Galactic Mage 4: Alien Arrivals Page 42

  Blue Fire, however, already knew, at least the first part. And she could not have cared less, apparently, about the second. The moment he made contact, she blasted him with happiness, and the thoughts that filled him spread his face in a smile so violent the muscles began to cramp. He was dimly aware of the pain of it, but his body was so filled with unbounded happiness that he could only barely hold onto the thought that he might be in some kind of danger.

  He staggered back, and for a time those with him gaped at him, wondering if they ought to intervene. Roberto even offered to knock him out, if Orli thought that might break the spell. She shook her head no, but by the way she chewed her lower lip, it was obvious to all in the cargo hold that she was reconsidering as the second minute of Blue Fire’s jubilance went by.

  Eventually Blue Fire’s giddiness abated enough that Altin could breathe and break himself out of the contact, an effort that actually required drawing mana through the ring.

  “Well?” Orli and Roberto asked simultaneously.

  “Well, she knows that Yellow Fire is alive,” he said, panting and leaning on his knees. “Apparently they’ve been … doing whatever Hostiles in love do across all that space. She was too happy to use her words, but I saw her joy, and in it the reflection of his. So, I guess they found each other right away. She’s going to help him recuperate. Apparently he’s still very weak.”

  Orli jumped up and down and clapped her hands, her eyes glittering. “Thank God,” she said, elation still driving her to bounce. “I’m so happy. Finally, after all that time.”

  “What about the big ships, or whatever the hell they are?” Roberto asked. “Did she tell you what that is?”

  “I don’t even know if any of what I tried to tell her about them got through,” Altin confessed. “I opened up to her with my ideas, but it was like getting hit by Palace-sized fireballs of flaming happiness. I was having trouble finding my own thoughts in all of it.”

  “Yeah, we saw that, dude. I’ll be honest; you looked kind of dumb there for a while. I thought you were going to start drooling or something.”

  Orli made a ticking sound with her tongue against the roof of her mouth, but Roberto shrugged and put his hands out defensively. “What? You saw it too.”

  “The point is,” Altin pressed on, “I still have no idea what those ships represent, friend or foe, much less what they actually are. I suspect I’m going to have a hard time getting through to her through all of that interstellar mooning for a while. I had thought to be the bearer of good news, but it seems now, she has little enough need of me.”

  “Well, good,” Orli said. “I for one am happy for her. And for you. You hardly needed her in your head all the time. She always put you in a mood.”

  “Whoa, look who’s all sympathy now,” Roberto said. “Wasn’t even a week ago, and you were on him about that promise that he made.”

  “Well, that was a hard time for us both. But it all worked out in the end.” She glowered at him a little bit, however, for taking Altin’s side.

  “All except for those big ships,” Altin said. “I’m not ready to concede that they are part of an outcome that we can all call ‘all worked out.’ I believe we ought to go and make sure Yellow Fire is not in some sort of danger now.”

  “Dude, I’m not trying to be a dick here, but my ship is out of service until I get this tank back up and the rest of the ship checked out,” Roberto said. “No way I’m risking it or anyone else on it until we square this away.” He patted the tank that Chelsea was strapping down.

  “Agreed. But my tower is not.”

  “Why not just look around with your magical eyeball thing?” Roberto asked. He lifted his hands up, right in front of his face, and waggled his fingers, peering out through the motion. “Just check it out that way. That’s way faster and less risky.”

  “Yes, but you’ll recall we can’t see those ships with our eyes. In fact, only some of your equipment picked them up at all. But at least some of them did.”

  “That’s true,” Roberto said. “But only after they damn near ground us down like cheese. You should look before we leap; you know what I’m saying?”

  The events of the last hour had rattled them all. Emotions were high, and it was a few moments before Altin recognized the sagacity of the advice. He took a breath and cast a seeing spell, fully expecting to see nothing. But he was wrong.

  There upon the surface of Yellow Fire’s new red world appeared four long, wide shapes, each with a huge oblong forward section that flared out and then tapered back liked the end of a shovel or perhaps a pit viper’s head. The rest of each ship—long and narrow, seeming as long as a mountain range—stretched out behind the thick forward end with a graceful quality. They were obviously rigid but, in being so, conveyed a certain fluidity. They weren’t pretty, per se, all one color, a brownish green that reminded him of the color of seaweed, and the surface of each was knotty and imperfect in a way, like something grown or even eroded rather than something built. If they were ships, they certainly weren’t held together with rivets and welded seams, not that Altin could see. At the narrowest end, the enormous length finally split in two, forked like the tongue of a dragon, and in places along the end of each tine, they flared out with flattened extensions that looked like tiny wings. These seemed tiny from Altin’s perspective compared to the rest of the ship, but in the context of the real mountains and the large rock formations nearby, which Altin was familiar with, the smallest of these were at least a half measure wide. In short, whatever those things were, they were huge.

  Each of them had landed upon the surface with the thick ends, heads, as Altin thought of them, pointed toward one another, as if they were in conversation. They left a space between them that was, by Altin’s guess, perhaps ten measures across, and as he watched, a large opening appeared in the top of each ship, roughly midway down its length. Great gusts of smoke or steam poured forth from those openings—the winds on the surface were so violent it was hard to be sure—smearing the emissions to the barest streaks of white, and shortly after, they were gone.

  Something long, wide, and flat rolled itself out of each opening, like a tongue lolling out of a mouth upon the ground. These were the same color as the rest of the ship, but they unfurled gradually out over the marginally flat upper surface of the vessels, then down the sides onto the red dirt of the planet. Once they had touched the ground, they straightened and appeared to Altin’s eye to become perfectly rigid.

  Altin watched breathlessly, though somewhere in the back of his mind, he absently considered dropping the spell and telling the others what he saw, perhaps even setting up a scrying illusion in which they could all watch. But he couldn’t make himself let go of the seeing spell just yet. He couldn’t stop watching.

  Shortly after the four tongues went rigid, four angular contraptions came up from the dark spaces inside the enormous ships, each of them with giant wheels, several on each side of the vehicle—if in fact that’s what they were—and around these rows of wheels were wrapped continuous bands of yet more of the blotchy green-brown material, though this time jointed together in small, parallel plates. The rows of wheels rolled upon these bands, the bands themselves moving down and around the front and back wheels in a continuous loop that seemed to him meant to supply traction for the machines.

  The machines rolled out from their ships, down the rigid tongue ramps, and onto the storm-churned plain. Each machine sent up a long pole from its top, nearly as thick as the whole machine. When the poles, like enormous, fat masts, reached what Altin thought might be a half measure in the air, they sprouted new growth, which branched horizontally like giant spars.

  Altin really wanted to break the spell and tell everyone what he saw. He could hear the muffled anxiousness of them speaking around him. Their curiosity was palpable, and he nearly lost the spell anyway.

  But he held on long enough to watch the spars as they in turn sprouted wide ends, like spoons, only flat at the leading edges. When th
ey were fully formed, the mast poles themselves bent downward at the halfway point, suddenly sinuous, and stretched themselves out over the ground as if they were the feelers of some great insect. He almost had time to wonder what they were doing, when the feelers went rigid again and all three machines began to dig.

  All four machines plunged their flat-tipped spoons, obviously shovels, into the ground, and what Altin had thought of as stays now began to rotate like the blades on a windmill, driving the spoons into the land and ripping out enormous chunks of red soil and stone. The shovel ends spun round on the pole, an axle now, and flung the dirt into the wind.

  Smaller shafts emerged from the sides of the digging machines as the shape of the hole they were making formed. These extended out above the wheels, unfolding like the legs of a giant grasshopper. They angled out to brace against the dirt and thrust themselves deep into the surface, obviously meant to provide greater stability. Then nothing more emerged. The machines set themselves to the work in perfect unison, and soon they were excavating with remarkable efficiency.

  It was hard to believe how quickly they dug. Altin watched in growing horror as the movements of the shovel arms became so rapid he could no longer see the shovels turning anymore. All he saw were four plumes of dust blowing out across the vast flatlands, a red stain on the wind like bloody smoke from a fire.

  When at last he broke the seeing spell, his friends were staring at him impatiently. He thought about trying to explain it, but instead he anchored a scrying spell to the spot he’d been watching from and linked it to an illusion in the air, allowing them to see it for themselves.

  By the time he was done and could clear his head from the casting well enough to gauge their response, Orli was in tears.

  Chapter 50

  Seawind’s teleport spell put Pernie right back where she’d been the day he’d first appeared at Calico Castle: on the seventh floor of the tall central spire, which had been Tytamon’s bedchamber for centuries, but which now stood decorated to appease Orli’s taste. Orli hadn’t been in it since the day Pernie tried to shoot her through the heart with her own laser, and Pernie knew it immediately. There was a film of dust on everything, including the duvet, and the rug still had a burn mark where the laser beam had been redirected toward the floor by the elf. Pernie took it all in, the bed just as it had been when Pernie had been moping there, the boxes of shoes right where they’d been dropped at the base of the stairs leading up to the topmost floor. There could be no doubt. It was clear neither Orli nor Kettle had come back here after that day.

  Pernie smiled and was glad. Maybe she really was still in time.

  She absently fingered the little pouch of her sling, her old weapon now tied around her waist again like a belt, though the dangling ends no longer dangled quite so far. They’d given her back all her weaponry, her sling, her little knife, and her amulet that was the shrunken version of Ilbei Spadebreaker’s magical pickaxe. But they had taken away her spear and her glass knife, and they wouldn’t let her bring Knot with her either. They told her those belonged to the Sava’an’Lansom, a title of which she was not yet fully in possession.

  She didn’t care about titles, though. She just wanted one thing. To see if Orli Pewter had married Master Altin yet. The untouched room gave her hope.

  She went to the great chest, hoping to find Orli’s laser in there. It was gone. So the room was not entirely untouched. Pernie glanced over her shoulder and also noticed that Orli’s tablet was not leaning next to the hourglass. She’d taken her technology.

  Pernie crept down the stairs, listening intently for the sounds of anyone coming her way. No one was.

  She came upon the landing that looked into Tytamon’s study and saw that the door was locked. The last time she was here, she wouldn’t have been able to get in there, but this time she had her power under her control. She leaned forward and peered through the keyhole, careful not to touch it, for she knew that such things were often equipped with magical booby traps.

  She spotted a clear space on the other side, and, simply to prove that she could, she teleported herself inside. She turned all about, standing alone in the most forbidden of all places in Calico Castle, and she was exultant for it. She truly was a teleporter of Calico Castle now. Just like Sir Altin. Just like Tytamon had been. She finally was one of them.

  She sighed as she thought it, though. She wasn’t really. They could teleport very far. All around the world. Altin could teleport all across the stars. She’d never teleport across the stars.

  She opened her hand and looked into it, still holding the small mint leaf Seawind had given her. “All you have to do to return to us is tear this leaf in half,” he’d told her. “It is your choice. We will not come for you again.”

  She had been more than happy to let them send her away after that, vowing never to return, still pouting some at having found out she couldn’t have Knot with her here. Oh, what fun it would have been to ride him across the open prairies of Kurr. No place on the island was open at all, only a few scarce beaches here and there, and those rarely even so much as a full measure long. She thought that perhaps even Knot did not know how fast he could go. She knew that she had grown stronger and faster with practice and training by the elves. She thought that maybe Knot could grow faster and stronger too, given enough room to run. She was sure he was already faster than any horse she’d ever seen.

  But Knot was gone. She thought she most likely would never see him again. Which was fine. Once Master Altin fell in love with her, he would let her fly on Taot’s back. She was sure a dragon would be better than some old bug anyway.

  Still, she sighed again.

  She tucked the leaf behind her ear for safekeeping, and looked around the room. She’d never gotten to come in here before, only glimpsed it through the open door. It was even messier than she recalled, and it looked like a lot of Tytamon’s equipment had simply been pushed right off the end of the long table that he’d used all those years for a desk.

  She heard voices coming through the window across the room, which startled her. With reflexes she’d long since stopped even thinking about, she whispered the words of her complex invisibility spell. She made her way quickly toward the window, stepping lightly over and around the assorted stacks of ancient artifacts and slipping easily between the carelessly arranged tables that angled here and there across the room. The first thing she saw was a big silvery thing sitting in the meadow beyond the walls. She knew immediately what it had to be. A spaceship! Seeing it made her even more excited to see who was visiting.

  She had to stand on tippy toes to lean out far enough through the window to see down into the courtyard below, but see she could, and she started upon seeing who it was, as interest in the spaceship vanished. It was Master Altin and Orli, talking to a group of people Pernie wasn’t sure she recognized. One of them looked like the fun and funny Earth man Roberto, but if it was him, he was dressed differently than before. The familiar fleet uniform was gone, and instead he wore a bright purple coat with long tails and very torn and tattered sleeves. But he was the only one she might recognize. She was sure she didn’t know the rest.

  Orli Pewter was crying, which Pernie thought was good. She would be crying when Pernie was done too.

  Pernie reached down and touched her boot, making sure the little vial of Fayne Gossa was where she usually kept it. It was. Master Altin would never know it was Pernie that did it if Orli Pewter died that way, and in time he wouldn’t be mad at her and would love her instead.

  She stood back upon her tiptoes to look down again. Master Altin was talking emphatically, and the way Orli Pewter was moving made it seem as if they did not agree. Pernie was glad of that too. She would always agree with Master Altin; he was a Seven, and he was the greatest wizard in all the land. Plus he had a dragon, which nobody else had. And he’d discovered outer space. And the moon.

  Shortly after, the disagreement ended, and just like that, Master Altin disappeared. Pernie thought that was
odd because he didn’t say anything or move his hands at all. He cast his spell like the elves of String.

  She turned to go, intent on sneaking down to the dining room and waiting until Kettle set the table for them all to eat. Kettle always set the table, every night. And Orli Pewter would sit to the right of where Master Altin sat. Which meant Pernie knew exactly which cup to put the poison in. Then she could simply wait in the shadows until Orli Pewter was dead. She would teleport outside once it was done, and then hide in the forest for a week or two. Then she would “come home” and tell them about her first year on String. They would be glad to see her then, and Orli Pewter would be buried in the ground.

  A movement in the window caught her eye.

  She turned back and saw that there on the windowsill near where she’d been looking out was a little vase of some kind, or at least that’s what she’d thought when she’d first approached—not that she’d given it any real thought at all. But there it was, a fancy thing of glass, the sort of thing only a grown-up would want, boring but for the green spikes of a leafy-looking top, which was the source of the motion that she had seen.

  She turned once more to go, but then stopped, and looked back at the vase again. It reminded her of something. She stepped nearer to it and examined it more carefully. Her little brow furrowed as she recognized what it was, or at least what it had been made to resemble with marvelous accuracy: it was a pair of twisted palm trees, just like those in the forbidden cove. The ones that weren’t supposed to grow anywhere else at all.

  What a strange thing to find at Calico Castle. Djoveeve had told her that nobody could ever know about such things. She said that the sacred trees were an absolute secret that had to be kept from humanity. The old woman had made a big fuss about it when Pernie and Knot had chanced upon the grove. And yet, there one was, a miniature likeness sitting in plain view upon Tytamon’s windowsill.

  She picked it up and gave the green spikes, obviously little glass palm fronds, a spin. They turned as easily at her touch as they had at the touch of the breeze.