by Martha Wells
“Yes, we found a circle—”
“It’s a long story.” Florian urgently shouldered in between the men. “Gerard, Niles gave me some different herbs and a bunch of premixed powders and effusions. Can we do something about the howlers?”
“Yes, if he sent the right things.” Gerard shook his head, trying to get his mind back on the essentials. First they had to do something about the howlers or the Gardier could use them to retake the base. “If the Gardier are using Ixion’s spells to control these creatures—”
“What are you going to do?” Florian asked, pulling the various bags and packets out of her pockets.
Gerard nodded to himself. “Counter his spell.”
Following Ilias down the dark tunnel, Tremaine realized she was clutching the sphere in a death grip. Rulan was keeping his electric torch shielded with his hand so there was just barely enough light to make their way along without tripping. The dark was a little easier on her nerves; she felt far less exposed with the overhead lights out.
Ahead, Ilias paused. Tremaine could barely see an opening in the rock wall. He turned back to say, “This is it.”
Tremaine stepped up to look inside, pulling her torch out of the coverall’s pocket and switching it on. She flashed it over the circle of symbols etched into the stone floor and the metal tripod in the center. The tripod was still empty. It made her wonder what was supposed to be there and where it was now, and what the Gardier were doing with it. The rest of the chamber seemed just bare rock, the walls shining with moisture and a purplish moss.
On impulse, Tremaine turned to Rulan. “Can you stay out here and keep an eye out for ... you know.”
He looked past her into the room, then nodded. “Yes, ma’am. I’ll go back a little way to that last branch corridor.”
Tremaine watched him go, then took a deep breath and moved further into the chamber, approaching the edge of the circle. Ilias followed her, walking as if there was slime on the floor. He had shed his coverall at the earliest opportunity and looked far more comfortable without it. She had rolled up the sleeves and opened the front of hers, but hadn’t taken the time to get rid of the bulky garment.
“Let’s get this over with.” Tremaine tucked the torch under her arm and pulled the sphere out, tossing the bag down. She hesitated, frowning. It was still spinning and the metal was hot. Not quite hot enough to burn, but warm enough that it wasn’t easy to handle. “It’s been like this all along.”
“What?” Ilias stepped closer, peering at it warily.
“Stirred up. Like there’s something it didn’t like. Now that we’re in here, it must be this circle, but...” She shook her head, not quite happy. “I guess it must have been reacting to this thing the whole time we’ve been here.”
Ilias squeezed her shoulder. “Better hurry.”
“Right.” He thinks I’m nervous; well, he’s right. Tremaine just hoped the sphere didn’t get moody and decide not to listen to her. This would be a fine time for a disaster, just when she had been stupid enough to ask for an important job. She stared down at the metal ball, trying to concentrate on what she wanted it to do. Before she could arrange her thoughts she heard a faint sound. Ilias twitched, looking toward the door. She asked in a whisper, “What was that?”
He shook his head, starting toward the opening. “Someone called out.”
Rulan appeared in the door, caught in the light of the electric torch Tremaine still had tucked under her arm. He had something in his hands. She frowned, her first thought that he had found something and had brought it to show them. “What—” It was a rifle.
A familiar figure in Gardier uniform stepped up beside him. Tremaine said sharply, “Ilias, stop.” Her stomach clenched. She had been caught flat-footed and it was not a pleasant sensation.
Ilias halted in place, head cocked, watching Rulan and the Gardier warily.
Gervas stepped forward, clutching his translator disk. His narrow face was pale and gray in the unflattering glare of the light. He said, “Very good. Tell him to turn around.”
Instead Tremaine dropped her torch. It hit the floor and winked out but several balls of sorcerous light sprang to life overhead, illuminating the chamber with a faint white glow. Ilias, braced to jump Rulan, fell back a step, startled. Did we decide Gervas was a sorcerer? Tremaine wondered, backing away, her heart pounding.
“Do as I say and you will be unharmed,” Gervas said. He spoke by rote, as if he didn’t believe it and didn’t care if she did either. “Tell the native to turn around.”
Tremaine translated for Ilias, who gave both Rulan and the Gardier an impartial glare and turned his back, saying, “Try to stall him—”
“Stop!” Gervas shouted suddenly. He lowered his voice with an effort, grating out, “Tell him not to speak or I’ll kill him.”
“He doesn’t want us to talk—” Tremaine began in Syrnaic.
“That’s enough!” Gervas moved further into the room, eyeing her suspiciously. “So it is the little woman from Maiuta.”
“That’s me.” From here Tremaine could see the crystalline rock he held. It looked about the right size to fit into the tripod behind her. That’s not good. “You’ve met Rulan, I see.”
Gervas flicked a glance toward the young man at his side. “He recognizes his place is to help us.”
“Really?” Tremaine lifted her brows. “You recognize that, Rulan?”
Rulan’s face was expressionless. “I had relatives on the Southern Islands; they have them hostage.” He stepped closer to Ilias, covering him with the rifle.
It was pointless to argue with someone who would turn traitor for such an irrational reason, but Tremaine tried anyway. “And you think they’ll let them go if you do this?” she asked skeptically.
“I know what they’ll do if I don’t.” Rulan poked Ilias in the back for emphasis. Mistake, Tremaine thought as Ilias spun and grabbed for the rifle barrel. That poke had told him exactly where the other man was standing. Rulan stumbled back as Ilias wrenched at the gun. Tremaine surged forward to help. But Ilias suddenly lost his hold on the gun and collapsed.
Tremaine stumbled to a halt, horrified, but she hadn’t heard a shot. Then she saw the crystal in Gervas’s hands spark. “You leave him alone,” she said, not realizing she had spoken until the words were out of her mouth. The sphere was ticking in her hands like a time bomb. Blow Gervas up, she told it, go on, you can do it. What are you waiting for?
Ilias pushed himself up off the floor to his knees, breathing hard. He can’t get up, Tremaine realized. Some kind of disabling spell. He tossed his hair out of his eyes, glaring up at Gervas, but she could tell he had been badly shocked. Rulan straightened from a fighting crouch, leveling the rifle at Ilias again, glancing at the Gardier.
“I will if you do as I say. You will answer my one question—” Gervas began.
“Then you’re a fortunate man if you have only one question—” Tremaine started with no idea of where she was going.
“Shut up or I’ll kill the native now,” Gervas grated.
Tremaine shut up. Fear again. Gervas was desperate and afraid. Maybe it was so easy for her to tell that because she shared both emotions. She tightened her hold on the sphere; her hands were sweating and this would be a bad time to drop it. Ilias looked from her to Gervas, frustrated with his helplessness.
Gervas took a breath and fixed his gaze on Tremaine. “Our avatar detected two sorcerers on the native craft we destroyed. How did you conceal your power from me when you were captured before?”
My power? “I’m not a sorcerer. Your thing must have detected someone else.” Had Gervas forgotten about Florian? He knew she was a witch. He had been rather snide about it at the time, Tremaine remembered that distinctly.
Gervas looked down at the crystalline rock and an eddy of light crossed its rough surface. With a loud pop the electric torch she had dropped exploded into fragments. Ilias recoiled and Tremaine flinched away from the fragments that struck her boots. The sphere
just whirled a little faster, the metal growing warmer. It must have deflected the spell to destroy mechanical objects again.
Gervas’s brows lifted suddenly in startled realization. In a thoughtful tone, he said, “I see. It was not you I detected.”
Ilias said suddenly, “Tremaine—” He was staring at her feet. Tremaine looked down and realized she had stepped back over the edge of the Gardier spell circle etched into the rock. Little points of light sparkled above the incised symbols. “Uh oh,” Tremaine breathed. The sphere had done something to the portal, made it react in some way. I’d like to get out of here but I’m not sure I want to do it with their portal. And Ilias wasn’t inside the circle.
“So you of Rien have the avatars also,” Gervas sounded almost relieved. “You will tell me how you came by the knowledge to create that one.”
“I don’t know what an avatar is. I know what the word means but I don’t . . .” Except that’s not the word you’re using. The translation spell would choose the closest equivalent for an unfamiliar term, the way the sphere did with Rienish and Syrnaic. An avatar was an incarnated god.
Tremaine stared at the crystal the man was holding, thinking of how Ilias had compared the sphere to Cineth’s god. “You mean a ... receptacle.”
“Call it what you will.” Gervas was impatient. “You will tell me what method you used to transfer the sorcerer’s consciousness into that device.”
“You put a living person in that crystal? He— It does your spells for you?” Things started to fall into place and she said in a rush, “That’s why you can’t heal yourselves and your magic is so limited. You aren’t sorcerers. You’ve got that one there, and the other smaller crystals are smaller sorcerers— No, no, Florian and Ander were right, the little crystals just connect to the big one. They’re like the early spheres the Institute made, they’re like the cylinders in a music box, they only have certain spells recorded in them.” The implications all fell into place and she couldn’t believe it. She wasn’t usually a sympathetic person but this turned her stomach. “My God, who did you put in that thing? Was he alive when you did it?”
“You may pretend you don’t understand, but it does you no good,” Gervas thundered. “Now give me the avatar or I’ll kill the native!”
“This is not an avatar, this is—” This is a sphere that Arisilde built to do tricks for a twelve-year-old girl. It was like Edouard Viller’s original spheres: It boosted the sorcerous abilities of a person with a limited magical talent, letting them perform simple spells. Which is all it did, until Arisilde vanished. Then it not only let Gerard correctly operate the architecture of Arisilde’s Great Spell, but sucked the spells out of a Gardier translator and used that information to decipher the wards on the Gardier airship and destroy them. Since then it made friends with a Syprian god, woke you because Gerard was hunting Ixion‘s curse, boosted Gerard’s death spell from a distance, recognized people who have no magical talent like Ilias and Ander.... That’s after it established enough of a connection to this world to influence your writing ... It acted like a living sorcerer. Niles was right, a sphere couldn’t do those things. It would have to be a human mind.
“Now!” Gervas snapped impatiently.
“All right, all right. Just.. .” Give me a moment to have a brilliant idea. And maybe now she knew what the sphere was waiting for. It must be evenly matched against the disembodied consciousness in the crystal Gervas held. It had to take Gervas quickly, before he had a chance to harm her or Ilias. There was one way to do that and it was right under her feet. Tremaine swallowed in a dry throat. “Arisilde,” she said under her breath, “if you’re in there, see what I’m thinking, see what you need to do. I don’t know the spells, but you do.” The sphere clicked at her and the inner motion of its wheels slowed, but the outer surface grew painfully hot. She started toward Gervas, holding it out.
Ilias, who had been unable to understand the Rienish conversation, struggled helplessly to stand. “No, don’t!”
In Syrnaic, she said, “It’s all right. I’m about to try something—get ready.”
Ilias subsided, watching her worriedly, and Gervas nodded, relieved at her surrender. “Very good. Now give me—”
Tremaine lurched forward and grabbed Gervas’s arm, yanking him off-balance and across the lip of the portal.
The Gardier wizard staggered forward and Tremaine fell back. As they hit the ground both vanished, as if the stone under them had gone liquid, then hardened again in a heartbeat. Though Ilias had experienced it before himself, watching it was a stomach-churning shock; he pushed at the ground to surge to his feet and realized abruptly that he could move his legs; the curse had disappeared with Gervas. And Rulan didn’t know it.
Rulan took a step toward the edge of the circle, uneasily shifting his hold on his weapon, the sweat gleaming on his forehead in the light from the remaining torch. Ilias eased back into a half-sitting position, wiped his mouth on his arm and wriggled his toes to make sure he could move. He just hoped Tremaine wasn’t dead.
Rulan threw a wary glance at him, and Ilias bared his teeth, trying to look thwarted and defenseless. The other man snapped some words in Rienish that Ilias didn’t understand, then looked at the circle again. He paced closer to the edge, studying the empty space in frustration. Ilias waited, silently urging him closer; he was fairly sure the only part of the weapon that was dangerous was the open end of the long tube. It was still pointed toward him, but Rulan’s attention was more and more focused on the circle.
Rulan took that last step and Ilias surged to his feet, throwing himself forward and grabbing the weapon, wrenching it upward.
Tremaine fell backward and kept falling. She struck hard-packed sand, the breath knocked out of her, Gervas landing heavily nearby. Wheezing, she twisted, kicking out at him. Caught by surprise and badly shocked, he lost his grip on the avatar crystal and it rolled free. Clutching the sphere tightly, Tremaine grabbed the crystal with her free hand. She rolled away from Gervas, pushing herself awkwardly to her knees.
They were above the scrub desert, atop one of the hills, further away from the wall she had mistaken for a cliff. From this angle it was obvious it was a structure, crudely made with enormous slabs of rock propped up against each other. It was at least the size of the Ravenna.
Gervas twisted around, his face working. Tremaine read horror, shock, rage. Oh yes. This was a good feeling. She said through gritted teeth, “Have a go at these natives, why don’t you?”
Gervas shoved to his feet, reaching for her.
The stone floor smacked into her and Tremaine found herself sprawled on it, groaning. She felt like she had been run over by a milk truck.
The cool dampness of the rock revived her a little. She heard scuffling nearby and shook her head dazedly, pushing herself up on her hands and knees. Rulan would still have the gun and she needed to help Ilias. The sphere lay near her right hand, spinning itself like a top. The crystal with its imprisoned Gardier sorcerer lay near her left. “Hold on, I’ll be there—” She looked up to see Ilias had Rulan on the ground, one knee planted between his shoulder blades, determinedly strangling him with the Gardier rifle. “Never mind, I see you’re dealing with that.”
Tremaine made a few awkward grabs at the sphere before it slowed its spinning motion enough for her to catch it. She stumbled to her feet, bending down again to pick up the crystal. Staggering, she made it to the edge of the portal and sat down on the floor. The symbols of the spell circle were melted and blurred now, as if the stone had turned liquid with heat.
Rulan went limp. Ilias dropped him and shoved him away. He stood to smash the rifle against the stone floor until the stock fell off and metal bits went flying. “Hey,” Tremaine objected belatedly, “don’t do that unless it’s unloaded.”
He whipped around, dropping the remnants of the rifle, staring at her. “You’re back! I thought you were ... gone.”
“No, that was the plan,” she explained as he knelt beside her. She leane
d against him, needing the support. “Gervas is gone.”
“Where did you take him?” Ilias put an arm around her, holding her up.
“That place we went by accident, the desert with the giant.”
“Good,” Ilias commented. He looked grimly at the circle, taking a deep breath. “I hope he enjoys it.”
Tremaine sat the sphere in her lap and picked up the crystal, looking into it. White light played in its depths, very like the distant blue sparks in the inner layers of the sphere. Very like. “Gervas said there’s a wizard imprisoned in this. That’s how the Gardier get their magic.”
“Imprisoned?” Ilias leaned over the crystal doubtfully. “You mean, somebody’s soul is in there? But that’s . . .” She could almost hear him sorting through words. “... perverted. Even if it’s a wizard. Are you sure he wasn’t lying?”
Tremaine looked at the sphere. Oh, Arisilde, how did this happen? “Pretty sure.” She lifted the crystal, testing its weight. “You don’t think he went in there voluntarily, do you?”
Ilias was still skeptical. “If he’s in there, he didn’t ask for it. I’d bet the harvest on that.”
Me too. Tremaine hefted the crystal and smashed it down onto the floor.
It broke like glass. Milky white light fountained up out of the shattered mass. Tremaine yelped, grabbing the sphere, and Ilias grabbed her, scrambling to his feet. It rushed for them like water, but parted a few inches before Ilias’s boots, streaming away on either side of them. The light faded, dissipating in trickles, dying away. Ilias set Tremaine on her feet again. He looked aghast. “There was something in there all right. It really was a person?”
Tremaine nodded grimly. “It really was.”
