The Gate of Gods (Fall of the Ile-Rien) (51 page)

T
remaine broke into a run when she reached the gate, heading back along the side of the lodging house, through the garden court with its damp laundry. Giliead and Ilias passed her but she couldn’t make her legs move any faster.
They didn’t send troops through because this was a distraction. Idiot.
And both times the Liaisons had managed to find them, they had been looking specifically for Gerard.

Back through the alley and she was running around the corner of the Philosophy College. She heard gunfire but it was muffled by distance, and the court was a confusion of running and shouting people, students, townsmen, but no Gardier. Tremaine looked desperately for Gerard but there was no sign of him or Niles either.

Then Florian appeared in the circle. Tremaine skidded to a halt on the grass, demanding, “Florian, what are you doing here?” Ilias had stopped to listen but Giliead was running for the college gallery.

Startled at the confusion, Florian blurted, “The
Ravenna
’s under attack—airships appeared right around us.”

“Great,” Tremaine snarled. “We’re under attack too. Come on.” Without waiting, she ran for the gallery. Ilias caught up with her easily and the bells were still pealing urgently as they took the broad steps two at a time. Digging in her bag for more ammunition, Tremaine crossed the portico to the big open double doors. The high-ceilinged hall just inside was dark except for a few oil lamps, smelling of dust and aged wood and books. She saw Giliead, Niles, Barshion, a dozen others looking out the windows in the far wall that opened onto another court.

Niles’s brother Cathber glanced back at their arrival, saying grimly, “It’s a standoff.”

Past the other men, through the wide arched window, Tremaine could see perhaps twenty Gardier. They were all armed, except for a Liaison who still stood within a gate circle, holding a sorcerer crystal. The circle was small, barely ten feet across, and burned into the grass. They had three hostages, a young woman and two men, all dressed as students. The Gardier were holding them with pistols to their heads, making a human barrier in front of the circle. Four other bodies already lay sprawled on the grass, one of them in Gardier uniform. “Where’s—” Tremaine started to ask, then her throat closed in shock.

Gerard was a short distance from the other hostages, two Gardier gripping his arms, a third holding a pistol to his head. He looked barely conscious and only the Gardier seemed to be keeping him on his feet.

Niles stood out on the open portico, holding a sphere, Adel Kashani and two student-sorcerers flanking him.

The Liaison spoke, too quietly for Tremaine to hear. She did hear Niles, on the portico, breathe the words “No, damn it, no.”

Then the three Gardier dragged Gerard over the edge of the circle and vanished with the Liaison.

Tremaine yelled in pure horror, barely conscious of the shocked gasps and dismayed murmurs of the people around her.

The remaining Gardier looked as horrified by it as she was. A Gardier officer stepped back, lifting his pistol, but with the sorcerer crystal gone he was as good as unarmed. Niles didn’t even gesture and the officer dropped his weapon, then fell to the ground, clutching his throat. The other Gardier shifted, still holding their hostages; but they were frightened, uncertain. Niles’s face was a stony mask. He started down the stairs, saying in Aelin, “If you surrender, you won’t be injured.”

In the sudden silence, the officer’s gasps for air as he writhed on the grass were clearly audible. Two of the Gardier dropped their weapons, hastily backing away as their hostages pushed free. The last Gardier shouted angrily, but in his agitation he moved the pistol away from his hostage’s head, and she grabbed his hand, sinking her teeth into it. The pistol went off but the bullet struck the ground as the other two hostages leapt to help her.

Tremaine pushed through the crowd, ignoring the confusion as more people rushed forward to help. She hurried down the stairs, across the gravel path to the grass and the edge of the small circle. The Gardier had used something similar to Gerard’s new circle again; the symbols had burned into the grass, faint lines of white ash, already beginning to disappear.

Tremaine looked wildly around. “Florian! It’s going away!”

“Here.” Florian stepped into the circle, looking back at her, eyes wide and serious. “I can do it.”

“Tremaine, you can’t!” Niles shouted from the portico. “We can’t risk it!”

“You’re the only other one here who knows the spell, you have to stay,” Tremaine told him. She stepped into the circle with Florian. Ilias was right behind her and Giliead with him. She wanted to tell them not to come, but she knew she needed the help.

Niles had lifted his sphere, probably about to knock them all unconscious, but if he tried, Florian’s sphere deflected it hen the court and the gray daylight vanished.

Tremaine’s stomach lurched and the floor moved under her feet. They were in a sizable room with huge window panels on each side, looking out onto a sea of heavy gray clouds.
Airship,
she thought, lifting her pistol. One of the new prototypes, like the one they had stolen from Maton-devara. The circle they stood in had been hastily inked onto the floor, the cork mats ripped aside to expose the metal surface. Barely ten paces away was another circle, this one larger, more carefully drawn. In it stood the Liaison and the two Gardier with him, an unconscious Gerard hanging limply in their grasp.

Another Gardier stood outside the circle. He spun around, stared incredulously and stepped toward them, just as Tremaine fired.

The bullet struck his chest instead of the Liaison’s. As he fell, the Liaison, the other Gardier and Gerard disappeared.

“Goddammit!” Tremaine strode to the other circle, snarling. She dug into her satchel for an incendiary, pushing down the strike lever to arm it. “Come on.”

“Quick, before they break the other end,” Giliead said as they all stepped over the border of symbols.

Florian took a deep breath. “Ready?”

Tremaine heard shouts and running boot steps from the access corridor, and tossed the incendiary outside the circle. “Ready.”

Florian yelped and the room vanished in a blast of heat.

They were in a large stone chamber, lit by the harsh light of a carbide lamp, the circle carved in stone on the floor. A Gardier armed with a chisel and hammer was just stooping over one of the symbols. He had time to look up in horror just before Ilias kicked him in the head, knocking him over backward. Ilias stepped in to finish him off with a sword thrust.

“Tremaine,” Florian snapped. “Warn me next time. And that was our escape route.”

Looking around for more Gardier, Tremaine threw her a look. “You wanted to escape to a Gardier airship?”

“Point taken, but do warn—”

“We’re back in the mountain, in our world,” Giliead interrupted. The polished stone threw back reflections from the lamp, the distinctive half columns along the wall arching up the curves of the domed ceiling, the bands of carving that repeated the circle symbols. He was right, they were in the lower chamber of the mountain ruin. It was night and no daylight was showing through the cracks in the far wall that led outside.

“Why the hell did they come here?” Tremaine said to herself. And which circle had they taken? The one they were standing in had been the dud that she and Gerard had tried first when they were exploring the room. The Gardier must have used the circle in the airship to reconnect it, but they had modified it to cross from Ile-Rien back to the staging world, the way Arisilde had modified the circle at Cineth.
They were catching up to us,
Tremaine thought, sick with fear at what they might do to Gerard.
Now they’re a step ahead.

“Quiet.” Ilias was standing with his head cocked, listening. Then he and Giliead ran for the stairwell. “They went up!”

Tremaine pelted after him, Florian behind her.

The stairs were pitch-dark and Tremaine kept one hand on the cold stone wall to steady herself. Behind her she heard Florian swear softly. “What?” Tremaine demanded.

“That sorcerer crystal is casting like crazy,” Florian reported, breathless as they climbed. The cold was chilling Tremaine’s sweat-soaked shirt, making it damp and clammy. “I think the sphere’s deflected a dozen spells. If we didn’t have it, we’d be paste.”

“Can you talk to the crystal?” Ilias asked Giliead.

Giliead sounded bitter. “No, this one won’t listen.” That didn’t surprise Tremaine. Giliead had already talked two crystals into defecting; the Gardier must be onto his abilities by now.

They came to the top of the stairs and Tremaine saw Giliead charge down the passage, Ilias taking the last steps in one bound to follow. She scrambled after them, reaching the passage in time to see the figures of the Gardier and Gerard, etched in the light from another carbide lamp, framed against the jagged black opening in the wall. Then they vanished.

Tremaine swore, running after Giliead and Ilias. They came out into the open chamber, the cold wind off the river filling it with the scent and sound of rushing water. The two men stepped into the circle, and Tremaine followed, turning as Florian hurried after her. The other girl threw one curious look around the big room, then hastily stepped into the circle.

The circle Arisilde gave us in Capistown,
Tremaine thought. She was certain now he had given them the last circle he took, before whatever happened had happened, perhaps his last coherent memory before he had fled to the sphere. The circle that had been dead after Nicholas had destroyed the other end in their Capistown house, dead until the Gardier had come through it. Gerard was right, the Gardier must have broken it at its original destination after Arisilde came through, because they were afraid he might come back.
Then when they realized we were here, when they noticed we were using the other circles, they restored it so they could come after us.
“Everybody, be ready,” she said, feeling inadequate. “I think this is the one.”

Giliead grimaced, Ilias just nodded, and Florian lifted the sphere, saying, “Right. Here we go.”

T
his time the abrupt vertigo knocked Tremaine down. She shoved herself upright off a cool stone floor, looking around wildly. They were in a round rock-walled room, very like the one they had just left, the walls a mottled dark gray, curving up to meet in a dome high above their heads. There was a small opening in the very center of the dome, letting in sunlight and revealing a small patch of blue sky. She heard a shout and boot steps and twisted around, lifting her pistol.

Three Gardier were just disappearing through an archway in one curved wall, leading into another half-glimpsed room. Still near the edge of the circle, the last man spun around, raising his rifle. Tremaine jerked her pistol up but Giliead had landed near the man and he stood up suddenly, gripping the rifle and shoving it upward. Tremaine winced away from the blast of the shot, painfully loud against the stone.

The man had the sense to let go of the rifle but Giliead slammed him in the head with the butt before he could back away. As the Gardier collapsed, Tremaine scrambled to her feet. She reached the wall just as Florian and Ilias did. Ilias flattened himself against the stone, taking a careful peek into the next room.

He jerked back as two more shots rang out, spraying them with stone splinters from the edge of the arch. Ilias swore, throwing a look back at Tremaine. “Well?” he asked. On the far side of the archway, Giliead had dropped the rifle, edging close to try to see into the next room without getting his head shot off.

Tremaine grimaced. She couldn’t chance throwing an explosive, not if Gerard was in there somewhere. There was no other exit and the Gardier could keep them pinned here indefinitely. “Florian,” she said, “do something.”

“I’ve already done a concealment charm, but that’s not going to work well in close quarters. I don’t want to use the mechanical disruption, not with those around,” Florian muttered, nodding toward the satchel slung over Tremaine’s shoulder. “I don’t trust this sphere like I would Arisilde. I’ll make them drop the guns.”

“Right.” Tremaine had time to notice that the circle was carved into the floor and the walls weren’t mottled as she had first thought, they were smooth gray stone covered over with writing in black charcoal or paint that was coming off on her sweaty hands. Looking closely at the wall, she made out some of the more familiar symbols from the circles, scrawled wildly, in no discernible pattern or order, on top of each other. It had the look of something written by a madman, and was not reassuring.
So where the hell are we?

Firmly gripping the sphere, Florian closed her eyes for a moment. Alarmed shouts and the clatter of weapons striking the floor sounded from the next room. Giliead and Ilias bolted through the archway and Tremaine flung herself after them, making sure Florian was close behind her. The sphere was the only protection for the explosives and her pistol, and she had to keep near it.

Through the archway Tremaine saw another dome-shaped room, another circle carved into the floor. One Gardier already had Giliead’s sword through his abdomen; another charged Ilias and got a slash across the throat. Tremaine shot the last one, just as he turned to run.

Florian was muttering to the sphere, distracted, and Tremaine kept a hand on her arm. The back of her neck was prickling; there was something very wrong about this place. It was obviously another ancient ruin, but the Gardier had to be here for a reason.

“This place is familiar,” Giliead said quietly, moving to the next archway.

“It’s familiar and creepy,” Ilias added, following him, his sword held ready. He jerked his head back toward the dead and dying Gardier. “These are all Liaisons.”

Tremaine looked at the bodies on the floor, saw crystals embedded in their cheeks, foreheads.
Creepy is right,
she thought. Following the Syprians’ lead, Tremaine and Florian veered rapidly around the carved circle, the blood and still-twitching bodies. Writing covered the walls in this room too, stretching up to more than a man’s height. The skylight was bigger and the light let Tremaine see a line of carving, so obscured by the scribbles that her eyes had passed right over it before. The circle symbols were carved into the band, as if in decoration. She said, “It’s just like the circle cave in the mountain. That’s why it looks familiar.”

Giliead threw a worried look at her. “This whole place is alive with curses, like the circles Arisilde makes.”

“The place we just came through?” Florian asked, head down, still concentrating on the sphere.

“Yes, this looks like it was built the same…” Tremaine followed Giliead into the next room, where he and Ilias stood looking around in wary astonishment. It was a mirror image of the room they had camped in at the mountain, with the same carving on the walls, the same raised border that they had used as a fire pit. It was so like it Tremaine almost expected to see the scattered remains of sava rinds and firewood from their hasty departure. “Exactly like it,” she finished in a low voice.

Giliead went to the further doorway, past which Tremaine could see a corridor just like the passage that had led from the mountain’s upper circle chamber to the stairwell. From this vantage point it looked identical, though the bright sunlight seemed to be coming from the wrong direction. Tremaine wondered if it looked out on the same view of the river gorge, or a mirror image of it. “Creepy is an understatement,” she muttered. Were they somewhere near the mountain ruin, or had there been another part of it they had somehow failed to find?

Giliead said suddenly, “Curse! Back that way!”

Tremaine spun around, just as the floor dipped and swayed, eerily reminiscent of the deck of the
Ravenna,
and she flailed to stay upright. Florian gasped and caught hold of her shoulder; Giliead and Ilias both stumbled but managed to keep their feet.

More Liaisons appeared in the archway they had just come through, these unarmed. They charged, shouting, and Tremaine fired twice into the pack, hitting the one in the lead. He fell back just as Florian lifted the sphere and a black cloud sprang into existence in the center of the room, vapors roiling, shooting off sparks of contained lightning.

“They’re gating in behind us!” Tremaine snarled. Shoving the gun back into her belt, she reached into the satchel for an explosive but Giliead and Ilias had slammed forward into the Gardier, taking advantage of Florian’s illusion.
Just as well,
she realized. They had to get back through that circle and she couldn’t risk blocking the way with rubble.

“The Gardier shouldn’t be able to do that.” Florian grimaced, handling the sphere lightly. It must be red-hot from all the spells; there had to be sorcerer crystals here somewhere and there was no telling what attacks it was holding off.

We have to find Gerard and get the hell out of here.
Tremaine ducked through the doorway into the wide passage. Halting abruptly, she saw the far end, where the stairwell had been in the mountain ruin, was just a rough jagged opening, as if the stone had been torn away. It looked out into open air, with a glimpse of forest and low hills far below. The forest was the lighter green of the Gardier world.
I have a really terrible feeling about this,
Tremaine thought. The opposite end had a broad stone spiral stairway, but it was leading up.

She had to take a look, she had to be sure. She hurried down the passage toward the opening, past the doors that led into the other rooms, all identical to those in the mountain. She looked into each briefly to make sure Gerard wasn’t there, but all were empty. Reaching the edge of the gap, she gripped the jagged stone and leaned out cautiously to look down, the wind whipping her hair.

The ledge was sheared off, remains of broken masonry blocks sticking out of it. Hundreds of feet below she could see a complex of Gardier buildings, stone like the ones in Maton-devara, with the same flat mansard roofs. Two black airships were moored in cleared fields nearby.
This is not a mountain,
Tremaine thought, feeling a little sick. She could see from looking at the ground that the structure was moving a little. Floating.

She turned, heading back toward Florian. Though the other girl was too occupied with the sphere to listen, she said, baffled, “God. We are there. This is the other half of that room in the mountain.”
So it didn’t fall into the river, it came here?
Then she shook her head, trying to get past her astonishment.
If we can gate the whole
Ravenna
, why can’t they gate part of a mountain? And keep it in the air with a Great Spell, to make sure nobody sees it except the Liaisons they control.

“Get out of there,” Florian shouted at Giliead and Ilias. “I’ve got a spell!”

Tremaine looked over her shoulder. Now ignoring the illusion, the Liaisons were throwing themselves practically onto the two Syprians’ swords, trying to overwhelm them, with no sense of their own survival. More were pushing in from the room behind them. Ilias hamstrung one that tried to jump Giliead from behind, and the two men ran for the door.

Tremaine backed away, giving them room to get through. As the Liaisons started forward, Florian whispered something.

The black cloud abruptly swelled to fill the room. Tremaine retreated hastily from the doorway, stepping on Ilias. From past the cloud she heard abrupt screams, then silence.

Breathing hard, Giliead stared at Florian, aghast. Looking from him to Florian, Ilias asked, “What was it?” He was panting as well, his shirt torn and his chest and sword spattered with someone else’s blood. His nose was bleeding again and there was a cut under his eye where a Gardier had gotten in a lucky hit.

“It electrified the air in the room,” Florian said evenly. Her face was set but as she turned away, her mouth twisted in pain. “I learned it looking for things to use on Ixion.”

Florian was going to feel that later, but they couldn’t stop to deal with it now. The Gardier must have taken Gerard up the stairwell at the other end of the passage; it was the only way out of this corridor. “We need to go this way.” Tremaine started for the stairs.

The others followed her, and she added, “I think we’re in the missing half of the mountain ruin, that they gated the whole thing to the Gardier world, to the place they called Maton-first.” She pointed back toward the opening at the far end of the passage. “And I think it’s floating in the air.” Giliead moved past her to take the lead, casting another worried look at Florian.

Ilias guarded their backs, watching the corridor behind them. He said, “I don’t understand. The Gardier stole part of the ruin and brought it here? Why? And what’s holding it up?” Tremaine couldn’t tell whether he really wanted to know or if he just needed to talk. She suspected the latter.

Giliead said reluctantly, “That would explain why the floor keeps moving, why there are so many curses.”

Florian didn’t say anything, barely seemed to be listening. She just looked sick. Tremaine was fairly sure she had never done a death spell before.

They started up the stairs and Tremaine had the sinking feeling they had come too far, that the place to rescue Gerard had been back in their mountain, before the last gate.

Each step was a little too high for her, like the stairs in the mountain ruin, like the stairs in the Wall Port, the city under the Isle of Storms, the fortress. The walls were dotted with the small niches. She thought the missing section of the ruin must have been a series of eggshaped domed chambers, running alongside the cliff for some distance on either side, stretching up all the way to the cliff top. Tremaine couldn’t hear any movement; if there were more Liaisons here, they were keeping quiet about it.

The stairs ended in a broad open ledge, looking out onto a large domed chamber, shadowy and vast, nearly as large as the circle room in the fortress. In its old location it must have spanned the river gorge. The walls were studded with the carved half pillars and a short set of steps led down to the floor from their ledge.

The room was dimly lit and it took a moment for Tremaine to pick out the small glass lamps, strung from ropes supported by hooks pounded into the stone walls. The light was green-tinged and odd, and she realized they were glowworm lights, like the one Davret had shown her aboard the old Aelin airship.
Of course, they can’t run electricity up here.
As her eyes adjusted to the light, she saw that carved symbols covered the floor, but instead of multiple circles they all formed one big spiral, winding out toward the walls of the chamber. The stone was scribbled over with more symbols, written in chalk, dust, red-brown streaks like dried blood.

And in the center of the spiral, atop a low stone plinth, was a large sorcerer crystal. It was twice the size of the sphere in Florian’s hands, yellowed with age, fragments of black rock stuck to it like mold. Tremaine started to spot more crystals, smaller ones, scattered all over the spiral, hundreds of them. There was no movement, no sign of any Liaisons, but they must have all gated to the circles at the other end of the ruin to get in behind them.
Gated from here?
“This thing, I think this is one big gate,” Tremaine said softly.

Ilias looked around cautiously, stepping back to suspiciously eye the ledge above their heads. “Those wizard crystals,” Giliead said, low-voiced. “Most of them are alive.”

“This must be where they do it,” Florian whispered. “This must be where they put people in crystals.”

Tremaine could believe that; the air was tinged with decay, as if a number of people had died here. “There’s Gerard,” Giliead said suddenly. Tremaine stepped to his side, scanning the chamber’s floor anxiously. In a moment, she saw him. He lay unconscious, half on his side as if he had just been carelessly dropped. He was on the spiral, off to one side in the deeper shadow, his gray suit almost blending with the stone. “I’ll get him, you all wait up here,” Giliead said, starting down the steps.