Galactic Mage 4: Alien Arrivals
The Galactic Mage Series
Book 1: The Galactic Mage
Book 2: Rift in the Races
Book 3: Hostiles
Book 4: Alien Arrivals
Book 5: (in progress)
Prequels
Ilbei Spadebreaker and the Harpy’s Wild
Ilbei Spadebreaker and the Zombie Apple Collapse
(in progress)
John Daulton
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John Daulton
This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.
ALIEN ARRIVALS
Book 4: The Galactic Mage Series
The phrase “The Galactic Mage” is the trademark of
John Daulton.
Copyright © 2014 John Daulton
All rights reserved.
ISBN-13: 978-0-9894787-5-5 (Paperback)
ISBN-13: 978-0-9894787-6-2 (Kindle Ebook)
Cover art by Cris Ortega
Interior layout by Fernando Soria
DEDICATION
In memory of Michael G. Burke.
- Series
- Title
- ISBN
- Dedication
- Map
- Chapter 1
- Chapter 2
- Chapter 3
- Chapter 4
- Chapter 5
- Chapter 6
- Chapter 7
- Chapter 8
- Chapter 9
- Chapter 10
- Chapter 11
- Chapter 12
- Chapter 13
- Chapter 14
- Chapter 15
- Chapter 16
- Chapter 17
- Chapter 18
- Chapter 19
- Chapter 20
- Chapter 21
- Chapter 22
- Chapter 23
- Chapter 24
- Chapter 25
- Chapter 26
- Chapter 27
- Chapter 28
- Chapter 29
- Chapter 30
- Chapter 31
- Chapter 32
- Chapter 33
- Chapter 34
- Chapter 35
- Chapter 36
- Chapter 37
- Chapter 38
- Chapter 39
- Chapter 40
- Chapter 41
- Chapter 42
- Chapter 43
- Chapter 44
- Chapter 45
- Chapter 46
- Chapter 47
- Chapter 48
- Chapter 49
- Chapter 50
- Chapter 51
- Chapter 52
- Chapter 53
- Chapter 54
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Chapter 1
P
ernie woke in darkness, her cheek damp where it lay upon something soft. She knew she was awake because her eyes were open. She blinked a few times, but there was nothing to see. The smell of damp stone surrounded her, mixed with a hint of sea air, as it had been when she’d gone to sleep.
Voices murmured from around a bend. They belonged to the elves and that old woman with them. The three of them sat a few paces beyond the small chamber where Pernie was. Guarding her, she knew. The elves were the ones who had taken her. She’d tried to fight them off, to escape and run free. She even bit the Queen’s elf, Shadesbreath, on the hand, a good bite that drew green blood. Elves were salty and tasted like the sea.
She sat up and looked in the direction of the sound. Somewhere in the darkness, a passage led from this small chamber into the outer one, but no light defined its opening. She didn’t want to go out there and talk to them anyway. That’s what they wanted. She wasn’t going to give them anything they wanted. Ever. But she was hungry. So perhaps she would have to in the end.
Petulant lips pouted, unseen in the blackness, as she debated what to do, the stubborn side at war with the hungry side, a battle between mind and body. Inevitably, body won.
Shadesbreath, in his black leather armor, dagger hilts protruding everywhere, sat upon a stool of carved coral near a boulder, watching as Pernie’s head poked out of the dark passage. He watched her as she emerged, already looking her way as if waiting for her all along. He glanced across the boulder, which served as table for all assembled there, to where Seawind sat. The two elves nodded. Seawind even managed something like a smile as the corners of his mouth grew a hair’s width wider into his pale green cheeks.
“So, little one, you have decided to come into the light,” said the third figure seated there, a human woman of indeterminate years, many of them. She was wrapped in leather armor as brown as bark and which matched the color of her eyes so perfectly it had to be by design. “My elven friends suggested you wouldn’t be doing so for another half day.”
Pernie frowned at the woman, but didn’t say anything. She scanned the tabletop of the boulder in search of food. There was nothing there.
“I’m hungry,” she said, stepping out into full view. “You’d better not let me starve, or Master Altin will come and burn you to ash.”
The old woman laughed, a long and throaty thing, her head tipped back and a few loose strands of gray hair dangling like vines around her neck. “Oh, I should think he would at that,” the woman agreed. “But don’t you worry about going hungry, young miss. We haven’t brought you all this way to starve you to death.” She turned in her seat, an orange-and-brown bit of coral work to match those upon which the elves sat, and took up a small leather sack lying near her feet. She tossed it to Pernie, who caught it naturally. “There, child, is enough to keep you for a week.”
Pernie frowned at them all again, the three strange figures sitting there watching her, then pulled at the mouth of the sack and peered inside. It smelled of fish. She opened it further and found within a tightly packed block of fish strips, salted and dry. She looked up at the three of them. “I have to eat this for a week?”
“You’ll get used to it,” the woman said. “The elves, for all their finery with wine and long lives, have not the patience for quality cuisine. I’ve had to make do on my own. After the first fifty years or so, you get over the old cravings. Food becomes fuel and little more. You will enjoy the fruits of the island, though. Those more than make up for what you’ve grown used to in the past.”
Pernie’s thoughts flickered back to the heaping tables put forth by Kettle, the old kitchen matron back home and the only mother Pernie had ever known. The stout old woman would have a fit if she knew what the elves intended to serve as Pernie’s permanent repast.
“Well, I don’t want to get used to it.” Her gaze flicked toward Shadesbreath. Her eyes narrowed. She looked to see where she’d bitten him on the hand, but there was no sign of the injury anymore. “I want to go home.”
“You have already been told that is not going to happen,
dra’hana’akai
,” said Seawind as Shadesbreath quietly studied her. “It is best if you settle in.”
“I don’t want to settle in. I want to go home. When Master Altin finds out where you’ve taken me, you’ll see. This whole cave will be filled with fire, and Sir’s dragon will gobble you up alive and chew your bones to dust. Just wait and see.”
“Sir Altin has already been informed, and the War Queen of Kurr has already acknowledged our right to take you. You are here because you are The Bodyguard, Protector of the High Seat, chosen by Tidalwrath himself.”
“I’m not a bodyguard. I’m only a girl. Even I know that. Kettle always said the elves are supposed to be smart, but that doesn’t seem very smart to me.”
The old woman laughed. The elves seemed incapable of it.
“You are correct, child,” the woman said. “You are not a bodyguard, at least not entirely. One day, though. Perhaps one day soon, if my friend Shadesbreath has the right of it about you.”
“I don’t want to be a bodyguard. I want to go home.”
“That is not possible.”
Pernie pulled out a strip of salt fish and nibbled on it. It wasn’t as bad as she’d thought it would be. They watched her eat.
The old woman rose and went out for a time, then came back with a silver goblet filled to the brim with water. “Here, child, drink.”
“Stop calling me
child
. My name is Pernie.” She would have refused the water as a show of defiance, but the salt fish required that she drink, leaving the name issue as the only convenient one for the display.
“I am Djoveeve.”
Pernie thought the name sounded weird, like there was something stuck in the woman’s mouth. She might have laughed at it another time.
“If you’ll let me,” the woman said, leaning down and putting her hands on her knees, “I’ll show you how to use your magic.”
“I don’t need you to show me how. Master Grimswoller is my teacher back at magic school. And once I’m done with my lessons, Master Altin said I could be his apprentice.”
“Well, Master Altin is going to have to find another apprentice because Tidalwrath has plans for you.”
Pernie scowled up at Djoveeve then, her eyes narrow, feral. If she were a cat, she would have hissed. The old woman watched her silently, the two of them watching back and forth. They might have stayed that way for hours had not Pernie been distracted by the pink edges of the woman’s eyelids, bright pink, so bright they seemed lit from within. They reminded Pernie of raw meat. A few eyelashes still grew from them, the last and hardiest weeds clinging to ground in which nothing else could grow. Time had killed the rest. Pernie had always thought of Kettle as old, but this woman redefined aging. Pernie had never seen a woman that looked as old as Tytamon, the ancient magician who had presided over Calico Castle for most of Pernie’s life, a man rumored to have been approaching an eight hundredth birthday had he lived another pair of years.