The travelers gate trilo.., p.1
The Traveler's Gate Trilogy (Complete), page 1
part #1 of The Traveler's Gate 1-3 Series
Contents
Damascan Map
Title Page
Copyright
The Damascan Standard Calendar
HOUSE OF BLADES
CHAPTER 1: Ghosts and Demons
CHAPTER 2: Sacrifices
CHAPTER 3: Travelers
CHAPTER 4: Hidden Talents
CHAPTER 5: A Step Forward
CHAPTER 6: Welcome to Valinhall
CHAPTER 7: Sharp Lessons
CHAPTER 8: Risks and Rewards
CHAPTER 9: Deals and Darkness
CHAPTER 10: Another Test
CHAPTER 11: Orgrith Cave
CHAPTER 12: Escape
CHAPTER 13: The Chains of Valinhall
CHAPTER 14: The Wrong Place
CHAPTER 15: Playing With Dolls
CHAPTER 16: The Road to Bel Calem
CHAPTER 17: Midsummer's Eve
CHAPTER 18: Convergence
CHAPTER 19: Overlord Malachi
CHAPTER 20: Bad Habits
CHAPTER 21: A Victory
CHAPTER 22: The Hope of Escape
CHAPTER 23: Aftermath
THE CRIMSON VAULT
CHAPTER 1: A Prison in the Rain
CHAPTER 2: Weapons Old and New
CHAPTER 3: Royal Blood
CHAPTER 4: Rebirth
CHAPTER 5: The Rising Sun
CHAPTER 6: The Grandmasters' Council
CHAPTER 7: Avoiding Justice
CHAPTER 8: Ice and Moonlight
CHAPTER 9: The Incarnation of Valinhall
CHAPTER 10: Return to Bel Calem
CHAPTER 11: Alin Vs. Kai
CHAPTER 12: A Declaration of War
CHAPTER 13: Nine Doors
CHAPTER 14: The Frozen Horn
CHAPTER 15: Succession
CHAPTER 16: Careful Plans
CHAPTER 17: The Royal Army of Damasca
CHAPTER 18: A Duel
CHAPTER 19: Ambush
CHAPTER 20: The Mask
CHAPTER 21: The End of the Dragon
CHAPTER 22: The Crimson Vault
CHAPTER 23: Seeds
CHAPTER 24: The Gates of Heaven
CHAPTER 25: Long Live the King
CITY OF LIGHT
CHAPTER 1: Gathering Weapons
CHAPTER 2: Arrivals and Departures
CHAPTER 3: Gates in the Snow
CHAPTER 4: A Dead Man in the Graveyard
CHAPTER 5: Disturbing Explanations
CHAPTER 6: A Test and a Ghost
CHAPTER 7: Elysian Rule
CHAPTER 8: The Gallery
CHAPTER 9: Inside Enosh
CHAPTER 10: Stories in the City
CHAPTER 11: Elysia Vs. Valinhall
CHAPTER 12: Fighting in the Streets
CHAPTER 13: Invasion
CHAPTER 14: Battle in the House of Blades
CHAPTER 15: Prices Paid
CHAPTER 16: The Founder's Heir
CHAPTER 17: Capture
CHAPTER 18: A Conversation in Avernus
CHAPTER 19: Creating Incarnations
CHAPTER 20: Old Friends and New Enemies
CHAPTER 21: Daughter of Wind
CHAPTER 22: Grief
CHAPTER 23: A Pair of Masks
CHAPTER 24: The End of a Traveler
CHAPTER 25: Newfound Powers
CHAPTER 26: Strategic Planning
CHAPTER 27: War in the City of Light
CHAPTER 28: Rewards
TRAVELER'S GATE CHRONICLES
Welcome to Elysia
Tower of Winter
The Feathered Plains
The Crystal Fields
Gardens of Mist
Maelstrom of Stone
The Steel Labyrinth
The Lightning Wastes
Caverns of Flame
Ragnarus
*Sequel Page*
*The Future*
The Traveler's Gate Trilogy
Will Wight
www.WillWight.com
Copyright © 2016 Hidden Gnome Publishing
All rights reserved.
Cover Art by Melanie De Carvalho
Cover Design by Patrick Foster Design
The Damascan Standard Calendar
(Also called the Cynaran Calendar, established during the reign of Queen Cynara II)
Spring
Day 1: Spring’s Birth
Day 45: Sower’s Day
Day 90: Spring’s End
Summer
Day 1: Summer’s Dawn
Day 45: Midsummer
Day 90: Summer’s End
Autumn
Day 1: Harvest Day
Day 45: Reaping
Day 90: Autumn’s End
Winter
Day 1: Winter’s Day
Day 45: Midwinter
Day 90: Winter’s End
This was a simplified system intended to unify the various seasonal and lunar calendars that competed prior to Damasca’s conquest of the continent. To mark the date, you count the number of days between you and the nearest holiday. The 81st day of Spring, for instance, would be “9 Days Till Spring’s End.” The 46th day of Spring is “1 Day Since Sower’s Day.”
House of Blades
(Book #1 of the Traveler’s Gate Trilogy)
CHAPTER 1:
GHOSTS AND DEMONS
350th Year of the Damascan Calendar
16th Year in the Reign of King Zakareth VI
10 Days Until Midsummer
Through the darkness and the pouring rain, Simon stared at the ghost.
He had never seen a ghost before, but he knew this one at once. It looked like little more than a man-sized lump of mist, so he might have mistaken it for a product of the storm if it hadn’t seemed quite so unusual. For one thing, it glowed with a soft blue-white light, even though the moon was hidden behind rolling black stormclouds. For another, the ghost didn’t fade away or drift in the wind. It stood stock-still, facing one direction across thirty paces of rain and shadow. Simon imagined the ghost was looking straight at him.
He moved to take a closer look, but his father grabbed him by the arm. “Simon, why don’t you come help me with the cart?”
The boy cast one last, longing glance at the ghost before trudging over to the cart, hitched to their nameless donkey. They had packed the wagon to the brim with crates, boxes, and bags containing everything they had bought and hoped to sell in the villages between Enosh and Alrin. Simon’s father, Kalman, bent over the cart, checking that everything was sorted and covered.
There was nothing Simon could do to help, but his father had only called him over to keep him out of trouble. And away from anything interesting. Maybe the ghost would drift over here, and then he might even get to talk to it!
Simon’s mother, Edina, walked up and threw an arm around her son’s shoulder. “It’s pretty, isn’t it?” she said. “What do you think it is?”
“A ghost,” he said with certainty. He was only eight years old, but his mother stood less than a head over him. She looked even shorter next to her husband, whose head brushed the branches of the nearby trees.
She nodded thoughtfully. “I bet he was a victim of the Forest Demon. He could have been another merchant, just like us, killed before his time. His soul will wander this world for eternity…or until his killer is brought to justice!”
Her voice rose dramatically at the end, and Kalman sighed.
Simon shivered in spite of himself and looked into the shadows, trying to make out the shape of a crouching demon. Would he be able to tell if there was a demon behind that redberry bush?
“What’s the Forest Demon?” he asked.
Edina took a step back so she could look at her son from arm’s length. She widened her eyes as though shocked. “Why, I’ve never told you the story of the Demon of Latari Forest?”
Simon shook his head.
“Then gather ‘round, young one, and open your ears. I’m about to tell you a tale of horror and tragedy that happened right where we stand, in this very forest.”
He wasn’t sure how, exactly, he was supposed to “gather ‘round,” but he tried to look as attentive as possible.
“Let’s pick up this story once we’re on the road,” Kalman said, with another glance at the ghost. The figure of glowing mist still hadn’t moved: it stood like a statue, staring at Simon’s family with no eyes.
Edina slapped her husband on the arm without looking. “They say the Forest Demon looks like a man,” she began, ignoring Kalman once again. “He wears a cloak with the hood up, so you can’t see his face, but you’d never know he wasn’t just another lost wanderer…until he’s already on top of you, and by then it’s too late. He prowls the edges of the trees, looking for people he can snatch up for food. Once he finds you, he takes you to the center of the forest, where there’s one tree that’s all his own.”
Simon’s mind filled with visions of a stranger in a black cloak, his hideously inhuman face hidden from view.
“When he gets you to this tree, he hangs you up like a piece of drying meat.” She mimed slipping a noose over her neck. “Then, once you’re dead, he eats your body slowly. Piece by piece. They say his hanging tree is solid red, covered in the blood of his prey.” She gestured toward the ghost. “That must be the spirit of one of his victims, here to watch over us, to make sure we don’t get eaten up.”
She swept a mock bow, clearly proud of herself.
As Simon stared through the veil of rain and into the sh
“He’s eight,” Kalman said dryly. “You’re going to make him superstitious.”
“He’s eight,” Edina countered. “He’s already superstitious.”
“It’s not hard when his mother’s telling him Traveler’s tales every night before bed. Speaking of which,” he waved at the ghost, “we need to get out of here before whoever summoned that thing shows up.”
Edina grinned. “Ah, now who’s superstitious?”
“That’s Traveler work, you know it as well as I do,” Kalman said patiently.
Simon’s ears instantly perked up. He’d been scanning the bushes for odd-shaped shadows, spinning a fantasy in which only his alert warnings had saved his parents from an ambush by the Forest Demon, when the mention of Travelers caught his attention. He’d always wanted to see a Traveler.
Kalman levered himself up onto the driver’s seat of the cart. “I want to be back on the road before they show up.”
“Really?” Edina responded. She nodded toward the edge of the trees. “You want to ride out into that?”
As if her words had summoned it, lightning whipped across the sky, closely followed by the crackle of thunder. Simon felt like his skin was soaked through from the water that dripped through the Latari Forest’s thick canopy, but the storm beyond the treeline was like a waterfall by comparison. He’d rather jump into a cold bath than head out there.
Especially if it meant missing the Travelers.
“At least the storm won’t try and kill us,” Kalman said, keeping his serious gaze focused beyond the trees. Simon’s father smiled sometimes, but he never joked, and he meant every word he said. Edina was his exact opposite in almost every way.
She chuckled. “Kill us? Why would anyone want to? For our vast wealth? Travelers are just people, Kalman. They’re not monsters.”
Deep in the trees, coming from the center of the forest, a small pinprick of orange light appeared among the bushes. Simon squinted, trying to figure out what he was seeing. A torch? A campfire?
Kalman stepped down from the cart, but his expression remained clouded. “What are we going to do if a Traveler shows up, and he doesn’t—”
Edina interrupted by reaching under the tarp and pulling a two-pound sack out of the cart. She shook the bag under his nose, where it rattled as if it were filled with gravel. “If a Traveler shows up? We’ll sell him some beans!”
Simon kept staring at the orange light. It couldn’t have been a torch—it was too bright, too steady for that. It looked almost like a flame-colored star, drifting through the trees toward him.
But it was coming toward him.
Kalman’s lips twitched up in something that was almost a smile. “Beans?”
“Travelers still need food, don’t they?” Edina licked her lips. “Mmmm, beans. Delicious. And the rain will ruin them, so we might as well get rid of them while we can.”
Kalman sighed, defeated, and pulled his wife toward him in an embrace. “You win again, I’d say.”
She laughed from somewhere around his chest. “Then my flawless record stands another day!”
“Someone’s coming,” Simon said quietly. The orange light might not have been coming from a torch, but somebody was carrying it. And they were getting close.
Simon didn’t have long to wait. There were two people, it turned out, the woman in front carrying a light that looked a little too bright to Simon. It burned too steadily, not at all like a dirty, smoky, regular fire, and it didn’t hiss or throw up steam when it passed through the rain.
More importantly, she wasn’t carrying the light at the end of a torch. It hovered in midair two feet above her upturned palm.
Simon couldn’t hold back a grin. This was obviously a real Traveler, using the powers of a real Territory. Maybe he’d get to see her summon a monster!
Her partner was a big man with scars all over his face, so much that Simon couldn’t see any smooth skin, and he wore a grey cloak the color of the rain. Simon would have expected someone with that many scars to look mean, but he didn’t; he looked peaceful. He smiled at Simon as he approached.
The woman had yellow hair and wore dark red, almost black, robes. She was short—though taller than Simon’s mother—and she had blue eyes. Simon had never seen anyone with blue eyes before. When she saw Simon’s family, she glanced around into the bushes as if she expected to see the Forest Demon hiding nearby.
The ghost raised one misty arm, pointing straight at Simon. Then it blew apart, as if the wind had suddenly grown too strong for it to hold together.
The pair of Travelers stopped a good ten paces away, the woman still looking warily into the forest.
“Are you alone?” the scar-faced man called.
“Not at all,” Edina yelled back. “I have my husband and my son with me, but thank you for asking.” She snapped her fingers as though just remembering something. “And I’ve got a donkey as well, so it’s practically a party!”
The Travelers stared for a moment, and then the yellow-haired woman snorted out a laugh. Simon relaxed. If she could laugh, that meant she was really human.
“The forest can be dangerous this time of year,” she said. “I’m glad you have your donkey around for protection.”
Edina returned a chuckle, but the scar-faced man stepped forward without so much as a smile. He spoke in a smooth, utterly patient voice. “I apologize for my…lack of clarity. Have you met any strangers in this forest today?”
“Just two,” Edina quipped, before Kalman took over.
“We have seen no one else, sir,” he responded. “Is there anyone we should watch for?”
The two Travelers traded another look, this one longer. Finally the woman lowered her hand, though the light hung in the air like a lantern on a hook. As her hand fell to her side, Simon noticed a second light, dull red, glowing softly on the center of her palm.
“It’s not safe for you here,” said the yellow-haired Traveler. “It would be best for us all if you left the forest.”
“As soon as the storm lets up, we’ll be on our way,” Kalman said.
The scar-faced Traveler shook out his gray sleeves, and tendrils of glowing mist rose from around his feet. “It would be better for you to face the storm than what lies at the heart of these trees.”
The woman gave a little bow, and then both Travelers turned and began to walk away.
“Are they talking about the Forest Demon?” Simon asked his parents.
The red-robed Traveler turned her head a bit and smiled at him, but she kept walking.
“That’s right,” Edina said playfully. “The Travelers are here to deal with the Demon, so you don’t have to worry about him or his bloody tree.”
Both Travelers stopped.
The scar-faced man in gray turned completely around, mist swirling around his legs. “I’m sorry, ma’am. What was that about a tree?”
Simon’s mother looked surprised, but she replied anyway. “I was telling him stories about the Demon of Latari Forest. You know, he hides his face in a hooded cloak, kidnaps innocents, and hangs them on his blood-red tree. Surely you’ve heard the stories.”
The woman’s face grew pale, and she drew a shaking hand over her eyes. “Saints above,” she said.
Her partner, on the other hand, still seemed totally calm. “As a matter of fact, I have,” he said. He closed scarred eyelids briefly, and as soon as he opened them, he flicked one hand toward Simon’s mother.
At Edina’s feet, another shape of glowing mist rose from the ground, just like the ghost. This one wasn’t shaped like a man, but like a long tendril, like an earthworm, sticking its head up and questing around in the air. The mist touched Edina’s cheek tenderly, feather-light, and then it pulled back a few inches. It hesitated, weaving in front of her face for a second or two.
Then it struck like a snake, the mist plunging into Edina’s open mouth. She inhaled roughly, like screaming in reverse, but she didn’t look in pain. At first she looked stunned, as if she had seen Simon do something so wrong that she was too surprised to punish him for it.
Then she sagged in place, going entirely limp and starting to collapse. Something caught her. Something invisible, like the strings on a puppet. Then those strings began to pull. Edina twitched violently, arms bending one way, neck stretching back farther than it should have. Her head moved side to side, jerking back and forth. Moon-colored mist swirled around her form, and Simon could have sworn he saw brightly colored flower petals drifting down around her.
