The Wizard Hunters (59 page)

Nearby some of Ander’s men had set up the small portable wireless brought with the other supplies from Ile-Rien. Earlier, Deric had climbed on top of the taller stone building to string up the wire that worked as an antenna. If the
Ravenna
managed to successfully cross through the portal, she would signal them, but so far they had heard nothing but dead air. The wounded Arites, his arm in a sling to keep him from moving his injured shoulder, had been pressed into service as a radio operator. He sat cross-legged in front of the little device, studying it with wary curiosity.

The freed prisoners roamed over the plaza, some gathered in groups talking excitedly, others sitting alone or staring dully into the distance. They came mainly from the Southern Seas, from Maiuta, Khiuai, the other islands, though there were people of all nationalities mixed in. There were a number of Parscians and citizens of the Low Countries who could speak Rienish well and translate for the others. They hadn’t seen the sun since they had been brought to the Gardier base and even the misty glow through the island’s fog must have been a relief. Florian and Dyani were moving among them, calming them, looking for wounded, offering water.

There were also eleven Gardier prisoners, captured by a force led by Halian and Ander. Their hands bound with their own chains, they sat in a little group, guarded by Basimi and a group of freed slaves. Their faces were closed and still; it was hard to tell how they were taking their captivity. Only one seemed to be an officer.

Tremaine wasn’t keen on having them here. After discovering Arisilde’s fate, she would have rather left them underground for the howlers and grend to find. Or just shot them.

Before she and Gerard had left the caves, Ilias and a few others had gone back to look for Rulan, but he hadn’t been in the portal chamber. They had found howlers feeding on a body that might have been his in one of the other tunnels, but they couldn’t be sure.

“I don’t want to ask it if it’s Arisilde,” Gerard said, eyeing the sphere almost warily. “This explains so much. Its ability to construct new spells of incredible complexity, to initiate attacks.” He shook his head slowly. “It must be a living hell. The Gardier have certainly proved themselves to be callous in the extreme of human life, but to use this as the entire basis for their magical craft...”

Tremaine didn’t want to talk about it, though she could see why Gerard was unwillingly fascinated by the subject. It was undoubtedly what the Gardier would have done to him eventually. There was no telling how many captured sorcerers from Ile-Rien, Adera, Parscia and everywhere else had already shared that fate. “I don’t know. I mean, yes, I’m sure it’s horrible for the Gardier sorcerers, especially, you know, right when they put them in the crystal. But I don’t think Arisilde remembers being a person.” At least she hoped he didn’t. She didn’t want to think about the gentle, kind man she had known trapped in a metal prison. “If he did, wouldn’t he have tried to communicate with us, warn us about what he found here?” She ran a hand through her hair, grimacing at the gritty feel of the sand and dirt in it. “I think he’s been asleep and using the sphere just started to gradually wake him up.”

“Almost asleep.” Gerard glanced at her. “It was undoubtedly his influence that allowed events from this world to appear in your writing.”

Tremaine shook her head. There were still so many things she didn’t understand. “But how did he know things about Ilias and Giliead? They never met him.”

“Arisilde was—is?—an extraordinarily powerful sorcerer,” Gerard said slowly. “He obviously maintained some sort of connection with this world, even from a sphere locked in a dusty cabinet at Coldcourt. The Syprian god did greet him rather readily, if you remember. And the god, whether it’s an elemental or a spirit that was at one time human, would know about the events you described, from communicating with Giliead.” Gerard winced, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “I can’t think what it must be like. Trapped inside a metal prison, drifting in and out of awareness, trying, perhaps unconsciously, to reach your mind. It’s a wonder you didn’t receive any more impressions from him. Anything worse, I mean.”

It hit Tremaine like a punch in the stomach. “He was giving up.” She stared at nothing. The images that had come to her, working their way into her play and the smattering of magazine stories, that had been the attempts to communicate. But she hadn’t responded and the sphere had been left in the cabinet, untouched. Arisilde, left without hope in whatever part of his consciousness that was still functioning, had started to die.

And you wanted to die
. Her feelings of overwhelming resignation, of being trapped, useless, hopeless. It wasn’t all him. She had been despondent enough on her own, probably with a borderline case of shell shock. That probably hadn’t helped either, when the only connection Arisilde had had was with someone who just fed his own despair.

“This is all speculation,” Gerard was saying, “and it doesn’t tell us what happened to your father.” He looked at her gravely. “Nicholas could still be alive. He may have sent Arisilde back for help and to warn us about the Gardier. But something happened during the spell and Arisilde ended up in the sphere at Coldcourt.”

Tremaine swallowed in a dry throat. She didn’t want to talk about this to Gerard yet. Maybe later, when she was sure. She looked out at the mist hanging above the sea, trying to focus on the here and now. Across the plaza, Florian and Dyani were trying to convince a woman with a stunned expression to drink some water. “Or the Gardier captured them, killed Nicholas and tried to make Arisilde ... Tried to put him into one of their crystals. And Arisilde escaped. The hard way.”

Gerard pressed his lips together and shook his head. “Why didn’t he warn you about Rulan?”

“Maybe he didn’t know how.” Tremaine lifted her brows as another thought occurred. “Or maybe Arisilde wanted to see Gervas. One last time.”
I know I would’ve done that, but would Arisilde
?

As Gerard mulled that over, Ander, Halian and Gyan, with the other Syprians and Rienish, emerged from the stone building that concealed the surface shaft. The Syprians stopped to douse their torches and Ander came wearily toward Tremaine and Gerard. He rested one foot on the block, leaning on his knee. “Anything on the wireless?”

Gerard shook his head. “Nothing yet.”

“Why don’t you sit down before you fall down?” Tremaine told Ander. Before they had evacuated the caves, she and Ander had taken the buoy back out through the passage to the little cove they had landed in. The sphere had been able to send the buoy back through the portal from there, so at least the
Ravenna
had still been intact and roughly where she was supposed to be at that point. They had all expected the ship to come through immediately, but that had been hours ago.

He smiled, lifting his brows. “Why, Tremaine, it’s as if you care.”

“Put the accent on the ‘as if.’ ” She saw Gerard staring at her and explained, “Ander and I are developing a new relationship where we’re completely honest with each other.”

“I see.” Gerard’s glance at her was dry. “That should make the time just speed by.”

Ilias and Giliead came out of the stone building, both dragging along something wrapped up in a tarp. Knowing Syprian reluctance to touch anything that had belonged to the Gardier, Tremaine stared in surprise. She couldn’t think what they had found down there that they actually wanted to keep.

They dumped it on the pavement and stepped back, staring down at it bleakly.
Not that they look like it’s something they want to keep
, she thought.

Ander frowned down at it and Tremaine asked, “What’s that?”

Ilias rubbed his eyes. “You don’t want to know.”

Giliead, more literal-minded, said, “It’s Ixion.”

Now everyone stared at the bundle. Tremaine stood up and approached it carefully. She had never laid eyes on Ixion and was tempted to ask them to open it so she could take a look. Deciding reluctantly that that might be seen as inappropriate under the circumstances, she looked up at Giliead, asking, “You think he might be growing another body somewhere?”

Giliead nodded, pressing his lips together.

Halian let out a breath. “I know your reasons, but what are we going to do with it?”

Gerard stepped up beside Tremaine, eyeing the bundle grimly. “I can cast a ward around it, that’s a start.” He glanced back at the sphere and shook his head slightly. “I should say, we can cast a ward around it.”

A crackle from the radio interrupted. “It sings!” Arites yelped.

T
he singing Arites had heard was the rapid beeps and clicks of a Rienish code signal. The transmission was garbled, perhaps from the weather, perhaps from the lingering remnants of the etheric disturbances around the island, but it was in the newest military code. After their experience with Dommen, Tremaine didn’t find that terribly reassuring.

Once it was translated into words, the message on the radio had briefly explained the delay, saying that a call for evacuation assistance had been received from Chaire and the
Ravenna
had paused to pick up more passengers. In response Ander had tapped out a series of instructions over the wireless to meet them at the cove the Syprians called Dead Tree Point. They couldn’t reach the harbor the Gardier had used without going back through the caves, and Halian had said that was the best alternate spot for a boat to come in.

With Ander in charge at the plaza and as strong a ward as Gerard and the sphere could cast around Ixion’s body, Tremaine, Gerard, Ilias and Giliead made their way down the canal to Dead Tree Point. Florian had followed them to the edge of the canal, watching them anxiously. They had left the sphere with her, just in case.

Though no one was willing to say out loud that this might be a trap, they had discussed alternate plans; if this wasn’t the
Ravenna
, they still needed a way off the island or a way to summon help from Cineth. Ander and some of the others had raided the Gardier stores for rations, but food and clean water were going to be an issue soon. The best alternate solution was to risk the caves again and make for the Gardier harbor and the transport ship docked there. If the few surviving Gardier hadn’t already taken it for their escape.

If this wasn’t the
Ravenna
, Tremaine thought they were probably all dead.

They reached the cove late in the afternoon and the gray clouds overhead were beginning to darken with the threat of rain. Walking out onto the bluff where there was a good view of the cove below and the gray-green sea past the sheltering rocks, Tremaine found herself missing the
Swift
. She wondered if Ilias and Giliead felt the same. She shielded her eyes from the watery glare, staring into the mist that lay across the waves like a cotton wool blanket. “I don’t see anything.”

Gerard lowered the field glasses, his brow furrowed with anxiety. “But the mist is very thick out there and with the
Ravenna’s
camouflage, she might fade into it.”

Giliead frowned in concentration. “I hear something.”

After a moment Tremaine heard it too. Her stomach jittered and she found herself wanting to bounce nervously on her heels. “That’s an engine.”

Squinting, Ilias pointed. “There, it’s a boat.”

Gerard lifted the glasses again, then lowered them with a relieved smile. “It’s one of the
Ravenna’s
launches. I can see Niles in the prow.”

In another few moments they could all see the small boat chugging toward them, slowing as it drew near the cove. Tremaine couldn’t see Niles without the field glasses, but she could see that the man at the wheel, and the others behind him, wore dark blue Rienish navy uniforms. Then the clouds parted, sunlight temporarily thinning the mist just long enough for them to glimpse in the distance the distinctive silhouette of the enormous hull and the three stacks. The
Ravenna
was hanging back offshore at the edge of the deep water.

Giliead stepped back with a startled curse. He turned a shocked expression to Ilias, who said pointedly, “I told you. She’s as big as a mountain.”

“Now we can get off this damn island,” Gerard breathed fervently, turning for the trail that led down to the little beach.

Tremaine folded her arms, smiling. “That’s right.”
Now we can go after the Gardier
.

MARTHA WELLS was born in Fort Worth, Texas, and received her B.A. in anthropology from Texas A & M University. She is the author of four previous novels:
The Element of Fire, City of Bones, The Death of the Necromancer
, which was nominated for a Nebula Award, and
Wheel of the Infinite
. She lives with her husband in College Station, Texas. You can visit her website at
www.marthawells.com
.