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

by Martha Wells

  Somehow, in the back of her mind, she had assumed that he would take the easy way out as soon as she offered it. Every other man she had ever offered it to had certainly taken it. Not counting those who had bolted before she could indicate the exit. Instead, Ilias stared at her, then demanded, “What ‘this’? I don’t know what ‘this’ you mean.”

  He was so agitated his command of Rienish had slipped. Still not looking at him, Tremaine switched to Syrnaic, and continued doggedly, “You know what I mean. Us this. I mean, us. It’s not going to work.”

  “I don’t understand.” This time he sounded more stubborn than emotional.

  She made herself look at him. “Yes, you do.” He just stood there glaring at her. She pressed her lips together. He’s actually going to make me say it. He’s going to stand there and play dumb until I say it. “We—as in, you and me—are not married anymore.”

  Ilias took that in quietly. He transferred the glare to the view of the green court below. Then he said calmly, “No.”

  Tremaine lifted her brows. “What do you mean, ‘no’?”

  “You can’t do that,” he explained with annoying patience. “We’re still married. Karima can’t give back the price, she doesn’t have it anymore.”

  Tremaine felt her jaw tighten. Surprise, surprise, you knew he was stubborn. “I don’t want the money back. I waive all claim to the money. She can keep it.”

  “You can’t do that. If you don’t take it back, we’re still married. And Karima doesn’t have it. So it’s against our laws.”

  Tremaine flung her arms in the air. “Oh, that’s a damn lie. You people have like three laws and they’re all about curses. You’re telling me in the whole history of the Syrnai nobody ever broke up a marriage without getting the money back.”

  “Yes. No. Never.” Ilias folded his arms.

  Tremaine tapped her fingers on the stone, seething. She kept expecting this to segue into “there’s another man, isn’t there” except Ilias was Syprian and could care less if there were half a dozen other men. She decided to try insults. “Oh, so this is a money thing, is it? You just want to stay married for my family’s land and money and… things.” She tried to suppress a wince. Oh, that was convincing.

  Ilias appeared equally unmoved. He snorted derisively. “Like the house in Capistown your father was supposed to burn down? Or the land that has the Gardier camped all over it?”

  Tremaine pushed a hand through her hair, snarling in frustration. “You can get married again.”

  “No, I can’t,” he explained, mock-patiently. “I’m still married to you.”

  She glared at him. “I’m trying to make this easy.”

  His expression said plainly that if she thought this was easy, she was crazy. He told her, “I don’t know what’s in your head, but when you get over it, I’ll be here.”

  Swearing, Tremaine looked away. She saw that Gerard had finished the circle and was sitting on the steps of the college’s gallery, his head in his hands. She pushed away from the balustrade and started for the stairs. Ilias, of course, followed her.

  As she came down the gallery steps and out onto the grass, Giliead looked up, brows drawn together in worry. “What?”

  Tremaine had hoped her expression was under control, but obviously it wasn’t. She sensed eye-rolling and gestures going on behind her and clenched her jaw. “Nothing,” she said pointedly. It had occurred to her that she would also be losing Giliead, and Gyan and Kias and the others back in Cineth. You got along without them before, she reminded herself. Oh right, and how was that plan for killing yourself going?

  Gerard pushed wearily to his feet, collecting the sphere from the ground at his side. “I’ll make a test first,” he told Barshion and the others gathered around.

  Tremaine came over to stand beside him. “You need a volunteer?” she asked.

  “No,” he told her, writing something in his notebook. He tore the page out and gave her a brief glance from under lowered brows. “The acoustics in this court are excellent, by the way.”

  Tremaine grimaced. One of the young students hurried up to hand Gerard a rock and a section of twine. As Gerard tied the note to the rock, she said, “Are you going to say ‘I told you so’?”

  “I’m considering saying it to Ilias,” Gerard said dryly. He tossed the rock into the circle and looked at the sphere thoughtfully for a moment.

  Tremaine gazed at the perpetual storm clouds above, counting to ten in Aderassi. She knew the rock had vanished by the excited murmurs from the watching crowd. She managed to say calmly, “I have my reasons.”

  Gerard lifted a brow, enigmatic. “I don’t doubt that you do.”

  Before Tremaine could reply, a young man shouldered his way through the crowd, breathing hard. He did a double take at the sight of Ilias and Giliead, then stepped up to Gerard. “I’m sorry, they sent for me— They said— I’m Cathber Niles—”

  “You’re Breidan Niles’s brother?” Gerard asked, startled. “He should be here any—”

  Niles appeared in the circle to a chorus of startled and gratified exclamations from the crowd. “Hello there,” he said, spotting Gerard and Tremaine first and starting toward them. “I see everything is working as—” He stopped, staring as his brother stepped forward. “Cathber?”

  “God, you’re alive!” Cathber flung himself on Niles in an enthusiastic greeting.

  The expression on Niles’s face was too personal, too painfully relieved to watch. Tremaine leaned over to ask Gerard, “Did you ask about Colonel Averi’s wife?”

  Gerard’s expression went still. “Yes. When the barrier first appeared, it cut across a number of lodging houses and homes on the north side of town. Everyone in its path was killed. After the Master augmented the wards, the barrier was pushed back slightly and they managed to recover the bodies. She was a nurse, and had been visiting a patient in one of the lodging houses.”

  “Goddammit.” Tremaine rubbed her eyes. She had to find some way to avoid being the one to pass that news along. At least with Ilias and Giliead back in Cineth, she would never know when they eventually tackled a wizard they couldn’t kill. Unable to help herself, she broke her rule and looked at them.

  Ilias was staring off toward the people still gathered on the portico, managing to appear completely unaffected. So Tremaine was the first one to see Giliead, who had been frowning absently at him, stiffen suddenly and spin around, looking toward the open end of the court. “Gerard—” Tremaine began, the back of her neck prickling with unease. Ilias turned, watching Giliead worriedly.

  Giliead said, “There’s a Gardier circle, I just felt it.”

  “Where?” Gerard shouted. Tremaine could see the sphere in his hands twitching and sparking.

  Giliead moved further out into the court, head lifted, listening. “Back there somewhere!” He pointed across the left wing of the Philosophy College, to the towers behind it.

  Swearing bitterly, Tremaine bolted down the court. She didn’t know Lodun at all, except for brief visits years ago. She hoped someone was following her who would know the shortcuts and byways of the college courts. Behind her she could hear Gerard shouting, Barshion and Kashani echoing him, people running in all directions.

  She reached the end of the gallery where an alley ran back between the Philosophy College and the wall of the women’s college. She ran down it, hoping it went where she thought it did. It opened into another court, smaller and shaded by half a dozen trees, where someone had strung up an entire laundry’s worth of sheets. Giliead caught up with her at that point, seized her arm and dragged her back behind him. Tremaine flattened herself against the wall. Beside her, Ilias glared. “If you try to get yourself killed, I’ll— I’ll—” He finished with a snarl of frustration.

  “Yeah, you and who else?” Tremaine shot back at random, desperate to ignore that insight into her character. She leaned out past him to see that several students had followed them: a couple of young men in Scholars’ gowns over their suits, a
few men and women in battered work clothes stained with mud, as if they had just come in from gardening, and one wide-eyed young blond woman in a flower print dress. None of them seemed to be armed, but firearms were problematic where the Gardier were concerned anyway. “Nobody brought a sphere?” Tremaine asked. “You know, the thing we need to fight the Gardier?”

  Giliead nudged her, showing her the copper metal ball tucked under his arm. “Gerard gave me his. The others are with the wizards working to make the new barrier.”

  “Right.” Gerard was without a sphere, and Tremaine didn’t like that, but he must realize he wasn’t up to running and dodging through these courts. “Are any of you sorcerers?” she asked the students hopefully.

  “All of us,” one of the young men assured her.

  Giliead held up the sphere, saying urgently in Rienish, “I can smell and see the Gardier curses, but I can’t make this do things to stop them. Which of you is the best wizard?”

  Everyone turned to the young lady in the flowered dress. She looked around at the others, and shrugged. “I suppose that’s me.”

  Great, Tremaine thought, trying to ignore Ilias where he was pressed against her side. Our lives are in the hands of someone who looks like she should be organizing the First Year Play or charity dinners for the Old Students’ Club. She heard bells start to ring, an urgent peal of warning. As Giliead handed the sphere to the young woman, Tremaine pulled her pistol out of the back of her belt, chambering a round. “You listen to him, you understand, all of you? To both of them. They’ve been doing this a long time. What’s your name?”

  The young woman blinked at the sudden appearance of the gun. She accepted the sphere meekly. “Yes, madam. I’m Alissa, madam.”

  Giliead nodded and slipped around the corner. Tremaine followed with Ilias, the students hurriedly moving after them. Alissa took a couple of long steps, catching up to Tremaine. She was wearing pumps, and the half sleeves of her dress were frayed and grubby, not that that was necessarily a by-product of Lodun’s captivity; every young woman student Tremaine had ever met had been a little grubby.

  Giliead led them through the court, using the drying sheets moving gently in the breeze as cover. Why can’t I hear gunfire? Where the hell are they? Tremaine wondered, gritting her teeth. On the far side of the court they found a rambling old house made of fieldstone, with delicate leaded windows and tiny little cupolas. Giliead jerked his head, telling Ilias to go around the far side. Ilias motioned for four of the students to follow him and ran around the side of the house. His soft leather boots were silent on the grass and paving but the students’ shoes made noise and Tremaine’s nerves jumped. Giliead led them rapidly along the other side, through an untended flower bed. Ahead high garden walls cut off the view. Above them more college buildings loomed, heavy stonework blocking the light. “This is a lodging house for tutors—there’s another quadrangle behind it,” Alissa whispered. “Is that where they are?”

  Tremaine flicked a look at Giliead’s intent face. “Yes.”

  “Isn’t that gun useless against them? Can’t they blow it up?” one of the young men behind Tremaine asked.

  She tapped the sphere in Alissa’s hands. “Not while we have that.”

  Footsteps on grass gave them an instant of warning. Tremaine pulled Alissa back and Giliead surged forward, reaching the corner just as two Gardier came barreling around it. He slammed one in the head with his sword hilt but the second dodged sideways, lifting his rifle.

  Tremaine aimed for his forehead but Alissa muttered and gestured, the sphere sparked and the man dropped the rifle with a cry, stumbling away, his hands knotted in pain. Two of the students tackled him, another grabbing up the weapon. “Damn,” Alissa muttered in awe, looking down at the sphere. “You lot weren’t kidding.”

  “Do that again!” Tremaine told her, pointing to the garden wall. Giliead was already around the corner and she plunged after him.

  On the other side of the wall was an open paved court, surrounded by a grass verge and shaded by two large oak trees. A dozen or more Gardier stood there. Alissa’s spell hit and most of them threw their rifles down, crying out in pain. One had been just out of range of the spell and Giliead slammed that one’s rifle away with his sword. Tremaine heard Ilias shout as his group burst into the court from the far end. She dodged past Giliead, her eyes finding the man with the sorcerer crystal, standing in the center of the court. She fired as the first shots rang out, diving to the ground and hoping the students had the sense to duck.

  Nothing changed and, swearing, she rolled over and fired again, mindful of how many shots she had left. This time she saw the flash of light near the crystal as it deflected the bullet. The man holding it was a Liaison, light glinting off the two crystals pocking his face, and he didn’t even bother to look in Tremaine’s direction. Alissa had come out from behind the wall, talking to the sphere in a low steady voice. The Liaison wasn’t talking to his crystal, just holding it and glaring at Alissa as the air seemed to thicken and twist between them, the ether within so agitated it was almost visible to the naked eye.

  Alissa winced and set her jaw as some part of what the Liaison was directing the crystal to do leaked through to her. Peripherally aware of fighting, yelling, of the two students with captured rifles shouting at the Gardier to surrender, of Ilias blocking the escape of several others, Tremaine shoved to her feet, willing the thought toward Alissa: Just let the damn thing help you, don’t force it!

  Then Giliead left his sword in a Gardier’s chest and charged forward, tackling the Liaison to the ground. The sorcerer crystal tumbled in the grass, a few feet from the Liaison’s outstretched hand. Tremaine scrabbled forward but Ilias got there first with a rock from one of the flower beds. He smashed it into the crystal, hastily backing away from the flood of liquid light pouring out of the scattered shards.

  Tremaine looked around, seeing most of the Gardier captured by the students, the ones unlucky enough to encounter Ilias and Giliead lying bleeding on the ground. One of the students had managed to get shot despite the various spells, but he was sitting up and cradling his arm.

  She stepped toward the Liaison, looking down at him. Giliead had him pinned to the ground, and the man was glaring up at them with a grimace of rage. He was the same one who had come to the ruin in the mountain. Tremaine said, “Remember me?”

  His eyes went blank, his face transforming from that of an angry young man’s into an expressionless mask. His voice distant, he said, “You’re too late.”

  “Probably,” Tremaine agreed, knowing she was talking to it, whatever it was, the thing that spoke through the Liaisons. “But I’m used to that.”

  “Why aren’t they sending more men?” Ilias asked quietly from beside her. “If they were finally able to make a circle in our world to come here, why send this few? Why not a hundred?”

  He had a point. Tremaine shook her head, thinking furiously. “The wards must be down—”

  Giliead turned his head to say, “They aren’t. I can still feel them. They’re weak, but they’re still there.”

  “Madam, come and look at this, please,” Alissa said, as if Tremaine was her tutor and she was calling her attention to a bad citation in a text. The sphere tucked under her arm, a lock of stray hair falling across her forehead, she pointed at something on the paving stones.

  Tremaine moved to her side. Faintly etched on the paving stones in lines and strokes of ash were the symbols of a circle. Tremaine followed the curve of it with her eyes, trying not to see it. “This is our circle. The one we used to get in.”

  “No.” Ilias shook his head, pacing along the line of symbols. “These runes are different. But it burned itself into the ground, just like ours did. Does that mean it came from this world, from outside the city, like we did?” He looked up at her, stricken. “But how could they? Only Gerard and Niles knew the new curse.”

  He was right again. Gerard hadn’t finished the spell to make the gate to enter Lodun until yesterday
. Oh. No. The more we used the circles in the mountain and the fortress, the easier it was for the Gardier to find us. Tremaine shook her head, in horror, not denial. What if it isn’t the circles the Gardier were somehow tapping into, but the spheres themselves?

  They had known the Liaison crystals somehow communicated with each other. In Maton-devara the Liaison had found Giliead through the captured sorcerer crystal, even though it had only been out of its lead-lined box for a few moments. Arisilde broke the crystals we found, she thought, mentally kicking herself. When they had first come to Cineth in the Swift, they had put Arisilde’s sphere and the small Gardier crystals they had captured in a bucket of water, to try to block the etheric vibrations. And the crystals had come out of the bucket broken and cracked and yellow. Nicholas thought that Arisilde broke the first sorcerer crystal they found because he was trying to free the soul trapped inside. Did Arisilde know then? Arisilde had always known things without quite knowing them, done things that turned out to be important later without knowing why he had done them. “Arisilde said the crystals see everything. What if they see the spheres too? Or if Arisilde’s sphere was the only one they couldn’t see, and when we started using the others…” The regular Viller spheres were just tools, without personalities inside them to detect and prevent that kind of spying. If they can hear the spheres, they know all our new gate spells. And no matter what adjustments were made to it, no matter how Arisilde or Gerard or Niles manipulated it, the world-gate circle was still a Gardier spell. They had had it the longest, maybe they were the only ones who truly understood it.