Hostiles (The Galactic Mage series) Read online

  He pressed the small button on one edge of it as he had seen Orli and Doctor Singh do with this type of device, and as expected, it lit up when he did. He pushed the symbols on it randomly, but none of it made any sense. He could not read the language printed there. The translation spells on his amulet required the person speaking or writing to intend that he might understand. Nothing on this tablet was written for a Prosperion.

  He poked at it anyway, stared into the bright bluish light of its window hoping somehow to find something that looked like the map Doctor Leopold had drawn and that somehow he could then add Orli’s name to it. He knew how to make her name in Earth letters. She’d drawn it in the sand for him once while they were chasing sunsets. And he’d seen it on the monitor in the troop carrier he’d been on with Colonel Pewter the day they’d gone to rescue her from Thadius. If he could find that map, he could bring up the symbols chart on this machine—he’d seen Orli and Doctor Singh do that much as well. But no matter how many times he tried, no matter how many icons he poked, he could not find the map.

  He did find what appeared to be a scrying spell in progress, and there was a woman wearing strange clothing, much different than the familiar uniforms of the fleet, standing in front of a scene depicting Hostiles flying amongst huge shimmering monoliths. The structures were familiar to him, at least in a general sense, for he recognized their type from pictures Orli had shown him before, images of Earth cities made of magnificent mirrored towers with lamps that burned but never flickered and could be made any color of the rainbow.

  These great structures were besieged by Hostiles, and he could see that many of the mirrored monoliths had Hostiles draped over them like sheets of dripping red-hued clay. Several of the structures appeared to have eroded beneath the blanket of whatever the Hostiles did, and it was apparent from the slump and missing angles at the tops of several of the structures that whatever the orbs were doing, it was dissolving the material. Altin could not help but wonder if this is what they had done to the world of Andalia. From the pictures Orli had shown him, on a tablet very much like this one, there had once been structures like these on that world too, or at least close enough that they seemed alike to Altin’s Prosperion-born eyes. When Orli’s people arrived on Andalia, however, there were no such structures to be found. The entire world had been wiped clean. And it appeared that Blue Fire was at it again.

  He had to find Orli fast.

  He pressed the button that shut off the images and the meaningless drone of the woman’s voice. The tablet was no use. Doctor Leopold was only marginally useful, and High Priestess Maul, who had Altin’s lost Liquefying Stone, refused to speak to him. Which meant he needed to find another, better, diviner.

  Magic ranks worked by halves and doubles. If Doctor Leopold was a Y-class diviner, then a Z-class diviner would be twice as powerful. And given that the best the Y-class healer could do was draw a three-hundred-measure-wide circle on a map, Altin definitely needed a Z. With that kind of power, he might be able to narrow that circle down to something more manageable, even if only by half—and he hoped for much better. He needed much better. But there was only one Z on Kurr that Altin knew of: the crazy Ocelot, a wild witch-woman living in the depths of Great Forest, rumored to be over a thousand years old and completely mad. The answers provided by divination were ambiguous at the best of times. He could not imagine how unintelligible hers would be. Assuming he could find her at all. But he resolved to do it anyway. He had no other choice.

  “I’m going to Ocelot,” he announced as he stuffed the tablet back into a fold of his robes. “And you are coming with me.”

  “I’m what?”

  “You’re coming with me to talk to her. You can tell her what you saw. We can bring her out here, and the three of us will figure it out.”

  “I doubt she’ll be of any use. I suspect all this sort of thing is quite beyond her grasp.” He waved a thick-fingered hand toward the window and planet Earth beyond. “Ocelot is barely more than an animal.”

  “When was the last time you spoke to her?” Altin already knew the doctor never had.

  “I read my Diviners Guild newsletters. She comes up as a topic every fifty years or so.”

  “I need your help,” Altin said. “Orli needs it. We have to try.”

  “Listen here, young man, I’m not going to be dragged into the dark reaches of Great Forest in quest of a psychotic. You have almost no chance of finding her, likely less than none, and there is nothing I can do to help you with it. Furthermore, I am hardly in the kind of shape to be tromping up and down hills and clambering over fallen trees and under rocks. Not to mention the fact that my death in the pointed mandibles of some monstrous spider will not serve anyone here in town.”

  “You’re coming,” Altin said. “I won’t let Orli die because you are fat and afraid of bugs.”

  “I hardly count spiders in the forty-stone weight class as simply ‘bugs.’”

  “Did you know the Earth people have candies that make you thin?”

  The change in tactics took the doctor aback. He huffed and flustered for a moment, blowing out his cheeks. “That has nothing to do with anything, young man.”

  Seeing his shot land a telling blow, Altin was relentless in following up. “Yes, it’s true. Orli remarked once about how we have a preponderance of big fat fellows just like you trundling around Kurr. She thought it interesting that we didn’t have magic to fix that sort of thing. At the time, I only shrugged, pointing out that only in the larger cities was that sort of thing common anyway, but she laughed and told me about these candies her people make. Little things, barely bigger than the tip of your finger. They do something to some sort of mechanism in your body and you simply can’t be fat anymore.”

  “I am sure that being eaten by wood ticks, titan spiders or dire wolves would constitute a form of weight loss as well,” countered the doctor.

  “Imagine how good you would look. How long ago was it that your dear wife passed?”

  “How dare you!” the doctor said, and he looked shocked that Altin would stoop to such a thing.

  Altin merely shrugged at that, tilting his head a little and letting his expression suggest the doctor hadn’t finished thinking the question through. “Seventy-one years,” he said, answering for him. “A shame, and Mercy bless her soul. But here you are, still a young enough man. And imagine what powers you in particular must have, as familiar as you are with the functions of anatomy, both male and female.” Altin blushed as he spoke it, knowing he was seriously transgressing, but desperate needs need desperate acts sometimes.

  For a moment Altin worried that he had overplayed his hand. Doctor Leopold was clearly as embarrassed by the inappropriate suggestions as Altin was, perhaps more so, for he had not had the time with Orli that Altin had, Orli who was constantly teasing in the most audaciously sexual ways, which had toughened Altin up a bit on that particular front. But finally, biology being what it is, and the doctor being a doctor after all, he relented with a sly smile. “Lose the weight, you say? And but a bit of candy to get it done?”

  “Yes. Just that. And you can eat all you like after. The pounds fall away like pushing goats off a roof.”

  “Goats climb back again.”

  “Not if you keep eating the candies. I give you my word; Orli will make sure you have a lifetime supply.”

  The doctor’s gaze flickered toward the window for a moment, then back. “Well, we do need to save the girl.”

  Altin smiled. Briefly. And then they were gone.

  Chapter 12

  Blue Fire came to Orli in her dreams again. The fullness of a planetary-sized friendship washed over Orli with familiar warmth, a richness of love and joy that the young woman hadn’t felt in what seemed forever now, not since Thadius Thoroughgood had poisoned her with siren’s blood, a love elixir of magic made on Prosperion. When Thadius had corrupted Orli’s love for Altin, stolen it for himself, Blue Fire had mistaken it as betrayal, assumed Orli had been fickle and t
reated Altin’s love as something of inconsequence. Such was an unacceptable thing for the bereaved Blue Fire, whose own lover, a love that had spanned thousands upon thousands of years, perhaps even millions, had been lost in the flare of a sun. That flare had left her in silence for eons. For her, the thought of such reckless treatment of love, a precious thing beyond all else, was unconscionable, and had Orli been within her reach, Blue Fire might have squashed her for it, for having believed Orli could waste such a gift. But now Blue Fire knew the truth, and she once more sought her first friend, the first kind voice she’d heard in the span of all those lonely millennia. She understood now, and she knew that Orli had never betrayed Altin. Blue Fire was slowly coming to understand the nature of deceit, of lies, of truth that was not truth. She thought of it as a disease. Orli had been infected, but now the toxin was gone. All was forgiven. And more than forgiven, for Blue Fire was glad to have her friend back. And so was Orli, particularly in this place where injustice once more ran amok and her life was, again, out of her control. In fact, Orli was so overjoyed to feel the vast presence of Blue Fire flow into her dreams that at first she didn’t realize it wasn’t simply that, just a dream. So frustrated and frightened was she by her situation that she didn’t believe Blue Fire was real, which made Blue Fire have to repeat herself.

  Orli Love hate Blue Fire, came the thought a second time, this time with even greater urgency. The thought pressed down like a heavy, frenzied weight upon Orli’s dreaming consciousness. Altin Love give truth Orli Love.

  Struggling to stay in the dream and not wake up out of sheer joy, Orli had to grapple with the frantic nature of Blue Fire’s thoughts. Something about Altin. “I don’t understand,” she said to Blue Fire in her dream, a technique she’d learned and practiced plenty in recent months.

  Orli Love hate Blue Fire. Altin Love speak truth for Blue Fire. Altin Love give truth Orli Love. Blue Fire not truth that is not truth.

  Orli could see herself and Altin in the dream that Blue Fire directed at her. She was talking to Altin. Blue Fire’s reckoning of human speech made for overly animated movements of her mouth, but the meaning was obvious. There came with it a tremendous sense of urgency and fear. It was a colossal dread of loneliness that filled Blue Fire most.

  Clearly Orli was supposed to tell Altin something. Something about the truth.

  Truth, came the echo of that thought right back at her, Blue Fire having picked up Orli’s nascent comprehension.

  “What truth?” Orli asked, and bitterness backfilled the thought as she sent it away. It bubbled up from her own situation, her own reality where truth seemed to hold so little sway. “I don’t understand. And I can’t tell him anything. I’m in a prison cell on Earth.” She followed it with an unspoken “as usual,” but she didn’t need to say it, as thoughts and words were all the same. Speech in dreams was a convenience more than a necessity. “And besides, they’re going to kill me soon.”

  Blue Fire did not seem to recognize the importance of that. Orli Love hate Blue Fire. Blue Fire hate Orli Love hate Blue Fire.

  Blue Fire was so afraid as she conveyed it that the sense of her dread spread inside Orli like icy water surging in and flooding her. Orli could not help but be caught up in Blue Fire’s terrible stress. “What do you mean Alti—Orli Love hates you,” she said. “He could never hate you.”

  Hate spilled into Orli’s dream for a moment, but it was shaped into something more like blame. Condemnation. She saw an image of Altin pointing at a blue star. Blame. Definitely blame.

  Orli Love blame, concurred the thought in Orli’s head as she felt the emotions of it. Blue Fire pulled the idea from Orli’s mind like an epiphany and sent it back. Orli Love blame Blue Fire kill Altin Love world.

  Orli had to wrestle with that idea, as was so often the case with this strange and magnificent planetary creature, working to extract meaning from the convolution of Blue Fire’s largely visual language. She had so little of words, though she seemed to be seeking more of them. She now knew they existed, but they remained foreign to the enigmatic being, clumsy and unnatural. Still she tried, and eventually Orli figured it out.

  “Altin blames you for killing my world?” her dream self said, then amended, “Orli Love blames you, is that what you mean?” Keeping track of the abstractions was difficult, even with practice. Blue Fire knew them not as themselves but by who loved them. Orli thought it was beautiful, a better measure of the being. Humans default to the sense of self, which seemed so small by comparison. Still it was puzzle-like in nature, and navigating conversations in such a way was difficult, especially while trying to hold on to a dream that was not just a dream, but a dream the dreamer was aware of. Doing so required a certain agility of consciousness, which sometimes didn’t work so well, especially when trying to decipher cryptic emotional thoughts. “That doesn’t make sense,” she said.

  Orli Love blame Blue Fire. Blue Fire kill Altin Love world truth that is not truth. This thought was followed by images of large black and brown orbs swooping down on an alien city, melting away its parts, injecting diseases into its atmosphere that would wipe out every last human that lived there. Orli recognized the city as Persepiece. It was a city on Andalia, a city that Blue Fire did destroy, on a world she’d destroyed, or at least rid of its human populace. Blue Fire kill world. Truth. Orli’s dream filled with sorrow then, a torrent of it pouring into her heart and mind, followed by unfathomable regret. Shame. It dissolved after a time and was gone. It was an admission. But Orli already knew that much. She had known it for a while. It was why she had worked so hard to stop the allied attack on Blue Fire’s world. The frenzied urgency returned. Blue Fire kill Altin Love world truth that is not truth.

  Orli filled with the honesty of it all. The shame of the first part and the fear in the second. Frustration, even. But still, she wasn’t sure what Blue Fire was trying to tell her. “I don’t understand,” she said in her dream.

  The frustration swelled nearly to the point of becoming painful. Orli felt it twofold. From her distant, enormous friend, and from her own recent experience, the feeling bouncing back and forth in her mind like light between two mirrors. She conveyed that back to Blue Fire, told her she was trying to understand, urged her to keep trying to explain.

  Then came an image of Orli standing on the Earth, balanced upon it, not in triumph, not godlike, but clearly in possession of it. Earth was hers. Altin Love world, came the thoughts. Blue Fire not kill. Truth.

  “Are you trying to tell me it isn’t you attacking Earth?” Orli asked.

  Not mine. Orli saw images of the orbs flying around Andalia, followed by a return to the image of Orli standing on the Earth. There were no orbs flying around her or the world upon which she stood. Truth.

  “Then whose?”

  Not mine.

  “I believe you,” Orli said. She made a point of filling her dream with an appreciation of truth, of trust and love. “I believe you,” she said again.

  Truth, repeated Blue Fire. Orli Love hate. Orli got the sense of a flash flood crashing down a ravine, washing away strange trees, spindly and straight, growing so tightly together they looked like bundled toothpicks. Total disaster. And all the while the sense of Blue Fire’s dread of loneliness.

  Then she knew. She understood, finally, recognizing the flood was Altin’s trust and love being washed away, the broken trees the fragile bit of happiness she’d found since meeting him. Orli realized in that moment that Blue Fire was stricken nearly senseless with fear that Altin would take his friendship away from her and that she might again be alone in the endless night. She needed the presence of a male mind, even one as small by comparison to Blue Fire’s as any human mind was. In fact, the disparity was tragic in its inadequacy. Blue Fire knew this as well. The whole of it, the despair, the pathetic nature of it all, she understood it perfectly, and that too became so clear to Orli that she began to cry for Blue Fire’s misery, the sobs in her dreams convulsing her body as she lay upon the hard prison bunk, ju
st as helpless in her own way. Blue Fire continued to send that sorrow in great and growing waves, layering the weight of fear and grief on her until it had gone on so long that Orli finally remembered she could push it away.

  “No,” she said, forcing away the misery that crashed into her dreams, denying the premise that sent it from far across the galaxy. “Orli Love will never abandon you.” The thoughts she put behind it were ferocious in their certainty. “He won’t. Just as he never abandoned me. He is truth that is truth.” She sent with that idea feelings of constancy, of solidity, of eternity.

  Blue Fire repeated the sequence of images that conveyed Altin’s belief that Blue Fire was attacking Orli’s world. She showed Altin shouting at her from within her very heart. He really did blame her. He’d made it perfectly clear. Not Blue Fire, was all that she could say. If thoughts could be whimpers, that one was.

  “Then we have to find out who it is,” Orli sent back. “If it is not you, then it is another world like you. Another Blue Fire.”

  No other Blue Fire.

  “There has to be another.”

  I am Blue Fire.

  “Yes, but you had a mate once. There were two of you.”

  Yellow Fire.

  “Yes, Yellow Fire. So there must be another one. Another Fire.” She did her best to convey the sense of another sun, a colorless sun, simply a star. She tried to construct an image of Blue Fire as she was in dreams, vast blackness with a pink lining that softly glowed, but she changed it, made the aura around its edge colorless. It was her best attempt at creating the idea of Blue Fire as part of a species. She wasn’t sure how well it worked.

  Then came another sense of epiphany from Blue Fire, and Orli’s mind was once more flooded by Blue Fire’s images, this time a torrent of dark textures and temperatures, of stones and weeds, creatures and vacancies. A gush of ideas and concepts from the microscopic to the vast blasted through Orli’s brain for what felt like hours, a speeding meteor storm of ideas and visions that ended at last with a small round patch of dark green crystals pulsing in a field of yellow ones. This, came the sense at the end of it. Blue Fire. Yellow Fire. This. Orli saw dandelion seeds blowing across a pond. She’d seen that before, but this time the pond was filled with stars.