by Martha Wells
Through the archway Tremaine saw another dome-shaped room, another circle carved into the floor. One Gardier already had Giliead’s sword through his abdomen; another charged Ilias and got a slash across the throat. Tremaine shot the last one, just as he turned to run.
Florian was muttering to the sphere, distracted, and Tremaine kept a hand on her arm. The back of her neck was prickling; there was something very wrong about this place. It was obviously another ancient ruin, but the Gardier had to be here for a reason.
“This place is familiar,” Giliead said quietly, moving to the next archway.
“It’s familiar and creepy,” Ilias added, following him, his sword held ready. He jerked his head back toward the dead and dying Gardier. “These are all Liaisons.”
Tremaine looked at the bodies on the floor, saw crystals embedded in their cheeks, foreheads. Creepy is right, she thought. Following the Syprians’ lead, Tremaine and Florian veered rapidly around the carved circle, the blood and still-twitching bodies. Writing covered the walls in this room too, stretching up to more than a man’s height. The skylight was bigger and the light let Tremaine see a line of carving, so obscured by the scribbles that her eyes had passed right over it before. The circle symbols were carved into the band, as if in decoration. She said, “It’s just like the circle cave in the mountain. That’s why it looks familiar.”
Giliead threw a worried look at her. “This whole place is alive with curses, like the circles Arisilde makes.”
“The place we just came through?” Florian asked, head down, still concentrating on the sphere.
“Yes, this looks like it was built the same…” Tremaine followed Giliead into the next room, where he and Ilias stood looking around in wary astonishment. It was a mirror image of the room they had camped in at the mountain, with the same carving on the walls, the same raised border that they had used as a fire pit. It was so like it Tremaine almost expected to see the scattered remains of sava rinds and firewood from their hasty departure. “Exactly like it,” she finished in a low voice.
Giliead went to the further doorway, past which Tremaine could see a corridor just like the passage that had led from the mountain’s upper circle chamber to the stairwell. From this vantage point it looked identical, though the bright sunlight seemed to be coming from the wrong direction. Tremaine wondered if it looked out on the same view of the river gorge, or a mirror image of it. “Creepy is an understatement,” she muttered. Were they somewhere near the mountain ruin, or had there been another part of it they had somehow failed to find?
Giliead said suddenly, “Curse! Back that way!”
Tremaine spun around, just as the floor dipped and swayed, eerily reminiscent of the deck of the Ravenna, and she flailed to stay upright. Florian gasped and caught hold of her shoulder; Giliead and Ilias both stumbled but managed to keep their feet.
More Liaisons appeared in the archway they had just come through, these unarmed. They charged, shouting, and Tremaine fired twice into the pack, hitting the one in the lead. He fell back just as Florian lifted the sphere and a black cloud sprang into existence in the center of the room, vapors roiling, shooting off sparks of contained lightning.
“They’re gating in behind us!” Tremaine snarled. Shoving the gun back into her belt, she reached into the satchel for an explosive but Giliead and Ilias had slammed forward into the Gardier, taking advantage of Florian’s illusion. Just as well, she realized. They had to get back through that circle and she couldn’t risk blocking the way with rubble.
“The Gardier shouldn’t be able to do that.” Florian grimaced, handling the sphere lightly. It must be red-hot from all the spells; there had to be sorcerer crystals here somewhere and there was no telling what attacks it was holding off.
We have to find Gerard and get the hell out of here. Tremaine ducked through the doorway into the wide passage. Halting abruptly, she saw the far end, where the stairwell had been in the mountain ruin, was just a rough jagged opening, as if the stone had been torn away. It looked out into open air, with a glimpse of forest and low hills far below. The forest was the lighter green of the Gardier world. I have a really terrible feeling about this, Tremaine thought. The opposite end had a broad stone spiral stairway, but it was leading up.
She had to take a look, she had to be sure. She hurried down the passage toward the opening, past the doors that led into the other rooms, all identical to those in the mountain. She looked into each briefly to make sure Gerard wasn’t there, but all were empty. Reaching the edge of the gap, she gripped the jagged stone and leaned out cautiously to look down, the wind whipping her hair.
The ledge was sheared off, remains of broken masonry blocks sticking out of it. Hundreds of feet below she could see a complex of Gardier buildings, stone like the ones in Maton-devara, with the same flat mansard roofs. Two black airships were moored in cleared fields nearby. This is not a mountain, Tremaine thought, feeling a little sick. She could see from looking at the ground that the structure was moving a little. Floating.
She turned, heading back toward Florian. Though the other girl was too occupied with the sphere to listen, she said, baffled, “God. We are there. This is the other half of that room in the mountain.” So it didn’t fall into the river, it came here? Then she shook her head, trying to get past her astonishment. If we can gate the whole Ravenna, why can’t they gate part of a mountain? And keep it in the air with a Great Spell, to make sure nobody sees it except the Liaisons they control.
“Get out of there,” Florian shouted at Giliead and Ilias. “I’ve got a spell!”
Tremaine looked over her shoulder. Now ignoring the illusion, the Liaisons were throwing themselves practically onto the two Syprians’ swords, trying to overwhelm them, with no sense of their own survival. More were pushing in from the room behind them. Ilias hamstrung one that tried to jump Giliead from behind, and the two men ran for the door.
Tremaine backed away, giving them room to get through. As the Liaisons started forward, Florian whispered something.
The black cloud abruptly swelled to fill the room. Tremaine retreated hastily from the doorway, stepping on Ilias. From past the cloud she heard abrupt screams, then silence.
Breathing hard, Giliead stared at Florian, aghast. Looking from him to Florian, Ilias asked, “What was it?” He was panting as well, his shirt torn and his chest and sword spattered with someone else’s blood. His nose was bleeding again and there was a cut under his eye where a Gardier had gotten in a lucky hit.
“It electrified the air in the room,” Florian said evenly. Her face was set but as she turned away, her mouth twisted in pain. “I learned it looking for things to use on Ixion.”
Florian was going to feel that later, but they couldn’t stop to deal with it now. The Gardier must have taken Gerard up the stairwell at the other end of the passage; it was the only way out of this corridor. “We need to go this way.” Tremaine started for the stairs.
The others followed her, and she added, “I think we’re in the missing half of the mountain ruin, that they gated the whole thing to the Gardier world, to the place they called Maton-first.” She pointed back toward the opening at the far end of the passage. “And I think it’s floating in the air.” Giliead moved past her to take the lead, casting another worried look at Florian.
Ilias guarded their backs, watching the corridor behind them. He said, “I don’t understand. The Gardier stole part of the ruin and brought it here? Why? And what’s holding it up?” Tremaine couldn’t tell whether he really wanted to know or if he just needed to talk. She suspected the latter.
Giliead said reluctantly, “That would explain why the floor keeps moving, why there are so many curses.”
Florian didn’t say anything, barely seemed to be listening. She just looked sick. Tremaine was fairly sure she had never done a death spell before.
They started up the stairs and Tremaine had the sinking feeling they had come too far, that the place to rescue Gerard had been back in their
mountain, before the last gate.
Each step was a little too high for her, like the stairs in the mountain ruin, like the stairs in the Wall Port, the city under the Isle of Storms, the fortress. The walls were dotted with the small niches. She thought the missing section of the ruin must have been a series of eggshaped domed chambers, running alongside the cliff for some distance on either side, stretching up all the way to the cliff top. Tremaine couldn’t hear any movement; if there were more Liaisons here, they were keeping quiet about it.
The stairs ended in a broad open ledge, looking out onto a large domed chamber, shadowy and vast, nearly as large as the circle room in the fortress. In its old location it must have spanned the river gorge. The walls were studded with the carved half pillars and a short set of steps led down to the floor from their ledge.
The room was dimly lit and it took a moment for Tremaine to pick out the small glass lamps, strung from ropes supported by hooks pounded into the stone walls. The light was green-tinged and odd, and she realized they were glowworm lights, like the one Davret had shown her aboard the old Aelin airship. Of course, they can’t run electricity up here. As her eyes adjusted to the light, she saw that carved symbols covered the floor, but instead of multiple circles they all formed one big spiral, winding out toward the walls of the chamber. The stone was scribbled over with more symbols, written in chalk, dust, red-brown streaks like dried blood.
And in the center of the spiral, atop a low stone plinth, was a large sorcerer crystal. It was twice the size of the sphere in Florian’s hands, yellowed with age, fragments of black rock stuck to it like mold. Tremaine started to spot more crystals, smaller ones, scattered all over the spiral, hundreds of them. There was no movement, no sign of any Liaisons, but they must have all gated to the circles at the other end of the ruin to get in behind them. Gated from here? “This thing, I think this is one big gate,” Tremaine said softly.
Ilias looked around cautiously, stepping back to suspiciously eye the ledge above their heads. “Those wizard crystals,” Giliead said, low-voiced. “Most of them are alive.”
“This must be where they do it,” Florian whispered. “This must be where they put people in crystals.”
Tremaine could believe that; the air was tinged with decay, as if a number of people had died here. “There’s Gerard,” Giliead said suddenly. Tremaine stepped to his side, scanning the chamber’s floor anxiously. In a moment, she saw him. He lay unconscious, half on his side as if he had just been carelessly dropped. He was on the spiral, off to one side in the deeper shadow, his gray suit almost blending with the stone. “I’ll get him, you all wait up here,” Giliead said, starting down the steps.
The outer edge of the spiral started just at the bottom. Giliead reached it, eyeing it and the writing scrawled across it with distaste, then stepped cautiously out onto it. Beside her, Tremaine felt Ilias shift nervously.
“Hurry,” Florian said, anxious. “The sphere is all twitchy, I’m not sure if it’s the—” As she stepped forward, something leapt on her from the roof of the ledge above them.
Tremaine had just enough time to realize it was another Liaison. She yelled in alarm, plunging forward, but the force of the man’s leap knocked Florian down the stairs and onto the edge of the gate spiral. Florian hit the ground hard, letting go of the sphere. It rolled across the spiral, sparking madly. Ilias dropped his sword to fling himself on the man’s back, dragging him off Florian. Giliead spun around, running back to help.
Tremaine flung herself across the floor, reaching for the rolling sphere.
The floor lurched underfoot again and Tremaine fell to her knees, just managing to catch hold of the sphere. The metal was burning hot and as she grabbed it she felt it jerk and shudder as the gears inside spun wildly. Oh, shit, she thought. Even she could tell that it had just deflected a spell. Clutching it to her side, she twisted around.
Florian lay crumpled on the floor, Ilias sprawled next to her. The Liaison who had knocked Florian down lay nearby in a spreading pool of blood, Ilias’s knife hilt protruding from his neck, but another Liaison stood over them, aiming a pistol at Ilias. It had so many crystals pinpricking its face its features were nearly unrecognizable as human; it looked like some weird fay horror. Giliead stood helplessly, watching the Liaison with the intensity of a thwarted predator. There was no way he could reach it before it shot Ilias. And there was no way Tremaine could drag her pistol out from where it was tucked into her belt, aim and fire before it shot Ilias.
Sprawled on the stone and unable to move, the curse sapping his strength, Ilias swore at his own stupidity. The Gardier must have used Rienish illusions, one of the few curses that could fool Giliead. And fool the sphere. Ilias knew he had looked at the ledge above their heads and seen nothing, and the second Liaison with the shooting weapon must have been crouched below them next to the stairs, concealed by a curse.
He could just see that Florian’s eyes were open and aware, glaring at the Gardier. She struggled to move, gritting her teeth, but couldn’t lift her head. The curse holding them both immobile wouldn’t work on Giliead and must have been deflected from Tremaine by the sphere. But he didn’t think she could make it do anything else to help them. Tremaine must have come to that conclusion herself. “Hey there,” she said to the Liaison, her voice even but her eyes flat and angry. “Can we talk about this? I don’t see any—”
Ilias couldn’t see what happened but there was a flurry of movement, then something grabbed his hair and dragged him half-upright. He felt the cold muzzle of the shooting weapon shoved against his temple and saw Giliead jerk to a halt a few paces away, breathing hard.
Shit, this is …bad. Giliead must have tried to take advantage of an instant of distraction on the Liaison’s part. Ilias couldn’t even make himself wince away from the weapon, couldn’t even make his throat move to speak. He didn’t know why the thing hadn’t just killed them already. Because it hasn’t been told to yet?
He saw Tremaine eye the Liaison narrowly and wet her lips, though she didn’t betray any other hint of nerves. She tried again, “Where’s Castines? You know, he’s really the one we came to see….”
She let the words trail off as the air shivered and a man stepped into existence near Giliead. He was tall, with the olive skin of coastal Syprians, his hair a matted mane that might have been any color beneath the dirt. He wore the ragged remnants of a filthy Gardier uniform, and there were little crystals pocked all over his face, though the skin around them wasn’t infected and discolored, the way it always was with the other Liaisons. Ilias could smell him from here, an odor rank enough to make his stomach want to turn. And I think we’ve just found Castines. In a low rough voice, the man said in Syrnaic, “I told you, that’s not him either. That’s the Chosen Vessel they brought with them from Cineth.”
Giliead stared at him, startled. Ilias supposed the man was talking to the surviving Liaison.
“Hey!” Tremaine said loudly, trying to distract him away from Giliead. “Glad you’ve finally got that figured out.”
The man lifted his head, looking toward her, and Ilias saw he had a crystal about the size of a child’s fist sticking out of his temple, half-hidden by his hair. Ilias felt bile rise in his throat. The man’s face was blank, as if he was concentrating entirely on something else. Looking at the sphere Tremaine was cradling against her side, he said, “You can’t use that. It wants curses, and all your curses are dead.”
This is not going to end well, Tremaine thought, feeling cold creep down her spine. He was right that she couldn’t use the sphere. It wasn’t Arisilde, and she just didn’t have enough magic to talk to it. Under the flap of the satchel, she put her hand on something that she would be able to use, but there was no point in revealing it yet. Giliead must have seen her stealthy movement. Watching the man with contempt, he said, “So you’re Castines,” bringing the man’s attention back to him. “You don’t look as if this place agrees with you.”
Castines’s expression change
d, coming alive, and his lips curled in a sneer. “Don’t speak, Vessel, or I’ll kill him. Not a word. You Vessels make this so easy. You think you’re so superior because a filthy ball of light gives you orders. Always bringing others with you, afraid to travel alone outside the gods’ reach. It makes you so easy to—” Then his face went blank again, and he said more softly in Aelin, “Castines wants to kill the Rien sorcerer. But he’s the wrong one, isn’t he?”
Giliead pressed his lips together, torn between anger and confusion. Tremaine tried to keep the consternation off her face, wondering if Castines was as barking mad as he looked and sounded or was switching languages to confuse them. In this situation she couldn’t see why he would bother. Right, just… keep him talking. Trying to sort out the sense from the madness, she thought, He was looking for the Rien sorcerer, someone he mistook Gerard for. She took a not-so-wild guess. “You were looking for Arisilde.” Her voice came out even and conversational, which was a nice surprise.
Castines turned slowly back to face her. Still in Aelin, still with that oddly empty look on his face, he said, “We found him traveling the gates. We see all the gates through the avatars, as well as through the master gate. All the avatars are of the same material, they are all one. But we found we could also see into the metal avatars, whenever they were used to make the gates. So we called to him, showed him how to find the gate to bring him here. He was powerful, and we thought we could use him, make him an avatar and get more of his kind, power our ships and our gates. But he grew angry. He did that.” He pointed to the far wall of the dome, and Tremaine saw a spiderweb of cracks that branched through the old stone. “Before he fled, he pulled us apart a little. Castines doesn’t like it.”
