From the soft murmur of voices ahead of them, Delia knew her sister was right. The mages were gathering, and she was just a little surprised at their eagerness to get to work on something that was bound to deplete their energy so badly. Not to mention something that was going to force them to camp. She very much doubted that any of them had ever slept out of doors in his life.
—or will it deplete their energies? I could be mistaken. If Jonaton is right, there is that energy source there. And if it self-renews, maybe they can draw on that to do their work.
That might explain the enthusiasm she saw when she and Isla entered the “Preserved Nuts” cellar. The gaggle of mages, all of them dressed for travel and sitting on packs, turned their heads at the sound of footfalls, obviously expecting Jonaton at any moment. They didn’t exactly look disappointed to see Lady Valdemar, but as they turned their heads to resume their conversation it was clear she was not who they wanted.
But a moment later, Jonaton did appear, and for once, wearing something so workmanlike and practical that Delia hardly recognized him, with his hair bound up in a tight knot on the nape of his neck.
Then again, he’s about to go camping in the wilderness. Probably even he recognizes this is not the time for flowing tresses, jewelry, and lace.
He carried two rucksacks, one in each hand, and right behind him were Ivar and Alberdina, also dressed for wilderness travel and geared up. Hakkon trailed behind them. Ivar had a pack so huge it made Delia’s eyes widen. It towered above him, and there were weapons tied all over the sides of it.
“Clear out of the way,” Jonaton said brusquely, and turned to Isla. “My lady? Your assistance?”
“Gladly,” Isla said.
The mages, packs and all, squeezed against the walls of the cellar, as Jonaton’s gaze flickered over to Delia. He pointed at her. “I want you along,” he said. “You’re a good anchor. Go to your room, pack everything you think you’ll need for three or four days. Hakkon?”
“I’ll fix her a bedroll and whatnot. Delia, just bring your personal things, I’ll take care of your camping gear.” The Seneschal turned on his heel and sprinted for whatever entrance he’d come by. Delia obeyed Isla’s silent head-jerk and ran to her room.
As she ran, she decided what she was going to pack; she still had a couple of the saddlebags from when she had first arrived here. They fit neatly in a chest-stool in her bedroom, and hadn’t been in the way, so she’d left them there.
Before her father had died, she’d sometimes gone off on rough, day-long rides with her pony, rides for which dresses and skirts were utterly inappropriate, and she still had a couple of changes of the soft, baggy canvas trews and heavy linen shirts she’d worn for that. Then a heavy woolen short cape in case it was colder there than here, a rain-cape, underthings, twice as many stockings as she thought she’d need, and she planned on sleeping in her clothing unless it got filthy, so no point in taking bedshifts. She got what was needful from her bathing room—she’d probably be cleaning herself sketchily in the lake. Extra boots, just in case the first pair got wet, because there was nothing worse than wet boots. She cast a glance around the room and decided that was enough. It all fit handily in two saddlebags. She changed into an outfit similar to what she’d packed, slung the bags over her shoulder, and ran back down again. She met Hakkon in the cellars and saw he had a pack much smaller than Ivar’s with him.
He handed it to her. “Bedroll and some useful odds and ends,” he said. “I’ll let Grim know that one of the boys is to train your foal for you while you’re gone.”
“Thank you, Hakkon,” she said with relief. That had been a worry. She hadn’t wanted Grim to think she was shirking.
By the time they reached the cellar, the Foothold Gate was open, Ivar and Alberdina were gone, and the mages were filing through as Jonaton waited impatiently. She formed up behind the last of the mages, without really thinking about it, stepped through and—
—it was darker than a cave. Darker than anything she had ever experienced before. An enormous darkness that stretched to infinity on all sides of her, and she felt as if she was falling, but she knew she wasn’t. And she felt as if she was being stretched in every possible direction. It didn’t hurt, but it didn’t feel good either!
There were things out there. Things she couldn’t see. They couldn’t see her, either, but she got the idea that they knew she was there, somewhere. And they wanted very badly to find her.
She tried to make herself small, but all she succeeded in doing was stretching herself in different directions, some of them impossible. And at the same time she couldn’t actually feel anything of her body, as if she was just some—thing, with no body at all, just a little cloud of Delia, a mist in the darkness, and if she wasn’t careful she’d blow apart, as a breeze blew apart a cloud of fog, and she’d never find herself and those things would breathe her in, or drink her up and—
—and she stepped down hard on moss-covered ground, stumbled over a stick, felt her elbow caught by someone, and was pulled out of the way just as Jonaton stepped through the Gate and it closed behind him. All there was now was a single cube of inscribed sandstone to mark where it had been.
One of the other mages caught Jonaton as he stumbled as she had done. He shook his head hard and made an inarticulate noise.
“That’s a rough one,” the mage said in sympathy.
“Well,” he replied, thickly. “Once we get the real Gates up, it won’t be so bad.”
“Oh, it could be much worse,” Ponu said cheerfully, materializing out of the group and taking him by the shoulder. “Come along, there’s work to be done. Delia, you come too. Ivar and Alberdina need your help making camp.”
But I’ve never camped before, she thought. It didn’t seem to matter, though. She was carried along by the press of bodies, through underbrush and waist-high grass already being trampled flat, over the top of a low hill.
And there it was, stretching out in a bowl of a valley.
Ivar hadn’t lied. The lake was the biggest she had ever seen, practically filling the valley, steel-blue under an extremely early-morning sky, the sun just barely peeking up over the horizon. And at the far distant shore, three narrow rivers. Did they lead into the lake or out of it?
Probably into it. All this water has to come from somewhere.
Back in Valdemar the sun was well above the horizon. It was, in fact, the usual time for breakfast if you weren’t too quick about waking. They must be at least as far from Valdemar as Valdemar was from the Capital.
“At least it isn’t going to rain,” someone said cheerfully, and gave her a little shove to send her down the slope.
The mages trailed in single file down to the center of the cup of the crescent, and she followed them through more waist-high grass. Belatedly she wondered if there were any ticks or other obnoxious biting insects.
Too late, she thought with resignation. She hadn’t prepared with repellent, and she’d just have to hope that if there were such things, her trews tucked into her boots would keep them out. Ponu propelled Jonaton just ahead of her by his shoulder, although Jonaton didn’t seem in the least reluctant to go. The closer they got to that circle of land protruding into the water at the center of the crescent, the more she was able to make out some of what Ivar had talked about. Ruins, stone ruins—what looked like the wall of a round tower, and several buildings. Most of those weren’t even head-high, but it occurred to her that those ruined walls could make a great basis for shelters. And when she saw Alberdina and Ivar hard at work inside them, she was pleased to think that her untutored guess was correct.
She detoured and joined them, ignoring the mages who had clustered at the water’s edge, where there seemed to be those other remains that Ivar had spoken of—docks, a jetty, the sketchy remains of boats.
And she gaped at the number of packs clustered on the flattened grass in the center of the
ruined tower. “But—”
“I’ve been back and forth a few times,” Ivar said cheerfully. “I’m used to playing pack-mule. Cousin, what do you want Delia to do?”
Alberdina rummaged in an open pack beside her and came up with a hand-scythe. Delia took it uncertainly. “Ever used one of those?” Alberdina asked.
“Gathering herbs?” she replied with hesitation.
“Go gather reeds along the shore and bring them back here. Reeds, not sedges. Sedges have edges; reeds are round.” Alberdina went back to her task, which was threading pieces of rope through grommets on the edge of what appeared to be a house-sized piece of canvas. Maybe larger. Ivar picked up a hand-axe with a hammer-like side balancing the axe-blade and headed out through the remains of the tower door, which was completely without a header, just two jambs and a sill.
She followed her orders and went down to the shore, avoiding the gathering of mages down by the jetty. Now that the sun was up, the lake water was more blue than steel, but with edges going to green, except where the jetty was. Bay came with her, wagging his tail solemnly when she looked at him. “Good boy,” she told him. He snorted and picked up his ears, tail wagging harder.
She took off her boots and waded in. The water was cold, but shallow enough here that she could see the sandy bottom, and little minnows darting through the plants—which were, as specified, round. She bent down and began cutting, stacking the cut reeds up along the dry shore as she worked. The water smelled clean, the cut reeds added a pleasant green scent, the sun was comfortable for now—but she decided that when she’d finished cutting as much reed as she could carry, she’d go back and get her hat from her pack. It didn’t make any sense to come all this way to help, only to be felled by sunstroke.
Bay kept watch while she worked, and she was quite comforted by his presence. After all . . . she already knew there were bears.
When she returned, Alberdina and Ivar were creating a sort of tent-shelter using the stone walls and the enormous piece of canvas. They’d spread the canvas over the top of the walls and were working their way around the base, pounding wooden pegs cut from branches into the ground with the hammer-ends of their hand-axes and tying off the pieces of rope fastened to the grommets in the canvas. “Spread the reeds about two knuckles deep around the edge of the tower inside,” said Alberdina. “Keep cutting and spreading until you’ve gone all the way around the edge.” Delia spread her reeds, got her hat, and went back to the lake edge to gather more.
By the time she’d finished about a quarter of the circle, Alberdina and Ivar were inside the new shelter, ducking their heads a little, lashing together a sort of rack made of branches, after pounding the uprights into the ground. They’d picked a place that was up against the tower wall that had a tumble of stones under it; obviously she didn’t need to put reeds there. By the time she’d finished the next quarter, the rack was finished and all the packs were stacked on it, up off the ground. Smaller bags were hung by their straps off the frame. Ivar was gone, and Alberdina was clearing away a spot where it looked like a fireplace had been built into the wall.
By the time she’d finished the third quarter, Ivar had come back with several armfuls of wood. Alberdina had started a fire and had metal grates on legs poised over it.
As Delia finished spreading her final armful of reeds around the edge of the ruin, Alberdina turned away from the fire and surveyed her work.
By this time she was fairly sweaty, her back hurt from all the stooping over, and she was tired. “Take a break,” Alberdina told her, then went to a pack on the very top of the rack and took what looked like a round, fist-sized loaf of bread out of it, and took a leather bottle off the side of the rack. She handed both to Delia, who eyed the bread dubiously. She was starving, and this didn’t look like much.
“It’s travel-bread,” Alberdina told her. “It’s a lot more filling than it looks.”
And when she bit into it, she discovered it was very dense, and packed with dried fruit and seeds. It was, indeed, a lot more filling than she’d thought possible.
Meanwhile Alberdina had gone outside the shelter and given a shrill whistle, then shouted, “When you’re at a place you can stop, come eat!”
Delia had eaten the bread very quickly, and now was thirsty. “Is the lake water safe to drink?” she asked Alberdina.
“Yes,” the Healer said shortly, taking an armful of the solid little bread loaves out of the pack. “Drink what’s in the bottle, take it with you, and fill it at the cleanest spot you see.” She left the shelter again and came back empty-handed. “Floor this entire thing with reeds, then come to me for what you can do next.”
With a sigh, Delia did as she was told. This was going to be a very long day.
* * *
—
By nightfall, the following had happened.
Delia had floored the shelter with reeds. The mages had two sets of pillars erected. She had absolutely not expected them to be any sort of practical builders, but they were. They’d even brought cement with them, or someone had brought it in previously, and the mages had used it to cement rocks from the ruins into foundations into which the four curved pillars had been set, in pairs, looking very like the horns of the Foothold Gate back in the cellar. That was in the late afternoon; once finished, they spread their bedrolls on the reeds, heads facing the wall, toes facing the center, about two circles deep.
Alberdina had established a proper latrine, well away from the shore, with a screening of woven willow withies for privacy.
Ivar had shot and butchered a half-grown wild pig, and Alberdina had roasted it on a bed of hot rocks from the ruins. One of the mages had helped her make the bed—with magic, which had been amazing to watch, as the right-sized rocks levitated into place, forming a sort of pavement. Ivar had built a fire over the rocks, let it burn down to coals, brushed the ashes away, and spread pieces of pig over the rocks, turning them until done. So everyone had pork and salt and herbs from Alberdina’s pack with their travel bread.
Delia thought that she had never tasted anything so good.
Just at sunset they all had a short wash in the lake, then took to their bedrolls. The reeds, spread over the flattened grass that had grown up inside the ruined tower, made a passable mattress, at least enough to keep stones from sticking into her. She was asleep faster than she had thought she’d be able to manage.
In the morning, when she woke with the first light, she picked her way through the sleeping bodies to take care of business and have a better wash-up afterward. Then she had a look at those two proto-Gates.
One pair was on land, and was about as far apart as a pair of wagons side by side. The other was just on the edge of the water, so that boats that went through would slide right down into the water naturally, and had been positioned where the jetty had been. Deeper water, deep enough for the fully loaded barges. The wood they were made of was some of the oddest that Delia had ever seen, and she could not make up her mind what it was. It was darker than anything she had ever seen before, greenish in color, and much denser. It looked varnished, and practically brand new.
Was this something their mages had done when they’d been erecting the things? Or had the wood come from some place outside of Valdemar?
She heard footfalls behind her, and turned to see Jonaton approaching. “How—” she began.
“Are we getting horses and barges through? These will be the paired Gates like you see on the canals, where the horses are unhitched, put through a smaller Gate beside the barge Gate, and catch up with their barge on the other side. Obviously we can’t do that since we’re putting the barges straight into the lake from the canal on the other side,” he said, surveying the curved upright and laying a proprietary hand on it. “So each barge will get a strong push on the Empire side, come through here, and drop into the water, with a crewman aboard with a pole who’ll get it out of the way by poling it
to the right or left. The horses will come through over there. We’ll either tow or pole the barge to the shore, and either tie it to a previous barge or hitch it back up to the horses to start a new barge string. We reckon on the horses pulling full ten-barge strings. And meanwhile people can be coming through the horse-Gate when there aren’t horses coming through.”
“I was going to ask about the wood,” she said.
“Oh.” He laughed. “These were either breasthooks or keels of the boats that were here. The rest rotted away, but whoever built these things impregnated the wood with copper salts, probably using alchemy rather than pure magic. There’s honestly no way of telling how old they are without a lot of magical shenanigans we don’t have the time or energy for. They’re not less than fifty years abandoned, and not more than five hundred. I’d guess it’s nearer to the five hundred mark than the fifty, but I can’t think about everything I want to, right now. I have to set things aside, for later. Urgency. Focus. It means I just have to let some things go.”
She blinked. But, then again, there were things as old or older than that in the Empire. “What are you doing today?” she asked.
“Tying them to the power source, then turning four pieces of wood into two Gates. There will be a lot of—stuff—going on. Like we did with the Foothold Gate, but more, and with more mages. Then the rest of the mages except the Circle and I go home via the Foothold Gate while Ivar, Alberdina, and you stay here. And the third day I tune the two Gates with your help as an anchor, I open them, some more magic stuff goes on, and the fourth day, I spend flat on my back while Alberdina takes care of me, and Sai makes something about the size of Bay to feed me when I am up to it. And right now, you and I go back to the Foothold Gate and wait for breakfast and lunch to get pitched through.”
She laughed, thinking he’d made a joke.
When “breakfast and lunch” arrived, however, he held her over to one side of the rippling disk of weird light that suddenly irised open, and she discovered it was not a joke as baskets and bags came flying through it, piling up at the foot of the thing. She realized in a moment they were coming too quickly for Isla and Hakkon alone to be throwing them through; they must have some servants in on the Plan now.
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