Hostiles (The Galactic Mage series) Read online

  “Something like that, Your Majesty, but I have also spent two days in divinations following that conversation, and we have not gotten one drop of dreaming to suggest she is telling us anything but the truth. All divinations point to something red. There is a quality to redness that appears to be the center of it all.”

  “Ocelot told me to find the red world,” Altin said suddenly upon hearing that. “I’d almost completely forgotten. She said Orli would know what that meant.”

  Orli blinked in surprise at him. This was the first mention that he’d made of any red world, although admittedly, they’d only had two waking hours together since he’d pulled her out of the death chamber back on Earth, and most of those hours had been rather emotional.

  Seeing her bewilderment, Altin repeated everything he could recall from what Ocelot had told him, concluding by saying, “She told me that Orli would know how to find the red world, or that she could figure it out. She said we must find it or everyone will die.”

  “Ocelot is a witch,” said the Maul. “She is a primitive and completely removed from civilized events. Her magic has no context in modern politics alone, much less the wherewithal to fathom the nature of alien worlds. She doesn’t even know there are such things. She is a spirits worshiper, barely more than an animal.”

  “She is a Z,” said Altin. “And she showed me exactly where Orli was, which you would not, or could not, do. And she appears to know more about the red issue than you as well.”

  The High Priestess ignored that and turned to Orli instead. “What do you know of a red world?”

  “I don’t know anything about a red world,” Orli answered honestly. “The only red world I know is Mars, which is a small planet near Earth. But there’s nothing there but mining colonies and a few oddball cultist enclaves. There are definitely no Hostiles—I mean, no Blue Fire-like creatures there.” It occurred to her that the Maul might be offended by the pejorative note that she’d struck when mentioning the cults, and she looked to the High Priestess to see if she had been offended in some way.

  “Are you sure there are no other red worlds somewhere else?” the Maul pressed on, impervious to the Earth woman’s blasphemy. “Something you saw on your way from Earth to Prosperion? That is a long journey, during which you must have seen many worlds.”

  “No,” Orli admitted. “Space travel doesn’t really work like that. But there are probably millions of them. Billions of them. But I don’t know of any in particular. Only Mars.”

  “Think harder,” demanded the Maul.

  “It doesn’t matter how hard I think. I don’t know of any other red worlds. And besides, it might not even be a world she’s speaking of. Blue Fire is named for a sun, just as her husband was, so it might be a red star you are looking for. There are millions of those too. And that’s not even the worst part of it.” She paused to look at Altin, who nodded, encouraging her to continue. “Blue Fire and her mate were named for the sun of the other, the sun that gave birth to the one they loved, not their own sun. So even if I did know of a red sun, would we be looking for it or for the planet orbiting another sun that loves the planet revolving around it? That’s the problem. Are we looking for a red planet, a red star, a planet around a red star, or a planet around another star, which may or may not be red but that loves a planet in orbit around a red star somewhere else? Do you see what I’m saying? It doesn’t matter how hard I think. How can I possibly know?”

  Queen Karroll wrinkled up her face at all of that, and it was clear she thought it all gobbledygook, but the High Priestess never lost a step.

  “You see,” said the Maul. “Wild magic to lead us wildly astray.”

  “Perhaps,” said Altin, “or else it is Z-class magic leading us simply and straight to the point that we refuse to see.”

  “And what point is that, Sir Altin?” The Queen pointed with a golden gauntlet at Orli. “Miss Pewter has just said she knows of only one world, and it is without life. The rest is long-winded nonsense.”

  “If Orli knows of only one red world, then perhaps that is the only red world we need worry about. We all know perfectly well that divination is all about working with what you already understand. So, perhaps that is what Ocelot is trying to do, get us to work with what we already have between us.”

  The Maul nodded. At least on that she and Ocelot would agree.

  Movement in the sky turned the Queen’s attention upward in time to watch a gryphon and its rider come swooping down. The majestic creature landed on a ledge built into the west wall for it, its leonine paws making no sound as they touched down. Its rider, a man in leather armor, threw down his lance as soon as his mount landed, then he leapt off to stand beside the beast, clearly impatient for the gryphon handler to come and take the reins.

  At first the gryphon snapped at the handler, its sharp eagle’s beak darting toward the woman, who dodged with practiced ease and, with a few utterances, calmed the beast enough to be allowed hold of its bridle. The rider wasted not one moment more and sprinted down the stairs, where he was accosted by an officer, only briefly, and shortly after, the two of them came sprinting toward the Queen.

  “Your Majesty,” said the rider, his voice rapid, his breathing fast. “The Earthmen have begun landing a force at Little Earth, and they’ve sent a contingent in advance, moving southwest of the city. Lord Forland’s patrol was near and has moved to intercept.”

  The Queen groaned. “Forland has had that command for less than a week.” She rolled her eyes skyward, silently cursing the gods and fate. “How many Earthmen?”

  “At least two hundred approaching the city, Your Majesty, in golems of some kind, ogres made of steel. And I have no good count for how many of them are at Little Earth.”

  The Queen was silent for a time, chewing on the inside of her lip, then she tilted her head and lanced Orli with her gaze. “Why is it, Miss Pewter, that wherever you go, hosts of invaders follow immediately in your wake?”

  Orli could only blink back in bewilderment, wide-eyed and as surprised as everyone else by the news they’d just received.

  Chapter 25

  Gromf snuck down during the dark heart of the night to the dark heart of the mountain, far below the great fortification Warlord had built for the All Clans. He picked his way down the winding ledges and squeezed through the narrow places until at last he was at the pool where God spoke. He did not know how to get the hideous figure of God to appear in the water as Kazuk-Hal-Mandik had, but he hoped that God would know that Gromf was there. God was a god, after all. Did it not make sense that he would know such things?

  Gromf lodged his torch between two rocks near the edge of the pond and stared at the water for a time. Its surface looked black as the stone that formed it, and were it not for the occasional drop of water falling into it, an echoing plop that sent rings rippling to the edges and warped the reflections of the ceiling for a time, Gromf might never have known there was water there at all.

  He sat at the edge of the pond, waiting, his eyes growing tired of staring at the reflection of himself. He looked about, studying the chamber more closely than he had before. Empty, smooth and shapeless, an anonymous formation of time and water passing through. A few crannies pocked its walls where some element or another had embedded itself and then given way to erosion more readily than the surrounding stone, the evacuation making little shelves and alcoves into which Gromf realized Kazuk-Hal-Mandik and perhaps the warlocks of the northern clan for seasons beyond counting had set lamps and tapers and obscure items of ambiguous use.

  In one of these, a very large one at the back of the pond, Gromf saw a skull, a terrible thing, wide and fissured, lumpy and gray with eye sockets that must have held fist-sized eyes and a row of upper teeth that might once have eaten steel. The brow ridges were uneven, large even for an orc, but pronounced more on the right side than the left, jutting out like a bent pinnacle. Whatever soul had housed itself in such a form must have been a fearsome thing.

  The water lit up
with the bright light of day as Gromf studied the misshapen skull, and once again God sat upon his rock beneath a cloudless sky of blue, the stony rope of his long left arm trailing out of view over a jumble of God Stone-covered boulders, his jointed legs all in a twist before him like a bramble of fleshy cord.

  Gromf stared into the pond, keeping his revulsion in check, though the quiver that moved his upper lip might have been obvious to a god.

  “You come without your master,” said God in the voice of an avalanche. “Already there is divide.”

  “No,” said Gromf, squinting into the glare of so much light. “There is no divide between orc and orc. It is this magic you would have us do. Your demons have no Discipline.”

  The fissure in his face elongated, grotesque and horrible as it shaped the fault line of his laughter.

  “You laugh at Discipline,” Gromf accused.

  “I laugh at your fear,” God said. “I laugh at your weakness. You crawl down here to beg for power over the power I already give.”

  “No. I come to seek what the human song does not know. The demons must have Discipline or they can be of little use.”

  “I will discipline them,” said God, his long left arm rising and falling in a whip-strike of elastic stone. It cracked a thunderous sound and several boulders near the impossible figure were turned to glittering clouds of sand.

  “And who will discipline you?”

  Again came the whip-crack, this time cutting a trench knee-deep into the rocky landscape twice the length of God’s long arm, the last half of it spreading along the ground like cracking ice. The ocular depressions of his eyes moved outward in their perimeters as if by rage. The surface of the pond grew choppy then, the water covered with tiny lines like those the night winds draw in desert sand. Storm clouds formed in the skies above the deformity of God.

  Gromf watched in silence as fury contorted and pulsed before him in the pond, but eventually it stilled and the storm clouds went away.

  “You are strong and clever, Gromf. You will lead the All Clans one day.”

  “Warlord will lead the All Clans,” Gromf said. “I will serve him in my place. It is the way of Discipline.”

  “And you will serve me, young orc. This too is the way of Discipline.”

  “Discipline must tie both ends of the rope to cross the gorge.”

  Tremors crossed the water again, but only briefly.

  “How do we control the demons that we bring forth?” Gromf asked directly, feeling confident now. “How do we control them if something happens to you when the fight begins?”

  “I am God. What can happen to me?”

  “The same that has been done to the old gods.”

  “That was at my hands. There are no gods left to challenge me. This world is mine. And I will give it to the All Clans, and your beloved Warlord as you choose.”

  Gromf nodded, seeing what he saw in that. He asked his question again. “How do we control the demons when they come?”

  God roared then, no attempt to hide the emotions at all, a great wailing and flailing of all four malformed limbs. “You will do what I tell you, mortal, or I will crush your people and give the world to the elves.”

  “Then you will not tell us how it is done?”

  “They are mine to control. That is all you need to know. The time has come. Open the gate, and open it all the way.” The water went dark.

  Gromf’s face contorted with the tempest of his thoughts, but he quickly brought them in check. The sky might be gone from the pond, but God might still be watching. If he was a god. Gromf was no longer sure.

  Gromf stood on the open plains beyond the city of the golden queen, the walls of her vast fortress visible in the distance a few measures off, or at least the image of it as it had been two hours before when the great dome of concealing magic had been cast. Now what he saw was a memory of a time when the plains were empty but for the All Clans shamans arriving, the time of commencement now well underway.

  The shaman circles were working together to bring the warriors out of the mountains. In only an hour they had managed ten thousand of them, and more shamans were still arriving from the southern clans. Soon there would be a hundred thousand orcs ready to march on the human capital and crush it forever. Soon Warlord would sit in the high place that the humans’ golden queen sat upon, giving orders and eating the cold meat of her dead heart. It was time.

  He turned and watched Kazuk-Hal-Mandik directing another circle of shamans, sandy-skinned orcs from the edge of the Sandsea Desert, to their place far from where his own clansmen were. Warlord was smart enough to know that even in this time of pending victory, it was best to keep the individual clans far apart so no accidental fighting occurred. What tragedy it would be to have a clan war break out now, here under the concealment of a great dome of magic, a racial suicide just when they stood at the mouth of humanity’s cave ready to take it for themselves. Finally. The humans would find the dead bodies rotting in the sun by the stench, only see them after stepping into the soft mess of their decay. Such was the fate of the undisciplined. It was good to see that the plan made by Warlord and Kazuk-Hal-Mandik was made of Discipline.

  When the old warlock was through with his instructions, he came back to where Gromf stood. He wore his God Stone on a leather thong around his neck. Gromf’s was in a pouch tied to his waist. Gromf decided to try once more to dissuade Kazuk-Hal-Mandik from opening the gate to God.

  “I think we have enough warriors for victory,” he said. “The humans do not know we are here on their plain. Much of their force is still encamped at the base of the great peak far to the north of us, guarding the castle with the broken tower. The demons will be trouble for us all. God will not send them back when this is done.”

  “You continue to blaspheme, Gromf. I accept it from you because you are young. Warlord will not. The spear is thrown. That is the end of it.”

  “We cannot control them.”

  “God will control them.”

  “And who will control God?”

  “We’ve had this discussion before, Gromf.”

  “This is not Discipline.”

  “Discipline is how we got here, Gromf. Look around you. We have the power to conceal ourselves from human eyes. We fill their fields with warriors while they sleep and get fat on honeyed sweets. You complain sometimes like a woman. Now is the time to find your heart for war.”

  Gromf shook his head, but he would not disobey. That was not Discipline either.

  By what he guessed was well past midday—it was impossible to tell through the concealment spell for the sky above was stuck fast and still displaying the morning’s clouds—all the orcs had arrived, a massive host bristling with swords and spears and axes. All but the southern warriors wore steel armor, another product of Discipline, and more than half of them had at least some form of enchantment on their weaponry. For most, merely the added bite of fire, but for a few, the strongest warriors, more powerful effects were in place, sinuous reaching spells put upon their spears and more than a few with devouring acid dripping from their blades. Even the humans were afraid to use that particular magic.

  Warlord came to the front then, riding a horse like a human would. The animal looked small beneath the massive figure, and Gromf wished privately that Warlord stood upon his own two feet.

  The other clan commanders came to line up beside him, each of them on a horse of his own. The animals shifted and shied beneath the weight of their riders, and twice one of the gray orc horsemen clouted his beast in the head in an attempt to calm it. The tactic did not work.

  “The time has come,” shouted Warlord, facing the distant city walls. “I will have the night’s feast in that high place there.” He pointed with his axe at the highest spire of the palace, which strove above all else in the city, at least a half measure into the sky.

  Shouts and calls for victory and glory of various clans followed, which Warlord let play out until they were still. He turned in his saddle and p
laced a huge hand on the rump of his animal, nearly encompassing it. He looked straight to Gromf and Kazuk-Hal-Mandik standing there.

  “Drop the illusion and bring forth the demons,” he said. “Let it begin.”

  Chapter 26

  “Take a thousand men and go help Lord Forland hold off the Earthmen,” the War Queen ordered the officer alongside the gryphon rider. “Find out what they want.”

  “Yes, My Queen,” said both in unison, and once again they went off at a sprint.

  The Queen looked back at Orli who returned her gaze with a frown, irritated by the monarch’s implications that somehow Orli might be responsible for the fleet landing a company of mechs on Kurr—not to mention that somehow she might have been responsible for the Hostiles attacking Earth or any other issue of warlike incursions anywhere. She had as much pull with the fleet as she had with the Queen, and Blue Fire certainly wasn’t taking any orders from her either. Blaming her was ridiculous.

  “So, Miss Pewter, you haven’t answered me,” pressed the Queen. “Why is it that war seems to follow you everywhere you go? What have you to say for yourself?”

  Orli’s eyes narrowed as she found her spine. “What I have to say is that Captain Asad believes invading forces follow Altin around in the same sort of way. Which makes the captain just as wrong about him as you are about me. I would also say that at some point, hopefully, someone in charge of one of these human worlds will stop jumping to conclusions and accept that maybe things are more complicated than is convenient for decision making right now. That is what I would say.” She put her hands on her hips and stared up at the resplendent Queen defiantly.

  Altin jumped in on her behalf, hoping to avert calamity. “Your Majesty, when I rescued her, her execution was being carried out. The headsman’s axe had fallen, almost literally. Doctor Leopold had to extravasate the venom from her body or she would be dead right now.”