The Gate of Gods (Fall of the Ile-Rien)

  The god was already trying to push an image at him and after a moment of concentration he had it: a view from the stern of the Ravenna, as the ship sailed across a choppy day-lit sea, puffs of white cloud streaming up from her three chimneys. The image also conveyed distance, and that it was not something the god had seen itself. There was a confusing jumble of impressions attached to it, and even once he managed to sort them out, they made no sense. Flashes of one of the Ravenna’s beautiful wood-paneled rooms, light and garbled sound, one clear picture of Florian’s startled face.

  Florian’s alive. Giliead’s heart leapt. The only way the god could have seen this was if it had touched the mind of someone on the Ravenna, which meant all their friends were hopefully safe and heading this way. The god was only supposed to be able to touch the mind of a Chosen Vessel, but… A lot of things aren’t what we think they are, he reflected grimly.

  Trying to ask the god how and why it knew this just got him the same jumble of images again, but then the god was never good on questions that started with how or why. Leaving the god settled comfortably in the grapevine, he started down the street again, relieved to have good news to report for once.

  Visolela had extended a grudging invitation for Tremaine, Ilias and Giliead and the others to stay in the lawgiver’s house. But Ilias refused point-blank, Giliead looked horrified at the prospect and even Cletia seemed less than thrilled. Tremaine, finding herself relegated to the unaccustomed role of the tactful one, had explained that there was no room for the Aelin and that they should all stay together.

  Tremaine wasn’t sure what other options there were. She knew there was nothing like a hotel; apparently the closest equivalents were a couple of establishments on the edge of the city that were basically caravansaries that catered to traders. According to Cimarus, the only member of the immediate group who was actually trying to be helpful, neither would be large enough to accommodate the Aelin either. Tremaine was beginning to wonder if she could get somebody to rent her a warehouse on account; anything of value she had to trade had been left back in Capistown or on the Ravenna.

  But Visolela, apparently fed up with the situation and anxious to be rid of them, offered the home of one of the less influential branches of her family, packing the current inhabitants off to stay at the lawgiver’s house or with other relatives. Tremaine, relieved, had accepted immediately.

  The house, which was down toward the harbor and near the edge of town, was apparently only a few streets uphill from the beach and the boat sheds for the war galleys. Not exactly the best spot to be in case of Gardier attack, Tremaine reflected wryly. Near a prime target. Is that Visolela’s nonexistent sense of humor? Still, the Gardier hadn’t fired on the galleys in their first attack, only on the fishing boats and merchant craft tied up at the docks; she wasn’t sure they realized the fastest and most dangerous Syprian vessels were stored out of the water in the long narrow sheds. Apparently only the galleys needed to defend the city were still here anyway; the others had been moved to less obvious coves along the coast.

  The long twilight had fallen by the time Gerard, the Aelin and the Capidarans had been fetched and they all reached the house together. The day’s heat had settled into a comfortable warmth and it was a quiet part of town with big trees leaning over courtyard walls to shade the street. The house’s entrance was just another wooden door in a white clay-covered wall. But once Giliead opened it and they walked into a large cool tiled foyer that led into a brick-paved court with a fountain and flowering trees, Tremaine decided it would be ideal. The rest of the house rambled off to the back and both sides, much larger than it had appeared from the street.

  “Well, this should do nicely.” Gerard, with his shirtsleeves rolled up and his coat long abandoned, motioned for the Aelin to hurry in. He looked frazzled from the long day and Tremaine knew that keeping the badly overstimulated Aelin together, even with the help of Aras and Vervane, had not been easy.

  “Hard day?” she asked, as he did a quick head count of the Aelin who were milling in the court, pointing and exclaiming appreciatively. A couple of the older men helped Elon in. The younger children had already leapt into the fountain.

  “Not really,” he admitted. “There was an open-air tavern establishment that was quite accommodating under the circumstances, and Halian was very helpful.” He glanced down at her, wiping the sweat from his brow. Ilias passed through the foyer just then. He had recovered quickly, though Tremaine suspected he still had a raging headache. Except for the bruises and the dried blood, he looked normal. In fact, she thought the blow to the face had actually straightened his nose a little. He disappeared into the bowels of the house with the air of someone who didn’t want to discuss anything. “I suspect you had a much harder time.”

  “It had its moments,” Tremaine agreed ruefully. She shut the heavy wooden door, wishing they could just forget about the Gardier, forget about Ile-Rien, shut the world out and stay here forever. Even if they had to live with twenty-odd noisy and wildly curious Aelin. “So Halian was with you?”

  “Yes, I was surprised, I thought he would be anxious to catch up with Giliead and Ilias.”

  “They had a… disagreement. Giliead said he and Ilias aren’t going back to Andrien.” She took a deep breath. “I don’t know. Karima’s on her way here.”

  Gerard looked weary for a moment, the lines around his mouth more pronounced. “I see.”

  Gerard located a room with a door and retreated with his notebook and the sphere to work on etheric calculations. Aras had retired to sleep, Vervane was looking after the still-recovering Meretrisa, but Tremaine found herself unable to settle anywhere. She wandered the house, finding it had large rooms, with mosaic or tiled floors, and another atrium toward the back, with a cistern, vegetable patch and flower beds. All the personal possessions had been removed, though from the dusty corners and the arrangement of the remaining furniture—couches, wide beds and the low tables Syprians preferred—Tremaine thought most of it had been unoccupied anyway. The empty corners smelled of wool and incense, and the dried herbs the Syprians stored their clothes in. Maybe this was the house Visolela, Pasima and their other brothers and sisters had occupied as children, before everyone had grown up and gone away to their own establishments. It made a contrast to the Andrien family house, where instead of growing up and out, the family had dwindled through death and disaster, so despite all the marriages and births the comfortable old house still had plenty of room for visitors. Now thoroughly depressed, she made her way back to the atrium.

  The sky was blue purple now and crickets sang in the trees. Shrieking children ran through the rooms opening onto the portico. Obelin, Eliva and the other older Aelin had brought couches out onto the grass and were basking in the warm twilight, still a little dazed by their abrupt change in circumstance. One of the older boys was moving along the portico, lighting the olive oil lamps with careful concentration. Tremaine found her way down to the kitchen, a big plain clay-walled room at the end of the garden.

  Giliead was there, building a fire in the cooking hearth, and Ilias was sitting on a stool, helping by poking randomly at the kindling with a stick. Cletia was hovering, arms folded, chin set stubbornly, while Davret and two other Aelin girls and a boy were unpacking baskets of food, handling the rounds of brown bread and goat cheese curiously. Balin was there too, poking through a basket, and Cimarus was leaning in the doorway, apparently guarding her. The Gardier woman was wearing one of the Aelin’s bright-patterned scarves around her neck. “Dinner?” Tremaine asked hopefully, the sight of the food making her aware how hungry she was.

  “Visolela sent some food over.” Giliead jerked his head toward the baskets the Aelin were unpacking. He sat back on his knees, having gotten the fire started despite Ilias’s help.

  “That was unexpectedly nice of her,” Tremaine said dryly. Ilias snorted amusement, then winced and gingerly touched his nose.

  “They should throw a festival for us,” Cimarus put in suddenly.
As everyone regarded him with varying degrees of doubt, he bristled a little. “We made a great voyage—not that we had a ship for the last part—but the poets will tell stories about us.”

  “Maybe so,” Giliead agreed with a shrug, not sounding enthused by the prospect. Ilias, apparently on the verge of regaining his sense of humor, poked him with the stick instead of the kindling.

  Davret lifted a hunk of cheese, wondering, “How do you cook this?”

  “You don’t have to, you can eat it the way it is,” Tremaine told her.

  “Ah.” She waved to get Ilias’s attention. “Name this?” she said in halting Syrnaic.

  Tremaine lifted her brows as he told Davret the Syrnaic word for cheese. He caught her eye, smiled faintly and said, “They don’t have a problem with learning our language.”

  Davret listened to this exchange carefully, as if trying to puzzle out the words. She told Tremaine in Aelin, “You’ve said we can’t go back, and after what happened when the Gardier came, and what Balin has told us, we all know it to be true. We discussed it this afternoon and wish to stay here. They have trading clans, or something like it. We saw at the port today.”

  Balin, a bag of green fruit sitting forgotten in her lap, stared. “These people are savages,” she protested, blank with astonishment.

  Davret made a derisive noise and the other Aelin gave Balin admonishing looks. “Don’t be rude,” Davret said. “They have goods, they trade them and trade knowledge along the way. That’s not savage. That’s what we do. Or what we’re supposed to do.”

  “What are they saying?” Ilias asked. The Syprians were watching Balin’s shocked reaction with interest.

  “They want political asylum,” Tremaine said. At Ilias’s upraised brows, she clarified, “They want to stay here.”

  Giliead shrugged. This was obviously one problem that he didn’t consider his. “That’s fine.”

  Cletia frowned, not sure if this was a joke or not. “They’re Gardier.”

  “It’s dangerous to travel here,” Tremaine told Davret in Aelin, feeling they should at least be warned. “There are bad sorcerers who kill people, and monsters. And the Gardier might attack here too, if we don’t stop them at Ile-Rien.”

  “You mean we might end up trapped in a stone prison for twenty years?” the Aelin boy interposed, wide-eyed, before Davret could answer. “Oh, no!”

  Tremaine stared at him, then laughed so hard she had to support herself on the wall. Davret and the other Aelin girls collapsed in hilarity, leaving Balin uncertain and a little affronted. Cletia was frowning while Ilias, Giliead and Cimarus impatiently demanded to know the joke, when the Syprians abruptly went silent.

  Tremaine looked to see Halian and Karima standing in the doorway. Ouch, she thought. Karima only had eyes for Giliead, and the look on her face was like a punch to the stomach.

  Giliead stood, absently brushing his hands off, his face closed and impossible to read. He threw a glance down at Ilias that drew him reluctantly to his feet.

  Tremaine meant to stay in the kitchen and tell the Aelin about cheese. She had spent a great deal of her life avoiding emotional confrontations and she didn’t want to be a part of this one. But Ilias caught her arm as he passed, pulling her out onto the portico after him.

  The atrium was cloaked in blue twilight, the flickering lamps on the pillars making it seem even darker. Tremaine stepped out after Ilias in time to hear Karima say, “It’s never mattered. You know none of it ever mattered.”

  Tremaine winced again, wishing she could edge off into the shadows and make her escape, but Ilias was still holding her hand. He had stopped in the shadow just outside the kitchen door so she couldn’t see his face, but she could feel the tension in his arm, hard as a rock and tight as piano wire. The Aelin had sensed the charged atmosphere and all seemed to be finding things to do in other parts of the house. Eliva had gotten up to herd the children away.

  Giliead stopped by the nearest pillar, his face caught in the lamplight. He shook his head, not looking at her. “The Ravenna is coming back. The god can see her somehow, feel her coming. When she gets here we’ll go to the other world again, to Ile-Rien, to help free their wizards. I don’t know what will happen, what I’ll have to do. If we come back, everything will be different. Everyone will know I’ve used curses—”

  Karima put a hand on his arm, her face drawn and urgent. “The god accepted you. That’s all that matters.”

  “That’s not all that matters,” Giliead said, his teeth gritted.

  “This is all my fault.” Halian’s voice was hard, but the pain under it made Tremaine’s head hurt. “If I—”

  “No.” Giliead looked at him directly for the first time. Tremaine knew that even if Giliead wouldn’t admit it, Halian’s reaction to the story on the ship this morning had wounded him to the core. “But I know how people will react. Many of them are still afraid of the Ravenna and the Rienish. Once they know what I’ve done, they won’t accept me, even if the god does.” His expression softened as he looked down at Karima. “I don’t want to bring that down on you, on Andrien House. Not after everything else.”

  Tremaine knew he meant his sister, and Halian’s daughter and Ilias’s cousin, the women of the family who had all been killed by Ixion. The curse that had lived in the house until Gerard had rooted it out on their first visit here. “We’ve weathered everything else, we can weather this,” Karima said, suddenly angry. “It’s our choice—”

  “It’s not your choice to make.” Giliead gestured impatiently, angry now too.

  “Herias accused him of doing something to the god, Karima,” Ilias put in reluctantly. “If Herias can think that, what will everyone else think?”

  Giliead persisted, “It’s time, and you know it. I’ve been there too long as it is. Ilias is married now, and you know I never will. It’s time we left.”

  Karima tried to stare him down, her mouth set in a thin line. “Chosen Vessels have married before.”

  Giliead lifted his brows. “Chosen Vessels who did curses?”

  Karima glared, then took a sharp breath and looked away.

  Giliead said again, quietly, “It’s time.”

  Tremaine rocked on her heels, watching the moths flit around the lamps, until Karima said, “Do you agree?” She didn’t realize the question had been addressed to her until Ilias nudged her with an elbow.

  “Oh, what? Yes, sure.” Tremaine nodded rapidly.

  Karima was still looking at her in the darkness. “Where will you stay?”

  “Here, until the Ravenna arrives. After that—” She could feel Ilias watching her, willing her not to point out that they might not come back. “After that I don’t know.”

  Karima nodded reluctantly, resigned. “There’s no reason to be strangers to us.” Her voice was thick but she made herself sound firm. “I’ll stay in town until the Ravenna comes back with Gyan and Kias. Send someone to me when you come back from Ile-Rien.” She stumbled over the name, and Tremaine realized that nobody needed to tell Karima that there was a strong possibility that they wouldn’t return.

  They walked Karima and Halian to the front gate, and Karima hugged Giliead, Ilias, then Tremaine, so hard Tremaine feared for her ribs. She had the feeling that Karima had just passed the responsibility for her son and her foster son’s well-being to Tremaine. It was an emotional reality this time, and not just a means to an end as it had been at the wedding. Halian hugged them too, then he and Karima left for the walk back up to the lawgiver’s house.

  Giliead leaned in the doorway, watching them go, and Ilias pulled Tremaine into an embrace, burying his face in her hair. She took a deep breath, trying to think of something to say. In the end, all she said was, “Was there wine in those jars in the kitchen? Let’s drink it.”

  They ended up down on the stretch of wide sandy beach, near the boat sheds. The moon wasn’t quite full, but it was bright enough to illuminate the white sand and the foam cresting the rolling waves. The boat sheds were guarde
d by four or five young men and women who stayed within the light of their shielded lamps, watching with wary bemusement.

  A wineskin slung over her shoulder, Tremaine stood up above the water line, her bare feet in the still-warm sand, watching as Ilias tackled Giliead into a large breaking wave. The wind was cool, tugging at her hair, and she just hoped the two men weren’t drunk enough to drown each other. Starting to feel mildly euphoric herself, she doubted her ability to navigate the waves without falling over, let alone haul anyone out. The younger Aelin had followed them, and were running in and out of the shallow surf, shrieking with delight at the water, at the foam, at finding shells with little creatures still inhabiting them. They were acting as if they had never seen open water before today, let alone played in waves, which of course they hadn’t. The ones who had been children when Castines betrayed them would have seen the seas of their home, but that must be a dim memory now. Tremaine kept trying to do a head count of the smaller ones, mindful of the giant crabs the Syprians hunted for food, but Ilias had assured her that those creatures would flee from people.

  She could see the lighthouse up on the promontory from here, the blazing fire on the top platform of the pyramid a guide for any ships coming in. It would also be a guide for invading Gardier, but Visolela had told them that a few days after the Ravenna had left, the god had begun to inform Herias whenever it sensed Gardier within range of the coast. Gods couldn’t usually detect activity by Syprian sorcerers unless it was fairly close; apparently they learned quickly how to avoid drawing the gods’ attention, or they didn’t live long. The god’s ability to detect Gardier was an advantage the Syprians were going to need.

  The Gardier here were still just the remnants of the force that had occupied the Isle of Storms and the ships that had arrived to relieve them. The Ravenna had destroyed one vessel before leaving Cineth but they knew now there was at least one more. They had no airships yet, but some would surely arrive soon, when the Gardier had subdued Ile-Rien to the point that they could remove the blockade on the coast and send those ships to this world.