by John Daulton
Pernie let go of Altin a moment later, pulling her little hands off his face, oblivious to the sticky blood soaking them so thoroughly. “I think that helps,” she said, smiling up at Kettle. “See.”
Altin sat up and coughed out more blood. Kettle watched in horror thinking that Pernie must have ruptured one of his lungs. Perhaps both. He coughed and gagged and drew in ragged breaths. He was a mess, a slimy crimson ooze. But he was alive.
His first word came as if released from a bursting bubble, fast and wet, “Orli?” He looked around, and seemed to see Kettle and Pernie for the first time. He blinked and, in trying to wipe whatever it was away with his hands, smeared more blood into his eyes.
He reached for his robes but realized he was still wearing the space suit. Suddenly he scrabbled back out of the way, getting out of the space behind the ancient armor suit. “Don’t go in there. Stay away from the armor.” His eyes were aflutter then as he tried to clear them of all that blood. It ran in red tears down his face. He looked the part of some gruesome carnival clown in makeup that was a mask of melting horror and leaking death.
He stared into the space behind the armor, glared into it, the intensity of his blood-soaked expression enough to silence even Pernie’s voice. He tried to cast a seeing spell, but he started coughing so violently he couldn’t get it off.
“Please,” Altin said, wheezing, gasping through the fit that wracked him. He nearly blacked out and had to flop over on his side. “Please,” he said, weakly, still trying to catch his breath. It was barely a whisper. “Please, please, please.” He kept saying it, over and over, staring into that place, watching it with a wounded ferocity as he lay panting, waiting for his vision to return. Every so often he would mutter the name of some god or another. He would curse them or praise them alternately.
He tried to cast a seeing spell again, but he simply didn’t have the strength. So he stared, glared even, as if he were trying to burn a hole straight through all that dark space between them with the raw ferocity of his need to know. His need to have her back.
Kettle and Pernie backed away from the armor, backed away even from him. There was something terrifying in his eyes, something threatening the worst of all possible things, something so unspeakable, so unbearable, neither dared to ask. They stared with him, sharing the pall of his awakening dread, the growing thing that filled the room like rumors of a plague.
And then Orli came staggering out of nowhere. In a suit just like the one Altin wore. She appeared in a rush of air, a hot one, stumbling the moment she arrived. She took one running step forward and clanged off the armor suit, buckling it and sending it falling noisily toward Pernie where she stood. The child scrambled out of the way even as Orli staggered back, hit the wall and stumbled two steps forward where she tripped over Altin and went sprawling to the floor, her helmet bouncing out of her hand and sent skittering across the flagstones into the dark places near the farthest end of the room. She lay there motionless for a time, her suit smoking heavily, as Altin leapt for her, finding the strength to half dive, half crawl to where she lay, her name a desperate hope upon his lips.
“Shit,” she said even as his cries rang out. She’d landed hard against the stone floor and knocked the air from her lungs. She gasped a few times more, before she fumbled to right herself. He was already there, rolling her over and helping her sit up.
She shook her head to clear it, and looked instantly relieved. “You’re alive!”
“You’re alive!” he rejoiced. “Thank the gods, you are alive.” He sobered instantly. “But is it done?”
“The charges went off, if that’s what you mean,” she replied. “I waited until it blew.”
“So is it dead?”
“I don’t know. I only had time to drill one hole, and not even very deep. Red Fire must have known what we were doing because he started shaking everything. The Higgs prism kept me mostly out of trouble, but the damn wall was moving so bad I couldn’t set the drill. So once I realized trying was pointless, I jammed a charge into the hole I’d made, and then just hung the bag with the rest of them on it. I set the timer for fifteen seconds and jumped. When I’d floated far enough away, I got my helmet off and the amulet ready, but I wanted to make sure the charge went off. The second I saw the fire blast in the heart chamber, I left. And, well, here I am. But that’s it. After the flash, I just don’t know. All I know for sure is: that was pretty damn close.” She held up the stub of the fast-cast amulet, the chain still dangling from her gloved hand. Smoke rose in lazy lines from the glove, drifting toward the ceiling, the strange Earth material obviously singed. “I guess now we wait and see. Or you can go look with a spell.”
Altin tried again to cast a seeing spell, but he could not. He started coughing once more. “Ugh,” he said. “I’m worthless now.”
“Want I should heal you some more?” Pernie asked. Orli got up and ran for her helmet where it had rolled into a corner near the room’s farthest wall.
Altin watched her go, saw that she seemed to be perfectly fine as she strove to pull something out of the helmet, and he turned back to Pernie. “Heal?” he asked, with perhaps more than a little horror in the expression that he wore. He was afraid he already knew the answer too.
“Yes,” she said, nodding honestly up at him, her small face radiant with pride. “It was I what brought you back. Kettle said I shouldn’t, but I did anyway because I knew I could even if I didn’t know the spell. At least not exactly, I know the flower healing spell, but it worked, didn’t it? I just made it for you. I can do it again too, you’ll see.” She moved toward him, reaching out her steady little hands.
Kettle’s own hands darted out and snatched her back. “That’ll be enough a’ that sorta thing from the likes a’ you, child,” she said. “Ya done a fine thing, I’ll grant ya, but that’s plenty fer today, I’d say. Master Altin will be needin’ seen ta by a trained professional from here.”
Pernie looked as if she were ready to argue, but Altin stayed her with an upraised hand. “She’s right, Pernie. But you’ve done a wonderful thing. I will be forever in your debt.”
“Well, I was just going to—” she began, but she stopped when Orli’s yelling turned all eyes to the far end of the room. Orli had extracted a small object Pernie didn’t recognize from the helmet and now held it to her ear.
“Just send them, goddamn it. It’s fucking dead. We killed it.”
The three Prosperions stood staring, transfixed by the urgency in Orli’s tone.
“I don’t want to know why! They’ve already waited long enough.”
Altin thought she was going to lose her mind. She was absolutely furious, but then, just as suddenly as the one-sided conversation had begun, Orli’s tone changed, softening considerably.
“My father?” Another pause. “Okay. Good. Thank God. So you’ll send them if they show up?”
More breathless waiting on the part of Altin, Kettle and Pernie.
“Okay,” Orli said at last, her voice one of absolute relief. “We’ll tell them. Pewter out.” She looked up and saw them all staring at her, two faces filled with bewilderment and one with rising hope.
“Well?” said Altin, having partially figured out what was going on.
“The director said they’ll come. The orbs have all gone motionless. He says they’re turning gray. Nothing is moving, so it worked! It really worked. And he’s going to send the Marines. But we have to get word to Citadel. We have to send the teleporters.”
Altin’s first thought was to teleport the two of them straight to the space fortress, but he knew immediately that could be the death of them. He was too weak. He glanced sideways at Pernie. For the barest flicker of time, he considered letting her try to heal him a little more, but he put that idea away even faster than he had set aside the inclination to teleport to Citadel.
“How long before they are ready to go?” he asked, buying himself time to think. “Aren’t most of them deployed around Earth?”
“Yes
, but they’re gathering in localized areas now. Ten minutes tops and there will be plenty of them ready to go, but we have to send the mages, so they can figure out where they need to be. Which means we need to go now.”
“Go where?” asked Pernie.
“Hush, child,” snapped Kettle, her eyes wide and frightened.
“I can’t do it,” Altin said. “Not yet.” He looked again to Pernie. His heart pounding loudly in his chest and in his ears. It was so risky. She would have no idea what she was doing. Fear and love had guided her before, instinct, animal power. But she’d be thinking now. That would be ruin. Wouldn’t it? He didn’t know much about healing magic, though he imagined it worked like all the rest.
“How much power do you need to talk to Peppercorn?” Orli asked.
Peppercorn, of course! He had enough strength for that. He knew as she said it that he must be more compromised than he’d thought. Even the obvious eluded him.
A moment later, Peppercorn confirmed that she and the Citadel mages were already on their way to Earth. A wizard on the wall had just contacted them and told them the news, and the spell had already commenced down in the concert hall.
“So now we wait,” Orli said, once Altin announced that Citadel was underway. “I can keep us up to date through this.” She lifted the helmet’s earpiece and showed it to him in the palm of her hand. “It’s not as convenient as my tablet, but it will do until you get your strength back.”
Altin couldn’t bear the thought of waiting the rest of this fight out. He turned to face Pernie squarely. She saw it and knew what that look meant.
“Altin, no,” Kettle gasped.
“She’ll be fine,” he told her. To the child, “Only just a bit. No more than unwilting a daffodil. Do you hear?” He’d read the spell she’d used. He’d tried to cast it long ago when the guilds were first testing him.
“Master Altin,” insisted Kettle, stepping forward and catching Pernie from behind, gripping her by the shoulders again and hauling her to a stop. “I won’t let her do it. She’s my ward, an’ I say she won’t. Kill yerself if’n ya must, but this child won’t be doin’ it fer ya, an’ carryin’ the guilt fer it all her life. No sir, not while I’m standin’ here ta stop it.”
“It’s my castle,” he said, straightening and staring the older woman down. “So she’s my ward too. And I think there are few people in this world who are less inclined to guilt over something like that than Pernie is. Isn’t that right?” He looked to Pernie for a reply, but most of that had gone over her head, and what hadn’t had already dissolved in eagerness, anything like caution lost in the giddy joy that possessed her when she discovered she had a real chance of being useful to him.
“Altin, I forbid it.” Kettle pulled Pernie in close to her body, right up against the bloody apron, and crossed her strong hands over the child’s chest protectively. “I said no.”
“Stand aside, Kettle. It must be done. Lives are at stake.” He stepped forward and knelt down before Pernie, looked her straight in the eye. “No more than the flower, all right? Don’t try to make it bigger just because it’s me. You must have discipline.”
“I won’t,” she said. A sculptor shaping confidence could not have found a better model than Pernie was right then.
Kettle started to speak, “Altin, I—”
“Kettle!” he roared. “There are things at stake larger than the guilt of a girl. Be silent!” The volume and severity of it startled her, and her eyes went wide. She’d never imagined such a thing from him before. But she was silenced by it.
Altin looked back to Pernie, his expression soft and gentle again. He shut his eyes. “Go on, then,” he instructed her. “Just a little bit.”
Pernie glanced over her shoulder and shot Kettle a little smirk of victory, even stepping out of her protective grasp. She put her tiny hands on Altin’s blood-smeared face again and closed her eyes too. With remarkable discipline, she reached into the vast and churning whorl of mana, and as deftly as she might have snipped off a raven’s wing or a frog’s leg with her little knife, she plucked out a slender strand of mana and poked it into Altin as tenderly as if she were threading a needle. She then began pushing growthful thoughts into him as she chanted the words of the spell. There was no reason why it had to be a flower, she knew, for there was nothing in the words that seemed to be about flowers at all. In fact, she thought most of the strange words taught by Master Grimswoller and the other teachers at school were silly anyway. She simply knew that flowers grew. That they knew health from lethargy. Vigor from decay. So she filled him with it. Just that tiny bit. Just as he’d asked. Just the small thread she’d gathered and fed into him so carefully, pushing it in and feeding it as gently as if she were blowing across a hot spoonful of stew. And, after a time, she knew not how long, it was done. Enough to heal a flower, just as she had promised. She released the spell.
When she was finished, she opened her eyes, wondering if it had worked. It seemed like it had. And he was smiling back at her.
“You’re a genius,” he said to her, his green eyes wide, the whites white now and nearly aglow. He hugged her, a long, strong hug that mashed the sharp corners of the spacesuit against her ribs, pushed into her skin painfully. But she didn’t care. Then he did something he’d never done before. He kissed her. One warm kiss upon her little cheek.
Then he stood and spun round, facing Orli. “She’s done it!” he proclaimed. “It’s enough to get us there. Let’s go fetch Taot. We have to help them hold out until they come.”
“Help who?” Pernie asked eagerly. “And who is coming?” But they were already gone, Altin and Orli vanished with a single rush of air, leaving her behind, again. Which really didn’t seem fair. Not now. Not after she’d proven herself to him. She had magic. She should be with him in case he needed her. And yet here she was, alone with Kettle, like always. It definitely wasn’t fair.
And Pernie knew exactly whose fault it was.
Chapter 49
Taot spun and rolled and blasted fire to melt away the ice lances being flung up at him, his attention fully on keeping himself and his two riders alive. His first instinct, wanting to swoop down and lend his fiery breath to the defense of the gates, proved too dangerous right away. The battle at the gate was pinched down to the area just outside the palace walls, a tiny knot of Prosperions stuck in the role of cork, whose demise seemed to be inevitable at this point, as a pair of demons had got in behind them and impeded their final retreat. Altin didn’t want to think who it was that might be down there fighting in the gate, so close and yet trapped outside, although he feared he already knew.
Whoever they were, the handful of human combatants were embattled on all sides by the piercing thrust of pointed demon limbs, the snapping grab of pincers and mandibles, and the mashing, bashing blows of so many oddly concocted variants of blunt weaponry, perverse designs that only deranged gods could have seen fit to arm any creature with. And then there were the orcs in all their numbers and with all their assorted weaponry as well and, of course, their spells.
The walls around the palace were swamped with gnashing tides of enemies whose great numbers pressed upon one another in such a way that they often turned against each other for want of an enemy to fight. And even with that self-consumption, the numbers of the enemy grew. More and more demons continued to flow into the city, causing the horde around the Palace to spread like a black stain expanding in a ruined cloth. For those amongst the ranks of the deadly host that were not bent on destroying their fellows, most were happy for the chance to take shots at anything flying by. And a low-flying dragon with two human riders was a particularly savory target for the orcs. And so it was that Taot and his human friends discovered upon arrival that they had more than enough to do in simply keeping themselves alive, much less swooping down and coming to the aid of the Queen. They were, in a way, the target of every enemy that was not directly engaged with the monarch and her valiant but very small band.
And if the p
rojectiles being hurled up from the ground weren’t trouble enough, the treacherous skies were made more so by the blinding-bright stripes of laser fire coming down from above. It descended from orbit at unpredictable angles, appearing suddenly like plummet-lines of burning death as the starships fired with brutal accuracy and cut hissing troughs through the seething demon sea, great canals carved into the enemy ranks with banks of rent bodies that writhed and hissed and squirted foul fluids into the air like fountains, spurts and spouts that splashed into the flow of gore oozing through the city in steaming streams and pooling into lakes of wretched hideousness. But even those seared swaths filled in with new enemies nearly as soon as the laser beams had passed, the press of the enemy, the supply of its assailants seemingly without end.
The laser fire was the most dangerous for the dragon near the Palace wall, so Altin guided him away, directing Taot to take them back toward the rear of the enemy mass, the place where the incoming mobs crashed against those who crowded one upon the next in hopes of something to kill, some trying so desperately, so eagerly, to find something to bite, stab or mangle that they would simply crawl up and over the rest of the lot and continue toward the Palace anyway.
For a moment, Altin considered getting to work with Orli and the dragon fighting along that line, even though doing so would represent but a drop in the ocean in terms of overall effectiveness, but after only a few moments flying over that colliding line at the rear of the enemy, he realized it was almost as dangerous to be flying back there as it was near the Palace walls. Not so much because of projectile danger from the orcs, for most of them were forward and trying to get through the gates, but instead because of the fleet aircraft flying all around.
Several dozen fighters flew back and forth across the ranks. They streaked by at incredible speeds and strafed the attackers with bullets, burned them with lasers and blasted into them brutally with missile fire.
At first they hadn’t seen the fighters, for such was the nature of their speed. But as Taot was banking and prepared to dive in for the trio’s first attack, one such fighter came shooting down from above. The heat of its passing nearly blistered their skin, and, making things worse, Taot got caught in its passing jet stream, which nearly twisted the poor dragon into a knot. Fortunately for his riders, he was adroit enough to spin with the whirling winds, escaping the air currents in a graceful pair of barrel rolls that just managed to keep Altin and Orli in their seats.
