Galactic Mage 4: Alien Arrivals (37 page)

She hadn’t tried timing a jump like that before—if the teleport she’d need could be called a jump—but somehow in the calm of that plunge it came to her that the bottom was an option too. So she curled up her knees briefly as she tipped her head way back, looking as far around toward the beach as she could. Her body followed her gaze, and she gently rolled over, at which point she flattened herself out into the fall again, now looking down at the rocks and sand.

They seemed to be hurtling up at her. She twisted and glanced toward the water, looking for a good spot to land. She had to wait the split second until she was in range. She could only teleport fifty spans, and even with the short two-word version of the spell, timing would be everything.

She wished she wasn’t so dizzy now.

The craggy black shapes of the rocks were almost upon her when she barked the two words out. And then she was standing on the sand.

Her little chest rose and fell rapidly as she blinked down at her feet. She’d done it.

She looked around a little wildly, staggering as a wave of vertigo hit, poison and the descent combined. Then she looked back up to where she’d just come from and laughed.

With a quick glance around, seeing that there were no great magic manatees around, she trotted back to the cliff, where she began to climb with a huge, ecstatic smile.

She wanted to do that again.

Chapter 33

O
rli drew her blaster and pointed it where Altin indicated he’d be teleporting the decanter to. He directed her to move down the stairs a ways, so she could have cover—or a head start—if there was need for a getaway. “Don’t shoot it, though,” he said. “Only if I tell you to.”

“Or if something jumps out and eats his head,” Roberto added over the com.

“That’s not funny,” she said.

“Just trying to lighten it up,” Roberto said. “You two are making me nervous with all that readiness. We all know you can’t shoot for crap, Orli, and Altin just said you guys had that thing with you when you got here the first time. Altin put it there himself.”

“Yes, well, it didn’t have life signs then,” Orli said. “So something is happening.”

“Did you look?” Roberto asked. He had, after all, been the one to point out that it was radiating human body temperature. “I mean before you put it there to begin with?”

Altin glanced up at Orli upon hearing that. It was a good point.

“Well, no,” she admitted. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

“Well, that’s all I’m saying. You guys are making me nervous, and whenever you pull a gun, I get this overwhelming desire to run and hide.”

She let herself grin and started to come back up the stairs, but Altin held up his hand. “No, just in case. He’s probably right, but a little caution costs us nothing.”

She nodded, and he began the teleport spell that would bring the decanter up to the battlements. Casting took him barely beyond a second, and then there it was, sitting right before him on the flagstones, a tall, slender thing made of clear crystal, shaped like a pair of palm trees that have wound round and round one another as they grew. The stopper was made to look like leafy palm fronds, sharp spikes of flat green glass that had spun freely with the force of the wind, and it continued to do so even after it arrived, though it was clearly losing momentum now that they were out of the storm.

Orli shifted her grip on the blaster as Altin watched the decanter, prepared to send it right back out if he had to. He glanced up at her, then right back, both of them anxious to see what might appear. If anything.

Slowly the little palm-frond stopper stopped turning, and at last the thing was completely still. Nothing else happened.

“Wasn’t it empty before?” Orli asked. With the movement of her head, she directed his attention to the fact that it was full to the top with a gray-green liquid of some kind.

“It was,” Altin agreed.

“So what is it?”

“I have no idea.”

“You know,” said Roberto, cutting into the tension in the tower’s inner atmosphere, “for being the big-shot wizard on Prosperion, I have to say, you say that a lot. I thought you read books all the time.”

“I do,” he said. “But it seems the more I read, the less I know. It’s like every new book simply reveals the existence of whole new stacks of information that I also haven’t learned.”

“Well, that’s not very useful right now.”

“No, it’s not.”

“So what do we do with it?” Orli asked. “Do you take it to Doctor Leopold and have it divined? Or maybe Ocelot?”

“I’ve had about all of Ocelot I can stand,” Altin said. “But I’ll get it to the doctor when we get time. For now, let’s stick to the mission, and go speak to the Queen. Whatever this is, it has been sitting up here this long, so I’m sure it will be fine waiting a little longer for Doctor Leopold.”

“Maybe you should just put it back out there,” Roberto suggested. “Just in case, you know, like the wind or something in the atmosphere was working like a refrigerator on that thing. Whatever is in there might just need to warm up before it comes shooting out and opens up a whole new can of whoop ass that nobody really needs right now.”

“It was in Tytamon’s collection,” Altin said. “I doubt it harbors some awful monster or unspeakable plague. He was not the sort of man to leave something like that lying about on a windowsill.” To prove his faith in that idea, he went to it and picked it up. It was warm to the touch. “Interesting,” he said. He really wanted to open it, but resisted the temptation.

“Well, then let’s go,” Orli said. “I want to get this discussion with Her Majesty over so we can get Yellow Fire on the road to recovery. Do what you’re going to do with it, and let’s start moving.”

Altin’s jaw worked back and forth for a time, and then he closed his eyes. A moment after, the decanter vanished from his hand with a pop of collapsing air.

“Where’d it go?” Orli asked.

“I put it back where it’s always been. In Tytamon’s window, right where he himself left it last.”

“Good. Now let’s go. With luck, we can be working on Yellow Fire before dinnertime.”

That, however, would not be the case, for upon their arrival in Crown City some half hour later, they found Her Majesty locked in a private audience with officials from the Transportation Guild Services, including the entire TGS council and the master operators of the three currently functional TGS space depots.

“I’m sorry, Sir Altin,” apologized the herald standing between two guards outside Her Majesty’s private audience chamber. “But no one is admitted.”

“He’s the Galactic Mage,” Orli reminded him. “There wouldn’t be any TGS space depots without him.”

“All the same, Miss Pewter, orders are orders.”

“It is fine,” Altin said, mildly annoyed. The two of them took a walk around the Palace while they waited for a chance to speak with the Queen. When finally word came, the sun had already fallen off the edge of the world, and the Palace glowed like a golden mountain for all across the city to see.

Her Majesty met them in her audience chamber, staying there after the last of the TGS officials had gone. She was finishing off a lamb chop as they came in. Altin bowed and Orli curtsied as was proper in the royal presence.

“Yes, yes,” the Queen said, seeing all of that. “So what news have you brought? I’m sure you’re going to get on with begging me about Blue Fire’s mate again, so let’s be on with it so we can be done again.”

“Your Majesty,” said Altin. “You asked that we gather more information. And we have. It’s been several months’ work, and at considerable personal expense, but we now have everything we need. Orli has prepared a document that breaks down all the sciences and principles at work, and she details how they have been verified, including the work of several brilliant men and women of science from planet Earth.”

Orli lifted the tablet she’d been carrying since they’d come. She pulled up the presentation she had put together, beginning with a brief video in which Professor Bryant explained some of the core geologic principles in language that Her Majesty would surely understand. That was the advantage of having a professor along, as making such explanations palatable to various audiences was part of his job.

But before the professor managed to get even a full sentence out, the Queen waved it away. “Turn it off; turn it off. I already know you’ll have the tedious details worked out, assuming it’s possible at all. Spare me all that nonsense. I’m too old to try to learn the wearisome workings of another world in that sort of detail. That’s what young people are for.”

Orli paused the display, but couldn’t quite get her mouth closed all the way, so stunned was she by that. “But Your Majesty,” she started to protest, but the Queen cut her off again.

“You already know what I want. So say it, and you’ll have my permission. I’ve already talked to Director Bahri about this at length. I was on Earth several times last week, if you didn’t know. His opinion on the Blue Fire–Yellow Fire matter remains the same. He wants precautions in case things go wrong, but the rest is up to me. So if I say so, it will be done.”

“Fine,” Orli said. “We’ll wait. I don’t care anymore. It’s already been a year since Altin proposed, so what’s another one? The lives of two living worlds are at stake, and I won’t let them be bargaining chips in the debate over a party on our behalf.”

“It’s on
all
of our behalf, my dear. You have no idea how much people love these sorts of things. The blanks and commoners just adore celebrity, and it will win me a great deal of goodwill. Goodwill that I have lost. You may not be aware of it, but there are many who blame me for the losses we incurred in the war. Many. And I have to give them something to prove that things are returning to the happy, untroubled way they were before it all went wrong.” She forced a smile at the end of it, but there were stress lines around her eyes.

“Well, you could have married off a duke or something,” Orli said. “It didn’t have to be my wedding you kept ransoming.”

“That insolent tongue sounds an ugly thing in such a pretty mouth as yours, and it would be a shame to lose it.”

“Your Majesty,” Altin interjected, knowing well how tenuous the relationship between Orli and the War Queen was. There had simply been too much stress put on it since they’d first met. It was going to take time to heal it back to where it should be, if such was even possible. “There is something you should know. It is about the Liquefying Stone.”

Her Majesty pushed her plate away and leaned back in her regal chair rather abruptly. The disinterested smile that followed was obviously forced. “Well, go on?”

“Your Liquefying Stones, the eight hundred you have locked up in your vaults, the ones you took from
Citadel
for safekeeping, well, it seems they will no longer function if Blue Fire dies.”

That sat her up again. “They what?”

“Yes,” Altin went on. “We’ve seen it firsthand. Orli and I and, of course, the science team that the professor brought with him agree: when they die, the Hostile worlds, or the beings, whatever they may be, when they die, the crystals no longer function for channeling mana. They don’t even draw light the way they did. They become little more than hazy gray rocks. If the heart stone is destroyed, they become brittle as glass.”

“Well, then you certainly won’t be keeping your promise to kill her, should the attempt to revive the other one go bad. In fact, I rescind my permission in that regard.” Her tone made it clear that there was no room for argument with that. She even smiled again. “There, you see, Miss Pewter, just like that, you have your argument back.”

“I don’t want my argument back.” Orli looked at Altin and shook her head, exasperated and seeming to say, “Why in the hell did you tell her that?” with her eyes. “Your Majesty, Blue Fire will die anyway. Somehow she’ll find a way. Surely at some point simple despair will kill her, whether she believes it or not.”

“Perhaps, but for now we have hope that somehow she will revive her spirits, and until such time, we shall just pray to the gods for her quick recovery. Now, if that is all, I have a great deal of things to attend. Your teleporting guildmates at the TGS are a demanding lot and nearly extort gold from me these days. And it appears that Miss Pewter’s people remain all aflutter in fear of what will happen if magicians are allowed on their world. I’ve just come back, and I can tell you, everywhere we went the lights dimmed and the buzzers buzzed and doors opened randomly at times. They actually had the audacity to ask that I take off my armor. I should think more than a few assassins would enjoy such an opportunity.”

“Who on Earth would want to kill you? There’s no reason for it.”

“You are aware of the number of lives that were lost there, are you not?” she said. “Hundreds of thousands. Their previous director paid the price and will rot in jail for life. They’re still fighting over his fate, as many are calling for him to be executed publicly, although they’ve made a big fuss about that not being appropriate. They are a people squeamish about death in that regard. I can hardly believe they considered doing anything but. However, it’s not my world, so if they want to feed him until he dies, so be it. But there are those who feel I should be sitting in that cell with him, and it seems I have many enemies on both worlds these days. I have this from Director Bahri’s own … master-at-arms or whatever they call them. It is a threat that, of course, comes with the territory, so to speak, but it was an astonishing moment of clarity when I found them all bewildered by the fact that I would not take off my armor. What was it, did they suppose, that had me wearing it to begin?”