The Crimson Vault Part 5

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 gla.s.ses 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 hoa.r.s.e, 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 Enoshahospitality."

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 herea" 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.

He kept chuckling. "Look at you. I didn't stop you from going anywhere, but you just watched. I bet you never even thought about going to help him, did you?

She opened her mouth to defend herself, but realized she had nothing to say. She couldn't even think of a good lie.

Talos clapped her on the shoulder, smiling fondly. At that moment, he actually looked like a proud big brother. "There's nothing to be ashamed of, Leah," he said. "You made the right move, and now one more piece has been taken off the board. As for you opposing me in the successiona"

He shook his head, his expression so sad that he looked like a grieving saint. Behind him, Lysander smirked.

"Don't," Talos said. "You're not a match for me, and I like you. Either work with me, or stay out of my way."

When Talos and his Overlord left, Leah stayed where she was for a moment, thinking. Then she walked over to the corner of her room and reached up to the wall behind the chair where Talos had been sitting.

In the corner of the wall and ceiling rested a crystal so clear it was almost invisible. Leah sat down in the chair, the crystal in her lap, and drew a spark of power from her Source in Lirial.

Deep within the recording crystal, an image began to form: the back of Talos' blond curls, Lysander's receding hair, and Leah herself, sitting on the bed. The crystal had recorded everything that happened in the room since she had activated it, just before Talos walked inside.

She controlled the view with her mind, sending it back to watch her brother's every move, to listen to his every word. There were clues hidden in everything that had happened here today, and she intended to find them.

One thing, at least, had become clear: Talos was a danger. He had at least one Overlord in his pocket, and the fact that he wasn't hiding their arrangement suggested that he had an agreement with at least one more. He obviously had no consideration for the safety of the Damascan people, planning as he was to a.s.sa.s.sinate the King during war preparations.

He had to be stopped. And Leah would be the one to stop him.

CHAPTER FOUR:.

REBIRTH.

Kai looked down the corridor to his left, which was filled with darkness and dust. The thick sandstone blocks of the walls looked no different than the ones surrounding him. He looked back: more darkness, lit occasionally by flickering yellow quartz embedded into the walls. A pile of dust on the floor marked the last golem to attack him on his way here.

He looked to his right to see an identical pa.s.sageway, also dark, likely hiding a dozen golems.

"I am hopelessly, deliriously lost," Kai said to himself. Or, at least, he thought it was to himself.

A figure of shadows and black cloth stepped from the darkness. He was hunched and hooded, his robes a black that had faded with age until it could almost be called gray. He had each of his hands tucked into the opposite sleeves, as though he was about to bow. Every inch of his flesh was hidden by black.

Of course, the Nye had no flesh. They were nothing but shadows and clothes, all the way down to the essence that gave them life and power.

Kai had always found that somewhat creepy.

"You are only lost if you are not where you wish," the Eldest Nye said. His voice was harsh and grating, though soft, like a hairbrush dragging through gravel. "Where do you wish to be, young dragon?"

"Not as young as I once was, Eldest of the Nye," Kai said. His voice had taken on the singsong voice he used when he was amused or annoyed. He hoped the Eldest a.s.sumed he was amused.

The Eldest chuckled, which was truly disturbing. "Come at last to claim your birthright, have you?"

He wasn't about to have that conversation, at least until Mithra was in his hands. The Eldest knew the answer, anyway.

"Honored Eldest, I thought you couldn't leave the House." Kai started walking down the corridor as he spoke, more out of a desire to be doing something than out of any conviction that he was heading the right way. As Kai walked, cl.u.s.ters of yellow quartz embedded in the walls flared to life, casting the halls in a dim golden light. When he got too far away, the lights farthest behind him winked out, so only the sections of the hall where he needed light were illuminated.

The Eldest followed. When he stood next to a glowing quartz, he looked ordinary, his dark gray cloak fully visible. But when he stepped into shadowa

It was as though he stepped through shadow instead. There were perhaps twenty paces between each quartz-light, and the gaps between were filled with darkness. But when the Eldest left one pool of light, he appeared immediately in the next one, seemingly not having crossed the shadow between.

Kai wondered what would happen if the lights failed entirely. He missed his dolls very much right then.

The Eldest finally decided to speak, perhaps in response to Kai's earlier question. "Many of the Nye cannot leave the House. They are bound to it too closely. But as the Eldest of my kind, there is little I cannot do. Little I do not see."

Kai made a curious noise in his throat, as though he was only mildly interested, but that was the most terrifying thing anyone had told him in years.

The thought inspired a surge of anger. Why should he pretend that the Eldest didn't bother him? He had obviously intended to frighten Kai, or he would have remained hidden. Why should he tiptoe around the Eldest's anger, pretending not to be frightened?

He knew why, of course. The Eldest could be terrifying, when he chose. But at the moment, Kai didn't care. Both of them knew that Kai hated the Eldest, so why act otherwise?

"Why did you decide to haunt me, Eldest?" Kai asked.

The Eldest laughed again. Twice in one day*something horrible must have happened to put the Eldest in such a good mood.

"The son of Kalman," the Eldest said, "has faced his Overlord. Some four weeks past."

Kai turned sharply, looking straight into the Nye's hood. "Is he alive?"

"No."

Kai drew in a breath. He had only ever agreed to train Simon once Caela had told him of Indirial's unfortunate offer, and he had never agreed to help Simon hinder the sacrifice. In fact, he had withheld information that would have made Simon's job much easier. He had made his choice over twenty years ago, after all. He would be a hypocrite if he changed his mind now.

But maybe, if he had just told Simon what he knew, the boy would still be alive.

Surprisingly, Kai actually felt a wash of guilt at the thought. Then it occurred to him that Azura was free, with Simon's death. Maybe his dolls, his beloved little ones, would finally take him backa He felt guilty for that, too. Why should he? The dolls were his, after all. But the feeling did not go away.

The Eldest shook his head, sadly. "Yes, it is a tragedy," he rasped. "His wife has taken over his realm. From what I can see, she is far better organized than her husband, though she is not a Traveler."

For a moment Kai stood, uncomprehending. Then a surge of anger swept through him, and he summoned a scimitar from the Valinhall armory. The sword flashed into his hand, and he swept it into the Eldest's neck.