The Fatal Gate

by Ian Irvine

  “Are you … going to eat me?” she quavered.

  Several of the beasts laughed. “We prefer our meat mature,” said a massive female with red-gold eyes the size of oranges and a green crystal on a thong around her neck. “You wouldn’t have any flavour.”

  “We could smoke her,” said a small male with half a dozen teeth missing from his lower jaw and a large chunk out of his right nostril.

  “Don’t toy with the child,” said the male who had carried her here. “Old-human girl, my name is Ghyll and I lead—”

  “Equally with I!” the massive female said sharply. Her red-gold eyes steamed and violent jags of yellow and purple raced across her skin.

  Waves of gentle, calming pastel colours ebbed and flowed across Ghyll’s yard-wide chest. It had to be some kind of skin speech. “We, that is Taitt and I, jointly lead this clan of lyrinx. We—”

  “If—if you’re not going to eat me, why have you brought me here?” said Sulien, very politely.

  “How dare you interrupt!” hissed Taitt, her skin colours clashing violently. “Be silent, grub, or I will feed you to my pups!”

  Sulien envisaged that gory fate as only a sensitive could. Would Taitt divide her up first, or toss her to the pups and let them fight over her? She choked.

  Ghyll scowled at Taitt before turning back to Sulien. “You’re an important little girl,” he said. “Well connected. We invited you here because we can help each other.”

  “You didn’t invite me, you kidnapped me,” she snapped.

  “I saved you from your hunters.”

  The word saved was debatable. “How did you find me?”

  “I homed in on your gift. It’s the strongest I’ve ever sensed in an old human.”

  A gift she did not understand, but needed to. “How can we help each other?”

  Ghyll exchanged glances with Taitt. She did not speak, but waves of orange and black washed across her front.

  “The Merdrun are our ancient enemies from the void,” said Ghyll. “We fought them many a time—”

  “Gergrig said they’ve never been beaten, in ten thousand years of war,” said Sulien.

  The lyrinx rose as one, their great wings cracking and their teeth bared, and their skin colours flared so brightly that they lit up the cavern for fifty yards. Sulien let out a squeak and cowered against the floor.

  “They never beat us!” hissed Taitt. “Not once!”

  “And the last time we fought,” said Ghyll, “the Merdrun broke and ran.”

  Sulien slowly came to her feet, staring at Ghyll and Taitt. Were they offering to help? The aid of such mighty creatures could win the war—if they were telling the truth. She thought they were, for she could always tell if people were good or bad inside, but did that sense apply to the lyrinx as well? But what if it was a trick? “What are you saying?”

  “If we joined forces …” said Ghyll.

  “As equals!” snapped Taitt.

  “Will you give your people our message—that we offer our friendship and aid in the greatest battle of all?” said Ghyll.

  “Why would you help us?” Sulien said carefully. “It’s not your fight.”

  “It will be if you lose,” he said gravely.

  “Um … But what do you want in return?”

  “The gift of a small part of Santhenar. And a treaty guaranteeing our lands, for ever.”

  It seemed a small price to pay for their aid, though even a nine-year-old girl could see the conflicts that would create. “I can’t offer—”

  “Treaties take patient negotiation between equals, compromise, and benefits to both sides. But you know the greatest people in the west. Will you speak for us?”

  Sulien looked down at her ruined boots. An alliance with the lyrinx, who knew the enemy and had never been beaten by them, seemed like the answer to a prayer. But could they be trusted? They looked bad, yet her gift did not detect anything evil about them, just a desperate hunger for a safe home.

  “And in return, you’ll help us fight the Merdrun?” she said.

  “Once the treaty is signed,” said Ghyll.

  29

  LIKE ALL OUR OTHER ENEMIES

  Karan’s clung desperately to her seat in the sky ship. A lyrinx was going to eat Sulien. “She’s dead,” she moaned. She wanted to hurl herself out the door.

  “Not yet,” Yggur said coldly. “Pull yourself together! Track her.”

  “I don’t know where to begin.”

  That was the brat, calling to its mother! It was Gergrig’s voice. Can you find her?

  Someone let out a high, nerve-rasping giggle. Empuly, Karan thought.

  She’s in the land called Salliban, said Jaguly.

  And it’s hundreds of miles long.

  Narrowing, said Jaguly. A long pause. A hundred miles. Another pause of several minutes. Sixty miles … twenty-five.

  Still too big an area, said Gergrig.

  Then the voices were gone.

  “I think I know that city,” said Yggur, clamping his hands around his head and closing his eyes. “A square, stepped pyramid, and a dome collapsed to a broad arch. It’s Hessular!”

  “Can you find it on the map?” said Karan.

  “I have it on this map.” Yggur tapped his forehead. “It’s forty miles south-south-east.”

  “But Sulien isn’t there any more.”

  “The lyrinx’s lair won’t be far away. Find her!”

  He drove the sky ship south at a furious pace. Karan was struggling to regain her sense of Sulien when she heard Gergrig again.

  I’m troubled by the brat’s cry. What did it mean?

  Who cares? The listless voice had to be the apathetic Unbuly. Something’s got her and she’ll soon be dead.

  Before she dies, said Gergrig, we’ve got to know the names of everyone she’s told about our weakness. We’ve got to hunt them down as well. Empuly, link to the brat and find out why she cried for help.

  Karan heard no more for the best part of an hour, then Empuly moaned.

  What is it? cried Gergrig. What do you see?

  Karan sensed Empuly thrashing her arms and legs in a fit, then an image flashed into her own mind so clearly that she could see the detail of the lyrinx’s scales, the patterns in its great, intelligent eyes, and a thread of white sinew caught between its rows of teeth. She cried, “No!”

  Yggur cut the rotors and the sky ship slowed and stopped, wallowing in the bumpy air.

  What’s a lyrinx doing on Santhenar? hissed Gergrig.

  He sounded alarmed. There was a long pause in which Karan could sense the triplets’ inner turmoil.

  What did your predecessor magiz know about this? said Gergrig.

  After some minutes of silence Jaguly spoke. The lyrinx reached Santhenar … ten years ago, she said slowly, as if struggling to read the clouded memories of the dead. When the Way Between the Worlds was opened and we first saw this world. Why does it matter?

  We fought the lyrinx an aeon ago and they were fierce, clever enemies, our greatest.

  But … why were they not exterminated like all our other foes?

  They were based in a place that could not be taken without losing over half our number, and our ancestors had other enemies to fight. Now I wish they had taken those casualties and extinguished the lyrinx for ever. What if they join forces with Santhenar?

  Jaguly giggled. What can a handful of lyrinx do?

  Gergrig did not reply. Karan glanced at Yggur, who shrugged.

  Lord Gergrig, said Empuly. I’ve caught a very strange call.

  Who from?

  One of the base-born scum the brat was travelling with. Whelm, they call themselves. A woman, Yetchah, used the child’s cry to contact our previous magiz, not knowing she was dead, and the call came to me.

  Karan sat bolt upright, knowing what was coming. Twelve years ago her own gift had been used as a bridge between the Whelm and their master, Rulke, and look at the ruin that had caused.

  Yes? Gergrig said impatiently.


  The Whelm want you for their master. They swear you will have no more perfect servants.

  Gergrig let out a derisive bark of laughter. Merdrun have no need of servants—only slaves.

  They promise to obey your every order, without question. Yetchah says they know where the lyrinx’s lair is—a cave near a nearby glacier. They offer to take back the child, force her to link so you can interrogate her, then kill her.

  That pleasure is reserved to me, said Gergrig.

  Yetchah says the whole Whelm nation, twenty-five thousand, is hunting the brat. And once she’s dead they will fight on your behalf. They are relentless.

  Why not? he mused. Let them serve—for as long as we need them.

  And then?

  We will treat them like all our other enemies. Then Gergrig and the triplets were gone.

  “What are we going to do?” said Karan, so afraid that every nerve stung. If the lyrinx didn’t eat Sulien the Whelm would kill her—if the triplets didn’t get to her first.

  “Find Hessular, then get to the lyrinx before they do.”

  Half an hour later the sky ship was over the ruins of the half-drowned city. “No sign of the Whelm,” said Yggur. “They’ve gone after her.”

  “How are we going to find her?”

  He hovered over the arch and slowly rotated the sky ship. “Stop me when you know which direction the lyrinx was heading.”

  “There,” said Karan, pointing towards three peaks that stood rather higher than the rest of the range.

  He climbed to the base of the clouds and headed for the peaks. A quarter of an hour later they were flying low over a pair of glaciers that ground their way down between walls of broken grey rock.

  “Keep a sharp lookout,” said Yggur. “Lyrinx are heavy creatures; where they’ve gone to ground there will be signs.”

  “If they’re so heavy, how can they fly?”

  “Via the Secret Art, though few can use it for any other purpose.”

  “Lucky there’s only a handful of them,” said Karan. “But once they breed … If there were thousands of lyrinx, what chance would we have?”

  “We’ve got more than enough real threats to worry about.”

  “I can’t see any sign of the Whelm.”

  “It’ll take them hours to get here. Any lyrinx tracks?”

  “Yes, there, running down towards the glacier.”

  Yggur set the sky ship down several miles away, hidden behind upthrust slabs of ice. They donned heavy coats, gloves and hoods, made sure their weapons were ready for use, and tied the vessel down.

  “Out!” said Yggur, tipping Hingis out of his hammock with one foot.

  “Are you sure?” said Karan.

  “I’m not leaving him here to sabotage the sky ship again, or steal it.”

  Hingis studied Yggur with empty eyes but said nothing.

  They headed down the glacier, then onto the broken wall of the valley. Below them the lyrinx tracks plunged into a gap at a point where the side of the glacier had pulled away from the rock.

  Down they went for more than a hundred yards, the ice now looming precariously above them. She eyed it uneasily. The glacier, which was in slow but relentless motion, creaked and groaned as it moved, opening crevasses with reverberating cracking sounds only to slam them shut again. Ahead, a rectangular tunnel had been cut into the base of the ice.

  “It’s not safe,” said Hingis, who was gasping and blue around the lips.

  “What do you care?” Yggur said coldly. “You want to die anyway.”

  “Not crushed under a million tons of ice.”

  “You were happy to see us smashed and burned if the sky ship crashed,” Karan said coldly. There was no room in her heart for anything but finding Sulien—if it was not too late. “Stop whining.”

  “I’ll go first,” said Yggur. “There may be traps.”

  He headed in and, after a moment’s hesitation, Karan followed.

  “How can they live down here?” said Hingis from behind her. “No one can know when the ice is sound or when it’s going to collapse.”

  The tunnel became a triangular passage lit by pallid grey-blue light that leached all colour from their faces. It looked like a crevasse that had been opened out, and Karan did not like it at all. The cracked ice creaked and groaned all around them and jagged lumps kept falling from the roof and walls. The forces down here must be immense—perhaps enough to snap the crevasse shut and smear them against the iron-hard ice.

  Had the lyrinx brought Sulien this way? Or had it already eaten her? There were no marks on the floor and the air had no smell; it was too cold.

  After a mile or so the passage passed from the ice into banded grey and white rock and sloped upwards. Yggur studied the walls. “This is freshly cut. Can’t be more than a year old. Can you smell anything? Your senses are keener than mine.”

  “There’s a faint rank odour, not one I’ve ever smelled before,” said Karan.

  “Go and have a look. We’ll make a plan.”

  What about traps? Karan gulped, then felt her way up into absolute darkness.

  The further she went the milder the temperature became, and the stronger the rank odour. Suddenly she caught another, horrifyingly familiar smell—meat hanging in a coolroom. She stifled a shriek and fought the sickening terror that threatened to overwhelm her. It was well-aged meat and must have been hung for weeks. Not a freshly killed girl.

  She passed along a sinuous passage, still climbing, then another, and a faint orange light appeared in the distance—some form of mage light—and beyond it a log fire. She stopped, her heart thudding slowly. Dare she go on? If there were guards out, they would see her before she made them out against the light. But Sulien could be up there; she had to keep going.

  With every step she expected to be discovered, caught, killed! Another corner. The light was brighter ahead and the passage wider and higher.

  And then she saw her. Sulien was alive, but surrounded by lyrinx. Karan’s knees gave, relief warring with terror. They hadn’t harmed her yet, but they were monsters; they might do anything.

  She backed away, sick with dread. Yggur was a great mancer but not even he could free Sulien away from so many lyrinx.

  “She’s up there,” she croaked when she reached Yggur and Hingis. “In a broad cavern with several passages leading off the far side. Couldn’t see how far they went.”

  “How many lyrinx?” said Hingis, speaking for the first time in hours.

  “Thirteen, and all staring at Sulien as if they can’t wait to eat her. I don’t see what we can do, Yggur. I couldn’t even take on a baby lyrinx.”

  “I don’t know.” He rubbed his eyes. “But we’ll go up.”

  Karan led the way, knowing it was hopeless. She had a knife and knew how to use it, but it would be no use against an armoured lyrinx. And she had no faith in Hingis. No one could rely on a man who just wanted to die.

  As she rounded the last corner and the orange-lit cavern opened up before her the lyrinx rose together, blocking her view of Sulien. Most headed towards one of the shaded passages but a big female came the other way, towards Karan. She wore a heavy blade on her right hip but did not need it; the retractable talons on her hands were six inches long.

  Yggur retreated around the corner into the dark. “Should’ve expected they’d guard the way in.”

  “Have you got any kind of a plan?” said Karan.

  “Hingis will confuse the guard with an illusion. I’ll take care of her, silently, and we’ll go up. Hingis will craft another illusion and I’ll attack the lyrinx with my most powerful mancery, giving you the chance to get Sulien away. If we’re pursued, I’ll bring the tunnel down behind us and we run for it.”

  “Not much of a plan,” muttered Hingis.

  “Got a better one?” Yggur said in a frigid voice.

  “How long to prepare the illusion?” said Karan.

  “It’s ready,” said Hingis. “All I have to do is release it. But there
’s only so much power I can draw from this—” he looked down at his meagre, twisted body, “—and when it’s gone the illusion will fail. Ready?”

  No, thought Karan. They crept to the corner. The guard stood at the entrance to the cavern, forty yards away. There came a tiny thud, an exhaled sigh, and she toppled and fell, half blocking the entrance.

  “That’s one hell of an illusion,” Yggur said softly.

  “I haven’t used it yet,” said Hingis.

  “Then what …?”

  There came a chorus of chilling howls from the cavern.

  “Whelm!” cried Karan. “How did they get here so quickly?”

  “There must be another entrance,” said Yggur. “Hingis, work your illusion!”

  The orange mage light flared then broke into a dozen orbs, half casting bright light and the other half beaming out impenetrable shadows. They shot in all directions, bouncing off the walls, bursting and forming more bright and dark orbs, until the maze of light and shadow utterly confused Karan’s senses.

  But not Yggur’s, for he drew his sword and raced up. Karan leapt over the body of the dead guard, who had been struck in the back of the head with the bolt from a heavy crossbow, and ran after Yggur. How was she supposed to find Sulien in all this?

  Someone bellowed, “Dismiss!”

  The illusions vanished; Hingis cried out in pain and the cavern was plunged into a smoky gloom lit only by the distant fire. A group of lyrinx raced out of one of the tunnels but a dozen Whelm, concealed behind a low rock shelf, rose and fired at them. The lyrinx shrieked and clawed at the bolts embedded under their armoured skin. Evidently they had been dipped in some corrosive substance, for the lyrinx were in such agony that they could not defend themselves.

  The Whelm—who appeared to be killing out of pure loathing—slew the lyrinx where they lay, thrashing and helpless. Karan felt sick at the sight.

  “Stop!” Sulien screamed. “They’re our friends.”

  Karan crept from rock to rock, trying to see her. Why would she say such a thing?

  A lanky female Whelm darted forward, then lunged. Sulien shot out to one side and bolted towards the nearest cavern, the Whelm after her.

  “Sulien!” Karan screamed, but Sulien kept going.