Dance of Destinies (The Galactic Mage Series Book 5) (43 page)

That calmed her some, and she tried to relax. She used the breathing techniques Djoveeve taught her, breathing that wouldn’t give your location away. Breathing to help your strength and agility. Elves don’t make mistakes in battle because they don’t get scared. They don’t get excited and do dumb things. Humans have to protect against being scared and dumb. That was the price of instinct. That’s what Djoveeve said.

So Pernie calmed herself. She had time. She just needed to think. She had to figure out what to do next.

When she woke up, there were voices coming down the hall. She cast her invisibility illusion, masking sound and smell as well. Nobody had ever taught her how to hide her heat before. She knew even as she cast it that they would see her that way.

As if to confirm it, one voice called out, “In there.”

Pernie wished she had sight magic. She wanted to teleport out, but what if one of them was where she wanted to go? Altin had almost teleported into her once. Her hand throbbed simply from the memory, a pulse of phantom pain where his robes had become part of her flesh.

She didn’t want to hurt the Reno PD men or the men from the NTA. She knew they were not criminals, or at least she didn’t think they were. But she thought she might have to hurt them if they tried to get her again. She wasn’t going to let them put that collar with the biting electricity on her again. She wasn’t going to let them send her home. Not until they taught her how to fly. Not until she knew everything about technology and guns.

Two men burst through the door. They held weapons that Pernie could not see because the lights they carried were too bright.

“Got her,” one of the men called out.

Pernie heard the
ffft
,
ffft
of the weapon firing as she began the teleporting spell. She felt the bite of the projectiles like bee stings, one in her shoulder, another in her cheek.

Her magic finished as the second one struck, and she appeared in the hallway outside the room, right behind the men. She got a half step before her vision went blurry and she collapsed to the floor, felled again by the same Earth trick that got her the last time. It occurred to her, in the moments before darkness took her, that she would have to develop some kind of immunity to their knockout serum in the same way she’d developed one for small doses of Fayne Gossa. Apparently the resistance to “all poisons” supposedly imparted to her through that exposure on String did not include the poisons they brewed here on Earth.

Chapter 44

T
he Marchioness of South Mark stood as she had been since the man called Jefe and the rest of them had left. Jefe was going to bring her a “mech” and a driver for it. He said he had men, ex-NTA forces no less, who would operate them for him … for her. For a price. They both knew he held all the cards on that front. But she had magicians, and so she’d had to up the game. Her contribution to his enterprise would have to be more subtle: diviners and seers to help him do his dirty work. And he would need it. Even with her magicians working to hide his plans and his activities well after his campaign began, his efforts would be, ultimately, obvious. Her people would take pains to hide his intent and his activities on Earth for as long as it was possible to do so, from prying magicians working for the TGS and perhaps even the NTA, but that would only work for so long. Ultimately, NTA machinery would see, someone would see, and, after, well, Jefe would have to look to his own interests in his pursuit of his coveted “Texas.”

And while the marchioness was looking quite well to her interests on Prosperion, what interested her most in the absence of the Earth men and her minions was what she saw in her enchanted mirror. For the last two hours she’d been standing stock still before it, staring. It was mesmerizing.

Lady Meade and the Galactic Mage had somehow gotten themselves into the hands—or tentacles—of some variety of alien animals. The Galactic Mage was nowhere to be found in the view—he hadn’t been for an hour or so since Jefe and company had departed—but Lady Meade, upon whom the mirror’s enchantment was locked, had been slapped about on some luminous plateau, half-naked, where she was prodded with some kind of three-pronged conical device for a time. Not long after that began, she was picked up and simply discarded, thrown off into the darkness, where she flew to gods knew where.

The marchioness had watched it happening and watched for nearly five full minutes as the newly made lady of Calico Castle plummeted through latticework grating of some alien variety and eventually lost herself in clouds of fog, or mist, or steam, upon catching hold of the torn remnants of some alien clothing.

There had followed quite a bit of drifting about, and some collisions with large gray things, which the marchioness thought might be the massive alien creatures, though the limited view she could manage with the mirror had frustrated that, forcing her to call for Kalafrand.

For the next hour or so, she and the seer had watched as Lady Meade was blown about, exploring the alien spaceship. It was quite clear that was what she was doing, sailing in a way, and it was nearly impossible for the wizened Lady of South Mark to tear herself away when came a tap upon her door. But tear herself away she did, for that tap was one that announced events for which she had a great need to attend.

The thief, Black Sander, waited beyond the door with the Earl of Vorvington. The earl’s round face was florid, and his chest heaved with eager breath. She could see in his gleaming eyes that her mechanized armor piece had arrived.

“It’s here,” he said unnecessarily. “Come, you must see. It is truly spectacular.”

She allowed herself to be led down the stairs and out of her own house. Vorvington grabbed a hooded lantern as they went out, and Black Sander extracted a bit of wax from somewhere inside his cloak and summoned a luminous illusion to guide them through the darkness.

She glanced up and saw that Luria had slunk off behind the horizon already. Sunrise was still another four or five hours off. That was good. The Queen’s seers wouldn’t be watching now.

They made their way down a paved path, around the fountains, and over the massive fishponds on a series of arched stone footbridges. They rounded the hedge maze and eventually came to the smokehouse, a long, flat-roofed structure of unpainted wood.

“I apologize, My Lady, but this is the most convenient place,” said the earl. “I thought it prudent.”

She waved the apology off. “Go on, go on.” It was not without some effort that she hid her own excitement. She hadn’t been this close to finally doing it for forty years. Forty years of waiting. Two hundred years of it. But finally, it was right there in her grasp. The smoke was clearing and reality was taking solid shape.

And solid it was. They went into the smokehouse, and there it stood in all its magnificence: an enormous, gleaming mech. The machine armor of the Earth Marines. It stood half again as tall as she was, and across its shoulders, it was nearly as wide. It had great arms, jointed like a human’s, but broad and spectacularly made of metal that shone like steel. Beneath and between the plates of its heavy armament ran tubes and silvery rods of metal. There came a dull hum from it that rumbled even in the ground.

She let her gaze wander up its length, from its titanic feet to its windowed canopy. She peered through the glass and saw a man inside. He stared back at her, his features expressionless. She noted that he wore a mustache that curled in the same way that Jefe’s did, a pair of black hooks pulled out to either side.

Jefe stepped out from behind the mech and came to stand before her. With a flourish, he swept his arm out and presented the machine.

“This, My Lady, is as I promised you. You can see that it is working fine. Ignacio will show you, if you do not mind.”

Carefully restraining any sign of enthusiasm, the marchioness nodded. “Carry on.”

Jefe lifted his arm and spoke into a bracelet on his wrist. “Go on, Ignacio. Show her.”

The hum of the mech grew louder, and something of a whining sound ensued. It spun at the waist, halfway around, and lifted one of its arms. A cylindrical appendage, wide like a keg but made of separate black metal tubes, was directed at a side of mastodon that was drying near the back of the smokehouse. The corner of the marchioness’ mouth twitched up with a smile she could not entirely contain.

Fire erupted from the end of the Gatling gun accompanied by a loud, cracking sort of whine. A red spray of meat flew across the space and spewed all over the smokehouse wall beyond where the side of mastodon hung. Perhaps a second and a half went by before the lower half of the mastodon fell to the floor, the upper portion swinging lazily on its squeaky hook. Smoke rose from both halves, and little flames flickered for a moment before they went out.

“That is the gat, My Lady,” pronounced Jefe.

The mech’s giant feet stomped a few steps around, turning so that its whole body faced the mastodon meat. A narrow nozzle emerged from the lower portion of its torso, and suddenly a tongue of flame like dragon’s fire engulfed the meat lying on the ground. It blew past the meat even, and against the smokehouse wall.

The meat and the wall were aflame.

Right after, a spew of white issued forth. The flames were extinguished entirely.

“I apologize for the damage,” Jefe said, though he didn’t sound sorry at all. “All part of the demonstration.”

“Carry on,” was all she said again.

“Go on, Ignacio,” Jefe said.

Ignacio marched the mech to the farthest end of the smokehouse, some thirty spans away. Then the mech jumped right out through the roof, boards and bits of roof tile falling in after. It was gone from sight for a seven count before it came back down again, landing so hard several pieces of meat fell as the rail to which their hooks were mounted broke loose from the beams.

There followed a blasting out of the far wall with an incendiary device of some sort, after which they all followed the mech out back and watched a brilliant series of maneuvers that ultimately ended in the complete destruction of the smokehouse, a small smithy, and three five-hundred-year-old oak trees.

The marchioness could not have been happier, and she watched for over the course of an hour as the mech stomped about destroying outbuildings and remote garden structures. Finally, when the demonstration was complete, the mech came back and stood before them again. It hissed and ticked with a distinct
ting
,
ting, ting
as various hot metals cooled. Ignacio’s smile inside was not quite so big as Jefe’s, but it was big enough.

“Is my Prosperion friend pleased?” Jefe asked.

The marchioness drew herself straight and tried to look just a little bored. “It will suffice. Tell your man his performance was acceptable. I will take the forty-three at the agreed-upon price.”

Jefe laughed. “Of course.”

“See that it is done,” she snapped at Black Sander. “I want them all within the week.”

He inclined his head, losing his devil’s eyes beneath the wide brim of his hat.

She glared at Vorvington then. “You. Inside.”

Vorvington looked startled, then afraid. He followed her inside, panting in her wake. She grinned wickedly as she led him on.

When they were back in her chamber, she locked the door. She glowered at him, which made him wince and fall back like a beaten cur. Her eyes narrowed, and he slunk down even more. Then she made him pleasure her for the remainder of the night, lying on the couch with her father’s famous sayings beneath her and looking past her lover as he huffed and labored and sweated, looking beyond him into the bone-framed mirror where the Galactic Mage’s new bride crawled around the alien ship doing the most extraordinary things.

It was almost sunrise when the magic mirror went blank.

Chapter 45

O
rli was familiar enough with the wind shifts now to make falling through the opposing layers efficient if not quite simple. It might almost have been fun were she not in agony in her ribs, her hand, and her leg—and were it not for the fact that Altin was lost and, for all she knew, dead and stuffed in a jar or hanging on a wall like some trophy fish. But other than the agony and dread, it might have been enjoyable. She thought Roberto would probably have been having fun anyway.

She guessed her fall to be on the order of six or seven minutes, plenty of time to think, but thoughts of Roberto and even Altin vanished as the bottom finally came into view. The steam was thicker, and the wet clouds that had been simply hot and wet became miserable again. It was almost impossible to breathe by the time she was four levels from the thickest of it—the same layer of blinding fog in which she’d been lost after getting her free fall under control the first time. And as if breathing in steam as if it were liquefied air wasn’t painful enough, the temperature was nearing the point of scalding.

She feathered the Higgs prism back, slowing her fall. From beneath the steam came a rumble, a roiling, popping rumble that sounded every bit like water boiling. Massive quantities of it, a river’s worth or a lake.

She couldn’t go down into that. Even cockroaches couldn’t handle that, no matter how determined they might be.

She looked to the bulkhead, where the hook-tailed aliens crawled along with their three-limbed mustache faces. She wondered if they could swim in whatever that was down there. All she could see was hazy gray, but onward she fell, angling back and forth across the wind with each successive level.