The Galactic Mage (41 page)

“Tell him I can do it now,” he said, hoping he still had time to save anyone from being shot. “Although your lamps may flicker once again, I will not put them out.” He realized that their shield was somehow connected to their lamps, and perhaps much of their other “technology” too, and Altin understood what he had done. He’d simply pushed too hard. Their shield was as brittle as an egg shell and had to be treated as such. But he could do it now. “Tell him,” he urged again.

Orli repeated his message, adding a few words of her own. Roberto seemed once more to have to back her up. Eventually the captain gave in.

“Do it,” Orli said at length. “But you better do it quick. I’m not sure the captain’s up for a whole lot more.”

“I will. I promise it will be all right this time.”

She smiled her winsome smile, and once more he began to chant. This time he cast the spell slowly, poking the mana into their shield with the care one saves for threading a needle or petting a hatchling chick. And finally it was done.

He came out of the spell and, as expected, saw that the lights were coming on. “Sorry about your lamps,” he said. “There’s nothing for that I’m afraid.”

Orli told her shipmates that Altin’s spell was done. He watched as the two of them looked about the room, as if searching for some evidence that the magic was in place. Roberto, after a few moments like that, said something to Orli in a clearly questioning tone.

“He wants to know if we have to do anything to make it work.”

“No. There’s nothing. It simply will. I can’t promise it won’t dim your lamps every time. But they should come back on as they have these last two times. You should know that your whole ship is going to have moved to another place. The shift might be disorienting if you’re not ready for it, as your ships will be blinking out of the way each time an orb sends one of its battering rams. It’s an unsettling spell at first. It took me some time getting used to it when I began using it back at home. But you will grow accustomed to it too. Everyone does.”

She smiled up at him, her face so beautiful and pure. He was so glad he’d finally made the spell work. He could not have endured failing her.

She turned in response to a tone coming from her seeing mirror and began chatting with a face that appeared within its shiny surface. Watching her using that device certainly made it seem as if there was magic taking place, a kind of sight merged with telepathy. It was an interesting combination, and the image was remarkably crisp and clear. He wished his scrying basin could be used to summon sound. From the half of the conversation he could make out, it was obvious that the other ship was eager to find out if Altin’s spell was going to work.

The captain said something that was little more than a snarl as he stepped over and had a few words with the man on the other side of Orli’s looking glass.

Finally Orli turned back to Altin, saying, “The other ships are ready for you to come.”

“Tell them about the targets on the floor,” he warned. “I don’t want any more accidents.” He looked sideways at the captain and added, “Or any more red lights in the chest.”

She nodded, her face an oasis in the black desert of this eternal night. “I did.”

“Tell them again, just to be sure.”

She stepped up to him and kissed him on the mouth. He nearly swooned. By all the gods, she was an assertive thing. “I’ll tell them,” she said, laughing as he blinked his vision back. “Now go.”

He smirked, and let the feel of her lips radiate across the landscape of his body like the warmth of the sun rising over a dew-cooled hill. Though tired, haggard and hungry, he had enough strength now to enchant a thousand ships.

He wanted to say something appropriate back, something a hero from Prosperion’s epic myths would say at such a time, but she silenced him with a finger on his mouth. “Just go. And hurry back.” He smiled again, glad that she had saved him from appearing inarticulate.

Still a little dizzy from her kiss, he closed his eyes and began to chant. He had a lot of work to do.

Chapter
42

B
y the time Altin had enchanted the last of the four ships, the strength borrowed from Orli’s kiss was almost entirely gone. He left the bridge of the final ship to a host of grateful, if perhaps slightly skeptical, smiles. The captains of the other vessels were far more congenial than Orli’s captain was, and all in all, the experience was a pleasant one. Orli’s people were a colorful bunch, not only in their many shades of skin, but in their love of laughter too. He found that even though he could not understand any of them, most of the people that he met were fast to smile and quick to laugh. They all seemed ready to want to like him and to clap him on the back, and, in truth, he was happy to meet them as well. However, once he was back in his tower, all of the energy simply drained from him and he collapsed onto his bed.

He needed sleep so desperately that he could hardly think anymore. His head lolled to the side, cradled in the soft embrace of his pillow, and he saw the empty space where his food crate normally sat. His stomach growled as if reminding him that the crate should be sitting there and that he hadn’t eaten in what felt like months. He wondered if Kettle had had a chance to refill it yet—assuming she even would, given how mad she was at him. He looked over to the bread sitting on his table and gave a grunt; it was likely as hard as stone. He didn’t have the energy to get back up anyway, though perhaps he had enough for one more cast. He could retrieve the crate and set it down right here, right within his reach. He was so hungry.

With enormous effort he swung his legs around and sat up with his feet upon the floor. He struggled with his vision, blurred as it was, and had to blink several times just to bring some liquidity to the dryness that gave his sight a haze. A long rumble traced its way through the maze of innards beneath his ribs. He took a breath and forced himself to clarity.

Fighting for focus, he began the cast that would bring the crate back from Calico Castle with something in it for him to eat. He closed his eyes and carefully sounded the measured cadences that underlay chant, and after slightly more time than it normally took, his crate finally arrived. But it was too late for Altin, the spell sapped the last of his strength and he fell back into the bed, unable to rise again. Breakfast would have to wait until he slept. He just hoped the Hostiles would not attack before he had time to eat. He didn’t think he could cast again without fuel.

But there would be no such luck, for when he awoke a few hours later, he found that hunger was the least of his concerns. A thin rain of dust was falling down from the ceiling and most of his books had just crashed noisily to the floor, and those that did not hit the floor, landed on his head.

He shook the fatigue from his mind and mounted the stairs at a run. When he reached the battlements, he saw that his tower was spinning wildly, giving him a nauseating view of the Earth fleet as it wobbled in and out of sight while the tower cartwheeled through the night—he’d been hit, and he hadn’t reset the stasis element of his Polar’s shield.

He spoke the word that stopped the spin and quickly looked about trying to assess his circumstance. His mouth fell open as he looked out into the sky. Orbs swarmed everywhere, and Altin couldn’t even begin to count just how many there were darting about like a cloud of bats dipping insects from the surface of a pond. There had to be at least five hundred, probably more. And they were attacking the ships just as Altin had feared they would, in ordered formations of eight to ten, sending organized waves, patient enough to do their work right this time, and clearly with enough numbers in reserve to keep up the attacks until they finally did. Apparently his Combat Hop was working well enough though, for he could see that the ships he’d enchanted were indeed blinking in and out of sight, a flashing play of light reflecting off the long bright ships as they appeared and reappeared randomly amongst a crisscross of red-light beams and the occasional white flash of an exploding pellet bomb. He was glad of that. But he knew from experience that it only took one lucky shot—or one unlucky Combat Hop—and the light play would become a fireball instead. He needed to help them out. And most of all, he needed to get to Orli’s ship.

He realized immediately, however, that he had troubles of his own, and it seemed that the orbs might be aware of who it was that had introduced this magical element into the Earth fleet’s options for defense. Or else they knew where their real problems actually lay. Two groups of ten orbs each were hovering on either side of his tower, but not moving yet. Perhaps they had paused, thinking their last shot had done the trick, but the righting of the tower proved them wrong and so they came for yet another pass.

They darted in together at their incredible rate of speed, and in unison twenty giant battering rams were hurtling on their way, staggered in distance so as to arrive not quite all at once. Altin watched them streaking in, thinking that avoiding them would be like dodging hailstones the size of cottages. Gritting his teeth, he braced for a concussive blow, then thought to release the stasis spell again “just in case,” hoping it would mitigate the damage if the Hostiles did get another lucky strike.

Combat Hop took him out of range, however, and all twenty missiles hurtled out of sight. Altin rushed to get a teleport-merge started, and a moment later two of the orbs were spinning broken into the night. He managed to get a second pair before all of the orbs had recaptured their weapons and regrouped for another pass. He got a third pair as they came rushing towards him, their spherical masses bursting open just before his tower blinked safely away at the approach of the hurtling granite rams. He managed to finished off two more pairs as the orbs streaked silently across his field of view. And he got another as those that remained turned and tried to get away, teleporting up to them and capturing them in his crushing magical grip before they could get out of range.

“Hah, hah,” he laughed. “Run, cowards. A teleporter is here. And I’m not afraid to break the rules!”

His jubilation was brief, however, as one of the Earth ships was suddenly enveloped in a brilliant ball of explosive yellow light. A moment later it broke in two, its halves drifting apart, spurting flames and clouds of debris from many places along its battered hull. Altin could see human bodies amongst the wreckage being jettisoned from openings in the decimated ship, and his heart nearly fell from its place inside his chest.

“Orli!” he cried, leaning so far forward in his attempt to see that he nearly tumbled over the wall. In a panic, he suddenly realized that with all the Combat-Hopping about, he could no longer tell which ship was which. They all looked so infernally the same. He had no idea if that had been Orli’s ship.

He threw himself on the floor near his scrying basin and muttered into it, willing Orli’s face to come into its view. It did not. At first, all the world went dark as Altin felt himself begin to curl up and die.

But then he realized that Combat Hop had made her ship move. She was no longer where she was supposed to be. Scrying was like teleporting, you had to know precisely where you wanted the spell to appear or it could not do its work. Orli was no longer exactly where he thought.

“Tidalwrath’s fits,” he cursed, scanning the sky in hopes of some miracle that would reveal which ship was hers.

But he had his new divining spell. He cursed again for having wasted precious seconds having not thought of it before.
Stupid mage, gather your wits.

With a cherished image of her held in his mind, he began the chant that cast to the tune of “My Cat’s Paw.” He just wanted to know where she was. He prayed to all nine gods as he began, swearing reverence to them forever if only she were still alive. A moment later he knew that in fact she was.

Not only could he sense that she was still alive and on her ship, he could also feel the depths of her unprecedented fear. He knew in that instant that she was not so much the warrior after all. There was not one drop of battle lust coursing through her veins, not one iota of her was thirsting for a kill. The only thing keeping her focused on the task at hand was her will to live. She fought on with stubbornness alone, stubbornness and the desire to save her friends. And the Hostiles were trying to take that away from her. To take her away from him.

He felt the rage come back to him again; the old rage; the familiar one; the burning, primal hatred that he’d felt down in the canyon where Pernie had been taken by the orcs; and sadly, the same one that had filled him on that day his sister died. He felt it pour into him like the waves of demons summoned upon the isle of Duador, a seething mass of acidic hate that could now be channeled at his foe. It did not blind him this time, not as it had when he was young. At least not quite. The sound of “menace” bounced around inside him, a thin strand of consciousness that could just keep him from losing touch. He would not lose sight of Orli, no matter what he did. His magic would not hurt the ones he loved; he was never doing that again, but he could use his anger to break some rules.

Letting the divination go, he strode over to the wooden bowl behind him and took up the Liquefying Stone. Gripping it in his fist, he swung back to look into the scene raging above. It was time for the coconuts to die.

The combined power of Altin’s rage and the Liquefying Stone transformed what had started out as merged pairs of Hostiles into merged dozens, then fifteens, then twenties. Range became less of an issue too. He teleported his tower defensively out in front of the struggling knot of ships. He floated before them all and defied the entire host of orbs to come at him alone. Many of them did.

For every wave of eight they sent at a lumbering ship from Earth, they sent a wave of twenty, and then forty, as they realized that Altin was the most imposing force. But Altin did not care. Huge lumps of merged Hostile orbs were now tumbling away from the battle like disfigured mountains, melted volcanoes murdered and trailing long lines of glowing lava goo. The entire scene seemed a tiger’s pelt for all the streaks of orange and black striping across the stars. And still Altin raged. Not even bothering to chant, not needing to. Raw magic, happening with just a thought.

His tower was struck twice in the randomness of Hostile luck, made more likely by the ever-increasing size of the formations the Hostiles were sending at him now. But still he did not care. Better him than her. “Send them all,” he screamed as the fury and the lust for killing boiled inside his veins. On a surge of emotion twenty-four Hostiles became a massive broken mass.

Every time an Earth ship blew apart, Altin sung his Cat’s Paw song, feeling Orli with his mind and heart, just to know that she was still alive. As long as she was there, he could continue in the fight. He could not allow himself to think of any other fate.

“Send them to me. Send them all,” he screamed again as he merged three waves of thirty into one unfathomably large and decimated lump, ninety gone in a single “shot.” He had gone to a place beyond bloodlust. He had never felt so alive, so focused on any singular goal in all his life. Save her. Save her at any cost. He was exultant in his love and in his rage. He could feel his mythothalamus nearly glowing with the heat. This was power.

He sent out a telepathic call daring anything that might hear it to come and take him on. There were at least three hundred of the orbs still racing through the night. And it seemed as if they heard him, for suddenly the attacks on the Earth ships came abruptly to a halt.

Altin felt the resonance of his telepathic taunt reverberate in his mind like a well struck drum. He grinned as he saw the remainder of the orbs begin to form into several groups from ten to thirty each. He laughed at them, and spat out into the air over the parapet. “Come on,” he shouted on telepathic waves as his teeth ground like a miller’s stone.

He clutched the Liquefying Stone so tightly that it broke the skin, slicking the stone with the spill of blood, but he did not feel a thing. He grabbed an ocean’s worth of mana into his head and cast it out like a net over the nearest cluster of the orbs, defying with savage disregard the distance “required” by his spell as he drew the net tight around them, squeezing them all into a wad as he collapsed it and ruptured the lot of them with a cosmic pop that sent a measure-long gout of ichor spewing across the darkness like a burst boil. He cackled with maniacal delight and plunged back into the mana to gather up another net to cast.

The orbs sent their formations at him from every side, groups coming from everywhere, and coming wave after wave after wave. His tower blinked in and out of sight, dodging battering rams with instantaneous speed, though from time to time one of them struck it a glancing blow. He’d left the stasis spell off, and he no longer cared if the spinning made it impossible to see. He saw within the mana now, and he was a creature of the Liquefying Stone. He crushed the orbs as they soared past; it was like grasping grapes and making wine in magical fists. They died in an endless spray of orange, spitting their juices into the night time and again, yet still coming, undaunted by the scattered husks of their broken fellows spinning away with each successive pass. They were undeterred, no matter how many Altin merged. On and on they came. And Altin crushed them as fast as he could.

It seemed as if he might actually destroy them all too, so long as his shield held out, but then, just as he was feeling certain that he would, just as the last three waves of them came at him from top and bottom and side, just as they came in what was going to be their final pass, they got their lucky shot—and actually, they got three.

Staggering their attacks just enough to have weapons incoming in perfect increments of space and time, three of the huge battering rams slammed brutally into Altin’s Polar shield. Miraculously, the shield itself held up, but Altin’s tower could not. The impact shook the ancient stone so hard it knocked loose the tower’s entire outer wall. The battlements collapsed, falling outward and crashing to the ground, bringing Altin with them, tumbling down amidst a jumble of giant blocks of stone. He had only the vaguest sense of falling before he hit the ground, and then, with a hazy image of Orli’s face and crushing sense of regret, the light that was in them slowly left his eyes.