Queen of Stars (8 page)

Chapter 10

T
he landscape was all black lava, rugged and sharp, and at first glance completely barren, although closer inspection would reveal myriads of tiny orchids hiding in the crevices like colored stars. The buildings were low and as dark as the rocks.

Izar leaped down. Dismounting more gracefully, Rigel thanked Kitalphar for the ride. She acknowledged his gratitude with a dignified nod and launched upward, soaring into the pearly dawn sky. Saidak would take him back to Canopus.

Commander Zozma came bounding toward them, massive paws throwing up spurts of black sand. He stopped abruptly, staring at Rigel.

“You smell of blood.”

“It’s my own.” Probably his medical amulets had healed his scratches already, but he should have taken a minute to swim.

Izar sniggered.

“Her Majesty is impatient, Marshal,” the sphinx growled. “I recommend haste.” He spun around and loped off at a pace that made the two bipeds run to keep up with him. He led them to a small, windowless shed built of undressed lava rocks with a low slate roof sagging badly in the middle. The kennel-height plank door swung open on its own. Even Izar had to duck under the lintel; Rigel needed to bend double to fit through. When he straightened up, reality had suffered another dimensional twist, for he was now in what Fomalhaut called his laboratory, which was really a showroom, filled with wonders to impress visitors.

Whether it was indoors or outdoors was debatable. The space was as large as a football stadium, open to the breathtaking moonless night sky of the Starlands. Even at noon yesterday there had been no sign of sun in here, and yet the interior was always bright as midday. The walls comprised a circle of massive stone monoliths, topped with a ring of capping stones, like Stonehenge only much larger. Every gap looked out on different scenery—beaches, jungle rivers, snow-capped mountains, village streets—some in bright sunlight, others at night or under monsoon rains. The floor was a polished mosaic of cabalistic symbols that changed surreptitiously, like the writing on Saiph.

Jaded by terrestrial technology, Rigel found it all rather juvenile, but Izar thought it was a wonderful place to visit. He laughed aloud as he saluted a suit of golden armor standing just inside the door and it returned the gesture. A dozen or so of these metal guardians stood scattered around, and once in a while they would trade places in a stiff, clanking march.

Talitha was visible over at the far side, in the seancing court, and Rigel herded Izar in that direction, keeping to the perimeter to avoid some less trustworthy wonders on display. The pool of black water periodically swirled as if large things swam just below the surface; the pentagonal hearth burned with dark blue flames cold enough to make even a starborn shiver; and so on. The centerpiece was a stupendous pendulum that Fomalhaut called the Time of Life, a crystal disk about five meters across, suspended on a rod that hung from the night sky. It should have been possible to calculate the height of the pivot from the period of the pendulum, but this was not Earth and the period seemed to vary. At the moment the rod was close to vertical, the bottom edge of the disk near the ground and imperceptibly sinking.

“Come away from that!” Rigel yelled.

“Aw, just a peek…”

“No! Come here,
starling
. You heard what the mage told you yesterday.”

They had an agreement: When Rigel called him “starling,” Izar had to obey instantly. Any other time he was free to choose and, although he might still be punished for any wrongdoings, disobedience would not be listed on the charge sheet. He accepted the terms because Rigel never abused them.

The seancing court was a circle of multicolored mosaic, surrounded by a low parapet, a toddlers’ paddling pool without water. In the center a sphere of crystal about a meter and a half in diameter was mounted on a silver plinth that put its top at about head height for an elf. A male starborn stood beside it, embracing it, hands and forehead pressed to the crystal. His unusual sea-green hair identified him as Mizar, one of Fomalhaut’s assistants. Standing beside him with her eyes closed and a hand on his arm was Queen Talitha. Izar ran forward to join the group.

Rigel followed at a slower pace, but found his way blocked by the menacing figure of Fomalhaut himself, a tall golden-haired elf wearing his court mage’s disk collar of opals and pearls in honor of the queen’s visit. Fomalhaut was a starborn of the old school, although that meant very little because they all were, and he had disliked Rigel since the day they
first met in a Wal-Mart store. When he learned that the halfling was Queen Electra’s by-blow, dislike had ripened into loathing. And when the new queen appointed the mongrel to one of the highest offices in the land, loathing had become abhorrence.

Rigel halted and bowed, arms out. “May the stars shine on you forever, Starborn Fomalhaut.”

The mage did not offer the customary formal reply. “Halfling, I just want you to know you that I did not tamper with your reversion staff yesterday.”

This was an astonishing concession for him, almost an apology.

“I thank you for telling me, my lord.”

“I will so testify today on the Star of Truth.”

“For me that is not necessary. I would never doubt your word.”

For a moment the elf just stared down at him with his lip curled in distaste. Then he said, “Then why do you not believe me when I tell you that I foresee imminent death for you if you remain in the Starlands?”

“Within months, you said. I did extrovert yesterday. Has that changed your prediction?”

“No. You returned. Your fate will be the same.”

“Still months?”

“Nearer weeks.”

Not good news. “Thank you, starborn, but my answer must remain that I am bound to serve Her Majesty and Imp Izar. A long life has no appeal if it is to be marred by shame.”

“Idiot!” Rejecting the suggestion that a half-blood could have a sense of honor, the elf spun on his heel and strode back to the seancing court. He laid a hand on Mizar’s arm. A moment later Rigel arrived, spoke his name for the benefit of the others, and connected to the seance by grasping Fomalhaut’s shoulder.

As soon as he closed his eyes he was back on Earth, hurtling along a street roaring with busy traffic, a disembodied and invisible presence flying just above head height. Mizar, who was directing this trip, was following a black SUV, which slowed for a green light, then swung around to make a dangerous left turn through a gap in the oncoming traffic. The move caught Mizar by surprise, so the perspective wavered unsteadily, passing through a furniture van—whose interior was predictably dark—before speeding forward to catch the disappearing quarry.

Rigel heard Izar say, “Wow!” as if from very far away, barely audible over the sound of traffic.

“About time you got here, halfling!” That was the queen. “Identify this location.”

Rigel knew he was deep in the skunk pen when she called him that. He looked up at the buildings whizzing by and then over at the street signs. It was early on a hot summer morning, and the road reeked of exhaust fumes. There was a plane coming in overhead.

“It’s Calgary,” he said, “where Izar and I were yesterday. Heading east. If you’re following some members of the Family, I’d guess that they’re skipping town. I wonder why they didn’t leave right after the art gallery disaster.”

“They had some business to tidy up,” Talitha said angrily. “Tell us where they’re going.”

“Back to Saskatchewan, likely. If they were staking out Avior as bait for me, their headquarters must be in or near Regina. That’s the city where she lived. When she brought her work to the show in Calgary, they would have followed. Or at least some of them would have.”

There was silence for a while. The road widened as it emerged from the older section of town, beginning to look more like a highway. A turnoff sign to the Deerfoot Trail confirmed Rigel’s identification of the route, if not necessarily the destination.

“Mintaka’s the passenger,” Talitha said. “I don’t know the driver. Pull right inside and let Izar have a look at her.”

The SUV had sped up and was passing all other traffic, weaving in and out. Mizar tracked it closely, and Rigel found the effect dizzying. He wondered if starfolk were immune to motion sickness.

“First,” he said, “can you give us a look backward, please, starborn?”

The mage ignored the halfling’s request. The point of view continued to race after the SUV, moving steadily closer to its back window.

“Why do you want that?” Talitha demanded.

“Because I think I can hear a siren. The Mounties are…” No, this was still inside city limits, so the Mounties might be assembling somewhere ahead, outside the city. “The police may be after them.”

“Worse!” the queen said. “Much worse. Show us, mage.”

“What Your Majesty requests is not easy,” Fomalhaut muttered, and the scene lurched and spun several times before Mizar had them racing backward along the highway. Even then, the ground sloped sharply to the left.

Yes, there were flashing lights in the distance. “They won’t give chase,” Rigel said. “It’s too dangerous. They’ll radio ahead and close the highway. What have they done—the halflings, I mean—to get the cops on their tail?”

Silence. Seancing Earth was legal, unlike actually extroverting there, because seancers could do nothing to influence events or make themselves known. As genuine reality TV, it was a popular pastime with some starborn but that didn’t mean they always understood everything they saw. The scene twisted around to a forward view again, but the fugitives had drawn a long way ahead. Mizar jumped the view a kilometer or so and started to close in on them again.

“What have they got in the vehicle, then?” Rigel asked.

“Guns,” Fomalhaut said. “They stopped at a place with many small houses around a yard, and they loaded up with guns. At the time we thought someone in the guardroom was watching them.”

Not a guardroom, more likely a motel office. The survivors of the attack on Rigel were destroying evidence of their crime; being machinery, guns could not be introverted to the Starlands.

The SUV’s back window loomed in front of them, and they were once again surrounded by the sound of tires on the asphalt and a stench of exhaust. The luggage in the back was hidden under a blue tarpaulin, and the man in the passenger seat had twisted around in an attempt to extract something. He wore a red turban to hide his ears, but his face had a Nordic pallor and his eyebrows were gold. Given the way the vehicle was weaving in and out of traffic, Mizar was having trouble stabilizing the point of view, but Rigel recognized the passenger instantly.

“That’s Mintaka!” Izar said. “I hate him, hate him!”

“So do we all, love,” his mother said. “He’s very bad.”

Mintaka succeeded in throwing off the cover, revealing a heap of automatic or semiautomatic firearms. What he was after was underneath them and he had to rummage to find it. “Got it!” he shouted, his voice sounding abnormally loud to the watchers in the seance court.

“That’s a reversion staff!” Rigel said. “They’re going to blow.”

“Blow what?” asked Izar.

“Introvert out of there. Can they use a staff sitting down?”

When Mizar did not answer, Fomalhaut said, “They may try. But if they can’t straighten out parallel to the staff, they may leave bits of themselves behind.”

Their vantage point crept forward and twisted to show the driver’s face, which was screwed up in a rictus of concentration or just plain terror. A Starlands halfling could not have much experience driving a car and she was well over the speed limit now, tearing along the highway. Her features were nondescript and quite human-looking, but she had the unmistakable something-about-the-eyes that spelled “halfling.” Whether or not she had a navel or iron-hard feet, her lack of obvious elfin features would make her especially useful to the Family for extroverting missions. She might be a resident agent, or just part of a team assembled to collect the weaponry and prepare to ambush Rigel.

“That’s Alkes!” Izar said. “I never liked her much, but she wasn’t as bad as Mintaka, or Hadar, or Botein, or…
Huh?”

The view swung around to check on Mintaka, who had just reclined his seat so he could stretch out, his body approximately straight if not flat. He was holding the reversion staff on top of him.

“What’re you doing?” Alkes shouted, frantically dividing her attention between the road and her companion.

“G’bye, sister. Gotta fly.”

“Bastard! You wait for me, you—”

She reached a hand for the staff. Brakes squealed. She screamed; he swore. The SUV vanished as the watchers’ perception shot out through the windshield. The shriek of brakes ended in the nauseous sound of one impact, then another.

The point of view twirled madly as Mizar looked for the crash. When he found it, he had to soar back along several hundred meters of highway. The SUV had left the road, rolling across the median ditch and into the oncoming lane. Two cars, a van, and a bus had brought it to a halt.

Then another car plowed into the tangle.

“Stop!” Talitha shouted, apparently forgetting that she had only to open her eyes to break the contact. But the mage did stop, and Rigel was suddenly back in Fornacis too. The realism of the crash had left him sweating and shaking.

“Did they both make it?” he asked. “Did anyone see?” How many innocent victims had been killed or harmed in the other vehicles? He felt sick, but he was not at fault and there was nothing he could do. Survivors with cell phones would be calling for ambulances already.

“I didn’t see,” Talitha said.

“Nor did I.” Fomalhaut scowled at Rigel, rubbing his shoulder as if it had been soiled by the halfling’s touch.

“I shall add Mintaka and Alkes to the summons that has already been sent to Prince Vildiar,” the queen announced. “If he cannot produce them when court assembles at noon tomorrow, we shall ask why.”

She would never get Vildiar to testify on the Star of Truth and no one in the Starlands would dare to arrest a Naos, but she had apparently decided to provoke a confrontation of some sort. She showed her youth sometimes by refusing to listen to her advisors’ counsel. Only rarely did she pay attention to Rigel’s views; he was a foreigner, a mere babysitter, and not much older in years than Izar. All he could do was hope that she wasn’t making a horrible mistake.