Rift in the Races (68 page)

Its leaves were dark, three blades, each with serrated edges and, at the tip, ending in a needle thin point like a stinger. Veins showed clearly on the surface of its leaves, slightly lighter in color and looking almost bloated where they branched out from the leafstalk. They seemed to swell as she watched.

“You see it?” Thadius said, his voice low, nearly a whisper.

She turned her attention from the plant and peered deeper into the cage, trying not to blink, looking around at nothing she could find, staring as intently as it was possible to stare, hoping for a sign of movement to guide her eye. But she didn’t see anything. She didn’t know what she was looking for. Was there something in the plant she’d missed, some camouflaged animal? She reflexively looked around the front of the cage, looking for some sign or placard to give a clue.

“Look, see, it moved. It knows we’re here.”

Her head came up quickly. She thought it typical that she would have looked away at just the wrong time.

Following the direction of his finger, she once again found herself staring at the bush. She was about to ask if it was the bush she was supposed to look at, when it, the bush, suddenly leapt to the front of the cage, several of its branches curling around the metal and even more darting out like serpent tongues, seemingly intent on grabbing Thadius by the throat through the bars.

He didn’t jerk back reflexively as Orli did. She nearly jumped out of her boots trying to get away. But the tendrils didn’t reach out as far as she and Thadius were. They tried. They twisted and snaked in the air, the thinnest extent of them poking out, strait as laser beams. Straight at Thadius. Every one of them.

“Isn’t it marvelous,” he said. “As far as I know, it’s the only one left. It’s a craven vine. Some say the ancient elves created the species by accident after their first great civil war twenty thousand years ago. Others say it was a curse put upon an ancient healer who failed to save the daughter of the great transmuter king, Zandafast. Either way, those were the olden days, when magic was still animal and rare. All the greatest creatures came from that time.”

Orli stared in horror. She couldn’t decide what was more horrifying: that the creature was so fantastically deadly, that it was only bent on getting Thadius, or that he was completely oblivious to either of the first two.

“I must say,” he said, noting the look on her face, “I expected you’d like this one very well, what with your, you know, penchant for plants and all.”

She could only stand, wide-eyed and speechless, her heartbeat slowly returning to normal as she stared into the cage. He hadn’t even blinked at it. It might just as easily have been a bit of wet grass stuck to his boot.

“Well, let’s have a look at something else then, shall we?” he pressed on. “If you don’t like that, surely you’ll like this one over here. As I said, all the best stuff was made in the good old days. Some by accident of nature, others by the magic of the races over time. This next one I’ll show you is all the nastiest parts of nature and the best bits of godly wrath all wrapped up in one. It’s wonderful.” He led her past several cages. She followed numbly, her head tipped slightly as she peered into each cage they went by.

She saw a tiger, that was sure, like the Bengal tigers that had once lived on Earth, only this one was perhaps half the size that she understood the Earth variety to have been. Next she saw a cage that had its bars augmented by wire mesh. Curious, she stopped to look inside. This one was furnished with the trunks and limbs of several trees, the scaffolding of which created a playground for a small band of dark green squirrels who squeaked and chattered playfully as they leapt from limb to limb. She smiled as she watched them, their antics funny and their voices sweet. She leaned forward and chirped at one that was nibbling on a bit of melon rind near the front of the cage. “Hey, little guy,” she cooed at it.

Thadius’ warning was too late, and by the time he realized she had stopped and called to it, the little green monster had already spun and spat at her with lightning speed as it issued a most frightening and feral hiss. Orli only had enough time to twist a little before the wet missile hit, striking her in the shoulder rather than straight in the face.

Thadius was upon her in a moment, tearing at the buttons of her coat, his face calm, but urgency obvious. He was pointedly demanding something of her, but at first she was too shocked to make it out, thinking he had suddenly taken it upon himself to make an unwarranted sexual advance.

“Get the jacket off,” he repeated for the third time, before she could translate his words. “You won’t like the scar this leaves if you let it eat through to your skin.”

She looked from his face to where his eyes were focused, and sure enough, the jacket was smoking from a large, black patch that already had burned nearly through her velvet riding coat. It made an awful hiss and smelled terrible.

“Oh, shit!” she exclaimed and suddenly set to helping Thadius get her out of the coat.

“Careful,” he said as he pulled it off, holding the material away from her in a manner that prevented her arm and hand from making contact with the burning area.

He tossed the coat on the ground and then went to a bucket hanging from a post near the rail that ran along the front of the squirrel cage. He dipped out a scoop of clear liquid and ladled it over the smoking sleeve. The hissing abated and the acrid fumes cleared not long after.

“This isn’t much better for the skin,” he said raising the ladle up for her to see. “So we had to get it off. It will neutralize the acid, however, and keep it from burning a knee-deep hole into the floor.”

“The floor?” She looked down at the stone upon which she stood.

“Yes. It’s pretty nasty stuff. Doesn’t work on metals or on glass, for some reason, but it eats right through flesh, wood and stone.”

“Then why in the hell isn’t there a glass front on the cage?” Perplexity gaped in her features.

“Where’s the fun in that?” he replied.

Orli had to bite her tongue. This place was making it very hard for her to stick to her plan of not being rude. She looked around and shook her head, a series of brief, incredulous quarter-turns. They were hardly twenty steps into this freak show and already both of them had been attacked. And worse, it increasingly reminded her of her captivity, and the auction, in Murdoc Bay. She really didn’t want to see any more.

She was about to say at least that much, politely of course, when he said, “Come on. I want to show you my unicorn.”

At first she rolled her eyes. He was unrelenting. Plus, a unicorn? Really? That was the sort of thing little girls dreamed of. Whatever freak he was about to show her was probably only going to make her sad. She felt like Roberto now, suddenly understanding the skepticism he so often displayed.

But she followed.

Sure enough, there was a horse with a long, slender horn jutting from its forehead. But, just as she had feared, it wasn’t a majestic one. But for the horn, it wasn’t much different than the other horses she’d seen on Prosperion, except that this one looked rather sad as it stared dully out at them through rheumy eyes that leaked dark trails down its face. Its coat was mottled gray, shaggy and unkempt, with clumps of dark fur hanging from the traces of its ribs like filthy cotton. Orli had no way of knowing whether the creature was molting or suffering some disease. Its black mane was a tangled mess, the long, dull strands of it all twisted up with bits of moldy straw in much the same fashion as were those that stuck from its tail in every direction like faded thorns. It didn’t smell very good.

“These are nearly impossible to get,” Thadius announced proudly. “Mine is one of only three in captivity. Technically, it’s illegal to even have one of these, but nobility hath privilege, as they say. Plus, I have a few drops of royal blood.” He gave her a moment to stare into the cage. “So, what do you think?”

“I think I’m going to be sick,” she said.

Chapter 50

Q
ueen Karroll’s hand trembled upon the hilt of her dagger. Her arm had moved across her body as if of its own accord, her hand like a spider crawling toward some trapped creature in its web, creeping to the weapon unconsciously as rising anger drew nearer to explosive rage with every successive word the messenger spoke. Her teeth gritted audibly, sounding like marble columns cracking beneath some preposterous weight. Finally she couldn’t hold it in. “By the Hammer of Anvilwrath, I’ll not stand any more of this!” she cried. “Silence. Speak another word of this idiocy and I will have you whipped, hung, drowned and beaten. Not one more word!” She paused long enough to glower and fume. “How can such incompetence even be possible? It is as if you people strive to discover new limits of ineptitude by the day. Is there some secret trophy, some prize being awarded to the winner of the most incompetent diviner in all of history? The gods’ lot of you are worthless. You couldn’t divine your own birthdays with a calendar and your mothers standing there giving you advice.” She sat upon the golden throne glaring down at him, the royal bosom heaving as the wave of fury crested and eventually began to subside. Finally, she could speak again. “And what,
precisely
, do you mean when you say that you can’t find the girl?”

The trembling messenger’s eyes darted back and forth as he debated whether or not the “speak another word and be whipped, hung, drowned and beaten” threat had been rhetorical or real and, if the latter, whether or not it was rescinded by her asking the question. Her expectant gaze and the twitching fingers on her dagger suggested he was better off answering. “It’s blocked, Your Majesty. We cannot locate her. Conduit Causthoff even looked with the illusionist’s guildmaster, a P-class illusionist, two seers and, of course, the full complement of Her Majesty’s divination corps. The fact is that countermeasures are up and exceedingly effective.”

“Are you trying to tell me that you can’t find that Earth girl or her body because your magicians are being outmatched by a filthy rabble of orcs, even in this?” Her eyes started to swell in measure with her broad bosom again, and the leather straps of her breastplate creaked ominously like an essential roof beam about to break. “Am I to understand that the royal diviners have been bested by a bunch of cave-dwelling shamans in leather underclothes for something as simple as finding a body?”

“Not exactly, My Queen,” the man looked to her hand, which continued to clutch at the pommel of the dagger and seemed only a movement away from gutting him like a fish. His knees trembled even more violently. “It’s v-very sophisticated casting, Your Majesty. They don’t think it is being cast by the orcs at all.”

“Of course it’s the orcs. They found Tytamon’s bones gnawed on like an old mutton chop in a Daggerspine pass nearly three weeks ago. Where have you been, hiding under your bed?”

“Yes, Your Majesty. I mean, no, Your Majesty. No, not hiding under my bed, I mean. Majesty.” Her head lolled impatiently as he struggled to find his wits. Eventually he did. “The diviner’s concert does know about the eastern pass, of course, My Queen, and yet, they say it doesn’t feel like primitive magic blocking them. It’s not something any of the old records talk about.”

“It doesn’t
feel
like primitive magic, and it’s not in the old books?” Her face pinched up, and for a moment, the poor messenger was certain that was going to be it for him, but suddenly the Queen pulled in a long, calming breath and settled back into the royal chair. At least a little bit. In a level tone, she went on. “In case you hadn’t noticed, the orcs aren’t following the patterns that got their arses handed to them the last fifteen times they tried to put their diseased feet on the level lands of Kurr.”

“No, Your Majesty. Of course not. But just the same, the diviners can’t find Miss Pewter because there are significant counter-spells in play.”

The Queen leaned the rest of the way back in her chair and sat quietly for a moment, looking through the man as if he were made of glass. “Well, that means she’s still alive at least. That’s good news. One would expect those waltzing ninnies at the wizards school might have concluded that much at least, don’t you think?” The question was a rhetorical one for sure this time—the messenger was confident of it, so he kept his mouth shut. Disgust painted a grim visage upon the Queen’s face when she did focus on him again. “If they’re going to that much trouble to hide her, get a bigger concert and break through. I shouldn’t have to tell you that sort of thing.”

“Yes, Your Majesty. Of course not, Your Majesty.” He stared at her, unmoving, still somewhat paralyzed by fear and unwilling to make a wrong move in exiting. He wasn’t even sure if he should be making eye contact or looking at the floor.

“So go,” she said. Most of the anger had left her now. “Go and find her! And Tidalwrath’s fits, man, don’t bring me back news like that again.”

“Yes, My Queen.” He backed out, scraping and bowing the whole way, and, in his discomfiture, did not wait until the double doors to the Queen’s audience chamber had closed to sprint away.

The Queen saw the man run and spat on the floor before her throne. “Incompetents!”

The Earl of Vorvington, next to speak with the Queen, saw her do it as he approached and thought the expectorant meant for him.

She saw his expression and raised a hand. “Not you, Vorvington. At least not yet. But they’re all cowards, imbeciles and fools. My kingdom is besieged by primitives, and my own people think they are outmatched. And worse, they want to show our new allies from Earth how inept we are by proving we can’t even keep track of the one officer they’ve assigned to our care. It will be a wonder they don’t declare war on us and try to take Prosperion in the name of imposing planetary competence. They’ll be doing us all a favor if this is what we’ve come to.”