The Wizard Hunters (26 page)

“Right, I’ve got them stashed all over the place.” Tremaine crouched next to Florian, too worried about Gerard to explain further. Between them they managed to roll him over. “Is he all right?” she demanded, too flustered to check for herself. She didn’t want to look for a pulse and not find one, she just wanted someone to tell her and get it over with. Ander jammed the torch between two rocks and she saw Gerard didn’t seem wounded, except for the dried blood around the cut on the temple he had gotten in the boat wreck.

“I think so, he’s breathing. They used some kind of spell on him,” Florian said, glancing worriedly at her. She was trembling too but didn’t seem to notice. “The survivors of the attack on Duncanny reported that something similar happened to the sorcerers there.” Ilias and his friend followed Tremaine over and Florian’s eyes widened as she looked up, taking in Giliead’s appearance at close range. He had sheathed the sword in a scabbard hung across his back, but he still looked intimidating.

“That’s right, they were struck with spells that caused unconsciousness,” Ander said, then added, sounding exasperated, “A little forewarning might have been nice.”

“What?” Tremaine looked up, realizing he meant Giliead. “We knew Ilias was looking for someone. We couldn’t really discuss it in depth or anything.”

Ilias dropped to his knees beside Tremaine, speaking and pointing urgently toward the dead Gardier. She nodded, pushing her hair back in distraction and trying to get her brain started again. At least the digging creature had disappeared, leaving a broad trail of dark blood or ichor and three badly mangled Gardier.
I vote somebody else make all the decisions now
, she thought, but pushed to her feet and said, “Yes, the noise, there’ll be more of them. We need to get out of here.”

Ander took one last uneasy look at Giliead, nodded sharply and turned back toward the rocks. “I’ll get our supplies.”

Tremaine went to where the leader lay sprawled. The small wireless box crackled at her, barking a command in the Gardier language. It was different from any wireless she had ever seen before, with odd-sized dials and unintelligible symbols printed on the gray case. She absently pushed it off the rock, smashing it with a satisfying crunch.

She found the sphere where it had rolled into a hollow in the dirt. It clicked at her when she picked it up and she brushed the dirt off, saying, “I’m glad to see you, too.”

She looked up to see Ilias watching her dubiously, one brow lifted. She considered trying to explain the sphere by gesture, but since she would have been hard-pressed to explain it in words, disregarded the notion. “This is ours,” she explained, tapping the sphere, then herself in the chest. “The Gardier stole it.”

He nodded understanding. She looked down at the leader and saw it was the man who had first captured them, the one with the burns on his neck.
Well, you should have stayed back at the base with Gervas
. A translator medallion lay on his chest and she picked it delicately out of the blood, then jerked it to break the chain. The man still had three of those devices on his belt, the intriguing little metal boxes with triggers. One was in his hand. She leaned closer, wondering if she should take them too. The sphere’s gears started to spin as it drew near the devices and it clicked anxiously. Tremaine shifted the sphere to the other arm, pried the box from the dead man’s hand and unsnapped the others from his belt, stuffing them into her pockets.

Gerard’s belongings, his notebook, aether-glasses and spectacles, a pocketknife and her compass lay on the rock where the wireless had stood and she hastily scooped them up as well. Florian stepped up with the sling, helping her tuck the sphere back into it. “You got his translator?” she asked.

Tremaine shouldered the sphere and found the translator medallion in her pocket. She wiped the blood off on her coat before handing it to Florian.

“Can we make it work?” the other girl wondered. Holding it, she turned to Ilias, who was watching her quizzically. “Do you understand me now?”

He lifted a brow and threw the equally puzzled Giliead a “they act like this occasionally and I have no idea why” look.

Horian grimaced, studying the disk. “Guess not. Maybe it only works for Rienish. Or maybe there’s a way to activate it—” She tapped it thoughtfully on a rock.

“I don’t think that’s going to work,” Tremaine told her, distracted. She lifted one of the Gardier’s lamps, but it jangled with broken glass, useless, and she dropped it again. “The Gardier are going to be able to find the sphere with those glasses—”

Florian looked up. “If we get a chance, we could put it in water. That would block any etheric vibrations.”

Ander scrambled down out of the rocks with their satchel slung over his shoulder. He paused to pick up one of the fallen rifles, then turned and almost ran into Giliead. The big man stood with his hands planted on his hips, his expression forbidding.

Ander eyed him aggressively, then tried to go around him. Giliead shifted slightly to block him. Ander stepped back. “Any idea what he wants?” he said, still watching him carefully.

Ilias stood near Tremaine, surveying the scene with a thoughtful expression but no hostility. Tremaine looked at Ilias inquiringly. He glanced around, found one of the fallen pistols, poked it with his boot, then looked back at her and said clearly, “No.”

“No?”

He looked apologetic but repeated firmly, “No.”

“Tremaine?” Ander prompted tensely.

“Leave the rifle. They don’t want you to take it,” she explained.

Ander swore in annoyance, watching the big man who blocked his path. “Can we explain that it could be useful?”

Tremaine looked at Bias again. He looked back at her. She told Ander, “It doesn’t appear to be a negotiable point.” She let out her breath, wincing as her jaw throbbed. “We have a vocabulary of maybe six words, Ander, I don’t think we can discuss this.”

A sharp report echoed off the rock around them. Everyone flinched. “That was a shot,” Florian whispered, “and it was close.” Giliead and Ilias exchanged an uneasy glance, but Giliead didn’t move.

“We don’t have time for this, Ander, just leave the damn gun,” Tremaine said urgently.

Ander swore again and dropped the rifle. Giliead stepped back, letting him pass.

“Good.” Tremaine looked down at Gerard again. He was still deeply unconscious. Ander and Florian hadn’t said how long those other incidents of sorcerous catatonia had lasted and she didn’t feel like asking at the moment. She squatted down to grab his arms. “Somebody come help me with—” Giliead took her shoulders and shifted her gently aside, then lifted Gerard’s arm and hauled him up over his shoulder. “Never mind.”

W
hile Giliead carried the unconscious man, Ilias shouldered his friend’s sword. “I wish you’d found mine. That was a good blade,” he said regretfully. They had reached the end of the ruined city and found the passage in the wall that curved sharply up through the rock toward the surface shaft. Water trickled continuously down the walls and the torch threw red reflections onto the slick stone.

There were rough-cut steps that made the going somewhat faster, but it would also make it easier for their pursuers.

“I was too busy looking for your dead body,” Giliead retorted sharply, earning a nervous glance from Florian.

Giliead had already told Ilias that he gone into the river after him and been swept down it as the flying whale burned, fetching up on the bank in a lower cave. He had had to take the long way back through the upper passages to get down to the harbor cave and search the lower city before he found Ilias’s trail signs.

It was too much like what Giliead had gone through on their last trip here, when Ilias had fallen into Ixion’s hands. Ilias knew just how hard that search must have been, but there was no point in dwelling on it.

The man Ander walked between them, carrying the torch. He and Tremaine had continued to exchange argumentative-sounding remarks and Ilias had the feeling it was about the wizards’ weapons. It was odd; most people were leery of anything that had to do with curses. Wizards could put an evil touch on objects and cause whoever had them to fall ill and die, let alone the danger of handling curse weapons. He put it aside; maybe they had come from so far away that there were no wizards there, which would explain their strange clothes and traveling gear.

Scrambling up a gravelly incline, Ilias heard a wordless shout echo from the cavern. He paused at the top, reaching down to take the torch from Ander as Florian climbed past him. “You hear that?” he asked Giliead. The girls were good company but it was a relief to be able to talk without sign language.

“They’re on our trail now,” Giliead said grimly. He helped Tremaine with a hand under her arm, then climbed after her.

Ilias gave him a wolfish grin. There was another reason besides grend and burrowers that this surface shaft was dangerous. “They’re in for a surprise.”

A few more moments of scrambling progress up the passage and they reached the bend Ilias remembered. A big stone pipe, large enough for a couple of men to crawl through abreast, stuck out of the rock at an angle, pointing down the rough steps. It was dripping with slime and had strange white parasitic vines growing along it. The end was closed off with a heavy iron cap and there was a lever to release it along the top. Ilias found handholds in the slippery rock and pulled himself up, saying over his shoulder, “Go, go, I’ll take care of it.”

Giliead managed to get the girls to move past but Ander shoved the torch at Tremaine and climbed up onto the rocks. Ilias grabbed the lever, glancing back to make sure the others were clear, then tried to swing it over. It creaked but barely shifted. He swore, bracing his feet on the mossy stone, and threw all his weight into it. Ander leaned in to help and Ilias shifted position so he could pull while the other man pushed.

Ixion had used this ancient waterflow so he could periodically drown the burrowers when they got too numerous. The valve that controlled the flow hadn’t been opened since Ixion had used it to trap Ilias inside the cave last year; if some important part of the mechanism was rusted through, they were dead.

The lever gradually began to move, the metal groaning from the effort, and foul-smelling liquid gushed from the pipe. Then white wizard light blazed from the passage below and Ander yelled a warning. Throwing his weight on the lever for all he was worth, Ilias glanced down and got a confused image of figures in brown, and one white face. For a heartbeat he froze and that might have been the end, but Ander was still pushing and the lever gave suddenly, releasing a torrent of foul-smelling water that burst down the passage with the force of an avalanche. The loud bang of a wizard weapon blasted off the rocks and chips of stone rained down on his head. Ilias flinched and Ander grabbed his arm and they both leapt off the pipe.

The fluid gushing down the tunnel forced the wizards back, but it wouldn’t last forever. Ander made a relieved comment and turned back up the passage, following the wavering light of the torch to where the others waited. Ilias had to stand there a moment and get control of himself.
It was your imagination
, he thought.
It couldn‘t have been him. Gil cut the bastard’s head off and no wizard comes back from that
.

“Ilias,” Giliead called from above, his voice barely audible over the growing roar of the pipe. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” he said hurriedly, climbing up toward him. “I’ll tell you later.”

F
  Chapter 11  
F

T
remaine’s jaw throbbed and she was so tired she was stumbling. She followed Ilias with Florian and Ander behind her and Giliead bringing up the rear, carrying the still unconscious Gerard. Ilias and his friend would call comments or questions to each other occasionally, but Tremaine, Florian and Ander were too occupied with trying to keep up to talk much.

Tremaine scrambled over a rock wedged across the way and looked up to find herself facing a dead end. It was a good-sized chamber, a relief after the narrowness of the last passage, and the walls reached up to the open air only twenty feet above. It was a shock to see the soft gray daylight framed by dark leaves and vines clustered along the edge of the shaft.
It’s day again
, she thought blankly, not sure how long they had been down here.

“That’s a relief,” Florian said, sounding heartfelt as she stumbled to a halt.

“I didn’t think I was nervous of enclosed spaces until I came here,” Ander agreed. He shifted the strap of their satchel on his shoulder and studied the open air above. “Do we know where we’re going?”

“Away from here?” Tremaine suggested. At the moment she just didn’t care.

Ilias and Giliead held a quick consultation in which they seemed to hold opposite opinions. Ilias won and started to climb, using the thick vines and chinks in the rough stone face, while Giliead watched with a disgruntled expression.

Ander grabbed a vine to follow but Giliead motioned for him to stay back. Accustomed to the exploring technique they had used so far, of waiting for Ilias to conduct a reconnaissance every time they entered a new place, Florian caught Ander’s sleeve, explaining, “Wait, they want to make sure nothing is up there.”

At the top Ilias scrambled over the edge, then appeared again to call back down. With a muttered comment, Giliead started up, Gerard still slung over his shoulder.

They all made it to the top with a minimum of injury and aggravation, crawling out onto a flat rocky surface in the shadow of a fifty-foot cliff. Stunted trees and thick green-black vegetation clung stubbornly to the rock all around. The sky was still heavy with gray clouds and mist drifted among the branches. Tremaine just sat on the ground for a moment, wiping the sweat off her forehead with her sleeve, her shoulders aching and her arms trembling from the strain. She hoped there wasn’t much further to go; she knew she had just about reached her limit. Florian didn’t look any better and even Ander was worn from his injuries and the long scramble through the cave passages.

Nearby was a canal like the one they had seen at the entrance. The opposite side was bordered by a high wall of more long black stones. Beyond it were wind-twisted trees, smothered with choking vines.