The Gate of Gods (Fall of the Ile-Rien) (23 page)

“Here, down here!” Balin called out desperately.

“There’s hundreds more what?” Then Tremaine gasped, her stomach lurching. They were suddenly somewhere else.
I will never get used to this.

Tremaine got an impression of a giant cathedral-like space, blue-veined stone and sunlight slanting down from some great distance. It was cool and damp, but not as cold as the cave they had just come from. Then she had to sit down, clutching her swimming head and trying not to be sick.

Everything continued to swim, though she knew it was Ilias who pulled her to her feet, propelled her out of the circle and sat her down again a short distance away. After a moment the feverish sensation of impending nausea faded and she blinked sweat out of her eyes. Ilias was sitting in front of her, holding her injured hand, biting his lip in concern. She saw with surprise that among the bloody and burned skin there was a piece of rock stuck to her palm. She must have fallen on it in the circle chamber and it had stuck to the burned flesh.
Ugh, no wonder it hurts,
she thought with a wince.

Gerard was stooping over them, irritably demanding, “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I said ‘ow,’ ” Tremaine told him, grimacing. She hadn’t thought it was this bad. Then she looked up, and up, and up.

They were in a giant chamber, at least twice the size of the train yard at the central Vienne station. It was full of dusty sunlight from narrow slits of louvers set high in a soaring roof. The stone was light-colored, almost like a white marble with different shades of blue and gray woven through it. There were carved archways, leading off into other spaces, some sunlit, some shadowed. The floor was paved with a pearly gray stone and it was covered with circles, more than she could count. They seemed to be everywhere.

“Wow,” Tremaine muttered. Giliead was standing guard over them, his sword resting on his shoulder as he watchfully scanned the area. Cimarus had taken charge of Balin, who sat in a sullen heap, and Cletia was nearby, sorting through the jumbled contents of their hastily packed supplies. Meretrisa lay wrapped in the blanket, Aras and Vervane anxiously leaning over her. “What about Meretrisa?”

“I’ve stopped the bleeding but the bullet punctured her lung,” Gerard told her. “Now be quiet.”

“Shouldn’t we do something about the circle?” Tremaine wondered, feeling vague. “They’re going to realize we went through one of them, so—”

“I already did,” Gerard interrupted, digging a handkerchief out of his pocket. “I used the sphere to melt away a few of the key symbols.” He handed the cloth to Ilias, and said, “Go on and pull it out.”

“Pull what out? Ow!” Tremaine strangled a yell and glared at Ilias. He pressed the handkerchief over the now–freely bleeding wound, ignoring her. “It could have been stuck in a bone or something.”

“It wasn’t,” Ilias told her repressively. “I pull things out of people all the time.”

Gerard shouldered between them and took hold of her wrist, though Ilias didn’t let go of her hand. She knew Gerard had already begun a spell because the throbbing started to ease immediately. She noticed Ilias still looked worried, his brow creased, sweat staining the open front of his shirt. And there was fresh blood spattered on his coat sleeves and caught in his hair. “That was very effective, that thing with the head,” she informed him. He lifted a brow at her, and she amended, “I’m talking about cutting the Gardier’s head off and throwing it at his friends. Who was shooting the arrows?”

He jerked his head toward the others. “That was Cletia.”

“Of course it was,” she said dryly.
Oh, good, I got saved by Cletia,
Tremaine thought, rolling her eyes.
That makes it all worthwhile.

I
lias lifted the cloth at Gerard’s urging and saw the wound in Tremaine’s hand had already closed, though it looked new and raw. The burns were better and he could already see new pink flesh under the blood and damaged skin. He took a deep breath in relief and looked up at the wizard. “Thank you.”

Gerard didn’t seem able to speak and just patted him on the shoulder. Ilias knew he looked on Tremaine as a daughter. Apparently annoyed by their concern, Tremaine said in exasperation, “I feel fine.”

“Just sit there quietly,” Gerard told her with some asperity.

“Vervane got hurt too, go yell at her. Balin bit her, she probably needs a carbolic bath. And does this mean the Gardier captured the original circle, the one in the house? Or the notes on it you gave Niles? How else could they get here? I mean, there?”

Good questions,
Ilias thought, looking at Gerard. Clearly not wanting to answer them now, the wizard said only, “It’s a possibility.”

Giliead glanced back at them. “We need to find a more defensive place to camp.”

Ilias nodded. This place was so big this room might as well have been an open field; he felt exposed, as if he had a target painted on him. All the circles, each one a potential open doorway for their enemies, didn’t help.

Gerard, already turning to go to Vervane and Meretrisa, paused to say, “Aras and I didn’t explore very far. The place looks deserted but we only glanced into a few of those other chambers. Take great care; we don’t know if the Gardier could get here through some alternate route, through another circle.”

Ilias pushed to his feet, asking Tremaine, “You’ll be all right?”

“Oh, sure.” She blinked up at him. “I think I’m going to sit here for a while.”

Ilias threw Cimarus a look that promised death if he didn’t keep a good watch, then paused to shed his coat; it was too warm here for it. He avoided Cletia’s gaze deliberately, knowing he needed to say something to her about her quickness with the bow. She had saved Tremaine, saved them all. But he couldn’t deal with it just now. Pulling his baldric back over his head, he followed Giliead across the giant space.

They made their way between the circles, heading for the nearest archway. Giliead had left behind his wool wrap as well, and took a deep breath of the warm air. “What happened?” he asked quietly.

Ilias shook his head. The narrowness of their escape made his skin creep. “They would have had all of us, just like that, but Tremaine was in the circle chamber. I heard her scream when they made her shooting weapon break. I took two with the sword before they knew I was there and Cletia got the others with a bow before the last one escaped.” It could have been Tremaine lying there instead of Meretrisa.
That last Gardier could have taken Tremaine with him.
The thought made him ill.

Giliead acknowledged what he hadn’t said with a grunt, looking bleak. “We were lucky.”

They reached the archway and got a view into the next chamber, and Ilias saw why Gerard and Aras had decided the place was deserted. This space wasn’t nearly so large, though the ceiling was still a good two ship’s lengths or so high and it was a long stretch to the next archway. There had been some kind of balcony along one side, but two of the supporting columns had collapsed, and the blocks that had formed it lay tumbled along the wall. No effort had been made to clear or repair anything and it all smelled damp and dusty and disused.

The openings slitted into the curved roof seemed to be everywhere, and the bright sunlight outside made it easy to see. The trickle of water falling led them through the next archway and into a smaller chamber that looked as if it had been carved right out of the blue-white rock. Water ran down a wall through a crack in the domed roof; the fact that it was caught in several carved stone basins before running out through a small drain in the floor made it obvious that it wasn’t natural. Ilias let the water run over his hand and tasted it cautiously. It was clear and sweet. He glanced around the room again, frowning. There was something …artificial about it. “Why did they want a room that looks like a cave?”

“Who knows.” Giliead made a helpless gesture, turning to investigate the smaller doorway that led off to the side. It turned out to be a corridor made to look like a rocky tunnel.

It had no openings in the roof and was dark, and one end ran only a short distance back the way they had come to the main circle chamber. But the other led to another larger room, dusty and empty, with more rooms beyond it. “This place is huge,” Giliead muttered, sitting on his heels and using his knife to scratch a careful trail sign on the floor.

“We can get the others into that rock room for now. It’s got water, and two doorways so we can’t get boxed in.” Ilias didn’t have a bad feeling about this place; it didn’t give off any feeling in particular, though its size was intimidating. He could see why Arisilde would have come here to investigate the circles, but searching for his oversubtle trail marks was going to be a chore. But he had never heard of a place like this in any story; the Wall Port had been an unthinkable distance from Cineth, but they had still heard tales of it.

Giliead nodded, pushing to his feet, his face weary. “We may be here a while. There’s a lot to explore.”

Ilias bit his lip, and had to say it out loud. “Do you think we’re any closer to home than we were in the mountains?”

Giliead looked around again, his mouth twisted wryly. He rested a hand on Ilias’s shoulder and pulled him into a one-armed hug. “I have no idea.”

F
lorian found herself wandering the
Ravenna
’s main hall, where green marble columns flanked seating areas with couches and armchairs. The cherrywood-veneered walls were lined with the empty glass cases of the ship’s old shopping arcade. This late at night, the only people around were a few officers and some researchers from the Viller Institute, all on their way to some other part of the ship. She missed the livelier company of the refugees, who had filled up all the
Ravenna
’s silences and given the long corridors a sense of noisy community.

Florian pushed through the heavy doors out onto the Promenade deck, but it was unlit except for the dim reflection of moonlight on the sea, the large windows looking out onto the limitless expanse of dark water and sky, and she retreated quickly.

It was well after midnight by the time Niles had finally been persuaded to rest. After the encounter with Chandre and Ixion, he had gone back to the Second Class lounge and drawn the circle again, with Florian and Giaren’s help, with meticulous care. Again, it hadn’t worked.

Florian had been surprised when Giaren, normally rather diffident, had slammed a book down on the table and shouted angrily that Niles was going to kill himself and what good would that do their lost companions? Niles had gotten huffy but had grudgingly agreed to go to his cabin and try to sleep.

With the blackout curtains and dead-lights carefully fixed over the windows and portholes, the corridors quiet, Florian perversely felt wide-awake.

Poking around in the corridors between the main hall and the closed doors of the Observation Lounge, she found the First Class library unlocked. On impulse she went in, scanned the shelves quickly and selected a gothic novel, meaning to sit down in one of the upholstered leather chairs in the main hall and read. But after a few moments the quiet, broken only by the hiss of air through the ventilators and the creaks and groans and thrums of the ship, began to feel creepy rather than restful.
Ixion’s here somewhere,
Florian found herself thinking. Maybe not walking around loose, but would Lord Chandre’s men and the Capidarans really keep as close a guard on him as Colonel Averi’s men had? And she would bet he wasn’t being kept in the specially warded chamber anymore. And if Nicholas was right about Ixion taking an interest in her…

Gah, you’re going to make yourself crazy.
She returned to the library, reshelving the gothic and instead taking a humorous story about the romantic adventures of a wine-bar dancer. She went out and down the passengers’ stairs, past the portrait of Queen Ravenna and the First Class Entrance Hall, the fine wood walls and the marble-tiled floor gleaming, and down to the smaller carpeted lounge where the steward’s office, paneled in sleek wood with etched-glass windows, took up one wall. It had once been a command post for Lady Aviler’s volunteers, but it was closed and dark now as well. Four large corridors led off from this lounge, two toward the bow and two toward the stern. She chose the one that led toward the First Class staterooms, hoping the Syprians would still be awake.

The quiet corridor stretched on forever, the distant end curving upward like an inverted horizon. The doors she passed, all set back in small vestibules, were closed and quiet, and she wasn’t sure who, if anyone, was quartered here now. She tried not to succumb to the fear that something was about to dart out and grab her, but since something had, effectively, darted out and grabbed her on the voyage to Capidara, it wasn’t easy.

Florian reached the right little vestibule and knocked lightly on the door. It moved in the frame a little, as Tremaine had been too impatient to wait for a key when she had first appropriated the rooms and had got one of the Syprians to break the lock. To her relief she heard a stirring inside.

Gyan opened the door, brows lifting in anxious surprise. “Florian.” He studied her face a moment, then added ruefully, “I see you’re not coming to deliver good news.” He was an older man with a heavy build and a good-humored face, balding with a long fringe of gray hair.

“No,” she said regretfully as she followed him into the suite. It was all red and gold, with a deep tawny carpet and red drapes covering the portholes in the far wall of the sitting room. The lights, all of which were on as the Syprians refused to touch the switches, were frosted crystal lozenges set into the cherrywood-veneered walls. A few small pieces of rough wood lay on a delicate marquetry side table, along with a scatter of wood shavings and a little knife. One piece of wood was in the process of being carved into the head and neck of a sea serpent. “Nothing’s changed since this afternoon.” Florian dropped down onto one of the gold-upholstered couches, the book in her lap, and said wearily, “It’s so frustrating. I know we’re doing everything right. We’ve done it exactly the same way we did it in Capistown, and Niles and I and the other Rienish sorcerers have all tried it, but nothing happens.” She massaged her temples. “I know it’ll turn out to be something simple that we’re all overlooking.”