Hostiles (The Galactic Mage series) (21 page)

Who fall beneath their might

These are the darkest legions

Come summoned to the fight.

Through a world as vast as ours

Tidalwrath built a passage true

So summon them not lightly

For unsummoning thou won’t do.

Kazuk-Hal-Mandik stopped her then, raising his hand and croaking for silence. He looked up from his place seated on the floor, up at Warlord standing tall above him. “This is the thing I told you of, Warlord. This is what happened to the dwarves. The humans say the lands of the dwarves still churn with the demons unleashed that day.”

“And so it will be with the humans,” said Warlord. He turned to go.

“The humans no longer go to Duador, Warlord. It is a lost land.”

“That is because humans are weak.” He started for the door.

“No, Warlord.” The old warlock’s voice was strong, insistent even, defiance that spun Warlord back around, his eyes narrow and violence shaping in the movement of the great muscles shifting beneath his skin. Kazuk-Hal-Mandik went on despite seeing it. “It is because there were too many of them to be slain, Warlord. The demons. You heard the song. ‘They come like bats at twilight from a cave.’” He quoted from an earlier passage then, one that described the demons in lines that read, “A spew of blackness will arrive, swept out from summoned rift,” though he could only partially recall what came next, something about “devouring thy enemies in a wave”
and “thrift.” He struggled to find the right human words.

Kazuk-Hal-Mandik glanced to the woman who amended for him: “A wave that knows no thrift.”

“Yes, that was it.” The shaman grinned at that, and the dim light of the fire glinted off his remaining teeth, making them appear as if they were broken stalactites in an old, decaying cave. “Uncounted death. Uncountable. That is the lament of the humans and the elves, for they could not take what they had conquered. We must learn from their lack of Discipline.”

Warlord looked annoyed by that, his great face contorted with his scowl and his own teeth, still strong like mammoth ivory, showing in fearsome rows of opposed menace as if by that difference alone the disparity between the great warrior and the frail old warlock could be known. “We have the greatest army Prosperion has ever seen. No human king has mustered such numbers as counted in the warriors we have devouring our stores.
We
are the darkest legions. We are the spew of blackness that will bring respect to the All Clans, and we will deal with your … demons when the time comes that I am done with them. You just make sure they appear when I call for them.”

“Hush, Warlord. You must not speak such things aloud.”

Warlord roared then, striding forward and leaning down to blow the wrath that rose at such defiance directly into the ancient warlock’s face. The ferocity of it sent the dried wisps of Kazuk-Hal-Mandik’s hair billowing behind him like mangy tatters of fur on an old carcass lying in some lost and windy mountain pass. He was not afraid of God. “I will speak what I see,” he said when the initial thunder had passed. “And I will not cower or run from your conjured things.” He straightened then, took a breath. He looked down at both of them, Kazuk-Hal-Mandik and Gromf beside him, with his lip curling some. He glanced to the woman briefly before letting his yellow eyes settle back on the pair of shamans sitting there. “You got your human song, old one. And you’ve got your young victor of the yellow stone. Now you get three sunsets. Then we go to war.”

“But Warlord, that may not be enough,” protested Kazuk-Hal-Mandik.

“Silence,” Warlord shouted. “You have had your time. I have done everything you asked. You asked that we take the castle of the human shaman. You asked that we help you steal his yellow stones and the words to the demon song. You said that was all God needed to promise us victory. Now you have them. I have kept my word. Now you and God keep yours. You have three days. The time has come.” The wind of his passing set the small fire to dancing for a time, and Gromf contented himself with watching it while Kazuk-Hal-Mandik got up and followed Warlord out.

When they were gone, Gromf looked up at the woman, who was proper and lowered her eyes. He could not decide if Warlord’s three days was Discipline or not. His decision was strong. It was action. That was good. They had been patient, and they had had an army over a hundred thousand strong waiting on the machinations of one old warlock for well over a season now, waiting only for that. Everything else in place. That seemed like Discipline.

He wondered and wished he knew.

Eventually Kazuk-Hal-Mandik returned. He looked agitated. “I think this is not enough time.”

“I think it is the time we have,” said Gromf.

“Then we must learn the elf words soon, and how the human said to shape them.” Gromf nodded. Kazuk-Hal-Mandik looked to the woman. “Sing us the summoning parts again. Sing them slowly.”

Chapter 17

O
celot’s hovel was as disheveled and nondescript on the inside as it had appeared from without. With the nascent forest fire extinguished, Altin and Doctor Leopold found themselves the guests of the woodland denizen, sitting before her fire and waiting for her to brew tea that neither of them had any intention of drinking. Doctor Leopold sat on an upturned log, its flattened ends the work of Ocelot’s long-lost woodsman lover. Altin had the pleasure of a chair, but it suffered visibly from dry rot, and for once in his life, Altin found that he had empathy for the corpulent doctor, knowing in those moments spent upon that seat what the doctor must worry about nearly everywhere he rested. The anticipation of the sharp and sudden drop that he was sure must come at any time was a distraction Altin had to struggle to set aside.

Wishing to break the silence—the only sound in the small space being the pops and crackles of the fire and Ocelot’s muttering as she watched the kettle suspended above it on an iron hook—Altin finally spoke. “You’re much younger than the rumors suggest,” he said, hoping to start the conversation off better than it had begun with his nearly burning down what counted as her neighborhood. He knew that her current appearance—she sat before them no longer as an ocelot but rather looking to be a girl of no more than fourteen years—was either transmuted or illusionary, but even knowing it, that was the only thing that came to mind to say. Some propitious instinct in him told him that it was best not to simply blurt out why they had come, which in a way would have been pointless, for he was absolutely certain she already knew. They were in her court, so to speak, so he would play the part of supplicant for now.

“Rumors have it you are smarter than the questions that you ask,” she said, grinning over her shoulder at him. Doctor Leopold even laughed at that, which got a frown from Altin directed his way.

“Well, if we’re speaking of rumors, it’s not often one sits before a Z-ranked diviner rumored to be the oldest person in the land.” It was the best he could do in his own defense, while trying to appear as if he had much more patience for this banter than he really did.

“You would face alien worlds alone and yet quake before one small cat that becomes a girl.” She made a
tsk-tsk
sound with her teeth. “It makes more sense that I would tremble before you. You and your world gift.” Her eyes, brown now, flicked in the direction of his ring. “What could I do that you could not stop anyway?”

“I do not tremble, nor did I come to fight or challenge you. But you already know that. So, if it is directness that you are looking for, you should stop wasting time.”

She giggled then, a sound that seemed natural in the body of the gangly girl she had become. She took the teakettle off the fire, its handle gripped in a thick handful of large dark leaves. She moved through the dim confines of her house, the wind blowing through the places where centuries of rain had washed away the mud that had once sealed her home and kept the elements at bay. She filled three small cups, none of them matching, one with no handle, and brought them back to the fire on a tray made from a single piece of bark. She set it on an upturned log that matched the one the doctor sat upon and took the cup with no handle as a courtesy, once more employing the fistful of leaves.

“Go ahead and drink it,” she said, nodding in the direction of the steaming cups. “If I wanted you dead, I wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of making tea.”

Altin looked to Doctor Leopold, for the man was well versed in herbal brews and their like, being a medical man and all, but the doctor, while calm enough now and curious enough normally, shook his head adamantly side to side. Definitely not.

Ocelot sighed and sat on the floor near the hearth, the chair and the two logs making for a third of the hovel’s furnishings. She turned her back to the wall, leaning against the hearthstones and pulling her knees up nearly to her chin. She leaned against the stonework, and the long bones of her shins could be traced through her flesh, set to high relief by the shadows the fire made. She took a long sniff of the steam coming off of her tea then balanced the cup on the flat of a bony knee.

“So you know why we are here,” Altin said after a time. “How much do I need to add to what you know before you will tell us if you are going to help?”

“I need him to drink my tea,” she said simply, pointing at the doctor. “I must see the spell he cast exactly as he saw it. Otherwise, there is little you can tell me that I have not already seen.”

Altin looked to the doctor, who suddenly sat bolt upright. “I won’t do it,” he protested. “I have not lived to my fine age by trusting every wild concoction thrust at me. If there is anything you learn as a doctor, it is that half the best medicines in the world do twice as much damage as they do good, and all the half-baked remedies are worse. I’ll be having none of that brew, whatever it is. If this child is a Z, let her be a Z without poisoning me.”

Ocelot shrugged and went back to watching the steam rising from her cup.

“Doctor, please,” said Altin. “You can’t possibly mean to come all the way out here, endure all of this, travel to other worlds, witness the attack on Orli’s planet—Orli who is your patient, mind you—only to falter now at a spot of tea.”

Doctor Leopold shrugged in much the same way Ocelot had.

Altin nearly panicked, horrified by the idea that everything hung upon the outcome of this childish standoff. He scowled at the doctor then swung his frenzied gaze to Ocelot. She smiled and said, “Don’t worry. He drinks it.”

“No,
he
does not drink it, young lady,” protested the doctor, “and I’ll thank you not to speak of me as if I were not in the room.” Doctor Leopold tugged at his lapels, as if straightening his now filthy coat might somehow ameliorate the amount of scrutiny he was getting from Altin just then.

“I can’t believe you,” Altin said. He tipped forward in his chair and nearly snatched one of the teacups off the thick slab of bark. It was too hot to drink, so he conjured a small ice lance, barely the length of his middle finger, though somewhat thicker around, and stuck it into the tea, stirring with it until the cup nearly overflowed. He threw the remainder of the diminutive weapon into the fire and poured the whole cup down his throat, swallowing as infrequently as possible and trying not to taste it at all.

It was remarkably good, despite his expectations, slightly bitter but with a hint of mint. He leaned back, anticipating the worst, and waited. The left leg of his chair gave way with the tipping and resettling of his bulk. It snapped with a dry crack, and he slid off onto the floor. The suddenness of the chair leg buckling startled him more than it might have as he fell, given the tense rigidity with which he sat, expectant of some horrible effect of the tea. He cried out, one short bark of surprise, just before he hit the ground. Ocelot watched him, clearly amused.

Altin collected himself and then pushed the remnants of the chair away, settling himself there on the floor with his legs crossed beneath his robes. He would not give her the satisfaction of his indignity. He sat waiting for the impact of whatever it was he’d just drunk.

Nothing happened.

Ocelot’s grin subsided as she observed him over time, the firelight glinting in her luminous, still slightly-feline eyes.

Finally Altin turned to the doctor. “There, you see? It’s perfectly fine. And I doubt that log will buckle like my chair did, so let’s be on with it.”

“We’ll see about that,” the portly doctor said, his brow now glistening with the sweat of nerves. “Come here.” He pointed to the area of the floor between his feet. “Sit here.”

Altin scooted to where he’d been directed, and Leekant’s greatest healer took the young magicians face in a pair of soft, fleshy hands. He spent the next several minutes working his way through Altin’s body magically, inspecting his mouth, throat, intestines and various arteries, capillaries and veins for signs of any malignancy. There was nothing to be found. He even spent time poking through the maze of Altin’s brain, feeling for currents that should not be, for pressure that grew or moved tidally, but there was none of that either. Nothing out of the ordinary at all. Finally he was forced to conclude that there was, perhaps, no poison in the cup.

“Fine,” he said. “But if I die, I’ll have you know I’ll be waiting for you in hell, even if I have to climb down eight levels to find you and plague you for all eternity when you finally do get there. Do you hear me?”