The Gate of Gods (Fall of the Ile-Rien)

by Martha Wells

  “Like what?” Ilias slung his baldric over his shoulder and checked the set of his sword in the scabbard. He knew from what Gerard had said, and his own past experience, that either all would go well and they would quickly return, or it would go badly immediately.

  Tremaine folded her arms, pacing impatiently. She had been running her hands through her hair, disordering it as if she had just gotten out of bed—which made him want to be in bed with her right now. “This is going to drive me crazy,” she said, sounding more angry than anything else.

  “Now you know how we felt when you made that first experiment with Gerard,” Florian told her sharply.

  Tremaine was unimpressed. “Yes, that’s why I always go. Then I don’t have to feel this way.”

  Giliead had been standing at Ilias’s elbow, radiating increasing impatience. Finally, he said, “I need to talk to you.”

  “I don’t— Hey!” Giliead seized his arm and hauled him into the cold hall, then through the first open door to one of the empty bedchambers. Ilias banged into the door and grabbed it, planting his feet to halt himself. “What?” he demanded, jerking his arm free.

  Giliead planted his hands on his hips, glaring at him. “You don’t know where this thing will take you. Think what happened last time—”

  “Either the sphere has a god in it or it doesn’t. And either we trust it or we don’t,” Ilias said, his voice flat with irritation. “If you’ve got another choice, I’d like to hear it.”

  Giliead grimaced. “Why are you doing this?”

  Ilias took a deep breath, trying to actually answer the question and ignore the peremptory tone. “If I don’t do something, I’ll go crazy. The only thing useful I’ve been able to do in days is help clean a floor.” He shook his head in frustration, shrugging. “Besides, he can’t go alone. If that thing takes us to the middle of a Gardier outpost—”

  Giliead gestured in annoyance. “Have you not noticed that he is a wizard? He can take care of himself.”

  Ilias stared at him, then said through gritted teeth, “So I’m useless. I’m still going.”

  “Hey, that’s not what I—” Ilias cut him off by slamming out of the room, managing to bang Giliead with the door in the process.

  He stamped down the hall and back to the ballroom, where everyone was gathered. Gerard was standing inside the curse circle now, the god-sphere tucked under his arm, still reading the sheaf of paper in his other hand.

  “Hey.” Tremaine caught Ilias’s baldric as he passed her, forcing him to stop or strangle himself. She was frowning but instead of speaking she pulled herself forward and kissed him. The kiss deepened until their teeth scraped, then she released him. She still said nothing, but at the moment she didn’t need to. He knew Pasima was right, that he couldn’t live in Tremaine’s world, and what was between them had been born out of expediency. He could admit to himself he still didn’t know what it was they had together. And now he had to go off and hopefully not get killed.

  He went to stand next to Gerard in the circle, conscious of everyone’s eyes on him. Giliead had followed him into the ballroom and stood next to Tremaine now, arms folded, watching him worriedly.

  Gerard glanced up, folding the paper and tucking it carefully inside his coat. He said, “Ready?” He looked as if he just wanted to get it over with. Ilias felt the same. He nodded tightly.

  Nicholas said in Rienish, “Good luck, gentlemen.”

  Ilias was braced to fall into water. Every time he had been through the world-changing curse, it had been over water. Sometimes very cold water. The sphere sparked blue and spun, and the room vanished. His stomach lurched from a sudden drop and he felt the floor fall away under him. An instant later he landed on hard stone, staggering to keep his balance and stay on his feet.

  Heart pounding, Ilias looked around wildly, reaching for his sword hilt. They were outside, in gray daylight, under the partial shelter of a soaringly high rocky overhang. Nothing moved nearby except Gerard, shakily getting to his feet a few paces away.

  Ascertaining that they weren’t dead and weren’t about to be leapt on by anything, Ilias took a deep breath and actually looked at the place.

  The ledge they stood on extended some fifty paces beyond the shelter of the giant overhang, ending in a jagged cliff. Beyond it was a sweeping view of a cloudy morning sky and the wall of a canyon. A dark green band of forest topped the buttressed cliffs directly across the gorge and clumps of greenery clung in pockets up and down the rock, all wreathed in drifts of mist. The air was fresh and cold and the roar of falling water echoed off the rock. Ilias moved forward, far enough to peer over the edge, and saw there was a broad river several ship’s lengths below. Further away, a cluster of toweringly high falls at the end of the canyon fed it, the water plunging dramatically in cascades of spray. Despite the cloud-streaked sky, it was a beautiful sight, the dark green against the gray of the rock, the whitecapped rush of the water.

  Behind him, Gerard swore softly in awe. Ilias glanced back at him and saw the wizard wasn’t reacting to the view. He turned to look.

  The gray-veined walls of the overhang were carved with square columns, narrowing as they arched up to gather in a domed circle on the rock high overhead. The floor had been smoothed by human hands and etched with strange symbols— Ilias skipped back away from the markings on the stone, realizing they were from the world-changing curse and formed a large circle.

  “It’s all right,” Gerard said, though he sounded a little overwhelmed. He was looking around at the symbols, the sphere tucked under one arm. “It won’t—shouldn’t hurt to touch them.”

  Ilias let his breath out, nodding. He looked around at the overhang again, following the line of columns. “Look, it’s broken off.” The right-hand wall was missing a last column entirely and the other had only the jagged remnants of one. “The end of the chamber is sheared off.” He carefully stepped over the curse circle and crossed the distance to the end of the ledge to look directly down, stepping cautiously as he drew near the edge in case it crumbled. He sat on his heels, leaning out to see the gray-green surface of the river below.

  “My God, yes,” Gerard said, following him. “If these columns were evenly proportioned, there was at least another section of about this size extending out over the water.”

  “Maybe more than that.” Ilias could see huge chunks of stone thrust up out of the water all along the rocky bank so far below, each creating whitecapped waves and eddies as the water rushed past. If that amount had fallen on the bank, no telling how much littered the deeper water toward the center.

  A flock of birds flew by, white with long thin bodies and large graceful wings. Ilias stood and backed away from the edge. The cold was making the scars on his back ache, but at least it was clean air, fresh as the morning of the world. “Do you know where we are?”

  Gerard shook his head. “I have no idea. I know we’re somewhere in your world, but that’s all I can say.”

  “It looks a little like the Wall Port, like the same people built it,” Ilias pointed out, then found himself unable to say exactly why he felt that way. As Gerard stared at him expectantly, he gestured helplessly. “The way it’s so big. Or something. I don’t know.”

  But Gerard frowned, looking over the chamber. “Perhaps you’re right. But this is clearly a spell circle and these symbols match the new ones Arisilde gave us. Though I don’t see any specific spot for the antagonist—the sphere or crystal—that controls it.”

  Ilias headed toward the back wall, slowing his steps to let his eyes adjust to the shadows. The stone was darker back here as well, making it harder to see the carvings. Gerard stopped, tracing a band of faded figures with his fingertips. Following the curve of the wall, Ilias felt the faint rush of air from the doorway before he saw it. Closer, and he could see the narrow opening, set between two of the pillars. He paused in it, squinting to see. It was carved back into the cliff, and dim daylight filtered down through cracks in the rock, illuminating a wide passage
with more rooms opening off it.

  “It doesn’t appear to have been recently occupied,” Gerard observed, stepping to his side.

  Ilias took a deep breath, tasting the breeze. The air held stone dust, moss, water, bird droppings, with no scent of human presence, at least not nearby. “Not this part of it, anyway.” He glanced at Gerard; he knew they had found something important. “The people who lived here, they made the world-changing curse.”

  Gerard nodded grimly. “Yes, that spell circle carved into the rock is at least as old as the rest of this place.”

  Ilias moved down the passage to the first door, taking a cautious look inside. It was a big room, dimly lit by an old crack in the high rocky ceiling, roughly squared off, with a circle of low stone blocks in the center. The circle was about the right size for a fire pit. Ilias stepped inside, but it was too dark to make out old burn marks on the stone or soot stains on the rock above it. This might have been a room for living in, though there wasn’t a stick of furniture or scrap of cloth left to prove it. There were carvings on the walls, in parallel bands, and half columns carved out to make it look as if they were supporting the rock overhead.

  He went back out to the passage. Gerard had made a light, a little floating ball of yellow-tinged illumination, drifting along after him as he investigated a room across the way. Ilias had to shake his head, thinking of how a little wizard light like that would frighten people back in Cineth. He snorted to himself. That was the least of their problems. Gerard glanced up, asking, “Find anything?”

  “Just another empty room.” This one was bigger and lacked the fire pit, and had an opening into the next empty chamber. Like the other, it was clean except for drifts of dust and blown leaves.

  Gerard frowned thoughtfully, running a hand through his hair as he looked around. “We’ll have to come back when it’s evening here. If those clouds abate, we can get a look at the stars and have a better idea where we are in your world.” He stepped back out into the passage, the wizard light bobbing along after him. He stood there a moment, looking down the shadowy corridor. “Unless we can find more writing, or more significant carving, back there….”

  Ilias drew breath to suggest they explore it now, then thought of how Tremaine and Giliead would feel, waiting and worrying. “We should get back, tell the others what we found. And that we’re not dead.”

  “Yes. Yes, of course.” Reluctantly, Gerard moved back toward the main chamber. As they came out into the wan daylight, he made the wizard light vanish with a distracted wave of his hand. “We’ll need to come back with a larger group, and—”

  “Wait, wait. I saw something.” Ilias crossed to the side wall, studying the half column there intently. “Something flashed in the light, like metal.”

  “Where?” Gerard demanded, hastily following him over.

  It was too dark in the corner formed by the column to see it, whatever it was. Wary of curse traps, Ilias didn’t want to feel around for it. He stepped back, motioning to Gerard. “Make the light again.”

  Gerard made a preoccupied gesture and the light sprang into existence above his head, banishing the shadows from the dark corner. Ilias spotted it immediately, pointing. “There.”

  Gerard stepped close, squinting, lifting the glass pieces over his eyes to peer at it. “Good God,” he whispered, startled.

  It was a squiggle of what Ilias could now recognize as Rienish writing, marked on the stone with some white substance. Near it, wedged into a small crack in the carving, was a round metallic disk, like an ornament or a game counter. “What does it say?” he asked impatiently.

  “It says ‘The Scribe’ in Rienish.” Gerard sounded incredulous. “And this…” He scraped at the object with his thumb and managed to push it free. He turned it over on his palm and Ilias leaned to look, seeing it was of a light-colored metal incised with the delicate little figure of a flower. “Is a button.”

  Ilias nodded, seeing it was like those on Gerard’s coat, though the design was different.

  “But why back in this corner and not in a more obvious place?” Gerard said, half to himself.

  Ilias jerked his head toward the opening. “Rain and dust gets blown in here and might have worn the writing away, if it was any closer to the opening. It’s sheltered back here.” He cautiously dabbed at one of the strokes forming the words, figuring Gerard would have warned him if it was a curse trap. A white powdery substance came away on his finger.

  “Yes. Yes, that must be it. It’s written with chalk. I suppose we’re lucky it lasted this long.” Gerard shook his head slowly. “ ‘The Scribe’ is vaguely familiar. I think it’s the title of something, a book or a play.” He lifted a brow ironically. “I strongly suspect Nicholas will be able to tell us.”

  “Why?” Ilias demanded.

  “Because this button is made of white gold, a metal that can’t be used to conduct etheric activity, unlike silver. It’s a sorcerer’s coat button.” Gerard closed his hand around it, his expression intent. “And it can only belong to one person.”

  Yes.” Nicholas studied the button, turning it over on his palm. “Arisilde must have left it there.”

  Tremaine had shouldered her way in between him and Gerard to see. She picked up the button. “So he was there.” It only made sense. Why else give us the circle to go there? But what did he want us to see? Whatever it was, it didn’t seem as if Ilias and Gerard had found it.

  She hadn’t known just how worried she had been until both men had appeared in the circle again, no worse for wear. A gust of cool outdoor air from the other world had accompanied them, with a scatter of dead leaves that had drifted to the ballroom floor like torn paper fragments. She had seen Giliead rub his face to conceal his expression and look away, and Florian fan herself with a sheaf of notes, and knew she hadn’t been the only one. The initial experiments at the Viller Institute with the spell circle had had immediately fatal consequences for the sorcerer involved, but that had been without Arisilde’s help and without a correctly assembled sphere. She hadn’t worried about that. Well, not much anyway, she admitted to herself. But there had been no telling where this circle was meant to go and what they would find waiting for them.

  “How can you be certain?” Florian asked, standing on tiptoe to look over Tremaine’s shoulder. She sounded a little skeptical. “I can’t remember what Gerard’s coat buttons look like and I’m standing right next to him.”

  “Because it comes from one of my old coats, the one Arisilde was wearing when I sent him back,” Nicholas told her.

  Tremaine nodded, remembering. “He never bought clothes. He just wore whatever he could find.”

  Ander lifted a brow. “He sounds like he was a little…” He glanced at the sphere, sitting nearby on the table, and obviously decided to choose another word. “Unique, for a sorcerer. I wish I’d met him.”

  Nicholas slanted him an opaque look, but Tremaine was willing to concede that compared with Gerard and Niles, Arisilde had looked like a mad ragpicker. And in his case, it wasn’t for an intentional effect, as it was when Nicholas assumed that guise.

  “What did the writing mean?” Ilias asked, watching Nicholas. “ ‘The Scribe’? It was a message to you?”

  “Yes.” Nicholas glanced at him. “It’s the title of a painting in my collection, one of my favorites. Years ago Arisilde constructed a spell for me, using the painting to…keep an eye on an acquaintance of mine.”

  Gerard was nodding, lost in thought. “I thought it sounded familiar. But did he mean it to suggest that he was spying on someone? That he had followed someone there?”

  Nicholas was staring at the coat button, his brows drawn together. “I think it may mean… that he felt he was being followed, or watched. By some method he couldn’t discover.”

  Tremaine looked from Gerard to Nicholas. “Was it me?” she demanded. “Were you using the painting to spy on me?”

  “What? No!” Nicholas stared at her, startled into showing honest affront. “For the love
of God, Tremaine, it was years before you were born.”

  “Oh.” Tremaine subsided, aware she was being a little overwrought. “Maybe he just wanted you to be sure it was he who left the message.”

  Ignoring them, Gerard continued, “Nevertheless, this is an important discovery. These new symbols, compared with the original circle, can tell us so much more about how the individual elements that make up the spell actually work. It could allow us to manipulate them, to choose our destination, so we could construct another circle that could transport us to Lodun from any point in the staging world, or even from our own world—”

  Ander nodded. “It means we can get inside Lodun and get the people out, without the Gardier knowing until it’s too late.”

  “If we can devise the right circle,” Gerard added, giving Ander a repressive look. “I’ll report to Colonel Averi, and I suggest the rest of you get some sleep.”

  Chapter 4

  The next morning dawned far too soon, at least for Tremaine. It had been well past midnight when she went to bed but she woke after only a few hours, her mind retracing yesterday’s events in exhausting detail. Seeing the gray line of daylight under the door didn’t help.

  She crawled out of the still–faintly musty bed, cursing as her bare feet touched the cold boards. Fumbling along the wall, she found the switch for the wall sconce and pushed it, blinking at the dim glow of the shaded electric light. She gathered her clothes up from the chair where she had left them but the cold was funneling right up her cotton nightgown as if it was a chimney, and she made a run back for the bed.

  Ilias was lying on his stomach, arms curled around a pillow, watching her blearily. “What are you doing?”

  “It’s cold,” she said through chattering teeth, pushing her feet under the blankets to warm them against his side. He gasped and woke up a little more. His queue was unraveling and his hair was a mass of frayed tangles and curls, spreading out over the muscles of his shoulders, the two long lines of scar tissue showing through the strands. The scars were a souvenir of Ixion, of a transformation spell that had reversed when Giliead had cut Ixion’s head off. The spell was the reason Ilias had gotten the curse mark. Absently she picked up one of his smaller braids, picking it apart to redo it.