Rift in the Races (9 page)

“What are you two whispering about?” demanded Captain Asad. “I think at this point, given current realities, all information needs to be presented openly.”

“I was just telling her,” said Aderbury, “that the spell is difficult, though we will be working on simplifying it now that we figured out how to make it work.” He winked at Orli. “As with most inventions, the prototype is often clumsier than later work. Also, a significant downside of anti-magic is that it degenerates quickly. It has to be maintained regularly or it will fade away. That part is easy enough to do, and any enchanter C-ranked or higher can keep one up. It’s rather like riding a gryphon. A child can do it once it’s captured and trained. But it’s the capturing and training that gets people killed.”

“So what happens if it runs out?” asked Captain Asad. “The entanglement array will be exposed to … all the magic that is going on down there.” He spoke the word
magic
as if it were a scorpion on his tongue as he pointed through the floor to the redoubts far below, envisioning as he did hundreds of Prosperions like Altin doing whatever it was they do. “It’s very expensive machinery. I am certain the admiral did not anticipate that it might be accidentally destroyed.”

“It won’t run out,” Aderbury said, more than a little defensively. “Not unless all the duty officers are dead. And if that happens, well, I can’t speak for anything working well after that.”

“Only our very best will crew
Citadel
, my dear captain. Have faith,” said the Queen.

“Speaking of faith,” said the long silent earl, “by my faith I need a drink. And I am starved. I think I’ve had all of this
Citadel
business I care to have for one day. And I swear I can smell mammoth roasting out there, even through all this rock.” He tapped the stone wall near him and sniffed a large, full-bodied sniff as if that might prove his claim.

“Vorvington has the right of it,” said the Queen. “My cooks will have everything ready by now. We shall dine and enjoy the evening together as friends before you all go running off back to your ships and that Tinpoan base of yours.”

Orli glanced across the room to Altin and saw his expression brightening to match hers. Finally, the time had come.

“I see there are no complaints,” the Queen said, ignoring the rigid impatience that stiffened Captain Asad at the mention of the impending feast. “Master Aderbury, lead us back to the teleportation chamber, and make it the shortest route possible. We’ll be dining in less than half an hour.”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” said the stocky mage, and soon he had vanished down the stairs with the rest of the group making their way single file in his wake.

The Queen lingered until all were gone but Altin, Orli and herself, and of course the elven assassin, just out of sight below them on the stairs. “Thank you, Sir Altin,” she said to Altin once the rest were out of earshot. “It’s important you do your duties in the matters of
Citadel
and my armada. You’ll be grateful for the authority it brings one day, just you wait and see.”

“Of course, Your Majesty. And thank you.” She moved to withdraw, but stopped when he called to her in a querying sort of way. “Your Majesty.”

She looked back, eyebrows on high. “Yes, Sir Altin?”

“Would you be offended if Orli and I were to skip the feast? I can ask Envette to meet you all in the teleportation room.”

A lecture began to bloom upon her lips, but a smile flowered there instead as she gazed upon the two young lovers. She laughed, then reached out to touch Orli on the cheek. “I don’t envy you your captain’s wrath for it, but I certainly envy your beauty and your youth.” She regarded Altin warmly. “I shall make your excuses.”

“Thank you, Your Majesty.” This from both of them.

The War Queen called down to the elf and ordered him to move along, and shortly after she was gone.

Finally Altin and Orli were alone.

Chapter 6

O
rli leaned against Altin, her head tilted upon his shoulder and her eyes closed. She breathed in the aromatic spectacle of the coastline in long, patient breaths, blissful and at ease. The humid palpability of salt and sand and seaweed mixed together as one great tumble of planetary perfume, the perfect distillation of land and sea, a plentitude pregnant with everything that the sterility of space had denied her for so long. This was reality. It was the reality of a soft beach, still warm from a day beneath the sun, comfortable to lie upon, fun to filter through her fingers or toss into the breeze. Being here contented her so thoroughly she was sure she could sit and simply wriggle her toes through the rest of her life.

Altin sat beside her, staring off over the horizon, filled with contentment of his own. He liked how her hair felt against his cheek, soft and smooth. He thought it smelled more beautiful than anything nature could provide. So he watched and breathed her in as daylight slowly gave way to night.

“Look, there it goes again,” he said after a time. “I have to admit, it really never does get old.”

He referred, of course, to the disc of the sun as it lay itself to rest beyond the sea. It lavished the last of its gold and crimson upon the clouds that had assembled to sing it a silent bedtime song, a lullaby of light in the nightly ceremony of repose.

“It goes so quickly at the end,” he said. “It makes you wonder why it doesn’t just shoot across the sky throughout the day.”

Orli opened her eyes in time to watch the sun slip away and vanish, staring absently into the orange glow until it was gone. Altin’s shoulder moved her head up and down a little each time he took a breath. She liked that. Liked knowing he was alive, feeling him against her.

They sat silently for a time. Altin fidgeted his ever-bare toes in the sand as she had been doing for some time now. He too delighted in the contrast of cool and warm, the difference between the surface and what was underneath.

They watched as stars slowly began to freckle the sky, the first of them coming quickly, for there was no moon that night. The brightest of the early stars, the one Altin said his people called Hope, burst into view as if someone had struck a match. She liked that they had named it that. Hope. Altin had told her once that it was named as it was because hope was always on the horizon, the promise of an ancient myth.

The story told of a maiden whose betrothed had gone out upon the great blue sea and never come home. Every night the maiden sat upon the shore, waiting for him to return, every night he did not come back. For over a century she waited and watched. Her anguish was so great that even the gods could feel it from their places high above. Her love was so beautiful and enduring the gods did not have the heart to tell her that he had drowned. They did not have the will to break such a true and devoted thing. So they let her sit upon the shore until her mortal body could endure no more, and when it had finally wasted away, the goddess Feydore, whose sympathy was greatest, placed the maiden’s soul up in the heavens, where she could wait forever, hoping rather than ever having to face that he was gone.

At first Orli had thought the story cruel. “Why didn’t they just let her into the heavens? Or bring the sailor back? They’re gods, aren’t they? Can’t they do anything they want?”

He’d laughed and stroked a strand of golden hair from her pretty face. “It’s a myth. I didn’t write it.”

She’d laughed too. That was the first time they’d ever chased sunsets together. Now she loved that star more than anything in the sky. She thought it funny that she could ever care about a star after how much she’d come to hate everything about space.

She reflected on the star and let herself simply enjoy being with him. As usual, his mind was transported elsewhere. He thought almost always of the Hostiles and how to find them. He thought about how to get farther into space. He thought about how to get her home. He thought. Always. But she loved him, absent as he was. He could no more help that about himself than a desert cactus could help having spines. It took nothing from the beauty of the whole, and the springtime blooms were a marvel to behold.

“Well, it’s definitely gone,” he said after a while. “Let’s go get the next one.” He popped up as if he’d been sitting on a spring. Reaching a hand down to help her up, he said, “But first, if you don’t mind, I’d like to take you somewhere you haven’t been before. I’ve been meaning to for a while, but I promised myself this time I would. I searched out the perfect landing place yesterday.”

She grinned. Of course she didn’t mind. He could take her anywhere, and she would be happy to be along for the magic ride.

He was like a boy in so many ways. In his enthusiasm, he forgot to affect machismo most of the time, something Earth men rarely did—and more than any man she knew, he had enough power and intelligence to warrant such an attitude. But he did not have it. His sense of his own power was like an afterthought. He gave it the same degree of thought one gives the ability to blink or breathe.

She let him lift her from the sand, and she enjoyed watching him watch her casually wipe away the sand from her backside. He made a point of looking up at the sky, as if by mere coincidence he’d been struck by the impulse to stargaze, but she knew better. Altin and his strict sense of propriety. She’d show him what she thought of that. She made a point of dusting off then, turning and, with a few flicks, asked, “Did I get it all?”

He tried to put on a most clinical examination, which made her giggle because she knew it was counterfeit. He stared stiffly, eyes open in the precise measure to illustrate his ease with having been put to such a task and that he was in no way leering and inspired to lustful thoughts. Every blink closed and opened mechanically, timed to ensure each one came at the correct and normal increment, thus communicating the respectfulness of his scrutiny. “It seems so,” he stated matter-of-factly. He might as well have been reporting on whether or not a pot of water had begun to boil. Which it had, she knew, and she giggled again. He went to such lengths to conceal his lust.

And she loved that too. His lust. It was nice to be wanted. Wanted, but with dignity and respect. It made her feel powerful in a way she hadn’t known before. He did not want her for simple pleasure. He wanted her for her. His desire just made it fun.

Not to mention the custom of his people required a two-year courtship before marriage, and any dalliance outside of matrimony was strictly taboo. It was a quaint old custom, not so different than how it had been in places and in parts of ancient Earth history. Orli had decided she rather liked it and couldn’t help but wonder why the people of her planet had thrown such customs off. Still, he was very smart and very handsome, and she sometimes thought two years seemed a very long time. And they weren’t even officially courting. That actually required specific acts, beginning with a proposal.

When she was done tormenting him, he smiled and asked, again, if she was ready to go.

“Of course I am,” she replied.

“It might still be pretty warm when we get there,” he warned. She nodded, perfectly ready to enjoy whatever might come with their next cross-country teleport.

A few words and a few moments later found them standing once more upon the sand, except this was an entirely different kind of beach. A very hot one. The sand burned beneath their feet, and Orli had to burrow in quickly because it felt as if it might actually scorch her skin. Besides the huge temperature change, the texture of the sand was different. It was finer, almost powder, and soft as baby skin.

They stood upon a vast sand dune in the western part of the Sandsea Desert overlooking a huge round chasm that appeared as if it had been stamped into the desert by some great hole punch. She gauged the opening to be at least a mile across, a massive yawn in the desert, with sand sliding into it in an endless flow, pouring over the edges on all sides and falling like water down into the darkness far below.

“The Great Sandfalls,” he told her as she marveled at the movement of so much shifting sand. “They say it widens by nearly half a finger every year and someday will consume all of Kurr.”

“I think I believe it,” she said after a time. “It’s beautiful.”

He was shifting from foot to foot as they watched, but he recognized the utility of Orli’s burrowing strategy. He wriggled his feet down in. “I know you like to chase sunsets, but we’ll catch the next one at the Gulf of Dae. I figured you might enjoy seeing this.”

“I do,” she said, her voice nearly a whisper. “It’s amazing.” She plopped down onto the sand and wriggled her backside in deep enough to make for a tolerably cool seat. He sat beside her, and for a while the two of them enjoyed the view, watching the endless fall of sand and contemplating the possibilities of an opening so large.

“What is it?” she asked after a time. “A sinkhole?”

“Nobody knows,” he said. “There are many theories, and a sinkhole is one of them. Others say it is the den of the last great sand dragon gone into hiding a hundred thousand years ago. Of course the Church has a bunch of stories about angry gods hammering holes in the world and lots of that sort of rot, but thinking people still argue about what it really is. Many expeditions have gone down to explore it, but none came back. So many that there are more than a few who call it the Tomb of a Million Souls. That’s the sort of thing that keeps the dragon’s den version going strong.”