“Good, because—” Tremaine said just in time to catch a swell in the face. She coughed up water, gasping. “Never mind, it wasn’t important.”
Floating nearby, one of the men said tensely, “He’s coming back, Captain.” He was a hard-faced, wiry man whose name Tremaine thought was Basimi.
She looked and saw Ilias swimming toward them through the mist. He moved quickly, with a minimum of splashing. Still about ten yards away, he paused, treading water, and waved to Ander.
“Right.” Ander nodded, turning to tell the others, “Let’s go.”
The men swam awkwardly as they towed the cases, making Tremaine feel vulnerable and glad for the concealing mist. Giant black rocks loomed suddenly ahead of them, the water lapping at their rough surfaces. They made it past without the waves slamming anyone into the stone and Ilias swam back to report, “The cave mouth ahead leads to the inlet where the entrance is.”
As Ander translated for the others, Ilias turned to Tremaine. “Are you all right?”
“Why, do I look like I’m drowning?” she asked, right before another swell swamped her.
Ilias hauled her up by the collar and she shook the water out of her ears in time to hear Ander say, “Tremaine, will you hold on to one of the goddamn cases?”
“We’re nearly there.” She kept swimming. She was going to do this on her own if she had to dog-paddle the whole way.
Dark cliffs draped with the sour-colored greenery materialized out of the drifting fog. They followed Ilias toward an opening tucked into a fold of the rock. Gray light inside showed the cave was open to the sky somewhere not far ahead. The waves grew rougher, buffeting them against the steep sides as they worked their way along. After much cursing, gasping and bruises the passage spilled abruptly into an open well with a little gravelly beach along the rough rock wall.
The men reached it first, hastily hauling the supply cases up onto the gritty sand. Tremaine felt for the bottom and found it, her feet slipping on the gravel. Florian, some paces ahead of her, stood up with an exclamation of relief. Rulan waded out to her to drag her case ashore.
Tremaine staggered up after them. Under the bulging folds of the cliff were the dark pockets of several cave mouths. One was larger than the others, leading back deep into the rock. The familiar smell of dank decay hung over the little inlet and the purplish plants clung to every crack.
“Here we go again,” Florian said under her breath, plopping down on the sand and pulling off her boots to dump out the water. Under Ander’s direction, the men pried open the waterproofed cases.
“I think we’re a little better prepared this time,” Ander commented, lifting one of the crossbows out and checking the stock and string for dampness. They had also brought brown coveralls, confiscated from an abandoned textile mill in Rel. Ander had pronounced them close enough in color and style to the Gardier uniforms and worker outfits to fool an observer at a distance or in bad light.
Sitting on his heels, Ilias leaned over to inspect the crossbow. He didn’t look impressed. “They’re small. They have good pull?”
“Good enough.” Ander handed one to him and knelt beside the case with the torches and other equipment. “It’s what we used on the Aderassi front. The Gardier’s spells for disrupting machinery and electrical equipment won’t work on them.” He shook his head suddenly, wincing at some memory, and looked around to make sure the other men weren’t having trouble arming themselves. “Didn’t help much against firearms, but it was something.”
Basimi came over, wearing one of the coveralls over his wet clothes and checking the set of his equipment. His eyes moved over their little group and Tremaine wondered what he saw: one Intelligence captain recently wounded and still laboring under a burden of exhaustion, one wild native guide, plus one half-trained underage witch and one dilettante flake. Then Basimi said, “Are we sure we can trust him, the native?”
Rulan, sitting nearby checking the batteries of the torches, glanced up, frowning a little.
Ander flicked a grim glance at Basimi. “The native’s killed more Gardier than all of us put together,” he said. Startled, Basimi gave Ilias another searching look.
Tremaine was a little surprised at how correctly she had guessed Basimi’s estimation of them. Surprised, but not particularly gratified. She shifted over to Ilias, trying to look as if she was asking about the crossbow, and said in Syrnaic, “Are we sure we can trust them?”
“That’s what I was wondering,” Florian said in the same language. “If Colonel Averi thinks he didn’t find all the spies—”
Loading bolts into a quiver, Ander said flatly, “No, we aren’t sure we can trust them.”
Ilias lifted a brow at this information, then rolled the shoulder he had injured and glanced uneasily back at the cave entrance. “I wish I had my sword.”
Tremaine looked at the other men, most of whom were busy arming themselves. “I wish you had your sword too,” she said under her breath.
“
W
hat about the disappearing curse?” one of the men demanded.
“The what?” Gerard asked, baffled. “The one you did to the
Swift
, that didn’t work,” Dyani interpreted, shifting around to find a more comfortable spot in their crowded cell.
It had been a long timeless interval and they had no idea if it was day or night. The Gardier hadn’t provided any food and their source of water was a trickle of foul-tasting liquid leaking down the rock walls. That may have been just as well; the sanitary facilities consisted of the back corner of the cell. The chains, not comfortable to begin with, had painfully abraded everyone’s wrists. The crowded conditions would have been intolerable, except that most Syprians were apparently sociably inclined individuals with the body modesty of cats. And this group had obviously already been through trying circumstances together in the past. Giliead was really the only withdrawn one, set apart more by his reticence than his status as the god’s Chosen Vessel.
“The disappearing curse did work,” Arites protested. “There’s no leviathans here, so maybe—”
Gerard shook his head. “No, I don’t have the materials to create that ward again.” The Syprians were taking their enforced proximity to a sorcerer fairly well, though Gerard was still glad Giliead and Halian were his allies.
There had been one awkward incident not long after Ixion left. At some muttered commentary near the back of the group, Halian had lifted his head, singled out the ringleader by eye, and demanded, “What did you say, Darien?”
Darien had shrugged uneasily. “He’s a wizard too.”
“He’s killed wizards.” Giliead hadn’t bothered to turn his head, but his voice was as hard as steel. “Haven’t you?”
“I have.” Gerard eyed his audience thoughtfully. “I can describe the occasion if it would help.”
To his surprise nearly everyone had nodded. After relating the time he had fought a rogue Bisran sorcerer-priest, he followed it up with a couple of Nicholas and Arisilde’s more violent adventures. He had noticed that some of the men still avoided his eyes and had shifted to the back of the cell to avoid any accidental contact, but others were obviously hoping he could help.
Gerard had been racking his brain for something that might get them out of here, but the Gardier were proof against any direct attempts at offensive spells. He added, “The cell door and the corridor are too small; if one of you tried to slip out, even warded, the Gardier would be aware of it. They can detect wards at close quarters.”
Halian grunted thoughtfully. He hadn’t asked the frantic questions that the others had, but Gerard sensed he was just as eager to take any weapon that lay to hand.
“There’s got to be something.” The quiet voice was Giliead’s. He leaned against the bars, staring toward the cell door.
The others went silent.
Respect or fear
? Gerard wondered. Looking at the other men’s faces, he thought it was mostly respect, but the fear was there too. He said slowly, “This may be a ridiculous question, but there’s no possibility that Ixion might be trusted, in this one instance?” He shifted uncomfortably, leaning back against the damp wall. “He knows what I am. Even if he’s holding that fact back as insurance, a way to bribe the Gardier for his safety . . .”
Giliead shook his head, brows drawn together almost in pain. For a moment he looked young and uncertain. “I can’t . . . he’s done this before. When he tricked his way into our house, he didn’t just pretend to be someone else. He made himself our friend, he kept it up for months when he could have killed us at any time.” He turned urgently toward Gerard, as if willing him to understand. “Just telling them who you are is too easy for him.”
“He’s right,” Halian put in with grim resignation. “This could just be a game to him.”
“And he’s drawing it out for his own amusement,” Gerard finished thoughtfully, rubbing his aching shoulder again. He found himself wishing Ixion could encounter Nicholas Valiarde. Tremaine’s father had disliked men who used other people as playthings, whether they were sorcerers or not, and his response to them had tended to be fatally efficient.
They always have a weakness . . . Now there’s a thought
. He wondered if perhaps he was looking at Ixion’s weakness, or at least one of them. “He didn’t kill you because he didn’t want to,” Gerard told Giliead.
Giliead looked at him, not understanding. “The game is more important to him than winning,” Gerard clarified. “It makes him vulnerable. We, on the other hand, are only interested in winning.”
He watched Giliead turn that thought over. Halian said doubtfully, “You think we should make a deal with him.”
“Then kill him?” Gyan put in, hopeful.
“Exactly. If we can.” Gerard saw they all seemed a little startled, and he added honestly, “As I said, we have mad sorcerers in Ile-Rien also, and they have to be dealt with without mercy; they’re too dangerous for honorable means.”
Giliead actually cracked a smile. “I know.”
Thinking about Nicholas Valiarde had led Gerard’s mind back to the old days before the Viller Institute. He wasn’t sure he had ever been in this tight a situation before, though there had been some interesting times. “That’s it.” Gerard sat up suddenly. He had been trying to think of a complicated spell, but perhaps the answer lay in something simple. If Ixion could be persuaded to get them, or at least Giliead, out of this cell even as a cruel trick, they might just be able to play a cruel trick on him. “I haven’t used this in years—it wouldn’t work against the Gardier. It’s a charm that can disarm a sorcerer, or a Rienish sorcerer at any rate, temporarily. It may work on Ixion as well. It’s certainly worth a try.”
“How temporarily?” Halian demanded.
“Very temporarily, only a few moments, but if you’re quick—”
“—That’s all I’ll need,” Giliead finished, watching him intently.
Distracted, Gerard looked around, absently patting his non-existent pockets. “The spell requires a few simple ingredients.” Spittle, a bit of thread, those were accessible enough. “I need some strands of hair from a virgin.”
He hadn’t realized the implications of that until he had said it aloud. Before the sudden silence could become embarrassing, someone in the back said, “Well, Arites?”
“Very funny.” Arites twisted around to glare at the offender.
“Hah.” Dyani gave them a determined smile, sitting up in the circle of Gyan’s arm and picking at one of her braids. “Now you lot can’t say I wasn’t useful for something.”
W
ith the battery torches and the carbide lantern, the cavern passages weren’t as dark—at least Tremaine kept telling herself that. These tunnels were definitely more cramped and narrow than those nearer to the underground city.
Ilias led the way with Ander, Tremaine stumbled along not far behind, and Florian followed with the sphere, the other men behind her. They had all put on the coveralls and Tremaine was sweating under hers. She had had to roll up the arms and legs to keep from tripping and the extra rolls of bulky fabric didn’t help.
A hiss from Ilias abruptly silenced them and they waited, tense and expectant. Then he poked his head around the turn and whispered, “Douse the lights!”
Ander hurriedly translated for the others and the lights winked out along the line. Still keeping his voice low, Ilias explained, “There’s a new break in the wall ahead, leading into a room or a passage I didn’t know about, and there’s wizard light.”
As he spoke Tremaine’s eyes adjusted and she could see the dim white glow ahead.
“Let’s take a look.” Ander eased forward after Ilias.
Tremaine started to follow when a hand on her arm stopped her, and Ander said, “No, you and Florian stay back here.”
“Why?” Tremaine demanded. If he said “because it’s dangerous” she was going to laugh hysterically.
“Because I don’t want the sphere deciding it doesn’t like what we see,” Ander told her in a tense whisper. “I don’t want to announce us to the whole island just yet.”
“Oh.”
Well, that makes sense
. Tremaine settled back against the rock.
She waited impatiently, listening to the tense breathing of the men and her own pounding heartbeat. The faint white radiance grew a little brighter, but it wasn’t enough to make out anyone’s face. Muffled clicking from the sphere was accompanied by the sound of Florian shaking the bag and murmuring, “Stop that, right now.”
“Is it moving?” Tremaine asked quietly.
“A little,” Florian admitted, shifting around for a more comfortable position. “It’s not whirring, you know, like it does right before it”—Tremaine could almost hear her veer off the words “blows things up”—“does something.”
“Does it do that a lot?” one of the men asked softly, sounding both amused and worried.
Tremaine recognized Rulan’s deep voice. Florian explained, “It reacts to the Gardier and to anything it considers hostile.”
We won’t raise the point that it’s making those decisions on its own
, Tremaine thought,
and has decided it can practice sorcery without benefit of human intervention
. The sphere was their best weapon; they couldn’t stop using it just because it had developed a mind of its own.