Gabriel’s breath paused. “You’re sure?” he asked.
“Thought you’d want to know,” Cully said a little smugly.
Mark my words.
Gabriel started, his hair standing up on the back of his neck. He looked back, calmed himself, took three breaths for concentration, and went into his palace.
He raised his own shield of gold; he placed the golden buckler on his arm. He paused and winked at Prudentia.
“For this, you were born,” she said again.
“I wish you’d stop saying that,” he said.
Mortirmir’s shield covered the entire phalanx of the casa. Behind, the Duchess of Venike had her scarecrows on their feet, their long spears shining in the starlight. They almost filled the great cavern, and they were packed very closely.
Gabriel waited a full minute; so long that Ser Michael thought the emperor might have changed his mind.
“I need a piss,” muttered Cully, and people laughed.
“Ready?” Gabriel shouted, and his voice, attenuated by the hermetical shields, echoed off the ceiling far overhead.
He took the answering growl for assent.
The plaque had eight settings and four lines. He consulted the itinerary in Al Rashidi’s memory for the twentieth time and turned the key from the bottom of the cross to the top.
The curtain fell away instantly.
Gabriel’s heart beat so fast he wondered if he could die of it.
There were stars. They had been hidden by the working of the gate, but now they seemed to fill the sky; millions of stars of brighter than normal intensity. A night sky, and a mighty comet burned across it in splendour.
A smell of vegetation and something else, like cinnamon. Maybe like basil. Cool. Pleasant.
The emperor stood that way for perhaps three heartbeats before the Nordikaans surged forward to surround him, and then the whole line of the casa stepped forward ten paces.
They were on a hillside in starlight, surrounded by ferns that smelled like cinnamon and stood higher than a mounted man. The gate behind them was two great pylons of what appeared to be ivory—seamless, beautiful, and the colour of an old moon.
There were sounds: a call, and then another, and a creaking, like a cricket from home, but higher pitched, and another droning noise.
The casa crushed the ferns flat despite their size and marched on, forming a hollow square as practiced, filling in from the gate. The hill was high and bald except for the ferns; at the foot of the round hill was a stream, deep and wide, bridged with a high span of the same seamless ivory as the pylons.
The square grew until there were fully three thousand forming its sides.
Gabriel stood in the middle of the square, drinking in the night air.
“How far to the next gate?” Bad Tom asked.
“Twenty-four imperial miles,” the emperor said.
“Ain’t we lucky it’s not four thousand,” Tom said with a laugh.
Gabriel’s glare was lost in starlight.
Michael rode up with Toby at his side. “Camp here?”
“As soon as Morgon certifies the water,” the emperor said. “Gentlemen, have you ever imagined what we could face? Poisonous air? No air at all?”
“God between us and evil,” muttered Michael. “But yes, I’ve thought of it.”
“Good,” Gabriel said. “We have to think of everything. All the time.”
Mortirmir was in full armour. He didn’t even look uncomfortable. In the starlight, he looked like a young god. “Absurd,” he snapped. “Illogical. If the atmosphere were poisonous, no one would ever have come here. People did come here, or we wouldn’t have a map. QED.”
“That’s you, told.” Derkensun laughed and Michael winced.
A pair of wagons came through into the square, and Michael rode off to pass the word to No Head for a camp.
“I don’t see na’ firewood,” Tom said.
“We can burn the wagons we empty of supplies,” Gabriel said.
Tom nodded. “Ye ha’e a muckle answer for ae. For me, I want a good fight. An’ I miss Sauce. I miss … why can’t we all be together?” he asked.
Gabriel backed Ataelus until he was almost nose to nose with the big man. “Because if I fuck up, everyone in front will die,” he said. “And someone has to be ready to carry on. Right now, that’s Sauce.”
“Oh,” said Tom. Just for once, he was at a loss for words.
“Move the scarecrows forward,” Gabriel said. “And get Ariosto.”
“Have you noticed how little the stars move?” Mortirmir asked Bad Tom.
The big man raised an eyebrow. “I canna’ say that I ha’e,” he admitted.
Mortirmir was watching the sky. “The gates must all open at different times,” he posited slowly. “Astronomical times? Hermetical times? Thomas, I didn’t even look into the aethereal in the last place. Well, a peek perhaps. But these are different worlds.”
Bad Tom smiled. “Aye, so I’m told.”
Mortirmir wasn’t really listening, but then, he seldom did. “Dan Favour looked at the gate, what, seven hours ago? And it was night here. And it still is, and no sign of dawn.”
Gabriel emerged from his candlelit red pavilion in his flying harness. There were tents going up as far as the eye could see. But those were tents for officers and artificers and cooks. The men, no matter what their social rank, were sleeping on the ground, which was soft, a little spongy, and smelled spicy, but seemed wholesome enough in the odd light.
“Ye’r goin’ flyin’ in the dark,” Tom Lachlan said. “On a fewkin’ alien world in the middle o’ hell, and it mayhap full o’ de’ils, and ye’r goin’ to ha’e a wee flyabout.”
“Yes,” Gabriel said. He grinned.
“Ye’r a loon,” Tom said affectionately. “I wish I had a beastie like yourn. We’d go and find trouble.”
Gabriel laughed hard; so hard he had to lean against a surprised magister magus. “Tom, we’re marching through hell. We’re in trouble. We don’t have to find it.”
Bad Tom laughed in turn. “God’s truth,” he said.
“Michael’s going to sleep. Tom, you’re in command.” Gabriel slapped the hill man’s hand. Tom grinned.
“Ah, a’wheel,” he said. “I’ll do me best.”
Gabriel got up on Ariosto, already tired from a day in the saddle. He knew that somewhere two worlds behind, it was just coming on for late evening. But in his head, it was the middle of the night.
Love you, boss!
Love you, too, brother.
Smells funny. Feels odd. Air feels odd.
Give me half an hour …
No! Let’s fly!
Ariosto leapt into the air. The hillside was just steep enough to give him an easy lift, and he was away on a rising air current and his pinions were almost invisible in the bright starlight, an iridescent wink and he rippled his control feathers.
Up, Gabriel ordered. I want to see.
They went up.
When it was cold, the way the air suddenly grew cold at home at a certain height, Gabriel prepped and cast the opening frames of Al Rashidi’s working against the Odine. It worked to illuminate the enemy; Gabriel cast it as a separate working, to see what might be seen. It was sluggish; difficult to cast, as if he’d only just learned it, or lacked the ops, which he did not.
Either it failed, or it found no target.
Then he did what Mortirmir had taught him—he looked for silent talents by looking for movements in the currents of potentia.
It was his first look into the world’s aethereal and Gabriel was startled by the emptiness, the lack of colour.
There was a rich brown outside his iron gate. He opened the gate cautiously and looked, but the brown was below him, and nearly uniform. Of gold potentia there was very little.
Gabriel surfaced in the alien real. Ariosto had climbed while he cast; now he could see nothing but the stars above and a few campfires at his feet, very far down, like candle lights.
&n
bsp; He took Ariosto down.
Careful, boss. I don’t even know …
Gabriel leveled them out somewhere around a thousand feet. He could see the difference between water and woods and what appeared to be open fields. He could see the river below their camp, and the bridge that seemed to be of bone or ivory.
Lower.
He dropped down until he could see the road going over the bridge and then he followed it away from camp. It was clear for a minute or so, and then it vanished to reappear as a wide trail or cart track.
Lower.
Any lower and we might as well walk, Ariosto complained. But he dropped down another hundred feet and they glided silently over the track, lost it in a patch of high ferns, and they were in open country—a hill, as high as the one on which their camp was built, and then another stream and another ivory bridge.
Was there a very faint smudge of colour off to the right?
He continued, following the track; it passed over three little streams and then climbed up onto a causeway, and suddenly there was a road, exactly like the road through the crawlies, smooth, well built.
Gabriel took Ariosto down almost to the road surface and swept along the road, and then up, up, climbing hard.
This air is heavy.
Gabriel had no idea what his mount meant, but the lack of potentia concerned him. They rose high enough that Gabriel was sure he was looking at dawn; a very, very faint smudge of rose off in the endless starlight.
He could also see the end of the road; another pair of ivory pylons like huge Umroth tusks rising out of the …
He could see bright light, and something …
He turned. The gate was open.
It was open.
He banked, his attention suddenly everywhere, trying to find an enemy. He flew a little farther and watched the gate collapse sideways until it didn’t seem to exist, confirming his observation that the gates had only two “real” dimensions.
He cast a very small working with enormous effort, allowing himself the ability to see heat. The gate burned like a sun, and he could not look at it; it reflected passively on huge ferns … and he saw that the gate was empty, but nothing had come through; or rather, nothing he could see had.
He turned Ariosto again.
Nothing there, boss, his mount said. Nothing to eat anyway. Now, off to the right there’s something. A herd.
Where? Gabriel thought.
There. Ariosto turned slightly. What are those?
They looked like deer, or horses, in the uncertain vision of warmth. They were somehow reassuring. And they were more than a mile off the road.
Not for us, Gabriel said.
He turned and Ariosto beat his wings strongly, and they were coasting along the track again. The causeway was already gone.
Something tried to destroy the road, Gabriel thought.
Full dawn; the longest, slowest dawn any of them had ever experienced.
Gabriel rose from his camp bed and left Blanche asleep. He took a proffered cup of quaveh from Nicodemus, pulled the bed hangings closed, and stretched.
“Isn’t it odd that we’re here, at the end of all things, marching through hell to save our world, and we all just go to sleep?” he said. “Like it’s the end of another day on the farm?”
Nicodemus smiled inscrutably. “Yes, Your Highness.”
“I’ll bet you say that to all the boys,” Gabriel said.
Nicodemus refilled his cup. “No, Your Highness.”
Gabriel sighed.
“I have a stack of messages for you. And Ser Robert has had the green banda out all night. He begs leave to report in person.”
Gabriel nodded. “Ser Robert first,” he said.
Long Paw stepped in to find the emperor naked, washing himself. MacGilly and Woodstock were laying out arming clothes.
“Morning, sir,” Long Paw said. Highness was a silly title, and Long Paw couldn’t stomach it. Most of the old company men couldn’t, so they didn’t.
Gabriel grinned. “I’m still alive and the camp wasn’t attacked, so I guess we’re alright?” he asked.
Long Paw held out a clod of what appeared to be mossy earth.
“We own the ground,” he said. “We’ve patrolled right up to the gate. It’s open, alright. But …” He shrugged. “It’s the salamanders. They’re on the other side.”
Gabriel was washing under his arms. He stopped moving a moment as he absorbed the words.
“Ah,” he said.
“I looked right through, Captain. They’re there, camped. Looks cold. No guards. I shit you not.” He shrugged. “I’ll wager they’re getting ready to come through.”
Gabriel’s eyes grew hard.
“It’s fifteen miles or a little less,” Long Paw continued. “We could stop ’em dead at the gate.”
“No,” the emperor snapped. “Towel.” The last comment was directed at MacGilly.
He looked back at Long Paw. “No, we want them to come through. To clear the gate. We need to beat them and then move through. Not get locked in a long contest of attrition on a narrow frontage. How many?”
Long Paw shrugged. “No idea. Honestly, Captain, I peeked through and ran like hell.”
“Good,” Gabriel said. “Shirt.”
MacGilly handed him a shirt.
Gabriel looked back at Long Paw. “Nicely done, Paw. Any idea how many troops we have this morning?”
“All the casa, of course. All the scarecrows. Du Corse is having breakfast outside; his people are just coming through.” Long Paw yawned. “Christ, what a day.”
Gabriel got his braes on, one leg at a time. “And the start of another. Get some sleep,” he said.
“Count Zac has the pickets now,” Long Paw said. He gave a vague salute and wandered out.
Mortirmir came in. He handed Gabriel a stack of messages.
“Read that,” he said.
Gabriel read and his eyes closed. “Damn,” he said.
Blanche was just rising. She poked her head out the curtains, alerted by his tone. “What is it, love?”
Gabriel was trying to breathe. “Ash won the race to Lissen Carak somehow. He stormed all our nice entrenchments and he already holds the town. And …” He shook his head. “All the workers.” He looked at Blanche. “All the workers are … taken. By the will. Which means that Ash is allied with the will. The only worse news would be that Ash had taken the gate. Miriam is dead.” He was shaken.
Blanche swung her legs over the edge of the curtained bed and walked to her husband and kissed him. “Shit washes off,” she said softly. “Whatever Ash breaks, we can make right.”
Mortirmir smiled at Blanche. “Exactly. Your words to God’s ear, my lady. We will build such wonderful things.”
“The dragon spell didn’t work on the will,” Gabriel said.
Mortirmir shook his head. “May I speculate?”
Gabriel showed a little of his old humour. “Could I stop you?” he asked.
Emperors have to be resilient.
Mortirmir ignored him. “This war; for the gates. For … whatever they are fighting for …” He waved his hands. “It’s gone on forever. For a very long time. Someone built this web of hermetical gates; Derkensun calls it a Sky Road, which I like. Inaccurate, but yet, accurate. And the Sky Road was meant to unite all the hermetical races. But instead, it is the conduit of war. They are all …” He looked out the door. “They are like fencing opponents who know each other very, very well. They have responses and deceptions, but they know each other’s styles. You taught me this, Gabriel.”
Gabriel was reading the other messages. It amused him, even in a moment of maximum crisis, that he was getting a message from Alcaeus, who was marching the last of the imperial army over the Green Hills, via a messenger bird who had flown to Arles, and then an imperial messenger who had ridden a horse across hell, to his camp on a world his people were calling Arden.
“Yes,” Gabriel said.
“The dragon spell, as we call
it, is far too complex; it rests on endless sloppy base works; it is really a compilation of hundreds of subworkings, and they don’t even join up properly, and to me …”
“Is this going somewhere?” Gabriel asked, reading more bad news. “Get Ser Michael,” he said to MacGilly.
“Yes!” Mortirmir said, frustrated. “We’re going to change all that. We don’t have to learn the great workings by rote with subhermeticals created by wardens and irks who don’t think like us. We can strip it all away and write new workings. But it is because no one is writing new workings that they can learn these responses and deploy them.”
Gabriel looked up. “Right. I got that last part. But right now, I’m about to fight an alien army on alien soil and I’m apparently already two days late to save the world.” He paused. “But if you are right,” he said, and looked into Mortirmir’s slightly mad eyes. “If you are right, Morgon, then we really are the monsters, and the dragons are right to fear us.”
Morgon laughed. “Of curse they’re right. Why do you think I used Al Rashidi’s huge working?”
“Because we knew it would work?” Gabriel tried.
“No,” Morgon said smugly. “Because I’m saving the real stuff for the real fight.”
The adolescent master magister was practically hopping with excitement.
“How’s your ops right now?” Gabriel asked. Michael came in wearing his arming coat over a nightshirt.
“Terrible,” Morgon admitted. “There’s no potentia here. It’s all been used up.”
“Used?” Gabriel asked. “Morgon, you are beginning to sound every bit as confusing as Master Smythe. Michael, we’re fighting. Today. Army of salamanders, we think—superfast, hot to the touch, good weapons skills.”
Michael smiled. “So one of Kronmir’s predications was accurate.”
Gabriel waved a hand as Anne put his jupon on the other arm. “I don’t care about the plans of our adversaries just now, no matter how pure an intellectual problem. I care about our plan. We’re suddenly behind schedule. We have to fight for the next gate, and we need to move. We have very little magick. This will be a straight-up fight …”
“It’s not that bad,” Mortirmir said.
“Salamanders have some serious talent,” the emperor said. “Shields first.”