Hostiles (The Galactic Mage series) by John Daulton Page B

stared, his mouth open, his mind still processing Altin’s hasty summary a full half minute after Altin’s tale was told. His brows furrowed, then un-furrowed, then furrowed again. “So, you’re saying …,” he began, but stopped, and there followed another few sequences of wrinkles forming upon his brow.
    “They’re blaming Orli for it,” Altin said as he watched the doctor trying to work it out. “Or at least for part of it, and after all that’s happened between us, they think she is a traitor and that I, that all of us, everyone on Prosperion, have been in league with Blue Fire all along.”
    That much the doctor could grasp easily enough. “I can’t say as I blame them,” he said. “From where they stand, that’s surely how it appears.”
    Altin nodded. “But it’s not true, and Orli must not die for their misapprehension.”
    “No, she must not,” the doctor agreed. “But what about this Blue Fire? That seems a larger problem, don’t you think?”
    “I’m working on it. But I can’t do anything until Orli is safe.”
    “Ah, the priorities of youth,” cooed the older man. He nodded to himself as he said it, which made the folds of the many chins cascading down his neck spread outward like smiles intent on strangling him.
    “She doesn’t have time for a lecture on priorities. I need you to find her. My divination is too weak, and there isn’t time.”
    “Surely they’ll have a trial and that sort of thing first. The Earth people are not orcs.”
    “Their entire world is surrounded by an uncountable number of Blue Fire’s legions. They will know I am coming for her, and they’ll cut her down as quickly as Her Majesty would were she in their shoes. Her Majesty is not an orc either, and you know how it would go if things were reversed.”
    “Hmmm. You’re probably right. Then let’s not waste any more time.”
    Altin could not have looked more relieved. “Please, hurry.”
    “I think speed is the last thing you need, my boy. You’re asking me to find someone on a planet I’ve never even seen and as it relates to a tumult of events caused by another planet I’ve not only never seen but never had a chat with, as you seem to have, and much less a thousand other intricate details about which I have no knowledge at all.”
    “I can fix that. Some of it anyway.”
    The doctor looked intrigued and terrified in turns by the way Altin’s eyes were narrowing. “Then do so,” he said, but his expression made it look as if he were admitting that having his head removed was the best remedy for a headache.
    Altin wasted not another moment, and by the time the doctor had finished speaking, the two of them were at Calico Castle. Altin had teleported them directly to the clean room, a space reserved for teleportation in the tall tower that had been occupied for centuries by Calico Castle’s recently murdered keeper, the great mage Tytamon.
    “That was fast,” commented the doctor. “I didn’t see you cast.”
    “I’ve gotten better,” was all Altin said. He closed his eyes for a few moments after that, then stepped out of the chamber, beckoning the doctor to follow.
    Altin went straight to an arched window on the far side of the cluttered room, stepping over the tumble of Tytamon’s collected artifacts and magical curiosities as he went. “There,” he said, pointing through the window. “That’s Blue Fire.”
    The doctor nearly stumbled twice trying to navigate his prodigious bulk across the room, squeezing between tables that were set at random angles and which created pathways never meant to accommodate such commodiousness. Muttering and cursing his way through them, stepping over and around the stacks of books and the odd antiquities, and doing so with far less grace than Altin had, he finally approached the window where Altin stood. Upon looking out, his mouth fell open and stayed that way for quite some time.
    This was a man who had never been to space. Despite Altin’s several