City of Light (The Traveler's Gate Trilogy) (28 page)

She’s absolutely right,
Angeline agreed.

Kai forced reluctance into his voice. “I would love to help, if only I had an advisor. It would be foolish to head into battle as I am now…”

The statement was met with sighs, jeers, and mocking laughter from the dolls. Kai was sure that Simon must have taken Rebekkah, or else he would have heard ‘punch you in the face’ included somewhere in the verbal abuse.

Otoku had her arms folded, though Kai hadn’t seen her move.
Oh, and you don’t think your advisor will show up soon? He’s the
last
person to ignore a direct threat to the House.

“Be that as it may, he’s not here now. I’m afraid that I can’t risk heading into battle without an advisor, it simply wouldn’t be wise.”

She grumbled a bit more, and her sisters joined in, telling him what a horrible person he was. His smile broadened; he
had
missed them.

Simon’s not here,
Otoku said at last.
So fine, I will allow you to borrow me. Only for today. And no baths!
She held her arms out for him to pick her up.

Tears burned at the corner of Kai’s eyes. She had actually
moved
. For him! He picked her up as delicately as a sculpture of spun glass.

I hope you appreciate the sacrifice she’s making,
Caela sent.
Make sure you get rid of the Incarnation.

He’s absolutely
wrecking
the House!
Gloria added.

The invader had given him a chance to use his beloved dolls in combat again. Far from killing him, Kai wanted nothing more than to shake the creature’s hand and thank it, from the bottom of his heart.

But the little ones wanted him to take care of this threat, and that was what they would get.

He pulled open the door to the bedroom, and Otoku sighed.
Place me and Mithra on the ground.

He couldn’t conceal his surprise; she normally hated being set on the floor. It could smudge her dress.
Are you sure?

No, I’ve given up my magical powers of prediction and now I’m wildly guessing. Hurry up.

Smiling to himself, Kai placed Mithra and Otoku on the ground. Then, to his surprise, he saw a body flying toward him.

***

For a second, as Lycus flew through the air less than a foot from the room's ceiling, Lycus marveled that he didn't feel any pain. Surely the Incarnation should have killed him, and he would die in horrific agony...compared to that, this seemed almost pleasant.

He had realized what would happen to him at the end of his fall, and the seeds of panic started to bloom, when his trip came to an abrupt halt. This, too, didn't hurt as much as he'd imagined. In fact, it almost felt like someone had caught him.

He looked up to see Kai’s smile. His eyes were hidden behind clumps of his shaggy white hair, and he was smiling down at Lycus as though he held his own precious infant.

Lycus leaped out of the swordsman's arms as fast as possible.

Kai didn’t seem to mind. He reached down and picked up one of his dolls from the floor: this one wore a long red dress with flowers on it, and her black hair hung loose down her back. He scooped her up, brushed off her dress, and placed her gently on his left hand.

With his right, he reached down and picked up a Dragon's Fang. It was easily as long as Simon's, covering more than half the room, and it had a smooth vein of gold running down the flat of the blade.

He must have placed the sword and the doll there before he caught Lycus. How had he known to do that? How had he found the time?

Kai looked at the Incarnation and cocked his head to one side. “So noisy, my dear, so noisy. You know I need my rest. Shall we stop the noise, so silence reigns supreme once more?”

The steel giant heaved its right arm, pulling one of the Nye off its feet, and then smashed a fist into the black robes. The Nye deflated as though it had been filled with nothing more substantial than air, flowing off like a snake made of black cloth and squirming blue-white light.

Erastes dodged one blow, and Andra hurled a decorative urn, which smashed against the Incarnation's armor. The other two Nye strained even harder, but the giant seemed to ignore them now. It ducked beneath the door to the forge, walking inside without looking back, then seized the handle to the workshop in one armored fist.

Lycus looked up to beg Kai to help, but the man was gone.

In his place hung a cloud of black smoke.

Smoke whirled through the room, flowing into the forge, re-forming into Kai, standing beside the Incarnation. He brought Mithra's silver-and-gold blade down on the giant's exposed neck.

The room rang with the sound of a bell cracking, and Incarnation of Tartarus almost dropped to one knee. That was more than Erastes and Andra had managed, and for the first time, Lycus thought they might actually be able to beat this thing. Kai was a full member of the old Dragon Army, not a new Valinhall Traveler like Andra or Erastes, and he could do things with his powers that Lycus couldn’t imagine. If anyone could beat this creature, he could.

The Incarnation righted itself and slammed a skull-sized fist into the metal of the workshop door. At the first hit, the door dented. At the second, it caved in. At the third, it was knocked off its hinges and went flying into the room, crashing into a table and sending tools spilling all over the floor.

The Incarnation headed inside, and Lycus gasped as he heard his father, Caius, scream for help.

Lycus felt as though his heart would stop. His father almost lived in the workshop, some days, and the room wasn’t that big. It would take the Incarnation significantly less effort to crush Caius than it had to crush the workshop door.
 

Erastes, Andra, and Lycus all ran forward, trying to help, even though the Nye had lost their grip on their chains. The two black chains now dangled from the Incarnation's shoulders and arm, flying behind him like streamers as he marched through the workshop.

The two Nye looked at each other, black hood meeting black hood, and then they backed into the shadows and disappeared.

“Hey, get back here!” Andra shouted, but they were gone.

Why did they leave?
Lycus thought, astonished. Had they realized they couldn't beat an Incarnation, and therefore abandoned the rest of them to their fate? Were they trying to test the humans, to see if they were 'worthy' of defeating this invader? Or maybe they were trying to do something useful, and they had gone for help.

Now that he thought of it, Kai was standing there too. He stood with his head cocked, looking at the Incarnation's back, Mithra held in one hand and the black-haired doll in the other.

Lycus rushed past him, hoping desperately that the Traveler would decide to help. Kai was always strange, even frightening, but he was still an ally. Even a friend. He lived in Valinhall, too, which made Lycus think of him as on their side. The idea that he might stand aside and let the rest of them die...it hurt in ways that Lycus didn't even like to think about.

As terrible as Simon had been, that day when he killed the soldiers under Erastes' command, at least he hadn't abandoned his friends.

The Incarnation kicked and smashed at the tables in the workshop, destroying almost as an afterthought, as though it had been ordered to crush every piece of furniture it could lay its hands on.

Lycus' father, Caius, held a smith's hammer in both hands. He looked determined, but he had backed himself into a corner. He held the hammer out, as though it had the magical power to ward off Incarnations, and it looked like he was prepared to die fighting.

The Incarnation's helmet swiveled to look at Caius, and Lycus lunged forward, driving his sword into the base of the giant's breastplate, around the hip. That looked like a weak point, and there was
no way
he was letting this thing kill his father if he had a say in the matter.

The giant surveyed Caius for a second, then turned his gaze to a wooden table set with bags of precious stones. It swept the jewels off the table, then smashed its fist down into the wood, blasting the table to splinters.

Then it looked around, as though seeking something else to dismantle.

Meanwhile, Erastes plucked the hammer from Caius' grip. Holding the weapon one-handed, he jumped high enough to reach the Incarnation's head, driving the hammer down on its helmet.

Andra hacked furiously at the back of the giant's armored legs, trying to cut its feet out from under it, but as far as Lycus could tell, she was only scratching the metal.

Kai...still stood outside, in the forge, looking thoughtful.

Finally, the Incarnation caught sight of the blank patch of stone that held the hidden door to the gallery. Ignoring the futile attacks of the Travelers, it walked up to the wall and rubbed a palm over the wall, almost tenderly.

Lycus thought that it would hammer the wall into pieces, just as it had done the doors to the forge and workshop, but instead it reached out a finger and delicately flipped the disguised switch that opened the door.

The stretch of stone wall swung open to the tune of grinding machinery, and the Incarnation hummed in pleasure. “Efficiency,” it said, in its rumbling voice. “Excellent.”

Then it ducked, moving carefully to avoid wrecking the hidden door, and slid sideways into the gallery.

Lycus stared after it, wondering. Now that it was in the gallery, surrounded on two sides by stools and polished wooden bars, it appeared to be glancing around instead of attacking. It almost seemed like an interested foreigner, taking in the local sights. Like it was only
pretending
to be a monstrous destroyer.

Now that he thought about it, what was the Incarnation here for? It hadn't attacked the humans directly, instead moving deeper into the House. It hadn't tried to take anything, nor had it fought them seriously. It did nothing but move from room to room, breaking furniture almost absently, as if it couldn't be bothered to ruin a room completely before walking farther.

It didn’t come to kill us,
Lycus realized.
So why is it here?

He couldn't figure out the answer, but the question bothered him. He didn't follow the giant into the gallery, though Andra and Erastes did.

Well, they tried to.

Kai stepped forward, though Lycus hadn't seen him move out of the forge. He placed a hand on Erastes' shoulder, lifting his gold-and-silver blade to bar Andra's way.

Both of them stopped, looking at him.

“Please,” he said, bowing slightly. “Allow me.”

He swung his Dragon's Fang around to point it inside the door, so it didn't get caught on the doorframe, and then he followed his blade inside. He moved with smooth grace, as though he was only one step away from starting a dance.

Honestly, it wouldn't have surprised Lycus if Kai
did
start to dance. He was the strangest adult Lycus had ever met.

Kai stopped and glanced back into the gallery, where Lycus noticed that the black-haired doll was sitting on one of the few workbenches to survive the Incarnation's rampage.

“Otoku, if you please?” Kai said sweetly.

Lycus thought he heard a distant, windy voice let out a sigh.

Then Kai popped into a cloud of smoke, which rushed behind and above the Incarnation, re-forming into an image of Kai standing atop the giant's steel shoulders. Kai drove his blade down, into the top of the shoulder joint, where the armor should have been weakest.

Nothing. His blow did even less than Andra's had. The Incarnation didn't even seem to notice, except that he absently swung his Ragnarus sword above his head, swatting at Kai like a horse's tail sweeping away flies.

Kai leaped back, his head skirting the tall ceiling, and landed lightly on the bar. He began to chant, or possibly to sing, a little above a whisper. “Hush, little one, there's naught to fear. It's just the wind, that's what you hear.”

The Incarnation drove a steel fist at Kai so fast that Lycus couldn’t see it, but the Valinhall Traveler ducked out of the way as though he'd known the hit was coming.

“Hush, little one, it's not the end. Just put your trust in steel...and wind.”

Not for the first time, Lycus wondered if Kai was quoting something. Half of his little rhymes seemed made up on the spot.

Then again, there did seem to be something happening to his blade. It was almost invisible, like a heat haze in the desert, but the air warped around the Dragon's Fang. It twisted in transparent rivers around the sword's edge, and Lycus thought he could hear the rush of a breeze through the trees.

What power of Valinhall was
that?

Kai jumped back up, onto the giant's shoulders. This time, the Incarnation seemed to be expecting it: the giant lifted its blade to drive into the Traveler's side.

Raising his own sword, Kai drove it down into the armor's shoulder joint.

At first, Lycus wondered why Kai had done it. The Tartarus armor had repelled his attack only seconds ago, surely nothing was different now.

Then he noticed that the Dragon's Fang was inches deeper than it should have been. It had driven through one of the weakest joins in the Incarnation's armor, the wound red-hot at the edges and dribbling molten steel.

Kai hopped back down to the floor, his blade still swirling with almost-visible wind. He ducked one of the Incarnation's slashes, then returned with an overhand cut of his own, landing on the wound he’d made in the giant's right shoulder.

He slashed through the metal, leaving glowing, heated links of steel chain in his wake. The Incarnation shouted, perhaps in surprise or pain, as its armored right arm slid off the shoulder, dangling only by a few bits of mail. The bronze, steel, and iron clockworks inside its arm clicked away, exposed to the air.

Humming to himself, Kai dodged a second punch from the creature's left hand. Then he took his blade in both hands, swinging with his whole body at the Incarnation's breastplate. He didn't bother aiming for a weak point, this time; he hit the giant square in the chest with the edge of his Dragon's Fang.

The Incarnation staggered back a step, grabbing a bar in its left hand for support. Kai kept pushing, long past the point where he should have realized that this wasn't going to work.