Roberto looked into it and let out a low whistle. “So what is it?”
“I think it’s a ship,” she said. “I think they all were.”
“Who the hell builds ships that big?”
“Who the hell sent balls of rock the size of small moons around the galaxy?” she said. “Or hopped around in an old English tower like something out of a fairy tale? This universe is damn sure not what they taught us it was back in elementary school.”
“You ain’t lying about that.”
“So,” inserted Altin, “are you saying that the strikes on your ship were merely the mishap of being in the path of enormous spaceships on their way to Yellow Fire’s world?”
“That’s my guess,” Deeqa said, nodding in a way that made the thick golden rings that held up a long column of her hair glimmer in the ship’s emergency lights.
“Well, they could only be there for one thing, then,” Orli said as she sidled in next to Roberto to look at the tablet. “They’re there for Yellow Fire. The timing can’t be a coincidence.”
“Friend or foe?” Altin wondered aloud. “Though I’ve never heard Blue Fire mention her species having friends.”
“She’s got you,” Roberto said. “So why don’t you ask her if there are others?”
Altin was reluctant to let his enormous planetary friend know that they’d brought Yellow Fire back to life, only to tell her that something else might be going wrong. Orli could read the dilemma in his eyes. “Just ask her,” she said. “She’s never been one to run from a fight. If they are enemies of the Hostiles, Blue Fire can help us deal with it. Hope might make her ferocious, and to protect him … can you imagine? I wouldn’t want to get in her way.”
Altin nodded and immediately sent his thoughts out across the space that separated him and the living world of Blue Fire. He conveyed through his thoughts the happy news that Yellow Fire had come to life, but added in the potentially disturbing part about the timing and appearance of the rift opening nearby. He showed her his memories of the image he’d seen in the helmet, transmitted from Roberto’s ship. He did his best to show her the dulling of the far side of the rift, where the pinkish flames seemed to waver as the objects came through.
Blue Fire, however, already knew, at least the first part. And she could not have cared less, apparently, about the second. The moment he made contact, she blasted him with happiness, and the thoughts that filled him spread his face in a smile so violent the muscles began to cramp. He was dimly aware of the pain of it, but his body was so filled with unbounded happiness that he could only barely hold onto the thought that he might be in some kind of danger.
He staggered back, and for a time those with him gaped at him, wondering if they ought to intervene. Roberto even offered to knock him out, if Orli thought that might break the spell. She shook her head no, but by the way she chewed her lower lip, it was obvious to all in the cargo hold that she was reconsidering as the second minute of Blue Fire’s jubilance went by.
Eventually Blue Fire’s giddiness abated enough that Altin could breathe and break himself out of the contact, an effort that actually required drawing mana through the ring.
“Well?” Orli and Roberto asked simultaneously.
“Well, she knows that Yellow Fire is alive,” he said, panting and leaning on his knees. “Apparently they’ve been … doing whatever Hostiles in love do across all that space. She was too happy to use her words, but I saw her joy, and in it the reflection of his. So, I guess they found each other right away. She’s going to help him recuperate. Apparently he’s still very weak.”
Orli jumped up and down and clapped her hands, her eyes glittering. “Thank God,” she said, elation still driving her to bounce. “I’m so happy. Finally, after all that time.”
“What about the big ships, or whatever the hell they are?” Roberto asked. “Did she tell you what that is?”
“I don’t even know if any of what I tried to tell her about them got through,” Altin confessed. “I opened up to her with my ideas, but it was like getting hit by Palace-sized fireballs of flaming happiness. I was having trouble finding my own thoughts in all of it.”
“Yeah, we saw that, dude. I’ll be honest; you looked kind of dumb there for a while. I thought you were going to start drooling or something.”
Orli made a ticking sound with her tongue against the roof of her mouth, but Roberto shrugged and put his hands out defensively. “What? You saw it too.”
“The point is,” Altin pressed on, “I still have no idea what those ships represent, friend or foe, much less what they actually are. I suspect I’m going to have a hard time getting through to her through all of that interstellar mooning for a while. I had thought to be the bearer of good news, but it seems now, she has little enough need of me.”
“Well, good,” Orli said. “I for one am happy for her. And for you. You hardly needed her in your head all the time. She always put you in a mood.”
“Whoa, look who’s all sympathy now,” Roberto said. “Wasn’t even a week ago, and you were on him about that promise that he made.”
“Well, that was a hard time for us both. But it all worked out in the end.” She glowered at him a little bit, however, for taking Altin’s side.
“All except for those big ships,” Altin said. “I’m not ready to concede that they are part of an outcome that we can all call ‘all worked out.’ I believe we ought to go and make sure Yellow Fire is not in some sort of danger now.”
“Dude, I’m not trying to be a dick here, but my ship is out of service until I get this tank back up and the rest of the ship checked out,” Roberto said. “No way I’m risking it or anyone else on it until we square this away.” He patted the tank that Chelsea was strapping down.
“Agreed. But my tower is not.”
“Why not just look around with your magical eyeball thing?” Roberto asked. He lifted his hands up, right in front of his face, and waggled his fingers, peering out through the motion. “Just check it out that way. That’s way faster and less risky.”
“Yes, but you’ll recall we can’t see those ships with our eyes. In fact, only some of your equipment picked them up at all. But at least some of them did.”
“That’s true,” Roberto said. “But only after they damn near ground us down like cheese. You should look before we leap; you know what I’m saying?”
The events of the last hour had rattled them all. Emotions were high, and it was a few moments before Altin recognized the sagacity of the advice. He took a breath and cast a seeing spell, fully expecting to see nothing. But he was wrong.
There upon the surface of Yellow Fire’s new red world appeared four long, wide shapes, each with a huge oblong forward section that flared out and then tapered back liked the end of a shovel or perhaps a pit viper’s head. The rest of each ship—long and narrow, seeming as long as a mountain range—stretched out behind the thick forward end with a graceful quality. They were obviously rigid but, in being so, conveyed a certain fluidity. They weren’t pretty, per se, all one color, a brownish green that reminded him of the color of seaweed, and the surface of each was knotty and imperfect in a way, like something grown or even eroded rather than something built. If they were ships, they certainly weren’t held together with rivets and welded seams, not that Altin could see. At the narrowest end, the enormous length finally split in two, forked like the tongue of a dragon, and in places along the end of each tine, they flared out with flattened extensions that looked like tiny wings. These seemed tiny from Altin’s perspective compared to the rest of the ship, but in the context of the real mountains and the large rock formations nearby, which Altin was familiar with, the smallest of these were at least a half measure wide. In short, whatever those things were, they were huge.
Each of them had landed upon the surface with the thick ends, heads, as Altin thought of them, pointed toward one another, as if they were in conversation. They left a space between them that was, by Altin’s guess, perhaps ten measures across, and as he watched, a large opening appeared in the top of each ship, roughly midway down its length. Great gusts of smoke or steam poured forth from those openings—the winds on the surface were so violent it was hard to be sure—smearing the emissions to the barest streaks of white, and shortly after, they were gone.
Something long, wide, and flat rolled itself out of each opening, like a tongue lolling out of a mouth upon the ground. These were the same color as the rest of the ship, but they unfurled gradually out over the marginally flat upper surface of the vessels, then down the sides onto the red dirt of the planet. Once they had touched the ground, they straightened and appeared to Altin’s eye to become perfectly rigid.
Altin watched breathlessly, though somewhere in the back of his mind, he absently considered dropping the spell and telling the others what he saw, perhaps even setting up a scrying illusion in which they could all watch. But he couldn’t make himself let go of the seeing spell just yet. He couldn’t stop watching.
Shortly after the four tongues went rigid, four angular contraptions came up from the dark spaces inside the enormous ships, each of them with giant wheels, several on each side of the vehicle—if in fact that’s what they were—and around these rows of wheels were wrapped continuous bands of yet more of the blotchy green-brown material, though this time jointed together in small, parallel plates. The rows of wheels rolled upon these bands, the bands themselves moving down and around the front and back wheels in a continuous loop that seemed to him meant to supply traction for the machines.
The machines rolled out from their ships, down the rigid tongue ramps, and onto the storm-churned plain. Each machine sent up a long pole from its top, nearly as thick as the whole machine. When the poles, like enormous, fat masts, reached what Altin thought might be a half measure in the air, they sprouted new growth, which branched horizontally like giant spars.
Altin really wanted to break the spell and tell everyone what he saw. He could hear the muffled anxiousness of them speaking around him. Their curiosity was palpable, and he nearly lost the spell anyway.
But he held on long enough to watch the spars as they in turn sprouted wide ends, like spoons, only flat at the leading edges. When they were fully formed, the mast poles themselves bent downward at the halfway point, suddenly sinuous, and stretched themselves out over the ground as if they were the feelers of some great insect. He almost had time to wonder what they were doing, when the feelers went rigid again and all three machines began to dig.
All four machines plunged their flat-tipped spoons, obviously shovels, into the ground, and what Altin had thought of as stays now began to rotate like the blades on a windmill, driving the spoons into the land and ripping out enormous chunks of red soil and stone. The shovel ends spun round on the pole, an axle now, and flung the dirt into the wind.
Smaller shafts emerged from the sides of the digging machines as the shape of the hole they were making formed. These extended out above the wheels, unfolding like the legs of a giant grasshopper. They angled out to brace against the dirt and thrust themselves deep into the surface, obviously meant to provide greater stability. Then nothing more emerged. The machines set themselves to the work in perfect unison, and soon they were excavating with remarkable efficiency.
It was hard to believe how quickly they dug. Altin watched in growing horror as the movements of the shovel arms became so rapid he could no longer see the shovels turning anymore. All he saw were four plumes of dust blowing out across the vast flatlands, a red stain on the wind like bloody smoke from a fire.
When at last he broke the seeing spell, his friends were staring at him impatiently. He thought about trying to explain it, but instead he anchored a scrying spell to the spot he’d been watching from and linked it to an illusion in the air, allowing them to see it for themselves.
By the time he was done and could clear his head from the casting well enough to gauge their response, Orli was in tears.
Chapter 50
S
eawind’s teleport spell put Pernie right back where she’d been the day he’d first appeared at Calico Castle: on the seventh floor of the tall central spire, which had been Tytamon’s bedchamber for centuries, but which now stood decorated to appease Orli’s taste. Orli hadn’t been in it since the day Pernie tried to shoot her through the heart with her own laser, and Pernie knew it immediately. There was a film of dust on everything, including the duvet, and the rug still had a burn mark where the laser beam had been redirected toward the floor by the elf. Pernie took it all in, the bed just as it had been when Pernie had been moping there, the boxes of shoes right where they’d been dropped at the base of the stairs leading up to the topmost floor. There could be no doubt. It was clear neither Orli nor Kettle had come back here after that day.
Pernie smiled and was glad. Maybe she really was still in time.
She absently fingered the little pouch of her sling, her old weapon now tied around her waist again like a belt, though the dangling ends no longer dangled quite so far. They’d given her back all her weaponry, her sling, her little knife, and her amulet that was the shrunken version of Ilbei Spadebreaker’s magical pickaxe. But they had taken away her spear and her glass knife, and they wouldn’t let her bring Knot with her either. They told her those belonged to the Sava’an’Lansom, a title of which she was not yet fully in possession.
She didn’t care about titles, though. She just wanted one thing. To see if Orli Pewter had married Master Altin yet. The untouched room gave her hope.