Galactic Mage 4: Alien Arrivals (6 page)
She paused near the end of the limb, at the farthest portion that would still support her weight, and realized there were still at least three spans’ distance between her and the vine. She looked up into the leaves where the vine disappeared. She looked down to the jungle far, far below. She hoped the vine was secure up there somewhere, then backed up, all the way back to the trunk, then sprinted forward again, once more bouncing on the limb and then hurling herself toward the vine.
She was in free fall for what felt like forever. She heard the vine tearing through the canopy above her as she fell, snapping smaller branches and stripping away leaves with a particular hiss before they began to flutter down after her. Beneath her, the bristly mass of a low-growing clump of spiny palm trees seemed to rise up at her like a cluster of spears. She gripped the vine tightly and gritted her teeth. If the spider-apes could do it, she could.
Free fall ended so abruptly that, despite her firm grip, she still slid half the length of her body down the vine. The thin stems of the young leaves that grew from the vine, and the coarse fibers of its outer bark, gave way as she slid. But she clutched it with all her might, clamping down with hands and feet. The bark gave way to firmer, moister stuff beneath, and with some small amount of friction burn, she was able to break her fall.
She stopped just short of the leafy spears beneath her, and her feet grazed more than a few as she swung across the jungle floor with only three spans to spare. But three spans above it she was, and that was plenty. She swooped over it all in a rush of air, the wind blowing back her hair and peals of purest joy blowing out across her lips.
The arc of her swing carried her right back up into the canopy again, just as it had the spider-apes, and she was still squealing rapturously as the massive python caught her by the wrist.
At first she had no idea it had happened; it was all part of her thought to reach out to grab the nearest branch. But soon the green-and-yellow tendril of the serpent was winding down her arm like a corkscrew. She tried to yank herself free, but it was obvious that she had nowhere near the strength. In a matter of moments the snake had yanked her loose from her vine and hauled her up into its coils, where it began to squeeze.
Chapter 5
O
rli peered out at the planet far below, her hands resting on the stone windowsill of Calico Castle’s tall central tower—now far from its usual place upon Prosperion—as she leaned forward to take in the spectacle. The planet, called simply R3, was a massive, rocky world some twelve times larger than Earth. It was in the system named for its sun, Fruitfall, which was the designation Orli had given it when she’d first seen it—and a name that had been officially pulled into the networks back on Earth, making it permanent, to Orli’s private delight.
In orbit around R3 were three moons, two that were approaching the size of Earth’s own moon, and one that was nearly as big as Earth itself. This was the moon that she and Altin were calling Yellow Fire—for now—for this was the moon that they believed once held, and hopefully still held, the heart of Blue Fire’s mate. And it was to confirm that fact that they were there.
Altin was just finishing pulling on his bulky spacesuit as Orli, already suited up, wistfully gazed out upon the grayish, planet-sized moon. It was the first time she’d allowed herself to consider that she might be wrong. What if he wasn’t down there? What if Yellow Fire really was dead? What if they found the chamber deep beneath the dead moon and there was as little life within as there was without? What if?
“Well, are you ready?” Altin asked, turning her around.
“I am,” she replied. “Do you really think there’s a chance for them?”
Altin’s left cheek pushed up under his eye, where uncertainty tugged the corner of his mouth up a bit. “Mine is not the scientific world,” he said diplomatically. “Though in time, I might get to it. Until then, I leave such conjecture to you and yours. I am simply here because I love you. And, of course, because I do hope to help Blue Fire find happiness. So, in that, I am very hopeful that the, well, the flower bulb of his life force, as you once referred to it, is still viable at the least.”
She smiled. Hope was good. Hope was what brought them here. “Well, let’s go to it, then.”
“Do you have your Higgs prism ready, so we don’t have any surprises like last time?” He rubbed his back absently as he recollected how the heavy gravity of the world called Red Fire had caught them both off guard the first time he had teleported them there. It had only been a scant six months since they’d first been there, and the memories of the pain were still fresh.
She smiled, patting a black box clipped to her suit’s utility belt. “Already set. This time we aren’t in such a hurry as before. I had time to calculate the moon’s gravity yesterday while you were still looking for the planet with your scrying spell.” She moved away from the window, stepping over and around a clutter of ancient artifacts and piles of stacked books. She and Altin were in the study of the deceased mage, Tytamon, Altin’s mentor of many years. He’d been murdered just before the great battle with the orcs and demons had broken out, and Altin had not been able to find the will to tidy the chamber up and make the place his own. So it was mostly as the great sorcerer had left it, which made navigating through the jumble of old furniture and magical antiquities treacherous—who knew what priceless item she might break, or worse, what awful curse or magic trap she might unleash?
Carefully, she picked her way to a sturdy table of gray and ancient wood upon which sat a small box of hard plastic, nestled amongst the heaped leather-bound books and baskets filled with a variety of nameless magical ingredients and oddities. The very presence of that box amongst all the ancient things made it stand out as entirely alien.
She opened it and pulled out a black device with a few dials and a small display screen, just like the one clipped to her belt. “I got you your own this time,” she said as she approached. She turned the dials on it to a setting Altin recognized as the symbol for the numeral “one” in the writing style of Earth. “When we get down there and you drop the magic dome, tap this button right here.” She pointed to a large and conspicuous button near the bottom of the unit, before clipping the Higgs prism onto his suit’s utility belt and attaching the short length of its nylon tether.
“Roger that,” Altin said, making a face at her as he parroted the words the Earth people used when speaking to one another on their coms.
She smiled up at him, her pretty face tan beneath the glass dome of her helmet, her time on Prosperion giving her color she’d never had while stuck on a spaceship. Her blue eyes sparkled green and red and amber in alternating turns as they reflected the lights blinking on the control panel of his spacesuit. Seeing her made him smile.
“Let me double-check the landing,” he said. “One moment.” He turned and went into the small chamber built into the tower’s western wall—not that there was any real sort of “west” now that the tower was out in space, floating as it was in orbit above R3 and its largest moon. Inside the chamber, normally used as a “clean room” or teleportation chamber, Altin had set a large wooden basin, which was filled nearly three-quarters full with water. This was the method of magical scrying, and into that water Altin had cast a form of seeing magic through which he could now watch the surface of Yellow Fire. He locked the spell in place on a particular patch of the moon, not far from the base of a rather abruptly upthrust mountain range.
He took the time to study the area, noting the conspicuous lack of greenery and the total absence of any sign of life. Or even weather, for that matter. The whole of what he saw made it appear as if the moon was nothing but a great ball of ash.
Nonetheless, there were no apparent dangers lurking near, and so he concluded that it was safe enough to teleport the tower down to the surface, where he and Orli could begin the search for Yellow Fire, or at least, for his hopefully alive-but-dormant heart.
Casting the teleportation spell was a matter of moments. The size of the tower and all its stone, much less all its floors of books and furnishings and its two living occupants, were nothing to him. Altin was a Z-class teleporter, teleportation the strongest school of magic he possessed, the strongest of his seven schools, seven of the eight possible. Such access to the varied magicks of Prosperion was rare, and it was a rare mage indeed who could toss towers about the galaxy so easily as Sir Altin Meade. But he could, and it was through that rare gift that they found themselves there above Yellow Fire and, in the moment after Altin’s glance into the scrying basin, that they found themselves upon the surface of the large gray moon.
“Well, here we are,” he announced as he came out of the teleportation chamber and rejoined Orli amongst the jumble of books and dusty magical things. “Let me know when you are ready for me to drop the Polar Piton’s shield.”
“Well, don’t drop it yet,” she said, looking startled. “You don’t even have your helmet on. And let me check to make sure the teleport didn’t do anything funky to our suits. You people and your damn magic are always messing with our technology.”
He feigned indignation. “
You people
, eh? And here I thought you meant it when you swore all that fealty to Her Majesty on the Crown City walls the day the demons came. Some subject of the kingdom you turned out to be.”
She laughed. “Of course I meant it, but that doesn’t change the fact that your magic tends to scramble computer brains sometimes.”
He nodded, his face serious again. Many a near mishap—and more than a few that weren’t so lucky as to be just that—had occurred when the channeling of magic disrupted the circuitry of the Earth machines. The people of both worlds were still working on trying to figure out why that was, why it only happened sometimes, and how distance and specific schools of magic came into play. There was so much to learn, but there was also hope that some insights would be found soon, as there were teams from both worlds working on that very thing. So much could be gained by both worlds if they found a way of unraveling that mystery. But until then, the mix could be dangerous.
“Put your helmet on,” she ordered with a twinkle in her eyes. She took it off the table where it sat near a low-burning candle. She lifted it up and set it, gently and lovingly, into place. He reached up and fumbled with the latches for a time, which put an exasperated expression upon her face. “God! You’re like a big infant with these things.”
“Hey!” he protested. “Look at these gloves. How can I be expected to perform delicate operations when each of my fingers is as big as a pig’s foot?”
“I’ll give you a pig’s foot,” she said, smiling again. With a few deft movements, she had his helmet locked into place. She made sure the suit’s dorsal unit was secure, then checked the control panel on his chest and the other on his sleeve. “All good,” she said. “Let’s go. And don’t forget to take it down slow. Let the air out of here easy first, or we’ll be picking up Tytamon’s stuff from halfway across the solar system.” She pointed to the heaps of things around them to make her point.
Altin nodded, then closed his eyes. He let his mind slip into the mana, the place of magic, which for Altin was a constant pink mistiness, like a cloud had settled upon all the universe and no wind stirred. Most magicians saw mana differently: as currents, rising tides, waves, and undulating whorls of chaos. But Altin had a ring—he had the stone within the ring, really, hidden underneath—given to him by Blue Fire. It was a piece of herself and a piece of the Father’s Gift, a part of that which had given her life. The ring smoothed out the tempest for Altin, gave him mana that was nearly as instant as his thoughts. He no longer had to speak the words that shaped ideas and formed the constructs of spells as other humans did.
And so, with that quickness afforded by the ring, he plunged into the mana and, with it, into the magic dome he had cast around the tower, the dome known as a Polar Piton’s shield. He reached out with his thoughts and found the thread of magic that wove the dome together, holding in the air they breathed, maintaining the steady temperature, and even sustaining the very gravity that held them both comfortably to the floor. He found the thread, tugged at it gently, and, heeding Orli’s warning, unraveled the invisible protective shell slowly so as not to send all the air beneath the dome blasting through the windows in a rush. He let it leak out through small openings until it was all gone. The air he could manage; the gravity he could not.
He braced himself as he opened his eyes, awaiting the crushing mash of gravity that had smote him when he’d dropped the shield on the planet Red Fire, a great weight that felt as if ten thousand smashing bricks had fallen upon him. But it did not come. Intellectually he’d known it wouldn’t. Orli told him this moon was much smaller than Red Fire was. Smaller than planet Prosperion even, if not by much. But still, the mind and memory do their work, and it was a matter of several moments before the tension left him and his taut muscles could relax.
“I confess to having been nervous there,” he said by way of letting her know that it was done. For without saying so, there was no other evidence that the dome was down.
Orli turned and looked out the window. “It looks kind of like our moon on Earth.”
Altin, having never been there, couldn’t say much to that. “Well, let’s be on with it, shall we?”
Orli picked up a large tool kit and slung the strap over her shoulder. “Yes,” she said, “let’s go.”