The Fatal Gate Read online

  Now a dismal grey light was creeping between the gigantic trees. Were the Whelm close enough to sense her? If a sensitive broadcast her emotions it could be used to locate her. Karan had told Sulien about this flaw when she was a little girl and taught her how to prevent it, by rigidly controlling her feelings. Sulien wished she had practised more, because little snippets of terror kept escaping.

  Mine is a life thrice-owed, said Idlis in mind-speech, and because I owed Karan, I swore to protect her daughter with my life. I cannot allow you to harm her.

  The Whelm were skilled at inflicting pain. They tortured him until Idlis, the most stoical of them all, shrieked.

  No obligation to an outsider can supersede your duty to your own kind, said the Whelm who had spoken earlier. Besides, Karan could be dead.

  Makes … no … difference, gasped Idlis.

  Your oath was to the mother; it ceases on the mother’s death.

  Should it be proven that Karan is dead, I will review my oath.

  She will come after her daughter by the fastest means possible.

  Sulien’s heart leapt. Karan would come after her, whatever the cost.

  When she does, the Whelm continued, I’ll cut her throat and end the obligation once and for all. And then, Comrade Idlis, you will finally do your duty to your own kind.

  Sulien could not move, could not speak, could hardly breathe. She felt like a frozen lump with a desperately pounding heart in its middle. She huddled under the overhang of a moss-carpeted rock, looking out at the teeming rain and praying that Karan did not come. Though she knew she would.

  My obligation cannot be ended in such a way, said Idlis.

  But he sounded less convincing now; he was weakening. Sulien hugged herself desperately, trying to think what to do. He would break soon, then the Whelm would catch her and betray her to Gergrig, and he would kill her as slowly and cruelly as only he knew how.

  Let’s just hunt the little brat down and kill her, said a second Whelm, one who had not mind-spoken before. Then we can show her head to Gergrig and—

  In the first place, the first Whelm said coldly, we have no way of contacting Gergrig save through the child. We have to take her alive so we can force her to link with him. Second, she’s our bargaining piece. If Gergrig knows the child is dead, why would he agree to be our master?

  They were definitely closer now. But how close? She peered out from her hiding place. The rain was heavier than before; little streams of water poured over the lip of the overhanging rock and down in front of her like silvery ribbons.

  Judging by the depth of the moss, it rained most of the time here. Sulien felt a pang of longing for dusty old Gothryme, where they were constantly praying for rain and hardly ever got any, and for dear old Rachis. He must be so lonely and sad, and he didn’t even have Piffle for company—Maigraith’s evil son Julken had strangled Sulien’s beloved puppy.

  She wept, then realised she was broadcasting her emotions again, leading the Whelm to her. She choked her feelings down and squinted across the hummocky ground. They were close now; she could smell their sweat and the rank herbs they used to flavour their food.

  It was still gloomy and patches of mist kept the visibility low. She slipped out, treading carefully so she did not break through the moss. Ahead, the tangled branches of three fallen trees blocked her way. To the right the ground rose steeply and her dark clothing would stand out against the green moss.

  On her left it plunged into a valley, dark at this early hour, with more fallen trees and hundreds of moss-covered boulders. It offered better cover though it looked dark and wet, and was bound to be full of leeches, centipedes and other creeping horrors.

  But it would be easier to hide there and more difficult to search. She headed into the valley, then upstream, checking over her shoulder every couple of minutes. She was in the deep shade between the boulders dotted along a little stream, and feeling safe for the first time since the Whelm had seen Gergrig, when the biggest Whelm of all, lanky Bervi, stepped out from behind a boulder only yards away and lunged at her.

  Sulien squealed, threw herself sideways and evaded his clawing fingers by half an inch. But Bervi wasn’t as clumsy as the other Whelm; he kicked out and the toe of his iron-shod boot caught her in the right ankle, knocking her off her feet into the shallow water.

  The bottom was littered with pebbles. Sulien, desperate now, flung a handful at his face. Most of the pebbles missed but one glanced off his blade-sharp nose and hit him in the left eye. And in the gloom of the forest he wasn’t wearing his eye covers.

  Bervi reeled backwards, caught a heel and landed hard, striking the back of his head on a stone. Sulien scrambled to her feet, her ankle throbbing, splashed across the stream and darted into the gloom on the other side. From there she scrambled over boulders and fallen trees, then hobbled down the valley until the shade was so dense that she could barely see at all.

  The trees here were the biggest she had ever seen; they must have been three hundred feet tall and their trunks were many yards through the middle. But was she safe here? Could she ever be safe when the Whelm were hunting her? No, never.

  She sat down, gasping. Her ankle was swelling, hideously painful and bore a purple bruise the shape of the toe of Bervi’s boot. But she had to keep going and find a hiding place where she could sleep, somewhere that the Whelm could not get to. A hideout with several exits.

  This was basalt country, and it was unlikely that there were any caves. The big trees were widely spaced, there were no branches for the first hundred feet, and the straight trunks were impossible to climb without claws. But she noted cracks in the trunks here and there at ground level, where the heartwood had rotted away leaving cavities inside. Sulien checked dozens of trees and found many with cavities, though some were too narrow for her to squeeze into and she was afraid of what she would find inside. Safe holes were probably inhabited by creatures she would not want to sleep with.

  But the sooner she was out of sight the safer she would be. The biggest tree of all was a hoary old giant that might have been a thousand years old, and its buttressed base, which was at least twenty yards around, was cracked and fissured in many places.

  Only two of the cracks were wide enough for her to squeeze inside. She slipped into the wider one, careful not to leave scrape marks on the moss, clambered down a narrow conduit like a flattened piece of pipe, then down for at least another twenty feet into the rotted-out subterranean heart of the monster tree. Here, she discovered by feeling around, the conduit flared out like a door knob into a space seven or eight feet wide. Other cavities led off in three directions but she did not probe them to their limits. She was too exhausted.

  When her eyes had adjusted to the dim light filtering down, she saw that the floor was rotten wood, and horribly damp and mouldy, though it was soft and a lot warmer than outside. It was teeming with cockroaches, wood beetles and woodlice, and the thought of them crawling on her made her shudder, but at least they didn’t want to eat her.

  Her ankle was more swollen than before and painful to touch, but there was nothing she could do about it. She ate some tasteless Whelm gruel mixed with water, rolled herself in her damp coat and lay down.

  But the moment Sulien closed her eyes she saw her beloved father again, as she had in a nightmare a couple of months ago. Llian lay in the middle of an expanse of grey stones, as still as death.

  Her fondest memories were of being cradled in his arm as a little girl, listening to him telling tales great and small, or making stories up just for her. She had felt loved and safe, and his stories had taught her more than all her lessons. She whimpered and wrapped her arms around herself. He could not be gone!

  Finally she dozed. She woke a couple of times, startled by sounds in the forest above, then slept soundly until hunger and thirst woke her. She yawned, stretched and was reaching for her mug when the hairs rose on the back of her neck.

  She turned and gasped. Idlis was sitting on a mound of rotted wood
on the other side of the little cavern, his black eyes fixed on her unblinkingly. Before she could move his bony fingers clamped around her wrist.

  “You will come with me now. Don’t struggle or it will go very badly.”

  5

  HE FELT NO HEARTBEAT

  Wilm clung desperately to Aviel as the second of the shadow gates, the azure one, enveloped them and spun faster and faster. She gasped and doubled up, clutching her middle, then everything around him blurred into streaks of colour.

  His eyes watered so badly that his whole face grew wet. Something burned the inside of his nose and down the back of his throat. Then, with a swoop that left his stomach behind, the gate plunged down through solid rock into darkness. It became so cold that the tip of his nose and his left ear burned. His throbbing right ear, what remained of it after the summon stone had consumed the top half, went blessedly numb.

  Aviel stiffened in his arms, gave a little sigh and went limp.

  Panic struck him. Was she dead? Wilm cried out her name, then shrieked it. “Aviel, Aviel?”

  The empty silence mocked him: how insignificant he was, how helpless to do anything for her. She must not be dead! Yet again he saw that festering brute, Unick, pointing his Command device at Dajaes. The black crystal on its tip had flashed and Wilm’s wonderful, loyal, loving Dajaes fell dead. The memory would haunt his nightmares, sleeping and waking, for all his days.

  He dared not relax his grip to check on Aviel for fear she would be torn away from him in the wildly spinning gate, and lost for ever. Wilm hugged her more tightly, trying to protect her with his long, lean body.

  The streaks of colour faded to black until the darkness was absolute. The temperature rose sharply and the air grew thick and heavy; it smelled like hot rock and each breath burned all the way down to his lungs—the gate must be taking them deep underground. Wilm’s claustrophobia swelled; solid rock was closing in on them from all sides; what if the gate vanished and left them here to die? He’d often had nightmares about being trapped underground, unable to breathe and battering bloody knuckles on the walls as he slowly suffocated.

  The gate was spinning ever more slowly now. Was it fading out? He squeezed Aviel’s body more tightly against himself, trying to understand what had happened. As the Merdrun opened the Crimson Gate on Cinnabar the summon stone had projected a shadow gate on the cavern wall. Aviel, in a desperate attempt to stop the enemy, had hurled the flask of quicksilver from the Origin device at the summon stone, poisoning it, and the shadow gate had split in two.

  Why? And what had happened to the Crimson Gate? It had spun upwards and vanished from sight, though he did not think it had closed. Had it brought the invading Merdrun to Santhenar? He had to find out, fast, and send out a warning.

  “Aviel?” Wilm said softly. He still could not see a thing.

  He squeezed her small frame, but she was limp and did not react. Had she struck something in the whirling gate and been knocked out?

  It was still utterly black around him. He enclosed her with his left arm, holding her tightly against him, then, self-consciously, felt her head and neck. His face grew hot. Aviel was a very private person and did not like to be touched, but if she was injured he had to know.

  He probed her back and her right arm. Nothing was broken or torn, nor could he smell any blood. He felt down her left arm and the muscles were taut. She was holding a metal tube, Unick’s Origin device, which was designed to locate sources of power, though without the flask of quicksilver it was probably useless. Certainly useless to him, since he had no gift for the Secret Art.

  The two sections of the tube were still partly open and a faint blue glow came from the needle-like crystals on the end. Inside, something reflected silvery blue—a few drops of quicksilver. Wilm inspected Aviel’s face but gained no comfort. Her eyes were closed and she was as still as death, then the glow went out.

  He felt her throat but his callused fingers sensed no heartbeat. He licked a finger and put it under her nose, though if she was breathing it was too faint to feel. In his distress he clapped a hand to the hilt of the black sword on his hip, the enchanted blade that had once belonged to the great Magister, Mendark, and was now his. Wilm had saved Aviel’s life with it, avenged Dajaes with it, and it was the only precious thing he owned. But as he touched the hilt, the gate began to spin again, dizzyingly fast.

  It jumped sideways with such a lurch that the blood drained from his head and he almost fainted. He clung desperately to Aviel. Once more the gate seemed to be skipping through solid rock. It rushed through him, dragging on his bones and teeth and organs, though how could that be? Each skip was longer than the one before though Wilm could not tell whether they were travelling yards at a time, or miles.

  Then his head struck something hard and the world around him faded away …

  A bright light shone on his face and his head throbbed. He was lying on warm wet grass, the air was warm and sticky, and distantly he could hear shouting and screaming. He opened his eyes and the rising sun dazzled him.

  Aviel was no longer in his arms. Had he lost her? He staggered to his feet, hearing the roars of soldiers hurling themselves into battle, the clash of steel on steel and the shrieks of the dying, only a few hundred yards away.

  “Get down!” she hissed. “They’ll see you.”

  He felt a great swelling in the centre of his chest. “You’re alive!”

  “Down!”

  He fell to his knees, wiped his eyes and at last he could see. He was on a small hilltop in full view of anyone who should look his way. The ground was covered in short springy grass of the most brilliant green, unlike any green he had seen in his hometown of Casyme, or during the past six weeks of travel. The flowers in the grass were large and brightly coloured, and the humid air was thickly scented from myriad blossoms, overlain with the smell of wood smoke. Even the birds in the sky were different—their plumage shouted in glowing yellows and reds and blues. Wherever the gate had taken them, it was a long way from home.

  The gate was only ten feet away. It was shaped like a trilithon and was sky-blue, and still. It had shrunk and faded since carrying them away from Carcharon; it was not much taller than Wilm now. Aviel stood in front of it, staring at him.

  She was a small, slender girl, almost sixteen. Her heart-shaped face was elfin; tendrils of her fine silvery hair drifted up and down in the warm breeze. Her twisted right ankle and angled foot were partly concealed behind her left leg. Even with Wilm, her oldest friend, she kept them hidden.

  “I was terrified you’d died,” he said. “What—”

  “The Merdrun are here!” she hissed. “Come back into the gate.”

  Wilm felt confused. “But where are we?”

  Aviel’s voice, which was naturally high, became shrill. “I don’t know. Come on.”

  “We’ve got to find out as much as we can. It’s vital information, Aviel.”

  She hesitated. “All right, but be quick.”

  To his left, half a mile away, stood a forest of gigantic trees that extended over hills and valleys for miles. To the right a broad brown river wound across a plain towards the sea. A large town on its further bank had streets running in sinuous curves, and dozens of boats were tied up at its wharves.

  “Merdrun, to me!” The battle cry soared above all the other shouts and screams.

  Wilm could not see the fighting; a ridge of rock fifty yards down the hill blocked his view. He crouched down and scurried that way.

  “Wilm, come back!”

  He had to know what was happening. He crept down to the ridge, climbed it, peered over and saw a smaller town only a quarter of a mile away. Many of the buildings were aflame, and its dark-skinned inhabitants were fighting from behind hastily erected barricades.

  Aviel limped down. “What are you doing here?” he whispered. “Go up.”

  “Not without you.”

  The inhabitants of the town were doomed. Squads of armoured Merdrun were advancing from all sides,
cutting down everyone they came across, just as they had done on Cinnabar. Over and again he saw groups of locals attack single Merdrun soldiers. And over and again, with methodical savagery, the soldiers killed all their attackers. The Merdrun were supernaturally strong and violent, almost magically so. Clearly the rumours about them were true—they were the most deadly fighters in the void, and each the equal of at least five ordinary troops.

  Buildings were also burning in the town on the far side of the river, and smoke rose from other parts of the landscape. He could not tell how many Merdrun there were, though they were everywhere.

  “Wilm?” hissed Aviel. “We can’t stay any longer.” She scrambled back down the ridge and headed up the hill.

  He was still staring at the besieged town. “The Crimson Gate must have got here a long time before ours. Looks like the Merdrun have been here all night.”

  She stopped. “If they have, they must have seen our gate open.

  Come on!”

  The gate flared bright blue, lighting up the hilltop, faded then flared again.

  “Wilm, hurry!” wailed Aviel.

  He was running up the slope, bent low, when a band of Merdrun came storming up the hill, fifty yards to his left. They had the black glyph burned into their foreheads and were led by a lean, hard-faced fellow with a close-cropped black beard and a completely bald head. Gergrig!

  They had not seen Wilm; their eyes were fixed on the glowing gate and on Aviel, who was still twenty yards from it.

  “The little bitch who poisoned our gate,” said Gergrig. “Cut her down!”

  A spasm of terror shot through Wilm. Why hadn’t he listened to her? The Merdrun were ten yards closer to the gate; he would never reach them in time.

  “Aviel!” he bellowed. “Go!”

  The Merdrun turned and it was clear from Gergrig’s grim smile that he had recognised Wilm too. Wilm wrenched out the black sword. He had no hope of beating any of the Merdrun but he might delay them long enough for Aviel to get away.