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

by Martha Wells

  Giliead gasped a breath, choked at the stench of burned human flesh, and ran toward the injured man. He passed through the barrier, feeling it pluck at his clothes and hair, and fell to his knees beside the Capidaran. He was breathing, but with a liquid rasp that meant burned insides. Behind him, Nicholas reached the curse barrier and bounced off as he tried to pass through. Stumbling back, he swore in frustration. “Quickly, they may throw another explosive any moment. Gerard—”

  Giliead hadn’t thought of that, but of course the Gardier would have more of the things. He gathered up the wounded man as carefully as he could, grimacing at the close view of burned skin showing through the gaping holes in his shirt and jacket. He said hurriedly, “Wait, don’t take away the curse, I may be able to bring him through.”

  Giliead lifted the man and stood, mentally gathered himself, and stepped into the curse barrier. He felt it pull at him again, at the man in his arms, but after an instant it gave way and he stumbled through to the other side.

  Cletia stood in the doorway, staring, a horrified Cimarus behind her. “Take him out in the hall,” Nicholas ordered, just as glass crashed again from the windows behind them. “Excellent timing,” Nicholas added under his breath.

  Giliead agreed, feeling his stomach clench at the nearness of their escape. He carried the man out to the hallway, deliberately not looking back at the curse barrier, knowing the other weapon would explode any moment. The other two Capidarans were already out in the hall, the older woman collapsed on a chair, her face chalky with shock. “Get some wet towels,” Gerard told the other woman sharply. “There’s a bathroom just up one floor. Stay away from the windows.” He had spoken by habit in Syrnaic and had to repeat himself in Rienish as the woman stared at him blankly.

  Giliead laid the man down on a couch at Gerard’s urging, just as the second blast went off, muffled behind the protective curse barrier. If someone needed better evidence that Rienish curses could protect people rather than hurt them, Giliead couldn’t think what it would be. He threw a glance at Gerard, asking, “Those are the same weapons from the Gardier world, the ones that made the fire in the building?”

  “Yes, an incendiary,” Nicholas answered him, striding toward the stairs. “You, Cimarus? Get upstairs, see if you can spot them from the window on the floor above this one. Try not to open the shutters far enough to let them fire in.”

  Giliead looked at Cletia, opening his mouth to reinforce the order but she jerked her chin at Cimarus, telling him to follow Nicholas’s instructions. As Cimarus bounded up the stairs, Cletia ducked back into their room and came out with her scabbarded sword, hurrying after Nicholas.

  “Yes, careful,” Gerard called after him. “They’re sure to keep trying. Is the door to the back secure?”

  “It was the last time I checked,” Nicholas said grimly, starting down the stairs.

  Gerard had knelt beside the couch to listen to the wounded Capidaran’s labored breathing, trying to touch his ruined skin as little as possible. He sat up, taking a sharp breath, sweat staining his collar. “This man’s going to die unless I do a healing.”

  “You can fix this?” Giliead asked, trying to keep the incredulity out of his tone.

  Gerard gestured, distracted. “Burns aren’t difficult to heal. It’s simply a matter of encouraging the skin to grow back, something it’s already inclined to do on its own.” He shook his head slightly. “But it’s a complicated spell, I don’t know if I can hold the wards….” His jawset. “I have to try.”

  Giliead got to his feet, realizing he couldn’t help here. As he started up the stairs, the younger Capidaran woman appeared again, her arms full of dripping wet cloth, passing him on the steps. The older woman staggered to her feet and came over to help her lay the towels on the wounded man.

  Giliead heard Gerard ask urgently in Rienish, “Meretrisa, do you have any experience with major healing spells?”

  She shook her head, her face anguished. “No, I’ve never— I don’t think I can.”

  Giliead moved quickly up the stairs, going to the room where he had stored their bowcases, selecting one hurriedly and taking a handful of hunting arrows. He found Cimarus struggling to open the window at the end of the hall. “Move that metal clip over, then you can push the top part up,” Giliead told him, tossing the arrows on a handy chair and pausing to string the bow. It was a fine one made for him in Cineth, of polished goathorn, wood and bone.

  Swearing in frustration, Cimarus got the glass window pushed up out of the way and cautiously eased the shutter open. “There they are,” he murmured. “Down in the garden.” Giliead looked over his shoulder and saw three men in the brown Gardier clothing confidently crossing the winter-dead garden court toward the back of the house. All carried the long black shooting weapons. “Go get a bow,” Giliead told Cimarus grimly, shouldering him aside and nocking an arrow. He drew, taking careful aim on the Gardier in the lead. These men might not be wizards but he had never felt any regret in killing those who used fire as a weapon. And it would help clear Ilias and Tremaine’s way back to the house. “There’s going to be more of them.”

  Tremaine brought the taxicab to a halt, cursing. The end of their street was blocked by an automobile jammed into an ancient horse-drawn omnibus. Someone had cut the horses loose and taken them away but no attempt had been made to clear the blocked street. “Idiots,” she muttered, throwing the motorcar into reverse and only belatedly remembering to look behind her.

  Braced in the back, keeping a hold on Balin, Ilias pointed out rather desperately, “We can walk from here.”

  “I know, but—” But the neighborhood was too empty. She didn’t want to hurry down that street under the gaze of all those windows. And the bomb blasts were getting closer, following them the whole distance from the harbor.

  She jolted the motorcar back into gear, turning down the street that ran behind their house, remembering that Mr. Derathi had made his deliveries through the back door so there had to be a passage through to it. This street was much like the other, lined with brown brick town houses, some with shops in the bottom floors. It was empty, quiet, as everyone huddled in terror indoors. She braked at about the spot where their house was in the opposite street. Craning her neck, she was rewarded with the sight of a narrow alley running between the two brown brick buildings into the center of the block.

  Tremaine bailed out, pausing as Ilias dragged a struggling Balin out of the back. The smell of smoke was strong here, but the breeze must be coming from the harbor. Balin glared at her, spitting a curse, but Tremaine was too occupied to surrender to the impulse to kill her. She led the way down the narrow alley, carrying her pistol down at her side, concealed by a fold of her coat. Dirt had drifted over the paving and weeds and determined flowers had taken root, but there was a flattened path down the center. At the end was a battered wooden gate in their house’s garden wall, standing open. She was willing to bet Derathi hadn’t left that open this morning.

  She waved for Ilias to wait and he pulled Balin to a halt, covering her mouth when she tried to shout. Tremaine turned back to her to put the pistol’s muzzle right under her nose, saying quietly in Aelin, “If you bite him, three guesses what I’ll do to you.”

  Ilias lifted a brow in appreciation. Balin looked convinced, so Tremaine turned back to the gate, carefully peering inside. There was no real spot for anyone to hide in the small walled yard. She spotted the first brown-clad body crumpled in the weedy dry flower bed and twitched, raising her pistol. An instant later she saw the feathered arrow shaft standing out of the man’s back and knew he wouldn’t be causing trouble anytime soon. She eased a little further through the gate and spotted another Gardier floating in the stagnant green water of the fountain, and several more sprawled on the dirty stone flags. Looks like we had company, and company regretted it, she thought, grimly pleased.

  She glanced up at the house, grimacing as she saw the second-floor windows in the conservatory had been broken out. She looked down again,
realizing that broken glass littered the paving. “That’s not good,” she muttered, stepping forward. The windows must have been blown out in an explosion. Glass cracked under her boot and she held out her free hand, in case there was a—

  “Dammit!” Tremaine leapt back, gritting her teeth, shaking her numb hand. Her fingers pricked and tingled from even brief contact with the ward. She glared at the house, hoping the ward had also announced her presence as well as zapping her with what felt like an electric shock, but no one appeared at the door or windows.

  “Tremaine,” Ilias said quietly.

  “It was a—” She turned, saw he had his hand clapped tightly over Balin’s mouth, that he was looking at the far wall of the garden. Not the wall, she realized a moment later, but the three sets of bootprints in the dirt beside it. Illusion, she realized with a sick sensation, they can’t get past a ward set with a sphere’s help, so they’re waiting for Gerard to drop it to let us in. “—a ward, right, you know how we always—” Say the leader’s the one in the middle, say he’s holding the crystal maintaining the illusion about chest level— She twitched her pistol free of her coat, raised it and fired.

  The report rang out as the illusion shattered between one blink and the next. Two Gardier flung themselves away and one fell to the ground, crystal shards spattered with blood scattered around him. The telltale remnants of liquid light pooled on the ground, all that was left of the sorcerer who had been trapped inside the crystal. Guessed right, Tremaine thought, already scrambling for cover behind the raised edge of the fountain. A shot into the coping sprayed her with stone chips and she rolled away, feeling gravel and broken glass grit under her back. With the crystal broken the Gardier couldn’t destroy her pistol with their mechanical disruption spell, but that didn’t stop them from shooting.

  Ilias had flung Balin aside and tackled the nearest Gardier, taking the man to the ground before he could bring up his rifle. Tremaine popped up to take a shot at the other, missed as he fired at her. The bullet hit the dead man in the fountain, making the corpse jerk horrifically. Two more Gardier vaulted over the wall. Ilias had killed the one he had tackled and now crouched behind the gate, taking cover from the gunfire. Balin, knowing the Gardier might not realize she was one of them, had flattened herself into the weeds across the court. Or she might just remember what had happened to some of the other Gardier prisoners, killed by a Liaison to keep them from talking.

  Damn it, this could be a problem, Tremaine thought desperately, crawling through the gravel, trying to keep the fountain between her and the Gardier. Knowing she only had three shots left, she risked her head to fire again, just as a feathered shaft suddenly slammed into the nearest man’s chest. The Gardier choked as he fell, blood foaming at his lips.

  Tremaine shot the other one as the last tried to go back over the wall, only to be dragged down by Ilias. She heard a door bang and turned, just in time to see the other Gardier who had been creeping quietly up behind her. Before she could even get her pistol up, Giliead suddenly appeared behind him, his sword biting into the man’s shoulder.

  Tremaine pushed to her feet, watching Giliead finish the Gardier off with a thrust to the chest, uneasily fascinated. She tore her gaze away, looking back to make sure Ilias was all right. He was just retrieving his knife from the body of the Gardier who had tried to escape.

  Giliead spotted Ilias and his whole body relaxed, though he didn’t do more than nod to him in relief. Ilias gave him a tight smile back, then dodged sideways to recapture Balin as she ran toward one of the fallen Gardier rifles.

  “We need to get back inside, there’s more of them,” Giliead told Tremaine, turning back to the house.

  “Right.” Tremaine started after him, and flinched back with a curse as she walked into the ward again. She shook her stinging hand, gritting her teeth. “Hey, can we do something about that?”

  Giliead looked back in consternation. “Sorry, it doesn’t work on me.”

  The servants’ door at the side of the house opened and Nicholas stepped out, motioning them to come toward him. “Hurry, Gerard’s opened a passage in the ward.”

  “Are you sure?” Tremaine took a cautious step forward, feeling the air in front of her.

  “No, it’s a cruel joke,” Nicholas snapped. “Get in here.”

  Snarling under her breath, Tremaine followed Giliead across the littered pavement to the doorway, Ilias hauling Balin along after her.

  “Why on earth did you bring her?” Nicholas asked as they reached the house. He shut the door behind Giliead and shot the bolt, throwing a suspicious glance through the inset window.

  “Bring who?” Tremaine’s expression was too acid for mockinnocence. She went through the little entryway and into the kitchen. Cimarus was in the doorway to the pantry, his sword hung over his shoulder, watching worriedly.

  “She was escaping,” Ilias replied, pushing the Gardier woman ahead of him. Balin snarled at Nicholas, who ignored her.

  Tremaine decided to give up on the sarcasm battle. “What happened to the windows? The bombing is still several streets away.”

  “We’ve been attacked by two groups of Gardier.” Nicholas turned away from the door impatiently, leading them through the kitchen. “They’re obviously after the sphere or Gerard or both.”

  Tremaine snorted derisively. “That’s suicidal of them. Arisilde’s not going to—”

  “Unfortunately, Arisilde isn’t here,” Nicholas cut in. They came out into the front hall, which seemed undamaged except for a lingering odor of smoke. Nicholas started up the stairs. “Gerard took him out to the Ravenna last night, so Niles could work with him. He brought Niles’s sphere back here to carry on the experiment.”

  “Oh.” Tremaine bit her lip, taken aback. That explained the simultaneous illusion and gate spell. Niles had had powerful help.

  Gerard met them at the top of the stairs, saying in profound relief, “Thank God you made it safely.”

  “Do you know where Florian is?” Tremaine asked. She had been hoping the other girl would be at the house with Gerard, but surely she would have come out to see them by now.

  “I left her with Niles on the Ravenna this morning, with Kias and Calit.” Gerard looked at her sharply. “Did you see if—”

  “The illusion worked, Niles was able to make a gate.” Tremaine felt the tightness in her chest ease. With Arisilde and Niles and the Ravenna between them and the Gardier, Florian and the other Syprians were better off than they were.

  She saw two Capidaran women she didn’t know, one young with dark hair done up in a bun, the other older and a little on the stout side, both leaning anxiously over a man stretched out on one of the fusty divans. There was a pile of towels and a large china bowl of water on the floor. Tremaine took a step forward to see who was hurt and suddenly realized the red and black marking his torso was burned flesh and blackened cloth, not just a rather ugly patterned shirt. Her gorge rose. “Who’s this?” she asked, trying to clamp down on incipient nausea.

  “Tremaine, this is Meretrisa and Vervane, members of the Capidaran party,” Gerard said, preoccupied. “The injured man is Aras, with the Capidaran Ministry.” He turned back to Nicholas. “We need to—”

  A bomb blast shook the house, plaster dust raining down, windowpanes rattling in their casements, glass shields trembling in the sconces. Everyone flinched and Vervane, the older Capidaran woman, cried out, clapping her hands to her ears. Balin looked around hopefully, as if she expected the house to collapse. But the old building stayed upright. Tremaine looked around for a window to see how close the hit had been. Before she could take two steps for the stairs, another blast hit. She staggered, the vibrations making her teeth ache.

  “God, what are they doing?” Gerard muttered, heading for the window with Nicholas.

  Tremaine made it to the stair railing, looking out the window above the front door. In the haze of smoke she saw that the houses across the street were rubble.

  Another bomb blast shook the ho
use and she gripped the railing. How many people had died in the past minute?

  As the sound faded, Nicholas said quietly, “They’ve realized they can’t get past our wards.”

  “So they’re just bombing the rest of the street?” Tremaine gestured in frustrated rage. She looked at Gerard. “Can you stop them?”

  He shook his head slowly, his eyes not leaving the devastation. “Not with this sphere. I can’t hold our wards and strip theirs simultaneously. If Arisilde was here—”

  “If Arisilde was here, Niles wouldn’t have gotten the Ravenna out in time,” Tremaine told him, frustrated.

  “Quite possibly.” Gerard looked at Nicholas, grimacing. “The Gardier must think Arisilde is with us. They won’t stop until they find him.”

  “They’ll bomb this neighborhood to the ground around us.” Nicholas nodded absently, eyes distant as he thought it over. Tremaine bit the inside of her lip to keep from snapping at him. The worse the situation, the calmer Nicholas seemed to get, and it drove her mad.

  Gerard lifted his brows suddenly. “We’ll have to abandon the house, drop the wards, let them take it.” He smiled thinly. “We’ll go through the circle.”

  Tremaine blinked. Of course. The only value in the house was the sphere and the circle itself, and Gerard and Giaren had already taken enough notes on it to be able to re-create it anywhere. They could wait out the attack in the cave Ilias and Gerard had found, then return. She turned to Ilias and Giliead, waiting tensely behind her. “We’re going through the circle—get anything we might need.”

  They were both moving before the words were all the way out, Ilias bolting for the stairs and Giliead shouting for Cletia and Cimarus. Tremaine turned back as Nicholas said, “Yes, it’s the only thing we can do. I’ll stay here and destroy the circle.”

  “What?” Tremaine’s brows drew together, but a moment later, she saw it too. “Because the Gardier could follow us through.”