Martha Wells - Fall of Ile-Rien 01 - The Wizard Hunters

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Once a fertile and prosperous land, Ile-Rien is under attack by the Gardier, a mysterious army whose

storm-black airships appear from nowhere to strike without warning. Every weapon in the arsenal of

Ile-Rien’s revered wizards has proven useless.

And now the last hope of a magical realm under siege rests within a child’s plaything.

“THE WIZARD HUNTERS is a tense, exciting book replete with tantalizing mysteries...The story twists

and turns in surprising directions... I enjoyed the time I spent with these people, and I’m anxious to find

out what happens to them next!”

Nina Kiriki Hoffman

Resonating praise for the vision, imagination, and storytelling mastery of MARTHA WELLS

“Wells is the brightest new light in the fantasy field in some years.”

Portland Oregonian

“Wells is an author who leaves us eager for more.”

Cleveland Plain Dealer

“In a field teeming with clones, retreads, and solipsistic doorstoppers, Wells dares

—and gloriously succeeds—to be different.”

Kirkus Reviews (*Starred Review*)

“Wells continues to demonstrate an impressive gift for creating finely detailed fantasy

worlds rife with many-layered intrigues and immensely personable characters.”

Publishers Weekly

“Wells never fails to intrigue, amuse, and fascinate ...

I highly recommend anything by Martha Wells—and I wish she wrote faster!”

Jennifer Roberson

Books by Martha Wells

Wheel of the Infinite

The Death of the Necromancer

City of Bones

The Element of Fire

Forthcoming in hardcover

The Ships of Air

THE WIZARD HUNTERS

BOOK ONE OF THE FALL OF ILE-RIEN

MARTHA WELLS

An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

Copyright notice

Contents

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

To Liz Sharpe and Carolyn Golledge

THE WIZARD HUNTERS

Chapter 1

contents - next

Vienne, Ile-Rien

It was nine o’clock at night and Tremaine was trying to find a way to kill herself that would bring in a

verdict of natural causes in court when someone banged on the door.

“Dammit.” A couple of books on poisons slid from her lap as she struggled out of the overstuffed

armchair. She managed to hold on to the second volume of Medical Jurisprudence, closing it over her

finger to mark her place. The search for the elusive untraceable poison was not going well; there were

too many ways sorcerer-physicians could uncover such things and she didn’t want it to look as if she had

been murdered. Intracranial hemorrhage seemed a good possibility, if a little difficult to arrange on one’s

own. But I’m a Valiarde, I should be able to figure this out, she thought sourly. Dragging the blanket

around her, she picked her way through the piles of books to the door. The library at Coldcourt was

ideal for this, being large, eclectic, and packed with every book, treatise and monograph on murder and

mayhem available to the civilized world.

The entry hall was dark except for a single electric bulb burning in the converted gas fixture above the

sweep of the stairs. The light fell on yellowed plaster walls and rich old wood and a

blue-and-gold-patterned carpet on polished stone tile. Coldcourt was aptly named and Tremaine’s bare

feet were half frozen by the time she made it to the front door. She had let the housekeeper have the night

off and now she regretted it, but she had had no idea it would take this long to arrange things. At this

rate, she wouldn’t be dead until next week.

The unwanted person was still banging. “Who is it?” she shouted, wondering if he could hear her.

Coldcourt had been built as a country house and its walls were thick natural stone to withstand the

Vienne winter. It was part of an aging neighborhood of small estates just outside the old city wall and

sprawled in asymmetrical crenellated and embellished glory across its poorly kept grounds. The door

was several inches thick, old oak plated with not entirely decorative embossed lead, proof against bullets

and other less solid assaults. The windows above the door were heavy leaded glass threaded with silver,

the blackout curtains fixed tightly. All buildings had the blackout curtains, stipulated by the Civilian

Defense Board, but the other protections were peculiarly Coldcourt’s. Though all its wards against

sorcerous attack were no help in the current situation.

A muffled voice replied, “It’s Gerard!”

“Oh, God.” Tremaine leaned her forehead tiredly against the chill wood surface. As executor of her

father’s estate, Guilliame Gerard had been her guardian until she was twenty-one, but she had seen him

only infrequently these past few years. Her first thought was that her supervisor in the Siege Aid group

must have written to him.

Tremaine had joined the Aid Society because they worked in the bombed-out areas of the city

searching for survivors or bringing supplies to the fire brigades and the War Department’s rescue teams.

It was hard, desperate work, and many of them, even experienced men like constables or fire brigade

members or former soldiers, were killed by unexploded bombs or collapsing buildings. A small woman

who had never been very good at games in school shouldn’t have been able to last a week. Tremaine’s

life should have ended with no more fanfare than a line in the casualty columns of the newspapers.

Anything else would surely lead to a Magistrates’ investigation which might uncover even more

unpleasant facts about her family’s immediate past than had already been exposed; that was the last thing

she needed. But Tremaine had been in the Aid Society for six months.

She probably still couldn’t hit a lawn tennis ball properly, but she could climb, scramble over, under,

and through rubble like a squirrel, dodge flying debris, and when a ghoul had leapt out at her from a

half-collapsed cellar the instinct to beat it to pieces with a lead pipe had triumphed over the will to die.

But after six months of near-death-but-never-quite experiences, her supervisor had told her she was

due a month’s leave before she could enlist for another term. Tremaine had protested with a patriotic

fervor that her old friends in the theater would have admired, those who were still alive anyway. But she

had given in when she had seen the look in the woman’s eye. The supervisor was the Duchess of

Duncanny, used to managing estates on a grand scale, and she had been trained as a hospital nurse early

in the war. She was too perceptive by far and Tremaine had looked into those old eyes and thought, She

knows. She knows why I’m here. It was time to leave the Aid Society and find some other way.

She must have contacted Gerard. “Shit. Shit, shit, shit.” Wincing, Tremaine turned the heavy key

and drew the bolts.

Gerard slipped in, by habit pushing the heavy door shut quickly so a betraying light wouldn’t escape.

The outskirts of Vienne were considered an unlikely target area and Tremaine hadn’t heard any bomb

warnings on the wireless earlier.

He was a tall man, in his early forties, with dark hair just lightly touched with gray. His tie was askew

and his tweed jacket stained with dark patches. His spectacles caught the light as he stared down at her

in consternation. “Tremaine, I’m sorry to burst in on you like this, but something terrible has happened.”

They broke the wards, she thought, staring at him blankly. The palace is destroyed. A bubble of

hysterical laughter grew in her chest. It was over. There would be no messy inquests or embarrassing

articles in the papers to avoid. The Gardier had won and she could bash her own head in with a rock and

no one would think twice about it. “The palace was bombed.”

“No.” Gerard gave her an odd look. “Oh no, not that terrible.” He took a sharp breath, gathering his

thoughts. “I’ve just come from the project. The last test sphere was destroyed.”

“Oh.” Tremaine wet her lips, trying to catch up. He meant the Viller Institute’s Defense project

outside the city. She gathered the blanket around her and fumbled the large book into a more

comfortable grip, trailing Gerard further into the hall. “Do you need me to write a bank draft?” she asked

vaguely. There were people in the city who did that and handled the other business affairs of the Institute,

but perhaps those offices had been hit or evacuated. “I thought the government requisitioned anything you

needed now.”

Gerard stopped to face her impatiently. “Tremaine, listen to me—” He blinked as he took in her

appearance. “Is that your nightdress?”

“It’s a smock. An artist’s smock.” Most of Tremaine’s clothes were worn-out; the couturier she had

patronized had closed down and left the city and she hadn’t had time or inclination to stand in the lines at

the stores for months. “I— Never mind. Now . . . what’s happened?”

“The sphere we were using for the experiment was destroyed,” Gerard explained. “The Riardin

prototype of the Viller sphere, the last one we had.”

That time she understood him. “Was destroyed?” Suddenly angry, Tremaine dumped Medical

Jurisprudence on the marble console table. “What the hell do you mean ‘was destroyed’? By who?”

“By Riardin.” His face grim, Gerard adjusted his spectacles. “It killed him and self-destructed.”

Tremaine let out her breath and pinched the bridge of her nose. “Moron,” she muttered. But it didn’t

surprise her. It was hardly the first time this project had killed someone.

“He was overzealous,” Gerard admitted, “but he was the best we had. I’m now the highest-ranking

sorcerer on the project.” He took a deep breath, as if he was still trying to take stock of that himself.

Tremaine looked up at him, frowning. Lodun University had been sealed off by its own wards and lay

under heavy sorcerous siege by the Gardier. It had been impenetrable for the past two years and no one

had been able to get close enough to discover whether the sorcerers and townspeople trapped inside

were still alive or not. Since then sorcerers who could be spared from the border and coastal defenses

were in short supply. Gerard was more than competent, but he wasn’t up to the flamboyant Riardin’s

level. One of the benefits of suicide was not having to watch while what was left of her friends went

before her. “Gerard . . .”

“The other spheres were specifically keyed to Riardin. He built them, he worked with them. There’s

no time to build another for me.” His expression was grave. “I need the Damal prototype.”

“Oh.” Arisilde Damal had been the greatest sorcerer in the history of Ile-Rien. Tremaine had called

him Uncle Ari. She stared at Gerard for a moment, nonplussed, then realized he was asking for her

permission. “Well, yes. Of course.”

Gerard started for the stairs, halting in confusion when Tremaine veered back toward the library, still

dragging her blanket. He demanded, “You don’t keep it in the vaults upstairs?”

“It gets lonely. It’s cold and dark up there. That’s probably what made the two early spheres die, you

know.” There had been three original spheres constructed by Edouard Viller, Tremaine’s foster

grandfather, kept in the secret storerooms in Coldcourt’s attics. Two had quietly died in their years of

inactivity and the last had been destroyed by Arisilde Damal himself in the course of a powerful spell.

When Tremaine’s father, Nicholas Valiarde, had endowed the Viller Institute to continue Edouard

Viller’s work, Arisilde had worked with the natural philosophers employed by it to re-create Viller’s

original design.

Tremaine led the way into the library. The books had overflowed the floor-to-ceiling shelves long ago

and invaded the parlor next door and several rooms on the second floor, but the main part of the

collection was still housed here. Though it badly needed dusting it was still the coziest room in the house,

with colorful antique Parscian carpets and overstuffed armchairs. It was also the only room without blank

spots on its walls where paintings had been taken down, silent reminders of the imminent danger of

invasion. Following the instructions her father had left behind, Tremaine had had his art collection

removed to a sealed hidden vault below the Valiarde Importing offices in Vienne, along with some of the

furniture, the older books, her mother’s jewelry and other valuables. Since then Tremaine had had the

feeling the house was an empty shell, nothing left behind, including herself. She went to the glass-fronted

cabinet against the far wall and opened a drawer to search for the key.

“Sorry to burst in on you like this. I know you’re on leave from the Aid Society.” Gerard glanced at

the meager fire in the grate and the pile of books surrounding her armchair. “Are you writing something

again?”

“Uh huh.” Tremaine gave up on the key buried amid the welter of pencil stubs, scraps of paper, and

several decades’ accumulation of unidentifiable odds and ends, and popped the lock on the cabinet

doors with a hard jerk. The sphere rested on an upper shelf, crowded in with old yellowed notebooks

and folios. It was a small, croquet ball-size device formed of copper-colored metal strips, filled with tiny

wheels and gears. She lifted it off the shelf, her fingers going a little numb with the mild shock of the

power shivering through the metal. She breathed on it and the sphere warmed to her touch.

She gathered it against her chest as she shut the cabinet door. “No magical locks? No secret

devices?” Gerard said a little sadly as he stepped up behind her. “The Valiardes have come down in the

world.”

“No, really?” Gerard had been a trusted crony of her father, so he was entitled to the observation, but

Tremaine still felt more than a twinge. “Just stab me in the gut while you’re at it, why don’t you?” she

muttered.

“Sorry.” He actually sounded sorry as he accepted the sphere from her. He added wistfully, “I was

rather fond of the secret magical locks.”

“So was I.” Tremaine looked into the sphere, watching the blue and gold lights chase each other

along the metal pathways. Alchemy and natural philosophy were powerfully mated in the design; she

hadn’t a clue how it did what it did. This particular sphere had never been part of the Institute’s studies.

Uncle Ari had given it to her when she was a little girl, the day her pet cat had died of old age. He had

said it would be cruel to prolong the cat’s life but that this could be her friend too. It won’t catch mice

but it can purr, he had told her. Uncle Ari hadn’t always been playing with a full deck of cards, but he

had been very sweet. He had been the first sorcerer to begin the Viller Institute’s great project and one

of the first to die of it. She said, “Give it a minute to warm up.”

Gerard watched her gravely. “I handled this one when Arisilde first charged it, but that was years ago.

Is it easy to work with?”

She shrugged. “I never had any trouble with it. But then I never used it for spells. Not real ones.” You

didn’t have to be a sorcerer to make the sphere work, but you did need to have some latent magical

talent. Tremaine’s great-grandmother had been a powerful witch, and all her mother’s family had had

talent to one extent or another, though her mother had been an actress rather than a sorceress. As a

child, Tremaine had had enough magic to make the sphere find lost toys and produce small illusions and

colored light shows, but even that ability had faded with lack of practice. She supposed she would never

see the device again. “Any progress?” she asked, not expecting an optimistic answer. “Besides Riardin

blowing himself up. Not that that was progress but—”

Gerard knew her too well to take offense. “I think we’re close. The experiment Riardin was

conducting— He was approaching the spell from an entirely new angle.” He shook his head, pulling his

spectacles off to rub his eyes. “We’re very close to deciphering Arisilde’s architecture.”

“So you’ll know exactly what killed Uncle Ari and my father.” Tremaine turned the sphere, watching

the sparks travel deeper into its depths. It was active tonight, more so than she had ever seen it before.

Perhaps because she hadn’t had it out since last year. Last year? Maybe it’s been longer than that.

“They wanted to save us from this, Tremaine,” Gerard said quietly. He gestured at the blackout

curtains tightly covering the library’s narrow windows. “From this war.”

“I know.” Nicholas Valiarde and Arisilde Damal had been the first to discover the early traces of the

Gardier, that faceless enemy that appeared out of nowhere, that attacked without reason with power that

destroyed conventional weapons and magic alike. That had been years before the devastating attack on

the city of Lodun, before the small country of Adera had been overrun and forced to serve as a Gardier

staging area for attacks on Ile-Rien.

Tremaine didn’t blame Nicholas and Arisilde for what had happened afterward. It had been an

accident, a series of miscalculations on the part of two men who had been treading a fine line between life

and death all their lives. With a sigh, Tremaine held the sphere out to Gerard. “Uncle Ari never wanted to

make weapons.”

He took the sphere from her, handling it carefully. “It may sound overdramatic, but this could be the

salvation of—” He stared into the sphere with consternation. “It’s gone dead.”

“No.” Frowning, she took it back. She shook it a little, making Gerard wince, but then he was used

to the more delicate and temperamental instruments constructed by Riardin and the others who were

trying to duplicate Arisilde’s work. “It’s fine.” She held it out, showing him the lights moving deep within

the device.

Gerard took the sphere again and Tremaine leaned over it, frowning as the life faded out of it. She

shook her head in annoyance, taking it back from him. “It worked for you before, didn’t it?”

She shook the sphere again and he hurriedly stopped her. He said, “Perhaps ... I haven’t worked

with it in more than ten years.” He blinked, struck by the enormity of the possible disaster. “If that’s the

case... We have working spheres to continue the experiment.”

“You mean it’s forgotten you?” Brows drawn together, Tremaine held it out to him again. “Try to use

it while I’m holding it. Something simple.”

Gerard rested his fingers lightly on the sphere, frowning in concentration. For a moment Tremaine

thought nothing would happen. Then a swirl of illusory light drifted across the fine old carpet near the

hearth, sparkling like fayre dust, making both the fire in the grate and the electric bulb in the lamp dim and

shiver.

Gerard let out his breath and released the sphere. The light vanished. “It still knows me but it

apparently wants contact with you also.” He met her eyes, his face serious. “Tremaine, I hate to ask you

this, but. . . it’s vital for the continuation of the experiment. We’re so close to success—”

Tremaine looked around at the library, gesturing vaguely. She couldn’t afford to get involved in

anything right now. “I’m sort of in the middle of something—”

“—I know it’s dangerous, but if you could—”

Dangerous. Tremaine stared at him. That’s perfect. She nodded. “Give me a few minutes to get

dressed.”

Chapter 2

contents - previous | next

Isle of Storms, off the Southern Coast of the Symai

“We’ll see you at the moonrise,” Ilias said, and thought, I hope.

In the water below, Halian was balanced carefully on the bench of the dinghy, bobbing in the ripples

that washed against the rocky wall of the sea cave. He was a big man, weathered by sun and sea, his

long graying hair tied back in a simple knot; Ilias had never thought of him as old, but right now worry

made Halian show his years. “Are you two sure you know what you’re doing?” he asked, handing up the

coil of rope.

Ilias chuckled, reaching down out of the crevice for it. “I’m never sure we know what we’re doing.”

The jagged hole of the cave entrance lay only twenty paces or so beyond the bow of Halian’s little boat,

allowing in wan morning light and the dense fog that lay like a wool blanket over the blue-gray water. The

rock arched high enough to allow entrance to their ship the Swift, but the bottom was dangerous with

submerged wrecks.

Longer ago than Ilias or anybody else alive could remember, the back of the cave had been a harbor,

part of an old empty city that wove through the caves, much of it underwater. But now the stone docks

and breakwaters were obstructed with the wooden skeletons of wrecked ships, all jammed together in

one rotting mass. The stink of decay hung in the cool dank air, concentrated in the fog that some wizard

from ages ago had caused to form around the island. The sudden gales and bad currents that frequently

trapped ships and drew them in to their deaths gave it the name the Isle of Storms.

Halian didn’t appreciate the attempt to lighten the mood. “You know how I feel,” he said seriously,

sitting down again in the boat as it rocked gently in the low waves.

“It’ll be all right,” Ilias told him, exasperated. When Halian had brought this up to Giliead last night, it

had caused one of those long polite arguments between them where both parties are actually on the same

side and there is no hope of resolution. Ilias had no idea how it had worked itself out; he had gotten fed

up and gone to sit out on the wall of the goat pen with the herdsmen.

From the crevice above Ilias’s head, Giliead’s voice demanded, “What did he say?”

Ilias stretched back to hand the rope up to him through the narrow passage. “He said we’re suicidal

idiots.”

“Tell him thanks for his support,” Giliead said, but the words didn’t have any sting to them. “And love

to Mother.”

Ilias leaned out again to relay this, but Halian rolled his eyes, saying, “I heard him, I heard him.” He

took up the oars as Ilias freed the mooring line. His expression turning rueful, he added, “Just take care.”

Ilias smiled. Halian had faith in them; he was just tired of funeral pyres. “We will.”

Without looking back, Halian took two quick strokes toward the cave entrance, the little boat already

starting to vanish into the fog. Ilias braced his feet on the slick rock and pushed himself up through the

opening into the cramped passage above, finding handholds in the mossy chinks in the stones. Giliead

was waiting there, sitting on his heels and digging through the supplies in their pack. The crevice stretched

up into the rocky mass over their heads, disappearing into shadow when the dim gray light from the

opening below gave out. “Ready?” Giliead asked, shaking his braids back and awkwardly maneuvering

the pack’s strap over his head and shoulder. He was nearly a head taller than Ilias and the confined

space was almost too small for him.

“No,” Ilias told him brightly. The crevice was not only too small for Giliead, it was too small for the

distance weapons they would have preferred to bring; bows and hunting spears would never fit through

here. They both had their swords strapped to their backs, but drawing them in the confined space was

impossible.

Giliead’s warm smile flickered, then straight-faced he nodded firmly. “Me neither.”

“Then let’s go.”

The climb went faster than Ilias remembered, maybe because this time he knew it would end.

Searching for a way out of the caverns last year, they had discovered this passage by accident, not

knowing if it led to a way out or a dead end somewhere deep in the mountain’s heart. It was pitch-dark

and the stone was slick with foul water that dripped continuously from above. After a time the sound of

the waves washing against the cave walls below faded and the only noise was their breathing, the scrape

of their boots against stone, and an occasional muttered curse due to a bumped head or abraded skin. It

was hot too and nearly airless, and Ilias felt sweat plastering his shirt to his chest and back. Bad as it was,

it was still easier going up than it had been last year going down.

Giliead called a halt at what they judged was halfway up and Ilias wedged himself onto a shelf of rock

invisible in the dark, bracing his feet against the opposite side of the crevice. Shoving the sticky hair off

his forehead, he realized his queue was coming undone and he took a moment to tighten it and pull the

rest of his hair back. After some struggling, he managed to unsling the waterskin and take a drink. He

handed it up to where Giliead was shifting around, still trying to fold his larger body into a comfortable

position, and slapped it against the other man’s leg to let him know it was there. When Giliead handed it

back down, Ilias asked, “What did you and Halian finally decide last night?”

“That I’m bullheaded and he’s worse.” There was rueful amusement in his voice. Since Halian had

married Giliead’s mother five years ago, becoming his stepfather and the male head of the household,

things between him and Giliead had occasionally been tense. There wouldn’t have been a problem if

Giliead had still had his own household with his sister Irisa, but living under what was now Halian’s roof

had caused some friction.

“Bullheaded? I would have picked the other end.” Ilias was only a ward of the family, Giliead’s

brother by courtesy rather than blood, and therefore able to remain stubbornly neutral. He had come to

Gil’s house of Andrien as a child; his own house had been a poor one with far too many children to

support, especially boys. He and Gil didn’t look much like blood brothers either, since Ilias’s ancestors

had come from further inland, where people were smaller with lighter hair and skin, and Gil’s people

came from the bigger, darker strain that had been planted here on the coast since before the first boat

was built.

Giliead snorted. Ilias could hear him shifting around uncomfortably again. Finally Giliead added, “He

understands that I just want to be sure.”

Ilias finished the unspoken thought hanging over both their heads. “That Ixion’s not back.” It was the

first time either one of them had said it aloud, though Ilias knew they had both been thinking it since

earlier this season when the rumors had started. Stories of smoke from the island again, of the bodies of

curselings like those Ixion had bred washing up on isolated beaches. It wasn’t just talk, either; in the past

few months fishing boats had gone missing far more often than they should, with no survivors and no signs

of wreckage in any of the places where small boats usually came to grief. Then a trading fleet of six ships

from Argot had failed to arrive and two small coastal villages of gleaners had been found deserted, the

huts burned and the boats broken into kindling. Nicanor, lawgiver of Cineth, and his wife, Visolela, had

asked Giliead to return to the island to see if another wizard had taken Ixion’s place here.

“He can’t be back,” Giliead pointed out reasonably. “I cut his head off. Nobody comes back from

that.”

Ilias remembered that part, in a hazy way. Lying across Giliead’s lap in the sinking gig, the water in

the bottom red with blood, he had a clear picture of Ixion’s head under the rowing bench. They had

never talked about that, either. “Dyani told me you threw it to the pigs.”

“The pigs we eat?” Giliead sounded dubious.

Ilias didn’t take the bait and after a moment his friend said quietly, “Three days after we got back I

took it to the cave and the god told me to bury it at the place where the coast road met the road to Estri.

That’s when you started to get better.”

“Oh.” Ilias scratched the curse mark on his cheek. He remembered Giliead being gone then and

everyone refusing to tell him why. Even after all this time, the memory of Ixion’s malice and power gave

him a cold feeling in the pit of his stomach. That the man could be dead and in at least two pieces and still

be trying to hate him to death.

As soon as Ilias’s fever had abated enough for him to get up, he had walked to Cineth to turn himself

in and get the curse mark, the silver finger-width brand given to anyone who had been cursed by a

wizard. Giliead had caught up with him halfway there and tried to stop him, but Ilias had refused to listen.

He hadn’t meant to make himself a walking symbol of their failure but maybe it had turned out that way; it

still seemed like something he had had to do, though Ilias couldn’t say why even to himself.

He shook his head, trying to drive off the uncomfortable reflections. At least the curse mark had

stopped Visolela from trying to convince the family to sell him off into marriage somewhere inland.

“Crossroads, huh,” he said thoughtfully, keeping his tone light. “I guess the god figured the bastard’s

shade would get confused and wander around in circles.”

“Shades can’t cross running water anyway.”

Ilias heard Giliead’s boots grate on the stone as he shifted, ready to start the climb again. Giliead

hadn’t meant for Ilias to come with him this time. He had, in fact, invented a story about a dull trip along

the coast to Ancyra, which would have been more convincing if Giliead wasn’t such a lousy liar.

Cornered and forced to admit the truth, Giliead had still maintained adamantly that Ilias shouldn’t come

with him. Ilias had spent the last few days countering arguments, calling bluffs, topping dire threats with

even more dire threats, ignoring pleas, and foiling a last-ditch attempt at physical restraint by battering the

bolt off the stillroom door. Everybody else had refused to take sides, fearing retribution once Giliead

wasn’t around to protect them. Halian and Karima, Giliead’s mother, hadn’t interfered either, both

knowing that the only thing more dangerous than going to the Isle of Storms was going to the Isle of

Storms alone.

That Giliead would go, with help or without it, had been certain; it wasn’t just that he had taken the

duty of Chosen Vessel personally ever since he had first discovered what being one meant. Ranior, who

had been his father before Giliead had been named a Vessel, had died from a wizard’s curse. It had been

the first real curse that Giliead had ever faced and probably the first time he had started to blame himself

for things he had no control over.

Ilias took another drink from the waterskin, slung the strap back over his head and shoulder and

pushed himself up to follow. “That’s rivers and streams that shades can’t cross, not seas.”

“Seas don’t run?” Giliead countered.

He had a point. Ilias thought for a moment, feeling for the next handhold. “They’re salty.” But as he

leaned against the warm rock, he felt a vibration. He hesitated, pressing the side of his face against the

stone. Somewhere, deep inside the mountain, something was thrumming. Like a giant heart beating fast in

panic.

“What would salt have to do with—”

His throat suddenly dry, Ilias whispered tensely, “Gil, listen.”

Giliead stopped. Ilias could sense him listening silently to the telltale vibrations in the stone. After a

moment he answered softly, “I feel it.” He let his breath out in resignation. “I hate being right.”

“I hate you being right too,” Ilias told him briskly, bracing his feet and feeling for the next handhold. At

least they didn’t have to wonder about it anymore; knowing for certain was a relief. Though it sure cut all

the joy out of the debate over the seaworthiness of shades. “And Halian thought he wouldn’t have

anything to worry about the rest of the year except the drainage problem in the hay fields.”

“Well, that’s a pretty serious drainage problem,” Giliead said, deadpan, as he resumed the climb.

After a moment, he added, “It’s not him. It’s another wizard that came to take his place.”

“I know.” Ixion alive had been bad enough. Ixion, dead, headless and really, really annoyed was

unimaginably worse.

After another long stretch of darkness and groping for hand- and footholds and occasional slips on

the slimy rock, Ilias realized he could make out Giliead’s outline above him. Nearly there, he thought.

Too bad this was the easy part.

The gradual increase in light let their eyes adjust from the impenetrable darkness to the dim grayness

of the upper cave, just visible through the cracks above. Giliead found an opening large enough for them

to wriggle through and paused, listening intently, then cautiously edged upward to peer out. There was

room for only one of them at a time and Ilias waited below, braced awkwardly, nerves tight with tension.

Giliead’s heritage as the god’s Chosen Vessel made him proof against curses, but not Ixion’s curselings.

If something had heard them climbing up through the cave wall, if it was waiting up there like a civet at a

mousehole, all he would be able to do was pull Giliead’s body back down after it bit his head off.

Martha Wells - Fall of Ile-Rien 01 - The Wizard Hunters

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