The Galactic Mage Page 22

  And he fell.

  And he fell.

  It seemed he must have fallen for an hour, although he doubted it had been that long, and with every passing moment he kept anticipating, at last, some contact with the planet’s surface. But it just would not arrive. His seeing stone continued to plummet for what seemed an impossible length of time, and after pushing himself to the limits of his magical strength, he had to let the vision go. He was exhausted. He simply could not go on. With the last of his energy, he conjured the image of the falling stone back in the scrying basin and locked it there with a simple enchanter’s stream. It was all he could do to stagger downstairs and tumble into bed.

  He woke the next morning—or what felt like morning given how different the concept became up here on the moon where both the sun and bright Prosperion lit up the sky on schedules of their own—and ate the last of his now quite stale loaf of bread. Losing his access to a fresh daily loaf was an unexpected downside of being out in space. He would have to load up on food the next time he went down.

  He took a drink of water from the pitcher on his nightstand and noted that it too tasted rather old. Looking into the pitcher reminded him of his scrying basin on the battlements, and he trotted up to have a look at the stone which was now surely lying on Naotatica’s solid ground.

  But it was not. It was still falling. Altin could not believe his eyes. Nothing could fall that long. Such a thing was absolutely impossible. It was as if the entire planet was made of air. Green air. He couldn’t believe such an absurd idea. How could a planet be made of nothing but howling winds and mist? What kind of planet was that? Surely not one that had spawned the race of elves.

  His mind began to wrestle with the new problem that he’d found. It couldn’t really be a planet if there was no planet in all that mist, could it? And yet, it certainly looked like a planet when viewed from high above. He thought about it some more. Naotatica had seemed shockingly large as he’d been casting his stones closer and closer during the approach. It was possible, he supposed, that Naotatica could be, well, really, really large. Amazingly large. Perhaps incredibly larger than Prosperion could ever hope to be. Maybe, given the enormity of the distances he was discovering out here in space, perhaps there were sizes of all kinds to be fathomed here as well, not just distances from point to point. He realized that Naotatica might not be subject to all the same size paradigms that Prosperion and Luria had caused him to unknowingly embrace.

  Given that idea, he decided that it was at least plausible that the sky on Naotatica was vastly larger, or deeper, than was the sky around Prosperion, much thicker than Prosperion’s little translucent shroud of glowing mist. And if this were the case, extrapolated outward by Altin’s new respect for possible distance, it stood to reason that a stone falling through a sky that large might take considerably longer to hit the ground than would a stone dropped into the air above Kurr.

  But still… all night?

  He was willing to believe, however. For now. And so, leaving the basin enchanted with the view of the plummeting seeing stone, he decided that this was a perfect time to take the tower home. He needed to stock up on a few supplies anyway, and he was really hungry for something substantive to eat. He looked up at Prosperion and saw that Kurr was nowhere in his field of view. Judging from the position of the sun, he realized that it was evening back at home and suddenly hoped that perhaps he might be in time for dinner; a hot meal was exactly what he needed after so much time away.

  It turned out he was in time for the evening’s repast, and it was over a huge roast turkey, heaps of fresh vegetables and a pudding that rivaled the turkey for size that Altin regaled not only Tytamon but Kettle too with his stories of Naotatica and its seemingly endless sky.

  When he got to the part about coming home for want of food, Kettle’s face took on a stern and focused look, as if she’d been stewing on this for days. “Well, sir, if ya are goin’ ta be flyin’ around in space, ya needs a proper bellyfull ta keep yer strength. Any fool knows as much.” She shook her finger at him as if he were five years old and had gone out into the snow without putting on his coat, and her momentum began to build. “Gone fer days,” she trudged on, “An’ not one word ta me about it. And here, me havin’ ya—the lad I’m charged with feedin’ mind ya—starvin’ ta death out between the stars. The hearth goddess herself will have my soul fer failin’ ya.” With that she got up and stomped out of the room, the two mages smiling at one another across the plentitude of food.

  “I can’t tell if she’s mad or impressed,” Altin admitted as he heaped another portion of pudding on his plate.

  “Both,” Tytamon said around a mouthful of the spectacular dessert. “Mostly impressed, I’d wager. But if she’d boxed your ears on her way out, I wouldn’t have been surprised.”

  Altin nodded and grinned as he took another bite, but when he’d finished his meal and a half hour of discussion with Tytamon about his plans, he found that he had a messenger waiting at the stairwell leading up into his rooms.

  “Master Altin, sir,” Pernie said, carefully repeating the message word for word, “if ya would oblige, Kettle has need of yer services to fetch yer coldstone box up into yer rooms.”

  He gave her a quizzical look, but nodded that he would follow as she scampered off into the dark. She led him back to the kitchen where Kettle was still heaping leftovers and loaves of bread and flasks of water and wine into a large wooden crate that she had lined with enchanted cold stones. She speared him with a look as he walked in, and he knew that he was about to receive a lecture from her in no uncertain terms.

  “Now yer goin’ ta listen ta me, boy. Ya may be the young master in this here castle, but I’m not without some say about what goes on, and there isn’t gon’ be no flying up in space without no food. Ya hearin’ me?” She didn’t even give Altin time to nod. “This here crate is gon’ be yers. I know enough ‘bout yer teleportin’ to know ya can send this crate right over there under that table any time ya like.” She pointed with her chin at a stout wooden table in a far corner of the room. “So from now on, if’n yer gon’t be off fer days and weeks at a time, yer sendin’ it back fer me ta fill with food whenever ya need. Do ya hear me, lad? Ya send it right back there. Won’t be no starvin’ mages on my watch, or it’ll be the rollin’ pin fer ya I tell ya true. And don’t think I won’t do it, ‘cause I will.”

  Altin started to protest, to explain about accidents and how Pernie might be playing under the table when the crate came back or something of the sort, but he could tell by the look on Kettle’s face that she already knew all about that and would not be hearing his excuses. It was safer to just say, “Yes, ma’am.”

  She stuffed some carrots into a small basket and loaded them into the crate, then set its lid back on, pounding it down tight with a fleshy, flour-covered fist. “There ya go. Now get this thing out of here, it’s takin’ up too much space.”

  Altin smiled and happily obliged. With a few words and a gesture, the crate was sitting near his bed. “Thank you, Kettle,” he said when it was done. “You are very kind.”

  “Don’t I know it,” she said. “Now get along. Yer taking up too much space too.”

  He gave her a short bow and a polite smile, the latter of which she warmly returned along with a pinch to his cheek that left a flour print to mask the red mark she’d put there. And just like that, his stale bread and old water days on the moon were at an end.

  Once again thinking of water reminded him of his seeing stone, still being seen in the basin up in his tower. He wondered if it had finally hit the ground. He remembered to smile at Pernie who was studying him silently from beside the fire as he left, and then he went upstairs to see.

  Chapter 23

  The seeing stone, unbelievably, was still falling. Altin might have spent some time on exasperated expletives, but there was something new to see as well. The stone was beginning to glow, as if it were heating up.

  He frowned down into the scrying basin and won
dered what was going on. He cast the seeing spell that would bring his senses to the stone and once more found himself listening to the sound of violent, howling winds. But he could also hear the seeing stone as it hissed and scorched in the billowing mist. It fell and fell, and as it did, it grew hotter and hotter with each descending yard. And it was only a short time after Altin had rejoined it that the stone actually burst into flames as it tumbled through the endless glowing green.

  The flames burned loudly and sounded like a torch held in a raging storm, and all the while the flames grew larger and brighter until at last the stone vanished with a hiss. The falling sensation in Altin’s vision stopped.

  Anchored to the tumbling stone, his spell had just lost the object to which it was attached, leaving Altin to stare motionlessly into an endless expanse of green. He could still hear the winds howling, but the sense of falling was gone. He wondered what he should do. The stone had been falling for over half a day. Should he press on himself and see how much further he could go? Naotatica certainly seemed an unlikely place to have spawned a race of elves. But he wondered if perhaps he had just not gone deep enough. Perhaps he just had to finish passing through the clouds.

  But what, twelve hours of falling through the clouds? Was that even reasonable to assume? If that wasn’t completely preposterous, then what did it imply? Maybe Altin had been right before. Maybe it was an entire planet made of air, green, whirling air. But the Elves weren’t ethereal things. So they really couldn’t be from here. Or else he just hadn’t gone far enough down to see. Or else the Church was wrong. He didn’t believe half of what they said anyway. Less than half. They seemed to have morality mostly right, but the stories were absurd. Naotatica was clearly not being accurately described. He groaned.

  He decided to push his vision further in, and, using his newfound understanding of distance, was able to attain seeing speeds that were beyond him only a few weeks in the past. With some slight modifications to the chant that he was speaking beneath his breath, his vision was hurtling through the apparently depthless mist.

  Eventually, even at this seemingly impossible speed, it took another hour and a half until the color of Naotatica finally began to shift. He still hadn’t found land, but as he traveled deeper into the planet the scenery began to change from greens to yellows and gradually to the brightest raging white. In fact, it got so bright that Altin once more had to tweak his spell as it became far too bright to see, brighter than staring into the sun. His vision continued on into the brightness for nearly another hour until he was abruptly in the dark.

  At last! He’d finally found land. Or so he thought. He must have gone too far, pushed past and beneath the surface of the soil. He backed his vision out until once more he was in the light. The indescribably bright light. Somehow retracted too far.

  Impatiently, he changed his chant back to accommodate a slower speed and tried once more to move downward towards the ground into which his sight had disappeared. It took a bit longer, but once more he plunged his view into total darkness, never having seen the ground’s approach.

  “What the…?”

  He backed out again, slowly. Total, overwhelming whiteness.

  Forward, the tiniest movement, into black.

  This can’t possibly be Naotatica, he told himself. Nobody could live in this much sunlight. And to think, he’d actually thought it was bright on Luria.

  But then again, on Luria the brightness obviously came from the sun. Whatever this light was, it couldn’t possibly be the sun, not shining through the blanket of clouds Altin’s sight had just fallen through. Could it?

  Good Mercy and her five favorite dogs. What was going on out here? Did nothing make sense in space? It wasn’t like he didn’t already think the Church’s version of reality was ridiculous, but, after what he’d seen in the last few weeks, even their stories made more sense than this. The whole thing was impossible to comprehend.

  However, the one thing he did comprehend was that there were not going to be any elves waiting for him and his tower to arrive. At least not here. And if there were, they were not the kind of elves that he had any desire to meet. Any creature that could live in an atmosphere of fire capable of burning up a stone was not a creature Altin felt he needed to get to know. Taot’s acidic humor gave him troubles enough at home.

  And besides, he had no evidence that such a race was even here. Like the satyrs and the Never Ending Song on Luria, the elves of Naotatica were nothing but a myth. It seemed that once again he had spent a tremendous amount of time and energy to discover absolutely nothing at all.

  Why was everything out here so entirely empty, anyway? What was the point of all of these places and spaces if there wasn’t anyone to fill them up? The waste of time, effort and whatever it was down here serving as land was an outrage, and the possibility that something had created such waste insulted what little grip on anything approaching piety he might tenuously retain. He could not hear the curse words he uttered back in the tower, but he spoke them aloud just the same. This was annoying. Frankly, from his point of view, Naotatica could officially be written off. But, given that he was Kurr’s first interplanetary explorer and therefore technically empowered to do so, he thought it only proper that he at least see it in person before he wrote the planet’s condemnation forever in his notes.

  He retracted his vision back to Kurr and recast the Polar’s shield around his tower, preparing himself to go. He immersed his vision in the shield, just to be sure that it was sound before preparing to teleport back out into the stars.

  He debated how to approach this new teleport as he was about to go much farther than he’d ever tried before. He could use the Liquefying Stone and try to one-shot all the way to Naotatica, or he could try to hop the tower off of a few seeing stones along the way and get there without its help. Weighing the learning opportunities on either side, he opted for the latter and set himself about the cast.

  The teleport worked easily, in fact far more easily than he’d hoped it would. He could have skipped the hop effect entirely had he known how little the distance would actually mean in terms of ease. The simplicity with which he brought himself all that way was due to knowing where he was trying to go. Even though he knew how teleportation worked, it was still surprising that such a distance made so little difference in the end. Compared to how hard it was to cast one small stone blindly out into the night, the relative effortlessness of moving the large tower all the way to Naotatica was incredible to comprehend. But it turned out to be very easy, and he was glad he’d taken the time to try.

  He’d aimed himself and his tower at the last seeing stone he’d cast, the one prior to the one that had been falling for all that time. Once more he found himself floating above the surface of the enormous giant green ball, only this time he was there. Despite having seen it before, it was even more breathtaking in person; something was lost when viewing such a vista through a magical device. Naotatica was colossal. It was beyond colossal. Altin simply had no way to express his sense of amazement as he looked on. From there he decided to teleport even closer still, and in a blink, half the night was filled with the titanic green world.

  He went downstairs and got his notebook from the table in his room. He brought the inkpot up with it and set them on the table near the wall. He pulled out the rickety stool and, opening his book, began to sketch the planet onto a blank page. There were a few distinguishing lines that ran round the surface of the planet, a marbling effect, which made it more than just a circle on the page.

  Beneath the illustration he made a few notes. He described the fate of the seeing stone, and he wrote about his encounter with the point of light and dark. He even made a few comments about elves and the errors of the Church before looking up once more and noticing that his tower had begun to fall. He rose up from the stool and walked over to the parapet. He had to squint into the night to be certain, as the planet’s proximal size was such that it made movement hard to gauge, but soon it was confirmed: t
he tower was definitely falling, and it was falling directly into the giant green world.

  At first fear clutched at Altin’s chest. What was going on? Was some other magician working against him down below? Perhaps he’d been wrong about the elves. But as he thought about what he’d seen, he shook himself free of such ridiculous thoughts. Of course that was not the case. This was just something new, something else with which he would now have to contend. And he needed to do it before he fell into the planetary mist. He had great faith in Polar Piton’s shield against the cold and heat of empty space. But he was not sure he wanted to try it in the whiteness that burned within Naotatica’s blazing depths.

  Calming himself from the initial grip of fear, he thought for a moment about what spell would serve him best. He could teleport back to that last seeing stone and still have a reasonable view. But somehow that felt like a retreat. And he wasn’t yet willing to concede.

  He ran back downstairs and went through one of the books he kept on his shelf. There was a chapter on falling that he’d read a few years back while studying flight forms and other airborne spells. He found the pages he was looking for and sure enough he had a spell called Stasis: Falling Stops. It seemed the perfect thing. Only this spell required a feather from a raven’s wing and a small bit of lead. Damn, he thought. A bad time for spell components.

  He knew he had a brick of lead down in the tower’s lowest room, but the raven’s wing was something of another trick. He went down and dug out the lead from a box buried beneath a stack of old notebooks and a few sacks of assorted things. He conjured a magical flame and melted off a drop, which he then cooled with a simple spell called “Arctic Breeze.”

  The feather was still going to be the sticking point. The dead bird from his initial testing of the shield was likely still outside the tower near the wall, but that was a sparrow and would be no help at all. He rummaged around the lower rooms for quite some time, opening boxes he hadn’t looked into for several years. He couldn’t believe there wasn’t a raven feather in a single one.