Hostiles (The Galactic Mage series) (2 page)

Gromf pressed himself into a crevice, buying himself just enough space for the tatty-eared orc to pass. He saw there was a dagger in the mangled orc’s hand, gripped with the blade angled downward. The
doh-ruek
paused as he came even with Gromf, turning to stare into the space, his nostrils flaring as he sniffed the air. Gromf prepared to fight, prepared to die. For a span of three heartbeats, he thought he might be caught. He hadn’t woven an odor-mask into his illusion. A human would have done so. He cursed himself inwardly for such a lack of Discipline. He deserved to die. Even by the hand of a
doh-ruek
, a creeper into the rugs of higher shaman.

But the mate-thief kept going, moved away, making his way from stalagmite to boulder, boulder to pile of broken rock, creeping toward the center section of the wall, keeping to the shadows as best he could, and, for a
doh-ruek
, doing a fair job of it. At length he came to where the distance between hiding spots was too long, the torchlight too revealing. There were twenty-five paces from where he stood to the bottom of the pile. Gromf grinned, happy to watch him try. To watch him hiss away in the flash of light and a wisp of vapor.
Go
, he thought, silently cheering the
doh-ruek
to his doom.
Go. I will watch your empty death and learn
.

The dagger-wielding orc didn’t go, however. Instead he crouched down and muttered to himself, casting something. And then he was gone. He appeared an instant later behind Drango-Kal, the dagger already buried to the hilt by the time the sand orc knew what had come of him.

Drango-Kal’s eyes opened wide, the bloody veins that crept out from the secret places in his skull revealed by the expansive orbs of his surprise. He let out one short gasp, the least portion of a shout, and slid off the
doh-ruek’s
knife like a sack of dead fish. The
doh-ruek
kicked him as he fell, and the one-time lord of the pile tumbled down the slope, coming to rest amongst the still smoking remnants of his own recent victories.

Gromf shook his head again as he watched, continuing to marvel at the stupidity of his people, continuing to curse them as a race that doomed itself to such displays. He sighed as he did, found himself shamed by one who should be beneath him and unable to cause shame. Shame even in thought. He waited to see how long it would take the rug-creeper to realize his mistake.

Not long.

The
doh-ruek’s
eyes suddenly shot wide, almost as wide as Drango-Kal’s had in the moment of his demise, and he practically threw himself down the pile to where his victim’s body lay, still bleeding into the base of the mound.

He desperately rolled the dead sand orc over and took up the limp left arm. He opened Drango-Kal’s hand there and found nothing. He looked frightened. He flung down the left arm and grabbed the right one by the wrist, opened the dead fist. Relief came upon his face.

He took out the yellow stone and studied it for a moment. Relief turned to a toothy gape of glee. His eyes narrowed then, and his grin became thin and calculating. He turned his head toward the shadows, looking straight through the darkness into the nook where Gromf lay in wait. The
doh-ruek
flipped his dagger in his hand, the bloody point downward again, dripping into the grit and filth of the heap. He closed his eyes and muttered three words, enough for the teleport.

Gromf only had enough time to realize he’d been caught when he heard the breath in his ear, felt it right behind him. No time to even turn, no time to duck. By the time he understood what happened, the
doh-ruek
was there, at his back, with his knife and his yellow stone.

Gromf cringed as he waited for the blow, for the bite of the knife into his stupid, undisciplined flesh, and, even as he did, his mind welcomed death. It was only right for the stupid and weak to die. He should have shrouded himself in odorlessness. He was stupid and lazy and cast his illusion like a fool. He would spend eternity in the cowards’ place with the idiots and weaklings.

When the blow did not come as quickly as the thought, he spun and prepared to defend himself. Perhaps God wanted him to have a chance. He was young. The young could learn. He did not expect to see what he found.

The
doh-ruek
stuck out from the rock in places as if the stone were giving birth to him. A portion of his face pushed through the wall just far enough to clear his mismatched ears, but the rest of his head was engulfed in solid stone. The knife, still poised for the killing blow, was held in the grip of a hand and arm that stuck out from the wall like a branch, but that, traced back to its origins, ended at the elbow, the rest somewhere in the stone, out of sight. All of him was. His whole body but for his face, his right arm and his left hand, and only barely that last, half the hand, the fleshy pads and fingers, and no more. All the rest was completely encased in stone.

A few moments had to pass before Gromf could process what he saw. He couldn’t fathom it, once more this magic made no sense. But slowly the shock wore off and his mind went back to work. He shuddered at the vision before him. The
doh-ruek
was somehow inside the cavern wall. But how?

Thoughts felt as if they came to Gromf through a lake of sap, but they came. It was the stone. The
doh-ruek
was a teleporter, that had been obvious right away. And yet somehow he’d done it wrong. Or done it too far. Which had to be the yellow stone.

That was when Gromf realized the stone was there. Right there. And he was nearly as lack-witted as the
doh-ruek
. He opened the fingers that jutted like a lumpy green shelf from the wall. It was there. The yellow stone. The stone that made skull-thick lightning and buried teleporters in walls. It was there, but it was stuck, partially sunk into the rock, half its width, lengthwise, in there like the foolish orc was.

Gromf spun, looking to see if there were hordes of his fellow competitors coming for him.

There were not.

He forced himself to calm, controlled his breathing. Think and Discipline. Of course there weren’t any coming. He’d been hidden all along, invisible no less, and nobody could know where the teleporter had gone, not here in the shadows, not there in the wall. Some observing him on the mount might have thought he disappeared. He had looked this way though, so Gromf knew that perhaps a few thinkers would figure it out. They might come investigate. He had to be quick.

He tried to pry the stone out of the rock face with his fingers but it was in too deep. He knew he would have to chip it out.

He reached up and took the dagger from the
doh-ruek’s
hand. At least the mate-stealer had been of some value to his clan in the end. He raised the knife and prepared to make the first blow, then stopped.

“Idiot!” he cursed, a silent hiss to himself.
Discipline
! he thought. He calmed himself in yet a deeper wave. Willing himself to patience. He closed his eyes and cast a new illusion, this time on the knife. Silence.

Now the work could begin.

Chapter 2

A
ltin staggered as he released the spell, stumbling backwards and nearly tripping over the plush crimson and gold of the stool just behind him. The backs of his knees hit it, which spun him and forced him to catch himself with one hand braced against the rich velvet cushion lest he fall. He blinked a few times, then looked to Her Majesty seated in the concert hall’s front row. He nodded to her, saying, “It is done.”

“It is,” she beamed. “And I see you and our new friend, Blue Fire, were successful.” She managed to make a common magician’s seat look regal simply by sitting there, her golden plate armor gleaming in the bright light that radiated from nearly everywhere in the room, seemingly without source, but brilliant just the same.

There were only a few gathered in
Citadel
’s great concert hall for the cast that sent the Earth fleet home: Her Majesty, her assassin, the marchioness—who had only recently arrived on
Citadel
, and uninvited no less—Altin, Aderbury, the seers and teleporters guildmasters, and, of course, Conduit Huzzledorf. Beyond that, the vast chamber was empty, a cascade of empty, crimson seats forming the audience hall that served as the heart of the first great royal space fortress.

The Queen, as did the rest in the room, looked up into the space above the conduit’s place in the center of the room. As one, they gazed into the illusion that the one-eyed seers guildmaster, Master Alfonde, maintained through the images relayed to him by a seer-telepath from atop
Citadel
. The image portrayed the view of the space, the empty space, beyond
Citadel
where the Earth ships had just been. The vacancy so displayed confirmed that, in fact, the fleet ships were now gone. “Nicely done, Sir Altin,” continued the Queen. “Please tell Blue Fire that we appreciate her assistance in sending those people home.”

“She knows,” said Altin as he blinked away the awe that still hung upon him. He was not sure he could ever grow accustomed to the magnitude of Blue Fire’s power. She was so vast, her reach so far, her abilities so completely outstripping anything the wizards of Prosperion knew. In helping her send the Earth ships home, Altin felt like a barnacle on a whale’s belly, shouting directions to it for how it might swim across the sea but otherwise just along for the ride. He’d guided her magic to the seeing stone Conduit Huzzledorf and his team had cast in place in the space above planet Earth in what had been only a matter of hours before, but beyond that, he’d done little more. Still, it was done, and regardless of how small he felt by comparison, the spell had worked. The fleet folks were home. They would be angry, Captain Asad for sure, but they were home. That’s what their people wanted, and, well, more importantly, that’s what the War Queen required. And he couldn’t blame her. The order to knock Altin out and lock him up in an anti-magic cell was not a smart move on the part of the fleet, at least not as far as Her Majesty was concerned. While he could understand it from their perspective, well, he could see it from the perspective of the Queen even more clearly—especially since he’d been the one in the cell, not to mention the one with the lump on the back of his head.

“Show me Earth. Show me where they went,” demanded the Queen. “I want to see what they are doing now.” She gazed down at the wrinkled figure of Master Alfonde, who sat on one of the eight stools ringing the conduit at the center of
Citadel
’s crimson-clad concert hall, two seats from where Altin stood. “Get me to the conduit’s seeing stone, or get me on one of their ships … what is taking you so long!”

After a few moments’ exchange between Master Alfonde and the conduit, the image in the air above the conduit shifted to one depicting planet Earth, a huge round vision of it that filled the chamber with a gentle blue light. For most in the room, this was the first time they had ever seen it. Altin had seen it recently, guided to it by the conduit’s seeing stone, and of course there was the conduit himself. He and his team of teleporters had actually been there once, in orbit anyway, if briefly, gone on the orders of the Queen and helped with the distance by High Priestess Maul. Those few had seen this new and inhabited world, but for all the rest, this was a first, a unique experience that quite deserved the gasps and murmurs of appreciation the blue-marbled beauty inspired.

“It’s lovely,” said Aderbury staring up at it, his mouth slightly agape. “I don’t suppose I will ever get tired of seeing new worlds like that. It is truly a great time to be alive.”

“It might be lovely if it weren’t entirely infested with blanks,” said the marchioness.

“Indeed,” said the Queen, ignoring the main thrust of the comment in favor of its lesser but just as true implications. “They are rather limited by their reliance on machines.”

“I don’t know about that,” Altin said, staring up at the globe like the rest. He thought of Orli being there and hoped she was happy that she was home. He hoped she had recovered from her injuries, the mysterious injuries of spirit that he blamed himself for. Maybe now she could find peace. He knew it wouldn’t be easy for her, but he knew she would. Their love had been poisoned by Thadius, and he knew he would never get it back, especially not after she found that it was Altin who had guided the cast that sent her people home, thrown them back to Earth as it were, and without so much as a homing lizard note to tell them what was about to come.

He would find her and explain, of course. He would try. He could only hope that somehow they could recover the love that they had lost. But he knew it would never be. He had for consolation only the knowledge that at least now she was safe. That was what mattered most.

“What are all those bright flashes?” Aderbury asked. “Over there, on the right side.”

Sure enough, looking more closely at the vast glowing ball filling the center of the room, there was a distinct pattern of light play. Altin had noticed and dismissed it as lightning at first. He’d seen lightning in the clouds above Prosperion a few times from a vantage upon Luria, Prosperion’s bright red moon. But this seemed different. “Run out to it,” he demanded, preempting even the Queen in his urgency.