Read The Gate of Gods (Fall of the Ile-Rien) Online
Authors: Martha Wells
Damn it, this could be a problem,
Tremaine thought desperately, crawling through the gravel, trying to keep the fountain between her and the Gardier. Knowing she only had three shots left, she risked her head to fire again, just as a feathered shaft suddenly slammed into the nearest man’s chest. The Gardier choked as he fell, blood foaming at his lips.
Tremaine shot the other one as the last tried to go back over the wall, only to be dragged down by Ilias. She heard a door bang and turned, just in time to see the other Gardier who had been creeping quietly up behind her. Before she could even get her pistol up, Giliead suddenly appeared behind him, his sword biting into the man’s shoulder.
Tremaine pushed to her feet, watching Giliead finish the Gardier off with a thrust to the chest, uneasily fascinated. She tore her gaze away, looking back to make sure Ilias was all right. He was just retrieving his knife from the body of the Gardier who had tried to escape.
Giliead spotted Ilias and his whole body relaxed, though he didn’t do more than nod to him in relief. Ilias gave him a tight smile back, then dodged sideways to recapture Balin as she ran toward one of the fallen Gardier rifles.
“We need to get back inside, there’s more of them,” Giliead told Tremaine, turning back to the house.
“Right.” Tremaine started after him, and flinched back with a curse as she walked into the ward again. She shook her stinging hand, gritting her teeth. “Hey, can we do something about that?”
Giliead looked back in consternation. “Sorry, it doesn’t work on me.”
The servants’ door at the side of the house opened and Nicholas stepped out, motioning them to come toward him. “Hurry, Gerard’s opened a passage in the ward.”
“Are you sure?” Tremaine took a cautious step forward, feeling the air in front of her.
“No, it’s a cruel joke,” Nicholas snapped. “Get in here.”
Snarling under her breath, Tremaine followed Giliead across the littered pavement to the doorway, Ilias hauling Balin along after her.
“Why on earth did you bring her?” Nicholas asked as they reached the house. He shut the door behind Giliead and shot the bolt, throwing a suspicious glance through the inset window.
“Bring who?” Tremaine’s expression was too acid for mockinnocence. She went through the little entryway and into the kitchen. Cimarus was in the doorway to the pantry, his sword hung over his shoulder, watching worriedly.
“She was escaping,” Ilias replied, pushing the Gardier woman ahead of him. Balin snarled at Nicholas, who ignored her.
Tremaine decided to give up on the sarcasm battle. “What happened to the windows? The bombing is still several streets away.”
“We’ve been attacked by two groups of Gardier.” Nicholas turned away from the door impatiently, leading them through the kitchen. “They’re obviously after the sphere or Gerard or both.”
Tremaine snorted derisively. “That’s suicidal of them. Arisilde’s not going to—”
“Unfortunately, Arisilde isn’t here,” Nicholas cut in. They came out into the front hall, which seemed undamaged except for a lingering odor of smoke. Nicholas started up the stairs. “Gerard took him out to the
Ravenna
last night, so Niles could work with him. He brought Niles’s sphere back here to carry on the experiment.”
“Oh.” Tremaine bit her lip, taken aback. That explained the simultaneous illusion and gate spell. Niles had had powerful help.
Gerard met them at the top of the stairs, saying in profound relief, “Thank God you made it safely.”
“Do you know where Florian is?” Tremaine asked. She had been hoping the other girl would be at the house with Gerard, but surely she would have come out to see them by now.
“I left her with Niles on the
Ravenna
this morning, with Kias and Calit.” Gerard looked at her sharply. “Did you see if—”
“The illusion worked, Niles was able to make a gate.” Tremaine felt the tightness in her chest ease. With Arisilde and Niles and the
Ravenna
between them and the Gardier, Florian and the other Syprians were better off than they were.
She saw two Capidaran women she didn’t know, one young with dark hair done up in a bun, the other older and a little on the stout side, both leaning anxiously over a man stretched out on one of the fusty divans. There was a pile of towels and a large china bowl of water on the floor. Tremaine took a step forward to see who was hurt and suddenly realized the red and black marking his torso was burned flesh and blackened cloth, not just a rather ugly patterned shirt. Her gorge rose. “Who’s this?” she asked, trying to clamp down on incipient nausea.
“Tremaine, this is Meretrisa and Vervane, members of the Capidaran party,” Gerard said, preoccupied. “The injured man is Aras, with the Capidaran Ministry.” He turned back to Nicholas. “We need to—”
A bomb blast shook the house, plaster dust raining down, windowpanes rattling in their casements, glass shields trembling in the sconces. Everyone flinched and Vervane, the older Capidaran woman, cried out, clapping her hands to her ears. Balin looked around hopefully, as if she expected the house to collapse. But the old building stayed upright. Tremaine looked around for a window to see how close the hit had been. Before she could take two steps for the stairs, another blast hit. She staggered, the vibrations making her teeth ache.
“God, what are they doing?” Gerard muttered, heading for the window with Nicholas.
Tremaine made it to the stair railing, looking out the window above the front door. In the haze of smoke she saw that the houses across the street were rubble.
Another bomb blast shook the house and she gripped the railing. How many people had died in the past minute?
As the sound faded, Nicholas said quietly, “They’ve realized they can’t get past our wards.”
“So they’re just bombing the rest of the street?” Tremaine gestured in frustrated rage. She looked at Gerard. “Can you stop them?”
He shook his head slowly, his eyes not leaving the devastation. “Not with this sphere. I can’t hold our wards and strip theirs simultaneously. If Arisilde was here—”
“If Arisilde was here, Niles wouldn’t have gotten the
Ravenna
out in time,” Tremaine told him, frustrated.
“Quite possibly.” Gerard looked at Nicholas, grimacing. “The Gardier must think Arisilde is with us. They won’t stop until they find him.”
“They’ll bomb this neighborhood to the ground around us.” Nicholas nodded absently, eyes distant as he thought it over. Tremaine bit the inside of her lip to keep from snapping at him. The worse the situation, the calmer Nicholas seemed to get, and it drove her mad.
Gerard lifted his brows suddenly. “We’ll have to abandon the house, drop the wards, let them take it.” He smiled thinly. “We’ll go through the circle.”
Tremaine blinked.
Of course.
The only value in the house was the sphere and the circle itself, and Gerard and Giaren had already taken enough notes on it to be able to re-create it anywhere. They could wait out the attack in the cave Ilias and Gerard had found, then return. She turned to Ilias and Giliead, waiting tensely behind her. “We’re going through the circle—get anything we might need.”
They were both moving before the words were all the way out, Ilias bolting for the stairs and Giliead shouting for Cletia and Cimarus. Tremaine turned back as Nicholas said, “Yes, it’s the only thing we can do. I’ll stay here and destroy the circle.”
“What?” Tremaine’s brows drew together, but a moment later, she saw it too. “Because the Gardier could follow us through.”
Gerard’s worried gaze never left Nicholas’s face. “At the very least, they would be able to copy the new circle’s symbols. We can’t allow that.”
Nicholas was nodding. “I recommend you wait there until Niles can re-create the new circle and send you word that the attack is over.” He lifted a brow in ironic comment. “Really, Gerard, don’t look so dramatic. I am planning on leaving the house before it’s blown to bits.”
Gerard swore, passing a hand over his face. “I realize that.”
Ilias pounded back down the stairs, his pack and Tremaine’s bag slung over his shoulder with his sword and one of the wooden cases the Syprians stored their weapons in under his arm. Giliead appeared with Cletia in tow, carrying their packs and weapons and the other cases. Cimarus came up the stairs from below, taking the packs Cletia passed over to him. Tremaine smacked herself in the forehead, knowing she should have been moving already. She started for the stairs. “Gerard, do you have any notes or books here, anything you need?”
He looked around, distracted. “Yes, in my case downstairs.”
Nicholas took the pistol from her, moving to cover Balin while Tremaine hurried downstairs. She found Gerard’s case on the table in the salon and as she grabbed it up another bomb blast reverberated down the street. Her jaw ached from gritting her teeth and she tried not to imagine the faces of the people she saw on this street, the women and children living in the houses, the people who worked in the shops. Remembering that Ilias had said it was cold in the other world, she grabbed Gerard’s overcoat from the bench in the hallway, slid to a halt and caught up the coats that must belong to the Capidarans.
As she reached the top of the stairs Giliead was carrying the wounded man, wrapped in a blanket, into the ballroom, with Meretrisa and Vervane following uncertainly.
Tremaine went after them but stopped in the doorway, startled by the sight of the damage. The conservatory windows weren’t just broken, the whole back section of the room was charred and blasted. A shoal of broken wood and plaster chunks had fetched up against an invisible barrier where a ward had stopped the debris from flying across the room. The air smelled heavily of smoke and sulfur.
Nicholas was covering Balin with Tremaine’s pistol and Gerard was herding the others into the circle. Cletia looked stoic and Cimarus nervous, an attitude also shared by the two Capidaran women. Ilias just looked impatient and Giliead grim. Gerard told Nicholas, “The wards will linger a short time after we go, so you’ll have a few moments.”
Nicholas nodded, and as Tremaine dumped the case and her armload of coats inside the circle, he passed the gun back to her. “Wait a moment,” he added, and pulled a handful of ammunition out of his coat pocket, dropping it into hers.
“Thanks.” She threw him a look. He lifted a brow at her and she couldn’t think of anything to say. She jerked her chin at Balin, telling her in the Aelin language, “Get over there.”
She shook her head stubbornly. “I won’t go.”
Another blast sounded nearby, close enough to rattle the sconces and remaining windows, and cause a shower of plaster dust.
Nicholas moved before Tremaine could, catching the woman by the arm and propelling her into the circle. Tremaine hurried after, grabbing Balin by the collar and shoving the pistol into her side.
Nicholas stepped back. Gerard looked up at him, saying, “Good luck.”
Nicholas just smiled. It was a particularly evil smile, and didn’t promise well for the Gardier.
Bastard,
Tremaine thought.
He enjoys this
kind of thing.
Somebody had to, she supposed. As Gerard whispered to the sphere she held her breath and felt the rush of vertigo, then the world turned dark.
F
lorian hurried down the alley and paused as she reached the street behind the old house, relieved to see its distinctive roofline over the shorter town homes surrounding it.
Nearly there,
she told herself.
See, I told you you could do this.
The air had been heavy with smoke the whole way and it was much worse here; her lungs were starting to ache from coughing. The harbor launch she had ridden in from the
Ravenna
had just reached the dock when the bombing started. The Port Authority and the government buildings she was familiar with all seemed to be targets, which only made sense. As a victim of many Vienne bombings, she had decided to try what the Siege Aid people always told you never to do: to make her way across town back to the house.
Navigating rubble-blocked streets and dodging fire brigades, floods from broken water mains, patrols of Capidaran constables and soldiers as well as panicked civilians had been harder than she had thought. But the launch pilot had said the
Ravenna
had escaped and she had seen an airship crash into the harbor, and another go down near the Port Authority, so she told herself the attack couldn’t last much longer.
Florian stepped out onto the walk, getting a better view of the empty street, and halted in shock. Half the buildings were piles of smoking rubble, leaving their house and a few of the town homes on either side standing like an isolated island. “Oh, no,” she murmured, sickened by the sight.
They knew, the Gardier knew we were there.
They had to be looking for Arisilde.
She scanned the overcast sky hastily, but there were no airships in sight. She knew that only meant they might be hiding up in the clouds. Or that the Gardier had landed to attack the house from the ground. She whispered the words of her favorite concealment charm. It made her feel a little better, though not much.
Gritting her teeth, Florian darted across the street toward one of the few houses left standing, reaching the shelter of its set of stairs. She could smell gas and groaned under her breath; a broken gas main was all this situation needed.
Florian hesitated, knowing she was being stupid, but she had to see if the others were in the house, if they were trapped or… She started forward, hugging the side of this building, the rough texture of the bricks scratching at her clothes, and reached the edge of an alley. Overgrown grass came up through cracks in the pavement but it was free of garbage or rubble. She hurried down it, grateful for the shadows that hid her from above, nervous at how trapped it made her feel. This charm didn’t exactly have a great record of success at fooling Gardier crystals or the smaller belt devices.