Contents
Title Page Copyright WARNINGWelcome! [Series Title] Gardens of Mist Maelstrom of Stone The Steel Labyrinth
GARDENS OF MIST
Will Wight
IMPORTANT:
What follows is a small collection of short stories set in the
universe of the Traveler’s Gate Trilogy, which begins in the novel
House of Blades.
If you have
not
read
House of Blades
or its sequel,
The
Crimson Vault,
then
you will not understand the following
stories.
It’s okay; it’s not your fault. I understand. You’re still
handsome and/or pretty.
If you were simply browsing the Kindle Store and this book
caught your eye, I urge you to close this preview and go check out
House of Blades
. I’ll wait.
If you’ve already read the Traveler’s Gate Trilogy—or at least
the first two books—then come on in, my friend!
These stories are intended to give you a closer look at the
Territories and characters that we didn’t get to explore in the main
trilogy. If you’d rather stick with Simon, Alin, and Leah, I’ll
understand!
City of Light
will be available in early 2014, and I hope
it meets your approval.
Still with me? Then buckle up. We’re headed off the map.
Welcome to Elysia, young Traveler.
You will have heard many stories about what it means to be
one of us. Do not be fooled. No outsider understands our purpose.
They think we are here to lead other Travelers, to make the
decisions that they cannot.
This is true, and it is not true.
They think we are here as a last resort, as an ultimate power,
to keep the Incarnations in check.
This is true, and it is not true.
They think we are here to balance the other Territories, to keep
them from obtaining too much power and upsetting the natural
balance.
This is true, and it is not true.
What I am about to tell you is known by few, and understood
by even fewer: we are not here to lead, or to threaten, or to
eliminate threats. In the course of our duties, we will do all these
things, but ultimately we are here for a single purpose.
We are here to guide. We are here to lead by example,
inspiring other Travelers to live up to their own potential. We
should be as beacons in the darkness.
Welcome to the City of Light.
G
ARDENS
OF
M
IST
Compassion, tied to the Rose Light, is also the virtue most necessary for leading Travelers of Asphodel. To protect their minds, they cut themselves off from each other. This is understandable, perhaps, but it is also a tragic weakness. If we are to heal them, we must first show them what they lack.
-Elysian Book of Virtues, Chapter 4: Rose
Today, I learned why Damascan magistrates don’t accept eyewitness testimony gathered in Asphodel.
It’s not like I didn’t know what could happen to people out in the Mist. I’ve lived in the Gardens my entire life. I was born here, in a hollowed-out tree on the edge of the Midnight Fields. Every day, I step out of my door and walk into the Mist without a second thought. I’m not rich enough for a carriage, and I have to get to work somehow.
I give the Mist nothing to feed on, so it can’t touch me. My emotions are my own, locked up and held tight until I’m back between four walls. I’m no Traveler, bending the Mist to my will, but I know how to survive. That’s why it always surprises me a little when someone vanishes into the forest and is never heard from again, except as a drifting voice on the wind.
Don’t they know any better?
It’s not fair of me, I know, but I expect everyone to know the rules of Asphodel like I do.
First, you don’t walk into the Mist unless your mind is clear as good glass. When I walk outside, I’m a saint in human skin. You couldn’t get a rise out of me if you stabbed me through the foot.
Second, you don’t stop and smell the flowers. The bigger and brighter the blossom is, the more it wants to eat you. Nobody survives a day in the Midnight Fields unless they learn this lesson.
Third, you don’t trust anything you see in the Mist. Not ever.
It’s hard for some people to remember the last rule, which I guess I understand. If you can’t depend on your own eyes, then how do you know what’s real?
The answer: you don’t. But it’s easy to forget that. Which is what killed Adrian Corydon.
been working in the Fields ten years longer than even I had. He rescued me, one day, when I was foolish enough to let myself get distracted by a herd of wild bulls and forget that I was standing in a patch of purple blossombells. They had dissolved through my shoes and started digesting my ankles by the time Adrian pulled me out, and I never felt a thing.
Even when the pain set in, I didn’t scream. I didn’t allow myself to think about my shredded, bleeding feet. I knew better; the Mist was all around.
So anyway, I remember Adrian as a good guy. Not everyone thought that way.
Adrian tended to get a little angrier than he should, a little more stressed. He let the work in the Fields get to him, and sometimes he raised his voice in the middle of the Mist. One time, he staggered into our work site, stole another guy’s hoe, and waved it in the air while screaming about how his wife didn’t respect him. He had a bottle in his other hand, and I had no doubt what it contained. Adrian was partial to a particular recipe of nasty liquor made of yellow starvine sap. It was cheap, he could brew it at home, it burned like a bonfire, and yellow starvines were known to produce the most pleasant hallucinations of any of the flowers in the Midnight Fields.
That was only one of the Adrian stories that floated around my work pool like kites on the wind. Adrian was a big, bearded guy, and he threw his weight around even where he shouldn’t. Some people resented him. Others wondered about his wife, Phelia. Was she safe? Did he hurt her? Maybe we didn’t see her as often as we should…
Looking back, it was all a recipe for some kind of disaster, but I didn’t notice at the time. I tended my own garden, as they say in Asphodel, and let everyone else tend theirs. I keep to myself as much as I can. I’ve been that way for years, ever since my own wife left me for a merchant back in Damasca.
“It’s not you,” she said. “It’s this place. It does things to you. It’s not natural.” She walked through a Gate, and I never saw her again.
I didn’t feel anything, though. The Mist was excited that day, and I didn’t want to stretch my luck.
You’re right, I should get back on track. Adrian Corydon. I was sleeping when it began.
I still live in the hollowed-out tree I inherited from my parents, and it’s not a big one. I barely had to roll out of my hammock to unlatch the door and push it open.
Adrian stood there, right outside my door, his boots planted in a big puddle of Mist. It’s winter here—Asphodel has seasons like normal, though I know a lot of Territories don’t—and the air was cold enough that I regretted every second I held the door open. Adrian, though, he was soaked in sweat. His beard clung to his chest like a pile of soggy leaves sticking to the forest floor.
His hands spasmed opened and closed, like he couldn’t wait to get his fists around someone’s neck, and he had to lean one forearm against my doorframe to stay upright.
“Took me a long time to find out where you lived,” Adrian said. He was panting like he had run all the way here from town.
By “town,” I mean the cluster of huts and homes around the Midnight Fields that we affectionately called “the town.” Enough people lived there that it probably qualified as a village, I guess.
“All these trees look alike.” I held the door out a little wider, inviting him to step inside.
As he walked past me, I smelled no spirits on him, just sweat and the clean-water tang of the Mist on the winter air. At the time I thought that meant he was sober. Later, I told myself that of course he had been drunk, and I just hadn’t noticed. Now, I don’t know what to think.
With the Mist safely locked outside, I let my irritation bubble up from the place where I’d shoved it down. I don’t know anyone that likes being woken from a sound sleep in the middle of the night. I’d spent the whole previous day hoeing my row and picking blossoms in the Fields, just as Adrian himself had. The last thing I wanted was a mystery visit infringing on my allotted eight hours of sleep.
“What do you want from me, Corydon?” I asked.
It wasn’t the most hospitable thing to say, I’ll admit, but he must not have minded too much. He laughed.
“Don’t worry, it won’t be a long visit. I need to ask you a question.” “Then get to it,” I said. “My bed’s not getting any warmer.”
quite quick enough, but I know something was there.”
I couldn’t help the hint of humor that crept into my voice. “You been out in the Mist too long, Corydon?”
Adrian wasn’t born here, like me, but he was the next thing to it. I couldn’t think of anyone who had walked the Gardens longer than he had. He should know better than to give in to fantasies born in the Mist.
Adrian jabbed a finger at me. “That’s it! That’s just it. I don’t see anything moving in the Mist. I don’t see dead relatives, or walking nightmares, or anything else that Mist-touched people claim to see. It’s the Mist itself that’s moving.”
“The Mist moves all the time, Adrian,” I said. The Mist, for all its supernatural properties, is still water in the air. It moves with the wind just like any cloud.
“I know what it does,” Adrian snapped. “Don’t treat me like a new hire, you know better than that. This is different. Sometimes I think the Mist is moving around behind my back, you know. Reaching into me, pulling stuff out. The anger, the fear, the…you know what I mean. One day, I’m afraid the Mist is going to get what it wants, and everything I’ve pushed down all these years is going to bubble up to the top and come bursting out of me. It’s going to keep on coming, up and up, and the Mist is going to feed and keep feeding until there’s nothing left of me at all…”
His voice drifted off. He didn’t seem to need a response, for which I was glad. If I had reacted honestly at that moment, it would have been to run out of my house, into the night, and to keep running away from this potentially deranged madman.
I’ve seen dozens of people whose sanity has been eaten away by Asphodel. None of them are what I would consider safe living companions.
I don’t know why I didn’t leave right then. Maybe something he said rang true in me. Maybe I just wanted to know. But I had to ask the next question.
“Why did you come to me with this?” I asked. I had a positive opinion of Adrian, but we were hardly friends. In many ways, I barely knew the man.
“You’ve been around longer than anyone,” he said. “You know what the Mist can do to folks. And there was your wife. And…well, I don’t want this conversation getting around, if you understand me.”
reasons. I couldn’t ruin Adrian’s reputation in town because, frankly, no one would listen to me.
“I understand,” I said. That probably didn’t sound too gracious, so I tried to offer him what advice I could. “Listen, if you want my opinion, I’d say you should go home. Get a good night’s sleep. Talk to your wife, if you can. But more than anything, keep control of yourself. You’ve managed to keep the Mist out this long; you can do it a little longer.”
Today, as I look back on this conversation, I wonder if I should have said something different. Maybe I could have said something else, something that would have helped.
Probably not.
Adrian straightened up and nodded without looking me in the eye. He looked sober now, and his sweat was at least starting to dry. “You’re right,” he said. “I’ve gone this far. What kind of man would I be if I backed down now?”
He stuck out one hand, and I took it. His huge hand had a set of calluses to rival my own.
After that, he left. As he walked off, I would have bet money that I saw a wave of Mist following him.
I know, it was probably my imagination. A dozen people have already heard this story, and they all said the same thing. But I can’t forget the Mist, slithering after Adrian’s footsteps like a snake. Outside of a mist-binder’s control, I’ve never seen it act like that.
But, like you said. Probably my imagination.
I managed to scrape up a couple more hours of sleep before the next knock came. This time, I wasn’t nearly so irritated. I knew what was coming. I’ve always had a sense for bad news.
The foreman of my harvest crew—my boss—stood outside, holding a glowing cluster of pink night-roses like a lantern. She was one of the few bald women I knew, and she had tiny black eyes like a pair of beetles.
She was also a Gardener, a Traveler with the power to call on the plants of Asphodel. Despite my exhaustion, I straightened my back and bowed my head in respect.
“I beg your pardon for waking you,” she said. She wasn’t really sorry, but good manners were a matter of survival here. Provoking someone else can be just as bad as letting yourself get provoked.
The foreman lowered her bundle of glowing flowers, shifting the pale pink light away from her face. “Phelia Corydon is dead. We need you to help find Adrian.”
Her words stunned me, but a tendril of Mist was creeping in my door, so I let the cold swallow my reaction. “Of course. Let me get my coat.”
Perhaps luckily, we weren’t the ones to find him. We wandered around in the cold and the dark for only an hour before we came across a small crowd, maybe ten or twelve people. I knew most of the faces. They were gathered around a tree, all talking at once. Some of them held bundles of night-roses, like the foreman; others lit their way with more traditional lamps, or even wickwood torches.
The crowd stood in a mass, facing a bloody mess at the foot of a tree.
Despite all my years of training and conditioning, I almost lost control of myself when I saw what lay there on the Mist-shrouded ground.
Adrian Corydon sat with his back propped against the tree. He was just as wet as the last time I had seen him, but this time his clothes were soaked in blood. Adrian didn’t have a scratch on him, but his wife lay in a heap next to him. Her once-white nightgown had been stained dark red.
I didn’t stop to look for further details. The ground lurched, my stomach twisted, and I had to look away before I called the Mist to me.
The foreman demanded answers in a calm, reasonable tone. As though there was no corpse at her feet. Rule number one in Asphodel: stay calm.
I’m still not sure if Adrian heard her or not, but he spoke anyway. His voice quaked with emotion released: fear, anger, horror, relief, I’m not sure.
“It was the Mist. It got me. It got me at last. I told you it would. It set a trap for me, do you see? It’s just a trap.”
By the end he was pleading, reasonable. At his feet lay a bloody hunting knife, of the sort we used to skin bulls or peel the bark off shellvines.
When he said all that, we knew what had happened. We’d all seen it before. He’d panicked in the Mist, let it get to him. It had eaten him from the inside out, twisted him, turned him into something that couldn’t tell the difference between reality and nightmare. It was best to put such people out of their misery.
So we did. They did, I mean. I was with them, but I wasn’t with them, do you know what I mean? I think, even as dark as it got, part of me knew something was wrong. I didn’t do anything.
beg them to stop. I put all my effort into keeping myself absolutely calm. I wouldn’t want to let the Mist in.
They were a quiet mob. Quiet, and efficient. They had a rope up and over a tree before the sun’s first rays crept over the forest.
Adrian kept repeating, over and over, “It was the Mist, you understand? It got me. It wasn’t me, it was the Mist!”
At first, he was as calm as usual, but as they dragged him closer to the rope he got more and more frantic. Which, of course, just made them drag him faster. Excited by his emotion, the Mist pooled closer, twisting toward him in questing tendrils as it looked for a gap in his mind.
On its own, the Mist is harmless. We live in it, work in it. But when it senses prey, it’s more deadly than a wildfire. Everyone around is in danger.
The foreman was the one who finally got Adrian’s head in the noose. Her beetle-black eyes were cold when she ordered the drop.
They lifted him up, pulled the rope tight, and dropped him short.
He kicked a few times, the Mist surged up, and then they both went quiet. “Well,” the foreman said, “that’s that. I’ll expect to see you all at work in two hours.”
Without another word, everyone went home. Even me. I couldn’t sleep, but I tried; I knew I would need my strength for today’s work. Besides, disposing of madmen was familiar work for anyone who stayed in Asphodel any length of time.
Not that it was usually quite so…graphic. Or personal. But I repeated that to myself until the sun rose higher and the bell chimed, letting all the harvest crews know to report to their fields.
As I did every morning, I picked up my equipment: hoe, gloves, hat, spade, shears. I made sure it was all in place, and I made the usual hike down to the Fields.
When I got to the edge of town, a little collection of propped-up wooden shacks next to the tangled rainbows of the Midnight Fields, I noticed two things. First, no one was working. Everyone on my crew was gathered up in the town, silent, tools hanging forgotten at their sides.
Second, a woman with loose, stringy hair was walking from worker to worker, asking a question that I couldn’t quite make out. A woman in a white nightgown.
Eventually, as I knew she would, she made her way over to me.
eyes, but none made it into her voice. “I woke up, and he wasn’t there.”
Later, the foreman made it very clear that I should not have told her. She almost had me brought up on charges before the Overlord. By telling Phelia what happened to her husband, I might have made her vulnerable to the Mist, and thus endangered all of us.
But as it happens, Phelia Corydon acquitted herself well. I told her the story that I’ve just told you, and she didn’t scream. She didn’t attack me, or break down into tears, as I might have in her place.
Like a true woman of Asphodel, she made a mask of her face. Then she spat at my feet.
Without looking at anyone else, she walked into town. I don’t know where she was going, but I heard later that she had reclaimed Adrian’s body and was taking the case to the Overlord. It’s probably true.
So I’ve told you the whole story, even the parts that I should probably leave out, for my reputation’s sake. But as I said already, I don’t have much of a reputation.
I know, I should have realized immediately what the Mist had done to us. I should have insisted that we take Adrian inside, wait for morning, and examine the evidence.
It hasn’t been long. I’m still shaken by the whole thing. I’ve had enough practice staying calm that you’d think I’d be able to keep my head in any situation, but I’ll tell you what: this one gnaws at me.
But, given time, I’ll pack it away. Shove it down. I’ll bury the memory so deep that I don’t feel anything, so it can’t be used against me. As much as I can, I will forget Adrian Corydon.
I have to.
In their attempts at self-preservation, Travelers of Asphodel often throw away the only parts of themselves worth protecting.
M
AELSTROM
OF
S
TONE
There is always time for patience…
-Elysian Book of Virtues, Chapter 5: Green
When Chloe etched the final rune into her knuckle-sized sapphire, it felt like being let out of prison.
She dropped the sapphire—cut into two dozen facets, all covered in fresh, blocky runes—on her workbench, next to a sprawling collection of her tools.
“That’s one sapphire heartstone done!” she called into the swirling tunnels of her house. “In record time! You should go ahead and retire, I’ll take over for you.”
She always tried to make jokes when she needed to leave the house in a hurry. Sometimes she could slip away while her grandfather chuckled.
Chloe pulled her padded leather jacket on with one hand and opened the door with the other. Maybe, if she were only quick enough, she could make it outside.
The scuff of her grandfather’s slippers behind her warned Chloe that she had been too slow.
She spun around, favoring him with a bright smile. “I was just heading out, grandfather…I mean, ah, Grandmaster Ornheim. Can I get you anything while I’m out? Something to eat, or…”
Chloe’s grandfather, whose name was once Deiman Uracius, looked like nothing more than a village child’s idea of a wizard. He sported a white beard long enough to reach his belt, had he worn one. But of course he didn’t, because that would mean forgoing his traditional thick, brown robes. Rings of precious metals and gems flashed on each of his fingers: plain halfsilver bands; gold rings set with sunstone; rune-etched rubies; obsidian bands with small caps of iridian sand. On his face, as always, he wore that small, infuriating, invincible half-smile.
Nothing will ever disturb me, that expression said. Nothing ever could. If gold coins rained from the sky I would not laugh, and if the sun failed to rise I would not weep.
Grandmaster Ornheim laced his ring-speckled fingers together and fixed his granddaughter with that same not-quite-smile. “I am proud to be your grandfather, Chloe, you know that. But it is important you not call me that.”
Enosh cultural propriety. “I know that, Grandmaster, I apologize.”
The Grandmaster took no more notice of her words than a golem would have. Less, if the golem were well made. “Not even in private. Our habits in private never fail to carry over into the public sphere.”
“Perhaps the reverse is true as well.” Chloe snapped her fingers as though she had just realized something. “That would explain all the lectures! You don’t give enough of them to your students, so all the undelivered speeches bubbling up within you must carry over into the private sphere.”
Her grandfather’s patient smile didn’t flicker. “Your tolerance is nearly inhuman. You absorb every word of my wisdom with the patience of a mountain, and yet you still find time to put every one of your tools up in its proper place. How do you do it?”
She was becoming too predictable; he hadn’t even glanced over at the workbench. Chloe let her shoulders slump—she needed to show him that she wasn’t happy about this—and marched over to the workbench, hurriedly scooping up her tools and dumping them into the appropriate rack, drawer, or box.
Grandmaster Ornheim strolled over to stand beside her, plucking her carved sapphire up from the surface of the workbench. “This is functional. Clean. I can see how this might work quite well, actually.”
“Of course,” Chloe said, but she couldn’t help a little spark of pride. She had worked for hours on that heartstone, after all, even if she hadn’t done it willingly.
“Have you any thoughts on the golem?”
“Oh! Yes, hang on…” after a moment she found it: a glass jar of sparkling golden sand. Iridian.
She poured a handful of iridian into her hand, and then willed it into the air. A tendril of sand rose, following her thoughts, spreading out into a gleaming sheet of tiny stars.
“I was thinking something like a bird, you see.” The sand condensed into a glittering model of a stationary bird. She wasn’t sure what kind of bird it was —there were no birds native to Ornheim, so she had only ever seen them on trips outside—but this model looked like a bird to her. “I’d like a light rock for the body, maybe something volcanic, I’m not sure.”
“And the skystones?”
anything, I know it will be a little unbalanced, so I’d plan to put the heartstone here, in the middle of its back.” Some of the spare iridian floated around the bird’s back, encircling where the heartstone would go.
This was the one part of the process to which Chloe had actually invested time and effort. Anyone could carve the runes of a heartstone; the process was mostly tedious memorization and hours of mindless drudgery. She would rather spend her time in the mines. Designing the golem itself, on the other hand, actually took a degree of creativity, even artistry.
Plus, in her personal opinion, skystones were amazing. With only a little mental effort, an Ornheim Traveler could make those little blue stones rise and hover in midair. She had begun practicing with skystones since she had first felt her bond to Ornheim’s vast earth.
Grandmaster Ornheim waved his hand, and the iridian wrenched itself from Chloe’s control, flowing back into the jar in a sparkling golden river. One tendril of sand even reached back out and pulled the lid back on. “Very good. You’ll be ready to assemble your golem soon, but don’t get ahead of yourself. You’ve got plenty of time.”
This from the man who would spend six weeks studying a block of marble before he first touched it with his chisel. “Yes, Grandmaster.”
Before her grandfather could say anything else, Chloe turned and pulled open the door. Some of her friends were going Beneath today, and if she was lucky, she might get there in time to join them...
Grandmaster Ornheim’s hand rested softly on her shoulder, and she almost screamed in frustration.
“I hope you’re not leaving quite yet.”
“No, I’m not,” Chloe said, in the most unconvincing tone possible. “You need to—”
“Yes, I know. You tell me every time.”
The Grandmaster stroked his beard, always playing the venerable old teacher. “You do? Then tell me, what must you do before leaving?”
Chloe briefly wondered if she could just start running. How far would she make it before her grandfather brought her back? It was an unfair thought, of course, since Grandmaster Ornheim would never physically stop her from leaving. His disapproval, along with the inevitable lecture when she returned, was enough to keep her in place.
“An Ornheim Traveler must always stay and watch the Cycle,” she recited. “It is by the flow of the Maelstrom that our lives are guided, and we must respect that flow.”
“Lest we be crushed beneath it,” her grandfather finished. “Sit. Watch the Cycle. The City Beneath has existed for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years. It will still be there in an hour.”
An hour? In her estimation, she could learn the Cycle safely in one look. It wasn’t that much different from glancing at a clock, after all. Not in principle, anyway.
Chloe walked up to the edge of the cliff outside their house and leaned on the railing. Her home—like everyone’s home, here in Ornheim—was carved into the side of one of the more stable mountains. A path three or four paces wide stretched out from the front of the house like a porch, terminating in a seemingly endless drop down to Ornheim’s dark surface. Only Master-level Ornheim Travelers were allowed to descend that far.
Master Ornheim Travelers, or those few who fell through the thin wooden safety railing. Chloe didn’t spare much thought for the drop, though. She had lived with that threat for most of her life. And she had better things to worry about.
Above her whirled a Maelstrom of Stone, flying and dancing in an endless cycle.
Rivers of shining golden iridian drifted by, twisting like giant ribbons on an invisible breeze. A star-shaped chunk of rose quartz the size of a barn rolled in a lazy orbit around an inverted mountain with a flat top. It looked like it had been torn up from the ground by the roots. As Chloe watched, she saw specks of blue flickering toward the bottom of the floating island. It was kept aloft by veins of skystone, then.
A stone titan plodded by, looking like a craggy face the size of Chloe’s mountain. Its dull eyes were fixed on some invisible point in the distance. Some people built villages on stone titans; they avoided great danger, and tended to visit water sources quite often. Chloe could never imagine living on a mountain that wasn’t stationary, herself.
didn’t place too much faith in that theory. For one thing, how would a roof that big stay up?
After only a few minutes of staring out at the Cycle, Chloe began to grow bored. The ribbons of iridian were circling her mountain, making a full round once every eight or nine minutes. The chunk of rose quartz, on the other hand, only took twenty-eight seconds to encircle its island, and was getting a little closer each time. The island itself seemed to drift randomly, though it looked mostly stable. The rose quartz star and its inverted island would crash together eventually, though that was hardly remarkable. Rocks the size of small towns slammed into each other all the time here, with a noise like thunder.
Nothing else even remotely interesting was happening nearby. She had a good grasp on the Cycle, or at least the part of it that affected her. What was she going to gain by standing here waiting? The Cycle took more than a few minutes to change.
Chloe had almost turned away when she noticed a flash of green on the surface of the floating island, maybe fifty paces away.
She spun back to look, since anything that deviated from the Cycle was worth investigation. But the island’s rose quartz “moon” quickly rose, blocking her view.
She waited the next fourteen seconds in utter impatience, mentally begging the chunk of rock to hurry up and cross over to the other side, so that she could see what was happening on the island’s surface.
After the most agonizing quarter of a minute she could remember, Chloe almost cheered when the chunk of pink quartz floated to the other side.
That was when she recognized what she had failed to notice before. The speck of green was not a rock formation, but a girl. A dark-haired, tan-skinned girl in a green dress.
Chloe let out an involuntary gasp. There was a girl, who looked to be less than Chloe’s own age, out in the Maelstrom itself. Alone. Even Grandmaster Ornheim would not have traveled beyond the mountain without a good reason and extensive preparation, and he likely would have brought help.
The spiky ball of rose quartz floated by on another orbit, reminding Chloe: it was going to crash into the island. It might take minutes, hours, or even a day, but when it eventually happened, that girl would die.
Saints above, what am I supposed to do?
from the girl in the green dress. No, I can’t call him that, he won’t answer to that. “Grandmaster Ornheim!” No response. “Grandmaster!”
He may have left. That wouldn’t be too unusual; he was a Grandmaster, after all. Ornheim was his backyard, and he could come and go as he pleased. Did she have time to go look for him? Did she have any other options?
Her grandfather, she knew, would tell her to wait. Observe. There is always time for patience; that was one of his favorite sayings. Another of his most common: You must learn the board before playing your first piece.
Chloe respected her grandfather, and patience was the way of Ornheim. Carving a golem’s hearstone took weeks, and building its body could take months. Learning to read the Cycle took years; learning to navigate the Maelstrom took a lifetime. There were no shortcuts in Ornheim, and endurance always yielded results. But she simply could not justify doing nothing while a girl died in front of her eyes.
She wasn’t sure what exactly she could do, but surely something would be better than nothing. That, or it would result in two bodies lost on Ornheim’s surface instead of only one.
One of the giant ribbons of iridian floated by, and Chloe got a terrible idea. Before she could think about it too much, she vaulted over the railing and into empty space.
For a sickening instant, her stomach lurched, and she wished with all her being that she could take it back. She was going to fall into the hazy, brown distance, and—while she didn’t know exactly what waited on the ground— she was pretty sure that she would get there by means of a sudden, violent stop.
Then, in response to her mental screams, the river of iridian flowed down and cushioned her fall. Not that it felt much like a cushion at all, really; it felt more like slamming face-first into a beach. But she would take what she could get.
She had initially imagined using the iridian to form a bridge and letting the girl cross. The problem was that it was far beyond the scope of her abilities with the substance. Maybe Grandmaster Ornheim or one of his top students could do that, but Chloe certainly couldn’t. Not yet. Commanding iridian
Seconds in, she started to shake. It felt as though she were trying to drag a cart uphill. Soon after, she started to sweat.
It shouldn’t be this hard, she thought. Maybe I’m using too much power.
Experimentally, she relaxed her mental grip on the sand.
Immediately, the gritty golden cloud started to disperse, and she began to fall right through.
She tightened her grip once more before she had fallen more than a few inches. After about ten seconds of silent, terrified shaking, she got her flying carpet of sand moving once again.
She didn’t know how she made it—the iridian river seemed to crawl forward an inch at a time—but she eventually covered the fifty paces to the island.
She had imagined setting her floating platform down, reaching out to the girl in green, and then the both of them flying gracefully back to the mountain.
Instead, she let herself crash to the island’s surface, the glittering golden sand drifting off like smoke to spiral through the air once more. Every muscle in her body hurt, as though she had run for days while carrying a sack full of stones.
Sweaty, shaking, and lying flat against the rock, Chloe barely managed to speak. “I’m here…to…get you.”
The girl measured Chloe with dark eyes, and then looked back up at the escaping sand. “Do you have more of that?”
Between labored breaths, Chloe shook her head.
“Then it seems we’re both stuck,” the girl said. “Unless you have a golem nearby. Or some other plan I haven’t thought of.”
She didn’t seem nearly as panicked as Chloe thought she should be in this situation. Nor as grateful as she’d hoped. “I thought…you would be… scared.”
The other girl thought about that for a moment. “My mother wouldn’t be scared. She would say that was a waste of time.”
Chloe had finally started to get her breathing back under control. “Your mother would get along well with my grandfather, I think. I’m Chloe.”
“Deborah, daughter of Deborah.”
Deborah inclined her head formally, and Chloe did the same. As best she could while remaining face-to-face with the stone, anyway.
moon. She raised one hand and pointed. “That’s going to crash into us at some point.”
Deborah followed Chloe’s finger up. “I had hoped I was imagining that. Well, no use waiting for it to happen. Maybe, if we work together, we can call that iridian back.”
“Not me,” Chloe said. “It’s too far away, and I’m too tired from making it all the way over here. It would kill me.”
In truth, Chloe would try it if she had to, but she wasn’t exaggerating when she said it would kill her. In her current condition, she was sure that the
iridian would simply slip from her grasp and drop her.
Deborah patted the stone on which she sat. “There’s plenty of skystone here. But it’s way too deep to do us any good.”
Chloe pressed her own palm against the rock and listened to the voice of the stone. It passed through her like a wave of distant whispers.
There was indeed a vast network of skystone here, as she had expected. Deborah was right, though; there was no way to pull even a single chunk of skystone up through such solid rock.
“We don’t need a piece of skystone,” Chloe said. “We just need to use what’s already here. We can fly the whole island.”
Deborah glanced over at the mountain, which seemed much farther away from this side. Skepticism was evident on her face. “Even if we can activate that much skystone, I can’t steer it.”
“I can.” Probably.
“Really?” Deborah’s eyebrows raised. “Are you sure?”
“Absolutely,” Chloe said. Assuming it’s exactly like a theoretical iridian
bird.
In true Ornheim fashion, the two Travelers didn’t act immediately. They sat there, waiting, for over half an hour. Partially, Chloe wanted to regain her strength before she tried activating and controlling whole veins of skystone. She also wanted to give her grandfather time to show up and stage a miraculously timed rescue.
After half an hour, though, neither of them could deny it any longer: the chunk of quartz was getting closer. Even now, if they timed the activation badly and lifted the island too quickly, they would slam themselves against the quartz prematurely.
Chloe didn’t have to imitate the other girl’s pose, but she did so anyway. It seemed like a good position for speaking with the stone. “Ready when you are,” she said, hoping it was true.
She let her mind drift down into the jagged roots of the floating island, seeking skystone. The blue stone webbed the inside of the inverted mountain, filling the ordinary rock like a bright blue skeleton.
When the quartz passed by overhead once more, Deborah flared the skystone. The veins flashed blue in Chloe’s mind, and the island jerked upwards.
No, not like that, Chloe thought. More like…
She sent herself down, into the rock, and activated the skystone on the far side of the island. It flared to life, pushing them forward and slightly up. They drifted closer to the mountain on their own momentum, now; they might come in a little high, but Chloe would be more than willing to risk a broken leg by jumping down rather than a broken spine by falling.
“Above!” Deborah shouted. Chloe jerked her head up to see the barn-sized star of rose quartz flying down at them like a colossal hammer.
Together, the two young Travelers flared the skystone so hard that they blasted toward the mountain, barely scraping by the quartz in time to avoid a titanic collision.
And they were headed straight for the side of the mountain.
Desperately, Chloe flared the skystone closest to the mountain, trying to slow them to a safe speed. Deborah, on the other hand, had a different idea: she was trying to bring them higher, apparently so that they could float safely over the peak.
Chloe felt that it would have worked out much better if they had worked together instead of moving in two different directions, but it certainly could have been worse. Their island came to rest above Chloe’s mountain, hovering exactly over the highest peak.
“It worked!” Chloe said, her voice filled with relief and exhilaration.
“Yes it did,” Deborah agreed, in much the same sound as a sigh of relief. “Now, how do we get down?”
***
Deborah, as it turned out, was the daughter of the current Overlord.
received from the Damascan villages.
Grandmaster Ornheim, once he found and rescued them, had known exactly what questions to ask. In short order, and with impeccable manners, he had figured out precisely who ‘Deborah, daughter of Deborah’ was.
When Chloe first heard the news, her first reaction was confusion. How could Deborah be an enemy? Chloe had just risked her life to rescue her. Her second reaction was fear; surely, Grandmaster Ornheim would hold the young Deborah hostage against her mother’s behavior. That was, if he didn’t execute her outright.
Instead, Chloe’s grandfather sent a sapphire messenger golem to tell the Overlord what had happened, and to offer her daughter back.
When the Overlord and her entourage arrived, full of gratitude and words of friendship, Grandmaster Ornheim let out the longest speech he had delivered in weeks.
He had been holding back, Chloe could tell.
Within the lecture, he had a lot to say about the great Cycle, about what it meant to be an Ornheim Traveler, and, of course, about stone. Chloe’s grandfather could never say more than three words together without talking about stone.
She was just considering sneaking off when the sound of her name brought her back to her senses.
“...Chloe has always had a problem with waiting. ‘Listen,’ I always tell her. ‘Watch. Be still and think.’ These are good lessons, but there are other things worth learning as well. Things that she teaches me.”
Chloe frowned. She couldn’t remember ever teaching her grandfather anything in her life.
“She reminds me that certain situations call for action, not preparation. We can’t always be perfectly informed or absolutely prepared. Sometimes, we simply have to act. There are times when I forget that. If anything, today’s events have shown us why we can’t always wait for an opportunity. Every once in a while, we must seize whatever chance we can, and hope for the best.”
Grandmaster Ornheim turned toward Chloe, a broad smile splitting his beard in half. “For if we don’t act when we need to,” her grandfather said, “then what were we waiting for in the first place?”
T
HE
S
TEEL
L
ABYRINTH
Humility is the lesson you should learn in Tartarus. To truly work as a unit, you must suppress your selfish pride, and no Territory teaches this lesson better than the Steel Labyrinth. There is no such thing as a lone Traveler of Tartarus.
-Elysian Book of Virtues, Chapter 6: Red
296th Year of the Damascan Calendar 2nd Year in the Reign of Queen Deianira III
12 Days Until Spring’s End
Everywhere Valin looked, he saw swords. The tiles in the floor were made of a thousand blades, hammered flat in an interlocking pattern. From the ceiling hung a forest of sharp metal, honed to a razor’s edge. Each wall bristled with hundreds of needle-tipped knifepoints.
And the three Travelers standing in front of him each had a sword pointed straight at his chest.
The young woman in the middle was in her mid-twenties, roughly Valin’s age, and the patch on her uniform indicated that she was a lieutenant in some Overlord’s private army. Her right eye was covered in a black patch, and she had her long hair tied behind her back.
“State your name, your rank, and your allegiance. Keep your hands away from your weapon.”
Casually, Valin rested a hand on his sword’s hilt. “Aren’t Damascan soldiers supposed to keep their hair short? It’s not like I care, but I thought it was regulation.”
According to Deianira, Valin had three bad habits.
His first was that he talked far too much, even in situations where he should just keep his mouth shut.
The lieutenant’s grip tightened, and she took a threatening step forward. “If you do not state your name and allegiance, then I have no choice but to treat you as an agent of Enosh and deal with you accordingly.”
To either side of her, her fellow Tartarus Travelers spread out to keep Valin encircled.
small smile. “Out of curiosity, how would you treat me if I were an agent of Enosh?”
Another bad habit: he taunted his opponents. He didn’t have to, he supposed, but it was so easy. Everyone took combat so seriously all the time; just because it was a matter of life-and-death didn’t mean you couldn’t have a little fun with it.
A hand brushed Valin’s shoulder as one of the soldiers tried to seize his sword arm. He should have moved faster.
That brought to mind Valin’s third habit, and the one that came up most often. He loved a good fight, so he started as many as possible. More than he should, to tell the truth, but he saw himself as a helpless prisoner of his own impulses. Nothing got his blood up quite like a good brawl.
As a way of keeping himself in line, he always tried to wait until the other guy threw the first punch. No one had punched him this time, but surely grabbing him was just as bad. They wanted to take Valin prisoner as a suspected killer from Enosh, and then how would he do his job?
Valin’s elbow crunched into the soldier’s nose. Warm blood spurted onto Valin’s arm, and the Traveler let out a shout of pain.
“If I really were from Enosh, that would have been a knife,” Valin said. “Did you really think it was a good idea to try and grab someone you thought was a dangerous assassin? Where did you learn that?”
The lieutenant seemed stunned for a second—in Valin’s experience, people often reacted that way when he chatted casually in the middle of a fight—but she recovered quickly. While Valin was still talking, she lunged, her sword-point leading the way.
It was exactly the move they taught Damascan twelve-year-olds in their first year of fencing school. Valin slapped the sword away with the back of his hand and stepped forward, grabbing the Traveler by her collar.
“Stab, you’re dead,” Valin said. “You’re a Tartarus Traveler in the Labyrinth. Surely you can do better than that.”
He shoved her backwards and she stumbled, barely managing to keep her feet. The third of the trio had raised his sword, but he changed his mind and knelt, pressing a hand to the metal floor of the Steel Labyrinth.
A hissing sound echoed through the hall as the mysterious mechanical contraptions of this Territory whirred to life.
Valin’s smile widened. “See? There we go.”
from the far end of the hall, flying straight for Valin. They passed harmlessly around the three Tartarus Travelers; Valin almost thought one of the spears actually corrected itself in mid-flight to avoid the lieutenant.
In the split second it took the spears to reach him, Valin had his sword drawn. It was a standard Damascan longsword, forged for him by the best smiths in Cana. Deianira had bought it for him only a couple of months ago as a Winter’s End present.
He only hoped that it wouldn’t break.
The first spear reached his right leg, and he barely stepped out of the way in time. The second he had to kick out of the air. The third, he dodged by leaning to the right, and the fourth simply missed.
The fifth and sixth spears flew true, and he didn’t have the time to dodge. With both hands on the hilt, he brought his sword crashing onto the first spear, striking it down with a shower of sparks. Without a second to pause, he swept his blade to the right, knocking the final spear off-course and sending it spinning in midair. The butt of the spear smacked into his ribs, but without enough force to do any actual damage.
The spears clattered to the sword-patterned floor in a crash of falling metal. Valin slid his sword back into its sheath. “Now that was a rush! I’ll have to come back here. Good practice.”
His heart pounded with exhilaration, and at last he felt the old fire in his blood. It was all too rare these days that something challenged him.
After a second, he realized that the three Travelers were still on the ground. They weren’t unconscious, were they? He didn’t think he had hit any of them that hard.
The lieutenant stared at him as though he had started to glow. “How did you do that?”
“Years of training and experience, a good night’s sleep, and loads of natural talent.”
The man with the bleeding nose raised himself to one knee. “Who are you?” he choked out.
“Oh, right.” Valin glanced around the hall until he spotted what he was looking for: a leather satchel leaning against the spiked steel wall. He’d dropped it there just as the three Tartarus Travelers attacked him.
“In the front pocket of that bag, there’s a piece of paper. Could you grab it for me?”
seconds, she reached warily into the front of the bag and plucked out a crumpled, browned sheet of paper.
“Deianira sent me,” Valin explained. “She thought you might need some help.”
The lieutenant’s eyebrows drew down, so close together that it looked like she was trying to glare a hole in the paper. She flipped it around, showing him the red wax seal on the other side.
“This is the royal seal,” she said. “By Deianira…do you mean Deianira the Third? Our Queen?”
“How many Deianiras do you know?” Valin asked. “I’ve only ever met the one. Didn’t you ask for help?”
He reached out for the paper. In what looked like an unconscious reflex, the lieutenant clutched it tighter. “We asked for reinforcements and advice, actually. And we sent word to the Overlord, not to Cana.”
Valin didn’t know how the Queen had intercepted a message from Tartarus, but he had learned long ago not to underestimate her ability to ferret out secrets. “My strength and considerable experience are at your disposal,” he said. “I also took it upon myself to evaluate your combat skills.”
The lieutenant winced and looked away. “I can only say that, unlike many Travelers, we’re actually weaker inside our Territory than outside it.”
He had assumed as much. Tartarus had a well-earned reputation as a deadly combat Territory, but much of that strength came from their ability to summon their weapons almost instantly. Inside the Territory itself, they couldn’t summon weapons directly.
He knew that, but he couldn’t help feeling disappointed.
“But that is no excuse,” the lieutenant continued, to Valin’s surprise. “We took you too lightly, and you were gentler than we deserved. Thank you.”
That may have been a first. Usually, the people Valin defeated showed one of three reactions: fear, anger, or disbelief. The lieutenant didn’t seem resentful at all, but he supposed carrying a letter with the royal seal on it could have simply impressed her. Perhaps that was all it was.
Still, he wasn’t sure how to respond.
One of the other Travelers spoke up: “What are you looking for?” “Dragons,” Valin said simply.
The soldier with the bloody nose snorted, and Valin shot him a look that shut him up.
The lieutenant looked completely lost. “But dragons aren’t real,” she said. “Are they?”
Valin sighed. He had delivered this lecture a thousand times, and sometimes he got sick of doing it. “In Naraka, there are black-skinned lizards that breathe fireballs. In Endross, there are huge flying drakes that spit lightning. In the lowest levels of Ornheim, there’s a species of burrowing worm that hurls sparks and is intelligent enough to speak. With all that, why shouldn’t there be dragons?”
“But—” the lieutenant began, but Valin kept going.
“And no, I know what you’re going to say, those aren’t dragons. I’m looking for a real dragon. Strong, intelligent, flies, breathes fire…you know, a dragon. We’ll find one in a Territory one of these days, mark my words.”
Valin had seen plenty of dragon-like creatures, but nothing gave him the sense of majesty he had always pictured in the dragons of legend. Dragons should be more…magical, he guessed.
“I see,” the lieutenant said in a voice that said she didn’t see at all. Clearly, she had lost the thread of the conversation a while back.
“You’ve seen many Territories,” one of the other Travelers said, in a transparent attempt to change the subject. “But I haven’t seen you summon anything. What kind of Traveler are you?”
“I’m not a Traveler,” Valin said. “I don’t have bonds to any of the Territories. I just go from one to another, doing what I can. That’s probably why they call me the Wanderer.”
The three Travelers exchanged glances, but they had nothing to say. ***
The way back to the nearest Damascan base was tricky, and Valin was soon lost. Every half an hour or so—though it seemed completely unpredictable—the Labyrinth whirred and shifted. The hallways shuffled, the floor separating and sliding apart, new gaps opening in the walls. Once, a dead end transformed itself into a room full of whirling circular blades inches in front of Valin’s face.
at all, following a mental map that they all evidently shared. As they walked, they answered Valin’s questions.
There were very few permanent outposts in the Steel Labyrinth. None of them that were permanently manned. By order of the Overlord, no Damascan Travelers were allowed to sleep in their Territory; there had been disappearances, including a handful of tragic incidents in which the sleeping Travelers had been trapped in rooms with no exits. Sometimes, when they woke up, they were able to make Gates and escape. Other times, they would be skewered by traps while still unconscious.
Thus, the rule about sleeping in the maze.
The Tartarus Travelers understood these rules and seemed to accept them. Valin had been summoned for a more urgent reason.
“Something has been killing Travelers in our unit,” the lieutenant—whose name was Roshan—said, as she gently guided Valin away from a pit of gnashing mechanical traps. “They’re usually alone, and they fail to report in. When we find them next, it’s only their mangled bodies.”
“You think it’s Enosh?”
“We think one of them has disguised themselves as one of us,” Lieutenant Roshan said. “We think he or she is ambushing us when we’re alone, or else has summoned something to do it for them.”
She seemed more disgusted at the thought of a summoned killer. Was that because she was afraid of monsters from another Territory, or because she hated the idea of someone too cowardly to do their own killing? Valin had heard odd things about notions of honor in Tartarus.
“I’ll need to see the body. I can’t guarantee that I’ll find anything helpful, but I’ll do what I can.” He wasn’t rude enough to say it to her face, but he was certainly more likely to know something useful than any of these Tartarus soldiers. He had devices in his satchel that might come in handy.
“You’re more likely to find something than we are,” Roshan said, impressing him yet again. “We’re going to stop by and pick up some more weapons before we show you the scene, just in case…”
Her voice trailed off as the wall in front of them parted, revealing a man lying on his back in a small pool of blood.
Too small, Valin noted immediately. The corpse was partially curled around a circular chest wound as big around as a man’s head. Anything that caused a wound that size should have left a puddle of blood twice as deep.
her two subordinates, and they quickly drew their swords and positioned themselves around the body, watching the corners of the room for movement. It was not a large room, perhaps five paces to a side, and the only visible entrance was the one through which they had come. But if Valin had learned anything from his short time in Tartarus, it was that the Labyrinth could open up a new door anytime and anywhere.
“I take it this isn’t the body you meant to show me,” Valin said.
“The Captain’s body is in a coffin,” Roshan said in a tight voice. “We left the blood where he was killed, in case we needed to examine it again. This is a totally different room.”
Valin dipped his fingertips in the blood: still warm. He gestured to the corpse. “Who was this?”
“He was meant to stay with the Captain’s coffin.” “Alone?”
She nodded. “This is the fourth victim. The second one taken right under my nose.” Roshan stared straight at the wall, and Valin left her to her thoughts. He had nothing productive to say.
Besides, the body was more interesting.
He ran a finger along the edge of the wound, coming up with a thin layer of black grit. Ash, perhaps? If so, then they were most likely looking for a killer from Naraka, or maybe Endross.
He examined the body for another five minutes before he came up with another source of the black dust. Under the fingernails this time, as though the soldier had managed to scratch his attacker.
Valin scraped out a little of the dust and rubbed it between two fingers. Against his better judgment, he placed a little on his tongue.
He spat it out immediately. It didn’t taste foul; worse, it tasted like good topsoil. That narrowed his list of possibilities down to one. “Everybody who died was alone?” he asked, just to be sure.
“They were.”
“Then I’m afraid I can probably tell you what killed them,” Valin said. “And you’re not going to like it.”
All three Tartarus Travelers turned to face him. “What?” Lieutenant Roshan demanded.
“A Strugle.”
The room fell into a long stretch of silence.
obey, or else the Strugle will take them away’? The Strugle is real?” One of the male Travelers coughed to cover up a laugh.
Valin knelt and began rummaging through his pack, wishing that he had packed the stone amulet he had once unearthed in Ornheim. It had been designed specifically to block the attack of a Strugle.
“Strugles are native to Ornheim, though based on the way it hunts, some naturalists believe that it originated in Asphodel.” He had a dagger here that could heat itself red-hot but never lose its shape; no, if he got close enough to use a dagger, the Strugle would simply eviscerate him. “It locks on to feelings of loneliness, uncertainty, isolation, and it uses them to identify its prey. Its favorite tactic is the ambush; some people believe that it feeds on the fear and surprise of its victims as much as their flesh and blood.”
The frozen horn he had picked up in Helgard, perhaps? Maybe it could banish the Strugle back to the Territory from whence it came…but no, blowing the horn in Tartarus was too risky. It might banish whole rooms from the Labyrinth around them, leaving them to fall right through the floor.
“Tartarus Travelers would normally be a good match for a Strugle,” Valin continued. “You summon quickly, you’re usually armored, and you’re rarely alone. It’s hard for a Strugle to target someone like that. But that’s when you’re outside your Territory. If you’re here, and you don’t know what you’re facing, you’re little better off than an ordinary person.”
These days, it almost never occurred to Valin that he, too, could be considered an ordinary person. He had certainly never thought of himself as ordinary.
“How do we catch it?” one of the men said.
“We don’t,” Lieutenant Roshan responded, reluctance heavy in her voice. “We tell everyone we can about it. We let the Overlord know what we’re up against. We prepare, and we hit it together.”
“Lieutenant…” the man began, but he let the statement hang.
Valin thought he saw the problem. He wasn’t the most familiar with Tartarus Travelers, but they had a reputation for their prickly sense of honor. He didn’t fully understand it—honor seemed like an unnecessary set of arbitrary rules, to him—but he could at least accept it.
“Is there some reason you might want to catch this thing yourself?” Valin asked. He kept rummaging around in his satchel; surely something in his collection would come in handy.
Lieutenant said. “Including my commanding officer. The Overlord has yet to send a replacement for him, but when he does, I have no doubt that I will be at least demoted. Capturing or killing the beast myself would go a long way toward restoring my honor, but that won’t happen.”
“Why not?”
She met his gaze levelly. “Because it’s not about me. It’s about saving lives. The smart move is to regroup, report, and form a plan of attack.”
“Aha!” Valin said. At last, he had found something worth looking for. It was a plain gold medallion, unmarked, that would give you a vague sense of danger. He had received it as a gift from a Tartarus Traveler, actually, who had found it in a locked chest deep in the heart of the Labyrinth. Valin was convinced that the medallion was unfinished—there had to be some way of improving it, even if no one else would try—but it would be perfect against an ambush predator like the Strugle.
“Fortunately for you,” Valin said, “I rarely do the smart thing.” As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he realized how they sounded, but he plunged ahead anyway. “I’ve hunted Strugle before, in teams and alone. You can evade them, you can trap them, and you can kill them. All you need is bait.”
Roshan shook her head. “I told you, I won’t—”
“Let me put this to you another way, Lieutenant,” Valin said. “I’m going to find a Strugle. With your help, I’m much more likely to survive. And if I die, it will be because you abandoned me.”
Without another word, Valin set off down the steel-plated hallway. Deianira would have backed these Travelers into the same corner, he was sure, but she would have felt badly about it. Valin didn’t. He would have been perfectly happy to hunt the creature alone, but if she followed, perhaps Roshan would get a little bit of the credit.
Only seconds later, three more sets of footsteps followed him. ***
Several hours after Valin’s conversation with Roshan, he knelt on a metal ledge, looking down into a cavernous steel bowl. Blindfolded, Lieutenant Roshan crouched at the center of the bowl. His golden medallion hung around her neck.
killings. When he started tying the blindfold around his own eyes, Roshan had stopped him.
You’ve fought these things before, she’d said. Are you afraid of them? Well…no.
That settles that, then. They’re attracted to fear. I’ve never seen one of these things before, I’ve only seen what they can do to my men. I’m terrified.
And somehow, Valin found himself prepared to carry out an ambush, while Roshan sat out there waiting for one.
He had faith in their chances of attracting a Strugle. The hunter was obviously very active, considering its recent body count, and the conditions were perfect. As long as Roshan was genuinely shaken, they had a good trap.
Assuming that they could kill the creature once they caught it.
Strugles may have originated in Asphodel, but they were adapted to life in Ornheim. Their hides were covered in thick, stony plates that would turn any blade short of a pickaxe. For the two Strugles Valin had killed before, he had lured one into an ambush of fireball-wielding Naraka Travelers, and crushed the other beneath a giant boulder.
Valin had heard great things about the superiority of Tartarus Steel blades, but if they could pierce the hide of an Ornheim predator like a Strugle, he would buy one of those weapons for himself. Maybe Deianira could get him one.
He waited in silence as two hours stretched into three. It wouldn’t have surprised him to spend an entire night waiting patiently for the Strugle to arrive, but obviously it had instructions to strike early and often.
At the edge of the metal bowl, a flicker of movement caught Valin’s attention.
He stared into the shadows, trying to figure out whether his eyes were tricking him. Then the darkness shifted again, and a brown-black lump slid into view.
It looked like a starving man strapped with stone armor. Slatted ribs pressed against thin, flaky skin underneath heavy blocks of granite. Its arms tapered to black spearpoints at the end; he couldn’t see anything like hands or claws.
As he recalled, the face was the worst. Its mouth was a circular, sucking vortex full of teeth, its eyes huge moons of milky white. It was a face bred for inspiring nightmares in children.
Quietly, he signaled the other two Travelers, gesturing down toward the creature. Roshan couldn’t see his gestures from behind her blindfold, but it seemed she sensed something. She froze as soon as the Strugle emerged from the shadows, slowly turning her head to face the monster.
The Traveler nearest to Valin reached over, lifting the lid of a long silver treasure chest. He had insisted on picking it up from a Damascan armory before they set this ambush.
Across the room, on the opposite side of the great steel bowl, the other male Tartarus Traveler raised one hand in front of him.
A spinning blade the size of a cartwheel erupted into the air out of the silver chest, so big that it seemed like it couldn’t possibly have fit inside. Almost soundlessly, it whirred into the air and spun into the Traveler’s waiting hand.
The closer soldier reached into the chest with one hand. When he pulled it out, the hand was covered by a gleaming silver gauntlet.
So quietly that Valin almost couldn’t believe it, more pieces of armor flew from the chest and assembled themselves on the Traveler’s waiting body. In only a few seconds, and with less sound than a clattering teacup, the soldier of Tartarus was covered by a suit of polished steel.
Unaware, the Strugle crept closer toward Lieutenant Roshan. It scuttled like a crab, though it only had four limbs, inching sideways and lurching forward as though nervous.
Right now, the medallion she wore should be warning her of the Strugle’s approach. She would be ready to attack when the time came.
Valin placed his hand on the hilt of his sword. The three Travelers would attack first. With any luck, they would finish it off before he managed to climb down. If not, he stayed in reserve. Everything had lined up exactly as they had planned.
Then, with a grinding squeal of shifting gears, the Labyrinth changed. The bowl slid back, bringing the Strugle and Lieutenant Roshan away from the rest of the room. Valin’s ledge raised even higher, and the room widened, separating him from his allied Traveler on the other side.
Great, Valin thought. Now it’s going to take me forever to climb down.
It actually took him another second to realize the real problem: now, even the two Tartarus Travelers were too far away. The Strugle would get the first strike.
But the man didn’t leave. He reached into the chest and pulled out one of the strangest swords Valin had ever seen. It was long, clearly meant to be used with both hands, and slightly curved. The sheath still covered its blade, but Valin knew that it would only be sharp along the outside edge.
The Traveler leaned back, poised to throw the sheathed sword like a javelin.
“Lieutenant!” he bellowed, and launched the sword like a ballista.
It shot straight for Lieutenant Roshan, who did not turn toward the sound of her subordinate’s voice, as Valin had expected she would. Instead, she turned to face the Strugle and tore her blindfold off.
For a split second, as the curved sword flew through the air, she stared into the Strugle’s horrific milky eyes.
And then, without looking, she reached up and caught her sword in her left hand.
In one smooth motion, she pulled the sword from its sheath and swept its edge toward her opponent.
Valin didn’t watch how it turned out; he started to scramble down the side of his steel cliff. The landscape was made up almost entirely of interlocking steel plates, and he cut himself more than once, but he knew he would need to get down there as fast as possible.
The Strugle’s preferred method of attack was ambush, terrifying the victim into paralysis before impaling them on its spear-like arms and draining them of blood. But if it was confronted, it would not run away and seek other prey, as would many predators. Instead, it hunched into an almost turtle-like defensive stance, using its stony armored plates to defend itself as it continued to force its victim into a corner. Only when it had no other options would it finally flee.
In this situation, the Strugle running was probably a worst-case scenario. It would be free to hunt on its own, and there was no realistic chance of tracking it down a second time before it killed again. That meant they had to kill it before it either devoured Lieutenant Roshan or decided that it had to run.
Why did the room have to shift? Valin wondered. Why then, at that exact time? If the bowl had stayed in place, the Travelers could have killed the creature instantly, at range.
If the Steel Labyrinth was self-aware, it had a sick sense of humor.
