The Crimson Vault (The Traveler's Gate Trilogy) (14 page)

Simon realized he had gone too long without speaking.
 

“Oh, sorry, uh…he fought me. We had a fight in the forest, but he said I was terrible.”

Leah twisted her bracelet around her wrist, lost in thought. “Combat ability?” she said. “I suppose that makes sense.”

Something Kai said floated back to Simon. “I don’t think he let me in because of the fight,” Simon said. “He said he could teach anyone. I think he just wanted to make sure I wanted it bad enough.”

“No,” Leah said, “you have to be compatible. He must have known you were, somehow.”

She sounded certain, but the more Simon thought about it, the more sure he became that he was right. “I don’t think that’s how Valinhall works,” he said. “You don’t get anything in Valinhall just because you’re suitable or you need it. You have to earn it. If you’re skilled enough and determined enough to pass the tests in the House, then I guess you’re compatible. I think anyone can try, if they want.”

Leah stared at him for a long time, chewing on her lip. “No compatibility test. I suppose that would make sense,” she said at last. “They say…well, never mind. But that would make sense.”

In Simon’s pocket, his caged acorn began to vibrate. Leah glanced at his buzzing pants, and then back up to Simon’s face, and then at his pants again.

“Would you like me to leave?” she asked politely.

Simon’s face heated, but he pulled out the shaking acorn in its golden cage. “Alin needs me,” he said. “Do you know where he is?”

Leah’s gaze sharpened. She took him by the arm again, and began to guide him down the hall. “I believe he’s finishing up his speech. I’ll take you there. Did he say why he needed you?”

Simon held up the caged acorn, which was hurling itself against its bars with animal ferocity. “You know as much as I do,” he said.

“They say the Grandmasters are meeting today,” she added, as they walked.
 

“That could be it,” Simon responded. She pressed up against his arm as she guided him down the hallway, and he was torn between moving a proper distance away and pretending not to notice so that she would stay that way as long as possible.

Better not to react,
he told himself, and stayed where he was. He got the impression that Caela would have just laughed herself sick.

“When you find out, let me know,” she said. “I need to know whether or not I should be worried.” Then she smiled at him, which at close range had a devastating effect. He caught himself wondering if she would be impressed by the powers of a Traveler.

Without thinking, he spoke. “You’ve been different lately.”

Her face didn’t change, but he recognized that it had become a mask to hide her real expression. “It’s not like we’ve spent much time together, Simon.” She pulled away from his arm, almost casually.

Well, he had started this. He might as well go all the way. “No, I didn’t mean that. You just seem more confident since we left the village, not less. I have no idea what I’m doing, and Alin’s only pretending, but you almost seem more comfortable outside the village than you were when we lived there.”

Leah kept her gaze focused on the end of the hall. “I lived most of my life outside of Myria, after all.”

“That could be it,” Simon said. “You seem like a different person now, that’s all. Like you were one Leah in the village, and now you’re another Leah outside.”

“Maybe outside Leah is better,” she suggested with half a smile.

“Maybe. I just wish I knew which of you was real.”

Leah lost her smile.

They walked the rest of the way in silence, Simon mentally kicking himself the entire way. He should have kept his mouth shut.

***

Simon eventually made his way to the huge square outside the Grandmasters’ palace. The space was crammed with thousands of people, more people than he had ever seen at one time. Maybe more people than he had ever seen total. They packed the flagstones, stood on nearby stoops, or leaned out the windows of other buildings. A handful of people even stood on the rooftops around the square, listening.
 

From a balcony high up on the palace, Alin spoke. His voice had been amplified so that everyone in the square could hear him, which Simon assumed was some sort of Traveler thing.

After listening to Alin speak for a minute or two, Simon had to admit: he was good at this. The setting sun caught his golden hair and armor, making him shine like a burning star, and he spoke with the intensity of a natural storyteller.

“I saw friends snatched from me on Damascan ropes,” Alin was saying. “I saw family cut down by Damascan spears. Their faces, as they begged for mercy, haunt me today. They will continue to haunt me for the rest of my life.”

He paused for a moment, as if to collect himself, and together the crowd held one breath.

“Overlord Malachi was—” there was enough cheering at the word ‘was’ that Alin had to stop—“he was a Traveler of Naraka. As many of you know, Naraka, the Cavern of Flame, represents law and order. Any Traveler of Naraka should be driven, almost compelled, to uphold the laws and the highest moral principles. When a true Naraka Traveler sees a man cheated by his neighbor, he does not hesitate. He makes sure that justice is done.

“When I stood in Malachi’s hall, when I looked the Overlord in the eye, I told him why I had come.

“I told him I came for justice.”

The crowd reacted as though he had promised them each a bucket of gold: they screamed in a roaring ocean tide of noise that made Simon wince and cover one ear. He wished he had worn his cloak, so that he could stuff its fabric into his ears, but he carried it slung over one shoulder. Wearing a hooded black cloak in this crowd would do nothing but make him stand out, and not in any way he would have enjoyed. Besides, it was hot.

The cheering went on for a full minute before Alin waved the crowd to silence. He began to speak, but Simon was distracted by a glint of gold at the corner of his eye.

When he turned to look, he stared straight into the beak of a golden hummingbird, hovering inches from his nose.

Simon let out a yelp and stumbled backwards, out of the crowd. A few people looked curiously at the gold bird, but apparently such sights were nothing to be concerned about in Enosh, because they quickly turned back to Alin.

The hummingbird followed Simon as he backed out of the crowd. Simon eyed it warily as he searched for a place far enough where he could examine the bird in relative peace and quiet. It obviously wasn’t going to attack him, or it would have done so already. Besides, he had faced worse than a shimmering golden hummingbird. But he suspected he knew where the bird had come from, and if he was right, it would have a message for him.

He finally found a place, a thin alley in the shadow between two buildings, that wasn’t packed with people.

Simon turned to face the bird, which had followed at an uncomfortably close distance of about two inches from his head. “Well?” Simon asked.

The hummingbird spoke in a rich, rumbling baritone that sounded like it came from a burly lumberjack. “I have a message for you, Traveler of Valinhall.”

Startled, Simon almost backed into the wall of the alley. “Is that your real voice?”

The hummingbird tilted its head to the side, in a motion that reminded Simon vividly of Kai. “It is,” the hummingbird responded. “Why do you ask me this?”

“Nothing,” Simon said quickly. “Never mind. Did Alin send you?”

“I was sent by Alin, son of Torin, the Elysian Traveler,” the hummingbird responded. “He wished me to bring you a message: the Grandmasters don’t trust you. Naraka wishes you to be kept away from Alin, and many of the others agree that you are not to be trusted. He has invited you to their war council, but he has done so against their wishes. He believes that they may try to exclude you, or to trick you somehow. He wished you to be forewarned.”

Alin? Acting kind and thoughtful? To me?
Simon suddenly felt guilty for thinking that Alin looked like a pompous, painted fool up there in his gold armor.
 

“That is very kind of him,” Simon said. “Will there be danger?”

The hummingbird hesitated before responding, in his bass rumble, “Alin does not believe so, Traveler. This is the end of the message. Farewell.”

The golden bird flitted off, but hesitated a few feet away, hovering in place. After a moment, he darted back over. His beak flew at Simon’s face like an arrow, and it was all he could do to stop himself from instinctively backing up a step, but the hummingbird drew himself to a halt at the same uncomfortably close distance to Simon’s face.

“I feel compelled to add something, Valinhall Traveler. Alin, son of Torin does not believe you are in physical danger. He believes that you are, at most, at risk of being excluded or embarrassed.”

The hummingbird hovered even closer, leading Simon to wonder if he was in danger of having his eye spitted on the end of the bird’s sharp beak. “I remember the Grandmasters of old, and I do not agree with Alin’s assessment. I believe you should be on your guard.”

“Thank you,” Simon said to the bird. In his own ears, his voice sounded dark. Suddenly he felt as though he was back in Valinhall, surrounded by traps and enemies and the certainty that, as soon as he put a foot wrong, he would die.

In some strange way, the thought made him feel a bit better. He had conquered Valinhall, at least to a point; he would conquer this.

The hummingbird bobbed once in midair, then zipped off toward the Grandmasters’ palace.

Simon took a deep breath, forcing his mind back into the familiar patterns of the House. He had to be ready to fight on an instant’s notice.

As more cheers erupted from the nearby square, shaking the ground and signaling the end of Alin’s speech, Simon pulled on his black cloak.

***

The war council of the Enosh Grandmasters took place in a room specially designed for the purpose. The centerpiece of the room was a polished stone table that took up the vast majority of the floor. Nine banners hung on the walls, each marked with what Simon assumed were the symbols of the Territories that the Grandmasters Traveled.

A clawed fist clutched a ball of flame on a red banner above Grandmaster Naraka. She hunched in her chair and pointed her red lenses at Alin, ignoring Simon entirely. A fan of four feathers marked a brown-and-white banner above Grandmaster Avernus, a severe-looking woman with straight silver hair who had a habit of looking down her nose at everyone else. The dark, thin man sitting beneath a green banner commanded much of Simon’s attention. He had barely said a word, but he had a manner about him that looked like one of the Dragon Army: dangerous grace barely restrained. From the symbol on the banner above him—a snake eating its own tail around a thunderstorm—Simon guessed that he was Grandmaster Endross.

There were others that Simon had never met and could not guess, like the person wrapped all in silver and gray ribbons. He couldn’t see an inch of skin. Even that Grandmaster’s voice was altered so that they spoke in a toneless buzz, and Simon couldn’t figure out if it was a man or a woman. Their banner was no help: two crescent moons bracketing a full moon with a starburst in the center.

Simon couldn’t help but notice that there were only nine Territories represented, when there should have been ten. Not counting Valinhall, which Enosh barely seemed to acknowledge as a real Territory, there should have been nine original Territories and Elysia.
 

He supposed they couldn’t represent Ragnarus, the ninth Territory, because its only Travelers were Damascan. But he still found its absence odd.

Alin sat at the head of the table, underneath a gold banner marked with the same symbol on the breastplate of his armor: a winged sword, point-down, set against a rising sun.

By contrast, they put Simon in a rickety wooden chair at the corner of the room. It creaked when he moved.

The Grandmasters and Alin had spent the first few minutes of the meeting reviewing Alin’s speech and the general tone of the populace. It seemed they were all very pleased with themselves, and Simon was becoming bored enough that he wondered if he could open a Gate right there and just leave. He wasn’t sure even that would get their attention.

Only the hummingbird’s warning kept his attention focused. He might be in danger, so he needed all his wits about him. Besides, if they wanted him to leave, that was more than enough reason to stay where he was.

After a round of verbal back-patting in which all the Grandmasters agreed that the day had been a rousing success, Grandmaster Naraka slapped her palm down on the table in front of her. At the sound, everyone else turned to her. No one seemed particularly surprised that she had cut them off rather than waiting for her turn to speak.

“That’s enough of that,” Naraka croaked. “Eliadel, we have news of great import. We have waited to share this with you only so that we could verify it ourselves.”

Grandmaster Helgard, a bearded bear of a man, grinned and sat forward in his chair. He looked suddenly eager. The Grandmaster of some Territory Simon didn’t know—its symbol was a mountain and two crossed hammers—shifted uncomfortably in her seat. She was old enough to be Simon’s mother, with touches of gray here and there in her hair, but she looked like a villager: dark skin, dark hair, and simple brown clothes. The one decoration she wore was a looped double necklace of some blue-green stone.

That Grandmaster shook her head. “We are not ready—” she began, but Grandmaster Naraka cut her off.

“Not yet, Grandmaster Ornheim,” Naraka said harshly. “There are those in this room who are not qualified to hear the following discussion.”

So the Territory with all the rocks is called Ornheim,
Simon thought.
Got it.
Only a few weeks ago, he had suffered quite a collection of injuries at the hands of living stone summoned by Ornheim Travelers.

Then he realized that all the Grandmasters had turned to look at him.

His senses sharpened, and he reached his mind out to Valinhall. At even the slightest hint that they were trying to summon something, he would call steel and essence and be out the door before they could blink.