The Galactic Mage (9 page)

He appeared on the flagstones a step outside the door and swayed, woozy with the effort, just as Pernie came sprinting down. He shook his head to clear it, which had almost the opposite effect, and grabbed her by the shoulders as she prepared to bolt past him and across the yard. She screamed at his unexpected appearance, and he shushed her with a hiss.

“Pernie,” he said, leaning down and looming in her face, which was barely a blur in the thunder of his throbbing head. “Pernie, listen, you woke me up. You did. But, I’m not going to tell, okay. You’re not in trouble. All right? You don’t have to be afraid. Nobody has to know.”

“Ow,” she whimpered, glancing at his hands gripping too tightly into her flesh and looking up at him again with eyes that were frightened and with tears streaking the dust upon her cheeks. He couldn’t tell if she was in disbelief at this stroke of luck or if she thought she was in a scary monster’s grasp. Frankly, he wasn’t too sure either. He relaxed his grip a bit.

“Listen. I’ll make you a deal, okay?”

She nodded, barely discernible.

“All right. Here it is. You don’t tell anyone that I fell asleep on the floor, okay? And for me, I won’t say a thing about you coming in and waking me up. How’s that? Is that fair?”

She sniffled and nodded slowly back at him.

“You promise?”

“Yes,” she said. “I promise.”

“Okay. I promise too.” He released her shoulders and stood up, swaying. “Here, shake on it,” he said, extending a trembling hand down to her. She hugged him instead, catching him entirely off guard as she wrapped her little arms around him and nestled her cheek against his hip. He had no idea what to do with that, and she made him entirely uncomfortable standing there. He patted her awkwardly atop the head until at last she went away. Hopefully she would keep her word.

Once Pernie was headed quietly to the kitchens, Altin dragged himself back up into his room. The teleport down the stairs had cost him what little strength the slumber of collapse had brought. Light was beginning to fill the chamber from the window and Altin knew he needed rest. He took one last glance at the spell book lying on the floor and resigned himself to scrying up to the moon later on tonight. He hated to put it off, but he didn’t even have the energy to wag a finger at the mouse, which now sat imperiously atop the new loaf of bread, nonchalantly nibbling on Altin’s food. Instinct told him that he should shoo the creature off, but instead, the powerful magician collapsed upon his bed.

Chapter
8

W
hen he finally awoke early the next afternoon, Altin was excited enough by the prospects of the day to be un-phased at having to share his breakfast with a mouse. Granted, had the thieving little pest been in sight, it would likely have suffered some horrible, magically wrought fate, but it wasn’t, and so Altin tore off a large chunk from an unmolested portion of the loaf and scampered up to the battlements to survey the skies above.

The sun wouldn’t set for another two hours, and Luria wouldn’t peek up for a bit longer than that, which gave Altin the time he needed to clean up a little and to review the complicated seeing spell in his notes. He wanted to make sure he had it down perfectly; he didn’t want any mistakes—there were more than a few ex-seers in asylums around Kurr staring blankly at the walls, drooling, mumbling and forever lost to magic gone awry. The gods only knew what they were looking at, and Altin had no intention of finding out. He certainly had no intention of leaving his mind somewhere on the moon.

And finally it was time. Luria rose triumphantly into the night about half an hour after dark, and Altin wasted not one second in delay. He planned to try this spell without the Liquefying Stone at first. Seeing magic was more technique than power, and he thought that this spell might still be within his natural range now that he knew where Luria “was.” He wanted to find out. And so he began.

Leaning upon the parapet, he closed his eyes and muttered the spell beneath his breath. There were no gestures for this spell, only a gentle rhythmic sway. He did as much, allowing the motion of his body to rock him back and forth, a wave washing from shoulder to shoulder while his palms remained planted on the coarse stone.

Seeking the seeing stone that lay on Luria’s red soil, Altin found it almost immediately, sensing its enchanted beacon clearly from across the mana stream. He let his thoughts fall into the currents then, let the mana sweep him away, his consciousness buffeted forwards towards the seeing stone as his body stayed at home. After only a few moments Altin’s sight opened upon the moon, emerging as the mana curtain was, in essence, drawn aside.

Everything was dark, or mostly so. Almost night, like failing twilight or just before dawn. He had to struggle with a wave of dizziness as his vision swam, his bearings all askew, for there was no sense of gravity or ground when using sight like this. He had to center visually, the horizon giving him the only clue, but once oriented, he was able to have a look around.

He was on a barren plain, a desert perhaps, though devoid of any desert plants. Devoid of any desert anything, frankly. Just soil. Reddish gray in the wan light of the enchanted seeing stone, pebbly and without the faintest ripple caused by a gust of wind. And it was silent. There was not a sound at all. Not a bird’s chirp, a bee’s buzz or the slightest breath of air. It was eerie. At first Altin assumed he must have cast the spell wrong, but confirmed with a quick mental review that he had not. He thought it might be the distance, perhaps something unanticipated by the spell. But for now, he let it go. It was just quiet. But at least he was seeing on the moon.

He was exultant with this success, and he had to struggle to maintain his calm so that he would not lose contact with the spell. He glanced down at the seeing stone that would have been lying at his feet, were his feet actually there with him, and briefly noted how different it looked from everything else around. It was so very round and large compared to all the other rocks. He had an urge to reach down and stroke it, to comfort it and thank it for its work. The thought occurred to him that this particular seeing stone would be there for the rest of time, unknown leagues from its home and with no chance of ever getting back, making him nostalgic on its behalf. Such thoughts reminded him that he could turn around and have a look up into the sky, realizing that he could have a glimpse at his own world, a view of Prosperion and of Kurr. Almost tentatively he turned his vision round and looked up into the night.

Back in the tower his body gasped as his vision filled with the radiant wonder of his home world high above. The view was spectacular. Prosperion was a giant blue ball, massive and bright, draped in places by a veil of lacey white clouds swirling and stretching across vast leagues of beautiful azure sea. His planet seemed to have a thin layer of mist around it too, a glow like a translucent shell of shimmering energy, wafer thin and from this distance looking no thicker than a folded handkerchief.

On the right half, just now fully around the horizon, he could see what had to be the continent of Kurr. It was shaped just like the maps back home said it was: the Gulf of Dae cutting in exactly where it should, the Daggerspines crisscrossing darkly in the north, and the Great Forest large enough to be an ocean of green at the center like an arboreal bull’s-eye at which he might throw pebbles from up here. He grinned and just stared for the longest time appreciating the magnitude of what he saw. It was odd to think that he was looking down on himself, knowing that the smile he had looking down on Kurr was really a smile looking up at the moon instead. It was just a delightful paradox, and he allowed himself to take it in.

After a time, he realized that he should get busy and look around. He couldn’t channel mana forever, after all. Besides, there had to be more to Luria than just this rocky desert plain. One advantage of the seeing spell he was using now was the spell’s ability to “run.” However, he had no landmarks or promising features to draw him to any particular place, so he decided it made the most sense to just run towards what appeared to be the coming dawn. And so he did.

He pushed his vision along, slowly at first, no faster than a horse could lope, but after what seemed almost twenty minutes with no discoveries of note, he decided to speed it up a bit. Soon his vision was racing across the surface at speeds the fastest of the Queen’s clipper ships could never hope to match. He zipped across the landscape, rotating his view as he went, searching for anything that might hold his interest and give him a reason to stop for a better look.

A short time later, he intercepted the sunrise and that gave him a moment’s pause. The sun came up all right, but by all nine gods and several of their pets, Altin had never seen it shine so bright. The sun seemed more radiant, more intense up here than it did back on Prosperion. Much brighter. Too bright. Altin made a mental note of that, a reminder to prepare for that reality when he finally came up here himself. And come up here he would, of that he was completely sure. But when he did, he’d make sure to be prepared for the incredible heat.

The sun’s brightness explained the vacant desert upon which he now stood. The more he contemplated it, the more it made perfect sense. Luria was much closer to the sun being way up here like this. It stood to reason that it would be subject to greater heat than Prosperion ever was. And as he glanced about, back towards the darker regions he’d just come from, it occurred to him that when it was daytime down on Kurr, Luria was actually farther away from the sun as well. He began to think that it might get very cold up here at times too. In fact, he suspected he might find snow somewhere if he just kept up the search. That could explain the difference in Luria’s appearance on the horizon back at home, so red sometimes, yet pink when highest up above, made so by the dusting of snow. It all became so obvious to him now, and he nodded down in his tower, certain that he was finally figuring it out. Perhaps if he moved quickly enough, he could catch the snowfall somewhere before the vicious sun had time to melt it all away. He was certainly ready for something new to see. Even if only a river of melted snow.

As he pushed his vision across the barren waste, he finally spotted something on the horizon that indicated a change of scenery. He approached it rapidly and soon found himself, in essence, standing at the edge of a very large and very deep crater. By his estimate it was perhaps a half a league across and roughly a hundred paces down. There was an odd little mound at the bottom, centered precisely, that looked about twenty paces high by fifteen or so across. He was happy to go down and have a look.

The edges of the crater were craggy, but lacked the evidence of erosion that running water usually made. When he found no cracks down in the crater’s bed, it was clear that this particular depression did not get the runoff of his anticipated snows, that it was not a dried-out lake bed or anything similar. There certainly were no fish bones to be found. He speculated that if the heat was as intense as it had to be to burn off the waters in the cycle of a day, there likely were no fish anywhere on the moon. He began to wonder if there was anything up here at all.

The small mound was exactly that, a small mound jutting up abruptly from the center of the enormous hole, featureless beyond a depression at its very top, rather like a miniature volcano that had yet to blow. Altin spent the better part of twenty minutes zooming his vision around it in hopes of something more. But there was nothing else to see. And the silence began to annoy him now.

Life was full of sound. Even the quietest places on Kurr were alive with sound. The most remote meadow in the deepest wood still had the whisper of the wind or the rustle of squirrels and birds amongst the trees to prove that life was taking place. Bugs flew by on noisy wings and animals called out in anger or in glee. Even the rain makes sound when it falls upon the ground, be it on stone, grass or even sand that’s nearly soft as down. There’s always noise. But there was none of it here. Nothing to hear at all. And it vexed him more and more as time went by.

He ran his vision up and out of the crater and began to scour the moon some more. Faster and faster he pushed his sight, as fast as it could go. But there was still nothing. Finally, frustrated at his lack of adequate speed, he pulled out of the spell and brought his vision back to his real eyes in the tower, back to Prosperion and Kurr. He needed the Liquefying Stone if he wanted to go faster.

He moved over a crenel to the wooden bowl and took the stone from beneath its cloth. This will make me swift, he thought as he clutched it in his fist. I want to find the snows tonight.

He carefully recast the seeing spell, cautious not to overdraw the mana with the ugly yellow stone. Even with caution, he found himself practically slapped back onto the surface of the moon. His vision filled so suddenly with the red expanse that he nearly stumbled from surprise. He steadied himself and prepared to resume his search from where he’d left off, intent on moving quickly now with the help of the yellow stone.

The Liquefying Stone softened the mana immensely though, making the nebulous matter almost too soft to be properly malleable for this. He had to practice pushing it around for a bit, kneading it and trying to mold it into the shape he needed for the movement portion of the Seeing spell. Mastery took him a while, but eventually he became used to shaping the squishy mana and was able to put it to the task. He smoothed out a sheet of it, flattening it with long sweeping strokes of his mind, then began to roll it up, bending it around, fashioning something of a funnel in his mythothalamus. He channeled more mana through it then, holding the funnel’s shape taut, like lips pursed to whistle or blow, and then he let the mana through. Soon the coursing currents pushed his sight along, jetting him across the moon’s red surface faster than a ballista bolt.

He traveled around the moon in an unthinkable display of speed, the featureless terrain a blur beneath him as he zipped about. He spent the better part of five hours traveling at such a pace, discovering several more craters, much like the first, although varying in size from some no larger than the Queen’s arena to some so vast that he could barely make out the opposite edge. But in the end, they too became featureless in their own way, and eventually he found himself heading back round into darkness, the sun setting at his back.

Here, he thought with some renewed optimism, here is where I finally find the snows. Of course here. He moved gradually further from the dwindling light, realizing as he did how silly he’d been to expect snow while he’d been moving through the Lurian day. Giddiness must have made him dumb. He laughed silently at himself as he pushed on with fresh energy, traveling onward until the landscape was completely lost in darkness once again, and this time there was no seeing stone to cast even the faintest glow. He had no idea that anything could be so black. Even the stars were no help, and there were so many more of them than he’d ever seen before.

He took the time to look up, to stare out into all those tiny points of light, so many of them, the same constellations he had always known and a few new ones too. There were new stars now, stars he’d never noticed before. Some filled in the old constellations in places that were empty when viewed from Kurr, remaking them, unwinding figures and characters that millenniums of myths had made and creating new ones in their place, nameless images, frightening and foreign and making Altin feel as if he were suddenly all alone.

And oh how dark it was. There was no darkness on Prosperion like this, not unless one was locked in a dungeon deep beneath a castle’s walls. Only the absence of stars marked where the night sky ended and Luria’s surface curved away, a pitch black crescent marking a horizon that seemed ready to swallow him if he ventured any farther than he had. He paused. What was the point of exploration if he couldn’t see a thing? Such darkness would have him running circles until he tapped his magic strength. And there was no way to cast light to accommodate a seeing spell. He made a mental note to maybe work on that one day. But he would not venture further into the dark.

Instead, he took the time to study the sky again, marveling once more at the stars so spectacular and bright. They too were brighter than at home, like the sun had been. He became increasingly aware of how much closer he must be now, how much nearer to the heavens—if there really were such things.

All those little windows, pinpricks leading into the realm of gods, divine light winking through the holes in the universal dome. It seemed somehow bigger from up here on Luria’s distant sands. Almost possible. He laughed. Maybe. But more impressive for sure. More dangerous and amplified. And yet despite the ominous darkness and the odd sense of infinite proximity, the stars still screamed for him to come to them. He could hear them call his name. The breathy whisper of a lover, a distant siren song. Something. Some inexplicable draw. And he knew as he looked into the sky that there was death out there. Death in all that dark and unknown space. Death for him.