Rift in the Races (36 page)

She didn’t know much about Polar Piton or his spell, but she knew enough to laugh. “No, I’m sure he didn’t.”

“Well, that is another reason why it is important to use the seeing stones. I discovered something similar when I first found Naotatica. That’s why they say, ‘If you’re going to work with razor weed, always stew before you chew.’”

She didn’t fully understand what that meant either, but she did love when he said that sort of thing, so she smiled and nodded as she crawled up onto the parapets and pointed down below. “It is pretty,” she had to admit.

They were just outside the solar system’s farthest edge, perhaps ten degrees above the ecliptic. She pointed out a vast, curving expanse of white rocks floating in the distance below them, arcing away to either side until it thinned to visual nothingness.

“Ice,” she said. “Probably methane and ammonia, but maybe some water too.”

He turned and looked back in the direction from which they had come. Despite Orli having pointed it out earlier, he could no longer find the star he thought of as his own. He’d made no constellation for it.

“We’re very far from home,” he said. “Farther than I’ve ever been.”

“It’s a shitty feeling, isn’t it?”

It just came out. Like pus from a lanced wound. The words accompanied by the rictus curl of her upper lip. She immediately apologized. “I’m sorry. I know exploration is your dream. I didn’t mean to say it like that. I don’t know what’s wrong with me today.”

“I understand,” he said, and she could see in his eyes he truly did. “It won’t be long. We’ll win this war, and then it will be just us. I’ll explore during the days and spend every evening with you.”

“And weekends.”

He nodded. “And weekends.”

He went to the table by the stairs and dropped the Liquefying Stone into its wooden bowl, covering it up with the towel. He wouldn’t need it to move around within the solar system. However, he would need some rest before he cast too many other spells. If this really was the home system of the Hostiles, he needed all his strength if things should go awry.

He went back to stand by Orli at the wall.

“You know how to use this, right?” He pulled out the little cluster of amulets he wore and separated out the fast-cast amulet that would take them home. “Strike it like a match if something should go wrong. It will take us back to Calico Castle.”

She started to reach for it, but he snatched it back.

“Harpy spit,” he said. “No it won’t.” He looked startled.

“What’s the matter?”

“This doesn’t have enough mana in it now. Not here. Not this far.” He swore again and turned back toward the door. “I have to augment this enchantment.”

“Right now?”

“Yes, right now. While I still have enough strength to do it. This is the only lifeboat on the ship, if you take my meaning.”

She made a lemon-eating face and nodded. “I do.”

He started back down the stairs.

“How long is that going to take?”

“An hour,” he said. “Or not much more.”

Exasperation escaped in a throaty hiss as she rolled her eyes skyward.
Not again
. She resisted the urge to ask him what she was supposed to do while he went and started casting yet another series of long, boring spells.

“Keep an eye out for Hostiles,” he said as if she’d asked anyway. “If this is where they live, there’s likely to be some in this neck of the woods.”

That wasn’t quite what she’d had in mind, but the thought startled her and straight away killed the petulance that had begun to grow.
Great,
she thought.
Now I can sit here and try not to freak out for an hour
.

She sat between two merlons and crossed her legs beneath her as she gazed around absently and sighed. Maybe it wasn’t such a big deal. Not much different than staring at a ship’s monitor for the same reasons, she supposed.

She could hear him muttering and cursing down below, his voice carrying up the stairs with those purportedly profane Prosperion oddities that usually, though not now, amused her so. Apparently he was having trouble finding what he needed in his books, and it irked him to swearing. He was so like a dusty old librarian in that way. She grinned as she listened to all his delightfully alien vulgarities. It really was sweet. Which is why she just wanted to go back to his world.

Spectacular as all this galactic panorama was, she wanted something real. A hill to climb, a squirrel to watch, the caress of flower petals brushing against her nose. The more she tasted of those things on Prosperion, the shorter her patience grew for this. Shorter now than she even knew. Boredom came on its heels.

Which is why curiosity made her get up and walk over to Altin’s wooden bowl.

He made such a big deal about that little yellow rock. The orcs had gone to war over it. He called it ugly all the time. She took it out and looked at it. She didn’t think it was ugly. It wasn’t beautiful in the way of a cut diamond or those giant pulsing rubies on the concert hall doors in
Citadel
, but it wasn’t ugly. At least not exactly. It had its own personality, a yellow one. A very yellow one. Roberto would have made a pee joke. She giggled and already missed her friend.
Okay, it is kind of ugly
, she admitted to herself.

She turned it round a few times and held it up to the distant sun. She expected the crystal to light up with the incoming rays, to glow a little, but it didn’t. That struck her as odd. Like glass that light didn’t come through. Or at least, not exactly.

She suddenly felt that maybe she shouldn’t be messing with it after all, and was just starting to freak herself out, when Altin shouted, “Finally!” The sound of his voice startled her, making her hand dart back reflexively toward the bowl like a child who’s been caught stealing cookies from the cooling tray.

She laughed at herself when he didn’t come up and yell at her. What was she, five? And what did she think the stone was going to do, burn her?

She grinned inwardly, feeling silly. Childish. It had been so long since she was five. A whole different life. A different universe, as far as that mattered.

She took the little yellow rock to the parapet wall and climbed back up into the crenel, where she reclined against one of the granite blocks as if it were meant for comfortable repose. She turned the stone over absently between her fingers as she allowed herself the luxury of a daydream.

Altin, frazzled and impatient with fatigue, finally had the right spellbook. What on Prosperion had made him put it under the bed? He was getting sloppy. The infernal duties of working on
Citadel
and training mages for it was addling his mind. He missed the simplicity of working on his own, with no one to answer to but himself. No duty. No deadlines. Just the beautiful work.

He shook himself. No time to drift. He needed to channel more mana into this amulet before something happened that made them need it. If something happened to him out here, Orli would be trapped forever, drifting, hungry, alone. He could not let that happen. He cursed himself for not having anticipated it before he put her in danger. He was half tempted to take them back right now while he still had the strength. He was tired, but he knew the distance now. He was reasonably sure he could make it.

But that was risky. He
was
tired. This was easier to do. Trickling mana into this amulet wouldn’t take a significant spell. Just some time. Less than an hour if he focused. They had that long, surely. And if it came down to it, well, then he’d take the risk of the big cast. Better to be patient than perished, Tytamon would say.

So with a quick bite of stale bread and a splash of water on his face, he sat at the table and began studying the spell. Memorizing its nuance, still vaguely familiar to him from having done it not so many months ago.

When he was ready, he closed the book and set it aside. Pulling the amulet and its leather thong over his head, he set it on the table before him. He calmed his breathing. Closed his eyes. Let his mind open itself to the mana, reaching out, seeking the undulating waves of pink and purple chaos.

There were none.

At least no undulating waves. No chaos. Just mana. Smooth as stretched taffy, a great plane of it as far as he could see, and all of it flowing toward a dark mass in the distance that drew the mana in like a great drain in the middle of a pink sea. He had the dim sense of it, the mass, far away, some great distance, but there, present. Near and far. He felt it there in the same way he had never been able to sense where Luria was, never sensed a planet or a sun. It was a presence in the way nothing else was or ever had been, something beyond his experience. He’d never heard of it. Never read of it in a book.

Odd as it was, incredible even, he didn’t have time to contemplate it. He had to get to work. Its presence only increased his sense of urgency.

He let his mind slip away, fall toward the great flattened plane of mana, touch it gently. He tried to pluck up the least bit of it, just a wisp was all he needed, a thread to begin adding to the amulet.

But he couldn’t get the least little part. Not a hair. Not the finest barb of a feather. He couldn’t take any of it. He might as well have been trying to pinch a bit of marble from the Palace floor.

He tried again. Tried to reach into that vast expanse of rigidly flowing mana, and again he could not.

He tried a third time. And a fourth. Each time pushing harder, trying with a more invested portion of his will, scratching at it with the fingernails of his mind, then clawing, then hammering, trying to get any amount of it at all. But still nothing. He attempted to move the whole of his consciousness closer, seeking to lay awareness atop it like a rug, perhaps even spread upon it like the Hostile had done to his shield. He was determined to connect with a greater area of its surface and have more contact with the impossible-seeming state of the mana energy. He spread his will out, put himself all in, like pressing one’s body against a large mirror or giant pane of glass. He leaned against it with all his magical might.

That’s when the great dark mass saw him. Not with eyes, no, but it saw him just the same.

He had just enough time to realize it before everything went black.

The red-headed boy came charging at Orli, dribbling the soccer ball with great skill for a child of only ten years. He was the other team’s superstar. And mean. The last time he’d tried to get by her, he’d shouldered her so hard she crashed to the ground and bruised the inside of her right thigh where her left knee struck it. He did it again. Down she went.

Her father yelled at her, “Get up, Orli. Don’t take that crap from him.”

She jumped up and chased the boy down, furious. Her skinny legs pumped as hard as they could. He was a year older, but she was fast. Faster than him. She could hear her father cheering. She could hear the parents on the sidelines of the other team cheering the boy. Her team’s goalie waited expectantly, legs pumping, hands out, antsy, wide-eyed and afraid to be the one who blew the game.

Orli pushed harder, reached down into herself for that thing her father called “her everything.” She sprinted. Caught him. She ran past and swung her foot around at the ball with every ounce of her strength, kicking it away. The blow kicked his legs out from under him too. He tumbled in a heap, rolling over twice with his own momentum, as her team’s goalie ran out and snatched up the ball.

The referee called the penalty, she heard the whistle at the same time she heard her father, the colonel, roar triumphantly. “That’s my girl!”

Pride filled her. She remembered lying there, panting, breathing in the scent of fresh-cut grass. She could taste it. Her leg hurt from where her shin bone had hit the boy’s. It hurt more than her thigh.

The boy was crying.

She hadn’t felt bad then, but she did now, looking back. The pride of the moment mixing with the reflection afforded by time. She wondered what that little boy was doing now. What he’d grown up to be.

Then she felt the whisper of hate. It was just a whisper. Except not entirely a whisper because it wasn’t a word. It was the phantom of a whisper. The silhouette of an idea. A question without language. Without physicality in the way a thought might be counted as having substance or mass. Physic-less. It was hate. A question of it. And a certainty.

For the briefest flicker of time, she thought it was her conscience. A part of the memory. Of hurting the red-headed boy. Guilt hit her, an almost overwhelming sense of shame. No whisper.
Shame
.

She began to cry.

And cry.

And cry.

She cried so long and so hard, her body began convulsing. Whole-bodied sobs racked her until she had to bury her face in her hands, unable to contain the monsoon of grief. And it was grief. Deep, consuming grief.

Grief.

Mourning.

She was in mourning. She wept until her body began to ache, her stomach muscles cramped, her back muscles warming with the threat of strain.

But she couldn’t stop it. She tried. She became aware of it. Separated from the grief in the oddest way. The far away parts of her mind watched and couldn’t figure out why. It was as if her own thoughts were a shadow. A whisper demanding, “Why?” Her own question, this time. Different. She knew it was hers because it had language.
Why?