Rift in the Races (61 page)

Aderbury turned back to his assistant, a surly-looking middle-aged woman holding a carved wooden staff nearly two spans long. “Are you ready?”

“Yes,” she said. “Dazmond nearly has it in place.”

Dazmond was the conjurer holding the enormous spike up into the air and pressed against
Citadel
, though it swayed and rotated as it floated there, not yet attached. He chanted under his breath as he worked, holding the spike in place as best he could with a small tornado at the top and a powerful updraft spell from underneath. Slowly, carefully, he directed the airflow against the diamond spike and gently nudged its blunt end perfectly within the circumference of a complex set of runes etched upon the sphere.

“One moment, Ilbei,” said Aderbury as he watched the conjurer maneuver the spike into its final position.

“Of course,” said Ilbei and set himself to hobbling his mule and pulling off the packs and saddlebags from mule and donkey alike.

When the spike was set perfectly, Aderbury cast a long and meticulous transmutation which merged the spike to the sphere of
Citadel’s
fabulous shell. As he worked, the joint lit up, the spike and the area around it looking like a section of the sun with a single needle-sharp ray, but once he was finished with the cast, the spike vanished and once again the sphere was smooth as glass.

Ilbei finished his work with his animals just as Aderbury completed his spell. As he retook his place beside the transmuter, the miner couldn’t help asking, “Where’d yer fancy spear get ta? Ya didn’t muff the job there, did ya, gettin’ in a rush?”

Aderbury grinned. “It’s there. Just collapsed, ready to spring out at the least touch. If we want to throw it, we throw it. But if one of those Hostiles tries to attach itself to our fortress, it will get a nasty surprise right through its heart … or whatever it has that serves as one. We don’t even have to activate that part of the defense. The runes do all the work.”

Ilbei shook his head. “You boys is always lookin’ fer ways ta do less work, I’ll give ya that, but I’ll grant it’s most likely a fine bit a’ defense.”

Aderbury beamed, happy that Ilbei finally recognized the magnificence of the work. In his own way, of course. “The whole thing will be covered with them,” Aderbury said. “Just let one of those bastards come at us. Better to find a frost cactus in your pants than get a bite from that.” He nodded up at the spike, or at least at the glassy smoothness of where it had gone, hoping for one last bit of praise.

Once again, the wrong audience.

“Master Aderbury, sir,” said Ilbei with no segue at all, “I was asked ta inquire as ta whether ya seen that pretty little Ensign Pewter yet. Her people is a’wonderin’ if’n she come through by now. They ain’t seen her at Calico Castle in a fortnight, last I heard, and some folks is fixin’ ta worry some.”

“I haven’t seen her,” Aderbury admitted. “Although I expect her any day. I’ve been expecting her any day for a while now, actually, now that you mention it.” He nodded toward a ragged but tautly raised pavilion fifty paces to their left. “I’ve had the Earth machine for weeks waiting for her to come set it up. Frankly, I hope she gets here pretty soon. We’re going to be ready to go in a month, five weeks at most. Peppercorn is getting pretty antsy to find out if that contraption will work inside her anti-magic chamber.”

“Well, don’t that make it pretty close ta three weeks since they assigned her here?”

Aderbury nodded. “Yes, I believe it does.”

“I don’t reckon things has got so loose as all that in the service since I left forty years back. Not even fer folks what got assignments soft as working under yer particular excellence, Master Aderbury, and no disrespect intended a’ course.”

“Hey, I run a tight ship here,” Aderbury said . He grimaced realizing he’d used the one word he was fighting so hard to prevent in relation to
Citadel
. It seemed ultimately inevitable, but he wasn’t yet ready to give it up.

“Well, I expect she’s perfectly fine with Master Tytamon and all,” Ilbei said, though his voice trailed off at the end of it.

Aderbury nodded, barely, and the absent nature of his expression confirmed he was thinking along the same line as Ilbei. Three weeks was too long.

“Can ya have yer telepath check ma mail fer me?” Ilbei asked. “In Crown. If’n Mistress Kettle ain’t got word fer me that Miss Orli has returned, I’m gonna go look around, if’n, a’course ya got no dire need of my services straight away.”

“Why don’t we send you to Crown and you can get your mail yourself. You can swing by the Castles, Inc. office while you are there and see if Orli checked in with Thad.”

Ilbei’s face grew craggier again as Aderbury once more spoke too familiarly of the baron’s son.

“You are relentless, Ilbei,” said Aderbury, but neither pressed a case beyond just that. “If Lord Thoroughgood hasn’t seen her, then have the teleporters send you back to Calico Castle and you can have your look around.”

Ilbei gave a polite inclination of his head. “I thank ya, sir, but no thank ya on that teleporter thing. I got no need a’ being popped in and out like that. I’m just fine stayin’ popped in at all times when I can help it. Bad enough back and forth from Tinpoa as it was. That was enough of it fer a lifetime if’n ya asked me.”

“Well, if you’re worried about her, that is the fastest way.”

“I am worried, some,” he admitted. “But I can make good time if’n I need. And Tytamon’s hardly the sort ta fret about. I’ll check with yer clerk and have ‘em check with the Crown City post.”

“Have him get in touch with Thad—Lord Thoroughgood while he’s at it then.”

“Yes, sir,” Ilbei said, having known his refusal to teleport would lead to a better solution in the end—one that didn’t involve having himself “vaporized.” He turned to go, but swung back. “I don’t expect you folks have put up a proper tavern amongst any a’ them tents yonder, have ya? I could use a jolt.”

Aderbury laughed and pointed down a short row of tents that were significantly smaller than the big pavilion he used as his command post. “The black one,” he said. “It’s funny how few of these people stay here at night—most go home every day, and come back in the morning—and yet somehow that tent stays busy all the time.”

“As it should, sir, as it should. There’s somethin’ squirrely ‘bout a man what don’t drink. I never trust ‘em. It’s like they got somethin’ ta hide.”

Aderbury grinned. “Well, I’ll come have one with you when I’m done setting the rest of these spines. Can’t have the best digger on Prosperion thinking I’m hiding things.”

“Bring yer purse,” Ilbei said. “I expect I’ll be runnin’ short right about the time ya arrive.”

Aderbury laughed. “Of course.”

Chapter 43

O
rli awoke in a bed so soft she thought for a moment she must be falling. Or perhaps even dead, peacefully at rest, her departure from the world marked by the absolute dissolution of all discomfort. Nothing had ever been so plush in all her life. Ever. As fabulously soft as the enchanted mattresses were in the barracks at Little Earth and in the guest rooms of Calico Castle, nothing had prepared her in any way for the sumptuous luxury of the massive bed she found herself in this time.

She slowly became aware of it as sleep slipped off her like a satin sheet pouring itself over the edge of a mattress and pooling on the floor. She blinked slowly from some unremembered dream and found herself staring up into the coral-pink velvet of an enormous canopy. For the briefest moments, she panicked, thinking she might somehow still be a prisoner, but the sight of so much tasteful embroidery and all that pink expanse, the delicate extravagance above her, not to mention the sweet perfume of the rose petals strewn about the bed with her, assured her that she was not. She pushed the panic back down into the recesses of denied memories for now and stared up at the gold thread that traced lace-like patterns in the rich velvet. The patterns matched the white lace of the curtains hanging on all sides, the left and right of which were drawn back, gathered at the center and tied in graceful arcs to black bedposts of carved ebony.

Lifting her head from the downy depths of a satin-cased pillow, she looked around, realizing as she did, that this bed stood very high. She was at least three and a half feet off the floor. Her eyes made a quick circuit of the room: ornately carved dressers, closets, a small writing desk, bedside tables … all of it matching ebony, all inlaid with pink coral. Silver candlesticks sat atop a pink coral mantle carved with butterflies and sea horses, which surmounted a large fireplace done in, of course, pink marble to match the pink coral theme. The room was very large, and the opulence of it made Orli think that she must be a guest of the Queen.

She let her head fall back into the pillow, which gave an airy
whoosh
on impact, a sigh of luxury. She’d known Her Majesty would send help eventually. She allowed herself to breathe in deeply, trying to make the reality of her rescue sink in all the way. She could smell food. Ham and bacon and venison sausages and, most of all, the aroma of the rich and almost frighteningly potent coffee the Prosperions called Goblin Tea. It filled the air like a blanket of safety and carried with it a sense of peace and serenity. It was not an aroma that could be found in times of strife or misery. It was simply too marvelous.

She closed her eyes and soaked it in, the food, the coffee, the security. She slowly became aware of the fact that her whole body ached, though there was no part of it that could count as pain. Somehow the aches were kept at a distance, though her head didn’t feel like she’d been drugged. Quite the opposite in that, for she found her memory worked fine, as frightening thoughts of recent days threatened to fill her mind and decimate moment’s peace she’d found. But she fought them off, forced them away and let herself simply savor the warm embrace of the bed. Sleep came back again.

She was drinking coffee with Altin on a beach. The beach on the Gulf of Dae. He’d brought a small table and some chairs, all of it in a shrink box, a whole complete picnic just popping up from a tiny cube he’d placed on the sand. They sat and enjoyed the coffee and the sea breeze. The two scents mixed perfectly as she stared out over the waves into the vast blue-gray expanse.

Something swam far out beyond the waves. Something black against the blue, a line at first, then a mound of it. A whale, she thought. It must be a whale. This excited her, and she rose from her seat and walked out ankle-deep into the foam and the tug of retreating waves.

The mound grew larger and darker. It rose higher out of the waves until soon it was very large and hovering above. No mound now, but a great black sphere, limned with a pinkish glow like a planetary atmosphere. It grew until it blocked out the sky.

Suddenly she was very far away. The ocean was gone. Altin was gone. Everything gone. There was only the enormous black sphere. Blacker than any kind of darkness she knew. A great gaping hole in a starless sky, but yet no hole. Clearly mass. Enormous mass. And it was just her, alone. In space. And she knew, in the way of dreams, that she was in space, yet there were no stars. No galaxies. Just her. And the blackness that was more.

She saw a river of lava. Except, she didn’t see it. She thought she saw it. But didn’t. It was the memory of having seen it, even though the event had not taken place. It flowed as anger flows. Hot and swollen. Orli felt the anger of it. It was anger but not her own anger. The thing was angry. The black thing.

Terror poked like a child’s fingers at the edges of consciousness. She knew she should be afraid. That seemed reasonable. But she wasn’t.

Willows wept over a pond. The dangling sweep of their drooping limbs brushed the surface of it, stirring the mirrored calm that seemed a collection of tears. Dandelion seeds blew across the water, little white parachutists, some dragging the lone point of their seeds like tiny toes across the water in a silent ballet. A sad ballet. Doomed. They blew in a whirling cloud across the pond and toward the farthest bank. Where the lava was. The lava ate them in its fire and they were gone.

The tree and the pond were gone.

There was only the fire. And rage.

Orli woke up, startled by the intensity of the dream. The anger still so near that her heart raced. Her hands were trembling when she thought to look.

She glanced around the room. Gauging by the light filtering through the gauzy curtains on the window to her right, she hadn’t slept long. The aromas of coffee and cooking meats still wafted warmly from beneath the door.

She threw the wealth of covers back, a full foot of them, layers of satin, fine-spun wool and a puffy, quilted coverlet that had to be worth more than a year’s income for the average Prosperion. She swung her legs out of bed, took a moment to notice the finery she’d been sleeping in. More satin, a gown falling to her ankles, cool and nearly liquid, delicately embroidered at the hem. Someone had spared no expense.

She padded barefoot across the room and opened the door.

A chambermaid sat on a long couch reading from a newspaper, a massive parchment thing that crinkled loudly with each turned page. Orli could not help but notice the headline:
Tytamon the Ancient Killed by Orcs.
The memory struck her, and she must have gasped because the woman looked up. She’d convinced herself it wasn’t true.