Rift in the Races (66 page)

Happily, there was nothing to see. Nothing. Empty space, and no Hostiles outside the ship. Not a one. All those hours of waiting, stressing, expecting at any moment the crash of a great stone battering ram against the side of the unshielded ship, every second spent tense and listening for the sound of the impact, nerves firing in anticipation of the shudder that would announce they were all about to die ... all for nothing.

Now that they could breathe more easily, everyone wanted to know what had happened to the wizards. Despite the record restart time, they were still alone and very far away from the rest of the fleet. Years away.

Once Captain Asad was convinced there were no Hostiles present and the ship was, for the time anyway, safe, he went to sick bay to find that answer for himself. He found Doctor Singh and Conduit Huzzledorf leaning over the powerful X-class teleporter, Envette. Shortly after beginning the teleport spell that would take them back to the rest of the fleet, she, like the other mages, had dropped like a planetary shuttle with a dead gravity drive. In her case, upon seeing the others fall in their attempts at seeing spells, she had immediately begun casting the teleport that would take the
Aspect
back to the fleet, and like the rest, she shared their fate. Down she went in a heap on the deck.

“She seems to have gotten it the worst,” Doctor Singh was saying to Conduit Huzzledorf when the captain came in. He pulled open her eyelids and flashed a penlight into them, first the left, then the right. “And I’m not getting any signs of recovery yet, unlike the others who seem to be improving some.”

He tapped the side of the monitor on the wall above Envette’s bed, bringing up a three-dimensional image of her brain. “As you can see here, deep in the temporal lobe, this structure …,” he pointed with the penlight at a bulbous object rendered in blue that grew off of another similar object rendered in pink, which, in its own turn, butted up to a longer curving structure that was green. “This is something unique to Prosperions, at least it is to the seven I’ve had in my care. It’s the only difference between us that I have found.” He gazed across the room, taking in the full complement of teleporters sent by the Queen and jerked his head in the direction of Altin’s amniotic tank, though it was on the other side of a bulkhead from where they were.

Playing as critical a role in the casting of great magic as Conduit Huzzledorf had for most of his adult life, he recognized the structure immediately from drawings and diagrams he’d studied when he was in conduit school. “That is the mythothalamus,” he explained. “It’s the center of magic. Not everyone on Prosperion has this. Far less than half. And, as you may have noticed, some are significantly larger than others.” He tapped the monitor with a pudgy finger. “Teleporter Envette here is rather a rare creature in that regard, assuming this illusion is accurate.”

“It is. And I gathered that she was different,” said Doctor Singh. “And that young man in the other room must be something of a freak by those standards.”

“To say the least,” admitted the conduit. “Z-class mages are one in a hundred-million at best.”

“Well, A to Z, whatever hit your people did something to them in this brain structure and caused it to swell. It’s put pressure on the amygdala and, I can only guess, the result has caused them to shut down. I can’t find any other damage to them. There’s no other swelling, all other vital signs are normal, and as I said, some of your team is coming back around.”

The conduit nodded. “So will Envette recover as well?”

“I should think so,” Doctor Singh said. “But to be honest, I’m not sure what the difference is. Was she doing something different when she was knocked out? Some variation or different approach to … doing something magical?” His dark face wrinkled as he said it, a querulous expression that suggested that, even if he did get an answer, there probably wasn’t going to be much he could do with the information.

“Yes. She was trying to teleport. These others were with me channeling a seeing spell.” He paused, then corrected himself. “These others tried to be with me. I actually never got the least bit of mana from them. Which is odd. Usually I get fed a thread right away. You might almost think they never channeled any at all. I should think they could not have, as I have never experienced that sort of thing before, and I’ve been at this for a very long time.”

“Maybe they didn’t then,” shrugged Doctor Singh. “I wish I could be more help. All I can do is monitor them, and make sure the swelling doesn’t get any worse. So far, so good. Keep your fingers crossed.”

The conduit nodded again. “I’m sure you are doing everything your people are capable of. I have confidence all will be well. However, we do have a problem about getting back.”

Captain Asad nodded grimly. “I’m glad to see your team was not too badly injured,” he said. “But you are correct about getting back without them. Do you have some other magicians that might be better equipped for this sort of thing?” He felt uncomfortable saying it; his ignorance on the subject put him on unpleasant footing.

“I think we should not cast magic here until we find out what’s happened,” said the conduit. “However, we are not as stuck as you might think.”

He reached into his tunic and pulled out a gold chain that hung around his neck. Attached to it was a large, deep purple amethyst gripped in an eagle’s claw made of gold.

The blank expression on Captain Asad’s face prompted the conduit’s reply. “This is a fast-cast amulet. Sir Altin’s notes could not express vehemently enough the value of having these for every member of any expedition into space. You are surely aware of the fact that one of these is what saved his life that day of the Great Hostile Battle when the child Pernie came along.”

Captain Asad nodded. Everyone in the fleet knew that story by now.

“Well, this is mine. We all wear them,” he took in the convalescing sorcerers with a sweep of his gaze.

“Ah!” said Doctor Singh. “Then we can go back now.” Captain Asad looked less optimistic, but the long, black line of his brow did rise some as if unburdened by a significant weight.

“Unfortunately not,” the conduit explained. “We’ve jumped well out of range of this amulet. The enchantment has to be increased. We tried to anticipate how far we’d come when we began all this, but, well, to be honest, Altin’s notes did not prepare anyone for … for this distance. The galaxy is absurdly large, I have to tell you, and I can hardly begin to fathom a universe.”

Both the captain and the doctor agreed, nodding. The captain even grinned, a rare thing to behold. He enjoyed seeing humility in this man.

“However, we can, now that we know, augment the amulets. It will take time. In fact, I would suggest making one for each of your ships as well as for every member of your crew. They would make a nice augmentation to the seeing stones we’ve already made for some of your vessels. If a similar situation occurs, you could simply smash it and be back in orbit above Tinpoa, or even your own world should we have the great fortune of visiting there one day.”

“Are you telling me that you can put some sort of magic into one of those and then, just like that,” Captain Asad snapped his fingers as he said it, “the whole ship will just shoot right back to someplace you pre-designate?”

“That’s precisely what I’m saying, Captain. However, as you can see by the circumstance I am in right now, there must be suitable mana wound into the amulet to feed the spell. If there is not enough mana to accommodate the distance asked of the enchantment, well, let’s just say the results could be disastrous. However, once a distance, any distance, is understood, enough mana can be wound in to accommodate that distance. The destruction of the stone ameliorates the need for accuracy and spares blinding of the mythothalamus in the case of excess.”

Wrinkles appeared above Doctor Singh’s eyes, and he made a sucking sound against the back of his teeth.

Both captain and conduit looked at him. The faraway expression on the doctor’s face told them he was mulling something through. At length he lit up with the light of epiphany. He faced the conduit directly. “You realize that’s what happened to Altin, don’t you?”

The conduit nodded. “That’s what he told you as part of what you called ‘semi-coherent rambling’ before you people put him in the fishbowl. I read your report. He’d front-loaded it with mana in anticipation, as we did with this one, but it was not quite enough for this distance. He obviously guessed pretty close, or got lucky, because he did make it all the way back to Prosperion. It could easily have gone worse, now that I know what he was up against. I would not be willing to risk any of my people, or yours, in the hopes that I have done near so well with these.” He held his eagle-claw amulet up and shook his head.

“So it’s not possible?”

“Not with this one,” said the conduit. “And with no mages awake, we can’t add to it. And if we had mages up, we wouldn’t need it to begin. I’ve decided there must be something wrong with the mana out here.”

“Well,” said Doctor Singh, “that’s kind of what I’m getting at. Clearly there was nothing wrong with the mana back where we were. And your folks got us here easily enough. Couldn’t we contact our ships and have them arrange to have another one of those made with more?”

“Well, there is one small problem,” said the conduit.

“What’s that?”

“There are no enchanters on any of your other ships, remember? We are all here. The rest of us are on Prosperion.”

“So call Orli,” said Doctor Singh. “She can get someone to help us. Didn’t the Queen tell us they have a top-notch enchanter working on
Citadel
anyway, someone named Pepperspray, I believe? Orli can just walk over there and ask her herself. And we have that enchanted diamond on the bridge now, so she should know right where to send our new … one of those.” He nodded toward the conduit’s miniature eagle claw.

The conduit nodded. “Aha!” exclaimed the conduit. “You are correct. Her name is Peppercorn, a genius. Perfect for the job, Doctor. You are a quick study, my good man. You don’t miss a thing.”

“In my profession it’s best to pay attention to the details.”

“Indeed!” He turned to the captain. “Call your girl, Captain, and I can have Peppercorn whip us up our escape in a matter of days.”

“A tactical retreat, Conduit,” said the captain. “It’s not an escape. We get those amulets, then we finish this thing.”

“Indeed.”

The captain tapped his com badge. “Captain to bridge,” he said. “Ensign Nguyen, get Pewter on the
Citadel
array immediately.”

“Aye, sir. One moment while I bring her up.”

Chapter 48

I
lbei arrived at the mountain pass where Leekant’s sheriff and his men had found Tytamon’s bones and the bits of Orli’s uniform and gear. It was just before noon when the grizzled old miner rode up, two days after leaving Kettle and the sad black flags of Calico Castle. The rubble-strewn opening leading into the rocky jaws of the Daggerspines seemed to cough up space reluctantly, high and narrow on both sides, a slender crack that quickly vanished into darkness, lost in the shadows of rapidly rising granite walls. The campsite at the mouth of it, crude as it was, marked the last vestige of anything even remotely civilized, if a jumble of rocks and the dark stain of a long dead fire could be said to represent such a thing.

Ilbei had been through this pass a few times in the last forty years, not many times, but what he didn’t know specifically, he knew by the nature of it. And it didn’t take him more than a glance to know that Tytamon had never been devoured here.

He didn’t care what the sheriff’s men had to say. The orcs would not have feasted on a human in this place. For one thing, it was too much food for the kind of band that would have been traveling through it, and for another, they would not have left behind the things Ilbei found after having a look around.

He got down off his mule and set to poking about. The mud was a mess, churned up by the feet of the sheriff’s men, their boots and their horses’ hooves. But still he looked about, rolling over rocks and dragging the sharp point of his pick through the soil and ash. Doing so, he managed to drag up a bit of Orli’s hair, which at first he thought might have been a scrap of cloth, but as he scraped away the mud, pulling the fine strands through tightly-squeezed thumb and forefinger, he realized immediately what he held. It was a clipping. Fifteen strands, he counted, and all of essentially identical length.

“Well look at this here, Jasper,” Ilbei said, addressing the donkey out of habit. “Sliced neat as ya like, not a trace a’ scalp.” He dragged the thick mud with his pick some more, moving around the edge of the fire. He found another bit. Seven strands. He wiped the muck away with his fingers as before, then whistled through his teeth.

“Ya see there, Jasper? Same as before. Ya don’t reckon no orc never took ta barberin’ now do ya?”

The donkey was too busy biting at an itch on its flank to respond.

“That’s right,” said Ilbei anyway. “Orcs is more the yankin’ kind.”

He spent a bit more time raking through the mud. He came across a strange object that he’d never seen before. A cylindrical object, half as thick as his little finger and just about as long. It smelled like brass to his metal-sensitive nose but, when wiped clean, he saw that it was shiny, like brushed silver or plain steel. It had a strange tip on it, cone shaped, made of copper and something gray that smelled like lead. There was something else too, sulfur, he thought, or something similar, but too faint to be sure. Whatever it was, he knew he’d never seen one before.