The Wizard Hunters (5 page)

Her first hint that her family life would not be a normal one had come when she was seven. Her mother Madeline had died and her father had disappeared for a year. She had lived with Uncle Arisilde then and he had assured her that her father was still alive no matter what the newspapers might say. She had realized later that Nicholas had gone after her mother’s murderers and that her peripatetic existence with Arisilde, wandering the byways of Vienne, tramping through fields and forests, with occasional visits to Lodun where they stayed in the strangest places and met the oddest people, had kept her alive. That quirky and self-effacing Uncle Arisilde was a powerful sorcerer and that he was hiding her from her father’s enemies, some of whom were powerful sorcerers themselves. One day Arisilde had taken her back to Coldcourt and they found her father there, and that was that.

She had never found out what had happened to those enemies. Nicholas Valiarde had never set foot on a stage but he had been a born actor, taking on different roles and personas the way other men changed their coats. He had done work for the Queen at times, but Tremaine had grown to understand that his public persona of gentleman adventurer was just that, a persona. He wasn’t one of those noble rogues with a heart of gold who were portrayed in novels and plays, though he could maintain that act when it suited him. The reality was that he had been and to a large extent still was a lord of the criminal underworld—dangerous, implacable and ruthless.

After a time of staring hypnotized at the night landscape, it occurred to Tremaine that Gerard must be exhausted from making this drive once already tonight and she offered to take the wheel.

“I didn’t know you could drive,” he said, gratefully pulling over to the side of the narrow country road. “Did you learn in the Aid Society?”

“I drove supply trucks for a while,” Tremaine told him, blundering into the spiky hedgerow while climbing out of the passenger-side door. Staging an accident with her truck would have been a possibility, but everyone had been so disparaging of her ability to learn to drive it in the first place that she hadn’t been willing to give them the satisfaction. She disentangled her cap from the thorns and stumbled around the front of the car.

Gerard climbed into the passenger seat. “This past six months for you must have been—”

“It’s the same for everyone.” Tremaine pulled the door shut with a grimace. She sounded like a bad melodrama.
Don’t mind me, even though my leg’s blown off, I’ll stagger back to the front line
. She fumbled with gears and got the car pointed back to the road.

“With the skills your father taught you, I thought you might go into the Prefecture or the Intelligence Service. Though I was glad you didn’t.” Settling back in the seat, Gerard added ruefully, “They aren’t making any headway from what I’ve heard and the attrition rate is even higher than the Aid Society.”

Tremaine had never considered that as a serious possibility. It wouldn’t have worked, anyway. She hadn’t wanted her death to ruin some vital operation or get anyone else hurt or killed. That was the last thing she needed. “I was never as good at that sort of thing as you all.”

Gerard snorted. “You weren’t there to see my spectacular failures. I was lucky Nicholas was there to save my— Well, that’s all over with now.” He must have sensed she wanted to change the subject. “What are you writing?” he asked.

“Ah . . .” Natural honesty did not run in the family so Tremaine wasn’t sure how she came to be saddled with it, at least when it came to speaking with Gerard. She guided the car past a couple of slow-moving farm carts. It was safer to bring supplies into the city after dark. Branches caught on the windscreen and the bonnet as Tremaine edged the car close to the ditch, and one of the drovers lifted his hat in thanks, barely visible in the light from his kerosene lamp. It gave her time to think. “I was playing around with . . . doing another play.” She winced again, glad it was too dark for Gerard to see her face.

“Another adventure?”

His voice still sounded unconcerned but Tremaine knew in her gut he had read the titles of the books piled around her chair in the library. Gerard hadn’t been one of Nicholas Valiarde’s chosen few for nothing. “Maybe,” she said offhandedly. Tremaine’s plays and serials had all been romantic adventure fare, with lost cities, undiscovered fayre islands, and other fantastic elements. Not exactly something one read
Medical Jurisprudence
for. “Something different, you know.”

Fortunately Gerard was tired and he soon began to drift off. Tremaine had been out here several times when the Institute first acquired the land and had to backtrack only once. The car was stopped twice by Civil Defense patrols, cautioning her to use the headlamps sparingly, and once by the regular army as she neared the old estate that housed the project grounds. Bringing the car to a halt, Tremaine fished for Gerard’s authorization papers in the litter in his dispatch bag, glad for the electric torch the soldier shined into the car. She handed him her identity card and Gerard’s papers. He checked them over briefly with the torch, then directed the light for a moment on Gerard, who snored. “Looks in order, madam. Hold up a moment while I get the corporal.”

“All right,” Tremaine replied dispiritedly, thinking
Miss, it’s miss. I’m twenty-six, I only look forty
. Her mousy brown hair didn’t look any better for the bad bob she had gotten not long ago. If she had just continued to cut it herself with the kitchen shears, it would have at least looked neat. She was pale from the winter too but so was everyone else. She probably didn’t look like a Gardier spy, at least. There were warnings in the papers constantly that there were Gardier spies in the cities, there to get information on defense plans and troop movements on the Aderassi border, and to kill sorcerers.

The soldier carried their papers over to the truck parked off under the trees and she heard the voice of the corporal as he checked their documents again. “They’ve hit the coast too, Chaire again. It’s likely they’ll take another run at Vienne before midnight.”

“No, not again.” The soldier sounded as resigned and weary as Tremaine felt.

“Yes, just came in on the wireless.”

The bombings on the seaport of Chaire had started only a few months ago. The two things that had most puzzled the Institute’s researchers since the war began was where the Gardier had come from and how they were concealing their bases. Airships now also came from the captured territory of Adera, but at first they had always come from over the Western Ocean. They still made their attacks on the Western Coast that way, but as far as their allies in Capidara could tell, the dirigibles were not passing over their territory at any point. Speculation in the newspapers had covered everything from a secret undiscovered island, an underwater city and a hitherto-unnoticed continent that submerged at will. If the Gardier came from further away, from some hidden city, then that still left the fact that they appeared to be supplying and launching many of their airships from the middle of the open sea. After three years of fighting, Ile-Rien still knew little about them, not even what they called themselves; the name
Gardier
had been given to them by the newspapers and was a Rienish corruption of an Aderassi slang word for “enemy.”

Ile-Rien had been invaded before. During the Bisran Wars, troops had crossed the borders and pushed inward as far as Lodun, overrunning towns and villages, burning witches and priests. She had read the history, seen the ancient great houses pockmarked by cannonballs. But nothing prepared you for this.

Many of the standards of the Ile-Rien sorcerer’s arsenal, like the charm that ignited gunpowder, were useless against the Gardier. Only illusions or defensive wards seemed to succeed against the airships and attempts to work magic often drew their attention. And one of the Gardier’s most devastating spells caused engines, gun mechanisms and electrical equipment to spontaneously explode. Now traveling the shipping lanes to and from allied nations was suicidal and the few surviving factories were hard-pressed to provide new munitions.

The soldier returned and handed over the papers. “Thank you, madam. Careful now. It’s a good night for a bombing.”

It might have been the soldier’s warning or Tremaine’s inherited paranoia, but as the road left the woods and hedgerows behind for an open down, she switched the headlamps off. The sloping field ahead, bleached of any color by the moonlight, led down to another shadowy curtain of trees, the dark sky chased with clouds stretching above it. Tremaine’s foot slammed onto the brake before her brain processed what her eyes had just recorded; outlined against a stray cloud was a long cylindrical shape, the jagged ridge down its back tapering into knifelike tail fins. Gerard jolted awake. “What is it?”

“Airship, dammit.” Tremaine craned her neck to look out the windscreen. It was low, perhaps only a hundred feet above them. She wished she hadn’t stopped so abruptly; surely a sudden motion was more likely to attract attention than a slow one. She was very glad Gerard’s car had a silver-gray body and a dingy gray bonnet; it should blend in with the grassy field.

Please no firebombs
, Tremaine thought, watching the airship draw closer. After so much time in the Aid Society she should be used to air raids, to the noise and the smoke and the smell of death, but maybe that was something no one got used to. The damn thing was passing directly over them, as if drawn to the surely near-invisible shape of the car by her fear. It was too dark for a shadow to fall over them but Tremaine gritted her teeth, feeling it anyway. She started as something clanked on the floorboard. “What the hell?” she whispered. The clanking turned into rhythmic clicks.

“It’s the sphere.” Gerard sounded quietly aghast. He fumbled for it in the dark.

The Gardier could detect spells and the sphere, old and fading, was held together with nothing but magic. “Kick it,” she urged him.

“I’d rather not.”

Tremaine’s stomach twisted with tension. She had seen too many people get blown up to want to die that way. And certainly not with Gerard in the car, and not with the sphere needed by the Institute.
Come on
, she told it silently,
stop clicking at the airship. You‘re going to get us all killed. And no, I’m not being ironic
.

There was one last reluctant click and the sphere shuddered into silence. Gerard breathed, “That was close.”

Tremaine twisted around on the seat, looking out the back to see the airship passing over the crown of the hill behind them. It must have moved out of the sphere’s range. She took a deep breath in relief, then realized the airship was going in the wrong direction. She frowned, glancing at Gerard. “It’s not going to Vienne?”

“Bel Garde.” His voice was grim as he turned to look back. “It’s just over that rise, on the other side of the woods.”

It was a suburb of Vienne, one of the most beautiful. Remembering the last time she had been out there, Tremaine pictured old houses with wild green summer gardens centered around the ruins of an ancient and picturesque stone keep. “There’s nothing there,” she protested.

She couldn’t read his expression in the dark, but she saw him shake his head. “An arms depot.”

“Stupid place for an arms depot.” The first blast echoed over the hills, jarring her teeth. The flash lit up the sky for an instant. “Ex-arms depot,” Tremaine muttered, turning around and putting the car back into gear. “How did they know it was there?”

She heard his tired sigh. “Their intelligence sources are excellent.”

Wonderful
, she thought sourly. She could have lived without knowing the newspapers were right about the spies.

Tremaine didn’t see the turn for the Institute’s drive until the last instant and skewed the car into it, almost landing them in the ditch.

“Sorry.” She winced, noticing Gerard was still gripping the dash.

“That’s quite all right.” He took a deep breath. “Once you get past the bridge, just turn into the woods to the left. We keep the vehicles under the trees to keep from drawing any airships down on the place.”

Peering into the dark, Tremaine managed to find an open spot and deposit the car in it without incident. She collected the sphere from the floorboards and trailed after Gerard, following the beam of his electric torch over the uneven ground. She stumbled over the remains of an old brick path and a stone flower bed border, more confirmation that they were on the grounds of the old estate that housed the Institute. They passed out of another copse of trees and emerged to see the outline of a ruined great house against the moonlit velvet background of the sky. It was a forest of towers and sharply pitched roof lines and half-collapsed walls etched against the night.

The past few hours had been surreal enough already; now Tremaine found her attention roaming, trying to turn this into a scene for a play or a magazine serial. Foolish. The theaters had been closed for months and only a few of the magazines were still in operation. Not that people didn’t still want stories. In the Aid Society, as they had huddled around the kerosene stove in the shelters during their rest breaks, there was always some new volunteer who discovered her identity and begged her to tell him the ending of her last serial in
Boulevard
. The final three numbers of it had never been printed when publication was suspended for the war.

They were now walking on a dirt path through winter-dry grass, drawing closer to another large dark shape outlined against the sky, this one with the curving roof of what had been a large stables. Abruptly the sphere in Tremaine’s hands trembled and heat flashed through the metal, intense enough for her to feel it through her gloves. She swore, juggling the thing awkwardly.

“What is it?” Gerard demanded, pausing.

“Did we just pass through some wards?” Tremaine managed to get the sphere tucked under her arm, where the thickness of her tweed jacket protected her from the sorcerously hot metal.

“Yes.” He stepped closer, directing the light down on the sphere. “It reacted again?” he asked, his voice tight with excitement.