THE WIZARD HUNTERS

by Martha Wells

Giliead heard footsteps on stone outside the door and stiffened. “They’re coming back.” He tucked the skein inside his shirt and everybody shifted around, chains clanking, trying to look like they hadn’t been watching a foreign wizard do a curse.

  The door creaked open and three Gardier entered, all carrying the wizard weapons. They lined up in the space opposite the bars of the cell, pointing their weapons into it. That does not look good, Giliead thought, a sick sensation settling in his gut. The others stirred uneasily and Halian threw him a tense look. Gerard said softly, “Oh, no.”

  Giliead heard Ixion’s voice out in the corridor, speaking the harsh Gardier language and sounding querulous. Then the leader Gardier came in, the one with the amulet that let him speak Rienish but not Syrnaic. He carried a crystalline rock in one hand. A rock? Giliead thought, baffled. It looked like an ordinary gray rock, half-covered with white fragments of crystal.

  Halian whispered to Gerard, “What’s that?”

  “I ... don’t know.” Gerard shook his head, eyeing it worriedly.

  Ixion trailed in last, still making his complaint, but his eyes were alight with interest.

  “Ixion, what are they doing?” Giliead asked sharply.

  Ixion threw a glance at him but didn’t answer.

  The leader lifted the rock and spoke to it. He’s as mad as Ixion, Giliead had time to think before the crystal started to glow and light fountained gently up from it like beads of water.

  Giliead looked at Gerard, who was staring, blank with shock. “Oh God, it’s like the sphere,” he breathed. “That explains so much.”

  “Not to me,” Halian muttered.

  The gentle radiance bathed the Gardier’s sharp features and his face was rapt with concentration. Then the light abruptly died. He looked up in grim triumph and pointed at Gerard.

  Giliead swore, surging to his feet with the others. The Gardier shouted and the deafening blast of a wizard weapon rang out. Giliead ducked instinctively, dazed by the loud noise. Someone cried out and Giliead looked up to see it was Arites. He was on the ground, gripping his shoulder, blood streaming from between his fingers. The others were crouched on the floor or had fallen back against the wall, temporarily frozen in shock. Gerard was the only one still on his feet.

  The Gardier pointed the weapons at them, the meaning obvious. The leader shouted orders and one of the others started to unlock the cell door. Halian leaned over Arites, helping him sit up, and Gerard knelt next to the wounded man. He looked at the wound, then pressed his hand over it.

  Gyan, Kias, and several others tensed, ready to charge the door. Halian told them roughly, “It’s no good, stay where you are.”

  “Yes,” Gerard seconded hastily, looking around at them all. “Don’t risk yourselves; they’d kill all of you.”

  They‘ll kill all of us anyway, Giliead thought, but Gerard and Halian were right. Even if several of them rushed the door, it was too small and the Gardier weapons were too fast and too deadly.

  Gerard stood as the guard jerked the cell door open. The Gardier eased closer, pointing their weapons, and the one with the crystal touched his amulet and spoke to Gerard. It was the Rienish language, Giliead could tell that much. Gerard answered with a dark expression and stepped out of the cell. Three of the guards seized him and hauled him through the outer door.

  Giliead swore and exchanged a bleak look with Halian. He hoped that wasn’t the last they saw of Gerard.

  “Are you all right?” Dyani asked Arites urgently. She looked at Giliead. “If it doesn’t kill you right away, does that mean it’s all right?”

  “It doesn’t... it doesn’t hurt as much.” White and trembling, Arites lifted his hand carefully and Giliead leaned over to look. “Gerard did a curse to stop the bleeding.”

  Arites was right. Giliead could see the lacerated flesh where the curse from the weapon had torn into his shoulder, but it wasn’t bleeding. Giliead met Arites’ eyes. I thought he was trying to staunch the blood with his hand, he thought. No curse to heal a wound like that could be evil. “Gerard did a spell to stop the bleeding,” Giliead corrected, using the Rienish word.

  He looked up as Halian said softly, “I don’t like this.”

  Ixion was arguing with the Gardier leader in their language. One guard remained, still pointing his weapon at the cell, but his eyes were on his leader; he was obviously waiting for an order. They don’t need us anymore, Giliead thought grimly.

  The leader spoke sharply to Ixion, made a “go ahead” gesture at the last guard, and followed the men who had taken Gerard. Dammit. Giliead shoved to his feet, pressing against the bars. “Ixion, I’ll help you get off the island, whatever you want.”

  Ixion flicked a glance at him. He turned to the remaining guard, stepping in front of him and gesturing back at the cell, as if offering another alternative. The guard shook his head angrily, lifting his weapon and motioning for the wizard to get out of his way.

  Ixion moved like a striking snake, slapping the weapon away and catching the Gardier by the throat, squeezing off his outcry. He shoved him back against the wall, forcing him down despite the man’s frantic struggles. Giliead caught his breath, knowing what was coming. Behind him someone murmured in horror.

  Ixion breathed into the Gardier’s face and the breath became a gray mist. It clung to the skin, the mist turning into a solid mass that filled the nose and the gaping mouth.

  The guard clawed at Ixion’s hands but his eyes went still and his struggles ceased. Ixion stepped back, his expression oddly blank, and wiped his hands on the coarse brown garment.

  “Let us out,” Giliead said softly.

  Ixion turned to him and for a heartbeat it was as if Giliead was looking at someone else, another man in the wizard’s makeshift body. Someone who wasn’t mad. Ixion reached for the lock, then his face changed. “Just you,” he said, and smiled.

  Half expecting it, Giliead glared. “All of us.”

  “Of course not. I don’t need all of you.” The wizard glanced toward the outer door. “Hurry. If they don’t hear the weapon fire and screaming soon, they’ll surely come back to see what the delay is.”

  Giliead turned to face the others. Gerard was right. It gave him renewed confidence as he slipped the cursed skein out of his shirt. His friends were all carefully not looking at each other or him, tense with anticipation and fear of giving the game away. Arites was the only one staring wide-eyed at Ixion. Halian, standing behind him, was regarding Giliead gravely. He said, “Go ahead, Gil.” There was almost a crack in his voice. “Don’t worry about us.”

  Giliead gripped Halian’s shoulder, silently mouthed “Don’t overdo it,” and nodded sharply. He turned back to Ixion, trying to let all his hate and none of his anticipation show in his eyes.

  “Very sensible.” Ixion put the key in the lock. His eyes hardening, he said, “The rest of you, don’t try anything unwise. I may be trapped by these Gardier fools, but I can still strike you blind, boil your blood, turn your innards to burning coals.”

  The others stirred fearfully and Halian folded his arms, watching the wizard grimly.

  Ixion turned the key and jerked the heavy door open. Giliead stepped out and Ixion shoved the door shut again, locking it. He turned toward Giliead with a cold patronizing smile, reaching for the chains at his wrists.

  “Ixion.” Giliead slapped the charm into the wizard’s open palm. “Blood stand still.”

  Ixion froze, mouth open, shock growing in his eyes. It was only an instant before Giliead’s joined fists, gripping the heavy metal chain, struck him in the chin. He dropped like a dead man.

  Giliead found the key on the floor and unlocked the cell, wrenching open the door.

  “Is he dead?” Halian demanded as he stepped out.

  “He’s not breathing,” Giliead reported, leaning over Ixion as the others hurriedly stepped past the wizard’s inert body. He couldn’t find a heartbeat either. Not that that meant anything where Ixion was concerned. He grimaced. “For what tha
t’s worth.”

  “Cut his head off again,” Gyan suggested, helping Arites out of the cell. “That’ll slow him down, at least.”

  “With what?” Giliead interrupted the general chorus of approval. He wasn’t going to use the Gardier weapon that still lay where it had fallen; for one thing, he hadn’t a clue how it worked. He managed to pry Ixion’s eyes open to see the pupils were still and dead. He sat back, thinking it over. It was damn problematic trying to kill someone who seemed to be stone dead already.

  “We’ve got to do something with him,” Halian pointed out.

  “Right.” Giliead hauled Ixion up and deposited him in the empty cell, shutting the door again and tugging on it to make sure it had locked.

  Jivan had the key to their cell and was trying it in everyone’s manacles without success. “This isn’t going to work,” he said, frustrated.

  Kias, cautiously surveying the outer room, ducked back in, saying, “Hey, there’s all these others here locked up. Maybe that key works on these doors too. Should we try?”

  “Yes, let them all out,” Halian told him with a firm nod. “We’re not leaving anybody behind.”

  Chapter 21

  Light came through chinks in the rock, telling Tremaine that they were traveling parallel to a passage within the Gardier base. Everyone was tense, moving in strained silence.

  Ilias stopped at a wider crack in the rock. Through it Tremaine could glimpse a rough corridor strung with electric bulbs. They crouched on the floor of the narrow cavity to wait as he and Ander held a consultation in such low tones Tremaine couldn’t hear them no matter how close she edged. Finally Ander turned back, elbowing Tremaine to move her out of the way, leaning toward Basimi to whisper, “We’re going to try to get to the chamber where the portal is by cutting through here. Florian, do the illusion now.”

  Florian nodded hastily, slipping the sphere’s bag off her shoulder and passing it to Tremaine. “Wouldn’t want to accidentally put an illusion on the whole island,” she said under her breath.

  “Ha ha, right.” Tremaine put the sphere on the ground, anxiously edging it away with her foot and hoping it didn’t decide to help anyway. The men eyed it doubtfully.

  Florian closed her eyes in concentration, murmuring a few ritual words. Back in Rel, Florian and Niles had discussed illusions and wards that were most likely to remain undetected by the Gardier. They had settled on the simplest of illusions, just a faint clouding of sight that would blend shadow and the expectation of the viewer to obscure their passage. In the knife-edged light from the corridor, Tremaine saw Ilias watching Florian. His shoulders were a little hunched and his body tight with tension. She was beginning to realize he still didn’t like magic at close quarters and probably never would; Ixion and the other mad sorcerers of this world had left too deep a scar. She gave him a nudge with her elbow. He glanced at her and managed a brief smile.

  Looking back at the others, she caught Basimi and Deric exchanging a dubious expression; they were used to sorcerers providing support in combat, but Florian was very young.

  Florian opened her eyes and nodded firmly. “That’s it.” She stretched to pick up the sphere’s bag again.

  Ander glanced at the others, possibly seeing the same doubt Tremaine had noted. He leaned forward, listening, then slipped out of the gap down into the corridor. Ilias followed immediately. Tremaine clambered after them, relieved that the other men followed despite their doubts.

  They made their way step by step down the Gardier corridor. After six paces Tremaine would rather have been at home removing her own teeth with a pair of pliers; anything was preferable to this tension that made her stomach churn and her heart beat somewhere in the region of her throat.

  Just as they reached the mouth of a short cross passage, Ilias stopped, his head cocked alertly. An instant later Tremaine heard the sound of footfalls and Gardier voices. The men tensed, lifted their crossbows, but Ander motioned sharply to hold back. Florian took Tremaine’s hand, either for reassurance or a possible boost from the sphere, Tremaine couldn’t tell. The girl’s palm was cold and damp with sweat but her expression was calm and intent. Tremaine just hoped the sphere didn’t decide to help by doing something drastic.

  Three Gardier passed the mouth of the connecting corridor, not twenty paces away. One glanced casually at them, his expression obscured by shadow, but he must have seen nothing but the illusion. Then the Gardier were gone and it had lasted only a heartbeat. Close enough to spit at, Tremaine thought, exchanging a relieved look with Ilias.

  They moved on, but the next connecting tunnel led the other way. Tremaine could just see that it opened into a jagged hole that looked down on some large shadowy space. Intriguing sounds echoed from it, voices and machinery clanking and the buzzing of the big arc lights. It had to be the large cavern the Gardier used as a work area.

  Obviously coming to the same conclusion, Ander hesitated, but couldn’t resist the chance to reconnoiter. He turned into the short tunnel.

  There were only a couple of bulbs lit here and the shadow gave the illusion of security. Some tumbled rocks near the open edge also afforded some cover. Two of the men stayed up near the mouth to watch the corridor as the others edged into position around the opening. Tremaine managed to shoulder her way forward, crouching next to Ilias.

  The opening gave a view of the main cavern from a different angle than Tremaine had seen before. They were about twenty feet above the floor and almost directly opposite the tunnel entrances, the wooden stairs and platforms and the mesh cage that marked the slave pens. The giant ring frames of the half-completed dirigible still lay atop the construction scaffolds, glittering in the glare from the buzzing arc lights. From this angle she could see several generators, about fifty yards along the cavern wall, at the center of a cluster of power lines that ran snakelike across the stone floor.

  “Taking those generators out would help,” Basimi said softly. From the murmurs of agreement he was voicing everyone’s thought.

  None of the slaves were out and most of the Gardier who were visible weren’t working on the airship. They’re getting ready for something, Tremaine thought. She was relieved to see only a few howlers, squatting sullenly in a makeshift pen near the other tunnel entrances.

  Ilias sat up suddenly with a muttered exclamation. He nudged her arm and pointed. At first she couldn’t see anything, but then a flash of green and white amid the brown and gray caught her eye.

  A group of Gardier were emerging from one of the tunnels near the stairs. They were hustling along a figure in Syprian clothing. Even at this distance through the cavern’s shadowy spaces and too-bright pools of electric light, she recognized his walk.

  Tremaine’s eyes widened. It was Gerard and he was alive. “It’s Gerard! Come on, let’s go get him!” She started to stand.

  Ander grabbed her arm, yanking her back down. He whispered furiously, “Tremaine, we can’t take that chance. We have to destroy their portal.”

  “We have to do both,” she told him firmly, jerking her arm free.

  They were speaking in Rienish. Unable to follow their conversation, Ilias looked frustrated. He twisted around suddenly, staring back up the tunnel, then hissed a warning. Tremaine turned to look just as two Gardier appeared, framed in the opening into the corridor.

  Discipline held and everyone went still. The first Gardier just glanced down the shadowy cavity and kept moving. The second hesitated. Just keep moving, you bastard, Tremaine thought in annoyance. She couldn’t make out his expression but suspicion was eloquent in the very way the man stood. Then he reached for one of the devices on his belt.

  Grimacing, Ander signaled for the men to be ready. The second Gardier returned impatiently but the first ignored him, studying the device in his hand. It was the one that looked like a cigar lighter with crystals attached. The same kind that patrol leader used when Florian tried to do an illusion, Tremaine thought helplessly. Oh, damn. At least it hadn’t been her idea to come down this tunnel
. Beside her Florian shifted nervously.

  Then the Gardier made a shocked exclamation and his head jerked up. He stared directly at them.

  Ander made a sharp motion. Both Gardier barely had time to reach for their sidearms before crossbow bolts struck them. One staggered back, clawing at the bolt, crying out. Shouts and running bootsteps echoed down the tunnel. “That’s it, we’re done,” someone said. Ander swore, snapping out orders.

  Basimi shoved Tremaine down behind the rocks and she pushed back against the wall. Florian landed beside her as the men surged forward.

  Tremaine sat up on her knees, risking a peek. Ander, Ilias and the others were holding the end of the tunnel. She heard two gunshots, loud as explosions in the close space. She saw Basimi and Rulan duck back against the wall. Then Ilias took his crossbow by the stock and swung it up, smashing the lightbulb overhead and the passage was cloaked in darkness.

  Tremaine sank back down, trying to think. In the dim light, she saw Florian wince and the other girl didn’t bother to ask how bad it was. Out in the cavern the Gardier were looking up, running toward the tunnel entrances.

  There’s an idea.... Tremaine sat up, leaning forward to see. There was no one near the generators and this part of the cavern was nearly dark. She caught Florian’s eye and jerked her head toward the opening. “Give it a try?”

  Florian studied the situation, brows drawn together. “Why the hell not.”

  Tremaine nodded, grimacing. Maybe she wished Florian had refused, but it wasn’t as if they had a lot of options. Tremaine edged forward, finding the lip of the crevice in the dark, carefully feeling for footholds. Florian followed her, the sphere making annoyed clucking noises as its bag thumped against the rock.

  It was only about twenty feet but Tremaine’s hands were sweaty and shaking, reflecting the state of her insides, and it made the climb difficult. A buzzing alarm started to sound somewhere in the Gardier tunnels, echoing off the walls. Across the cavern, agitated guards and workers ran in and out of the entrances, shouting instructions and questions. The howlers near the chain mesh fence hissed uneasily.