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

by Martha Wells

  I don’t think I’m going to need more explosives.

  Ilias rolled over, struggling to sit up as the paralyzing curse faded away. He could see the fall of moon- and starlight through the openings in the high ceiling and it gave shape to the dim outlines of the giant circle chamber. “We’re really back here, the fortress,” he said incredulously. They were near the spot where they had left the Gardier who had survived the attack; someone must have come for them because both the living and the dead were gone, only bloodstains and the scattered remnants of the ropes they had been tied with were left behind.

  Giliead grabbed his arm, demanding, “Are you all right?”

  “No. Yes.” Ilias shook him off. He was still trembling with rage and an urgent need to kill Castines or Orelis or whatever that thing called itself. “We don’t have a sphere, a crystal. We can’t go back. She’s going to kill herself to kill them, she’d never bring Arisilde there.”

  Giliead just looked at him, shaking his head helplessly. “Maybe not. Maybe she meant to—”

  “Maybe,” Ilias snarled, and slammed his hand against the stone floor. “Was Tremaine right? Would breaking that spiral really break all the curses?” If it was for nothing, if it was all for a lie…

  Giliead gestured in frustration, started to speak. Then his face went still and he slowly turned to look out over the shadowy room, the dusty carvings half-visible in the blue-white shafts of cold moonlight.

  Ilias felt his anger freeze, sinking into sick dread. “What is it?”

  “The curses are fading away, the curses in the circles.” Ilias could barely see him in the dimness but he knew Giliead’s eyes were fixed on that distance that no one but Chosen Vessels could see. “They’re fading away, dying.”

  Oh, no.” Florian struggled to her feet, dazed. Her knees and elbows had been scraped in the fall and for a moment refused to bend right. She was in the Ravenna’s empty second ballroom, in the circle they had drawn to reach Lodun. Gerard lay nearby, unconscious, his face pale and bruised, his breathing shallow. Sense caught up with her. Gerard was out, Ilias and Giliead were stuck back in their world with no sorcerer and no sphere, it would take too long to explain the situation to Kressein or Avrain or Kevari, who must all be occupied defending the ship, Colonel Averi was injured or dead, it would take too long to get Niles. She bolted for the doors.

  Her heart pounding, she ran out and down the length of the lounge. She glimpsed two airships outside hanging over the sea, another in flames, just settling to the blue surface. A bomb blast went off, somewhere not so distant. She banged through the doors to the stairwell and pounded down the stairs, so frantic she almost missed the landing she wanted. There was someone running after her, calling her name, but she ignored him. She heard another explosion that made the deck under her feet shiver. Out of the stairwell, down the corridor and across the hall, into the main ballroom foyer.

  There were two guards there who stared at her in amazement when she flung herself on the embossed leather doors, pounding on them, and shouting, “Arisilde! Arisilde, please!”

  “Stop her?” one of the bewildered men asked.

  The other shook his head, watching her in consternation. “She’s one of the sorcerers, so— I don’t know. Miss? Miss, what—?”

  Florian couldn’t take the time to explain. She pounded on the soft leather again. “We have to get Tremaine! I know she wouldn’t kill herself, I know she had a plan. You’re the only one who can—”

  The door flew open and she staggered through into the dark ballroom. The doors slammed shut behind her, leaving her in darkness for a heartbeat, then every light in the big room blazed into life.

  The original circle was still there but new symbols had been painted inside it, branching off from it in a loose spiral like the master gate in the ruin. The symbols were more neatly painted than Castines’s master circle, and the entire spiral was much smaller. Florian stared, realizing suddenly what she was looking at. “You made another master circle.”

  Arisilde stepped around a pillar and came striding toward her, waving his hands excitedly. “No time for questions, we’re in a bother.” He pointed toward the front corner of the room, where a different spiral of writing spread out across the floor from the main circle and climbed up one of the pillars. “I’ve connected our circles to theirs, but when the last of their master circle is all gobbled up, this will be eaten too, and no more gates. So you must be quick, like a little bunny rabbit.”

  “Right.” Florian nodded rapidly. I hope he meant what I think he means. “I don’t have a sphere.”

  He looked down at her, his violet eyes already going distant. “Just call for me. Be sure to be in the same circle, or I won’t be able to find you.”

  “I will.” She started to step into the circle and fell flat on her face.

  There was a rough stone floor under her instead of the Ravenna’s marble tiles. Swearing in shock, Florian pushed herself up and saw the gray walls with their frantic writing arching up over her. She heard a not-so-distant crash. She pushed to her feet only to stagger sideways as the ground swayed under her. She saw cracks creeping up the walls, and the opening at the top rained stone chips and dust down on her head as it widened. Mentally pleading Don’t fall yet, don’t fall yet, she caught her balance and ran for the archway.

  Tremaine retreated hastily from the cracks spidering across the spiral. The stone underfoot shuddered again and a massive bass groan echoed through the chamber; the sound of walls shifting. You know, she told herself, hastily climbing the swaying steps, blowing yourself up when you had the chance would have been quick. The satchel with the explosives was on the far side of the room where Castines had flung it, on the other side of an inexorably widening crack, so that was out of the question.

  The stairwell was shaking, dust falling from overhead, so Tremaine stayed on the ledge, looking out over the chamber. Rienish sorcerers had created Great Spells that lasted for years and years after their deaths; obviously whatever was keeping the ruin intact and airborne wasn’t one of them. Stupid worthless Castines, Tremaine thought sourly. The gods were right; Syprian sorcerers really weren’t good for anything.

  Footsteps sounded on the stairs behind her and she yelled and spun around. Florian rounded the corner of the landing just below, sliding to a stop as she saw Tremaine. Am I crazy? It looked like Florian, her clothes dusty, her cheek scraped and the sleeve of her sweater torn from her fall. “What the hell—” Tremaine managed, flabbergasted.

  “Arisilde sent me!” Florian shouted, gesturing wildly. “Come on, damn it!”

  Tremaine plunged down the stairs. She realized Florian must have been shouting for her the whole way up here, but she hadn’t been able to hear her. Florian pushed off from the wall and they ran down and into the passage, the stone swaying erratically under their feet. “Arisilde made a spiral in the Ravenna, and sort of spliced it into the Gardier spiral, to make a gate to the circle we came in on,” Florian panted. “But he’s making it work all himself, and protecting the Ravenna, so I don’t know—”

  “Florian, you don’t have a sphere,” Tremaine pointed out as they ducked back through the fire pit chamber. The electrified air spell must have vanished when Florian was separated from the sphere; the only evidence of it was several dead Liaisons, their bodies twisted and convulsed.

  “I know that, he’s doing it all himself!” Florian said frantically.

  As they ran through the second domed chamber and into the first, Tremaine began, “Yes but—” Just then a thundering crash sounded from behind them. The floor dipped and Tremaine staggered across the line of the circle.

  Her stomach lurched and she fell flat on her face. But it was on the tiled floor of the Ravenna’s ballroom which swayed only with the welcome movement of the ocean.

  Florian slammed into the floor beside her, then rolled over with a groan. Tremaine managed to sit up, saying, “Never mind. It worked.” She wished she knew how to faint, but all she could do was sit numbly o
n the floor. It was deathly quiet, though maybe Tremaine’s damaged hearing just couldn’t detect the Ravenna’s normal noises; there was no sound of bomb blasts from outside the metal hull and she was fairly sure she would be able to hear those. If it was true, if Orelis’s death had released the spell that had imprisoned the crystals’ unwilling inhabitants, those airships would have no defense against spells or anything else.

  “That was… close.” A dazed Florian pushed herself upright, pulling at her torn sweater to look at a bleeding elbow. “I don’t know how he got us there and back without going through the staging world, but if he hadn’t…”

  If he hadn’t, I’d be dead, and Florian too for trying to come after me, Tremaine thought. “You rescued me again,” she said blankly. Her head throbbed slowly, the pain settling in just above her right ear.

  Florian stared at her, cradling her elbow. “I thought this was the first time.”

  “Really? I—”

  “I have to go, Tremaine,” Arisilde said. He was suddenly kneeling in front of her. He looked the same as he had before, but his eyes were weary. She didn’t think she had ever seen him look tired before.

  “You took Orelis’s place, and made the circles work.” Tremaine wanted to be clear on that.

  “Yes. But it was very hard,” he agreed with a sigh. “I can see why she was so tired. I’ve done too much, Tremaine, and it’s all going away. I have to go away.”

  “You mean you have to die.” She could see the dark wooden walls through him, and she didn’t think he had been that transparent before.

  “I don’t have a choice anymore, I’m afraid. I’ve been mostly dead for a long time, I think it’s past the point to get on with the rest of it. And having seen an example of what comes of holding on to life for too long—” He waved his slender hands deprecatingly. “We wouldn’t want that, would we?”

  “No, we wouldn’t want that.” She could barely see him now and his voice was faint.

  “Tell your father good-bye for me. I’ll miss him. And when you see the god of Cineth again, tell it Orelis and Castines would never have come to Cineth. They feared the gods more than anything.”

  “Arisilde,” she said, but he was gone.

  They sat there in silence for a time. Tremaine pushed sweat-soaked hair out of her eyes and took a deep breath. He had forgotten there would be no gates to Cineth or anywhere else without him or Orelis. She would never know if Ilias and Giliead would be able to leave the fortress and get home safely. But you couldn’t chance trapping them here, away from everything they know, away from the god, to finish a war that no longer has anything to do with them, to be out of place forever.

  Watching her, Florian said hesitantly, “He left a lot of spheres. Maybe one of them is powerful enough to open a gate to Cineth….”

  Tremaine just looked at her. She knew it wasn’t true. Without a living sorcerer inside them, the spheres were just tools, dependent on whoever wielded them.

  Florian groaned under her breath. “I know, I know it won’t work. But they’ll be all right. And maybe Niles or someone will invent another way to get us there.”

  “Maybe.” Tremaine didn’t want to hope. It hurt too much, and she had always been a realist. She struggled to her feet, holding out a hand to Florian.

  Nicholas handed off the field glasses to Reynard, saying, “I don’t suppose you know where there’s a stockpile of arsenic?”

  “I thought of that already,” Reynard said with some asperity, hunkering down between the crenelations to focus the glasses on the plaza three stories below. “If we poison the water supply, we might as well cut our own throats.”

  “Hmm.” Nicholas wasn’t sure he agreed, but there was no point in arguing over it. It had been a long busy night and morning.

  The overcast sky made the plaza in front of Prince’s Gate fade into a gray dimness; the paving stones, the ancient towers of the old palace wall, the great arch of the Queen Ravenna Memorial, which stood like a prisoner in the center of the plaza, were all of the same gray stone and blurred by the fine rain. The great iron-sheathed doors of the gate stood out in rust-streaked black. Service Gardier armed with rifles, many of Rienish make scavenged on their march to Vienne, were collected in the plaza, readying themselves for another patrol through the city.

  The patrol was probably occasioned by the destruction of two generators late last night, the ones that had been powering the streetlamps in this section of the city. Or at least Nicholas hoped it was; that had certainly been his plan. The Gardier were going to make a show of force and use a sorcerer crystal to search for the saboteurs; Nicholas meant to make sure they found them relatively quickly.

  He glanced back at Madame Cusard and Berganmot’s young apprentice, whose name was Perrin. They were on the roof terrace of the oldest wing of Fontainon House, shielded from view by the wall atop it and also by the bulk of the house’s tower behind them. There had been a Gardier sentry up there, but he was dead now, his place taken by a young woman wearing his uniform cap and coat and holding his rifle. Anyone looking up from below wouldn’t notice the difference. Madame Cusard’s nephew Ricard was below with the other men and women, hastily gathered into the lower levels of the house and readying themselves for their own attack.

  The Cusards had identified and disposed of their two traitors after the Vintner’s Row mews trick, which had freed the rest of their recruits to participate in this. With the sphere’s help, Perrin had been able to get them past the Gardier wards to enter Fontainon House this morning. “Ready?” Nicholas asked him with a lifted brow.

  The boy looked up, his eyes alight. The sphere had been a revelation to him. He nodded. “Yes.”

  “As we said earlier, the important point is to wait for the sorcerer crystal. It’s—”

  “Here,” Reynard interrupted, lowering the glasses and drawing back from the opening in the wall. “He’s just come out of the gate.”

  Nicholas stooped hastily to look. Down below, a Gardier had just stepped out of the shelter of Prince’s Gate. The bad light and the distance meant Nicholas couldn’t see much detail about the man himself, but the large chunk of crystal he carried was fairly obvious. “Very good,” Nicholas muttered, and drew breath to give the order.

  Below, the Gardier staggered and fell to his knees as the crystal in his arms shattered, white light bursting out of it in a brief fountain that coalesced into drops, falling to the ground and vanishing. The men around him cried out or recoiled in shock.

  Nicholas and Reynard exchanged a startled look, then both turned to stare at Perrin, Nicholas demanding, “Did you do that?”

  “No, it wasn’t me!” He stepped close to peer past them. “Wasn’t the sphere either. But that crystal’s a deader.”

  Madame Cusard craned her neck to see. “Is it a trick? What does it mean?”

  Nicholas shook his head slowly. From the reactions of the men below, it didn’t look like a trick. But this was a question that would have to be settled later. He said, “It means we need to get started. Give the word to the others. Tell them no prisoners,” and reached for the rifle leaning against the wall.

  Chapter 20

  Cineth, the Syrnai

  Giliead and Ilias would have reached Cineth sometime that night, but rain had swelled the river and clouds covered the waning moon, so they decided to camp. Trying to cross the ford in the pitch-dark in high water would be suicidal, and from the news they had gotten from both the last village and the traders they had met, there was no reason to hurry.

  They had encountered the last trader along the muddy forest road. She was an older woman with three young husbands, one riding on the wagon with her and two on horseback, probably all acquired to help load and unload the wagon. They were transporting amphorae filled with either wine or olive oil, destined for the villages along the river valley. She had picked up her last load in Cineth, so she knew all there was to tell.

  Standing beside the horses in the light drizzle of rain, she had told Giliead,
“No, there’s been no word of the giant wizard ship, or any of the Rienish wizards, not since the rainy season started. And they said it’s been almost as long since they had word of a Gardier attack. A few days ago one of the small metal ships drifted into shore near a Gleaners’ village up the coast, but the Gleaners killed all the Gardier before the lawgiver could get there. The Chosen Vessel of Ancyra said she didn’t think there had been any wizards among them, but she and the lawgiver were too late, and there was nothing to be done.” The woman shrugged, looking curiously past Giliead to where Ilias stood. They were both wearing oiled leather cloaks dyed blue and gray, with the Hisian clan signs ripped off to keep from being shot at, and Ilias had his hood pulled up to hide his curse mark. He had been looking off into the dripping forest the whole time Giliead had been speaking to the trader. She asked, “Is your brother married?”

  “Yes,” Ilias said, and walked away. Giliead had nodded his thanks to the woman and followed. He had been able to hear the god since they first crossed back into its territory, and though it was too agitated at his return for him to get much sense out of it, he thought it would have shown him the Rienish if any of them had been within its boundaries.

  The fitful rain stopped by nightfall and they camped beside a fallen tree, finally managing to scavenge enough mostly dry wood from it to build a small smoky fire. There wasn’t much food left, just some cheese and dried pomegranates from the last village, and some tree-eggs, round white fungi that grew on exposed roots in damp weather and tasted a little like bread if you baked them in the ashes long enough. Ilias just poked at the food, anyway.

  Huddled in his cloak, Giliead finally said, “It’s good news, about the Gardier. If they didn’t have any wizard crystals, then breaking the spiral must have worked.”

  It had been fifty-three days, and they had tried not to talk about it. At first they had speculated so much on what had happened, what might have happened and what could have happened that they were almost telling stories to one another about it, each one further and further from the facts. After that they had been well occupied with climbing down the escarpment to get out of the fortress, then with killing or avoiding Hisian bandits. It was after they had gotten back into friendly territory that the things they weren’t talking about had begun to wear on them.