Dance of Destinies (The Galactic Mage Series Book 5) Read online

  That calmed her some, and she tried to relax. She used the breathing techniques Djoveeve taught her, breathing that wouldn’t give your location away. Breathing to help your strength and agility. Elves don’t make mistakes in battle because they don’t get scared. They don’t get excited and do dumb things. Humans have to protect against being scared and dumb. That was the price of instinct. That’s what Djoveeve said.

  So Pernie calmed herself. She had time. She just needed to think. She had to figure out what to do next.

  When she woke up, there were voices coming down the hall. She cast her invisibility illusion, masking sound and smell as well. Nobody had ever taught her how to hide her heat before. She knew even as she cast it that they would see her that way.

  As if to confirm it, one voice called out, “In there.”

  Pernie wished she had sight magic. She wanted to teleport out, but what if one of them was where she wanted to go? Altin had almost teleported into her once. Her hand throbbed simply from the memory, a pulse of phantom pain where his robes had become part of her flesh.

  She didn’t want to hurt the Reno PD men or the men from the NTA. She knew they were not criminals, or at least she didn’t think they were. But she thought she might have to hurt them if they tried to get her again. She wasn’t going to let them put that collar with the biting electricity on her again. She wasn’t going to let them send her home. Not until they taught her how to fly. Not until she knew everything about technology and guns.

  Two men burst through the door. They held weapons that Pernie could not see because the lights they carried were too bright.

  “Got her,” one of the men called out.

  Pernie heard the ffft, ffft of the weapon firing as she began the teleporting spell. She felt the bite of the projectiles like bee stings, one in her shoulder, another in her cheek.

  Her magic finished as the second one struck, and she appeared in the hallway outside the room, right behind the men. She got a half step before her vision went blurry and she collapsed to the floor, felled again by the same Earth trick that got her the last time. It occurred to her, in the moments before darkness took her, that she would have to develop some kind of immunity to their knockout serum in the same way she’d developed one for small doses of Fayne Gossa. Apparently the resistance to “all poisons” supposedly imparted to her through that exposure on String did not include the poisons they brewed here on Earth.

  Chapter 44

  The Marchioness of South Mark stood as she had been since the man called Jefe and the rest of them had left. Jefe was going to bring her a “mech” and a driver for it. He said he had men, ex-NTA forces no less, who would operate them for him … for her. For a price. They both knew he held all the cards on that front. But she had magicians, and so she’d had to up the game. Her contribution to his enterprise would have to be more subtle: diviners and seers to help him do his dirty work. And he would need it. Even with her magicians working to hide his plans and his activities well after his campaign began, his efforts would be, ultimately, obvious. Her people would take pains to hide his intent and his activities on Earth for as long as it was possible to do so, from prying magicians working for the TGS and perhaps even the NTA, but that would only work for so long. Ultimately, NTA machinery would see, someone would see, and, after, well, Jefe would have to look to his own interests in his pursuit of his coveted “Texas.”

  And while the marchioness was looking quite well to her interests on Prosperion, what interested her most in the absence of the Earth men and her minions was what she saw in her enchanted mirror. For the last two hours she’d been standing stock still before it, staring. It was mesmerizing.

  Lady Meade and the Galactic Mage had somehow gotten themselves into the hands—or tentacles—of some variety of alien animals. The Galactic Mage was nowhere to be found in the view—he hadn’t been for an hour or so since Jefe and company had departed—but Lady Meade, upon whom the mirror’s enchantment was locked, had been slapped about on some luminous plateau, half-naked, where she was prodded with some kind of three-pronged conical device for a time. Not long after that began, she was picked up and simply discarded, thrown off into the darkness, where she flew to gods knew where.

  The marchioness had watched it happening and watched for nearly five full minutes as the newly made lady of Calico Castle plummeted through latticework grating of some alien variety and eventually lost herself in clouds of fog, or mist, or steam, upon catching hold of the torn remnants of some alien clothing.

  There had followed quite a bit of drifting about, and some collisions with large gray things, which the marchioness thought might be the massive alien creatures, though the limited view she could manage with the mirror had frustrated that, forcing her to call for Kalafrand.

  For the next hour or so, she and the seer had watched as Lady Meade was blown about, exploring the alien spaceship. It was quite clear that was what she was doing, sailing in a way, and it was nearly impossible for the wizened Lady of South Mark to tear herself away when came a tap upon her door. But tear herself away she did, for that tap was one that announced events for which she had a great need to attend.

  The thief, Black Sander, waited beyond the door with the Earl of Vorvington. The earl’s round face was florid, and his chest heaved with eager breath. She could see in his gleaming eyes that her mechanized armor piece had arrived.

  “It’s here,” he said unnecessarily. “Come, you must see. It is truly spectacular.”

  She allowed herself to be led down the stairs and out of her own house. Vorvington grabbed a hooded lantern as they went out, and Black Sander extracted a bit of wax from somewhere inside his cloak and summoned a luminous illusion to guide them through the darkness.

  She glanced up and saw that Luria had slunk off behind the horizon already. Sunrise was still another four or five hours off. That was good. The Queen’s seers wouldn’t be watching now.

  They made their way down a paved path, around the fountains, and over the massive fishponds on a series of arched stone footbridges. They rounded the hedge maze and eventually came to the smokehouse, a long, flat-roofed structure of unpainted wood.

  “I apologize, My Lady, but this is the most convenient place,” said the earl. “I thought it prudent.”

  She waved the apology off. “Go on, go on.” It was not without some effort that she hid her own excitement. She hadn’t been this close to finally doing it for forty years. Forty years of waiting. Two hundred years of it. But finally, it was right there in her grasp. The smoke was clearing and reality was taking solid shape.

  And solid it was. They went into the smokehouse, and there it stood in all its magnificence: an enormous, gleaming mech. The machine armor of the Earth Marines. It stood half again as tall as she was, and across its shoulders, it was nearly as wide. It had great arms, jointed like a human’s, but broad and spectacularly made of metal that shone like steel. Beneath and between the plates of its heavy armament ran tubes and silvery rods of metal. There came a dull hum from it that rumbled even in the ground.

  She let her gaze wander up its length, from its titanic feet to its windowed canopy. She peered through the glass and saw a man inside. He stared back at her, his features expressionless. She noted that he wore a mustache that curled in the same way that Jefe’s did, a pair of black hooks pulled out to either side.

  Jefe stepped out from behind the mech and came to stand before her. With a flourish, he swept his arm out and presented the machine.

  “This, My Lady, is as I promised you. You can see that it is working fine. Ignacio will show you, if you do not mind.”

  Carefully restraining any sign of enthusiasm, the marchioness nodded. “Carry on.”

  Jefe lifted his arm and spoke into a bracelet on his wrist. “Go on, Ignacio. Show her.”

  The hum of the mech grew louder, and something of a whining sound ensued. It spun at the waist, halfway around, and lifted one of its arms. A cylindrical appendage, wide like a keg but mad
e of separate black metal tubes, was directed at a side of mastodon that was drying near the back of the smokehouse. The corner of the marchioness’ mouth twitched up with a smile she could not entirely contain.

  Fire erupted from the end of the Gatling gun accompanied by a loud, cracking sort of whine. A red spray of meat flew across the space and spewed all over the smokehouse wall beyond where the side of mastodon hung. Perhaps a second and a half went by before the lower half of the mastodon fell to the floor, the upper portion swinging lazily on its squeaky hook. Smoke rose from both halves, and little flames flickered for a moment before they went out.

  “That is the gat, My Lady,” pronounced Jefe.

  The mech’s giant feet stomped a few steps around, turning so that its whole body faced the mastodon meat. A narrow nozzle emerged from the lower portion of its torso, and suddenly a tongue of flame like dragon’s fire engulfed the meat lying on the ground. It blew past the meat even, and against the smokehouse wall.

  The meat and the wall were aflame.

  Right after, a spew of white issued forth. The flames were extinguished entirely.

  “I apologize for the damage,” Jefe said, though he didn’t sound sorry at all. “All part of the demonstration.”

  “Carry on,” was all she said again.

  “Go on, Ignacio,” Jefe said.

  Ignacio marched the mech to the farthest end of the smokehouse, some thirty spans away. Then the mech jumped right out through the roof, boards and bits of roof tile falling in after. It was gone from sight for a seven count before it came back down again, landing so hard several pieces of meat fell as the rail to which their hooks were mounted broke loose from the beams.

  There followed a blasting out of the far wall with an incendiary device of some sort, after which they all followed the mech out back and watched a brilliant series of maneuvers that ultimately ended in the complete destruction of the smokehouse, a small smithy, and three five-hundred-year-old oak trees.

  The marchioness could not have been happier, and she watched for over the course of an hour as the mech stomped about destroying outbuildings and remote garden structures. Finally, when the demonstration was complete, the mech came back and stood before them again. It hissed and ticked with a distinct ting, ting, ting as various hot metals cooled. Ignacio’s smile inside was not quite so big as Jefe’s, but it was big enough.

  “Is my Prosperion friend pleased?” Jefe asked.

  The marchioness drew herself straight and tried to look just a little bored. “It will suffice. Tell your man his performance was acceptable. I will take the forty-three at the agreed-upon price.”

  Jefe laughed. “Of course.”

  “See that it is done,” she snapped at Black Sander. “I want them all within the week.”

  He inclined his head, losing his devil’s eyes beneath the wide brim of his hat.

  She glared at Vorvington then. “You. Inside.”

  Vorvington looked startled, then afraid. He followed her inside, panting in her wake. She grinned wickedly as she led him on.

  When they were back in her chamber, she locked the door. She glowered at him, which made him wince and fall back like a beaten cur. Her eyes narrowed, and he slunk down even more. Then she made him pleasure her for the remainder of the night, lying on the couch with her father’s famous sayings beneath her and looking past her lover as he huffed and labored and sweated, looking beyond him into the bone-framed mirror where the Galactic Mage’s new bride crawled around the alien ship doing the most extraordinary things.

  It was almost sunrise when the magic mirror went blank.

  Chapter 45

  Orli was familiar enough with the wind shifts now to make falling through the opposing layers efficient if not quite simple. It might almost have been fun were she not in agony in her ribs, her hand, and her leg—and were it not for the fact that Altin was lost and, for all she knew, dead and stuffed in a jar or hanging on a wall like some trophy fish. But other than the agony and dread, it might have been enjoyable. She thought Roberto would probably have been having fun anyway.

  She guessed her fall to be on the order of six or seven minutes, plenty of time to think, but thoughts of Roberto and even Altin vanished as the bottom finally came into view. The steam was thicker, and the wet clouds that had been simply hot and wet became miserable again. It was almost impossible to breathe by the time she was four levels from the thickest of it—the same layer of blinding fog in which she’d been lost after getting her free fall under control the first time. And as if breathing in steam as if it were liquefied air wasn’t painful enough, the temperature was nearing the point of scalding.

  She feathered the Higgs prism back, slowing her fall. From beneath the steam came a rumble, a roiling, popping rumble that sounded every bit like water boiling. Massive quantities of it, a river’s worth or a lake.

  She couldn’t go down into that. Even cockroaches couldn’t handle that, no matter how determined they might be.

  She looked to the bulkhead, where the hook-tailed aliens crawled along with their three-limbed mustache faces. She wondered if they could swim in whatever that was down there. All she could see was hazy gray, but onward she fell, angling back and forth across the wind with each successive level.

  The heat grew.

  She blew back toward the bulkhead, realizing as she did that she was, at some point, going to have to figure out how to stop without hitting the damn thing so hard she’d break the rest of her ribs and who knew what else.

  As she got closer, she saw more of the hook-tailed aliens, “hooks,” as she thought of them. They looked like ants in a line. Most of them moved angularly, heading down into the dimness or coming up from below.

  She paralleled a line of them moving downward toward the starboard hull, or at least what she thought of as the starboard hull. God knew how far off her bearings were at this point. After what seemed an eternity, she found it, a great dark expanse rising up out of the steam as if it were the end of some fog-filled universe. Soon she was sliding along the rough surface of it, braking her momentum with her left elbow and leg—agonizingly—and working the Higgs prism to lower herself down.

  Finally she found the bottom, and, to her great relief, it was solid, at least along the hull. That was the only bit of relief, however, for it was so hot and the steam lay upon it so heavily that she started to panic. She crouched, prepared to leap back up, and fumbled frantically for the Higgs prism dial. The device had gotten so hot she could hardly handle it, and her hands trembled terribly. The broken one was useless.

  She realized she was losing it, and closed her eyes, calming herself. Making herself breathe in long, hot breaths of all-but-liquid air. Agony, but not instant death.

  She could still see, at least a little bit. The steam whirled around, thicker and thinner in wisps and whorls.

  The sound of the boiling was incredible, like an avalanche rumbling from everywhere in the mist, under her feet and thrumming beneath her hand upon the hull, like a million unseen hammers were beating upon the bottom of the ship, up and down all its length. The noise filled the space all around her, although perhaps more so from off to her right.

  A few more moments spent calming herself and she realized she could endure it for a bit longer, long enough to look for something that might help. Maybe she wouldn’t have to go back up just yet. Maybe there really would be a weapon she could find.

  She knew that was a ridiculous hope, but that was what she was running on at this point. A wave of heat washed over her that nearly set her to panicking again. She looked to the flesh on her forearm, the soft, paler skin on the underside. It wasn’t blistering, but it was turning blotchy and pink.

  Get moving, damn it.

  She started along the hull, heading in the direction where she’d seen the hooks angling toward.

  Something whooshed past her head. She felt the brush of it against her hair, and couldn’t tell if it was something physical or just a gust of wind.

 
A huffing sound accompanied it as it rustled past. She ducked reflexively and crouched down. She couldn’t see more than a few feet in any direction through all the steam. More huffing was coming from above and behind her. She waited, staring into the mistiness. She was fairly sure she was being slowly cooked as she waited.

  Something dark whooshed by, something curved. A hook. She just saw the shadowy arc of it coming at her and jerked her head aside. The alien huffed and hustled past. She shuddered. At the speed it was traveling, that hook could have taken her head off, or sunk right into the back of her head and hauled her off like a pig carcass in a slaughterhouse.

  She shuddered a second time, then listened for more aliens coming. Silence. She had to keep moving; she didn’t have time to linger down here, or she’d be a cooked pig anyway. A cooked little human cockroach.

  She headed in the direction of the bulkhead, the direction the hook that had almost hit her had just gone. She wove back and forth away from the wall a little, looking at the ground for something that might help. She didn’t know what. Anything. Altin’s helmet. His backpack unit. An alien ion rifle with a full stock of plasma grenades. Anything.

  No such luck.

  She came to the bulkhead and found nothing at all. Although she could hear the sounds of the hook aliens running around in the steam above. From the noise of them, and the way the sound shifted sometimes, a bit of an echo, she thought they might be running into some kind of corridor. Some of them sounded hollow, and she could make out little grunts as well.

  She crept along the base of the bulkhead, moving toward the boiling sound. She crouched as low as she could, but the heat grew too intense. There was some shielding effect as long as she stayed low, so she knew she was nearing some kind of edge—she was on a ledge perhaps. She wasn’t about to discover where that edge was on accident, however, so she backed off. One thing was not hard to locate, however, for the roaring of a wind vent came from just above, loud enough to be distinct from the massive, rolling boil.