The Gate of Gods (Fall of the Ile-Rien) (40 page)

Giliead leaned in the doorway, watching them go, and Ilias pulled Tremaine into an embrace, burying his face in her hair. She took a deep breath, trying to think of something to say. In the end, all she said was, “Was there wine in those jars in the kitchen? Let’s drink it.”

T
hey ended up down on the stretch of wide sandy beach, near the boat sheds. The moon wasn’t quite full, but it was bright enough to illuminate the white sand and the foam cresting the rolling waves. The boat sheds were guarded by four or five young men and women who stayed within the light of their shielded lamps, watching with wary bemusement.

A wineskin slung over her shoulder, Tremaine stood up above the water line, her bare feet in the still-warm sand, watching as Ilias tackled Giliead into a large breaking wave. The wind was cool, tugging at her hair, and she just hoped the two men weren’t drunk enough to drown each other. Starting to feel mildly euphoric herself, she doubted her ability to navigate the waves without falling over, let alone haul anyone out. The younger Aelin had followed them, and were running in and out of the shallow surf, shrieking with delight at the water, at the foam, at finding shells with little creatures still inhabiting them. They were acting as if they had never seen open water before today, let alone played in waves, which of course they hadn’t. The ones who had been children when Castines betrayed them would have seen the seas of their home, but that must be a dim memory now. Tremaine kept trying to do a head count of the smaller ones, mindful of the giant crabs the Syprians hunted for food, but Ilias had assured her that those creatures would flee from people.

She could see the lighthouse up on the promontory from here, the blazing fire on the top platform of the pyramid a guide for any ships coming in. It would also be a guide for invading Gardier, but Visolela had told them that a few days after the
Ravenna
had left, the god had begun to inform Herias whenever it sensed Gardier within range of the coast. Gods couldn’t usually detect activity by Syprian sorcerers unless it was fairly close; apparently they learned quickly how to avoid drawing the gods’ attention, or they didn’t live long. The god’s ability to detect Gardier was an advantage the Syprians were going to need.

The Gardier here were still just the remnants of the force that had occupied the Isle of Storms and the ships that had arrived to relieve them. The
Ravenna
had destroyed one vessel before leaving Cineth but they knew now there was at least one more. They had no airships yet, but some would surely arrive soon, when the Gardier had subdued Ile-Rien to the point that they could remove the blockade on the coast and send those ships to this world.

Tremaine heard someone behind her and glanced around to see Gerard strolling down the beach, still without his jacket, his hands in his pockets and the moonlight glinting off his spectacles. She shifted the wineskin off her shoulder and handed it to him as he stopped beside her.

He took a drink and coughed. “There are many beautiful things here, but I have to admit, their wine is not one of them,” he choked out.

“It’s mostly water and some kind of spice. You have to drink a lot of it,” she advised him.

Gerard made a disgruntled noise and handed it back. “Cimarus told me they broke with Karima and Halian. I was rather hoping that wouldn’t happen.”

Cimarus and Cletia hadn’t followed them down to the beach, for which Tremaine was grateful. Cimarus had still been nominally in charge of making sure Balin didn’t kill anybody, and Cletia, after Cimarus had glared at her and cleared his throat pointedly in brotherly rebuke, had stayed behind. “It wasn’t quite that bad. Giliead just told them that he won’t be going home to Andrien afterward.” She ran both hands through her hair, scratching vigorously. “When the
Ravenna
gets here… I’ve still got those gold coins in the safe. If there’s time before we leave, I should buy a house or something.” She hadn’t discussed this with anyone yet, as she was still tentative about the whole idea. But the more she thought about it the more it seemed like the right thing. “It would give the Aelin a place to stay until they figure out what they’re going to do. And if we make it, it would be good for Ilias and Gil to have someplace to come back to.”

“And you?” Gerard asked quietly.

Tremaine took a deep breath, feeling the wine thrumming through her veins but not clouding her head. The Aelin teenagers were splashing in knee-deep surf, their clothes soaked. She recognized Davret from her laugh but she didn’t know the others well enough to pick them out in the moonlight. The younger children were digging holes in the sand and trying to bury each other.
In a way, you’ve been planning this since you first saw Cineth.
It was impossible, and probably crazy, and she knew what she would be letting herself in for. But when she thought of going back to Coldcourt, if it was still there at all, and carrying on as if nothing had happened, Nicholas’s presence or absence notwithstanding, she knew what she had to do. And she wasn’t giving Ilias up to Cletia. “And me,” she told Gerard.

He nodded. “I see.” She thought he might argue, or list all the obvious disadvantages, but he didn’t. He was still looking toward the water and she saw he was watching as Giliead and Ilias wandered up the beach toward them, weaving a little. Giliead paused to rescue an Aelin girl who was getting buried a little too deeply, pulling her out of the sand and brushing her off. “I suppose there are really no firm plans to be made until after we deal with the Lodun situation. That will completely change the character of the war.”

Tremaine nodded, wishing she was a little more drunk.
For the better or for the worse,
she thought, understanding intimately for the first time why some people were so afraid of change. They would either gain the upper hand over the Gardier or give them an easier victory, and her stomach wanted to turn at the thought. “I— Oh, no, don’t you—” Lost in dark thoughts, she hadn’t noticed that Ilias’s unsteady progress was a trick until he darted forward and grabbed her around the waist.

Hauled down toward the surf despite protests and struggling, she had to be content with the impotent statement “You’re going to get it later!”

“Promise?” Ilias replied, laughing, and dived into a wave with her.

Tremaine had just enough time to hold her breath as they went under, but as he pulled her to her feet, she faked coughing and sputtering. But she was still too tipsy to fake it well, and he just gave her a long salt-water-tinged kiss. As soaked and dripping as he was, Tremaine leaned against him, and it was just cool enough for her to feel his warmth through the wet shirt and pants plastered to his body. Breaking the kiss as another wave washed around them, he spoiled it by nuzzling her ear and saying, “You needed a bath. Everyone agreed.”

“You’re as big an ass as Giliead,” Tremaine told him, winding both hands in his hair and pulling his head down again.

A sound, booming across the harbor like some great bass-voiced giant, made them both flinch. “What the—” Tremaine began, then she recognized it. Gerard was already waving frantically from the beach, Giliead was looking out to the harbor and the Aelin had frozen in place like startled rabbits. “That’s the
Ravenna
!”

I
t was sometime later that Tremaine stood on the stone docks near the Arcade and saw the battery lamps on one of the
Ravenna
’s covered lifeboats crossing the harbor toward them. A moment later she heard the diesel chug of its engine. “Finally,” she muttered.

“They must have anchored fairly far out from the harbor mouth,” Ilias said, watching the approaching lights intently.

He was more sober too, as was Giliead, who added, “Makes sense. She needs room to maneuver if the Gardier come after her.”

Tremaine was also more sober but still barefoot, her feet covered with sand, and her clothes were still damp, though no longer dripping. Gerard hadn’t bothered to retrieve his coat and with his few days’ growth of beard he looked a little rakish, like a desert island survivor. Standing a short distance away with a few of their followers were Visolela, Cletia and Pella, the lawgiver’s deputy. Cimarus was still back at the house guarding Balin, and they had decided to let the Capidarans sleep. The other group was far enough away that no one had to make awkward small talk, not that Pella would have spoken to them anyway.

Behind them on the harbor front, a small crowd had gathered, many of them merchants or sailors who lived nearby or on their boats, hoping to see the
Ravenna
. As they were about most everything, the Syprians were of two minds about the great ship, with one faction superstitiously afraid of it and the other fascinated by it. It was members of the latter group who had gathered in the harbor tonight, and some had brought pillows and blankets, ready to camp out all night for a glimpse of the ship at dawn. Tremaine was reminded of the people who had practically lived at the stage door of the opera and the bigger theaters, hoping to see their favorite performers come and go.

The dark shape of the lifeboat drew closer, the light revealing the people standing in the bow. “It’s Florian and Nicholas,” Ilias said, giving her a relieved smile.

“And Gyan and Kias and the others,” Giliead added, sounding as if that was a great load off his shoulders.

Tremaine felt a tight little knot somewhere in her heart relax.
The god was right.
The boat was about forty feet long, painted gray to match the
Ravenna
’s war camouflage, its canvas canopy meant to protect the occupants if it had to travel a long way to reach safety. It looked oddly prosaic next to the painted Syprian galleys and fishing boats.

“Thank God,” Gerard said, and turned to help Ilias and Giliead light the torches along an empty stretch of the dock to guide the boat in.

Tremaine waited impatiently as it drew near, waving back when Florian spotted them and waved wildly from the bow. The boat bumped the dock and Ilias caught the rope one of the seamen tossed him and Giliead helped tie it off. Florian was already trying to climb out and Tremaine caught her arm, hauling her up. Florian hugged her tightly, saying in a rush, “We knew you were all right, Arisilde told us.”

Ready to demand answers to a dozen questions, Tremaine sputtered to a halt. “Who told you?”

Gerard, in the middle of giving Nicholas a hand up onto the dock, stared in shock. “What?”

Florian answered but Pasima, Sanior and Danias had already climbed out the stern and were noisily being welcomed by Visolela, Cletia and the others and Tremaine couldn’t hear what she said. Kias and Gyan had followed Nicholas out, and in the confusion of their greeting, Gyan clapped Ilias on the shoulder and explained happily, “Their god took human form and destroyed Ixion.”

“What?” It was Giliead’s turn to stare.

“We’ve had some interesting developments,” Nicholas said dryly, cutting through the babble of voices. “I think you’ll want to come back to the ship with us.”

W
incing at the bright lights, Ilias followed Tremaine down the
Ravenna
’s wood-walled corridor. After days of firelight, candlelight and the little floaty puffs of wizard light that Gerard used, he had forgotten how harsh even the
Ravenna
’s glass-covered curse lights could be when you came in from the night.

The outer part of the ship was shrouded in darkness and curses to keep the Gardier from seeing her from the air. They had survived the perilous act of being in a small boat winched up the wall of the great ship to the boat deck one more time, then blundered through the dark to a hatch, following a sailor with a small curse light. Tremaine, intent on their goal, had practically jittered with impatience the whole way, and Florian was just as excited. Ilias wasn’t so sure he was looking forward to this. He threw a worried look up at Giliead, who was frowning in thought as he listened to Gerard and Niles.

Gerard was shaking his head, frowning. “But what did he do?”

Niles sighed with the air of a man who had been asked that question far too many times. They had gotten through the explanation of Ixion’s being let loose on the ship to make curselings on some flimsy pretext and Arisilde leaving the god-sphere to save Florian and Nicholas and the others, but they still weren’t clear on what had happened to Ixion. “We’re not certain. He hasn’t really said, and Ixion— I suppose he could be faking, but—”

“I don’t believe he’s faking.” Nicholas, dressed in black and trailing them like a sinister storm cloud, had a dry little preoccupied smile.

Giliead lifted a brow, doubtful, but Ilias knew that Nicholas was as unlikely to be fooled by Ixion’s games as Tremaine.

They turned through a half-lit foyer lined with stacked furniture, their steps oddly muffled by the dark-patterned carpet. Ilias saw the big double doors, padded with leather embossed with a design of squares and circles, that led to the ballroom where the ship’s curse circle lived. Something about the place gave him prickles up the spine even without Giliead’s ability to smell curses.

Still flushed from excitement, Florian fumbled in a pocket, bringing out a ring of Rienish keys, saying, “He’s shown up other places today but mostly he’s—”

A click inside the door made Ilias start slightly. He stepped back hastily with the others as the two doors swung slowly open. Cold air wafted out, the same damp chill that shades brought. “Here,” Florian finished. Tremaine plunged into the shadowy expanse beyond without hesitation, Florian only a step behind her. Gerard and Niles followed, still deep in conversation, and Nicholas after them.

Giliead and Ilias exchanged a wary look. Giliead had a weary “here we go again” expression. Ilias agreed; Arisilde had been easier to accept when he had just acted like a particularly idiosyncratic god, trapped in a little metal ball or not.

Bracing himself, Ilias followed Giliead inside.

The cut-glass sculptures that surrounded the curse lights were lit but the room was still dark, shadows clinging to walls cloaked with wood and rich red drapes, the red-enameled pillars. The curse circle the
Ravenna
used to take her between worlds was painted onto the marble floor, encompassing most of the room.

The spectral cold raised tiny bumps on his arms but Ilias couldn’t see anything different from the last time they had come to this room. The others stood near the edge of the curse circle, looking around expectantly. Tremaine radiated tension, her arms tightly folded. He glanced at Giliead, wondering if the new human god would appear after all, and saw Giliead had his head cocked, listening intently, a faint frown on his face. The silence seemed as supernatural as the cold, so palpable that even the constant distant rumble of the
Ravenna
’s insides was inaudible.

“You found some more pieces. I thought you would.”

Ilias whipped around, backing into Giliead. The voice had come from just above his left ear. He found himself facing a tall thin man, dressed in Rienish clothing, though it was ragged and the worse for wear. He had white hair and very odd eyes. But the oddest thing was that his form seemed faintly translucent; there seemed no weight at all to that light body. Ilias stared, only realizing he had frozen in place when Giliead took his shoulders and shifted him off the foot he had stamped on. His only consolation was that everyone else had flinched violently as well, even those who had seen Arisilde manifest before.

Tremaine stepped forward, moving to Ilias’s side, fascinated. “What pieces, Uncle Ari?”

“Pieces of the puzzle.” He shook his head, a faint smile playing about nearly colorless lips. “Questions can be difficult, as I seem to be missing pieces myself. I think I put some bits of my memories into different parts of the sphere for safekeeping, and then you know what happened.”

“When Ixion destroyed the sphere,” Niles explained quietly.

“Yes, we didn’t like that, it gave us all quite a fright.” Arisilde looked quizzically at Ilias, then at Giliead. He said gently, “I should have liked to tell you not to worry. It thinks the world of you, you know, and wouldn’t let a little thing like a spell or two get in the way. It does understand the difference between magic used in a benevolent fashion and magic for gain or ill.”

Ilias looked up at Giliead, startled. Giliead blinked, his face still, a red flush creeping up his neck. Tremaine said urgently, “You mean the god, Arisilde? Our god? Cineth’s god?”

“I made the wall because I felt I was being followed. But I was wrong, you know. Or right, actually. Just not the way I thought I was,” Arisilde explained earnestly, though the answer had nothing to do with her question. “You know, if you destroy the master, you free the slaves. But the whole structure will collapse as well. I shouldn’t have minded it, you know. Being stuck there. Wander around a bit, meet new people, if I survived the fall. Certainly would have saved us all a lot of trouble. But I didn’t realize it was the crystal that was important, and not the bodies, until it was too late. And then I had to leave my body there. I know, silly of me. You go and do it then. I’ll come and get you when you’re done.” That odd violet gaze settled on Tremaine. “You found my boat, you and Gerard, that was clever. Remember, that was three o’clock tomorrow afternoon.”

Ilias heard Gerard ask quietly, “What does he mean?”

“That’s the time he told us would be best for using a modified world-gate to reach Ile-Rien,” Niles replied. “He said you’d have ‘the rest of the pieces.’ ”

Gerard lifted his brows. “He’s right.”

Arisilde told Tremaine, “That was where I met the god, before I died, you know. Not there, of course, it can’t quite reach the island.”

She turned to meet Gerard’s baffled gaze, then looked at Arisilde again. Ilias shifted uncomfortably. They knew Arisilde had met the god somehow, or he wouldn’t have been able to pass along stories about them to Tremaine, before she had come to this world. But hearing how it had happened somehow made it all too real. Hearing someone other than Giliead talk about what the god said and did felt …wrong. Oblivious, Arisilde continued, “I could hear it, though, after Nicholas had left. I heard it singing to itself. It gets very lonely, when you’re not there.” This last was addressed to Giliead. “But there’s no help for that, is there? So I took the boat and sailed toward the singing, until it heard me singing with it and came out to see me. It told me all about you.” For an instant his vague eyes went even more distant. “Its memories go very deep, back into dark places it no longer wants to visit. It has lived for a very long time, finding bright little mortal lights it can talk to, and then losing them to the dark. It feels it more than you know. It has forgotten more of its past than it willingly remembers.”

Ilias tore his gaze from those eyes and looked at Giliead again. Giliead’s face was utterly shocked, as if the words had just peeled his soul bare.

“After you met the god, Arisilde,” Nicholas said carefully. Ilias realized this was a tale they must have been trying to get out of Arisilde since they had first been able to speak to him.

Arisilde blinked and seemed to become a bit more aware, but his eyes moved up to a shadowy corner of the ceiling. “I was going back to the island but the boat got a bit out of hand in the wind and I landed in the wrong spot. Those things always happen for a reason, you know. It mightn’t be a good reason, of course. But I found the circle in the cave, quite different from the one Nicholas and I had found in Adera. So I gave it a whirl. Hello there, I expect you’d like to see Ixion.”

Giliead started, turning to follow Arisilde’s gaze. Ilias looked to see familiar sparkles of light high up in the shadows at the top of the room. “It’s the god,” Giliead said quietly.

“So it’s true—” Ilias turned back to face Arisilde, but he was gone.

G
iliead waited while the Rienish guard unlocked the door. This was a room in the place called the Isolation Ward, at the stern of the ship. It was a warren of small rooms, all with dingy white walls, where the Gardier had been held prisoner on their voyage to Capidara. Now the only prisoner was Ixion.

“You know you don’t need to do this,” he told Ilias. Despite the cool air that came from little holes in the walls, Giliead felt sweat soaking the back of his shirt. He couldn’t imagine how Ilias felt.

Ilias just gave him an annoyed glare. “I know I do need to do this.”

“Me too,” Tremaine put in. They both looked at her and she flung her arms up in exasperation. “Oh, come on. This ship has half a dozen sorcerers, plus Arisilde. And you two. He’s not going to do anything, even if he is faking. You need to stop acting like he’s some kind of bogeyman and see him for what he is—an opportunistic manipulating bastard.”

“When I said that to you about Ander, you ignored me,” Ilias told her testily. “And what’s ‘bogeyman’ mean?”

Tremaine craned her neck to look into the front room, obviously trying to see if Gerard and the others waiting there had heard Ander’s name. “I did not ignore you. And don’t change the subject,” she snapped.

Giliead rolled his eyes wearily.
Cletia must be out of her mind to think this isn’t a real marriage.
“Fine, all right. The door will be open, just stay outside.” He nodded to the guard, who had been regarding the Syrnaic conversation with impatience.

The man opened the door and stepped back.

The room was small but clean and the air wasn’t stale; the Rienish had always treated their prisoners better than the Gardier. There was a small bed with cushions and blankets, and Ixion sat on the edge of it, watching them with a puzzled expression. Giliead’s first startled thought was
It’s not him.
Then he looked more closely, stepping forward into the room. The wizard’s hair and eyebrows had grown in more fully, disguising the unnatural smoothness of the body he had grown like a curseling in one of his vats. He had beard stubble now too, and it made him look younger, innocent. And somehow less like his original body. Or maybe that was his expression, baffled and a little worried. Ixion said in Rienish, “Who are you?”

Giliead had discovered the hard way that he couldn’t tell someone was a wizard unless they had recently made a curse. He couldn’t smell or see any curses around Ixion now, but that meant nothing. He glanced back at Ilias, who was leaning in the doorway, warily fascinated. He was holding Tremaine’s hand, either for reassurance or to keep her from following Giliead inside or probably a combination of both. Tremaine just looked fascinated. Making his voice even, Giliead told Ixion, “You know who I am.”

Ixion shook his head. “No, I don’t know anyone here.” He sounded as if he was weary of saying it. “I don’t know where this place is, or how I got here.” His eyes moved from Giliead to Ilias and Tremaine. Giliead realized suddenly why he had thought this wasn’t Ixion. The wizard’s eyes had been dark brown in his old body and his new one. Now they were blue. “Why does this building feel like it’s floating?”

Giliead saw Ilias’s eyes narrow and Tremaine lift a skeptical brow. He knew they thought it was a trick, but Giliead wasn’t certain. Ilias asked suspiciously, “What do you remember?”

Ixion gestured helplessly, unaware that his audience had tensed at the movement. “A farm, I think, the forest. A city …? It’s all in fragments.”

Giliead felt the god’s presence again as it worked its way through some inner conduit inside the ship’s structure. Relieved that it had decided to follow them here, he looked up in time to see it climb out of the curse light in the ceiling of the room. Arisilde’s words came back to him again:
It feels it more than you know,
unsettling and warming, all at the same time. He had always told himself that the god didn’t feel toward him the way he felt toward it, that it didn’t have emotions as people did. But maybe all it lacked was a way to communicate those feelings. The haze of light drifted into a corner, and he could feel it studying Ixion intensely.
Is it true?
he asked it.
Did Arisilde take away his memory?

It pushed images toward him and Giliead concentrated, his eyes widening as he realized what the god was telling him. He told Ixion hastily, “It’ll be all right. You’re on a foreign ship, an ally’s ship, in the Cineth harbor. Just give us time to talk it over.”

Ixion nodded uncertainly, though hope had leapt to life in those unfamiliar eyes. This was possibly the most solid information he had been given yet. Giliead stepped out, having to shift Ilias and Tremaine out of his way, and the guard closed the door again. “What?” Ilias demanded. “Is that all? How can you tell—”

“Arisilde took away his ability to cast curses, and all his memories of ever using them,” Giliead interrupted. The god had followed him, popping out of the curse light in this room and drifting down to settle under the table the other Rienish guard was sitting at, somewhat to the man’s consternation.