by Dante King
“Hello, you,” I said. To my surprise, my voice was cracked and raw, as if I had been screaming along with ten-thousand other people at a Tool concert.
“Here, take this,” Enwyn said. She thrust a bottle into my hand.
I took a pull of the bottle. It was an ice-cold beer. It had the same effect on me as rain must do on a lettuce that has been left too long out in the sun.
“Man alive, I needed that,” I said. “How long was I out for?”
“Seconds,” Enwyn said, helping me to my feet.
“Seconds?” I said. “How can that be? I thought that the three trapped souls were meant to give me about an hour with my dad.”
Enwyn shrugged.
“Shit, I must have just had myself an Inception moment,” I mumbled, rubbing my temples and taking another swig of beer.
“How do you feel?” a cool, calm voice said from over my shoulder.
I turned.
Princess Alura, heir to the throne of the Gemstone Elementals, was looking as radiant as she always did. Not surprising, perhaps, in a woman whose very skin looked to be carved from shimmering diamond. She looked a little like Emma Frost in her diamond form, but with golden eyes that were centered by bright white irises.
“How do I feel?” I asked. I moved my head experimentally from side to side. It felt like my brain had come loose at the roots and was knocking around in my head like the last biscuit in the biscuit barrel.
“I don’t want to sound overly dramatic,” I said, “but I feel like I’ve just spent a hundred years in the devil’s butthole and then been crapped out headfirst into a pile of broken bottles.”
Alura grinned. “Not overly dramatic at all.”
Cecilia laughed. “I always said you were a delicate flower, darling,” the Elven aristocrat mocked gently and kissed me on the cheek.
I laughed. “I’ve been saying that for ages, and yet no one seems to believe me.”
“It’s probably all the blood and carnage that you leave in your wake, I imagine, Mr. Mauler,” Odette Scaleblade said in her husky accent.
I cast an eye at my enigmatic Academy tutor. She was dressed in her habitual garb of skirts and shawls, in different shades of gold, russet brown, and bronze. The woman, as well as being a Death Mage of the first order, was also a dragonkin. Her dragon tail swished gently through the rainy air as we all made our way into the cover of the large pagoda that Barry Chillgrave, our resident poltergeist, had helped erect as part of our funky-fresh new outdoor entertaining area.
“Yeah,” I said to the sultry woman, “the accompanying bloodbaths do fly in the face of that sensitive facade that I’m trying to conjure around myself, don’t they?”
Me, Damien, Enwyn, Alura, Cecilia, and Nigel Windmaker, my uber-brilliant Wind Mage fraternity brother, all pulled up pews around the large table that sat under the pagoda.
Bradley Flamewalker appeared at my shoulder. The delicious smell of roasting meats marinated in a spice mix came with him. He was a guy with whom I’d had a little altercation when we first met. But it was all water under the bridge now, him being the fraternity’s low-man.
“How do you feel about ribs?” he asked, slapping me on the arm in a way that made my brain shake like a jelly.
At the very mention of ribs, my stomach began growling and grumbling like a rottweiler with a toothache.
“Yeah,” I said. Even though we had enjoyed a feast at Priestess Entwistle’s place—before having to hightail it out of there through her secret portal—I could definitely eat again. Whatever magic had enabled my father and I to converse for however long we had, it had taken it out of me.
As I was thinking over what had happened back in the Celestial Realms, Bradley went back inside and returned with a plate of ribs that was so massive I doubt Ron Swanson would have been able to polish them off on his lonesome.
“What the hell animal d-d-did those things come from?” Nigel asked.
“Catoblepas,” Bradley replied promptly.
“Obviously,” Damien said. He looked as if he knew what a catoblepas was about as much as I did. “Man, you ask some dumbass questions.”
“Oh, p-please,” Nigel retorted, grabbing one of the enormous ribs and dropping it onto his plate. “Your brain is so dull that if it was a knife, I could ride a broomstick all day with it in my back pocket and not split a hair.”
This was the sort of banter that soothed me after a day of bloodshed, explosions, and elevated stress levels. I grinned as Damien tossed a piece of potato salad at Nigel, but the quick-thinking Wind Mage redirected it with a burst of air so that it flew back toward Damien. With a deft point of his index finger, Damien incinerated the piece of potato salad in mid-air.
Cecilia laughed, and Alura clapped politely at the display.
“What a waste,” Bradley said sadly.
Rick finished packing up the magical forge that had once belonged to his father. This forge was now magically contained in a handy-dandy receptacle that he could fit in the pouch of his plaited leather and grass skirt. Now that he was finished, he stumped over to us. He eased himself into a chair and grunted in a way that told everyone nearby that he was going in for the ribs in a matter of seconds so they might want to clear the runway. Rick was the kind of enormous individual whose food was normally scared of him, even after it had been slaughtered and cooked, so voracious was his appetite.
The sound of the door to the kitchen of the fraternity house opening drew my attention away from my ribs for just one second.
Madame Xel stepped out into the rain. She was another one of the Academy’s teachers and a succubus who could charm the cock out of the pants of a man wearing a full suit of armor. She was followed by the ethereal and regal-looking Priestess Entwistle and the dour-faced, former Head Warden of the Eldritch Prison, Idman Thunderstone.
The two women were locked in conversation together, while Idman followed looking even more grave than usual. This was saying something, as Idman Thunderstone habitually had the tense, unsmiling countenance of a horticultural spy who was trying to smuggle a gorse bush through enemy lines by hiding it deep within his rectum.
It was only then, on catching sight of the man’s widow’s peak and severe expression, that I realized that there was someone missing from the gathering. Someone who should have been there.
“Hey,” I said loudly as Idman, Madame Xel, and Mallory took their seats at the table, “where’s Janet at?”
“I’m not a hundred percent sure where she went, man,” Damien said thickly, his lips coated with a rather fetching lipstick of beef marinade, “but she rushed off somewhere, just after you and Rick started doing your bit of arts and crafts with those three souls.”
That didn’t sound like your usual Janet behavior. I had met the girl in the middle of an Iron Maiden moshpit and, for someone who probably only just came in at five-foot five, she could handle herself. We had been through some stiff times together—both in and out of the bedroom. She was a woman who knew how to hold her own, and knew how to hold my own too, if it came to that.
I scanned the faces around the table. My eyes caught those of Idman, her father, and the man looked quickly away. For the first time since I had met him, the man looked sheepish. He had the guilty cast of a man who’s done something a bit naughty and fucking well knows it.
I pointed a half-gnawed rib in his direction.
“Where’s she gone, Warden?” I asked.
Idman attempted to hoist a look of careful nonchalance onto his face, but I wasn’t having any of it.
Trust your gut, my old man had said, and I meant to. What my gut was saying right at that moment was this: Firstly, that the ribs that it was currently enjoying were absolutely fucking delicious—the Alexandra Daddario of the meat world. Secondly, it was telling me that Idman Thunderstone was hiding something and, what was more, it was something he wasn’t proud of.
“Come on, Idman,” I coaxed, “spill the beans so that we can get on with dinner.”
Idman st
ripped off a bit of meat, put his rib down, and dabbed at his lips with a napkin.
“She shouldn’t be long,” he said, with an attempt at his old imperiousness. “A simple errand.”
I held his eye, and eventually, he looked down at his plate.
“Although,” he added, “she has been gone for perhaps a mite longer than I had anticipated…”
I pulled another rib toward me. My gut was talking again. Now it was telling me that I was likely about to take a running swan dive into a big vat of crap, so I had better chow down while I could.
“Where’s she gone, man?” I said.
Cecilia was looking intently at Idman. It was well known that Janet and Cecilia were close friends.
Idman looked loathe to speak.
“Ah, come now, friend,” Rick said, “we are all friends here, no? There’s no judgement. Better to speak the truth than hold it in and let it fester.”
Idman cleared his throat and raised his chin. When he spoke, it was with all his old cold suavity.
“It concerns a… habit of mine,” he said. “One that I developed many years ago, but have recently, imprudently, started to pick up again.”
“Habit?” I asked, although I figured we all knew where this was going.
Nigel was looking on and chewing gormlessly, like he was watching a particularly good episode of CSI.
“The stresses of working as Chief Warden of a prison, you see,” Idman continued. “And, what with being here and having to share quarters with that pestilential poltergeist, I’ve felt like I’ve needed some extra doses now and again.”
“What is it, this habit?” I asked again.
“Yeah, Idman,” Damien said, a sarcastic smile playing about his lips. “Didn’t you hear? Acceptance is the first step to recovery.”
“It’s a certain type of pixie dust,” Idman said stiffly. “Taken through a… particular orifice.”
I made a face at that.
“J-j-jeez,” Nigel said, “you think you know a guy.”
“Am I right in concluding from what you say, Mr. Thunderstone,” said Alura, with devastating politeness, “that you sent your only daughter off on an errand to procure illicit narcotics for you?”
Madame Xel held up a manicured hand and chimed in. “Excuse me, but where I’m from, we call a spade a spade and a drug deal a drug deal.”
I drained my beer in one long, slow swallow. Son of a beef brisket, it was a tasty one! I could quite happily have sat there and drank as many more as it took for me to be taken to bed in a wheelbarrow, but I had that awful feeling that duty was calling and that I was bound to answer whether I wanted to or not. Janet had pulled my chestnuts out of the fire before and, not only that, she was my friend and the reason I had learned my very first spell.
Regretfully, I stripped the last bit of succulent catoblepas meat off the rib I was eating and tossed the bone onto the grass. Almost before it had settled, the saber-toothed tiger cub, who had followed us home from one of our very first missions, zipped out of a nearby bush and snatched it up. In a blur of purple and mauve fur, the little animal had disappeared back into the bush again. The crunch and crack of bone came to my ears and the leaves rustled.
I got to my feet with a little groan, stretched my back, and rolled my shoulders. After what my father had told me, about being able to influence the shape that the spells I created through sex with other mages took, I was eager to get practicing. However, so long as Janet was off on this pixie dust-related errand that Idman had sent her on, my whole attention wouldn’t be on the job.
If I was fast approaching the hard limit of my spell production, as my old man seemed certain I was, then there was no point half-assing a lay. Better to whole-ass sex and ensure that I gave myself the best chance of creating the most useful spell.
I popped a bit of potato salad into my mouth and chewed thoughtfully. Then, I smiled to myself.
Stay optimistic, but marry that optimism with pragmatism too, my dad had told me. And make sure you don’t always have your eyes fixed so firmly on the future that you forget to enjoy the present.
It was sound advice.
Hell, I could take the time walking down there to run through my spellbook and figure out a spell that my arsenal could most strongly benefit from.
Fuck it. If someone’s got to go out and search for her, then it should be me. That girl has come to mean a lot to me. And she’s one of us.
“Right, I’m going to go for a stroll and see if I can find Janet,” I said.
My eyes settled on Idman again. I would have asked the jackass to come with me and help me search for his daughter, but he was wanted by the Arcane Council and was meant to be lying low at our fraternity house.
“D-d-do you need any h-help, Justin?” Nigel asked me.
Judging by the extra few stutters his voice had taken on, the halfling Wind Mage had imbibed more than his fair share of the ale. I looked around at Rick and Damien, and saw that they too bore the subtle signs of a couple of lads who’d been into the good stuff for a few hours, while I had been off leading the delegation that had rescued Mallory Entwistle.
Rick was breathing pretty heavily—though that might have been because he’d replaced all his internal organs with catoblepas rib meat—and his eyelids looked to be set on a slow downward trajectory. Damien was covered in whatever marinade had been coating the ribs. Even Bradley, who usually passed out before he got too drunk, was slumped in his chair with the beneficent look of a man who was completely at peace with the world.
“J-J-Justin?” Nigel prompted.
I blinked.
“Aye? I’m good, Nigel. Thanks, man. I’ll just go and see what’s kept her. You know what Janet’s like. Even if she has run into a bit of trouble, I’d be more inclined to pity the poor goofball who got in her way than to worry about her.”
“I’m in complete agreement with you there, darling,” Cecilia said. She was picking daintily at the ribs on her own plate, wiping her fingers with her napkin after every bite and sipping from a glass of bright green wicked willow wine—apparently, the last winter’s vintage had been particularly fine.
“You and I are going to have to have a chat about this later, Idman,” I said. “This house has an open-door policy as far as mind-altering substances go, but if you’re wanting to shove a bit of pixie dust up your—wherever it might be that pixie dust goes—then you don’t send out lonesome women to score it for you.”
“Drug dealers,” Damien said, staring at Idman with one eye closed and trying to drain a glass that was already empty, “can be an unsavory bunch.”
“One who ran the Eldritch Prison would surely be aware of that,” the gorgeous, angelically proportioned Priestess Entwistle said mildly.
Idman, though he had haughty disdain running through his DNA, had the good form to look just a smidgen ashamed of himself.
“Where was this deal meant to go down?” I asked.
Idman took a sip from his goblet and said, “There is a specialist spot in Nevermoor. A place that some of you might have heard of before, though it is spoken of in whispers by the prudent. In this backstreet, which is veiled from casual sight and can only be accessed by those who know how to open the front gate, one can get their hands on practically anything they desire.”
“I won’t pretend that this place you’re describing doesn’t intrigue me,” I said. “What’s its name?”
“Its name is Powder Lane,” Idman said, his voice dropping a couple of octaves, even though he was surrounded only by friends.
Now, I had spent my fair share of time in Nevermoor. I enjoyed strolling through the village on my way home from class at the Academy, stopping off at one—or a few—of the taverns for some much-needed refreshment after a hard day of putting the mind and body through their paces. I had never, at any point, heard of nor seen a street named Powder Lane.
“You’re sure there’s actually such a place?” I asked. “You didn’t just happen to inhale some of this pixie dust into
your corn-hole one day and then imagine it?”
Idman gave me one of his old-fashioned looks; a real stink-eye number. It was one of those hard looks that you could have beaten armor out on, but it had no effect on me. I was well past being able to be intimidated by a trifling look.
“Of course it is there,” he said. “I’m sure that were you to ask some of your fellow students at the Academy—those with particularly dark bags under their eyes and propensity to fall asleep at the back of classes—they would bear out what I have told you.”
I had been raised on some of the best fantasy books ever written. Thanks to this, I knew that a place such as Powder Lane, a place hidden in plain sight, was bound to be difficult to enter.
“You mentioned a front gate,” I said. “I’m thinking that you’re not referring to a run-of-the-mill gate that you push open, right?”
“No, it’s not just a gate as such,” Idman Thunderstone said. “There is an alleyway around the back of the least reputable alehouse in Nevermoor.”
“The Goat’s Scrote?” I said immediately.
“Yes, that’s the establishment,” Idman said, a touch of distaste entering his tone. “There is an alleyway round the back of this inn, guarded by a sphinx in human form. This person will ask you the riddle of the week—a riddle that circulates amongst those who frequent Powder lane. Get it wrong and the Sphinx will lay about you with no uncertain violence.”
“Okay,” I said.
“What’s th-th-th-the riddle of the w-w-w-week?” Nigel stammered. The halfling was a sucker for any sort of puzzle or head-scratcher.
Idman replied, “The riddle this week is: You measure my life in hours, and I serve you by expiring. I’m quick when I’m thin and slow when I’m fat. The wind is my enemy.”
“The answer is, of course, a candle,” Nigel put in quickly before anyone else could attempt to answer.
“And that’s all I need?” I asked as Nigel sat back in his chair muttering to himself happily.