Gardens of Mist (The Traveler's Gate Chronicles: Collection #2) (6 page)

But the man didn’t leave. He reached into the chest and pulled out one of the strangest swords Valin had ever seen. It was long, clearly meant to be used with both hands, and slightly curved. The sheath still covered its blade, but Valin knew that it would only be sharp along the outside edge.

The Traveler leaned back, poised to throw the sheathed sword like a javelin.

“Lieutenant!” he bellowed, and launched the sword like a ballista.

It shot straight for Lieutenant Roshan, who did not turn toward the sound of her subordinate’s voice, as Valin had expected she would. Instead, she turned to face the Strugle and tore her blindfold off.

For a split second, as the curved sword flew through the air, she stared into the Strugle’s horrific milky eyes.

And then, without looking, she reached up and caught her sword in her left hand.

In one smooth motion, she pulled the sword from its sheath and swept its edge toward her opponent.

Valin didn’t watch how it turned out; he started to scramble down the side of his steel cliff. The landscape was made up almost entirely of interlocking steel plates, and he cut himself more than once, but he knew he would need to get down there as fast as possible.

The Strugle’s preferred method of attack was ambush, terrifying the victim into paralysis before impaling them on its spear-like arms and draining them of blood. But if it was confronted, it would not run away and seek other prey, as would many predators. Instead, it hunched into an almost turtle-like defensive stance, using its stony armored plates to defend itself as it continued to force its victim into a corner. Only when it had no other options would it finally flee.

In this situation, the Strugle running was probably a worst-case scenario. It would be free to hunt on its own, and there was no realistic chance of tracking it down a second time before it killed again. That meant they had to kill it before it either devoured Lieutenant Roshan or decided that it had to run.

Why did the room have to shift?
Valin wondered.
Why then, at that exact time?
If the bowl had stayed in place, the Travelers could have killed the creature instantly, at range.

If the Steel Labyrinth was self-aware, it had a sick sense of humor.

On the far side of the room, the Traveler with the bladed disc hurled it toward the Strugle. Closer to Valin, the man covered in armor leaped down from the ledge, landing easily on the ground twenty feet below.

Obviously, the armor reinforced his body somehow, which Valin deeply envied at the moment.
 

“I’d give my left leg for strength like that right now,” he muttered. He wouldn’t mind the armor part either, to tell the truth; his fingers were bleeding from a dozen little cuts.

When he finally reached the bowl, the three Tartarus Travelers had things well in hand. The one with the disc waited high on his ledge, throwing it every few seconds and calling it back to his hand. It didn’t do much damage to the rocky monster of Ornheim, but it left little chips of stone in its wake.

It seemed that the armored Traveler’s job was to keep the Strugle from reaching its prey. Every time the creature got close to stabbing Roshan, the man pulled it backwards. Roshan herself used her gleaming blade to deflect strike after strike, occasionally flickering out to draw blood.

Delay tactics
, Valin realized. They were holding it there, chipping away at the predator little by little, waiting for it to succumb to its wounds and die.

Not a bad strategy, but if this kept up, he wouldn’t get his chance to play.

Apparently the Strugle heard his thoughts, because the creature’s head twisted almost backwards on its neck, its two white-lantern eyes staring him straight in the face. Its round mouth let out a growling shriek, and it slipped through the armored Traveler’s gauntlets to scuttle straight toward Valin.

It seemed to prefer weaker prey.

Valin drew his sword and held a basic stance: blade up, feet apart, crouched on the balls of his feet. A smile tugged at the corners of his lips. This wasn’t, perhaps, the most efficient way of getting rid of the creature, but Naraka take him if it wasn’t more fun.

The Strugle opened with a probing jab of its spear-arm that Valin had no trouble deflecting. The second had a little more spirit behind it. Rather than trying a third time, the Strugle hissed and rushed him, loping straight forward with both arms extended.

Valin twisted to the side and put his whole body behind a thrust to the Strugle’s relatively unarmored chest.

Then Tartarus played yet another underhanded trick on him.

His sword bent and snapped off, clinging as it struck the metal floor.

Without missing a step, Valin threw his hilt aside. He knew immediately that if he tried to back off, the Strugle would simply stab him through the back. So he leaped forward.

He didn’t have anything like the strength it would take to wrestle with the creature evenly, but he would settle for keeping it from stabbing him. Awkwardly, he pushed at the Strugle’s arms with hands and feet, trying to keep it entangled just long enough for Lieutenant Roshan to strike the final blow.

Over the monster’s plated shoulder, he happened to catch a glimpse of Roshan’s eyes.

She had her curved sword held in both hands, and was almost here. He hoped he could hang on long enough for her to get there and stab the monster through.

Wait, come to think of it, how will I get out of the way when she does? She won’t stab me, will she? This was a bad plan…

Instead of crossing the last few paces to him, though, she stopped, drew one arm back, and threw her sword forward.

Is she trying to hit this thing with her thrown sword?
Valin thought incredulously. If that worked, he was going to apprentice himself to this woman, and never leave until he learned her miraculous sword-throwing secrets.

The sword didn’t fly nearly as straight as it had earlier; it looped and wobbled through the air

Oh, she’s not throwing it
at
the Strugle. She’s throwing it
to
me.

If anything, the thought was even less comforting…but it was just as interesting. He couldn’t deny that he liked the idea of finishing off this creature himself. He had to let go of one of the Strugle’s arms—potentially freeing it to stab him in the back—to reach up and snatch the hilt of the lieutenant’s sword.

He was face-to-face with the Strugle’s whirling circular mouth, close enough to smell the iron on its breath. His body was pressed against the creature’s unarmored underbelly.

He had the perfect chance. So he grabbed the hilt of the sword in both hands and drove it down, putting three and a half feet of steel into the monster’s guts.

It spasmed as it died, leaking strangely dark blood all over the place. Valin stepped back, to avoid getting more blood on his skin than he absolutely had to. He pulled the sword out with him, and it slid from the monster’s body with miraculous ease.

“I need to get one of these swords,” he said. “They’re incredible.”

Lieutenant Roshan’s grin made her look like a different, even younger person. “Come and see me in the Forges, and I’ll show you how they’re made. We’ll have plenty of time, since I suspect I’ll be on forge duty for the next few weeks. If not the rest of my natural life.”

Valin reversed the bloody sword and held it out to her, hilt-first. “I just might take you up on that. But who says you’ll be punished at all? We caught the thing, didn’t we?”

She took the sword from him and began wiping the blade down with a thick cloth she produced from her pocket. “Not enough, I’m afraid. It was your plan that worked, and you that struck the final blow. Thank you for that, by the way.”

Tartarus Travelers and their honor. They could be even more confusing than the Labyrinth itself. “If you knew that, why did you toss me the sword? Why didn’t you just wait and kill it yourself?”

Roshan moved around to the armored Traveler, helping him out of his breastplate. Apparently he couldn’t just conjure it off the same way he could summon it on. “I knew you had the better shot,” she said. “I wasn’t thinking of my reputation at the time, I was just trying to make sure we killed the monster. Besides, it’s not like this is over. We still don’t know who summoned it in the first place.”

“Sure you do,” Valin said. “Enosh. It’s always Enosh.”

“We’ll have to be more specific than that, I’m afraid.”

Valin nodded absently, still looking at the Strugle’s corpse. “That’s it for me, then, I guess. My job’s done. I was almost hoping it would take longer.”

“Hoping you would run into a dragon?” the armored man asked. His voice was somewhat muffled by the helmet.

Valin spread his hands helplessly. “Not entirely. The Territories are fascinating; I can never see enough of them. I’ve never spent much time in Tartarus before, so I was hoping to get to know it a little better.”

He hesitated, then added, “And you never know. Maybe this will be where I finally do find my dragons.”

Lieutenant Roshan shrugged. “Well, good luck to you. Tell the Queen we were grateful for your assistance, and hers. If it helps…I’ve heard rumors of fire-breathing snakes with golden scales. Not dragons, exactly, but close.”

“It’s just a tale we use to keep the novices up at night,” one of the men put in. “But hey, you never know.”

Valin had certainly followed up on less. “Where?” he asked.

“Supposedly, in the center of the Labyrinth.”

He picked up his satchel, slinging it over one shoulder. “Can you point me in the right direction?”

“It’s a labyrinth,” Lieutenant Roshan said. “That’s not just a name. It’s a big maze.”

“Right, got it. So no one knows where the center is.”

Oh, well. He would just have to find it himself. He liked things better that way anyway.

“Before I forget…” Roshan said, and tossed him his gold medallion. “I had a real battle with myself about giving that back to you. It may have saved my life today. The voice is a little creepy, though.”

Valin snatched the medallion out of the air and tucked it away in his satchel. He hadn’t forgotten; part of him had been hoping that Roshan would stay quiet and try to keep the artifact for herself. He should have known better.

“You wouldn’t be willing to part with your sword, would you?” Valin asked hopefully.

She laughed. “Pick one up yourself. There are plenty around here. If you want a good one, though, you’ll have to come see me in the forges.”

“Oh, well. It was worth a try.”

Valin raised a hand in farewell and headed out of the room and back into the razor-filled hallway.
 

Then the Wanderer walked deeper into the Steel Labyrinth, looking for dragons.

You will find that the Red light of humility shines strongly in the Labyrinth, for many of its Travelers hold fast to the old ways. Rather than guiding them, we must ask them to guide us.

-Elysian Book of Virtues, Chapter 6: Red

More Stories In…

THE LIGHTNING WASTES

(The Traveler’s Gate Chronicles, Collection #3)

Coming January 2014

Also, check out Will’s website for book updates, news, original fiction, and his long-forgotten True Name!

www.WillWight.com