by Wight, Will
Leah looked around at Ragnarus, at the glittering weapons that surrounded her, and she raised her voice. “I’ve come to talk with you,” she said.
For a few seconds, only silence answered. Then a woman stepped into Leah’s view. She walked as if she had exited a door, but Leah could clearly see a straight hallway in either direction. There was no way for this woman to have hidden anywhere.
Even if she would blend in.
Her dress was scarlet light folded into waves of solid fabric, and her skin a dusky red that looked painted on. Her eyes were shaped like those of an ordinary human, which Leah hadn’t expected, but their irises were clearly red.
The former Ragnarus Incarnation put a hand on her hip and smiled with one side of her mouth. “I suppose you’re the daughter.”
“Queen Leah the First. And which of my ancestors are you?”
The red woman’s smile widened. “Queen Cynara, also the First of that name. A pleasure to meet you, Highness.” She bent her knees in an ironic curtsy.
Leah had been somewhat prepared for this. She’d already thought through all the possibilities of exactly who could be sealed beneath Cana’s Hanging Tree. It couldn’t be Queen Cynara the Second, since that Queen of Damasca had remained alive to seal the other eight Incarnations. That left either her mother, Cynara the First, or one of the Ragnarus Travelers of old, before the Vault was sealed by the Elysians and re-opened.
She had considered this possibility, but her expectations paled before the reality. She was standing before the first Queen of Damasca, the woman who had torn away the seal on Ragnarus, bound the Territory to her bloodline, defeated the last Elysian Incarnation in single combat, and formed Damasca into a unified nation almost singlehandedly. Leah had grown up hearing legends of this woman’s adventures, both historical and mythical.
So she was proud that her voice didn’t waver as she said, “The pleasure is mine.”
Cynara nodded, accepting the compliment. “You approached me. You wish to bargain?”
“I wish to stop my father.”
Leah’s hand brushed the ring-box in her pocket. Even a former Incarnation of Ragnarus would surely ask for payment, so hopefully a lost artifact of the Crimson Vault would do the job.
Queen Cynara paced slowly across the Vault’s broad floor, seemingly lost in thought. “There is the matter of payment…but we will get to that. How do you know you want to stop your father? Do you even know what he wants?”
“If he’s the Incarnation of Ragnarus, then he wants power,” Leah said. “He doesn’t care how or where he gets it, so long as someone pays a price.” Murin fluttered her wings and squawked, agreeing.
Cynara nodded, once. “True and wisely spoken. Still, why stop him? He would make a better ruler than some.”
Because he’s an insane, murderous Incarnation, Leah thought. “Because I don’t trust his judgment,” she said.
“Ah.” Queen Cynara pondered for a moment, tapping a finger against her lower lip. “Take it from me, his judgment is certainly questionable. As was mine, until…recently. But you want more than to stop your father. Be specific.”
If that’s the way she wants it, Leah thought. “I need the answers to three questions. What is my father planning? How do I stop him, and the other Incarnations? And how do I deal with the Incarnations as a whole?”
She wasn’t sure Queen Cynara would have an answer to the last question, given that she had apparently failed to control the Incarnations the first time around, but it would be worth comparing what she said to the Avernus Incarnation’s advice and then comparing notes.
“The last one is easy,” Queen Cynara said, shrugging one red shoulder. “Simply return each Incarnation to its home Territory. The longer I spent in the Unnamed World, the more my thoughts began to bend to my new nature. And now, the longer I spend in my Territory, the more I remember who I used to be.” Her eyes grew distant. “I wish I’d known that before I saved your father from the brink of death.”
Leah, too, wished that she had simply let Zakareth die on the Vault floor. “So, if I return the Incarnations, everything works out?”
Cynara waved a hand. “Of course not. Nothing ever ‘works out’ simply or easily. You’ll have to create a team of Travelers dedicated to finding and stopping Incarnations. That’s what the Elysians did, in my time, but now I’d recommend that Valinhall of yours. Or at least I would have, except that Zakareth attacked them. I don’t know how it ended up, but we do have two of their excellent swords here in the Vault.”
Leah’s first thought was to run and go tell Simon, but if the attack was over, then he surely already knew. And she had better things to do than to worry about a bunch of Valinhall Travelers in a fight.
She decided to ask the ancient queen the same question she’d asked Avernus. “The Territories would become more difficult to colonize and control if I left the Incarnations loose,” she said. “Why don’t I use the Hanging Trees again?”
Cynara stiffened visibly at the mention of the trees, and she began rubbing her left wrist. “Even if you were willing to bear the moral burden of the yearly sacrifices, which I suspect you are not, the situation is much worse for the Ragnarus Incarnation. The Trees were never meant to work on our kind.” Cynara’s eyes blazed, and her voice shook with remembered pain and grief. “I never fully lost consciousness as the Tree fed upon me, do you understand? Not for one moment. I was even aware of the outside world, able to sense events to a certain degree. I cannot imagine a more complete state of agony.”
Leah managed to repress a shudder. She would subject the Incarnations to that if she had to, to preserve the security of the realm, but she would certainly prefer another way. A way that Avernus and Cynara seemed to be offering.
“Well, then, on to my other questions. What is my father planning, and how do I stop him?”
Queen Cynara released her own wrist and composed herself, brushing off her scarlet dress. Her smile returned, and this time it had an edge. “In this, help and payment are one and the same. Here is my price: I will give you the information you seek, and in exchange, you will embrace the power that you now hold.”
“I will not become an Incarnation,” Leah said at once. She had decided on that before coming here. The last thing they needed was another Incarnation taking her father’s place.
“Not that,” Cynara said irritably. “Why does everyone assume I speak in riddles? The power you now hold. In your hand.”
Leah’s hand clenched on the ring-box, and she drew it out of her pocket. “This?”
“The Eye of Ages,” Queen Cynara said, her smile broadening. “I’ll help you replace your eye, and tell you your father’s plans…not that he’s been keeping them secret. All you have to do is accept.”
Leah rattled the ring-box in front of her. “What do you gain from this?”
Queen Cynara rested her chin in her hand as though thinking. “That wasn’t one of the questions I agreed to answer, was it? No, it was not. Let us say that our interests coincide, for a time.”
I can’t see a trap, Leah thought. Which means there must be one somewhere. What angle is she playing? What am I missing?
The problem was, she didn’t know enough. She knew practically nothing about the Eye of Ages, or about Queen Cynara. What could possibly motivate the woman?
“What do you think?” Leah muttered to Murin. She hadn’t quite decided whether to trust the bird—she had come from another Incarnation—but it seemed that Leah’s interests and the interests of the Avernus Incarnation should align on this issue.
Murin ruffled her feathers in what looked like a shrug. From everything the bird could tell, Queen Cynara had no secret agenda.
Which meant that her move was so subtle that even a mind-reading raven couldn’t ferret out its meaning. That made Leah even more nervous.
Cynara hadn’t stopped pacing. Or smiling. “One eye in exchange for wisdom. There are worse bargains.”
Leah’s father had a saying about bargai
ns. It takes two people to make a deal: a desperate man and a winner.
So far in her life, Leah had always tried to be on the winning side. In this bargain, she was afraid she knew where she fell.
But she was desperate.
“I have some conditions,” she began, but Queen Cynara spoke over her.
“No, you don’t!” she said sweetly. “You’re quibbling to make it look like you haven’t given ground. Come now, I’m a weapons dealer, not a merchant. Let’s get started, shall we?”
Cynara clapped her hands, and a chair slammed into the backs of Leah’s knees. She collapsed backwards, sinking in the soft, padded fabric. Murin took off from her shoulder in a flurry of black wings.
Her parting caw had a distinct flavor of You’ll get no help from me.
Queen Cynara leaned over the chair, with her red eyes and ruby smile. “Just relax and let me take care of everything. It’ll all be over soon.”
Then she reached for Leah’s eye.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE:
NEWFOUND POWERS
359th Year of the Damascan Calendar
1st Year in the Reign of Queen Leah I
7 Days Since Spring’s Birth
Simon sat on the grass of the graveyard, looking at the newest headstone.
He realized that he’d never even known Kai’s full name. What was his father’s name? Or his family’s, if he was Damascan? Simon didn’t know. He knew so little about the man who’d given him a new life.
And now he may never know. The tombstone read, simply:
KAI AND OTOKU
That was it. No birth date, no cause of death, no prayer to the Maker or mention of family. Valin had added Otoku’s name without Simon having to ask for it, for which Simon was grateful, but he still felt like it wasn’t enough.
Valin stepped up beside him. “Nine graves, huh. Better than I’d expected. I’d have thought there would be thirteen, by now. Then again, I also thought we’d have overthrown the Damascan throne, so what do I know about making realistic predictions?”
Simon said nothing. He didn’t have anything to say.
The Wanderer sighed and ran a hand over his bare, chain-marked scalp. “Sulking, huh? Seven stones, I was good at sulking when I was your age. I’d had a lot of practice, you see.”
He thought grieving would have been a better word than sulking, but Valin wouldn’t appreciate the difference. This was the man who had founded Valinhall—he wasn’t likely to overflow with compassion and pity.
A shadow stepped up to Simon’s other side. Speaking of pitiless…
“He’s still dead,” the Eldest Nye said. “As I said he would be. Watching the rock will not bring him back.”
“Not that it would change much if he did come back,” Valin remarked idly, scratching the back of his neck with a dagger. “He didn’t do much but lounge around the House all day. He’ll probably be happier dead, all things considered.”
Simon looked up at him, feeling surprisingly…blank. This was an obvious attempt to provoke him, for some reason. The Eldest and Valin were trying to get a reaction out of him.
So be it. If they kept it up, he’d kill them both, and then they would stop. Was that what they wanted?
The Eldest folded his sleeves. “He had such promise as a child. To think he never accomplished anything of worth. It’s an unforgiveable waste.”
Simon hadn’t brought Azura with him, and he couldn’t summon or banish anything within the House. It seemed Kai had known how to do so, but that secret, too, had died with him.
But Simon never went anywhere in Valinhall unarmed.
He didn’t attack the Eldest first. Since the Nye had been last to speak, he would be prepared for an attack. Instead, Simon pulled the dagger from his belt and struck at Valin, slashing at the man’s legs.
Valin stepped back, but Simon pressed the advantage, pushing the knife toward the Wanderer’s bare middle. The older man caught his wrist in a grip that didn’t budge under Simon’s steel-enhanced strength.
He had expected as much from Valin, but this gave him the opportunity to try a move that Kai had demonstrated but never properly taught him. He dropped the dagger and grabbed on to Valin’s wrist with his newly empty hand, pulling himself up and off his feet. Then he drove a knee into the Wanderer’s face.
Valin’s nose crunched, spraying blood down his chin, and he staggered back. Without a pause, Simon turned and drove a fist at the Eldest.
His knuckles slammed into the Eldest’s upraised arm, which felt like punching a steel bar wrapped in yards of thick cloth. The Nye started to speak, but Simon kicked his dropped dagger up, snagging it out of the air with his left hand and driving the blade into the Eldest’s hood.
The Nye swayed backwards, bending almost entirely in half. Simon kicked at his waist, forcing him to take a step back, and then turned the dagger back to Valin.
He scored a long hit across the Wanderer’s chain-marked chest, but Valin didn’t seem to notice. He stood smiling, his nose and his chest both bleeding freely.
“I guess you can fight like the Valinhall heir should,” Valin said.
The Eldest flowed around to stand side-by-side with his former master. “If Kai had brought us the Founder’s heir, then perhaps his life was not such a waste after all. If, instead, he only brought us a single worthless recluse to replace him…I would be very disappointed.”
The Eldest Nye took one step to the side, and beside him, driven at an angle into the earth of the graveyard, was a slightly curving sword almost as long as Azura. A single line of gold ran from the hilt to the tip of the blade.
“You defeated me when I held Mithra,” Valin noted, ticking the point off on one finger. He held up a second finger. “You were Kai’s choice as his apprentice.” Third finger. “And technically you defeated a second Valinhall Incarnation.” Valin spread his hands. “Mithra wouldn’t abandon her previous bearer, but now Kai is dead. You’re the obvious choice.”
Simon had spotted the setup between King Zakareth and the Endross Incarnation earlier, and he wasn’t about to miss this one. He looked to the Eldest Nye. “This is what you want from me. This is where you’ve been steering me since the first day. And…is this why you brought him back?” He nodded to Valin.
Pressing the ends of his two sleeves together, the Eldest bowed slightly. “I brought him back for many reasons, some of which you could not comprehend. This was but one of them. As for you, I did not ‘steer’ you anywhere. I had to practically choke you with this.”
Valin wiped blood away from his chest with one hand—his wound had already closed on its own. “I’d hoped to have this conversation with you in five years, when you’d…filled out a bit. But time moves on and nothing stops it, not even a Territory like this one.”
On the surface, it seemed that they were offering to put him in charge. But that wasn’t quite right, was it? They didn’t want to give him more authority; they wanted somebody to take responsibility.
A few quick objections flicked through his mind—I’m too young, I’m not ready, there are better choices—but he set them all aside. There were two questions that needed answered.
First, did this need to be done?
And second: was he willing to do it?
The Wanderer’s earlier question, separate from but related to the first two, passed briefly through his thoughts: What do you want, Simon?
Valin spoke up again, wiping blood away from his mouth. “Kai died in a fight with another Valinhall Traveler, and I hear Indirial became an Incarnation. Those things should never happen. It’s a mess around here, and we need a Founder to take charge, to make everyone march in the same direction. Essentially, to keep everyone alive.”
So it did need to be done, then.
If you boiled it down, this was the same problem that had gotten him to leave Myria in the first place. People needed help, and no one else was going to help them.
What do I want to do?
When he put it like that, there was n
o choice at all. He’d made his decision the minute he walked away from his village.
He stepped over to Mithra and put his hand on her hilt. Then he hesitated. “Wait. What about the dolls? They’re bound to Azura, aren’t they?”
“You will take a new advisor,” the Eldest said, in his raspy voice. “He will guide you forward not in battle, but in the order and governance of Valinhall as a whole.”
Guilt pecked at his insides like a sparrow plucking seeds from dry ground. He couldn’t abandon the dolls, not now. Not when they were broken, and scattered. Kai would never forgive him.
“Azura doesn’t have a new bearer yet,” Valin pointed out. “Until she does, you’ll still be able to come and go in the seventh bedroom. And the dolls can always talk to you, if they wish, though I understand it’s harder for them to communicate with the bearer of a different Fang.”
At least he wouldn’t have to abandon them immediately. Not until Azura chose a new Traveler.
Valin leaned close. “So, Simon. Did Kai waste his life, or not?”
Simon wrapped his hand around Mithra’s hilt, and he felt a surge of satisfaction that he didn’t think came from him. He still held steel—though he was starting to worry about his chains—and he pulled her from the soil, adjusting to the balance. She felt much the same as Azura, but was shaped slightly differently, and perhaps a few inches shorter. He would have to practice even harder now.
It took him a moment to notice that something had changed.
The grass, which usually rippled in a gentle breeze, had stilled. Even the crawling nest of emerald lightning overhead was completely frozen. Simon stood in a lake of absolute quiet and stillness; for a moment he thought he’d called as much Nye essence as he could hold, but he felt no ice in his lungs.
The Wanderer had his eyes shut, and the Eldest drew a deep, rattling breath through his hood, as though savoring a new scent.
