House of Blades Read online

  None of the sacrifices had been brought in yet, thank the Maker—no, wait, not the Maker. The Maker was a village superstition. Seven stones, how deep into her role was she, that even her thoughts were suspect?

  Leah began walking toward the sergeant and his Traveler, letting the daughter of Kelia fall behind her like a shed cloak. She drew herself up, moving with steady confidence, with purpose, the way she had been trained. People responded to body language, to the authority implicit in one’s bearing. And she would need every scrap of authority she could get, if she wanted them to take her seriously.

  Hoofbeats sounded behind her, but Leah kept walking. She very carefully did not turn around.

  One of the two soldiers that had been following her pulled his horse to a stop only a few feet in front of her, so that she would be forced to run another direction. The other rode up to her right and hopped down.

  He snarled roughly at her, reaching to grab her arm. “If you think—” he began.

  Leah did not respond. She did not look at him. She did not even slow down, though in just a few seconds she was going to collide with a wall of horseflesh.

  She twisted her wrist, letting moonlight fall on the crystal she wore on a thin silver bracelet. As she did, she cast her mind out, calling for the power of Lirial.

  And her Territory answered.

  A jagged spike of milky white crystal erupted from the ground, growing in half a second into a five-foot-high stalagmite that stabbed the air inches from Leah’s shoulder. The soldier’s hand was in the way, caught in the act of reaching out for Leah. By all logic the crystal should have impaled the man’s arm, perhaps taking the hand off at the wrist. But Lirial did not destroy. It revealed. It protected.

  And it preserved.

  The soldier’s hand, from his wrist to the tips of his outstretched fingers, had been frozen inside the jagged mound of crystal as if within ice. Unlike ice, though, this crystal would never thaw or melt. And it was hard as stone.

  The soldier tried to pull his arm out of the crystal. For a few futile moments he heaved his body backwards, planted a leg on the crystal and shoved, hammered at the crystal with his fists. Then he started to scream.

  Leah gestured again, and another crystal spike burst from the ground in front of the horse barring her way. The horse reared, screamed, and galloped in the other direction. She doubted that the rider minded.

  The sergeant and his entire entourage were looking at her now, including the bald Endross Traveler. His eyes, a bright green that she could make out even at this distance, widened when he recognized what she had done. With a shout he raised both palms, calling what looked like a ball of rolling storm-clouds into his hands.

  Keeping her face blank, Leah continued walking. She did nothing to let her sudden wariness show. Endross was widely considered one of the most formidable Territories for combat, and Lirial’s strengths lay in other areas. If she made a mistake, she could find herself seriously injured before she managed to reveal her identity.

  But she had met dozens of Endross Travelers in her childhood, and they had all shared a single trait: they were jackals. Predators. Scavengers, concerned with preserving their own safety above all else. A rare few would seek out their equals for the pleasure of testing themselves against a rival, but none would dare challenge a superior.

  So before she dealt with him, she needed to show—beyond all doubt—that she was his superior.

  Glittering lights flashed in the Traveler’s handheld storm, like half-hidden strikes of lightning, and about a dozen shapes the size of dragonflies burst forth into the air, streaking towards Leah. She recognized the shapes from her education in the ways of Endross: storm-drakes, tiny flying lizards that would latch onto their prey and shock it to death with sparks of lightning. Not something Leah wanted to happen to her.

  There were a handful of easy ways she could deal with this summoning, but any one of them would just invite another attack from the Endross. She would have to come up with something more impressive.

  Sending a mental call into Lirial, Leah turned her left hand palm-up. A crystal ball slightly bigger than her fist fell out of thin air, landing in her outstretched hand. She stared into it instead of at the oncoming storm-drakes.

  In the crystal’s depths, a hundred symbols flashed and rolled as the orb performed a thousand arcane calculations in a fraction of the time it would have taken her. To her eyes, the symbols spelled out precise directions.

  And with another flash of her crystal bracelet, and another mental call to her Territory, Leah followed those directions.

  Fourteen spires of white crystal speared from the ground and into the air. They were made out of the same substance as the jagged crystals she had already summoned, but unlike the rough mounds she had called the first time, these were finger-thin and needle sharp. They grew from the earth and stretched to their full height of six feet in a fraction of a second.

  Each crystal needle had speared the exact center of an Endross storm-drake. The lizards’ tiny bodies were now trapped in milk-white crystal, but, for the moment, they still lived. Their legs scratched feebly at the pale needles, and their wings beat at the air.

  Leah dropped the crystal ball from her hand and kept walking, not slowing by a hair. The orb evaporated before it hit the ground. Each of the white needles had burst from the ground at an angle, leaving her just enough room to walk straight through the forest of crystal needles without cutting herself. She kept her eyes locked on the sergeant, ignoring the Traveler entirely.

  She certainly did not let her relief show. There had been precious little opportunity to practice her Traveling over the past two years in Myria, and even with the crystal ball’s assistance she had worried about making a mistake. Come to think of it, she was lucky the orb had stayed where she left it all this time; if the crystal ball had rolled off, she would never have been able to summon it. That was a restriction unique to Lirial, one that Travelers of other Territories did not have to put up with. If someone had broken into her Lirial sanctum and taken her orb, even just to move it across the room, her summons would have gone unanswered and she would have been torn to shreds by Endross storm-drakes.

  Leah shook that image away. She had succeeded, that was what mattered, and now would come the real test.

  She walked the last few paces to Malachi’s sergeant, looking neither left nor right, before she stopped. Out of the corner of her eye, she recognized that the Traveler had gotten to his feet, perhaps to defend himself. But the storm was gone, so he had let his Gate dissipate. That was a good sign.

  When she stood only a few feet from the sergeant, she released Lirial and called upon her other Territory. This power was wilder, hungrier, more dangerous, but she would only need it for a quick demonstration.

  Hopefully.

  A hot weight settled on her head as she summoned her crown. A thin circlet of mirror-bright steel that shone an unnatural shade of red, the crown was not particularly impressive on its own. Certainly not compared to her father’s. But it represented something that carried far more weight.

  The blocky sergeant’s eyes went wide, then narrowed in calculation. Leah tensed, preparing for combat, but at last the man went down on his knees. The gesture was awkward, given the man’s age and his armor, but he finally managed it. Then he pressed his forehead to the sand.

  “How may I serve?” he asked. His voice was both loud and clear, even speaking into the ground.

  Immediately all the soldiers around him copied his pose, faces to the sand. They almost certainly would not recognize her, even by reputation, but her demonstration of Lirial and their leader’s behavior would have told them all they needed to know. Only the bald Traveler remained standing.

  Leah fixed her gaze on the Traveler’s acidic green eyes and waited. Either he would give in or she would have to kill him. At this point she had no chance of failure, not with her crown on her head and his Gate closed, but she had no way of knowing
which way the soldiers would go. It would make things so much easier if he would just submit.

  So she stared him down, projecting absolute certainty and command.

  He opened his mouth as if to speak, hesitated, and then reluctantly bent forward in a bow. Just to teach him his place, Leah then pretended he didn’t exist. It was more merciful than he deserved.

  “Stand, sergeant,” she said. “What is your name?”

  “Yakir, Your Highness,” he said, struggling to his feet.

  Leah let some of the cold fury she felt leak into her voice. “Sergeant Yakir. On whose orders are you here, interfering with royal business?”

  Yakir’s voice went hoarse, and he did not meet her gaze. “My apologies, Highness, but I am here on the orders of Overlord Malachi.”

  “For what purpose, sergeant?”

  “Well...for the midsummer sacrifice, Highness. We’re here to collect the nine.”

  The sacrifice? Leah thought. Surely not. The timing was right, but how could something so routine have led to this debacle?

  “Do you usually have to burn a town to the ground to collect the sacrifice, Sergeant Yakir?” That was something of an exaggeration, since the fires burning around Myria would likely be extinguished by morning, but he would not dare to correct her.

  Yakir glanced up at the Traveler next to him, who suddenly looked uneasy. “We met a party of village leaders out on the road, Highness. Some among my staff—” Leah felt sure he meant the Endross Traveler—“believed that they were, uh, a little too resistant. We decided that a more forceful hand was needed here.”

  Reading into what was not said, Leah could put together a picture of what had happened. The sergeant had, as was his right as a representative of Malachi, demanded nine villagers for the King’s sacrifice. He would have been vague about their ultimate fate, since very few in the kingdom knew what really happened to the annual sacrifices, but clear that he would need nine people to come with him to the capital. The Mayor and his advisors had balked.

  And this Traveler, impatient and offended, had led an attack. The sergeant had probably had no choice but to go along. Still, it was his mission, and therefore ultimately his responsibility.

  “That was a foolish decision, Sergeant Yakir,” Leah said coldly. “The people of this village have no identity as Damascans, and no idea of the sacrifice. They certainly could have done nothing that would justify such a forceful response.”

  Yakir paled and bowed again, almost certainly aware that she could take his life with a stray thought. She wouldn’t, though, unless she had no other choice.

  “I must speak with the Overlord regarding these matters,” Leah continued. “But until then, my own orders remain. They come from the King himself.”

  Yakir cleared his throat. “Your orders, Highness?”

  Leah nodded, already planning ahead. These next few weeks would be far more dangerous for her than the past two years, but she could see no other alternative.

  “You will take me to Bel Calem,” Leah commanded. “As a sacrifice.”

  Sergeant Yakir turned white.

  CHAPTER THREE:

  TRAVELERS

  The land north of Myria was not as fertile as to the south, but neither had it yet become the forbidding wasteland of the Badari Desert. It was mostly long stretches of rock and scraggly trees, broken by occasional hills and tiny creeks. Simon hadn’t run more than two or three miles when a young man stepped out from behind a stand of rocks and waved him down. Alin’s gold hair flashed in the moonlight.

  If Simon had had the strength, he would have waved and shouted back. Instead, he fell to his knees, letting his mother spill to the ground. She had lost consciousness at some point, but Simon hadn’t even noticed.

  Alin ran over and gathered Simon’s mother in his arms. His head was half-covered by a dirty cloth bandage, and blood trickled down from his scalp to drip onto his shirt. He still managed to look like a ragged hero, injured in battle but still radiating strength, rather than the helpless victim of a mad Traveler. Simon knew he himself probably looked like a boy exhausted by a day of work. A skinny boy.

  “Who’s with you?” Simon asked, once he had a moment to catch his breath.

  Alin shook his head, looking grim. “Only a few. Mostly old people, and the ones who lived right next to the north gate. We think they were probably looking for slaves, so they didn’t care if the old or the weak got away.”

  “Those looked like Overlord Malachi’s men,” Simon said. “We’re his people. Why would he do this?” Simon had grown up with stories of Malachi, the Overlord who managed their corner of Damasca in the name of the King. His reputation said he was distant but just, not a murderous tyrant.

  Alin set his jaw, and his eyes blazed. He held Simon’s mother in his arms as if she weighed nothing. “The King will punish Malachi as he deserves,” Alin said. “And if he does not...if he doesn’t, then we are his people no longer.” His voice trembled with rage, but Simon almost rolled his eyes.

  What would Overlord Malachi or His Majesty Zakareth care if the people of one small village refused to obey him? He had already demonstrated his willingness to burn their homes to the ground; he would hardly care about some empty threats.

  He didn’t say any of that to Alin, of course. No need to start a fight.

  Alin led Simon to a shallow cave, barely more than a depression in the rocks, less than a hundred paces from where Alin had first appeared. About two dozen people from the village had crammed themselves inside. Simon spotted Chaim, a large man and the only one of the Mayor’s advisors who hadn’t ridden out of the village. He had his sturdy arms wrapped around his wife and three children. The three of them were all close to Simon’s age, but they clung to their father like toddlers.

  Leah’s aunt Nurita held her daughters close in one protective bundle; her stern face showed no sign of tears or dirt. Other than those two families, Simon and Alin were the only two visible without white in their hair.

  Someone passed Simon a skin of water, and he took it gratefully. After a few tries, he was able to get his mother to drink a little, though she didn’t wake. After she stopped drinking and turned over on her side, Simon raised the skin to his own lips and set about washing away the coating of dry, stinging dust in his throat.

  Alin began to speak as Simon drank, keeping his voice low to avoid bothering the others. “We talked before you got here. The soldiers burned what they could, but the fire wouldn’t have spread far. There’s just not enough wood. We’re going to go back in tomorrow and see what can be saved. We think that, over the next few days, some of the others might come back to us.”

  Simon thought of Leah’s hand on his face and hoped fervently that Alin was right.

  “We talked about going to Kortan,” Alin continued, “but it’s far enough away that we’re not sure some of the people here will make it on foot, in the middle of the night with no supplies. And the raiders are probably gone by now.” He spat the last sentence like he wished the soldiers had stayed, so that he could kill them himself.

  Alin appeared to notice Simon’s sword for the first time, and he brightened. “You have a weapon? Did you take it from one of the soldiers?”

  Simon opened his mouth to respond, but Nurita stirred and raised her head. “Did you hear that?” she demanded.

  Raiders appeared as if summoned to answer her question. They were on foot this time, and their dark armor glistened in the moonlight as they spread out to encircle the cave entrance. Everyone scrambled to their feet and someone began to cry, but no one made any other sound. They simply stood in the silence of shock and despair.

  “They must have left the village right after we did,” Alin whispered. Anger and frustration tightened his voice. “They had to have followed right on our heels. Why would they do that? Why?”

  After they had finished surrounding the entrance, the raiders stopped moving. They stood with weapons drawn, in silence, waiting. After
a moment or two, a lean man in a hooded cloak stepped forward. He carried a torch in one hand, and by its light Simon could see the man’s clothes more clearly: the cloak was brown, the shirt beneath purple. Malachi’s colors.

  As the man approached, he used his other hand to draw the hood back from his face. His head was entirely hairless, his skin pale, and his eyes a luminous green that shone in the torchlight. He turned his head to survey the situation and grimaced as if displeased.

  “I am Cormac, a Traveler of Endross in service to Overlord Malachi.” Several people moaned, and Simon felt his chest tighten. Travelers had a thousand powers, most of them gruesome and terrible. He had heard the legends of Endross as a boy from his father: Endross was the place where storms were born, a blasted desert wasteland where only the most twisted and horrible monsters lived.

  Of course, Simon’s father had never actually seen a Traveler before the one that killed him.

  “Your village was given the honor of providing a small sacrifice to the Overlord,” Cormac continued. “But you have reacted with blasphemy and sedition. You are too close, no doubt, to the heretics of Enosh who fail to worship the Evening Star. You will all be taken to the Overlord’s seat in Bel Calem, where you will face his judgment. And, of course, we have taken the necessary sacrifices in spite of your...lack of cooperation.”

  He made a gesture with his free hand, and one of the soldiers appeared, hauling a line of collared villagers just like the one Simon had seen earlier. This one was longer, however, and its occupants had their wrists and ankles bound as well as their necks. Rather than children, these slaves were mostly grown men, except for one woman who shuffled along behind them. They were eleven in total.