by John Daulton
Altin grinned, but he kept the tilt of his head forward, slightly submissive all the same. “Of course, My Queen.”
She laughed again. A great merry laugh that filled up the gilded hall to its gold-encrusted rafters. The bonds of tension that bound the courtiers burst at once, and they all laughed with her, some nervously, some simply out of joy that they’d not been struck by the flung scepter of royal outrage today. To be included in a mild insult was, by comparison, a great relief.
The Queen, when her fit of humor had passed, looked back at the two of them standing there and smiled. Her gaze passed from one to the next, then back again. Finally, it settled on Sir Altin. The smile faded to absolute seriousness. “You play the game well, Sir Altin. And if you’re smart about it, everybody wins. Everybody.” The smile returned as she waved them away with the royal scepter. “Now be off with you. Both of you. I’ll hear not another word of this until you have something I can consider, something that won’t make me look the fool in the eyes of posterity.”
“We will, Your Majesty. And thank you.” He bowed. Orli curtsied, and the two of them backed properly away. Altin kept his grin in check until they were well beyond the Palace gates. They hadn’t quite gotten what they’d come for, certainly not what Orli had had in mind, but they’d gotten more than he’d actually expected that they would. Which was a start. Maybe there was hope for Blue Fire after all.
Chapter 4
The elves dashed off into the woods again, gone just as fast as fast could be. Little Pernie stood watching the last waggle of a young rubber tree as the motion of Seawind’s passing settled back to stillness again. This was her third day doing this, and she was convinced now that he did that purely for her benefit. She’d seen him move enough over these last few days to know he didn’t have to touch that tree if he didn’t want to. Yesterday hadn’t gone any better than the first day in terms of catching them, but she was determined to do it somehow. She thought perhaps it was those little things, those signs of dancing rubber trees, that she was supposed to look for to keep up. So, with a determined sigh, she set off at a run again.
She ran past the rubber tree and through the dense underbrush for a time. She came across an animal trail and stopped, looking about for some sign, something else to track them by. There was nothing.
She listened for silence in some direction, any direction, hoping for a cessation of the cacophonous screeching and squawking and howling and whistling along some sliver of the jungle somewhere. Maybe the creatures of the jungle could help her find which way the elves had gone.
They did not.
She ran on. She ran down the animal trail for so long she finally had to stop and catch her breath. She did so, and began running yet again. She came to a stream again, perhaps the same one she’d first encountered the other day, perhaps a new one. She had no way to know. She stopped and got herself a drink. She looked around. The sweat sticking her silky elven tunic to her body annoyed her. She looked all around yet again, but still there were no signs of them. She thought about running on again, even did so for a dozen steps or so, but soon realized that seemed pointless too. She might be going the wrong way as easily as the right.
Still panting, she stopped and looked up into the canopy high above. Maybe she could spot them from up there. Casting her gaze around, squinting through the green ubiquity, she found a thick kapok tree covered with climbing vines. She went to it and set to climbing it herself.
A practiced climber, she made quick progress, and soon found herself a hundred spans above the jungle floor. She took a thick vine in her hand to secure herself, and peered around to see what she could see. It looked nearly the same from up here as it did from below. Green. There were, here and there, small clearings that she could look across, but no movement at all. She supposed the creatures of the jungle didn’t survive for very long making it so easy for predators as that. Especially the elves.
She thought it might be funny to make them come up here and find her instead of her running after them again. So she climbed another twenty spans up and found a comfortable place in the boughs where she could rest and watch.
She lay up there for some time, silently gloating over her own cleverness, when a wave of noise came at her from far off to the right.
She rolled onto her stomach and peered through the leaves, the line of her sight just below the lowest level of the canopy, like looking along the bottom of a great green cloud. Something was coming. Lots of somethings. Great dark things with legs like spiders, only directed upwards rather than down, reaching into the cloud. They came in a flurry of falling leaves and shrieking racket, at least forty of them all roughly in a row, a pack of them, or a herd, or whatever such things comprised.
Her first thought was to climb down before they got to her, but a glance below reminded her just how high up she was. She’d be several minutes exposed trying to shimmy down all that.
She considered climbing higher into the canopy, but the sight of those creatures frightened her. What if there were others hidden in the sea of leaves? Her fingers spidered down her side to where her little knife had always been, the little knife she’d had for many years—the one the elves had taken along with her sling and the miner’s pick she’d gotten from Master Spadebreaker when he died. All she had left to her was to hide.
She crushed herself into the leafy vines around the tree trunk as best she could, wriggling under them like she might a thick blanket on a cold winter’s night. She thought the noise she made was awful as she did it. The piercing shrieks of the creatures swinging toward her grew louder and louder with each passing heartbeat.
Soon the racket was nearly deafening as they approached. They came all together like the first winds of a terrible hurricane. She peered out from her hideaway and watched them as they went by, the leading edge of the storm passing on both sides.
They were great hairy things, and what she’d mistaken for spider’s legs were arms. Lots of arms. At least six that she could count on each creature, thrusting out from oblong bodies that from one end sprouted long tails of pale, smooth flesh like rats and from the other, hairy-faced heads with faces that were frighteningly like those of men. They reminded her of the apes that the carnival men from Murdoc Bay brought when they came to Leekant during the Harvest Festival holiday, but only in the vaguest sort of way.
The whole group of them swung past her hiding place at marvelous velocity, their many arms reaching up into the leaves to clutch branches with absolutely surety. Occasionally, one or another of them would suddenly seem as if it were falling. It would start to plunge toward the ground, and for the first few instances of it, Pernie had watched in expectation of a mighty splat. But none of the creatures fell. They gripped vines in one or two of their hands, and they held them confidently as they fell, the vines falling with them, limply at first, but soon enough they went taut. In that instant the creatures would swing forward in long and graceful sweeps, sometimes so close to the ground that the bulging curves of their undersides—or perhaps what served as their backs, though Pernie could not be sure—would brush the tips of the low brambles before they were once again slung upwards toward the canopy. In these moments, these great swinging arcs, the creatures on the vines would get out way ahead of their companions, shrieking and raising a racket that made Pernie cringe. But then, as the rapturous noise had barely just begun, another of the many-handed apes would suddenly be plummeting toward the ground. Soon after, that one was way out in front, screeching its supremacy back to the rest. Pernie was sure it was a game.
The whole of their passing came and went in less than a minute. They swept in, swept past, and swept out of sight again, the storm gone and only the diminishing racket of their cries marking that they’d ever been by at all.
Pernie shook a little with fright at first, but she recovered most excitedly. She’d never seen such things before. Great Forest was home to nothing so wondrous as that, at least not that she’d ever seen. And as she thought about what she
saw, she realized too that they might have just shown her the way. She couldn’t run with the elves very well, but perhaps she could keep up with them like that. By swinging from the trees.
She pressed her lips together firmly, determined, as she stared up into the shadows of the canopy. It was so thick above her that she couldn’t see the sky, not even a patch of it. She knew there would be creatures in there for sure. She’d been listening to them for days. If she only had her knife!
But she didn’t have it. And she did want to learn how to not be afraid of an orc.
She supposed learning that might start with not being afraid of whatever lived up in those trees. It surely couldn’t be any worse than those bugs with all their legs and waggling eyes, much less that pack of two-legged dragons with the stubby wings and giant, gnashing teeth. And besides, swinging from those vines looked like fun.
She climbed a little farther up into the canopy and found a long limb extending far out from the trunk. It made something of a tier in the canopy, and she found she could run right down it for over sixty spans. Other limbs from other trees crisscrossed it as she went along. She hopped over some and ducked under others, never losing any speed.
Soon the limb became too thin, barely as wide as her hand across, and it wouldn’t be much farther before it began to bow beneath her weight. It grew increasingly springy the farther down it she ran, and there were more and more forks in it, each of them sprouting tufts of leaves that tangled up with the tufts from other trees. Still, she could get good lift from it, so, spotting another branch that looked promising, she took the last few running steps and then bounced, riding the flex of the branch down and letting the rebound launch her into the air. She flew to the next branch and landed easily, just as nimble as a chipmunk—not so unlike her play back home in Great Forest used to be.
She trotted along the new limb, looking around for one of the thick vines she’d seen the six-armed apes swing from. Soon enough she spotted one and made her way to it, straight as an arrow shot.
She paused near the end of the limb, at the farthest portion that would still support her weight, and realized there were still at least three spans’ distance between her and the vine. She looked up into the leaves where the vine disappeared. She looked down to the jungle far, far below. She hoped the vine was secure up there somewhere, then backed up, all the way back to the trunk, then sprinted forward again, once more bouncing on the limb and then hurling herself toward the vine.
She was in free fall for what felt like forever. She heard the vine tearing through the canopy above her as she fell, snapping smaller branches and stripping away leaves with a particular hiss before they began to flutter down after her. Beneath her, the bristly mass of a low-growing clump of spiny palm trees seemed to rise up at her like a cluster of spears. She gripped the vine tightly and gritted her teeth. If the spider-apes could do it, she could.
Free fall ended so abruptly that, despite her firm grip, she still slid half the length of her body down the vine. The thin stems of the young leaves that grew from the vine, and the coarse fibers of its outer bark, gave way as she slid. But she clutched it with all her might, clamping down with hands and feet. The bark gave way to firmer, moister stuff beneath, and with some small amount of friction burn, she was able to break her fall.
She stopped just short of the leafy spears beneath her, and her feet grazed more than a few as she swung across the jungle floor with only three spans to spare. But three spans above it she was, and that was plenty. She swooped over it all in a rush of air, the wind blowing back her hair and peals of purest joy blowing out across her lips.
The arc of her swing carried her right back up into the canopy again, just as it had the spider-apes, and she was still squealing rapturously as the massive python caught her by the wrist.
At first she had no idea it had happened; it was all part of her thought to reach out to grab the nearest branch. But soon the green-and-yellow tendril of the serpent was winding down her arm like a corkscrew. She tried to yank herself free, but it was obvious that she had nowhere near the strength. In a matter of moments the snake had yanked her loose from her vine and hauled her up into its coils, where it began to squeeze.
Chapter 5
Orli peered out at the planet far below, her hands resting on the stone windowsill of Calico Castle’s tall central tower—now far from its usual place upon Prosperion—as she leaned forward to take in the spectacle. The planet, called simply R3, was a massive, rocky world some twelve times larger than Earth. It was in the system named for its sun, Fruitfall, which was the designation Orli had given it when she’d first seen it—and a name that had been officially pulled into the networks back on Earth, making it permanent, to Orli’s private delight.
In orbit around R3 were three moons, two that were approaching the size of Earth’s own moon, and one that was nearly as big as Earth itself. This was the moon that she and Altin were calling Yellow Fire—for now—for this was the moon that they believed once held, and hopefully still held, the heart of Blue Fire’s mate. And it was to confirm that fact that they were there.
Altin was just finishing pulling on his bulky spacesuit as Orli, already suited up, wistfully gazed out upon the grayish, planet-sized moon. It was the first time she’d allowed herself to consider that she might be wrong. What if he wasn’t down there? What if Yellow Fire really was dead? What if they found the chamber deep beneath the dead moon and there was as little life within as there was without? What if?
“Well, are you ready?” Altin asked, turning her around.
“I am,” she replied. “Do you really think there’s a chance for them?”
Altin’s left cheek pushed up under his eye, where uncertainty tugged the corner of his mouth up a bit. “Mine is not the scientific world,” he said diplomatically. “Though in time, I might get to it. Until then, I leave such conjecture to you and yours. I am simply here because I love you. And, of course, because I do hope to help Blue Fire find happiness. So, in that, I am very hopeful that the, well, the flower bulb of his life force, as you once referred to it, is still viable at the least.”
She smiled. Hope was good. Hope was what brought them here. “Well, let’s go to it, then.”
“Do you have your Higgs prism ready, so we don’t have any surprises like last time?” He rubbed his back absently as he recollected how the heavy gravity of the world called Red Fire had caught them both off guard the first time he had teleported them there. It had only been a scant six months since they’d first been there, and the memories of the pain were still fresh.
She smiled, patting a black box clipped to her suit’s utility belt. “Already set. This time we aren’t in such a hurry as before. I had time to calculate the moon’s gravity yesterday while you were still looking for the planet with your scrying spell.” She moved away from the window, stepping over and around a clutter of ancient artifacts and piles of stacked books. She and Altin were in the study of the deceased mage, Tytamon, Altin’s mentor of many years. He’d been murdered just before the great battle with the orcs and demons had broken out, and Altin had not been able to find the will to tidy the chamber up and make the place his own. So it was mostly as the great sorcerer had left it, which made navigating through the jumble of old furniture and magical antiquities treacherous—who knew what priceless item she might break, or worse, what awful curse or magic trap she might unleash?
Carefully, she picked her way to a sturdy table of gray and ancient wood upon which sat a small box of hard plastic, nestled amongst the heaped leather-bound books and baskets filled with a variety of nameless magical ingredients and oddities. The very presence of that box amongst all the ancient things made it stand out as entirely alien.
She opened it and pulled out a black device with a few dials and a small display screen, just like the one clipped to her belt. “I got you your own this time,” she said as she approached. She turned the dials on it to a setting Altin recognized as the symbol for the numeral “one
” in the writing style of Earth. “When we get down there and you drop the magic dome, tap this button right here.” She pointed to a large and conspicuous button near the bottom of the unit, before clipping the Higgs prism onto his suit’s utility belt and attaching the short length of its nylon tether.
“Roger that,” Altin said, making a face at her as he parroted the words the Earth people used when speaking to one another on their coms.
She smiled up at him, her pretty face tan beneath the glass dome of her helmet, her time on Prosperion giving her color she’d never had while stuck on a spaceship. Her blue eyes sparkled green and red and amber in alternating turns as they reflected the lights blinking on the control panel of his spacesuit. Seeing her made him smile.
“Let me double-check the landing,” he said. “One moment.” He turned and went into the small chamber built into the tower’s western wall—not that there was any real sort of “west” now that the tower was out in space, floating as it was in orbit above R3 and its largest moon. Inside the chamber, normally used as a “clean room” or teleportation chamber, Altin had set a large wooden basin, which was filled nearly three-quarters full with water. This was the method of magical scrying, and into that water Altin had cast a form of seeing magic through which he could now watch the surface of Yellow Fire. He locked the spell in place on a particular patch of the moon, not far from the base of a rather abruptly upthrust mountain range.
He took the time to study the area, noting the conspicuous lack of greenery and the total absence of any sign of life. Or even weather, for that matter. The whole of what he saw made it appear as if the moon was nothing but a great ball of ash.
Nonetheless, there were no apparent dangers lurking near, and so he concluded that it was safe enough to teleport the tower down to the surface, where he and Orli could begin the search for Yellow Fire, or at least, for his hopefully alive-but-dormant heart.
