Dance of Destinies (The Galactic Mage Series Book 5) (5 page)

“They tried to shoot you?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that does change things a bit. You hadn’t mentioned that they shot at you, unprovoked.” His bushy white brows drooped over his eyes for a time, then he set his gray eyes back on Roberto. “It was unprovoked, wasn’t it? What were you doing when it shot at you?”

Roberto’s eyes glanced away for the barest moment. He didn’t even want them to. They just did. He frowned, emitted a low sort of growl. “Shooting at it,” he admitted.

“You shot first?”

“It had my friends. What was I supposed to do?”

“But you said they weren’t harmed.”

“I said I don’t know if they are harmed.”

“Right. There are worlds of difference between them.” He looked to Kettle then. “I suspect we won’t be back in time for dinner,” he said.

“Weren’t ta be the first time,” she replied. “I’ll have somethin’ waitin’ fer ya, all the same. Just in case.”

He smiled, his expression softening, affectionate. “Hardly the first time, indeed.” They exchanged a pair of sighs that spoke more than ten thousand words might have, and then she turned and tottered off back toward the gates.

When she was gone, Tytamon sighed again, this one different than the last. Resignation, certainly, but determination too. It was the sound one makes when about to embark on a long and wearisome journey, a journey all too familiar despite the destination unknown. It was the trek of tedious responsibility, down another rough road in a long line of them. It was the sound of time weighing heavily upon a man. “Let’s be off, then,” he said when he’d blown it out. “But we’ll begin with the Queen.”

“Whoever,” Roberto said. “Let’s just get some wizards on the way. Preferably a whole crapton of them. And maybe a few platoons of mechs just to be safe.”

“We shall see,” said Tytamon. The great sorcerer closed his eyes and began chanting straightaway.

Chapter 5

P
ernie appeared beside a rushing river, flanked on either side by the elf Seawind and the old woman Djoveeve. She knew that the river was the Sansun, because she’d known that they were going to come to Crown City, the capital of Kurr and the city where the War Queen lived. Pernie had met the War Queen before, and even fought in a battle with her. She was very excited to see the Queen again. The last time, Her Majesty had tried to order her around, but Pernie was about to become the
Sava’an’Lansom
, so she was sure that would change things quite a lot. Besides, Pernie knew a lot more about the War Queen now.

Before she’d been dragged off to the Isle of Hunters in the elven lands of String, Pernie has spent just enough time in school to have learned lots of facts about the magnificent Queen Karroll. It was said that her armor made her all but invincible. It had been enchanted by great diviners two hundred years ago, and one of its main magicks was that it defended her with the force of her own courage. Pernie did not understand how that could work, but it sounded very impressive. Besides, the War Queen fought with a broadsword that was longer than Master Altin was tall, and it was nearly as wide as Pernie was. She read that the War Queen was the greatest warrior on all of Prosperion, and that even the Royal Assassin, Shadesbreath, couldn’t beat her in a fight.

Pernie didn’t know if that was true, but after spending just over a year in training with the elves, learning how to be their Sava’an’Lansom, she rather hoped it was. The Sava’an’Lansom, or “assassin of the vale” when translated from elven to the common tongue of Kurr, was supposed to be the guardian of the High Seat, which apparently was what the elves called their ruler, although Djoveeve had explained to Pernie that they didn’t really have a ruler in the way humans did. But Pernie didn’t care about that kind of thing. All she knew was that after a year of being knocked around by elves, of being struck by their spear butts and kicked by their swift, accurate feet, she had a place in her heart that was rooting for some representative of humanity to fight better than the elves—Pernie being human and all. With all the stories she’d heard about the elves as she was growing up, especially the way people paled when they spoke of the dreaded Shadesbreath in low whispers, as if he might be lurking there in the room, it gave her hope for her own abilities to think that the most deadly fighter in the world was a human and not an elf. She could hardly wait to see the War Queen again, this time with much less fighting going on all around.

And see her they would. Seawind had told her that she must go to the human school. In some weird form of elf logic, it turned out that the best way for her to become the bodyguard of the elven High Seat was to learn from humanity. Elves didn’t make very much sense sometimes, but Pernie was fine with it. She was going to learn from the humans on Earth, not the boring ones here on Kurr. She was going to learn everything Orli Pewter knew, and then, when Orli Pewter died—maybe by accident, as one could never be too sure about such things—Pernie would be ready for Master Altin to fall in love with her.

Pernie could hardly wait.

Seawind led them out from behind the clump of bushes they had appeared behind. He pulled the long green cloak he wore about himself and drew up the hood even though it was a pretty spring day. She watched as he changed the pale green hue of his skin to the tanned tones of Pernie’s own flesh, though he did not change the seaweed-green color of his hair.

“Come, little Sava,” he said, “let us go get you to Earth.”

Pernie followed along behind him as they entered the city. Growing up at Calico Castle, she’d always thought that the walls of that gray stone fortress were high and mighty indeed. But now she saw that they were not. Calico Castle was hardly a cobbler’s hovel compared to Crown City. She had to tilt her head so far back to see the top of the walls that she was nearly looking straight into the noontime sun.

The guards at the gate made no particular notice of them as they passed through, and Pernie thought their scarlet capes very beautiful. She wished she had a scarlet cape instead of the boring elf-made clothes—dumb brown pants, dumb short boots, and a plain green tunic with no sleeves. That last was kind of pretty in a shiny sort of way, but it was plain. She felt like she should be wearing something better now that she was here and about to see the War Queen. Pernie wasn’t normally the sort to care about such things, but she really did want to impress Her Majesty this time.

The trek through the city was a long one, and it took them the better part of two hours to arrive at the spectacle that was Unification Avenue, rebuilt after the war in even greater glory than it had before. Pernie gasped as she gazed down it toward the Palace. The boulevard was enormous, a hundred spans wide and five hundred long. The trees along its sidewalks were still not as the old stories said, as the healers with their growth magic hadn’t had time to coax the newly planted replacements back to half-measure altitudes. But the statues were all back, tall and regal, old kings, famous warriors, and all the gods, major and minor, depicted in glorious poses down a wide median that divided the avenue. The least of them stood twenty spans high, and some, the five-armed god Anvilwrath with all his weapons in hand, had to be no less than ninety spans.

Pernie and her two companions walked down this central avenue, and she gawked and gasped. She had been in Crown City once before, but she’d flown in right after the orcs captured Calico Castle and only got to see one corner of a military compound. This was much better than that. They passed the statue of the Huntress, the divine guardian of the goddess Mercy, and just as in the stories, she had her great bow across her back and a spear forty-five spans long raised and aimed as if to pierce the sun above. Pernie thought the minor goddess looked a little bit like her, if only a little, but there was certainly a touch of similarity around the eyes and nose and perhaps a little more in the way her hair hung long around her shoulders and down her back. But someday it would all look like her. Pernie was going to grow up tall and strong like that, she knew. And she already knew how to use a spear.

At the end of the avenue was one last series of statues, three in a row, side by side, all of which were enchanted into motion, replaying short ten-second scenes. The centralmost was enormous, nearly as large as that of Anvilwrath and the great gods. The scene it presented depicted the mighty War Queen doing battle with an orc that was twice her height and at least three times as wide across the shoulders and chest. He was a monster. And he bore a battle-axe with two huge blades, each as wide as a wagon bed. The War Queen’s face was twisted in defiance as she swung her sword. The orc roared as he swung the axe, so loud it made Pernie step back. His mouth gaped like a cavern as he did so, and it was so large Pernie thought she might have been able to stand upon his tongue and not be as tall as his teeth, two of which curled out from his mouth like tusks, thrusting up from a jaw that was broad and square. The marble Queen raised her sword and blocked a blow of that mighty axe, and the crash of the two weapons made thunder and sent sparks out in a rain of fire. She roared back at the orc, and the sound was terrible and glorious. Then the statue was still for a time. Pernie got goose bumps running up her arms.

On either side of that statue were slightly smaller ones, the one on the right depicting mounted men and warriors on foot, battling with orcs that crushed in all around them. It came to life right after the Queen’s statue battle settled down. The men leaned from their saddles and slashed at their enemies, who jabbed with long spears back at them. They all shouted and cursed and growled, and the clank and clatter of their armor and swords mixed with the thuds of wooden spears pounding on shields of steel. Their battle went on for ten seconds too, and then it settled back to the white silence of the enchanted stone. Then the last statue’s enchantment began.

The statue on the left depicted yet another battle scene, this one showing humans from Earth in their splendid battle gear, machines that they wore like suits of armor, and from them sprayed death on light beams and tiny arrowheads that Pernie knew were called bullets. Pernie loved bullets. Roberto had let her shoot bullets from his gun one time. And the laser too. She liked the laser, but the bullets made an excellent sound and the whole gun recoiled in her hand. The weapons of the Earth warriors cut through the limbs and face of a hideous monster with many legs and eyes like spiders’ eyes. It had sets of mandibles all lined up in a row, which opened and closed, clacking loudly as they gnashed, a distorted and mutant face attached to a crab-like body with great mashing spheres where its crab claws should be, huge, round hammers big enough to crush mammoths into patty meat. But the Earth machines blasted into it, alien and powerful, and the demon limbs broke, blasted apart until it collapsed like an old swamp house on rotted pilings. Pernie watched and sighed and wished she could have an armored machine like that too. Maybe she would one day, now that she was going to Earth.

“I notice they didn’t bother to carve our friend in that,” Djoveeve observed as they walked past the statue of the Queen.

Pernie looked at it again, but couldn’t fathom what the old woman meant. She saw Seawind look up at it too. He acknowledged whatever the old assassin had intended him to see, doing so with a single nod, but he said nothing and no emotion crossed his face. They seldom did.

The three of them came then to the enormous Palace gates. Pernie’s pulse raced. The walls were so high she couldn’t even guess how tall they were. At least twice as high as those that ran around the city. And these were mirror smooth. They looked like marble, but Pernie knew from the stories that they were so full of enchantment magic it had taken tens of thousands of magicians hundreds of years to make them as they were.

It was frightening to think, as she stood there, that the orcs and the demons had almost gotten through. How could anything get through all of that?

The guard at the gatehouse came out. His plate armor was gilded with gold and polished to a mirror shine. His cloak was red like the others were. Once again Pernie wished she had more impressive clothes.

“Business?” the guard demanded.

Seawind pulled back his hood.

“Mercy’s ghost,” the red-cloaked man said, stepping away. His face paled, and Pernie thought it was fun to see how scared he was. She’d used to think elves were scary too, but she didn’t anymore.

The man went back into the gatehouse. A few minutes passed, and after, the gates swung open enough to admit them.

A herald approached down a main avenue that ran around a fountain and took up more space than all of Calico Castle did. He was riding on a golden disc that glided above the ground.

He came to a stop above the shimmering paving stones and simply hovered there, the flying disc barely three finger widths off the ground. “Please,” he said. “If you will accompany me. Her Majesty is being notified of your arrival now.”

“Thank you,” Djoveeve answered, sparing the elf having to remember his human courtesies. She made to reach for Pernie’s shoulder to nudge her toward the disc, but Pernie was already standing on it, right next to the herald and grinning ear to ear.

Djoveeve and Seawind followed suit, the elf’s face as inscrutable as ever and Djoveeve’s brightening a little in the glow of Pernie’s exuberance.

As they sped through the outer reaches of the Palace compound, Pernie gaped and pointed this way and that, crying out, “Oh, look at that” and “Djoveeve, do you see?” all the while. She must have asked, “Can’t we just go touch it for a minute?” forty times by the time they got to the Palace proper and the stairs.