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

by Martha Wells

  Most of the Aelin had wandered off. Dyani was going to teach them how to shop at a Syprian market and give them a tour around the city; how they had come to this arrangement when the Aelin knew only about twenty words of Syrnaic, most of them food-related, Tremaine wasn’t sure. But then she and Ilias and Florian had managed to navigate the Isle of Storms with only three words in common, so she supposed it wasn’t as hard as it sounded. She hadn’t told the Aelin where she and Ilias and Giliead were going; the fewer people who knew, the better.

  The Aelin children were fascinated by a new playmate who spoke their own language and were desperate to drag Calit into their games whether he liked it or not. He was still a little standoffish from what she could tell, but he was beginning to make overtures by splashing fountain water on one of the younger girls, so she suspected he would do fairly well.

  Then she realized Cletia was standing over her. Tremaine glanced up with a frown, and Cletia said, “I want to speak to you in private.”

  “Oh, fine,” Tremaine said, with a deliberately poor attempt at good cheer. She pushed to her feet, wondering if it was some message from Visolela. She wasn’t sure how much Cletia had seen of Pasima since the Ravenna had returned. She followed Cletia to the portico and one of the disused sitting rooms directly off it. The red tile floor had collected dead leaves and dust, and the room was bare of furniture. “Well?” Tremaine asked impatiently.

  Cletia threw a look out the wide doorway, checking to make sure Gyan and Dyani were out of earshot. She said a little stiffly, “I want to speak to you about Ilias.”

  Tremaine folded her arms and put on an expression of faint boredom. She did not want to encourage this conversation. “You know, I don’t think he’s any of your business.”

  “Everyone knows you only married him for the alliance, even if you are bed friends now,” Cletia said, obviously fighting to keep her expression calm. Tremaine felt her face go tight. “But the alliance is sealed now. Visolela knows how dangerous the Gardier are to us, she won’t let Pasima or Pella or anyone else argue with Nicanor’s decisions.” Cletia hesitated, as if hoping Tremaine would agree, then added more firmly, “You don’t need Ilias anymore.”

  Tremaine held her gaze, feeling rage simmer. Apparently more lack of encouragement was going to be necessary. “I’m still not hearing anything that’s any of your concern.”

  Cletia’s face hardened in annoyance. “You saw us in Capistown. You know he could never live in one of your cities.”

  “I know that,” Tremaine said through gritted teeth. She remembered a promise to Karima, before they had sailed for Capidara, that she wouldn’t make Ilias come back to her world. But the idea of severing the tie between them was as attractive as the idea of cutting off her arm. She should tell Cletia that she meant to stay here, but for some reason the words didn’t come out. “The chances that any of us are going to live past the next few days are low, so why bother to talk about it.”

  “You said that before.” Cletia gestured impatiently. “You use it like an armor, so you don’t have to think about the future. I want to talk about what happens if you all live. He could be happy with me, you know that.”

  Rage bubbled over. Almost without her conscious volition, Tremaine said, with no particular emphasis, “You know, I’d just hate it if anything happened to you.”

  Cletia stepped back, wary. “I don’t want to fight with you.”

  “You really don’t,” Tremaine agreed. It just infuriated her more that Cletia was being so reasonable. It also infuriated her that she recognized the fact that Cletia was being reasonable.

  Cletia seemed to realize the conversation wasn’t going to get any better. With a gesture of frustration, she turned to go. “We don’t have to be enemies.”

  “It’s a little late for that,” Tremaine told her retreating back.

  She listened to Cletia’s footsteps recede along the portico and stood in the room for a long time, taking slow deep breaths, despite the dust. It had occurred to her why she had avoided every opportunity to talk to Ilias. I can’t say it. I can’t say it like I’m supposed to. All the ridiculously emotional phrases of love. She remembered the last play she had seen before the war had closed the theaters, a romantic drama with people draping themselves languorously on couches and saying things like Oh, darling, my wife will surely understand. She knows a love like ours extends past destiny and reason and You’re the only one in my life and you fill it completely. She couldn’t imagine how drunk she would have to be to say something like that. Whenever she had tried to write a romance in her plays, the audience could never tell if the characters were in love or not. She clapped a hand to her forehead in despair. Killing Cletia seemed like the best solution. Yes, for a crazy person, she thought in disgust. We were trying to give that up, remember?

  And Ilias couldn’t live in her world. Not in the cities, the places they would have to fight the Gardier. Even if the fighting didn’t kill him, he would be badly ill within the year. And Giliead couldn’t leave this world for long periods of time, and the separation would probably kill them both. And I can’t stay here. If we don’t stop the Gardier at Parscia and Capidara, they’ll take the rest of the world. Then this world. That cold fact settled sickly into her stomach, turning the bright morning gray. I can’t stay here. That was why she hadn’t told Cletia of her plan to come back to this house.

  Someone stepped into the doorway, blocking the fall of light. She looked up to see Balin, standing uncertainly. The Gardier woman said warily, “I need to speak to you. I want to talk.”

  “Oh God.” Tremaine pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes. “Not you too.”

  Balin looked a little affronted. “You don’t need my information anymore?”

  “What?” Tremaine stared, trying to drag her mind back from the abyss of her personal life. “Oh, you want to talk? Finally?”

  Balin stepped further into the room, saying, “I want to stay with them.”

  “With who? The Aelin?” As Balin nodded, Tremaine lifted her brows. “Even here, with the savages?”

  “The Etara don’t seem to mind.” She shifted uncomfortably, folding her arms tightly and looking away. “I can see why Command would want to kill me. I’ve been with you too long, I could have told you anything, been corrupted…. It’s a chance I took willingly. But the Etara, they were trapped in that place for a generation, they knew nothing, except one name.” Her mouth hardened. “And they aren’t soldiers.”

  Tremaine nodded slowly. “Talk, and I’ll speak to Averi about letting you stay here, in Obelin’s custody.”

  Balin took a sharp breath. “I heard the name Castines before Obelin spoke of it. In Maton-Command. I’ve heard the Liaisons say it to one another. I didn’t know who they meant, but I thought it must be someone in a very high position. Your spy will have told you that we don’t know the names of our leaders, only our immediate commanders.” She hesitated but looked out into the court again, where Eliva and two of the other women were cleaning up after the meal, and Gyan was bringing a bucket of water to sluice down a wooden table. She let out her breath, sounding defeated. “Your people showed me maps, but I would tell you nothing. But there was one—it was near a place in your world that they called Kathbad—that showed Maton-Command. I have been there several times, but only the Liaisons go to Maton-First.”

  “Maton-First is different from Maton-Command.”

  “It is near to it.” Balin seemed to be making a genuine effort to explain and make herself understood. “I’m not sure where. Only Liaisons go there. The ones I heard speak of Castines… they spoke as if he was at Maton-First.”

  Tremaine rubbed her temples. It was an odd bit of information, and confirmed some of their theories about Castines, but she didn’t see that it changed anything having to do with the mission. “Right. You’ll have to come back to the Ravenna and talk to Colonel Averi.”

  Even after waking up and cadging a quick meal from the Ravenna’s dining room, and making smal
l talk about how the people making the food on this trip weren’t nearly as good at it as the ones on the voyage to Capidara, Ilias still felt as shaken as if he had had a hard blow to the head. Besides the one Herias had given him.

  The sorcerer Kressein had agreed to take charge of Ixion, to continue to watch him and to take him back to Capistown if he proved to be as innocent as he appeared, and as the god had said. Ilias wasn’t sure how he felt about that, but he did know that releasing him anywhere in the Syrnai would mean a quick death. People didn’t know Ixion’s face, but they knew his name, and the poets would spread the story everywhere.

  Ilias realized he was actually looking forward to sneaking through captured Rienish territory and fighting the Gardier. It would distract him from what had just happened, and give him time to put it in perspective. If he wasn’t killed.

  Ilias and Giliead had been given Rienish clothes to make them less conspicuous, though the idea was for no one to see them until they reached the wizards trapped in Lodun. It was also going to be colder in Ile-Rien and they would need the extra protection. The clothes didn’t feel right, and Ilias rejected outright the boots, which felt heavy and gripped his feet in distracting ways. They decided to settle for what they had mostly done in Capistown, and wear the heavier wool shirt and long coat over their own clothing. Then they had then spent some time figuring out where to put a slit in the shoulders of the coats so they could get to their swords.

  “We’re going to a whole city of wizards.” Ilias sheathed his sword and sat down on the bed, laying the leather scabbard across his knees. It hadn’t been so long ago that the idea would have been laughable. Or, actually, screamable. Now they were here in this room with curse lights in a floating metal mountain of a ship. He pulled at a loose piece of leather braid, looking up to ask Giliead, “Are we crazy?”

  “It seems like the best explanation,” Giliead agreed. He plopped down next to Ilias.

  “Fortunately the god’s crazy too.”

  “Apparently.” He added dryly, “I guess that shouldn’t be as big a surprise as it was, at least according to Arisilde the bodiless wizard god.”

  Ilias lifted a brow. Giliead sounded jealous of Arisilde’s connection with the god. Pointing this out, or pointing out how unsurprising this was, would probably provoke a fight, so he decided to save it for later. “And Ixion doesn’t remember any of it,” Ilias said, just to test how the words sounded. “He’s sane now.”

  “I wish I was.” Giliead let out his breath, shaking his head. “At least they’re Rienish wizards. It won’t be like the city I saw from the curse circle in the Barrens.” He twitched, shaking off the memory.

  Considering where they were going, Ilias didn’t want to talk about places where wizards ruled and kept people like cattle. He knew Rienish cities weren’t like that, but he would just rather not start this trip with those images in mind. “Where’s Tremaine? She should be back by now.”

  After searching around the Ravenna for Tremaine and finally being told that she had just arrived back, Ilias ran her to ground in Florian’s cabin. She was throwing a collection of clothes around the room, apparently in an effort to select what she wanted to wear. Florian was sitting on the bed, one of the new spheres in her lap, with a disgruntled expression. He knew she was upset that she wasn’t going with them. The idea that she was much younger than Gerard and Niles, and that they wanted her to grow old and do curses for her people instead of ending up in a Gardier wizard crystal didn’t sit well with her. Ilias understood; he had been a young warrior once too and had had even less concept of his own mortality than Florian.

  He leaned in the doorway, brows drawn together, watching Tremaine fling things around the cabin. “What’s wrong?” he asked her finally.

  She threw an opaque glance at him. “Balin told me she heard Castines mentioned by two Liaisons in Maton-Command, that he’s in a place called Maton-First, but that’s all she knew. And that it’s on the same side of their world as Capidara, so we won’t be going there anytime soon.”

  Ilias nodded. She seemed to have settled on a pair of dark-colored pants and a heavy wool shirt, not unlike what he and Giliead had been offered. As she bent over to wrestle her boots back on, the tightness of the pants was extremely attractive, but he didn’t think commenting on it would be a good idea at the moment. “And that upset you?”

  She tossed her hair out of her eyes, fixing a glare on him, as if she had read the other thought anyway. “No.”

  “Oh.” His frown deepened. “All right.” Giving in, he asked Florian, “What’s wrong with her?”

  Florian shrugged, shaking her head. “They’ll let me go down in the engine shafts—which is the scariest place I’ve ever been in my life, thank you very much—after a disgusting and really hungry curseling, but I can’t do this.”

  “If a curseling rips your guts out, Niles can fix that,” Tremaine replied laconically, struggling with the last boot. “He can’t get you out of a Gardier crystal. Unless it’s the hard way.”

  Florian rolled her eyes. Ilias decided talking to either of them at this point was a waste of time. He left the cabin to find Giliead waiting for him in the dim corridor. He reported wryly, “Don’t go in there, it’s dangerous.”

  “What did you do?” Giliead asked accusingly.

  Ilias stared at him, offended. “I didn’t do anything. I’ve been with you all day.”

  Giliead just frowned suspiciously and stalked away. Ilias flung his arms in the air in frustration and followed.

  Kias had picked a good spot for the curse circle. It was an open grassy clearing, near the ocean but sheltered from the sea wind by a ridge of rock and stands of heavy pines. The remains of an old house, a fallen-down tumble of stone, lay just under the trees where the ground flattened out. Giliead remembered this had been someone’s land once, but the family had died out and no one was left to claim it.

  The circle had been painted onto small flat stones, laid out in a ring in the center of the clearing under the bright afternoon sun. Gerard and Nicholas were waiting for them, along with Gyan and Kias. There were also a couple of Rienish sailors and Avrain, a young Rienish wizard who had come with the Ravenna from Capistown. He had reddish hair and a face Giliead would have said was good-humored, if it hadn’t belonged to a strange wizard. Avrain shook hands with Gerard, telling him, “Good luck. When you reach Lodun, I hope—” He gestured a little helplessly. “I just hope.”

  Gerard nodded, looking away uncomfortably. “I know.”

  It reminded Giliead that these people had friends, family trapped in this place, who could end up as slaves imprisoned in Gardier crystals.

  The god, which had settled into the remains of the ruined house’s hearth, was fascinated by the circle. It kept pushing images at it, as if trying to talk to it, and Giliead kept seeing the circle’s symbols in the god’s thoughts. As if it’s talking back, Giliead thought, baffled. The whole thing should have been deeply uncomfortable, but the god seemed to be enjoying it. Arisilde’s words went through his head again, that he had heard the god singing and sang back to it.

  They had assembled a supply bag with the little packages of Rienish travel food, maps, more ammunition for the Rienish shooting weapons that Tremaine, Gerard and Nicholas would carry, and other necessary items. This was sitting next to the pack that held the spheres.

  Tremaine sat on the ground to open it now and Giliead leaned in to look over her shoulder. Six new spheres, each wrapped in a thick cotton cloth, were nestled inside. A couple had come a little unwrapped, and he could see things moving inside their copper bodies, and an occasional spark of white or blue. None of these had an actual living wizard inside, like Arisilde’s late sphere, but he could hear them whispering to themselves, a background hum of words just on the edge of audibility.

  “Some of these look a little active,” Tremaine told Gerard dubiously. “Is that good?”

  Looking over a sheaf of papers, he replied, “I think it’s due to being transported on the
Ravenna—being exposed to Arisilde seems to have an enlivening effect on them.”

  Giliead’s mouth twisted ruefully. He noticed Gerard hadn’t answered her question as to whether this was good or not. Tremaine had obviously noticed too, and frowned into the pack before folding over the top and buckling it closed again. She wasn’t saying much to Ilias, but then that wasn’t unusual on the eve of a battle. But Giliead would have given a great deal for a chance to cross-question Cletia about what had happened while Tremaine was in Cineth this morning.

  As Giliead straightened up, he saw Bythia, standing with Gyan and Kias a short distance away in the shade of the trees. No one else was supposed to know about this, but then poets tended to know everything anyway. She came forward to meet him, saying, “I had news and Gyan said it shouldn’t wait until you got back.”

  “He was right.” Not the least because as dangerous as this was likely to be, they might not be coming back. “What is it?”

  “I found mention of a wizard called Castines in the Journals. There’s not much, just a story about how Dinias—he was Chosen Vessel for Essanum back when you were a boy—hunted him up into the mountains at the edge of the Hisians’ territory.”

  Giliead nodded. That put Castines in the right area. He thanked her, returning to the others in time to hear Gerard explain, “In order to create the gate into Lodun more quickly, we’ve already drawn the necessary symbols on corkboard. It will still take some time to ritually join the symbols, but considerably less time than it takes to draw them out.”

  Looking out to sea, past the curtain of pines, Giliead could see huge puffs of steam rising into the air, the white breath the Ravenna made as she prepared to depart.

  Gerard looked around, a brisk air masking what Giliead could easily read as weariness and anxiety. “Are we ready to go?”

  “No,” Tremaine replied before anyone else could, “but let’s go anyway.”

  Chapter 16