Rulan took that last step and Ilias surged to his feet, throwing himself forward and grabbing the weapon, wrenching it upward.
T
remaine fell backward and kept falling. She struck hard-packed sand, the breath knocked out of her, Gervas landing heavily nearby. Wheezing, she twisted, kicking out at him. Caught by surprise and badly shocked, he lost his grip on the avatar crystal and it rolled free. Clutching the sphere tightly, Tremaine grabbed the crystal with her free hand. She rolled away from Gervas, pushing herself awkwardly to her knees.
They were above the scrub desert, atop one of the hills, further away from the wall she had mistaken for a cliff. From this angle it was obvious it was a structure, crudely made with enormous slabs of rock propped up against each other. It was at least the size of the
Ravenna
.
Gervas twisted around, his face working. Tremaine read horror, shock, rage.
Oh yes
. This was a good feeling. She said through gritted teeth, “Have a go at these natives, why don’t you?”
Gervas shoved to his feet, reaching for her.
The stone floor smacked into her and Tremaine found herself sprawled on it, groaning. She felt like she had been run over by a milk truck.
The cool dampness of the rock revived her a little. She heard scuffling nearby and shook her head dazedly, pushing herself up on her hands and knees. Rulan would still have the gun and she needed to help Ilias. The sphere lay near her right hand, spinning itself like a top. The crystal with its imprisoned Gardier sorcerer lay near her left. “Hold on, I’ll be there—” She looked up to see Ilias had Rulan on the ground, one knee planted between his shoulder blades, determinedly strangling him with the Gardier rifle. “Never mind, I see you’re dealing with that.”
Tremaine made a few awkward grabs at the sphere before it slowed its spinning motion enough for her to catch it. She stumbled to her feet, bending down again to pick up the crystal. Staggering, she made it to the edge of the portal and sat down on the floor. The symbols of the spell circle were melted and blurred now, as if the stone had turned liquid with heat.
Rulan went limp. Ilias dropped him and shoved him away. He stood to smash the rifle against the stone floor until the stock fell off and metal bits went flying. “Hey,” Tremaine objected belatedly, “don’t do that unless it’s unloaded.”
He whipped around, dropping the remnants of the rifle, staring at her. “You’re back! I thought you were ... gone.”
“No, that was the plan,” she explained as he knelt beside her. She leaned against him, needing the support. “Gervas is gone.”
“Where did you take him?” Ilias put an arm around her, holding her up.
“That place we went by accident, the desert with the giant.”
“Good,” Ilias commented. He looked grimly at the circle, taking a deep breath. “I hope he enjoys it.”
Tremaine sat the sphere in her lap and picked up the crystal, looking into it. White light played in its depths, very like the distant blue sparks in the inner layers of the sphere. Very like. “Gervas said there’s a wizard imprisoned in this. That’s how the Gardier get their magic.”
“Imprisoned?” Ilias leaned over the crystal doubtfully. “You mean, somebody’s soul is in there? But that’s . . .” She could almost hear him sorting through words. “... perverted. Even if it’s a wizard. Are you sure he wasn’t lying?”
Tremaine looked at the sphere.
Oh, Arisilde, how did this happen
? “Pretty sure.” She lifted the crystal, testing its weight. “You don’t think he went in there voluntarily, do you?”
Ilias was still skeptical. “If he’s in there, he didn’t ask for it. I’d bet the harvest on that.”
Me too
. Tremaine hefted the crystal and smashed it down onto the floor.
It broke like glass. Milky white light fountained up out of the shattered mass. Tremaine yelped, grabbing the sphere, and Ilias grabbed her, scrambling to his feet. It rushed for them like water, but parted a few inches before Ilias’s boots, streaming away on either side of them. The light faded, dissipating in trickles, dying away. Ilias set Tremaine on her feet again. He looked aghast. “There was something in there all right. It really was a person?”
Tremaine nodded grimly. “It really was.”
I
lias led the way back through a different passage in case Gervas had brought friends. It narrowed to nearly a crack before opening into the main cavern. At least Tremaine thought it was the main cavern; it was a great dark empty space where lights flashed at random, illuminating running figures. Noise made it more confusing as people shouted in a variety of languages and rifle fire echoed from down the rocky passages. “Oh, great,” she said sourly, propping her weary body against the cool stone. “How are we going to find the others?” She didn’t hear anyone yelling in Gardier; that was promising.
Ilias paused, another shadow-shape in the dark, one hand on her arm to keep track of her. The sphere had tried to make light for them back in the passage, but Tremaine had desperately convinced it/him not to so they could move around with a little more circumspection. Ilias tugged her back into the passage impatiently. “Most of the fighting is back this way.”
“Oh, good,” Tremaine muttered, taking his word for it.
After a long scramble through the dark, Tremaine dimly heard gunfire and Ander’s voice yelling, “Cease fire, cease fire! Shooting at it doesn’t help!” The passage abruptly opened into a ledge looking down on a view of a huge dark cavern, or a different branch of the one they had just come from. In the erratic light of a few battery lamps, torches and several balls of sorcerous light, Tremaine could see a large wooden platform not far below them with moving figures, stacked crates and big metal tanks. Then in midair a huge patch of the darkness seemed to shift. The light caught it and she realized it was the black skin of a Gardier airship, turning away from the platform and moving slowly down the cavern. The hollow rushing sound of its engine reverberated through the enormous space, rising to a roar as it glided further away.
Ilias stepped to the lip of the rocky ledge, swearing under his breath. “They’re running. There’s nothing we can do.”
“Running,” Tremaine repeated almost absently, watching the jagged tail fins as they vanished into the shadows. “I don’t think they can use the portal anymore. They can’t get to Ile-Rien. But they can fly to another base. If they’ve already sent a message— But only if they’re using magic to communicate. They can’t get a conventional radio signal out of these caves.”
Ilias stared at her, then eyed the sphere suspiciously. “Who are you arguing with?”
“Myself.” But the ruthless bitch and the twitchy poet were in agreement on this one. Tremaine addressed the ball of metal and wheels and sorcerous power softly. “We can’t let them go, Arisilde. Stop the airship.”
A sort of rushing thump, like a giant gas stove being lit, echoed off the cavern walls. The airship had moved perhaps three hundred yards away down the huge passage, out of reach of any of the lights. But spots of red blossomed in the dark, apparently in midair, throwing orange reflections on the rock; fire growing inside the dirigible’s membrane, traveling from cell to cell through the hull. Tremaine nodded to herself, satisfied with her deductions and the result. “The wards were already gone. All the spells on this base, all the other crystals in their gadgets, must have been tied into that big one.”
The orange glow grew and uneasily, Ilias pulled her back from the opening. Tremaine hesitated, wanting to watch, but let him draw her away.
B
ack down the passage they found a dark corridor now chaotically lit by firelight and battery lamps and crowded with freed slaves in Gardier worker coveralls. Tremaine was relieved to recognize some of the Syprians and a couple of Ander’s men among the unfamiliar faces. Everyone was filthy and flushed from the heat.
“Gil!” Ilias shouted suddenly and bolted past, shouldering a path through the press and sending people staggering out of his way.
One of the bigger figures turned. Tremaine had a glimpse of Giliead’s face—startled, relieved—before Ilias flung himself into his arms.
“Tremaine!” Florian called from behind her. Tremaine turned and saw Gerard striding toward her. As he reached her, she automatically tried to hand him the sphere. He took it, passed it off to Florian behind him and pulled Tremaine into a tight hug. He released her and she couldn’t think of anything to say. “You smell funny,” she blurted.
He smiled, raising his voice to be heard over the babble. “It’s one of Niles’s old college charms. I used it to confuse the howlers. Hopefully it will wear off eventually.”
“Did you get the portal?” Ander demanded, appearing next to them.
Tremaine nodded, not really sure where to start. “We destroyed their sorcerer and Arisilde got the airship—”
Florian was pounding her on the back. “I knew you could do it.”
“Wait, what?” Ander stepped closer, frowning. “Their what?”
A deep-throated roar rolled down the tunnel, bringing an acrid cloud of smoke. There was a general instinctive surge back toward the main cavern, away from the wash of reflected light and heat.
An arm still around her shoulders, Gerard urged her after the others. Sounding puzzled, he asked, “Who did you say got the airship?”
Tremaine took a sharp breath. This wasn’t going to be easy to explain. “I found Arisilde.”
F
Chapter 22
F
W
ith the Gardier gone, the caves were silent again. The light from his torch throwing twitching shadows over the rock, Ilias picked his way through the big cavern to where Giliead stood by the skeleton of the half-completed flying whale. No thumping, no buzzing lights; it was obvious all the Gardier’s magic had fled. It was a relief to hear nothing but the whisper of wind through the air shafts far above, the soft voices of the Rienish and an occasional clank as someone tripped over debris in the dark. The lines that connected the wizard lights, the artificial walls, were just lifeless trappings, so much litter cluttering the ancient stone.
Giliead held his torch high, the warm light striking coppery sparks off the metal ribs arching up into darkness. “How many more of those do you think they have?” Ilias asked him softly.
Giliead shook his head, his gaze still caught by the metal beast. “If Ander is right about those markings on the maps, that they represent more Gardier strongholds—”
“Too many.” Ilias answered his own question, wishing he hadn’t asked it. He was just trying to avoid what they had to do next anyway. “Come on, we’re putting it off.” He turned away brusquely, but Giliead caught up with him in a few steps, dropping an arm around his shoulders.
They went down the narrow tunnel that led through the Gardier’s quarters, threading their way through the slapdash barricades already pulled down by the Rienish. The howlers had hauled off most of the bodies as they escaped into the tunnels, Gardier and freed slave. A door in one of the fake walls stood open and Ilias saw Ander and his men inside, tearing open cabinets and drawers in their haste to search. Ilias noted with approval that they were destroying some of the strange Gardier devices too; Gerard had said the crystal boxes didn’t all hold captured wizards, that some of them must only be useful for specific curses and that they might not work now that the main crystal was destroyed. But he was glad to see them in shattered pieces.
Ander, studying a sheaf of paper he had just pulled out of a drawer, looked up and spotted them in the doorway. “Don’t stay down here too long. We’re almost done here and we need to evacuate the area soon.”
Ilias cocked a brow and glanced up at Giliead.
Like we need him to tell us that
. Giliead just said imperturbably, “We’ll be right behind you.”
They moved on, making their way back through to the dark warren of the prison area. When they were out of earshot, Giliead said, “I wish I was that young again.”
Ilias snorted. “No, you don’t.”
They found a few more Gardier dead, the bodies torn apart by howlers. There were also a few dead slaves in similar condition, huddled in the back corners of open cells or sprawled across the doorways; stragglers who had been reluctant to trust their Syprian rescuers or just too afraid of the Gardier to attempt escape.
Still they made sure all the cells in the prison area were empty. Halian was leading the
Swift’s
crew on a similar search in the other parts of the wizards’ caves. Once they left for the surface, anyone who remained behind would end up howler food.
Finally there was only one more place to look. Giliead pushed open the heavy metal door to the chamber where he and the others had been held. The torchlight flickered and for an instant Ilias couldn’t see anything on the other side of the wall of bars. Then he made out the sprawled form and took a deep breath to slow his pounding heart. Ilias held the torches as Giliead knelt and cautiously reached through to touch the wizard’s body.
“He still feels dead.” Frowning, Giliead stood, brushing his hands off on his pants. “He’s cold, but not as cold as he should be.”
“He doesn’t look as dead as he did last time,” Ilias pointed out, watching Ixion’s unmoving form uneasily.
Giliead lifted his brows. “Good point.”
They stood in silence for a moment.
Giliead grimaced, planting his hands on his hips and looking away. “I think he moved.”
Ilias fell back a step in pure reflex, then glared at his friend. “That’s not funny.”
Giliead shook his head, frustrated. “No, no, from when we first put him in there. I think he’s moved.”
“Oh.” Ilias eyed the inert form again warily. It might be Giliead’s imagination, but he wasn’t willing to count on that.
“He could do it again.” Giliead wearily rubbed his forehead as if his head hurt. “He could have bodies growing all over this place we’d never find, not before the Gardier come back.”
They regarded each other with glum resignation. Ilias took a deep breath. “We’ll have to take him with us.”
“
A
re you sure?” Gerard asked again. He and Tremaine were seated on a dark stone block on a bluff overlooking the sea. This had been a plaza or meeting area about the time the underwater city had been built. Dark flat-roofed stone buildings formed two sides of it, one concealing a shaft leading to the caves and the other a rough set of stairs down the rocky overgrown hill to one of the canals. The twisted trees and thick vegetation had eaten away much of the stone paving but the outline of the plaza was still visible. The misty sky was a heavy gray and waves washed against the rocks below, twisted into fantastic shapes by wind and water. Tremaine sighed. “No. For the last time, no. If you want to be sure, ask it. ‘Are you Arisilde? One click for yes, two clicks for no.’ ” She knew she was hovering on the edge of exhausted collapse, but she couldn’t seem to manage it. All she could do was sit here being dimly surprised her aching body was still upright and argue with Gerard.