Creation Mage 7

by King, Dante

  “Knowing you two,” she said, her eyes narrowing, “you’ve probably been chatting about everything but what we should do when we land, all while we draw inexorably closer to the seat of the Pirate Queen’s power.”

  “Well…” I said. “I’d say we were talking about important things…”

  Barry muttered something under his breath. I thought I caught the word ‘sex rat’, but Janet seemed to miss it.

  “I guess as the only female present and, therefore, the only person in the vicinity with anything even resembling common-sense,” Janet said, “I’ll be the one to ask the question that should be on the tip of both of your—”

  “Penises?” Barry hazarded.

  “—tongues,” Janet finished.

  Barry cleared his throat and whistled a few tuneless bars. “That’s what I meant,” he said.

  “What is the pertinent question to which you allude, oh wise woman?” I asked the athletic brunette at my side.

  “Who the fuck was the Pirate Queen when she was alive?” Janet asked. “The more that we know about this chick, the easier it’ll be to find a weakness in her armor.”

  “You think that just by knowing a little of her backstory we might be able to pinpoint a potential Achilles’ heel?” I asked.

  Janet shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “Who in the name of a narwhal's nutsack is Achilles?” Barry asked.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Janet and I said in unison.

  Barry leaned back and cracked his spine with a sound like a packet of potato chips being stepped on.

  “I can tell ye that easy enough,” he said to Janet, gazing as wistfully out at the growing shape of the Pirate Queen’s dominion as a man with only one eye can. “Her name is Isobel Galeflint.”

  A gasp from behind us alerted the three of us to the fact that Enwyn had joined us. I noticed, from my mental peripheral, that the sex rat that Barry had apparently seen adorning the back of her head had been combed out, as had Janet’s.

  “Isobel Galeflint!” the Fire Mage said, coming to prop her elbows on the bow rail and lean back so that the sun fell on her upturned face. “Surely not the same Isobel Galeflint that was sister of …”

  “Queen Galeflint, aye,” Barry said. “Aye, that be the woman who took up the mantle of Pirate Queen when she was shuffled none too gently off the mortal plane.”

  “Isobel Galeflint was actually once the sister of a monarch of the Avalonian Kingdom?” I asked in surprise.

  “Aye, that she was Master Mauler, that she was,” Barry said. A smile flashed with a falcon’s speed across his scarred and withered face. “She was a damned bloodthirsty wench at that.”

  “I notice something that might very well be approval in your voice, Captain Chillgrave,” Enwyn said with mock sternness.

  Barry held out his skinny wrists in the manner of one expecting to be taken in by the law.

  “I’m a damned pirate, ain’t I?” he said. “Guilty as fuckin’ charged. I’ll not deny that the way that flint-hearted bitch conducted herself made my pecker look like the perfect gentleman.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” I asked the pirate captain.

  “Yargh, just that every time that fine filly entered my presence, my todger used to get up so that she had somewhere to sit down,” Barry said.

  The two girls groaned.

  “Let’s get back on track here,” Janet said. “This woman, this Isobel Galeflint, she was the sister of some old Queen of Avalonia?”

  “That’s right,” Enwyn said. “Her sister, Alantra Galeflint, must have been the Queen four—no five before Queen Hagatha.”

  “Aye, that’d be about right by my reckoning,” Barry said.

  “And what?” I asked. “She became the Pirate Queen by…?”

  “Well, I was smuggling a lot of sizzle-root at the time,” Barry said, “so I wasn’t in Avalonia for much of the time that all the drama between the two sisters was taking place, you know.”

  “Do I want to know what sizzle-root is?” I asked.

  Enwyn waved a hand in a way that told me it was not relevant to the issue. “Best to ask Igor. I’m sure he’d be able to give you an answer. Probably a sample of the stuff too.”

  “Ah,” I said. “It’s that sort of herb, is it?”

  “From what I gathered, though, when we pulled into port to unload the bales of sizzle-root,” Barry went on, “is that old Isobel had tried to do a bit of a number on her older sister.”

  “I’d hardly call regicide, ‘a bit of a number’,” Enwyn said.

  “Fair enough,” Barry conceded, “though I’m sure Isobel would argue that she was committing tyrannicide rather than regicide.”

  “I’m pretty sure that’s the line that most usurpers take, isn’t it?” Enwyn said.

  “Good point,” Barry replied. “Anyway, she was a bloodthirsty woman was Isobel, back in them days, though to my mind she’s still about as vicious as a wolverine wearing a pair of barbed-wire underpants. Like Miss Emberskull said, she ended up attempting to assassinate her sister, the Queen.”

  “And she got busted and given the old beheading treatment or something, did she?” I said, taking a guess.

  “No,” Enwyn said. “In fact, Queen Alantra, being her big sister and all, showed Isobel mercy. She banished her little sister from the Avalonian Kingdom rather than put her to death.”

  “That was nice of her,” I said.

  “It was a bloody whopper of a mistake is what it was,” Barry said mildly.

  “Why’s that?” I asked. “Isobel didn’t see it for the gift that it was?”

  “You could say that,” said Janet sardonically. “I remember my dad telling me this story when I was a little girl.”

  “Oh, I imagine that anything that Idman Thunderstone deemed as appropriate bedtime material probably didn’t end well,” I said.

  “It ended kind of well for Isobel, at least for a while,” Janet said. “Isobel collected pirates, vagabonds, and general evildoers from across the realms while she was in exile. Then, when she’d rounded up every hardass with a grudge against the crown, she attacked Manafell, took on her sister, and ended up killing her.”

  “That just goes to show where mercy gets you,” Barry said, shaking his grizzled head.

  “She killed her sister?” I asked.

  “That’s right,” said Enwyn. “Twisted her apart like a fresh pretzel if the records of the time are to be believed.”

  “Then she took the throne?” I asked.

  “Duh,” Janet said.

  “Eventually, though, thanks to a band of you—guessed it—Creation Mages, the Arcane Council was able to take her out,” Enwyn said. “It was a grizzly demise for Isobel Galeflint. More so, even, than her poor merciful sister.”

  “That explains how she became one of the most powerful people in the Spectral Realm, then,” I said. “I guess with the sort of power-hungry, get-up-and-go attitude that saw her murder her own sister, it was only a matter of time before she was ruler of something.”

  Enwyn nodded and polished her glasses with her cuff.

  “And now she’s being just as much of a pain in the rear-end for the Spectral Realm,” Barry said. “If what that sluggard, Chopsticks Nutlee, is to be believed. And if anyone can tell us where the Stronghold of the Twin Spirits is located, it’ll be Queen Isobel Galeflint.”

  I gave him a dubious look. “You think she’ll know where it is?”

  Barry growled. “Captains like Isobel, they know all the waters, all the lands that surround them. It’s what gives ‘em an edge. I should know. I was just like her once, only worse. She’ll know where it is. It’s just going to be a case of getting the information out of her. If we can’t buy it or barter it out of her, then we’ll just have to slay her. With enough Death Energy, I’ll get back not just my old powers, but all my memories too. I hope.”

  We sailed on in silence, each of us lost in our own thoughts of what might be to come.

  As the island archipelago known
as Cupido Island drew nearer, I squinted against the glare of the sun on the ocean.

  “Is it just my imagination,” I said, “or are some of those islands…”

  “Floating,” said Janet, who was leaning forward and shading her eyes with her hand.

  “Oh aye,” Barry said quite conversationally, as if you saw millions of tons of geological formations floating every day, “they don’t call ‘em the Buoyant Isles for nothing.”

  “I thought you said it was called Cupido Island?” I said, struggling to keep my bottom jaw from sagging all the way to the waxed deck of the schooner.

  “Aye, well, technically, it is the main island of the Buoyant Isles that is called Cupido Island,” Captain Chillgrave, famed pirate and geography teacher extraordinaire, informed us. “Only, folk mainly come here now to pay homage to the Pirate Queen, who lives on Cupido Island, and so the whole archipelago just became Cupido Island, if you follow my drift, sir.”

  I couldn’t find the energy to reply. All my brain power was spent on the sight that was gradually coming into sharper and sharper focus in front of me. The sight of quite a few, but not all, of the islands actually floating in mid-air.

  Barry steered us with great care toward the two large rocks that stood like sentries just out from the Cupido Island main. They were covered in white and pale blue bird shit. Even from about half a mile across the water, I could hear the yammer and shriek of seabirds yelling and cursing at one another.

  Barry was at the prow of our schooner, leaning over the rail, almost far enough to fall in. He had his right hand extended and was moving it through the air, this way and that, in the same way that he would have been steering the ship had he been standing at the wheel. The schooner responded to every little motion of his hand, adjusting course in minute increments as we neared the Pirate Queen’s lair.

  “What are you looking for, Barry?” I asked the poltergeist as we passed under the shadow of one of the sentinel-like rocks.

  Barry did not answer but nodded down to his left.

  I peered where he had indicated and saw something floating about six feet under the surface of the water.

  “What the fuck is that?” I asked.

  Barry, still not taking his eyes from the sea in front of him, said, “That, sir, would be a Tempest Mine.”

  “Tempest Mine,” I repeated slowly. “Tempest Mine, as in a mine that, should we be silly enough to run over it in this very brittle, very combustible wooden ship, explode in a burst of Storm and Fire Magic?”

  Barry grinned. “And here was me thinking that they didn’t teach you anything at the Academy except how to get laid and drink your weight in mixed spirits,” he said. “Well, blow me down but wonders never cease, do they, sir?”

  I was half-tempted to point out that drinking your weight in mixed spirits and getting laid was practically the electives of every single person who attended any tertiary education anywhere in the multiverse, but I was too distracted by the large, ghostly green balls of submerged death that were bobbing merrily along the water.

  Barry, correctly interpreting my silence as an uneasy one, said soothingly, “Oh, now don’t you worry, skipper! Old Barry was sailing these waters long before you was a glint in your father’s eye. He knows this port and the shoals all about Cupido Island like the ruddy back of his hand, so he does.”

  “Barry,” I said, “people always use that expression, ‘I know this or that like the fucking back of my hand’, but tell me this: were you aware that you have a smear of shit on the back of yours?”

  Barry’s eye twitched, but he dared not look away from the water he was navigating.

  “What hand would the fecal matter be on precisely, sir?” he asked.

  “The left,” I said.

  Barry’s brow furrowed a little under the brim of his facetious large captain’s hat. “Well, I had no notion that that was there, sir. I’ll clean myself up and make myself presentable before we make landfall, that I promise you, sir.”

  I sighed inwardly, deciding not to point out that the poltergeist had missed the point I had been trying to make.

  Chapter 11

  By the time that we drew into the mouth of a large bay that was, essentially, the entrance to the archipelago, I had stopped gawping at the general insanity of the floating islands and had started noticing details.

  As well as the dozens of levitating little atolls, there were also bridges of rope, stone, rubber, and, in a couple of instances, something that looked very much like spider web connecting them. The place was a hive of activity. All kinds of creatures and sailors were swaggering from over the bridges and up the rope ladders that hung from some of the floating islands.

  “Bit of a melting pot, is it not?” Enwyn said from beside me.

  “That’s one way to describe it,” I agreed.

  I saw whores, tailors, weapons-dealers, wine-sellers, robed monks, furred barbarians, leather-clad raiders, scrapping drunks, spell-weavers, longshoremen, merchants, jugglers, fishermen, pearl divers, talisman dealers, stevedores, lunatics, and, of course, pirates, of every race, color, shape, and description that I could ever have hoped to imagine. They were all going from one island to the next, swaggering along on business of their own.

  Our schooner, followed by the vessel belonging to Captain Nutlee, glided smoothly into port, guided by the expert hands of good old Captain Chillgrave.

  If he had seemed weak before, then coming into the port of Cupido Island looked to have breathed a new lease of life into Barry Chillgrave. It was almost as if the collection of stinks that assailed our nostrils had acted as a tonic to the malnourished captain. He stood up straighter and puffed out his scrawny chest. His eye glittered as our ship bumped gently into the piles of the dock. The not-unpleasant stench of fresh fish was in the air, along with the less tasty odors of sewage, blood, tar, and the metallic tang of raw magic.

  “What’s the tactic here?” I asked Barry as a few of the crew, who had apparently traveled in flying and non-flying ships before, tossed ropes overboard and began tying the boat securely to the dock.

  “How do you mean, sir?” Barry asked.

  “Well, how do we go about getting to the Pirate Queen?” I asked. “We’re here, in her goddamn citadel, and I think it’d probably be the smart thing not to attract any undue attention to ourselves before…”

  My voice trailed off.

  Alura, who was standing nearby, tugged at my sleeve and said, “Justin, I think the Pirate Queen is going to know that Barry at least is here, and soon.”

  She was right. I heard it now. And saw it too.

  Looking around at the levels of docks and floating piers where a number of floating levitating ships were moored, I saw that there were many pirates, sailors, and fishermen pointing down toward us.

  No, not toward us, I realized. Toward Barry.

  It appeared that I had drastically underestimated just how fucking famous Barry was in certain circles—in this motley circle in particular.

  Males and females of all kinds were jostling on the piers to try and get a look at the scrawny pirate captain. A few fights had predictably broken out as people fought for the best viewing spots. Spells flashed into the air. There was a rush of green flames as something combustible and magical was ignited and exploded skyward.

  “Nothing like making a nice stealthy entrance,” I said to Cecilia, who had come to stand at my hand and gape up at the gathering crowds. “Your fucking great grandpa sure knows how to sneak into a place, doesn’t he?”

  Cecilia did not answer. I could see that she was casing the faces peering down at us, trying to see if there was anyone out there that meant us ill.

  She had her fucking work cut out for her, that was for sure. There were a buttload of rubberneckers gathering now, and I figured that the sooner we were off the ship and blended in with the crowd, the better.

  “Barry,” I hissed into the ear of the pirate captain, who was standing and looking very heroic with his leg up on a coil of rop
e and one arm tucked behind him, “we should get the hell out of here, don’t you think?”

  Barry stirred and shook his head a fraction. Then he said out of the corner of his mouth, “Nay, not just yet, sir. Now that we have our berth, we must wait for the harbormaster to give us the once over. No one sets foot on the docks of Cupido Island without his say-so, sir. Trying to leg it before he has seen us would do us more harm than good, sir.”

  “And who the fuck is the harbormaster?” I asked, scanning the plethora of faces surrounding us.

  “That would be him, I think, sir.” Barry nodded toward a large cyclops, dressed in a well-cut suit of mossy gray. He wore a high cocked hat, a quill and a dried fish of some description stuck into the band. He was surrounded by a collection of hard-faced men and women that may as well have had ‘BODYGUARD’ branded across their fronts and backs.

  The cyclops strode down the wharf, kicking some unfortunate inebriate out of his way and into the sea.

  Barry watched him come without a flicker. All around us the words ‘Captain Barry Chillgrave’ fell like leaves.

  “So,” the cyclops said in a sandpaper rough voice, “it’s true what they’re saying all down the wharves.”

  “Truth on the wharves,” Barry said. “That’d be a fuckin’ first.”

  The cyclops did not smile. He didn’t look like he had smiled in a long time. Perhaps ever.

  “Captain Chillgrave,” the cyclops said, taking a large ledger that had been handed to him by one of his flunkies. “What brings you to Cupido Island after all these centuries?”

  “Pleasure, o’ course,” Barry said, with what he must have thought was a charming smile. In actual fact, it was the sort of look that a constipated piranha might wear after downing a bottle of laxatives.

  The cyclops, unsurprisingly, did not smile. He made a small note with the quill that he had extracted from his hatband.

  “And the name of this vessel?” he asked.

  “Flying Dutch Rudder,” Barry said promptly, making me wince.

  “Any booty to declare?” he asked.