The Fatal Gate

by Ian Irvine

  Aviel slumped on her chair, breathing heavily again, trying to find her courage. Damn Hublees! Damn the Archeus and damn Shand! She wasn’t taking advice from a traitor.

  She withdrew Wilm’s black sword from its copper sheath. It was said to be enchanted but what did that mean? It was very sharp and surprisingly light—light enough for her to swing one-handed. She wound strips of rag around the blade, tied a loop onto the hilt, slid the sword into her voluminous skirts and fixed it to her belt under her coat. It would be awkward to draw and unfasten the sword, and almost certainly useless against a ghost, though she felt better for having it.

  Aviel crept out between the uncanny boulders and turned towards Rogues Render. The distant wailing rose and fell, but now she saw a greenish glimmer in the direction of the ruins. She stopped, her stomach throbbing. Why was it up to her? Hadn’t she done enough?

  With a special gift comes great responsibility, she told herself. And to defeat the great enemy we must all do our utmost. The little lecture was no help at all, but she went on.

  Before she was halfway she sensed something sniffing, as if trying to locate her. Aviel froze, shudders creeping up her back. Could she do this? She took another step forward, but a small rock moved underfoot, jarring her bad ankle. She stifled a cry, waited until the pain eased and hobbled on.

  The cold was awful. The tip of her nose was stinging, her eyes were watering in the wind and the tears were freezing on her cheeks. Such cold should have reduced the smell of Rogues Render to an occasional whiff but the disgusting reek grew stronger until it was almost unbearable. How could those carrion hunters have rendered thousands of dead soldiers, just to make corpse candles? Her innards churned.

  It reminded her of her first real crime—robbing a grave and disturbing the sacred rest of someone dead. Was distilling the spectral blood from a ghost vampire also a crime? It was certainly a huge stride down the dark path, no matter how noble her motives for attempting it.

  This train of thought was undermining what little confidence she had left. She had to focus on getting to Rogues Render, finding a way to trap Lumillal, and surviving it.

  The eerie wailing died away and was replaced by faint, faded screams, echoes from the past as the betrayed soldiers were cut down. The yellow-green glimmer from the ruins started to waver up and down like the southern aurora she had seen one winter’s night as a little girl. It was bright enough, as she approached, to light up the ruins: the stumps of fallen chimneys, lines of brickwork, scattered stone blocks, roof beams and broken slates. To her left, four rusting iron cauldrons stood in a row, each big enough to have contained a couple of oxen.

  Not oxen, though …

  She suppressed the ghastly thought. Further on was a tangle of pipework, rusted through, and three lines of rotting wooden vats. The iron hoops had come away and the staves stuck up like angled teeth.

  And everywhere—everywhere!—were the great bone middens the human predators had left behind, sometimes round piles, sometimes walls of bones as much as six feet high, ten feet across and twenty feet long. It was the most awful sight she had ever seen—all that remained of twenty thousand soldiers, betrayed and slaughtered because of one man’s insane lust for another man’s wife.

  And driven by the Merdrun’s summon stone. Never forget that.

  Aviel’s right ankle was throbbing and her right knee and hip ached; the long walk over rough ground had shifted her joints out of alignment.

  Sssssssss. Somewhere behind her.

  Aviel spun round, staring into the green-tinged darkness, her heart thundering.

  My, you are a pretty one!

  “Where are you?” she gasped. “What do you want?”

  Gifted too. You’ll give me back years and years. Sssssssss.

  Now she saw him, a dark outline against the green glow. Lumillal must have been a tall man once, and perhaps a handsome one too, though he was shrunken and stooped as if his desiccated flesh had pulled his frame out of shape and compressed him sideways. His skull was long and very narrow, his teeth large and pointed and slightly luminous. His eyes were black rimmed, deeply sunken and huge, and lit from within by the same oily yellow-green glow that bathed the ruins. Did it come from him?

  He drifted towards her, making the hissing sound as if with each breath, sssssssss, sssssssss, sssssssss. But ghosts did not breathe; were they even alive?

  Aviel backed away and darted down between two of the long bone middens. At the end she turned left and ducked in behind one of the rotting vats. The staves still had a faint fatty odour from the corpse candles that had been made there.

  Sssssssss.

  She crept out the other way, careful not to tread on the scattered bones, slipped through a small gap between two more vats, then down behind a soot-stained length of wall towards the cauldrons.

  Sssssssss.

  He was coming straight for her. Perhaps, as a former vampire, he could smell her blood or see her life force. Panic overwhelmed her and she had to fight down a scream, fight the urge to run too. She had a job to do and no one else could do it—get Lumillal into one of the cauldrons so the others could trap him there.

  She now saw that there were six cauldrons, not four, though the one closest to her lay on its side and she could see through its rusted-out base to the white midden behind. The cauldron next to it was also on its side. It may have been whole but it would be harder to seal Lumillal in. She scurried through the base of the rusted-out cauldron and out the other side, catching her skirts on jagged edges of metal, and on to the cauldrons beyond. They were all upright.

  Sssssssss. Sssssssss.

  He was right behind her; how was she to do it? She must not make it too obvious. She hobbled behind the next cauldron, out of sight, then climbed up onto the broken brick wall behind it. She could not see Lumillal from here though the glow from his awful eyes was brightening.

  She caught the rim of the middle cauldron, sprang up and, with much scrabbling and gasping, heaved herself onto it. Where was he? She could not tell. She lowered herself into the cauldron but her boots could not grip the steep sides; the rusty scale on the iron was flaking off under the pressure. When she reached the limit of her arms she had no choice but to let go and fall, a foot and a half onto inch-thick ice in the bottom of the cauldron.

  It broke with a loud crack, the shards stabbing her ankles and shins, and she plunged another six inches into freezing water which flooded in over the tops of her boots and burned all the way down to her toes. She could not get out of it; there was no way to climb the sides of the cauldron. She had trapped herself.

  She huddled in the icy water, her feet slowly going numb, now praying that Lumillal would not find her. The thought of being trapped in the cauldron with him, and tortured by him, almost stopped her heart. She prayed that Hublees would catch him first, though she could not imagine how.

  All was silent now, as silent as the dead. The wailing and the faded screams had stopped the moment she entered the ruins.

  Sssssssss.

  Lumillal’s hideously elongated head crept above the rim. His green-glowing eyes looked down and fixed on her, then he drifted ever so slowly upwards until he hung in the air above her. His mouth cracked open in a predatory leer. Sssssssss.

  Aviel let out a screech and sprang up, scrabbling for the rim, but did not even get close.

  You can’t escape, hissed Lumillal. And your allies can’t save you either. You’re all mine now, until you die.

  “What are you talking about?” she blustered, a sickening dread creeping over her.

  Do you think I don’t know why you’re here? You’re not the first to come for my Archeus, but I’m still here, and they’re in here.

  He pointed to his middle, then raised one spectral arm, bared his pointed teeth and strained. Brilliant green light shot up from his fingers for hundreds of feet then split into dozens of rays that curved down over Rogues Render like a protective shield.

  “What’s that?” she gasped. Her he
art was now thundering so loudly that he must have been able to hear it.

  My terror barrier. A sorcerous spell that renders everyone nearby paralysed by a dread so powerful that they’re incapable of thought. Your so-called friends won’t come to your rescue; they can’t move. And when I’m finished with you I’ll feed on them too.

  Aviel was incapable of replying. Not because of his terror barrier, which did not affect those at its centre, but because she had been thrown to a wolf and was desperately trying to find a way to save herself.

  You fool, Hublees! she thought. You just assumed Lumillal wasn’t a mancer—and you were wrong. He’s a powerful sorcerer. We’re all going to die and this monster will end up even stronger.

  Your life force is very rich, said Lumillal, eyeing her with such lust that he was drooling strands of glowing plasm. It might even be enough to bring me back to life as a real vampire. If it does I’ll drain you to a husk, break free of Rogues Render and stalk the land for the ninety years’ worth of victims I’ve missed out on.

  “How can you do spells? Were you a sorcerer in life?”

  “Aviel?” shrieked Earnis. “Where are you? Are you all right?”

  He must have broken free of the terror barrier; she could hear him scrabbling across the bone stacks. Should she call out? Or pray that he never found her and got away to safety?

  Then she saw the predatory hunger on Lumillal’s face and knew how wrong she was. Earnis hadn’t broken free; Lumillal had allowed him to escape so he could run to her—and to his death.

  “Earnis,” she screamed. “You’ve done exactly what he wanted. Run!”

  With a gesture of his bony left hand, Lumillal raised her in the air until her head was five feet above the top of the cauldron. Aviel dared not struggle; if she broke free she would hit the bottom of the cauldron hard enough to break her ankles. She watched helplessly as Earnis raced along between two bone middens. He saw her suspended there and skidded to a stop.

  “Let her go!” he roared.

  “Earnis, he’s a great sorcerer,” cried Aviel. “There’s nothing you can do.”

  Earnis drew a silver throwing knife from a pouch, drew back his arm and hurled it at Lumillal.

  Silver can’t harm me! Lumillal laughed as it passed harmlessly through him. Earnis drew another knife.

  Aviel choked back a sob. Lumillal was going to kill Earnis solely because he cared for her. “Earnis, run!”

  Lumillal lowered her onto the broad rim of the cauldron, then drifted slowly towards Earnis, who thrust out his silver knife, but there was nothing he could do to harm a ghost vampire. Lumillal swirled his right hand, and a pale yellow radiance rose like misty tendrils from Earnis’s head and chest.

  It was his life force. As Aviel watched in horror, Lumillal drifted down and gathered the yellow tendrils in, winding then back and forth between a hand and an crooked elbow like freshly spun thread. Earnis slumped to his knees, gasping.

  “Earnis, he wants to kill you. Run!”

  “What kind … a man … abandon you?”

  “A live one!”

  But Earnis—brave, loyal, gentle—shook his head. Even knowing he was going to die, he would not turn his back on a girl he had come to love. Even knowing that she did not love him.

  “Might … give you … chance,” said Earnis.

  It won’t, said Lumillal, but I thank you for the donation. The life force of a noble sacrifice is particularly nourishing.

  There was nothing she could do; Lumillal was beyond her reach. He gathered in more and more tendrils until there were barely any left and Earnis was swaying on his knees. His mouth hung open and his eyes were as dull as the eyes of a fish on a monger’s slab.

  Lumillal gathered the last tendrils and wrenched them out. Earnis collapsed. Lumillal wadded all the threads into a ball, tossed it high and, with a single gleeful movement, swallowed it.

  Earnis jerked, then fell on his face. He was dead.

  Aviel screamed and screamed.

  37

  YOU KILLED HER, DIDN’T YOU?

  Karan gazed at Sulien in wonder. She was scratched and battered and bruised, thinner and paler than before, and a much older girl looked out of her nine-and-a-half-year-old eyes. She was quivering like a small creature that had to be wary of predators every moment of its life or be eaten.

  Then the older girl vanished, and the child threw herself into Karan’s arms, hugging her so tightly that the breath was squeezed out of her.

  “I knew you’d come for me,” Sulien whispered. “I always knew … deep down.”

  Karan’s eyes watered. She knew Sulien was thinking of all those times in the past weeks when Karan had not dared to answer for fear the magiz would find her. And those times since Karan had regained some mancery but at the cost of her ability to link.

  “Sith?” said Yggur.

  “Fast as you can,” said Karan.

  As the sky ship turned north and climbed, Sulien pulled away. Her eyes roved around the inside of the sky ship, looking at the strangely beautiful Aachim craftsmanship. Every cupboard, every knob, every seat, strut and ceiling panel was beautifully carved and decorated with inlaid woods of many colours, or precious minerals. She turned to Yggur, who was at the controls, staring out the front window.

  She took a deep, shivery breath and went up to him, swaying as the craft rocked in the air. She bowed and said gravely, “Thank you, Mister Yggur.”

  Karan suppressed a snort. Mister Yggur indeed!

  Yggur inclined his head to her gravely. “I’m glad you’re safe, Sulien. You’re braver than any child—and most adults—I’ve ever met.”

  After a long pause Sulien came back to Karan, then started. She had just seen Hingis scrunched into a seat down the back. She went down to him and stood there, gazing at his ruined face and sad, twisted body.

  “You helped me too,” she said. “Thank you.” She extended her hand, and, after a long pause, Hingis shook it.

  “I didn’t help that much,” he said and turned away.

  The confidence and sense of purpose he had shown after their attack on the lyrinx’s cavern was gone. He was a broken man again.

  “What happened to you?” said Sulien.

  “Sulien!” hissed Karan. “Don’t ask personal questions.”

  “When I was seven, my twin sister dared me to ride a dangerous mule,” said Hingis breathlessly, his withered lung crackling with each breath. “She’s brave and she loves danger; she had already done it easily. But I’m … not brave. I was terrified and the mule knew. It threw me off then kicked me when I was down, and kept kicking. I should have died. I wish I had. But Esea ran in and dragged me to safety and … I ended up like this. A monster, inside and out.”

  “I saw you at the door of the sky ship,” said Sulien. “You were very brave.”

  “It’s not brave when you don’t care if you live or die.” He rose, climbed into the hammock furthest away at the back and pulled a blanket over his head.

  Sulien took a lurching step back, staring at the desolate shape, then hurried back to Karan, and they sat down side by side. Sulien’s hand crept out and found Karan’s. Karan sighed and drew her close.

  “Mummy, where’s Daddy?”

  Karan had been dreading the question. “I don’t know.” She summarised what had happened since Sulien left with the Whelm more than a month ago, then told her how Karan and Llian had finally met at Carcharon and what had happened there and at Alcifer.

  “After I got back from … dealing with the first magiz—”

  “You killed her, didn’t you?” said Sulien, wide-eyed.

  Karan did not want to relive that desperate time up on the ice-covered plateau, on her back with her belly bared to the magiz’s knife, but Sulien needed to know.

  “She was about to kill me and drink my life, to open the Crimson Gate. I cast the only spell I could, a simple freezing charm inside her open mouth and … it killed her. But she used her own death to open the gate, and the Merdrun star
ted to come through. Then something strange happened.”

  “They ended up on an island a long way away,” said Sulien. “But they’re trying to escape.”

  “After I came back from Cinnabar Llian had disappeared. I knew he was in danger but so were you. I saw Yetchah see Gergrig, and I heard her vow to take him for their master. I … I had to choose between looking for Llian and trying to find you.”

  “Poor Mummy!”

  “I had to choose you. Llian would have done the same, but …”

  “It must have been horrible.”

  “Yes. There was only one way to get here quickly enough, so Yggur helped me steal Malien’s sky ship.”

  Sulien turned to Yggur, who was staring ahead, then back to Karan. Sulien must have known there was more to the story but did not ask.

  “What happened to you?” said Karan.

  Sulien related how she had escaped the Whelm and how good Idlis had been to her. She told of her capture by Ghyll the lyrinx on the arch in Hessular and the bargain he had wanted to offer humanity until the Whelm slaughtered his people, and then his threat of undying war.

  “The Whelm are a pox on Santhenar!” cried Yggur. “How could I have ever seen otherwise?”

  “And now they’ve betrayed us to the enemy,” said Karan. “For nothing! Gergrig will put them down the moment he has no further use for them.” She closed her eyes and leaned back in her seat, and suddenly the force that had driven her all these days drained away. She was so exhausted she could barely hold her head up. “Yggur,” she said slowly, “what do you make of the lyrinx’s threat?”

  “It’s an empty one—there can’t be a hundred of them in all Santhenar.”

  Sulien reached over and took Karan’s hand. She seemed anxious. She did not speak for some time, though she kept leaning towards Karan as if she wanted to say something.

  “What is it, darling?” said Karan.

  “Idlis said my gift was growing. He said it was so strong he could sense it … and so did Ghyll, but …”