Hostiles (The Galactic Mage series) by John Daulton

time to explain what he was there to ask of them. They’d simply dismissed him. But such was the vanity of the Church sometimes, with its answers already in hand, its diviners full sure of themselves and often when curiosity would serve them best. But Klovis had told him they were working on the Hostile problem, which he supposed was hopeful. And she had healed his hands and knees, which he was grateful for.
    While he was glad to know that the Maul was responsive to the request of the Queen and that she was working to get Blue Fire to call off the Hostiles, he knew it wasn’t going to happen. He knew it better than the Maul ever could, for he was certain Blue Fire would not open her heart to the priests any deeper than she had to him. Far less so, he surmised, and he’d been there physically. They’d never get that close. The love of Worship was not the same as the love of Love, and he knew with more than mere instinct that Blue Fire could sense the difference and would never allow the calculating nature of power, even in the background wisps of the Maul’s mind, into her private places, the deepest chambers of her heart, the vulnerable place where her life force was. And if the Maul didn’t have that kind of access, she wasn’t going to change Blue Fire’s mind and get her to call off the attack. Altin couldn’t prove it, but he knew it in the way one knows that rain has come by the petrichor.
    However, his mission remained. The dismissal by Anvilwrath’s priests in Leekant merely meant he needed another diviner. He’d been confident that the combined power of the Maul’s circle of twenty-five could find anything for him, but that was no longer an option. They were busy. So his next best option, being that his own lowly level of divination was not worth the time it would take to try, not to mention the fact that he was already in Leekant, was Doctor Leopold. He made his way straight to the Guilds Quarter part of town.
    He burst into the doctor’s office twenty minutes later, panting for having jogged the entire way. A few months ago, he might have risked teleporting into a back alley to expedite the trip despite such things being expressly against the law. But not now, not with the Orc Wars ratcheted back up. There were wards up and watchers monitoring the mana flow. The last thing he needed was conflict with the city guard, running was only slow, a delay with the guards could be catastrophic.
    “Why hello, Sir Altin,” greeted the buxom and nearly-ever-cheerful Lena Foxglove. “I’m glad to see your arm has recovered so nicely, even though you didn’t let the doctor finish healing the incision.” Her smile was wide and white, her eyes sparkling, but he was glad to see she didn’t go to the great lengths she’d used to in displaying her cleavage to him every time he came by. He had Roberto to thank for that.
    “Thank you,” he said. “It’s fine. I need to see Doctor Leopold immediately.”
    “Oh, you always need to see him ‘immediately,’” she teased. “I don’t suppose you have another mangled mouse for him, do you?”
    He shook his head, impatiently. “Lena, I really need to see him right away. It’s a matter of life and death.”
    “For you or for Taot? You know the doctor had nightmares for a month after spending that much time with the dragon that day. You really should make a point of acknowledging what he did for you. He still gets requests for veterinary services because of it, and he’s lost two good patients because he refused their pets.”
    “Lena, please. It’s Orli. She is going to die if I don’t speak to him right now.”
    “Oh,” replied the comely receptionist then, a thin film of ice forming over the lake of her loquaciousness. “Wouldn’t that be a shame?” She made a show of looking through some papers on her desk. “Let me see,” she mumbled as she rifled through them.
    Altin went to the door leading back into the doctor’s office and examination rooms and