Hostiles (The Galactic Mage series) (67 page)

He nodded. “Yes, all is past. You are a rare woman to allow it. But yes, we are forever friends.”

“Good. Then as my first official act of friendship, let us get this Fire Fountain dedicated and get to the food. I haven’t had a good meal since they put my leg back on. I’m sure I need the sustenance or I’ll be forever with this limp.”

He smiled. “Yes, and I could use something to divert me from guilty thoughts. Being out here … seeing what I saw when I first arrived. This is such a dearly won place.”

She patted him on the arm. “You must not dwell on it today. At least today.”

“I will do my best, Your Majesty.”

Eventually the crowd simmered down, and the Queen could get on with the dedication ceremony.

“As you all know, inside this vast concrete box that our Earth friends have built for us, lays an open demon gate. To date, we have no known means of closing such a thing, though our diviners are working on it night and day, and of course, so is our heroic Galactic Mage.” The crowd began cheering and shouting Altin’s name, a great chorus of
Sir Altin, Sir Altin, huzzah!
Over and over they chanted it, and Her Majesty let it go for quite some time, sparing a glance over her shoulder at him as he sat blushing amongst the other notables. She winked and beamed proudly at him, then turned back and raised her hand, bringing them to mostly quiet again. “Together they will seek a way to close that foul portal forever. However, until such time as that means is found, and as a way of symbolizing our trust and our mutual dependence upon our sister world, planet Earth, the fleet has agreed to install and forever operate this Fire Fountain with us.” She turned to another illusionist sitting beside the one amplifying her words and nodded. “Behold,” said the Queen, pointing into the sky. “This is what goes on inside this plain gray box.”

In the air above the crowd appeared an enormous illusion, providing a view of the interior of the Fire Fountain. There were several piles of something dark and smoldering laying about on what was otherwise a plain concrete floor. The walls were plain as well, very tall, but unadorned for the most part, no attention to aesthetics wrought in. Only the long, narrow strips of clear glass that ran the length of each wall broke the monotony of those mighty walls, narrow strips, barely six Earth inches wide, though several Earth feet thick. Only those windows and, of course, the guns and cameras that hung about the ceiling high above.

The guns were monstrous, nine-foot-long Gatling canons with seven barrels each, all of which fired rounds nearly as thick as a man’s wrist. There was a gun turret in each corner and one mounted at even intervals all around the high ceiling, placed with enough frequency to have one to cover every twenty-foot square below. While few of the Prosperions assembled knew precisely what they were, there was a deadly aspect to their alien construction that few failed to recognize. They might not know specifically what those things were, but most could fathom what would be the end result of standing in front of one. And the Earth people in the audience knew exactly what they were, and to the last of them they began to grin appreciatively. There was a lot of firepower in that massive concrete box.

Just as the crowd managed to take it all in and marvel at both its size and even at its conspicuously bare and bland design, which for some seemed something of an anticlimax, a huge black demon appeared. It simply popped into view standing on the ground, its seven long limbs already clawing for something to kill. The illusionist conveyed the sound inside as well as the view, and the moment it appeared, the air filled with its roars just as three of the guns went off. The flash of their barrels and the thunder of their fire carried over the crowd and out across the plains as a spray of supersonic bullets pulverized the beast below. The demon twisted and raged and lashed at nothing, gore oozing from holes that opened in its body faster than could be accounted for, until it finally broke into pieces, flames ignited in its joints and steam hissing from the cracks in what remained of its hard armor shell.

Then new fire came. The whole of the scene consumed by it. The Prosperions knew what this new inferno was. It was the activation of some powerful enchantment Her Majesty had arranged. And for a long time there was nothing to see in the illusion but a bright yellow box of flames hovering above them all, fire raging violently and looking as if it had been locked up in a cube of glass high above the crowd.

When the flames died away, there was once again nothing in the room but a smoldering pile of something black upon the floor.

The crowd cheered as one, and their noise filled the air again, just as another demon appeared in the box, followed immediately by two more. Their fates were the same as the one before.

The crowd cheered and shouted even louder, joining their noise with the raging ruckus of the demons as they died and the glorious roar of the Gatling guns. The demons writhed in agony and with every contortion the people purged themselves of more and more pent-up rage. It was an orgy of bloodlust and revenge. The people purged and purged as they watched ten more demons die.

Finally the Queen motioned that the illusionist should cut the image off. She raised her hands for quiet, but still had to wait some time for the crowd noise to subside.

“This,” she said when at last she could be heard, “this is the place where we will always be reminded of our fragility. Our vulnerability. This is where we can come and see what is at stake for us all. This is why our worlds need one another. This is the memorial to our fallen, but also the monument to remind us that we live in a new universe. We can, in our sorrow-filled memories, come here and also recognize our strength.

“A page has turned upon us, and we find ourselves faced with a new reality. Our very achievements, all the things we have learned, discovered and revealed by our magic …,” she paused and turned, pointing to the director and his nearby officers, “all the things we have learned, discovered and revealed by our science …,” she faced back out into the crowd, “these things we have unlocked with our hard work over centuries and millennia, and these things now dictate our need for one another. And it is here, at Fire Fountain, where any who doubt can come and look and understand. Let none of us forget.”

She called for a moment of silence then, a time of prayer and mindful thoughts for all those who were gone. She did not lead them in it, nor did she call for a priest. She simply asked that they do it, that they call up the faces of those who had sacrificed and could not be saved. And remember them.

When it was done, she raised her head and proclaimed that it was time for the feast. And there, revealed by the release of the hiding enchantments put upon it, was spread upon the field behind the crowd a feast so enormous no other in history was its match. There were tables and chairs for everyone, and more notable for the historians than the simple scale of the feast was the fact that there were no special places for the nobles or the dignitaries from Earth to sit. The Queen waited until the crowd had seen it too. She gauged it by the growing waves of whispers and muttered wondering. She smiled. “Today we feast as friends and equals,” she declared. “Now let us eat!”

The crowd roared and many of them ran for the food as if they’d not eaten in all these long months since the war was won.

Her Majesty turned back to face those assembled on the stage. “My hope is that you will all mingle amongst the people and make acquaintances with them. There are none of us holding titles today that do not owe their privilege to those people down there. The blood of the farmer and the housewife paid for our privilege. Today we give that sacrifice its due.”

“Your incompetence bought them their sacrifice,” snapped the marchioness, her voice a raspy whisper. “Don’t think to lecture us anymore this afternoon. We sit through this from you because it is what must be done, but you brought this upon them. You make me sick, standing there in your gleaming armor still today. Arrogant woman. You should be in that prison on Earth with that idiot director they deposed!”

Before the Queen could respond, the marchioness motioned for her teleporter to take her away, leaving the Earl of Vorvington staring wide-mouthed in the space where she’d so recently stood. He looked up at Her Majesty with his red jowls reddening all the more, as guilty in appearance as if he’d said it too.

“Let it go, Vorvington,” said the Queen. “All will settle in time.” She flashed a somewhat embarrassed look at the new director, which he acknowledged with a crooked left side of his mouth. He’d seen plenty of that same sort of thing himself back on Earth, and there would be arguments among his fleet officers, hard feelings and resentment for a long time to come. She shook it off, however, looking to Altin instead. “Sir Altin, if Miss Pewter can spare your attention long enough, would you be so kind as to take the rest of us to the feast?”

He glanced down at Orli, who smiled and giggled as she nodded that of course it would be okay.

“It would be my honor, Your Majesty.” A few moments later the lot of them were engulfed in an adoring crowd.

Chapter 52

S
everal hours after the feast at the Fire Fountain began, Orli and Altin sat together, legs dangling over the ledge that marked the entrance to Taot’s cave. The feast was still raging out on the prairie far away, measures and miles from them. The people were happy, allowed themselves joy and drunkenness, which most often turned to tears. But they were trying to move on. So were the two young lovers, which was why they were here.

They’d been out on that ledge for some time. The Queen had not only graciously allowed them to go, but when she’d heard where they were going, she insisted that Altin take Taot a full mammoth haunch right off the cook fire and give it to him with her full compliments and gratitude. The dragon hadn’t been much for the gratitude, but he’d been delighted at getting an effortless meal of that size. In fact he’d been sleeping it off ever since. In the silence that had fallen after all the bones were crunched and the tissues chewed and chomped, the two of them had come out upon the ledge and sat together staring up into the stars. For a while they chatted about the banquet and the Queen’s speech. They talked about plans, about Kettle, about lost Tytamon. But for a long time after, they sat in silence, each swept off in their own thoughts, their own memories, and the night was long upon them when Orli finally spoke again.

“The Queen said it’s been a hard-won happy ending for everyone in that last toast she made.” Her gaze fell from the sky as she said it, dropping in the turn of a breath to where it came to rest, staring down into the darkness below. The valley floor was barely visible even with Luria nearly three quarters full, a pale pink arc hanging low in the eastern sky, featureless as a forgotten memory. “Is it really happy, though? For everyone?”

Altin nodded, running his finger absently over the back of her hand, enjoying the cool satin of her skin. “I suppose it is. Or will be. Although I’m not sure when I will feel it all the way. The work on the battlefield in the days after your people came will haunt me forever. I’ll never forget those faces, those bodies all gnawed upon.” He shuddered and forgot for a time to stroke her hand. After a while he started up again, finally looking to her. “But yes, I suppose we will be happy again. If we don’t allow it, then what were we fighting for?”

“It’s not going to be happy for us all,” she said. “Some of us will never be. One of us anyway.” She pressed her lips inward, her sad eyes resigned.

This startled him, and he turned to her with fright dawning like frost commencing upon his heart. “What do you mean? What are you saying?”

She could see the rise of terror in his eyes, the frantic look beginning, the fear of losing her somehow. Again. She could read it as plainly in his moonlit face as if he’d worn a sign. She smiled and stroked his cheek with the curl of her fingers. “Not us,” she said. “We’ll be happy. I am happy now. But I’m sad for Blue Fire because she’s out there all alone. Alone and violated. It’s not fair.”

“He never made it, though,” Altin pointed out. “He didn’t get to her. He was still tunneling when he died.”

“Does it matter?”

He looked away. “No. I don’t suppose it does.”

“I wish there was something we could do for her.”

He nodded. He let go of her hand. Felt guilty for it. That he could be happy, that he got to have Orli in his life. It was true Blue Fire had nothing now. She was silent all the time. She had no joy in the victory. Nothing to celebrate. Only memories of fear added to that long-abiding loss she’d known for millenniums beyond count.

Altin scooted back far enough to lean against the rock face, only his calves and ankles dangling out into the open space above the valley far below. She reached out and absently ran her fingers through the soft hair on his shins, her gaze still directed down into the valley as his returned to the sky.

Luria hung in the darkness as a wide crescent smile, and he thought that at least she was happy all the way. Altin gazed upon her bright face for a long time, thought about how much had come to pass since that first time he’d gone there, his first time standing upon another celestial sphere, a world that was not his own. He remembered the first time he’d seen that red, rocky place, how alive he’d felt staring back at Prosperion.

And then there had been Red Fire. Another red place. This time angry and violent. Two ends of a long trail. He let go a long sigh as he thought through it all. All his new friends, all the ones he had lost.