The Gate of Gods (Fall of the Ile-Rien) Read online

Cletia nodded. “We were told the Ravenna would go from this world to Cineth, then back again to the Ile-Rien land.”

  “The second part isn’t quite that easy.” The plan to try to use a curse gate to get into the city where the other Rienish wizards were under siege was all well and good, but Gerard still didn’t know the right symbols to make the curse circle go where they wanted it to.

  She was watching him thoughtfully, frowning a little, but he had known Cletia since she was a child and seldom seen her do anything but frown. Then she said, “Will you go with them?”

  Giliead hesitated, both from surprise that she had bothered to ask and the fact that he had no idea how to answer that question. Despite what had happened with Ixion, he didn’t want to abandon this new part of their family at this dangerous time, and he knew Ilias didn’t either. And somebody had to be there when Ixion inevitably turned on the Rienish and the Capidarans. But that wasn’t a decision he was free to make at the moment. “It depends on what happens in Cineth.”

  She took a deep breath. “I thought—” The not-so-distant boom of thunder interrupted her and she glanced toward the little round window that lit the stairwell, startled. “That was close.”

  His head turned toward the circle of grimy glass, Giliead felt a cold chill walk up his back. There had been no flash of lightning. In the ballroom, Gerard had been speaking but all the voices abruptly stilled. The thunder crashed again, and this time Giliead knew it for what it was.

  He turned to the ballroom, almost colliding with Gerard in the doorway. The frozen expression on the wizard’s face would have told Giliead all he needed to know if he hadn’t already guessed. Gerard said, “It’s the Gardier. They’re bombing the city.”

  Tremaine was on the stairway down to the foyer when Ilias caught up with her. He didn’t say anything, for which she was grateful. She wasn’t sure what he thought; she knew that as the nominal head of a Syprian household she was doing a lousy job.

  They crossed the foyer and reached the outer doors, the cold gray day greeting her as she stepped out on the walk. It had rained lightly while they were inside, making the paving slick and treacherous and giving the brownstone office buildings across the way a damp gloss. She made it two steps down the road before Ilias’s lack of comment got to her and she turned to him and demanded, “Well?”

  He shrugged, looking annoyed. “He does that whenever he talks to you.”

  Tremaine was already starting to regret her outburst. What was the point, anyway? She shook her head, feeling tired of it all. “He just wants me to be safe.”

  Ilias stopped abruptly, startling the businessmen who had been walking behind them into hurriedly veering around. Exasperated, he said, “I want you to be safe. Gil wants you to be safe. Florian wants you to be safe. Gerard, your father, Averi the warleader, they all want you to be safe. When did any of us say it to you in a way that made you seem like a fool?” He gestured helplessly, upset and frustrated. “You said you let him stay around because you hate yourself. That’s true. You want him to punish you.” He took a deep breath, maybe afraid he had said too much. He finished a little lamely, “And you shouldn’t do that.”

  She stared at him, mouth open, then managed to shut it and look away.“I…”

  Ilias grabbed her arm. Startled, she saw he was looking up, his expression aghast, and followed his gaze.

  Stark against the gray clouds was the giant black shape of a Gardier airship. Tremaine stared for a long heartbeat, trying not to believe her eyes. The jagged ridge along the back that led down to the cluster of knife-edged tail fins, the black swell of the balloon, the control cabin tucked up under it. It’s our airship, she tried to tell herself. The one they had captured at such high cost in the Gardier world. It isn’t our airship, common sense told her a moment later. The cabin was smaller, without the second level; it was one of the older models. Then sound and motion returned and she pointed, yelling a strangled warning to the others on the street as Ilias hauled her toward the shelter of a doorway.

  The first explosion crashed as Tremaine slammed back into the closed door, Ilias shielding her with his body. Tremaine knotted her hands in his coat, waiting for flying debris; their shelter was only a step and a brick archway, fully exposed to the street. But though she could hear screams and shouts there was no whoosh of fire and shrapnel.

  Her brain ground into gear and she stood on tiptoe, looking over Ilias’s shoulder to see smoke rising above the buildings across the street. It hit two— Three streets away, she realized, judging it with senses honed in the bombings of Vienne. The Capidaran style of public building wasn’t as elaborate as the Rienish and the Gardier might have trouble picking out the Port Authority from the air. She knew they were aiming for it. If Gardier spies in Capidara had scouted the targets for this force, they would be aiming for the refugee hostel, the Port Authority, the Magistrates’ Court, the Ministry, anywhere the new spheres might be.

  Another booming crash, and another, echoing from behind them…. “The harbor,” she breathed. The Ravenna. “Oh no.” She pounded Ilias’s shoulder and he stepped back. Keeping hold of his sleeve she pushed out of their inadequate shelter and ran down the walk back toward the Port Authority. Instinct said to take the opposite direction, away from a potential target, but the side street was the shortest path to the harbor front.

  People were running, screaming, motorcars speeding past as smoke from the bomb bursts belched into the sky. A siren belatedly started to howl as Tremaine reached the corner and ran toward the harbor. She stopped at the end of the short side street, where it opened onto a raised promenade that ran alongside the waterfront. Ilias jolted to a halt beside her.

  The view opened up from here into the curve of Capistown’s harbor, framed by the mountains that bordered the town on the left and the long arm of land that reached out into the bay on the right. Over the masts of the small fishing boats and pleasure craft that were docked along here, she could see the larger ships that lay farther out at anchor. One of them was the Ravenna.

  The great liner, painted gray for camouflage in the open sea, dwarfed the military ships and the smaller Queen Falaise moored nearby. The abstract outline of an eye was still visible on this side of her prow, painted there to make her more acceptable to the Syprians when she had been docked outside Cineth harbor. There were three huge smokestacks on the topmost deck, and Tremaine couldn’t see any sign of steam from even one. “Go, go, go,” she muttered. “What are you waiting for?”

  Then a black airship blinked into existence above the liner.

  Tremaine felt her gorge rise. “Oh, God.” This can’t be happening. She couldn’t remember who was on the ship, Niles and Gyan for certain, maybe Kias and Calit…. She saw the dark shapes fall from the airship and held her breath.

  The moment stretched forever, long enough for her heart to start beating again. The bombs must have missed.

  Then fire blossomed up from the liner’s upper decks and the ship shuddered, heeling sideways as it started to vanish under the surface. Tremaine made a strangled noise in her throat.

  “No.” Ilias shook his head, his expression baffled. “There’s something— She’s not going down like— And there’s no sound!” Then he caught her arm, pointing urgently. “Look at the water.”

  “What?” Tremaine shook her head, sick.

  “There’s a bow wave, over there.” He was bouncing on his toes in anxiety, pointing toward a churning V of white froth midway across the harbor.

  Tremaine squinted. It did look like a bow wave. A large one just like a giant liner should produce. What the hell…. The water the Ravennawas sinking into was flat, undisturbed. “God, you’re right!” She pounded Ilias on the shoulder, bouncing up and down herself. Now that she knew what to look for she could see a haze of steam in the air far above the apparently shipless bow wave. “It’s an illusion.” That explained the hesitation after the bombs dropped; the sorcerer controlling the illusion had had to rapidly adjust it to make it look as if the
y had struck a solid target. It was Niles, of course. It’s sneaky and subtle, Tremaine thought, jubilant. It had Niles written all over it.

  Distant pops sounded as a Capidaran battery on the far side of the harbor fired at the airship. Its wards deflecting the shots, the airship dropped more bombs. But the Ravenna illusion wavered; Tremaine could see water through it now, the tremendous splash as the bombs hit the water, a cloud of rapidly vanishing fire and smoke. She looked again at the empty bow wave to see the real Ravenna’s stern shimmer into existence as the illusion cloaking it dropped away.

  The Gardier aboard the airship must have realized their mistake as the illusory vessel beneath them faded. The airship turned, angling toward its real target. But fiery orange lines crept over the black surface of the balloon, flowing over it like liquid light; Tremaine knew it was the gas inside the hydrogen cells, ignited by a sphere. “Niles can’t take much more,” she said, thinking aloud. “Those two illusions— some of that he could do in advance but—”

  The real Ravenna released another cloud of steam, then disappeared, turbulent waves radiating out from the spot it had just occupied. Niles had made a world-gate for the ship, probably right before he collapsed. Ilias swore, startled. “It’s different when you see it from outside,” he said under his breath. He had gone through world-gates several times but Tremaine didn’t think he had ever seen the Ravenna perform this feat from a distance.

  She nodded rapidly. All the boats along the dock rocked madly as the waves from the ship’s abrupt disappearance reached them. “Let’s hope there was nothing waiting for them on the other side.” Then another bomb burst from inland made her reflexively cover her head.

  Ilias pulled her back to the shadow of the warehouse behind them, saying, “We’ve got to get out of here.”

  “Yes, we have to get back to the— Shit.” Seeing the Ravenna escape seemed to have freed her stunned thought processes. She went cold with dread, realizing what the airship’s exact targeting of the Ravenna meant. “They knew exactly where she was. They gated right on top of her. Or what they thought was her.”

  Ilias nodded, flinching as another explosion sounded. Tremaine could smell smoke on the wind now. He said, “Right, there’s spies here too.”

  She turned back to the side street, making for the main road again despite the danger. “We have to get to the house. The Gardier will be heading there, that’s what all this is for.” No one had known about the house and the experiment with Arisilde’s sphere except themselves, until this morning when Gerard and Ander had informed the Capidarans. The timing of the attack might be coincidence, but Tremaine didn’t much believe in coincidence anymore.

  She was halfway down the side street when she heard the distinctive whoosh-thump of a falling bomb. She hit the cracked pavement, instinctively covering her head as Ilias threw himself on top of her. The explosion reverberated through the street and she heard the dull roar of fire. Ilias rolled off her and she pushed herself up, realizing she and Ilias were covered with dust and plaster flakes. The bomb had struck the Port Authority.

  “Damn,” Ilias muttered, sitting up on his knees, looking up at the building. Tremaine could see that the brick wall looming over them didn’t look damaged but smoke streamed up from the roof.

  There was an airship nearly right above them, moving off now but it would be coming around for another pass. Tremaine grabbed Ilias’s arm, hauling herself up. “It’ll be back. We’ve got—” She inhaled a lungful of acrid smoke and doubled over, coughing.

  Ilias pulled her onward, glancing up to keep track of the airship’s progress. They reached the street to see a building had collapsed less than a block away and the air was filled with dust and smoke. The street was empty of fleeing pedestrians but a motorcar and a truck had been trapped in the debris, the motorcar crushed under a fall of bricks and the truck trapped by a beam across its steaming engine.

  Ilias hesitated, scanning the street, then started toward the collapse. Tremaine had been hacking up dust trying to clear her throat enough to tell him to do just that; the airship was targeting the larger public building behind them and wouldn’t waste another bomb on the far end of the street. She just hoped Averi and the others had had time to get to safety.

  They made their way through fallen bricks and abandoned motorcars, coming within a few paces of the back of the trapped truck. Tremaine had just realized it was a Capidaran government vehicle when a gunshot, loud and close, made her jump nearly out of her skin. It had come from the truck, from the cabin over the back bed.

  Ilias stopped, throwing her an inquiring look. Tremaine shook her head, baffled. The Gardier didn’t land troops during bombings. At least, they hadn’t in the bombings of Ile-Rien. Then the cabin door started to swing open and Ilias dived to one side and Tremaine scrambled to the other.

  The opening door blocked Tremaine’s view but she saw a lean form jump out. The door nearly thumped her in the head as Ilias hit whoever it was from the side, knocking him to the pavement.

  Tremaine stepped around the door, saw the struggling figure on the bottom had a pistol in its hand and stamped on it, pinning the weapon and the hand to the pavement. A sharp cry of pain told her who this was and she swore bitterly.

  As Tremaine stooped to grab the pistol, Ilias sat up, still pinning the struggling figure. It was the Gardier woman, Balin. “Guess who?” he told Tremaine, grimacing as the woman tried to knee him.

  Tremaine stepped past him to look into the back of the covered truck. Two people in the red-and-gray Capidaran military uniform lay inside, the man in a crumpled heap against the front wall of the cab, the woman sprawled across the bench, a bloody wound in her chest, the silly little cap that the Capidaran Women’s Auxiliary members wore knocked askew, still held to her head by hairpins.

  Tremaine felt her lips draw back in a snarl. They must have been moving Balin back to her cell in the Magistrates’ Court. From their positions, the man had been thrown forward and possibly died in the crash; Balin must have gotten his gun and shot the woman after a struggle.

  Automatically chambering a round in the pistol, Tremaine looked down at the Gardier woman. Balin’s face set but her eyes were afraid; she had a trickle of blood from a scalp wound running down her cheek. Ilias, keeping a wary eye on the woman, hadn’t looked up. “What do we do with her?” he asked, breathing hard. “Take her with us?”

  If I had to shoot someone in cold blood, I’d rather it be her than that idiot I killed for the truck in Maton-devara, Tremaine thought. Not that her blood felt particularly cold at the moment. If she could trade Balin for that poor dead Gardier man she had left to grow cold in a ditch, she wouldn’t hesitate. Unfortunately, it’s not a trade.

  “We’ll take her with us,” she said. “Get her up.”

  Chapter 5

  Giliead had given up counting explosions. The distant blasts were punctuated by the eerie wail of what Gerard said were warning sirens, though they sounded further away now. Sick with anxiety about the others, Giliead paced the front hall, where Gerard was trying to use the talking curse box to reach Niles on the Ravenna, or Averi at the Rienish headquarters, but the thing wasn’t working properly.

  Kressein, with the assistant who carried his sphere and the two Capidaran warriors, had left already, going off to try to do what they could to repel the attack. At least they could do something; Giliead felt trapped and useless.

  Gerard spoke into the curse box with more agitation, then slammed the listening part down. “I’ve lost the operator.” He loosened his collar, swearing. The sphere was still tucked under his arm. Giliead had noticed it never clicked and sparked to itself the way the god-sphere did. “The lines must be down.”

  Giliead didn’t know what that meant but it couldn’t be good. He looked away, gritting his teeth to keep from asking useless questions. Fire is falling from the sky and Ilias and Tremaine are out in it.

  Gerard must have read the thought from his expression. He took a deep breath, saying, “Tremaine
is …more than experienced with bombings. She was in Vienne through most of the worst— They should be fine.”

  “I know, but—” The crash of glass breaking from upstairs interrupted him. Giliead traded a startled look with Gerard, then beat the wizard to the stairs, taking them two at a time. He couldn’t smell a new curse. As he reached the ballroom doorway he saw the remaining Capidarans were still in the big room, the two women, the other man, all of them looking around in a puzzled way for the source of the crash. Frowning, Giliead felt a draft of fresh damp air that shouldn’t exist in the enclosed chamber. From here he could see straight through to the archway at the back, where a small room with glass windows looked down into the dead garden. He started forward; it had to be the source of the noise and the sudden draft. The Capidaran man, much closer to that end of the room than Giliead, was already moving that way. Giliead glanced over his shoulder, telling Gerard, “Something came through back there—”

  From behind him, Nicholas shoved into the doorway, shouting, “Stop! Gerard, it’s—” An explosion shuddered the floor. Giliead staggered, shocked, covering his ears and wincing away from the light and sound.

  He saw fire roil out of the far end of the ballroom, enveloping the Capidaran man. Giliead started forward in instinctive reaction with no idea what he meant to do, but Gerard ran past him, flinging up a hand and speaking a spate of unintelligible words.

  Giliead felt the curse grow outward from Gerard, saw it as a haze of yellow light spreading toward the back of the room, passing the two women who had fallen to the floor under the force of the blast. The fire met the curse, washing up against its fragile barrier. Then the flames and heat vanished.

  Giliead fell forward a step, staring. The wall that separated the little glass room was singed and blackened, a hole blasted through it revealing broken wood, shredded paper and smashed plaster. Shattered glass and wood fragments lay in an uneven pile just at the foot of the nearly invisible curse barrier, as if they had been washed there by a flood. Beyond it the Capidaran man sprawled, his clothes half burned away, his skin bloodred.