By the time she’d finished about a quarter of the circle, Alberdina and Ivar were inside the new shelter, ducking their heads a little, lashing together a sort of rack made of branches, after pounding the uprights into the ground. They’d picked a place that was up against the tower wall that had a tumble of stones under it; obviously she didn’t need to put reeds there. By the time she’d finished the next quarter, the rack was finished and all the packs were stacked on it, up off the ground. Smaller bags were hung by their straps off the frame. Ivar was gone, and Alberdina was clearing away a spot where it looked like a fireplace had been built into the wall.
By the time she’d finished the third quarter, Ivar had come back with several armfuls of wood. Alberdina had started a fire and had metal grates on legs poised over it.
As Delia finished spreading her final armful of reeds around the edge of the ruin, Alberdina turned away from the fire and surveyed her work.
By this time she was fairly sweaty, her back hurt from all the stooping over, and she was tired. “Take a break,” Alberdina told her, then went to a pack on the very top of the rack and took what looked like a round, fist-sized loaf of bread out of it, and took a leather bottle off the side of the rack. She handed both to Delia, who eyed the bread dubiously. She was starving, and this didn’t look like much.
“It’s travel-bread,” Alberdina told her. “It’s a lot more filling than it looks.”
And when she bit into it, she discovered it was very dense, and packed with dried fruit and seeds. It was, indeed, a lot more filling than she’d thought possible.
Meanwhile Alberdina had gone outside the shelter and given a shrill whistle, then shouted, “When you’re at a place you can stop, come eat!”
Delia had eaten the bread very quickly, and now was thirsty. “Is the lake water safe to drink?” she asked Alberdina.
“Yes,” the Healer said shortly, taking an armful of the solid little bread loaves out of the pack. “Drink what’s in the bottle, take it with you, and fill it at the cleanest spot you see.” She left the shelter again and came back empty-handed. “Floor this entire thing with reeds, then come to me for what you can do next.”
With a sigh, Delia did as she was told. This was going to be a very long day.
* * *
—
By nightfall, the following had happened.
Delia had floored the shelter with reeds. The mages had two sets of pillars erected. She had absolutely not expected them to be any sort of practical builders, but they were. They’d even brought cement with them, or someone had brought it in previously, and the mages had used it to cement rocks from the ruins into foundations into which the four curved pillars had been set, in pairs, looking very like the horns of the Foothold Gate back in the cellar. That was in the late afternoon; once finished, they spread their bedrolls on the reeds, heads facing the wall, toes facing the center, about two circles deep.
Alberdina had established a proper latrine, well away from the shore, with a screening of woven willow withies for privacy.
Ivar had shot and butchered a half-grown wild pig, and Alberdina had roasted it on a bed of hot rocks from the ruins. One of the mages had helped her make the bed—with magic, which had been amazing to watch, as the right-sized rocks levitated into place, forming a sort of pavement. Ivar had built a fire over the rocks, let it burn down to coals, brushed the ashes away, and spread pieces of pig over the rocks, turning them until done. So everyone had pork and salt and herbs from Alberdina’s pack with their travel bread.
Delia thought that she had never tasted anything so good.
Just at sunset they all had a short wash in the lake, then took to their bedrolls. The reeds, spread over the flattened grass that had grown up inside the ruined tower, made a passable mattress, at least enough to keep stones from sticking into her. She was asleep faster than she had thought she’d be able to manage.
In the morning, when she woke with the first light, she picked her way through the sleeping bodies to take care of business and have a better wash-up afterward. Then she had a look at those two proto-Gates.
One pair was on land, and was about as far apart as a pair of wagons side by side. The other was just on the edge of the water, so that boats that went through would slide right down into the water naturally, and had been positioned where the jetty had been. Deeper water, deep enough for the fully loaded barges. The wood they were made of was some of the oddest that Delia had ever seen, and she could not make up her mind what it was. It was darker than anything she had ever seen before, greenish in color, and much denser. It looked varnished, and practically brand new.
Was this something their mages had done when they’d been erecting the things? Or had the wood come from some place outside of Valdemar?
She heard footfalls behind her, and turned to see Jonaton approaching. “How—” she began.
“Are we getting horses and barges through? These will be the paired Gates like you see on the canals, where the horses are unhitched, put through a smaller Gate beside the barge Gate, and catch up with their barge on the other side. Obviously we can’t do that since we’re putting the barges straight into the lake from the canal on the other side,” he said, surveying the curved upright and laying a proprietary hand on it. “So each barge will get a strong push on the Empire side, come through here, and drop into the water, with a crewman aboard with a pole who’ll get it out of the way by poling it to the right or left. The horses will come through over there. We’ll either tow or pole the barge to the shore, and either tie it to a previous barge or hitch it back up to the horses to start a new barge string. We reckon on the horses pulling full ten-barge strings. And meanwhile people can be coming through the horse-Gate when there aren’t horses coming through.”
“I was going to ask about the wood,” she said.
“Oh.” He laughed. “These were either breasthooks or keels of the boats that were here. The rest rotted away, but whoever built these things impregnated the wood with copper salts, probably using alchemy rather than pure magic. There’s honestly no way of telling how old they are without a lot of magical shenanigans we don’t have the time or energy for. They’re not less than fifty years abandoned, and not more than five hundred. I’d guess it’s nearer to the five hundred mark than the fifty, but I can’t think about everything I want to, right now. I have to set things aside, for later. Urgency. Focus. It means I just have to let some things go.”
She blinked. But, then again, there were things as old or older than that in the Empire. “What are you doing today?” she asked.
“Tying them to the power source, then turning four pieces of wood into two Gates. There will be a lot of—stuff—going on. Like we did with the Foothold Gate, but more, and with more mages. Then the rest of the mages except the Circle and I go home via the Foothold Gate while Ivar, Alberdina, and you stay here. And the third day I tune the two Gates with your help as an anchor, I open them, some more magic stuff goes on, and the fourth day, I spend flat on my back while Alberdina takes care of me, and Sai makes something about the size of Bay to feed me when I am up to it. And right now, you and I go back to the Foothold Gate and wait for breakfast and lunch to get pitched through.”