The Crimson Vault (The Traveler's Gate Trilogy) (7 page)

Adessa and her group did not waste any time. As soon as she saw that the King was indeed seated on his throne, she shouted, “Now!”

The Endross Travelers raised their stormy Gates, and lightning blasted the throne.

White light swallowed the image in the lens, and Leah flinched back from the glare.
What are they thinking?
she wondered. The King was protected from such direct attacks, especially on his throne.

Sure enough, when the light cleared, Leah’s father was still seated. He apparently hadn’t even moved, though the servant’s charred body was smoking on the ground several paces away, and Indirial now stood directly in front of the King. He held his long, pitted sword in hand, and his black cloak swirled around him, almost covering Leah’s view of Zakareth. Black chains crawled up the Valinhall Traveler’s forearms.

Leah realized that something else had changed: huge, drooping flowers now surrounded the throne. The blossoms were all brightly colored—red, yellow, purple—and they released clouds of glittering spores into the air. She had never seen such plants before, but she recognized them from her tutoring: flowers from the legendary Midnight Fields in Asphodel.

“The yellow flowers paralyze,” Lysander muttered to Talos. “The purple induces sleep, and the red kills. In Asphodel, these flowers often hunt in unison.”

The Ornheim girl raised her hands, launching two blue spikes at the throne. Indirial batted them aside almost casually. Then she reached into a leather pouch at her side and withdrew a handful of dust, which she cast in his direction.

The dust should have fallen to the ground inches in front of the girl’s face, but it drifted forward unnaturally quickly, flowing into Indirial’s face.

Indirial reached a hand up to his throat. He choked, letting out a single cough, and then sank down to one knee, making retching noises in his throat. Leah’s heart dropped. Apparently even Valinhall’s strength counted for nothing against poison.

“I don’t know what
that
was,” Lysander said, sounding surprised.

“Find out,” Talos ordered.

Wind rushed from the open Endross gates, catching the various glittering spores and whipping them into a whirlwind that swirled around the King and his guardian.
 

Adessa raised the glowing end of the Bleeding Wand. A crazed smile grew on her face, and the wind tossed her hair into wild shapes. She looked like a witch from the stories, about to bring a horrible curse down on her enemies.

Leah was certain that she was about to watch her father die.

Then the clouds parted. The wind slackened enough for her to catch a glimpse of Zakareth sitting on his throne, his chin cupped in one hand.

He hadn’t moved.

A dull white light flashed in the middle of the whirlwind. It somehow shone
through
Indirial’s skin.

Indirial rose to his feet, and for an instant Adessa’s aim wavered between her father and his bodyguard.

Then Indirial moved.

He appeared ten feet away, just in front of Adessa, as though he simply hadn’t bothered to cross the intervening space. His cracked sword slapped into the ruby wand, knocking it out of Adessa’s grip.

As the Wand tumbled through the air, a huge war-hammer of mirror-bright Tartarus steel appeared in Indirial’s left hand. End-to-end, it was almost five feet long, and made of solid metal.

Indirial spun with the hammer in one hand, slamming it into the side of one Endross Traveler’s head. Blood and brain sprayed out, and the sheer force behind the blow launched the Traveler’s body into the air.

In the same motion, Indirial swept his sword across the other Endross Traveler’s throat. He spun around until he was facing the King again, then he turned his momentum into a huge overhand throw. He hurled the war-hammer at the wall just behind the throne.

The hammer struck at terrifying speed, blasting a huge chunk of the stone wall outward. A cloud of dust billowed up, shrouding half the throne room in a split second.

Adessa’s Bleeding Wand and the Endross Travelers’ bodies hit the ground at about the same time.

The Endross Gates—hungry, swirling thunderstorms—hung in midair, blowing air steadily forward. But now, most of the deadly spores were blown through the gap in the wall instead of swirling around the throne.

The thunderstorms began to shake and crackle more violently.

The Ornheim Traveler threw her carved ruby to the tiles, and the tiled floor began to crack and flow upward as it gathered itself together into a golem.
 

Indirial flowed forward. His sword flickered out, cracking the golem’s heartstone in two, then thrust into the Traveler’s rib cage.

She slid off the sword and onto her back. Her half-formed golem crumbled.

Only the three Asphodel Travelers were left. The boy ran headlong toward the door, which Leah thought showed unusual wisdom. The young woman clapped her hands together and began to summon mist. That was likely suicide, as the mist would turn on any source of terror, even its summoner, but she was clearly desperate.

The oldest Asphodel Traveler tore off her mask, revealing a calm, grandmotherly face. She sank to her knees and folded her hands in her lap.

Waiting for death.

Indirial cut the young woman down before she could summon anything, then he once again moved so fast that he seemed nothing more than a black blur. He grabbed the boy by the neck and clubbed him with the hilt of his sword. The boy collapsed to the ground, unconscious.

The Overlord’s mercy was touching and tragic, but ultimately futile. He would plead with the King for the young Traveler’s life, saying that he was too young to know what he was doing, that his elders had just led him astray.

Indirial would try his best, but Leah knew her father. He had no use for rebels.

The cloaked Valinhall Traveler walked over to the kneeling old woman, who was the last of Adessa’s followers left. Indirial said something too soft for Leah to hear, muffled as it was by the Lirial lens.

The old woman shook her head. She closed her eyes.

Almost gently, Indirial slipped his sword point into her ribs and out. The Asphodel Traveler slumped over, a peaceful smile on her face.

Roughly ten seconds after Adessa’s rebels first attacked, only three people remained alive in the throne room.

Indirial strolled over to Adessa, who scrambled over the floor tiles on her hands and knees. She finally grasped the Bleeding Wand and spun around, raising it to point at the throne again. She screamed.

Then the Endross thunderstorms exploded.

There was another flash too bright for the scrying lens, and the display whited out. When it cleared, the Wand was nowhere in sight. Adessa lay flat on the floor at the foot of the throne with Indirial standing over her, one foot on her neck. The tip of his sword rested on her back.

Leah risked a glance back at her brother. His face seemed thoughtful, as though he had just received some new piece of data, but his hand tightened on his sword. By contrast, Lysander’s mouth hung open a little bit, and his glasses had been knocked askew.

“I would say six Travelers are not enough for Indirial,” Leah said casually. “What do you think?”

Overlord Lysander glared at her, but neither of the men said anything.

 
On the other side of the lens, Leah’s father let out a heavy breath. She stared, hoping that Talos hadn’t noticed. The King had been holding his breath. He had used no otherworldly protection from poison; he just held his breath and waited for Indirial to clean up the problem.

She supposed it didn’t matter, in the end. The King had survived.

King Zakareth rose to his feet. His crimson eye blazed like a star from within the cloud of dust that rose from the shattered wall.

“Adessa, my daughter,” the King said. His voice was cold, but firm. Businesslike. “I have not named you Successor. I have not given you permission to summon that wand from my Vault. And now you make an attempt on my life in my own throne room. What have you to say in your defense?”

He sounded as though he was conducting normal court business. Not at all as if his own daughter had just tried to kill him.

Indirial took his boot off the back of her neck, letting her struggle to her knees. Her wild hair framed her face like a lion’s mane, lending her a frenzied aspect.

“Father, I only meant to take advantage of a temporary weakness,” Adessa said. Her voice was hoarse, and she licked her lips as she spoke. “It was all as you taught me. If I had stood by, I would not be worthy of being named your Successor.”

Zakareth stared at his daughter, saying nothing. Perhaps encouraged by his silence, Adessa tried to climb to her feet, but Indirial put a hand on her shoulder, keeping her in a kneeling position. She tried to push his hand off her shoulder.

Indirial’s hand stayed where it was.

The King spoke again, his voice hard and even. “I held some hope for you, Adessa, despite your past failures. But your actions today have proven that you are not worthy of succeeding me.”

“I have proven only that I—“

“Be silent,” Zakareth said. He did not seem to speak any louder, but somehow his voice resonated through the hall in tones of absolute command. “You have endangered the Kingdom by threatening to plunge us into a succession during a time of crisis. You have wasted the lives of six Travelers, just when they are most needed. And you have jeopardized our safety in the war for which I have prepared since before you were born.

“You, Adessa, have betrayed the people of Damasca. I name you traitor, and hereby exile you to the Territory of Lirial, where you will remain under the supervision of Overlord Belanine until the end of your days.”

Adessa started shouting, but her father just spoke over her.

“Indirial, make it so,” he said. Indirial bowed from the waist, grabbing the Heiress by her wrist and pulling her along. His black cloak billowed behind him. She struggled, but she might as well have matched her strength against a carthorse.

“I’ll be back!” Adessa screamed. “I’ll take your throne from you! I deserve it! It’s mine!”

“Stop,” the King said. Indirial stopped, glancing curiously over his shoulder. It looked like he didn’t understand what the King was up to any more than Leah did.

Adessa saw her chance and seized it. “You can’t do this to me,” she said.

Zakareth walked up to his daughter and put his face inches from hers. He lowered his voice, but he spoke so firmly that Leah could still understand each word. At last, a touch of anger entered his tone.

“I will be clear with you, because you are my daughter. If you were not a Ragnarus Traveler, I would simply execute you. But I would prefer you alive, so I will leave you with three choices. First, I can exile you to Lirial, where you will be safe but powerless to cause any greater harm. Or, if you prefer, I could always feed you to the Hanging Tree. The sacrifice was late this year.”

Adessa flinched and looked away from her father’s face. She obviously knew what such a sacrifice meant.

“Third,” the King continued relentlessly, “I could instead exile you to Enosh. I can arrange to have you dropped at one of the Naraka waypoints controlled by the Enosh Grandmasters. They would take you in gladly enough, and you know how they would treat you. As a Ragnarus Traveler. As my daughter. You would taste the full extent of Enosh…hospitality.”

Adessa licked her lips. Her eyes bounced everywhere, looking for an escape.

“Choose,” King Zakareth said, his voice resonating with hard anger.

“Lirial,” Adessa whispered.

“So be it,” he responded. “One moment, Indirial.”

Then King Zakareth straightened up and turned toward what, to him, would be a blank stretch of wall. Through the scrying lens, his eyes met Leah’s. His red eye flared.

“I hope you learned something today, Leah,” her father said calmly.

Then the view through the lens winked out.

Leah realized she was holding her breath and clutching the arms of her chair as though trying to crush them to splinters. She let out her breath in a whoosh, then waved her hand, cutting off the power that kept her scrying lens active. It shrank back to the size of a dinner plate and popped off the wall, clattering to the floor.

Everyone was silent for a second. Then Talos spoke. “Sometimes,” he said, “I wonder if there’s anything our father doesn’t know.”

Lysander spoke into Talos’ ear. “We should go. If he saw us here…” The Overlord was clearly trying to keep his voice down, but Leah had no trouble hearing him.

Talos shrugged and rose to his feet. “Well, at least we learned something today. We’ll have to remove Indirial first, before we make our move.”

“If you can,” Leah said lightly. She toyed with her crystal bracelet, trying to seem unconcerned.

Overlord Lysander opened his mouth, but Talos cut him off with a gesture. He bowed to Leah, a broad smile on his face. With his golden hair and chiseled features, he looked like the rightful Successor to the Damascan throne.
 

“Farewell, little sister,” he said. “Don’t do anything rash, and I see no reason why we can’t be friends.”

He moved toward the door, but something occurred to Leah. There were no other Heirs or Heiresses still in the running to become Successor. Adessa had been exiled, Cynara was mad, and her little brother Petrin had died years before. Why would he want to share information with his one remaining rival?

She considered and discarded half a dozen subtle ways of determining his motivation, but there was one he would never expect. She could ask him.

“Why did you come to me with this?” Leah asked.
 

He shrugged. “You had the seeing crystal. If I could have summoned it myself, I would have.”

“But what if I oppose you in the succession?” she asked. “What if I had gone to save Father?”

Talos blinked, with an expression on his face as though his sister had started quacking like a duck. Then he laughed.

“Oh, Leah. Sometimes I forget how young you are.”

Leah flushed, though inside she felt nothing but a cold anger. She raised one eyebrow at him.