by John Daulton
She sang the song of healing then, carefully and slowly, wishing as she sang the words she’d learned that the bug might be healthy again, believing that it would be best if its broken legs were whole. She imagined them growing straight and strong again as if they were but stems of daffodils slowly rising from the ground. She even felt bad about it too, for having broken them, and her spell was infused with the simple sympathy of a child, pure and uncomplicated, and the plainspoken thoughts of merely wanting pain to go away.
After a time, she felt that it was done, for the words of the spell were gone. Sung out to completion.
She opened her eyes, her returning awareness almost dreading to see the bug looming over her again, as it had not long ago when she had nearly nodded off.
It wasn’t. But it was standing normally again, no longer mashing itself down against the ground.
Pernie stood up and looked at it. It looked back at her with its bent gray eyestalks. “Are you still hurt?” she asked it telepathically.
It made no reply.
“I’m going to stand on you again,” she informed it with thoughts and words alike. Then she stepped onto its back just as she had before.
“No,” it conveyed telepathically as she did so, the sense of negativity. But she didn’t care.
She stood on it, drawing back on the rope, hoping it might help her balance if the bug took off again. Which it did, and the rope didn’t, and, while she did do a fair job of bracing for the speed of the bug’s acceleration, it simply moved too fast for her to stay aboard. She tumbled off sideways when it made its first sharp turn, which it did right away. Still, she managed to ride it for nearly the length of five full spans.
What she needed was some way to balance herself from side to side. She scanned the area all around, and finally she spotted a fallen branch lying half in and half out of the creek. She made to go get it, but the bug flattened itself out again, making an anchor of its weight.
Pernie grew irritated at this belligerence. She set herself at a sideways angle, braced her feet, and gave the bug a yank with all her strength. It flipped over onto its back, its legs once more scrabbling in the air. It flopped and twisted and got back upright, again scuttling to face her flat and straight on, perhaps even understanding that she might yank off the rope.
She wondered if it was smart enough for that.
She tried to run around to get a sideways angle again, but it rotated with her all the while, keeping its body lengthwise to her, its head down and pointed at her like a dart. She feinted right, then jumped left and gave the rope a yank. She wasn’t remotely fast enough to trick it, but she was strong enough to once again break one of its legs. Which prompted it to roll right back up into a ball.
“Stupid bug,” she said. “That’s what you get.”
She half dragged, half rolled the bug over to where the branch lay up against the bank. She pulled it out of the water and studied it. It was a little longer than she was tall, and rather crooked for all that length, but it was thick enough for what she needed it to do.
She snapped off all the forking branches coming off of its main length, having to stand on it with her foot and yank mightily before some of them would break. But after a few minutes’ work, she had a very crude sort of pole with which she could try riding her captured bug again.
She turned back to where it lay near the water, gazed down at its body rolled tightly up in its shell, and shook her head. “For such a big mean bug, you’re kind of a scaredy-mouse, aren’t you?”
She sent it a telepathic command to unroll itself, but all she got back was “no.” She was rapidly becoming convinced that that really was all the creature could say. She did, however, get the vague sense of pain again.
Impatiently, she once more cast the healing spell, again squatting down and this time laying her hand on the curving surface of the protective shell along the insect’s back. In a matter of minutes, it was done, and once again all the creature’s legs were whole.
She stood and stared down at it with a frustrated sigh. “Now listen up, you: I’ve squashed a lot of bugs before, and I’ve got no problems doing it again. You’re going to straighten out right this moment, or that’s all it’s going to be. You hear? I’ll break every one of your legs if you don’t start listening to me.” She sent that thought with all its conviction and imagery at the bug, her hands on her hips again. She was tired, it was hot, her face and tongue hurt, and the day was growing late now. The stupid elves would come find her any minute and take her back to the stupid cave.
To her astonishment, the creature unrolled itself. She smiled. “Good bug,” she said. “Now take me for a ride.” She took up her crooked stick and hopped upon the bug’s back again. It was somewhat awkward trying to manage the rope and the stick together, but she got herself situated as best she could. “Go on,” she said, sending the command telepathically.
The bug took off again, its acceleration so astonishing that despite having her stick to brace with, the slightest angular motion dumped Pernie right off again.
“Stupid bug,” Pernie muttered as she once more clambered to her feet.
She saw that the bug was standing nearby. This time, at least, it wasn’t flattened out and ready for another tug-of-war. That made her smile.
“Good bug,” she said. “Maybe you aren’t all the way stupid after all. Now let’s go again before the elves come and try to take you away.”
Chapter 11
A high, hot sun heated the streets of Murdoc Bay as if the city were one great kiln. The general … frugality … that ruled in the city of greed often precluded the wasting of wealth on indulgences for the weak—indulgences that included such devices as awnings or trees planted simply for the purpose of throwing shade. The starkest example of this tendency could be seen along the landward edge of the wide avenue known as the Decline, up which Altin and Orli now strode.
The Decline was a back-and-forth boulevard that traversed the length of the great black cliffs beneath which most of the port city was built. It slowly wound its way down, taking nearly three measures to cross three hundred vertical spans, and ultimately brought the downward-destined traveler into the heart of Murdoc Bay, a city that was home to no small number of brigands, pirates, and thieves.
All along the rock-face side of the snaking boulevard were businesses—though such a designation could only be loosely applied for most, as more than half were surely fronts for one nefarious enterprise or another. These establishments, be they legitimate or not, were built one beside the next, their bare storefronts looking out over the edge of the sloping avenue and their back rooms carved deep into the rock. And most noticeable to Orli as they climbed was the fact that barely one in five of them offered the simplest accommodation of a shady overhang. As she and Altin made their way up beneath a blazing sun, she found it hard to imagine how so many businesses could lack even the most basic of commercial courtesies, that being something as simple as shade and an invitingly opened door.
Yet despite the heat and the inhospitableness of the street, it was up this ramped row of business that Altin and Orli went, the sweat running freely from them both. They were headed to the top of the cliff, intent on meeting with Roberto on its plateau. The top of the Decline marked the end of the city, and beyond it, there was naught but open wilderness, treeless and stark. Orli welcomed it. Rough, heat-blasted lands were at least honest, unlike Murdoc Bay. The sooner they were out of this place, the better, as far as she was concerned.
Orli’s hand rested conspicuously on her blaster, her fingers already curled around its grip and her lean muscles visible beneath her sun-browned skin, taut and ready to draw. Her eyes, hidden behind dark sunglasses, swept nervously back and forth. Altin kept her close, with his arm around her, his hand in the small of her back. He knew how anxious being there made her, and his green eyes scanned the faces and shadowy spaces between buildings, darting from one to the next, and up to the high places of the shallow rooftops where there were struc
tures ambitious enough to encroach sufficiently into the avenue to make such things necessary.
Mainly she saw awe and admiration in the countenances of the people there, and no small amount of fear—fear of Altin, the Queen’s Galactic Mage. She wasn’t sure if it was because he was the Galactic Mage or because he was the Queen’s, but either way, she counted their journey fortunate in that his face had become so recognizable as to provide some measure of defense. Although, even with that working for them, she wasn’t fool enough to think his association with the crown, his title, or even his reputation as the most powerful living magician on Kurr would keep them safe in a city like this. His mentor, Tytamon, had been more powerful than he, and even Tytamon, an Eight, a wizard of nearly eight hundred years’ experience no less, had been struck down by a lowly fiend. And that had happened in Leekant, a much gentler city by far. A knife in the back was all it had taken to kill the greatest magician the kingdom had ever known, and Orli had been helpless to do anything about it. She held no delusions about Altin’s reputation being sufficient reason for either of them to drop their guard here in Murdoc Bay. Especially on the Decline.
So they walked together up out of the city, Altin nodding politely to those who would wave enthusiastically at the two of them and their celebrity, but mainly watching for anything provocative with the words to a fireball spell partway muttered upon his lips. He hardly needed words these days, not with his ring, but Orli knew that he muttered them out of habit anyway, holding the conflagration he would unleash to defend her only a half heartbeat away.
No fools dared tempt him, however, and neither fireball nor laser beam was let fly before they crested the cliff and found themselves looking out upon the dry lands that sprawled away from the city for measure upon measure, a vast expanse of prickly yellow weeds, squat, stunted trees, and enough loose, rocky soil to make a horse want to rub its hooves for thinking on it very long.
“Is it always this hot down here in the spring?” Orli asked as she wiped away a rivulet of perspiration that threatened to run into her eye. “This is brutal. It’s as if this rotten city can’t offer anything nice at all, not even its springtime weather.” Having been briefly imprisoned in Murdoc Bay as part of Lord Thadius Thoroughgood’s plot to capture her and then “rescue” and seduce her for himself, Orli’s singular earlier experience with the city had not been a good one. This scalding heat did little to improve her attitude toward the community.
“No,” said Altin, he too wiping at the moisture that poured down his brow, “this town is pretty much the dung spout of society, if the truth be told. But money seems to love it here, and the marchioness controls a great deal of wealth by having this place as the commerce capital of South Mark.”
“Well, they deserve each other, that old hag and this crappy town. I can’t believe Roberto would want to have anything to do with this shithole. It gives me the creeps.”
“If he’s going to be in the Goblin Tea business, he’s going to have to do it from here.” He pointed off toward the east, where barely visible on the horizon could be seen a faint green line. “That way is Gallenwood and the Feshtie River. The sea air and desert heat make a perfect humidity for growing Goblin Tea, while the river provides fresh water, and the forest gives home to the durma bees and coffee moths that pollinate when summer comes.”
“Well, I do like Goblin Tea,” she said. She was smiling, but Altin knew it was only partly out of her fondness for the mildly, deliciously intoxicating stimulant. “Maybe the city does have at least one redeeming quality.”
Altin nodded, agreeing, though she knew he was not much of a fan of the bitter black beverage that most everyone else adored. He complained that the effects of the stuff took forever to wear off, which she thought was both just like him and ironic all the same.
“So where is Roberto and his new spaceship?” Altin asked as they moved out farther into the open and the heat. They were both scanning the area from side to side. There wasn’t the least bit of a dune or hillock to obscure the view, so there was no place to hide a ship, even if someone wanted to. “He said ‘right outside the city,’ which means here at the top of the Decline. He should be here.”
Orli pulled a thin black tablet out of a flat leather pouch hanging from her belt and tapped up their present coordinates using the data stream from an orbiting starship, the Aspect, the same ship she used to serve aboard.
“He’ll be coming in over there,” she said, pointing. “About three hundred yards past that pile of rocks.” From the way it looked, she suspected someone had been hastily buried there.
They made their way in the direction she’d indicated, and as they approached, there appeared before them a long, slender craft, gleaming like liquid silver in the glare of the high and blinding sun.
They both had to look away, the glare was so bright, and looking back required that they shield their eyes, though Orli only for a moment, as her sunglasses soon dimmed down enough that she could see.
“By the gods,” Altin exclaimed. “It’s awfully bright. And I had no idea your people could cast invisibility.”
Orli laughed. “It’s not. It’s the surface of the ship reimaging the environment.” Her lenses were finally dark enough to look directly at it. “But leave it to Roberto to get that entire surface chromed. I’ve never seen that before. Could that possibly be any more ostentatious?”
“Hey, I heard that,” came Roberto’s familiar voice from a loudspeaker mounted somewhere on the ship. “And it’s not chrome. It’s titanium- and silver-treated palladium glass.” A moment after, a ramp lowered from a place at the belly of the ship, discernible by the dark rectangular outline that began to form and then grow until there was a tangible opening.
Two tall and strongly built women carrying large shoulder-mounted laser cannons came down the ramp first, the barrels of the guns nearly four feet long and ringed with spiral cooling tubes that were caked with frost and sent vapor into the air to be devoured by the heat. The two women took places at the base of the ramp, one on each side, each of them leaning back against the straps slung over their bared shoulders and thrusting their pelvises forward where the gun braces pressed firmly to their shapely hips. Orli could not help but notice that both women were strikingly beautiful, and dressed to express it. Each of them wore formfitting black pants and a corseted vest of satiny purple material that was far more provocative than one might expect for a pair of rather burly guards. Their bosoms bulged as conspicuously as their shoulders and biceps did.
A moment later, Roberto descended with a third woman at his side and two more only a few steps behind. All three of these women were strikingly beautiful as well, the two behind attired exactly as were the ramp guards. The fact that they too wore the corseted purple made it seem as if these might actually be their uniforms, though Orli could hardly believe it. For one thing, the woman at Roberto’s side was not wearing purple, nor a bustier. Roberto, however, was wearing the same color, if not the same outfit, which drew a snicker from Orli that she only barely managed to contain. She could not help but gape at him.
The swarthy Spaniard wore a long coat of bright purple silk, which perfectly matched the bustiers of the four women behind him, excepting that Roberto’s coat had an additional treatment of gleaming gold macramé at hem and cuffs, and it was decorated with carved buttons of mammoth ivory, though none of them had been put to use this hot day. Upon his head perched a large three-cornered hat—custom made, Orli was sure—black as night and festooned with a feather two feet long and just as purple as the shimmering jacket was.
While his lower half was covered with his customary black pants and blaster belt, his trouser legs were stuffed down into boots that, like jacket and feather, were as purple as anything could possibly be. Even the soles of those gaudy knee-highs were gilded at the edges with gold leaf, tacked in place and made to match the macramé and the buckle of the hatband.
Orli let go a long and most unladylike sort of snort, and she barely held herself
at the furthest reaches of self-restraint as he approached.
Roberto ignored her facial contortions and nasally rasps, and he bowed with a long flourish of his three-cornered hat as he came to stand before them both. Altin bowed formally back and opened his mouth, about to give the proper Prosperion greeting when one is addressing the captain of a ship, but Orli’s guffaws simply exploded into a full fit of laughter at the sweep of the hat. “You’re going to get your feather in the dirt,” she managed to gasp, but that was all before hilarity had her bent over completely at the waist and nearly wheezing for breath.
Immune to her ridicule, Roberto’s eyes shot wide with feigned horror instead, and he snatched his hat back up and spun it around, bending the feather this way and that, and, to his further dismay, discovered that he had in fact gotten a few bits of grit lodged in there. He immediately set to picking them out with genuine irritation apparent on his face.
Orli laughed for nearly a full minute more, and it was all Altin could do to stand straight and try to be polite.
“Go ahead and laugh,” Roberto said, “but do you know how much this damn thing cost me? They had to do it nine times to get the color right.”
Now Altin was laughing too.
Roberto looked back and forth between them, then to the beautiful woman standing at his right, the only one from the ship not wearing purple to match the rest. The other two women had stopped on approach and now stood a respectful pair of steps behind them, their faces stoic, though not without traces of humor twitching the corners of their mouths and glimmering in their eyes. The woman beside Roberto made a better show of keeping her expression neutral, though Orli thought she might be biting her tongue more than a little bit.
Eventually, Orli stopped laughing, and with a shake of her head and an expression that clearly declared what she thought of his ensemble, she clapped him in a long and hearty hug. He grinned a great big cheesy grin at Altin over her shoulder as he hugged his best friend in all the universe, and Altin smiled back, glad to know that Roberto was not only safe but beyond thriving by the providence of the Queen.
