City of Light (The Traveler's Gate Trilogy) (23 page)

She stopped fighting him, so Indirial released her arm. It was only then that she noticed something was wrong.

She couldn’t see Grandmaster Naraka through the Gate.

Her two Naraka guards were clearly straining to hold the Gate, shouting something at one another. The three Tartarus Travelers had blades drawn, and one of them reached out to one side of the Gate, dragging Grandmaster Naraka back by the hem of her robes.
 

One lens of her red spectacles was gone, but she wore a mad smile. As a Tartarus pulled a length of rope out of her pack to tie the Grandmaster’s arms, the old woman got one last gesture in with her branded palm.
 

Indirial rushed forward, his cracked blade drawn, but he wasn’t fast enough. The Naraka Gate winked shut, Grandmaster Naraka’s laughter drifting out.

From the look of things, the guards had restrained the Grandmaster before she shut the portal. If that was true, then they would be able to open a new Gate from their side at any moment.

Unless the Grandmaster knew a way to seal a Naraka Gate and keep it sealed. Unless she hadn’t been tied securely as it had looked. Unless the Travelers took too long to open the Gate, and Leah’s fight was already over.

Too many possibilities.

Indirial skidded to a halt where the Gate had once hung. “We need another way out,” he said. “It takes too long to open a Valinhall Gate. What about Ragnarus?”

Leah hefted her spear, walking toward the broken doors. She could hear the fight between Simon and Alin in a series of deafening cracks and crashes, but she couldn’t see much except a few flashes of colored light. “That’s not an option. There may be enemies in the Crimson Vault.”

Indirial didn’t ask for any more details, moving on to the next possibility. “What about Lirial?”

With her Spear, she nudged one door open. It swung crazily from one hinge, dropping splinters like a tree dropping leaves, but she got a better look at the fight. Alin was standing in a dome of Green Light, and Simon had dropped his sword. What were they doing?

“Lirial’s no good,” Leah responded. “According to the scout reports, he’s got a network of guards on the other side. We’d be detected and detained.”

The Overlord’s gaze snapped to Feiora.

Leah shook her head. “They’ve got guards on the other side of Avernus, too. That would be the same as Lirial.”

Feiora hesitated. “Not quite,” she said. “There are some other…complications.”

Simon had produced a giant silver hammer from his Territory, and he swung at Alin’s green dome. Leah silently cheered, waiting for him to break the barrier so that she could hurl her Spear.

The green shield vanished, and then Simon was wrapped in Orange Light. Before she could even think of interfering, he shot up to the sky.

She felt a moment of panic for Simon. How long would he rise like that, drifting toward the clouds? Would he ever come down? But she focused on what mattered most.

Alin was standing in the street, exposed and undefended.

She drew back the Lightning Spear, ready to throw…

And a blue tentacle wrapped around her right arm. A cold tingling, buzzing sensation ran up and down her arm, as though it was carried through her bones. The Spear clattered to the floor, and she collapsed to her knees, all but out of strength.

Then Indirial was there, and his blade passed through the blue tendril, severing it into two twitching pieces. The buzzing feeling passed quickly, but the weakness remained. She shook it off and looked up at the drifting jellyfish-creature that had managed to sneak up on her while she was focused on the Elysian Incarnation.

Its body was the size of a horse, its tentacles at least eight feet long. She wouldn’t have thought it possible, but the thing spoke.

“Surrender and you will find mercy,” the creature hummed, in a voice like a nest of hornets. “Resist and—”

Indirial’s blade split it down the middle, and it collapsed into piles of shining blue goo.

Leah turned back to Alin. He was gone from his spot in the street, so she didn’t waste time looking for him. She twisted her left wrist, until the crystal she always wore there caught the light.

Then she called Lirial.

A pair of white crystal spheres spun out of her Lirial sanctum and into this world, one flying up the street and one down.

Almost immediately, she heard a chime in her mind as one of the spheres spotted Alin. A silver-white light flared in her vision, invisible to anyone else, pointing at a spot hidden in a nearby alley.

Leah didn’t wait until she got a clear shot. She didn’t stop to think about the collateral damage. She had a chance, and she took it.

She threw the Lightning Spear.

As always, the Spear blasted from her hands with force dozens of times greater than her merely human throw. It streaked toward Alin in a blur of steel, ruby, gleaming gold, and black wood.

She didn’t get to see it land, though, because she all but collapsed in pain. It felt like a thousand wasps stinging every inch of her skin, while at the same time a thousand hammers smashed each of her bones to splinters.

Leah had to cling to the stone wall to stop from falling over, and she bit her lip until she tasted blood to keep from screaming.

The Lightning Spear was not the most pleasant weapon in her arsenal.

There was a sound like a building collapsing, and Leah snapped her head up, worried that she actually had broken a building in which people lived. But the Spear hadn’t needed to crash through a wall.

It had flipped into midair, after rebounding off Alin’s shield of green light. Alin stood at the mouth of the alley, both hands out toward the spear as if he were trying to push it away with the force of his mind. A wall of green plates stood between him and the spear, and his face was twisted as if in pain.

With a thought, Leah summoned the Spear back. It flipped around in midair and started to hurtle toward her outstretched hand.

Upon further inspection, it looked as though there was a second layer of green light in the air around Alin, but this one had a hole in it big enough to drive a wagon through. It seemed that the Lightning Spear
had
been enough to punch through his green shield, but not enough to penetrate two layers.

The warm wooden haft of the Spear smacked into her palm, and she levered herself back to her feet.

Now that she knew she could break his defense, she would need to keep attacking until she drew blood.

Speaking of blood, something purple and sticky splattered the stairs in front of her, and she looked up in alarm to see a bird-man in the traditional wooden armor of Avernus shredding a fuzzy, purple Elysian creature with its twin blades.

The Gendo bird-man, which Feiora must have summoned from Avernus, turned its beak toward Leah. It dismissed her after a second, running off on taloned feet with leaps and bounds that ate up five paces at a time.

Indirial grabbed her shoulder and pushed her back into the building. In the same motion, he turned around and put his back to the street.

A blast of gold almost blinded her, shattering against Indirial’s back. The force from the gold light pushed the debris on the stairs back in an invisible ring, knocked one of the doors off its hinges, and set the other to smoldering.

Indirial offered her a smile. “Feiora can open you a Gate,” he said.

“How are you still alive?” she asked, almost involuntarily.

He turned his back to her, holding his blade out toward Alin. He wore a plate of translucent green light, like part of a suit of armor that only existed in her imagination. “I like to come prepared,” he said. As she watched, the spectral plate on his back flickered and went out.

Valinhall,
she thought.
Why am I ever surprised when they have a new weapon? I should get him to make me a list.

Feiora put a hand on her arm. Behind her, a two-foot-tall bearded man in a tall red hat burst through one of the blue windows, brandishing a pickaxe and screaming. Eugan shrieked at the gnome, flapping his wings to hover over the red creature’s hat.

The Elysian choked and fell over, apparently victim to one of Avernus’ psychic attacks.

The Overlord drew Leah back to the other end of the room, never checking to see if Eugan was safe. “It will take me a second to open an Avernus Gate. Stay here.”

“Not yet,” Leah said.

Feiora looked at her as though considering whether to knock her out and drag her into a Territory on general principle.

Leah flipped her left hand at an encroaching gold-armored dog, which had bounded through another broken window. A spike of crystal shot out from the tiles beneath it, enveloping the dog and sealing it in midair.

“You need me here,” Leah said.

After a second, Feiora nodded, and then she turned back to the fight. She had gotten a spear from somewhere, although Leah would have sworn that she didn’t have one before the fight began, and she began using it to poke a slithering, boneless blue cat away from Indirial, who had managed to swat a ball of gold light out of the air with the flat of his blade.

Just then, Leah realized what was missing.

“Where’s Ilana?” she shouted.

No one answered.

***

Alin's head wouldn't stop screaming.
 

Leah's Ragnarus spear had blasted straight through an entire wall of Green Light, and he had barely been able to throw up a second shield in time, before the weapon destroyed his head as easily as it cracked the Green. The feedback from a broken Green shield was one of the few things that still pained him; Rhalia had once explained that the wall was constantly linked to him, which was why it felt like someone flogging his skull with burning whips every time a shield broke.

Currently, he was hurling blasts of Gold Light blindly at the Naraka waystation, trying to buy time until the burning in his head died down.

The noble citizens of Elysia were doing a wonderful job of earning time for him. Three of the Blue District jellies had been destroyed, and a handful of the gnomes were disabled, though their brothers kept fighting. Gold soldiers marched in formation against the side of the waystation, trying to knock their way into the walls, even as Violet and Silver creatures hopped or flew into the broken windows.

The Rose Light filled with compassion and horror at the number of living beings who were losing their lives crawling into that waystation, but Alin drowned out that voice with Gold. This was a battle, and he intended to win.

The Elysians swarmed the building, tearing chunks of stone out of the pillars to carve new entrances, slithering through cracks, hopping over shattered glass and into the windows. In fact, the most difficult point of entry might have been the gaping open hole where the doors used to be.

A Valinhall Traveler stood there, in the empty doorway, deflecting everything that Alin could throw at him and
still
managing to kill any summoned beings that got too close. At first, Alin had thought it was Simon, but when his vision cleared a little bit he realized that was ridiculous. This man, Alin had met only once: he’d pulled Alin away from Leah, just as Alin's rage had gotten the better of him.

This Traveler was older and taller than Simon, with lines of gray at the edges of his hair. He had the dark complexion of a villager, and he wore his shirtsleeves pushed up—even in this cold—to expose the black chains that wrapped up his forearms. He wore his cloak with the hood up, and when he moved, Alin could only see him for an instant. All he could see clearly was the flashing sword in his hands, which looked as though it had been notched and cracked by years of abuse.

The man grinned, bright and cheery, as he slapped away a bolt of Gold Light and sliced an approaching slitherback—one of the blue-skinned lizard-cats—into three equal chunks. Blue blood oozed down the stairs, mixing with red, purple, and yellow in a macabre rainbow.

Your people are dying,
the Rose Light cried.

Put an end to this,
the Gold advised.
The quicker the battle ends, the fewer lives lost on both sides.

That sounded like good sense to Alin, so he summoned his golden blade.

It formed in his hand, an artifact created of Gold Light. Its blade was straight, its crossguard wide enough to protect him, its hilt long enough to hold in both hands if necessary. It wouldn’t get rid of his reach disadvantage against a Valinhall blade, but Alin had other powers for that.

Red Light coiled around his legs, and he launched himself into the fight.

The raven's scream crashed into his mind, telling him to give up, to run away, to find a place to hide, and a thousand other conflicting instructions meant to distract him. He ignored that one; his bond with the Silver Light protected him. Somewhere, he could hear the Silver laughing at the pathetic attack.

A sheet of Violet Light fell like a luminescent blanket over the enemy Valinhall Traveler, covering him and hopefully providing an instant's distraction while Alin landed. It worked; the enemy dodged out from under the Violet with blinding speed, allowing Alin to end his jump by slamming into the stairs, legs braced and slightly bent under him. The lines of Red Light in his lower body absorbed most of the impact, flaring briefly brighter.

Then Alin realized a problem. He couldn't see the Valinhall Traveler. Where was he? Alin must be looking straight at him, given the direction he'd dodged, but there was nothing there. Nothing but a blurry shadow that Alin was, for some reason, having trouble looking at...

A burning line scratched his left side as the Traveler's curved Valinhall blade slashed straight through Alin's armor and scored a hit on his side.

Alin was calling Rose Light at the first hint of pain, and his wound flared pink as it healed. He swung his golden sword from left to right, hoping to take the other Traveler's head off.

The ball of smoke and shadow rolled to the right—he knew it must be the Traveler, but he still couldn't bring himself to focus directly on it, as though it slid away from his eyes. Silver flashed, and the sword was coming up from the ground, angled at Alin’s neck. He put a single six-sided plate of Green Light in the way, and the tip of the blade slid off the shield like fingernails off a glass window. Alin retaliated by calling Blue Light out of the ground. It sprouted in tendrils, grasping for the Traveler.