The Fatal Gate

by Ian Irvine

  “You got it back in time,” said Ifoli.

  Tallia gave her a very cold stare. “Why, Shand?”

  “Ifoli and I have been working on a vital project,” said Shand. “One that could save us. The proof is in the device you took from me.”

  “Ah, yes.” Tallia put a battered red leather bag on the table and withdrew an object a handspan across made of six short copper tubes sticking out of a central graphite hub like the spokes of a small wheel. “This … conglomeration. What is it, pray?”

  “It’s a greatly improved version of Unick’s Command device. Ifoli and I saw that if it were made properly it would be the most powerful device ever built on Santhenar. It would allow a mancer—assuming he had the strength and the skill—to find, control and use all other sources of power, even great natural sources of power that are presently not known to us.”

  “What on earth are you talking about?” said Nadiril.

  “Coming to that,” said Shand. “The device would also allow us to block sources of power, including the summon stone.”

  “Ah!” said Yggur.

  “That’s why I needed the Archeus,” Shand went on. “To make the Afflatus Effluvium.”

  “To what purpose?”

  “It gave us the insights to work out what was wrong with the Command device, and how to improve it. Ifoli was the only one who understood Unick’s original design.”

  “That would be the same Ifoli who served Snoat faithfully for two years,” Yggur said coldly. “She was so keen to be the perfect servant that she even served him in bed.”

  Ifoli put her head in her hands. Nadiril looked away.

  “We might have overlooked all those crimes,” Tallia said relentlessly, “had your device actually worked. But this … monstrosity—” she nudged it with the back of her hand “—isn’t even as strong as Unick’s.”

  “Of course it isn’t,” said Shand. “We never found the black crystal from the original device, so we don’t yet know what it was.”

  Ifoli raised her head. Her eyes were red. “With the right crystal our device will be many times more powerful—and it can draw on an entirely new source of power that—”

  “Sulien was the first person to see,” said Shand.

  “What the hell have you been up to?” cried Llian, leaping to his feet. “How dare you use my daughter in your corrupt schemes?”

  “I didn’t,” Shand said wearily. “She was spying on us in the ruins of Zile. We got into trouble and she saved our lives, and then, quite by accident, she saw this new source of power …”

  Llian was shaking. How could this have happened, right under his nose? “Why don’t I know anything about this?”

  “You’d have to ask her.” Shand explained what had happened. “And it’s the most important breakthrough in mancery in a thousand years.”

  He had everyone’s attention now.

  “Go on,” said Tallia, leaning forward eagerly. “But this had better be good.”

  “Until now,” said Ifoli, “mancers have only been able to get their power from three places: their own frail bodies, or via the necromantic arts from the bodies of others, or from artefacts that have been painstakingly enchanted. But Sulien saw an entirely new source of power, a natural source far greater than anything we’ve been able to use before …”

  “Continue,” said Yggur.

  “We call this source a field, and it’s formed around a natural node—the great fault line west of Zile.”

  “How is it formed?” said Tallia, frowning.

  “I don’t know, but we suspect there may be other nodes and other fields—almost certainly there’s one at Demondifang. With our new Command device we’ve been able to draw tiny amounts of power from the fault-line field. And when we discover the right black crystal—”

  Yggur held up a hand and conferred briefly with Nadiril, Malien and Tallia. “You’ve bought yourselves a reprieve,” he said, “though only because we’re desperate.”

  “We’ve got to attack the summon stone right away,” said Malien.

  “So we’re prepared to give you two a chance,” said Tallia. “We’re sending three sky ships to Demondifang at first light and you’ll both be on them. Yggur will take charge of the Command device.”

  Yggur rose, locked a metal collar around Shand neck before he could move, then another around Ifoli’s.

  “What are they for?” snarled Shand.

  “If there’s any further evidence of treachery,” said Yggur, “I trigger the collars.”

  71

  IT WOULD HAVE BEEN A DISASTER

  Yggur climbed aboard the first sky ship. Llian, white-faced and blank-eyed, went next, stumbling on the ladder and nearly falling. Aviel felt for him. Karan was hovering between life and death; he was in agony and clearly could not comprehend why he had been sent on this desperate mission.

  Ifoli and Shand followed in silence, then fourteen soldiers and their baby-faced captain. Aviel waited until everyone was in their seats then climbed the ladder and heaved herself in, limping more than usual. She had overstrained her ankle on the walk to Rogues Render and back, and none of the scent potions she had made in increasingly desperate attempts to heal it had made any difference.

  Now this madness. The previous attack on the summon stone had been a disaster, and the stories she had heard about Whelm trapped in the unreality zone, embedded in trees or rocks while still alive, gave her the horrors. Would that be her fate, as punishment for her ventures to the dark side?

  The captain of the squad, a slim young fellow who did not look much older than herself, pulled a grey curtain across the rear half of the cabin, hiding the soldiers from view. The sky ship, with Yggur at the helm, lifted off and headed west across forested hills for Demondifang.

  Aviel sat with her fingers writhing in her lap and a painful knot in her belly. There had not been time to finish making the second batch of nivol. The final stage of preparation remained, though she did not see how it could be done in an unsteady sky ship. Everything—all these people’s lives, the lives of everyone back on Healer’s Isle and the fate of the world—depended on her now. What if she mucked it up? It was easy to get things wrong in alchemy; if one tiny step was done imperfectly the whole procedure would fail, and it would be her fault.

  “Once we’re out over the sea we’ll have clear air for an hour or two,” said Yggur to Aviel. “It’ll be your best chance. If you need a hand, Llian can help.”

  She glanced sideways at Llian. He was a famous man, a good man too. He had freed Wilm from the slave camp, and that had meant the difference between victory and defeat, but she did not see how he could help her now. He looked … broken.

  “Alchemy requires delicate hands,” said Shand, “and Llian is a clodhopper.”

  “His calligraphy in the Tale of the Mirror was almost perfect,” said Yggur coldly. “It can’t be you or Ifoli, for the obvious reason—”

  “That you don’t trust us not to bugger it up.”

  “Good of you to be so understanding.”

  Aviel glanced at Ifoli, whose only reaction had been to hunch even further down in her seat. Aviel had heard so much about her: how extraordinarily beautiful she was, how brilliant, how accomplished in a dozen separate fields, how quick thinking.

  This Ifoli was undoubtedly beautiful but looked tormented. Had she, in her desperation to be the perfect spy and gain the respect of her famous great-grandfather, also gone too far down the dark path? It was a warning Aviel must not ignore.

  When they were out over the Sea of Qwale, in steady air, she went to the workbench the Aachim had installed against the left side of the cabin. They had carved recesses to hold the bases of every piece of equipment she needed to use, and had fixed her apparatus stands to the bench top.

  Llian rose. “What do you want me to do?” he said dully.

  “Nothing yet.”

  Aviel was used to working by herself at her own pace, and having the clumsy Llian as her assistant made her feel s
elf-conscious and irritable. She could feel the sequence of procedures, which she had done perfectly after Rogues Render and had fixed carefully in her mind again, slipping away.

  She imagined that she was in her beloved workshop in Casyme, with the door closed to keep the outside world at bay. Slowly the tension eased, and the other people in the sky ship faded into the background. It was not a bumpy flight so far, though the gentle rocking of the sky ship required her to constantly adjust her balance, and soon her bad ankle was throbbing.

  She put a colophony disc in a flask and set a golden brimstone in the middle, dribbled spirits of wine around it as before, ignited it, put the top on and opened the glass stopcock.

  Llian hovered irritatingly. She wanted him to go away, but how could she say so when he had done so much for Wilm? And when Llian was in such agony?

  Once the initial condensate had been discarded she connected the first of her layered filters, waited until the condensate had passed through, and checked the colour, which was the palest pink. She connected the next filter, continued the process, then the one after, making sure the sequence of colour changes was exactly as the procedure stated. Finally, after more than an hour, the drips went a shimmering silvery white.

  Over the next twenty minutes, drip by careful drip, she collected a fifth of a cup of the silvery liquid into a flask before the condensate in the tube took on a pale blue hue. Aviel carried the precious flask down to a small stand to which the diamond phial was clamped, placed the flask in its carved recess and slipped a pre-weighed piece of sintered platinum into the phial. She then dripped a hundred and thirty-six drops of the shimmering condensate onto the sintered platinum and checked the colour. It was still silvery white, though no longer shimmering. Now for the final, exceedingly dangerous step. Every eye in the cabin was on her. Her hands were shaking, her heart pounding and sweat was running down her forehead.

  “Llian!” she snapped. “Sweat’s getting in my eyes.”

  He wiped her forehead with a rag and stood by.

  “Wash your hands and dry them.”

  He scrubbed them in the bowl at the far end of the bench and wiped them on a pure-white towel.

  “See that bottle,” she said, indicating the one clamped into a deep recess near the end of the bench. It was a quarter full of the thick oily yellow-green fluid. When she had last seen it, it had been half full—Shand must have used the rest. “Take the wire off the stopper but don’t open it until I say so.”

  “Why not?”

  “It contains the Archeus distilled from a deadly ghost vampire called Lumillal, and it’s very, very dangerous. Hold the stopper in.”

  A spark lit in Llian’s eyes for the first time. “I’d love to hear that tale.”

  Aviel noticed Shand’s smouldering eyes on her. What was he thinking about? She took a small measuring cylinder, put a glass funnel on top and limped down to Llian; she didn’t trust him not to trip over if he brought the bottle to her.

  “Lift the stopper out, very carefully.”

  His hands were steadier than hers. When he lifted the stopper out, wisps of yellow-green Archeus trailed up as if, even after all this time, Lumillal’s spirit essence was still trying to escape. Aviel took the bottle, her hands shaking, poured twenty-four drams into the measuring cylinder and rapped, “Stopper it and wire the stopper down.”

  He did so, then put the bottle back in its recess and clamped it down. She dribbled the Archeus in, following the steps as before, removed the plug of azure jelly and the sintered platinum and rinsed them three times, then checked the colour of the liquid at the bottom of the diamond phial. It was a brilliant green, just as it should be.

  She felt exceedingly weary. The process had taken almost three hours; they were three quarters of the way to Demondifang, and she had been on her feet the whole time.

  “It’s done,” she said hoarsely, holding up the phial so Yggur could see it. “Eight drops of nivol.”

  The sky ship lurched. Pain shrieked through her right ankle and she fell sideways. The diamond phial hit the side of the bench, and for an awful moment she thought the nivol was going to spill. Llian caught her by the waist with strong hands, steadying her.

  “Thank you,” she whispered, shivering.

  Had even a single drop of nivol spilled it would have been a disaster. There was no way to clean it up, and even washed down with water it would eat through the floor of the sky ship within minutes. She stoppered the phial carefully, snapped a band tightly from stopper to base to hold it on, then put it away.

  “Well done,” said Yggur.

  Aviel lurched across to her seat and collapsed into it. She could not have stood up any longer. She closed her eyes, trying to hold back tears of pain, then rubbed her throbbing ankle. That did not help, and it was bound to get a lot worse before they returned to Qwale.

  If they ever did.

  72

  GIVE THE NIVOL TO LLIAN

  Working with Aviel had drawn Llian out of his endless agonising about Karan, but now, as the sky ships approached Demondifang from the east, the pain returned redoubled.

  What if she had come to, calling for him, and he was not there? What if she had died and Sulien was having to carry the burden all alone? She did not even know where he was—he had not been permitted to tell her. Sulien would only know that in their greatest need he was not there—again! Curse the war, curse the summon stone and curse Yggur, Malien, Nadiril, Tallia and Shand!

  “The other two sky ships are decoys,” said Yggur. “The first one carries spring-fired harpoons with square ends made from hardened steel.”

  “Won’t work,” said Shand quietly, rubbing the metal collar around his neck.

  “Maybe you don’t want it to work. The Aachim who made the harpoons believe that, fired with great force, they’ll smash the summon stone to bits.”

  “It won’t let them get near.”

  Llian listened to this exchange with increasing alarm. With Shand and Yggur constantly at each other’s throats and Aviel in constant pain, how could they hope to succeed?

  Especially if Shand was, as clearly Tallia and Malien feared, still a traitor. Could the first magiz’s link have survived her death? Might the triplets have reactivated it? Could the new magiz on Cinnabar take him over again? Why had Shand been sent anyway, when the new Command device was so weak?

  “Quiet,” said Yggur, jerking his head towards the grey curtain. Behind it, the baby-faced captain was briefing his troops: “The second sky ship is loaded with barrels of blasting powder. It’ll attack the stone from another direction at the same time.”

  “Just as useless,” muttered Shand, “and a damn sight more dangerous.”

  Yggur shrugged. “They’re just here to make a diversion so we can sneak in from the west and put down at the very edge of the peak.”

  “Same plan that failed last time,” Llian muttered. “Anyway, the great storm won’t let us get near the peak.”

  “Xarah says the summon stone has been weaker since Gergrig and the triplets were killed; the storm too. I’m hoping to set down at the western end in an area concealed from the stone by a rocky ridge.”

  “The summon stone doesn’t see,” said Ifoli softly. “It senses.”

  “Best we can do. That’s the peak on the horizon—we’ll be there within the hour.”

  Aviel whimpered. Was she reliving the terrors at Carcharon, when Unick had tried to feed her to the summon stone? Llian took her hands. She clung to him desperately, her eyes closed, her whole body trembling.

  He swallowed. And it already knows we’re coming.

  Yggur turned hard to the right to stay well to the north of the island, and accelerated. Llian, looking out the window, saw the other two sky ships continuing slowly on, a couple of hundred yards apart. How could their diversion work when the stone knew three ships were coming?

  “It’s changed again,” said Ifoli forty minutes later, after they had gone past the island, turned south and were now heading back t
owards it from the west. She kept pressing her fingertips to the shiny collar around her slender neck. If things went wrong, or Yggur saw evidence of treachery, would he hesitate or would he just trigger the collars? Llian could not bear to think about that.

  The monstrous thunderhead that had hung above the peak for more than a month was gone. The sky was clear in all directions, though every so often a flash of blue lightning burst up or out from the peak where the summon stone stood.

  “It’s damaged and uncontrolled,” said Yggur. “Spraying power in all directions.”

  “The more power it discharges,” said Shand, “the weaker it’ll become.”

  “If one of those lightning bolts hits us …” whispered Aviel.

  “We’ll die without knowing what happened,” said Shand with a grim chuckle.

  “Why is that amusing?” said Yggur coldly.

  “It’s the perfect death. In a single flash, all our worries about friends or family, even the future of Santhenar in the hands of the Merdrun, become irrelevant.”

  “Only a traitor would find that comforting.”

  Shand closed his mouth with a snap. Llian, now thoroughly unnerved, went to the large window at the front of the cabin and looked out. “There’s smoke everywhere. Most of the forest has burned.”

  “I dare say the lightning—” began Yggur.

  “It looks like the fires were deliberately lit. Everything’s been burned from the edge of the mangroves up to the yellow cliffs.”

  “Deliberately?” Yggur descended and raced across the smoking forest a few hundred feet up.

  Llian peered down. The lower and middle sections of the island had been burned some time ago, and parts of the upper slopes; most of the forest had been reduced to ash and smoking stumps. Then a long, gaunt face looked up, and another. They were everywhere.

  “Whelm!” cried Llian. “Thousands of them. They must have burned the forest to kill the chimaera and all the other mad stuff in the unreality zones. But why?”

  “The Whelm’s motives are simple and never change,” said Yggur. “Gergrig’s death and the defeat of the Merdrun on Gwine would have been an awful blow. The master they’d yearned for all these years, and a month ago swore to serve, is gone.”