by Martha Wells
Giliead’s hopes were raised when he climbed cautiously up to one of the dark stretches, only to find yet another identical catwalk and another ladder. Coming back down to the lighted area, he said with a grimace of frustration, “This isn’t telling us anything, is it?”
Ilias agreed, leaning around Giliead to see up through the opening. “At least down below there were things to look at.”
“We’ll go down again. If there’s something to tell us where they came from, it’ll be there.”
A faint sound from back down the catwalk made them both turn.
A man’s head and shoulders suddenly popped up from the opening below the last ladder, facing away from them, no more than twenty paces away. He was dressed in the brown clothing of the wizards, though his cap had been pushed back and the eye coverings were hanging down around his neck. He had dark hair, clipped close to his head, and his skin was moon-pale, as if he had spent all his life underground. Ilias ducked instinctively and Giliead fell back a step toward the ladder behind them. But the wizard had already pulled himself up and turned to step onto the catwalk. He froze, staring right at them.
Ilias couldn’t read the man’s expression in the dim light, but he could imagine it. For a long heartbeat nobody moved, then Giliead said matter-of-factly, “Shit.”
The wizard gasped and fumbled at the sheath at his belt. Ilias saw the hilt of one the curse weapons and knew they were dead. He pulled his knife, drawing back for a desperate throw, when Giliead snatched it out of his hand. He looked up in shock to see Giliead grab the curse-light bubble above his head, yanking it down so the black rope was visible. He put the knife against it in obvious threat. That can’t work, Ilias thought, whipping back around to face the wizard.
The man had frozen, one hand still on the weapon, his expression horrified.
Ilias threw a wary look up at Giliead. “It worked,” he whispered.
Giliead took a sharp breath, acknowledging the danger. “Get down the ladder,” he said softly.
Ilias slid past him, careful not to jostle his arm. “Do it. If you turn your back on him—”
“I know.”
Ilias reached the ladder, catching hold of a rung and setting one foot on it. “Ready,” he said. The wizard shifted nervously, his hand still on the weapon’s hilt.
Giliead sliced the cord. The curse popped loudly and the light winked out. White sparks showered down as Giliead yelled and dropped the knife. Ilias heard the wizard shout in horror and feet pounded on the walk but he was already swinging down the ladder, dropping to land lightly on the padded floor. He saw a large room, with tables and benches and walls lined with metal cabinets. Two doors, one directly in front of him and one behind. Just as Giliead landed behind him, the door on the far side of the chamber swung open and there stood three wizards.
They weren’t wearing the eye coverings or caps, so it was easy to see their expressions of complete astonishment. Ilias registered that they weren’t identical after all; one was taller than the others, another more squarely built, and the third had beard stubble showing starkly against the whiteness of his skin.
Giliead swore under his breath and grabbed for another light bubble. Ilias dived for the other door, their only clear exit. He could still hear the wizard on the catwalk above the thin metal ceiling, yelling like a madman. He was afraid to see what the other three were doing. He hit the door with his shoulder, feeling the wood crack. The room went dark as it burst open, sending him staggering into another narrow corridor. He looked back desperately, but Giliead was already shoving through the door behind him.
They ran, banging open the doors, looking for anything like a way out and finding only tiny unlit chambers filled with shadowy incomprehensible objects. Then Ilias shoved a door open to see a small room with a wide square window looking out into the darkness of the cavern. “Gil, here!”
Footsteps thudded down the metal floor behind them as they tumbled through the door. Giliead tripped over Ilias in the confined space and they both hit the floor in a heap. Ilias struggled to his knees, yanking the door closed and fumbling at the unfamiliar bolt, just managing to slide it home.
He fell back as the wizards pounded on it from the other side. It looked stronger than the other doors but they didn’t have much time. Giliead was already struggling to stand, heading toward the window. Ilias lurched to his feet, looking around for something else to block the door.
The walls were lined with cabinets but when Ilias tried to pull them down across the door he discovered nothing was movable. He turned to Giliead, who had stopped at the window set at an angle in the far wall. He was swearing in frustration.
“What is it?” Ilias stepped up beside him, reaching for the metal bar that was just outside. He flinched when his hand banged into an invisible barrier. He fell back a step, thinking it was some protective curse, then realized the openings were covered with clear glass. “Oh, no.”
“We need something heavy.” Giliead turned around, trying to pull down one of the shelves. It refused to give, too firmly attached to the wall.
Ilias turned, looking around again, and saw a rough gray rock with crystal shards growing out of it, mounted in a metal stand atop one of the cabinets. It looked heavy. He reached for it but Giliead turned suddenly and knocked his arm away.
Ilias stepped back, knowing that look. “It’s cursed?”
Giliead stared at it, eyes narrowed. “Yes, there’s something . . . I’m not sure what.”
That was all Ilias needed to hear. “Great, we picked a room with a cursed rock.” Ilias moved back to the window, drawing his sword. He struck the glass with the hilt. Tiny cracks appeared, but it didn’t shatter. Two more blows had the same effect.
While Ilias battered at the unbreakable glass, Giliead turned away to drag open one of the narrow doors in a cabinet, revealing metal drawers. He gave one a hard yank and it came loose, spilling papers covered with brightly colored markings onto the floor.
Giliead awkwardly lifted the drawer above the angled window, and Ilias hurriedly sheathed his sword to steady it. “Together,” Giliead said as they lifted the clumsy battering ram. “Now!” They smashed the metal down, shattering the glass barrier.
The floor jerked under them suddenly, throwing them both backward. Ilias’s fall was cushioned by landing on Giliead but the metal drawer clipped him in the temple. Dazed and seeing black patches hovering in his vision, he struggled to push himself up. “Did we do that?” he gasped, his uppermost thought that the beast was alive after all and reacting to the injury.
Giliead lifted him off as he sat up. “No, no, we couldn’t have.” The battering at the door had stopped with the abrupt movement of the whale, but now it resumed with renewed fervor. As Ilias climbed to his feet and wrestled the drawer up again, Giliead stared down at the papers on the floor, then grabbed one off the pile. “Ilias, these are maps! This is what we’ve been looking for.”
“Take some and come on!” Ilias hefted the drawer and Giliead steadied it from above. One blow took out the rest of the glass panel. Ilias ducked as Giliead slung the drawer back against the door. He grabbed the metal rails, lifting himself up onto the ledge, then realized Giliead wasn’t behind him anymore. “Gil!” He looked back over his shoulder. “Come on, now!”
“Right behind you. Hold it.” Ilias wriggled involuntarily as Giliead shoved a couple of folded maps under his belt into the back of his pants. “Go!”
Ilias swung out of the opening, hung for a moment from the metal bar, looking for a good flat landing spot. The lights were shining brightly from the platforms now and shouts from that direction told him their exit would be witnessed. He aimed for the riverbank, then dropped.
He landed hard, letting his upper body go limp and rolling to absorb the shock, feeling the sharp edges of the loose scree jab into his ribs and back. Winded, he sprawled to a stop just as Giliead hit the ground heavily behind him.
Dazed, Ilias lifted his head to see the cavern illuminated with a strange
red-orange light. Incredibly, the glow emanated from the center of the flying whale. Barely conscious of the wild cries of alarm from the platform, he watched flame suddenly blossom under the creature’s skin, its metal bones visible now through the illuminated hide. Giliead dragged him to his feet, staring up at the thing, muttering, “Oh no.”
They‘re afraid of fire, Ilias thought in horror. Now they knew why. “We did that,” he gasped.
Giliead gave him a push. “Run.”
They ran down along the rock-strewn riverbank. Ilias looked back just as a fireball erupted from the creature’s spine and it tipped sideways, sliding ponderously down onto its dock. Fire burst outward from it, enveloping the platforms, climbing the cavern walls. He turned back, pounding toward the shelter of the rocks as burning metal rained down like fiery hail.
Giliead reached the boulders at the edge of the river and Ilias was right behind him when something struck him in the back. It knocked him to the ground and he slid in the rough gravel, scraping his arms. Raw pain radiated from his shoulder and he rolled, clawing at it, desperately trying to wrench out the fragment of hot metal. Giliead leaned over him then, slapping his hand away. He wrenched the fragment out himself and hauled Ilias to his feet. Then Giliead froze, staring back at the base of the platform.
Feeling blood trickling down his back, Ilias followed his gaze. A man staggered on the cavern floor below the burning platform. In the blaze of orange light Ilias saw his clothes and surely the flesh beneath were charred from the fire; he must have jumped from the dock or fallen from the whale almost in time to avoid the blast. Wizard or not, Ilias had a stomach-churning moment of guilt and pity; then the man raised his hand and a light glinted starlike in his palm.
Something came out of that star and faster than thought streamed toward them, a shadowed distortion in the air, expanding to push smoke and flaming metal aside. Giliead shouted, shoving Ilias back even as the curse struck him.
Ilias launched himself over the rocks but the wave hit, slamming him down into the stone. He knew he was rolling down the steep muddy slope, then nothing.
Chapter 5
Port Rel, Western Coast of Ile-Rien
The giant gray wall of the ship’s hull seemed to stretch out and up forever, the upper decks and the three gray-painted stacks lost far above the spotlights’ glare. The light was a little muted, the outlines of the ship a little blurred, and Tremaine found herself squinting. The distortion was more than could be accounted for by the heavy mist in the cold night air.
There was a ward of concealment laid over the huge bulk of the ship, a very slight one to escape the Gardier’s ability to detect the presence of sorcery. From above, it distorted the ship’s form to an empty square of water at an open dock, concealing the presence of the spotlights and dampening the sounds of welding and labor.
“Beautiful, isn’t she?” Captain Feraim said, studying the gray bulk looming above them fondly. “Had a few voyages before the war, never sailed since. They brought her in to add ballast because she was so bottom-heavy from her engines.”
Tremaine nodded. “I remember reading about her, before the war.” The Queen Ravenna had launched only a few months before the first Gardier bombings. She had been built to be the star of the Vernaire Solar Line, to carry passengers in speed and comfort between the ports of Ile-Rien, Parscia, and across the ocean to Capidara. Now that the Gardier patrolled the sea-lanes by air, no one traveled to Capidara. If Tremaine had thought about it, she would have supposed the Queen Ravenna to have been trapped in another country’s port or destroyed along with so much of the navy, the other commercial shipping and the three smaller Vernaire passenger liners. It was hard to believe she had rested quietly in hiding here in the port city of Rel for three years.
It was hard to believe that only a few years ago there had been time and money to build such things, and that people had taken pleasure trips on them without fear.
“Yes,” Gerard said, folding his arms as he studied the great ship. “I heard she was to be refitted as a troop carrier, but there was never anywhere to send troops. Until now.”
“She’s still the fanciest lady on the sea. They didn’t have the labor to finish the refit.” Captain Feraim turned and started back down the dock with a sigh. “About time she had a chance to show her stuff. In the open ocean she’s faster than an airship, faster than anything we’ve seen the Gardier use. Before all this happened, she was designated a last-chance evacuation transport.” He glanced back at them with a slightly twisted smile. “Meaning they were going to send her out but didn’t expect her to make it past the blockade.”
Tremaine and Gerard followed Feraim, Tremaine pulling up the collar of her pea coat against the damp cold. Activity around the giant gray hull was hushed but hurried as repairs were made and supplies carried aboard for the upcoming voyage. Tremaine shook her head, bemused. It was hard to believe it was really happening.
It had been a whirlwind week. Secret meetings, Gerard and Niles and others rushing back and forth between the palace and the Institute, shifting the location of the experiment to the Port of Rel.
One of the first discoveries was that the sphere did not have to be inside the circle to initiate the translocation. As long as the sphere was within a certain distance, it could begin the spell. They could also trigger the reverse adjuration separately, as long as they were within a few hundred yards of the spot the circle occupied, whether it was here or there. Wherever there was.
Tremaine, Gerard, Tiamarc and a few others had been through three times in a small tug dubbed the Pilot Boat, allowing various sorcerers to experiment with drawing buoys through and sending them back, testing how long the doorway would stay open. They hadn’t seen the Gardier’s airships again, but then there hadn’t been a bombing along the coast for three days.
Tomorrow they would take the Pilot Boat through one last time, the final preparation for the expedition that would carry the first of the teams of soldiers and sorcerers who would scout the Gardier island in preparation for the attack. For the past few months the frequent bombings along the coast had kept ships from reaching the open ocean and prevented Capidara from sending in supplies and munitions. This was only one small base, but if they could destroy it, there would be a hole in the Gardier blockade. And this would be the first time Ile-Rien had managed to capture anything belonging to the Gardier except for that one mangled airship; there was no telling what they could find there.
Feraim gave them a casual salute and headed off down the dock toward the old warehouses that served as the naval headquarters. “You should get some sleep,” Gerard told Tremaine as they started away in the opposite direction. “It’s going to be a long day tomorrow.”
“I will. You aren’t going back to the boathouse tonight, are you?” Further down the boardwalk, where a sandy beach hugged the curve of the cove, there was an old resort hotel, closed since the war. The Viller Institute had taken it over as a headquarters, since the assembly rooms had more than enough space for their work. In the daylight it was a picture of decayed gaiety, with fading white paint, broken red tile on the roof, and several stories of large balconies and open verandas. At night it was just large, gloomy and dark. Tremaine didn’t mind the gloominess; she was used to Coldcourt after all, though the ghosts there were all part of the family.
“No, I’m just going to stop by and talk with Niles before I turn in.” Gerard sighed as they started up the first flight of stairs that climbed the terraced ground up to the hotel’s veranda. There was just enough moonlight to see the steps; gaslit lampposts with ornamental ironwork that looked as delicate as spun sugar should have lit the way, but they were kept turned off to avoid Gardier attention. The white beach below lay still and empty except for the steady creep of the surf and the occasional abandoned bathing machine. Off to the right was an amusement pier, closed and abandoned like most of the town, the dark windows of the restaurants and theaters throwing back no reflections. There were no lighted windows visible any
where, though there were workmen, sailors, naval officers and most of the staff of the Viller Institute in these buildings. Even the sound of the sea was muted. The place was overlaid with sorceries, small ones, charms of concealment and darkness and silence. Wards to warn, and confuse and disguise. No great spells, nothing active to attract the Gardier’s notice.
Tremaine gripped the railing to keep from stumbling on the uneven boards, though a couple of men had been through to hammer the loose planks down. “I suppose they’re nearly done with the design of the new spheres.”
Gerard nodded. “Thank God.” Once Arisilde’s sphere had demonstrated the proper way to activate the spell, they had been able to pinpoint the defects in the others that the Institute had constructed. One of Niles’s tasks was to build his own sphere to take the place of Arisilde’s. “Once that’s done you can go home.”
“Right, home.” Tremaine let her breath out slowly, wondering how much she could safely say. So far the sphere had stubbornly refused to let Gerard use it alone, so Tremaine’s place in the project had been assured. So far. “I rather like it here.”
“Here?” Gerard glanced at her in mock-horror as they climbed the last steps to the dilapidated veranda. It was distinguished by long clay basins and tubs empty of plants, with a forbiddingly boarded-over solar and a general air of forlorn desolation.
“Well, not here.” The hotel’s gas lines had been turned off, so none of the radiators worked and the rooms were cold and damp and smelled odd. The kitchen’s modern refrigerated iceboxes installed before the war had also failed drastically and they were depending on infrequent ice deliveries from the military outpost in Rel. She added cautiously, “But I’d like to stay with the project.”
“I’m sure we can find something for you to do,” Gerard said, sounding a little surprised as he opened one of the double doors. Blackout curtains hung just inside, so it was like stepping into a pit. “I thought you’d want to get back to your play.”