Rift in the Races (80 page)

“It will be fine,” Aderbury tried to argue, but Ilbei wasn’t having any of it.

“Sir, with all due respect, wasn’t this here room made fer a reason?”

What could the transmuter say to that? He’d been the one that explained the purpose of the closet to Ilbei to begin. He offered a feeble smile and stepped into the room, shutting the door behind him. He did stay pressed up against it though.

Ilbei frowned at that, but reckoned he couldn’t blame him for it. He turned back to the machine, grit his teeth and flipped the switch, his eyes closing reflexively and his shoulders rising in anticipation of the explosive sound that would precede his consumption in flames.

The only thing that erupted from it was the sound of Roberto’s voice.

“…
gonarf menas tohr porta may hansafor corpak
.” Or something equally unintelligible is what both Ilbei and Aderbury heard. But it was definitely Roberto’s voice. They both recognized that well enough.

Ilbei went to the control panel and looked into the monitor. It was a lot different than the small com panels up in the mines, but he knew what the flashing orange light meant. He tapped it with a thick finger, and soon Roberto’s face came into view. The swarthy new-made commander was just reaching to turn his monitor off, clearly having not expected anyone to pick up the feed. His face brightened as if Ilbei had thrown the switch that activated relief.

Roberto spoke happily to them, a string of sounds that were just as incomprehensible as the first.

“I can’t understand what yer sayin’,” Ilbei said. He ran his eyes across the control panels but couldn’t see anything obvious to do. He turned to Aderbury, something approaching mild panic filling him. “I think I musta done somethin’ wrong.”

“It’s the anti-magic,” said Aderbury coming into the chamber to stand beside the miner. He leaned forward and said to Roberto, “We can’t understand you. Can you understand us?”

Roberto nodded that he could. The enchantments on his end, on his communicator, were still working properly.

“This was one of the reasons we needed someone from Earth in here,” Aderbury said.

Roberto said something, then turned to speak to someone behind him. Captain Asad appeared on the screen above his shoulder peering into it as if down a hole. He said something too. The only word they could recognize was “Orli.”

“We’re trying to find her, sir,” said Aderbury. He didn’t have the heart to say it was mainly a body search. But there were still many who had hope, including himself to some degree, and Master Ilbei completely of course.

Captain Asad said something else, and at two points during the conversation, he clearly spoke Altin’s name.

There wasn’t much Aderbury could say. He hadn’t heard from Altin yet.

Roberto held up a finger and then the screen went dark.

Ilbei looked at the blank screen, then back at Aderbury and shrugged. “I’m pretty sure he did that, not me.”

“Maybe.”

They waited for several moments, until finally the screen came back to life. Again it was Roberto, and again came the single finger. The view on the screen split in half, one with Altin sitting at a table, and one with Roberto, Captain Asad once more standing at his back.

“Dragon’s teeth, Aderbury,” Altin cursed, “Why in the name of all the gods would you keep your mind perpetually blocked! I’ve been trying to reach you for two days.”

“Good to see you are up and well,” said Aderbury. “And I see they truly could re-grow your arm. That’s incredible, a miracle.”

“Where is Orli?”

Aderbury withdrew visibly from that question. He looked at Ilbei, more as a way to escape Altin’s gaze than for any help he thought he could get from the doughty man. “I don’t know, Altin. We’re looking.”

“Who is ‘we?’”

“Captain Andru is still out there looking for the orcs.”

“That’s it?”

“The sheriff’s men followed the clues at the eastern Daggerspine pass. They searched all through the area. There were no signs of her in the pass beyond the campsite. They looked, Altin, but there was no trail.”

“So there’s only Andru looking? Does he even know she’s gone?”

“I’m sorry, Altin. I don’t know what else to say.”

Altin’s jaw shifted where he clenched his teeth, and his eyes glossed with tears of frustrated impotence. Ilbei squirmed behind his beard as he watched it. He was sworn to secrecy. But Altin’s heartbreak and helplessness were evident, even across all that space.

“The orcs ain’t got her, Sir Altin,” Ilbei blurted at last. “And she’s still alive.” He just couldn’t hold it in the face of so much obvious torture. Ilbei was nothing if not an old-world romantic among Prosperions.

Aderbury looked as incredulous as Altin did. Roberto looked confused. Captain Asad looked like he was about to yell at someone.

“The Queen’s got her elf chasin’ down a—well, a rumor let’s just say. I ain’t even supposed ta say that much or Her Majesty will have my tongue, and that was her threat, not me spinnin’ yarns. There’s some nefariousness afoot, but if’n anyone can find her, that assassin is the one I’d put my wager on.”

Altin looked as if he were going to explode. “Aderbury, get me home. Get me down there right now.”

Aderbury blinked at the ferocity of the unexpected command. “I don’t think our teleporter knows where you are. She’s never seen the ship.”

“They are preventing me from talking to the other mages here,” Altin spat. “All in the convenient name of waiting for me to heal. But they don’t want me to go home. They bungled an attack on the Hostile world and think somehow I can do it differently. I’ve already told them I can’t grab mana any better than the others can. At least not … like this.”

Neither Aderbury nor Ilbei knew what that meant, but both wanted to help.

“So what can we do?”

“Can you get here? Is it done? Is
Citadel
done?”

“Actually, it is. Or close enough.”

“Then the Queen will have to order these teleporters back to you since they know where we are. Surely they’ll let me aboard
Citadel
once you get it out here. Then you can send me home.”

Captain Asad’s voice burst in then, and though his words were lost on Aderbury and Ilbei, the tone made it clear that he had forbidden anything to do with Altin going back to Prosperion.

Altin ignored it. “It doesn’t matter what they think. We can’t do anything right now. What I need to help the fleet is on Prosperion anyway, whether they believe it or not. Just get me off this gods-be-damned ship, Aderbury.”

“I’ll try, Altin. But you have to know that the Queen is pretty hell bent on beating the Hostiles now too. And if I push too hard, well, I’m not sure I’ll be any use to you in jail.”

“Don’t you get it? We can’t grab the mana, Aderbury. You might as well try biting through an axe. Something’s wrong with it where the Hostiles are.”

“I …”

“Get me out of here, Aderbury. Just do it. Please.”

The agony on his face was so obvious, so painfully clear, even Captain Asad saw it. His command, however—lost on Aderbury and Ilbei in the particulars but not in the intent—made it perfectly clear that he was not going to allow Altin to leave until the Hostiles were destroyed.

Good luck stopping him
, thought Aderbury. But aloud he said, “I’ll talk to Her Majesty. In the meantime, since we have the communications machine working, we’ll do the first flight tests immediately. I understand from Conduit Huzzledorf that they’ve figured out the distance and expect we can move the mass of
Citadel
to your location with something near twenty teleporters. That is far fewer than we’d even hoped.”

“Just get me home.”

Captain Asad said something, followed by a remark from Roberto, which got him yelled at by the captain.

“What did he say?” Aderbury asked.

“He said he’ll order the teleporters to
Citadel
right away. He wants it up here too.”

“Tell him we’ll be there soon.”

“He heard you.”

Roberto tried to look happy from his place in the video, but a bark from Captain Asad forced him to cut off the transmission from their end.

Aderbury turned to Ilbei, who let go a long, tense breath. “I reckon that could have gone better,” the grizzled old digger said.

“It could have gone worse.”

Ilbei nodded. That was technically true.

“Now, master miner, I believe there are some things you ought to tell me about Orli given that a particular basilisk is now out of the bag.”

Ilbei sighed again and flicked his tongue out, feeling it against his teeth. He’d always liked having it and thought it a shame that it would likely soon be gone.

Chapter 64

T
wo days after Aderbury’s first contact with the
Aspect
via the entanglement array, the teleporters from the fleet had been called back to Prosperion and taken their places on
Citadel
. Conduit Huzzledorf took them to the concert hall, and after briefing the rest of the teleporters in the circle, seated as they were around the ring and in the first several rows of seats, they were ready to take
Citadel
out for its first trial flight.

Given the dire situation with the Hostiles, and growing tensions between the Queen and the fleet—the word of Orli’s obscure situation had caused quite a fuss after Roberto privately got a message to Colonel Pewter—the pre-launch ceremony was brief. An ox was sacrificed in the old-fashioned ritual to the gods, and the feast prepared. The meat was still warm when the Queen ordered
Citadel
to take off.

Ilbei sat on a wooden chair in the anti-magic room wishing he were anywhere but there. He was furious that he’d been assigned to it, and he thought the fleet was idiotic not to bother sending someone to take his place. They’d promised to assign someone once
Citadel
arrived, but the admiral thought it best not to send any more of his people to Prosperion until the “officials” could figure out what happened to the last officer they had sent. Ilbei supposed he didn’t blame them for that, but still, why
him
?

He already knew why. So he sat there and mumbled curses through the filter of his scraggly mustache. He looked down through the transparent floor at the gridlines of the redoubts far below. A wave of vertigo passed through. He’d gone out of his way to make a life of getting deeper into the earth, not higher off the ground. Though he knew there was a great thickness of crystal beneath his feet to hold him, he still hated thinking he might fall. Fifty paces down was a long way to even imagine he might fall, and he couldn’t help imagining himself smeared across one of those redoubt walls.

The upside of the transparency was that he could see what was going on, and so he saw the signalman wave the yellow flag that indicated the teleporters in concert were about to make the initial cast. Ilbei’s guts tightened as he watched it wave.

He could see Aderbury in the high tower just below him. In response to the yellow flag, Aderbury held up the blue flag that meant they were clear to go. Ilbei knew that flag was accompanied by a telepathic command, sent to the conduit in the concert hall somewhere far below, down in the depths of the mighty fortress, down in the heart of
Citadel
.

The next thing Ilbei knew he was falling.

He fell for several long seconds, tumbling through the air vaguely aware that the communications machinery was falling with him. He saw the green grass rising up at him. Heard the clank of the metal machines. Saw flashes of cloudy gray sky. Saw the colors of the Queen’s tent, even recognized in some dim way that she and the rest of the crowd were watching as he fell.

He had enough time to realize what was happening, at least to a degree. He knew he was going to die. There was a swell of fear in it. He thought briefly of his mule and that damned Jasper. He hoped someone would take care of them. He saw Kettle’s smiling face. Then he hit the ground. Dead on impact.

Chapter 65

T
he cheers throughout
Citadel
were raucous. The mages, topside amongst the redoubts and down in the concert hall, hooted and hollered, tossing caps and hats if they had them, and clapping one another on the back with resonant thuds. The handful of soldiers in the parade grounds sent out a chorus of shouts of their own, mostly profane, but backhandedly complimentary of the great magical work.

Equally pleased, if less overtly jubilant, were the assembled officers from Earth, watching on their monitors, gazing into the empty space into which Conduit Huzzledorf had assured them
Citadel
would appear. And then it was there.

For many, the initial surprise and appreciation of the feat was soon subdued by the appearance of
Citadel
itself, looking to them as it did, simply a drab gray block of stone. The diamond shell could not be seen at all, so there appeared only an uninspiring bit of architecture. Viewed through a video feed, they did not get the visual impact of it with any sense of relative scale, and so, shortly after the remarkable arrival, many in the fleet were left unimpressed.