Altin moved his vision to the edge of the heart chamber and saw the twins loading up crates and stacking them one atop the next. Everything that could be taken apart on the water saw had been, and it now awaited Altin in pieces, ready to be sent back into the
Glistening Lady
’s cargo bays. Professor Bryant had proudly proclaimed it in “great shape” and assured Altin that he would get all of his deposit back on those pieces of equipment that had been rented rather than bought outright. Altin could hardly care. Money didn’t matter. For all the expense and effort that had gone into it, they had what now? They had no way of knowing, possibly ever, if there had been or would be any value in any of it for Yellow Fire, or Blue Fire, or for anyone. That’s what they had.
He turned his sight away from the brothers at their work and watched the dim, steady pulse of the heart stone again, once more moving close to it. He’d always thought this was a work of optimism, and he’d done it only because Orli had pleaded with him to try. She was so passionately sure it was going to work. Her heart, like Kettle’s, beat for the service of others, where his seemed to beat only for his own curiosity. They’d been right about him a moment before.
But how can one be a creature other than one’s self? He was a creature of curiosity; his appetite, like Taot’s, was dictated by nature beyond his control. And, if truth be told, even as he reflected on it, it was working on him now as he stared at the purple pulse of Yellow Fire’s heart.
Why hadn’t it worked? Why wasn’t it growing or taking hold? He must have done something wrong. But what? It was clear that Yellow Fire’s heart still had life left in it. Wasn’t it? Or was that pulsing light simply some ambient quality, like the glow of metal that’s been heated in a forge? That might be said to have life too, but left alone long enough, that life, that glow, fades away. Perhaps the light in the heart of a dead Hostile simply took a great deal of time to fade away.
Still, if that were the case, then why did the crystals on Yellow Fire’s old moon in orbit above R3 have different properties than the crystals in dead Red Fire? If Yellow Fire had been completely absent of life, then those dull gray Liquefying Stones around him on that moon should have been brittle like the ones in dead Red Fire’s world were. But they weren’t. In fact, they still weren’t. Even now, with Yellow Fire cut out and transplanted into the heart chamber of the red world, the stones on the old moon were exactly as they had been. Altin had already checked and rechecked several times. The professor and Stacy Walters had looked in their machines. Nothing had changed beyond the movement of Yellow Fire’s heart.
Professor Bryant had originally said the life force must flow from the heart stone through the crystals and back, in some kind of loop. But that loop was broken. Yellow Fire was out and transplanted; he was on another world. And yet, apparently, there was still some kind of connection to the old. He wasn’t connecting to the new. But Altin had connected him with the spell. So something was missing. There had to be something else.
Or else it just wouldn’t work. Maybe it couldn’t. Maybe it was hopeless.
Which Altin refused to believe. Too many people believed. Too many smart people, too many loving hearts, had said that it ought to work. People of faith were praying, for Mercy’s sake. Which meant it had to be something Altin had done wrong.
He thought back through the spell he’d cast. It wasn’t so long ago that he couldn’t remember it clearly now. He was confident he hadn’t missed anything. He’d been careful with the clay, spread it evenly. He’d double- and triple-checked all of it. He’d even done it without the ring, channeling the mana exactly as the spell had been written, to the very last phrase, the very last syllable, all precisely as designed with no deviation in any way.
He thought about that, the part of the spell he’d done with the ring, the filling of the seam with mana. He wondered if perhaps he shouldn’t have worn the ring for that part either. Perhaps somehow he’d changed the texture of it. It didn’t seem likely, but one never knew about such things. Mana had certainly never operated any differently for casting other spells. Ice and fire conjured perfectly with the ring. Teleportation worked exactly as it should. But those weren’t spells over time. He wondered if maybe that could be the difference. Some of the mana had been channeled with the ring, some hadn’t. Then he’d joined them. He wondered enough to verify.
“We should go back,” he said suddenly, looking up at the two women still conversing over tea. Their vacant and surprised expressions prompted him to go on. “I need to go back and check something. I may have made a big mistake.”
“What mistake?” Orli asked.
“On Yellow Fire. I might have channeled the mana wrong from the start.”
“But you couldn’t have,” Orli said. “You said yourself that if you cast the spell wrong, the heart stone would have turned to ash. All of it would have.”
“Dust,” he corrected, biting his lip much like Orli sometimes did. “I did say that, though, didn’t I? Still, I think I want to have another look.”
Orli set her mug of tea down on the tray that Kettle still held out like a shelf. She couldn’t help the look of hope that came into her eyes. “I’ll call Roberto and have him tell the team we’re on our way.” She ran off immediately.
Altin and Kettle watched her go, her shapely legs carrying her swiftly through the meadow grass.
“She’s a beautiful creature,” Kettle remarked. “’Twas a time I didn’t look so different than that.”
Altin smiled and looked down into her ruddy face. “You’re still beautiful, Kettle. And there’s not one person in this castle that doesn’t love you through and through, myself most of all.”
She smiled up at him, some remark forming on her lips, but she checked it and seemed to relax a little bit, her shoulders rounding a little like some burden had been lifted off, or perhaps at least been set down for a while. “Thank ya,” she said. “And I’ll be mahself in time.”
“I know you will,” he said. “But no rush. We’ll have you however you are for as long as you’ll have us.”
She smiled again and reached up and stroked his check with her rough, gentle hands. “You’re a good boy,” she said. “Now get off with ya before yer space friends grow weary waitin’ on ya out there in the stars. What sorta Galactic Mage is late fer a thing like that, eh?”
He smiled, feeling better than he thought he deserved to, and headed for the gates after Orli, who was already inside.
Chapter 46
P
ernie had never seen Djoveeve cry before. She knew that the woman could because Seawind had remarked on it before—after the last time Pernie had nearly been killed by the great sargosagantis. But this time, as she coughed out water into the sand, she saw the tears running freely down the old woman’s cheeks. Djoveeve cried, and yet she looked overjoyed, as Pernie coughed and coughed and coughed. The more she coughed, the more water came. It came and came. She could hardly believe so much water was in her, as if she’d choked on the whole ocean. Djoveeve began choking too, on her own saltwater, and as she saw Pernie’s blue eyes fluttering and beginning to focus on her, she tried to scold her. She tried, but the words simply couldn’t make it past the sobs that came instead. She clutched Pernie to her bony old breast and held her, half yelling, half weeping for joy.
“Infernal child,” she finally managed as the sobs subsided some. “Stupid, brave, amazing little child.”
Pernie felt a little dim, and she was marginally aware that she’d likely nearly drowned. Her chest hurt very bad, and she suddenly had to throw up.
She twisted in Djoveeve’s arms and puked even more seawater for a while, puking so hard she saw spots swimming in her eyes. After a time, that passed, and she sat up and stared at the red-eyed woman, blinking and trying to get her vision right.
She realized someone was standing behind the old woman and looked up to see Sandew there, the lean young hunter shaking his head ever so perceptibly as he leaned upon his spear. Voices blew in upon the wind coming off the sea as well, and Pernie turned to see the lithe figures of three women kneeling in the surf, elven women, wet skin shimmering, a pale green hue that reflected the sunlight as the surf came and went around them. Their slender bodies were unmoved by the passing of the waves, and when the bigger waves came and rose nearly to their necks, crashing past and flowing up the sand, their long opalescent hair flowed in and out with the water like strands of liquid pearl. Their hair was the only motion caused by the movement of the waves, even the big ones, and despite the power of the surf. Their bodies remained unwavering, as if they were part of it, or part of the world. They were beautiful.
Pernie sucked in a breath upon seeing them. She pulled it in so hard it burned nearly as bad as when she’d breathed in all that water not so long ago. The effect of their beauty wasn’t much different than a physical blow. It was jarring. She thought in that instant that she might get wounded in her heart like Djoveeve had, like an arrow or the penetration of a knife cutting right through, but she did not. She waited for it, though, remembering what Djoveeve had told her about falling in love with them.
Pernie stared right at them, trying to somehow see them more. A strange tightness gripped her in the chest, an anxiousness she could not explain. Their beauty was inexplicable. Astonishing. Even painful. But she didn’t think she loved them.
The most recent wave drew back into the sea, and Pernie realized they were naked. She looked upon their nude figures admiringly. She did not love them, but she hoped someday that she might look like that, strong, toned arms, pert breasts, and a tummy with subtle lines where the muscle lay beneath. She felt certain that if she did, Master Altin would love her instantly. Seeing their graceful strength made her want to climb more trees and run longer in the sand while carrying her pack with Knot rolled up inside.
One of them raised a slender arm and waved at her. She waved back, and the other two did likewise. She smiled at them, and they smiled back, speaking to one another in voices that once more blew inland like songs, melodies swept in from a ship full of music sailing by somewhere out of sight.
She wondered if her voice would ever sound like that, be its own melody.
She looked down at her own body, skinny and straight as a spear. Her blonde hair hung dark and lank against the silk tunic, which in turn lay plastered against her skin. She wriggled her lips contemplatively, then looked up at Djoveeve, who was wiping the last tears from her eyes.
“You’ve scared the very last years of my life from me,” the ancient Sava’an’Lansom said. “I should think you’ve cost me a decade with that little stunt. How many times must I tell you, must we all tell you, not to approach the sargosaganti?”
“I almost rode it,” Pernie argued. “I did. I was very close.”
“You were more than close, little Sava,” said Sandew, unexpectedly and with more than a touch of awe. “I was there and saw you.” He pointed with his spear to the far end of the cliff, where it curved and sloped away out of view. “I heard the caterwauling of the females as they all struck out into the sea, and I watched as you fought with him. You rode him all the way out there, past the shelf where the seabed begins to fall away.”
Pernie looked back to the ocean, following the direction of Sandew’s spear, but from here, she couldn’t tell where the water deepened. She did note that the elven women had all gone away. She glanced up and down the shoreline, but there was no sign of their having walked away.
“Well, she nearly got herself killed for it,” Djoveeve said, and Pernie could tell, by the timbre of the woman’s voice, the initial shock of fright was fading and real anger would be coming straightaway. It worked the same with Kettle, but Pernie was used to it by now. Djoveeve wouldn’t try to paddle her behind like Kettle would, and if she did, Pernie knew perfectly well that she could get away. She could paddle her back if she wanted to. If there was one thing that had changed for the better since coming to the land of the elves, it was that Pernie would never be subject to a spanking again. That made her smile, and just thinking it actually kept the smile upon her lips the whole trek back to the cave, which Djoveeve made them walk because she wasn’t going to let Pernie try to run off again, as she put it, “on that obnoxious bug of yours.”
When they arrived at the cave, they found Seawind waiting for them with an unexpected guest: the War Queen’s Royal Assassin, Shadesbreath, returned from the land of Kurr. It was he who spoke first to her as they came into the dim interior of the cave.
“I hear they are calling you Sava’an’Sargosagantis,” he said.
She frowned and wrinkled up her nose. Nobody ever called her that before.
“Word travels quickly, Sava,” he said. “And riding sargosaganti has never been done.”
“And it shouldn’t be done,” Djoveeve said. “It is disrespectful and disobedient.”
“And very brave,” he said. “All three traits of a proper Sava’an’Lansom.”
“A dead one eventually,” Djoveeve remarked.
“Perhaps,” he said. “But we will see. One thing is certain. She is ready for the test.”
Cold fear gripped Pernie then, colder than lungs full of salty seawater. She hadn’t gotten away in time, and now they were going to make her fight the orc.
“I don’t want to fight the orc,” she said, her voice rising to near a whine. Her body, cold and tired and exhausted, seemed to have finally given up its last ounce of strength. “I don’t want to. Please don’t make me fight it. I just want to go home.”