Tower of Winter (The Traveler s Gate Chronicles Collection #1)

Contents

  

  

  

Will Wight

  

Copyright © 2013 Will Wight

All rights reserved.

  

Cover art by Patrick Foster.

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.

  Here there be dragons.

  You have been warned.

  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.

• -Elysian Book of Virtues, Page 1

  The Traveler’s Gate Chronicles (Collection #1)

  INTER T W First, you should observe the Violet Light, which is aligned with Helgard,

the Tower of Winter. Many students who came before you have wondered

why the Violet virtues of honesty, openness, and genuine expression are

linked with this specific Territory. Helgard’s Travelers are scholars, known

for their dedication to knowledge, research, and memory. Why, then, are they

not linked to wisdom, or even diligence?

• -Elysian Book of Virtues, Chapter 1: Violet

  Donia Sarkis, Traveler of Helgard, had great things ahead of her. Everyone said so. She might be an Overlord one day, when Vasilios stepped down. She might end up as an explorer, braving the unknown dangers of the Tower’s uppermost floors.

  Today, it seemed, she was meant to be a nursemaid. Nikolos shivered in his heavy, fur-lined cloak. He sniffled miserably, his well-bred good looks spoiled by a bright red nose. His sleek blond hair was ruffled by the wind, and he could barely keep his hood up.

  “Wait!” he said. “Did you see that?” He stared off into the blowing snow as though he had spotted some danger. “I don’t see anything but snow, Nikolos,” Donia said, keeping her tone polite. Nikolos was the Overlord’s son, and a bad report from him would haunt her for years. She could not afford to let the Overlord down.

  “Regardless, we should wait and watch,” the boy said, sniffling at every other word. “We wouldn’t want to run into an unknown danger.” Nikolos stumbled through a drift and plopped down on top of a thick, rounded boulder carved like the head of a statue. It was a grossly exaggerated caricature of a face, locked into the expression of a monster about to devour a meal. Its long tongue hung down almost into the snow, baring four pointed fangs at the corner of the mouth.

  It looked as if someone had carved a stone statue of a hungry monster, severed its head, and thrown that head on the ground. Donia happened to know that the statue’s “neck” actually grew down into the bedrock of Helgard’s fifteenth floor, and that there were hundreds of such heads scattered all around the floor. Some were so small that they were often

  No one knew the purpose of the heads, though there were theories. Somehow, Donia doubted they were originally intended as benches for spoiled children.

  “I seriously doubt we’re in danger here,” Donia said, because she couldn’t help herself. “This floor is well controlled. There are even a few permanent outposts.”

  “You never know,” Nikolos said. “We should keep an eye out.” He was hugging himself and staring at the ground, not even pretending to watch for danger.

  Nikolos had come up with some excuse to rest every hour since they had entered the Helgard Gate. At first, he was simply “overcome with the natural beauty of the Tower,” and he needed a moment to collect his thoughts. Then he would insist that he had heard a voice in the howling wind, or that he only needed a moment more to decipher the ancient runes on Helgard’s outer walls. Once, when he caught sight of an icefang shuffling through the snow, he had sworn that there was a dead body beneath the powder that was struggling to surface. They had to freeze in place, he said, because sudden movements could set it off.

  Donia remembered herself at fifteen, so she kept herself polite, though she couldn’t ever recall being so obnoxious. If she was tired, she would have just said so. None of this dancing around the subject or making up excuses.

  His attitude shouldn’t matter, she reminded herself. He could be a

screaming terror, and I’d still have accepted. Jobs like this are a ladder

straight to the top.

  Overlord Vasilios had insisted that Donia should escort his son from his relatives’ estate in Alrin all the way back home to Bel Tara. It was an easy assignment, but one that showed a great deal of trust in Donia. She had only been a Helgard Traveler for a few years, but she was already getting personal assignments from the Overlord.

  Annoying as this job might be, she had to prove she could do it. A patch of glittering snow caught Donia’s attention, lying at the base of a twisted tree. In the right light, it looked as though someone had sprinkled the snow with a handful of crushed diamonds or powdered glass.

  She recognized the signs immediately, as any Helgard Traveler would: an icefang lay in wait beneath that shimmering snow. Icefangs were among the least of the dangers that Helgard had to offer, but The creatures were scavengers, usually preying on the sick or the dead. She wondered if Nikolos counted as sickly. They were also highly territorial, and it was entirely possible that she had tread near this one’s burrow without realizing it.

  Donia took a few steps closer to the icefang, away from Nikolos. The beast began to tremble, almost imperceptibly. She held her middle two fingers together, leaving her other fingers spread out, stretching her hand out to the icefang in a sign of peace. For a few seconds, the scavenger’s eager trembling stopped as it felt

  Donia’s imposed peace wash over it. That wouldn’t be enough to stop it, not on its own, but it gave Donia enough time to enact the next step.

  Under her breath, Donia whispered the icefang’s name. Not its personal name, of course. Learning that would have taken entirely too long, and she didn’t have time for that right now. Instead, she recited the generic name for the icefang species. It was twelve syllables long, all but impossible to pronounce, and all icefangs would respond to it to some degree.

  She had heard it said that being a Helgard Traveler was half research and half rote memorization. In fact, she had spent three-quarters of her time as a student simply memorizing the hundreds upon hundreds of names that all Travelers of Helgard were expected to know as a matter of course.

  At this point, keeping an icefang quiet required no more effort than walking through the snow. As usual, when she correctly named a creature, she felt a rush of emotions in return. With more intelligent creatures, she would receive a rush of specific thoughts and memories, but the icefang was little more than a vulture. It felt frustration, deep hunger, and a barely-restrained eagerness to attack the intruders that had dared to set foot in its home.

  The peace she had imposed with her sign still lingered in the creature’s mind, and the unnatural calm also gave the icefang a degree of confusion. It wasn’t used to being calm.

  As always, the icefang’s emotions weren’t the only things that got transferred along the bond. Donia felt her own frustration with Nikolos, her hope to please the Overlord, her fear that she wouldn’t live up to her reputation, and her satisfaction at finally being home in Helgard all flow out of her.

  The icefang wouldn’t fully comprehend any of that, of course, but it grew her power and authority as a Traveler of Helgard. It knew that she could call up a dozen forces more deadly than itself, and it wanted no part of that.

  The glittering snow shrunk two sizes as the icefang cowered in the snowbank. Nearby, Nikolos heaved a sigh and rose to his feet. “I suppose I was mistaken,” he said at last. “We must remain vigilant.” He trudged over to Donia with his hands tucked into his pockets and his blond hair disheveled. The corner of his boot almost scraped the icefang hidden in the snow. Without her interference, it would have taken his foot off.

  Nikolos never even noticed.

• After Donia and Nikolos climbed up the seemingly never-ending ladder leading from the fifteenth floor to the sixteenth, Donia remembered something that she had been trying to forget.

  She hated this floor. The entire thing was just one open room, with no trees or hideous statues to break up the monotony. The blue-gray outer wall of Helgard encircled the floor, and without any obstructions, Donia thought she could make out the curvature of the tower, though it was hard to say for sure since she couldn’t see the far wall.

  The floor appeared somewhat even, but she knew that was an illusion. There was no snow here, and the ground was made entirely of uninterrupted ice. It looked as though the ocean’s surface had frozen during a choppy ocean storm: waves and spikes and curls of ice rose from the surface in a twisting frozen maze.

  That was one of the things she hated about this floor. Damasca had a small outpost here, but she couldn’t see it from the floor entrance because of all the waves breaking up her line of sight. She could barely judge distance at all.

  The icy floor glowed from inside with a pale greenish light. Perhaps she should have enjoyed that—there were many floors in Helgard that were much darker, after all—but occasionally the light would flicker out, as though something in the depths of the ice had passed briefly in front of the light’s source.

  That was a continual reminder of a fact that she didn’t want to think about:

  

something lay beneath the ice here, and no one knew what. The older Helgard

  Everyone that might know was either dead or insane.

  Which brought her to the worst thing about the sixteenth floor: the silence. From the frozen waves below to the enormous, distant icicles on the roof above—each of which was the size of a lighthouse—there was plenty of space to create air currents. Many of the Helgard floors generated their own weather. But not the sixteenth.

  Nothing disturbed the air on the sixteenth floor. Not a breeze, not the call of a bird, nothing. It was the closest to absolute silence that Donia had ever endured.

  And she couldn’t stand it. Nikolos cleared his throat, and it sounded like the rumble of thunder. “Quiet here, isn’t—“ Just in time, Donia clapped a gloved hand over his mouth.

  Nikolos’ words echoed softly off the nearby ice. Donia remained tense and alert until the sound died away, then she relaxed. Slightly. She put her mouth close to his ear and whispered as softly as she could. “What did I say before we climbed up here?” She loosened her hand, giving him a bit of room to speak.

  “Quiet,” Nikolos breathed, barely moving his lips. “That’s right. Better men and women than you, all Helgard Travelers, have made too much noise on this floor and regretted it. Do you understand?” Nikolos nodded eagerly. “Now, I’m going to take my hand away, and I want you to remain as quiet as possible.” When the boy nodded again, Donia took her hand away and turned back toward the field of ice.

  A worn, dirty Traveler with a scraggly beard stood not a pace behind her. Nikolos shrieked, though to his credit he stifled it quickly. Donia’s heart was pounding, but she reacted with more composure, as befit a Traveler of

  Helgard: she held her right hand out in a sign of aggression, words of summoning on her lips.

  The Traveler, whose blue-and-white Damascan uniform was torn to ribbons, held up both of his hands, palms out. The gesture showed he was unarmed and, for a Traveler, showed that he wasn’t making any hostile signs.

  “No, wait!” he said, in a hoarse whisper. “Help! I need your help!” Donia looked around, wary of a trap or ambush, though she couldn’t floor was lonely and silent; he and his friends could have just jumped on Donia and Nikolos, if that was their intention.

  “Where is the rest of your unit, Traveler?” Donia asked. The stranger shook his head frantically, like a dog trying to shake off water. "Gone," he whispered. "Attacked. Viciously attacked. Please, help me.

  I can't leave this floor." Nikolos must have felt the need to interfere, because he said, "Of course you can. We're standing not ten feet from the way down." Donia ignored him, keeping her focus on the shaken stranger. "What's your name, Traveler?" "Lukis, ma'am," he responded. "Inspector Lukis, Outpost Sixteen. Listen, I need you to take word back to the first floor. They're here. They're here for the Frozen Ones!"

  By the end, his voice had risen until it was more of a scream than a whisper. "Inspector Lukis," Donia repeated calmly. "Why can't you leave with us?"

  She had read that you were supposed to remain calm in these circumstances, even though all she wanted to do was bolt back down the ladder that had taken them here. This was more trouble than she was authorized to handle.

  With a trembling finger, Lukis pointed down at the glowing ice on which he stood. At first, Donia saw nothing, and she almost told him so. Then she noticed something deep below the frozen surface, like the glimmer of a fish's scales. Lukis took a step to one side, and the distant gleam followed him. "What is that?" Nikolos asked, staring down into the ice himself. "They called it up from the ice," Lukis whispered. "They sent it after me, but it can't get me up here. It can’t break the surface. If I tried to climb down the ladder, I'd have to pass through the ice. It would have me." "How do you know?" Donia asked.

  Lukis shuddered. "I could feel it," he said. "It...called my name." Donia felt a chill pass through her. Naming a creature of Helgard created a bond between the Traveler and her named companion. With intelligent creatures, it was more a sharing of names, in which both parties learned equally about one another. However, the Traveler always initiated the bond, and it was up to her how far to pursue it. If there was something here that could name them back... same absolute certainty that she had seen in Overlord Vasilios so many times. "Who's doing this?"

  Lukis let out the quietest laugh that Donia had ever heard. "They’re some kind of cult, maybe a dozen Travelers. I don't know who they are, exactly, but they killed the rest of Outpost Sixteen before we could even react. They’re ruthless. And they…”

  He leaned in close, his eyes flicking from side to side. "They want to raise the Frozen Ones." Donia cleared her throat. He had mentioned the Frozen Ones before, but she had decided to overlook that. The Frozen Ones were part of an ancient legend of Helgard, and one that seemed to have its basis more in colorful rumor than actual history.

  "Believe me," Lukis went on, sounding desperate. "Maybe they’re crazy, I don’t know, but they believe there are beings sealed here, on the sixteenth floor. They've been calling down into the ice for hours, trying to wake up whatever they can. They killed my unit because they need the bodies. They think the blood might help..." His whispers trailed off, but Donia had no idea what she could say.

  "Are they from Enosh?" Nikolos asked, sounding strangely excited. "I've heard that the Grandmasters do things like that. You know, blood sacrifice to raise monsters, that sort of thing."

  From what Donia had heard of Ragnarus Travelers, the Damascan royal family was more likely to be involved in human sacrifice than anyone from Enosh, but she kept that to herself. The annual sacrifice was cloaked in mystery, and no one outside the Royal Palace in Cana really knew what went on there. It was all way above her, and none of her business besides.

  "Not Enosh," Lukis said. "I know all of the Helgard Travelers that Enosh ever sends to this floor. One of them was visiting the outpost when these...cultists tore it down."

  Nikolos' face twisted into an expression of revulsion. "How can you stand to be so close to an Enosh heretic? I'd kill them on sight, myself." Nikolos wasn't a Traveler, and Donia was of the opinion that he would get himself eviscerated before he managed to kill anybody, but she held her opinion close. "Inspector. Are we safe here?" Lukis chuckled bitterly, though he didn't raise his voice above a whisper. "As safe as we ever are on this floor. They're busy with their ritual, or the outpost. Where the outpost used to be, anyway. They won't be coming back after me." "You should stay here, then," Donia said, though she realized immediately that her suggestion was useless. Of course he would stay here, where it was safe. What did she expect him to do, run back in and fight the cultists single- handedly?

  "In the meantime," she continued, "Nikolos and I will head back down and warn the Inspectors on the first floor. From there—" "Hold on," Nikolos interrupted. "How long will that take?" Donia sighed. "Nikolos, surely you can see that—" "And what will they do about it?" "They will send Travelers," Donia said impatiently. "A small army of

  Travelers, with powers at their command that you couldn't even pronounce." Nikolos met her gaze, his eyes more serious than she had ever seen them. "So we climb back down sixteen floors, which will take us hours, if not longer. We convince the Inspectors to send people up to the sixteenth. Even if they believe us without sending someone to look for themselves, how long will it take for them to gather enough Travelers? Not to mention getting them back up here."

  "What would you have us do, Nikolos?" Donia asked. She meant it to be mocking, but if he had a real suggestion, she was more than willing to listen. "There's a route to my father through here, right?" Nikolos said. "That's why we're on this floor in the first place. We should go to him. It's faster, he'll believe me immediately, and we won't need an army. My father alone will be more than enough."

  Donia had to admit that the boy had a point. She had seen Overlord Vasilios in action, and the man was like a Helgard Incarnation in the flesh. And according to rumor, the Overlords each had artifacts of Ragnarus that ensured they would always be more powerful than their competition. With that kind of weaponry on their side, they would have nothing to worry about. Besides, the Overlord would surely want them to come to him with this.

  She turned to Lukis, outlining exactly which crossing they needed to take. "Where is the enemy?" she asked. "Can we cross without running into them?"

  Lukis rubbed his gloved hands together nervously. "I couldn't say...I think, if you skirted the center of the floor and headed straight to the crossing, you could open a Gate without them being any the wiser. But there would be no in the wrong place at the wrong time." Donia stared off into the featureless waves of ice, mulling over the situation. It would be safer to go down to the first floor, that was for sure. It was her responsibility to keep Nikolos safe. The safer option wasn't necessarily the right one, though. She wasn't certain whether the Overlord would love her for bringing him the news first, or hate her for taking his son into danger.

  As she sometimes did, she pictured herself as she imagined others thought of her: strong, skilled, confident. Always ready with the right answer. That woman would know exactly what to do. She would likely press forward, relying on her own ability to keep them all safe.

  Unfortunately, Donia wasn't sure that woman actually existed. "We will move forward," Donia said at last. Lukis groaned, but Donia continued speaking. "As carefully as we can. If we see anyone, anyone at all, we immediately turn around, no questions asked. Now, Inspector Lukis, are you with us?"

  Lukis gaped at her. "Me?" "We've never encountered this enemy before, we're not familiar with the floor, and the boy here is the Overlord's son. He's not a Traveler." Inspector Lukis looked Nikolos over more carefully. "The boy?" Nikolos whined. "As you can see," Donia went on, "we could use your help." Lukis glanced from one side to the other as though trying to find his way out of a trap. At last, he closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

  "Let me show you the way," he said at last.

• For the first few minutes, the silence of the sixteenth floor was laced with tension. Donia barely took a step without craning her neck to see over a frozen wave, and three or four times she almost called on Helgard's power to destroy a shape that turned out to be nothing more than a flickering shadow.

  But Lukis set a pace barely greater than a crawl. He called a stop at any sound, seemingly even the echoes of their own footsteps. An hour into the journey, without seeing any sign of danger, Donia's alarm began to fade, and she started to worry.

  Nikolos drifted up to her, seemingly casual, speaking under his breath. "What do you know about him?" the boy asked, nodding toward Lukis. expecting someone to materialize inside them.

  "Nothing more than you do," Donia said. She had never heard of Lukis before. But then, Outpost Sixteen was one of the most isolated positions in the Tower. The more social or ambitious Travelers avoided it, leaving those who had a reason to stay alone.

  "I've been thinking. Isn't this a little suspicious? We haven't seen anything wrong this whole time. We're taking his word that there's a threat. We're taking his word on where it is. How do we know there are even any enemies out here at all? Even if there are, how do we know he's not with them?"

  They were far enough behind Lukis, and Nikolos was speaking quietly enough, that Donia doubted they would be overheard. In truth, Donia thought much the same. Lukis had shown them nothing to back up his claims.

  But there was something of an understanding between Helgard Travelers, even between Travelers of Enosh and Damasca. They may be enemies on the outside, and they would work against each other when ordered, but the real danger was the Tower itself. Tradition said that she could trust Inspector Lukis.

  "I say we trust him," Donia said. "Just for now. But I'm on my guard." Nikolos clearly wasn't satisfied with that, and he seemed on the verge of voicing another complaint.

  Then the ice in front of them exploded. The frozen wave burst with a sound like a thousand falling trees, bursting into a cloud of ice shards that tore into Donia, tearing through her clothes, slicing her skin.

  With well-trained speed, Donia threw her hands up, holding her fingers in the correct signs, and whispered a quick word. Helgard Travelers collected names and gestures that allowed them to summon, control, and influence the creatures of the Territory. But she was not limited to calling on living creatures.

  She held out the signs, whispered the key, and the Tower of Winter answered. Freezing wind whipped up around them, tearing at the fringes of her coat, throwing her dark hair in her face. In front of Lukis, it was much stronger. So strong that the wind blasted many of the flying ice chunks from the air, blowing them to one side of Donia's group.

  Some of the ice got through, drawing lines of burning red on her skin. Far

  Lukis hadn't reacted as quickly as she had, but then, he had been closer to the initial explosion. As the ice shards continued to fly, he huddled behind Donia's barrier of wind, curled up on the ground. His torn coat was in tatters now, and he was visibly splattered in blood.

  Donia didn't have time to worry long over Inspector Lukis. Three figures appeared in the blowing snow and ice. One of them raised a hand, and the daggers of ice stopped flying.

  I guess I owe Lukis an apology, Donia thought. Here were his mysterious cultists.

  And they were dressed...exactly as she had imagined. They wore the typical uniform that all Helgard Travelers shared, out of necessity: a fur-lined coat with a hood and thick, warm gloves. Unlike

  Donia's outfit and Lukis', both of which were blue with white fur, these three wore black coats lined in dark gray fur. The lower halves of their faces were covered by a black mask that, Donia had to admit, looked rather warm.

  In another circumstance, the effect might have been silly. They were dressed up like the villains of some bad play, and there wasn't even any reason for it; black was no good for stealth up here. The landscape was white, the light blue-green, and night never fell on the sixteenth floor. Part of her thought they couldn't be serious.

  Then she saw the dark stains, glistening against the black of their coats, and she had a disturbing thought. Those coats wouldn't show bloodstains. One of the figures stepped forward and spoke. His voice was cultured and educated, possibly a wealthy son raised at the heart of Cana. "I'm sorry for that. We can't be too wary out here, you know. We've heard rumors that there might be some Enosh Travelers around here, and we were not as careful as we should have been."

  Blood dripped into Donia's eye, and she wiped it away so it wouldn't freeze her eye shut. Anger and fear warred for control. "You're sorry?" she said. "You could have killed us! You nearly did! Give me one reason why I shouldn't report you to my Overlord. One!" The lead figure bowed at the waist, inclining his head a fraction. "As I said, it was a misunderstanding. We have heard rumors—" "We've heard some rumors ourselves, today," Donia said. Fear and anger were still having their match, but anger was leading by a head. "Who are you,

  He paused, then glanced down at Lukis. "Ah," he said at last. "Rumors. Yes, I imagine you might have heard a few. Well, I have nothing to hide. There is a being sealed in this floor known as a Frozen One. Perhaps more than a single individual. We are here to share our names, perhaps form a bond with this being, as has been the tradition in Helgard since time immemorial."

  Casually, Donia slipped her left hand into her pocket, swiftly forming sign after sign. She would have to move quickly, when the time came, so it would be best to do as much of the preliminary work ahead of time as she could.

  "And what about Outpost Sixteen?" Donia asked. Nikolos edged around so that he was standing behind her. Wisely so, she thought.

  The black-coated man shrugged. "Mistakes were made." That was all. "Well, I think," Donia began, and then before anyone could react, she shouted for her strongest ally. She called him Rishla, for short, because his full name was fifteen syllables and required years of linguistic training to pronounce. He looked something like a furred serpent, or a long weasel, with pale tan fur and a dozen legs. He was fiercely loyal to her, devilishly intelligent, and one of the most powerful creatures she had ever encountered at the tower. More importantly to her right now, he would come at the sound of his nickname, said alongside the proper signs. She didn't have time to shout all fifteen syllables.

  Well, he would normally come at the sound of his nickname. Creatures of Helgard could hear their name spoken anywhere, especially by their bonded partner. Why wasn't he coming already? More importantly... Usually, a battle between Helgard Travelers was a match of who could make their signs and shout the words the most quickly. The three cultists should have been yelling like town criers and frantically twisting their fingers, but they did nothing.

  Lukis barely managed to raise himself on one bloody arm, twisting to look at Donia. "No!" he croaked. "Don't summon...not here." Then he collapsed again, his strength evidently exhausted. man," he said. "But it seems like it's too late." The light beneath the ice vanished entirely, for one disturbing second leaving the entire floor in complete darkness.

  She heard a sound like a cross between a lion's roar and the tolling of an enormous bell. One of the cultists who had previously remained silent started laughing. "This floor is sealed by the power of the Frozen One," the speaker said. "We've managed to encourage that much cooperation, at least. Anything that tries to enter is met by his wrath."

  Donia didn't respond. Not in words. She crossed the first two fingers of each hand and stuck them out, one to each side. She spoke a key. This time, the enemy Travelers sputtered their own keys and began raising their hands in signs. The speaker raised his hands and made a warding gesture, trying to get his key phrase in place.

  He was too slow. A gleaming crystal snowflake the size of a wagon wheel came hurtling out of the distance, spinning through the air, its edge sharp enough to cleave bone. It had formed itself from loose ice and snow, and she could now control its flight with the motion of her right hand.

  She whipped her right hand forward to point at the cultist speaker, then brought her left hand in as well. A second giant snowflake followed. She didn't know any of the powers associated specifically with the sixteenth floor, but she could use this one anywhere. Very few people in the entire Tower could form two White Razors at once, much less so quickly.

  Donia was counting on the surprise. One cultist called up a burst of wind, blasting a single Razor from the air, but not before it could nick her in the leg. A second cultist dropped to his knees, letting the Razor fly over his head, straight at the speaker.

  The speaker spoke the last syllable of his key and stumbled backwards. In front of him, the loose ice-shards rose into the air, forming into a blue-white wall.

  The White Razor slammed into his ice-wall in a thunderous collision, sending chips of ice and a freezing wind flying in all directions. Donia was already forming new signs, speaking the key to her next

  The cultists muttered along, doing the same. Then Inspector Lukis picked his head up once more, thrusting a bloody fist at the ceiling.

  He breathed out three final syllables, smiled, and collapsed with his face on the ice. A crack echoed throughout the sixteenth floor, as though the world itself were breaking. Donia couldn't help but look up...and up...and up... At the icicles on the ceiling. The icicles that could crush an entire village. One of them, with its point directly above Lukis, started to fall. It looked deceptively slow, she noticed, as though it would take ten minutes to reach the ground. And beautiful. It refracted the ambient light of the sixteenth floor with the thousand indescribable colors of the rainbow.

  It didn't look anything like incalculable tons of ice rushing toward her at lethal speeds. All of this flashed through her mind in a single instant, then she grabbed

  Nikolos' arm and hauled him along behind her, running recklessly over the icy surface. She didn't know which way she was going, and she didn't care a bit, so long as it was away from that mountainous hammer of ice.

  Ordinarily, she would never have run over this ice. One slip on ice this irregular could mean death at the best of times, and now it certainly would. Mentally, she thanked her father for the gift of the new boots that he had sent her last Winter's End. She did not slip, and she did not look back. She just kept running.

  For a few seconds. She crested the rise of a frozen wave, dragging Nikolos behind her like a cart behind a horse. She jumped off and almost landed on another Traveler in a black coat.

  He had fallen onto his backside, scrambling backwards, face locked on the descending icicle. Donia couldn't blame him. She vaguely noticed a half- dozen other figures, dressed the same as the first, all around her, and a huge red circle painted on the ice.

  She would worry about all that after she survived. She kept running. She made it a few more steps before the icicle hit, tossing her from her feet.

  Donia slammed face-first into the ice, and the world went dark.

Donia's cheek, pressed against the ice, had begun to burn with the cold. She felt like she had been stabbed with a dozen knives, all up the right side of her body. Her hip sent up lances of pain when she tried to move, and it made a disturbing clicking sound.

  Worse, she could barely move. She was trapped. Her breath came faster and faster as she rolled her eyes around, trying to see a way out. All she could see, by the light of the dim glow beneath her, was ice: chunks of ice pressed against her face, above her, beneath her, all around. She was buried alive.

  The thought brought on a new wave of panic, and she instinctively tried to push herself up with her right hand. As soon as she leaned on her arm, pain shot through her as though someone had crushed every bone in the arm with a hammer.

  She couldn't help herself. She screamed. When her shout faded from her own ears, she realized she could hear voices. Not from far away, either; maybe she wasn't buried as deeply as she thought.

  As loud as she could, Donia shouted for help. Outside, someone cleared his throat. "Someone survived in there," he noted. Donia recognized the voice.

  It was the cultist who had spoken earlier. And he wasn't alone; several others muttered along with him. Just when she had thought things couldn't get any worse. The thought of other people outside, not far away, actually calmed her down. For the first time, she managed to take a calm look at her surroundings.

  Piles of ice, many the size of boulders, had fallen all around her. None of them rested on her directly, for which she was thankful. Several could have crushed her to death.

  Upon further inspection, there were gaps here and there around her. She might even be able to lever herself into a sitting position. Taking a deep breath, and ignoring her pain, Donia wriggled inch by inch up, so that she wouldn't have to lie trapped under the ice. The speaker outside wouldn't shut up, though. "Was it the lady who made it?" he called. "Do you have the boy with you?" Donia was having trouble breathing through the pain, but the thought of Nikolos took the rest of the breath from her lungs. she wished that the collapsing pillar of ice had managed to crush her, too.

  "Let me out and we'll talk about it," Donia managed to yell. "Hmmm...no, I don't think I will," the speaker said cheerily. "Though you couldn't have been more of a help to us, really. All that blood and noise and power flying around. The Frozen One is stirring. He just needs one more push. I'm going to do you a favor; I'll allow you to be one of the first witnesses to the birth of a new Tower."

  Donia had a little pride left, so she only screamed at them. She didn't threaten. She didn't beg. But she was going to die buried alive under a thousand tons of ice; she felt she was due a little screaming. She had heard nothing but her own shouts for so long that she almost didn't believe it when she heard another sound. "Um," someone said. "Hello?" It sounded scared. Vulnerable. Young. "Nikolos?" she asked, barely willing to hope. "Traveler Donia? Is that you?" Donia felt more relief at the sound of Nikolos' voice than she would have ever expected. "Nikolos. You're safe. Are you hurt?" "I don't know. I...I can't feel my legs." Panic entered the boy's words. "I can't feel my legs!" It took Donia many long minutes to calm Nikolos down. She was nearly at the end of her road, but giving in to terror wouldn't help anyone. She told

  Nikolos so.

  "They're outside," she told him. "I heard them. They're doing their ritual, and that gives us some time. I'll think of a plan, and as soon as we get an opportunity, I'll get us out of here."

  "Okay," Nikolos said, gasping out the word. "Okay." To her, waiting for an opportunity felt a little too much like doing nothing. She could call up enough power to shift the ice, but doing so might destabilize the entire pile and crush her. Besides, she had no idea where

  Nikolos was. Anything she did might kill him. She had some bonded creatures who could dig her out, but her summons had failed earlier.

  If she had to, she would try summoning every being of Helgard whose name she knew. She would keep it up until her voice failed her or something got through. summon him earlier. She wouldn't call anything else into an unknown danger until she had no other choice.

  The cultists hadn't left. They still spoke with one another outside her frozen prison. Occasionally Donia heard a crunching footstep on the ice, or a single word made oddly clear. Some of them began to chant.

  When she yelled, they ignored her. She shouted until her throat hurt and she started coughing, but she never got another response. That left her sitting there with her injuries, propped up against the bitter cold of the ice. Even through her Helgard training and her thick coat, the chill of the ice seeped into her bones. She needed something to distract her from the cold and the pain.

  Nikolos chose that moment to ask a question. "Traveler Donia?" "Hm?" "What are they doing out there?" he asked. "What are the Frozen Ones?" Donia thought back to her long years in the Helgard libraries, reading through the long history of myths and legends in the Tower of Winter. She had never taken the stories seriously, and comparative mythology was hardly her field, but some of it stuck.

  "Stories," she said. "Very old stories." "True ones?" "Nobody knows. These Travelers outside obviously think so. There's a legend that says that Helgard was once part of a greater world. A world that was being torn apart by unimaginable beings of terror and rage. The men of that world built the Tower of Winter to freeze these things, to keep them asleep for all of time. Now, we call those beings the Frozen Ones." "So the whole tower is nothing but a big icebox," Nikolos said.

  "Right now, I can believe it," Donia replied, pulling her coat closer. Outside, the chanting of the cultists grew louder. The light beneath her flickered.

  Time passed, she wasn't sure quite how much, but Nikolos said nothing. Donia had seen people fall asleep and freeze, here in the Tower. They moved and spoke a little less, and then still less, and finally not at all. It was hard to notice the transition.

  If that happened to Nikolos, she would never forgive herself. Forget what the Overlord would do to her; Nikolos was a fifteen-year-old boy, raised by was responsible for him, and she had put him here.

  The pain shooting down the right side of her body didn't matter. She had to keep him awake, aware, and alive until she could find a way to get him out of here.

  "Both your parents are Travelers," Donia called. Nikolos said nothing for so long that Donia's heart dropped, but he finally grunted in agreement.

  "Did you never take the tests?" "...every week since I was ten," Nikolos said. "They put me through every test known to mankind. I've spent the night in Asphodel gardens; I've had a

  Corvinus raven read my mind; I even hiked up a mountain in Ornheim." "Not Helgard?" That would be surprising, considering that his father was one of the most skilled and powerful Helgard Travelers in the world.

  Nikolos laughed for a moment, and then gasped in pain. Still, he forced his words out. "Oh yeah. Helgard more than anything. They forced me to keep an icefang as a pet for months, to see if I would bond with it. They didn't get rid of it until the third time it chased me up a bookshelf and wouldn't let me come down. Another time, they brought me to the edge of the Badari Desert, and gave me this little frozen goblet. They told me that, if Helgard accepted me, then the goblet would fill up with water, and I'd be fine. I passed out six hours in, and my father had to get an Avernus Traveler to fly me out."

  "That sounds terrible," Donia said honestly. She had to keep him talking. The cold was starting to slice through even her, so she could only imagine how Nikolos must feel.

  "It wasn't so bad," the boy said. "If I was a Helgard Traveler, then I could become Overlord after my father. Even if I Traveled a different Territory, at least I could do something worthwhile." "It's not like Travelers are the only ones worth anything," Donia said. "Most people aren't Travelers, and they live perfectly productive lives."

  "Yeah," Nikolos said, "let me just go and sell carpets for the rest of my life. That's just as good as calling fire from the sky." He sighed. "Anyway," he went on, "what about you? Did your parents have you tested?" “Not exactly,” Donia responded. A real conversation, at last. Some part of her was convinced that, if they could just keep talking, everything would turn out all right.

  “My mother works for the Seamstress Guild when she can, and my father test. And it would never have occurred to them anyway.” “Hold on a moment,” Nikolos said. “Is Master Sarkis your father?” Donia smiled, even though she knew no one could see her. The trust that

  Overlord Vasilios had for Donia’s father was one of the main reasons why she had been trusted with this mission in the first place. And the boy hadn’t even known who she really was.