The Fatal Gate

by Ian Irvine

  He looked evasive. “How would I know? I’m not a necromancer.”

  “I think you do know. You’ve got to tell me.”

  “It’s said … where lots of people have been killed. Battlefields, massacre sites, cities shattered by earthquakes or tidal waves, plague pits—that sort of place. Ghost vampires are incredibly rare though …” He trailed off, swallowing hard.

  He knows, she thought, but he’s afraid to say. “This is really important, Earnis. Do you know of any place where there is a ghost vampire?”

  “Only one.” Shudders racked him. “Rogues Render.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “I don’t know,” he said almost inaudibly, though Aviel was sure he was lying.

  “What do you know about the ghost vampire there?”

  “His name … is Lumillal. He’s very, very dangerous. And that’s all I’m going to say.”

  She perched on a stool, rubbed her throbbing ankle, then studied the circled items on the list of ingredients. “Even if you can buy all these from your unlawful sources, how can you be sure each chymical is what they say it is?”

  “I know who’s reputable and who’s not. I’ll get them straight away.” He rose.

  “Wait. I’ve got to see Tallia.”

  “What for?”

  Aviel could not bear to work here an hour longer; the workshop was tainted by Tule’s brutality, and what she had done to him. She had to get as far away as possible. If she succeeded in making nivol her crimes might be forgiven. And if she failed, perhaps she would not come back.

  She took a deep breath. “Tallia is getting more sky ships made in the shipyards. I need one big enough to carry all my equipment. Urgently.”

  “Why?” said Earnis.

  “Even if you can buy those thirteen chymicals, the only way I can hope to make nivol in time is to work on it while we’re looking for the last three ingredients. Everything has to be ready by the time we get the final ingredient, the Archeus of Eidolon, from …”

  His hair was standing on end again. “A desperate and deadly ghost vampire.”

  27

  IDIOT! IMBECILE!

  Dimly, over the roaring in Llian’s ears, he heard Ifoli shouting and Regg bellowing, but he could not make out what they were saying. Was there any way to save himself? If he went with the current, maybe he could get to shore further around the island. He turned but the current was sweeping him east, while the band of mangrove trees curved away to the north.

  Regg and Ifoli were still shouting. “There! There!” Regg bellowed.

  Llian kicked himself up in the water until his head and shoulders were exposed and made out a reef of dark rock that ran out from the shoreline for fifty yards or so. The falling tide had just exposed its top. Could he reach it if he angled across the current? Possibly, though it would be an exhausting swim.

  He headed for the reef. The rock was jagged and no doubt covered in sharp shells and barnacles. If a wave drove him into it he might break bones and would certainly gash himself badly, but it was his only hope. Llian put his head down and swam as hard as he could, but soon saw that the current would sweep him past a few yards from the end of the reef.

  He swam harder but did not have the strength to maintain it; swimming against the current a few minutes ago had exhausted him. There was nothing he could do to save himself.

  He was regretting his stupidity when Regg hurtled along the broken reef, slipping and skidding and risking going in himself, still carrying his fishing rod.

  If the reef extended out beneath the water there was a faint possibility that Llian could grab it and haul himself out, but as the current swept him closer he saw that there was no rough water past the end—it fell sheer into deep water.

  He made a last desperate effort, which did not even gain him a foot. Regg had reached the end of the reef and was standing there, rod outstretched, but it was not nearly long enough. Llian was carried past four yards away and the current took him east towards the Sea of Qwale.

  Thwack! Something cracked him hard on the back of the head. Then he was jerked backwards, the current spun him around and he felt the coat pulling off his shoulders. Regg had done a perfect cast—the sinker had bounced off Llian’s head and the big hook had caught in his coat. He wrapped his arms around himself to hold his coat on so Regg could pull him in.

  But neither the line nor the rod was designed for such a heavy catch. The line was wire-taut and the rod bent to breaking point. If either snapped …

  “Swim!” yelled Ifoli, who had come up beside Regg. “Take the weight off the line.”

  The current was a little slower here, in the lee of the reef. With the last of his strength he swam for his life. The tension on the line eased a little, Regg hauled him to the edge of the reef, Ifoli crouched and stretched down her arm and between the two of them they got him onto the rocks with no more damage than half a dozen barnacle gouges down his arms and legs.

  “Idiot!” she yelled. “Imbecile!” She threw her arms around Llian and burst into tears.

  “Thank you,” he gasped. “Thank you both.” Too weak to stand up, he slumped onto the wet rock, shuddering.

  “What the hell was that all about?” said Ifoli.

  “Sulien! A great beast had her in its claws. I just … panicked.”

  His teller’s gift could not stop imagining her fate—Sulien mauled by that thranx-like creature, eaten by it—but it was unbearable to talk about it. He choked out what he had seen. Ifoli crouched down with her arms over her face, rocking back and forth. Regg smashed a length of driftwood against the rocks until he had reduced it to splinters.

  “She’s a thousand miles away,” Llian said wretchedly. “There’s nothing I can do.” It was his job to protect her and he could not.

  He had to try and find her, hopeless though it was, but how? The unreality zone covered the shoreline here too and a pale bulge was creeping down the wet rock towards them, far slower than it moved across dry land. There must be something about water, or salt water, that was inimical to it.

  But the reef was drying in the sun and soon the unreality zone would have a clear passage. He checked the gravel spit—the middle was still underwater though its location was clearly outlined by a line of breakers. They went back up the reef until the water to either side was only waist deep, jumped in and waded towards the spit.

  “Tide’s falling rapidly,” said Ifoli. “Another twenty minutes …”

  “I can’t wait that long,” Llian choked.

  The sun went behind a cloud and in the shadows he saw that the shallow water next to them was glowing. The unreality zone was almost on them.

  “Come on!” said Regg.

  They swam to the spit, which was now exposed for several hundred yards and glowing pale yellow for half that distance, but as they approached it the yellow crept their way—the unreality zone was determined to get them.

  “Stay in the water,” said Ifoli.

  They waded along beside the spit, towards Mollymoot. The current tugged at Llian’s legs as if it yearned to take him again, but he had to get across. The tide was running out rapidly now. To the west a hundred yards of mudflat was exposed outside the band of mangroves. The water shoaled in front of him and he went another ten yards, then ten more. Come on, come on!

  Suddenly the waters parted, the whole spit was exposed, and he took off without looking back. Regg and Ifoli could look after each other; he had to get to the mainland. He ran in a weak-kneed stagger for Mollymoot, thinking to borrow money from Dilly then head to the nearest town to look for passage south, but by the time he reached her house it was too late; the tide was already creeping across the causeway to Meldorin. He slumped on the steps outside her front door and watched as the sea robbed him of his last hope.

  “I could not have helped you anyway,” said Dilly, after he, Ifoli and Regg had told their stories. “The mayor turned up yesterday, collecting for the war fund, and I gave her every coin I could spare.”

&n
bsp; On a little stone-flagged terrace at the rear of the house they lunched on bowls of clam soup and fresh bread dipped in oil. Llian’s journal, which had been soaked, was drying in the sun. The soup smelled delicious but he ate mechanically, unable to taste anything.

  “It’s hopeless,” he said dully. “Even if I could get to Shazabba, and had the coin to mount a search in the middle of winter—”

  “You could spend the rest of your life searching and find nothing,” said Dilly. “But you’ve got powerful friends, Llian. Ask them for help.”

  “I’ve got no way to contact them,” he said, feeling utterly helpless.

  “Ifoli does.”

  “I’m afraid to try again,” said Ifoli.

  “Shame on you, girl! Do your duty by your friend.”

  Judging by the look on Ifoli’s face she had never thought of Llian as a friend, but she took off her remaining earring, gave it a twist and sat there, shuddering.

  He was putting the journal into its bag when he noticed that the leather spine was scratched and scored near the bottom, as if it had been rubbing against something. He felt along the thick leather base of the bag. Something sharp was embedded there and he dug it out with his knife and laid it on the table. It was a little brass cone, about an inch high, with a flat brass base.

  “Where did that come from?”

  Llian weighed it in his hand; it wasn’t heavy enough to be solid brass, and he saw that the base was designed to be removed. He was about to lever it open with the point of his knife when Ifoli said sharply, “Put it down!”

  He laid it on the table. “What’s the matter?”

  “Move away from the table, everyone.”

  Dilly, Regg and Llian rose and moved to the other side of the terrace. Ifoli studied the little object, lifted it carefully and put it down again, then picked up Llian’s bag and poked her little finger into a small tear he had not noticed in the base.

  “What is it?” said Regg.

  “It’s the core of the Command device,” said Ifoli. “When the device burst, killing Esea, the core must have embedded itself in the base of the bag.”

  “Is it dangerous?” said Llian.

  “Unick sometimes booby-trapped his devices. But Tallia may be able to do something with it.”

  They returned to the table. Rather gingerly Llian wrapped the cone and put it in one of the pockets of his bag.

  Ifoli picked up her earring but put it down again. “I’m scared.”

  “We’re miles from the stone,” said Dilly. “Get on with it.”

  Ifoli took off her necklace and twisted the pearl. Her eyes lost focus and the tendons in her neck stood out, then she mastered herself and said softly, “Great-grandfather?”

  Ten seconds went by, then twenty, then his wheezy old voice came from the earring. “Where are you?”

  “Mollymoot, with Llian. Great-grandfather, we’ve seen the summon stone. It’s on top of Demondifang and it’s huge.”

  “Say no more!” It was Tallia’s voice. “We’re coming.”

  The earring went dead. Ifoli twisted each pearl back the other way, then clapped a hand to her back.

  Dilly inspected the lump, which looked as it had when Llian had checked it at the campsite, though it was larger and hotter. “I don’t like that at all. I should call the midwife to cut it open.”

  “No!” Ifoli said sharply.

  “If it gets any bigger—”

  “It’s reacting to mancery. I need a healer who understands the Secret Art.”

  The following day the lump had disappeared and Ifoli was almost her normal self again. The weather turned, the westerly wind died away and the causeway was open every day at low tide, though Llian did not cross it. Without a copper grint to his name he had no way to get to Shazabba and no hope of finding Sulien if he did. She was probably dead, and Karan too, and he struggled to find a reason for going on. Not even his journal could console him any more.

  A week later, at dawn, he was woken by a colossal racket outside his window. A ramshackle sky ship was hovering not thirty yards away, though it was nothing like Malien’s sleek craft. The cabin was an ugly rectangular box with strips of canvas hanging off it, the airbag was made of a variety of different-coloured fabrics, and the rotors had an alarming rattle. But with Nadiril and Lilis waving from the doorway, it was a most welcome sight.

  “Can you take me to Shazabba?” he said the moment the craft landed on a small flat patch at the back of Dilly’s vegetable garden, and Nadiril, Lilis and Tallia had alighted.

  “To join your partner in crime?” Tallia said coldly. “Not a chance.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Karan and Yggur stole Malien’s sky ship,” she snapped, “and it’s put our defences back by weeks.”

  “Karan’s all right?” he cried, embracing her.

  Tallia pushed him away, though she managed a small smile. “She killed the magiz on Cinnabar but couldn’t stop her from opening the gate. Karan was well the last time Malien got through to her, about a week ago.”

  “She might have found Sulien,” he said desperately. “I have to keep hoping.”

  Nadiril looked up. “Uh-oh!”

  Dilly came storming down the yard, swinging a straw broom menacingly, as if she planned to swat him over the side of the hill with it. “How dare you involve Ifoli in your deadly schemes!” she hissed. “Never again, you old fool!”

  “I tried to talk her out of it,” he said feebly.

  “Not hard enough!”

  “No. It was very wrong of me.”

  “Excuse me!” said Ifoli. “Being a double agent was my idea.”

  “And I should have refused you. But we’ll talk about it later,” he said to Dilly. “We need their news and everyone needs ours.”

  Nadiril filled them in, briefly, on the war situation, and that Shand had fled and was a traitor.

  “Shand!” Llian couldn’t take it in. “I don’t believe it.”

  “He as good as admitted it.”

  “What are you going to do now?”

  “We’re moving our headquarters to the Great Library,” said Tallia. “It’s only an eight-hour flight from here. And a lot closer to the enemy.”

  “Where are they?”

  “A long way north, somewhere in the western tropics. With the Aachim’s help we’re building more sky ships, and we’re sailing part of our army north to Framan, the port at the mouth of the River Zur.”

  “How many troops do you have?”

  “Twenty-four thousand, and the numbers are growing fast. Though few have combat experience.”

  “Are you planning on attacking the Merdrun, wherever they are?”

  “Sending an army thousands of miles by sea isn’t practical,” said Tallia. “Besides, if the enemy can reopen their gate they could turn up in Thurkad or some other vital place without notice.”

  “Then what are you going to do?”

  “Find a way to destroy the summon stone, of course.”

  “Is this any help?” Llian put the core of the Command device on the table.

  Tallia started. “Where did you get that?”

  “I found it in the base of my manuscript bag.” He explained. “Can the device be remade?”

  “I’ll send for our best practical mancers,” said Tallia. “Ifoli, you can advise them based on what you know of Unick’s original design.”

  “You’ll also need a black crystal,” said Ifoli.

  “What kind? There are lots of black minerals.”

  “I have no idea.”

  28

  IF YOU’RE NOT GOING TO EAT ME

  As the flying beast carried her away Sulien was sure she was going to wet herself—or worse. Her hammering heart was threatening to tear itself in two, the backs of her hands were tingling and there was no strength in her arms or legs. The monster was going to eat her.

  They were hundreds of feet in the air now and it was still climbing, though cold rain was battering her face and s
he could not tell where the beast was taking her. She dared not struggle in case it dropped her. And yet, falling to her death would be better than being torn to pieces and fed to its young … No! Karan had taught her that while you were alive there was hope. And from Llian, never give up!

  “Where … you taking me?” she croaked.

  The creature looked down as if surprised that she knew how to talk, then flew faster, sinews creaking and leathery wing membranes flapping. The rain was lighter here, and colder, and there were snowy peaks in the distance. It was taking her into the high mountains.

  Its talons had closed around her waist so tightly that she could not draw a full breath, and several of the points had torn through her skin, very painfully. It touched her on the forehead with the tip of a claw, said, “Sleep!” and she sank into a well of darkness.

  When Sulien woke, it felt as though a long time had passed. It was dark; she lay on rough rock, and the smoky air reeked of the monster that had carried her away. A fire burning in the distance shed just enough light to reveal a rocky roof high above. She was in a huge cave.

  Bulky winged shadows shifted around the fire—more of the beasts. They seemed to be talking. What did they want her for? She would hardly make a meal for the smallest of them, but perhaps they fed their young on live prey …

  Sulien swallowed, and her throat was so dry that it rasped. She was unhurt save for three very painful claw punctures in her middle, though her leg muscles were aching and the blistered soles of her feet throbbed. She was trying to see a way out when all the beasts rose at once and her captor strode her way, his toe claws making scratching sounds on the rock. She tried to run but her legs refused to move.

  “Going somewhere?” His rumbling voice was so deep that she could feel it in her bones. He caught her around the waist with one hand, carried her to the other beasts and put her down in the middle of their ragged circle.

  Waves of colour shimmered across their scaly skin, camouflaging them. There were thirteen of them, six males and seven females, and the females were just as big and deadly as the males.