doors. “When I’ve done what I need to, I will find you.”

  The Ragnarus Gate shrank, and Simon looked back out of the tent to find the King’s blazing red eye locked on him. He reached for Azura.

  Whatever she says, I think everything would be a whole lot simpler if I killed him right here, he thought. But Zakareth didn’t attack.

  And when Simon’s grip closed around his Dragon’s Fang, he realized whose fear and pain and panic he’d been sensing for the past few minutes.

  Azura’s.

  Her dread and grief crashed into him, and the pain hit him like the death of his mother all over again. A tear crawled down his cheek, and he didn’t even know why.

  What’s going on? he asked, trying to send his thoughts to her the way he would with a doll.

  She didn’t say anything he could understand, but he felt another surge of grief, and a single image:

  Otoku, half her face torn away, staring at the ceiling of the seventh bedroom, nothing more than lifeless wood.

  Steel flooded him, and he raised his blade to begin cutting a Valinhall Gate right there in the tent. Someone had attacked his Territory, and if he had anything to say about it, they would never get a chance to escape.

  No, wait…

  He dropped the Gate. That wasn’t the right place to go, and he knew it. No…Azura knew it. The enemy wasn’t in the House. So then, where?

  Behind him. He pushed out of the tent and saw, miles distant, the stone walls of Cana.

  The enemy was there, sure as he knew his own name. But even with steel and essence in him, it would take minutes for him to cover that distance.

  Simon didn’t have minutes. Otoku’s killer might be escaping even now.

  He pulled out the mask.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE:

  A PAIR OF MASKS

  The first time Indirial had fought with Kai, he hadn’t expected much. Kai had been shorter, weaker, and slower…but somehow it hadn’t mattered. With the help of those dolls of his, and some scary ability of Kai himself, the kid had been able to predict everything Indirial did. It didn’t matter that Indirial was faster and stronger, with better reach. Kai anticipated every move Indirial made and positioned himself to meet it.

  Before, that had driven Indirial half-crazy. He’d been fighting Kai to save Kai’s life, in part. He’d seen through Valin’s insanity, though Kai hadn’t. He still wondered, sometimes, how they would have changed—how the world would have changed—if Kai had lost that day.

  For one thing, there would have been no Travelers from Enosh on a rainy day nine years ago, looking for Valin’s Hanging Tree. Simon’s parents wouldn’t have died, and he likely would have never become a Valinhall Traveler.

  At the time, Indirial had known he was right, and Kai’s resistance had filled him with frustrated anger.

  Now, on the walls of Cana, he feinted at Kai’s left side, changed direction to sweep at his throat and force him to back off, and then summoned a spear from the Valinhall armory to thrust at his chest. Kai didn’t even blink at the feint, leaned back far enough to let Vasha’s point scrape the chin of his white-and-gray mask, and then grabbed the spear below the head and pulled it, jerking Indirial off-balance. In one smooth motion, he pulled Indirial toward him and drove Mithra through his stomach.

  Far from frustrated, Indirial didn’t think he’d ever had a better time.

  Valin had always spoken of the joy of battle, how there was no game greater than wagering your life in a contest of strength and skill between two evenly matched opponents, but Indirial had only ever caught glimpses of that in himself. He enjoyed using his Valinhall powers; how could he not? He could leap to the top of a tall building and look out over Cana, enjoying a view that only the Avernus fliers got to see. Unlike them, he didn’t even have to worry about falling. Travelers held very little fear for him, because he knew that in a straightforward combat scenario, he would always hold the edge.

  But he’d rarely felt the sheer thrill, the enjoyment of battle for its own sake. Not until now.

  So he let Mithra slide in through his stomach, relished the distant pain of his mortal body. Kai had earned that. It was a beautiful move, and had Indirial been only human, that would have been enough to outplay him. Taking this hit was something like applause from an appreciative audience.

  “Well done!” Indirial said, through a genuine grin. “I mean, wow, I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  While Indirial was talking, Kai released Mithra’s
hilt, pulled a two-headed battle-axe from the armory, and swung it at Indirial’s neck. Indirial ducked under it—which felt a little more awkward than usual, considering the six feet of steel sticking through him.

  He coughed up a little blood, idly wiping it away, and then pulled Mithra out of his stomach inch by inch. He tossed it underhand, back to Kai.

  In a spray of green and gold sparks, his stomach knit itself back together.

  Kai stepped forward with Mithra in both hands, working the forms as beautifully as if he were practicing in front of a mirror. He swept the blade diagonally up, then across, driving Indirial back. At some point, Indirial knew, his back would hit a wall. Kai was backing him into a corner. It was such a classic move that Indirial almost wanted to let him land it, but that would remove the spirit of the game, so right when he sensed he was about to be backed into a wall, he jumped. His strength as an Incarnation let him soar over Kai easily, even considering his reach with Mithra.

  Kai had been waiting for him.

  He hadn’t banished the battle-axe after all. He had only dropped it. Indirial had stopped paying attention to the weapon after it left Kai’s hand, but that was a mistake.

  Kai scooped up the axe, big enough to bisect an ox, and hurled it one-handed. It spun over and over on its way to meet Indirial in the air.

  He got Vasha up in time to deflect the axe-blade, but he didn’t expect Kai to be right behind it, leaping after the weapon to clash with Indirial in midair. Indirial managed to twist out of the way, avoiding a Dragon’s Fang through the chin by mere inches.

  Indirial had tried that move earlier with a simple chunk of stone he’d torn off the wall, and now Kai copied him with a battle-axe?

  He was falling down to the wall, but he already had his feet under him, and with the Nye essence it felt like a casual glide. “Is it the scroll?” Indirial called up. “Is that how you’re doing this?” Kai had always claimed he had a power called the ‘iron scroll,’ or the ‘black scroll’ or some such thing, and that allowed him to understand the flow of combat better than anyone else. Indirial had never found such a power, but Kai definitely had some edge.

  Indirial landed lightly, and Kai hurled a spear after him. He deflected it with the flat of his blade, watching Kai hit the wall in a crouch, Dragon’s Fang held out to the side. Under his shaggy white hair, the white-and-gray mask was featureless. Pitiless. Cold.

  It hadn’t been long since Indirial had hated the masks, hated the very idea of them. Calling more power at the expense of increasing your debt to Valinhall seemed like the exact trap that had ensnared Valin. The same trap that had ensnared him, if he was honest.

  But now? He liked the look of the masks. They would be the faceless executioners of Valinhall, and the last sight the unjust or unworthy would take to their graves would be a blank plate of gleaming metal.

  Come to think of it, Indirial thought, what about that debt?

  He glanced up at Kai’s neck.

  The black chains were only one link from completion.

  All his life, Indirial had heard horror stories about what happened when two Incarnations existed at the same time. Most of them, it seemed, simply died. Others lost all their powers and went insane, or one lost their powers and the other their sanity. Valin always said that he’d personally witnessed a double Avernus Incarnation, where each Incarnation had physically fused with the other, creating a horrifying monstrosity with extra parts, both bird and human, constantly tugging between two wills.

  Indirial wasn’t quite sure how that would be possible, since all of Valin’s life had passed while the Incarnations were sealed beneath the Hanging Trees. But he’d taken the stories to heart.

  He let Vasha vanish and raised his empty hands.

  “We should do this again, Kai,” he said. “If I was…like I was before, you’d have killed me right now. But I’m not, and you can’t. Now take off the mask.”

  Kai had paced back and forth on the wall while he was talking. He seemed to be limping, favoring his left leg. But when Indirial stopped, Kai puffed into smoke and swirled in Indirial’s direction.

  Look out, Korr warned. The violet flame burned at the heart of the smoke, flying along with the black stream, and came to rest in front of him.

  So Kai was going for a frontal assault, then? Fine.

  The white-haired Traveler manifested in front of Indirial with the point of his sword an inch from Indirial’s heart. He pushed it up, skewering straight through the heart like a knife through an apple.

  Blood welled up and flowed through Indirial’s lips, filling his mouth with the taste of copper, but he finally had the chance he’d been looking for: he grabbed Kai’s shoulder with one hand and his mask at the other, prying with all his strength and the full will of his Territory, trying to peel the mask off his old friend.

  Kai jerked back, tearing the mask from Indirial’s fingers. It was still stuck, so the Incarnation tried another tactic.

  When Kai tried to pull Mithra out of Indirial’s chest, Indirial held onto the blade and stepped forward.

  Then he kicked Kai in the ribs.

  Kai brought the Dragon’s Fang with him, pulling it out of Indirial with a sucking noise. He flew through the air, blood trailing from his blade, and landed hard on his back at the foot of the still-open Valinhall Gate.

  He writhed on the ground, in even more pain than the fall could account for. That’s right; he must have fallen on his wound. So much the better for Indirial’s purposes.

  This time, when Indirial reached down to peel the mask away, Kai didn’t resist.

  The last link around his throat was half-formed, but if Simon’s experience with the original mask was any indication, Kai wouldn’t be able to call any powers from Valinhall for hours, if not days.

  “You should have…left her alone,” Kai said, choking up. “She didn’t…deserve that.”

  Indirial let his joy fade a little; it wouldn’t be appropriate to keep grinning in the face of Kai’s obvious grief. “I didn’t want any of them to die,” the Incarnation said. “They’re part of me, now. As are you.”

  He reached down and grabbed Mithra, summoning Vasha again so that he held a Dragon’s Fang in each hand. All of the Wanderer’s remaining swords were now in his possession, except for Simon’s Azura. “Can you make it through the Gate, Kai?”

  Laughter burbled up in Kai’s throat, sounding like he had a throat full of blood.

  Indirial sighed. “Kai, I can’t believe how often we seem to have this conversation. Get back through the Gate, or you’re going to die. The fight’s over. I won.”

  “Hmmmm?” Kai said, his voice smooth. “Did you?”

  He reached out, and the air shimmered as he summoned something from the Valinhall armory: a giant hammer, mirror-bright Tartarus steel from head to hilt.

  With an audible click, the black chains around his throat snapped together.

  Indirial’s mind shattered, re-formed, shattered again. He was vaguely aware of falling to his knees, but he also felt the cold stone against his back, the burning Ragnarus sword wound in his back, and an overwhelming grief for a broken doll in a red dress. Steel shifted and pushed like needles beneath his skin, as patches of his flesh painfully hardened.

  He was looking up into his own eyes, which burned with violet flame like a warning from Korr.

  No, wait…that was a warning from Korr.

  Danger! His advisor shouted.

  With the last of his strength, Kai tossed the Tartarus steel hammer over the wall.

  And Simon rose up from the walls of Cana, masked in mirrored steel and dark iron. His cloak trailed black behind him, the hood raised. In his right hand he held Azura, long and gleaming silver, and with his left hand he plucked the falling hammer from midair.

  He seemed to hover for an instant, a specter of shadow and bright steel like an Arbiter of Naraka come to deliver judgment.

  Indirial had one moment to think, That is exactly how a Traveler of Valinhall should look.
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  Then Simon struck.

  That glimpse of Simon was the one clear look that Indirial got. As soon as the boy started moving with his hood up, the essence of the Nye flowing through him, Indirial had a hard time looking at him straight on. He wondered briefly if certain Incarnations had an easier time looking through the Nye cloak than others, but then Simon was on him.

  His first strike was a slash with Azura, which Indirial had to nudge with the Dragon’s Fang in his left hand. Simon followed up with a one-handed swing of the hammer, aimed at Indirial’s head.

  Ordinarily, he would have dodged, continuing his attack from a lower angle. Perhaps ducked under the hammer and driven his sword up into Simon’s stomach. But he had a good sense of Kai’s strength when he was wearing the mask, and he didn’t really want to kill Simon. The boy wouldn’t give him the same fight as Kai, but maybe in twenty or thirty years he’d turn into something truly spectacular. Indirial the Overlord, Indirial, son of Aleias, and the Valinhall Incarnation were all in agreement: they wanted to see Simon reach his potential.

  So he caught the blow one-handed with Vasha. Assuming that Simon in his mask was just as strong as Kai had been, Indirial wouldn’t need to meet the attack with his full strength.

  Indirial had already begun planning his next strike—stepping forward and hitting Simon in the head with the flat of Mithra’s blade, hopefully tripping him up and letting Indirial subdue him unharmed—when he realized that the hammer was still coming.

  Under the Nye essence, the instant had felt much longer, but the Tartarus steel head of Simon’s hammer met Vasha and didn’t even slow down. It was headed straight for Indirial’s temple.

  In a split second, he redirected all his strength as the Valinhall Incarnation into supporting his one-handed defense, pushing against the hammer with everything he had.

  Superhuman strength or not, there was only so much he could do against momentum with poor footing and no leverage.

  The hammer, along with the back of his own blade, smacked Indirial in the face.

  Even as an Incarnation, he felt that pain. The hammer smashed the side of his head, whiting out his world and sending him flying into a stone wall. He hit hard enough to crack the bricks, along with most of his bones, before flopping down to the ground. Which, he couldn’t help but notice, was also solid stone.