Rift in the Races (97 page)

Betrayal and hate filled him. Images of humans.

“No, damn it. You cannot do that.” He was angry now, and frustration finally gave way to a flash of rage. “We’re not all the gods-be-damned same. You cannot kill us all. You cannot hate us all. Think of Altin Love. Think of Orli Love. Think of Blue Fire, your mate. Do you want to kill that? Do you want to make the same cruelty? Is Blue Fire only rage?”

He expected a blast of anger to come upon him in response. He expected the pain back in his head. He expected … he wasn’t sure what he expected, but he was sure that with this much Liquefying Stone in the cavern, she could pretty much do anything she wanted.

Then he was in a tiny room, barely three paces across. He felt a warming in his heart, a pressure, like someone held it in a gentle grip. He knew it was her and, for a moment, was certain she was going to crush his heart right there in his chest. But she did not. She simply held it. He saw an image of himself standing in the tiny room as he felt the touch upon his heart.

Blue Fire
.

That was all she sent, then the pressure in his chest went away. He had no way to justify the certainty, but he knew that he was in the heart of the great golden cavern now. Blue Fire’s heart.

A flash of light caught his eye. He looked up and embedded in the wall was a cluster of dark green crystals, not unlike the yellow ones all around, but larger by several times. It was the only cluster of green crystals in the little room. When it flashed, a band of green, a ring of it, flowed outward and expanded through the yellow stones, widening until it had traveled the length and breadth of the chamber. It vanished when it came back upon itself, the ring shrinking inward and vanishing exactly opposite where it began. Its disappearance left Altin once more bathed in a golden glow and staring up at the cluster of green crystals.

The formation pulsed again, and the expanding ring of green light once more traveled through the small room. This pulse repeated again, and then again, until it developed into a slow, steady rhythm, the bands of green swelling in concentric waves that seemed to bring with them an inexplicable sense of vitality. Each pulse made him feel somehow more alive. It was hypnotic, and he watched it for longer than he knew. The thought came to him, not his own he was sure, that he was supposed to touch the green crystals with his hand.

He reached up, gently, and touched them. They were warm. One of the crystals came loose, a small bit, barely the size of the last joint of his little finger. It came loose and nearly fell, but he caught it reflexively. He studied it as it lay in the palm of his hand. It was still glowing despite being separated from the wall, rich and deep, like the green of an oak leaf.

He filled with a sense of giving. This was something masculine. A gift.
Father
, she sent.
Gift of Father.

He didn’t understand.

Help Blue Fire. Gift. Peace and friend.

A section of the wall to his right, just at eye level, pulsed with light, a cluster of yellow crystals. He turned to look at it, and it pulsed again. He reached up and touched it as he had the green cluster. Again a section of the crystal broke loose, a small bit of Liquefying Stone that was an exact match of the bit of green he’d gotten.

He saw animals coupling then, strange creatures, bear-like. Then a four-legged creature that reminded him of an elk, mounting another. Several more scenes like that. Followed by images of the green and yellow stones in his hands.

He touched them together. They flashed and for a moment he thought the heat in his hand would burn him, but then it was gone. He held one green stone, lighter in hue now having joined the two together. It was the green of springtime, a green to match the color of his eyes. It pulsed with the barest flicker of light inside, regular like the beating of a patient heart.

Orli Love help Blue Fire
.

All her rage was gone. She was afraid. He felt it now as much as anything he’d felt from her before. Lingering in the background of the feeling she sent was still the great, nearly stupefying sorrow, but now, more immediate was the fear. She was afraid to die.

They had that in common too.

He filled with a sense of blindness, and, in a sudden rush, almost a confession, she filled him with all her fear and helplessness. While fending off the missiles of the first attack, many of the weapons had nearly gotten through. He suddenly realized that, while the fleet had thought the fight hopeless and decided to leave, they had actually left too soon, just barely too soon if he had the sense of it right. Blue Fire had only barely kept up with the incoming missile attack. If they’d stayed and continued the barrage even for another half hour, she would be dead. She knew that she could never fend them off if they came back. If they really tried. Especially now. She never saw that solitary missile they’d sent at her when the three ships came back again.

The enchanted one, Altin knew.

Even now there was a huge dead scar at the northern pole of her world, an uncountable loss of life, from the least of her creatures to the most magnificent, all dead in a wide swath. Or dying still with terrible wasting disease. And that had been only a single shot.

Tears streamed down Altin’s face as she filled his mind with the images of all that death, the decimated lands, the creatures with the hideous burns and injuries that he could feel, some wounds hidden, piercing agony on the inside of bodies, wounds unseen and bleeding, ruptured tissues leaking fluids and corruption that bloated and ate away. Tears ran freely down his bare chest. They tickled where they ran along his ribs. He wiped them away with a movement of his arm.

“I will help,” he said, trying to shake free of so much fear and misery. It threatened to become his own. “I will help you. Willingly. But what can I possibly do? My magic is small compared to yours. It’s nothing. And I can’t even use it here.” He realized when he said it that that second part might not be true. He looked down at the green stone. It had become perfectly round and smooth in his hand now. A marble, with a warm glow inside that pulsed like a beating heart. He had a feeling that was the gift she gave.

Blue Fire. Magic.

In his mind, he saw the green stone he held. A confirmation. She showed him what it was, an understanding with no possible words, and suddenly he was awestruck, almost terrified, though the latter was tempered by his innate curiosity. But he was afraid. And it was his fear, not hers.

He could do magic now.

He was afraid to try.

Truth
, she sent to him.
Blue Fire truth
.
Help Blue Fire. Help Altin Love poison. Help Orli Love
.

He watched the light beating within the green sphere. It was beautiful, the most beautiful jewel he’d ever seen. No craftsman on Prosperion would ever match it. Not in a hundred million years. It brought the tears back just looking at it.

Truth
, she sent again. Urging him, her fear tremendous in his mind.
Help Blue Fire
.

He looked around the tiny room he was in. There was no way out. No exit, no sign of how he might have come in. He had nothing to experiment with, nothing to cast a spell on, no pebble to use as a test subject the way he had on that first day so long ago with his first bit of Liquefying Stone. There wasn’t enough room in this place for a mistake anyway. He’d be crushed and the whole thing would be over before it began.

Truth
, she sent yet again.
Blue Fire truth
. The sense of it followed by the image of the green pulsing sphere. She wanted him to try.

But what? What could he do?

Then he knew. He had to go back and tell the priests. If anyone would listen to her, it would be them. Somehow they’d gotten her to see him. The black fog. The fanning of himself. They knew enough, had learned enough from his thoughts, to have made a divination spell work for him, to make him easy for her to find. He could go back and tell them what he knew now. Then they could find her. She could tell them what she told him. And the Queen would listen to a high priestess, especially if he was there as well. The Galactic Mage, Her Majesty’s favorite new toy, combined with a high priestess and twenty-five clerics of Anvilwrath. Surely she would listen to them. Maybe she would speak to Blue Fire herself. Then she could convince the admiral.

It had to work. And fast.

“You must convince them,” he said to her then. “I will go home and tell them to talk to you. You must trust them. You must convince them as you have me. They will help me to help you.” He drove all the emotion of it out of himself as best he could, praying that she would understand.

She sent him back a feeling that could only be trust. Followed by the image of the green sphere that he held in his hand.
Go
.

Tentatively, he closed his eyes and reached out toward the mana that he knew was there, the mana that he feared to touch after what it had done to him before. The currents weren’t there. There were no whorls or tempestuous waves like he saw at home. Nor were there any signs of the thick, tarry stretch of it that he remembered from his nearly fatal experience at the edge of Blue Fire’s solar system. That stretch of tamed violence was gone just like the more familiar currents were. There was only a pinkish mist. It was everywhere, still and unmoving, perfect order and perfect entropy all at once. He wasn’t sure what to do with it.

He tried to gather it in, but it didn’t move. There was nothing to gather. He could more easily have caught a whisper.

Go
, came the thought again. She could actually speak to him in this state. That startled him, which made him fear that he would let go. But he did not. He couldn’t let go, for he hadn’t drawn any mana in.

Truth
, she sent.
Go
.

With the mental equivalent of a shrug, he began casting the spell that would either kill him or get him home, a teleport back to his secret place behind the armor in the great dining hall at Calico Castle. He half expected as he did it to find himself in the hkalamate pool instead.

And then he was home.

Chapter 78

W
hen Altin arrived, Kettle was setting a place at the long table as she always did in the evenings. A ritual more for her own sense of continuity than for the feeding of the magicians at Calico Castle. One of them was dead now anyway, and the other, as far as she knew, was off on some impossible quest in space. But she set the table anyway, laid out a plate and a set of silverware—always the good silverware, always the good goblets and finest wine—and then set out the food. Always freshly cooked, always something it made her proud to serve.

Altin watched her from the shadowy darkness, his bare feet noiseless on the ancient stone as he stepped out from behind the old suit of plate armor. He watched her, noted the sad turn of her mouth and the faraway look in her eyes, the slow, methodical movements that placed each fork, each spoon, each knife so carefully, just right. His heart broke for her. She’d been through so much. She must feel so alone now, Tytamon gone, him gone and Pernie off at school for the next two years.

He silently vowed to make it up to her. He’d promised to take care of them all, but this was more. She deserved happiness. He would make this all right again. At least most of it. Those things that could be helped.

He started to move toward her but remembered his nakedness. He’d forgotten about it in the womblike atmosphere of Blue Fire’s inner sanctum. If a sanctum it could be called. It was almost more like the inner ventricles of her heart, the center of her being, a pathway in her mind. Something ultimately intimate.

But for sanctums, he knew he needed to speak to the priests. He had to tell them what he had learned. He had to find out what they had learned. How had they found her so easily? His memories, his dip into Orli’s dreams, could not have been enough alone. Surely they knew more than they let on. He hadn’t been able to find Blue Fire when he’d tried or, at least, hadn’t been able to enable her finding him, and he’d known exactly where to look. He’d been there, at the edge of the solar system. There was more to the success of their spell than simple luck. He almost feared to ask what it was.

He waited until Kettle had gone back to the kitchen to bring the food and then made a dash for the stairwell that would take him to the guestroom he’d taken for himself, holding himself for decency’s sake as he ran.

He’d forgotten about the infernal re-garrisoning of the keep, however, and so it was with some bit of surprise that he rounded a corner and came upon two armed and armored men patrolling the corridor. Both wore charcoal gray tabards with the broken tower emblem of Calico Castle on them. He’d never seen anyone in livery in all his years living here. Both men started at the sudden appearance of a naked man, and their hands went reflexively to the pommels of their swords. But they stayed the motion as quickly as it started upon recognizing the young master of Calico Castle.

“Sir,” stammered one, while the other grinned. “Is everything all right?”