Creation Mage 7

by King, Dante

  “Well…” the Pirate Queen said. “There’s a first time for everything, isn’t there? And if you’re going to help, it may as well be to save the fucking Universal Magic. Technically, we would be helping ourselves. I don’t know about you horrible lot, but I’m quite attached to my quiddity.”

  Maybe Isobel Galeflint was looking to do a little penance for killing her sister? Maybe she had been searching, in an ever so private way, for a way to square herself in the eyes of the multiverse? I wasn’t sure what made me think that. Perhaps something in the very depths of those dangerous and clever gray eyes. If I could just warm her up a little—and me, Barry, Janet, and Alura could survive the next few seconds—I might be able to manipulate that lever in her.

  Everyone has their levers: the ways in which they can be moved and steered. Even chicks that are as badass and cold-blooded as Isobel Galeflint.

  The Pirate Queen considered the four of us for a full minute longer. Then, just as I believed that we were going to have to fight our way out of there after all, she cocked her head to the other side and addressed Barry.

  “You mentioned a war, Chillgrave,” she said.

  “Yes, Your Majesty,” Alura said, turning up her diplomatic charm and deference to stun. Her accent was so smooth and creamy and rich that you could have spread it on a cracker and topped it with a chunk of honeycomb. “Yes indeed, there is a war coming. Most assuredly so.”

  The Pirate Queen snorted with amusement, but she did not look displeased with the courteousness. I doubted that she often got addressed like that by the guy with the fucking eel head.

  “What war? With whom?” she said brusquely. “What’s the nature of this fucking battle that you’re harping on about?”

  “The war, the fight, that is looming on the horizon,” Janet said, “is an escalating war between the renegades that followed the Twin Spirits, Istrea and Zenidor, and your old stick in the mud friends, the Arcane Council.”

  At the mention of the Arcane Council, I saw the fires rise in the Queen’s eyes. The mere mention of the Arcane Council had brought back memories—and they didn’t look like the happy, fluffy kind. In that moment, I saw clearly how it was that she had fought her way up to lead the pirates of the Spectral Realm. Next to me, Barry cleared his throat a little nervously.

  Then, thankfully, the fire behind the gray eyes shrank down to embers. It didn’t look like anyone was going to be burned up just yet.

  Isobel ran her hand up and down the shaft of her staff in a manner that, even in that tense situation, couldn’t help but catch my eye. Had we been back in Avalonia and he had been feeling himself, Barry would have doubtless said something inappropriate that would have landed us in the shit.

  “Fine,” Isobel sighed regally, “I admit, you have me intrigued.”

  “I doubt you’ve changed in all the years,” Barry said, “so I’m guessing you’re keen as ever for a fight if you can have one.”

  Isobel smiled wolfishly. “Damn right, Chillgrave. I love to fight, and I’ve hated the Arcane Council ever since… well. Ever since I was shuffled off my mortal coil by them and their Creation Mages.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Janet shift on the balls of her feet. Thankfully, my girlfriend had more than enough sense not to look at me.

  “You had no love for the Arcane Council before you were sent to the Spectral Realm, if the tales be true,” Barry said.

  Isobel Galeflint’s lovely lips formed a salacious smile. “Quite,” she said, her tone indicating quite plainly that Barry had just ridden a unicycle over a tightrope stretched over the mouth of Hell. He had been very lucky not to fall. “However, as much as me and my crews enjoy a good scrap, I am no fool. I don't just go charging into a fight just for the sake of it, as much as I’d like too sometimes.”

  “Very intelligent of you,” Janet said approvingly.

  “Very female of you,” Alura said.

  “You want details before you make a definite decision?” I asked the Pirate Queen.

  Isobel nodded and spun her spear so that it rested on the brocade-covered shoulder of her leather admiral’s jacket. “I want to know more and, more specifically, I want to know what is in it for me.”

  “Apart from continued existence?” I said before I could stop myself.

  Isobel Galeflint stuck out her bottom lip and gave me a mock commiserating look. “Oh, there’s always a sweetener to any deal, chum,” she said. “Especially when you’re clearly in need of my services.”

  She jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “Follow me home to Castle Goldskull,” she said, indicating the enormous, ostentatious show of wealth behind her.

  She actually called it Castle Goldskull, I thought. That can’t just be some sort of fucking out-there coincidence, can it? Has she been to Earth, or did she just somehow come across a He-Man comic in a treasure chest somewhere?

  “I want details,” Isobel said again, turning to lead the way. “And, obviously, I want introductions.” She shot me a look over her shoulder as she swaggered away, her hips and ass moving in that special way that women have used for years to discombobulate the thinking process of men.

  Her gang of bodyguards fell in around us as we followed her. I glanced at them all, my palm itching with the desire to summon my staff.

  “Don’t mind the boys and girls,” the Pirate Queen said. “They’re just there to make sure that everyone behaves themselves, savvy?”

  Barry, wanting to assert his position of captain perhaps, hurried to catch up with Isobel as she strode away on her long legs.

  “I could use a drink, Captain Galeflint,” the old poltergeist said.

  Isobel run her eyes over the famed sky-pirate. “You fucking look like he could use a drink, Chillgrave,” she said acidly. “You look like a big bag of blue waffle.”

  I scratched my head again and looked at Janet, but the Storm Mage appeared to have not heard. She was too busy keeping an eye on our guards.

  Was that an internet reference? I wondered.

  Barry said nothing to this remark. He was still in need of the Death Energy that was rife on Cupido Island and especially around the Pirate Queen’s golden castle, which was built on the ruins of the temple where so many magical beings had apparently been sacrificed through the ages.

  He looked over his bony shoulder at me, in the pretense of making sure that we were all following along behind, and we caught eyes. Well, he caught my eyes, and I caught his one eye. Obviously, he did not want to alert the Pirate Queen to the fact that he needed this magic force to regain his former vigor and power. He did not want to admit to Isobel Galeflint that he was weak, even if he did look it.

  Barry knew, as well as I already did, that the Pirate Queen was a shrewd and stony-hearted woman who would not hesitate to capitalize on any sign of a weak spot. She was certainly canny enough to know far more than she was likely to let on. You didn’t become Queen of the Pirates of the Spectral Realm without being the most cunning and most ruthless out of an extremely cunning and ruthless bunch.

  She would have made one hell of a politician or lobbyist or CEO back on Earth.

  “And one more thing, Chillgrave,” Isobel said.

  “What’s that Captain Galeflint?” Barry asked.

  “I ain’t a captain, Captain,” Isobel said sweetly. “I have a fleet under me. I’m a fucking admiral.”

  Chapter 13

  The meeting room to which Isobel led us was nothing like what I might have expected. After being ushered through the gaping mouth of the enormous skull that made up the entire front wall of the castle, the Pirate Queen led the way down a hallway that would have been the throat of Castle Goldskull and then out into an expansive, light-filled space beyond.

  I blinked. I had prepared myself for flickering torches, lots of dark wood, maybe a few piles of gold and silver booty tumbled in the corners, and at least one broached barrel of ale or a few discarded rum bottles. Such were my expectations.

  Instead, the room reminded me of a pi
ratical Austin Powers-esque, seventies swinger room. There was a sunken fire pit, crackling merrily despite the clement weather outside. This fire pit was surrounded by plush velvet couches, a couple of stripper poles, and an extensive bar of polished mahogany and glass behind which was an array of colored bottles that would have kept even Reginald and Igor Chaosbane busy for at least ten minutes. The furniture looked like it had been made using designs taken from mid-twentieth century Earth.

  It was extremely disorientating, in a quite familiar and mundane way. I just couldn't get my head around how familiar everything was.

  Our host must have seen me looking bemusedly around. As her flunkies spread themselves efficiently around the room in standard bodyguard positions, Isobel snapped at me, “What are you staring at like a landed trout, liveun?”

  I opened my mouth and closed it a few times, like the fish indicated, and then said, “Nothing. It’s just… This is a nice room. Unexpectedly comfortable and… chic, I guess.”

  Isobel’s eyes narrowed as she scanned my words for sarcasm. When she had apparently decided they were clean of irony, she said, in a slightly less spiky tone, “That is why pirates do what they do: comfort. We want to live easy lives in rich surroundings. You think I plunder and kill, smuggle and rob, just so that I can roll around in the filth like so many of my contemporaries are happy to do down below?”

  I cocked my head. “Fair point.”

  “Speaking of points,” Isobel said, turning to Barry. “Chillgrave, you better introduce your companions, before I decide that this unaccustomed show of hospitality has been a stupid idea and I have them fed to my sweet little pet kraken out in the bay. That’s the thing about a creature big enough to make a lunch out of an entire frigate: it’s always so damn hungry.”

  “Where are my manners?” Barry said as the Pirate Queen deposited herself in a plush armchair, snapped her fingers at one of her guards, and pointed at the bar.

  “You don’t have any, Chillgrave, you’re a pirate,” said Isobel brusquely. “Now, chop chop, before I start to chop chop.”

  “This sparkling lass over here is Alura, Princess of the Gemstone Elementals,” Barry said without further ado. He obviously hoped to curry some goodwill by introducing our royal companion first.

  Alura, playing her part as well as she ever did, performed a textbook curtsy.

  “A pleasure, my Queen,” she said politely.

  Isobel smirked, but said nothing as she accepted a crystal goblet of some bright pink sparkling liquid from the selkie woman. She nodded at the selkie and indicated our group. “A goblet of picaroon poteen for these people, Meng,” she ordered. “There are few things more pleasing to the ego than having a real-life liveun princess in our midst!” Her smirk widened, and she looked around at her selected bodyguards. “Look how far we’ve come, my hearties. From filibustering royalty to fucking entertaining them.”

  There was a chorus of gurgling chuckles.

  As the drinks were distributed, Barry introduced me.

  “This lad here is Justin Mauler, a promising young War Mage from the Mazirian Academy, Admiral Galeflint,” the pirate captain said.

  “Mauler… Mauler…” Isobel said, taking a sip of her picaroon poteen. “The name doesn’t set any bells to ringing in my mind, though your face is somehow not entirely alien to me, somehow.” She gazed at me thoughtfully for a few seconds and then transferred her contemplative gray eyes to Janet. “And who is this?”

  “This is Miss Thunderstone,” Barry said. “Miss Janet Thunderstone.”

  “Ah, now there is a name that gets the mental tocsins to pealing,” the Pirate Queen said, setting down her beverage and clapping her hands.

  “You’ve heard of me?” Janet asked in surprise.

  “No, not you specifically, sweetheart,” Isobel said. “But I’ve heard the name Thunderstone before—there are many specters within the Spectral Realm who have been killed at the hands of Idman Thunderstone or his men. There are many ghouls, revenants, and wights that would be mighty interested to make your acquaintance…”

  The mood in the room shifted ever so slightly. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the guards along the walls sliding hands ever so casually toward sheaths and pockets.

  Barry cleared his throat and said, in a commanding voice that likely served him very well back in his heyday, “Ye might want to tell those festerin’ cuttlefish of yours to settle down, Admiral Galeflint, and relax their hands, if they know what is good for ‘em.”

  “Careful, Chillgrave,” Isobel said, her voice resonating with a violence that could come on as fast, as unexpected, and as unforgiving as a cannon ball up the fartbox. “Be very careful with the words that come tumbling from that grog-hole of yours, otherwise I might have to get you to make like a tree and—”

  “And leave?” I blurted in surprise. Whenever I had tried any of the classic exit lines in Avalonia, nobody had ever really got them.

  Isobel frowned, not taking her eyes off Barry. “I was going to say, you might have to make like a tree and wait there while I go and fetch an axe.”

  Then Isobel suddenly thawed and sat back in her seat. I let out a silent sigh and took a mouthful of the picaroon poteen. It was good stuff. It tasted like cranberry juice and burned like everyone’s favorite cinnamon-flavored whisky.

  “Enough with the pleasantries,” she said. “Enough with the posturing. I forget myself. It’s not every day that I get to sit here with a fine old salt like yourself, Chillgrave: a veritable fucking legend of a pirate both in the Spectral Realm and Avalonia.”

  Barry inclined his head.

  “Now, carry on and tell me about this war,” Isobel said. “Miss Thunderstone mentioned something earlier about some Twin Spirits. Who the fuck may they be, pray? And how is it that I’ve never fucking heard of them?”

  “They would have been after your time,” I said, deciding to take the lead before Barry could make an irrevocable balls-up. The poltergeist looked relieved at this and sank back in his chair. “They were a couple of mages, a couple of very powerful mages that set out to, as far as I can gatherer, save the world. One of the methods that they proposed on using to achieve this was genocide, but there is compelling evidence now to suggest that there was another less, well, unethical way for them to achieve their goal. The Arcane Council used a Kingdom-wide glamor to cover up the attempts of these two powerful War Mages—the Twin Spirits, Istrea and Zenidor. They effectively wiped them from history, which is why you probably haven’t heard of them, even from the recently deceased who have come through the Spectral Realm.”

  “A glamor that affected the hive memory of almost the entire Kingdom of Avalonia…” Isobel said, whistling softly. “And they have the gall to call me a monster. Why did they do this, Justin Mauler?”

  “They saw them as, in their attempt to save the Universal Magic and the ending of all things magical, trying to disrupt the good thing that the Arcane Council had going on, I guess,” I said. “You know what total low-down, dirty bastards governments can be.”

  “I think we’re all aware of that fact,” Isobel said, and her pirate bodyguards grumbled their agreement. “I must say, though, Justin, that I’m interested to see that, apparently, you and your mates seem to have shaken off the crushing power of the Arcane Council’s government. That’s a fucking rare thing. Most people find it too confronting to even acknowledge that they have been hoodwinked by the very people who are supposed to look after them and better their lives.”

  It was an astute observation for a pirate. However, with every minute that passed, I got the impression that Isobel Galeflint was far more than just a pirate. She was, I remembered with a lurch, the sister of a Queen.

  “Anyway, the Twin Spirits were defeated in the Void Wars,” Janet said, getting the conversation back on track.

  “And now it has fallen to us to take up the sword and continue the fight that Istrea and Zenidor started,” said Alura eloquently, her face glimmering and glittering in the sunlight that str
eamed in through the large windows.

  “And we’re running out of time,” I said, leaning forward in my chair. “Things are really getting down to the wire with the draining of the magic from the world.”

  “And not just the world o’ the livin’, Admiral Galeflint,” Barry said. “It’s the whole, entire ruddy Multiverse that is at stake here, and every mortal and spirit that calls it home.”

  Isobel regarded us as she held out her goblet and the selkie, Meng, refilled it from a decanter.

  “The Arcane Council, being the dumbass government entity that they are, is convinced that the rebels want to take power from them and supplant Queen Hagatha,” I said. “They can’t get their peanut-sized brains around the idea that there is far more at stake than just who sits on some big chair and makes all the rules.”

  “And you’re willing to fight against, and exchange blood and lives with, the Arcane Council, are you?” Isobel asked. Her eyes were fixed on my face, and she looked totally caught up in the joint narrative that the four of us were weaving.

  “Reginald Chaosbane, the Headmaster of the Mazirian Academy and the dude that is basically orchestrating this whole thing, didn’t really want to butt heads with the Council, I don’t think,” I said.

  “There’s a Chaosbane leading this little rebellion?” the Pirate Queen interjected.

  “Aye, that there is,” Barry affirmed.

  “Strike my colors, but if they’re in any way as cracked as the Chaosbanes that I used to know, then that must make for some interesting excursions,” Isobel said.

  “You’ve no idea,” I said truthfully.

  Janet and Alura exchanged glances.

  “Bu, you’re resolved on this course you’ve set out on?” Isobel said. “On rebellion, I mean. You’re not all going to get all squeamish when the fighting starts?”

  “We’ve been fighting for months,” Janet said bluntly. “We’re War Mages in training maybe, but we’ve seen more than our fair share of fucked up shit.”

  “Mostly thanks to Headmaster Chaosbane,” Alura said.