by Will Wight
And they were all staring, with painted eyes, straight at Leah. As though they had been positioned that way all along.
“I see the dolls are doing…well,” Leah said. She knew how useful they could be, but she still couldn’t help a little shudder when she saw them looking at her. “Does he have to keep them right there in the bedroom?”
The other woman shrugged. “It's Kai's thing, I think. I’m sure he put them there. Anyway, I don't question Travelers.”
Simon lay, shirtless and sound asleep, amid the cloud-soft whiteness of the bed's blankets. He was all tangled up in a sheet, as though he had tried to escape and the sheet had grabbed him and pulled him back. She always thought of him as small, and he would never be much more than her height, but he had put on a surprising amount of muscle in such a short time. If she hadn't known better, she wouldn't have recognized him.
Instead of walking over to shake him, as Leah had expected, the woman cupped her hands to her mouth. “Simon!” she yelled. “Company!”
Leah barely saw it happen. First Simon was tangled up in the sheet so thoroughly that she was sure it would take a seamstress and a pair of gardening shears to get him loose, then he was across the room, inches in front of her, with a knife in his fist. The gleaming point of the steel pressed against her collarbone.
She choked down a scream and stepped back, proud of herself for not falling over backwards. “What do you think you're—” she demanded, but she stopped herself.
Standing there in front of her, Simon woke up.
He blinked a few times, let out a little half-yawn, and noticed her for the first time. “Leah? Why are you here?” Then he saw the knife in his own hand, and his fingers jerked open. The knife clattered to the floor.
“Ah! Sorry. I didn't...they try to kill me in my sleep. All the time. It's a habit, I'm sorry. Are you hurt?”
Leah shook her head, too numb to speak. He had almost stabbed her in the chest before he even realized who she was. Wait. Who, exactly, tries to kill him in his sleep?
Simon frowned at the other woman. “Mistress Agnos, how did you get in here?”
“Like this,” Mistress Agnos said, miming twisting a doorknob and pushing the door open. She watched the two of them with a little amused smile on her face. “You should keep it locked. And I told you to stand back, Your Highness.”
“So you did,” Leah said sourly. “Simon, I need someone to guard me while I go to Endross. We'll be in a Territory where it rains lightning, and we'll probably be surrounded by dozens of Travelers that want to kill me. I need someone to keep me alive and unharmed until we get back. Will you do it?”
Simon glanced down at himself, then at her, and his face flushed. “Uh, let me get a shirt on first.”
“That would be best.”
***
It took Simon a few minutes to get ready, but he eventually emerged, wearing his hooded black cloak and carrying a doll. This one wore her long red hair tied back in a tail, and her outfit was nothing more than a plain villager's shirt and pants. He held the doll in the crook of his elbow as he followed Leah out through Indirial's Gate.
“Come back and visit us, Your Highness!” Mistress Agnos called, from back in the entry hall. Leah gave a noncommittal smile and wave. She was actually a little wary of the other woman, who seemed to swing between utter deference and a sort of motherly concern. It was disconcerting.
Helene Rhode, the Endross weather-worker, was waiting for them. She was perhaps forty years old, with the bright green eyes characteristic of some Westerner blood. Her sandy blond hair was cut close to her scalp, and she had a horizontal scar across one cheek. Most noticeably, she had a weapon strapped to every inch of her clothes. An unstrung crossbow hung from a harness at her right hip, opposite a one-handed infantry sword. She had buckled a dozen knives across her chest, on the outsides of her thighs, and on the insides of her boots. The hilts of two long knives, almost swords, poked up from her shoulders.
Thanks to the time fluctuation between Valinhall and the outside world, Leah had only been gone two or three minutes, but during that time Indirial had evidently found her in the camp and sent her to the command tent. The man did work fast.
I thought she was a weather-worker, not a walking armory, Leah thought, but she kept it to herself. Helene probably expected anyone she came across to mention the weapons, so Leah would maintain the upper hand by saying nothing about them.
“Helene Rhode, I presume,” Leah said.
Helene tilted up a silver flask and took a drink before answering. “You need someone to show you around the Wastes, am I right?”
“That's correct.”
“Fifteen years I've been working in Cana, keeping the worst of the storms away. Ten years before that, I was guiding merchant caravans across Endross, trying to keep them alive. Don't you worry, I'll get you wherever you want to go.” She flashed Leah a grin that looked more like a lioness baring her teeth than a smile.
Leah nodded as though she had expected no less. “You'll do perfectly, then. I need the Endross Travelers of Damasca to stop ignoring their duties and return to their posts. I don't know who needs to make that happen, but you will take us to them, and I will deliver my commands in person.”
Helene took another swig, arching an eyebrow at Leah over her silver flask. “Is there a reason you're going in person, Your Majesty? No offense meant, but wouldn't you be better off sending a lackey?”
“I can delegate anything that does not involve my duties as a Traveler of Ragnarus,” Leah said, half-truthfully. The full truth was that she needed as much authority here as possible, and she didn't have an Overlord to represent her in this matter. It would be easier and faster to do it herself.
“You think this will involve Ragnarus?” The Endross Traveler sounded uneasy.
“It will if our friends don't cooperate.” In reality, if Leah had to rely on her crown to force the Travelers to obey her, she would have already lost. She was hoping to do this without relying on any of her Ragnarus weapons.
Not that she wouldn't bring them anyway, of course.
Helene nodded to Simon, the first time that she had acknowledged his presence. “And him? I thought you were going to get a bodyguard.” He had quietly walked over to the map table and sat his redheaded doll next to him. They appeared to be studying it together.
“My bodyguard. That's right.”
“Not to overstep my bounds, but wouldn't it be better to bring along another Traveler? Between you and me, I think we can handle most trouble, but I don't think a boy with a sword is going to do us any favors.”
“I am a Traveler, actually,” Simon said. He sounded totally calm, but Leah knew that he must have been irritated, or he would have left the question for her to answer.
“Oh really? Which Territory?”
Simon met her eyes evenly. “Valinhall.”
Helene shot Leah a puzzled look. “Where?”
Oh, of course. Sometimes Leah forgot that Valinhall's existence wasn't common knowledge. “The same Territory as Overlord Indirial, Helene.”
“Overlord Indirial? Really? I always thought he was just a weird Tartarus.” She shrugged. “Well, the older you get, the more you learn, I guess. Now then, boy, what's with the doll?”
Simon looked down at the doll and back up, and Leah got the impression that they were having a silent conversation. “She wants me to tell you that her name's Rebekkah,” he said. He winced and added, “She would also like me to punch you in the face.”
Helene grinned her lion's grin once more. “I'd like to see that play out, Valinhall.”
Leah stepped in between them and gave Simon a cold look. He shrugged and pointed to Rebekkah, who seemed to have the slightest glare on her face. “That's enough. Helene, can you take us where we need to go?”
The Endross Traveler buckled her flask next to her crossbow and spread her hands. “I can take you to the main outpost. It's not hard to get there from here, actually. I don't know who's in charge
there, but whoever it is, you'll probably have to fight them.”
“Excellent,” Leah said. “That's why I brought a bodyguard. Lead the way.”
Helene swept out of the tent, Leah followed, and Simon walked behind them, muttering softly to his doll.
***
Leah learned something that day.
She learned that she hated Endross.
It had taken them an hour of walking to reach the place where Helene had decided to open a Gate. Leah wasn't sure whether this was simply the closest place she could open a passable Gate, or whether this took them somehow closer to the main Endross outpost. It was supposed to be accessible from Cana, and they had walked directly away from Cana to open the Gate, but distance could be strange in Territories. An hour's walking west in the outside world could put them two hour's distance east in a Territory. Or a thousand feet up. It all depended on the Territory and the nature of the Gate.
In this case, Helene stopped by a cactus and an unremarkable stretch of scrub grass and announced, “This is it.” She then spread her hands, opening one of the swirling, violent thunderstorms that Endross Travelers used as Gates. It hung horizontally in the air, a lightning-filled shadow roughly in the shape of a round doorway.
Helene stepped through without hesitation, obviously trusting that the other two would follow. Simon waited for Leah to follow. Leah glanced at him, hoping to see him nervous, so that she could offer support and make herself feel better. No luck. Simon looked back at her curiously. He even raised his eyebrows, silently asking if she needed anything.
She shook her head and stepped through the Gate. Back in Myria, she had so often wished that Simon would act with a little confidence. Now, she wanted the old Simon back. If only to have someone around who was more uncertain than she was.
She stepped through, and had only an instant to observe the landscape—a flat, cracked wasteland of yellow sand stretching as far as she could see, beneath an overcast sky—before something hit her ribs like a kick from a horse. She tumbled backwards, caught a glimpse of a blinding flash in the sky, heard thunder loud enough to tear her ears apart, and then she was slamming into the unyielding ground. Her breath whooshed out of her, and she gasped for air, clawing for the weapon she had dropped.
“Whew,” Helene said, grinning into Leah's face from two inches away. “Close one.”
It all came together: Helene had tackled Leah out of the way. Of what? Leah rolled to one side to see a smoking black scorch mark on the sand for an instant before the wind whisked the char away, leaving clean sand in its wake.
“Surely that would have missed me,” Leah said. The bolt looked like it would have hit several paces off the mark.
“Lightning works a bit different here than it does in the other world,” Helene said, pushing herself to her feet. “But it still carries along the ground. It doesn't have to hit you straight on. Even being too close to a bolt can kill you.”
Leah realized she was shouting, both over the ring in Leah's ears and over the constant howling of the wind. The storm caught strands of Leah's hair and flailed her face with them, forcing her to constantly hold her hair back. She hadn't even managed to stand up yet.
Simon walked through the Gate a moment later. Leah was on the ground, covered in sand, trying to keep her face clear of her own hair. There was a scorch mark two paces from the Gate. Helene was still brushing sand from her pants.
“What happened?” he asked, in all innocence.
“Never mind,” Leah called over the wind. Then the sky above her turned from a cool gray to jet-black in little more than an instant. She scrambled out of the way, imagining another lightning bolt blasting her to smoking pieces, but Helene didn't move.
An instant later, a waterfall of rain blasted Leah, soaking her to the bone in a second. Her crimson dress—formal attire, for when she was acting as Queen—deflated, fabric clinging to suddenly ice-cold skin. Her hair went from flapping around her face to hanging in front of her eyes in a sodden mask.
Then, after only a moment, the rain stopped.
Leah peeled hair back from her eyes to see that Simon and Helene were still standing in the exact same places, bone dry.
Helene shrugged. “That happens,” she said. “Let's go.” Then she started to trudge across the desert.
Leah couldn't remember the last time she had felt so embarrassed. She must look ridiculous. At least there was no one around to see. Well, Simon, but he hardly counted.
Simon let out a choking noise that might have started as laughter, and he was clearly losing the struggle to keep a smile off his face.
She raised one eyebrow at him, as her aunt would have done. “Well?”
Without saying a word, Simon walked over to her and extended a hand to help her up. He was still smiling, though, so she ignored him, instead searching around for the weapon she had dropped. When she found it, she shoved it into the ground and used it to prop herself up without Simon's help.
As Simon looked at the gold-headed, black-hafted Ragnarus spear, his smile faded. “Do you really think you're going to have to use that?”
“If I do,” Leah said, pushing hair out of her face, “then your presence here will become unnecessary.”
Simon nodded seriously, and together they began walking after Helene. A few more seconds passed, during which Simon wisely kept his mouth shut. Then his wisdom evidently ran out.
“Aren’t you cold?” he asked.
Leah shoved him with the butt of her spear.
***
The Endross outpost looked like a primitive fort. The wall was fifteen feet high and made of logs with the bark still on, lashed together by brown vines. A network of square wooden towers showed above the walls, each one made of rough-hewn timbers. The entire outpost was a square, not a circle as Leah had expected, and from each corner rose a tall metal spike.
“It’s to catch the lightning,” Helene explained, when Simon asked about them. “Funnels them into a…you know what? I’m not supposed to talk about it. Keeps the whole place from burning down, that’s all you need to know.”
Two Travelers, a man and a woman, stood guard outside the outpost gate. The woman was dressed in what Leah would expect from one of the Badarin desert people: her head was wrapped in a white cloth, she wore loose-fitting, pale-colored garments, and the pommel of her sword had no bare metal showing. The man dressed more traditionally for Endross Travelers, in a leather breastplate and leather-padded leggings, with a leather cap. A necklace of what looked like lion’s claws hung down over his chest.
He smiled broadly when he saw them, baring all his teeth like a maniac. “Who goes there.” It was a statement, not a question, delivered in the most evil, threatening voice Leah had ever heard.
Without being asked, Helene announced them in a clear, ringing voice. “Her Highness Leah the First, Queen of Damasca, seeks an audience with the leader of this outpost.”
Leah wasn’t ‘seeking an audience’ with anyone. She was demanding the presence of whoever currently commanded this outpost, so that she could get her Travelers back. However, Endross Travelers seemed unlikely to appreciate a political distinction, so she let it slide.
Simon stood to her right, and at some point he had raised the hood of his cloak. She found herself oddly comforted to have him there, even though—as she reminded herself—she still had her father’s spear. Surely that would be enough to deal with anything an Endross pulled.
The man lost his smile, and the woman pulled a cloth away from her mouth to whisper in his ear. Her expression said she had never smiled, and did not expect that trend to change anytime soon.
The man cleared his throat. “You would be looking for Corthis, then. He’s the strongest around here. But you’ll have to prove who you are.”
Leah and her companions stared at the guard. Before they reached the outpost, Leah had arranged her crown on her head: a silver circlet set with a large ruby. The gem gleamed and pulsed with its own ruby light.
Hefti
ng the spear, Leah took a step toward the guard. “You want to see proof of my identity?” she asked quietly. With a touch of her will, she prepared the circlet for action. It flared with a harmless red light; the crown wouldn’t activate without more effort on her part, but it still looked impressive.
The male guard took two steps back. Then one more, just to be safe. The woman stayed where she was, but she cringed from the light nonetheless.
“Sorry, my Queen, I didn’t recognize you,” the man croaked. “Enjoy your stay in the outpost.”
With a shockingly loud voice, the woman bellowed for someone on the other side of the gate to let the strangers in.
Leah let the light in her crown die and strode in, following a chuckling Helene, and followed by a silent Simon, who had taken the rear without being instructed. Perhaps he might grow into the bodyguard business after all; half of it was simply looming behind his employer, letting people know that he was there without saying a word. Granted, that would be easier for him if he were two feet taller, or if he had more of a reputation. Or if people even knew what a Valinhall Traveler was.
But she saw some potential.
Corthis, it turned out, was in the very back of the outpost, in a building that looked like a wooden amphitheater. He sat in a raised box above the stadium, which were packed with roaring Endross Travelers. And, for that matter, roaring Endross creatures. Snakes slithered among the feet of the stomping fans, deftly avoiding being crushed by their masters. Something that looked like a reptilian panther wove in and out of the shadows beneath the stadium supports, its coat occasionally crackling with blue sparks. Tiny storm drakes flashed in glittering swarms above the crowd.
As Leah stepped inside, she got her first glimpse at why the Travelers were all cheering.
The floor in the center of the stadium was bare, packed Endross sand. Two big men in torn leathers, presumably both Endross Travelers, circled each other in the ring. They were scratched, bleeding, and unarmed. One of them roared and charged like a bull, slamming his shoulder into his unprepared opponent’s middle. He didn’t stop there. He kept charging until he hit the short wall marking the edge of the floor. He slammed his opponent’s body into the wall, flipping the other man up and into the spectators on the other side.
