The Star Magicians

7. THE STAR OF TOMORROW

THE NOONTIDE SUN blazed down on a windswept hillside a few leagues east of the Sea of Dragons. Below, sleek purple lizards splashed in green water, returning to the scarlet-sanded shore with wriggling fish in their long scaly jaws. But here on the hill’s crest was only a bare knoll grown with tough, sighing tendrils of blue-green whipgrass, between the foam-crested waves and the empty sky above, where both suns burned clear and bright.

Calastor appeared, melting from thin air, the slim girl in his arms. She sank to the grass, still trembling with tension. Only seconds before she had seen the arrows flashing, the ring of grim, masked faces, the thunderous shouts and cries had beat on her ears—and now, the smooth sea, empty sky, and this placid hilltop, bathed in the sunlight.

“Here we will be safe,” Calastor said, seating himself on the grass beside her.

“Safe?” She laughed shakily. That will be a novelty! I’ve gone from one danger to the next so swiftly in the last day and night that I’ve nearly forgotten what the word means.” She peered at the tall, gray-eyed young man with unrestrained curiosity.

“Now that I think of it,” she said, “where is ‘here’? And how did we get to this place?”

He shrugged. “It would take too long to explain—and you would not understand anyway, unless you have had the benefits of an education in plenum mechanics. We are a few miles from Argion-City.”

“And how did you transport us here?” she demanded again.

“Well … let’s say I bent space, making this hilltop so ‘close’ to the Hall of Zargon that we could travel between the two places with a single step.”

She shivered a little. “Magic?”

“If you like.”

The girl gazed at sea and shore and the ridges of blue-green hills that retreated towards the horizon.

“And where, from here?”

Calastor stretched out his long legs on the grass, resting on one elbow, regarding her quizzically. “That’s a good question. I had planned to travel with the Star Rovers to the next world in their march of conquest, but rescuing you has destroyed my disguise, and also complicated things.”

She flushed a little under his thoughtful eyes. “What do you mean?”

“You are a new problem. What am I supposed to do with you? Take you with me, as I continue my plan to harry the Rovers until their morale crumbles? I can hardly do that … yet I cannot spare the time to transport you elsewhere.”

“Why time? If you can ‘walk’ from one planet to the next with your weird magic—”

He shook his head impatiently. “That means of travel is limited to brief trips. It would take a mental focus thousands of orders stronger than mine to bend space across interstellar distances. No, we shall travel by my ship.”

Lurn stared around at emptiness.

“What ship?”

Perion’s mockery glinted in Calastor’s laughing eyes.

“This one.”

He did something with one of the several rings on his fingers, and Lurn stifled a shriek of surprise as a sudden shadow fell over them. Looking up, she saw a small spacecraft hovering on negative gravity above the hilltop. A lean, wolfish speedster of glittering white alloy: a racing-craft, from the slim, rakish lines of hull and needle-prow. A trap slid open beside the keel, and a boarding ramp extended to their feet.

“Come aboard the Wolfhound and we’ll discuss our problem over some lunch.”

They boarded the craft and went forward to the small cabin. Lurn was almost beyond wonder by now, nearly accustomed to these thought-swift changes and appearances. But the Wolfhound was a miracle of engineering beyond anything in her experience, a sleek, deadly fighter, a dream-ship that surpassed even the technology of the Lost Ages of the Empire. Calastor indicated the shower and invited her to refresh herself, while he busied himself in the small but admirably complete galley. While she was gone he again made the craft invisible to the Rover-fleet’s detectors, and lifted her from the surface into orbit above Argion, near the orbiting ships of Drask’s mighty fleet.

When Lurn emerged from the shower, bathed, refreshed and relaxed, he lifted his eyebrows with surprise. Gone was the timid dancing girl with disheveled hair and tearstained cheeks, her lush young body scarce-veiled in floating tatters of soiled gauze. In her place stood a flushed young tomboy in tawny-yellow tunic, long legs tight-stockinged in golden-brown Altairian silk, small feet shod in sandals of choate-leather. Her eyes sparkled at his expression of surprise.

“Am I so different?” she asked demurely.

“I’d hardly know you!” he swore. “I see you’ve discovered my collection of costumes?”

She nodded, and slid into a seat before the lunch he had prepared—wine, cheese, olives, and spiced meats.

“Yes. I wonder that you need them, with your magic appearance-changing rings.”

Pouring wine into her goblet, he shrugged. “There are times when I cannot use the illusion-casters … shipboard, for example, makes it difficult because of the conflicting magnetic fields.”

“Then how had you planned to travel with the Rovers?”

“By pretending to be space-sick, and keeping to my cabin throughout the voyage. Which brings us back to the question of what I am to do with you …”

“I should return to Malkh. My talisman was destroyed, and My Lady will be wondering what has happened to me.”

He finished his meal and sat back with a cigaret of blue Harza smoke-weed.

“That raises another question,” he said, contemplating the veils of smoke. “In this struggle between the adepts of Parlion and the Rim-Barbarians, the Green Goddess represents an unknown quantity. Is She with us—is She against the Warlord?”

Lurn veiled her eyes and said noncommittally, “Her motives are Her own, and I have not been in the Sisterhood long enough to know Her plans. I was simply detailed to join the dancers in Argion-Palace and to watch, listen, and serve as Her eyes and ears.”

His attention sharpened.

“How—‘not long in the Sisterhood?’ All rumor says that those who serve Niamh of Malkh are sworn to Her service from childhood.”

“Not I,” Lurn said. “I came to Her by accident. On the world of my birth, my House pledged me in marriage to one whom I would rather die than wed. I stole a small yacht and fled … but the mechanisms were faulty. All our ships are breaking down for lack of any trained in the lore of repairing them. For weeks I drifted in the void, till gravity drew my vessel slowly into the fiery embrace of a green star. Although I knew it not, this star was parent to Malkh, the Green World of the Goddess. She it was who drew my ship, by what weird art I know not, from certain doom to the safety of Her realm. And, hearing my woeful tale, gave me refuge in Her Order.”

“Then you are sworn to chastity and the unwedded state?”

Rather curiously, her eyes dropped and a flush stained her white cheeks.

“No, I am … but a novice. I have not yet taken the Vows.”

Calastor grinned. “Well, I am glad of that.”

“Why, Lord?” she inquired guilelessly. Now it was his turn to avert his gaze.

“Oh … I … do not approve of … chastity. On Parlion we are few—so few—and marriage is a sacred bond,” he said, somewhat stumblingly.

Her gaze sobered. “That raises questions within me. If you intend to take me to Malkh, I must reveal its location, which is secret. How do I know you Parlion-adepts are Her friends? I cannot dare assist one who may be My Lady’s foe …”

“Let me allay your fears. Come.”

He led her forward into the sleek, low-ceilinged control cabin. Softly-glowing panels of winking lights lined the metal walls and there was a faint humming of concealed engines. At his touch, the cabin darkened. Another touch to a panel, and a misted arch of light sprang into being. It spanned the dimness like a curved wing of granulated luminance, and Lurn recognized it as a miniature simulacrum of the Carina-Cygnus Arm of the Galaxy … a cunning illusion, cast in three dimensions.

“This, you know, is the Galactic Arm wherein we are now,” Calastor said. “Watch.” One star flashed scarlet. “This is Scather, this red spark here at the edge of the Rift between Carina-Cygnus and the outer, Perseus Arm. The Rovers cut a bloody swath through the Rift-worlds, those lonely planets scattered in the gap between the two arms—then struck at Scather, only weeks ago.”

A second star flashed red.

“This is Argion, the next world at which they struck. See how it lies inwards towards the depths of the Orion Spur from Scather, which lies on the edge of the Rift.”

A third and fourth star flashed into crimson light, like tiny novas of sanguine radiance. And between the four red stars a thread of crimson light sprang, bridging them.

“This third star is the planet Xulthoom, the World of Mists. I was privy to their secrets in my guise as Perion the Piper just long enough to find that all Parlion’s direst predictions were true, and that Xulthoom was the next target for their conquest after they complete the loot of Argion.”

“And this fourth star?” Lurn asked.

“Notice how the three worlds, Scather, Argion, and Xulthoom, lie in a straight line pointing inwards of the Orion Spur?” he asked, by way of reply. “See the red line of light connecting them? The fourth star is directly in line with their last three conquests—although they have yet to leave Argion and hurl their fleets against the Planet of Mists. At all costs, I must keep them from dabbling their bloody hands on that fourth world …”

Calastor, brooding on the image of the arch of stars, did not notice how suddenly, as if recognizing that fourth world, Lurn blanched, color draining from her face. Faintly, she sank into one of the pilot chairs, shuddering as with some mysterious terror. But Calastor’s attention was turned from her.

Recovering her composure, the girl said, “Well?”

The vision vanished, and soft lights filled the cabin once again. Calastor seated himself across from her and lit another blue cigaret.

“Eight centuries ago, the Barbarian legions extinguished the last flickering torch of the mighty Carina Empire … and ours is still an Age of Darkness. During all these years, the nomad fleet of the Rovers has drifted from world to world at whim, looting, wrecking, smashing the fabric of civilization. No central authority has arisen to restore the web of Imperial power. What have we instead? On your birth-world, space-technology has almost become a lost art: as the old Imperial machines wear out, there are none to repair them or to replace them with new. On Argion, a whole planet has slid back into a feudal age of peasant-and-lord, slavery has arisen again, old forgotten gods have returned … Within a generation, Argion will be a savage world, stumbling through the darkness, bereft of science, lost in superstition and barbarism. And this is true of other worlds as well, of Shazar and Netharna, Valthome and Bellerophon, Ormish and Prydain, Chorver, Pharvis … half the worlds among the Near Stars are decaying into feudal savagery, forgetting what fragments they yet retain of Civilization.

“Only Parlion holds out against the Night of Chaos falling slowly over the Galaxy. Our little world was settled in the high noon of the Empire, as an outpost of science. There, on that rocky, barren little world, the White Order strives to serve The Light. The Adepts have mastered the forgotten science of historiodynamics: the exact prediction of social changes. Over the centuries, our Order has struggled to keep alight the torch of technological civilization on many worlds. We are few, and weak in physical force. We have no fleet, no navy, no battery of mighty weapons with which to oppose the Barbarians. Instead, agents such as I battle against the Darkness with a forgotten weapon the Imperial Ancients called Psychowarfare.”

“The war of mind against mind?” Lurn hazarded.

He nodded soberly. “Our weapons are suggestion … terror … mystery. We are vague, formless shadows, striking from the darkness and vanishing. Slowly, remorselessly, we are eroding the morale of the Rovers, playing on the superstitions that rule the Barbarian mind … trying with secret and subtle tactics to wreck them psychologically. But now our secret war has come into its final phase, and now we are fighting not just the Barbarians, but time itself.”

She watched him with curious, fascinated attention.

“The Masters of my Order work towards one glorious goal: the creation of a New Empire. Weighing and measuring the balance and inner dynamics of socioeconomic forces, we have determined that only one world is perfect to become the Nucleus of this Empire we intend to guide into birth. This world is the fourth red star you saw flame on the projection.”

Lurn’s hand flew to her lips as she fought back a gasp of astonishment. But, again, Calastor’s attention was elsewhere and he did not notice.

“If the Star Rovers are not turned from their course, they will strike next at Xulthoom, and whelm it swiftly, as the Hooded Men of Xulthoom have no armaments of defenses capable of holding off the Rover-fleets. And then, when they have looted the jewel-mines of the Misty World, they will strike on … and the Nucleus-World around which we shall build the New Empire lies directly in their path, only two parsecs further on into the Spur. I must stop them, and soon!”

His face a hard mask of determination, Calastor turned grimly to the girl.

“These are the secrets of Parlion. But I am revealing them freely to you, an agent of the Queen of Green Magic. We urgently need Her help. If She is truly opposed to Drask and his Star Rovers, as Her actions in secreting you as spy within his court would seem to suggest, then perhaps She will lend us more direct aid. Yes, I will take you to Malkh, the Green World—if you will join me in pleading for Her assistance!”

Lurn’s dim purple eyes flashed with excitement.

“Yes! Oh, yes, Calastor! She is … strange and superhuman, sometimes frightening and enigmatic, I know—but She is kind and good as well. I know she will help, if you say to Her the things you have been saying to me! Come, show me your charts—”

He sprang to his feet and seized her white hand.

“Good girl! I knew I was right in trusting you! But we must hurry—speed is of the essence now, for Drask will very swiftly leave Argion for the World of Mist. His prestige has been injured when I escaped so easily from his grasp, and to recover from this humiliation in the eyes of his men, he must give them another rich conquest—and fast! Anyone who knows psychology can read him that well! And I must be on Xulthoom before his fleets begin their siege … I don’t know just what I can do to frustrate his plans there, but with the aid of the Goddess Niamh—”

A shrill alarm cut across his exuberant words. Face tensing suddenly, he sprang to the panels, riveting his attention on the glowing detector-screens. Lurn joined him, laying a slim hand on his rigid arm, gazing up into the frozen mask of his face, weird in the light of the screens.

“What is it? Tell me!”

“Drask has made his move even more swiftly than I had expected,” he said dully. “Even now the Rovers are loading the loot of Argion aboard their fleets, making ready for departure. No time now to fly to the World of Green Magic to confer with your Mistress! Every moment counts. We must follow the fleet to Xulthoom, flying invisible and indetectible, shadowing them. But what I shall do to stop them, once we reach the Mist-World, I … do not … know!”

Lurn’s soul froze within her at the chill note of despair in Calastor’s voice, and she clutched his arm with white fingers, staring with him at the glowing screens.