The Fatal Gate Read online

  “Any luck, Yggur?” she called over her shoulder.

  He did not reply, though she heard metal clanking and clicking from beyond the hatch. A minute went by, and their plunge to doom was unabated. The mountains appeared to be thrusting up at her—in another minute or two they would slam at high speed into the ice-sheathed rocks. Why was the sky ship diving so rapidly? The Aachim had built it in great haste and it was the first of its kind; did it have some fundamental flaw?

  Fifty seconds. None of the levers were working now and the rotors were still. Karan’s heart was beating a tattoo against her breastbone—they had to survive, for Sulien’s sake. She tried to sense out the problem but got nothing.

  Forty seconds. But how could the sky ship be flawed? The Aachim were brilliant designers and builders, the best in the world, and this vessel had brought Malien all the way from Mount Tirthrax, a distance of fifteen hundred miles. Why had had it gone wrong now?

  Thirty seconds until the sky ship slammed into the rocky peak between two heavily crevassed glaciers.

  “Heave the right-hand lever back hard,” Yggur bellowed through the hatch. “Then shove the left lever forwards as far as it’ll go.”

  Karan heaved on the black knob and the sky ship’s dive shallowed, but not quickly enough to save them. She thrust the red knob forward; the rotors roared and the nose of the sky ship lifted towards the horizontal, but the grey, jagged rocks were no more than a hundred feet below, and less ahead; it seemed impossible that the craft could rise in time to clear them. She hauled back on the black knob with all her strength; the craft was in level flight now; now it lifted and they shot over the little peak, so close that the landing skids scraped on ice.

  Yggur emerged from the hatch. There was blood all over his face, a long bruise across his forehead and his swollen nose still oozed blood.

  Karan slumped in her seat, exhausted. “That was too close. What was wrong? Did something break?”

  “Not exactly,” Yggur said grimly. He held out several lengths of metal rod and pointed to scratches on them. “See those.”

  “What about them?”

  “Sabotage!”

  “Why would the Aachim sabotage their own craft?”

  A wild gust sent the sky ship skidding sideways. Karan turned back to the controls; there were cliffs and mountain peaks on three sides. Yggur came down to her, swaying on his feet. “They wouldn’t.”

  “Then who?” An awful possibility struck her. “Not Shand, surely?”

  “He was under the control of the magiz. Maybe he still is. Go down!”

  She eyed the crevassed ice of the glacier below and ahead. “Here?”

  “Land on the first flat bit of ground you come to.”

  “Me?” she squeaked.

  “You’ve got to. Not feeling too good.” Yggur slumped into a seat and sat there, head lowered, eyes closed, breathing shallowly. “I’m still channelling power to the rotors. All you have to do is work the levers.”

  Landing was tricky enough in good conditions. In this gusting wind, on a bumpy, crevassed glacier, one small mistake was liable to damage the sky ship beyond repair. She circled a relatively flat section of the glacier, trying to work out the best approach.

  “Hurry up!” said Yggur thickly. “Don’t know how long my repair will last.”

  She turned, lined the sky ship up with the flat section and slowed the rotors. A gust heaved the sky ship sideways, then up fifty feet in a stomach-churning instant. Karan panicked and yanked the middle lever to the right.

  “Steady,” said Yggur. Then, “A little faster.”

  She regained control, lined the sky ship up again, descended sharply and the skids hit the ice with an impact that twisted the frame of the cabin. Timber groaned and creaked; compartment doors flew open and mugs and cutlery rained down. She cut the rotors.

  The wind howled. Yggur wiped his bloody face on his sleeve, staggered to the doorway, slipped on his own blood and fell out onto the ice.

  Karan rose, her knees shaky. She hung on as a gust skidded the sky ship sideways, then clambered down the ladder to Yggur, who was on his knees, gasping. “You all right?”

  “No,” said Yggur. “Get it tied down.”

  He headed towards the cowling behind the rear of the cabin. It protected the mechanisms that powered the rotors and let protium in and out of the airbag.

  A series of canvas eyelets, reinforced with metal rings, ran along the outside of the cabin, and one of the compartments held spider-silk ropes, light but strong, plus pegs with hooked ends. She climbed down, hammered some pegs into the ice, tied the craft down, then went gingerly to the edge of the nearest crevasse.

  It went down an awfully long way, and low, grinding sounds issued from the blue depths.

  Crack!

  The ice quivered under her feet, then a triangular piece of the edge broke off and crashed down the crevasse. Karan cried out and leaped back, her heart pounding, then froze. She was on the edge of another crevasse, three feet across; it was partly concealed by a bridge of crusted snow that could collapse at any time. She had walked across it without realising it was there.

  She sprang across and, checking that the ice ahead of her was sound, headed towards the rear of the sky ship. Yggur’s feet and lower legs could be seen below the partly lifted cowling, and banging sounds came from inside.

  Thump. He roared, “You!” then scrambled out backwards, hauling something—no, someone—out on the ice.

  “Hingis!” Karan exclaimed. “What were you doing in there?”

  The master illusionist was one of the sorriest sights she had ever seen. He had been kicked repeatedly by a mule as a boy, smashing the bones of his face, caving in the left side of his chest and withering a lung. He had always been ugly, yet when she had seen him with Ussarine at Alcifer he had been so animated, because she saw him as a normal man worthy of her love, that his looks had seemed irrelevant.

  But at the worst possible moment, when Llian had needed their help to attack Snoat in the pavilion on the island and seize the Command device, Hingis’s obsessive twin sister Esea had forced him to choose between her and Ussarine. Hingis had chosen Ussarine, and Esea, unable to accept the rejection, had blasted the pavilion down onto them, breaking both Ussarine’s legs and several ribs. Then, apparently believing that she had killed them, Esea had fled in the darkness.

  Hingis, evidently, had stowed away in the sky ship. His face was bruised and badly swollen, his blood-red eyes looked as though every vein had burst, and the tip of his nose was frostbitten.

  “The little bastard has been sabotaging us for days,” said Yggur. He drew back a huge fist as if planning to punch Hingis in the face, but thought better of it and dropped his hand to his side. “Why?”

  “Destroyed my sister, and Ussarine,” said Hingis in a breathless voice. Having only one good lung, and it not very good, even speaking was an effort. “Want to die.”

  “You could have jumped in the lake and drowned yourself,” Yggur said coldly. “Why try to kill us too?”

  “Why not? We’re all going to die soon enough.”

  “You whimpering little shit!” Yggur heaved Hingis bodily into the air and turned towards the nearest crevasse. “Your wish is about to come true.”

  Karan sprang at him and caught hold of his right arm. “Yggur, no!” He raised it higher, lifting her as well. He was immensely strong. She pulled herself up and roared into his face, “Put him down!”

  He shook her off. She caught him around the ankles and hung on. For a moment she thought he was going to send her skidding across the ice towards the crevasse, then he stopped and looked down at her.

  “Why not?” said Yggur. “It’s what he wants.”

  “Why should he escape the consequences of his crimes so easily?”

  Yggur dropped Hingis to the ice. “What use is he?”

  Hingis bit back a cry of agony as he landed, then doubled up and put his arms over his face.

  “He’s a brilliant illus
ionist. He could be very useful in the war.”

  Yggur curled his lip. Karan looked down at the wretched little man and, despite all he had done to them, felt a trace of pity. “Ussarine isn’t dead. She’s just got broken bones and bruises.”

  Hingis’s hideous face crumbled. “Makes no difference. I can never look at her again.”

  “Why not?”

  “She begged me not to choose her over my sister, but like a fool I did. I can never forgive myself. I can never be with Ussarine.”

  8

  BLACK LIPS AND RED TEETH

  In the middle of the night Karan jerked awake in her hammock, realising that she had cried out. It was miserably cold, for the flimsy walls of the sky ship did not retain heat and the cabin was no warmer than the glacier it rested on so precariously.

  “Something the matter?” said Yggur, who was lying up the front, wrapped in a heavy coat. Hingis was swathed in blankets in a hammock at the rear, his hands and feet tied, and his teeth chattering.

  As Karan sat up, the hammock swung gently. “Bad dream. About Sulien.”

  The wind shook the sky ship, and if it strengthened they would have to take off. Hazardous as it would be in the air in such weather, it was even more dangerous on the ground. Should the wind tear the pegs free, the fragile craft would be bowled across the glacier and tumbled down a crevasse, or smashed against the ragged little peak on the other side.

  “How bad?”

  “She’s on the run.”

  “Better than being in the Whelm’s hands.” He went to the tiny galley at the rear, boiled water in a pot by closing his big hands around it, and made two mugs of chard. He handed her one and perched on the pilot’s seat.

  Karan warmed her half-frozen fingers on the mug. “They’re hunting her.”

  “Any idea where?”

  “In the far south, the west coast. Salliban.”

  “I used to know that land,” said Yggur.

  Karan had never been anywhere near it. “What’s it like?”

  “Rain-sodden. The coastal range is covered in trees as tall as any you saw in the jungles of Crandor, and the moss comes up to your knees.”

  “I thought it’d be a frozen wasteland.”

  “The interior is—Shazabba—but a warm ocean current runs along the west coast and keeps Salliban mild. It rains three hundred days a year and only snows twenty.”

  “Sounds miserable.”

  “Good place to hide if you know the land.”

  “Sulien doesn’t.” Karan choked. The thought of her gentle daughter running for her life through such a hostile place was unbearable.

  “If she got away, the Whelm might never find her. There’s only a dozen of them, isn’t there?”

  Karan started, rocking the hammock wildly.

  “What?” said Yggur.

  “There was something else in my dream. Something bad.” She struggled to recall it.

  “About?”

  The dream flooded back. “Mummy, Yetchah has called the Whelm, all of them. Idlis said the whole Whelm nation is hunting me.”

  Yggur stood up abruptly, cracking his head on the low ceiling at the front. The cabin rocked. He paced, rubbing his head, then whirled. “And if they catch her—if they use her to contact the Merdrun—if they join forces …”

  Karan hugged herself and rocked back and forth. “Yes,” she whispered. “Sulien’s the key.”

  “To our survival. You’ve got to find her.”

  “I—can’t!” she wailed.

  “Why not?”

  “When Malien unblocked my gift for mancery, I lost the ability to make mind-links.”

  “Or are you afraid to?”

  Karan had not considered that. “Um … Well, I had to close the link to Sulien weeks ago; the magiz was using it to hunt her down.”

  “The magiz is dead. Reopen the link.”

  Karan tried to but kept shying away; the fear was too ingrained.

  “Focus,” Yggur said softly. He pressed his big hands to the sides of her head, fingers touching at the top of her skull where the magiz had attacked.

  The world around Karan slipped away—sight and sound and every sense save the touch of his fingers—and then the world within. Nothing mattered; for the first time in years she was at peace. Warmth spread through her and her mind opened out in all directions—she sensed the world spinning on its axis, forests shrinking and expanding over the centuries, ocean currents swirling, glaciers grinding rock to paste—

  Yggur’s voice broke through. “Focus on Sulien.”

  Pain speared from the top of Karan’s skull to her chin, jagged around the sides of her lower jaw and stabbed at the base of her skull. A sequence of blurred colours flooded her: vivid greens, angry flashes of red, areas of silvery grey rippling in the wind, then a sweltering heat that felt so wrong in the frigid cabin.

  “Aah!” Karan hurled herself out of the hammock and lurched to the front of the cabin. Sweat was running off her; she sat down with a thump and felt so weak she had to support herself with her arms.

  “What was that?” Yggur said sharply.

  Karan’s voice seemed to come from far away. “I saw somewhere tropical.”

  “Where?”

  “Don’t know.” Another pain speared into the base of her skull, then a vivid image flashed through her mind. “Gergrig!” she said thickly. “Directing a group of acolytes.”

  “Doing what?”

  “They’re gathered around three women … like identical triplets. Big, strong women … Black hair. Skin the colour of treacle. Long, handsome faces. Why did I see them?”

  Yggur did not reply.

  “The acolytes are chanting, painting the triplets’ faces, blackening their lips … staining their teeth red.” She shuddered. “What do you think it means?”

  “I’m very much afraid,” said Yggur, “that he’s creating a new magiz.”

  “From one of the triplets?”

  “No, from all of them.”

  Shivers rippled down Karan’s backbone. “How could that work?” she said hoarsely.

  “Identical triplets understand one another in ways, and to a depth, that no other group of people can. If Gergrig succeeds, his new magiz could be far more dangerous than the one you killed.”

  How long would it take to create a new magiz? The Secret Art was difficult and long in the learning; even if the triplets were already skilled mancers, she did not see how a magiz could be made overnight.

  She stretched her mind out, very carefully, to the place, a hill topped with enormous round boulders, the spaces between them carpeted with velvety grass. Below the crest springs gushed from a dozen places, forming rills that networked the lower slope. It was a verdant land, as unlike Cinnabar as she could have imagined. She could almost smell it.

  But where was it? There was no way of telling.

  Sulien? Sul-ien! Suulieennn?

  “The triplets are whispering Sulien’s name,” said Karan. “They’re after her.”

  “You’ve got to find her first.”

  The sweltering heat vanished and with it her sense of Gergrig and the triplets; Karan started to shiver. She swathed herself in blankets and Yggur extinguished the lightglasses. Starlight filtered in through the small round windows and reflected up from the ice, dimly illuminating the cabin in shades of blue and grey.

  As she closed her eyes and tried to sense Sulien, a savage gust heaved the sky ship sideways. Hingis jerked upright, staring wildly around him, then scrunched up again and pulled a blanket over his head.

  “We can’t stay here,” said Yggur, thrusting the red knob forwards to engage the rotors. “Take the controls; I’ll undo the stays.”

  He heaved the door open and leaped down. Karan scrambled across to his seat and took hold of the levers. Another gust struck the sky ship, heeling it over and spinning it around by ninety degrees. Some of the pegs must have torn out of the ice and the airbag above the cabin was now acting like a sail.

  Yggur hurled a
handful of pegs and ropes in through the door. She heard him yelling but could not make out what he was saying over the wind and dared not leave the controls for a second; it was taking all her efforts to keep the sky ship head-on into the shifting wind.

  A stronger gust sent it skidding back towards the crevasse she had looked into earlier. Again Yggur roared.

  “What?” Karan yelled.

  “What’s going on?” shrieked Hingis.

  She turned the nose into the wind, revved the rotors and stood up, but could not see Yggur through the clouds of powdery snow. What if he’d fallen into a crevasse, or walked into one of the whirling rotors in the darkness?

  Another gust whirled the sky ship around again. Yggur let out a roar of pain, then the left side of the craft dropped several feet with an almighty crash. There was a thump behind her, a groan, then silence.

  Her heart missed several beats; one of the skids had slid into a crevasse. She checked on Hingis, who had been hurled head-first out of his hammock and lay in a crumpled heap. Had he broken his neck? There was no time to check.

  She darted to the door but could not see through the wind-driven snow. The airbag was a lot wider than the crevasse, though if she could not free the skid the back and forth movement would eventually break the cables that held the airbag to the cabin. The bag would hurtle skywards and the cabin would plummet to the base of the crevasse and smash to bits.

  She yanked on the beryl-topped rod that allowed more protium into the airbag, then pushed the red knob that controlled the speed of the rotors. They spun up to a roar and the vessel shuddered but did not move.

  Yggur’s head and shoulders appeared in the doorway. He had sprung up and caught hold of the rail beside the door.

  “More power!” he bellowed. “And more lift.”

  “Doing all I can.” The power he channelled through her to the controls came at a cost; her head was throbbing and nausea churned in her stomach. Aftersickness was rising and it would only get worse. “Get in!”

  “One of the skids is caught. I’ll try and heave it out.”

  “It’s too dangerous! You could be crushed.”

  He leapt back and disappeared.