Rift in the Races (26 page)

The lieutenant commander looked relieved and leaned back in his seat. So did Captain Jefferies. Captain Asad managed to look as if he were under personal attack. He faced the Queen squarely. “This is your hospitality? This is trust and mutual respect? You sic your … your … thought-miners on our brains the second we walk into the room?”

Almost everyone in the room seemed to share the same sigh.

“Captain, your fleet is in danger. If you would like to have our teleporters work out how to send your ships to them, or perhaps go get them and bring them back, we will try. There is no shame in asking for assistance from an ally.”

“Are you an ally? You spend nearly a year building that big, ridiculous … crystal ball. Carving pretty patterns on it. Putting goddamn horses in it. Horses! What in the fuck are you going to do with horses against Hostiles? Throw shit at them? And do you think I didn’t notice that your ‘spaceship’ happens to be an orb? Is that supposed to be a joke? Are you mocking our ignorance, or are we supposed to call that another coincidence?”

Tytamon jumped in before the Queen could speak. “Captain Asad. You are upset and perhaps now is not the best time to continue this.” He turned to the Queen whose face was turning red. “Can we please have this discussion at a later time?”

“Your own man proves the truth of it,” pressed Captain Asad, pointing at Altin. “He was out there all alone. No great crystal ball. Just him in one moss-covered stack of rocks. If any of that was real, if you could really do what you say you can, if any of this was more than an elaborate plot, you would have gone with our people when they left.”

The Queen stood, her mouth shaping something that everyone present knew would commit them to a course nobody wanted to take, except perhaps Captain Asad.

Tytamon’s voice when he spoke this time resounded with unnatural resonance, augmented by a silently muttered spell of command. “Your Majesty, please. Let us do this another time.”

“Of course,” she said as easily as if it were her own idea, her rage vanished. She sat and returned to her more diplomatic self. As if she’d not been insulted at all. Altin glanced at Tytamon who glanced back and shook his head, mouthing a silent, “Not now.” The old diviner across the room regarded Tytamon with a cool-eyed gaze as well, one eyebrow slightly higher than the other one. No one else seemed to know what he had done.

“Please,” went on the Queen. “Captains, gentlemen. Ladies. Today marks a tragic day in our mutual history. We will of course give you any aid you request. Simply ask it, and it is yours. But for now, I must retire. I have the pressing business of another war left to attend.”

She rose then and departed with a pair of ministers following in her wake through a door that had been invisible prior to its opening.

After several long uncomfortable moments, Captain Jefferies convinced the still fuming but now silent Asad that it was time for them to go. He agreed readily enough and, sending Altin one last accusatory look, left with his fellow officers from the fleet. Soon it was only Altin, Aderbury and Tytamon left sitting in the otherwise empty room.

“That man is a firebrand,” said Aderbury. “I’m sure glad I don’t serve on his ship. I can’t for the life of me fathom how he keeps his command.”

“Nor can I,” said Altin. “Orli despises him, and I don’t like him either. He’s distrustful and too quick to ire. I think he keeps his captain’s chair because they have few enough options after all this time in space.”

“Hotheaded he may be, but he’s got good reason to be distrustful,” said Tytamon. “He lost nearly an entire crew to the Hostiles—creatures who use magic just like we do, at least as far as he is concerned. And now he’s lost nearly half a fleet as well, timed in an unfortunate manner as he sees it, and one that, well ... put yourself in his plate mail for a while.

“You must admit, from his perspective, we have done very little to help. Some mine shaft branches, a few crewmen, a university course or two? What else, what of significance? It has been nearly a year, and we’re still dawdling on
Citadel
, a single ship we’ve been working on while at the same time they’ve repaired or nearly repaired several of theirs, not to mention doing so after having built a base in an airless environment and digging a vertical mine core that is nearly a straight measure deep on a Naotatican moon. He’s not unreasonable to feel we’ve done little to help them, if viewed from that particular point of view.”

“Well it’s an ignorant point of view. We’ve done plenty,” said Altin. “You can’t be serious. We’ve practically given them that moon, and we’ve opened our very kingdom to them, with every kindness. The Queen even provides them a free labor force, paid out of her own reserves, which is largely responsible for both having finished that mine and helping repair those ships. And what thanks do we get? When the orcs attack your castle, Tytamon, that man wouldn’t even send one gods-be-damned ship. Roberto had to steal it.”

“I’m not saying I disagree with you, Altin. I’m simply saying, if you want to understand why a man holds his nose, you have to try to smell the city from where he is standing downwind.”

“I still think he’s too quick to anger and a dangerous man to have in command of anything bigger than a river barge.”

“Perhaps.”

They sat in silence for a while, each mulling over the options and possibilities.

A small brown homing lizard appeared on Aderbury’s shoulder and began nibbling on his ear. He reached up for it reflexively and untied a note wrapped around its slender frame.

“Hether wants to know when I’m coming home and if you are coming by,” he said, looking at Altin at the last. “You would be welcome as well, Master Tytamon. She is making bat breast casserole. It’s amazing.”

“I’ve got a remarkable cook of my own to look in on,” replied the great mage. “Perhaps some other time. Mine has only recently returned to her kitchen after taking wounds in the service of protecting it with naught but a frying pan. I owe her my gratitude, and that is best paid in person.”

Aderbury nodded and after a few moments more he had departed, leaving the old master and the young student alone. They sat in silence for a while, Tytamon pulling down on his scraggly gray beard in long, contemplative strokes.

Altin was the first to speak. “Why haven’t you told the Queen about the Liquefying Stones? They need to know.”

“They don’t need to know. It makes no difference whether the orcs have the stones or not. If they open a portal to where the demons are, it won’t matter if they used the stones to do it or not.”

“It’s not only demon conjuring. It’s everything. The stones shifted the balance of power once before. They could do it again.”

Tytamon laughed at that, a short dubious sound. Altin was convinced the weathered old wizard’s humor did not relate to Altin’s remark. “The stones will kill more of their magicians than we will,” he said. “You know that better than anyone. And I don’t believe they have many of them to spare. Frankly, the stones may be our greatest ally.”

“But we need to get them back.”

“We do. And we will. Once Andru and his men find out where they have gone.”

“That could be months, even a year. Are you even going to tell him about the stones? At least
him
?”

“I already have.”

Altin pulled back, surprised. “You have?”

“You didn’t really think the young captain had that much disregard for the riding skills of the Queen’s combat wizards did you?”

“Actually, I did. I’ve worked with them. A bunch of mothers’ sons, most.”

Tytamon smirked beneath his whiskers and nodded. “Perhaps you have a point. But just the same, Andru knows. He’ll find them. And if he doesn’t, we will.”

“We?”

“Yes, we. You and I.” He turned and looked Altin square in the eyes, a storm brewing on his gray-browed forehead. “Altin, the Queen must not know about the Liquefying Stones.”

“She’s the
Queen
.”

“She is also fighting two wars.”

“Yes, the Hostiles and the orcs. She wants them gone. Who doesn’t?”

“Altin, she wants to be rid of them for good.
All
of them.”

“Right. I agree.” He stared back at his mentor, unable at first to fathom why this was a problem. He could see by the strange light in Tytamon’s eyes that there was something he was missing, something that lurked right out of reach. Altin sat back and tried to rethink it, searching for what it was he had missed. He gazed into the map lines of the ancient sorcerer’s face, as if somewhere in them he might find the path to what he was missing, the reasons that made letting the Queen in on the secret of the stones such a bad idea.

Tytamon saw that he wasn’t going to get it on his own, so with a muttered word and the turn of a finger in the air, Tytamon brought forth an image of the island of Duador, the whole of it, rotating in the space above the table like a mutton chop that had been tossed up and hung there.

It took a moment, but suddenly Altin understood. He let out an extended, “Ohhh.”

“Yes.
Oh
,” agreed the old mage. “It’s a bit different when you look at it in the light of that lamp, isn’t it?”

Altin nodded. He sat back in his chair and thought for a moment. He thought about what that kind of efficiency that would entail if pursued by conventional means, how nearly impossible it would be to scour every last inch of the Daggerspines, to ferret out every last orc. Even the mothers and children. Find every last one and wipe them out for good. Such were brutal thoughts, and he saw where Tytamon’s thoughts on the matter came from.

But then he thought about the fight the other day. He thought about the waves of snarling green coming over the castle walls. He thought about the groundskeeper dead, the stableman missing and likely dead as well. He thought about how frightened he’d been of losing Orli to one of them. He thought about Kettle and Pernie. He could see the two of them fighting for their lives down in the courtyard, Pernie so terrified it made her magic manifest. The thought of her terror reminded him of her earlier abduction, almost two years ago, and in his memory he could see her once again being covered in flour by orc cooks, being made ready for the pot.

That was the image that clinched it.

Slowly at first, but with increasing confidence, he began to nod his head. His face took on a resigned countenance, the sort one wears when taking foul-tasting medicine. “Her Majesty is right. It must be done. It is the only way.”

Tytamon stared at his apprentice, realizing the younger mage was coming to a vastly different conclusion than he’d been hoping for. He stared at Altin as if he had just grown a second head. “Altin, you must kill that thought before it sets a root that will undermine the very foundation of your humanity.”

“What root? There’s no root. There’s only reality. They must all be killed. Once and for all. It’s only logical. Think about it. They keep coming back, time and time again. How many Orc Wars have there been? Twelve? Thirteen? We cull them back, they hide in their mountains, and then they strike again. And now this? The polished armor, the shaman circle, and now the stones. It’s time to accept the fact that they are evil and wipe them out before it is too late. Why shouldn’t we?”

“Because it’s wrong, Altin. That’s the point I’m trying to make. That’s precisely what they said about Duador half a millennium ago.”

“Duador was a mistake.”

“So will this be if we let it happen. It’s not our place to decide what species live or die, Altin. Those decisions belong to the gods. Not men.”

“There are no gods,” said Altin. “If there were, there wouldn’t be any orcs making stew out of little girls. Or Hostiles clearing off entire worlds, when it comes to that. The universe will be better off when both species are dead.”

“I’m sure they feel the same way about us.”

“I’m sure of it too.”

“That’s the entire point.”

“Exactly.”

Tytamon let go a long breath and closed his tired eyes for a time. “Well, we won’t settle this today,” he said when he finally opened them. “So for now, let’s get back to Calico Castle. Get some rest and determine what we have next to do.”

“I already know what I’m going to do.”

“What?”

“If Andru is the only one who can find the orc’s nest, then I am the only one who can find the Hostiles. So, that’s what I’m going to do.”

“Altin, we have time for that.”

“Ask Admiral Crane how much time we have,” said Altin. “Ask all those dead Earthmen.” He got up and left.

Tytamon watched him go. When he was gone, the weary old mage leaned back and drew his pipe from a sleeve in his voluminous robes. He leaned forward again just long enough to grab a candle and light the pipe, before sitting back and staring up at the scenery on the ceiling above. A sea battle, the dark lines and broad sails of human warships working together with the elves in their sleek vessels of golden reeds and silver-leafed single sails. The allied ships moved as he watched, braving the white-capped tempest in mortal combat with the dwarves of Duador in their low-slung war boats, wide ironclad things, oars jutting from the narrow holes in the side, the arms of their catapults in various stages of release, the air between the sides filled with the great iron balls of explosive dwarven ingenuity.