The Gate of Gods (Fall of the Ile-Rien) (25 page)

“That’s good.” They could, at least, get back to Cineth, even if it took a long time. “So this is where we are in the building?” Tremaine peered at the map, trying to make sense of the little squares and circles and Gerard’s cramped handwriting. “What’s all this around it?”

“Empty rooms that could have been living quarters, lecture halls, meeting rooms.” He shrugged, gesturing around at the huge room. “It’s impossible to tell. This place has been abandoned for hundreds of years, like the city under the Isle of Storms and the Wall Port. The rest of this—” He traced a large amorphous shape that apparently indicated unknown territory. “Giliead says the building appears to go on for some distance, at least from the outside vantage point he and Ilias discovered. There’s another large oval section down here, which is why I believe there’s another circle chamber.” He shook his head, closing the notebook. “They haven’t advanced into that area yet. Giliead hasn’t sensed any etheric activity, except for the circles themselves. But we’ve never been able to determine how well he can sense passive spells.”

Tremaine nodded absently, frowning. They had covered a lot of ground in a day, but then if the rooms were all empty there wasn’t that much searching to do, just making sure there was no evidence of a Gardier occupation. “Something about this…” She looked up at Gerard. “I didn’t get the impression Arisilde had a huge amount of time when he was doing this.”

Gerard’s expression was blank. “When he was doing what?”

Tremaine gestured vaguely, shifting the rifle’s strap on her shoulder. “Looking for whatever he was looking for after he left Nicholas. He was supposed to be taking the message back to Ile-Rien that we were about to be invaded by a foreign power from another world who had magic that we couldn’t fight. I know he could be a little erratic— we never did teach him how to use the telephone—but this place would have taken days to explore, even for him.” Tremaine shrugged helplessly. “He knew he didn’t have days.”

“Yes, yes.” Gerard looked thoughtful. “I see your point. We should have found a signal or sign from him, like the coat button, as soon as we arrived.”

“If we’re in the right place.”

Gerard nodded, his brow creased and his eyes distant as he considered all the implications. “If this isn’t the place where he was… injured.”

“Oh. That’s a thought.” An uncomfortable thought. Tremaine frowned at him. “Watch your back, all right? Don’t do anything that, you know, Arisilde would do.”

Gerard was still staring into the distance. “Yes, I— What?” He gave her an exasperated look. “How would I know—” His expression cleared. “Ah, they’re back again.”

Tremaine looked around, relieved to see Ilias and Giliead walking out from the center archway on the far side of the chamber.

Watching Ilias’s lithe confident stride and the fine line of his jaw as he turned to say something to Giliead, Tremaine became aware that Gerard had been attempting to solicit her attention for some moments. He was now regarding her with a fond but weary expression. “What?” she demanded.

He smiled wryly, stuffing the notebook back into his bag. “Nothing.”

The two men reached them and both had to examine Tremaine’s injury before they answered any questions. Ilias took her hand, rubbing his thumb across the new skin on her palm while Giliead looked over his shoulder. “It’s still hard to believe,” Ilias said, glancing up at Giliead. Sorcerous healing had been the beginning of convincing the Syprians, or at least the Andrien Syprians, that not all magic was evil.

“Did your search turn up anything interesting?” Gerard asked hopefully.

Giliead rested his bow on the floor, saying, “There’re no more circles in this wing. We did find a room with water basins big enough to bathe in—some of them are broken and the pipes aren’t bringing the water anymore, but a few are still working.”

Gerard nodded. “That may come in handy if we stay here any length of time. You’re ready to advance into the other part of the building now?”

“Right after we get some food.”

Tremaine saw Cimarus was arriving for his turn at watching the circle chamber and his respite from Balin. Telling herself Cletia’s little sally had nothing to do with it, Tremaine decided it was time to get a private moment with Ilias. She looked at him pointedly, hoping he would get the message. “Gerard said you found the way out. Is it close by?”

“I’ll show you.” Ilias caught Giliead’s eye and jerked his head back toward the hallway leading toward their camp.
That either meant “I’ll meet you there” or “Make yourself scarce,”
Tremaine thought. From the suppressed amusement in Giliead’s eyes, she suspected it was the latter.

Ilias led her back toward the archway he and Giliead had used, lifting a brow at Tremaine’s rifle. “Are you going to keep that thing?”

“Until I get another pistol. I might talk Gerard out of his, but—” She recalled their recent unpleasant revelation. Not that anything but the sphere would do Gerard much good against a Gardier attack, but she felt profoundly uneasy at the idea of leaving him unarmed. “No, I think I want him to keep it.”

He gave her a sharp glance. “Why? What’s wrong?”

She repeated what she and Gerard had talked about, finishing with, “And I just don’t think Arisilde would have spent much time here. I think he would have decided to come back later with help to search the place, and left. So if something happened to him here, it happened right away.”

Ilias nodded, listening intently. “Or he came here first and went to the cold mountains from here.” They reached the archway. It opened into a big corridor, similar to the one that led to their campsite but without the rubble from the collapsed balconies. It was dank and a little dusty, with some flowering creepers growing down from one of the louvers in the curving roof.

Tremaine considered that idea, frowning. “But then why did he give us the circle to take us there, not here?” Another smaller corridor led off into a darker section of the building; if she had interpreted Gerard’s map correctly, that was the uncharted territory, the part Giliead and Ilias hadn’t explored yet.

“Uh, he didn’t remember it?” Ilias shook his head, obviously not pleased with that answer. He gestured down one end of the corridor. “This goes all the way around the circle chamber and connects up with the rooms behind it, the ones we already looked through. This other end goes to the way out.”

As they started in that direction he added, “If we are on the wrong track, we’ve got to go back. And if the Gardier are still there, that’s not going to be easy.”

“It’s not,” Tremaine agreed. She shook her head, gesturing helplessly. It was Arisilde they were talking about. Maybe attributing logical motives to him was the wrong way to look at the situation. “I don’t know, we’ve barely been here at all, maybe we’ll find a mark or something by one of the circles.” The possibility that the Gardier had unimpeded access to the circle in their house in Capistown made her stomach hurt; she didn’t want to think about it. And it did terrible things to their theory that the circle in the mountain’s upper chamber had stopped working because Nicholas had destroyed the corresponding circle in the house. The other alternative was that the Gardier had captured a copy of either Gerard’s notes on the new circle or Giaren’s photographs, and had drawn it themselves, and that didn’t bear thinking about either.

Ahead at the end of the corridor, Tremaine could see a broad shaft of sunshine lighting up a heavy stone staircase. “So when whoever built this place went away, they just left the door wide open?”

“It’s not an easy door to get to from the outside,” Ilias assured her.

Tremaine assumed the corollary was that it wasn’t an easy door to get out of either. The steps went up in stages, turning back and up into a stairwell that went through the curving roof. They started up, and up, and up. Tremaine’s legs were aching after the first landing; the stairs were like those in the other ancient cities they had found and were a little too high for the comfort of normal-sized people. It was warm enough that she tied back the sleeves of her shirt, reflecting that in this climate bathing was going to be more of an issue than it had been in the mountains.

At the point where Tremaine judged they had climbed the height of a seven-story building and she was about to ask just how far there was to go, the next landing took them outside onto a broad open platform. She stopped, whistling softly.

The sun was bright in an intense blue sky dotted unevenly with puffy white clouds. It shone down on low mountains capped with a tangled jungle of deep emerald green and on a narrow gorge with dozens of tiny streams of water running down its rough sides. The platform gave way to a small grassy field atop a bluff, and a short slope led up to another small plateau covered with broad-leafed palms and shorter trees with twisty limbs and furry green leaves. The plateau was bordered by more tall cliffs, walling it off like a private garden.

Tremaine wandered out onto the bluff, stumbling on the remnants of broken and scattered paving, the sun warm on her face. Ilias took her elbow, steering her around to face back toward the building.

She shaded her eyes, swearing in disbelief. The structure was gray on the outside and enterprising vines and flowers had taken root in cracks and crevices, so unless you looked for the sculptured roundness of the different levels of roof, you might mistake it for a series of low hills. Their wing stretched off to her right, stone buttresses supporting the vastness of what had to be the circle chamber. Two more wings ran out for a much greater distance in front of her, the larger sections buttressed and apparently supporting themselves on the rocky cliffs that crowded close to the smooth stone sides. She couldn’t see the smoke from their fire; it must be carried away by the fitful breeze.

Ilias stepped up behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist. She leaned back against his chest, grateful for the support after the long climb up the awkward stairs. He nuzzled her neck, saying into her hair, “We think we’re inland from Syrneth, where the Hisians live.”

“That’s what Gerard said.” And it seemed ridiculous to be standing here trying to think up a way to tell the man you were married to that you thought you had possibly fallen in love with him, so she turned around, making it a real kiss.

After a time, he sighed, resting his cheek against hers. She could feel the smooth spot in his beard stubble, where the silver curse mark marred his skin. Cletia had barely been willing to look at Ilias when she had first boarded the
Ravenna;
surely she hadn’t been able to get past that in such a short time.
But if Pasima was trying to dictate your every thought, how long do you think it would take for you to want to do the opposite of everything she said?
she asked herself.
Not damn long.
Feeling a need to change the subject of her thoughts, she pulled back, asking, “How do we get down from here?”

He looked around with a shrug. “Climb.”

“Climb? What, where? Down there?” Tremaine stared at the edge of the bluff. It was a long sheer drop down to the valley floor.

He jerked his head toward the cliffs ringing in their little plot of jungle. “Or up there. Or down onto the roof, then down the wall, but we think that would be too hard without ropes. And even with ropes, it wouldn’t be easy.”

“No kidding.” Tremaine pivoted, studying the area again. “Climbing up the cliff looks like the best way, but I don’t think Vervane could make that. Hell, I don’t think I could make that.”

“That’s the problem,” Ilias admitted soberly. “The people who lived here must have used the curse circles to travel in and out. That explains why they needed so many, anyway.”

Tremaine nodded thoughtfully. There might be another entrance somewhere, one that didn’t require climbing a sheer cliff, but there might not. “I think this is even more like a central train station than the chamber in the mountain. Whoever these people were, they must have traveled all over your world using these circles.”

That led to an explanation of what a train was, what a station was, the principles behind the idea of switching stations, and the last train trip Tremaine had taken with Arisilde. While they talked, they gathered some more wood from the fringes of their patch of jungle and Ilias climbed a tree after some yellow fruit to supplement their limited supplies.

They started down the stairs, Tremaine carrying one bundle of wood and Ilias the other, having used his shirt to make a temporary bag for the fruit. Admiring the exposed view of his chest and shoulders, she asked, “Has Cletia said anything to you?”

He glanced at her, puzzled. “About what?”

“Nothing in particular.”

He looked thoughtful. “Actually, she did say something when we were scouting the different circles back at the cold mountain.” He shrugged, clearly dismissing whatever it was as nonsensical. “I couldn’t tell what she wanted.”

Tremaine lifted her brows.
That’s interesting.
“I see.”

She had meant for her tone to be neutral, but Ilias had sharper ears than that. “See what?” he asked, throwing her a suspicious look.

Tremaine drew breath to tell him what Cletia had said, and suddenly found herself assailed by doubt. She found the idea of expecting him to wait at her bedside like some character from a bad romantic novel hilarious, or possibly humiliating, or possibly both, but what if he didn’t? What if he had intentionally stayed away to avoid giving her the wrong idea? What was the wrong idea?

While she still had her mouth open, trying to make a decision, he halted abruptly. Tremaine stopped an instant later, and in the sudden silence she heard the sound of soft-booted feet striking stone, heading rapidly away.

What the hell…
Tremaine went cold, exchanging a startled glance with Ilias. None of their party had reason to eavesdrop or run away, except possibly for Cletia, and she would have had to leave Balin unguarded. And Tremaine was fairly sure she would have the sense to walk quietly away without alerting them.