House of Blades Page 15

  He didn’t feel any more powerful, but the cold...surely something was different. The Eldest said something in his soft, rustling language. He said it very slowly for some reason, drawing each hissing word out. Maybe that was just how the language was spoken. Simon was about to ask him to translate when the two Nye guards behind him jumped to their feet and attacked. Slowly. Very slowly.

  Simon slipped to one side and his body moved as if it weighed nothing, as if it moved at the speed of his thought without bothering with muscles and bone. A chain whipped through the air where his head had been, but he was already gone. The other Nye sent a punch at Simon’s face, and he moved his head a fraction to the right. Again, his body responded almost before he thought about it, and the fist barely scraped his ear on the way past.

  Almost playfully, Simon slipped a foot behind one of the Nye’s and kicked. The cloth man fell on his back, but his partner whipped a noose at Simon’s face. It looked as if the chain was being hurled through deep water instead of empty air.

  Simon ducked under the chain and launched himself forward. Before he reached the Nye his sword was out, flowing, flashing with liquid speed. The Nye fell to pieces, then dissolved into shadow. The second scrambled to his feet, but Simon planted a sword straight through his chest and into the floorboards. He, too, fell apart.

  It was as though Simon’s body weighed nothing. He swung his sword in a complex pattern that Kai had taught him, and executed it in a fraction of a second. The maneuver was so smooth it was like watching Kai himself.

  “Incredible,” Simon breathed. He couldn’t hide his excitement as he turned to the Nye Eldest. “This is incredible. With this, I could have saved my village all by myself. Is this why people are so afraid of Travelers?”

  The Eldest chuckled. “This is not the tenth part of what a real Traveler is capable of. Not the hundredth part. But you have begun to discover what separates Valinhall from the other Territories.”

  Simon was still wrestling with the scope of a Traveler’s powers—Not the hundredth part?—but he wasn’t sure he had grasped what the Eldest was telling him. “And what is that?” he asked.

  “A Traveler of Helgard or Ornheim, or any of the other Territories you humans use, summons things that will help him destroy his enemies. He will call up a vicious beast, or a weapon, or some blast of ice or flame. For the most part, a Valinhall Traveler does not do those things.

  You will not summon powers outside of yourself, so that they may defeat your opponents. No. You will summon into yourself the power to win your own battles. That is what separates Valinhall from the other Territories, and the Dragon Army from other Travelers.”

  The cold had begun to bleed from Simon’s flesh, and it was as though his bones were suddenly made out of stone. He felt heavy and slow. “It’s fading,” he said. The Eldest nodded.

  “All powers here are temporary. You can call our speed into yourself, but not permanently. Everything lasts for its time, and then fades. With practice it will last longer, but never forever.”

  “So what now?” Simon asked.

  “Now? Unless I am wrong, I think you have an appointment with a skeleton.”

  Simon smiled and headed for the basement. He kept his sword bared. At last, he was moving forward.

  CHAPTER TEN:

  ANOTHER TEST

  The Nye’s essence didn’t make him any more skillful, Simon soon learned: any of the moves he had failed before were still beyond him now. And it didn’t make him stronger. But when its chill seeped into his flesh, he was filled with a speed and grace that more than made up for his other deficiencies. Behind him, in the long blue-lit basement of Valinhall, crumpled heaps of armor and shattered metal marked where twenty-three suits of black armor had fallen before him in a matter of moments.

  In one smooth movement, he pulled his sword out of the twenty-fourth armor’s shoulder joint. As the armor collapsed to its knees, it mumbled, “Such a lively dancer...” Then it clattered to the floor. To Simon’s enhanced senses, it looked as if he were sinking through invisible jelly.

  Lounging on his dark throne, Benson cackled and clapped his silver hands together with the ring of steel on steel. “Very good, Borus, very good. Don’t worry about them, kid; they’ll pull themselves together later. Now,” the skeleton leaped to his feet, “I think it’s my turn.” He snatched the hat off his head and swept into an elegant bow. “May I have this dance?”

  “If you think you can handle it,” Simon said. He found himself grinning. For the first time since he entered the House, he actually looked forward to a fight for its own sake.

  Without another word, Benson grabbed one of the huge double-bladed axes from the floor and dashed at Simon. The seven-foot-tall suits of armor had wielded the battle-axe in both hands, but Benson held it easily in one, as if it did not weigh as much as two grown men. He flicked the axe lightly at Simon’s side, but Simon was sure it had enough force to cleave stone.

  But it would have to be faster to catch Simon, fueled as he was by the Nye’s essence. He ducked under the strike with a speed and ease that felt impossible, then launched an attack of his own at the skeleton’s ribs.

  As he struck, the chill leeched from his flesh. The speed of the Nye left him.

  Exhilaration died, replaced by panic. His strike slipped through Benson’s ribcage and bit only air.

  “Almost tickled me there,” the skeleton said, and planted a bare steel-boned foot on Simon’s chest. Before Simon could react, Benson kicked, pushing Simon backwards.

  No, not pushed. Launched. The kick had such strength behind it that Simon was taken off his feet, hurled backwards halfway across the room. He cleared several piles of now-lifeless black armor and felt his back smack into something cold, smooth, and only slightly more yielding than the stone floor. His skull cracked against a solid surface, and for a moment his world was only darkness and flashing pain.

  When his vision cleared he lurched drunkenly to his feet, trying to hold his sword steady. Benson was advancing across the chamber, walking as if in no great hurry towards where Simon stood.

  “The one you landed on is a friend of mine,” Benson said. He held his battle-axe lightly against his shoulder, like a woman holding a parasol. He even gave it a little twirl. “He’s always real cranky when he has to pull himself together. When you try again tomorrow, he’ll do his best to give you a good thrashing.”

  “Not...tomorrow,” Simon said, trying to pull words from somewhere in his throbbing head. “This is the last time.”

  “Maybe when you were zipping around like one of them black robes, sure, you had a shot. But it looks like you’ve run short.”

  The essence, Simon thought. He reached out for the power, trying to call it back, but suddenly Benson was right in front of him, axe descending like the final judgment of an executioner.

  Simon threw himself out of the way a half-second away from being split apart.

  “You think I’m going to let you call some more, boy?” Benson tried to lever his axe up off of the floor, but it got caught on something, delaying him an instant. In desperation, Simon called the Nye’s essence, straining to pull just a little more speed. His power was far from recovered, but a wisp of essence rose up inside him, like a tiny shard of cloud. It lent him a tiny pulse of speed, maybe enough for a few seconds. Cold infused him, and his step now felt less like stumbling and more like stalking.

  “I guess you will,” Simon said, and then he swung his blade.

  It was all over but the details. The axe raced through the air in arcs that Simon would have barely been able to follow before, but now stood out like they were written in the air. Each strike was dodged or redirected. Benson couldn’t hit him, he was sure, but his own attacks struck sparks when they made contact with Benson’s metal bones. Simon could hit, but he couldn’t inflict any real damage. And his time was running out.

  So he slipped aside from one overhand strike and put his open palm over Benson’s
face, tucking his own foot behind the skeleton’s. Then he pushed. Benson only stumbled, and would have caught himself, but the great weight of the axe pulled him to the ground.

  His fall was deafening, like a rack of spears clashing to a stone floor. His hat rolled across the floor as Simon stood over him, pointing a sword at the skeleton’s steel skull. The Nye essence leeched away, and he scrambled to hold just a little inside.

  Benson showed his palms in surrender. “Easy, boy, easy. That’s my loss.”

  Simon relaxed, letting the power go. He turned and scanned the basement. The armors he had dismantled were already pulling themselves back together and shambling over to their stands. He had tried for weeks to clear the basement, and now that he had done it, he found it satisfying. But not enough.

  Not nearly enough.

  “Will the door to the library be open now?” Simon asked. He had already begun to walk towards the entrance.

  “I’d be very much surprised if it wasn’t,” Benson’s voice said from behind him. “But here, now. You’ve forgotten the most important part.”

  Simon turned, wary of a trick, and was almost hit in the head by something the skeleton had tossed at him. He snatched it out of the air and glanced at it: a tiny stoppered glass vial, filled with what looked like quicksilver.

  “What’s this?” he asked.

  “Strength,” Benson said. He had left his hat and axe on the ground, but he lounged on his throne as arrogantly as ever. Both of his eyes glowed with sapphire flame, even in the light of the blue torches. “You think that Nye stuff is fun? That’s the best drink you’ll ever put in your mouth, and you have my word on that. Remember, though: like everything else, it don’t last forever.”

  Strength? Would he be able to use a sword with the same kind of power Benson had? That would explain something of how Kai was able to swing around a seven-foot piece of steel like it was a willow switch. At the thought, he felt himself smile. For what seemed like the first time, he had taken a step forward.

  “Thanks,” Simon said, and he walked out of the basement. Heading for the library.

  He had to find Kai, and as soon as possible. He was wasting time.

  ***

  The library was a round, towering room, filled with books and scrolls of all description. Most of them seemed to deal with other Territories: their essential natures, their strengths and weaknesses, and theories on their purposes and origins. It would be good information to know when he was fighting the Travelers of the kingdom, if he could have taken the time to examine it.

  The guardians of the library were made of melted wax, their features soft and half-melted. Roughly man-shaped, the librarians fashioned themselves robes from scraps of paper and stuck them directly to their wax skin. They looked like statues of monks created by a madman out of trash and old candles, except that they lurched about their work with a single-minded intensity. They never spoke above a whisper, and they were constantly shuffling and re-ordering the books in a system that made no sense to Simon.

  Of course, they had tried to kill him.

  They fought with hands and feet, no weapons, and their strength was almost a match for Benson’s, but the Nye essence and the skeleton’s quicksilver put Simon beyond them. He had looked forward to receiving some other reward for conquering them, only to find out that “Knowledge is the library’s truest reward.” He had sighed and moved on to the forge.

  So far, he had yet to recognize any kind of logic in Valinhall’s layout. The garden was nothing but a sky and open plains, but it seemed to be surrounded by indoor rooms. And now the forge was only one door away from the library. Simon wondered briefly how they prevented the books from catching fire, but normal rules obviously didn’t apply here.

  Simon was locked in a battle with the guardian of the Valinhall forge—a giant serpent of ash and glowing coals, with orbs of white-hot iron for eyes—when someone else walked in. This was the fifteenth day in a row he had challenged the giant burning snake, and the first time anything had changed.

  Cold breath suffused his flesh, and steel ran along his veins, but Simon could barely push the massive snake back. The forge was long and intricate, with obsidian walls and anvils of various sizes stacked next to forge equipment and vats of molten metal. The heat in the room was already enough to singe the skin, and with a fiery snake inches from his skin...his sword glowed cherry red in the middle and was beginning to bend. Wisps of smoke curled up as the oil burned off the blade, and the serpent pressed harder, sensing weakness. His forearms felt like they were being pressed against a cook-stove, and the hairs on his arms had almost entirely burned away. Keeping the snake back was agony itself, but he knew that letting it through would be far worse.

  “I’m sorry,” a polite voice said from behind Simon. “I didn’t realize you would be so busy. I can come back later, if you like.”

  Simon was so startled he almost let the snake past his guard. It lunged, but Simon reacted with the speed of the Nye Eldest, sidestepping and thrusting his warped blade through the serpent’s skull.

  Simon hopped backwards as the snake writhed in its death throes, orange flames leaping up instead of blood. He leaned his back against the cool obsidian walls and held desperately to the powers inside his body. Only the chill energy flowing through his blood and bones kept him from screaming at the burns.

  A stranger stood leaning against one side of the open doorway, arms crossed. He was a tall man in brown and green traveling clothes, with a brown dirt-spattered cloak tossed over his shoulders. On his left side a sword hung sheathed, its hilt wrapped in red cloth and bearing a golden tassel. Under his arm he held an enormous old book, also bound in red and gold. He hadn’t shaved for a few days and he looked like he could use some rest, but he wore a kind smile.

  “Impressive,” the stranger said. “When I was your age, the guardian of the forge was a little old lady who asked me a riddle. They must have traded up. But now we’ll need a new one, I suppose.”

  “Ahem,” a second voice said. “That’s not entirely accurate.” Simon glanced over, still more absorbed in his pain than in anything the stranger might say, but he could only see one man standing in the doorway. And his lips weren’t moving. “In point of fact, the forge is one of the few places where the guardian is destroyed upon death. Assignments to this Room have traditionally been decided by a council of the most powerful parties in Valinhall, usually as a sort of prison sentence—”

  “Thank you, that’s enough,” the man said. He sounded weary, as well he might; the other voice spoke with the sort of fussy accuracy Simon associated with irritating old men obsessed with history.

  “Who’s that talking?” Simon asked. He knew he should ask the man’s name, but his power was fading, and the pain was quickly becoming more than he could bear. It was getting harder and harder to focus.

  The man let out a long-suffering sigh. “His name is Hariman; he’s my advisor. Don’t pay attention to a word he says.”

  “And, uh, where is he?”

  The stranger’s eyebrows rose for a moment, then he laughed and patted his book. There was a face painted in gold on the cover, and Simon watched as it came to life and slid over to the right, eyeing Simon carefully. “You must need medical attention if your eyesight is failing you that bad,” the book said in that fussy voice. “Not to mention the burns.”

  Simon leaned his head back against the wall. “A talking book,” he said. “Of course.”

  The man’s shrug was an audible shuffling of cloth. “At this point, I’m not sure why that surprises you. I’m Denner, by the way. Denner Weeks.”

  “Simon, son of Kalman.” Simon cracked an eye. “Are you Dragon Army?”

  Denner smiled easily. “Would I be in here if I wasn’t?”

  “I am.”

  Denner waved that away. “Kai took you in. That makes you one of us, and I’m sure you’ll choose a sword soon enough. There’s plenty available, I’m afraid.”


  “Really? I didn’t think...” his cold power faded further, and he was forced to grit his teeth against the rising pain.

  Hariman began to speak, but Denner swatted his binding and he sank into a grumbling silence. “Of the thirteen Dragon’s Fangs, only four are active right now. And some are lost. But a few others are just waiting for someone to pick them up.”

  Simon nodded vaguely. His burns were beginning to feel more distant, as though he was drifting away from his body.

  “You could continue educating the boy, which I applaud, or you could keep him alive,” Hariman’s voice said. “It’s up to you, really.”

  Denner sighed and Simon felt a hand on his shoulder. Then he didn’t remember anything for a long time.

  When Simon’s consciousness returned, he was standing in the open fields of the Valinhall garden, staring blankly at the huge fruit tree in the center. Waking felt like clawing his way up out of a dark void; he hadn’t been sleeping, precisely, but he had not been conscious either. It felt as though he had simply left his body behind for a few hours.

  Then sound faded back into focus. Not as if he were suddenly able to hear, but as if sounds that he had been hearing all along suddenly gained meaning.

  “...must have been some kind of venom,” Denner said. “Maybe it bit him.”

  “Good riddance if it has.” Chaka’s voice. “I still think it’s just shock from the burns. He wasn’t man enough to handle them, is all. Wouldn’t surprise me.”

  As Simon absently rubbed at the fresh skin on his forearms—newly healed and hairless; somebody had taken him to the bathroom pool—it finally occurred to him to turn around.

  Chaka stood with bladed arms crossed, his ruby eyes focused on Simon and his leather-flap lips set in a disapproving scowl. Denner had had a chance to clean up, it seemed, because his outfit was no longer quite so travel-stained, and he was missing a layer of dirt on his skin. He still carried Hariman, in its red-and-gold binding, under one arm.