He stepped forward.
“Wait!” she said, grasping his arm in an iron grip. “It must open at the far end. If you entered now, and it closed at this end before opening onto our destination, you would be lost forever in the Place of Mists.”
A distant clap of thunder sounded. A flash marked the opening of the other end.
“Now we may enter. Quickly. I must take my brother to our home. The longer we delay, the less of him there will be to save.”
“Stay here,” sang Issy.
Garten steeled himself. “No man has done this in history,” he said. “Why on Earth would I stay?”
Taking a deep breath, Garten stepped between worlds.
ADAMANKA SHRANE’S BREATH rattled in her chest. She was rotting from the inside out, used up by her magic, but she felt no fear of death. All progressed according to her masters’ plans. Should she succeed; she had no doubt her she would be rewarded, and if she were not, the honour of returning the masters to the Earth would suffice. She was the fulcrum upon which the fate of two worlds hinged. So few could make such a claim.
Her joints hurt. Her hair was greying. Her skin sagged around the neck. Holding her posture in meditation had become painful, but her mind remained sharp. She ignored the agony to commune with her other self, thousands of leagues away at the bottom of the world. Their minds touched, becoming one. She was in her rooms in Perus, hidden in a fold in the world. She was on a plain of snow, from whose front reared the black teeth of buried mountains.
The other half of Adamanka Shrane was occupied calling up a storm, and so Shrane-in-Perus waited and watched. Snow rose to her bidding, dancing in a wind she demanded of the elements. Blue skies covered themselves hurriedly in shrouds of white as a blizzard leapt up from nothing. Shrane-in-Ice remained in a clear space. Winds armed with knives of snow whirled around it. The expedition of the pompous Persin huddled near her, afraid of the fury of the storm she had called, and what else she might do, although their space was still, and above the sky was clear and bright with the midnight sun.
When Shrane-in-Ice had done, the two halves exchanged knowledge, happy to be one again, melancholic at their parting. Shrane-in-Perus retreated a little into the sky after the sharing was over, to watch her other self lead Persin’s parade of greedy fools to their doom.
The pain became too much. She let the contact drift. Sending, even between two halves of the same soul, was exhausting for a mage. The pain of it however, was nothing compared to the splitting. Splitting had been an agony to exceed all others.
The Morfaan must be dealt with, and it was that she waited upon. She drifted into a watchful half-sleep, the eyes of her divided soul on the currents of the otherworld while her body slept.
Days passed.
Her eyes flew open. The pulse of an opening way between the worlds rolled out across the city. With swift mage-sight she found the gate, buried deep in the ground below the Gentilla District. The gate was a small one, damaged, but dangerous for its user to reveal. A triumphant smile spread across her face. The Morfaan had shown her the way to their home. She rose to prepare for the arduous task of contacting the iron gods.
Once the Morfaan were finally extinct, nothing would stop her masters retaking what was rightfully theirs.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Ambition Foiled
ADAMANKA SHRANE WALKED ahead of Persin’s men, her staff punching small, neat holes into the snow’s crust. Above them the sun shone in a dazzlingly blue sky, but on every side a gale blew, propelling fat flakes of snow hard as bullets before it.
“We are nearly there,” she said. The eye of her magical storm was eerily still, but the noise from the gale could not be silenced, and the men must walk with it blasting their ears. The harnessed dogs had become aggressive with its noise.
“Give me the word, goodmage, and I shall arrange my men,” said Persin.
“I have seen the city in my mind. The entrance is akin to a cave, a gate behind. Five hundred yards separates it from the Prince Alfra, which lies at anchor in the Morfaan docks. If we are stealthy, we can pass between city and ship without detection. Half your men must surround the ship, the other half go within.”
“What about Kressind’s mage?”
“I will deal with him. Once he is defeated, no one can oppose us, and inside we shall find the treasures of the ancients.”
Persin’s avarice was all consuming, drowning his misgivings in imagined gold and glory. The fool was practically rubbing his hands together at the thought of his prize. Shrane would see he got what he deserved.
Sustaining the storm was a crippling drain on her mental resources. Were she whole, it would have been easier, but she were not. She felt herself fading, her essence consumed to feed the maelstrom. Such elemental magic was hard for her to conjure, for her powers were not in alignment with this world, and her staff of iron sent shooting pains up her arm because of it. She was being sucked dry, but there was not long now. The pull of the gate strengthened, she sensed the eagerness of her masters on the other side to make the crossing.
Soon all this would be done, and she could rest.
TRASSAN’S EXPEDITION STRIPPED the rooms around the gate chamber methodically. Complex devices that could have been works of art or machines, or both, were removed, catalogued, bound up in cloth and rope and carted down the tunnel, out of the city to the camp around the iron ship. The larger pieces—the vehicles and other machines of unguessable purpose—were dragged directly by the dogs down the ice road on makeshift sleds. The Prince Alfra’s steam winch worked all day, lifting the priceless devices into the aft hold where they were stowed for the journey home.
With the aid of Tyn Gelven, Ullfider catalogued the devices. Trassan bridled at the delay it caused, wanting to get everything out and the expedition away, as much as he understood the need for Ullfider’s diligence. He occupied himself by roaming from room to room, irritating his crew by checking on their progress. Most of the machines he could not understand, and he was eager to get it all back to Karsa so he might spend his time unlocking their secrets. Naturally, he would conduct preliminary examinations aboard the ship. There was not a chance Trassan was giving all the devices over to Vand before he had his time alone with them.
In quieter moments he hid himself away in the main body of the city and took out the device from the silver room. The first time he inserted a silver bead into its cavity he held his breath for a full minute. Nothing happened. He tried again, and again. Still the machine did not function as he expected, the light playing on the wires took on no form. He should have let it be, but he could not stop thinking about it and had several more surreptitious attempts. On the fifth failure, he went to the doorway of a building and waited for Tyn Gelven to come out from the tunnel. He called him over. Gelven was puzzled by Trassan’s secrecy but came into the room nonetheless.
“Tyn Gelven, check this for me.”
Trassan took the device from its sack as nonchalantly as he could, but was not successful in hiding its importance.
“Goodfellow?” said Gelven. He looked uncertainly to Trassan. A group of sailors came out of the tunnel carrying crates, singing a droning Ishmalani shanty to speed their loading of the sleds. Ullfider trailed them with a clipboard in hand. Trassan shrank back into the doorway. The movement only attracted Ullfider’s attention.
“Goodfellow!” said Ullfider noticing him. “I was meaning to find you and... Why... What do we have here?” He took the device from Trassan, who could think of no reasonable objection to him examining it, and turned it over in his hands. “This cavity seems the right size to take a bead of Morfaan silver.” His excitement was evident. “Where did you find it? Goodman Vand will be ecstatic! Is it catalogued? Why did you not bring it to me?” Trassan took it back gently from him. If there was one device he did not wish Vand to have, it was this.
“I did not wish the crew to see,” he said quietly, and cursed his ill fortune and own impatience while he did so. “Vand has to have
this machine, if it is lost, then...” He let the sentence hang. It was lost to Trassan now, worse luck.
“Indeed. I shall note it in the catalogue.”
“I would rather you did not,” said Trassan, regaining his wits. “We three know of its existence. That is sufficient. We must be wary.” He looked at the laughing sailors meaningfully. “Persin might yet have spies in our crew.”
“Of course,” said Ullfider, glancing suspiciously at the Ishmalani. “Of course. Does it work?” he whispered.
“I’m trying to find that out. When touched by bare flesh, it sings and lights up. I have inserted a silver into the cavity. Nothing more happened.” He held it out to Tyn Gelven. “Is it still whole?” he asked.
The Tyn shrugged. He placed a leathery hand upon the deck. “I detect a charge inside, pure and lively as that in a glimmer lamp.”
“I hope it’s enough.”
“We should put in the hold. Keep it safe,” said Ullfider, his suspicions roused. Trassan liked the old man, but he was Vand’s creature to the core.
“Leave it with me. I’ll take charge of this myself and will hand it to Vand personally. You and I can work on unlocking its secrets on the return voyage, Ullfider. See to the loading of the sleds. I’m going back into the chamber.”
He carefully placed the device back in the sack, and wended his way through the stream of men coming and going down the tunnel, furious that he had revealed his prize to Ullfider. There was nothing he could do. He would have to inform Vand of its discovery. The best he could hope for would be to get it working before they returned. Such a miscalculation!
The tunnel light had become erratic, and it flickered as Trassan entered. Everyone paused in the gloom, looking expectantly to the ceiling and walls. The light ignited again, and they returned to their tasks.
“Goodfellow Trassan! Goodfellow Trassan!” One of the ship’s Tyn hurried toward him from out of the city. Rulsy, she was called, a strange looking creature of childlike proportions, and all the uglier for it. She was assistant to the ship’s physic, but spent most of her time with Ilona. “There’s big storm coming. I feel it in my bones. Much snow, heavy wind.”
“See to it the glimmer lamps on the rope way are lit,” said Trassan. She nodded, and hurried off. He went into the treasure rooms. They were almost bare. He saw there was nothing more useful he could do there that did not put him under his men’s feet, so went back the way he had come, reemerging from the tunnel into the city’s wide avenue, and headed back towards the city entrance. Perhaps on the ship he would have more success activating the device.
He intended to go straight back to the Prince Alfra, but was drawn aside a while by one of the scouting groups he had combing the city. They had found an anomaly in the construction, a something that proved to be nothing. By the time Trassan had trudged into the twisted thicket of the buildings to look and back out again, the daylight twinkling in the city dome had dimmed to grey and the rainbows the ice cast had gone out. The storm was upon them.
He left the scouts and continued on his long walk toward the city gates. The sleds had returned moments before from the ship, ready for a new load. Nearly everyone was occupied around the gate cavern and the docks, and he found himself alone as he approached the exit.
Cold wind blasted through the open gates, hooting as it encountered the convoluted architecture of the buildings under the dome. Trassan slowed when he saw that the guard was not at his post.
“Redan!” he shouted. He waited for a reply. Getting none he walked slowly outside. Buffeted by gusts of wind that blew at him first from one direction, then the other, he checked around the entrance cavern.
Piles of crates and rope lay about, as if abandoned, loose tarpaulins cracking like cannon shots. The entryway was devoid of men or dogs. The wind blasted him hard, needling him with snowflakes. Glimmer lamps danced on their poles on the roped path marking out the route to the ship—another trick he had gleaned from Raik’s writings, and he was glad of it. Although the lamps were set no further than thirty yards apart, he could see only the first clearly. The second was a smudge on the glaring, flat whiteness of the storm. If he walked into the storm without the lights, he would be lost.
“Redan!” he shouted into the wind, which promptly shoved the words back down his throat. He went further, out to the edge, where the city canopy joined with the ground. Before he had even left its shelter he was subjected to the raw power of the blizzard. His eyes ached from the cold, his lips tightened, threatening to split. He held out his hand to shield his face and stepped out twenty paces. Almost immediately he lost his bearings. Carefully he stepped backwards, using his rapidly filling footprints as a guide to retrace his steps.
“Trassan!” A hand grabbed him and yanked him back toward the city canopy.
Vols Iapetus had him by the shoulder—ruddy in the face, out of breath, snowflakes clogging his eyelashes and beard.
“Vols? What by the hells are you doing out in this?”
“Trying to send this storm away,” he panted. “I can’t.”
“I’m not surprised. Look at it! You could lose the Isle of Karsa itself in this.”
“Trassan, since we came here, my facility with my gift has improved. The things I can do here, away from all the souls of Ruthnia... The weather, it has been good so far, yes?”
“That was you?”
Vols nodded, still gasping for air. Snowflakes melted on his face. “I’ve been steering storms away from us, but with this I can do nothing. Something is behind it. Someone is behind it, I mean. I can’t sense them, I can’t see them. They’re hiding themselves, masking the magic that made the storm. But the absence that leaves tells me someone with great power is coming.”
“Who?” Trassan turned to look out into the white, as if he might see the malevolent wizard behind the storm. By chance, he caught sight of a shape in the snow, just on the other side of the canopy.
“A body!” he said. The pair of them fought their way to it through the storm, ten yards feeling like ten miles.
Trassan rolled the corpse over.
“Redan!” A neat bullet hole punctured Redan’s parka over his heart, the fur soaked with blood.
“They’re here!” said Vols. “We must get into shelter and fetch Ardovani, I shall need his help.”
“Right,” said Trassan. “The ship, or the...”
A shot cracked out, almost inaudible against the howl of the wind. Trassan felt punched in the gut. A patch of blood spread across his stomach.
“Vols?” he said, grabbing for the mage’s arm. Agony welled up after the blood. He felt like his insides had been scooped out and replaced with hot lead, pain so harsh it bit into his soul. “I’ve been shot...” he said, and fell to ground.
The storm dropped. Blue sky slid overhead. Men approached, fifty of them, all armed.
Their leader dropped his hood. “Well, well, well,” said Vardeuche Persin. “Vand’s puppy! Caught outside, how unfortunate.”
“Get back!” Vols punched his hand forward. Persin was hurled away, head over heels, and crashed into three of his men. The others opened fire. Vols leaned toward them, eyes blazing. The bullets shuddered to a stop and dropped hissing into the snow.
“Is that how it is?” said Persin angrily, picking himself up from the ground. “Shrane!”
Persin’s mage came out from the middle of his men; a woman, staff upraised and crackling with bright blue light. Vols threw a sheet of flame at her. She rendered it into smoke.
“Surrender,” she said. “You cannot defeat me.”
Vols leaned further forward, arms out behind him, face straining with effort. She raised her hand, palm up, and advanced.
Reality warped across a broad front as Vols attempted to remove the other mage from existence. Her will countered his, their opposing commands to reality butting against each other like solid objects. The fabric of existence was the casualty of this struggle, tortured shrieks and dazzling flashes torn from the air as its very
structure was annihilated.
“An Iron Mage, an Iron Mage!” said Vols through clenched teeth. “You are a myth!”
“Vols...!” said Trassan. His eyesight blurred. Every beat of his heart plunged a dagger into his stomach. Cold seeped into his limbs of a kind that would never be warmed.
Adamanka Shrane came to a halt before Vols Iapetus, a rippling sheet of energy between them where their wills interfaced.
“I am no myth,” said Shrane. Her staff head swept down to point at Trassan’s face. He blinked in confusion, trying to make sense of what he saw. The world was losing its meaning, turning into a jumble of sensations that confounded understanding. “He is dying. You can fight me, or you can save your friend, but you cannot do both, scion of the Goddriver.” She planted her staff in the snow. The space between the mages buzzed and rippled. “Your choice.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
The Godhome
SHEET LIGHTNING ILLUMINATED a wrecked hall. Madelyne and Harafan dropped from a crack in the air that closed above them with a clap. They fell, half blind, onto a steeply tilted floor, skidding out of control until a pile of wrecked furniture against a wall stopped them finally, and painfully.
Harafan kicked himself out of a tangle of wood. “Are you alright. Madelyne? Mads?” He hunted for his friend, finding her sitting dazed on an upended sofa of gigantic size.
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