Rift in the Races (86 page)

Thadius’ eyes went wide, for where else could he go? He looked as if he might speak, might try one last protest, but the Queen’s glance over her shoulder toward an empty place near the wall stopped him.

“Get out,” she commanded.

He turned and stormed off, indignant, his mind awhirl. Three days was not much time to plan a strategy. And he only had four choices, three of which were more than unsavory. The first, he could try to hide on Kurr and spend a lifetime waiting for the bounty hunter’s blow. The second, he could try to get to String and fall upon the mercy of the elves—who would most likely kill him before he finished making the argument. And the third, he could try to live as a hermit on Duador, use his four schools of magic to hide him, a life spent waiting for the demon hordes to sniff him out, which they would eventually. Which left only the fourth option: planet Earth. Which in turn meant that all his hopes lay with Orli and the strength of the siren’s blood potion Annison had wrought.

He would need to get word to her right away.

Chapter 69

A
ltin got to be alone with Orli the following day. The Queen’s people would not allow him to see her the evening after she’d been found, and the Palace was an impossible place to teleport into—and a dangerous one—or he would have tried. So meticulously enchanted and well devised were the illusions and orientation shifts the Palace had in place, he couldn’t even get a seeing spell through the walls. So he’d had to wait. But, finally, they let him in.

He sat across from her at a small table. He leaned forward, pushing his hands out into the middle of the polished bloodwood surface, expecting her to take them into her own. She did not. She might have done less damage had she cast an ice lance through his heart.

“What’s happened to you?” he asked. “Orli, there’s something wrong. You’re not acting yourself. Please, tell me what it is.”

“I already told you, Altin. We have to help Blue Fire. We have to stop the fleet. They don’t realize what they are doing.” She looked straight into his eyes this time. She was completely sober. Completely sane. She really meant it.

“I know. I heard all of that yesterday. What I mean is, what’s happened to
you
? To you and me. Do you truly have feelings for Thadius now?”

She straightened and shook her short hair out, running one hand through the once-again glistening platinum strands that tumbled near her temple and so often fell into her eyes, tucking a length of it behind her ear. “None of that matters right now, Altin.” Her expression was the very essence of seriousness. “Altin, if you aren’t going to help me save her, then how can I be sure you care about anything at all?”

This caused him to pull back across the table, his hands retreating into his lap. Everything felt empty inside, as if he were a sack of flour with a rent seam. Everything of value that had been in him had spilled out now.

“I’m trying to tell you what has changed, Altin, and yet you sit there gaping at me like I’m the one who is different. You would have listened to me before.”

He tried to breathe through the bewilderment.

“Altin, right now we stand on the brink of exterminating an entire race. Blue Fire has lost her mate. She says she has never seen another of her kind. Ever. She’s been alive for over a hundred million years. For almost all of those she has been alone. But then she found him, Blue Fire, her mate, it’s where she got her name. His name. They found each other and meant to make another like them. But then he died, and he couldn’t fertilize the egg, the child they tried to make a hundred thousand years ago. Maybe more. I don’t know. But I do know now it is only her. She is all alone. And my people want to kill her. And your people are helping them. And then she will be gone too. They will all be gone. Don’t you see?”

Orli began to cry, and Altin realized that she meant every word. He softened, let go of his anger and his own selfish need, recognized that he hadn’t really been listening to her. Just like she’d said. Whatever this was she was on about, she felt it dearly. It mattered. Even if it was lunacy.

He reached out to her again, his hand across the table. “Orli, I’m sorry. I’m always thinking of myself. Please, forgive me. It’s all been so crazy. Surely you understand. But I’m listening now. Tell me about her. Maybe we can do something.”

She sniffled and nodded. She looked up and wiped away her tears on the sleeve of the new dress she’d been given by the Queen. Something simple, just as she’d asked.

“Altin, we have to stop it. We have to tell them the truth. And I know they aren’t going to want to believe. I’m just so full of her dreams and hopes and sorrow now. You can’t imagine it. A hundred thousand years of solitude. And a love so great it spanned hundreds of thousands more. It was so beautiful. And then it was gone. We have to convince them not to hurt her. And we have to somehow prove to her it wasn’t us. She wants to understand, Altin, she does. She’s even promised not to hurt us anymore. No more fighting. She told me last night. She wants to know us. She doesn’t want to be alone.”

“How are you speaking to her? How can that be? Your people have no telepathy.”

“The Liquefying Stone,” she explained. “The stone and smell. Somehow she found me through it. At least that’s what she seems to say. She doesn’t say anything really. It’s all images and feelings. But she found me that day I held the Liquefying Stone.”

“What day? When did you use the Liquefying Stone? Are you saying you did magic?”

“No, no. Nothing like that. It’s just, somehow, while you were downstairs trying to add more magic to your amulet, I fell asleep. Or mostly did. And I was holding the Liquefying Stone. I’d picked it up to look at it, and somehow, I guess holding it and dreaming—the scent in the dream, I was dreaming about the smell of grass—is how she found me. I honestly don’t know how it works. I really don’t. She said she
found
me and, well, now she speaks to me in dreams. She shows me things and makes me feel. It’s all so much bigger than the feelings that we have. All except for love. Love and hate. Those we share just the same.”

Altin didn’t know what to say. He simply watched her, watched the shape of her mouth as she spoke, the soft lines that he longed to kiss again but now feared he never would. He watched the glitter of her eyes as she spoke adoringly of this Blue Fire. Blue Fire the Hostile. It was all so seemingly insane. But Orli clearly loved her. Her eyes got such a distant glaze when she talked about the dreams, about the way Blue Fire made her feel. It made Altin want to cry.

But he bit it back. If Orli cared about Blue Fire this much, then Altin would care too. He would find a way to understand. Down deep he knew it might be the only way to win her back. He knew he’d lost her. He could feel the distance between them in the pit of his stomach, like the sense of falling that came with a sudden downdraft as he flew on Taot’s back, the unexpected drop of as much as forty spans, raising his gorge as he plummeted towards the ground. It was an unseen depression, an absence, and yet it was as tangible as any thing. More tangible even. And terrible. It was the absence of her love. She did not love him anymore. He felt it in every fiber of his being, felt it in his guts as a terrible wound, but he did not dare to ask about it now. He did not dare to speak such a thing aloud. Doing so would give substance to the truth he knew.

Something had happened to her. Blue Fire had changed her. And if it had changed her, then it must change him too. That was the answer. He must become that, whatever it was, as well. He would become anything for her. And then she would love him again.

“So what do I do, Orli? How can I help her? Can I speak to her? Will she speak to me?”

“I don’t know,” she replied. “She has to find you.”

“So how do I get her to find me?”

“You’ll have to find her in your dreams.”

Altin shook his head, frustrated. “How am I supposed to do that?”

“I really don’t know,” she said. “But she is wonderful. You must hurry.”

Orli’s hand went up reflexively to her ear, as if she’d been bitten there. She had. A narrow little lizard had appeared on her shoulder, hidden by the fall of her hair, with a note tied to its back. She took the creature down and placed it gently on the table, smiling at it as she did. “Hello, sweet creature,” she said as she untied the note. “What have you got there?”

She unfurled the note and began to read as Altin watched impatiently. He watched at first as delight played across her features then suddenly filled with concern. “Oh, no,” she gasped, as she kept reading. “Banishment?” she whispered as she read on. Finally she came to the end of the note and looked up at him. “The Queen has banished Thadius. She says he can’t come back for a thousand years.”

“Good.”

She gave him a punitive look.

He harrumphed, a low growl in his chest, but relented some. “Does he say why?”

“No. Only that he has three days to be off of Kurr.”

Altin suppressed his remark. But he was glad inside. Let the elves have him. They’d fill him full of arrows the moment his duplicitous foot hit the beach. Or perhaps they’d peel back his skin in tiny strips and sprinkle salt into the wounds until he told them everything he knew of Queen Karroll’s strengths and weaknesses. Altin silently considered making a point of casting a seeing spell to watch, if he could determine when the fallen lordling would arrive. He spoke none of that aloud, however. Instead he said, “Well, that’s going to be rough on him, but he’s a grown man. He’ll figure something out.”

“He has.”

“He has?”

“Yes. I’m going to help him get to Earth.”

He didn’t say it because it was obvious on his open-mouthed face. Orli saw the question clear enough. “Look, Altin, there is something you need to know.”

He felt the bottom start to drop out of his world, the very stones of its foundations turning to sand, draining away as if from a broken hourglass. He closed his eyes and wished what was about to come would not. It came anyway.

“I love Thadius,” she said. “I know that you and I had something really incredible for a while. But things have changed. I love him. And he needs me now. They both need me. Blue Fire and Thadius.” She leaned forward, this time extending her hand. “Please tell me we can still be friends, Altin. I know in my heart I could never be happy if you were mad at me. It seems cruel, I know, but, well, I can’t explain it any more than that. My feelings have changed. Please, try to understand.”

He looked deeply into her eyes, the amazing, perfect irises of blue. They were places to be lost in. Universes to explore. He had looked into them and seen love before. Love for him. Deep, true love that spilled out from her in waves that washed across his heart in warmth and honesty. And it was not there anymore. He could see it gone. A vast emptiness.

But it was not there for Thadius either. He could see that too. Or at least that’s what he convinced himself he saw. Nothing.

He took her hand. The skin so soft and smooth, cool but warming with his touch.

“I’ll never abandon you,” he said.

“Good. I knew you would understand.” She smiled, looking genuinely relieved. She withdrew her hand.

She might as well have pulled out his lungs. Taot could hardly have breathed more bitter acid into his eyes than the tears that burned in them just then. But he blinked as rapidly as he could and managed to keep most of them at bay. He forced himself to keep his head up and look at her.

“I’ve got to go to the Queen,” she said, oblivious to his agony. “I’ve got to go speak on his behalf. And I need to call my father. He can help.”

Altin’s lips quivered as he tried to force a smile, a wry one. The colonel would share his opinion of Thadius on the matter. He was confident of that.

Orli got up. “Will you come with me and help me speak for Thad?”

He laughed, nearly a retch. Bitter. “Orli, I will do anything you ask. But I think I am the last person on Prosperion you’d want to speak for Thadius Thoroughgood just now. I imagine you must be able to understand that at least.”

She sighed and nodded, looking down at the floor. “I am sorry,” she said. “But it will all work itself out in time.”

He nodded back. “Yes. I’ll be seeing to that.”

“So what will you do?”

He thought about it for a moment, running a tired hand through the mop of his ever-tousled hair. He pushed disconsolate feelings from himself on a long, low breath, a determined wind before which everything that mattered now must sail.

“I suppose I will have to begin by figuring out how to speak to your new friend.”

Her face brightened, happy at the news. She began to say as much, but he’d already begun casting his teleportation spell.

Chapter 70

K
ettle wept and held on to him for so long he was nearly dozing by the time she pushed him away and started dabbing at her puffy florid cheeks. They both had little clumps of flour on their faces where dough had begun to form in pasty trails marking the path of tears. She pulled strands of gray hair off of her forehead and tucked them up into a comb made of woolly rhino bone.

“They waited the proper honors fer him in Crown,” she told him, speaking of Tytamon’s national funeral honors. “They’s expectin’ ya ta speak.”