Galactic Mage 4: Alien Arrivals (2 page)

Djoveeve noticed Pernie’s distraction as it began to glaze her eyes. She watched as Pernie’s thoughts turned inward. She smiled patiently and looked up to her elven companions. “She is still very young.”

“No younger than you were when you arrived,” said Seawind. “And she is far more accomplished than you were at that age, far more and in many ways. Yours was better magic, surely, but you had nothing on her with a knife.”

Djoveeve nodded at that. There was no question about Pernie on that account. She’d heard the stories of the young girl’s ferocity during an orc invasion on Calico Castle. The child possessed every instinct of a killer, and she had the courage of all the greatest predators. She would make a powerful
Sava’an’Lansom
for the High Seat.

Pernie heard them talking about her. She knew grown-ups well enough to recognize when they were trying to talk over her head. She made a face, mostly to herself, and pulled another stick of fish out of the pouch.

Djoveeve considered her for a bit longer, then returned to the table that was a boulder. She drew in a long breath, looking up at the ceiling not far above. Pernie followed her gaze, tilting her head as she regarded the flecks of pyrite sparkling in the dark brown stone like stars of pale gold. “Is that gold?” she asked, pointing with a half-eaten bit of fish.

“No, child. But it does look that way.”

“I said stop calling me
child
. I’m nine years old. I’ll be ten at the end of summer.”

“But you are a child. That’s what being nine is.”

“I’ve fought orcs, you know. I’ve even killed some before. Just like grown-ups do.”

“Yes. That is why you are here.”

“Orcs?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“I hate orcs.”

“Everyone does.”

That made her think. Somehow she expected more arguments from them. “Elves aren’t afraid of orcs,” Pernie pointed out, looking to the elves sitting silently nearby. “So why should they hate them?”

“Are you afraid of them?”

Pernie had to think about that. She didn’t want to be afraid of them, but they were very scary. They had huge long teeth, and their lower jaws stuck forward in terrible ways. Their skin was green, greener than the pale shades of the elves, green like the leaves of oak trees and the needles of pines. Some were lighter hues, like pond scum. She’d seen one that might have been the color of earwax once, had it not had just that touch of green. Pernie thought they were green in a way that seemed an insult to forests, grass, and even weeds. They were mean and they ate people when they could. They’d almost eaten her once. And it was true that she had killed a few in the raid on Calico Castle, but she’d been terrified. She didn’t want to admit that she was afraid. Not to this old woman with the pink-rimmed eyes and the two pale green elves sitting there.

“No,” she said. “I’m not afraid.”

“Hmmm,” hummed Djoveeve. “We shall see about that.” She turned to Seawind, who had already gotten up. He left the chamber, his movements fluid and graceful. He wore a suit of scale mail armor that appeared to be made of leaves, silent leaves that rippled as if stirred by the wind as he walked away.

He left through a passage whose entrance was at such an angle that Pernie hadn’t known it was there. She watched him vanish through it as if he’d simply walked into the stone. She went over to it, peered around it as if looking around a dressing screen. Seawind was just rounding a bend in a narrow tunnel leading away.

She turned back to Djoveeve with her lips twitching from side to side. “Where are we?”

“You are on
Fel’an’Ital
. It is one of many islands in the elven lands of String. In the common tongue of your homeland, Kurr,
Fel’an’Ital
means ‘Island of Hunters.’”

“What kind of hunters? I’m a hunter. I hunt all the time.” She reached down to her waist, feeling for the homemade sling that was usually wound around her as a belt. “You took my sling,” she accused. “Give it back.”

“We took your necklace as well.”

Pernie reached up to her throat and felt for the small pickaxe amulet that had hung there by a leather thong. “That’s mine too!” she snapped. “You give it back. That was a present from Master Spadebreaker. It has magic in it, and Master Altin says I can keep it. You give it to me right now.”

“You can have it back when you are able to use it properly.”

“I can use it just fine.” She tried to intimidate Djoveeve with crossed arms and an icy glare, but the old woman’s face was as immutable as the stone all around.

Seawind came back into the room, leading a prisoner in chains. Pernie let out a cry and scrambled back so suddenly she struck the wall, her eyes wide with fright. The prisoner was an orc.

“So you
are
afraid,” said Djoveeve, though there was no condemnation in her voice. “I thought as much.”

Pernie stood stiffly, as if pinned to the wall.

“You’ll have your magic weapon back when you can face this creature without the fear that fills you now. Not sooner.”

Pernie barely heard the words. She could only gape at the orc. The fact that it was battered and worn looking made no difference to her. It was an orc. The most horrible of all creatures. Manlike. Men who ate men. She shuddered, a whole-bodied tremor from head to toe.

The orc looked up at her, saw her through glassy eyes. She was sure she saw hatred there. Or at least that’s what she convinced herself was there. In truth the orc made no movements, no aggressive acts. No expression came upon its broad green face at all. Another observer might have reckoned the orc looked tired, worn out. Pernie, however, did not, and she remained where she was, teetering on the brink of flight. To where, she had no idea.

“Take the pet away,” Djoveeve said. “You’ve seen what you needed to see.” Seawind and the other elf, Shadesbreath, who served as the Royal Assassin to the Queen of Kurr, exchanged glances once more before Seawind led the orc out of the room again.

Pernie was a few moments before she calmed herself.

“You must learn to face your fear,” the old woman said, rising and coming once more to stand before Pernie. “The Sava’an’Lansom cannot be afraid of an orc, not even an orc with magic. I will teach you not to fear them. When you are ready, you will face that one and defeat it on your own.”

Pernie’s eyes went wide with fright again. She tried to summon up her courage, tried to remind herself how it felt to jam her tiny knife into the firm green flesh, but all she knew was fear. She’d been afraid the whole time she fought the orcs last time. It was as if the person who’d been in those fights hadn’t been her, the frightened her who lived behind her eyes and who had looked out and watched as someone else operated her hands and feet that day. It was someone else who had stabbed and stabbed and stabbed. When it was done, when the screaming and bleeding was over, the inside Pernie had come back out, bringing the fear with her.

Djoveeve seemed to see all of that. It was as if the old woman looked right in through Pernie’s blue-eyed windows and saw it too, even felt it. Her expression softened, and she got down on her knees. She leaned back, resting on her heels, and smiled. “You won’t fear them when you are through. I promise. That is the gift of the Sava’an’Lansom. You will see. You will hunt without fear. Fight without fear. You will decide the fate of humans, elves, and orcs. This I promise.”

The two elves stood and said it too. “This I promise,” each of them repeated in turn.

What remained of fright was washed away by the oddity of what she’d just seen. They both looked so severe.

Pernie’s lips twitched from side to side again as she contemplated all of it. She looked back to Djoveeve, who remained seated on her heels. “So what does
seven land some
mean?”

“
Sah-vah ahn lan-sohm
,” Djoveeve replied, pronouncing the elven words phonetically. “It means ‘Assassin of the Vale.’”

Pernie looked suddenly to the Royal Assassin standing there beside Seawind. Shadesbreath, the bodyguard of the Queen of Kurr. That was the only assassin she’d ever seen. The only one she’d ever heard about.

“You mean …,” she began, sorting it out and unable to help a certain flicker of giddiness, eagerness shaping itself from the possibilities. “You mean, I get to be like him?”

Djoveeve nodded. “If you are up to it. Which we will have to see.”

Pernie frowned down at her at that. “I can do anything I want to if I want,” she said. “Kettle told me so a thousand thousand times.”

“As I said, we shall see.”

Pernie was sure she saw Shadesbreath smile before he turned away.

Chapter 2

P
ernie stood amongst twenty elves beneath a jungle canopy that spread high above her and seemed as if it must never end. A warm, sweet-smelling humidity hung heavily in the air, filled with the calls and cries of birds and creatures for which Pernie had no mental imagery. Of the elves, Seawind was the only one among them that she recognized. They were all male, not a single female in the lot, not even Djoveeve, who Pernie hadn’t seen in at least a day. With her absence came the absence of anything resembling a kind look or sympathetic eye. There were only stern stares and a smattering of derisive smirks.

“So, young Sava,” Seawind began, striding toward her as he spoke. “Today is your first hunt. Today we will see what you are made of.”

Pernie looked to the slender black-shafted spear he carried, then glanced around at the rest of the group as well. Each elf held a spear just like the one Seawind had.

“Where’s mine?” she asked, reaching out for his somewhat hopefully.

He pulled it out of reach, shaking his head as he spoke. “You’ve got no need for one of these just yet, Sava. It will be enough if you can keep up with the rest of the hunt.”

Pernie glowered at him and looked back at the gathered elves again. One of them, a bit leaner of frame and smoother of skin than the rest, leaned forward and regarded her dubiously. “Look at her, she’s hardly even a runt,” he said. “Skinny as a reed. She has no chance of running with us, and we all see it. She may be a human, but I see no point in getting her killed. Her people will complain and use it to begin the wars again.”

“She will be fine. And I believe the humans have had enough war for now, friend Sandew. Their lands are still damp with the blood of the dead, as is the ink, still wet upon their treaties.”

“Well, I won’t die to save her. She is your responsibility, Seawind, not ours.”

Seawind inclined his head slightly, a gentle nod in acknowledgment.

“Let’s be off,” said an elf standing beside Sandew.

In the time it took Pernie to turn her gaze from him toward Seawind, the rest of them were gone. Only the subsiding movements of a few broad leaves and low branches marked where they had disappeared into the jungle. She couldn’t hear them running at all.

“Good luck,” Seawind said. “Keep up as best you can. Now run!” He ran off after the rest, gone so fast she had no time to call out that he might wait and tell her where to go. He moved like a deer, darting away in an instant, and in moments he and his green-leaf armor were gone after the others. Vanished into the mass of greenery.

Pernie stared after him, trying to make sense of what she saw: the crisscrossing tree trunks, the dangling vines, the upthrust fronds and brambles and shovel-shaped leaves of so many unfamiliar plant varieties. She’d spent her entire childhood roaming freely in a forest that was just as large as this, she was sure, but despite all that time and experience, nothing in Great Forest had prepared her for this. The whole jungle seemed a great bramble of entangled everything.

But still, the elves had run right off through its density, and they were all bigger than she. If they could, she could. And so, off she went, running right after them.

She sprinted through the section of jungle Seawind had vanished into, slapping aside the leaves and leaping through the dense patches of dewy ferns. She fought off the tangling vines as she ducked and darted under and around great limbs and tree trunks completely hidden beneath blankets of ivy. She leapt over puddles that splashed warm water when she landed short on the far sides. She wove her way around large clumps of thorny bushes, and had to slow and scoot sideways through a thick patch of odd bulbous things that sprouted long, narrow leaves shaped like sword blades and which were just as sharp. By the time she came out the other side, she was crisscrossed with red lines of blood on her face, neck, legs, and arms.

But still she ran. She ran as fast as she could. She startled creatures large and small as she ran. Brightly colored birds squawked and flapped noisily out from hiding places near her head, and a small group of brown-and-orange-striped foxes went scooting for cover as she plunged through a clearing suddenly. At the far end of it, a dozen huge black birds, crows with reptilian heads, flew up like slicks of tar as she ran at them, the lot of them rising together from the half-eaten and rotting carcass of something very large and, by its stench, long dead.

These startled her and put a fresh burst of speed into her wild, careening pursuit of the hunting elves. She continued to crash into the jungle depths after them, her breathing growing louder as she leapt and scrambled through vegetation that was completely alien to her, not only unlike any she’d ever seen but unlike any she’d ever imagined. Some of them made noise. Others grabbed for her or bit at her or threw up strange clouds of spores, which she knew well enough to avoid. She saw plants fighting with one another. She saw plants fighting with animals. She even saw one plant eating some sort of wild pig, the stout body of the animal half-swallowed as if by a python, wrapped up in a roll of wide yellow leaves like a cigar. She paused long enough to watch the pig until it stopped thrashing. She shuddered and ran on.