The Crimson Vault Part 43

Behind him, Alin heard more crashes and explosions, along with the Enosh Travelers yelling at one another in evident panic.

Then he turned and, for the first time, got a good look at their enemy.

King Zakareth the Sixth stood in the center of the Enosh Travelers, a gold-headed spear in one hand and a huge black s.h.i.+eld in the other. He wore armor of black and gold, with huge decorative rubies here and there. Over his head rose a tall, spiked, black-and-gold crown with a single ruby above his forehead.

He should have looked ornamental, like a statue, or a fanciful painting of a warrior-king long after his reign had ended.

He didn't. He looked like he could stand alone against an army of t.i.tans and not expect a single scratch on his breastplate.

Only one thing confused Alin. He knew very little of the King of Damasca, but he had heard stories. Supposedly, the man was supposed to have a red eye that allowed him to see the hearts of men, spirits, or the future, depending on which version of the story you heard.

King Zakareth had one good eye, but his other was covered by a black eyepatch. Maybe he hid the red eye beneath the patch?

Regardless, he was smearing the Enosh Travelers all over the floor. It was about time that Alin became involved.

As he watched Zakareth skewer a huge summoned cat with his spear and smash a Traveler into unconsciousness with his s.h.i.+eld*showing agility that, by rights, he should have lost forty years past*Alin wondered what exactly he could be expected to do. Obviously the King had the full might of Ragnarus behind him, and he was more than a match for almost a dozen fully trained Travelers from Enosh. Alin had every confidence in his own abilities, but what was he supposed to do against that?

Of course, Elysia had other powers. Supposedly the City of Light contained the counters and complements to each other Territory.

And the doors were unlocked. He could go, right now, and take so many powers from his Territory that King Zakareth would bow to him. He could end this war in the time it took him to Travel to Elysia and back.

You stop controlling the power, Rhalia had said. The power starts controlling you.

Alin struggled for a moment, but he had made his decision when he left the Rose District without opening any of the other doors.

He would fight this battle with the power he had earned. If he diedawell, if he died, then at least he wouldn't lose his mind and Incarnate. He could rest easy knowing that, at the very least, he wouldn't endanger his former allies.

Not that he was in any hurry to die, if it came to that.

Alin knelt and pressed his palm to the floor tiles, reaching out to the golden power of Elysia in almost*but not quite*the same way he would have tried to make a Gate.

"Marakos," Alin said. "It's time."

A golden rent, very close to a Gate, appeared just above the floor like a frozen bolt of lightning. Marakos appeared, his wolf's jaws parted in a canine grin, his golden staff clutched in one hand.

He adjusted his sash as he came through, casting a quick glance at the battlefield. "Please tell me I get to fight the spearman in the middle," Marakos said. "He looks like a real challenge."

"Have at him," Alin said. The wolf snarled in what Alin thought was glee, running off with b.e.s.t.i.a.l speed to clash with King Zakareth.

Alin remained kneeling on the floor for a moment, trying to catch his breath. Calling the various powers of Elysia was tiring enough, but summoning someone was always an order of magnitude higher.

With most of the Enosh Travelers dead or unconscious, King Zakareth was left with four opponents: Marakos, who whirled his staff with savage enthusiasm, Grandmaster Naraka, the Asphodel mist-binder that Alin had met earlier, and Heir Talos.

Without his sword, Talos had taken to fighting with what seemed to be a jeweled staff, though from what Alin could tell he mostly used it to deflect his father's spear.

Finally, with enough strength to walk, Alin began to move closer.

He was just in time to hear the royal Heir whine.

"Where is it, father?" Talos screamed. "Where have you hidden it?"

King Zakareth leaped over a tendril of mist and splattered a fireball on his s.h.i.+eld, parrying Marakos' staff with his spear in the same motion.

For all that, his voice seemed relatively calm when he answered: "Where is your sword, son?"

"Tell me!" Talos demanded.

"You don't deserve to know," the King noted. "You're weak, selfish, and impatient. I have no use for you." He kept his eyes on Talos, but smashed his spear into Marakos' nose and knocked Grandmaster Naraka over with the back of his spear, interrupting her summoning.

Talos laughed harshly. "I had only one more use for you," he said. "I thought at least one good thing would come of losing my eye, but no. Now you're not even good for that. How ironic."

Alin wondered what, if anything, Talos was contributing to this battle besides being a constant distraction for his father.

The King slammed the edge of his s.h.i.+eld down on the forehead of the Asphodel Traveler, who crumped in a heap of gray robes. Her mist dissipated almost immediately. Then Zakareth turned, engaging Marakos in a heated battle, spear against quarterstaff.

His voice barely sounded strained.

"That's not irony," he said. "This is irony: I'm so proud of what you've become, son. Truly, you will be a credit to your sister's service."

For the first time, something seemed to shock Talos speechless. He stood there, his mouth hanging open, as Zakareth battled the wolf-man from Elysia.

Alin decided it was time for him to get involved; he hurled a ball of destructive golden light at the King.

Without so much as turning around, Zakareth smacked the ball of light from the air with the head of his spinning spear, whirling the weapon around for another strike at Marakos.

His voice bored on, relentless. "You will serve Leah as your Queen, or you will join your sister in exile. Or of course, you can let me kill you here."

Alin threw another ball of golden power, but it met the same fate as the first. Zakareth finally seemed to tire of fighting Marakos, disengaging and taking two steps back before hurling his spear like a javelin.

It blasted through the wolf-man's chest, tearing a ragged hole through him, and struck the tile before flipping back into Zakareth's waiting hand.

He snagged it out of the air, barely giving the wolf-man's corpse a second glance, and ignoring Alin entirely.

Alin wasn't prepared for the surge of anger and regret that pa.s.sed through him as Marakos died. He had never known Marakos particularly well*they just fought occasionally*but he had summoned the wolf here. Marakos risked his life gladly, even eagerly, for a chance at a good battle, but dying so suddenly, so casuallya Talos spat at his father's feet even as he backpedaled furiously, trying to put as much distance between them as possible.

"It doesn't matter who you named Successor! Not when I walk out of here with your crown and your spear."

King Zakareth caught another of Alin's attacks on his s.h.i.+eld. "I have every intention of making the announcement myself."

Alin had never been in such an infuriating fight. He had been outmatched before, but he had never been so thoroughly ignored. He walked over to Grandmaster Naraka, offering her a hand up.

"Can you summon something that can kill him?"

Grandmaster Naraka wheezed as she let herself be pulled to her feet. "I can give us some time while we escape," she answered. "We never should have challenged him here. But when we saw him alone, we thoughtawell, never mind. I can do something, child. Just give me some time."

"Right," Alin said, and summoned his sword.

Before he let himself think about what he was doing, he ran at King Zakareth's back, sword first.

The King may have had only one eye, but it apparently didn't impede his vision much. He spun around and turned Alin's sword of golden light on the head of his spear, smas.h.i.+ng his s.h.i.+eld into Alin's chest.

Thanks to the armor, the blow didn't hurt much, but it pressed on him like a giant's fist.

Behind the King, Talos raised his staff, squinting his eyes in focus. A crimson fireball flew from its tip, cras.h.i.+ng into King Zakareth's armored back.

Alin had a close-up view of the King's expression, and he simply flinched. Slightly. It looked as though he had felt a mosquito bite his hand, and he was just bothered enough to waste time crus.h.i.+ng it.

Zakareth shoved Alin backwards and turned toward his son.

The Damascan Heir caught one look at his father's face, turned on his heel, and ran.

King Zakareth pulled his spear back as if to throw it, but hesitated, thinking better of it. He swung it back to Alin instead, who caught it on a half-dome of translucent green light.

"Elysia," the King said. "I've never fought one of you."

Alin raised his off hand and fired a blast of golden light at Zakareth's chest from inches away, but he still managed to somehow catch the blast on his s.h.i.+eld. "That's a coincidence. I've never fought a madman before."

Come to think of it, he had actually fought a madman before, but thinking up clever retorts in the heat of combat was harder than the stories made it sound.

"Tell me something," Zakareth responded. "Out of academic curiosity, I've always wondered why one would choose to ally themselves with Enosh. They are nothing more than a cult of the Incarnations, a suicide pact preparing to burn the world."

Alin brought his golden sword down at the King's head, though he was blocked by an almost casual s.h.i.+ft of Zakareth's s.h.i.+eld. "They don't sacrifice innocents," Alin said. "They don't spill blood of their citizens in the name of security and stability."

King Zakareth thrust his spear at Alin's midsection, his expression never changing. "Don't they? How many do you think will be *sacrificed' if the Incarnations are released?"

Alin had no answer for that, so he put up a green wall between them to give himself time to recover. In fact, he had wasn't sure he had enough breath left to speak; the strain of his repeated summonings was threatening to lose this fight for him. He had to end it soon.

The King paced on his side of the green wall, apparently content to wait it out. "My ancestors planted the first nine Hanging Trees for a good reason. I planted a tenth myself. They are the only things standing between this land and total, deadly anarchy."

Zakareth raised his spear, slamming it against the green wall. Luminescent cracks began to spider across its surface, and Alin pressed his hands against the wall, willing it to hold.

"Don't join their misguided, suicidal club," the King went on. "You weren't born in Enosh. You can think outside of their madness. Let the Trees stand."

Alin thought of the Incarnations, and couldn't help but agree that releasing them must be a horrible decision. But, in the end, he just couldn't do it.

"Not if you have to kill your own people to do it," Alin said, firmly and finally.

The King looked at him with his one remaining eye. "You're innocent," he said at last. He shook his head and let out a sigh. "I can respect that. But you'll learn, if you live long enough."

With that, he took two steps back and hurled his spear through Alin's green wall.

The light shattered underneath the a.s.sault, sending red-hot shards of gla.s.s shooting into Alin's brain. He screamed, clutching his head, as his world was swallowed in white.

When he could see again, Grandmaster Naraka was standing*somehow unharmed*opposite King Zakareth, who had his spear back in one hand.

Between them stood a red-skinned old man who was obviously not human. His gray beard reached down almost to his toes, and his scarlet skin was as tough and gnarled as an old oak's wood. He held a long gray noose in his hand that seemed formed out of ash, and his fingers kept sliding down the rope, caressing it, as if his hands had taken on a mind of their own.

"Guilty," the old man whispered, in a voice like dust and paper. He spun the noose around his head and threw it like a la.s.so.

The King sidestepped, catching the noose on the edge of his s.h.i.+eld and readying his spear to throw.

But a second later he stiffened, almost dropping his spear to the ground.

Impossibly, the noose had somehow still ended up around King Zakareth's neck. And now the red-skinned old man pulled it tighter and tighter.

Grandmaster Naraka cackled, her red spectacles flas.h.i.+ng in the b.l.o.o.d.y light. "Your Majesty, meet Haresh, Arbiter of Betrayal. I've wanted to introduce him to you for a long, long time."

"For crimes against those who trusted you," Haresh said, "I p.r.o.nounce you guilty. The sentence is death."

King Zakareth's voice grated as he pulled at the noose, trying to speak. "Haresha" he choked out. "Grandmaster Narakaayou are not welcome here."

The ruby on the front of his crown flared. A wave of crimson light blasted out from the King, just like the power Leah had used against the Incarnation earlier.

Only this time, instead of being chained in one place, the Grandmaster and her Arbiter were swept down the hall like dust before a broom. They physically tumbled out, so quickly and so violently that for a moment Alin wondered about the Grandmaster's safety.

When they reached the end of the Vault, the silver doors slammed shut.

King Zakareth pulled the ash-gray noose from over his head and turned to regard Alin.

"Now, Elysia," the King said. "How will this end?"

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE:.

SEEDS.

Though her bones ached and her head felt as though it would split open, Grandmaster Naraka finally managed to climb to her feet. The agony threatened to paralyze her, but she was used to mere pain. Any Naraka Traveler was.

After groping around on the floor for another moment, she managed to find her spectacles and press them against her face. They improved her vision, just a little, and they painted everything in a comforting shade of red.

Of course, considering the torches just outside the Crimson Vault, she didn't need any help seeing the world in red.

The Arbiter, Haresh, made a sound like a hiss. He ran his ash-gray rope through his hands, tightening it in a series of furious knots. Then, without warning, he ran up and pounded on the silver doors of the Vault.

The doors rang like a gong, but they didn't give. Not an inch. Even the torches to either side of the door seemed undisturbed, burning merrily along.

"Let me in," the Arbiter hissed. Legend told that his voice had been burned away long ago. She was never sure if that was true, or just a ghost story.

The Arbiters were among the most powerful beings any Naraka Traveler could summon. Bringing one into being here, on the material plane, meant certain victory in battle.

Certain victory unless you tried to face down a Ragnarus Traveler at the heart of the Crimson Vault, apparently. The Grandmaster doubted anyone had managed to test that before.

"Well, you got your chance," Talos said bitterly. "How did you like your taste of my father's spear?" The Heir stood with his back to the doors of the Vault, his hands in the air. A swirling red Gate formed before him.