The Galactic Mage (36 page)

“What the hell was that?” Roberto said for what seemed the hundredth time today.

“Some kind of trick,” said the captain. “Part of the hallucination disappeared. Just be ready to melt him if he makes a move.”

“Oh, I’m ready.”

“‘Yes, sir,’ is the accepted response to an order.”

“Yes, sir,” Roberto said, wincing. Despite the captain being somewhat stuck with him and Orli now that the disease had killed most of the officers aboard the ship, things weren’t
that
comfortable on the bridge. He’d better watch his mouth. Silently he blamed Orli for her rebellious influence on him. That’s when Orli gasped.

“Look,” she said. She’d been watching the medieval man’s expectant face ever since the paper target had disappeared, and, for whatever silly reason, it had occurred to her to look around the bridge. And there it was, lying on the deck eight feet from the captain’s chair. The paper was on their ship.

“Oh, you have to be kidding me,” Roberto moaned. “Seriously, someone tell me what the hell is going on.”

The captain put his hand on his sidearm and turned back towards the monitor on the wall. “I do believe your peaceful man is actually targeting us.”

“No,” Orli said. “That can’t be it at all.”

“Now what’s he doing?” Roberto said, nodding up at the monitor where the man had once again begun to speak and sway.

“Let him have it, Lieutenant. Fire, now.”

“No!” screamed Orli as Roberto tapped the button with his thumb.

The man vanished as the laser’s red beam streaked down to where he’d been standing on the stone. Vaporized instantly, Orli knew, though none of them had ever seen a ship’s laser shoot a man before.

Orli screamed again, tears springing to her eyes. “What have you done?”

That’s when the sound of someone clearing his throat spun them all around.

Chapter
37

A
ltin had grown impatient when the people aboard the ship could not grasp what he was trying so desperately to say. He assumed the problem was that they were reluctant to teleport one of their own into a stranger’s tower, and he thought perhaps it might be because Taot was giving them a scare. He really couldn’t blame them for that, toothy brute that Taot was, and along with the recent fire-breathing episode, so he decided he had to take the initiative instead. He was confident that he’d found the right people, his exploratory seeing spell having ultimately brought him to the metallic vessel’s bridge. He had little doubt that the stern-faced man could be anyone other than the captain of the ship, and perhaps royalty as well, which was why he decided that that was where he needed now to go.

He cast the parchment target into their room and then followed the spell with a quick glance into the scrying basin to make sure that none of them had gone to stand on the drawing, perhaps misinterpreting his intent as wanting them to stand on it and be brought back to the tower by a teleport of Altin’s doing rather than their own. Surely they knew that he could not do that—no one could—but he wasn’t about to take a chance, just in case they didn’t know. It was possible they didn’t have a teleporter on board to advise them in such things, as good ones could be awfully hard to find.

But they weren’t standing on his parchment, so, seeing that it was safe, he teleported himself onto it instead, hoping they did not take his arrival as being unfathomably rude. One certainly never did something like this back at home as it would be considered a colossal breach of maritime etiquette. Such an offense would find you keelhauled or even worse.

He landed right on the target he had drawn, and, seeing them all still facing into their viewing wall, he politely cleared his throat. It was only then that he realized that they had actually taken a shot at him with one of their ship’s red lights, and the thought occurred to him that he might have just made a terrible mistake.

His confirmation came a moment later as the stern-faced man spun and, with reflexes like a snake, fired a hand-held version of the red light straight at Altin’s chest. The slender blonde woman let out a horrified scream as the red light struck him with brutal force, like a pinpoint blast of Taot’s breath, and then everything went dark.

He woke up sometime later in a room with the whitest lights he’d ever seen, bright yet somehow ghostly, glowing from behind panes of misty glass above. There was a low chirping sound, slow and rhythmic, coming from a strange panel filled with blinking lights behind him on the wall, and there was a man with deeply brown skin leaning over him and looking quite pleased as Altin came to. The man smiled and said something Altin couldn’t understand, his words coming on a wave of coffee-scented breath that was comforting in a room permeated by otherwise unnatural smells.

It took a moment for Altin’s head to clear, and once he realized what had happened, he suddenly checked to see if his hands and feet were bound. They were not. He breathed a little easier.

But why had the stern-faced man shot him? What could he possibly have done? Was his intent really that hard to understand? Altin had done nothing to suggest that he was going to be a threat. Which meant that these people might be the naturally violent sort, like orcs. Perhaps they were space pirates. That idea certainly made sense. Except why would they bother to save him after shooting him like that? Maybe they needed him to get them into his tower, particularly if they had no teleporter of their own. Or maybe it was for torture, and they wanted secrets of the Queen.

The chirping sound on the wall grew more intense as his mind ran through the possible motivations behind the stern-faced man’s attack. It occurred to him he might be overreacting just a bit. He was awfully far from home. Just as he had never heard of men like these, they probably had never even heard of his Queen, much less needed any secrets she possessed. He needed to gather his wits; that’s what he needed to do.

He tried to raise himself out of bed, but by the gods he was weak. How long had he been unconscious lying there like that? He suddenly clutched the sheet that was covering him and sought the wound he’d taken in the chest with his eyes. Someone, presumably the kind-faced man, had attached odd-feeling white bandages onto the area where Altin had been shot, and they were held in place with some sticky strips of something that felt like parchment pressed quite thin. Onion skin, maybe? The whole place left him feeling out of sorts. Lying here, actually on this ship, was much different than it had been when he’d been seeing his way around. For one, it seemed much brighter, too bright. And there was the most curious of smells. Unnatural, not quite metallic but definitely not perfumed. Something in an alchemist’s lab perhaps, but not from any he’d ever frequented on Kurr. It was completely alien.

He looked about tentatively. The room he was in was obviously a hospital ward; although the beds were odd shaped and made with lots of metal rails. Each one looked like it had a hundred moving parts, and he wondered what kind of people needed beds as complicated as all that. There were no other patients in the room; it was just he and the doctor, and that infernal chirping on the wall.

As he took in his surroundings, a rectangular section of the wall slid open, and in came the blonde woman with the very short hair. He remembered hearing her scream just before he’d been shot. He wondered why she cut her hair like that, barely hanging past her ears. She had an exquisite face though, pale as porcelain and nearly as translucent too. Her nose was narrow, like the statues of Mercy always were, and her eyes were large and of the deepest blue. But her clothing was immodest beyond belief, thin cloth, like hosiery, and all one piece, stretched about her fit body, revealing absolutely every gentle curve of the woman’s nubile form. He could even see the faintest trace of her ribs when she breathed, not to mention just about every other thing. My gods, he thought, an aggressive corset was one thing, but this? Water-soaked muslin hardly revealed so much. Modesty aside, she was lovely, and she moved just like a cat, with purpose and with grace. He noted that she wore one of those miniature red-light weapons at her hip, hanging from a belt and secured by a strap about her thigh. It was the same type as the surly man had used.

Which brought his mind back to why that man had chosen to shoot him when he’d first arrived. While undeserved, he didn’t suppose the reason for the attack was entirely a mystery: the unauthorized boarding of a ship was definitely taboo. But still, the episode was just an accident in the end, one that he hoped he would have a chance to make them understand.

As the woman approached him with a tender smile, he decided that perhaps they might have already figured out that very thing, maybe even divined it while he was unconscious in the bed. She certainly didn’t seem as if she were going to attack him with the red light now.

She said something unintelligible to the kind-faced man and then moved up to Altin’s bed. She stood a pace away as if expecting him to make a move. He lay back into the pillow and pulled the sheet modestly over his chest, unable to avoid watching hers as it expanded and contracted with every measured breath. She was striking, and her uniform certainly did nothing to impede his view. Women did not dress like this at home.

She noticed where his eyes had gone and a pinch of red came upon her cheeks. Altin was ashamed. What was wrong with him, gawking at her like that? Had he lost all self control? She was clearly no bordello tramp, and that was obviously her peoples’ customary garb. He berated himself silently for being so ungallant. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m not myself right now.”

Which was true enough, and she smiled, saying something unintelligible in response. Her voice was sweet, like flute music carried on a breeze, and Altin once again had to check his wayward eyes. She grinned at him this time, and it was his turn to show a blush. She turned to the man that was obviously Altin’s doctor and said something else to him. He answered back, and she actually clapped twice before plunging her hands quickly to her side, suppressing a smile and whatever it was she had been about to say. She blushed again, and then, with an embarrassed grin, uttered two short syllables and turned and left the room. Her backside was outlined just as well by the stretchy cloth as was her front, and Altin had to discreetly turn his head. He did not want these people thinking he was as licentious as they must already think him rude for having snuck upon their ship.

The chirping sound behind him was pulsing more quickly again, and the doctor came to him and pushed him back into his pillow with a knowing smile upon his face. Altin hadn’t realized that he’d sat back up again.

He wasn’t sure how much longer he was in their hospital, because there was absolutely no sense of night or day on board this ship, but he awoke at some point later and felt remarkably improved. He peeked under the stack of white cloth stuck to his wound and saw that the hole made by the red light was large and colored a ruddy brown, still angry looking, but apparently going to heal. The repair work certainly wasn’t very neat. He wondered if the injury had been terribly severe or if their doctor just wasn’t very good. He had to admit that having access to a Z-class healer like Doctor Leopold could spoil one to lesser healers when the situation came. Still, he was grateful to be alive as he sat up and swung his feet out of the bed.

He realized he was naked with a gasp, suddenly glad that the blonde woman hadn’t just come walking through the door. The doctor saw him sit up and came to him, presenting him with his old gray robes, recently laundered and folded into a perfect square. That was very considerate of them, despite the curious odor the laundering left behind, another unnatural smell, artificial if such a thing could be said of scent. The doctor said something that sounded polite, and Altin thanked him as he unfolded his robes and slipped them on. Someone had taken the time to patch the holes with some of the same stretchy cloth that these people seemed so inclined to wear, and Altin pushed a finger into a patch just to see what it was like. It was much thicker than he’d surmised, and seemed very strong despite being elastic like nothing he’d ever felt before. These were definitely a strange people, he thought. Very different than folks on Kurr. He would have to watch his manners. And he needed to figure out their language too.

The doctor was speaking to him again; his voice sounding very pleasant, though Altin couldn’t understand a thing, and he nodded politely and smiled back at the man. Yes, he was definitely going to have to do something about the language barrier. He caught himself reflexively wishing, once again, that he had the power to divine, but it occurred to him suddenly that in fact he did. Granted, it was a newfound skill, perhaps only a few days old, but still, it was not like he didn’t have the gift now that he’d pushed himself past his mental block. He knew for certain that there were language spells he could try once he got back to the tower and found them in a book.

Thinking of the tower, he was reminded of Taot lying out there all alone. Altin suddenly had a pressing need to know how long he’d been recovering. If it had been more than two or three days, Taot would be raving mad, if not sickened by the lack of food. Or worse. The large creature was hardly in a condition for a fast; he needed every bit of nourishment he could get.

He waited until the doctor turned around before quietly muttering the words for a telepathic check. The dragon was still asleep. That was good, and Altin did not bother to wake him up. Maybe he hadn’t been recovering for all that long. Still, thinking of the dragon reminded him of the fiery events of the recent past, and he realized that it was urgent that he take the dragon home; having Taot out here was a danger to them both. If the dragon accidentally killed him, it had no way of getting back. Altin promised himself that they would go soon. He did not bring the dragon out here to die.

The doctor was speaking into a square scrying mirror, an interesting spell that Altin had never seen, and in it was reflected the face of the stern man who had shot Altin with the beam of light. A moment later, the doctor cancelled the spell with a tap upon the mirror’s edge and turned to Altin, explaining something in his foreign tongue. Shortly after that, the man who shot Altin was standing in the room. Altin grew immediately tense.

The tall man said something to Altin, his voice icy and sharp, and he spared not a single smile. Altin was intimidated by the man and simply nodded back, anxious for him to go away. He was absolutely sure now that this man was at least the captain of the ship, if not these people’s king; he was the embodiment of command. Altin bowed when the man finished talking and seemed about to leave the room, at which the man’s stern face became even more so, his thick black brows knitting together in a frown. The man’s eyes were deep and severe; they made Altin nervous. The captain studied him a moment longer then looked briefly from Altin to the doctor. The doctor shrugged, at which the captain’s face returned to stern neutrality and he stepped out through the sliding portion of the wall without another word. There was something about men like that that made the end of conversations painfully abrupt, no wasted pleasantries or awkward lingering goodbyes. Altin wished sometimes that he could pull off that kind of thing, affect a bearing that put others on their guard. He could face Thadius down with composure like this ship’s captain possessed.

A few moments after the captain left, the blonde woman came in again, this time accompanied by a shorter, stocky fellow with dark skin, like the captain’s, but not so dark as the doctor’s was. This new fellow was the other man that Altin had seen up in the captain’s observation room. These were a very tawny people, he thought. Excepting for the blonde.

She was just as intriguing as before, and her companion seemed to like to laugh a lot. They stood very close to one another, and she frequently touched him on the arm. Altin wondered if they were husband and wife, although they didn’t seem to say as much with what passed between their eyes. Still, they were very friendly with one another, and Altin found himself struck with an uninvited jealousy. He caught it before it could take root and wondered if he was going out of his mind. Clearly the adventures of the last few days, on top of the emotional week he’d just been through, had put him out of sorts. He forced a smile onto his face and beat the silly feelings down.