The Gate of Gods (Fall of the Ile-Rien)

by Martha Wells

  Nicholas pushed away from the cabinet with a tired grimace. “I think your curiosity is about to be satisfied, Niles.”

  Istill can’t believe the Gardier came from these people,” Halian said thoughtfully, leaning back on the rail and looking across the deck. He was a big man, weathered by sun and sea, his long graying hair tied back in a simple knot. He had married Giliead’s mother, Karima, some years ago, a second marriage for both of them, for love rather than land or family influence.

  Ilias turned to look, the wind tossing his hair. They had gotten everyone bundled onto the ship and escaped the haze of mist surrounding the island. Now the older Aelin were up in the bow, drinking in the limitless blue vault of the sky, the warm sun and the sea. It made Ilias remember what Obelin had told them, that before the Aelin were trapped they had lived a wandering life, traveling long distances from their home. They had been imprisoned in the fortress so long they must have forgotten what it was like to move. “I don’t think they believe it yet either,” he said ruefully. After their time in Capistown, Ilias had missed the open sea himself. Sailing on the Ravenna had been very fine, standing at mountain height above the water, but being close enough to catch the spray was good too. It was almost enough to let him forget what they were heading into.

  Halian had told them the waterpeople had climbed up on the dock at Cineth and practiced their usual method of passing on a message, which was to tell everyone in earshot until someone took action. The word had reached Halian quickly, and he had borrowed this ship, the Importune, to come after them. It also meant that everyone would know they were back.

  The younger Aelin were everywhere, down in the hold trying to talk to the rowers despite the language barrier, up in the bow, atop the steering platform. Halian had had to pull a few crewmen off the oars over the objections of their rowing mates and give them the job of making sure no one fell overboard. Aras was trying to help at this task, and Vervane was sitting with Meretrisa and Elon in the stern cabin. Tremaine and Gerard were both asleep back there as well, which Ilias was glad of, as they both looked as if they needed it. One of the crew was guarding Balin, giving Cimarus a respite.

  “They truly have nowhere to go?” Halian asked, watching Davret catch one of the younger boys and swing him around in pure glee, her skirt twirling around her.

  “Not that we know of,” Giliead told him, looking out over the waves. They were making for Cineth, following the forested hills of the shoreline. “The Gardier who came after us were ready to kill them all, even the children. There’s something about this man, this Castines, the one who trapped them in the fortress. If he’s as important as we think, the Gardier would probably kill them just for knowing he ever existed.”

  Halian nodded grimly, looking out over the sea. After a moment he shot a look at Giliead. “You want to tell me now what’s wrong?”

  Ilias took a deep breath. They had already told Halian briefly about the Ravenna’s voyage to Capidara, about Arites’s fate and their discoveries on their odd journey back. They hadn’t told him what had happened during their escape from the Gardier world.

  Giliead hesitated, his eyes still on the not-so-distant shore. He shifted to face Halian. “I used curses.”

  Ilias managed to keep himself from looking guiltily around to see if anyone else was in earshot.

  Halian tilted his head, as if he hadn’t heard right, his brows drawing together. “What?”

  “We were trapped in the Gardier world, with no Rienish wizard to get us out,” Giliead told him, his face bare of any emotion, as if all this meant nothing. “I could hear the dead Gardier wizard, trapped inside the crystal we had captured. She told me a curse to make the Gardier stop firing on us, so we could reach the flying whale tethered to the roof. I made it work. Then she gave me the curse to let us take the flying whale back to our world, so we could get back to the Ravenna. I made that work too. When the Gardier found us in the fortress, when Tremaine and Gerard were gone, I talked to their crystal and it told me the curse to make the Gardier weapons break, in exchange for killing it.”

  Halian had said “But—” three times during that short speech. Now he shook his head, aghast, his expression sickened. “I don’t understand, how is that possible?” He looked at Ilias, who just looked away. This is not going well.

  Halian stared at Giliead for a long moment. “You know what they’re going to say, don’t you? That you’ve been too lenient in the past with people accused of cursing, that you let people go when you shouldn’t have, that that’s why Ixion tricked you into bringing him to Andrien. That it’s corrupted you.”

  Ilias swore. This again. Angry past bearing, knowing he should keep his mouth shut, he said roughly, “We didn’t bring Ixion to Andrien, we brought a man named Licias whose family had been killed by a curseling. We were tricked, fine, but corruption had nothing to do with it. And we were right about the Rienish wizards, the god said so.”

  Halian ignored him, still watching Giliead. He asked quietly, “What do you think the god is going to say about this?”

  “I’ll find out.” Giliead faced him directly, his eyes giving nothing away, but the tension in his body belied his calm tone. “What do you say about it?”

  Halian watched him for a moment more, then shook his head and walked away.

  Ilias gripped the rail, looking out at the sea. He felt sick. He had thought he had been anticipating this all along, but the truth was that deep down he hadn’t believed in it. He had really thought Halian and the others would stand by them. Stand by Giliead. “You think that’s… that?”

  Giliead took a deep breath. “He’ll wait for what the god decides.”

  “Why should he wait?” Ilias said through gritted teeth. The sick sensation of being punched in the gut was rapidly turning into something else. All we’ve done for them, he thought, seething, all those years of fighting and killing to keep them safe, can’t that count for something? “Why can’t he trust you?” he burst out, caught between grief and rage and the pure pain of betrayal. “Why can’t he trust me?” He flung a hand in the air. “Does he really think you’d—” He sputtered, unable to put it into words. Participate in the kind of corruption that led wizards to kill indiscriminately, driven by nothing but greed and lust, feeding off fear and pain. “And that I’d help?”

  Giliead shook his head. For a long time he didn’t answer, then he just said simply, “We don’t have anywhere to stay in town.”

  Ilias opened his mouth, closed it again, stopped by the faint catch in Giliead’s voice. We can’t go home. If Karima, if the others, felt as Halian did, they didn’t have a home.

  Ilias had faced that before, when he was a child and his family had left him out in the hills to die. He knew that to a certain extent he had never trusted anyone in the same way again, never felt as secure about his adopted family as those born into it. But Giliead hadn’t faced this before. And Giliead had prepared himself for this, was trying very hard to stay calm. Ilias took a deep breath, and another, until he could speak without shouting or snarling. “We can stay in the god’s cave.”

  Giliead said nothing for a moment, looking away, the wind whipping his hair around to shield his face. Then he just put an arm around Ilias’s shoulders.

  Tremaine woke, startled, at the thump that vibrated through the hull when the oars were shipped. She sat up on the floor of the cabin, bleary-eyed and feeling as if she had missed something important. Elon lay on the bench built into the wall, cushioned by pillows and blankets, Eliva seated on the floor next to him. Most of the rest of the space was taken up by baskets used for provisions and a rack of red clay amphorae. “I think we’re there,” Eliva said a little nervously, bracing herself against the cabin floor.

  Tremaine grabbed her bag and stumbled out into the brilliant sun and a view of Cineth’s harbor.

  The long curve of land was sheltered on one side by a high promontory. Atop it was a stone pyramid tower that acted as a lighthouse. On the other side of the harbor was a long
breakwater of tumbled blocks. Above the stone docks, Cineth sprawled across a series of low hills, the buildings mostly white stone with red tile roofs, none taller than two stories, with a few round fortresslike structures that Tremaine now knew were granaries crowning the hills. The whole was dotted with shade trees, standing in the gardens and market plazas.

  Along the waterfront there were stone stalls with wooden roofs, where men and women haggled over cargoes or hauled boxes and baskets back and forth. Gray gulls wheeled overhead. Most of the fishing boats were docked at short stone piers, and the war galleys like this ship were stored in long wooden sheds along the far bank. But as she studied the harbor front, she saw something new had been added: at regular intervals there were heavy wood scaffolds draped with ropes, with various-shaped levers sticking out and rocks piled on their wooden bases to stabilize them. Tremaine recognized catapults of different sizes, and several onagers, all aimed toward the harbor. If the Gardier came to Cineth again, the inhabitants were a little more prepared this time. But even the naphtha jugs wouldn’t be much help against artillery or bombs dropped by airships. And Cineth had no spheres to protect it against the Gardier magic.

  The sails were down and their galley was already being hauled into place along one of the docks. The rowers were coming up from below, stretching and calling greetings to the people waiting ashore. Even though Halian had reported that the Gardier attacks had been further down the coast, it was still a relief to see that the place looked undisturbed. Only the Arcade, a long stone building housing shops, still bore the smoke stains and signs of damage from the Gardier gunship that the Ravenna had destroyed outside the harbor.

  The Aelin were in an excited clump in the bow, pointing, talking to one another, the children bouncing with hysterical excitement, as if they were on an excursion boat. Oh, God, Tremaine thought, clapping a hand to her forehead. This is going to be a circus. As soon as their feet touched the dusty stone of the harbor front, the Aelin would all be wandering off in a dozen directions. Fortunately, Cineth wasn’t exactly a bustling metropolis and it should be fairly easy to round them up again.

  The Capidarans stood along the rail near the Aelin. Meretrisa was actually on her feet, Aras and Vervane supporting her. Gerard was nearer the bow, speaking to Obelin, who looked bewildered from too many new sights and sounds, his face and balding head reddened from too much sun.

  In all the milling around, she finally saw Giliead and Ilias, standing down the rail from the others, isolated. She shouldered her bag and went to join them, grabbing the rail to steady herself as the boat sloshed and bumped toward its place along the dock. Ilias glanced at her. Even when they had been about to storm a stronghold in the middle of a Gardier city and steal an airship with which they had no guarantee of being able to create a world-gate, he hadn’t looked this tense. Giliead’s expression was as implacable as stone, though she could see the tension in the line of his jaw. She swallowed whatever comment she had been about to make, since there was nothing to be said, and just leaned against Ilias.

  The galley slid into its slip, and as the men along the dock hurried to tie it off, Giliead vaulted the rail, landing on the stone platform and striding away. Ilias squeezed Tremaine’s arm and leapt the rail after him.

  “Damn it.” Tremaine pushed away, elbowing through the crowd of sailors. “Gerard,” she said as she reached him. “Ilias and Gil already went ashore, I’m going after them.”

  Gerard glanced at her, nodding absently. Then he paused, frowning. “They’ve gone to see the god?”

  “Yes. I want to—”

  He touched the bag that hung at his side, the one that held the sphere. “Perhaps I’d better come along.”

  Tremaine considered that for half a moment but shook her head reluctantly. “No. I think you’d better stay back here with the Aelin and the Capidarans.”

  He looked down at her, concerned. “Are you certain?”

  “No, but they need to stay out of this. And hell, you’re a sorcerer, you need to stay out of it too.” The god had given both Gerard and Florian its approval on their first visit here, but if Giliead was going to be repudiated by it…Tremaine didn’t want to take any chances.

  Gerard nodded reluctant assent and Tremaine clambered awkwardly over the rail, one of the dockworkers catching her arm to help her down. As she hurried after Ilias and Giliead, Gerard called after her, “Be careful!”

  She caught up with Ilias at the Arcade and followed him and Giliead up the hard-packed dirt path through the town, past white clay-covered houses with fruit trees leaning over the walled courtyards. Children played around the fountain houses in the communal courts, dogs barked, people recognized Giliead and called out or pointed or stared, surprised to see him back, or just surprised that no one had told them about it yet.

  If the god repudiated Giliead, he would be disgraced in front of all these people, the entire extended Andrien family, everyone he had grown up with. Trudging up the dusty road, Tremaine had the sudden realization that her own problems before the war had been minuscule compared to this. Being kidnapped into a mental asylum and branded by gossip as a madwoman, no matter how degrading she had found it at the time, had been barely an inconvenience in the larger scope of life. No one whose opinion she had really cared about had been affected by it, not Nicholas certainly, and not Gerard or Arisilde; Arisilde, in fact, wouldn’t have particularly minded had she actually been raving mad. And it hadn’t changed the opinion of her friends or acquaintances in the theater world; with all the quarrels, affairs, satirical newspaper columns, drunken sprees and being caught in opium dens with high-ranking members of the Ministry, they had barely noticed.

  They reached Cineth’s central plaza, a large area of open ground where spreading trees shaded little markets of awnings and small colorful tents. The markets were crowded today, with men and women buying and selling pottery, baskets of fruit and vegetables, fleeces, chickens, goats. The plaza was bordered by several long two-story buildings with columns and brightly painted pediments. The large one with the pillared portico was the town Assembly, the smaller round one with a domed roof was a mint and the one with the square façade was the lawgiver’s house. The city fountain house was next to it, a low square structure with sea serpents carved along its pediment.

  Near the center of the plaza was an old oak with heavy spreading branches that had long ago sunk to the ground under their own weight. The goat skull was still there as a warning that the god had inhabited the tree; it was stuck up on the same post but now sprouted dozens of colored ribbons tied to the horns as well as flowers and strings of beads and copper disks.

  Tremaine looked around for Nicanor or Visolela, the city’s appointed lawgiver and his wife, who wielded more power than he did. The only person who seemed to be expecting them was a young man waiting beside the goat skull. His hair was a dark blond, tied back in a multitude of braids, and he was nearly Giliead’s height, his olive skin contrasting with his light hair and silver armbands. He wore a leather jerkin and a sleeveless yellow shirt over his pants and boots and a sword strapped across his back.

  Giliead and Ilias halted a few paces from him, and Tremaine stopped well behind, sensing that this would not be a good moment to draw attention to herself. She wiped sweaty palms on her shirt and resolved to keep her mouth shut for once. This close, she could now see the man’s face was lined by more than sun and weather and that he also had an old burn scar on his shoulder. She thought he was still young, but life had obviously aged him prematurely.

  “Herias,” Giliead greeted him, his voice even, that stonelike calm making him seem almost indifferent. Tremaine knew him well enough by now that the more impenetrable his expression the more upset he actually was. And she could tell from the tense line of Ilias’s back that he was nearly ready to explode from worry.

  Herias flicked a wary glance at Ilias, then his gaze settled on Giliead. “You smell like curses.”

  God, no, Tremaine thought, sickness settling in the pit o
f her stomach. This man had to be the Chosen Vessel of Tyros, the one who had watched over Cineth while Giliead was gone.

  “It’s because of the Rienish wizards,” Cimarus said suddenly, and Tremaine jumped. Intent on the confrontation, she hadn’t realized he stood beside her. She glanced back, seeing Cletia hurrying toward them. Both must have followed them up from the harbor and Tremaine had just been too preoccupied to notice. “Their curses got us home. But the god met their wizard before we left, so that must be all right.” Cimarus threw an uncertain look at Tremaine, asking for her support. “Right?”

  “Uh, yes, that’s right,” Tremaine agreed hurriedly, just as Cletia stepped up beside Cimarus.

  “Yes, that’s true,” Cletia said, but her grim expression told Tremaine that she didn’t think this was going to work either. “We must all smell of curses, but it’s—”

  “Cletia,” Ilias interrupted quietly, not looking at her. “Don’t.”

  Cletia subsided uneasily. A crowd was gathering, merchants from the market, men and women who had come to the city center to buy olive oil or trade cattle and sheep, or who had followed them up here from the harbor. Tremaine saw Halian, watching with a kind of sick horror. She recognized other crewmen from the Swift, including Dannor, who on the Isle of Storms had objected so strongly to boarding the Ravenna that the delay had almost gotten them killed. She also recognized some faces from the council; among them was Pella, a lean spare man who was the lawgiver’s deputy and also the leader of the political opposition to the alliance with Ile-Rien. They were all quiet, so quiet all she could hear was the breeze in the tree leaves, the crunch of the dry grass underfoot, the lowing of a cow in the distance. A mob should make noise, Tremaine thought, the back of her neck prickling with unease. Rienish mobs always made noise. Gerard’s pistol felt heavy in the back of her belt. Please, don’t anybody make me use it, she begged silently.