“The next is a barren world, wasted by the wars,” Maria said.
“A whole world, wasted?” Sauce asked.
There was animated chatter from the smallest Quazitsh, the one covered in white tattoos or perhaps paint, narrow, angular strokes that looked to Gabriel like writing.
“They ask: How can we not know that most of the spheres are destroyed or ravaged by war?” Maria kept her tone neutral.
“By the blood of Christ,” Sauce muttered.
“And the next?” Gabriel was adamant.
“A very rich place, held sometimes by the … now he wants to tell me it is undefended, almost easy to take and hold, with thousands of slaves. Or millions. I’m sorry, Sire; the words are the same.” Maria didn’t take her eyes off the three.
“Millions of slaves, and easy to take …” Gabriel smiled. “I’m sure they are telling the truth.”
“I am not,” said the translator.
“We have some notes, too, my lord,” said Lucca, who was standing by.
“And this place?” Gabriel asked, pointing to the red jewel closest to the black hole.
Agitation, obvious hesitation, and then an outburst.
Maria listened for a long time. Horses fidgeted; men went out into the snow and relieved themselves. Sukey began to issue food.
“The Odine took it.” She looked at the tattooed creature. It looked miserable.
“And this?” Gabriel pointed to the blackened hole, or socket.
Silence.
Finally, the tattooed salamander spoke. The one in the jade torque interrupted him, and bared his fangs. The exchange grew heated, in what sounded to the better-trained ears present like two or even three different languages, and at one point, Brown pushed between the two.
Lucca glanced at Sauce, got a nod, and bowed to the emperor. “Lord, I don’t have the language to follow; but I know how to run the Question. Send the bastard in the torque away.”
“They have factions?” Gabriel asked.
Maria shook her head. “I cannot even hazard a guess,” she admitted.
Gabriel motioned to Ser Daniel and a dozen green men-at-arms. “Take this gentleman to the warm springs and let him bathe,” he said.
The torque wearer drew himself, or herself, up to fullest extent and spat a long speech in heavy syllables. And then was marched away.
“He says that we are fools, slaves playing at masters; that he now understands that we do not even know what we are doing; that he will not aid us or speak again, and he wishes he had ordered this other one killed, but he is a priest and not really a person.” Maria shrugged. “I think that’s what he said. Honestly, my lord, I am out of my depth.”
“I think you are the hero of this piece,” Gabriel said warmly. “Now ask our friend here again.”
“Through that gate used to be a Qwethnethog world. There was a war, after which sorcerers and priests closed the gate forever.” She took a deep breath. “She says, that way lies the Qwethnethog empire. Or it did. I have no reference for time, my lord. She refers each time to cycles and I cannot guess how long these cycles are.”
“Ask where the Quazitsh empire is located,” Gabriel said.
Silence.
He nodded.
So did Brown. “They ain’t fools,” Brown said.
“So,” Gabriel said to sum up. “Leftmost green jewel is probably the root into their heartland.”
“Gates open different times,” Mortirmir said. “They might have come through one, or two, or five.”
“Why is she helping us at all?” Tancreda asked Maria.
“She thinks we might be allies. She doesn’t seem to have the … prejudice … of the war leader, about our being slaves. Permission to speculate wildly?”
“Of course,” Gabriel said, looking at the jewels.
Maria’s shoulders hunched; her hesitancy was in every inch of her spine, but she pushed on. “Everyone makes war on everyone,” she said, “and the war between Quazitsh and Qwethnethog is very old; but they, at least, ally against dragons and Odine. Who, I may add, they refer to as Odine.”
Gabriel pulled at his beard. “This is incredibly fascinating,” he said. “But of no use whatsoever. “Gate one, Quazitsh. Gate two, unknown. Gate three, something we probably don’t want to find, since it was where our host wants to send us. Gate four, a world wasted by the Odine. Gate five, destroyed.” He shrugged. “I’m going to assume that Al Rashidi’s source only thought of this as having four gates. And that he counted from left to right.”
“Widdershins?” Sauce asked.
“Ifriquy’an,” Pavalo put in. “Yes.”
Gabriel nodded, and then inserted his key and turned it once.
The gate grew, if anything, darker.
“Ready?” he yelled, and a trumpet sounded: the two-minute warning. A falconet was brought up, the company closed ranks; women finished a sausage and dropped the rest into a purse; men thumbed the edge of a handy dagger and adjusted a sword belt. Arrows went to bows.
Morgon Mortirmir raised a shield of pure golden ops. “You expect the gate to be contested?”
“I expect every gate to be contested,” Gabriel said.
Mortirmir nodded.
Gabriel flexed his left hand. This world, despite its snow, was rich in potentia.
He turned the key, a soft click.
The gate opened.
A powerful, warm smell of seawater permeated the cave.
A narrow path of sand extended off into the light of four great moons. Black water lapped the ridge of sand from both sides. Traces of embankment and road could just be made out.
“Nowhere for an ambush to wait for us,” said Tancreda.
“Under the water?” spat Sauce. “By the Virgin. All our armour will rust. Alright, my children, on me. Let’s go!”
Sauce led her banda out into the darkness. They went forward at a trot, the horses a little spooked by the water but clearly delighted by the warmth.
“What are we doing with the Quazitsh?” Michael asked.
“We’re taking them with us,” Gabriel said.
Maria bowed. “The priestess wants to take … me. To her home. To negotiate.”
Gabriel nodded. He was watching the green banda press forward.
“I’ll think about it,” he said. “Atcourt!”
Ser Francis appeared at his side.
“We can’t afford to wait. I’m going with Sauce. Six lances, your choice, now.” He waved at Woodstock. “Ataelus. Oh God, he’s dead.”
Gabriel stood there a long moment, considering how many people were dead, and how he missed a horse, and then he shook it off. “Get me … a good horse.”
Woodstock brought him a big bay stallion, who was instantly interested in one of the sultan’s mares. But he was a genial fellow for a warhorse, and Gabriel mounted. Then he reconsidered, dismounted, and sent for Ariosto.
“Never mind, Francis,” he said. “I’m tired.”
He walked through the gate. Mortirmir and Tancreda were already there.
“It’s remarkable,” Mortirmir said.
“Aethereal?” Gabriel asked.
“Capable. Not robust,” Morgon said. “We are really very lucky at home.”
“Shouldn’t it be the same everywhere?” Gabriel asked, and then he gasped.
Tancreda nodded.
“Oh my … God,” Gabriel said.
There were stars. The constellations were alien, of course.
But almost directly overhead …
… there was a patch of pure black. It was …
… huge.
And empty.
He went into his palace and found the dominant colour outside the iron gate of his mind to be blue. There was the omnipresent black, there was gold, and there was some green as well.
“The water is full of life,” Mortirmir said. “There is something in there with talent. In the water.”
Gabriel thought of the beaked kraken. Of the Eeeague. The whales, the serpents .…
br />
He shook his head. “I thought there were seven worlds,” he said. “And then I thought there might be twenty-five.”
“There are hundreds,” Mortirmir said.
“Thousands,” Tancreda said.
“Again, no water, no food, and no place to camp,” Gabriel said.
Ariosto appeared with a burst of warmth and affection, and Gabriel went back through the gate to get armed.
“We’re jamming up,” Sukey said without preamble. “I’m through most of the food and most of the horse fodder.”
“Tell me some good news,” Gabriel said.
Sukey shrugged. “Bad Tom loves me?” she said, more a question than an answer.
“One more gate after this one,” Gabriel said. “We could be fighting at Lissen Carak in four hours.”
Sukey blinked.
But I don’t like this gate, and I don’t like those moons and the black hole in the sky. This is wrong. I can feel it.
He led Ariosto through the gate.
“Mortirmir?” he asked.
“Gabriel, something fell in the water. I’m … listening to it. My advice … is not to disturb it …”
Gabriel tried not to admit to himself that he was afraid to fly out over the black water alone. The surf was rising; the night was dark despite the moons.
Gabriel mounted, and Ariosto didn’t wait; he ran forward along the causeway and leapt into a sea-scented breeze and they were away in a wind of kelp and lobster, and his great wings worked, up and down, the pinions of his wingtips brushing the surface of the water, and wherever they brushed, some sort of life bubbled up.
Gabriel looked down. There were whorls of phosphorescence like pinwheels in the dark water, and they had both light and depth; at first, his eyes were fooled and he thought them reflections, but the more he looked …
… the patterns troubled him, and he raised his eyes to confront the blackness beyond the stars.
This place is wrong, Ariosto said.
Wet and wrong, Gabriel said.
At least I am strong here. You burn bright gold, brother. What is this? A disease? Or a power?
I don’t know. What was that?
In the real, a tentacle erupted from the water, slashed through the air, and struck back into the water with an explosion of spray.
Gabriel turned them back over the ruins of the embankment, which shone like a ribbon of white in the multiple moonlights. His heart was racing and he felt a mindless fear creeping over him.
He passed over the vanguard, and Sauce. They were racing along the shingle, and he thought maybe Sauce waved, and then she was gone, falling away behind, and he looked forward past Ariosto’s head and now he could see the next gate; a horned head, or a minaret, in bone white, stained with seawater the colour of a rotting tooth.
They banked, and then turned back as Ariosto sought the easiest air currents. Gabriel, taught by wyverns, looked up and back, right into the moons, but if there was an air creature, he wasn’t seeing or sensing it.
Hooooooom hoooooooooooooooooooom.
Gabriel sat back. The sound, if it was really a sound, had come through the aethereal.
Gabriel dropped into his palace despite his racing heart. But he hesitated with one hand on his first shield.
Prudentia was dead and cold. He’d drained her when he was fighting the salamanders and never recharged her. Now he took the shield hanging on her outstretched arm and considered .…
Hoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooom.
“It is looking for us,” Morgon said. He was sitting in an armchair with a harpoon in his hand.
“With ops,” Gabriel said.
“Yes,” said Morgon. “It is casting huge gobs of ops into the aethereal to see if any comes back.”
Gabriel snapped into the real to find the rotten tooth of the gate filling his vision, and Ariosto braking, his great wings fluttering and then cupping the moist air, and they were descending.
Another cave, the griffon said. And not a sheep in sight.
Can we get through the opening? Gabriel asked.
Ooooh, Ariosto said.
Gabriel’s guts squirmed, he rammed himself back in his saddle and gave a strangled scream, and then they were in near complete darkness and he dared a working, throwing light. There was a red glow far off, like a forge fire burning.
They were under an ivory dome four hundred feet high and big enough to cover the central square of Liviapolis. Ariosto banked; the walls sped past, and …
Did you cast? It’s coming. Morgon was insistent.
Call Sauce and tell her to turn back. Gabriel realized that Morgon had no more control of Sauce than he did himself.
He could see the plaque, glowing gold in the light, shining like a star, and he could see the gate at the far base of the dome, a low arch, this one lit bright red. The light was like the angry sunlight of a red sunset.
Out. We have to help Sauce.
Got it, boss.
The passage out was as mad as the passage in; Ariosto folded his wings and dropped through the tall gate, and even though the gate was a hundred paces wide, it seemed to reach for them like a leering mouth, and then they were out in the warm, moist darkness with the sea, the moons, and the lurking feeling of fear.
He was over the greens instantly. They were moving quickly, looking over their right shoulders.
Lower, Gabriel said, readying one of Morgon’s javelins from the bucket by his hip.
He came out of the darkness and Sauce’s head turned.
“Ride for it!” he roared. They were closer to the new gate than the old one, and he gestured and was past.
The column of soldiers opened out to a gallop as he climbed, heading out over the sea and into the darkness. All the phosphorescent patches were together now, a galaxy of constellations dancing together, a thousand paces off the causeway. Something was down there, and it was close.
He turned over the wheeling patches of sickly green brilliance. To his left, Sauce seemed to race over the moonlit sea, and the moon dazzled on her armour as if she was, personally, the tip of a moonlit spear.
The water began to move.
Don’t try and face it, Morgon said.
This from you?
It’s the size of a dragon, or larger, in the aethereal.
Right. Gabriel did not drop the charged javelin. He turned away, out over the sea. The thing was rising; it was the size of Harndon. Or so it seemed in the unseelie moonlight.
As fast as you can, he said.
Like you needed to tell me, brother.
Gabriel felt the shift in speed, the force of the wind against his body, and he crouched. They went on …
Why are we going this way? Ariosto asked.
So that it doesn’t look at Sauce, Gabriel said. Farther.
Their speed was formidable; even in leather and fur and armour, Gabriel’s sense of their passage was deep and cold. He could no longer see either of the gate towers in the real, and both of them were hundreds of paces high, and white.
Hungry, Ariosto said.
Oh dear, Gabriel thought. We need to turn.
Sure. Where are we going now? Hungry.
Gabriel thought through the fatigue and the vague fear and the growing panic. It was dark; the moons were in the wrong place, and the phosphorescence was everywhere; there were patches like eyes as far as he could see, a dazzle of them under the darkness where there were no stars, like false reflections, like …
Where to, boss?
In the real, it was all one seamless image—flat water speckled with phosphorescent images as far as his eyes could see.
They banked.
Morgon?
Silence.
Fear. Palpable, choking, rising to meet him. Alone, lost, with a tiring griffon under him and the weight of the alliance on his shoulders and no room to make an error.
Oh God, if there is a God, this would be a good time.
They turned. The phosphorescence dazzled his eyes wit
h its dim and endless magnificence.
MORGON, he all but shouted in the aethereal.
Gabriel.
I need a beacon. Gabriel tried to keep calm, keep hold of his memory palace, keep a grip on the great monster between his legs. And reality.
Wait one.
Gabriel couldn’t decide whether to turn in place or continue on what he thought was the right course. His disorientation was so great that he almost slipped from the high-backed saddle, and Ariosto side-slipped under him.
Steady, boss. I’m really hungry. Can I go down now?
Just a second.
Gabriel. Beacon in the count of ten. There will be three flashes in the real.
Morgon began to count down.
Gabriel leaned back, looking. Desperate.
Number one.
Gabriel saw …
Nothing.
Number two.
“Damn it. Damn it. Damn it.” Gabriel was looking in every direction, his head moving in near panic, his body leaning forward.
Got it, boss.
Number three.
Gabriel’s relief surpassed any other emotion he could remember. The fire-orange flash was a pinprick, miles away, but he saw it. Ariosto was lining up on it.
Close, he said.
You worry too much, Ariosto said.
A moment later he could see the causeway, and his heartbeat began to slow.
It’s the thing in the water, Ariosto said. I can feel it. The things. There are hundreds of them.
Gabriel pointed them at the gate. Straight through, he said.
They passed through the outer gate for the third time and Gabriel’s sense of dread fell away to mere fear as they passed the ivory portal.
The green banda were drawn up by the fiery gate, and Ariosto cupped his wings, sparkling in the firelit air, and skimmed the floor, which appeared to be a dazzling mosaic. Gabriel tried to remember what the other floors had been.
He dismounted, wondering how many times he could be terrified in a single day.
“What the fuck is out there?” Sauce asked him.
He shook his head. “Big, ancient creatures who live in the darkness,” he said. “Let’s not disturb them.”
“I hate it here,” Sauce said quietly.
“They don’t like us, either,” Gabriel said. He was looking at the gate plaque. It was quite simple: a single jewel. The jewel was a milky white, like a moonstone.