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

by Martha Wells

  Ilias squinted up at the sky, then lifted his brows in surprise. It was a clear night, the stars picked out like ice crystals against the dark void. “That looks like the Archers.” He pointed to the constellation that formed the outline of two men with drawn bows. “And the Mother, and the War Galley. The sky looks like it did before the Ravenna made the world-gate and we docked at Capistown.”

  “That answers that question.” With a sigh, Gerard tucked the papers back into a leather folder. “So we know we’re somewhere close to the region in your world that Capidara occupies in ours. Hopefully by tomorrow Niles will send for us and we can bring more navigational instruments. We’re rather badly prepared for an extended stay.”

  Ilias shrugged. “We’ve got weapons and blankets. If we can get out to the forest, we’ll have everything else we need.”

  Gerard turned and one of the light wisps drifted over to him as he started back toward the circle. His face set in bleak lines under the white light, he said, “Yes. I suspect we’re a good deal better off than our friends at Capistown.”

  Tremaine carried their other supplies in from the circle and sorted through them, but there wasn’t much there. Her bag contained her clothes, the blanket Karima had given her and some more ammunition for her pistol. Gerard had only a couple of books, some personal items and an electric torch, which at least would come in handy. The Syprians were the only ones who had been able to grab a large number of practical things.

  Cimarus still guarded Balin, Cletia had been sent to watch the stairwell down into the cliff, Gerard was in the outer chamber with the circle and Ilias and Giliead were trying to use Giliead’s blanket to block the draft coming through the doorway. This involved using a couple of latchkeys from Gerard’s pocket as nails driven through chinks in the stone and a rock for a hammer and a lot of mock-arguing about who was making the process more difficult by offering alternate suggestions.

  Tremaine shook her hair back, looking at the Capidarans. Meretrisa was speaking quietly to the older woman, Vervane, who was watching the Syprians with a wary expression. Meretrisa caught Tremaine’s glance and explained with a slight smile, “I was reassuring her that they aren’t… as uncivilized as they look.”

  Tremaine lifted her brows. Giliead, the only one tall enough to reach the lintel of the doorway, had just responded to Ilias’s criticism of his hammering method by elbowing him in the head. “It depends on your definition of uncivilized. When you see them kill someone, maybe that will give you a better basis for judgment.” She glanced back to see the startled expression on Meretrisa’s face. Oops, time to put scary Tremaine back in the box. She must be more tired than she thought. Not everyone wants to know what you’re really like, you know. In fact, nobody wants it. “Sorry.” She smiled, though it felt false and brittle, and got to her feet.

  She made her way through the door-making exercise and out into the circle chamber. Gerard was sitting on the stone, wearing one of the Syprian blankets as a cloak, writing in his notebook in the glow of half a dozen balls of sorcerous light. “Is that a good idea?” she asked, gesturing to the lights. “Someone might see them from the cliffs. Even if we are in the Syprians’ world, we still don’t know—”

  “I warded the opening against light,” he explained mildly, without looking up at her. “No one will see it from outside.”

  “Oh.” She sat on her heels, wrapping her arms around her knees and tucking her hands into her sleeves. It was probably colder out here, but she was numb now and couldn’t tell. “Aren’t you freezing?”

  “Yes,” he admitted. “Unfortunately, there’s no ward that will affect temperature. But it isn’t that much worse than the lodging halls at Lodun in the winter. Quite bracing, actually. It reminds me of my student days.”

  Tremaine lifted a brow. “That was forty years ago, Gerard.”

  He actually put his pen down to glare at her. “Twenty years ago, Tremaine, twenty—” He saw her lips twitch. “Very funny.”

  As he went back to his work, Tremaine sat for a moment listening to the river, organizing her thoughts. Finally, she said in Syrnaic, “The Gardier came right to the house, Gerard. They knew where we were.”

  He nodded grimly, not looking up from his notebook. “Yes, yes, they did.”

  She took a deep cold breath. “So… can they tell we’re using this gate?” When they had first experimented with the original circle in Port Rel, transporting the Pilot Boat to and from the staging world to test the spell’s abilities, the Gardier had been able to detect when the world-gates were opened. Of course, the Rienish hadn’t known that at the time.

  “The Gardier should only be able to detect us if they’re nearby, in this world. Or if we use the mobile circle to gate to this corresponding location in the Gardier world.” He lifted his brows. “Which I don’t recommend we do. Ilias pointed out some of the constellations for me, and if I’m correct in my calculations, in our world we’d be closer to Kathbad than Capidara.”

  “Kathbad.” Tremaine frowned. One of the first captured Gardier maps, the one Ilias and Giliead had managed to steal from the base on the Isle of Storms, had shown a major Gardier installation near Kathbad. Once they had realized the Gardier actually came from another world adjacent to the staging world, it had become apparent that the installation wasn’t at Kathbad but at the same location in the Gardier world. Kathbad was a remote island nation, and even its nearest neighbor Capidara hadn’t had any contact with it for the past three years. Since Kathbad was two world-gates from Gardier central, this wasn’t surprising. Tremaine supposed there was nothing left of it by now. “So if we used the mobile circle, the one that takes us to this same physical point in either our world or their world, we’d either be in Kathbad, which is probably a Gardier slave state now, or near a huge Gardier stronghold.”

  “Yes.” Gerard shrugged, still occupied with his notes. “Exactly.”

  No, I’m fine, really, thank you.” Florian handed back the mug of stewed tea, her voice holding a thin edge of impatience. Everyone seemed to think she was about to have a hysterical collapse and kept trying to give her a blanket or a cup of tea or coffee. She understood it was Capistown’s first bombing, but she had lived through so many in Vienne she had stopped counting them.

  After the bombing had stopped, she and Nicholas had reached the Port Authority to find it still mostly intact. Two bombs had struck the building but one of the Ministry sorcerers had helped the fire brigade extinguish the blaze. The wounded were being carried to the courtrooms next door, the dead still lay where they had fallen. The Rienish offices were in the part of the building now too dangerous to enter and marked by fallen beams and a haze of plaster dust. But Florian had caught a glimpse of Colonel Averi and several other officers she knew, still alive and well. When Nicholas had vanished in search of information, Florian had been swept into the ground-floor offices of one of the steamship companies with a cluster of other refugees, most of whom actually were in a state of hysterical collapse.

  Now she was sitting in one of the fine leather chairs of the office’s well-appointed waiting room, surrounded by weeping secretaries, office workers and shop girls, with a couple of clerks and a woman Magistrate trying to keep them calm. This is ridiculous. I know Nicholas said to wait, but I’ve got to get out of here. Just as Florian got to her feet, Nicholas appeared in the doorway, saying, “The Ravenna’s back, come along.”

  She hurried after him, relieved he hadn’t abandoned her entirely. The office door opened into a little court, once elegantly decorated with potted trees and a little fountain, and now packed with more confused and hysterical people. Florian followed Nicholas’s black-clothed back through the crowd and out onto the harbor front. The salt air was heavy with smoke, streaming up from the warehouses and the wreck of an airship that had gone down in the dock area. Out in the harbor a large cargo ship had sunk, its bow still visible above the waves. Like a gray mountain on the horizon, the Ravenna was just dropping anchor at the mouth of the harbor, steam
belching from all three of her stacks. The great ship looked whole and unharmed, and it was like seeing a piece of home. Florian took a sharp breath that almost turned into a sob. Frustrated, she wiped tears away, breaking into a run to catch up with Nicholas. Stop it, this is no time to blubber, she told herself sternly.

  Nicholas led her to a dock where a tugboat was being commandeered by Colonel Averi and several other Rienish. She climbed aboard, accepting a helping hand from one of the Capidaran sailors. Nicholas had already made his way up to the bow and Florian found Colonel Averi on the starboard side.

  “Florian,” he said absently, and put a hand on her shoulder, as if making sure he kept track of her. Looking over her head, the wind ruffling his graying hair, he called to one of the sailors, “All aboard? Let’s go.”

  She stood next to Colonel Averi as the boat chugged into motion, heading out into the gray water of the harbor. The wind was much cooler here and Florian shivered, glad that she had put on a thick sweater this morning. One of the Ravenna’s accident boats met them halfway across the harbor and they transferred onto it, the two small craft bobbing in the choppy water.

  Soon the Ravenna’s giant gray wall loomed over them as the accident boat pulled alongside. Florian clung to a bench as the boat was winched up to the height of a four-story building; she had always hated this part. They reached the boat deck, the davit holding them close to the side, and a female Rienish sailor opened the gate in the railing, ushering them aboard.

  Niles was waiting for them on the deck. “All right?” Averi demanded.

  “Yes,” Niles answered. He was hollow-eyed and hollow-cheeked, his normally sleek blond hair disarrayed. He carried Arisilde’s sphere under his arm, apparently unperturbed by the fact that it was spinning rapidly and throwing out blue sparks. “There was a Gardier ship waiting for us when we made the gateway to the staging world, but unfortunately—for them—they were too close to our stern when we materialized and well within Arisilde’s range. There were no survivors. There were other Gardier vessels in the area, so we returned as soon as possible.”

  Florian folded her arms to conceal a shiver, looking away. The gate spell was supposed to have built-in protections against opening a gate where another solid object was already present, but she didn’t think those protections had ever really been tested.

  Averi nodded sharply. “This changes our timetable rather dramatically. I need to speak to Captain Marais immediately.”

  As Niles and Averi strode off down the deck, several officers and sailors in tow, Florian stayed where she was. She felt a little light-headed and wanted to find Kias, Gyan and Calit. She realized Nicholas was standing next to her, and told him, “Don’t forget to tell Niles we need to do the new circle to get the others back.”

  “I will,” Nicholas answered seriously, just as Florian had time to realize that was an incredibly stupid thing to say. Of course he would remember. She swore silently at herself, feeling her cheeks redden, as he asked, “You’ll be all right here?”

  “What? Oh, yes.” The Ravenna was as familiar to her now as the block her old flat had been on in Vienne. On impulse she asked, “They’re going to talk about leaving, aren’t they? I mean, the ship is leaving Capistown soon?”

  “Yes.” Nicholas looked out over the city, the familiar view of the brownstone town nestled between the sea and the mountains, now marked by plumes of smoke. His expression was distant, his brows drawn together in worry. “It’s time to go back to Ile-Rien.”

  Chapter 6

  Tremaine woke huddled against the corridor wall with Ilias’s coat over her, cold, aching and cramped. She scrubbed her eyes, wincing at the bright dawn light filtering in around the blanket over the doorway to the circle chamber. Last night Ilias and Giliead had stationed themselves here to watch the circle, and Tremaine had squeezed in between them for warmth and finally fallen asleep. She dimly remembered that the two men had gotten up earlier when it was still dark, presumably to relieve whoever was watching the stairwell. Groaning, Tremaine shoved to her feet, staggered, and limped into the main room.

  Everyone else was awake and stirring. Balin glared from her corner and Tremaine ignored her. It was too early in the morning to deal with Balin. Aras, the man with the burns, still lay quiet, Meretrisa sitting at his side, and Tremaine made her way over. “How is he?” she whispered.

  “Better,” Meretrisa told her in a normal voice. She lifted a fold of the blanket, revealing the man’s arm and shoulder, and Tremaine leaned over to see. The skin was pink and new in blotchy patches where the burned areas had been. Meretrisa tucked the blanket back around him. “I don’t think he’ll wake for a while yet. This kind of healing takes a lot out of both the sorcerer and the patient.”

  “Right.” Tremaine pushed her hair back, frowning absently. That meant Gerard would be worn and exhausted, even more so than usual. She straightened up with a wince. She felt creaky and about a hundred years old herself; she couldn’t imagine how he felt.

  She turned to find Cimarus standing beside her. He said, rather pointedly, “We have some herbs and grain, but we need water and wood for a fire.”

  Though the Syrnai was a matriarchy, Syprians organized themselves by family groups, in a system that had little or nothing to do with rank or gender, and seemed based on the fact that everyone knew what everyone else’s best skills were. Knowing this told Tremaine absolutely nothing about how they decided who would scout, who stood guard, who steered the boat, who was the leader for that hour and who had to cook. Obviously right at this moment it was Tremaine’s duty to organize the group to find water and fuel and Cimarus thought she was lying down on the job. She made vague placating gestures. “I know, I know. But we might be going back this morning.” She headed for the hallway and the outer chamber, still limping. If they could return to Capistown soon, there wouldn’t be much point in looking for a way down to the forest to forage, though they still needed to explore the place.

  She ducked past the blanket curtain into the big chamber. Sunlight flooded it and the cool breeze carried the clean scent of the river and the distant rush of the waterfall. It was almost enough to wake her up. The jagged rim of the cave mouth looked out on a panoramic view of deep green forest cloaking the cliffs on the opposite side of the canyon.

  Gerard sat on the stone floor near the circle, notebooks scattered around him, contemplating the symbols with a dissatisfied expression. He looked pale in the bright light, his face drawn and marked by dark circles under his eyes. The sphere sat next to him, quiescent. But since it didn’t have Arisilde’s active personality, that meant nothing. Ilias and Giliead both stood nearby, contemplating Gerard worriedly.

  Tremaine frowned, pushing a hand through her hair again. “No word yet?”

  Gerard looked up with a sigh. “No, nothing.”

  She bit her lip, uneasy. It would have taken Niles some time to draw the new circle on the Ravenna, once the battle was over. If the battle was over. If Niles was alive. If the Ravenna wasn’t at the bottom of Capistown harbor or its equivalent in the staging world. “It’s night there now, right? Maybe they decided to rest first.”

  “Perhaps.” Gerard shook his head, gesturing in annoyance. “If we don’t hear from them soon, we’ll have to try to return. In the meantime, we might as well explore this place.” He glanced at the doorway to the corridor, though they were all speaking Syrnaic and only Cletia and Cimarus could have overheard. “You all realize, someone in the Capidaran delegation must have communicated to the Gardier where the house was and what we were doing there. That was no random bombing; they were determined to stop us.”

  Giliead nodded, grimly unsurprised. Ilias looked thoughtfully at the corridor doorway, asking, “One of them?”

  Tremaine shrugged, rubbing her eyes. “Who knows? I don’t think a spy would let himself—herself—be trapped in the house with us, but there’s no guarantee it’s a professional spy and not just a lucky amateur.”

  “Aras walked toward the firebomb,�
� Giliead pointed out. “He didn’t know what it was. A spy would have been expecting some kind of attack.”

  “Unless he has a little crystal stuck in his skin, and doesn’t know he betrayed us, like Niles did,” Ilias pointed out.

  “I can check Aras when I examine the healing on his burns, but I don’t think he has one,” Gerard said, thinking it over. “I think I would have noticed it during the healing spell.” He glanced up at Tremaine. “You’ll have to make an excuse to search the two women.”

  “God.” Tremaine buried her face in her hands. “It could be anywhere, Gerard, and I’m not going to be able to think of an excuse to search anywhere.” They could simply force the two women to allow a search. Though if they found nothing, all that would accomplish was letting a voluntary spy know that they were onto her. “Weren’t the Capidarans supposed to be checking for Liaison crystals?” she demanded.

  “Yes, but ‘supposed to be’ is the key phrase. They have little experience so far with how effective Gardier spies can be, and I don’t know how careful they were,” Gerard told her with some asperity. He sighed, gesturing helplessly. “Just be careful, all of you, and keep an eye on them no matter how helpful or innocent they seem.”

  In the gloom of the stone passage, Tremaine checked her pistol, wishing she had brought more ammunition than just the handful in her bag and what Nicholas had stuffed into her coat. She returned the weapon to her pocket, making sure she had Gerard’s electric torch in the other. She paused, brow lifted, to take in the sight of Ilias, wearing his dark blue greatcoat over his Syprian clothes, with his sword belt slung over his shoulder. He caught her smile and demanded self-consciously, “What?”

  “Nothing.” She glanced at Giliead, who had tossed his dun-colored wrap over his shoulder to accommodate his heavy leather baldric. “Ready?” she asked him.