The Gate of Gods (Fall of the Ile-Rien) Read Online Free PDF

coat sleeve and found it looked down onto a garden paved with stone, with overgrown beds choked with weeds and dead brush and a fountain with stagnant green water. He sighed, leaning his forehead against the cold glass. Everywhere he looked there were reminders of death.
    Nicholas wandered in and studied the windows with an air of dissatisfaction. The Capidaran man followed him, hesitating as Nicholas wandered out again. He stepped over to Ilias, and asked, “Valiarde— it’s a noble Rienish family, yes?”
    Ilias shrugged. “I don’t know.” He wasn’t sure what noble meant.
    “I see.” The man nodded, still bewildered. “But wealthy?”
    Ilias thought about it, trying to answer honestly. “They paid a lot for me.”
    The man just looked more bewildered, until a shouted question from Nicholas sent him hurrying out of the room.
    Ilias left the dead plants to their slow degeneration and went back through the big chamber. He found a wide stairway in the hall and climbed it, finding two more floors of cold musty-smelling bedchambers. Above that there was another stairwell, this one narrow and cramped, the wood paneling giving way to yellowed plaster halfway up. The hallway it led to was also narrow and cramped, with a low ceiling and only one bare wizard lamp for light. He opened a door and the wan light from the corridor showed him a small dark room with a bare iron bedstead and a washbasin on a stand. A thick layer of dust coated every surface and it smelled of must and rats. It looked like a cell, except the door didn’t seem to have any kind of lock. He left it open, moving down the hall to check a few of the other rooms. They were all the same.
    He heard Nicholas’s quiet step on the stairs and glanced back at him, asking a little suspiciously, “What are these rooms for?”
    “They’re servants’ quarters,” Nicholas said in Syrnaic. He glanced into one of the rooms as he came along the corridor. “Fortunately I wasn’t planning to hire live-in help. Other than that, I think this will do.”
    Ilias started to ask what it would do for when at the far end of the hall, one of the still-closed doors slowly started to swing open. Nicholas saw his expression change and turned, one hand moving to the pocket of his coat, but it was obvious no one was there to move the door. Fully open, it hesitated a moment before slowly and deliberately closing again; Ilias heard the latch click as it shut. Nicholas sighed in annoyance and looked at the Capidaran man standing in the stairwell, who smiled apologetically and made a helpless gesture.
    “Shades.” Ilias squinted up at the yellowed plaster ceiling, considering. Probably angry shades, since the quiet ones never knowingly drew attention to themselves. “Gil can take care of those.”
    “So he can.” Nicholas had fixed the Capidaran man with a gaze that should have melted the skin right off him. “Then this will still do—for half the price.”

Chapter 2
     
     
    I t was evening and cold with mist-drizzle when Tremaine arrived back at the refugee hostel. She was tired, thirsty, and had the strong sensation of an impending headache. Reaching the hostel was not much of a relief.
    The place had been a commercial traveler’s hotel, right up until the Capidaran authorities had conscripted it to hold refugees, so it was actually in much better condition than the dilapidated seaside hostelry at Port Rel that the Viller Institute had once taken over for its headquarters in Ile-Rien. There was no fallen grandeur here; there was in fact no grandeur of any kind. Crossing through the pokey little lobby with its bad imitation Parscian carpets and floral upholstery and dusty potted palms always brought back memories of waiting for trains in small villages along the Marches.
    The people sitting around on the hard wooden benches and understuffed couches made the place look even more like a station waiting room. Except no one’s going anywhere, she thought, depressing herself