by Dante King
Idman’s lip curled.
“Before you hit me with some scathing retort,” I said, my eyes hardening, “consider this. The Arcane Council will never think to look for you in such an obvious spot as the edge of Nevermoor. You’ll be closer than you’ve ever been to your daughter and, when things come to a boil one way or another—which is definitely the way it feels like they’re going—you’ll be right where the action is. And it’d only be temporary. Until you find something else. Can’t have a relic like you spoiling all the fun, after all.”
Idman’s frown melted away. He put his hands behind his back, paced up and down a few times, and then turned slowly.
“Fine,” he said, and there was a trace of a smile on his cold, chiseled face. “You make a compelling point, Justin.”
“I do, don’t I?” I slapped Idman chummily on the shoulder. “Might be a bit weird to be sharing a house with your daughter’s boyfriend, but I’m sure you’ll have more on your mind than me.”
“Like what?” Idman asked.
I pointed at Barry. “Him,” I said. “You’ll have to share the dungeon with good old Barry here. Just in case we get raided or something, you know.”
Idman closed his eyes. He had the look of a man who was praying for patience.
“Oh,” Barry said, giving a little cackle of glee, “won’t that be nice, eh, Master Thunderstone? Bunk mates! My, how far we’ve come in so little a space of time!”
Idman looked like he might have liked to go on at some length about the term ‘bunk mates’, but there was the grinding of stone, a squeal of metal and then the voice of Reginald Chaosbane echoed out from a passage to the left.
“When you weren’t in your cell and there were a couple of dead Jotunn, I thought to myself: where did my old friend Idman wander off to? I figured that you might be squirreled away in your hideyhole!” Chaosbane said jovially, swaggering out into the light cast by the enchanted windows.
“I’m not your friend, Chaosbane,” Idman said cooly, though he smiled. “I’m barely your ally.”
“The night is young!” Chaosbane said. “However, speaking of such things as allies—is it just me, or are things between our little band of like-minded people and the Arcane Council heating up a notch?”
Idman snorted and gestured around the room. “I’ve been incarcerated in the magical prison that I built for them,” he said. “Irony doesn’t get much more pointed than that, Chaosbane.”
“Oh, I don't know about that,” Chaosbane said. “All out war can be a lot… pointier. However, we aren’t there yet so, while we add just a little more sand to the Arcane Council’s collective vagina, let’s take the time to get out of here and, as my dear cousin Igor would advise: eat, drink, and be merry!”
The rest of our group filtered into the room. Cecilia, Janet, and Alura, the frat brothers, along with Madame Xel, Odette Scaleblade, Enwyn, and Ragnar Ironskin.
“Janet,” Idman said, hailing his daughter where she stood regarding him from across the room.
Man, for a family that practices Storm Magic, there must be ice running through the veins of the Thunderstones, I thought.
Janet had been casually looking at her father, as if everything we had gone through to ensure that he was busted out of this joint hadn’t even happened.
“Father?” she asked.
Idman stepped over to his daughter and squeezed her arm briefly. “Show your Headmaster and tutors out from the prison. My emergency gateway is behind that mirror over there. It should be able to bypass any blocks the Council has erected.”
Janet pressed the mirror, and said, “Nevermoor.” The mirror swung open like a door, and inside was a shimmering portal, like something out of Stargate.
Chaosbane, Odette Scaleblade, Madame Xel, Ragnar Ironskin, and Barry made their way through to Nevermoor beyond. Idman stepped up to the portal and turned to look at me, the three female students, and my fraternity brothers.
“Follow me,” he said, looking directly at Janet. “There is nothing left for us here.”
Then he stepped through the swirling magical portal and was gone.
“All right, you heard the man,” I said. “Let’s get to stepping, yeah?”
Janet went to lead the way when, from behind us, came the tramp of armored feet and a commanding shout rang out.
Someone else had found Idman Thunderstone’s secret inner sanctum.
From down the passageway came a tall elf, wearing a full suit of armor that had been burnished to a mirror sheen. His hair was long and blonde and flowed behind him as he marched toward us. At his belt was a sword with a golden hilt. He had the look of a medieval bureaucrat about him and the sort of face that even his own mother wanted to punch from time to time. Following him were a squad of half a dozen armored foot soldiers in mail coats.
“Halt!” the elf cried in a commanding and slightly nasally voice. “Halt in the name of the Arcane Council!”
A wave of light came through the corridor and struck the portal lying behind the mirror. It suddenly disappeared. Our exit had been cut off.
“Ah,” I said.
“Hm,” said Cecilia from next to me.
“Oh, shitballs,” Nigel Windmaker said softly from behind me, and with real feeling. He gulped.
Chapter Twenty-Five
I had, obviously, no idea if this elf official representing the Arcane Council always looked like a pompous asshatt, or whether today was a special occasion. I figured it didn’t really matter. What mattered was that here was someone embodying the very bunch of people that my friends, without too much notice, now found ourselves standing against.
I had to think fast to get us out of this one.
I wasn’t sure if I could appeal to this guy’s intelligence—I mean, who, if they were equipped with even half a working brain, would allow themselves to get dressed up in that outfit? Armor, in my opinion, was meant to be blackened iron, battle-scarred, and dented through much use. You weren’t supposed to look like the tin-man’s cock after he had just come back from getting a Brazilian.
No. With this individual, the best way to buy us a few minutes in which to get out of here, was to appeal to his vanity.
“How do we know you’re with the Arcane Council?” I asked, trying to sound as though I might be relieved when he proved it.
The armored elf’s back straightened and his nose rose a fraction, as if the popsicle stick of self-importance had been shoved just a little bit further up his ass.
“I am Yassin Herna, Chief Functionary of the Council,” he said. He moved his hip to the side and displayed the scabbard that hung at his waist. On it was a symbol, a sort of double-dragon crest that I couldn’t quite make out. Not that it mattered. I wouldn’t have recognized the seal of the Arcane Council if it had been served up to me with a parsley garnish.
I tried to make myself look relieved. “Oh, all right, that’s great news,” I said.
I felt Rick shift behind me and saw Bradley give him a nudge in the reflection of the mirror.
“And who might the eight of you be, if I might be so bold to ask?” asked Yassin Herna, Chief Shitpimple of the Arcane Council.
“Yeah, look, we were just getting a tour around the prison,” I said, making my words trip over themselves in what I hoped came across as great relief. “Then all this… shit started to go down, you know. There was all this fighting. The Jotunn guards were attacked by these scummy-looking lot in raggedy-ass sackcloth robes. They looked like junkies, you know. Anyway, we managed to fight our way through the mess and made our way to this room.”
Yassin Herna was clearly the kind of guy who was used to taking orders like a good little bitch and not using his imagination. However, he played the part of the seemingly hard-nosed, but fairly clueless, bureaucrat and said, “Is that so? You were on a tour were you?”
“That’s right,” Janet suddenly said, stepping forward and fixing the Yassin with the Thunderstone eye, a look that could shuck an oyster from ten aces it was so sharp.
“And you are, miss?” Yassin asked.
“I am Janet Thunderstone, and I had just brought my friends here in the hope that I could show them where it is that those fools and traitors that defy the Arcane Council are thrown, when all the violence broke out. Then, I overheard one of the ragged mages say that my father was in trouble and locked up somewhere in his own prison.” Janet scoffed. “I couldn’t believe it, so we went looking. We ended up here, in an office I have never seen before.”
Yassin swallowed. He was, like most professional bureaucrats, obviously an elf who regarded names more highly than people.
“Yes… Well, Miss Thunderstone, this is really something that someone above my paygrade should be talking to you about, but seeing as I am the highest ranking official here…” He looked over his shoulder and the six waiting guardsmen. “I regret to inform you that your father is, indeed, in a world of trouble. We believe that he is in cahoots with the Death Mages that breached the prison and escaped with them.”
Janet put on a wonderful, Golden Globe-winning performance of the completely surprised and shocked daughter.
“So, he’s not here?” she said in an anguished voice that was no less impressive for being completely fake. ““He was always such a terrible father. But he’s run off with Death Mages?” She shook her head.
“I am afraid so, Miss Thunderstone,” Yassin said awkwardly.
The armored elf shuffled his feet. He had clearly been hoping to come here and make the arrest of his career and, instead, he found himself potentially having to console a hysterical daughter. He cleared his throat. He suddenly looked like he would rather be anywhere else.
It was only going to take the smallest push to get him to let us go. So then I hit him with the game-winner.
“Yeah,” I said, “and now here we are in this fucking weird room with all these blurry portraits.” I pointed at the two pictures of my parents, which all eight of us could see as clear as day. “What the hell is with that?” I asked Yassin, shaking my head. “I bet they cost a fortune, and they’re not even clear. Sometimes I just don’t get art, you know.”
I saw the rigidity go out of Yassin Herna’s shoulders. He looked behind him at the guards once more and seemed to decide something. He turned back to us.
“Right, well, I can see no reason why I should keep you detained until the Arcane Council arrives,” he said. He glanced from me to Janet. She was standing, looking very believably morose, and being comforted by Cecilia and Alura. Cecilia had her curtain of long blonde hair across her face. No doubt she was disguising who she was just in case Yassin recognized her and decided to later let her parents know about her presence here.
“Excellent,” I said.
“Then I suppose I shall cancel my hex on your portal,” Yassin said.
“That’d be great. Thank you so much,” I said with a Colgate smile.
Yassin produced a very elegant, and rather effeminate, feather wand and cast a spell on the portal inside the mirror. It became liquid-like again.
Nigel slipped through the portal first, followed by Rick and Bradley.
“Oh! I should probably ask where it is you are going,” Yassin said. “Just in case the Council has any more questions for any of you.”
I saw Alura and Cecilia edge through the portal behind Rick and Damien.
“You know what, I think we’re just going to fucking get out of here, if it’s all the same to you, tin-man,” I said, and hopped through the portal, dragging Janet with me.
“Hey, I say, wait a—” was the last thing I heard from the pompous ass that was the Arcane Council’s Chief Whatdayacallit.
Janet and I emerged into the cool night air in Nevermoor village. The other six—Alura, Damien, Nigel, Rick, Cecilia, and Bradley— were already waiting for us. Janet quickly turned and muttered a few words and made a sharp gesture with her wand, as if she was closing an invisible door. There was a sharp snapping noise, like the mother of all locks being closed, then the portal vanished with its usual sucking sound.
Janet stood, breathing heavily and looking at where the portal had just vanished. Then she turned to me and brushed a lock of brown hair out of her eyes.
“The mirror is locked,” she told me. “They won’t be able to follow us. They won’t even know where we’ve gone to.”
I gave her a hug. “Nice work,” I said into her ear.
I held her at arm's length and looked into those big doe eyes of hers. Eyes that could be harder than coffin nails when the need arose. They weren’t now. They were soft and looked up at me meaningfully.
“Thanks for getting us out of there, Justin,” she said.
I shrugged. “It’s all good.”
“Thanks for finding my dad and freeing him. We wouldn’t have found him in time otherwise.”
“Janet, it’s all good,” I said. “Really. To be honest, I was pretty damned lucky to find Barry Chillgrave. He was the one that sniffed out your father. He tracked him down by following his thaumaturgical thread or something.”
She gave me another hug. She was petite, and her hair tickled me under the chin.
“Yeah,” she said into my chest, “but who freed Barry? Who managed to, somehow, get his hands on the Skeleton Key?”
“N-now that is something that I would like to know,” Nigel said, raising his hand like he was in class and had a question for a teacher.
I laughed. “I bet you would, Nigel.”
“Hey man, he ain’t the only one,” Damien said, walking over and slapping me on the arm. “I think I speak for all of us when I say I want to know what the hell happened after you fuckin’ boosted off into the fog that new spell of yours laid down.”
I looked around at my seven friends. All of their faces were turned toward me. I grinned. “Well, I guess I can fill you guys in on what happened,” I said. “Give you the play by play so you slow-asses feel like you were there.”
Rick gave me a playful shove, and I laughed.
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s head back to the frat and see if Chaosbane, Idman, and the rest are there. I’d be interested to hear what that wacky bastard Chaosbane has got up his sleeve next.”
We made our way through Nevermoor. It was early evening and the place was settling down into a cosy bustle. Lights were shining in the windows, the smell of woodsmoke was on the air as people lit their fires, and the sound of laughter and song was just starting to build within the taverns. It sounded like the spectacle of Arun had passed for them. I couldn’t help but feel a little sorry for the guy. He’d been an asshole, but his cousin had been an even bigger asshole. I put the thought aside for now and let myself absorb the pleasant atmosphere of Nevermoor and the company of my friends.
I breathed deep. It felt damned good to be back after being in the windowless confines of the Eldritch Prison for so long. I hadn’t realized how much I had missed the simple feeling of a breeze in my face until we arrived back.
We tramped up the long hill to the frat house, through the rusted iron gate, and down the crooked garden path. When we emerged out of the tangled undergrowth that the boys and I referred to as the front garden, I saw Chaosbane making his way up the porch steps. He was leading something behind him on a leash. On getting closer and allowing my eyes to take in the spectacle, I noticed that the Headmaster was leading Arun along by a tether. As we approached, the Headmaster of the Mazirian Academy tied the zombie to one of the main posts on the porch and stepped away.
“Chaosbane,” I said, “what the hell is Arun doing here?”
Chaosbane spun gracefully on the spot, using one heel as a pivot. He smiled delightedly at the sight of us.
“Ah, Justin Mauler and co! Splendid, simply splendid that you could make it, mates!” he said.
I pointed at Arun, who was busy gawping at nothing with his hazy, pale eyes and letting out little groans. “I’ve got to address the undead elephant in the room again,” I said.
“The Ar-undead elephant,” Rick rumbled. He was obviou
sly really happy with that gag that he had cooked up. I wondered how many more times we were all going to have to hear it.
“Hm, a pertinent question,” Chaosbane said, slapping Arun’s hand away as the zombie tried to get a grip on the sleeve of his doublet. The zombie Arun turned away, somewhat moodily I thought.
“Yes,” Chaosbane continued, “I reported the death to the family as soon as we returned, you know—can’t have them finding out through the grapevine, can we? Looks uncaring. Anyway, I filled them in, gave them the gist of things—”
“That their son had been murdered by an estranged cousin?” I said woodenly.
“That’s right!” Chaosbane said, seemingly delighted that I was keeping up. “So, I told the Lightsons, and they were as predictably upset and caring as any family of scorpions would be. After breaking the bad news to them that their son was, in actual fact, as dead as a doorknob, I tried to alleviate their sadness somewhat.”
“Let me guess,” I said, “by telling them that he wasn’t completely dead. Just a little undead.”
Chaosbane beamed. “Ah, Justin, I see that you have a soul as downy-soft as my own.”
I heard Cecilia give a little snort of unladylike laughter from behind me. I knew where she was coming from. Reginald Chaosbane really was something. When it came to people that you weren’t sure whether to hate or admire, the Headmaster of the Mazirian Academy stood alone.
“And, uh, how did they take it, sir?” Nigel piped up.
“Not well, Mr. Windmaker,” Chaosbane said sorrowfully. “Not well at all. If anything, the news that their son was currently tied up, mumbling and staggering about like Igor after a large evening on the Violent Violet Liftoff Shrooms, soured their mood even further.”
“That’s, um, terrible,” Alura said.
“I was going to dispose of the corpse, after performing a moderately boring and long cleansing ceremony, but I thought that you gentlemen might want to make use of him,” Chaosbane said. “I hear you were on the way to making amends with the poor fellow before he croaked it. And so I brought him here so that you could decide at your leisure.”