The Galactic Mage (28 page)

Altin was not a predator, and sitting there was vexing. How could he convey to the dragon that there was no way the orcs would be getting there this fast; not to mention the fact that the middle of a town full of orcs was not the ideal place to exact a rescue. He didn’t have time, however, for it was at that moment that he saw six orcs emerge from a concealed crevice in the rocks and begin riding up the trail leading into the orc-filled canyon. Riding on horses.

Since when had orcs begun domesticating horses? They were not supposed to have the discipline for that, or at least that’s how the stories were always told. Orcs will eat a horse before its old enough to ride. Impulse over intellect. Everyone knew that. But apparently things had changed.

Sunlight glinted off of Pernie’s flaxen hair just as the group disappeared into the shadow of the canyon’s wall. Taot’s thought was roughly the equivalent of a spoken “there.” The dragon followed this thought with what could have been a question mark regarding what Altin would like to do. The dragon was ready to swoop in and burn the village to a crisp. Altin had to remind his draconic counterpart that they were on a rescue mission and that Pernie’s life must be spared.

He conveyed a sense of bringing Tytamon first, to help them with the orcs, to which the dragon reluctantly agreed, and Altin cast the telepathic spell that would nudge Tytamon into opening his mind, but the ancient magician’s mind was closed. Telepathy was like that. One needed another telepath, for starters, and one could only push at that person’s awareness from the outside and hope that the recipient let you in. But Tytamon did not. His mind was apparently blocked by the divination spell that he was casting and Altin was put off. If he had some paper, he could teleport a note. Or even one of Aderbury’s ridiculous homing lizards, but he had neither, and he was unwilling to turn back now.

“Fine,” he said, sending the thoughts to the dragon as well. “Let’s go get her. Drop me off down there.” He sent an image of a place below the village near some trees. “Wait till I get in. I’ll tell you when to burn it. Just watch out for me and Pernie, though.”

The dragon seemed to understand, and Altin hoped the beast could control his natural instincts once the fight began. Taot swooped down into a narrow ravine, not too far off the trail leading into the village, and Altin slid down his neck and dropped onto the ground. He ran as fast as he could up through the rocks and stopped when he got near the canyon mouth. There were two large orcs with halberds standing guard, but Altin didn’t have time to fight.

He wished he’d memorized an invisibility spell, but, since he hadn’t, he cast a seeing spell instead. He found a place inside the entrance into which he could teleport and hide. Once inside, he did the same twice more and soon was well within the village, hidden in a filthy hut behind a stack of rotting grain sacks and trying for all his life not to gag from the overwhelming stench. From here he could hear Pernie begin to scream.

He cast another seeing spell and pushed his vision through the wall of the hut and towards the sound of Pernie’s cries. Two female orcs where stripping her down and smearing her with cooking grease, as a third began dumping a yellowish powder over her that Altin assumed was some kind of flour.

Drums were being beaten now too, and many of the orcs began to dance around the village’s central fire, whooping and howling with ravenous delight. From the general rapture surrounding Pernie’s preparation, it seemed that they had not had human meat in quite a while. They certainly weren’t wasting any time.

Altin would have cast the Teleport Other spell from where he sat, plucking Pernie out, but he was a lot farther than twenty paces away, a requirement of the spell—and that assumed that the little girl was not so hysterical as to qualify as an “unwilling target” as well.

There was nowhere else to hide between here and there, at least no place large enough to enable him space to move and cast without being seen, and so he was going to have to make a run for her from here. He decided it was time to call the dragon in.

He sent a message to Taot, still hovering above, indicating that he’d like the lower portion of the village burned. The dragon did not even bother to reply. The roar echoing off the canyon walls was enough to confirm that Taot was swooping in.

The orcs immediately leapt into action, their movements disciplined and unified. Altin peered through the hut’s window and watched several of them run off, even including one of the women that had been preparing Pernie for the pot. He noticed two older orcs emerge from a hut across the fetid trench from where he hid, one of them conspicuously draped in feathers and strings of teeth taken from animals of varying ferocity and size. A shaman, Altin thought. Great. He sent a warning to Taot not to fly too low and included an image of the shaman, trying to convey a sense of sorcery as best he could without the use of words.

Taot’s reply was an image of a broken egg and something approaching humor. Altin nodded and sent back a sense of “luck” as he ran to get Pernie from the orcs.

He was spotted immediately upon exiting the hut by an orc carrying a longbow. The orc dropped to a knee and knocked an arrow, plucking it deftly from the quarrel strapped to its thigh. The arrow came whistling in and went right through the sleeve of Altin’s robe as he dove narrowly to the side.

He rolled to his own knees and began at once to cast. He didn’t have time for a huge fireball, but even Altin’s small ones were large enough to do the trick. A bright mass of flame, big as an ale keg, crackled through the air and struck the orc full in the chest just as it released another shot. The arrow thunked into the ground between Altin’s thighs, narrowly missing his groin. Altin grimaced down at the arrow as the orc’s flesh and armor ignited and began to burn with yellow flames, the orc’s cries mixing with those of the dragon and poor Pernie for the span of several heartbeats while it burned. Finally, it fell into the muck and was silent again, its body reduced to a charred and steaming heap. Altin ran on to where he’d seen the females preparing Pernie to be cooked.

The orc women saw him as he ran in. They turned on him and growled curses that were animal and foul, rattling in their throats. Pernie saw him too, and she let go a squeaky plea for help as something like optimism glistened in her frightened eyes. Altin was resolved to stop at nothing to get her out of there. The sight of her like that, terrified and ready to be boiled, fueled his rage and filled him with hate.

The two females rushed at him, their teeth bared in savage snarls and their strong hands brandishing knives made for cutting meat. The first one was in flames by the time she’d taken her second step, struck full in the face by a melon-sized ball of fire. Pernie screamed and had to dive out of the way as the burning woman staggered back and nearly fell on top of her. The second woman, however, sprang like a leopard at Altin before he could cast another spell, and soon the two of them were grappling on the ground. Despite having knocked the knife away, mud, cooking grease, flour and bits of rancid food slicked them both to the point of being nearly impossible to grasp, and Altin found wrestling with her frighteningly difficult. And what was worse, Altin was not nearly as strong as the female orc was, not even by half. Only by the fact that both of them were slippery was he able to escape her clutches long enough to scramble to his feet, and even then the snarling woman thrust a muck-encrusted hand out and caught him by the sleeve before he could step away. He needed to get far enough back to cast another spell. He jerked violently against her grip, hoping to tear free either from her gnarled hand or from the robe itself, but neither would give way.

The orc woman used Altin’s violent tugging as a means to regain her feet, scooping up her dropped knife as he inadvertently pulled her up. She lunged at him with the grimy blade, a fluid motion as she rose, and caused him to twist awkwardly to avoid being stabbed between the ribs. He cursed. Caught in her iron grip like this, he could not make the gestures necessary for another fireball. His mind began to race, and he was about to count himself gutted when he remembered the simple lightning spell he’d unwittingly memorized during the standoff with the giant spots. Learning it seemed so long ago now, though in truth it had barely been seventy-two hours. With a sudden sense of calm, he straightened, took her by the wrist and spoke the spell’s single activating word.

She was mid-swing, the knife plunging for his heart when he said it. “Avort.” Suddenly she stopped and staggered back, eyes wide as she began to shake. The pitch of her screams rose two octaves as currents stored in the earth beneath them coursed through her body in violent waves, drawn forth by Altin’s call. She howled and writhed and shook, foam running from her mouth as Altin let her go. She collapsed upon the ground then, twisting and jerking with residual energy until finally she stopped moving all together, a faint whine of releasing air and some smoke wafting up with the departure of her last breath. She was dead. Altin looked upon her body and wrinkled up his nose. Her eyes had come out, and both her palms and the soles of her feet were split wide like over-done sausages, dark blood seeping out from the open flesh and running into the fetid mud in which she lay. Grotesque as it was, it served her right. He spat on her and looked up, seeking Pernie once again.

The little girl lay upon the ground, curled up in a ball, terrified and whimpering. Altin went to her. “Let’s go,” he said as he scooped her up. He turned and looked down the slope to make sure that he had time to cast the spell that would teleport them out. The whole village was ablaze, and the whole of the canyon was filled with the flickering glow of Taot’s raging breath. But there were four orcs charging up the hill at him. Males. He knew he could not fight them off and still keep Pernie safe. But he did have enough time to cast the teleportation spell. And with that he got them out.

Chapter
29

W
hen Altin first delivered Pernie into Kettle’s arms, the woman became a virtual fountain of tears and joy. She took the greasy, flour-covered child from Altin’s arms and rushed her to a back room of the kitchen, placing her on the cot she sometimes used for taking naps. She ran her hands and eyes all over the girl’s slender frame looking desperately for any signs of serious injury. There were no broken bones and only a few cuts, one of which required some stitches, but Kettle delivered those with a capable hand and in short order. Beyond that the child was relatively unscathed.

With hot water from the cauldron near the fire, Kettle washed Pernie down and wrapped her in a towel before taking her back to the cot and rocking her, still trembling, in her arms until at length the child was asleep. It wasn’t until then that Kettle said a word to Pernie’s savior, and her opening salvo was something to behold.

“You,” she spat, coming at him with such vehemence he took a backwards step. “Ya just up an’ go as ya please, don’t ya? Not one damned thought fer what anyone else is about. And ya takes yer tower an’ half the wall an’ just go cavortin’ around fer weeks at a time; not a care fer the likes of us. No, not you.” She drug the rarely enunciated pronoun out in a way that made it worse than any curse she could conceive. “An’ ya just left us wide open fer anyone what happens by, ya did, let the orcs waltz right in an’ take mah Pernie away.”

He started to mumble a reply, but she didn’t let him speak, rising and striding into him with a growl of rage so ferocious Altin lost focus in his bewilderment. He’d never seen her like this before.

“If’n ya ever go off an’ leave us open fer them orcs ta sneak in here an’ snatch her away again, don’t ya never come back or I’ll cut ya’ open myself, ya hear? By Mercy’s wrath, I swear I will, mage or no.”

There was nothing Altin could say to that. What could he say? And worse than the speechlessness was the dawning sense of dread that came upon him as comprehension began to permeate the barrier of his initial perplexity. As her words seeped through there formed within him an awareness that the furious woman might have a point. A terrible, horrifying point.

A part of him wanted to muster some sort of defense against it as her meaning grew like some wild accusatory weed, but how, when everything she said was true? He had been taking the tower out for extremely long periods of time, and he’d never once thought about the security of the castle or the people living there. Nothing had ever gone wrong before.

He tried to shake the blooming realization away. It frightened him to think he could be so selfish as she accused. He wasn’t like that. Was he? He fought to fend the feelings off. No, she was wrong. It’s not like the gates aren’t always open, he tried to tell himself. And Tytamon didn’t even keep anything that resembled a guard on staff.

But his attempts to convince himself were futile even as he had the thoughts.
He
was supposed to be the guard. He and Tytamon. But he’d taken a corner of the castle away instead. He’d excavated a section of wall that was large and obvious and then kept it gone for nearly an entire month, had been keeping it gone for months and months. How could the orcs resist such an invitation as that? They couldn’t, that’s how. And they’d gotten in because of him.

Kettle turned from him and went to a large cutting board where she began to chop carrots with such fervor that the knock-knocking of the cleaver against the wood made it sound as if there were a giant woodpecker in the room.

Altin considered leaving, but he knew that was the worst thing he could do.

“I’m sorry,” he said after a bit. “I didn’t think that orcs would come. It’s been centuries since they came around.” She looked up at him, and he immediately wished he hadn’t opened his mouth, or had chosen something else to say. But, it just came out. A reflex.

Fighting back tears, she turned on him in full, the cleaver still gripped tightly in her hand. “Don’t ya say another word,” she said, and he thought she might actually swing the knife at him. “Ya didn’t
think
is right. Damned right about that. Ya got the brains of twenty men, and ya can’t manage ta make even one of ‘em work. So what’s the good of havin’ ‘em then?” This last was mostly muttered as she turned away and brutalized another carrot, chopping deep lines into the cutting board as she pounded savagely against the wood.

“Well, I am sorry. And you can tell Pernie I’m sorry too when she wakes up. I never meant for anything like this to happen.” He turned to go, fighting back tears of his own. He felt so small.

“Tell her yerself,” Kettle said, her voice turning icy calm. “Don’t look fer me ta bail ya out of that one. Yer the one can look her in the eyes and explain ta her why it was she near got ate, tell her who it was what let the orcs inside. Yer the one ta tell her that, not me. I won’t be makin’ yer excuses fer ya. Hide from the rest of the story if ya like, hide from all of it, that’s fine by me. I’ll keep yer secrets, but I ain’t savin’ ya on this. I had enough of it.”

Altin cocked his head and studied the woman for a moment. She looked as if she’d said something she didn’t want to say, but she was in no mood to take it back.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Ya know damn well what it means.”

“No. I don’t.” He didn’t.

“All of it. Why yer here. The whole history. Yer parents. And yer sister. It’s all the same story with ya, Altin Meade. Only this time it’s different ‘cause it
is
yer fault. Ya can’t say yer just too young no more. An’ I’m not gonna baby ya about it neither. Not no more. Time fer ya ta grow up an’ face the truth, an’ I don’t care what Tytamon has ta say. I’m tired of it all. Yer too old for everyone to be prancin’ around secret-like, like yer made of thin ice and everyone’s a fat man walkin’ on the pond. I’m done with it I tell ya. Done.” She had run out of carrots and was now whaling on a cabbage. Coleslaw was likely to appear on the menu tonight.

Altin felt his face heat up as Kettle went on, his confusion growing deeper with each new word. What in nine hells was she talking about?

When she was done, the cabbage essentially juiced and now running onto the floor, he demanded to know just what it was she meant.

“What do I mean?” she said, squaring to him and stepping towards him once again. “I’ll tell ya what I mean. I’ll tell ya what everyone means but is too a’feared to say. Yer a menace Altin Meade. A sweet, hardworking, likeable menace most times, sure; an’ don’t think I don’t love ya with all mah heart, ‘cause I do, but yer a gods-be-damned menace. You’ve always been a menace. Since the day ya was born.” He could only stare. This was not the Kettle that he knew. She saw his apoplexy and relented some. “Didn’t ya ever want ta know what happened ta yer parents, Altin? Ta yer sister? Haven’t ya ever tried ta ask?”

“They died when our house burnt down. Tytamon said I was only a few months old.”

“Did ya ever ask how the fire got set, Altin? How the fire got so big?”

“Well, no,” he admitted. What was the point in asking that?

“It was yer magic what done it, Altin. Yer magic started that fire.”

Altin laughed, a nervous sound. “Impossible. I was an infant.”

“An’ magic usually comes around seven or nine. I wasn’t born yesterday, Altin. I may be a blank, but I didn’t just fall out of the peach basket. Of course magic comes later than that fer most. Fer most, Altin. But not yers. Yers started seepin’ out like seeds from a busted ‘mater when ya was nary but a babe.” She took a tomato from a basket near where she stood and pricked it with her knife to illustrate the point. She gave it a little squeeze and a jet of liquid squirted out. “The way I heard it, they figured ya musta got cold layin’ in yer crib. Maybe half asleep. But ya used yer magic somehow an’ brought the coals ta life, a raging fire that burnt yer house ta ash. Yer parents died getting ya and yer sister out.”

“That’s ridiculous,” was all that he could say.

“An’ yer sister… Do ya remember how that happened, Altin? Do ya? ‘Cause that was yer magic too. Ya teleported her into a tree. They say ya was only five or so years old. A sibling fight was all, but ya found yer magic again. An’ accident, sure, but that’s when the town council started ta figure ya out. That’s how ya ended up here, Altin. Because nobody but Tytamon had any chance of reining that kind of power in. Yer a menace an’ ya need to get yerself under control. Maybe ya can control the magic now, but ya ain’t figured out how ta control yerself.” She crushed the tomato in her hand and they both watched silently as the red juice ran down her forearm and into her sleeve.

Altin was in shock. How could he possibly respond to what she had said? Kettle’s story was ludicrous. She was blaming everything on him. It wasn’t even possible for an infant to use magic and conjure flames. There were the chants and gestures they had to know, distances involved. But even as he had the thought, he knew that those were only the superfluous contrivances of man. Raw power, animal magic, required nothing of the sort. But at less than one year old? The mythothalamus wasn’t even fully formed at that age. It couldn’t function that soon. And even if it had, what about the fire alarm ferns? Surely his parents had a few of those hanging around their house. Everyone with children did. The alarm would have been raised the moment heat fell upon the enchanted leaves, the plants charged with whistles loud enough for anyone to hear. His parents would have woken up, and the fire brigade would have been alerted too. And what about the fire brigade, where had they been? Surely they would have come in time; it was a modern world after all. Unless the fire had just been that big. Gods, how enormous would it have had to be? He was certainly capable of ridiculously large fires now. But he hadn’t even been one year old.

But what if it was true? What if he had killed his parents? And his sister? Neechy. Poor Neechy, not so much different than Pernie in appearance and in size. Had he really merged her with a tree? What a horrendous thought. And how? She couldn’t have been a willing subject. And even if she was, he wouldn’t have had any idea how that kind of magic worked. Teleportation is much more complicated than conjuring fire ever was.

Prompted by the emotion-laden queries, his mind began flashing images of a little girl in a blue dress peeping out of an empty apple barrel and sing-songing him with names as cruel as only an eight-year-old sister could apply. Horror grew in his mind as the memories came rushing back; he watched her childish face mocking him over the barrel’s edge, heard her voice taunting him with “Altin Maltin, Big Fat Paltin” over and over. He could remember the helpless rage he’d felt; he felt its echo even now, clutching his chest like an iron band, growing tighter and tighter as anger turned the screw. He hadn’t even uttered a word, hadn’t cast anything as refined as the spells that he knew now. He had simply willed her into the tree, willed her with every ounce of anger and hate that a five-year-old boy could possibly employ. And then she was gone, barrel and all. Forever.

A storm raged in his brain, the memories playing out like scenes in some macabre illusionist’s tale. He had memories of the villagers cutting down the tree a few days later when he’d finally tried to explain what had happened—even though in all honesty he hardly knew himself. He’d been too young to understand. But he understood when the lumber jacks pried strips of blue cloth out from between the trunk’s concentric rings. He’d understood that well enough. And then he’d apparently blocked it out. Until now. Until Kettle. Until Pernie had just about been killed.

Kettle was right. He was a menace. Deep down he’d always known it, always felt the danger lurking there. He suddenly understood why it was that he needed so desperately to get away, why he needed to run to outer space: to be free of anyone that he might love, that he might kill. It was no wonder he never feared for himself. He was not the one in danger. It was everyone else. Kettle was right. And he needed to get away.

He ran from the kitchen, back into his tower where he cast a Polar’s shield twice the size of the one he’d been using to protect himself. Under that one, he cast a second, the same as he’d been doing all along. The larger dome would prevent the orcs from coming through. Satisfied, he grabbed the Liquefying Stone and threw himself out into the night.

One hop returned him to his furthest point in space and, wanting to drift, he let go the stasis spell that held the tower in place. With the release of the stasis energy, the tower began to rotate, making the stars appear to slowly spin around. He hoped a coconut monster would come and kill him, or at least send him spinning eternally away. But for now at least he felt as if he were free to float endlessly through the night. He blew out the lamp he’d left burning on the table and sprawled out in the middle of the floor, staring up into the spotted sky.

Kettle’s voice ran through his mind over and over, her words an accusation. “Menace,” she kept repeating, a horrid echo in the caverns of his brain; it was a curse. And the worst part was that it was true. He was a menace. He was a killer. And he was mean. He was a mean, selfish killer. Realizing such things about himself was mortifying, and yet he knew with absolute certainty that it was completely true. All his adult life he’d fancied himself as an explorer, an academic and a sorcerer on his way to greatness. He sneered derisively as he thought about his selfish dreams. He’d never once thought that he’d be anything but a success—if not with his moon project, then with something else, perhaps something closer to home. But he’d always known that there would be something to validate him in the end. And now he saw that he was only a menace, had always been a menace. Nothing more.

How much death would he mete out before he was finally through? How many more lives would he take through pride and ignorance? His parents and his sister were obviously not enough. So now he killed little girls too, or at least tried to get them fed to ravaging bands of orcs. That’s what he did when he wasn’t killing helpless animals or being mean to young women who only wanted to dance. Good gods. What a bastard he was. And who was next? Who was next on Altin’s list to die, the list of those who had to pay for knowing the great magical menace, Altin Meade?