Hostiles (The Galactic Mage series) (6 page)

He forced himself to calm. Closed his eyes, regulated his breathing.

More calmly, he repeated his earlier threat. “I will kill you if you do not call them back. Call off the attack.”

Not mine
, she sent. It came upon a sense of otherness.

“Just do it. No more vagaries. No excuses. Call them off, and do it now.”

Not mine
, she repeated in his thoughts.

“What do you mean, ‘not mine?’ How stupid do you think I am?”

Not mine. Other.

“There are no others. You are the others. There is only you. You told us so yourself. No others. Just poor sad Blue Fire floating out here all alone with the memories of a dead star to comfort her in between bouts of genocide.”

Not mine. Other. Truth.

“You don’t know what truth is.”

Love is truth. Altin Love truth of love. Orli Love hate hate of Altin Love.

“I don’t have time for riddles anymore. They are going to kill Orli because you lied. Now call them off, or planet Earth will not be the only planet with no life on it when this is done. You have my Truth on that.”

He filled then with a sense of her fear. Not fear of him. Not even fear of death. Simply fear. It was as if he could feel her trembling in a way that, for some reason, struck him in the same way Pernie had trembled in his arms when he’d rescued her from the orcs. It was a childlike terror, a helpless, lonely, inconsolable sense of dread in the face of something out of one’s control.

The rational part of Altin’s mind tried to fight it off. He knew now that she could convince him that any emotion was real. That was her best weapon. Making truth out of lies. She did it in a way that made falsehood feel in a whole-bodied way to be true.

“I don’t believe you,” he said.

“Then I must die.”

That startled him. It was real. Actual sound. The sound came as an approximation of a voice, barely discernible as one, but one all the same. And it was loud. Cavernously so. It was as if thunder tried to shape words through the echo of itself, a great grating coming out of a deep and enormous cave. It was so enormous it threw Altin to the ground, the vibrations coming in the form of an earthquake, a violent rumble that tossed him against the wall and jabbed him full of shallow puncture wounds, his back and arms stuck first by the tips of the many crystals jutting from the wall, and then his palms and knees when he hit the ground.

What in nine hells?

“Then I must die,” rumbled the mighty voice again, the words more articulate this time, as if once was enough practice for that.

“No,” he said, scrambling to his feet, his mind awhirl. When did she learn to speak? Had she always known? More of the ruse, the lie? “You don’t need to die. No one has to die. Just call them back. I beg of you. There is no reason to kill them all.”

“Not. Mine.” Once again Altin was thrown to the floor by the shaking. The resonance of the consonant sounds moved the ground half a span vertically. Blood dripped from Altin’s hands, and he could feel it running in several hot rivulets down his shins.

“Then whose? Tell me that, and explain. Make me believe.” He didn’t want to hear it. He knew it would be a lie.

“Not mine.” This time he caught himself against the wall, though his hands were minced more just the same. Her voice came from everywhere. It was terrifying, but not more so than Altin’s fear for Orli.

“That’s not good enough.”

“Not mine.” This time it barely rumbled beneath his feet. It came once more after that, only in his mind, gently, like a thing settling back into place. Then Blue Fire fell silent.

Altin slumped against the wall. Exhausted. He looked at his palms, which gleamed wetly in the golden light coming from the walls around him. He could see, just visible as a faint line around the edge of his ring, the green pulse of the stone embedded in the silver. The stone she had given him. Blue Fire’s gift of heart stone, a bit of herself, a bit of the father’s gift, which was the dark green stone.

Maybe he was wrong.

He thought about the look on Doctor Singh’s face only a few moments before. The hate and sorrow. The total lack of trust.

Maybe he was doing it too.

Truth
. The thought came into his mind on a wave of sadness.

“Then who?” he repeated yet again. “Is there another one? Another Blue Fire?”

No other Blue Fire.

“Then it has to be you.”

Not mine.

Altin exhaled so long and so deeply it made him see stars. Or perhaps those were on account of utter fatigue. The emotions coming off Blue Fire had been so intense, they sapped his strength just as water takes the heat out of newly forged steel. It had to be her. There was no one else. She was either lying or there was something wrong with her and she didn’t realize what she was doing. Either way, it had to stop.

“I wish I could believe you,” he said. “I want to. But I can’t. If you can stop them, if this is some game, or some feeding mechanism for you … just stop.”

Not mine.

“If Orli dies, so do you. Or I will die trying to finish you. That’s a promise.”

Orli Love live. Blue Fire die.
The thought was demure. A pleading surrender. A willing sacrifice.

Altin shook his head trying to block her from his thoughts. He needed her out of his head long enough for him to think.

He stooped and picked up Doctor Singh’s tablet from where it had fallen when he was first knocked to the ground. He stared at his reflection in the blank space of its glassy surface. His dumb face looking haggard and helpless. He had no idea how to make it work. He had no idea how to find her. The homing lizard hadn’t come back. For all his power, he could do nothing right now. Orli was flying toward certain death, certain death that would claim her if the certain death of the flight didn’t get her first. If it hadn’t gotten her already. And there was not one thing Altin could do about it but pray. And prayer was not his way.

Thinking was.

With a thought, he teleported himself back to Prosperion. There was one other possibility.

Chapter 6

K
azuk-Hal-Mandik leaned out over the edge of the stone wall, peering down into the cavernous arena, down the face of the rock into the shadows below and around to the left. He’d seen where Drango-Kal’s killer had looked before he disappeared, before he’d vanished from the base of the mound of dead orcs. But now the teleporter was nowhere to be found, the light from the torches around the ancient shaman was too bright, spoiling his vision for the dark edges of the vast death pit below.

He reached into a rabbit-skin pouch and pulled out a small fold of vellum. He opened it and extracted a silver ring, a thing of the humans. Small and fragile like they were. But smart like them too. He slipped the ring over the little finger of his left hand. It barely fit at the tip, squeezing tightly to the green flesh only midway down his yellowed fingernail. It was good enough.

His vision shifted then, from his eyes to his hand, and in that instant it seemed as if he held his vision at the tip of his finger. This was the sight. Kazuk-Hal-Mandik had no magic sight, not by nature, not by the gift of God. But the ring gave it to him, the ring itself a gift of God, the one God who had appeared to them, the conqueror of the old gods, the God who brought them Discipline, the God that would lift them from the shadows and give them a rightful place among the races of Prosperion. Respect from Discipline. That was God’s promise.

He pushed his vision down into the vast dark arena, slipping over the edge and sliding down the wall like a winged thing swooping for its prey. He descended and slipped into the shadows along the edge of the cavern, wending his way around boulders and stalagmites, seeking the new leader of the contest. Where had the teleporter gone?

He ran his vision all the way down to the far end of the chamber where it began to arc around and head back on the other side. But there was no sign of the teleporting shaman with the stone. Kazuk-Hal-Mandik thought he must have missed him, Drango-Kal’s killer, crouched in the shadows somewhere. He had not seen any movement across the open center of the empty aquifer, the bloody grounds of this great contest. He lifted his vision some, gave himself a higher angle, this time two spans above the ground. He drifted slowly back along the wall, watching, listening. He had almost come back beneath Warlord’s suite where he’d started this search when he heard a sound, something faint, very small. He stopped. He stared down into the darkness, scanned every nook and crevice of the area nearby. He could see nothing. There was no one there.

He heard it again. Something falling. A pebble perhaps.

He turned back and let his vision drift once more toward the back of the cavern. A whelpling could crawl faster than he moved. He dropped back down to a span’s height off the floor. He heard it again. Behind him.

He spun back. Still nothing. So he waited.

He began noticing a pulse. Not so much a pulse of light, but a pulse of less darkness. Not steady, no rhythm, but visible motion in the darkness, something pale, and small, very small.

He moved to it. There was the stone. The yellow stone, the purpose of the contest, embedded in the face of the cavern wall. Half in, half out, and perched atop a leaking oblong expanse. Dark fluid ran down the rock. The stone flashed, or more accurately, vanished for a moment and became visible again. This happened twice more.

He noticed then the face above. An orc’s face protruding from the rock, the rest of its head buried in the cavern wall. He saw a hand above that, poised as if about to hammer down a blow, though the fist was loose and open now.

The yellow stone vanished and reappeared, as if it were blinking, followed by the sound of a stone chip hitting the floor. This time Kazuk-Hal-Mandik heard a hiss to go with it. A curse. He followed the sound to the piece of rock that had fallen. He watched it skitter to a stop. Then it vanished.

High above, back up in Warlord’s suite, in the well-lit room with Warlord’s food-laden tables and the soft strum of a lute, the old warlock laughed, his body laughed while his vision watched far below, beyond his open, laughing mouth.

He watched the progress of the invisible contestant for a while as whoever it was worked at chipping out the yellow stone. He raised his vision up and surveyed the area around them. Three sand orcs were tearing up a lone shaman from the northern tribe, Kazuk-Hal-Mandik’s tribe. There were two others making their way along the wall from the opposite end, though they were moving slowly, cautiously. He could not tell from this location whether they were hunting or hiding.

He lowered his sight down to the work of the invisible orc again. The stone vanished completely for a time. Two more rock chips fell to the cavern floor.

Kazuk-Hal-Mandik pulled off the ring, returning his vision to the well-lit suite. He turned to Warlord, who had moved from observing the contest to lean over the book from which a captive human read. The human’s words were a jumble of nothing in Warlord’s ears. He raised his hand to smite the bedraggled creature, but the ancient warlock stopped him, calling, “Warlord, no.”

Warlord spun on him and glared a yellow-eyed stain of warning at him. Warlord could break Kazuk-Hal-Mandik before he could cast a spell. No one in the room doubted that.

“Warlord, we need that human’s knowledge of the sounds they keep in those symbols drawn there.”

“In days gone we beat these things from them. Not this weakness you call for.”

“In days gone we were chased into these hills and kept here for centuries, Warlord. We must smear ourselves in the excrement of our enemies in order to creep into their camp.”

“Spoken like a coward,” Warlord said, but he did move away from the reader. He snarled at the orc woman strumming the lute. “You make our women weak with this excrement as well.”

“The lute compels him to read, Warlord.”

“And what will you do when he is done? That woman will have your human knowledge in her head. She will summon the demons into your bed, and you will cry out for me to come and save you from them. I will not come.”

“Yes, Warlord.” Kazuk-Hal-Mandik had no desire to win the argument. He already had what he needed when the massive leader of the All Clans did not mash the human into unconsciousness again. “Their eyes swell shut, Warlord,” he’d told him the first time. “And then they can’t read.”

Kazuk-Hal-Mandik allowed himself to listen to the human reading from the book for a while, droning on in the common tongue of the humans intermingled with long passages in a foreign language he believed belonged to the elves. He glanced up at the woman playing the instrument, a thick-thighed and broad-shouldered young thing he’d sired eighty seasons ago. She was a smart one. She would learn the song and teach him to sing it. And then, he would have a new power, the power promised him by God.

Still smiling, he went back to stand behind Warlord, the hulking figure’s massive hands wrapped around the steaming foreleg of a moose. The great warrior snapped it in half, and the sounds of him sucking the marrow from it filled the chamber for a while, blocking out in places the tuneless notes of the lute and the tired muttering of the human bent over the book.