The Galactic Mage (14 page)

“Gods be burned,” Altin spat, bolting up from the chair. “Not you too. I thought you were on my side. I get enough of that at home.” He reached over the teetering stacks of parchment records and mashed the towel back around the mouse quickly before snatching it away. He stormed to the door.

“Altin, wait,” the doctor called after him. “Come back.”

“If I want a lecture, I’ll go see Tytamon,” Altin said, striding out into the hall.

“I’m not going to lecture. Altin, I’m sorry. It just came out. I know you have as much advice in Tytamon as any one man could probably ever stand. I’m sorry. Come back. There’s more that you should know.”

Altin hesitated, but was giving the oddball Ocelot a serious second thought.

“Altin, come back and sit down. Don’t make me apologize again. I’m too old to be humble to a boy. Sit. And give me back the mouse.” There was something accusatory in his tone despite the words themselves, an implicit suggestion that only a child would continue walking out. Altin ground his teeth for a moment and then swallowed back his pride. He needed to know everything there was to know, and he didn’t want to waste time chasing the eccentric Ocelot through the woods.

He set the mouse back where it had been on Doctor Leopold’s desk and settled himself into the chair again. There followed a long period of silence before the doctor finally began to speak, skipping directly back to the subject at hand. “Another thing you need to know is that there is no moisture in the… air.” He hesitated on the word. “No. ‘Air’ is the wrong term. It’s difficult to explain. The sense I got was of gasping, but, because of the instantaneous nature of the event, there isn’t time to know. But it was dry cold, although that doesn’t really tell you much. The spell seemed to convey an inverted drowning feel. I felt as if I was drowning for lack of water, or such was the sense the divination gave. Air that was not air.” The doctor went on for several more moments, prodding at the idea with new, yet still ambiguous terms, trying to pin it down from different angles with different metaphors, until finally concluding by saying, “But such is the nature of divining, which you already know. You get clues but rarely any answers. The gods are tricky in this way. I hope it helps.”

“It does,” said Altin, his mind churning with possibilities. “It doesn’t tell me much, but it tells me something. I’m just not sure what. At least not yet.”

A knock on the door was followed by Lena’s voice, filtered through the oak. “Doctor Leopold, Lady Falfox is here to see you again. She says the headaches are back.”

Doctor Leopold groaned and raised himself up out of his chair with the help of hands pressed upon the desk. “What about the headache I get every time she shows up?” he muttered to Altin as he rose. “What’s for that?” He laughed then groaned again. “There’s nothing wrong with that woman that a hard day’s work wouldn’t cure.”

He came round the desk to Altin and offered his hand. Altin took it, thanking him for his time, and Doctor Leopold gave Altin a look that could have been the beginnings of another warning, but the glint in Altin’s eyes stayed it on his lips. The doctor nodded and smiled, then placed a hand on Altin’s back, gently directing him to the door.

Altin swung the door open and found himself face to face with smiling Lena, obviously familiar enough with Doctor Leopold’s habits to know that it would be Altin emerging from the office first. He nearly collided with her as he stepped out into the hall, and for a moment their faces were only a hand’s breadth apart. Altin could smell her perfume again and the sweetness of her breath; she must have been eating something made with mint. “Oops,” she said innocently, placing her small hands upon his chest in a show of modest self defense—although somehow she couldn’t quite manage to push herself away.

“You’re going to get blood on you,” Altin said, stepping back and opening his gory wad of mouse only inches from her face. Seeing its contents, she screamed and leapt back from him in terror, her pretty face twisted up into a mask of purest horror before she turned and ran back down the hall. Doctor Leopold made no attempt to hide his mirth and chuckled at Altin’s back as they followed slowly in Lena’s wake.

“That was almost cruel,” he said between receding waves of chortles.

“She deserved it,” Altin said. “She’s always doing things like that. Practically smearing herself all over me every time I come.”

“She likes you, boy. Any fool can see.”

“I can see. And I’m no fool. She’s a tart, and I have no time for her.”

“Oh, I think you’re being too hard on the girl. She’s sweet. And quite something for the eye.”

They fell silent for a moment as they came out into the waiting room, Doctor Leopold nodding politely to Lady Falfox as he walked Altin to the door.

“I don’t have time for sweet,” Altin said as they neared the exit. “I have my work to do.”

“I think it’s more than that.” Doctor Leopold started to press the point, but, once more, Altin stayed the physician’s tongue with just a glance. He looked over the doctor’s shoulder at Lena, now sitting at her desk again, and couldn’t help notice that she was wiping the corners of her eyes with a lacey handkerchief. She glanced up at him briefly, green eyes luminous with tears, then quickly looked away, finding safety in watching her fish swim around the bowl.

Altin beat back a rising tide of guilt. He hadn’t meant to make her cry. He hated that feeling. The guilt. It made him even angrier than before, and he returned his attention to the doctor, barely suppressing an urge to snarl. “Thank you for your time, Doctor. You’ll put it on Calico Castle’s bill?”

“You’re welcome. And this one was free of charge. Call it my contribution to history. Maybe you’ll mention me in your notes.”

“I will,” said Altin. They clasped hands once more and Altin strode back through town and out the city gates, his mind a jumble of images, ghosts of broken mice and of women crying behind their fish.

Chapter
14

A
ltin’s teleport brought him back atop the tower just in time to see Taot swooping down on a doe running for her life out in the meadows not far beyond the castle gates. In his present mood he was more than happy to watch the dragon do his work. A dragon’s life was simple and to the point. Instinctual. But not Altin’s. Everything was so damn complicated all the time.

Taot snatched the fleeing doe out of the grass, clutching it by the head and giving a quick whip to snap its neck. Once the doe stopped struggling, the dragon landed in the meadow not too far from the creek and set himself upon the meal. Altin, leaning on the crenellated wall, morosely watched him eat. Hurting Lena’s feelings was really working on his mind. Was he really such a lout? Thinking of it reminded him of the horrified look on Pernie’s face the other day. He’d scared her half out of her wits too. Actually, he’d treated her even worse.

He grunted derisively at himself. What was wrong with him? What a vicious thing he had become. Just look what he’d done to the mouse. He’d killed it, horribly, essentially blowing it to bits, and for what? He still didn’t know what the problem was. And Doctor Leopold’s answers had been vague. Such brutality and he didn’t even have an explanation to make it seem as if he’d achieved something for the merciless outcome of his act.

He wondered if perhaps he should try to find Ocelot after all; he needed to know. What he really needed was to be able to divine it for himself. He knew he could if he wanted to. Or at least that’s what he’d always told himself. He just couldn’t make himself. And why? What in the nine hells was wrong with him? He’d never shown an inclination towards laziness in his life. So why?

Watching the dragon eat seemed to embody all these things, all the complexity and inexplicability of… of just everything old and new. The dragon tearing into that carcass seemed cruel on the surface, but it was for a larger purpose in the end. The carnage had a point. Or so he told himself. But it was an animal point. And why the dragon and not the doe? Maybe the point wasn’t a good one. Ugh. It was all so damnably complicated. He hadn’t meant to make her cry. He didn’t mean to make anyone cry.

He was tempted to teleport back to Leekant, march back in and at least apologize to Lena. But he knew if he did that she’d take it for more than it was worth. His purpose was not to trick her, and he certainly did not want to lead her on. But he hadn’t meant to be cruel either. Although, it really wasn’t entirely his fault. She came at him like a charging mastodon most of the time, dangerous but visible from half a league away. And she was relentless. Always. And it was just a bloody mouse. She worked in a doctor’s office after all; she should be used to the sight of blood.

The more he thought about it, the more he realized he was being a stupid emotional fool. The woman would be fine. And he had work to do.

Taot finished his meal and let out a roar of satiated delight. Altin sent him a greeting, which the dragon returned with a sense of lazy ease. Deciding that some company would be good, Altin went out to the meadow and gave the dragon a scratch behind his massive ears. Taot lay flat to the grass, moaning, a low rumble in his chest like boulders rolling down a hill. The dragon’s thick hide made deep massage a chore, like kneading saddle leather, and Altin’s hands quickly grew tired, but at least there was one creature on the planet he’d managed to not damage in the last few days. Which was something, because lurking in Altin’s mind was the reality of having to make another try at the moon. And he certainly wasn’t going to send himself. Not now.

He was going to have to send another surrogate, and he needed to figure out how to keep it from blowing up. He had no intention of doing
that
to something else. But the doctor had spoken of “drowning without water” and “air that was not air.” What could that possibly mean? It meant nothing. It’s either air or it’s not air. And you can’t drown if you’re not in water. That was absurd.

The cold was easier to contemplate. Altin had been adapting and upgrading spells since he was seventeen; it was one of his gifts, an intuitive magical perspicacity. He was certain he could amplify the Winter Warding spell well enough to abate the cold, no matter how cold Luria actually got. And he would do the same for the Sunscreen spell, just to play it safe. Having no options for the other part, Doctor Leopold’s mysterious ramblings, he felt the best use of his time would be to begin modifying the hot and cold wards tonight, a task grounded in certainty, which was what his beleaguered brain needed for a time. And with that decision made, he gave Taot one last pat on the massive, scaly nose and returned to his tower after a quick stop in the kitchen to procure the evening’s meal.

He woke the next morning feeling much better. He’d made progress on the protective spells and had come to terms with his percolating sense of guilt. He resolved to be nicer to Pernie from now on and to apologize to Lena while making it clear that his apology meant nothing more than that. And he resolved to do the latter part after lunch. Because first he was going to have another try at Luria.

He needed to test the power of his wards, so he decided to make his next attempt by sending up a potted plant. At least if that went bad he wouldn’t have any guilt. He went down to the gardens and dug up a small tomato plant, and dumped it in a terracotta pot. Gimmel, the groundskeeper, caught him in the act, and scolded him for having done such a thing himself.

“That’s what I is fer, young sir,” Gimmel said as he pushed Altin out of the way and proceeded to dump out Altin’s recent work and then replant it in a larger pot. “Ya gots no room fer the roots in yer litt’l pot, sir.” He scooped in a sandy looking mixture from a gunnysack as he worked, then braced the plant up, tying it to a V-shaped pair of sticks. “Make it grow healthy an’ strong. ‘Maters big as yer fist, you’ll see.” Gimmel held up a grubby, clenched fist to prove his point.

Altin didn’t have the heart to tell him that the plant was likely to freeze to death in about an hour, and in his mind he could already see the three small cherry-sized tomatoes ruptured like the mouse. So instead he smiled and thanked the man, and then took the plant back up to his tower. It was time to test the wards.

He recast both protective spells, newly modified to forty times their previous strength. Altin was taking no chances this time. The new spells took about three times longer to cast, but time was not an issue, caution was. When it was done, Altin was ready to send the plant up to where the mouse had lost its life.

Again eschewing the Liquefying Stone for a teleport that was all his own, he cast the spell and shortly after heard the hiss of air that said the pot had disappeared. He went immediately to his scrying basin and called up the image of the plant. He saw it sitting there in its terracotta pot, half illuminated by the dull golden glow of the seeing stone which still lay where it had landed on Altin’s first successful cast and half in the dark. Again it was nighttime in that place, which was good. The location would be very cold with the absence of the sun, hopefully as cold as Luria could get.

He watched for quite some time, tense with anticipation, eyes locked on the little red bulbs dangling from the vine, waiting for them to pop. But they did not. The plant looked as comfortable as a plant could be. And so Altin waited. After about an hour he was satisfied that his new Winter Warding spell had worked. Now he wanted to check his heat spell. He couldn’t move the plant directly, so first he had to bring it back.

Once he cast the recall spell, he tapped the sides of the pot gingerly with his finger, testing for the effects of extreme cold. The pot felt no cooler than if it had been sitting there on the parapet all along. He felt the cherry tomatoes too, holding each one in his hand, feeling its round red skin, room temperature against his own. Altin was glad of that. He had defeated the unnatural lunar chill.

Now he had to find the sun.

He used the scrying basin to check the edge of the first crater he had found during his exploration of the moon. Having spent time there while seeing, he was familiar enough with that location to call it up easily in the water as he gripped the edges of the wooden tub. Unfortunately, the enormous lunar cavity was also in the dark. He grunted. No help there. He switched the view in the basin to another of the craters that he’d found, the largest of the ones he’d come across, and, sure enough, that one was in the light of day. Without delay he cast the tomato plant back up to the moon.

Once again he stared into his scrying basin and once again the plant seemed perfectly at ease. Its leaves were not curling up and crisping in the heat, and there was no smoke or steam coming up from the damp soil in the pot. Altin smiled, satisfied that at least his temperature wards were figured out. Or at least seemed to be. He decided he’d give the plant a few hours up there just to be sure, and he used that time to cast the better seeing spell so that he could have a bit more time up there himself.

He didn’t spend more than half an hour looking about before determining that Luria, like before, simply had nothing beyond the craters and barren landscape for him to see. The moon was a remarkable disappointment aesthetically and seemed a terrible waste of space. To be honest, the best thing about being up there was the view of Prosperion down below, which he did take a bit more time to appreciate.

Prosperion was beautiful from this vantage. And big. Looking down at it, at its massive blue sphere was humbling; it made him feel so small. She glowed like a jewel too. He traced the luminous layer of light that radiated around the planet with his eyes. Like a protective energy shield, he thought, something cast there by the gods, a divine enchantment meant to keep them safe. It amused him to think it might be humanity’s warding spell, and he chuckled. The patterns of the clouds, for the white swirls could be nothing else, were breathtaking, and Altin watched with increasing awe as a vortex storm rotated magnificently above the dark spot of Duador. The more he studied it, the more he calculated the storm’s relative size to other features of the globe, the more impressive it became. He figured the demons were getting a violent soaking as nature ran its awesome course, and likely getting blown around furiously as well. But he knew instinctively that the storm would not be enough to wash the island clean. The blight of human arrogance would not so easily rinse away.

Duador depressed him; he’d never had to look at it like this. The entire race of dwarves, extinct in a matter of eleven days. Talk about magic gone awry, he’d only killed a mouse. One spell, eight men and a conduit, and a continent was lost. Such power, such fragility, was frightening to think about. The cruelty of which men were capable was almost as awesome as that storm. Perhaps more so. Sometimes he thought that the gods should never have entrusted men with magic. The obliteration of the dwarves, as accidental as it may have been, was evidence enough. Humanity had been fighting a righteous war, or so the histories said, and they only sought victory, not genocide. They had no idea the power that they held. Sometimes Altin felt like that.

Which brought his mind back to Lena, and to little Pernie too. Why did hurting them bother him so much? He tried to tell himself that it really wasn’t that big a deal, but it was. He decided that now was the time to act on his promises to himself. And besides, the new warding spells had clearly worked.

He returned his vision and the tomato plant back to their rightful place on Kurr. He still didn’t know what to do about the “air that was not air” and the “drowning without water” thing, but he had decided to get the other problem off his mind. For the being-nice-to-Pernie part, he had time for that day-to-day. But Lena was another matter. So, for starters, he was going back to Leekant to apologize to her for having been so mean.

Taot was still nearby, so, struggling for the discipline to avoid breaking teleporting laws, Altin flew back to town again. He landed on the familiar knoll and hustled back through the busy streets. When he reentered the office, Lena once more greeted him with a smile; however, this one was not so eager as it had been the day before. She was a resilient girl, but the sting of his cruelty had not yet gone entirely away. “Hello, Altin,” she said, studying him as if noticing something new. “Is everything okay?”

“Yes, everything’s fine,” he said, haltingly at first. “Listen. About yesterday. With the mouse thing. Sticking the guts up in your face was pretty rude. I wanted to, you know, apologize for that. It was a mean thing to do, and I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you cry.”

Her smile warmed, spirits rising as dough becomes bread in an oven’s warmth. “Oh, Altin, that’s okay,” she said, tilting her head slightly to the side. “I know you didn’t mean to be mean. And I was… rather clumsy in my way too, so, I’m sorry also.”

He smiled back at her, relieved that this had gone so well. “Good,” he said. “Then there’s no hard feelings. That’s great.” He hadn’t planned on the apology going quite so smoothly, which left him feeling awkward now. “Well. Good. So, then I guess I’ll be on my way.”

“Wait,” she called as he turned to go. “Altin. The Summer Festival is only a few weeks away. You should ask me to go to it with you. I promise I won’t say ‘no.’”

Altin blushed. He hated dances. And he’d known she was going to make more of his apology than he’d wanted her to. “It’s two months away, not a few weeks.” He had to quell an urge to tell her to stop hounding him, but it was too soon after apologizing to hurt her feelings again. “I really don’t want to think about it just now.”

“But you know you’re going to go,” she persisted. “You always do.”

“I don’t ‘know’ that, and I’ve never brought anyone, have I? I don’t even like to dance.”

“You have too.”

“I have what?”

“Brought someone. You came with Madeline Pender a few years back.”

“Oh for the Pearls of String, how do you remember these things? I was fifteen.”

“And I was sixteen. Girls pay attention.”

“I guess.”

“So, will you?”

“Will I what?”