The Fatal Gate

by Ian Irvine

  Thump! Thump! Two more bats slammed into the glass and fell. A fourth bat landed on the stone ridge above the window and hung there upside down, glaring at her, its clawed feet screeching down the glass.

  “Aaahh!” cried Sulien, jerking upright. “Mummy, what’s going on?”

  Karan slid out of the window recess. “Just bats,” she said, taking Sulien’s hands. “Out hunting.”

  The clinging bat was joined by three more, the dim lamplight reflecting from their unblinking eyes.

  “What are they hunting?” said Sulien.

  Thoroughly unnerved, Karan gathered her blankets and climbed onto her bed shelf. The bat was only a black outline now but she knew it was watching her, and her sensitive’s inner ear picked up its high-pitched call. Was it spying on her? Had the triplets’ power grown so enormously that they could even control animals now?

  Sulien had gone back to sleep. Karan sealed off the window by propping the table against it and stuffing her blankets around the edges, then went looking for Tallia. After an hour of asking, Karan tracked her to one of the archive rooms three levels below ground. The guards would not allow her through, though one grudgingly agreed to take a message to Tallia.

  He returned a few minutes later. “You may enter.”

  It was after two in the morning. Karan followed him into a large room with benches piled with books, maps and papers on all four sides, and a long table in the centre, empty apart from a large map on beige canvas. As she entered, Janck turned it upside down. Tallia, who was seated at the far end of the table, looked exhausted. Janck was on her left and Malien and Yggur on the right.

  Tallia looked up but it was Janck who spoke. “Well?”

  “I need to speak to Aviel.”

  “Why?” said Janck.

  “Before I go spying on the triplets, I’ve got to know where the Merdrun are, who the local people are and what the land is like. She’s the only one who’s seen it.”

  Tallia and Janck exchanged glances, then he nodded.

  “She’s not here,” said Tallia.

  “When will she be back?” said Karan.

  “We … don’t know.”

  “What do you know?”

  “Xarah has done some scrying,” said Malien. “She believes the Merdrun are on the Isle of Gwine—an island about fifteen miles by ten—in the Western Ocean a long way west of Banthey.”

  “Ah!” said Karan. She had seen Gwine on the map but had never been near it. “How did they end up there?”

  “We think Aviel’s attack on the summon stone cut the flow of power to the Crimson Gate and made it go wrong, then close prematurely, fortunately for us.”

  “Why?”

  “Large ships seldom go anywhere near Gwine; the Merdrun can’t escape save by reopening the Crimson Gate, and that could take a long time, and great power—”

  Janck cleared his throat and Malien did not go on, but Karan did not need her to. Clearly, he was hoping to mount an attack before they could reopen the gate.

  “It’d be helpful if you could assassinate Gergrig … and the triplets,” said Janck.

  The gall of the man! “You want someone assassinated, do it yourself,” she said coldly.

  His eyes glittered. “You will go without delay. We—need—that—intelligence.”

  Karan did not want to go at all, but since she must, she hoped to delay it as long as possible. “I’ll need Malien’s help and mancery to prepare. I’ll go tomorrow … evening.”

  “Make it sooner.”

  Karan looked to Malien pleadingly and saw a grim smile flicker there, as if she were thinking, You stole my sky ship and now you want me to help you? But Malien said, “The preparations are complex and difficult; it can be no earlier than Karan says.”

  Janck grunted and waved a dismissing hand. “Get going, then.”

  Karan did not move. “There’s something else.”

  “Another favour?”

  “No, another security risk.”

  He sat up abruptly. “Go on.”

  She related the incident of the bats attacking her window, and her fear that the triplets were using them.

  Janck swore fluently. “Has their power grown so great that every bird and beast can spy on us?”

  “I hardly think so,” said Malien. “To be useful spies or attackers they would have to be individually controlled. It can only be a few individual bats, chosen from susceptible ones close by. Even so, if a swarm of bats attacked when Karan or Sulien were outside …”

  “I’ll add this threat to the list,” he said wearily.

  As Karan rose to go he said, “Wait! Your daughter.”

  “What about her?” Karan said warily.

  “I’m advised that her gifts for the Secret Art are remarkable and growing rapidly, and that this is unprecedented in an untaught child her age.”

  Karan gulped. “I couldn’t say.”

  “Where do her gifts come from?”

  “I don’t know, precisely.”

  “Indulge me with your best guess.”

  “I’m triune, and so is Sulien. I expect her gifts come from our ancestry.”

  “But Llian has no gift for the Secret Art, and Sulien is only half as much a triune as you. Surely her gift should be weaker, not stronger, and slower to develop.”

  Karan could see where this was leading but did not know how to divert him. “I don’t know enough to say.”

  “You don’t seem to know much at all, yet you refuse to allow her to be taught.”

  “I haven’t refused; I just … haven’t found the right teacher.”

  “If it’s not Sulien’s triune heritage, what is so special about her?”

  “It might be due to the hrux I was given to ease the agony of her birth.”

  “How so?”

  “Hrux is an aid to far-seeing and other such senses—” Why, why had she said that?

  Janck pounced. “Really? Then if we dosed Sulien with hrux she might relive the nightmare in which she saw the enemy’s secret.”

  “It’s too dangerous!” Karan cried. “Too high a dose can kill.”

  “The Merdrun will kill all of us if we can’t stop them. What have you done to extract the secret?”

  “I tried to find it after Sulien first had the nightmares. I found nothing.”

  “Months ago! What have you done since you took her back from the Whelm?”

  “I … She was too traumatised. It wasn’t the right time.”

  “But surely,” Janck said frostily, “you realise it’s not just the key to Santhenar’s survival, but hers as well?”

  Karan could see she was losing. “I … I’ll have another look in the morning.”

  “No, you’ll bring her here in the morning, eight o’clock, and the best mancers I can gather will examine her.”

  “Be damned!”

  “It’s an order, Karan, and if you don’t want to see the war out from a prison cell and your daughter in my custody and care, you’ll obey! There will be guards outside your door in any case. Now get out of my sight!”

  Karan returned to her room, sick with fear. Sulien was still asleep. Karan removed the blankets and table from the window recess to find the bat still staring in. She opened the catch and thrust the window up, dislodging the bat, then closed the window and went to bed. But every time she woke in the night the creature was there, or another like it, motionless save for its orb-like eyes. It was definitely spying on her and Sulien. How had it known they were in this room? Could the triplets see them through its eyes?

  Karan put back the table and the blankets, then got into Sulien’s bed and held her tightly. She hardly slept a wink that night and woke at dawn feeling more tired than when she had gone to bed. It was small consolation that the bat was gone.

  41

  YOU’LL BE RID OF ME SOON ENOUGH

  “It’s quite a large drop of nivol,” said Hublees.

  Stupid, stupid man! thought Aviel. How can one drop be enough?

  She put
the diamond phial in its leopardwood box, cleaned her gear and was packing it when Nimil burst in.

  “Malien says fly to Zile with all possible speed, not stopping day or night.”

  “Why?” said Hublees, frowning.

  “She wouldn’t say—afraid of being overheard. But the summon stone is more powerful than before and the Merdrun are drawing from it; it can’t be too long before they reopen the gate. The entire Whelm nation is racing north to join them, and Tallia needs the nivol desperately.”

  Nimil ran out and Hublees followed. When everyone had gone Aviel whispered, “Shand? Are you there?”

  There was no answer. Had he gone off by himself, seeking ingredients for his scent potion? If he wasn’t back soon he would be left behind.

  Osseion put his head in through the door. “We’re ready for the burial.”

  He had cut a grave through the ironstone crust into the soft red earth below it, at the far end of the gap between the stones. Earnis’s frost-covered body lay beside the grave.

  Aviel knelt beside him, took his icy hands and laid a kiss on his forehead. “Thank you for caring,” she said softly. “And for being a better friend to me than I could be to you.”

  Osseion and Hublees lowered Earnis into the earth. She wished she had something to put in his grave but her pockets were empty and her possessions meagre.

  Osseion picked up his spade. “I’ll cover him now.”

  “No, wait.”

  Aviel ran back to her bench, rifled through her phials and found a new perfume she had made recently, based on the cleansing scent of lemon verbena, with hints of citrus and mint. It was not a subtle perfume but it would cut through any drifting foul influence from Rogues Render.

  She put a drop on a fingertip, reached down and touched it to Earnis’s forehead, his lips and his heart, and tucked the phial into his pocket. “He’s ready now.”

  They buried him, Osseion covering the loose earth with rocks, then went back to their packing. After they had gone Aviel stood in the darkness by the grave. Earnis had been good and kind and gentle; he had helped her even at the cost of being ostracised by his fellows; he had risked his life for her, and lost it, and it was a tragic waste.

  Within half an hour they were gone, Hublees flying as high and fast as the sky ship would go. Aviel had no idea if Shand had made it back to his hiding place, and there was no way to check.

  They flew night and day for two whole days, crossing the Sea of Thurkad north of the fishing town of Ganport, then the mountains beyond, and halfway across the vast grasslands of the Plains of Folc, a land with few rivers and even fewer towns, occupied mostly by nomadic herders.

  “Can’t go any further without sleep,” Hublees said late on the second afternoon. He headed down towards a hilly area where scattered green patches suggested seeping water.

  Osseion put up Aviel’s tent and everyone went to their hammocks except Aviel, who had slept all the previous night and dozed half the day. She gathered armloads of a low-growing fragrant mint bush, took them to her workshop and was immersed in the pleasurably repetitive task of extracting the scented oils when Shand appeared.

  “Thought you’d leave me behind, did you?” he grated.

  Having survived Lumillal, she wasn’t going to be bullied by anyone. “Was I supposed to tell Hublees to wait for a traitor?” she said coldly.

  He winced. “You’re safe enough, having just done the impossible,” he said sourly, as if he resented her success.

  “I only made one drop.”

  “Then they’ll need you to make more, won’t they?”

  “I’m not going through all that again.”

  Shand shrugged. He didn’t care. How changed he was, and not in a good way. He looked older, thinner and more gaunt each time he appeared. This trip had forced him to use the dangerous invisibility spell for long periods at a time, and it seemed to be eating him away.

  He scraped some foul-smelling gunge—brown streaked with red and acid green—from a jar into a small distillation flask.

  “Is that from the desiccated corpse of a woman murdered long ago,” said Aviel, “or the last breath of an undead killer?”

  “Fat lot of help you’ve been.”

  He added a weighed amount of bright orange powder and clamped the flask over a burner. The lingering stink interfered with her own work but she continued shredding her herbs and spreading them on dishes of white fat, extracting the essential oils to make a balm for dry skin, watching him out of the corner of an eye.

  He kept glancing at the opening of the tent as if afraid someone was spying on him. Did Hublees know Shand was aboard? If he did he would report them both the moment he got to Zile.

  “Are you nearly done?” she said quietly.

  “You’ll be rid of me soon enough,” Shand said curtly. “This is the last one.”

  Shand opened the scent potion grimoire to the marked place and ran a gnarled forefinger down the right-hand page. His lips moved, stopped, moved again as if he were repeating lines to memorise them, then he closed the grimoire.

  He never left it open, for which she was grateful. All the Great Potions were dark and deadly; she had felt befouled just glancing at them. When all this was over—assuming she survived—she planned to make her own grimoire, only containing scent potions that were good or neutral.

  Shand muttered an oath and vanished. A few seconds later Osseion looked in. “Still working?”

  “Making perfume helps me to relax.”

  He wrinkled his nose. “Horrible smell for a perfume.”

  It was the lingering reek from Shand’s muck. “Some of the most beautiful perfumes have unpleasant ingredients,” she dissembled. “Just tiny amounts.”

  “Really?” Osseion scratched his head. “Well, what would I know?” He came in.

  Behind her, Aviel sensed the invisible Shand’s annoyance. He wanted rid of Osseion. Well, damn him!

  “Would you like some tea?” she said. “You must be cold out there on watch.”

  “Don’t feel the cold much,” said Osseion, “but tea and company would be welcome.”

  She made two mugs of mint-bush tea and sweetened his with honey since she knew he liked it that way. She indicated the second canvas chair, near the door.

  “Can’t sit when I’m on duty,” he said, slurping his tea.

  His eyes were always on duty, constantly roving over the benches and the tent, and every minute he put his head out through the entrance, watching and listening.

  “How are you doing?” he said quietly. “Don’t think I could have survived what you went through.”

  “Work keeps the memories at bay—most of the time.”

  “And when you’re not working?”

  “I see Lumillal killing Earnis, over and over.” Shudders racked her. “And sometimes I’m drawn back to Carcharon, when Unick held me prisoner.”

  “The memories fade in time,” said Osseion. “But they never go away.”

  “You must have seen some terrible things.”

  “Awful things,” he said, staring into the middle distance. “In battle, and while I was Mendark’s bodyguard. Sights that have broken many a man.” He turned back to her. “It’s inner strength that really counts, and you have it.” He drained his tea, put a heavy arm across her shoulder, then said, “Better get back to it.” He went out, and she heard his footsteps moving away.

  The grimoire opened as if by itself, then Shand reappeared. “He’s suspicious.”

  Chills touched her back. “He was just being friendly, wasn’t he?”

  “Bodyguards to the best have to be the best, and Osseion was. He misses nothing. Now be quiet; I’ve got to think.”

  She worked in silence, watching him from the corner of an eye. Shand distilled the stench, absorbed it in a small quantity of a pale orange fluid that she could not identify, sniffed, made a face, then distilled it once more. His movements were deft and automatic, as if he had used these techniques ten thousand times.

&nbs
p; Suddenly her make-work seemed pointless. She went into the darkened sky ship, climbed into her hammock fully dressed and fell asleep, but was jerked awake an hour later as a leering Lumillal wound the threads of her life around his hand. She forced the nightmare away, went out and found Osseion in the darkness.

  “I’m afraid to sleep,” she said. “Mind if I join you?”

  “Your company is always welcome.”

  They paced around the campsite for a couple of hours. Osseion was the perfect companion: he did not talk for the sake of it and she felt no need to. The night was mild here and absolutely still, and with his massive presence beside her she felt safe for the first time since Tallia, badly injured, had appeared at Shand’s house in Casyme more than two months ago and warned him about the summon stone and the Merdrun.

  A light appeared in a forward window of the sky ship. “Hublees is up,” said Osseion. “Better get packed.”

  When she entered the workshop Shand had twenty little phials lined up on the rear bench and the grimoire open before him, and was adding drops of each scented oil to a small flat-bottomed flask. It bothered her a little, though she could not work out why.

  She packed all her ingredients, including the priceless bottle of Archeus in its own padded box, and was putting the last of the wrapped glassware into its crate when Hublees bellowed, “Aviel! Time to go!”

  “One minute!” she yelled.

  Shand drew up a small quantity of a yellow-green oil from the last of his phials and discharged it drop by drop into the flask, which was half full of a deep violet fluid. He swirled it, it turned amber and he took a careful sniff. His eyes revolved in their sockets and he let out a strangled grunt, then hissed, “Yes!”

  Aviel hauled her crates to the foot of the ladder and went back for the boxes. When she returned with the second-last box Hublees was standing at the door of the sky ship and its rotors were turning gently.

  “Get the damned tent down!” he snapped.

  “Yes,” she squeaked and hurried inside to fold the benches.

  “Osseion,” he yelled, “give her a hand.”

  Osseion replied from some distance away. Shand swore, swept his phials into a leather pouch, folded it over and tied the strings, then slipped the little flask into a wooden case half filled with rags. He wrapped them around the flask, closed the case and thrust it and the pouch into his pockets, and vanished a second before Osseion came in.