The Galactic Mage (34 page)

The sound of soft fabric collapsing to the floor brought Altin’s attention up from the book to Tytamon. The ancient mage had turned his back to Altin and let his robes slip to the ground revealing in his nudity a body so scarred and hideously wrecked that Altin had to look away. Half of the old man’s left thigh muscle and buttock were gone; and the flesh up and down his entire left side was wrinkled and twisted far beyond any damage that time could possibly have wrought. He’d been mangled, as if burnt and chewed and soaked in acid all at once, the skin mottled, discolored, and undulant like a meat pie that’s been stomped. It took Altin several moments to recover from the shock.

“What in the name of Mercy’s tears is that?” he asked as Tytamon pulled his robes back up.

“That is the mark of
my
arrogance, Altin. It’s what happens sometimes to mages regardless of how strong or clever they think they are. I was inches from adding Eights to the list of dead magicians normally saved for Sixes.” Altin’s eyes were wide and staring, rapt, as the old man straightened his garment and returned to the chair and took another pinch of bread. “But that’s not the worst of it, Altin. I, like you, would not necessarily have regretted my own death. That is a price we have always been willing to pay. Both of us. That is an acceptable and familiar risk for mages like you and me. It is harm to others that we must suffer and that we must always try to avoid. And, sadly, despite our efforts, it is often inevitable.”

Altin had to think about that last part for a while. “So what are you saying? That people are just going to die because of me? That I should get used to it? Carry on? Stiff upper lip and all that rot?” Altin couldn’t believe what Tytamon had said. “You can’t possibly be serious. I can’t live like that. I won’t. Not now. Not knowing what I know. If that’s the case, then I’m definitely going to burn my mythothalamus out.”

“You have to find the balance, Altin. There is always middle ground.”

“I’m not interested in middle ground. Not if people are going to die, not everyone that I love. I can’t carry that kind of guilt. Not anymore. That’s something you just can’t understand.”

Tytamon pulled another chunk of bread from the loaf and held it near the candle flame for a while, toasting it absently as he considered Altin’s words. When it was warm enough, he pushed it into his mouth, his moustache squirming above his parchment lips as he chewed. He swallowed and then leaned forward in his chair.

“Her name was Kelline. She was my wife for thirty-seven years. A powerful Four—two Z’s, a W and an H.” He laughed a moment, a sad sound. “You think
you
can cast big fireballs?” Altin watched him closely and could tell that the old man was on an inward trip. “Anyway, we were young, and I was smart, too smart; I’d convinced myself I was smarter than anyone else alive. And so we decided to go to Kolat and have a look around.”

“Kolat?”

“A tiny island far to the south of Kurr. It’s a terrible place. It’s where I got the Liquefying Stone.”

Altin nodded, his own mind flashing back to that dark spot he’d seen looking down at Prosperion from the moon.

“We heard about it from an old pirate down in Murdoc Bay. He told us stories of a place where the creatures were so horrible and dangerous that the monsters of Kurr seemed soft and cuddly when compared. The pirates call the island ‘The Heart of Magic,’ but nobody ever listens to pirates and their wild tales. Nobody except for me. And I dragged Kelline along.

“Oh, she was happy enough to go, don’t get me wrong. And I’ve allowed myself to recognize that as the years went by, but she’d never have gone had it not been my idea. But we went. We were young and bored. We just wanted to see if the pirate stories were true.

“They were. It is the heart of magic, Altin, but in an unexpected way. You see, the whole island is made of volcanic rock and of Liquefying Stone. There are huge deposits of the stuff everywhere, and it’s almost impossible to cast a spell without being in contact with the stone. Which is why the creatures are so hideous and malformed.

“And they are malformed. You can’t imagine how much so. You’ve never seen such terrible things. Monsters, twisted into forms that are so hideous they are indescribable with words alone.” He whispered a chant under his breath and illusions began to dance about in the air above Altin’s bed, images of beasts that were little more than twisted wads of mangled limbs with eyes and teeth and wings jutting haphazardly from anywhere but where they should have been. The younger mage recoiled in horror with each successive scene. His mind suddenly returned to the misshapen skull on the shelf in the small basement room of Tytamon’s tower. It suddenly made perfect sense.

“Mercy save us,” Altin muttered as he watched the illusions that Tytamon spun before him in the air.

The images winked out a moment later, and Tytamon’s story went on. “But the beasts were not the trouble, Altin. The trouble came from what at some point must have been a race of men. There were tribes of these things, these men, who roamed about the island with appetites to make a swarm of locusts seem a sated lot. They were voracious and savage and cruel, and they had magic that was beyond anything you have ever seen. Animal magic, but tempered by just enough intelligence to make it unstoppable by any force I know. They’d survived the Liquefying Stone, warped and remade, but somehow they’d survived.

“Think about it. An entire race, capable of magic just like us, and one that has miraculously managed to adapt, to live in the excess of the Liquefying Stone, mutated over time by the endless effects of the stone’s presence at almost every cast. They were burnt and warped into something that no longer looked like man, but they were close enough still that Kelline and I could recognize them for what they were, or for what they used to be. And they recognized us as well. And hated us.

“When they attacked us, almost immediately upon our landing on the shore, of course we reflexively began to cast defensive spells. Apparently I was on a patch of sand that had no pieces of the yellow stone in contact with my feet, but my Kelline was not so lucky. The fireball she conjured engulfed us both in flame, but her much more than me. She burnt her mythothalamus out on the spot and never cast another spell.

“I fell to the sand and rolled into the surf, putting out the fire burning through my clothes. Quickly then, I got up and tried to put her out as well. She was screaming, and I knew she couldn’t cast a water spell. I rolled her burning body into the waves. By the time the water extinguished her, it was already too late. She died right there on the beach, in agony, and with me watching the entire time.”

He paused for a long while, and Altin thought perhaps the elder mage would be unable to go on, but at length he got his voice back. “When it finally occurred to me to look to see if our enemies were gone, I saw that Kelline’s fireball had killed them all. She got them. Every last one. She’d saved me as the last act in her amazing life.” He paused again, eyes glassy. “If only she could have lived.”

They both sat silently for a while, Altin unwilling to say a thing. Finally Tytamon shook himself and resumed where he’d left off. “Anyway, that’s when I discovered the Liquefying Stone. I fell to the sand next to her body and screamed and cried for a while, delirious with pain, in my body and in my heart, and then, in that delirium, I tried desperately to bring her back to life.

“As you know, I’m only an F-ranked healer, so I’m lucky to mend a broken toe, but as I was casting uselessly into her decimated body, I began to realize how much mana was pouring in. My leg was lying across a piece of the Liquefying Stone. The amount of mana I was pulling was incredible, and I could stream as much as there was available in the sky. And I did too; I thought the gods were giving me strength.

“But obviously I couldn’t bring her back, not even a Z can resurrect the dead, but still I tried. It wasn’t until later that I figured out that the incredible mana draw was due to the yellow stone.”

Altin nodded, understanding now what price his Liquefying Stone had cost. What it had truly cost. In a way, it made him feel even guiltier than he had before. The price of his progress in human lives was large, and possibly still mounting. The bodies were really piling up, back into time. But he also realized that he was no longer all alone. Tytamon’s tale was no different than his own. Only in the details, in the names of who was dead. He wondered how many more lives Tytamon had taken along his path through magic and a span of eight hundred years.

Tytamon blinked his eyes dry as he finished his tale, but he sat silently for a while, staring blankly into the air. Finally he stood. “She was a good woman, Altin. I’ve never recovered from her death. But she would never have wanted me to quit. And neither would your parents have wanted you to quit. I did not know them, but I am certain I am right. They would not have wanted you to run away.” He walked slowly to the door, turning back to add one more thing before going out. “But that is a choice you have to make. At least I’ve said my piece.”

Tytamon left without another word, just a wan smile as he disappeared down the stairs. Altin watched him go and gave a long and weary sigh. Maybe Tytamon was right. Maybe his parents wouldn’t have wanted him to quit. He just wished they’d lived long enough to say it to him themselves.

Nonetheless, Tytamon’s words opened up the truth that was buried in Altin’s heart. He wasn’t supposed to burn his magic out. He was a caster, and he was doing what he was supposed to do. What everyone wanted him to do.

He began to think of all the people who encouraged him every time they spoke. He thought of Kettle and Aderbury and Doctor Leopold. All of them loved what he’d been doing all these years; they’d attached a tiny portion of themselves to his dream, their hopes linked with his, tied to him and his seemingly impossible quest to reach the stars. He gave them something to root for in a world where life could be empty and often cruel. Blinding his magic or hiding away in outer space would only be another injury forced upon those who cared about him and the wonderful things he might discover with his gifts. He thought of little Pernie then, Pernie who idolized him, who hung on his every word, what would she think if he quit, if he threw it all away, ran from it like a coward into the night? Quitting would let her down most of all. She wanted to be like him. She would never quit, not with her tiny tiger’s heart. He wished he had half the guts she had. But he still had time to make it right.

Balance was the key. He had to find the middle ground. If he was truly meant to do this thing, to keep pressing out into the deepest parts of an eternal night, then he was going to start with what he’d been leaving out all along. He was going to find his divination skill. At least he could be a bit more rounded if he did. He wasn’t sure why, but he understood it now, what had been blocking him before. There were too many things he hadn’t wanted to know. Too many things he’d been afraid to find out. But the lavamoth was out of its chrysalis now, and he couldn’t put it back. There was nothing left but to fly into the fire.

He picked the book up from where it had fallen into his bed. Turning back to the page that began the simple spell, he started once more to sing its song, and by morning he’d actually made it work.

Chapter
35

A
ltin took his success with the divination spell, elementary as it was, as a sign. It was the approval from—from somewhere—that he was supposed to continue on. And he also knew that Tytamon was right. He’d known all along that he could never quit being a magician, that the people who had loved him long ago would have wanted him to press on, to keep on with his work in space. But he still needed some time to let his new world view soak into his head, so he decided a few days after hearing Tytamon’s tale to take the tower back out into space. Where better to have some time alone?

He cast the double domes, intent on never leaving Calico Castle unprotected again, and even included an illusion of the tower and curtain wall as well, making it appear as if everything was still in place. When it was done, he one-hopped himself and his recuperating dragon out into the stars—while largely recovered, Taot was still too weak to be left in his den alone, and Altin was determined to keep him close for at least a few more days.

The dragon was unperturbed by the sudden transition into outer space, and Altin discovered quite by accident that the darkness put the beast to sleep straight away, which was even better than at home, for the dragon badly needed the rest and was growing more anxious with every passing day.

Given the added bonus of Taot’s fitful slumber, Altin let himself drift among the stars for quite a while, studying the sky and beginning to contemplate the resumption of his quest to reach the star that he had chosen as the place he was going to get to next. He was staring out at it, dreamily half asleep himself, when he noticed a flash of light far off in the direction of his tiny target shimmering in the night. At first he thought it was just another star, and the pulse of light was gone so fast that he wasn’t sure if he’d actually seen a pulse at all.

He scanned the area carefully, this time more awake. He was fairly sure he’d seen a flash, but if he had, there was nothing out there now, only a million tiny lights. Perhaps it had just been a trick of the lamp burning on the table near the stairs, some wayward reflection bouncing off the shield. But no sooner had he written it off as being exactly such a thing, he saw another flash, which was immediately followed by two more.

“What do you think that is?” he said to the dragon sleeping near the wall. He wasted no time starting the seeing spell that would get him a better look.

Though well familiar with blind casting, he still had to guess at the distance between himself and the flashing lights, and his opening cast left him still a bit too far away, but not so far that he couldn’t run his vision towards the flashing lights without having to make a second cast. He sped his sight along until at length the flashes brought him to where he could see tiny specs of light floating in the distance like a glowing cloud of gnats. He moved in closer, slowing his vision as he drew near, and he watched in awe as a most amazing scene played out before his eyes.

It seemed he’d come across a great battle between a knot of the coconut monsters and a new form of creature that looked remarkably like some kind of frozen snake. There was a handful of these new monsters: stiff whitish things, long and blocky looking with glowing scales in places along their lengths that illuminated their shiny skins and everything around them like giant lightning bugs. They moved slowly, breathing fire from their arses, and Altin had to wonder how anything so sluggish had any chance against the battering rams of the speedy, aggressive spots.

However, the stiffened snakes did have beams of red light that shot out from underneath their throats, and they spat little pellets trailing blue fire that exploded into the giant flashes of nearly blinding light that Altin had seen from far away. Altin concluded that they were dragons of a sort and perhaps capable of holding their own against the spots after all.

He debated bringing the tower forward so that he might view the spectacle in person rather than through his sight, but as he watched the coconut monsters sweeping in and bashing at the snakes, and as he saw how the pellets were exploding virtually everywhere amongst a net of the searing red lights, he decided that perhaps the seeing spell was a safer bet for now.

The lumbering dragons were outnumbered by at least two-to-one, although the coconuts moved around too quickly for him to count them accurately, but he could see that there were only five of the silvery snakes currently in the fight. The longer Altin watched, the more he realized the snakes were probably going to lose despite their pellets and red lines of light. Still, the scene was a mesmerizing display of movement and brilliant energy.

As he watched the glorious dance of death, he couldn’t help wonder how long these battles had been going on out here, how many times these two types of creatures had clashed and fought and died—and with the people of Prosperion ignorant of it the entire time, ignorant of everything beyond their own, tiny little world. The recognition was humbling, and he clutched the parapet unconsciously as he continued to watch the scene unfold from the safety of a sight-wrought bird’s-eye view.

Two of the snakes teamed together against one of the coconuts, and Altin found himself letting out a cheer as the ball-beast ruptured into a spray of the orange ichor that served the spots as blood. Watching one of those nasty things blown apart was certainly nice to see. But then, unexpectedly, the furthest snake from him exploded in a flash of light so bright it made him step reflexively away from the granite wall he gripped, the movement breaking his concentration on his spell.

“Damn it,” he cursed before recasting the seeing spell.

The frozen snake was completely destroyed by the time Altin’s Sight had returned, and large portions of its length were tumbling slowly away, spinning as they drifted apart amongst a cloud of glittering dust and debris. Score one for the coconuts, he thought as he watched. This meant that the odds were now slightly worse for the snakes, given that they had only taken out one of the spots in the overall exchange. A one-for-one trade was not going to work in favor of the snakes.

One of the pieces of the decimated snake was coming slowly towards the location where Altin had his vision parked. The segment had gone completely dark, its glowing scales extinguished when it died, and its torn edges were bent and jagged, looking remarkably like they were made of metal, perhaps of iron or maybe tin. This detail caught his eye, and he pushed his vision to intercept the broken segment before it was beyond the illumination still coming from the snakes that remained alive. He wanted to have a closer look.

His first impression had been correct; the portion of the snake was indeed made of metal, or something like metal, and even its ribs seemed more like beams than bones, but beams made of metal rather than wood. And the snake was hollow. Looking directly into it from its broken end revealed that its guts were not soft and filled with blood, but were compartments built in perfect geometric shapes, like rooms. Altin knew immediately that he was looking at a ship.

He plunged his vision through the darkness and through the nearest wall, heading into the parts invisible from outside. He found himself immersed in absolute blackness as he pushed his vision blindly forward hoping for some signs of life.

He went through another wall and came into a room where a strange bluish fire was burning on an angular thing that reminded him of a writing desk. The pale blue light was enough to illuminate a dismal scene. There were things, manmade things, floating all about. He saw a cup and broken chair floating oddly in the air. There was a boot as well, and something that might have been a belt. And there was a corpse floating up against the roof.

Altin recoiled when he saw it, flinching unconsciously as it slowly turned, drifting like a body bobbing in a stream. The face, a man’s face, was bluish and cracked open, frozen solid and looking exactly like the mouse had after Altin had sent it to the moon. Altin gasped, and once again the distraction broke the Seeing spell.

“Good gods,” he muttered as goosebumps prickled up and down his back. “Those are men out there.” He knew instantly that he was required to go and help, chivalry demanded it, and he wasted no time in getting his tower to the location of the fight.

By the time he arrived, another ship had been destroyed by the coconuts’ attack. In fact, Altin’s tower nearly emerged in the exact same spot as one of the larger segments of the broken ship, the twisted wreckage blown into the area by the force of impact during the time it had taken him to cast; he missed merging with it by a matter of only a pace or two.

He shuddered and tried to quickly assess what was going on. Four coconuts were taking up positions that made it clear they were intent on attacking the ship closest to where Altin’s tower had appeared, perhaps a few hundred paces to Altin’s left. The ship was looking pretty battered, its armor dented in places and venting what looked like steam, and Altin was fairly sure it wouldn’t make it through the next attack.

He had to teleport his tower close enough to the ship to make a defensive cast, and upon emerging from the teleport, he immediately began a merging teleport spell directed upon two of the approaching four. Instantly, the two spots became one, the sudden combination rupturing the newly formed mass in a gout of orange as the other two sped on and set their shafts careening at the ship. The ship’s red streaks shot out, as did those of a ship several hundred paces beyond it on the farther side, and the two remaining battering rams were deflected harmlessly aside. Altin jumped his tower into the path of the second pair of orbs and cast another merging spell as they came in range. A moment later they were crushed together too, spewing their orange blood and spinning harmlessly away.

There were nine of the coconuts left, and Altin noticed that one of them was absolutely huge. He and his new snake-ship friends still had a lot of work to do.

Apparently the coconuts recognized where the new threat was coming from, and four of them were now streaking at his tower, using the same formation as the four he’d met when he’d first discovered these hostile spots not so long ago. He wondered if those he’d killed had somehow managed to warn the others, telling them how best to fight him off. He grit his teeth and hoped his Combat Hop was still going to do the trick.

It did.

The four stony beams flew harmlessly past as his tower dodged magically to the side, and Altin had to suppress a gloating sing-song that threatened to come upon his tongue. The wrong cadence could undermine the spell he was about to cast, the spell he had prepared for yet another merge. Focused, he finished the chant, and two more coconuts would not be furthering the fight.

Three more spots were coming at him from the left, however, apparently hoping to catch him off-guard while he fended off the other four. Two of them met with the merging fate straight off, and the ship he’d helped a moment before managed to take the third one out as it passed his tower by.

That’s when the big one came, moving towards Altin at a speed almost too great for him to see. It streaked in so fast that Altin barely had time to gasp. It was enormous, looming up at him like a rounded mountain as it approached. He grimaced as he waited for its giant battering ram to emerge, figuring the weapon would be as big as the tower was or more. He braced himself and hoped his Combat Hop enchantment would still be able to keep him safe. It should, he thought. He hadn’t put any restrictions in the spell regarding how big the coconut missiles could or could not be. Still, he closed his eyes and cringed.

But the giant spot did not throw its enormous spear at all. In fact, it came right up against the Polar’s shield and pressed against it tight. Altin swallowed hard, realizing he was about to be introduced to a new element of coconut battle strategy. The spot’s rough surface shifted to a softer, almost hotcake brown, and it began wrapping itself around his tower like a great fleshy blanket, oozing around it like melted wax until the tower was nearly halfway consumed, embraced almost entirely within the mass. The whole tower shuddered with the contact, waking Taot, who let out an irritated growl.

Altin immediately feared for the integrity of the shield. There was no way Polar Piton had ever considered anything like this. Panting with the rush of adrenalin, Altin began to cast a spell to teleport outside the creature’s grip. But, to his horror, he could not. The mana was being pulled away from him, drawn out of his reach as the giant spot sucked it from the space around the tower with such fervor that Altin couldn’t catch a single thread; it was like trying to use a teaspoon to dip water from mighty Kilgore Falls.

Several places around the surface of the shield began to pulse where the coconut’s flesh had started probing the magic barrier in selected spots, and there were tendrils coming out of its skin, thick as Altin’s arm and hollow at the tip like pieces of dark bamboo. The spot appeared to be trying to push them through the shield, and the whole tower was shaking violently with every thrust the monstrous creature made.

Altin needed the Liquefying Stone to compete with his assailant’s mana draw, and realizing it belatedly, he spun to get it just in time to see the wooden bowl tumble over the parapet’s edge.

“Damn it,” he cried. He immediately made to cast the teleport that would take him to the ivy bed below.

“Damn it,” he cried again. The monstrous orb was channeling the mana too fast for Altin to grasp enough to cast even a simple teleport spell. He had to run downstairs instead.

By the time he got outside the tower and around to where the wall was butted into the shield he realized he was really in it now. He had no way to get across the wall. “Gods be damned,” he spat, and ran back into the tower. He got a rope from the lowest room and ran out from the second floor onto the curtain wall. The tower was shaking terribly and Taot’s irritated growl had grown to something angrier and far more menacing.

Altin hastily tied the rope to a merlon and slid quickly to the ground. He ran to where the wooden bowl had landed in Lady Synthia’s writhing ivy bed and, glancing up, saw that the giant spot had already pushed three of its tendril tubes completely through the shield. “Mercy’s light,” Altin breathed as he searched frantically through the mass of shifting vines. Where was the gods-be-damned stone?