Hostiles (The Galactic Mage series)

by John Daulton

  “Seawind of the White Meadow, Speaker of the High Seat and emissary of String,” called the herald. He looked frightened as he spoke the words, his face gone pale and the normal solidity of his voice hollowed by the incredulity that had gone to work inside of him.

  Standing beside him was a lean figure, an elf, whose gaunt face was dominated by eyes green as seaweed and with hair to match. His skin was green as well, though pale, almost gray, and he wore a suit of scale mail armor that looked like a cascade of pressed birch leaves, though it made no rustle when he moved.

  A hush fell across the room, total awe in every face but the Queen’s and those of the fleet officers for whom the magnitude of the event, of this arrival, was lost.

  The elf glanced briefly around the room, then bowed, a supple movement like the bending of a willow switch. He looked to Her Majesty for permission to approach.

  She stood, remarkable in itself, and motioned him forward with her hand. “Approach, Seawind, and call me friend.”

  The elf walked, nearly gliding, between the tables and came to stand before Her Majesty. “I call you friend in the name of the High Seat and the people you call elves.”

  “I call you friend in the name of Kurr and the people you call dra’hana’akai.”

  “Then friends we remain.”

  “Friends we remain,” the Queen repeated. She looked to her left, where the marchioness sat. The barest movement of her head indicated that the marchioness should give up her seat immediately. In that rare moment, the angular face of the woman did not so much as blanch. She rose and made to move the earl down a chair. The ripple of rank would have the guildmaster diviner without a seat had the elf called Seawind allowed it to go on.

  “I haven’t time to share in your repast,” he said. “For I have much to do to prepare. I come only to petition your permission to remain in your lands for the span of two days.”

  “And to what extreme movement of fate do we owe the surprise and timing of this visit, friend Seawind?”

  He looked from her to where Altin and Orli sat at Her Majesty’s right hand. “Tidalwrath’s banishment nears its end. He will retake his place in the heavens and once more reign upon the seas.”

  The Queen smiled patiently and nodded. The rickety old Grand Maul had been on about that when they dragged his feeble form out from under the rubble of his temple seven days after the war was won. “Yes,” she said. “The priests of Anvilwrath have mentioned that to me.”

  “Then you know he will avenge the death of his brother.”

  She managed to hide the impatience that would have sounded in a sigh behind a broad smile, forcing it into the first wind of laughter instead.

  “Friend Seawind, I’m sure you know that I am not as inclined to prophesies as many others are. And even if I were, the priests of Mercy have promised me that the sea god holds us no ill will. So while I appreciate your taking the time to let us know, in truth, I’ve had about all the religious conversations I care to have for at least the next hundred years. Besides, this is a wedding party we’re having. Sir Altin and this lovely child of Earth are to be married on the morrow. This is a time of celebration. Let us put off the dire forecasts for at least today.”

  He bowed, a short thing. “As you require. I ask again only for two days’ liberty in your lands.”

  “And what will you do in those two days, friend Seawind?”

  “I come for the bodyguard. It is time for the exchange, as the treaty requires.”

  The Queen’s brow wrinkled at that, and she followed Seawind’s gaze to where it settled beyond her chair, to where she knew the royal assassin to be standing guard, invisible as always during events like these.

  “It is that time too?” she asked. She looked more than a little irritated at having not been notified of such a thing in advance. The look she shot her Guildmaster Diviner was a dire one. “Who knew these were such eventful times?”

  “They are,” confirmed the elf.

  “Then you have chosen one of us as the new protector?”

  “Yes. We believe the dra’hana’akai assassin has been revealed.”

  “Who is it?”

  “I will come for her tomorrow when it is certain.”

  “Well, that’s frightfully vague, friend Seawind. We’ve many wizards and many warriors, you know. Perhaps you can tell me a little more, that I might make sure she is ready for you when you come.” She emphasized the gender, glad for at least that much insight, as she pried for more details.

  “Tomorrow the last sign will appear and the time will be right. Then we will go.”

  “Oh, how hasty you elves are for such long-lived people,” she said, laughing it off in her most monarchial way. “But, yes, of course. Two days as you like. But not another word of this sort tonight. And please, do consider joining us as we celebrate the coming nuptials.”

  He bowed again. “I must beg your leave, friend Karroll. I have much to do.”

  One corner of her mouth twitched, but she forced the other side to join it, and pushed the two together into a smile. “Very well. Off with you then. My people will supply you with anything you should need.” She sent a glance like an arrowshot to the messenger still standing open-mouthed behind her chair. His silent bow proved that he would see her orders were obeyed.

  Seawind inclined his head and backed out of the room as was proper in this place. When the door closed behind his departure, near pandemonium broke out inside. Most of the Prosperions present looked as if they’d just seen a ghost, and the rest of them looked as if they might be ill. The air filled with the noise of so much speculation and murmuring.

  Orli turned to Altin asking the question that was on the faces of nearly every officer and official from planet Earth. “What was that all about?”

  “I only barely know,” was his unsatisfying reply. “Tytamon would have been the one to ask. He was the only one alive when that agreement was made. The rest is in the notes and scribbling of the ancients, who likely had to guess at the particulars of the treaty themselves.”

  “You mean it isn’t written down somewhere?”

  “No. It was an agreement signed in blood by the reigning kings of Kurr and the High Seat of String. The parchment was burned as part of the binding ritual.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Well, even still, that’s very exciting. Look at us; we’re to be married at the height of some ancient prophecy. And here people used to say I was boring.”

  “No, you’re still boring,” said Roberto, Orli’s man of honor, as he leaned around from his place at Orli’s right hand. He’d been listening all along. “But I have to tell you, you’ve gotten a lot more interesting over the last few days.”

  They both laughed, though Altin couldn’t quite muster the merriment to join in. He knew enough of the elves to be well sobered by the appearance of Seawind. Such an arrival had not happened in well over two hundred years. His expression grew stony as he tried to recall the details of that distant happening.

  Orli saw it, saw the absent look as he contemplated it, and she elbowed him soundly in the ribs. “Hey, none of that serious crap on the eve of my wedding, you hear me? Unless there’s some shit storm going to hit right now and ruin everything, something immediate and horrible that I need to know about, I want nothing but smiles, happiness and fun. I mean it!”

  He looked at her, his eyebrows raised, while Roberto laughed. “Welcome to the rest of your life, pal,” said Roberto with a signature sideways smirk. “She’s only going to get worse over time, I can tell you that. Although I guess the upside of life here on Prosperion will be that she can actually get a broom that flies.”

  Orli’s eyes narrowed, and she shot her friend a scathing look, though one with more than a hint of laughter in it too. But she turned right back and resumed the main thrust of the point she was trying to make with her soon-to-be husband. “I’m serious. Your people seem to have this stuff going on all the time. It’s one weird prophetic event after another around here, so if we
don’t need to sweat this one right now, let’s not. No serious faces. I want us all to be happy, even if just for two damn days.”

  Altin grinned at her exuberance even as he agreed with what she’d said. He thought about the endless stacks of prophesies that had wrapped themselves around the history of Kurr. Some had wrapped themselves around Altin and Orli too. Those were the ones that could be wrapped. Because they could be made to fit. All the others were discarded. And there were heaps and heaps of them. All forgotten now. Tossed onto the burn pile of things nobody thinks about after “the one true” prophecy comes along. At least for a while. Then that one unravels too, unmaking itself in time as history pokes holes in it in the same way the winds rearrange cloud shapes or a rising sun changes the figures one imagines can be seen in peeling paint above a bed. When that happens, all prophesies have the chance for life again.

  He supposed that an occurrence like the collision of several worlds and the peoples, the beings, that occupied them was more than enough to stir things up for a while, more than enough to give all the priests and oracles a thousand visions to find in their tea leaves and the patterns of thrown bones. He supposed in a way it would have been more surprising if an elf hadn’t shown up than it was that one had. Had this whole galactic tempest of the last two years gone on without their notice, that should have seemed strange indeed. So he smiled, and shook his head. “No,” he said at least. “Nothing terrible is coming. At least not that I know of. And if the elf knows of anything, his request suggests we’ve got at least two days, so I think in that you are in luck.”

  “Good. Then you’re in luck too. So eat up. You’re going to need your strength tomorrow night.” Her grin was wicked as her eyes narrowed with the pleasant threat.

  He grinned and made a show of cramming a whole dinner roll into his mouth.

  Chapter 54

  Orli stood before the full-length mirror in her room at Calico Castle. Altin had taken the time to clear out a floor of Calico Castle’s tall central tower for her to claim as her own. He’d been reluctant to do so for himself, saying it still didn’t seem right, but she convinced him that the time had come, and soon, they would share the topmost floor together, with this one beneath to serve as hers alone. It was furnished in much the style of the great ladies of Prosperion, but with Kettle’s help and some from grumbling Pernie, Orli had made it more like something she could consider home, a perfect blend of opulence and practicality.

  There was not, however, the least practical thing about her wedding gown, and even now, less than an hour before the wedding ceremony was to begin, the royal dressmaker, Perfuvius Needlesprig III, was still making tucks and touches, and generally preening at the gown like a nervous artist before his first gallery show.

  “Every illusionist on Kurr will be getting this,” he said. “They’ll be showing this in courts and courtyards everywhere. I think that the whole of the continent shall see a full day’s loss of productivity. Many are already calling for the occasion to be made a permanent holiday.”

  Orli simply beamed as she looked into the mirror, watching him working with his deft hands, his fingers moving over the surfaces of her gown like a pianist’s over white ivory keys. She could see Kettle standing behind, the woman’s ruddy face blotchier than usual for all the fits of laughter and tears, the moods upon her so vast and undulating Orli hardly knew what to do. And Pernie sat back there too, her little face glum and brooding, bored most likely by the monotony of the whole event, but surely also put out by having been shooed away by Perfuvius, who had twice made reference to her “grubby little hands” and how they must not be staining Orli’s pristine gown.

  It was a happy time, and Orli checked the timer ticking down on her tablet, which she’d leaned up against the mirror on a dressing table near the wall, unwilling to trust her reading of the large enchanted hourglass sitting beside it. What if she read that thing wrong? What if the magic didn’t work somehow, and she was late? What if a million other things. So to reduce that one bit of stress, she’d brought the tablet and set it up, just in case. Between the two chronometers, she had a strange pairing of alien timekeeping to keep her calm. Which wasn’t really working anyway.

  Perfuvius tugged down on her skirts and settled them with a swipe of his hand, then he turned her away from the mirror and looked her up and down directly with his practiced eyes.

  “Your face is the face of Mercy herself,” he said, “and your skin is as flawless as new-fallen snow. Sir Altin should count himself lucky if he doesn’t swoon and fall right out of the ship before he can say ‘I do.’”

  Orli smiled. “Thank you, Master Needlesprig. You are very sweet.”

  He turned to his small audience and presented her to them: “Is she not the most beautiful creature to ever set foot upon Prosperion?”

  Kettle clapped and cried and tilted her head from side to side, her cheeks aching from smiling for so long. Pernie, still seated on the bed, made a face and poked at Orli’s regular clothes, the plain trousers and the blouse she’d been wearing earlier in the day.

  “What’s the matter child?” asked the royal dressmaker to that face. “Do you not recognize genius when you see it? This gown is a cloud brought down from the heavens for our sweet Orli to ride upon.”

  Pernie muttered something awkward under her breath, but Perfuvius had already moved on, his capacity for paying attention to a child long past. He glanced over at the hourglass, unable to make any sense from the time ticking down in alien numbers on the tablet nearby.

  “Oh my, we’ve got to get your shoes.” He spun to face Kettle. “The shoes, woman! Where have you put the shoes?”

  “I had ‘em brung upstairs, all the boxes in ta’ the master’s suite,” she said. “I’ll run and fetch ‘em now.”

  “Be quick about it,” he snapped. “We dare not be late.”

  “Oh, they won’t be startin’ a thing without this sweet girl,” said Kettle to that. “But I’ll get ‘em quick all the same.” She hoisted her skirts well over her stout ankles and nearly sprinted up the stairs.

  Master Perfuvius glared at the hourglass as if it were speaking the most horrible profanities. He gasped aloud a few times, then flipped an exasperated expression at Orli when five more seconds passed and still Kettle had not returned. “What can she possibly be doing up there all this time?” he gasped. He called loudly toward the stairs up which Kettle had run only moments before. “Woman, the shoes, I say. Where are the wedding shoes?”

  In answer, Kettle’s voice came down that same narrow passage anxiously. “Which ones?” she shouted. “Which ones? I canna carry ‘em all! Ya sent a spider’s worth!” She seemed all aflutter, as if making a selection incorrectly might jeopardize the universe, and leaving a pair behind akin to neglect of the most heinous kind.

  “By the gods,” huffed Perfuvius. “Must I do everything!” He stormed off after her, insisting, “They’re marked, woman, they’re marked. We eliminated the others yesterday.”

  Orli watched him go, her own smile nearly as wide and permanent as Kettle’s had been since before the sun was up. This truly was the happiest day of her life. She looked at herself again in the mirror. The dress fit so perfectly, it set her figure off to all its best effects in every conceivable way. Her hair, like it had been at the ball that seemed so long ago now, was once again a gleaming pile of white gold upon her head, glittering combs and supporting enchantments holding everything in place. Altin would be surprised indeed. No more tomboy in hunting pants, at least not tonight.

  Her eyes went absently to where her regular clothes lay as she had the thought, and she saw Pernie still wearing a pout as she absently prodded at them.

  “What’s the matter, Pernie?” she asked, turning and going to sit beside the child on the bed. “You look like something’s bothering you.”

  “It’s not,” Pernie said, though it came too flat and too rapidly to be believed.

  “Well, you don’t seem very happy. Aren’t you happy for us?”
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  “No.” That came out abruptly, and then Pernie turned away. She scooted off the bed and moved across the room to Orli’s new great chest, where she began to flip its heavy brass latches up and down, making as much noise as possible with them and clearly intent on blocking out anything Orli might have to say.

  “Why not?” Orli pressed anyway. “You know I love Altin very much. And he loves me. We’re going to be together forever and live here all the time.” Orli went to her again, moving around her so she could face her again. She crouched down so she could look Pernie directly in the eyes. “That means you and I can be friends forever now too. You can teach me all sorts of new things about Prosperion, just like you helped me learn the language all through the summer last year. Doesn’t that sound like fun?”

  “No,” Pernie said. She flipped open the chest and looked inside, hiding her face from Orli’s earnest eyes. She made a point of pulling out bits of clothing, tossing them aside and wrecking all the careful folds.

  “Pernie,” Orli said then. “Please, tell me what’s wrong. You can be honest with me. That’s what friends do.”

  Pernie stared reverently down into the chest, never looking up at Orli squatting beside her there. Something about her aspect had changed. “So what are you gonna do with this?” she asked.

  Orli looked into the great chest, following the child’s gaze to where her blaster lay. Her pale brow furrowed beneath the majestic coiffeur Perfuvius had made. “Nothing if I can help it,” she said. She watched Pernie staring at the weapon and shook her head some. “Is that what this is all about? My gun?”

  Pernie looked at her then and smiled. “You won’t need it anymore,” she said. “Not with Sir Altin to keep you safe. You could give it to me. Then we could be friends.”

  Orli was still frowning. “I don’t think that would be a very good idea. How about when you get older? Then we can see about getting you one. Roberto can show you how to use it so you don’t hurt anyone.”