“I’ll show you.” Ilias caught Giliead’s eye and jerked his head back toward the hallway leading toward their camp. That either meant “I’ll meet you there” or “Make yourself scarce,” Tremaine thought. From the suppressed amusement in Giliead’s eyes, she suspected it was the latter.
Ilias led her back toward the archway he and Giliead had used, lifting a brow at Tremaine’s rifle. “Are you going to keep that thing?”
“Until I get another pistol. I might talk Gerard out of his, but—” She recalled their recent unpleasant revelation. Not that anything but the sphere would do Gerard much good against a Gardier attack, but she felt profoundly uneasy at the idea of leaving him unarmed. “No, I think I want him to keep it.”
He gave her a sharp glance. “Why? What’s wrong?”
She repeated what she and Gerard had talked about, finishing with, “And I just don’t think Arisilde would have spent much time here. I think he would have decided to come back later with help to search the place, and left. So if something happened to him here, it happened right away.”
Ilias nodded, listening intently. “Or he came here first and went to the cold mountains from here.” They reached the archway. It opened into a big corridor, similar to the one that led to their campsite but without the rubble from the collapsed balconies. It was dank and a little dusty, with some flowering creepers growing down from one of the louvers in the curving roof.
Tremaine considered that idea, frowning. “But then why did he give us the circle to take us there, not here?” Another smaller corridor led off into a darker section of the building; if she had interpreted Gerard’s map correctly, that was the uncharted territory, the part Giliead and Ilias hadn’t explored yet.
“Uh, he didn’t remember it?” Ilias shook his head, obviously not pleased with that answer. He gestured down one end of the corridor. “This goes all the way around the circle chamber and connects up with the rooms behind it, the ones we already looked through. This other end goes to the way out.”
As they started in that direction he added, “If we are on the wrong track, we’ve got to go back. And if the Gardier are still there, that’s not going to be easy.”
“It’s not,” Tremaine agreed. She shook her head, gesturing helplessly. It was Arisilde they were talking about. Maybe attributing logical motives to him was the wrong way to look at the situation. “I don’t know, we’ve barely been here at all, maybe we’ll find a mark or something by one of the circles.” The possibility that the Gardier had unimpeded access to the circle in their house in Capistown made her stomach hurt; she didn’t want to think about it. And it did terrible things to their theory that the circle in the mountain’s upper chamber had stopped working because Nicholas had destroyed the corresponding circle in the house. The other alternative was that the Gardier had captured a copy of either Gerard’s notes on the new circle or Giaren’s photographs, and had drawn it themselves, and that didn’t bear thinking about either.
Ahead at the end of the corridor, Tremaine could see a broad shaft of sunshine lighting up a heavy stone staircase. “So when whoever built this place went away, they just left the door wide open?”
“It’s not an easy door to get to from the outside,” Ilias assured her.
Tremaine assumed the corollary was that it wasn’t an easy door to get out of either. The steps went up in stages, turning back and up into a stairwell that went through the curving roof. They started up, and up, and up. Tremaine’s legs were aching after the first landing; the stairs were like those in the other ancient cities they had found and were a little too high for the comfort of normal-sized people. It was warm enough that she tied back the sleeves of her shirt, reflecting that in this climate bathing was going to be more of an issue than it had been in the mountains.
At the point where Tremaine judged they had climbed the height of a seven-story building and she was about to ask just how far there was to go, the next landing took them outside onto a broad open platform. She stopped, whistling softly.
The sun was bright in an intense blue sky dotted unevenly with puffy white clouds. It shone down on low mountains capped with a tangled jungle of deep emerald green and on a narrow gorge with dozens of tiny streams of water running down its rough sides. The platform gave way to a small grassy field atop a bluff, and a short slope led up to another small plateau covered with broad-leafed palms and shorter trees with twisty limbs and furry green leaves. The plateau was bordered by more tall cliffs, walling it off like a private garden.
Tremaine wandered out onto the bluff, stumbling on the remnants of broken and scattered paving, the sun warm on her face. Ilias took her elbow, steering her around to face back toward the building.
She shaded her eyes, swearing in disbelief. The structure was gray on the outside and enterprising vines and flowers had taken root in cracks and crevices, so unless you looked for the sculptured roundness of the different levels of roof, you might mistake it for a series of low hills. Their wing stretched off to her right, stone buttresses supporting the vastness of what had to be the circle chamber. Two more wings ran out for a much greater distance in front of her, the larger sections buttressed and apparently supporting themselves on the rocky cliffs that crowded close to the smooth stone sides. She couldn’t see the smoke from their fire; it must be carried away by the fitful breeze.
Ilias stepped up behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist. She leaned back against his chest, grateful for the support after the long climb up the awkward stairs. He nuzzled her neck, saying into her hair, “We think we’re inland from Syrneth, where the Hisians live.”
“That’s what Gerard said.” And it seemed ridiculous to be standing here trying to think up a way to tell the man you were married to that you thought you had possibly fallen in love with him, so she turned around, making it a real kiss.
After a time, he sighed, resting his cheek against hers. She could feel the smooth spot in his beard stubble, where the silver curse mark marred his skin. Cletia had barely been willing to look at Ilias when she had first boarded the Ravenna; surely she hadn’t been able to get past that in such a short time. But if Pasima was trying to dictate your every thought, how long do you think it would take for you to want to do the opposite of everything she said? she asked herself. Not damn long. Feeling a need to change the subject of her thoughts, she pulled back, asking, “How do we get down from here?”
He looked around with a shrug. “Climb.”
“Climb? What, where? Down there?” Tremaine stared at the edge of the bluff. It was a long sheer drop down to the valley floor.
He jerked his head toward the cliffs ringing in their little plot of jungle. “Or up there. Or down onto the roof, then down the wall, but we think that would be too hard without ropes. And even with ropes, it wouldn’t be easy.”
“No kidding.” Tremaine pivoted, studying the area again. “Climbing up the cliff looks like the best way, but I don’t think Vervane could make that. Hell, I don’t think I could make that.”
“That’s the problem,” Ilias admitted soberly. “The people who lived here must have used the curse circles to travel in and out. That explains why they needed so many, anyway.”
Tremaine nodded thoughtfully. There might be another entrance somewhere, one that didn’t require climbing a sheer cliff, but there might not. “I think this is even more like a central train station than the chamber in the mountain. Whoever these people were, they must have traveled all over your world using these circles.”
That led to an explanation of what a train was, what a station was, the principles behind the idea of switching stations, and the last train trip Tremaine had taken with Arisilde. While they talked, they gathered some more wood from the fringes of their patch of jungle and Ilias climbed a tree after some yellow fruit to supplement their limited supplies.
They started down the stairs, Tremaine carrying one bundle of wood and Ilias the other, having used his shirt to make a temporary bag for the fruit. Admiring th
e exposed view of his chest and shoulders, she asked, “Has Cletia said anything to you?”
He glanced at her, puzzled. “About what?”
“Nothing in particular.”
He looked thoughtful. “Actually, she did say something when we were scouting the different circles back at the cold mountain.” He shrugged, clearly dismissing whatever it was as nonsensical. “I couldn’t tell what she wanted.”
Tremaine lifted her brows. That’s interesting. “I see.”
She had meant for her tone to be neutral, but Ilias had sharper ears than that. “See what?” he asked, throwing her a suspicious look.
Tremaine drew breath to tell him what Cletia had said, and suddenly found herself assailed by doubt. She found the idea of expecting him to wait at her bedside like some character from a bad romantic novel hilarious, or possibly humiliating, or possibly both, but what if he didn’t? What if he had intentionally stayed away to avoid giving her the wrong idea? What was the wrong idea?
While she still had her mouth open, trying to make a decision, he halted abruptly. Tremaine stopped an instant later, and in the sudden silence she heard the sound of soft-booted feet striking stone, heading rapidly away.
What the hell… Tremaine went cold, exchanging a startled glance with Ilias. None of their party had reason to eavesdrop or run away, except possibly for Cletia, and she would have had to leave Balin unguarded. And Tremaine was fairly sure she would have the sense to walk quietly away without alerting them.
Ilias hastily deposited his burdens on the steps and she followed suit, starting down the stairs after him as quietly as she could. They were about two landings from the bottom and Ilias made it in near silence, taking two or three steps at a time. Tremaine hurried after him, pulling the rifle off her shoulder and cradling it. I really need to find a pistol, she thought, her heart pounding.
Tremaine reached the corridor several steps behind Ilias. It looked undisturbed to her unpracticed eye, dust motes drifting in the shafts of sunlight, but Ilias crouched to examine the floor. “Someone’s been here,” he said quietly.
Tremaine’s mouth twisted in rueful acknowledgment. “I was afraid you were going to say that.”
He pointed to various scuff marks in the dust. “There’s where Gil and I came and went when we found these steps, where Gil showed Gerard and Aras, then where you and I just came. Then there’s that.” He tapped the floor thoughtfully.
“That wasn’t here earlier?” Tremaine tried to keep one eye on the now ominously empty corridor while trying to see what he was pointing at.
He shook his head, grimly certain, and carefully followed the track a few paces down the corridor. “He came after us, stopped just at the stairs—he must have heard us talking—then ran away.” He crouched to look at the tracks again and lifted his brows. “It’s not the kind of boot the Gardier wear, or like you wear. It’s flat on the bottom, like our boots.”
“That’s something.” Tremaine felt the tightness in her chest ease. If it was a native to this area who had been frightened off by unfamiliar voices in a place he had expected to find deserted… That would be nice. But somehow she didn’t think so. “If you were out somewhere around Cineth, hunting or whatever, and you heard a man and a woman talking, even in a language you didn’t understand, would you run away?”
“No.” Ilias pushed to his feet, throwing her an ironic look. “Not unless I didn’t want them to see me because I was planning to kill them.”
Tremaine sighed. “That’s what I thought.”
Gerard frowned in concern, looking down the dark corridor into the unexplored wing. “Are you certain you don’t want me to accompany you?”
“Yes, because getting our only sorcerer killed and spending the rest of our lives stuck here sounds like such a good idea,” Tremaine told him, exasperated. “Now will you go back?” She adjusted the Gardier ammunition pouch on her belt and found herself checking the rifle yet again to make sure it was loaded.
At the intersection of the other passages, Ilias had found footprints in the dust where the intruder had turned into the other wing. Now Tremaine, Ilias and Giliead were going after him. Tremaine felt it would be at least as much fun as searching the Ravenna; in other words, dangerous and exhausting.
Aras had been sent back to watch Balin, Cletia to keep watch in the circle chamber and Cimarus had been moved to the corridor intersection, so he could watch for anyone attempting to enter their wing. He was armed with one of the bows and was uneasily surveying the dark corridors.
“I’ll try not to let any strangers in, no matter how persuasive their arguments,” Gerard told Tremaine, still repressively. “Just don’t get hurt.”
Tremaine snorted in derision as they started down the corridor. She kept behind Ilias and Giliead, who were walking a little apart, Giliead keeping his eyes on the corridor ahead and Ilias scanning the ground, following the tracks the intruder had left.
They had decided that the bows were better left to guard their camp, since Tremaine had the rifle. Both men distrusted the rifle on principle, but were willing to admit it was a necessary evil. And it might actually be useful, since the chances were that the intruder was not a Gardier.
Besides the distinct difference in boot soles Ilias had noted, Tremaine thought that if a Gardier had heard them he would have been back by now with more men to investigate. And the Gardier would have posted guards in this circle chamber.
They came to a little rotunda that formed an intersection of three corridors, two of them with lower ceilings and fewer louvers, leading off into shadowy depths. The third opened into a larger hall, lined with a double row of columns in an elegant hourglass shape that must be more to ornament the space rather than support the ceiling.
Ilias stooped to check a patch of dusty floor that to Tremaine’s eyes looked no different from any other, and jerked his head toward the large hall. “That way.” He kept his voice low.
“This looks like a main entrance,” Tremaine put in quietly. The back of her neck was prickling, but in these long stretches with no debris to hide behind, she knew no one could be watching them. At least, she hoped so.
Giliead nodded, turning to scan the area again. Tremaine had noticed one of them was always on watch when the other’s attention was distracted. When Ilias searched for faint footmarks on the dirty stone, Giliead was watching the corridor; when Giliead paused to look for curse traps, Ilias made sure nothing crept up on him from behind. They seemed to do it by habit, automatically, with never any need to discuss it. Giliead said thoughtfully, “Funny that it’s here and not back where the outside doorway is. But they must have used the curse circles to come and go.”
Tremaine, who was still hoping for a better outside exit, had to reluctantly agree. It did look as if visitors had been meant to enter the fortress through the circles, then proceed down here to the formal entrance hall. “So where did our mysterious stranger come from? Did he climb down the cliffs to get in here? The only thing we’ve seen so far that a scavenger could use is the loose stone, and he couldn’t haul that up the cliff without a lot of help. Besides, with all these mountains around, it’s not as if there’s a stone shortage.”
“We don’t know he’s alone,” Ilias told her, taking the first cautious step into the hourglass hall, looking up to make sure nothing was about to drop on them from above. “And we don’t know he didn’t come through a curse gate like we did.”
“But—” Tremaine was about to say that the man wasn’t a Gardier, so couldn’t have come through the gates. Circular thinking like that is not going to help. Following Ilias, she said, “You mean people besides the Gardier and us, who have the gate spell and a way to make it work without killing themselves.”
Giliead threw her a wry look. “Why not?”
Tremaine protested, “Because it’s complicated enough the way it is.” But she could too easily see it. This place, like the Wall Port and the city under the Isle of Storms, was so old there wasn’t a stick of furniture, a
scrap of fabric or paper left behind. The people who built it had to be long dead, vanished into the past. The only attraction the place had was the circles.
They reached the end of the hourglass hall and Ilias followed the tracks through a maze of smaller corridors. Tremaine noted that at first she had found the fortress’s large empty spaces grand and airy, but now they seemed ominous and menacing. Her nerves jumped at every whisper of wind.
The tracks finally led into a passage that was littered knee deep in rubble from a collapsed loft or gallery. Down its length, Tremaine could see entrances to several other branching corridors. As Ilias surveyed the expanse of track-concealing debris in disgust and Giliead watched the corridor, Tremaine asked, “So did he know we’d follow him like this? Did he come this way deliberately to try to lose us? Am I asking too many questions? Don’t answer that one.” She was half suspecting an ambush but the corridor was well lit by sunlight falling through the louvers and unless someone had buried himself under the heavy rubble, it was unoccupied.
“It’s the natural thing to do,” Ilias admitted, glancing back at her.
“Natural for you.” Someone who wasn’t an expert in tracking might not realize his passage could be read from the dusty stone floor almost as easily as in dirt or mud; Tremaine didn’t think she would have thought of it, but she made a mental note now.
Tremaine ended up sitting on a rock in the middle of the corridor, keeping watch with the rifle across her knees while Ilias and Giliead cast back and forth, checking the branching corridors for revealing tracks. Her stomach was starting to grumble and she wondered how long this was going to take. If it turned out their intruder was just a Hisian who lived in the area and liked to explore the fortress, and who had lit out for home at being startled by strangers, this was all an appalling waste of time. But they had to make certain.