The Fatal Gate

by Ian Irvine

  “Yes. She’s in—” She must not reveal anything that could be tortured from him. “Aviel’s with us, doing good work.”

  He sniffed the scent. Tears ran down his dirty face and for a few seconds he was overcome, then he stoppered the phial, put it away and wiped his eyes.

  “Have you come to get me out?” Wilm studied her, on her knees and gasping. “No, you can’t. What’s happening?”

  “Can’t tell you anything; I daren’t stay long. But if there’s anything you can tell me—anything at all.”

  Wilm lifted Karan to her feet and drew her back where the shadows were deepest. “The Merdrun are a cruel people; I’ve seen them cut down slaves just for looking at them. They rule by terror. It’s all they know.”

  “How many are there?”

  “I don’t know. Many thousands, certainly, though …”

  “What?” said Karan. “Even the smallest bit of information can help us.”

  “I don’t think their numbers are as big as they want us to think.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “It’s just a feeling, from watching them.”

  It wasn’t much help; all armies want to appear stronger than they actually are.

  “Their fortifications look strong. Do you know of any weak points?”

  “No,” said Wilm. “Everything is supervised by their engineers and artificers, and warfare is their life. They know everything about it.”

  Karan’s hyper-alert senses picked up another tingle, a warning that the triplets were on the hunt. “Got to go. The enemy knows I’m on Gwine.”

  “You know they have a new magiz? Triplets?” Wilm shuddered.

  “Yes.”

  “They come here sometimes, to drink lives and strengthen themselves. It’s horrible. They’re mad, and no one is safe from them. I could be next.” He checked both ends of the alley again.

  Karan felt a urgent tingle. “Got to go. Dematerialise!”

  She was falling, falling … thump. She landed beside a rack of upside-down flasks, sending them flying off the bench and smashing on the floor.

  Aviel let out a shriek. Karan could not raise her head. “Call … Tallia.”

  Aviel went out. After lying still for ten minutes, Karan had regained enough strength to clamber down off the bench, though not to stand up. She perched on a stool, supporting herself against the wall, alternately freezing and sweating. If the triplets found out she had spoken to Wilm they would drink his life in a heartbeat.

  She felt an odd tickling sensation in her head, as if they were searching for her. Could they track her this far away? Not that they needed to—the bats they controlled had already told them that she and Sulien were here.

  Aviel came back with Janck, who listened in silence to her report, then snapped, “Is that all?”

  “I’m sorry?” said Karan.

  “That doesn’t tell us anything. You’ll have to go back.”

  “It was too risky to go anywhere near the Merdrun camp. The magiz had detected me.”

  “I need hard facts,” said Janck wildly. He stalked back and forth. “What are their true numbers? Are they all based in the one place? What do they know about our plans? What are their weaknesses? Is there a way to attack them in their camp? How many slaves are there and can we use them? Can we cut off their supplies, block their escape routes or poison their water supply? That’s the kind of information a competent spy would have brought back.”

  She had never seen him like this. Had something happened while she was away? Or was it the loss of their nivol in that disastrous attack on the stone? “There could be as many as ten thousand in the camp, and more elsewhere, though Wilm had a feeling they were fewer.”

  “A feeling!” sneered Janck.

  “As far as I could tell that was their only fortress.” Karan felt another of those twinges that she interpreted to be the triplets searching for her.

  Mummy, Mummy? sent Sulien.

  BOOM!

  The workshop shook, then there came a great crashing and rumbling that shook the whole library. Janck drew his sabre, ran for the door and wrenched it open.

  “What was that?” he cried to the guards outside.

  Karan, who had staggered after him, did not hear their reply, which was drowned by a second BOOM! Then three more, each shaking the Great Library to its foundations.

  Then, horrifyingly in her inner ear, a high, nerve-jangling giggle that she recognised as Empuly. “It’s the triplets!” yelled Karan. “They’re attacking.”

  “That was up near the roof,” said one of the guards. “South side, I’d say.”

  Karan choked. “Our room’s up there.” Sulien?

  No answer. She forced herself to overcome her exhaustion and took off along the corridor, then up the stairs at the end, up and up. Janck overtook her halfway and disappeared into a cloud of dust belching down the stairwell.

  She heard him coughing as he climbed. Karan was struggling now; she scrambled up the last flight of steps on her hands and knees. At the top everything was so dark and dusty that she did not know which way to turn, though she sensed that the destruction had been to the right. Holding her sleeve over her nose, she stumbled along a hall littered with chunks of rubble, then stopped abruptly.

  Ahead the dust was thinning, a chilly wind blowing it into her face. There was no sign of Janck; he must have gone the other way. She looked down and choked; a few feet ahead the hall floor was gone and so were the walls and ceiling and the rooms to the right, plus part of the floor below. The attack had blasted a great hole in the southern side of the Great Library.

  She was looking across a fifty-foot gap to the corner of the building. The three or four rooms that had once occupied the space on this level were gone, including the room she shared with Sulien and Llian. If either of them had been inside they could not have survived.

  “Sulien?” she panted. “Llian?”

  Malien and Nadiril appeared, the latter’s cheeks covered in grey dust. “How dare they!” he wheezed. His eyes moved across the gap, and his lips moved as if he were counting the rooms. He noticed Karan. “Was anyone …?”

  “I just got back from Gwine. The triplets detected me; I think this attack is intended as a lesson to us. I sensed Empuly laughing.”

  “And all for nothing,” Janck said bitterly, appearing out of the dust behind them. “Karan didn’t learn anything.”

  “But Gergrig has learned a lot to his discomfort,” said Nadiril. “He knows we know they’re stuck on Gwine, and we can spy on them at will. The Merdrun are used to controlling and dominating; it must be galling to be so helpless.”

  “But Llian, Sulien …” Karan said helplessly.

  “They’re safe; they’re outside with Lilis.”

  The relief was so overwhelming that she staggered and nearly went over the edge. “What about the other people?” She swept an arm out to indicate the missing rooms.

  “All empty so no one could spy on you.” Nadiril sighed. “Most of our guest rooms are empty these days. Fewer scholars make the long journey to Zile every year, and every year our funds decline. I fear for the place after I’m gone. Who could possibly take on such a thankless calling?” No one replied, and he went on. “There’s another possibility—that Gergrig did not order the attack at all.”

  “Who else would dare?” said Janck.

  “If the triplets did it for the joy of destruction, I doubt Gergrig would be best pleased.”

  “Why not?” said Karan. “He wants us dead.”

  “Such an attack from so great a distance must have come at a huge cost in power. Power that’s been utterly wasted, and they don’t have any to waste—they need an enormous amount to reopen the Crimson Gate and escape.”

  “But the summon stone seems to be drawing prodigious amounts of power from the storm above Demondifang. It must be far more powerful than the original summon stone by now.”

  “It’ll need to be,” said Malien. “Reopening the Crimson Gate on Cinnab
ar from as far away as Gwine, then drawing it to Gwine so they can escape, will be no easy thing. It will be many times harder than opening it from Cinnabar the first time.”

  “Why can’t the Merdrun on Cinnabar reopen it?” said Janck.

  “Karan killed their magiz.”

  “Then maybe the Merdrun on Gwine aren’t as strong as fear made them out to be,” said Nadiril.

  “If they’re only half as strong as we fear,” Janck said grimly, “it’s all over.”

  48

  THE KILL-SPELL WILL GET YOU TOO

  Using her empathic gift, Sulien discovered that Shand was hiding in Zile, and tracked him and Ifoli to a small pyramid-roofed cupola at the top of what had once been the governor’s palace. Most of it lay in ruins but the cupola and the section of roof under it had been built so solidly that it had endured the aeons.

  Its green copper roof was held up on four columns of pink- and black-flecked granite. It was empty inside save for two stone benches, cleaned of their dust, and mounds of bird droppings. A lead crystal bottle sat on the further bench, light reflecting off its myriad facets as if it were a cut diamond. Beside it stood a small redwood rack containing phials, eyedroppers, a tall measuring cylinder and sundry other pieces of equipment Shand must have pilfered from Aviel’s workshop.

  Shand and Ifoli went to the bench. What were they up to? Sulien knew Ifoli had worked for the evil Cumulus Snoat for years—were they both traitors? Sulien slipped into the shadow cast by a pile of rubble next to the cupola, uncertain now. She had to have a teacher, but how could Shand be trusted after all the bad things he had done?

  “Are you sure this is safe?” said Ifoli, holding a phial between finger and thumb and eyeing it uneasily.

  “It’s very unsafe,” said Shand. “The Afflatus Effluvium is one of the Great Potions, and one of the forbidden ones.”

  A forbidden potion, thought Sulien with a shudder. What for? She wanted to run but dared not move. If they were traitors they might kill her or betray her to the enemy.

  Ifoli held it further away. “Why forbidden?” she said hoarsely.

  “No one knows—that list was made fifteen hundred years ago. Possibly because it’s so dangerous to obtain certain ingredients.” His gaze slid to the crystal bottle of Archeus and he grimaced. “Or because it’s so deadly to make.”

  “But you made it successfully.”

  “I’d already seen how to make it unsuccessfully,” said Shand. “My late master, Radizer, blew himself to bits trying to make this very scent potion a couple of hundred years ago. I’ve been thinking about what he did wrong ever since, on and off. However I believe it’s safe to use, in small doses.”

  “How can you possibly know?” said Ifoli.

  “Because I’ve already used it twice.”

  “Searching for the magiz’s link?”

  “I can’t do that on myself—you’ll have to. But the scent potion can also enhance creativity in the Secret Art.”

  “What for?”

  “Making our new Command device better and stronger.”

  Shand picked the device up and turned it in his hands. The inner ends of six narrow copper tubes had been embedded in a hexagonal block of shiny black graphite, one to each side, to form a flat star. There was an opal-lined cavity on the underside of the block and a compartment with a silver lid on top. Sulien wondered what it was for.

  “Tell me,” said Ifoli thoughtfully. “Why did you steal the Archeus?”

  Shand looked towards the lead crystal bottle, uneasily. “How could I do it to her?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Long ago the woman I loved—Yalkara, the great Charon who bore me a daughter then rejected me—murdered a crippled girl to cover up a crime. That’s why I took pity on one of the myriad of unfortunates in this land and took Aviel in. I thought I was compensating in a tiny way for Yalkara’s wickedness, but three years later, corrupted by the magiz’s link, I recklessly risked Aviel’s life to get that bottle of Archeus. Not to aid her noble project, but for my own shabby needs. I, who had always thought myself above base motives, stood revealed as low as any.”

  “You needed the Archeus to make your scent potion,” said Ifoli, “but why steal the whole bottle after the potion was done?”

  “In case I needed to increase the strength of my potion—to see deeper.”

  “Wouldn’t that be dangerous?”

  “Exceedingly.”

  “How much stronger did you need the scent potion to be?”

  “Triple strength required another six drams of Archeus.”

  “And Aviel can’t make more nivol without it,” said Ifoli. “Today, after this, you will give it back.”

  “But I might need—”

  Ifoli leaped to her feet, shaking with fury. “You stupid old fool!” she raged. “You’re not atoning for your folly—you’re compounding your crime. Give it back or you’ll get no aid from me.”

  Shand retreated, swallowing hard. “All right, tonight.”

  “Lie down.”

  “What?”

  Ifoli yanked the stopper out of the scent potion. “I’m looking for the magiz’s link, right now.”

  Was she planning to remove it by herself? Sulien had a very bad feeling about that but dared not show herself.

  “I’m not ready,” said Shand.

  “Too bad,” snarled Ifoli.

  She wafted the scent potion towards her nose, and her eyes wobbled in their sockets. She took a deeper sniff then sprang at him. Shand, off balance, lurched back. Ifoli shoved him down onto the empty bench, snatched up the Command device and jammed the leading copper tube so hard against his forehead that it broke the skin.

  Via the empathic gift, Sulien felt an awful pain spike through Shand’s skull, then, like a black leech standing on its tail and questing around for the scent of blood, something slid into his head, and lunged. She gasped, though it was drowned out by Shand’s shrieks.

  His fists were drumming on the floor, his feet kicking, head banging, nose belching blood. He kicked over the redwood rack on the other bench, the phial of deadly scent potion fell to the floor and the stopper came out. Yellow-brown fumes oozed from it and trailed up in a dozen places.

  Ifoli spun the tube on Shand’s forehead as if winding thread onto a reel then jerked the device back. He screamed and fainted. Sulien rose from behind the rubble pile. The referred pain was gone, but her skin was creeping.

  Shand groaned, opened his eyes and looked up at Ifoli. “Find … the … link?” he croaked.

  “Yes.”

  “Tear it out?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank you,” he whispered. “I can’t tell you what it’s been like with that malevolent presence embedded in my mind all this time.”

  He let out a great sigh, but then his eyes bulged and went red, and he began to choke and gasp.

  “Shand!” cried Ifoli.

  “It’s still there! Can’t save me. Run! It’ll jump to you.”

  Ifoli grabbed the Command device. “I’ll try again.”

  “No. Link’s got deep roots, well hidden. Can’t remove them; can’t see where they are.”

  As Ifoli put the copper tip of the device to Shand’s forehead, she choked and began to shudder uncontrollably.

  “Link must have a kill spell,” gasped Shand. “Go!”

  “Can’t … move.” Pink foam was oozing from her mouth.

  They were both going to die. Sulien ran to Shand and reached out with her hands cupped to the shape of his head, close but not touching.

  “Go … away!” moaned Shand.

  “I can see it,” said Sulien. “Black tendrils, creeping in all directions. Ifoli, can you see them?”

  “The kill spell will get you too,” gasped Shand.

  “Not if we’re quick. Ifoli, now!”

  But Ifoli was still choking, the foam gushing from her mouth now, and the tip of the Command device was battering at Shand, making red circles on his forehead.r />
  Sulien saw, in her mind’s eye, the malevolent black tendrils buried in Shand’s psyche. She tore the device from Ifoli’s fingers, spun the copper tube on his forehead, then jerked it backwards. Again he shrieked but this time the black tendrils stretched to three times their length, twanged, then came free and vanished.

  Ifoli fell over and landed on her back, her fingers clenching and unclenching.

  Shand came to his knees, panting. “Thank you,” he whispered. He focused on Sulien and scowled. “What are you doing here? If Karan finds out she’ll have my guts—”

  “I … My gift is growing fast,” said Sulien. “I’ve got to have a teacher. And Nadiril hinted …”

  “Did he now, the villain?” Shand said darkly. He looked Sulien up and down. “Are you all right?”

  “I know about buried links. It didn’t get me.”

  Ifoli had not moved, but now she sat up slowly. “You saved us both, child.” She reached out with both arms. “Come here.”

  Sulien took two steps and passed through a faint yellow plume rising from the spilled scent potion. Some went up her nose, her eyes crossed, then she sat down hard on the empty section of the bench.

  “I saw it!” she whispered.

  Shand pushed himself upright, alarmed. “Saw what?”

  “A long line of power … cutting across the land west of Zile.”

  He was staring at her as if she had gone mad. “What kind of power?”

  “The power of mancery.”

  “That’s impossible. Power can only be drawn from within a mancer or from an object enchanted by a mancer. It’s a fundamental limitation on the Secret Art.”

  “It … can’t be,” said Ifoli. “I’m sure the summon stone was drawing power from the storm above Demondifang.”

  “Then some great mancer enchanted it to do so.” Shand turned to Sulien. “Can you send me a link showing what you saw?”

  Sulien did so. It was a long but very narrow oval of shimmering power, running across the land for miles.

  Shand scratched the shape, a long curve, across the roof with the tip of his knife, then studied it, frowning. “I don’t understand … Wait! There’s a geological fault there—you can see it where it cuts through the rocks.”