House of Blades Read online

  Maybe I’ll get lucky, and you’ll get eaten.

  “You wound me,” he said, but he knew she didn’t mean it.

  No, I mean it, Otoku said.

  He pretended not to hear her.

  A few minutes passed before Simon arrived. He spoke with the parents—Kai had known he would—and then walked into the cave. Now there was a student Kai could be proud of. Only a handful of days after Kai left him on his own, and he had already earned Benson’s steel and made his way to the Cave. All he had needed was the proper motivation.

  Now, if he passed this one more test, he would have fully given himself to Valinhall. And he would be ready to die a man’s death.

  Why can’t you be more like him? Otoku asked. Kai blinked and raised the doll, staring her in the face. For the first time that night, she truly startled him.

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  Look how far he’s willing to go, the doll said. Look at how hard he’s working to save people from the sacrifice. And what have you done about it?

  “I’m giving him a chance,” Kai said, still off-balance. Otoku had never questioned him about this decision before. Why now? “I could have left him in the forest. It would have been safer.”

  Human sacrifice is a horrible practice, and you should have put a stop to it years ago. You know that’s what Valin wanted, before he...changed his mind.

  Kai shuddered. Now, why had she brought up that topic?

  “Nine people a year,” Kai whispered. “It could be much worse.”

  And how many people have died anyway? Not just the sacrifices, but all the others they killed to keep it all running. Is it only hundreds?

  “Simon has a chance. He’s in this for the right reasons, and I won’t stop him.”

  But you’re not going to help him either. The drifting wind behind Otoku’s voice sounded harsh, cold.

  “I can’t help him,” Kai pleaded. He couldn’t go on with her so disapproving. She almost sounded as if she preferred Simon over him! “Please. I’m doing what I can.”

  A man sighed heavily from behind Kai. “And you know Indirial would kill us both,” he said in a familiar voice.

  Kai rose and turned to meet Denner, who was still as rough-looking as ever. He hadn’t shaven, and his clothes looked slept-in. Hariman was tucked underneath Denner’s arm, but he remained uncharacteristically silent.

  “I did what you asked,” Denner went on. “He’s a good kid, but he’s not ready for this. We can still pull him out.”

  For a moment, Kai considered just waiting on the results of the test. Orgrith Cave had been formed in a chaotic battle between Tartarus, Naraka, and Ornheim Travelers, and the caverns shifted form almost constantly. But the Cave was always deadly. Kai didn’t know exactly what Simon would face within, and he could always just let the test run its course. Simon might survive, after all.

  Not that Kai would place any heavy bets on it.

  “He needs this,” Kai said softly.

  Denner sighed again and shook his head.

  If you leave him in there, Otoku said, I will tell my sisters. We will never let you sleep again.

  Absently, Kai patted the doll’s head. “Don’t worry, little one,” he said. “I will not leave him alone. But he must never know I’m there, or it will cripple him.”

  Kai sensed Otoku smile, and it felt like sunlight.

  Denner spoke up. “And what about the sacrifice? He’s going to stop it, if he can.”

  Kai stared at his old friend from behind his usual veil of hair, whitened years before its time by the powers of the House. “If you wanted him to fail,” Kai said, in close to his usual sing-song tones, “you would have never brought him here.”

  Glancing around as if for an answer, Denner finally nodded. And sighed.

  ***

  Simon was almost disappointed. For the first few minutes inside the cave, he kept every sense tuned and his sword in his hand. At every real or imagined scuff of dirt, he swung in one direction or another and froze, waiting for an attack. But inevitably nothing came of it, and he moved on.

  The cave led directly into a tunnel, circular and rough-edged, that sloped down into deeper shadows. Once he moved beyond even the faintest light from the cave entrance, Simon began to notice patches of fungus on the walls, glowing softly blue. The deeper he walked, the brighter the fungus grew. Or perhaps he had simply grown used to the light. Either way, it became easier to see.

  For perhaps an hour he walked along the tunnel, occasionally following the tunnel’s gentle shifts and turns. He found nothing. No branches, no side passages, no monsters, no missing children. Wearily he sheathed his sword. So far, Orgrith Cave had been somewhat disappointing.

  If I can just find some water, he thought, I can just sit in this tunnel until time runs out. They had never said anything about doing anything in the cave, and there was no reason he should risk his life if he didn’t have to.

  But what about the kids? He didn’t know the family outside the cave, but of course he wanted to find children that had become lost. He wasn’t a monster. He had to at least make a decent effort to find them. However many there were. And if they were in the cave at all.

  He probably should have asked.

  Simon had just decided to continue when he noticed a ripple in the tunnel’s stone floor. It was accompanied by a sound like a rock falling into a still pond.

  It was difficult to see anything in the blue half-light of the fungus, but he reasoned that there must have been a puddle of water collecting on the floor. If a puddle, though, what had disturbed it? He crossed the distance in two strides and knelt, running his hand over the stone floor. It was completely dry. Somewhat smooth and bare of dust compared to the rest of the ground, but there was certainly no water.

  He rose to his feet, a quiet alarm sounding in his head, and caught a glimpse of another ripple, farther down the tunnel. He started toward it, but immediately there came another, this one a whole pace closer to where he stood. Then another, even closer.

  His sword came out of his sheath just as the stone rippled inches from his toes. He had a good viewpoint this time: the stone of the tunnel had actually shook like the surface of a pond disturbed by a pebble. He felt no shaking under his feet, so it wasn’t some strange earthquake, and the stone seemed solid once the ripples passed. What, then?

  A few months ago he would have had no idea. It would have frightened him enough that he would have run from the cave, seeking help. Well, running sounded like a good idea now anyway, but his time in the House had at least taught him one thing: if it’s out of the ordinary, it probably means to kill you.

  So it was that when the ripples grew quiet, Simon had his sword reversed point-down above the stone. And when a slimy glowing blue creature with fangs longer than his middle finger sprang from the stone, aiming at his face, it swallowed three feet of steel.

  The creature was shaped like a cross between a river fish and an eel, with diamond patterns glowing with the same blue phosphorescence as the moss overhead. Its own momentum carried it up the slightly curved sword, until its teeth almost scraped the hilt and the point split its tail nearly in half.

  The shock of the impact carried Simon backwards, and he fell onto his tailbone. For a moment he froze, looking into the dying eyes of the eel-fish, which thrashed for only a moment in the throes of death. His heart slammed in his chest for a few minutes, but his first coherent thought was: Oh, good. Dinner.

  His second thought was that he should ready himself in case of another attack. So he did, springing to his feet and whipping his sword through the air to clear it of its burden. The corpse slid off easily, releasing a tangy smell halfway between fish guts and copper. Simon scanned the area but, seeing nothing, continued.

  He remembered to scoop up the corpse of the creature before continuing.

  Evidently he had almost reached the end of the tunnel, because moments later the ground began to flatten out.
A few minutes after that, the tunnel opened, and he began to see the true face of Orgrith Cave.

  It was, as he had feared, enormous. The cavern roof was so far above him that he would almost believe it scraped the sky. It was as though someone had hollowed out a mountain and dropped him inside it. It was far bigger, in fact, than the dome above the Cave entrance, and that confused him for a moment before he realized that he had to be far below and away from that structure.

  The open space stretched farther than he could see; infinitely, as far as he could tell, in any direction but behind him. The tunnel through which he came was the only opening in a miles-long wall, flat and massive.

  The cavern roof was supported by hundreds if not thousands of stone columns, seemingly formed naturally rather than carved, and so thick around the base that he didn’t think he and five others his height could encircle them with their arms. At least he could see; the pillars were ringed with spirals of glowing green mushrooms that shed an acid-green light over everything in the cave, in most places much brighter than the light in the tunnel

  Patches of the glowing blue moss were splashed across the ceiling and walls, and in places mushrooms grew big enough to shelter an entire family under their caps. The underbellies of these huge caps, as well, shed an eerie green radiance. From the ceiling and some of the pillars hung chunks of crystal that shone with a violet light. The overall effect of the clashing lights—blue, green, and purple—was eerie and otherworldly. For some reason, it made him feel cold.

  There was plenty of light, but some of the things that light revealed churned his stomach. A worm as fat as a cow, seemingly made of strung-together chunks of boulder, slid across the ground, dipping into the floor inside what was presumably a hidden tunnel. A four-armed crab with a shell that reflected the light like a mirror piled some stones up into an irregular pile, at least until it was suddenly seized and eaten by another eel-fish leaping up from the floor. It let out a piercing cry as the fanged creature bit into its soft underbelly.

  Something he could barely see scuttled along the far wall, and he heard motion on the wall behind him. He saw nothing, but something sounded like a dog’s claws scrabbling on rock.

  This isn’t any worse than the House. It can’t be. Not everything here wants to kill me. Not that everything there did either, now that I think about it. And at least I know how things work there. And at least I could have a clean bed, and regular meals, as long as—

  He shook off those thoughts. They wouldn’t be helpful here. Taking a deep breath like he was about to leap into an icy pool, he stepped into the huge cavern.

  And none too soon. Just as he cleared the tunnel, he heard a monstrous scraping behind him, like rock sliding across stone. He flattened himself against the wall to the side of the tunnel wall, waiting. Had the cave itself collapsed? Maybe some kind of rock slide?

  Foolish hopes, he knew, but he clung to them anyway before he saw the huge rock worm slide out of the tunnel like a maggot through a rotting fruit. It paused for a moment, eerily silent, lifting its boulder-head and waving it into the air, before it continued sliding forward and was lost in the forest of giant columns.

  He let out a breath and loosened a white-knuckled grip on his sword. Maybe he should summon the skeleton’s power now, just in case. And maybe the Nye essence too, for good measure. Except he didn’t want to be in the middle of trouble when they ran out. He touched the cold silver power in his mind, resolving to reach for it as soon as he noticed anything else out of the ordinary.

  Out of the ordinary like the high-pitched scream that sliced through the sounds of the cave. His first thought was that it must be some kind of death-scream from one of the cave’s monsters, but his mind refused to interpret the sound as anything other than what it was: the terrified cry of a human girl.

  Liquid steel surged through his veins before he realized he had decided to check it out. He repeated the process with a deep breath of essence from Valinhall. Then, with icy energy filling him till he felt his skin was ready to burst, he took off. The columns blurred around him as he left them behind, passing the clawed silhouettes of things that probably belonged in nightmares.

  He had begun to wonder if he had run too fast and should double back when a scream came again, this time mixed with a terrified sob. It was coming from his left.

  He turned to the side as soon as he recognized the direction, but he had never before tried to turn so quickly while moving at his enhanced speed. His own momentum flung him into the air, and he barely twisted to get his feet under him before he was dashed against a stone pillar. He landed with his feet against the pillar and immediately kicked off, shooting in the direction of the cries. The air tore against the corners of his eyes till he could barely see through the tears, and he couldn’t get a full breath of air.

  At this speed he couldn’t see details, and he didn’t have time to think. As soon as he saw a splash of color—a yellow light, he thought, next to something red—pressed back against the wall by a monstrous gray shape, he simply reacted. He swept his blade down in an arc, felt it bite something and pass through, then he was past, hurtling towards the floor.

  It was even harder getting his feet under him this time, but he barely managed to do so, slamming to the floor in a hard crouch. Only the steel running through him, strengthening his muscles, his bones, kept him from crushing himself on the rocks. Only the spirit of the Nye gave him the reaction to land, the grace to keep from rolling head-over-heels into the wall.

  As it was, his landing used up the last of Benson’s steel, though his essence lingered. Weakness gripped his muscles, and his sword suddenly felt ten pounds heavier. He looked up from his crouch, hoping desperately that he had not been too late.

  Two children—a boy and a girl—cowered against the wall, holding a flickering lantern between them. The splotches of red he had seen were the girl’s skirt and the boy’s jacket; not blood, he was relieved to see. A skeletal monstrosity loomed over them, something like a praying mantis but covered in rock-plated armor.

  It stood there for a moment as though it was about to crash down on them, impaling them on its forearms. Then its head slid slowly off its body and drifted to the floor.

  Simon released the Nye essence, letting it flow back into his Territory. The world resumed normal speed, and the head slammed to the floor as if it weighed five hundred pounds. The rest of the body crumbled after.

  A trembling ran through Simon’s body after the power left him. He shook with relief and with delayed fear, as if he had run blindfolded along the edge of a cliff and only afterwards realized the danger. His breath came in shallow gasps, and he shuddered. One lapse in judgment and he might have crushed himself against the cave wall.

  The children’s screams faded uncertainly to whimpers. As one, their heads turned to take in Simon, crouched a handful of paces away with his sword still bare. He must have scared them. They looked like they were trying to decide whether or not to run.

  “Don’t worry, I’m here to help you.” Now that he got a closer look at them, they were clearly brother and sister. They each had the same dark skin and light hair, a combination that until now he had only seen on Alin.

  “That was amazing,” the girl said. She was perhaps twelve years old and over a foot taller than her brother, so Simon took her for the older, even though the boy stood protectively in front of her. His jaw still sat half-open, and Simon wasn’t sure if he looked more awed or terrified.

  Something else skittered in the darkness, and the girl held the lantern out. A segmented insect claw pulled back from the light into the shadows.

  “Could you light that lantern again, if you had to?” Simon asked. She nodded. “Then put it out. Follow me; both of you hang on to my shirt.”

  Obediently, the girl blew out the light in the lantern and grabbed onto his right sleeve. Her presence would be a nuisance if he had to fight, but any move he made with the sword would shake her off anyway, so he decided t
o say nothing.

  Experimentally, he reached out with his mind of the Nye essence. Nothing yet. He knew from experience that it would take a minute or two for the moonlit mist to begin replacing itself, and a little longer for the steel. He would be completely vulnerable for the next few minutes, and wouldn’t be back to full power for almost half an hour afterwards.

  He set off at first for the entrance tunnel, hushing the children if either of them tried to say anything. Not that they did speak very often. The dim lighting and the scuttling shapes in the shadows tended to strangle conversation.

  As soon as the entrance tunnel came into view, Simon realized he was going to have to re-think his plan. One of the huge boulder-worms lay coiled up around the entrance, plates of its rocky armor shattered and cracked, exposing pale flesh. Dozens of the luminescent eel-fish he had seen earlier leapt from ripples in the stone, crawling all over the gargantuan corpse, tearing away chunks of meat.

  Most of the body was piled up at the entrance of the tunnel, but the tip of the tail was out of view. As Simon watched, something tugged the giant worm back up the tunnel. He couldn’t get a glimpse of whatever was pulling on the boulder-worm’s tail, but it had to have been huge to shift the monster’s massive bulk. The fanged eels barely noticed, but continued to feed.

  One of the children made a sort of gasping sound behind him, as though they wanted to cry but were afraid to make more noise. Simon could relate; terror hovered around him, not touching him yet, but making its presence known. He was trapped in this cave. Trapped.

  Simon turned and looked into the faces of the two children. No matter what happened to him, he needed to get them out.

  They walked in silence until they had left the noises of feeding monsters far behind, returning to the spot where he had killed the huge mantis creature. There was a crack in the wall nearby, highlighted by glowing blue moss, that might be big enough to shelter all of them. Maybe. They needed a place to rest and talk, and they wouldn’t get it out here in the dark.

  Simon eyed the entrance to the shelter for a moment. From here shadows shrouded the entrance; there was no way to tell how deep it was, or what waited inside. He summoned strength from Valinhall and ventured sword-first inside, hoping he could fight well enough in a crouch to keep him alive.