The Fatal Gate

by Ian Irvine

Karan followed, weaving between the dead and the dying. To her right a big lyrinx in heavy armour was fighting a band of Whelm. They had shot many bolts at him but none had penetrated his armour and now he hurled himself at them, swinging a great hammer in his left hand and a spike-tipped flail in his right.

  It was no ordinary flail—green lightning radiated from each of the spikes, sizzling and crackling and striking down everyone it touched. Already four Whelm lay dead and the rest were backing away, though more had massed further down the passage. On the far side of the chamber Yggur was fighting to get to Sulien. The Whelm were after him too, firing poisoned bolts which he turned away with magical flicks of his long blade.

  Karan’s knife was useless here so she heaved the crossbow out from under a dead Whelm and loaded it with a three-inch bolt. She was no expert with the weapon but at this range all one had to do was point and shoot. She crouched in the low-hanging smoke, saw a tall, scrawny Whelm creeping after Yggur, and fired.

  The Whelm went down, screaming and clawing at his shoulder. She gathered a handful of bolts and shot a second Whelm, a woman. She fell too. But where was Sulien? The light was dimmer, the smoke thicker, and it was hard to tell friend from foe.

  Mummy?

  A Whelm had Sulien bundled under his arm and was creeping towards the tunnel where they had massed earlier. Karan aimed carefully, intending to disable, but her shot went astray and hit him in the back of the neck. He slid to the floor, kicking and screaming and tearing at the wound, then went still. She had killed him.

  “Sulien, this way!” she yelled, reloading the crossbow.

  Sulien kicked free, looked around wildly but did not see Karan, then ran towards Yggur, crying out his name. He was locked in battle with a pair of Whelm, and when Sulien was still ten yards away another Whelm raced towards her and scooped her up.

  Karan was about to fire when she realised that the Whelm was Yetchah, who had once helped Idlis save Karan’s and Sulien’s lives. Karan hesitated too long; Yetchah ran into a patch of low-hanging smoke and vanished, taking Sulien with her.

  30

  THE LAST BREATH OF AN UNDEAD KILLER

  Within seconds of the sky ship taking off, Aviel wished she was back on solid ground. The pilot seemed dangerously incompetent, her head was spinning and her stomach was churning, and she was sure they were going to crash and die.

  The allies’ need for nivol was so urgent that Commander Janck had made available the first vessel their teams of artificers had built—with much help from Malien’s Aachim—in one of the riverside shipyards of Sith.

  At least, almost built. The cabin, which was not an elegant ovoid like Malien’s craft, but an ugly rectangular box, had only been fitted out with the pilot’s seat and controls, some bamboo and canvas chairs bolted to the floor, bulging nets that held their gear in place, and racks for Aviel’s crates of chymicals and equipment. The tiny galley lacked both a bench and a sink.

  The cupboards had no doors and neither did the squatting privy, a cramped recess behind the galley with just a square hole in the floor, and lacking even a door. Aviel only used it once, at high altitude and in dire need, but the air that whistled up through the hole was so icy, and her embarrassment so acute, that she neither ate nor drank during each subsequent day’s flight to ensure that she never need use it again.

  The sky ship, which in defiance of all logic had been named Hyacinth, had none of the grace or beauty of the Aachim’s vessels and many flaws they did not possess, notably a tendency for the rotors to stop at the most inconvenient moment and a strong disinclination to fly in a straight line. The pilot, Hublees, a fussy little mancer, kept muttering about it being “arse-heavy.”

  He was a shapeless short-legged fellow with a ridiculous jet-black goatee and white sideburns so long he could have knotted them under his chin. He was said to have special expertise in dealing with ghosts, spectres and similar creatures, though Aviel found it hard to take him seriously.

  “Flying experience?” he said in response to her question as Hyacinth staggered into the air from the shipyard, lurching and wobbling. Its wooden skids knocked the top off a chimney stack, scattering bricks onto a neighbouring building and smashing through the roof tiles. “I’d never even seen a sky ship until this morning.”

  People ran out of the building, shouting and brandishing their fists. He smiled amiably and waved. Nothing bothered him.

  Everything bothered Aviel. She felt sure he was going to crash the ugly craft into one of the tall buildings along the waterfront, which would see everyone dead in a fiery explosion, or into the icy waters of the River Garr, where they would quickly drown.

  Hublees headed out over the river. “But how difficult can flying be?”

  He pulled on a black-ended lever and the craft rose sharply, only to drop twenty feet with a jolt that toppled all the packs out of their nets. Aviel’s breakfast heaved up to the back of her throat. “Up, down, see.” He wiggled a red lever and the sky ship careered sideways towards a bridge. “Left, right.” He pushed a green knob in and out. “Stop, go. That’s all there is to it, Aviel my dear. I could teach a three-legged dog to fly Hyacinth in half an hour—as long as he could channel power to the rotors, of course.”

  He laughed as though he had made a great joke, swerved wildly, then checked his compass and turned east towards the Sea of Thurkad, rubbing his saggy belly. “Must get on, must get on.”

  Aviel felt an unpleasant whirling in her head and wanted to throw up. She closed her eyes but that made things worse. She clung to the bamboo frame of her chair, staring wild-eyed out through the boxy front window. They had only been flying for five minutes and the journey to obtain a golden brimstone, some bubble-bark pine colophony and three drams of Archeus of Eidolon would take the best part of a fortnight—assuming they survived the first hour.

  They were but five: herself, Hublees and Earnis, who was here to advise Aviel on alchemical methods and make sure the brimstone and colophony were suitable, since she had not seen either before. Osseion was their guard and general assistant.

  The fifth member of the team was the squeaky-voiced young Aachim, Nimil, with the metal slit in his throat. He had brought one of Xarah’s scrying boards, perhaps to spy on Aviel and report back to Malien, though his main job was cutting a cavity into a priceless plum-sized yellow diamond to make the diamond phial.

  Aviel had naively hoped to set up a small bench and work during the journey, but the sky ship lurched, rocked, bounced and tilted constantly. Often it dropped precipitously without warning or shot up at frightening speeds in sudden updraughts; it was never stable for more than a few minutes. She would have to sleep during the flight, then set up her workshop tent at each campsite and work all night.

  Hublees flew east to the coast near Vilikshathûr, then across the Sea of Thurkad, here a hundred miles wide. The lumbering flight took most of the day and Aviel was so miserably airsick that she barely managed an hour’s sleep.

  They landed on the eastern side of the sea, a couple of miles from the coast, by a creek dried to a few muddy waterholes in an empty landscape. The low brown hills were scattered with tussocks of grey grass and withered little bushes; the grey soil was powdery and there was a haze of dust in the air.

  “Doesn’t look as though it’s rained in years,” said Aviel, peering out the door.

  “The drought is everywhere,” Earnis said gloomily.

  Aviel picked up a crate of beakers and carried it to the cabin door, then hesitated, wondering how to get it down the six-foot ladder.

  “We’ll do that,” said Earnis. “Find a good spot for your workshop.”

  He carried the tent poles and rolls of canvas to the door and Osseion heaved them over his shoulder. Aviel went down the ladder and surveyed the site.

  “Will there be snakes?” she said warily.

  “I dare say,” said Osseion. “Scorpions and spiders too. Where do you want it?”

  She picked out a flat area, not too close to any bushes where
venomous creatures might lurk. “Here. Um … do you know how to put up a tent?” She had never seen one before, and this one had dozens of poles, ropes and pegs.

  Osseion ruffled her silky hair as he went past. “I’ve put up thousands of tents. We’ll have it done in no time.”

  The workshop tent was fourteen feet long and eight wide, with a canvas floor to keep the dirt and dust down and a flap that could be opened in the far end to let fumes out. A short bench at the end of the tent and a longer one on the right side were made from canvas stretched drum-tight across wooden frames. Three rectangular metal plates were set on top, one for her charcoal brazier and the other two to provide stable work surfaces. She also had a cauldron for boiling water and washing her equipment, though due to the risk of fire she kept it outside.

  Aviel went back and forth, unpacking her crates of equipment and racks of chymicals. It would take at least an hour to set out everything she needed for the night’s work and another hour to pack everything away at dawn. It was going to be a very long night and every succeeding night would be the same.

  “Anything I can help you with?” said Earnis, putting his head through the flap.

  She needed to focus on the unfamiliar methods she had to carry out perfectly, otherwise things would go wrong and she would have to do it all again.

  “No, I need to think,” she said absently.

  He looked disappointed but turned away.

  Aviel was assembling a glass still when a low voice behind her said, “Where are you up to?”

  She jumped. “Shand?” He appeared slowly, feet first. “Wh-what are you doing here?”

  “You’re not the only one who needs exotic ingredients.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “So that’s why the sky ship is ‘arse-heavy.’ You’re hiding up the back.”

  “There’s an empty space inside the rotor cowling, and very cold and uncomfortable and noisy it is too. My ears are still ringing.”

  She checked outside in case anyone was close enough to hear her talking to a traitor, but saw no one. “What do you want?” she whispered.

  He studied the layout of the workshop. “Space to finish my scent potion, of course.”

  She pulled the tent flap closed. “What?”

  “To finish the Afflatus Effluvium I have to extract and carefully blend four odorous oils, all related to death, decay and darkness and loss.”

  How dare he! “You can’t use my tent. There’s no room.”

  “The small bench on the end will do me.”

  This could not be happening. “Someone’s bound to see or hear you, and then I’ll be hanged.”

  “Not as high as I will be. You owe me, Aviel.”

  She thought about being condemned to slave in Magsie’s disgusting tannery, then about her own lovely little workshop in Shand’s back garden. She did owe him. “What have you got to do?” she said dully. “Will it take long?”

  “A few hours a night. I have to extract four odours: the essential oil taken from a plant at the moment it goes extinct, smoke from the desiccated corpse of a woman murdered long ago, an exhalation from the ancient past, rising from deep in the bowels of the earth—and the last breath of an undead killer.”

  The dark was rising up to choke her. “Why do you have to do it in my tent?”

  He moved the equipment she had laid out so carefully on the end bench, set up the apparatus he needed for scent potion work and went invisible. She knew he was still there, though; sometimes she caught an unpleasant whiff, or saw phials or flasks moving by themselves. It was impossible to focus on her own work and, until the others went to bed, she lived in dread that they would discover her aiding a traitor.

  The following morning they flew south over lands as dry and drab as their campsite, heading for Grund. Aviel saw little of it; after working all night she was so exhausted that she curled up in a corner of the cabin, tied a safety rope around her middle and plunged into sleep.

  The days fell into a pattern: land, put up the tent and set out her equipment, work all night, interrupted periodically by an increasingly fractious Shand, whose own work clearly was not going well, then crate her gear up and sleep the day’s flight away.

  Two days later, after half a dozen near-death experiences due to Hublees’ cheerful incompetence, the ramshackle sky ship plunged out of the clouds in mid-morning and Aviel saw, far below, a stone-capped hill, one of a number that stuck up like pimples on the otherwise flat land. The craft lurched in an updraught then dropped with a crash that rattled her glassware in its crates.

  “Where are we?” said Aviel.

  “The bitumen seeps of Grund.”

  “What a hideous place,” said Earnis.

  The land beyond the hill was utterly barren: there was not a tree, bush or tussock of grass to be seen for miles and the ground might have been burrowed by gigantic moles.

  Bitumen had been mined here for centuries, and thousands of ragged pits, most only a few yards across, had been dug out as the miners followed the veins and slowly upwelling springs down until the air became too poisonous for them to work. The ground was covered with black castings, heaps of bitumen-coated waste rock. It was a windswept, sterile wasteland—sweltering in summer and miserably exposed to the icy southerlies of winter, as now.

  The sky ship passed into another cloud and jerked up and down, making her stomach churn and her head spin. Sometimes she still felt disoriented an hour after they landed.

  “Where do we find a perfect crystal of golden brimstone?” she said dully.

  “We’ll see if we can buy one first,” said Earnis.

  “Or failing that,” Hublees grinned, “take it by force.”

  “No we won’t! That could contaminate its alchemical essence,” countered Earnis.

  “Without the crystal, we fail. There’s no room for your philosophical scruples now.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” snapped Earnis. “Alchemy—”

  He had touched a nerve, for Hublees was swelling like an inflated bladder. His soft round face twisted and he leapt up from the controls. “You don’t know anything about me, you arrogant little pup.”

  Earnis took an involuntary step back, then stopped, fists clenched by his sides. Aviel, shocked at this violent transformation of a man she had thought to be an amiable buffoon, saw that Earnis was preparing to take him on.

  Osseion sprang up, his weight rocking the sky ship, and stepped between them. “My job is to protect Aviel,” he rumbled, “and yours is to fly this box of canvas and string. Sit down!”

  For a few seconds Aviel thought Hublees was going to thump Osseion, which could not have ended well, then the fury rushed out of him and he deflated and sat down. “Never call me ignorant,” he said softly. “Never say that again.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Earnis. “But my job is to make sure Aviel gets the ingredients she needs. Not approximately, not second best, not contaminated by an improper collection method—but exactly what she needs.”

  Hublees, staring straight ahead, nodded stiffly. “But if you can’t, any golden brimstone is better than none.”

  “In alchemy, noble failure is safer than success by unsound means.”

  Aviel thought so too, though since she was a novice in the art it was not up to her. She had to follow the method on the parchment, precisely.

  “When you’re fighting the Merdrun there is no noble failure,” said Hublees, jerking the controls in his agitation. “If Aviel fails we’ll be annihilated, and not even an alchemist can find nobility in that.”

  “Are you going to land or not?” said Earnis.

  “Can’t risk it here,” said Hublees, heading east out of the clouds, over a long ridge then down. “The ship is too vulnerable. We’ll have to walk in.”

  The land here was equally barren: every tree had been felled for miles to feed the fires needed to purify the bitumen and distil off naphtha and other valuable products. There were no pits on this side of the ridge though—the land was u
nscarred and empty save for a herd of grazing animals, unidentifiable from this distance, further north.

  Hublees set down in an eroded gully that concealed the sky ship from every direction but the north, where the ridge overlooked it. A heavy frost lay on the pebbles. Earnis and Osseion erected Aviel’s tent and carried in her crates.

  Nimil, a quiet, solitary fellow, put up his own tent fifty feet away, set up a small table inside, clamped the yellow diamond to a stand and put a magnifying band over his eyes. Then he closed the tent flap and continued the painstaking work of cutting out the centre to make the diamond phial. Given that diamond was far harder than any other substance, Aviel could not imagine how he was doing it, nor was she going to find out. The Aachim were unsurpassed craftsmen and they guarded their secrets jealously.

  Osseion, his enormous sword strapped across his back, climbed to the top of a twenty-foot high outcrop of orange sandstone to keep watch. Earnis and Hublees donned their packs and Aviel gathered her own.

  “It’s too far for you,” said Earnis.

  The long walk across broken ground would be agonising, and the return journey worse, but she had to do it. “I’ve got to be there when the brimstone is collected.”

  “You’ll only slow us down,” said Hublees.

  “If you’re caught,” said Earnis, “the whole mission fails. I know what to look for.” He heaved his pack higher. “Don’t expect us until tomorrow. Golden brimstones are only found on the southern side of the Grund seeps, in a bitumen-filled fissure called the Tagly Artery, and it may be guarded.”

  “If it is, how will you get some?” said Aviel.

  “Don’t ask,” said Hublees.

  They set off. Irritable now, Aviel lit a brazier and put a pot of water on to boil for tea. The prepared chymicals Earnis had bought in Sith had saved months of work, and in the past nights she had finished all but the last three steps. They had to be done in a single sequence after she obtained the three final ingredients, one mineral, one vegetable and one animal: the perfect golden brimstone, a lemon-sized lump of bubble-bark pine colophony and finally, to create and activate the nivol, three drams of Archeus of Eidolon.