House of Blades (The Traveler's Gate Trilogy) (40 page)

Then they must be dead. What a shame; we’ll have to leave now.

Take me to them,
Simon commanded. And, for once, the doll did as she was told.

A few seconds later, Simon knelt beside the bed. Otoku said the beam he rested on wouldn’t make the rest of the pile collapse, but all the debris sounded like it would crack at any second.

He peered underneath the bed skirt and saw three pairs of eyes gleaming at him through the shadows and dust.

“Are you all right?” Simon whispered.

“Are you here to rescue us?” one of the girls asked, but her mother shushed her.

“Leave us now,” the woman commanded. “We will be fine without your assistance.” Even huddled in the dust under a half-broken bed, she glared thunderbolts at him.

“If you hadn’t noticed, there’s a battle out there,” Simon said. “All it takes is one more hit, and this whole room’s going to fall down on top of you.”

A monstrous voice shouted something about demanding blood, and another explosion shook the whole room. Dust rained down, making the children sneeze.

“We cannot get out,” the woman admitted, though her voice still sounded proud. “The bed is blocked on all sides.”

“What’s your name?” Simon asked gently. The chains slid down his hands like sap down a tree, reminding him to hurry, but if he just called steel and tore the bed off of them, they would be terrified. He might as well try to put them at ease.

“Without even giving me your name first? Do they have no manners where you come from?” she said, as though she couldn’t hear the battle outside. The room shook again; one of the girls buried herself in her mother’s sleeve.

“I am Simon, son of Kalman,” Simon said impatiently. “And you are?”

“Adrienne Lamarkis Daiasus,” the lady declared, and then she announced her daughters’ names, but Simon didn’t care enough to listen.

“Great, Mistress Adrienne—” she looked a little upset at the name, but Simon didn’t know or care anything about the proper mode of address for a Damascan lady—“here’s what’s going to happen: in a few seconds, I will pick this beam up and hold it out of your way.” He patted the beam he was kneeling on, which was as thick as his waist and stretched from one end of the room to the other.

“When I do,” he continued, “you take your children and come on out. I can protect you until you can leave the house. All right?”

“What about my husband?” Adrienne asked.

“Your husband is doing fine on his own,” Simon snapped, running out of patience. “And I don’t know whether he wants to skin me alive or give me a job, so before I find out for sure, I’d like to take you out of here. All right?”

Adrienne glared at him one more time before nodding. Somehow, even crouched beneath a broken bed and covered in dust, she made that seem like a generous concession to an inferior.

Simon shook his head and called steel. What was he doing here, anyway? These three were alive, and he could get killed for this. Malachi’s family was hardly his responsibility. He could just hear Chaka calling him an idiot.

Simon wasn’t sure he disagreed.

***

As ever, Malachi found wearing the Ragnarus mask a disturbing experience. On the one side, it made him feel like a demigod, pulling enough power from Naraka to level Bel Calem itself. With this mask, he could call enough fire to blacken the sky with smoke and ash, and the strength and energy flowing through him made him feel as though he could bend steel in his bare hands. That feeling was a drug all its own.

On the other side, his body bore the strain. His skin stretched and thinned as he watched, and even without checking a mirror he knew that gray would soon start creeping over what remained of his black hair. The mask made him blaze with power to dwarf a dozen Travelers, but like everything from Ragnarus, it carried a price. His life burned away every second, like a wick under the flame. Only a few hours in the mask would age him to death.

But this boy, this arrogant child, may have killed Adrienne. Rage warred with terror at the thought, and Malachi hurled another ball of orange fire from the Furnace. It shrieked as it darted for the Elysian Traveler.

He had intended to overwhelm the boy immediately upon donning the mask and turn his attention to more important things, but he was proving a tough strand to snap. His gold-armored warrior batted away everything that came too close with its staff, and the boy himself wielded blasts of golden light that forced back everything Malachi could summon. Not enough to threaten him, of course; with the mask on, Malachi doubted anyone short of Zakareth himself could best him in a frontal contest.

The problem was that Malachi couldn’t call anything too destructive inside his own home. The Elysian may have killed Adrienne in his carelessness, but if he hadn’t, Malachi didn’t want to bring the whole house down around her. Anything he summoned powerful enough to destroy the Elysian Traveler would blow his house in half, so he was forced to stick to lesser powers that he could control. He would win, eventually, but it would be a matter of wearing down the boy’s defenses, waiting for him to make a mistake.

But the longer this fight took, the more of Malachi’s life leaked away. He was already one, two, maybe even three years older than he had been when the fight started. What would Adrienne say, when she saw him as an old man?

The Valinhall Traveler would help her, if she could be helped. Malachi had great hopes for that boy, if he survived. Malachi had almost roasted him on pure reaction when he saw the child sneaking along in a black cloak, headed for his wife and children. Logic had restrained his power. Logic, and a feeling. Logically, if Simon had wanted Malachi’s family harmed, he could have just left them there. And Malachi’s instincts told him that a boy who would risk himself to save a captive—even a captive who wasn’t really being held against her will—would only be trying to help.

He would be a great asset to the Kingdom, one day.

But that was in the future. For now, this standoff had taken long enough. It was time to be finished.
 

Malachi raised both hands and twisted them in unison, the screaming fireballs from the Furnace keeping his opponent too occupied to notice, much less do anything. The wall between Naraka and this world twisted, shrieking in protest. This was one of the few powers he had been warned never to call, except under the most dire circumstances.

Too bad. He was about to end the fight, even if he had to blast this prophesied savior all the way back to Enosh.

“Vordreith, Lady of the Just, I call upon thee,” Malachi intoned. His whole body pulsed with agony, but that was a good sign. Attempting this summons without the mask might have killed him; he would accept a little pain. He did not usually have the voice to summon one of the Arbiters, but today the mask’s power carried his request to every flickering flame and dark corner in Naraka. “In the name of my lawful authority, I beg the power to punish rebellion.”

Vordreith’s response was immediate, a somewhat amused and cultured female voice that echoed in his skull:
Putting down rebels, Malachi? You?

“Please, my lady,” Malachi said. Some of the boy’s golden blasts were getting far too close to the bedroom door. He had to hope Simon had things well in hand there. “The Elysian Traveler is in my home. He may have killed my children.”

Really, now?
Vordreith murmured. Then all amusement vanished, leaving a voice as cold as a snowdrift in Helgard.

Then break him.

A swirling ball of fire appeared in his hands, boiling with all the natural shades of fire and beyond: the orange-gold of a blazing flame was streaked with red from a slaughterhouse, yellow from a thunderstorm, blue from an ocean’s depths. The whole immense power of it, borrowed from Vordreith, whirled in a space he could just barely contain in his two hands together.

Every Naraka Traveler, upon first beginning his training, eats a fruit that protects him from heat to one degree or another. One of the measures of a Naraka initiate’s potential power is how much protection they gain from the ritual. Malachi’s protection was the strongest in generations; the fruit of the obsidian tree had granted Malachi a protection so great that he could wade barefoot through coals without a twinge, and it was a good thing. A hair less resistance, and the burning sphere he held would have scorched the flesh from his hands. Without the protection of the obsidian tree’s fruit he would be dead. And without the power of the mask, he would never have been able to keep Vordreith’s fireball contained; it already would have consumed the heart of Bel Calem in raging flames. His head throbbed with the pain of the effort.

The challenge now would not be killing the Elysian. It would be doing so without burning his entire mansion down, and maybe his wife and daughters with it.
 

Malachi glanced to the right, at the bedroom door. They should be spared the worst of it—enough that it wouldn’t kill them, at least. If he controlled the energy correctly, if he could only do this right, then his family shouldn’t even feel the heat.

Malachi held the ball of fire in front of him and, with a wordless shout, triggered its power. A stream of fire billowed forth like a dragon’s breath, consuming all in front of it.

Flames swallowed the golden Traveler whole.

***

Fire gusted toward Alin, blasting apart the gold-skinned giant he had summoned. He barely had time to throw up an arm in a vain attempt to shield his face from the heat.
 

He had expected that, if this moment came, he would be able to die content knowing that he had done his best to oppose evil. What he felt instead was shame. He had told everyone that he would be the one to fight Damasca, even dared to think of himself as a hero.

The Overlord had proved him wrong. After all this, he was just a boy with a head full of pride.

Alin stood there, cringing and shielding his eyes, for almost thirty seconds before he realized that he wasn’t dead.

He lowered his arm and flinched involuntarily, taking a step back. The stream of flame hung in the air as though frozen, the heat still enough that he felt as though his skin should have caught on fire. It filled the room with a blinding light, so Alin felt he could look at nothing else.

When he finally pried his eyes away from the fire, he realized someone was standing in front of him, where he had been standing a moment before. It was a young man with golden hair, standing frozen like the fire, with one arm held up in front of his face. He wore a slashed, burned, expensive suit that might once have been blue, and he cringed away from the flame.

From inches away, Alin stared into his own face.

Rhalia dashed in from the side, white dress blowing in a wind that didn’t exist. Her golden eyes and hair shone bright with reflected firelight.

“Rhalia!” Alin said. “What is this? Am I dead?”

“Close,” Rhalia said with a laugh. “You know, you weren’t ready for this. I separated your mind from your body so that we could talk.” She floated over the stream of fire and hopped up to Malachi. He stood still in his purple suit, one half of his face covered by a crimson mask, mouth still open in a scream. His hands were thrust in front of him, as though he had to push the column of flame forward. Rhalia waved a hand in front of the Overlord’s face.

“You separated my mind?” Alin poked a finger at his own body, as it stood in front of him. It felt completely rigid, as though his flesh and clothes had turned to stone. “This is amazing! Could you do this anytime?”

“The longer I do it, the closer you come to frying your brain like an egg,” Rhalia said, spinning around and hopping back toward him. “So let’s make this quick, shall we?”

“That sounds fine to me,” Alin said. He had never even heard of frying an egg, but it didn’t sound like a pleasant process.

“You’re in the frying pan now, so I guess I’ve got a choice. Do I let you die, or do I give you something you haven’t yet earned?”

“That doesn’t sound like a choice to me,” Alin said, attempting a smile. Was she really still considering letting him die?

She wagged a finger at him. “Power unearned, in this case, could lead to worse than your death. Worse even for you.” Rhalia shrugged. “It’s hard to explain, really, but trust me. The more power I give you, the more likely it is to run out of control.”

“I will earn it,” Alin said. “I promise. I’ll do whatever I have to.” He tried to make himself sound as earnest as possible. He really would do whatever she asked, if it kept him from roasting like a chicken.

“Why did you attack the Overlord when you walked in?” Rhalia asked suddenly.

Truth to tell, he had been fighting his way through the Naraka creatures guarding the door first. There had been a few human guards as well, though they had mostly run when they realized Travelers were fighting. With his blood hot from the fight, he hadn’t thought at all; he had simply attacked. “If I hadn’t, he might have killed me,” Alin responded.

Rhalia pulled her legs up underneath her, sitting cross-legged in midair. Her white dress hung down almost to the floor. “You don’t even know for sure the girl Leah is here.” She started to drift in a slow orbit around Alin’s head.

“If she wasn’t here, Simon wouldn’t be either,” Alin pointed out. “And Keanos led me to this house. Besides, Malachi is the one who sent his men to the village. Malachi is the one who ordered her taken in the first place. He deserves to die.”

Rhalia floated back in front of Alin, smiling a little sadly. Her golden eyes shone with…tears? Was she about to cry? “That’s what I mean, Alin. I don’t see patience or temperance in you. You’re not ready for this yet.”

“I won’t ever be,” Alin said, “if I burn to death here.”

“Well, that’s true,” Rhalia said. “And I don’t want you to get incinerated, anyway. I kind of like you.”

“Glad to hear it.”

She stared into Alin’s eyes until he gave her his full attention, looking more serious than Alin had ever seen her. “I’ll give you the green, Alin, but I wanted to warn you first. Unearned power is a curse more often than a blessing.”

Did she really think this was important now? “I’ll be careful,” Alin said. He extended out a hand. “Please.”