House of Blades (The Traveler's Gate Trilogy) by Will Wight Read Free Book Online Page B

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.
    One of the collared men—a butcher, who had more than once given Simon a meal—shouted and jumped forward, leaping onto a nearby shoulder and grappling at him with bound hands. The other ten captives staggered toward him, jerked along by the rope.
    Cormac turned his back to the cave and moved toward the struggling prisoner. The soldier shoved the bound man to the ground, kicking him as he huddled in his bonds.
    “Unfortunately for you,” Cormac said, “we seem to have a spare.” He raised one cupped hand, which filled with a dark and swirling mass of clouds. The tiny mass began to spin, faster and faster, and to fill with flashes of unseen lightning, until he held a thunderstorm in the palm of his hand.  
    Cormac looked over the villagers huddled in the rest of the cave. “He was disobedient. This is the punishment for the disobedient.”
    As Cormac stepped toward the butcher and raised his arm, Simon cried out. The light from Cormac’s torch had fallen on the woman at the end of the line, revealing her face for the first time.
    It was Leah.

C HAPTER F OUR :
    H IDDEN T ALENTS

    Cormac held a hand over his head, and the storm inside it flashed. Thorned purplish vines sprouted from the earth around the captive butcher, crawling up his legs like questing snakes. The man's scream was terrible. Each vine had inch-long thorns that dragged over the man's skin, leaving deep red lines that trickled down his flesh. He clawed desperately at the vines, trying to peel them apart, but all he accomplished was shredding his fingers.
    Simon had never seen anyone in that much agony. A twisting sympathetic pain in his own stomach made him think he was going to vomit, but he couldn't look away. Someone should help, he knew that. His hand tightened on the hilt of his sword. But what could an ordinary blade do?
    He stood there, frozen.
    The dying man continued to produce a whimpering scream until the storm in Cormac’s hand flashed again, and blue sparks jumped from all the thorns at once. The man convulsed, spasming like he had lost all control of his muscles. The air filled with the smell of charred meat and hair. The other people in the cave screamed and pushed back into the rock; Simon himself felt paralyzed. The other captives tied to the same rope tried to pull away, but they were held firmly by their Damascan captors. Simon noticed that many of the soldiers looked sickened, and some had turned completely away, but none dared oppose the Traveler.
    After a few moments, the sparks stopped and the body slumped to the ground. His skin was red and swollen, and smoke rose gently from his chest. The smell was nauseating, and Simon heard several people behind him empty their stomachs on the cave floor.
    The purple-green vines slithered back into the rocky ground and vanished.
    Cormac looked vaguely disgusted, as though he had been forced to step on a spider while wearing a silk slipper. He waved at the smoke in front of his face and grimaced. "You take my point," he said. “Follow quietly, and I won’t need to make another example.”
    The Damascan soldiers pulled on the rope of captives, trying to maneuver them into position, but now everyone in the line was panicking, trying desperately to get as far away from Cormac as possible.
    "Honestly," Cormac said. He tossed the torch to a nearby soldier. "Struggling solves nothing. We’re leaving.”
    Cormac raised his hand-held thunderstorm over the struggling mass of captured villagers. Simon caught a glimpse of Leah's panicked face as she strained against the chains on her limbs and the collar around her neck. She didn’t even look