Hostiles (The Galactic Mage series) (25 page)

“It’s okay,” Orli said, letting Angela off the hook. “We both knew how this was going to work out. I’m just glad you tried. And who knows, maybe your uncle will figure something out at the last minute. If not for me, for the next guy. It’s bad enough the Hostiles are trying to kill us, you know? I have to tell you, this is a shitty way to go given the circumstances.” She wasn’t going to say what she really thought, that she was still hoping Altin would find her somehow. It was as if speaking his name might somehow curse the hope of it.

Angela started to speak, but she looked like she was trying to hold her own emotions in check. She only managed, “I’m sorry.”

“So what happens next?” Orli asked while Angela pulled it back together. “I eat, they send me a preacher or something, and then, into my veins with the cocktail that finishes me?”

Angela nodded, composing herself. “Basically. Your record shows no religious affiliation, so they’ll send a chaplain if you want. You can refuse it, but it will buy you a few minutes of time if you let him come.”

“So what am I supposed to say to him?”

“It doesn’t matter. Ask him to read to you from one of the holy books. Hell, just ask him to tell you a story. Tell him one of your own, call it a confession. Just … I don’t know. Get what you can.”

“That sounds like shit, to be honest. But it’s probably a good idea.” She was doing her best to remain glib as her guts twisted nervously inside. She really did have faith in Altin somehow finding her, but if he was going to do it, he needed to get to it pretty quick. The sands in the hourglass were running low, as he might say, and with every grain that passed, she grew more afraid.

Angela looked uncomfortable for a moment, glancing nervously up at the bright light of the diffusion panel, in which she knew a video feed was piping this interview into a monitor somewhere. She seemed to consider saying something for a moment, the pursing of her lips the evidence for a half second before it went away. Instead she blew out a long breath that inflated her smooth young cheeks.

“What?” said Orli seeing it.

“Nothing,” her attorney said.

“No, tell me. What were you about to say?”

“It’s nothing. I just—. Well, you know, before, you said that Altin Meade might come.” She glanced up at the ceiling, choosing her words carefully. “Do you think that is still a possibility?”

Orli’s eyes went wide, the mention of his name horrifying. It was as if she hung by a crystal thread above a pit full of spears, and Angela’s speaking his name threatened to snip that last lingering line that kept her aloft. It was as if Angela, perhaps fate itself, was trying to ruin her last hope. Her body tingled as if she’d already been hit with the electricity waiting beneath the cell floor, ready to burn her for having spoken his name as well. But she held on to her composure, forced herself to respond calmly despite what went on within her. “I wish he would, but he won’t. He has no idea where I am. And even if he did have an idea, how would he find me down here? There is no experience among his people that would make him think to look this far underground. They just don’t do that. Maybe in a few mines or something, but they don’t build bunkers like this. They have no need.
They
are civilized people.” She hated how true all of that was, most of it anyway, even as she was trying to make a lie of it.

Angela nodded, disappointment as obvious in the curve of her mouth as it was in the way she slumped, deflating visibly, if only for the barest of moments, so bare in fact that it suggested she hadn’t really thought it possible anyway.

She went to where Orli reclined against the wall and sat down beside her on the bunk. Another long sigh. The two of them stared into the emptiness for a while, neither having anything to say.

Finally, a knock on the door came again, followed by the entrance of the corporal with a tray of food. “I got ham and chicken, and the mashed potatoes are good. I had some earlier. Didn’t know if you like gravy, but I got a coffee cup full in case you do. They let me bring three different kinds of pie.” His smile was flat and sympathetic, and the mournful droopiness in his eyes suggested it was genuine. He looked back over his shoulders at the two guards at the door, but they weren’t watching him all that closely; their eyes were all on her. He reached into his waistband and pulled out a black plastic flask, which he slid onto the tray. “It’s really good vodka,” he whispered. He glanced to Angela and added, “Just make sure you take this with you when you leave, or I’m screwed.”

Angela took it off the tray and nodded that she would. “Thank you,” she said in the absence of any gratitude on Orli’s part.

The corporal nodded back. He obviously understood. “One hour,” he said. “Then the chaplain will come.”

Angela nodded once again for Orli’s part.

The corporal left, and once more the two women sat in silence for a while.

“You going to eat any of this?” Angela asked eventually. “The gravy won’t be any good cold.”

Orli shook her head.

“The pie looks good. Look at the color of that strawberry glaze. Come on, have something. I feel terrible.”

“I’m sorry to put you out,” Orli said. “You don’t have to be here. You are free to leave. I release you from your duties or whatever I’m supposed to say. Just go.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Angela said, frustrated. She leaned back and once again silence filled the room.

They were both startled by the next knock. It was the corporal again, this time with the chaplain. He looked down at the untouched tray and sighed, just as Angela had been doing so often since sitting there with Orli. He took it after only a brief exchange of glances with the attorney. He didn’t have the heart to look at Orli again.

The chaplain stepped into the room as the corporal went out.

“Ensign Pewter,” said the chaplain. “I’ve come to help you prepare.”

Orli looked up at him, and her eyes filled with fire. “Prepare yourself,” she said. “It’s your conscience that’s going to burn for this. Do whatever you need to do to make yourself and the rest of those lying cowards up there feel better about it, but I have no use for you.”

“You have no peace to make with your maker? Nothing you would like to say to God?”

“God already knows I think he’s an asshole, so there you go. And now that we have that out of the way, why don’t you just fuck off?”

“I will pray for your soul then.”

“Why don’t you pray for someone to figure out that the Prosperions aren’t the enemy, that I’m not the enemy, that there’s another Hostile world attacking Earth? Pray for someone to pull their head out of their ass before it’s too goddamn late. That’s what you should pray for.”

The chaplain straightened himself, brushed his fingers over his salt-and-pepper mustache and nodded. “Very well, I’ll let them know you are ready. And I will pray for you anyway.”

“Whatever gets you through the nights,” Orli said slumping back against the wall.

When he was gone, Angela looked to her client and shook her head. “I suppose I should admire your courage,” she said. “I think I’d be a crying mess if I were in your shoes.”

“I’ve spent enough time as a crying mess,” Orli said. “Turns out it doesn’t help all that much.”

Angela nodded, but unscrewed the cap on the flask. She raised it toward Orli who waved it off. “Do you mind if I do?” the woman asked.

Orli actually smiled. “Knock yourself out.” She watched the young lawyer’s face contort with each successive swig and wondered if this was the first time she’d ever had a drink. It seemed obvious that it was. Making today a day for new chemicals for everyone.

Chapter 21

G
romf and Kazuk-Hal-Mandik spent the better part of two full days listening and memorizing the summoning spells. They listened to the verses of the song as the woman sang, over and over, slowly committing the sounds to memory. Kazuk-Hal-Mandik had taught himself much of the human language in his time living in the world, but for Gromf it was all new. The sounds were ugly and tasted like rancid meat between his teeth. But he had Discipline, and he learned the sounds anyway. Two days gone, they were out of time for practicing. Now was time to try and see if it really worked.

“Go and tell Warlord we are ready,” Kazuk-Hal-Mandik commanded the singer. “Ask that he bring ten warriors. And then you may get some rest.” She was careful not to show relief, but the sagging of her features and the hoarse rasp that had become her voice was evidence of how worn down she was. She lowered her gaze and left them, and Gromf was pleased to hear the sound of her bare feet running upon the stone once she had left the room, sprinting to follow the old shaman’s orders despite how exhausted she was. She would produce good younglings for the All Clans, strong in spirit and in mind. Gromf approved of her. Perhaps when he reached his hundredth season he would take her for his second mate.

“One time,” warned Kazuk-Hal-Mandik when the woman was out of earshot. “Just one demon. From the first verses. And no God Stone.”

“I know,” snapped Gromf. He too was tired. He hadn’t slept in five sunsets. His temper floated near the surface now.

Shortly after, the sound of rattling armor and many heavy footfalls echoed down the corridor beyond the Chamber of Discipline, occasionally punctuated by the strike of wooden spear butts on the stone. Soon Warlord appeared accompanied by ten warriors, just as Kazuk-Hal-Mandik had asked. That was good, the old shaman thought. For all Warlord’s mighty roaring, he too believed.

“Slay it when it comes,” was all the warning the old warlock gave. “Do not wait to watch and see what it does.”

Warlord tightened several straps of his armor and several of the others donned helmets, buckling them on snugly. Gromf was pleased to see nothing but eagerness in their eyes. These were all mighty orcs, fearsome and tested in war. They spread around the room, Warlord with his enormous double-bladed axe standing nearest to the door. He would die before a conjured demon ran loose among his people.

“Bring them forth,” commanded Warlord, his teeth wicked sharp and glinting golden in the firelight.

Kazuk-Hal-Mandik took a pouch of sulfur and sprinkled the yellow dust around in a circle, just as the verses of the song had said. He then turned to Gromf and nodded for him to begin.

Gromf reached into the swirling storm of mana as he sang the words that built containment into the yellow ring Kazuk-Hal-Mandik had poured, the words meant to bind the creature inside. He was careful to speak them right.

He let his mind drift away then, falling out of the perfect cube of space that made the Chamber of Discipline, falling out into the mana currents, guided by the rhythms and the words that sought the anger through the center of the world, the anger that reached out with its teeming thirst for blood and the taste of death on its gnashing teeth, the milling sea of ravenousness that leaked its hunger through the very core of Prosperion. He looked for the braided strands promised by the song, the twisting threads that hid in the tempest of the mana, lost in the miasma of so much activity like a bit of leather thong tossed in a roaring fire, consumed by it physically as it was drowned in the light. But Gromf found it because he knew that it was there. He found it by its tiny whirling melody, and he grasped it with the fingers of his mind, tugging on it gently as if pulling himself along, the thread of it the lifeline keeping him from falling out of an abyss.

He pulled and willed the braid to thickening, dragging himself down into the depths of the mana, finding as he did that the twists of the cord, in their windings, seemed to stir the mana itself. He inched along, tugging himself with thoughts like hands over hands toward the circling motion, the pink and purple whorl of everything, crawling slowly down into an increasing chaos that rotated faster and faster as he went.

He pulled along more quickly, the vortex giving him speed. He made good time, and he travelled deeper and deeper, the vortex narrowing. In time he found the bottom, a tiny hole, it might have been the iris of some tiny creature’s eye. Light shone through it as if it were an arrow hole in a drying hide.

He leaned down toward the opening, moving in the way of non-action within the mana, and peered through the hole, peeking like a youngling watching grownups mate. He saw them then, the demons, the essence of them anyway, visible in both the realm of light and the mana stream. At first he started, wondering how such a thing could be, but he did not question it. This was a thing of gods, so it could be so if it was so. He watched from his high vantage place, down upon a vast landscape, ragged and profane, edged by ocean on all sides, though somehow he only knew that it was, the sense one has that a thing is true without a way to see. All he could see were the monstrosities, the countless hordes of moving, twisting bodies in a wide valley, the sunlight pouring down into it devoured by huge formations of the yellow stone. The God Stone was everywhere.

He watched and knew that he must be careful. He knew instinctively now what it was that Kazuk-Hal-Mandik had begun, and he knew why it was that the old warlock was letting him experiment with it first. If he could have, he would have spit at such cunning cowardice. But it was foolish to think such things. It lacked Discipline, for the warlock had handed over far more power than he must have understood, and in that moment Gromf understood nearly perfectly.