The Fatal Gate Read online

  “Run for it!” he screamed, putting on a burst of speed.

  Aviel hobbled to the gate. As she entered it, it flared again, but that was all.

  “Aviel, go!”

  “I don’t know how to make it go,” she screamed.

  Gergrig let out a bark of laughter. “Kill her,” he said to the two soldiers on his left. “I’ll deal with the boy.”

  Wilm had been put down all his life and the insult slid off him. He raised the enchanted black sword but it resisted him. No, it was being pulled to his right, towards the gate. Why? Was it trying to tell him something?

  There was no time to think about it; the Merdrun were between him and the gate, there was no way he could get to it, and Aviel would be dead in seconds. He sheathed the sword, unbuckled the copper sheath then ran to Gergrig’s right and hurled sword and sheath into the gate.

  “Draw it!” he roared. “I can’t get there.”

  Aviel’s pretty face twisted in agony. She drew the black sword, raised it in the gate and it flared so brightly that for an instant it outshone the sun. When Wilm could see again the gate was gone. He had done one thing right, at least.

  And now he would pay for it.

  Gergrig cursed. “Lebbix, run to the triplets. They’ve got to drag that gate back.”

  Lebbix, a slab-faced bull of a man whose arms and hands were covered in tightly curled black hairs, froze, his eyes wide and terrified. “The … triplets?”

  “You heard. Go!”

  “That gate’s a diminutive of the true Azure Gate. We can’t touch it.”

  “Find a way! The girl knows too much; she has to die.”

  Lebbix pounded down the hill. The other four Merdrun came at Wilm from all sides.

  His heart was trying to hammer a hole through his ribcage. He tried to run, but one of the soldiers tossed a loop of rope over his head and yanked him off his feet.

  “Beat him to within an inch of his life,” said Gergrig. “But don’t kill him. That pleasure is reserved for me, when you’re finished.”

  The Merdrun began, slowly and savagely. They were masters at inflicting pain, and Wilm, who had thought he had suffered in his brief, poverty-stricken life, now realised that he had not suffered at all.

  6

  OUR EFFORTS WILL ULTIMATELY BE FUTILE

  “You swore to protect me!” Sulien hissed.

  “And so I am,” said Idlis, “despite how dearly it is costing me.” His voice was thick and gluggy, as if he spoke through a mouthful of gruel. He tried to smile but only managed a ferocious grimace. His ugly face was battered and bruised, one top front tooth and two lower ones had been knocked out, and there was fresh blood on his grey lips. “Quiet, or we will both die. If you broadcast your feelings, they will find us.”

  “But my feelings make me what I am.”

  His black eyes blinked, three times. “You’re a little Whelm now, and to be Whelm is to be in control of your emotions at all times. Never let them control you.”

  “I’m not Whelm in here,” said Sulien, touching her chest. “And I never will be.”

  “Listen carefully, little one. My people are hunting you.”

  “All eleven of them. I know!”

  His bark of laughter was arid, mirthless, and raised her hackles. He caught her wrist, and her skin crawled from his touch, for it was cold and rubbery and somehow inhuman. “Child, you don’t know anything! Yetchah called for help and she has been answered. The entire Whelm nation is on the move, twenty-five thousand people, and they’re coming this way from the north, the south and most of all from the east, Shazabba. Every Whelm wants Gergrig for their master.”

  “Including you,” she whispered, shocked and shaken.

  “Yes, little one,” he said gently. “Even me. But my oath is everything to me. Gather your gear, we’re going.”

  With twenty-five thousand after her there was no hope. “How?”

  “Yetchah’s band is searching along the stream and will be here in minutes. We have to go out the … back way.”

  “How do you know it?”

  “Salliban is my homeland; it’s why I led my people to the village on the lake in the first place. As a child I used to know every tree in this forest, and many of the secret pathways still exist. Come.”

  Idlis wriggled into one of the conduits Sulien had been too tired to investigate. She hesitated. Could she trust him? She had no choice.

  The conduit, a hollowed-out root of the great tree, ran down gently for ten feet or more, then out horizontally. It was not much wider than her shoulders, and Idlis had to hunch his own to get through. He did not seem bothered by the confined space but Sulien could not stop thinking about being stuck here, unable to move forward or back, while small creatures with slimy bodies and sharp teeth lunged and tore bits off her.

  He reached a wider section of the tunnel, turned, then touched a small dumbbell-shaped lightglass on his belt until it glowed muddy brown. “Calm yourself! You’re broadcasting again.”

  She tried to clamp a lid on her feelings, but she was too afraid.

  Idlis knelt, his rough joints clicking, and stared at her. “How you’ve changed these past days,” he whispered, his thick voice awed yet troubled.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Your gift is growing. It’s so strong now, even I can sense it. There’s a power in you I never saw before, a very troubling power.”

  Sulien did not know what to make of that. Her gift for the Secret Art was just there when she needed it or, more often, not. “I don’t know anything about it.”

  “You’ve got to master your gift or it will lead your enemies straight to you.”

  “I don’t know how.”

  He looked disturbed. “But … surely Karan taught you how to use it.”

  “No.”

  His black eyes flashed and he thrust his hideous face at her until his battered nose touched hers. “Why not?” he hissed. “Stupid woman!”

  She recoiled from the contact. “Mummy’s not stupid!” she said hotly.

  “Then she’s wilfully negligent. How can she not see?” Idlis looked down into the muddy brown depths of his lightglass. “You must find a teacher, little one, or you will not survive.”

  “I don’t know where to look for one.”

  “Find out!”

  He turned and scrabbled on. Sulien followed on hands and knees, thinking about what she knew of her gift. It had two parts, physical and mental. With the physical side she had blistered Julken’s fingers when he’d tried to crush her hand. It was her best means of defence though she had no idea how she had done those things. The gift sometimes rose of its own accord when she was angry, or desperate. Though more often it didn’t come at all.

  The other side of her gift had to do with far-seeing and far-sensing. She had seen the magiz preparing to attack Karan on Cinnabar, and Llian about to do something incredibly foolish in Carcharon. Sulien had cried out to him, No, Daddy! but she had no idea how she had done it. Since he lacked the gift, she should not have been able to reach him mentally at all.

  And then there was Gergrig. Why had she seen him in a nightmare in the first place? How could she have seen anyone from so far away across the void? Why had she seen him at exactly the time when he’d been talking about the Merdrun’s one weakness? Pure luck? She did not think so. There had to be a reason, but what was it?

  Her head was throbbing and her ankle worse. Sulien abandoned the useless thoughts, wiped tears from her eyes and crawled on, enduring the pain as best she could.

  After ten minutes Idlis turned into a square hole cut in the side of the conduit and passed into the hollow roots under another tree. This cavity was smaller than the one she had hidden in and much darker.

  “How much further—” said Sulien. She was starving and very thirsty.

  Idlis’s iron fingers crushed her shoulder. “Shh!” His head was cocked to one side, listening.

  Sulien made out distant, echoing sounds that might have been peopl
e shouting.

  “They know where you hid,” he said. “They’ll hack into the base of the great tree within an hour, and follow us.”

  His lightglass outlined a high, narrow tunnel through red earth. They scrambled in. The sides were reinforced with stone here and there, but it must have been made a long time ago as some of the walls had collapsed and roots came though the sides and top of the passage in many places.

  It was high enough for Idlis to walk with a stoop and Sulien to stand upright, and after half an hour she thought they must have gone a mile, though she had no idea of the direction.

  He stopped, rubbing the back of his neck, then gestured to her to go past. The roof here was supported by thick boards furred with patches of white mould. When she was in front he heaved out some of the boards and the tunnel collapsed behind him.

  “I’m not the only one who knows these pathways,” he said. “They were vital to our ancestors’ survival in the centuries when we were hunted like dogs—before we took a master who could protect us in exchange for our service. We’ve maintained them ever since, in case of need.”

  This must have reminded Idlis of some terrible memory for he stood there, staring at the wall, his jaw tight. Who hunted you like dogs? she wondered. And why? She felt for him; the revelation made him seem more human.

  She laid a hand on his knobbly wrist. “I’m sorry; I can feel your pain.”

  Idlis looked at her in astonishment. She withdrew her hand, wondering. Had no one ever been kind to him before?

  They continued for hours along a series of earthen passages, a short tunnel through solid basalt that climbed at a steep angle, and then a longer tunnel, lined with yellow sandstone blocks, that curved ever upwards. It was followed by more earth tunnels, miles and miles of them, all climbing.

  The trek was exhausting and tedious, and now every passage looked the same. Sulien was always hungry, always thirsty, always exhausted. Did Idlis even know where he was going? Or were they trapped in a maze from which there was no escape?

  It reminded her of Karan, far away. Why did she never answer? Don’t you want me any more? Sulien needed the comfort desperately. Surely a tiny link couldn’t hurt.

  She tensed, preparing herself, then stopped. The Merdrun’s evil old magiz had used Sulien’s link to find her and attack her, and she had attacked Karan through it too. But the magiz was dead; Karan had killed her on Cinnabar yesterday.

  Sulien looked up. Idlis was almost out of sight ahead, the lightglass a tiny swinging point of brown light in his hand. She stumbled after him. Her ankle throbbed and her back hurt.

  “Is … far to go?” she gasped.

  “Very far,” said Idlis.

  “Can we rest for a while?”

  “No.”

  “I’m starving.”

  He did not reply.

  “I … I’ve got to do a wee.”

  “Hold it in.”

  It was all too hard. The link to Karan beckoned, and Sulien was about to make one when it occurred to her that the Whelm wanted her to do just that. They wanted to lure Karan here so they could kill her to please their future master. To save her mother, Sulien had to keep her as far away as possible.

  She was standing head down and eyes closed, aching with fear and misery, when Idlis clouted her over the top of the head. “You’re broadcasting again! Curb your feelings! Deny them completely.”

  Tears welled. She tried to hold them back and be a good little Whelm who never showed emotion. Not once had she wept in front of them, though she had shed tears every night in her hard bed after the daily punishment the Whelm gave all their children, good or bad.

  But nothing could hold back Sulien’s tears now. She let out a sob, which led to another, and then she was crouched down on the floor, rocking back and forth on her haunches and howling as if it was the end of her world.

  Light approached, pink through her scrunched-up eyelids. She choked back her tears, expecting another blow, but it did not come. The light moved away a little.

  She wiped her eyes on her arm, then her nose, and looked up. Idlis, one of the ugliest men she had ever seen, was gazing at her with an expression she was unable to fathom. It was almost as though he cared—though that seemed impossible. The Whelm were bound together by bonds of duty and iron-hard discipline, and their aeons-old yearning for a master to complete them, but Sulien had never known them to show any positive emotion towards each other, much less to an outsider who was only there under sufferance.

  “Are you in great pain, little one?” said Idlis.

  She nodded, afraid to speak.

  “What would your mother do?”

  “She would hug me and stroke my hair, and tell me that everything was going to be all right … and after a while, everything would be.”

  Idlis considered that. “I can’t do any of those things for you.”

  Sulien wiped her stinging eyes. The thought of him hugging her was preposterous, not to mention repellent. “I’m … not asking you to.”

  “I would never lie to you. Things are not going to be all right. Life is privation and torment, bitter endurance and failure—and then we die.”

  “Thanks!” The Whelm were prone to such statements; they seemed incapable of taking joy from anything.

  “I’m pleased to be able to help you,” said Idlis. Levity of any kind being anathema to the Whelm, they did not recognise sarcasm. “I have always found comfort in knowing that, no matter how hard we strive, our efforts will ultimately be futile.”

  Sulien gaped at him. “How can you take comfort in that?”

  “It takes us out of our petty selves. It reinforces our need and yearning to serve one who is far greater than us—a master who sees what we cannot. A master who can shape life, the world and even the future to his will.”

  “A cruel master.”

  “Life is cruel. All that matters is strength, and survival, for the alternative is the oblivion our ancestors faced.”

  “You said ‘to his will’,” said Sulien. “Must your master be a man?”

  Idlis stared at the floor of the tunnel for a long time. “The question has never come up.”

  “I’m asking it,” she said boldly.

  “I can’t speak for my people, only myself. I yearn to follow the orders of a master who has the vision to see what I cannot, and the strength to fight for it and never yield. I followed Rulke, but I could also have followed Yalkara.”

  “It must be hard for you to go against your own kind, then. To rob them of—”

  “It’s very hard.” He looked both ways along the tunnel, then back at her. “You’ve stopped crying. You feel better.”

  “Mmn,” said Sulien.

  “I think my way was more help than your mother’s.” He headed on.

  Stupid man! Nothing could ever substitute for the lovely warm feeling of having her mother’s arms around her and knowing she was safe.

  But his people were hunting her, and she could sense the rest of the Whelm nation too, twenty-five thousand of them, flooding towards this place from the north, the south and the east. She was the key to contacting their hoped-for master, and gaining him. They had to find her.

  The terror was back, worse than ever. Sulien limped after Idlis. He was just one man, and he wanted a master as much as any of the Whelm. How long could he hold out before he cracked, and betrayed her?

  Life is privation and torment, bitter endurance and failure—and then we die.

  What if he was right?

  7

  SABOTAGE!

  “What the hell is the matter now?” cried Yggur, heaving hard on the black-knobbed lever. The front of the sky ship had pitched down so steeply that Karan was falling out of her seat.

  The craft shook, then dropped so sharply that she tasted the smoked fish she’d had for lunch. She choked back a scream. “What’s—happening?”

  Yggur did not reply, though it was clear that the controls were not answering. She clung to the sides of her seat, her hear
t racing, assessing their chances of surviving a crash. They weren’t good.

  The sky ship was high above the long southern panhandle of Meldorin. The Sea of Mists was on their left and the endless southern ocean to their right. The range below them wasn’t high but the peaks were sheathed in snow and ice and cut by glaciers. If they crashed there, they would die. Even if Yggur landed safely but could not take off again they would probably freeze to death. At this latitude, fifty degrees south, the land was well into its five-month winter.

  “Come here!” said Yggur, rising from the pilot’s seat. “Take over.”

  “Me?” Karan squeaked.

  She swung from seat to seat down the steeply sloping cabin, strapped herself into Yggur’s chair and took hold of the levers. Panic flooded her. Flying a sky ship required a gift for mancery, so as to channel power to the rotors, but her gift was small, untaught and unpractised.

  “You know how they work?” Yggur was hauling himself up towards the rear hatch.

  “The left lever controls the speed of the rotors, the middle lever turns left or right, and the right-hand lever controls climb or descent. What are you doing?”

  “Feels like something’s come apart. Got to fix it or …”

  As he heaved the hatch open, a long metal object fell through, cracking him hard across the forehead and nose, then tumbled the length of the cabin and thudded into the front wall below the oval window. Yggur slipped but managed to hook his left arm around the seat at the rear. He clung there for a few seconds, blood pouring from his left nostril, then heaved himself up through the hatch. His long legs kicked and he disappeared.

  The metal object was a hexagonal rod, threaded at one end and with a hole in the other. Karan prayed that it was not something vital. She tried to pull the right-hand lever back so the sky ship would level out but the lever was jammed in the dive position. Why?

  Two and a half days had passed since they had stolen the sky ship and fled Alcifer, heading for Salliban, and the craft had been plagued by inexplicable breakdowns all that time.