Hostiles (The Galactic Mage series) (41 page)

“Not one breath of magic,” Altin must have said at least twenty times before the whole room had been equipped. “Don’t let them touch your skin until you need them. And not one single syllable of magic until you are all linked to Conduit here. If anyone so much as tries to light a pipe with a summoned flame, we will all be incinerated on the spot.”

Everyone nodded that they understood, and any marginally close observer of humanity could see fear on more than a few faces in the room.

“Let’s get the illusion up, Cebelle,” Altin said, “so everyone can see what we are up against. Don’t touch the Liquefying Stone while you do it.”

The old woman nodded at him, as if grateful for that reminder, redundant as it was, but the conduit protested in his way. “Sir Altin, if you don’t need me anymore, perhaps I shall go have a nice hot bath.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Conduit,” said Orli. “There are two worlds at stake. Give it a rest.”

“No, he’s right,” said Altin, trying to be diplomatic. “I’m sorry, Conduit. You know your job. Please carry on.”

Counting that a victory, the conduit looked as if he might press the issue, but Orli took a step forward looking as if she might throttle him on the spot, so he refrained. He returned to his seat upon the slowly turning ottoman, and tilted his gaze up into the air above him expectantly.

The low notes of Cebelle’s chanting soon became the only sound in the room, the lights dimmed, not that Orli could have identified where those lights came from to begin, and soon the large glowing globe of red Mars filled a space in the air ten paces in diameter above the conduit’s head. Orli heard several mages mutter, “Luria,” under their breath.

Mars rotated slowly in the illusion, which struck Orli as being much like a hologram, and orbiting the planet were its two small moons, Phobos and Deimos, both visible just now. Orli wondered if, given the absence of the giant Hostile in the scene, perhaps it had left. But then that too entered the image hanging in the air, dwarfing the two rocky lumps of Mars’ circuitous companions like a starship might dwarf crew carriers docked next to it in port. And even in this illusionary image, seeing how big the Hostile beside Mars was triggered more than a tingling sense of dread. She nervously wondered if perhaps all of
Citadel
’s mages, even with Liquefying Stones in hand, could possibly be enough. Had she been too hopeful in assuming it? While they had been in the cavern on Blue Fire’s world getting the yellow stones, Altin had made it more than clear that in all likelihood, the mages were going to kill themselves.

“Let us begin,” Conduit Huzzledorf said, holding aloft one of the big diamonds from his satchel. “Seers get this seeing stone now, before it goes. Sir Altin tells me it may disappear fairly quickly once it arrives at the sun. Apparently that thing is rather hot.”A few mages laughed at his joke, but most were either too nervous or too terrified to be amused.

So began the process of getting
place
for the teleporters, using a seeing stone to find a place of familiarity into which they were going to try to teleport that vast Hostile orb. Before they could send the orb into the sun, they had to know where they were going to send it, and they all had to know it if they were going to send something that big that far. That was step one.

The first seeing stone was cast, but as soon as it was gone, all the seers let out a collective moan, the sound of a hundred disappointed casters all as one.

“Try it again, people. I told you to look fast. Pay attention.”

As Altin waited, leaning against the stool in the central ring of seats where the lead casters from each school sat, a circle that ran around the conduit’s ottoman, he got a telepathic nudge from Aderbury, who was far above the concert hall, manning his post in the tower that looked down upon the assembled redoubts and out into the space beyond
Citadel
’s protective shell.

“My people want to take the redoubts out and go help the fleet ships fighting above Earth,” Aderbury said. “They’re getting antsy up here. Do you need us for this?”

“Tell them they need to wait. We need to contact Director Nakamura first. Our redoubts will still be fired upon if they go out right now. Wait till this works. Orli will contact them on her mirror and make sure they are going to cooperate.”

“If they don’t?”

“Well, let us hope they do. I’ll let you know.”

Aderbury let go of the tendril that connected their thoughts, and Altin turned to see how the conduit’s seeing went. Another of the enchanted diamonds had just left Conduit Huzzledorf’s hand. Not long after, three voices shouted, “I’ve got it.” One other said, “I think I saw it too.”

Conduit Huzzledorf looked annoyed and, in a little fit of impatience, mussed the already-spastic frazzle of his hair with his hands. “For the love of Mercy, we’re going to spend all day on the easy part,” he growled. “Let’s do this properly, people, so we can get to the Liquefying Stones.”

Altin wanted to jump in with a warning, to point out that eagerness was a terrible idea, but he knew that would be a bad idea too. There was no point in pointing it out again, nor was there any point in arguing with the man. Besides, who knew what kind of difference having a conduit could make while using the Liquefying Stone. Perhaps Altin was worrying about nothing now—though he sorely doubted it.

He was half tempted to take Orli back to Tytamon’s tower, just in case something went horribly wrong, but he’d vowed never to leave her like that again. They would face the danger together from now on—together, so that he could keep her safe.

Several more attempts to cast seeing stones into the sun were made, each in hopes that the seers could find them before they evaporated, and eventually all but four of the concert hall seers had found the place before the diamond was gone.

“Good enough,” the conduit announced. “You four can sit it out since you obviously can’t handle it.”

Orli’s mouth dropped open in her horror at how rude that was, but Altin was nodding that he agreed. They didn’t have time for weakness or incompetence because they didn’t have time at all. Now was not the time to mollycoddle people just so they could feel good about themselves.

“Healers get your sections now, and watch for injuries,” ordered the conduit. “Diviners, stay ahead of them so they don’t have to guess. Seers link the new place. Teleporters shape it; Sir Altin has the lead. Everyone, in order, you know how channeling works. Let’s go, let’s go.” He watched as the sections shuffled and shifted in their seats, nerves calming, and finally the room was ready for the attempt. “Get your stones, people. Let’s hitch the teams and quarter this titan.”

Altin waited until he saw the rest of the room had closed its eyes. He glanced back at Orli one time and smiled, a wan thing with love in his eyes, then turned to face the conduit who was watching him, waiting with an eyebrow raised. Altin nodded and closed his eyes.

Orli watched the two exchange the look, and she saw, or thought she saw at least for a moment, a look of humility flash upon the conduit’s face, as if, in that one moment, he was willing to let Altin know that he too was afraid. She couldn’t decide if that made her feel better or not, but at least it made the crimson-clad man seem human again.

Twelve mages fell over in their chairs immediately. Orli saw them fold as if they’d been gut-punched, first one, then two more, then the rest, with no particular pattern as to where it happened around the room. Just slump, slump, slump, twelve of them nearly all at once. None of them moved again. Nor did anyone get up to help. She thought about running to them herself but decided that might make things worse, getting in the middle of the concert like that.

Then began the wait. The time spent waiting for the seers to find the sun had seemed long enough, but now the time simply went on and on. After a while the beating of her heart subsided some, the fear spawned by the slumping mages exchanged for curiosity. She marveled at the haunting beauty of the song the concert hall magicians made. It was like a chorus of accident. No words together, no direction at all, and yet, there was a harmony in it that seemed to suggest orchestration anyway.

She listened to it for a time, but soon the sameness of it lost its hold on her. It became background sound like frogs and crickets chirping in a springtime field or the soft crash of surf over the course of a day at one of Prosperion’s many beaches. Thinking of that set her to watching Altin as he cast. She wondered what he was doing right then, wondered what was going on in his mind, what he was seeing. He sat motionless, where most everyone else in the room swayed. She wanted to walk around to the front of him, to look into his face, but she was afraid she might disturb him somehow. She was way too terrified of interrupting something to move, so instead she closed the lid on the empty wooden chest and sat down on it, using it for a low stool. She leaned against the half wall that separated her from the front row of the concert hall mages, staring mainly at Altin’s back. She watched him for a time, but then came a shout from across the room, a man in purple robes, an illusionist, seemed to bark then slumped forward in his chair.

Movements in the white-robed section adjacent to the illusionists seemed to become more frantic then, the healers, as Orli recalled. The pitch of their songs rose, and the weaving of their hands grew faster and faster, making it seem as if they stitched something together in unison through the air.

Someone else cried out behind her, somewhere above. She stood and looked, saw that a transmuter had also slumped forward in his seat.

Two more went down in the enchanters section, and a teleporter near where she stood, seated nearest the aisle, fell out onto the stairs. The woman’s body slid down the steps until she bumped against the wall, her robes pulled up so far as to expose her to her underclothes. Orli stared at the woman’s stomach and chest, willing the movement of breath. She watched the taut flesh below the mage’s ribs, waiting for it to rise. It did not. The woman was dead.

She looked frantically back to Altin, but he remained motionless upon his stool. The conduit too remained exactly as he was, seated on his ottoman, rotating in the dim light cast by the illusion of Mars still above him, its moons and the Hostile floating there. Nothing was changing. The only thing happening was people were falling out of their chairs. Dying.

Orli wanted to scream. She wanted to run to Altin and shake him out of the spell. Did he even know people were dying out here? Was he so lost in the magic he didn’t know? She knew better, though. If she touched him, they might all die.

Three more shouts. Another teleporter and two more purple-robed illusionists. An orange-robed conjurer after that.

Time continued to pass. A ridiculous amount of it. Four more mages slumped like melted things as what had to be another hour passed. Orli was frantic now. The Hostile was still floating above Mars, looking exactly the same. What could possibly be taking them so long?

She’d known that it would take time. She understood that mass and distance mattered somehow in doing this thing. But
this
long? She had no idea how long she’d been sitting there since it began. Many hours at least. If this was the time it took, it was going to be too late anyway. Crown City was probably already overrun.

And then the Hostile was gone. She knew it because the light in the room changed, the red light of Mars suddenly brightened in the absence of the darker Hostile. The wall beyond where the Hostile had hung in the air suddenly lit up with the glow coming off the illusionary red world, its glowing light no longer blocked by the intruding orb in orbit above.

As one, the entire room gasped as they came out of the spell. It was as if the lot of them had just come up from beneath the surface of some horrible lake, all rising out of the water in need of a single collective breath. A teleporter right behind Orli stood, looked as if she were going to say something to Orli, then fainted, her eyes rolling up into her head and her body pitching forward over the long brass rail. The railing worked like a fulcrum, and her feet flipped up, and over it she went, tumbling toward the floor where Orli was.

Orli caught her as best she could and lowered her to the ground. She glanced back over her shoulder toward the healers section and saw a white-robed mage jump the rail and come running toward her. Others were making their way to the rest of the wounded magicians lying around the room, and even the conduit went to see what he could do to help. Orli had expected him to gloat.

Orli gave the healer room to work with the fallen teleporter and turned back to see if Altin had come out of the spell. He had, though he sat rubbing his temples and shaking his head. She looked back to the healer, who nodded that the woman would be all right, and then she went to Altin’s side.

“So it worked,” she said. It was only half a statement, the other half made inquiry by the rising lilt in her voice.

“Yes. It did. I think we lost a lot of magicians though.” He squinted as his eyes played through the room. Several of the wizards in the rows above were weeping now, standing in small knots around fallen comrades. He nodded. They’d lost more than “some.” The count would be twenty-one dead when it was done. Twenty-one dead, eleven magically blinded and unable to ever cast spells again—for some a fate worse than death—and four more unconscious but otherwise relatively unharmed.

“So, did it go all the way into the sun? Is it dead?”