The Fatal Gate Page 8

  “We’ve got to race back to Vilikshathûr and take command of Snoat’s armies before word gets out that he’s dead.” Tallia looked around. “Where’s the captain?”

  “Hiding!” Malien said contemptuously. “I never trusted the fellow and clearly he’s got a lot worse over the past decade.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Malien indicated the coast of Meldorin, only a few miles to their west. Jagged black mountains, covered in forest, ran right down to the sea. “That’s Point Porp, and it’s the best part of a hundred miles south of Alcifer. If Xarah hadn’t acted so quickly the captain would have got away with the greatest theft in history.”

  “He has to face trial,” said Nadiril. “And the senior army officers.”

  Tallia heaved a great sigh. Finally something had gone right and, though it was only partly her doing, she felt better about herself than she had in months.

  Shortly the captain was dragged up from his hiding place, whining and blustering. He was a miserable-looking fellow; his stubbly jowls were covered in salt spray and mucus from a running nose, his skin was blotchy and the buttons of his waistcoat had burst open under the strain of his enormous belly.

  “Tallia!” he cried, reaching out to her with both arms. “For pity’s sake, help me.”

  Tallia stared at him. “Do I know you?”

  “It’s Pender,” Lilis said softly. “Pender, why did you do it?”

  Only now did Tallia recognise, beneath the ruined skin and sagging blubber, the brilliant sailor who had carried her and Mendark halfway around Lauralin a dozen years ago. She had briefly been an investor in his first ship, though within a year she had withdrawn her coin. They were too different to be in partnership, and he had always been a greedy, self-justifying man.

  “Haven’t done no harm,” he muttered. “You can forget about all this, can’t you?”

  “We’re at war!” she said incredulously. “Our very existence is under threat, yet you stole Snoat’s flagship and war chest and ran for it.”

  “Haven’t touched a grint of his treasures,” he whined. “You’ve got the lot.”

  “But had you got away, you would have been the richest man in Meldorin, and the loss would have crippled us in the war. You’ve committed a capital crime, Pender, and I can’t protect you.”

  “Please,” he said piteously, his nose oozing all over his upper lip.

  “You’ve really let yourself go,” Tallia said coldly.

  Pender wiped his nose on his velvet sleeve and burst into tears. “But I’ve got children to support—you can’t do this …”

  Tallia assembled a jury of ten from the sailors on the deck. “You know the facts. What do you say?”

  They only took a minute to judge him guilty.

  “You’ve got no choice now,” Nadiril said quietly.

  Pender had been a decent man once, in his greedy and self-serving way, and he had done Mendark and herself good service. But that had been long ago, and there was nothing left of the man he had been. It was hard but it had to be done.

  “Take a stout rope,” said Tallia, “and hang him from the boom.”

  12

  I’M ASHAMED OF YOU, GIRL

  The image of that far-off, dreadful scene had burned itself into Llian’s mind—the Merdrun army charging the red gate on that ice-sheathed plateau on Cinnabar.

  “They’re coming through!” he cried to Ifoli. “We’ve failed; we’ve lost.”

  “Ugh!” Ifoli clutched at her back and fell.

  They were trapped in a shimmering force-bubble near the shore at Alcifer, in darkness. Before he could catch her the bubble hurtled away so rapidly that the world blurred around him. His lungs felt as though they weighed a hundred pounds; each breath was a fifty-foot climb.

  The bubble plummeted from a height, bounced and bounced again, tossing him down, rolled across a bumpy surface and came to rest. He ached all over and something hard was jammed against his right hip—the top of Ifoli’s head. She groaned.

  He sat up and checked himself. He was covering in bruises but nothing was broken. The inside of the bubble had lost its shimmer and much of its colour; it was only faintly pink now. As he stood up it evaporated and he dropped six inches onto muddy sand that smelled of salt and rotting seaweed. They were on a beach or a tidal flat.

  It was still dark, though the bubble must have carried them a long way because it was considerably warmer than Alcifer. A few stars speckled the sky to his left. Ahead a black, irregular outline marked rising ground. To the right, a small mountain blocked a third of the sky. Behind him a series of low, scalloped shapes might have been hills. But there were no lights; no signs of life in any direction.

  Llian took stock. If his vision of the Merdrun storming the gate was true, and he felt sure it was, Karan’s reckless mission to Cinnabar had failed. He choked and fell to his knees, clawing his fingers through the sand. She had taken one risk too many and it had been the end of her. No Karan ever more. The pain rose until it was unbearable; he wanted to scream, to punch something, to batter his head against the ground until he fell senseless and could no longer feel.

  But Sulien was in more danger than ever. He had to find her.

  Ifoli groaned, and Llian remembered, through the mental haze, that she had been injured. His eyes were adjusting to the dimness now. She lay on her side on the wet sand, knees drawn up to her chest and her arms wrapped around them, and her teeth were bared.

  “Where are you hurt?” he said.

  “My back. Below the left shoulder blade.”

  He pulled up her coat and blouse and probed the area with his fingertips. She winced.

  “It’s swollen but there’s no wound. I’d say a fragment of the Command device hit you. We were lucky. It killed Scorbic Vyl and Esea … and Snoat.” That image would haunt his nightmares. “We don’t have to worry about him any more.”

  She sat up painfully, the starlight catching her eyes. “Why did you throw your Tale of the Mirror onto the fire?”

  It had been an impulse, quickly regretted. “I suppose … I just wanted to hurt Snoat. He’d done so much damage, ruined so many lives. I couldn’t let him die knowing that his perfect collection was back together.”

  “I could never burn a book.”

  “Books are my life, but they’re not worth the lives of good people.” He scanned the horizon again. “Any idea where we are?”

  “Near Mollymoot,” said Ifoli.

  “Never heard of it.”

  “It’s a little island at the north-western tip of Meldorin. Six hundred miles from Alcifer.”

  Llian could not see the sea, but he could hear it, a distant hissing. “We’d better move.”

  Ifoli tried to get up, but sank down again. “Another minute.”

  What was the matter with her? She was one of the cleverest people he had ever met, seemingly good at everything, and had always been decisive and quick to act in an emergency. She had saved his life in Pem-Y-Rum when Unick had tried to kill him, and saved him from making a fool of himself with the Command device half an hour ago. Something was badly wrong with her.

  The hissing sound grew louder. “How do you know where we are?”

  “I grew up here. It’s familiar, even in the dark. Perhaps that’s why the bubble brought us here.”

  “I assumed—from your name and accent—that you came from the far east.”

  “I was born in the east, but my great-grandfather has a place just over there.” She indicated a shadowy hill, then took three rasping breaths. “My aunt manages the estate—Nadiril seldom gets the chance to come home these days …”

  “Nadiril is your great-grandfather?” said Llian in astonishment. He had never thought of the Librarian as having a family.

  “That’s how I ended up being a spy in Snoat’s household. When I was younger I was … constantly seeking new challenges.”

  “But not any more?”

  “Took too many risks.” She was panting now. “Lucky to be aliv
e. Half my friends—brilliant, determined spies—tortured to death. What a waste!”

  Llian could identify with that. He had wasted much of the past ten years trying to be what he was not and satisfying nobody, least of all himself.

  “Played the role … too well,” said Ifoli, now stopping for breath after every few words. “Without me … Snoat might have done … far less damage.”

  Llian had often wondered why she’d served him so faithfully. She had seemed too perfect, and now she was paying for it. The rushing grew louder. “What’s that noise?”

  “The tide!” cried Ifoli. “They’re huge here—thirty feet low to high.” She looked around. “Only cross to Mollymoot at low tide. Comes in … fast.”

  Llian could see it now, a distant line of white, foaming towards them. He heaved her to her feet and gave her his shoulder. “Which way?”

  She turned to face the black shape of the mountain. “There.”

  They headed off, sometimes on hard sand, sometimes on smelly mud that sucked at their boots; it was slow and exhausting and he had to heave Ifoli along. Every time he looked back the white line of water was closer and the rushing sound louder; it was almost a roar now.

  “Won’t make it,” she said listlessly. “We’re way off causeway.”

  What causeway? He saw a faint line thirty yards to the right. The ground would be harder there and they could go faster.

  “Leave me,” said Ifoli.

  “Put your arm around my neck.”

  “What? No!”

  He swept her up in his arms and ran. She was neither big nor heavy, but her weight pushed him an inch deeper into the mud with each stride. He could not have done this a couple of months ago, but all his time on the road, climbing ridges and mountains and towers with thousands of steps, had given him stamina he had not had in a decade.

  He needed all of it. By the time he reached the causeway the foaming tide-front was racing towards them. He clambered onto the paved surface, which was potholed and slippery.

  “Put me down,” said Ifoli.

  He ignored her and set off towards the island. The shore was a hundred and fifty yards away, as near as he could judge. The tide was now a breaking wave, crashing and roaring behind them. He made ten yards, then twenty, but the wave was moving at twice his speed and there was no hope of outrunning it.

  His left foot plunged into a pothole and he fell, dropping Ifoli and landing on top of her. She shrieked. Before he could get up the water struck him, bowling him over her and along the causeway.

  Llian thrashed around in the boiling whiteness. A second wave struck him in the back and he went under, scraping his hands and knees on barnacle-covered stone and cracking his head on something hard, then the wave passed on. He stood up in hip-deep water, head throbbing, wiping gritty seawater out of his eyes.

  He was veering off the causeway and there was no sign of Ifoli. He fixed on the high peak of the shadowy mountain and, as the water surged the other way, thrashed towards the shore. He made another twenty yards and stumbled again, this time over something much softer. Ifoli, floating face down.

  Drowned? He heaved her upright, turned her and thrust his clenched fists in under her ribcage. Water gushed from her mouth; she gave a great choking gasp and began to retch. He threw her over his shoulder and staggered up the causeway, making it to the shoreline just as a bigger wave broke behind him, driving him forward. He used its momentum to heave her up five or six feet, above the high-water mark, and dropped her there.

  He crawled further up, hanging onto tussocks of wiry grass, and fell on a bed of shells and gravel, gasping.

  “Ifoli?” he said after a couple of minutes.

  Nothing. A rocky fist closed around his heart. Was she dead? He felt her face, neck and throat, and she was cold. He put his ear to her chest and she was breathing, though he heard a faint crackling, as if there was still water in her lungs.

  There were no lights along the foreshore. If she were to be saved, he had to do it. He turned her on her side and felt inside her mouth in case her airway was blocked.

  She retched again, water and mucus dribbled out and she breathed a little more easily. A minute passed, then she let out a feeble croak.

  He heaved her upright. “Where’s the nearest house?”

  “Aunt Dilly’s place.” She dipped her head to the left.

  He carried her up the track from the causeway, then off to the left along a narrow path between tussocks of coarse grass that sawed at his weary legs as he passed. Dry sand squeaked underfoot. He staggered over a little hill where the shrubs smelled like lavender, then up a winding path of lime-washed flagstones to a high, narrow stone house with a shingle roof, the shingles shining silver in the starlight.

  Llian could barely stand up. He banged his head on the front door and shortly a stern-faced woman opened the door.

  “Who are you?” She thrust a six-sided lantern into his face. “What do you want at this hour?” Then she looked down and cried, “Ifoli?”

  “Dilly,” Ifoli whispered.

  Dilly took Ifoli from Llian’s arms, effortlessly, and carried her down a hall and around a corner to the left. Llian’s knees gave way and he subsided onto the grey-green hall rug. It rasped against his cheek and smelled as if it had been woven from dried seagrass.

  The lighted room at the other end, when he finally reached it, was a large old fashioned kitchen: small cast iron stove, wide fireplace with an iron bar across the middle and a large pot, black as char, suspended over the coals. A table, covered in a blue cloth embroidered with white flowers, sat under a small window that looked out over a steep, bushy slope down to the sea.

  Aunt Dilly, who could have been any age from thirty-five to sixty, was tall and lean, with a beaky nose, deep blue eyes and thin fingers. She bore a distinct resemblance to Nadiril, though she was not an unhandsome woman. She had settled Ifoli on a chair and was cleaning blood and mud off her face with a brown sponge. Ifoli had gone a pale green; a fist-shaped bruise marred her high forehead and she was breathing raggedly.

  She looked up as Llian entered, wobbly on his feet. “Saved my life,” she croaked. “Don’t know why I’m so weak.”

  “Guilt!” said Dilly. “From serving that monster, Snoat. Acting as his right-hand woman! And who knows what else you did for him,” she said with a judgemental sniff. “I’m ashamed of you, girl.”

  Ifoli went a delicate shade of red.

  “I can’t think what possessed Nadiril to let you be his spy,” Dilly said crossly. “I’m giving the old fool a piece of my mind. How dare he!”

  “I pestered him until he agreed, Aunt Dilly. If anyone’s at fault—”

  “He had no right agreeing!” Dilly thundered. “And I’ll be having stern words with you too, young lady, the moment you’re better.”

  “Yes, Aunt Dilly,” Ifoli said meekly, though she seemed pleased to be fussed over.

  “You’re not going back to that vile man. I won’t hear of it.”

  “Snoat’s dead,” said Llian.

  Dilly turned to him. “I’m delighted to hear it—if you’re sure?”

  “We saw him die. It was … ugly.”

  “And who are you?” she said. “Apart from the hero who saved my beautiful niece.”

  “He’s Llian,” said Ifoli. “The Llian who told the Great—”

  “The Tale of the Mirror,” sighed Dilly. Goose pimples rose along her lean forearms and her blue eyes took on a liquid shine. “We’re bookish folk in this family. We love the Great Tales, and there’s none greater.”

  “Thank you,” said Llian, moved by her quiet passion. It was a wonderful thing to have a Great Tale to his name, but the look in the eyes of those people who loved his stories was greater still.

  “What were you doing out on the mudflats with the tide coming in?” Dilly frowned at Ifoli. “I’m surprised at you, girl; you know better.”

  “A gate,” said Ifoli. “It hurled us all the way from Alcifer in an instant.”


  “Are the stories true, then? About a terrible enemy gathering in the void to attack us?” She turned to Llian. “News comes slowly to our forgotten end of the world.”

  “They’re true. The Merdrun have invaded, and we don’t know where.”

  Dilly shivered. “You need tea.” She went to the black pot over the fire but swung back. “No, wine. Have you eaten?”

  Llian shook his head. “Not since lunch time … couldn’t stomach anything.”

  He sat at the far end of the table, out of the way. Dilly propped Ifoli up with cushions, for she was looking wan again, went out the back door and returned bearing a glass jug of pale green wine. She poured Llian a generous glass and Ifoli a little one.

  Ifoli managed a smile. “How come he gets more than I do?”

  “You’re ill. Besides,” she gave Llian a keen sideways look, “tellers are legendary drinkers.”

  “Indeed we are,” said Llian, and raised his glass to them both.

  The wine, though weak, was welcome. Llian would have preferred the glorious Driftmere brandy that he had pilfered from Pem-Y-Rum, but the decanter lay forgotten in Alcifer.

  The only other occupant of Dilly’s house was her fifteen-year-old nephew Reggeley, who had gone to bed hours ago. By the time they finished supper and washed the mud and salt off, it was two in the morning. Dilly showed Llian to a long, narrow room under the roof, up three flights of creaking stairs. A boarded ceiling followed the roof line, the low walls were olive green and there was a small bed at the far end, under a white window.

  “Can’t remember when I last slept in a proper bed,” he said, yawning.

  “You’ve got the best views in Mollymoot. The south window looks down the west coast of Meldorin. And to the north,” she gestured to the window by the bed, “our twin island and its great mountain, Demondifang.”

  “Twin island?” he said wearily.

  “Mollymoot and Demondifang are like two peas, linked at low tide by a two-mile-long spit of gravel, but the rest of the time they’re separate islands.”

  “Does anyone live on Demondifang?”

  “Not any more. After the last raid … the survivors would not go back.”