Free The Crimson Vault (The Traveler's Gate Trilogy) by Will Wight Page A

letting it fade back into the armory. Then he called steel and reached back to the armory, but not for the scimitar. He needed something bigger.
    The war-hammer was made entirely of mirror-bright Tartarus steel, so that it gleamed like a star in the dull yellow quartz-light. The Dragon’s Fangs themselves were made of Tartarus steel, which was all but unbreakable. This hammer was so massive that Kai felt its weight, even with Valinhall’s power flowing through him. He called stone, feeling his skin tighten as the shield settled over him.
    “It will be good to have our leader back,” the Eldest said.
    Kai swung, putting all the power he could summon into the blow. The wall exploded, filling the corridor with a noise like a mountain collapsing and blasting a cloud of dust, pebbles, and shrapnel into the hallway. Some of the rocks—a few the size of Kai’s fist—bounced off his impervious stone-shielded skin.
    But there wasn’t as much debris as he expected. He wondered at that for a moment before he realized that most of the wall had been blown out. Into the room on the other side.
    Through the ragged hole in the wall, Kai saw an enormous square room, tiled in bright blue and so tall that he couldn’t see the ceiling. It was lit entirely by those yellow quartz crystals, which had flared to life as soon as the wall opened up.
    The room held very little besides tile and glowing quartz, just a pedestal about waist-high on Kai. A sword levitated over that pedestal, point-down, revolving slowly in midair.
    The sword reminded him so much of Azura that his heart ached. It woke other memories, too, but those were even less pleasant.
    Mithra, the thirteenth Dragon’s Fang and the final sword forged by Valin the Wanderer, was only a few inches shorter than Azura’s seven feet. No one without the power of Valinhall could wield it. The blade was slightly curved along its entire length, and sharp on only the outside edge. That was where its resemblance to Azura ended.
    Where Azura’s hilt was wrapped in black, Mithra’s was wrapped in gold. A finger-thin line of pure gold also ran up the center of the blade, from hilt to tip. Kai knew from past experience that the gold was seemingly of one piece with the steel around it.
    Kai had asked about that, one evening long ago. Master, how did you get the gold into your sword?
    Valin had smiled gently and run a hand down the flat of his blade. This gold is special. I found it long ago and far away, in a city of light .
    He had a thousand stories about his “city of light,” and he would use them to keep the children entertained for hours. Of course, that was before he had killed King Zakareth the Fifth, before the Dragon Army was broken.
    Kai looked at Mithra, shining golden in the light.
    It wasn’t Valin’s sword anymore.
    The Eldest gestured, as though saying something, but the explosion of the wall still rang painfully in Kai’s ears. He didn’t mind. At least he didn’t have to listen to the Nye’s words anymore.
    Kai turned back to the Eldest, gesturing at his ears and shrugging helplessly. The Eldest folded his arms like a sulky child. That did much to improve Kai’s mood.
    When he turned back to Mithra, a fifteen-foot boulder stood in his way.
    As he watched, the boulder grew arms, slamming one down at Kai’s head. Only decades of training in the House allowed Kai to meet the blow, swinging his hammer up to meet the stone fist just as it would have crushed his skull into jelly. The war-hammer smashed into the fist, knocking it to the side just enough that it slammed into the tiles instead of reducing Kai to paste.
    The boulder grew a second arm. Then short, stubby legs. Then a head poked its way out of the enormous sandstone body.
    An amethyst gleamed like a single eye on the golem’s forehead.
    Kai still couldn’t hear much, but he was sure the Eldest was laughing.
    He dodged the golem’s fist a second time, just as his stone power ran out. Great. Now even a single