The Crimson Vault (The Traveler's Gate Trilogy) (19 page)

Their secondary purpose was to be there if any
thing
came through a Ragnarus Gate uninvited. Leah had never seen any living creature native to Ragnarus, but she had no doubt they existed. And if one came through, these guards were supposed to do their best to slow it down. Before they died.

She had never heard of a breach, and her father had once declared that there was nothing to worry about in that regard. But they had to replace these guards with disturbing regularity.

Leah took the towel as she stepped down from the pedestal where her Gate emerged. Wiping off her hands, she asked, “Where is my father?”

One of the servants bowed. “He is personally overseeing the war in Helgard, Highness.”

Leah turned to the servant and raised one eyebrow. “The war?”

“No doubt Your Highness has heard of our successful attack on the Helgard Grandmaster.”

Leah nodded. The Grandmasters had mentioned that fact in the meeting she had recorded, though Leah had already noted that the new, bear-like Grandmaster Helgard was obviously new to the position.

“The heretics are attempting revenge, Highness,” he said. “Your father has gone to reinforce his Travelers on the twenty-first floor of the Tower.”

“Very well,” Leah said. She turned to stride out of the blue room, heading for the Helgard Travelers’ barracks.
 

“Heiress Leah,” the chatty servant said again. Leah turned back around. Two years ago, she would have been piqued and offended that this servant had both stopped her and addressed her by name at the same time. After years in Myria, though, it almost seemed normal.

“Yes?”

“I can take you, Heiress,” the servant said. He moved his head to the right, revealing a tattoo on the side of his neck: a blue tower.

Travelers posted here as guards had almost always done something wrong—usually incompetence or a gross political blunder—and were sent for temporary duty here as a kind of punishment. They were always loyal, but rarely the best in the city, and they were
never
supposed to reveal their identities as Travelers, even to members of the royal family. Well, except in case of emergency.

And she supposed this qualified.

“Do it, Traveler,” she said. The man nodded and stepped to one side, his partner rushing out of the room. The Helgard Traveler began to chant under his breath, as though he were reciting the lyrics to a song too fast to be understood.

Finally, the air bloomed into a swirling vortex of snow: a Gate to Helgard. On the other side, she could see nothing but blowing snow.

The bitter cold filled the room in seconds, cutting through her thin brown peasant’s dress like an icy knife.

“I wanted you to take me to the twenty-first floor, Traveler,” Leah said. “Not outside the Tower.”

The Helgard Traveler grimaced; he didn’t seem bothered by the cold, which she supposed was to be expected. “This is the twenty-first floor, Highness,” he said. “I hate to think why they’ve called up this much snow, but it’s likely not good. The twenty-first is supposed to be solidly under our control, but this smells like a battle to me.”

Leah stared into the blizzard. “Well, I can’t go in there dressed like this. Send to my rooms, for—”

The second servant in blue hurried back into the room, a coat and thick red cloak over one arm and a pair of high boots in the other.

“This was all your bedroom attendants had on hand, Heiress Leah,” the second servant said, executing a bow. “If you would like to wait, I am sure I could find more.”

“This will do quite nicely, thank you,” Leah said. Her mother had always discouraged her from thanking the help, except in cases of extraordinary service. “When I get back, remind me to promote you.”

The young man beamed and handed Leah her coat.

The Helgard Traveler cleared his throat discreetly. “Heiress, is the Gate to your satisfaction?”

Leah knelt to lace up one of her boots. The helpful servant stepped forward to assist her, but she waved him away. “I’m sorry, Traveler, but I make it a policy to promote only one person per day. And unfortunately for you, this is my favorite coat.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw one servant shoot the other a triumphant grin.

Her boots and coat were lined with fur, but they were both bright red, marking her as a member of the royal family. She would show up on a field of snow like a bloodstain.

Well, she would have to risk it. Even with her Lirial Source as depleted as it was, she was hardly helpless.

She flipped up her hood and stepped into Helgard.

The cold air seemed to mock her cloak and jacket, shredding the layers and pressing against her skin like a blanket of ice. She slogged through the snow toward the only landmark she could make out: a low, distant wall of gray stone.

Her boots were made well enough to keep out water, which was fortunate, but her dress was not. Her coat and cloak covered most of her, but snow still found a way to her skin, melting and running down her body in ice-cold rivulets. She couldn’t stop shivering.

Worse, she started to hear things. Even over the ambient roar of the driving snowstorm, she began to hear the sounds of Travelers at war. The snarl of a great cat competed with a call like a distant trumpet. A long, rolling crack, like the sound of a tree snapping under its own weight, shattered the sound of the wind. On the heels of that sound, the ground under her feet shivered and shook. A layer of powdered snow lifted in a ring, blasted away from the gray wall in an invisible explosion.

Leah had some severe reservations about walking
closer
to a battle like that, but she had no choice. This information was too critical to withhold, even to wait for her father’s return. Though perhaps she should return to the palace, and come back here with an escort of expert Helgard Travelers…

No, her safety was secondary. She would have asked the Helgard Traveler on duty in the Blue Room to accompany her, except that Travelers in his position were strictly forbidden to accept any assignments that took them away from the palace.

But she could prepare.

In her mind, Leah reached out for Ragnarus. Usually, Lirial would be her preference for self-defense, but her Source had reached critically low levels. Until she could replenish its energy, she should save Lirial for an emergency.

A warm weight settled on her head as her royal crown arrived. It was a circlet of polished, red-tinted silver, with a single ruby set above her brow. Fortunately, it pulsed with an inner heat, refusing to give in to the cold of Helgard. She was glad of that; otherwise, it would have felt like wearing a halo of ice on her head. She was cold enough as it was.

As she approached the gray wall, a shadow rose up in front of her. Almost ten feet tall, it stood like a man, but its silhouette was thicker than any human being. As it lumbered closer through the snow, she made out a thick pelt of curly fur, and short horns on the head.

Seven stones,
Leah thought.
A
mirka. She had never seen one outside of a book. Not that she had ever wanted to.

The
mirka
leaned forward and roared, close enough that Leah smelled its rotting breath. In one of the
mirka’s
paws, a huge jagged icicle began to form, freezing out of nothing. Leah staggered backwards on instinct, but she knew she would never get far enough in this snow.
Mirka
were known to be able to hurl their spears of ice hundreds of paces, taking down their prey. What little the
mirka
left of its meal would be devoured by hungry icefangs.

Leah focused on her crown, and the ruby began to glow. She would have to use the crown after all, though its aftereffect would make delivering the news to her father…problematic.

The
mirka
drew its arm back to throw, and Leah opened her mouth to speak, but a clump of glittering snow detached itself from a nearby snowbank and hurled itself at the
mirka’s
arm. The snow growled and snarled like two bobcats trapped in a sack.

An icefang. An icefang had attacked the
mirka
. Leah felt an instant of profound relief, and then confusion. Icefangs were scavengers; they haunted the snow of Helgard, waiting for corpses, or else the weak and injured. Why hadn’t the show-shark attacked her, the relatively soft and unprotected prey?

The clump of snow bunched up on the
mirka’s
bicep, tearing off bits of flesh with its hidden mouth. The
mirka
roared as a line of dark blue blood ran down its furry arm, and it slammed its giant icicle into the icefang like a club. The icefang burst into a cloud of snow.

Then a second and a third icefang burst from the
mirka’s
feet in a spray of snowflakes. They crawled all over the
mirka’s
exposed flesh, growling and biting viciously.

They must have been summoned. A friendly Traveler had to be directing these icefangs, or they would have never worked together to bring down strong prey with an easy meal nearby. Leah started to walk in a wide circle around the battling creature, keeping a wary eye on the nearby snow. Patches of innocent-looking snow that glittered as though scattered with broken glass
could
be icefangs lying in wait. And if one of the scavengers was on the move, a moving furrow on the snow would be all the warning she would get.

The
mirka
finally managed to throw off or destroy all the icefangs, and it swiveled its head, sniffing the air. Looking for her.

Leah sped up, trying to get closer to the presumed safety of the gray wall. But the
mirka
spotted her and let out a roar of pain and rage. Practically all of its fur was matted down with its own navy blue blood.

It took one step toward her.
 

Then the air exploded.

That was what it sounded like, anyway: like standing in the middle of a thunderclap. Leah screamed, but she couldn’t hear herself; it felt like something in her ears would tear.
 

The rest happened in an instant. Something slammed into the
mirka’s
side, fast as a bolt of lightning, and Leah got a quick and blurry glimpse of crimson and gold. It hit the
mirka
so hard and fast that the beast seemed to vanish, blasted away and out of Leah’s sight so fast that she could barely see it move.

The wind of the projectile’s passing caught her, tore at her cloak, threatened to throw her from her feet. The wind hit her face with surprising heat.

Leah stayed standing, but she was having trouble catching her breath. She recognized that terrifying weapon, that deadly force of nature.

It was her father’s spear.

A line of snow had been torn away in the wake of the spear’s passing, leaving a path like an arrow from the gray wall in front of her, through the spot where the
mirka
had stood, and stretching as far as Leah could see in the distance. Only specks of scorched fur and blue blood on the snow nearby gave any sign that the monster had ever been there.

The path was bare soil, totally clear of snow, and it led straight to her father.

Well, King Zakareth had been considerate enough to make her a trail. She might as well make use of it.

***

As she had suspected, the gray wall was a long, low stone fortification outside one of the Damascan outposts in Helgard.
 

The Travelers hurriedly opened one of the side gates, beckoning her inside. As they brought her inside, leading her to a fire and to her father, they caught her up on the situation.

The Damascans had managed to kill Grandmaster Helgard barely two days ago, in real time, but Helgard had experienced a time spike since then. For the Travelers here, it had been over a week. The Helgard Travelers loyal to Enosh had used that time to assault this fortification on the twenty-first floor as the nearest Damascan outpost of any real size.

“They were pulling out all the stops, too,” the Traveler said. He shuddered and stared off into the distance, though he didn’t stop walking. “I’d never seen a frost giant before.” From his expression, Leah didn’t think he would want to see another one, either.

As soon as the time spike had stabilized, late this past afternoon, they had sent for reinforcements from the capital. Without them, the Helgard Travelers here wouldn’t have lasted the night.

However, they had not expected the King himself.

Zakareth and his deadly spear had proved enough reinforcements to get the Enosh Travelers to reconsider; they had pulled back to regroup just before Leah reached the wall.

Leah considered the implications of that. Why was the King here in person? There were only a few possibilities. Either he didn’t have any other Travelers to send—unlikely—or he thought this situation important enough to warrant his personal attention. Why?

Either way, she felt somewhat responsible for the Helgard Travelers here. Her news was likely to make the King return to Cana, and then they would be left here with no backup. Well, the stability of the realm came first. They could always come back and recapture their lost outposts later.

The Helgard Traveler led Leah into an ordinary sitting room. It was hardly fit for Damascan royalty; the walls were made out of rough, barely-cut stone, and the furniture was simple wood. Four chairs rested around a heavy, barely-polished table, and the hearth at the end of the room blazed with flame.

At least it was warm. Leah hurried over to the fireplace, pressing her body as close as she dared. It probably wasn't wise, but she barely gave any attention to the room's other occupants.

Talos sat at the table, his sheathed sword in front of him. Maybe half an inch of its red blade showed. Upon seeing Leah, he ran a hand through his golden curls, and flashed his sister a perfect grin. "Playing with the
mirka
, Leah?"

Leah ignored him, lowering her hood to feel the full warmth of the fire on her face. Her dress underneath was wet and cold, and somehow her body actually shivered
more
now that it was getting some relief. She supposed that was her way of transitioning from the cold. She would have pulled the heavy cloak from around her, leaving her in her dress and jacket, but she felt incapable of moving.