“I guess we’re not close enough to swim to the target point and go back through the portal?” Tremaine asked hopefully, squinting to see off into the mist.
“No, the island is several miles outside the circle’s radius.” Gerard pressed his lips together, studying the dim white sky.
“Did anybody see where the airship went?” Florian asked.
“They must have lost us in the mist,” Tremaine told her, trying to ignore the sick sensation in the pit of her stomach. “Besides, if they knew about the Pilot Boat, they must know at some point there’s a force coming through after us to attack them.” She remembered her dream, the
Ravenna
sinking slowly beneath a still sheet of black water. They had to keep the sphere away from the Gardier. Looking at the innocuous bundle slung over Gerard’s shoulder, she said, “It might be better to smash the sphere now.”
Gerard shook his head slightly, still distracted. “We have to get word back to Rel.” He turned to her, smiling a little ruefully, and adjusted his spectacles. “And I personally would be afraid of what the Gardier might do if they managed to find even one of the pieces.”
Oh, there’s a lovely idea
, Tremaine thought, grimacing. As they continued, the rocky ridge widened out, more boulders appearing on either side in the wash of dull gray waves.
Gerard halted abruptly. Tremaine leaned around him to see the ridge dead-ended into a rough waist-high wall, constructed of dark stone.
“What is it?” Florian asked, puzzled. “Is that a breakwater?”
“Whatever the purpose, it’s man-made.” Gerard sounded deeply worried. Beyond it was a rougher, obviously natural wall of lava rock, disappearing into the fog about thirty feet above their heads.
“I saw another boat caught in the storm,” Tremaine said, remembering it suddenly. Spots of purple and gold against the storm gray water. “It was a sailing ship. I don’t think it was Gardier.”
Gerard stared at her. “You’re sure?”
Tremaine nodded. “Well I didn’t have a chance to snap a photograph, but yes, I’m sure.”
Florian pushed the hair out of her eyes, biting her lip thoughtfully. “So . . . There’s people here? Besides the Gardier?”
Tremaine and Gerard both turned to look at her. “We hope? Or not?” Florian added uneasily.
“It’s . . . hard to tell at this stage,” Gerard admitted as he started forward again. Tremaine took a deep breath, adjusted the strap of the satchel on her shoulder and followed.
As they drew closer she saw the blocks forming the wall were huge, each close to twenty feet long, though they were only a foot or so wide.
Like stone logs
, Tremaine thought, puzzled, running her hand over the rough surface. She couldn’t see any mortar holding them together, but the wall seemed stable just the same. On the other side was a path, just wide enough for three people to walk abreast. Gerard climbed over onto it and she followed him, then turned to help Florian scramble over.
“This could be some sort of pavement, but it’s hard to tell,” Gerard said, brows drawn together as he studied the smooth stone surface under their feet. “I wonder ... If that wasn’t a Gardier craft you saw, if they were also under attack or simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Tremaine leaned against the wall to retie her bootlaces. “I hope it didn’t sink.”
I hope not everybody is as doomed as we are
. She shouldered her bag again. “Which way?”
“We need to get as far away from the wreck as possible.” Gerard glanced up and down the path. They could see about twenty feet in any direction, if that. The waves appeared out of an ocean of cloud to wash against the ridges and scattered boulders. It was quiet except for the distant scrape that must be the hull of the capsized Pilot Boat rubbing against the reef. “Unless we want to try scaling that cliff...”
“I vote not,” Florian put in, gazing up at the sheer rock wall.
“Quite.” Gerard adjusted his spectacles. “Widdershins way is usually appropriate in these situations.”
“These situations?” Florian asked with a puzzled glance at him.
“Situations in which we don’t know which way to go,” Tremaine explained, knowing Gerard’s sense of humor.
They followed the path to the left. After a short time it curved inward, leaving the sea, turning into a twisting passage through high rock walls, heavily shadowed by short deformed trees and curtains of dark foul-smelling vines. The walls were dotted with niches, square-cut and obviously meant for some purpose, but while some were high enough to hold lamps, others were at waist height, or only a few handspans above the ground.
The passage turned and dead-ended suddenly into a large square plaza. At the far side was a crude blocky structure made from more of the black stone logs, the only feature a large forbidding doorway in the center. The gray daylight illuminated a few paces of the dark tunnel within. The rock walls on the other sides were the same as the passage they had just come through, except on the left the rock dropped away to reveal a narrow canal. “It seems to be deserted,” Gerard commented warily. The edges of the stones were weathered and softened by time and there was no sign of any living inhabitants.
Her eyes on the view ahead, Tremaine stumbled a little on the uneven paving blocks. It was hard to see the full extent of the building; the concealing swaths of fog disguised where it left off and the dark cliffs began. Gerard stopped near the doorway and Florian moved over to the canal, Tremaine trailing after her.
It was just wide enough for a large rowboat. The far bank seemed to be made of more of the stone logs like the building, though heavy dark green bushes and palms grew atop it. The fog kept them from seeing anything beyond that. The canal itself was choked with reeds and other vegetation and the water smelled stagnant and foul. A bright green snake with black diamonds along its back slipped through the stems of the weeds as she watched. “First sign of life,” Florian commented, not sounding enthused at the sight. She shivered and rubbed her arms briskly.
“Gerard, the Gardier didn’t build this place, did they?” Tremaine demanded. The corners of the stones were rounded, moss and sand collected in niches and cracks; it looked ruinously old. “It’s not what I expected.” She wasn’t sure what she had expected, but it wasn’t this. She realized she hadn’t imagined their enemies living in very different circumstances from themselves.
“You’re right, this looks more like the remains of a long-dead civilization,” Gerard answered. He made a gesture and a wisp of spell light leapt to life above his head. “We’ll have to chance that it’s uninhabited by the Gardier or anyone else. We need to get under cover.”
Florian looked as uncertain as Tremaine felt, but they didn’t have much choice. Gerard stepped inside the doorway, the spell light drifting ahead of him.
The passage beyond was high-ceilinged and dry, the natural rock walls smoothed to roughly square precision by long-ago hands. “Hmm,” Gerard commented, and moved further into the tunnel. “I don’t suppose the emergency supplies included electric torches, batteries and a carbide lamp.”
Florian glanced into the satchel doubtfully. “Umm, no. Should we light the oil lamp?”
“Let’s save it for now.” After a short distance the passage turned to the left and Gerard paused, patting his pockets. “Compass, compass.”
“Wait, I’ve got one.” Tremaine dug in her coat and pulled out the small brass compass.
Gerard consulted it, Tremaine taking the lamp so he could record the direction in his battered notebook. He smiled slightly as he tucked the notebook back into his coat. “Your father used to carry small explosives in his dress suit.”
“Those were the good old days?” Florian offered dubiously.
“A long long time ago.” Tremaine handed Gerard back the lamp. She would rather not explain the facts of Valiarde life to Florian.
Gerard sighed. “Quite.”
They moved down the new passage, the light from the entrance fading quickly behind them. A cool steady breeze came from somewhere ahead. Tremaine tugged on the strap of the satchel again, wishing the spray hadn’t drenched her stockings. There were several more turns that Gerard carefully recorded, then the passage widened. Tremaine had barely noticed the ceiling was higher, that the wispy white spell light no longer reached the walls to either side. Then they turned a corner and the passage opened suddenly into a great dark echoing space. The light reached another waist-high wall not far in front of them.
Gerard gestured for the light to drift up as they moved forward slowly. It gave them tantalizing glimpses of the chamber beyond, of stone bridges, galleries, rows of pillars. Columns, built of bundled masses of the stone logs, supported a bridge that crossed overhead and led away into darkness. From the wall a wide stairway curved down and ended in a floor of polished black stone. No, not stone, Tremaine realized, seeing a drift of seaweed floating atop it. Murky water, still as glass. The whole place was half-submerged.
Tremaine stared, thinking,
This is Kimeria
. There had been a scene in her last play, cut due to the theater’s inability to stage it, where the characters, while exploring a hidden fayre island, encountered a sunken city. This was very close to how she had pictured it.
“Wow,” Florian said softly.
“My sentiments exactly.” Gerard shook his head slightly, his frown thoughtful. “The air is still fairly fresh. There must be an opening to the outside somewhere close.”
Tremaine nodded. “It smells like salt water. Really stale salt water.” While it looked a great deal like her imaginary city, this place didn’t bear much kinship with the little ship Tremaine had seen. She had only caught a glimpse of it, but she clearly remembered the colorful sails and the painted designs on the prow. Whoever had built this wasn’t an admirer of color or ornament, or at least not the kind of ornament that she could appreciate.
“Hold on.” Gerard gestured at the spell light again, dimming it to a negligible gray spark.
The moments stretched as Tremaine waited for her eyes to adjust. Florian shifted restlessly beside her and Tremaine bit her lip as the darkness seemed to press in. Then she saw the dim radiance from the far side of the chamber, a gray reflection of the wan daylight outside. She pointed. “There! See it?”
“Ah, yes.” Gerard waved the light back to life, the white glow washing over the dark stone again. “If we can jump to that broken column there at the bottom of the steps, we can reach the top of that wall.” Briskly he added, “Come along.”
They climbed cautiously down wide steps streaked with damp muck and managed the first jump to the broken column that poked up above the dark water.
Taking a wavering step to the next block, her mind still on the coincidental resemblance to her play’s setting, Tremaine said, “I wonder what kind of people lived here.” Above the waterline small pale lizards flashed away from their light.
“Humans, you mean?” Florian asked, taking Gerard’s outstretched hand to help her to the next block. “This place looks like it was built by giants.”
“There is evidence of a race of giants that inhabited part of Ile-Rien and the Low Countries hundreds, perhaps thousands of years ago,” Gerard admitted. “They’ve found similar remains on the Tiakar Plateau in Parscia. Not underwater, of course.”
“That’s comforting.” Tremaine nodded, not comforted at all. She was having a hard time not imagining large clawed hands reaching up out of that water and grabbing them. The still surface seemed made for something horrible to burst up out of it. The fact that this had actually occurred in her play didn’t help.
Florian gave her a skeptical glance. “If they were still here, there’d be brackets for lamps, or pipes, or electric wires, or something. They couldn’t live in the dark.”
“Albino giants that can see in the dark, like bats,” Tremaine countered.
“With fangs?”
Gerard paused to indicate a doorway between two of the huge pillars, leading into a small room empty except for seawater. “That doorway and the tunnel passage would not accommodate giants.”
“Oh.”
Gerard had to douse the spell light again to let them get their bearings, but the daylight was even brighter this time. There was another bridge, this one with a roof, blocking their view, but once they passed under it they could see the gray light was coming through an archway at the top of a low ramp. The breeze carried the dead fish smell Tremaine associated with every seaport she had ever visited.
They reached the ramp without anyone falling in, but the slick muck covering the stone made it a far more difficult proposition than anything else so far and Tremaine was glad for her rubber-soled half boots. Florian drew a little ahead as she and Gerard scuffed and scraped their way to the top, so that when they reached her the girl was standing transfixed by the sight ahead.
Tremaine took a startled breath. It was an enclosed cove, a lagoon sheltered by a high rocky vault arching overhead. A jagged opening at the far end allowed in daylight and fog drifting in from the open sea. The shore of the cove had once been a harbor; she could still see the stone platforms and breakwaters built out into it, the square pillars sunk into the water as pilings where the ships had once tied up. Now those platforms and the narrow slips between were jammed with wrecked hulls, wooden skeletons of craft of all different sizes. The wrecks formed a forest of broken masts, decaying sailcloth hanging like shrouds, rotted ropes like spiders’ webs. Some were capsized and submerged, some were smashed in heaps up on the stone bank, as if dropped there by a terrible gale. At least no one could doubt now that she had seen a ship, Tremaine decided ruefully, looking over the destruction.
“Good God,” Gerard murmured.
The smell of rot tinged the breeze that came from the sea entrance. This was old carnage, Tremaine realized with a little relief. Still, the destruction was disturbing on a whole other level, like the crater the Gardier’s attacks had caused in Riverside. “Must have been some storm,” she commented uneasily.
“More than one storm, surely.” Florian squinted at the cave’s entrance.
“Not a storm,” Gerard said. He studied the devastation, brows knit. “A trap. Powerful spells drew these ships here. If I could find the etheric signatures . . .” He fished in his coat pocket and drew out a pair of aether-glasses. Pulling off his spectacles, he held the glasses up to his eyes, turning to view all of the large cave.