The Crimson Vault (The Traveler's Gate Trilogy) (36 page)

"Alin," she repeated. Then her eyes widened, and Alin noticed they were almost completely white. "Eliadel. Does the Tree burn?"

She sounded eager, desperate, and on the edge of tears all at once, as though she were asking whether her son had returned alive from a battle.

Alin shook his head, and when she didn't seem to notice, he spoke. "The Tree still stands."

A tear flowed down the crags of Grandmaster Naraka's face and she shut her eyes again, sagging as if about to drift back into sleep.

"So close," she whispered. "I was so close."

"I couldn't leave you there to die," Alin said. "I had to protect you."

"No. No you didn't."

"But the Valinhall Traveler would have killed you!"

"Yes, he would have. And I would have died knowing that the world would be free again. Everything I've worked for..."

Her strength left her and she fell back against her pillows, tears wetting her face.

Alin stood and left the room, barely acknowledging the Naraka Travelers who stood, alert, guarding her door. Two stood inside and two outside, in case someone managed to slip through an undefended route in some Territory. Each of the Travelers looked so grim that Alin almost pitied the next maid to come with clean linens; she was likely to be torn apart by summoned beasts if she so much as sneezed next to the Grandmaster's bed.

Should he even call her Grandmaster Naraka anymore? Surely the Grandmasters would have to appoint someone else to that position, now that her marked hand had been severed. Eventually, he was sure they could find a way to brand her left hand instead, but it would take days—maybe weeks—to heal her hand to the point where she could use it effectively. Rhalia had been very clear on that point.

Until she recovered, who would perform the Grandmaster's duty in her place?

With a wash of guilt, Alin realized he had never even learned her real name.

The guards nodded to Alin as he walked out of the former Grandmaster's room. All of the Enosh Travelers had treated Alin with respect before, but now that he had saved their Grandmaster's life, the Naraka Travelers acted as though he were one of their own.

Alin wandered aimlessly through the halls, still too focused to give in to his body's demands for sleep. He didn't intend to head anywhere specific; he simply let his feet drift where they would. It was so early in the morning that the sky was still gray, so he barely saw anyone. That suited him, just now.

Eventually, he found himself in front of a lone door. It was almost plain, compared to the rest of the palace: made of wood, not stone, and only polished rather than etched with fancy carvings.

The room where his sisters stayed.

Before he thought about it too hard, he knocked.

I probably shouldn't,
he realized, just a second too late.
They're probably still sleeping. Anyway, I should be talking to the Grandmasters. We should be planning our next move.

But he stayed where he was.

Less than a minute later, Ilana pulled open the door. She wore a blouse and a long skirt—colorful, like the fashions here, rather than the earth tones more common in Myria—and she had her hair tied back. She looked as though she was going shopping, not just waking up.

"Alin!" she said, surprised. "Don't you have some sort of deadly war mission today?"

Alin blinked, for a moment not realizing what she meant. Then he realized: most of the city still thought they were preparing to attack Damasca. No one knew they already had.

He probably shouldn't tell her—secrecy was another of those things that the Grandmasters prized far more than he did—but the words were out of his mouth before he could stop them. "That's over. It...didn't go so well."

She looked at him a moment, and her expression softened. "Come on in," she said, stepping back.

Alin followed her direction. "What are you doing up? It's hardly dawn."

Ilana laughed. "Have you forgotten your life so quickly? I've woken up at dawn every day of my life, and I'm not about to start lazing around now. A farm doesn't run itself."

"You're not on the farm anymore, Ilana," Alin replied. "You don't have to go back ever again, if you don't want to."

She eyed him out of the corner of her eye as she drew him into their suite of rooms. "Why wouldn't I want to?"

Tamara was standing at a table, working a floured lump of dough with her fists. As he watched, she pushed her long hair out of her eyes with the back of one hand.
 

"We have cooks for that," Alin said wearily.

"Am I not a cook, now?" Tamara replied. She remained as even and placid as usual, not showing the slightest hint of pleasure or surprise at seeing him.

"You'll have to go to the kitchens to use the oven anyway," he pointed out. "While you're down there, you could just get some bread they've already baked."

"I could have someone pick out my clothes and dress me, too."

Shai, at least, had adapted to the easy life in Enosh. She was curled up like a cat on the seat of an enormous padded chair, a pile of collected knickknacks spread around her like a bird's nest. Just glancing over, Alin saw an egg the size of his fist, a glass bottle, several paces of sea-green twine, and a wind-up mouse that skittered across the floor on its own power.

His youngest sister still slept, the wind-up mouse clutched in her hands as though she dreamed of dismantling it to its components.

"We don't have time to lay about, Alin," Ilana said.

"You do have time, you just don't choose to use it," he countered.

"We
are
using it. That's the whole point."

"How bad was it?" Tamara interrupted. She didn't look up, continuing to knead dough between her hands. She had a habit of doing that: cutting through to the heart of a discussion without even seeming to pay attention.

A lump rose in Alin's throat. "Bad," he said.

"Tell me."

He recounted the entire operation, from being wakened in the dark of the night to dragging Grandmaster Naraka to Elysia for healing, and finally back to her rooms.

"She's still recovering there, even now," he said. "She woke up a few minutes ago. She said she wishes I would have just left her there."

Ilana and Tamara stood in silence. Tamara absently wiped at her hands with a damp towel, her dough safely packed into a basket. Even Shai was awake now, perched on the arm of her huge chair. The sun loomed outside the curtained window—the story must have taken longer than he had thought.

"So you were supposed to destroy the Hanging Tree," Ilana said. "Then you release the Incarnation...or Incarnations? One of them or all of them?"

Alin shrugged. "The Grandmasters talk like both of those are the same thing. Maybe if you release one, they all get released."

"There's already one," Shai said. Ilana shuddered visibly.

"Then I don't know," Alin said. "They said the Valinhall Incarnation is here in the palace, but I haven't seen him."

"We have," Tamara said. "Yesterday, when you were still busy with Grandmaster Naraka."

Alin perked up. He had imagined the Incarnations as giant, towering monsters. "Really? What was he like?" Even now, part of him was disappointed that they had gotten to see the Incarnation before he had.

"Terrible," Shai said quietly.

"He's not that bad," Ilana put in. "Sure, he's dark and horrible and violent, and he seems like he would murder you if you looked at him wrong. Oh, and the room keeps rebuilding itself around him, and I could have sworn I saw one of his shadows kidnap somebody.”

The other three all stared at her.

“What?” Ilana asked, a sarcastic tint to her voice. “That’s not
that
bad. I can see why you’d want him around.”

"Why would the Grandmasters want
any
of those monsters released?" Tamara asked.

Alin opened his mouth to defend them, but he realized he didn't know what he was going to say.

Because Damasca imprisoned them? That was hardly enough reason to release the Incarnations on Damasca's citizens. They didn't know anything, after all. To stop the sacrifice? More than nine people would die this year if even one Incarnation was set free, much less all of them. Because it was the natural order?

Ilana clapped her hand on his shoulder. "Well, for now, don't worry about it. Stay and have breakfast with us. We'll go down to the kitchens to finish this bread, and I think one of the helpers is saving me some soup..."

Ilana kept talking, with occasional input from Shai or Tamara, but Alin stopped listening. For the moment, he could stay with his sisters and pretend they were all back home.

Since when had he wanted that?

C
HAPTER
F
IFTEEN
:

S
UCCESSION

Surrounded by the workshop, Indirial looked like he had just discovered a hoard of treasure.

"This is where he designed the advisors," he said in awe. He pulled a black string off a nearby workstation and lifted it into the air; it drifted down much slower than it should have, as though it were drifting through water. "These materials must have come from foreign Territories. Amazing."

Indirial reached into a small leather purse, pulling out a tiny dark gem that almost looked black. He removed his medallion, comparing the gem at the center of the medallion to the gem he held in his other hand. The two were identical.

"How did you find this?" he breathed.

Simon looked to Olissa, who shrugged. "We've all been sharing my daughter’s bedroom, and I used to spend most of my days doing things that the Nye could probably do better for themselves. The Eldest asked if I needed something to do, and I've always been a bit of a tinkerer."

Indirial's face soured, and he put the gem back in its purse. "The Eldest, huh?"

"Why?" she asked. "Is there something wrong?"

"Not exactly, no." Indirial glanced at Simon, as though asking for help.
 

Simon wasn't sure he could explain, but he tried anyway. "The Eldest wants the Territory to grow and expand. And...well, that's all he wants. He doesn't care about us."

Indirial nodded. "It would have been nice to think that you had earned your way in here on your own, or that the Territory had for some reason decided to open this place back up. But if the Eldest's involved, that means he thinks there's some way to increase Valinhall's power."

Olissa looked unconvinced. "Is that bad?"

"Depends on your definition of bad," Indirial responded.

Simon waited for more, but the Overlord didn't seem inclined to say anything else.

"Well, if you don't want to tell me, just say so," Olissa said. "No need to be so cryptic." Deliberately, Olissa turned from Indirial to Simon. "Would you mind helping me for a moment, Simon?" she asked. Her voice was…almost
too
pleasant.
 

"No, ma'am," Simon said, looking away from Indirial. The Overlord's eyebrows were raised, and he looked as though he were trying to decide whether to be amused or offended. Simon wondered how long it had been since anyone dared to talk to Indirial like that.

Olissa reached into a nearby cabinet and withdrew the mask.

It had improved since Simon last saw it: polished-steel silver on one side and wrought-iron black on the other, with a jagged line through the middle like a solid lightning bolt. There were small eye slits, one on each side, though they still looked too small to see out of.

Clapping the mask down on a table in front of Simon, Olissa looked him in the eye. "Put it on, if you don't mind," she said.

Simon looked from her to the mask, then back at her again. On the one hand, if it gave him anything near the power it had apparently given Malachi, he could find a use for it. On the other hand, he couldn't believe something like this would be without drawbacks. Probably significant drawbacks. Plus, it was homemade.

He was willing to trust the artifacts left behind by the Wanderer, and he had no problem with those native to the Territory. But something Olissa had cobbled together out of an artifact she undoubtedly didn't understand...

What he had learned in Enosh led Simon to believe that this mask was from Ragnarus, and that further reinforced his suspicion that there would be some horrible cost to wearing the mask. His imagination leapt into action, providing him with disturbing images of the mask sprouting limbs of sharp metal, driving into his skull and drinking his blood.

"What are you waiting for?" Olissa said. "It's perfectly safe. It used to have all sorts of nasty side effects, but we think that was because it was broken. It won’t drain your life-force anymore."

"What is that?" Indirial asked curiously.

Simon had a different question in mind. “It drained your life-force
before?
”

Olissa waved that away. “Well, it doesn’t now. Now, it just draws on your connection to Valinhall. It’s like calling your…you know, steel or whatever. Just much deeper.”

Indirial eyed Olissa suspiciously. “How do you know all this? Where did you learn how to do
anything
with the artifacts of a Territory?”

Olissa raised her eyebrows at him. “The library,” she said, in a tone that made it clear that this subject wasn’t any of his business.

After a moment, she relented, adding, “Some of it, the Eldest taught me. Some of it, I learned from documents in the workshop. Some things…I just know, now. The longer I spend in the workshop, the more I know.”

“That kind of link can be dangerous,” Indirial warned. “I know you’re not familiar with…”

Indirial kept talking, but Simon stopped listening. He had heard enough.

Now he was faced with a simple choice: would he wear the mask, or not?

Taking a deep breath, Simon made up his mind. He needed an edge against Valin, and this mask might be it. If this would help him defeat the Incarnation, or even to last a little longer against him, he would be willing to take a little risk.