The Gate of Gods (Fall of the Ile-Rien) (16 page)

Lost in thought, Tremaine became aware that Ilias was standing at her side, trying to hand her a grubby green-stripey object covered with dirt and dangling bulbous roots. “What? No.” She fended it off with an elbow. “What is that?”

“A sava. You don’t have those?” He brushed off some dirt and took a bite. It made a crunching noise, like a very ripe apple. As Tremaine eyed it skeptically, he added, “They grow all through these kinds of woods.” Still chewing, he frowned at the wall. “Why is that here? It doesn’t look like the rest of the room.”

“I don’t know.” She gestured helplessly. “Nothing makes sense.”

He lifted an ironic brow. “You just noticed that?”

“A little help here,” Giliead grumbled from the opening as he tossed in an armload of fallen branches and kindling, and Tremaine, distracted by the idea of a fire and hot food, mentally put the wall aside for the moment.

W
hile Ilias helped Giliead carry up several loads of wood, the others used the first bundle to get a fire started in the raised hearth in the main room. On the second trip Ilias saw that Cletia had unloaded the contents of her pack, producing a small cooking pot, a folded-up waterskin, some dried herbs rolled up in a leather pouch and what was left of her packet of boiling grain, which was almost enough for him to be glad she was here. Almost.

After they had brought up enough firewood, Ilias went back outside to cut some fresh branches, hauled them back up and used some leather cord from Giliead’s pack to make a windscreen for the door into the cliff chamber. It took him a while to make it both easily movable and heavy enough to block the strong wind, but after it was done he wandered back into the main room, shaking pine needles out of his hair and clothes, to find the place seemed almost homey now.

The fire had nicely warmed the chill stone room and from the smell someone had made tea. Cletia was tending the fire now and keeping an eye on the Gardier woman Balin, and Cimarus had gone to watch the outer entrance. The Capidaran women were asleep; not surprising, as they had been up most of the night watching over the still-unconscious wounded man. Several of the sava had been washed and peeled and were now cooking in the coals. His stomach rumbled at the smell, reminding him he hadn’t eaten since this morning. Which had been late last night, here. Realizing it was afternoon now, which meant it was deep into the night back in Capidara, he went back out to the cliff chamber, shifting the screen aside to pass through the door.

Tremaine, Giliead and Gerard were all seated on the floor, staring at the curse circle with varying degrees of consternation. “So it’s been too long,” Ilias said, uneasily considering the consequences.

Tremaine pushed to her feet, throwing an arm in the air. “It seems like a long time to us, because we’ve just been sitting around staring at it. Niles had to redraw the circle somewhere else from your notes—”

Gerard removed the glass pieces over his eyes to wipe his forehead with his sleeve. “My notes were very clear.” He sounded testy about it. “It shouldn’t take as long as it did to draw it for the first time. And a Gardier bombing has never lasted this long. With the spheres allowing an active resistance—” He stopped, shaking his head.

“We can go back to see what’s happened,” Giliead suggested quietly. “Or one of us can.”

Ilias eyed him. It was true one of them would have to go, but he didn’t want Giliead to volunteer. When they had been captured near the Gardier city, the wizard with the crystal stuck in his head had seemed far too interested in Giliead. They knew now that the Gardier had some way to take wizards out of their bodies and put them in their crystals, that they had done that with Rienish wizards they had captured, that Arisilde might have lost his body through the same process. If the Gardier thought a Chosen Vessel was the same thing as a wizard, they might have meant to try it with Giliead. Ilias would just rather not give them the chance.

“That sounds like a very bad idea,” Tremaine said, unconsciously echoing his thought. “If they haven’t come after us, there’s a good reason.”

Gerard paced away a few steps, thinking it over. “If Niles and Kressein were both killed. If Nicholas didn’t make it—” He threw a look at Tremaine but her expression didn’t change. Ilias knew she would never betray herself that way, not even in front of her family. “There may be no one who knows where we went.” He took a deep breath. “Even if Florian survived, it may not occur to her that we fled through the gate.”

Tremaine shook her head, frowning at the carved dome over their heads. “Niles, Kressein, Florian and Nicholas? Especially since we saw the
Ravenna
go through a gate. We might as well say the whole city’s in ruins and everybody’s dead.”

Gerard stared at her in exasperation. “Tremaine, how many sides of this discussion are you on?”

She gestured erratically. “I’m just being the… devil’s advocate. I don’t know.” She scratched her head, looking at the circle of symbols. “And we know we can’t make a regular circle, because that would just take us to Kathbad and we know we don’t want to go there.”

Ilias nodded. He had been through enough curse circles by now to get the hang of it. “Besides, we’re high up in the mountains. If we make the regular curse circle here, we could come out up in the air in the other place.”

Gerard held up a hand for silence, saying carefully, “I’m aware of the difficulties of the situation.” He rubbed his forehead, his frustration showing. “We’ll have to try to go back through this circle.”

Giliead shook his head, pushing to his feet. “We’re all tired. We need to eat and sleep first. And if the worst did happen and the city’s been destroyed, then it won’t hurt to wait a little longer.”

Tremaine watched Gerard thoughtfully. “He’s right.” Ilias knew it was mostly Gerard Giliead was thinking of. The wizard hadn’t had any sleep in the last two days, and not much in the way of real meals. Gerard’s eyes were hollow and he looked more exhausted than he had since the
Ravenna
had reached port.

Maybe Gerard realized it too. He gave in with a sigh. “Yes. Yes, he’s right. We’ll wait a little longer. At least it’s giving me time to work on the problem of trying to get into Lodun.”

F
lorian sat on the deck, rubbing her arms through her rumpled sweater.
I feel like I just did this,
she thought tiredly. They were in one of the
Ravenna
’s Second Class lounges, and the electric lights were too bright for her tired eyes. Blackout cloth had been tacked into the fine wood veneer on the walls to stretch across windows that looked out onto the open deck. The blue and gold carpets had been rolled up and the couches, chairs and cocktail tables pushed back to the walls to clear the tile floor so that Niles could draw the symbols of the new circle.

He had been at it for some time now, the faint rasp of paper as he consulted his notes the only sound. Arisilde’s sphere sat nearby on the floor, clicking occasionally as Niles drew the symbols.

Florian yawned. Her clothes still stank of smoke from the fires in the city and she longed to take a hot bath and collapse in one of the cabins, but she wanted to see the others back safe first. And Niles had needed her to confirm his reading of some of Gerard’s notes, and later to help keep him awake and check his work. After all his efforts during the battle, he was still deeply exhausted. Giaren, who had made forays throughout the evening to the kitchens to obtain coffee and rolls, was sitting in an armchair on the far side of the circle, half-asleep himself. He had reported earlier that a detachment of Capidaran troops was coming aboard the
Ravenna
as planned, that Colonel Averi and Captain Marais had received word that the
Ravenna
could leave as soon as the supplies meant for the Rienish forces in Parscia were loaded, but that there was some problem that Averi was angry about. One of the officers had said he thought that the Capidarans had cut the number of troops they had promised at the last moment. In the quiet of this lounge at the ship’s stern, it all seemed very far away.

The
Queen Falaise,
headed directly through the staging world for Parscia, had already left and Florian had watched from the Promenade deck as it had steamed out of the harbor, saluting the
Ravenna
with a blast of its horn as it passed. Ander was aboard, along with some of the other Rienish officers she had gotten to know here. With two Aderassi sorcerers and their newly made spheres, the
Falaise
had every chance of making the crossing safely and running the blockade to reach Parcia. That was what Florian kept telling herself, anyway.

Florian jerked awake as Niles sat back on his heels with a sharp intake of breath, rubbing his eyes. “That’s it.”

“That’s it?” Florian straightened up. “We can get them back now?”

Niles got to his feet with a groan, one hand on the small of his back. “Yes. Just give me a moment.” Giaren hurriedly stood, pouring a cup of coffee from the tray and carrying it over to Niles, who took it with a gasp of gratitude.

Florian pushed to her feet. “I can do it, if you’re too tired. I mean, you must be too tired.”

Wincing at the taste of the coffee, he glanced at her. “Are you certain? You haven’t used this particular circle before.”

“No, but I’ve done the other one, and I’ll have… help.” She gestured at the sphere. It clicked back at her, a blue light flickering briefly from inside. “He’s done it before.”

Niles hesitated but a voice from the furniture crowded against the far wall said, “She’s right.” Florian looked, startled, to see Nicholas sitting up from where he had been lying out of sight on one of the couches. He climbed over a chair, his black coat making him a rather graphic figure against the softer golds and creams of the upholstery. He reached the floor, shaking out his coat. “From what I understand, with Arisilde’s help, I could attempt it as well.”

Florian turned back to Niles, glad for the support. “Yes, so there’s no need for you to—”

“Yes, yes.” Niles waved her to silence. “Go ahead. But be sure to let the sphere set the parameters for you.”

“I know.” Florian hurried to grab the sphere before he changed his mind or recalled what had happened the first time she had tried to use the sphere by herself. It clunked as she stepped into the circle. Shaking her hair back, she looked down at its tarnished surface.

“It’s different from working with an inert device,” Niles continued, carrying his coffee over to a chair and easing himself down into it as if his back still pained him. “Just give it a prompt with the first few phrases of the adjuration and let it do the rest.”

“Right.” Florian nodded firmly. She tightened her grip on the sphere and began the adjuration.

A blue light sparked through the openings in the metal, but nothing happened. Florian frowned, and tried again. And again. She looked up, frustrated, to see Niles, Nicholas and Giaren watching her expectantly.
Damn it, why does this have to happen now?
she thought in despair. Yet another chance to show that she was useful, ruined. But maybe she was more exhausted than she thought, and that was why Arisilde wasn’t working for her. Maybe she had simply messed up the spell so badly even he couldn’t fix it for her. “Niles, I’m doing something wrong. The sphere isn’t working for me.”

Brow furrowed, Niles set his cup aside, getting to his feet. “That’s odd. Usually it’s a struggle to keep it from interfering.” He joined her in the circle, taking the sphere and gazing down into it, his face going blank from concentration.

Florian waited, tensed in expectation of the sudden vertigo the gate spell caused, the sudden transformation into a new place. But there was nothing. The lounge remained the same, the electrics too bright, the furniture disordered.

Niles lifted his head, his expression incredulous and almost angry. “Something’s wrong.”

T
remaine was more conscious of the waiting now, and she hadn’t any way to occupy herself. At least Gerard had been persuaded to lie down and try to sleep instead of poring over his notes trying to figure out a way into Lodun. Ilias and Giliead had gone foraging in the forest again, coming back with fish from the stream and a collection of nuts and berries. She had gone out with them earlier to explore the area around the bluff thoroughly, and though they had found more jumbled stone ruins and more signs that this had been some sort of ancient settlement, they had found no more tokens left by Arisilde. And there wasn’t much of anything else left to find, just tumbled pillars, the remains of old foundations, scattered blocks from fallen walls. There was also no sign of current occupation, no trace of any other human inhabitants nearby. Tremaine was reduced to pacing the corridor.

The only good point in all this that she could see was that Ilias and Giliead had already benefited from being out of Capistown. After spending the morning out in the bright sun and brisk wind, Ilias had his color back and looked healthy again. Giliead was actually talking to people other than Ilias and hadn’t lost his temper once.

The meal when it was ready was a welcome distraction. Cooked over the fire, the fish were good even without any kind of seasoning, and the sava turned out to taste a little like sweet melon once it was baked. “It’s good country,” Giliead said, spearing a piece of fish out of the coals for Cletia. With no plates, everyone was eating out of their hands. In a moment of generosity, Tremaine had even agreed to let Cletia give Balin a portion. “I’d hate to winter here, though.”

“It’s not winter now?” Tremaine asked him, only partly kidding. He lifted a brow at her.

Using his knife to cut up another sava, Ilias prodded her with his boot to tell her he didn’t think she was funny. “We’d need half the year to lay in supplies,” he added. “Without a good grain harvest, it wouldn’t be much fun even then.”