A Girl From Nowhere (The Firewall Trilogy #1) - James Maxwell Page 0,146

soon as Taimin asked me to. No one has come in or out, not while I’ve been here.”

Blixen swept his gaze over his warriors and beckoned them to follow. He then walked to the heavy door, but rather than open it he lifted his leg and, despite the door’s size and thickness, he kicked hard. A sharp clatter split the air as the hinges broke. With a crash the door fell inward and tumbled to the ground. Vance jumped when it made a resounding boom. Blixen then entered the tower, and his escort followed.

It was the last thing Vance wanted to do, but all he could think of was Cora, and whether she was inside. He turned to Elsa and inclined his chin in the direction of the doorway.

Elsa thought for a moment and then nodded. “Go with him.”

Vance took a deep breath. Then, without thinking too hard, he hurried to the tower and stepped over the splintered door.

A circular space confronted him, paved with stone. Moonlight shone through a row of high oval windows. Already Blixen and his escort were climbing a winding series of oversized steps that curved around the inside of the tower’s perimeter.

As Vance began to climb, Blixen glanced over his shoulder and saw him.

Vance swallowed. “The Protector should be on the highest level,” he said.

Blixen didn’t reply but continued his ascent. Vance trailed behind the group, not wanting to follow too closely. He passed archways leading to storerooms filled with crates and saw corridors lined with linen mats that might lead to sleeping quarters.

Still thinking about Cora, he saw that Blixen’s group had come to an abrupt halt.

The bax were several levels below the uppermost floor, but something had definitely attracted Blixen’s attention. Vance climbed the steps to see what it was. A wide archway opened up near the stairs, where it was easy to see through while passing. Vance couldn’t yet see what Blixen was looking at. A bax’s thick body was blocking his view.

Vance instead watched Blixen.

Blixen’s chest rose and fell but he stayed where he was and said nothing to his companions. They too remained silent. Vance hung back, waiting for them to move, and then they did. Blixen left the steps and walked with a heavy tread toward the archway. His breathing sounded labored.

Vance climbed higher. He gasped. From his new position, he finally understood what Blixen had seen.

Through the archway was a wide, open space. Vance’s stomach churned when he saw corpses that had been stuffed, mounted, and arranged on display. Closest was a trull, powerfully muscled, with a bare chest and his jaws open to display his curved incisors. A pair of young skalen, a male and a female, stood together. The diamond pattern of their skin reflected the pale light that poured through the windows.

Vance walked slowly as Blixen and his escort entered the arched opening. Vance’s hesitant footsteps finally faltered. He stopped at the room’s entrance.

The Protector’s macabre museum was fully revealed. Vance saw a pair of bax, one from each gender, standing above three bax young. A mantorean had his body arched, posed with a bowstring against his triangular face. All of the different races held weapons appropriate to their kind: a club for the trull, javelins for the skalen, and axes for the bax. Every creature was perfectly still, supported by sharp poles embedded in their bodies.

Vance didn’t want to go on. He watched Blixen come to a halt in front of a female bax. As he reached out and touched her face, Blixen’s body quivered with suppressed emotion.

Vance knew that it was time to leave. Keeping his head bowed, he retreated and waited. Soon he heard footsteps climbing the stairway once more.

Blixen was on his way to the top of the tower.

Darkness seeped into the observation room, banished only by the moonlight and the cool green glow of a handful of aurelium lamps. At the end of a normal day, the Protector would be enjoying his dinner. But this wasn’t a normal day.

“Galen didn’t make it,” he said softly.

He stood near the edge of the observation room’s floor, where he had a direct view of the army outside the city. Strangely, the mass of distant figures remained half a mile from the wall. In the time since he had last looked, the gates had parted, and now stood wide open. He struggled to make sense of it.

The Protector’s mind worked furiously. There had to be some way for him to salvage something from the