The Ships of Air (The Fall of Ile-Rein)

by Martha Wells

  She said coolly, “Those didn’t look like military buildings. If it’s a civilian town, that will just make it easier to find a boat to get back within range of the Wall Port spell circle.” It’s amazing how I sound like I know what I’m doing. It was better than sounding terrified.

  It convinced Basimi, at least. He nodded more firmly and turned his attention back to the controls. He was guiding the airship into another turn, bringing it further down toward the dunes below. “You’d better get back there. I’ll try to bring it to a stop and we can jump then.”

  Tremaine started for the door, then hesitated. “Don’t wait too long,” she told him, suddenly worried he might mean to sacrifice himself. She didn’t know if Basimi had the martyr temperament or not.

  “Don’t worry about me,” he assured her fervently. “I can’t wait to get rid of this damn thing.”

  Reassured on that score, Tremaine headed down the passage at a trot, wincing as it jarred her sore back. She found Dubos in the fuel room. He had his pack on the floor beside him and was attaching something with a long fuse to one of the machines there. “We’re nearly down,” she told him. He nodded and waved her on.

  She passed down the row of crew quarters, hesitating outside the room where Arites’s body lay. Ilias had said a pyre would do, that the method didn’t matter as long as the rites had been done. She shook herself and went on.

  The others were in the cargo hold and Tremaine did a rapid head count, making sure they were all there. The door was open and Ilias and Giliead had taken the cargo netting off the crates and were rigging it up as a rope ladder, tieing it off to the hooks near the hatch with Cimarus and Molin’s help. “Brilliant,” Tremaine muttered to herself. She sure wouldn’t have thought of it. Fresh air heavy with damp and the salty-foul scent of marshland streamed in through the opening.

  An anxious Cletia waited with their packs in the center of the room; someone had wrapped a rope around the box with the sorcerer crystal, tieing it up like a parcel with a loop to sling over a shoulder. Tremaine grabbed her pack out of the pile, opening it to see Arites’s bag tucked inside. She made sure her pistol and the remaining cartridges were still there, then grabbed a couple of Gardier pistols from an open crate and scooped in extra ammunition for them. She closed the flap, fastening it down tightly, and slung it over her neck and arm.

  “Arites?” Cletia asked her. She threw a glance at Ilias and Giliead. Ilias tested the knots attaching the net to the floor hooks, and Giliead leaned dangerously out of the hatch, studying the ground below. “We leave him?”

  “We’re going to burn the airship once we’re off,” Tremaine told her. Ilias didn’t comment but she saw him lift his head and knew he had heard her.

  “Oh, that’s all right then.” Cletia looked away in relief.

  Tremaine heard the low buzz of the engine cough and sputter, then catch again. Giliead shouted roughly, “Come on, we’re low enough!”

  Cletia grimaced and grabbed a couple of pack straps, heading for the hatch. Tremaine caught hold of the ropes attached to the crystal’s box and hauled it after her. Giliead took it away from her as she got it to the hatch, pushing it out and using the rope to lower it.

  Tremaine blinked out at the gray sky, seeing the dunes below and the tufts of yellow grass much closer than they had looked from the control cabin. Ilias and Cimarus were already on their way down, swarming down the wildly swaying net like the born sailors they were. Reaching the end of the net, they dropped to the soft sand below, rolling to absorb the impact. Giliead, bracing his back against the side of the hatch as he lowered the heavy box, advised her, “Try to go limp when you drop, let yourself fall and roll.”

  “Oh sure, that’s likely,” Tremaine snapped. Taking a deep breath, she crouched, took a firm hold on the net and swung down.

  She climbed clumsily, the heavy knotted cords scraping her hands, cursing Ilias and Cimarus both for making it look easy. Above, Cletia was flinging out their packs. The hard part came at the end, when her reaching foot found empty air. Gritting her teeth, afraid to look down, Tremaine freed her other foot and let go.

  The ground was nearer than she thought and she hit sand and tumbled down the side of a dune. Winded, she rolled over, feeling her back twinge in complaint. She sat up gingerly, managing to spit out some sand. Cletia was just dropping to the top of the dune above her, the dark bulk of the airship blotting out most of the sky overhead. Tremaine couldn’t see the first Gardier airship, the one that was just above their airship, but the other was circling in, still some distance off. She saw with relief that Giliead had lowered the crystal’s box and that Molin was starting his climb down. The rise of the dune blocked her view of Ilias and the others. Her back throbbed in earnest as she flailed to her feet and stumbled through the soft sand.

  She managed to get around the dune to where Ilias was waiting, glaring up at the airship. He spared her a glance, calling, “You all right?”

  “Fine.” Cletia and Cimarus were scrambling around picking up the packs and Molin had the bags with the Gardier wireless books and maps. Tremaine spotted the crystal’s box sitting heavily in the sand. She reached it, standing protectively over it as she gazed up at the airship. She could see Giliead still in the hatchway, but no sign of Dubos or Basimi. They can’t talk to Giliead, she thought. Dammit, I should have stayed up there to translate. Ilias started swearing, using some words the translation spell hadn’t included.

  “I can’t hear the engine,” Tremaine said under her breath. She couldn’t remember if the low buzz had been absent before she had fallen into the dune, or if it had just now ceased.

  Their airship started to drift upward, the wind pushing it a little away from them. The nose of the Gardier airship bearing down on it appeared just past the dark bulk. Tremaine’s stomach clenched and she heard Ilias make a helpless noise in his throat. She drew breath to yell, to tell Giliead not to wait for the others, to get out now.

  Then Giliead swung out on the net and Dubos and Basimi appeared in the hatch above him. Ilias bounced in pure relief, punching the air. Tremaine wanted to sit down on the box and put her head between her knees, but there wasn’t time. “Come on,” she shouted, dragging at the box. “It’s going to blow up! The damn things fall when they blow up!”

  “Go!” Ilias waved the others on and grabbed up the box. Tremaine ran with him, the sand dragging at her feet, stumbling as she looked back over her shoulder at the two airships. Giliead and the other men were on the ground now, rapidly catching up with them. With no one at the controls the airship rose, closer and closer to the Gardier ship, which suddenly began to angle away from it. Gunfire sounded, and bullets peppered the sand only a few feet away.

  Then the gray daylight went yellow. Tremaine stumbled, looking back up to see their airship’s balloon suffused with red and orange, burning from the inside out. It drifted sideways, brushing against the Gardier airship, which was turning sharply to escape.

  Basimi arrived at her side, panting, his forehead streaked with sand and sweat. “The wards,” he muttered. Clouds of black smoke belched from tears in the membrane of their craft, blocking their view of the second airship still some way off.

  Tremaine just watched. The Gardier wards might be like the ones on the Ravenna; she was thinking of the door to the Isolation Ward, which had given way in a burst of etheric energy when it was hit by a force too strong for it to resist. The gondola of their airship was burning furiously now and it abruptly came loose, crashing to the ground in the marsh. Relieved of that weight and with so many of the individual hydrogen cells torn open, the enormous balloon rolled sideways, enveloping the other airship. “That’s got to do it,” Tremaine murmured.

  The explosion staggered her back; she winced away from the burst of flame and the wash of heat.

  Ilias pulled at her arm. Giliead had taken the crystal’s box away from him and stood at his side. Cletia, Cimarus and the others were staring up at the fiery spectacle.

  Tremaine nodded, tu
rning away from the burning airships. The other Gardier airship would come, but hopefully they would think everyone aboard their quarry had died in the fire. She felt stretched nearly to the limit, as if her endurance and sanity would just snap at any moment. But they had a long way to go.

  It was still dark when another soldier finally arrived to tell them the outpost was secure. With her borrowed electric torch and Kias at her side, Florian climbed up the sloping path to the promontory.

  It was lit by carbide lamps now, the stark light revealing the bodies of the Raider mercenaries sprawled everywhere, in twisted heaps. Florian’s stomach roiled at the smell of charred flesh in the cool damp air. The men had been hit with fire, with choking clouds and other Gardier attack spells; they had been helpless against them. Rienish soldiers moved among the bodies, looking for survivors, but there didn’t seem to be many. “This would have happened to us without your god,” Kias said softly, finding a path through the carnage for them.

  Florian just nodded, not bothering to correct him about Arisilde Damal’s godhood. She had been awake so long the scene was beginning to take on an air of unreality. She made it to the first metal building without throwing up and saw several dead Gardier lying beside the doorway, killed by Rienish gunfire when the sphere had stripped away the post’s defensive spells. There were men inside, searching cabinets and poking through the debris with electric torches. She asked about Gerard and was directed to a large structure at the rear of the camp.

  Kias looked around as they made their way between buildings, but with the confusion of lanterns and flashing torches and Rienish moving everywhere it was hard to make sense out of the chaos. “I can’t see Giliead or Ilias,” he told her, sounding worried. “They’re usually easy to find.”

  “I expect they’re with Gerard.” But she kept expecting Tremaine to appear. And she was concerned about Arites.

  The ruined generator was still belching black smoke into the air and they detoured around it. They found the large building with its double doors standing open, lit by several powerful carbide lamps. Florian grimaced at the sight inside. “Giliead was right, it was a spell circle. Was being the word.”

  The circle was about twenty feet across, neatly painted in white on wood panels laid out on the dirt floor. But about halfway around the familiar symbols were singed and the wood scarred, as if something powerful had burned the circle away. Something powerful did just that, Florian thought soberly. Gerard knelt near the edge of the circle, writing in a tattered pocket notebook, the sphere sitting on the floor beside him. She could hear it clicking and spinning even from the doorway.

  She stepped cautiously inside. The metal tripod in the circle’s center, where the Gardier placed the sorcerer crystal that powered both the circle and the etheric gateway spell, was just a lump of melted metal and glass shards, still steaming in the cool air. “Gerard?”

  “Florian.” Gerard glanced up briefly. “Sergeant Mastime told me he’d located you and Kias, and that poor Birouq didn’t make it.”

  “Yes, the Raiders—We didn’t see them coming, he didn’t have a chance.” She looked for Kias and saw he had remained prudently in the doorway. He was eyeing the circle suspiciously. “But Arites was with us, and we can’t find him. And where are Tremaine and Ilias and the others? I thought they would be with you.”

  Gerard scribbled another note. “They were on the airship.”

  Florian halted. “What?” she said sharply.

  “The Ravenna received a wireless message just before the airship vanished through the etheric gateway. The boarding party was attempting to enter the locked control room door. Tremaine was with them.” He lifted his head finally, and his face was bleak, the lines around his eyes and mouth accentuated by the stark light and his exhaustion. “That’s the last we know.”

  Florian looked at the burned symbols, sick. “They can’t come back through this circle. But the Ravenna’s circle—” She blinked in horrified realization. “They don’t have a sorcerer. Gerard, they don’t have a sphere.”

  On the floor the sphere spit angry blue sparks. Gerard got to his feet, moving like a weary old man. “They have nothing,” he said bitterly.

  Chapter 18

  Tremaine wiped sweat from her brow, nervously scanning the sky again. From the still-rising clouds of black smoke, the burning airships had drifted further away and crashed in the marshy flat.

  They were slogging through the dunes in the direction of the houses she and Basimi had seen from the control cabin. The sky seemed even more heavily overcast and the air was cool and damp, the light breeze carrying a salty tinge. Ilias had found some driftwood, and he and Cimarus dragged it along behind, using it to obliterate their tracks. Tremaine hadn’t thought of that and was glad they had. Not far ahead, as the dunes flattened out into grassland, lay the cover of a spreading forest. The trees were short and scrubby with light gray bark and tiny sprays of leaves.

  It seemed a little crazy, even to Tremaine, to go toward where the Gardier had to be, but they needed transportation. They had to find something at least capable of allowing them to return to the vicinity of the Wall Port so they could use the spell circle. If the Ravenna had left by then…Then we’ll be stuck there, she thought in annoyance. Her speculations on possibly making a deal with the Chaeans or some other traders for passage close enough to Capidara to make an etheric gateway were interrupted when she realized that wouldn’t work. Capidara didn’t have a spell circle, at least not yet. The way the Ravenna traveled with her own spell circle gave the ship maximum mobility in creating world-gates; they no longer had that advantage. And I have to convince Giliead to make the crystal work for us. And he has to convince it to take us where we want to go and not kill us. One thing at a time, she reminded herself with a mental groan. Right now they had to worry about not getting caught.

  Molin said sharply, “The other airship.”

  Swearing, Tremaine looked wildly around until she spotted it. It was just cutting through the lower level of clouds, pointing away from them, heading toward the column of smoke still rising darkly from the marsh. The others were already running for the forest and she bolted after them.

  Reaching the shelter of the green canopy was a profound relief. “I don’t think it saw us,” Dubos said quietly, as they moved further in over a carpet of dead leaves, their steps crunching quietly. Tremaine thought they would know soon enough.

  They were well into the woods when Giliead halted abruptly. Tremaine held up a hand to tell the others to stop. She realized she had used the same gesture Ander did and felt absurdly self-conscious. But it worked as Dubos and the others jolted to a halt.

  Giliead looked back, collected Ilias by eye, then told Tremaine, “We’re nearly to that village. We need to scout ahead.” Ilias jogged up to join them as Giliead set the crystal’s box down. Ilias touched Tremaine’s arm lightly, as if making sure she was still there.

  “Right. We’ll wait here.” Tremaine used her sleeve to wipe sandy sweat off her face. Giliead had had plenty of time to get the lay of the land while leaning out the airship’s hatch, but she had the suspicion that everybody knew more about what was going on than she did.

  Tremaine watched them dodge through the trees until she lost sight of them. Dubos and Basimi moved to her side, Basimi asking, “They’re scouting ahead?”

  “Yes.” Tremaine nodded, losing a little of her tension. She had thought they would object. Cimarus was hanging back, watchfully studying the terrain behind them for signs of pursuit. She suspected he would be more use now they were on the ground, in a situation he was more familiar with. Basimi just stood there, drawn and exhausted, but Dubos and Molin kept their eyes moving, wary and tense. Cletia was pacing back and forth, moving up through the trees a little to look after Ilias and Giliead, then restlessly returning to the others. She wore her sword slung over her shoulder as the Syprian men did. Cletia had a brain to go with her attitude, Tremaine decided. She hadn’t frozen up aboard the airship.

&n
bsp; Tremaine worried a fingernail until she bit it to the quick and tasted blood. Time passed at an unendurably slow crawl. “They got them,” Molin muttered.

  “No,” Tremaine snapped. Ilias and Giliead had spied on the Gardier for days in the base in the Isle of Storms’ caves. She didn’t think they would be caught. And it was too quiet. If the town is that close, why can’t we hear anything? Why weren’t the people running out to watch the airships burn?

  Everyone heard Ilias coming back before she did. She watched him running lightly toward them. Giliead wasn’t with him, but he didn’t look too worried. He came to a halt in front of her, reporting quietly, “The village looks empty. There’s no sign of anyone.”

  She hadn’t been expecting that. “What do you mean, empty? You mean they went to the airship wreck?” Cletia was at her elbow, listening intently, and Tremaine shifted to make her back up a step.

  Ilias rubbed his arm across his forehead, leaving a streak of sand and soot. “No, it’s deserted. Grass is growing between the stones in the street. And the houses we looked into were empty.”

  Tremaine bit her lip. “A ruin?” She was thinking of the underground city on the Isle of Storms, and the remnants at the Wall Port. Did the Gardier have some odd habit of choosing long-deserted dwellings to establish their bases? But how long could wooden houses last on a seacoast with no one to take care of them?

  He shook his head. “Gone a few years, maybe more.”

  She nodded slowly. That’s odd. But if they left boats…“Show me.”

  The others reluctantly agreed to stay behind and Tremaine followed Ilias to the edge of the woods where Giliead waited. There was an old dirt road there that turned to cobbles as it entered the little town.

  Tremaine saw it had been the only street, that the houses spreading out from it were linked by dirt or gravel paths. All the pathways were littered with dead leaves and fallen branches.