Then Indirial"s ragged sword burst from his chest.
Kai stood before a beautiful woman, and all he could think about was how her flowing black dress looked just like the wrapping on Azura"s hilt. He had thought that holding the sword again, speaking one last time with his precious little ones, would have helped him to forget about them. That certainly hadn"t worked; when he had been forced to hand Azura back to Simon, it had been like cutting off one of his hands.
"...will be positioned outside the house, and of course we have a significant force waiting for incursion from Naraka," the lady Adrienne was saying. Kai barely heard her; he was staring at her and thinking of his dolls.
"Master Kai? Excuse me? Can you hear me? Is there something wrong?" Adrienne sounded more annoyed than worried. Almost like Otoku, in one of her moods. The sound woke Kai from his stupor; perhaps he had drifted too far away, after all.
"My apologies," Kai said. "I was lost in thought. You were saying?"
Adrienne glared, but she visibly calmed herself and gestured at the door behind Kai. It was a stone double door, chained shut, with a padlock of Tartarus steel. "You will be our last line of defense, Master Kai," Adrienne said. "If what I"ve heard about Valinhall is true, you should have no trouble taking care of whatever Travelers make it past our initial troops and reach this point. Is there anything else you require?"
Briefly Kai wondered what the point was of making a padlock out of Tartarus steel. It would be all but indestructible, sure, but as a result it would be much easier to just shatter the chain itself. Even the wall that anch.o.r.ed the chain would be easier to break.
"Nothing but warning, my lady," Kai said, after realizing that he had gone another few seconds without speaking. "Simply tell me when to stand guard, and I guarantee that none will pa.s.s me."
Lady Adrienne let out a heavy breath and nodded, looking much rea.s.sured. "That is good to hear, Master Kai. We have prepared rooms for you, and I a.s.sure you that we will wake you in the event of an emergency. If you will*"
Kai lifted a strand of Adrienne"s hair from her shoulder and rubbed it in between two of his fingers. "You have lovely hair," he pointed out. "Have you ever considered donating it to someone in need? A doll-maker, perhaps?"
Very deliberately, Lady Adrienne looked from her hair to his face. "Remove your hand from me, Master Kai," she said. "I have heard that Travelers are all but useless against you, but I am not far from simply seizing a sword myself and doing my best to run you through."
Kai remembered himself again and withdrew his hand, standing with his spine straight as his master had insisted, so many years ago. "I am sorry, my lady."
Adrienne turned to walk away. "As long as this chamber is not breached, then we have nothing to discuss. I will have someone*"
She was interrupted for the second time, but this time not by Kai. A balding, pot-bellied Traveler in the red robes of Naraka came jogging up, waving for her attention. Only at that point did Kai realize the man had only one hand.
The aging Traveler began to speak, but as he did, a wail like a thousand furious ghosts pierced the palace.
Adrienne clapped her hands to her ears, but Kai just reached into his pocket. He had always wished Valinhall had a power to dull the senses instead of enhancing them; the clamor of one Dragon"s Fang upon another made quite an ear-shattering noise. Since the Territory had no such power, though*at least, none so far as Kai knew*he had taken to bringing globs of soft wax with him to battle. He pulled two pieces off and stuffed them into his ears.
Immediately, the piercing shriek was cut to merely a distant scream. Lady Adrienne shouted something at him, which of course he couldn"t understand, but he gave her a placid smile and nodded.
She rolled her eyes and pointed him into a room, so he nodded and followed her instructions.
A group of other Travelers followed him, but he waved them back. When they failed to understand, he shouted at them to fall back. At last, an exasperated Lady Adrienne brought them out of the room and sealed the door.
The situation was fairly transparent: obviously the Grandmasters had decided to send an attack early, and somehow Adrienne"s scouts had managed to detect the a.s.sault. For Kai, that simplified the situation greatly.
He would stay in this room and wait. If Travelers showed up here, he would kill them. If they did not, he would continue waiting until ordered elsewhere.
Simplicity itself.
The route to Bel Calem through Naraka would be too well guarded, Grandmaster Naraka told Alin. The defenses for that waypoint would have stood for years, solid and all but impenetrable. There would be traps, tricks, guardians, and fortifications too thick for them to penetrate.
So they came through a different Territory. There were twenty-three of them: Gilad, Grandmaster Naraka, Alin, and twenty soldiers of Enosh, to deal with the more mundane threats. Alin had heard that there was a squad of three or four Tartarus Travelers with the soldiers, but he couldn"t tell the difference. Maybe most of the troops couldn"t either.
Gilad was one of the few in Enosh with a link to two Territories, and he could draw from either Naraka or Helgard with equal ease. At Grandmaster Naraka"s insistence, he opened up a Gate to Helgard, and they walked through its snowy depths.
That was when Alin learned something that no one had bothered to mention about Helgard, the Tower of Winter: the place was cold.
Sure, he had expected to run across flat plains of glacial ice, and the razor-edged chill in the air didn"t surprise him. But plate armor, it turned out, was not the best thing to wear in such temperatures. It burned his skin as though he wore a suit of solid ice, and he hurried through as much to keep himself from freezing to death as he did to reach their destination that much sooner.
They had emerged from the Gate with their backs to a colossal wall. It was made of some blue-gray material that looked like metal, etched with gigantic symbols. Each twisting letter stood higher than Alin was tall. The wall curved around so slightly that Alin barely noticed it was curving at all, and it vanished into the distance in both directions.
Gilad said that was the outer wall of the tower. Alin looked up and saw, an impossibly high distance overhead, a metal ceiling the same color as the walls. It was covered with icicles the size of stalact.i.tes. Wisps of cloud twisted in and among the icicles like lacy ribbons.
Sure enough, they were inside some kind of enclosure, though one so big that it had its own horizon. Gilad called this the sixteenth floor, telling Alin that thirty-two floors of Helgard had been discovered so far. This one was one of the least inhabited, comprised as it was of seemingly endless fields of ice. The ice seemed to glow with an inner radiance, giving the room a surprisingly bright illumination.
According to Gilad, there were creatures and artifacts hiding in the cracks of the ice, and they did not like to be disturbed. As long as they kept their voices down and hurried across, they should be able to reach the way into Bel Calem with little trouble.
"Why don"t they have any guardians on this side?" Alin whispered, trying to step as lightly as possible in his clanking armor.
"It"s all but impossible to defend your home from every possible approach in every Territory," Grandmaster Naraka said. She seemed to practically glide over the slick, uneven footing, as though she had no weight at all.
"That"s true," Gilad allowed, "but it"s also unwise to bring a very large force through this floor. More people means more noise, and if you get too loudawell, you don"t want to do that. The first three expeditions to this floor vanished entirely, and the fourth came backawrong."
The glow in the ice underneath their feet flickered, as though something unimaginably huge had, for just a moment, pa.s.sed in front of the light.
Alin spent the rest of the trip with his mouth shut. He barely even allowed himself to breathe. The soldiers had worn light armor, and not one of them had said a word since pa.s.sing through the Gate, which just showed how much wiser they were than he.
Gilad finally reached his landmark: a frozen hand and forearm, outstretched from the ice like a dying man reaching out of the water for salvation. The wrist was easily as wide as Alin"s body, and the tips of the fingers reached well above Alin"s head.
"What was this?" Alin asked quietly, indicating the frozen hand.
"Not was," Gilad said. "Is. Now hold on for just a minute; I need to concentrate."
That was as forceful as Alin had ever heard the other Traveler, so he stayed quiet. Gilad muttered constantly to himself, as though reciting some long poem in a foreign language.
Finally, he motioned as though pulling aside a curtain, and a Gate opened behind his fingers.
"We have to be quick," Grandmaster Naraka whispered. At a whispered signal from a woman in front who looked like the leader, all twenty soldiers began marching through.
The other side of the Gate opened up on a broad room that looked a great deal like Malachi"s great hall, which Alin had visited a month before. It wasn"t the same room, though; this one was smaller, though still s.p.a.cious, and it hosted a few necessities, like washbasins and hat-racks, instead of Malachi"s blocky throne.
Alin wasn"t sure what this room was supposed to be used for, and he had no idea where the Hanging Tree would be located from here. But at least there were no enemy troops around, and that was all he cared about.
The soldiers spread out across Malachi"s room, forming a protective shield between the Travelers and whatever unknown forces might be protecting the Overlord"s home.
Grandmaster Naraka flipped her hand negligently to one side and five red sparks shot out from the air in front of her. They flew in loops around the room, flashing in and out of visibility like blood-red fireflies.
Gilad started looking from wall to wall, muttering to himself. Frost began to form on the ground at his feet, but Alin couldn"t see any other visible indication of his actions.
"I don"t sense anything," Gilad said, after a moment. "Did they really not have any guardians in this room?"
"Nor do I," Grandmaster Naraka agreed. "I also sense no alarms, but I detected something that might once have been a nest of kar"tul."
"They would be screaming right now," Gilad said. "We"d all hear it."
Alin continued turning, examining the room. There was barely enough ambient light to see, coming from the Grandmaster"s fireflies and the windows set high in the walls. The vast majority of the room, however, remained in shadow.
"Maybe they just didn"t set an alarm," Alin suggested.
"Or maybe," the Grandmaster said, "the alarm has already been silenced."
Gilad shook his head. "I wouldn"t think so, Grandmaster. They would have to have detected us in Helgard. And there are no long-term installations on the sixteenth floor, so to have an alarm there..."
"That means they would have known we were coming," the Grandmaster concluded.
Alin felt a chill that had nothing to do with the lingering cold from Helgard. Suddenly, the silent room was filled with a clatter of wood and metal. Alin spun on his heel to see that one of the Enosh soldiers had just collapsed in a heap. Blood spread from under his helm.
"Form up!" someone yelled, and the soldiers" ring around the three Travelers became even tighter.
When they drew together, though, one of the squad didn"t move. He stood there, with his back to Alin, as though staring into the shadow.
"Come on!" Alin called, but Grandmaster Naraka seized his arm.
"Quiet, boy," she hissed.
Why? Alin wondered, but he kept the thought to himself. He"s just standing there.
Then the soldier collapsed to his knees, and fell over on his side. Blood leaked from his armor.
Somewhere in the room, someone began to sing.
"Hush, my child. Night is coming. The waking world grows dull and gray."
Someone behind Alin shouted, and there was a clang like two swords clashing. He turned, summoning a globe of golden force into his hand as he turned; whoever this attacker was, he was about to face the power of Elysia.
Two soldiers lay on the ground. Both of their drawn swords lay in pieces.
The voice continued, in a haunting sing-song lullaby. "Leave your fear and leave your pain. I will make it go away."
"Enough of this foolishness," Grandmaster Naraka growled. She raised her hands, winced as though experiencing a minor and irritating pain, and then flicked her fingers up toward the roof. More of those red fireflies darted from her hands, but these hovered in glowing clouds at the corners of the ceiling. The resulting light was dim and b.l.o.o.d.y, but more than enough for Alin to see.
What he saw was a dim, swift figure in black darting from shadow to shadow. Alin immediately pulled his arm back and hurled the globe of Elysian light at the shadowed figure.
The silhouette of a man didn"t dodge or run out of the way. He raised one arm, and the golden blast struck him just below the elbow.
Alin"s light struck a shield of translucent green light. It was literally a shield, diamond-shaped and etched with a design that Alin couldn"t quite make out, but it seemed to be outlined in semi-transparent planes of phantom light.
The golden blast crashed against that pale green shield and did nothing. The shield flickered and disappeared, leaving the room as dark as before.
Gilad took advantage of the moment to step forward, rolling his marked hand in a complex pattern that Alin had last seen from Overlord Malachi. A bright orange fireball seemingly made out of screaming faces appeared from Gilad"s hand, streaking straight for the shadowed figure.
This time, the man in shadows didn"t even bother to raise his arm. The fireball crashed against his chest, splashing harmlessly against a ghostly green breastplate that the man most definitely had not been wearing earlier.
It was as though the man was covered in a full suit of armor that was completely invisible until it was needed. Was there anything they could do to get through to him?
Grandmaster Naraka, Alin noticed, had been moving both hands in a complex pattern for some time now. She finally finished, shouldered two soldiers apart to make room, and thrust her hands out toward the man in shadows. She made a sound like a grunt, as though she had repressed a scream, and a scaly red claw the size of Alin"s midsection pushed itself out from midair and crunched on the tiles, its claws sc.r.a.ping up a handful of the floor.
"Ah," the figure in black said. "At last."
The creature continued to pull itself into the world, revealing an enormous shoulder covered in spikes and ridges of hardened plate. Alin was almost afraid to see what would come through.
"Bear witness!" Grandmaster Naraka screamed. "For the first time in a thousand years, this world shall tremble before*"
She was cut off by the single clear, crystal note of a horn. It reverberated through the entire room, echoing and crashing in Alin"s ears, somehow without sounding strident or unpleasant.
The arm froze at the sound. Then it trembled, as though it was stuck in between worlds.
After the note had gone on for only a second, the hand was slurped back through the Gate. The portal winked out, leaving the room in silence.
The figure in black lowered a horn from his lips. It was seemingly made out of gla.s.s, and it had some kind of transparent tube in the middle that swirled with water. How did gla.s.s and water produce a sound like a horn? Alin had always thought they had to be made out of metal.
The man in the shadows...shrugged. "I"m sorry," he said. "Were you not done?"
Alin gave some serious thought to retreating.
Fortunately, someone screamed an order, and the soldiers rushed forward. Five men led the way, spears leveled. Three, to Alin"s surprise, stayed back with him and the other two Travelers. The remainder of the troops rushed after the spearmen, swords drawn.
The figure in black waited until the spears were almost upon him before he reached to the side and summoned a sword. It was long and straight, not the slightly curving sword that Simon used.
"I knew it," Grandmaster Naraka hissed. "Valinhall."
A Valinhall Traveler? Alin thought. This man looked very different from Simon.
For one thing, though the swordsman was wearing all black, they were simply dark clothes. Not the billowing black cloak that Simon tended to wear. Also, Alin couldn"t imagine Simon fighting without summoning that ridiculously long sword of his.
Plus, Alin didn"t see any dolls. He wasn"t exactly sure if the little girl"s dolls he had seen Simon carrying had anything to do with Valinhall, but he had chosen to a.s.sume that they did. Simon carried a doll everywhere now, so either they had something to do with Simon"s Territory or he had developed a disturbing habit.
Either way, Alin saw none of the hallmarks that he had a.s.sociated with Simon and Valinhall. But Grandmaster Naraka seemed certain, and she would know better than he would.
The five spearmen died very quickly. The man in black grabbed one of the spears below the head, pulling that soldier off balance and skewering him on the tip of a sword. Then he stepped forward, inside the reach of two other spearmen, and suddenly he was holding two swords, one in each hand. He struck out to either side, slicing through the spearmen"s necks as though they weren"t even wearing armor.
The remaining two soldiers with spears leveled their weapons, thrusting them at the man. He cut one in half and spun around the other, drawing his sword across the soldier"s throat. The last soldier threw down his half of a spear, screaming, and ran away.
The swordsman in black c.o.c.ked his head to one side, but watched his enemy run.
By this time, the Enosh soldiers with swords had stopped their run and come to a complete stop, hesitating before stepping into arm"s reach of the killer in black.
"Fall back!" one of the soldiers next to Alin shouted. She had a voice made to cut through deafening battlefields, and Alin realized she must be the commander.
"We"ll handle the Traveler," she said. She stepped forward, and the other two soldiers that had stayed with Alin stepped forward at the same time.