by John Daulton
He had to slow his pace considerably as he cruised along the surface of it, which once again reminded him of his first days in space, his first exploration of Luria, pushing his vision along its red surface. Things had certainly gone wrong since that propitious-seeming time. He had been such an innocent. So naive. About literally everything.
As he cruised over the giant orb’s surface, he noticed a pockmark forming itself, not unlike the craters he’d seen on Luria. Except this one was forming as he approached.
Suddenly the surface of the giant Hostile buckled, then fell away, as if a sinkhole had opened up. A perfectly circular orifice shaped itself, and then from it, like coral letting loose an egg into the sea, a Hostile popped out. A “regular” one, he thought to himself as it streaked off, maybe seventy spans in diameter.
He tried to catch it, but it was already too late, it gained speed rapidly, and by the time his wonderment at its formation gave way to lucidity and the point for his being here, it was already out of reach.
He did, however, have the advantage of now knowing how the Hostiles formed, so he simply moved around long enough to find another fissure in the process of opening. When he saw it, the tell-tale pockmark shaping suddenly, he shot himself over to it, observed the flesh-soil of the Hostile falling in and then doming at the bottom of the new crater, the new Hostile emerging like the crown of a child just being born. And as easily as that, he attached the Wake Sight spell to it.
In moments, he was streaking toward the sun, this time heading the way that he had come and at the speed of the Hostile to which his sight was bound. The Hostile he trailed soon joined with others coming up off of other parts of the enormous “mother” orb, and by the time Mars was fading in size behind him, he was part of the ant trail Orli had spoken of.
He oriented his vision forward as they approached the sun, and he half expected to plunge into the brilliance of the burning sphere as he got close. But he did not. Instead, and much as he had done earlier, the Hostile took an angle over the sun, on a curving but direct line straight to the other side. They were definitely heading past it.
Soon the sun was behind him. He couldn’t be sure where Earth was yet, but there were three bright stars ahead, any of which might be the world that had given him Orli. One of them grew brighter and brighter with greater rapidity than the rest, and he nodded, or his body far behind him did, as he determined that must be Earth.
But not long after, that bright light began to move to his right, drifting slowly farther out of the direct line of the Hostiles’ course until it was finally whipping by in the distance, closer than before, definitely round and planetary, but not with the least trace of blue. It wasn’t Earth. He figured it must be an inner planet, just as his own solar system had planets that resided inside the ring of Prosperion’s orbit. Which meant he still had to wait.
He turned his attention from the planet and again looked directly ahead. One of the stars before him did seem to have a bit of blue to it. In the time he had to watch it, it made him think of Blue Fire and of the blue star that had given life to her lover, the lover that she had lost. It seemed there was a lot of red and blue in the universe.
Thinking of Blue Fire and her lover filled him with sorrow, and the more he thought on them, the worse it got. Soon the sorrow became alarmingly profound, oppressive and crushing. Which is when he realized it wasn’t his. Blue Fire had sensed his thoughts and was filling him with her unfathomable lament.
No, he thought at her. Get out of my head. I’ll lose the spell.
Blue Fire faded once more away, the presence of her vast sadness draining from him as if from a great basin of private agony.
Free to think his own thoughts properly again, he realized that the Hostiles he was following were coming together with another glittering line of them, another ant trail, the two merging like streams and becoming a river in the black emptiness of space. He could trace the new line back in the direction of the planet he’d just passed, and he wondered if there wasn’t another giant orb there, an orb like the one hiding behind Mars, sending its own spherical warriors against the people of Earth.
Soon enough the second bright light of the three “stars” appeared big enough and far enough to his left that he knew it was yet another inner world. Like the last, it was not blue as he knew Earth would be, but was still bright and circular just the same, if only in the smallest measure his eye could make. It must have been much farther off than the last one had been.
He flew on in the endless silence for a few minutes more and was not surprised to encounter another line of Hostiles joining from off to his left. Three tributaries converging into one steady river of death.
Soon enough, the blue “star” of earth finally shaped itself round as well, and at length there could be no doubt what it was and what was happening to it. The giant Hostiles were sending orbs at Earth, adding to the already absurd number of its attackers from three giant sources hiding behind nearby planets. It was clear enough to Altin that Earth had no chance of staving all that off. They weren’t even fighting the one at Mars, despite Orli’s having mentioned the existence of bases there. He released the seeing spell and returned his vision to his own eyes. He quickly related everything he’d just seen to Orli, who looked mortified as she heard.
“That’s it then,” he said when he was done. “If this is what Ocelot wanted me to find, then, well, we found it. Now we know Earth is doomed to Andalia’s fate, and Kurr to that of Duador.” He had to laugh at that, though it was a dismal sound. “I wonder what the elves will do now that they are all alone on String. I guess they win. The last man standing.”
“Not if we can stop it,” Orli said. “There must be something we can do. You said Ocelot told you to bring me here. She said bring me here ‘or else’ everyone will die. Right?”
Altin nodded. “If this is the right red world.”
“Then there is something we can do.”
“I’m afraid you have more faith in her than I do at this point.”
“No. I’m just tired of everyone screwing up my life, and I’m not going to roll over and die. So think. Use that big size Seven brain of yours and help me figure this out.”
Altin laughed again, this one touched by at least some vestige of mirth. If he had to die, if all the worlds were ending and there was nothing to be done, at least he would finish his life beside her. Given the circumstances, he couldn’t think of a better way to go. “All right, General Pewter, what’s your plan?”
“Don’t ‘general’ me. I’m in no one’s fleet now, remember? I’ll settle for one of those ‘Lady’ titles from your world when we work this out. Now quit screwing around and think. People are dying.”
She was right, and her words sobered him.
“Blue Fire,” he said. “Gods, I’m dumb as rocks.” He sent the thought, but Blue Fire had already heard. He spoke his thoughts aloud. “You saw what I saw. Who is it? What world is that? Is it someone you know?”
Not know.
“Well, you must know something. More than us anyway? Think!” He echoed the inflection of Orli’s last words.
He saw then, in his mind’s eye, an image of himself standing naked on the ledge deep inside the world where Blue Fire lived, the world that she was. She projected that almost violently into his thoughts, just him, standing on that ledge.
“I see it,” he said as she pressed the image insistently. “Yes, me, there. What about it? A ledge. Me on the ledge.” He scoured the memory that was his own. He’d been far inside the planet, deep below, guided there by a glowing emissary of some kind. He sent the image of that thing, the stretching, amorphous wheel that had led him down into the darkness. “That thing?” he asked.
No. The negativity shook inside his mind. She remade the image of him standing there on the ledge.
He frowned. “Yes, me. On the ledge. The huge space of your outer chamber. Lots of Liquefying Stone. Is it Liquefying Stone?”
He saw a blue star then. It came upo
n a mixed wave of love and grief.
“Blue Fire. Your Blue Fire. It’s your husband, I get it,” he said, his impatience obvious. “It’s another Hostile. Is that what you’re saying? We already know that.” He felt bad for using the pejorative term, but what else was there?
No, she thundered in his mind. Once again he saw the image of himself on the ledge. Then he saw Orli standing there. Naked too. He’d never seen that before. He was struck by how beautiful she was. But no sooner had he seen it and realized what he was seeing, Blue Fire snatched the image away. There was negativity to the removal then, harshness. Once again he saw himself standing naked at the edge of the precipice, alone, though this time the blue star of Blue Fire’s lover hovered in the darkness at his back.
Still nothing made sense. She repeated the sequence, adding Orli, then taking her away. Always nude.
Finally it hit him. “By the gods I am dim as a cave. It’s a male. The Hostile attacking Earth is male.”
Blue Fire’s emotions told him he was right.
He turned to Orli. “She says this one is male.”
Orli nodded that she’d heard. Altin’s eyes lingered on her then, his gaze tracing the line of her throat, over the exposed flesh above the line of her blouse, which clung to her shoulders low in the southern style of Kurr. He looked down to the rest of her, his expression shaped by a fleeting hunger spawned by the things he’d just seen. In that moment he forgot himself, and his thoughts ran freely, in his mind and upon his face, if only for the span of that one glance.
“Oh, you have to be kidding me,” Orli said upon seeing it. “Now? Of all the times we’ve had, of all the beaches and all the hours and hours we’ve had alone on your world, now is when you look at me like that?”
Altin shook himself. He grinned a sideways thing. “Yes,” he said. “I guess we’re no longer on Prosperion.” He could not pursue it further, however, for the press of so much peril came creeping back like cold fog to smother the warmth of the exchange. “So now we know that much. Can you think of why that might help?”
Orli shook her head at first, but turned and walked about the room, stepping around and over fallen works of Tytamon’s magical contrivances without seeing them at all. She bypassed artifacts of most ancient Prosperion history, pushing aside this wicker weave, the work of people ten thousand years dead and gone, bumping aside that book, some dusty tome filled with pressed flowers from a place where long-extinct creatures had once roamed spectacularly, not even knowing what treasures she ignored as she passed them by. “Maybe it isn’t me that needs to know. Maybe it’s your friend, Ocelot. Or even just that priest with the big hammer, the one from Leekant that you said found your stone. She’s a diviner, right? And of course there’s Doctor Leopold. Maybe this is what they need to know.”
Altin nodded. “You’re probably right. But divining takes forever. I don’t think we have that kind of time. In fact, I’m sure of it. And it’s still nothing to go on, really. What does gender change? And even if it was significant in some way for the findings of a divination spell, it would still have to be a powerful one, which means hours and hours at best. Doctor Leopold spent several hours the last time I asked him for help, and some spells take days.”
Orli made a face at him, pushing out her lips in an elongated pout. “You’re so negative, sometimes,” she said. “We can at least go back and ask.”
“We can,” he agreed, “but that will also eat up time. Neither planet can afford to wait.”
“Then let’s buy them time,” she said. “If these big Hostiles are supplying the reinforcements, let’s get rid of them. Are you totally sure you can’t send that thing into the sun? Or even just send it farther away so it takes them longer to get to Earth? Even just to try? Maybe if we can do at least that much, we can convince Director Nakamura that the Queen is genuinely trying to help, maybe even prove her innocence. Then the starships at Prosperion can hose down the walls of Crown with lasers and drop a few tactical nukes into that demon orgasm that’s happening out on the plains. We might even buy enough time to send your guys to Earth to teleport more Marines to Prosperion to defend the city, even to save it.” Her voice rose in pace and pitch the entire time she spoke. “Altin, it really could work.”
Hope lit her beautiful face with such radiance. She was so exquisite to look upon, her blue eyes sparkling as she stared up at him, the lights of the nearby candles glinting golden in the satin hair that framed her loveliness. He hated to dash her hopes. But he had to. “It can’t be done. It’s too big; the mass would be well beyond me.”
“What about the mages on Citadel? Get Aderbury. Get all those guys, and the weird guy in the red suit.”
“Even they couldn’t do it. There aren’t enough of them.”
“You can help them. You’re a Z. You’re the most powerful wizard on your planet, damn it. Surely there’s something you can do. Use the goddamn ring Blue Fire gave you. Or something else I don’t know about. Please, you at least have to try.”
The no that had begun to form on Altin’s lips stopped, and for a moment he froze as if turned to stone. He looked down at his ring and slowly began to nod.
“Blue Fire,” he said slowly, to Orli but also to the being by that name, speaking with his thoughts to her. “Can you help us? Can you help me like you helped me with the fleet? Your power should be enough to send this thing away. Help us fight.”
Not fight. She followed that with the essence of dread, of feebleness. He saw himself once more standing naked upon the ledge, the blue sun of Blue Fire’s mate at his shoulder again.
“What do you mean, ‘not fight’? You fought with me before. We sent the fleet all the way back to Earth.”
The thought came as simply a negative, again with the image of him and the blue sun.
Altin growled, frustrated. He didn’t have time for another set of Blue Fire’s riddles. “Fine, then give us Liquefying Stone. Will you supply us with enough for Citadel? At least that?” He sent an image of the concert hall on Citadel filled with mages, each of them holding a piece of the yellow stone.
His mind, his heart, what felt like it must be his very soul, filled with hatred, envy and greed. It flooded with avarice, lust and need. The wave of it all buckled his knees, and he fell to the floor, clutching his head, shouting, “No!” But despite his plea for her to stop, on it came, a great blast of such horrible emotion, such awfulness, all he could do was collapse and curl into a ball.
The onslaught went on for what seemed like forever, all the while Orli kneeling beside him, shouting his name at first and then weeping, crying out into the void for Blue Fire to stop whatever she was doing to him. But on and on it went, Altin writhing in his fetal knot, shaking, sweating, tears running from the open faucets of his tightly shut eyes.
But at last it abated. The torrent of human depravity went away. It was replaced by the images of the humans Blue Fire had come to know, Altin, Orli, and the priests of Anvilwrath. All twenty-five of them and High Priestess Maul. There was even a flicker of Thadius Thoroughgood’s face, though she’d only known him through the images in Orli’s mind, the taste of his elixir left in the mana cloud that had poisoned Orli’s mind.
Altin came out of it trembling and looked up through horrified eyes at Orli bending over him. She pulled him to her, clutching his head to her breast and holding him tightly. He sobbed for a while, his body shaking and wracked by flashes of memory. His robes were damp with sweat.
Finally he calmed himself, his wits returning to him, and at length, he could think again.
“Are you okay?” Orli asked, hating how empty that question seemed. “I thought she was trying to kill you.”
“I think she nearly did,” he said, his voice weak, his body still twitching in her arms.
Eventually she helped him to his feet and together they got him into a chair. She stroked his damp hair as he fought to breathe normally. Many more minutes passed before he spoke again.
“She knows what my people will do w
ith them,” he said at last. “She knows the forces of greed and lust that humanity will set loose with the Liquefying Stones if they are given out.”
“They won’t,” Orli protested. “This is serious. And we’re not all like that.”
“We are. Look what we did to the dwarves, and we didn’t even have the Liquefying Stone at all. And think of it; look what the orcs have done with only two stones. Imagine a thousand stones in the hands of a people capable of doing what the orcs are doing now. What we did at Duador. Them or us. There’s no difference in the end. Only the stories we tell ourselves when it’s done.”
Her cheeks flushed red. She could see the emotions Blue Fire sent were smothering his ability to reason. “So what you’re saying, what you’re both saying, is that, for fear of your people killing themselves, we should just let them die.” Her eyes widened, bewildered, and she gasped at the very idea. “That doesn’t make any sense, Altin. You’re not thinking it through right now.” She turned and stormed to the window, blowing out an exasperated breath. “Tell Blue Fire that Altin Love thinks she’s making a mistake. Tell her Altin Love thinks Blue Fire is going to do on purpose what she did by accident to the Andalians. Tell her I said she’s about to add two more worlds and billions and billions of lives to the list of deaths she’s caused. Tell her I said I think that’s bullshit. Tell her I think she’s just as bad as any humans have ever been.”
Frustrated tears ran down Orli’s cheeks but she wiped them away angrily. She would not let Altin see them. She had to be strong, she had to stay strong, but this felt like one blow too many for her to take, one too many punches in this whole big fighting joke of a universe. The stupid joke of absent gods laughing at the futile plight of the feeble creatures who never even knew if they were real. She was so sick of feeling helpless all the time.
