King Tides Curse

by C J Timms

  Gale strode through and pulled a large sack from underneath his cloak. He positioned himself just far away enough from the gate and the entrance to the Cathedral that neither would ask questions. In the early dawn light of two suns, he waited. The sunlight played off the silver sails of the Membranous Cathedral, reflected upwards by the water of the harbour. The chorus of seagull shrieks was cut through by the dulcet tones of the desalinator pumping water. It worked all day, every day. Bursts of electrical discharge lit up the sails and the harbour in white flashes every minute as the water was desalinated.

  Only half an hour after he’d got there, his first mark strode through the gate. Gale held out a hand and put on a show.

  ‘Greetings friend, one gold coin to get inside to see the show. Candidates then pay the full entrance fee at the desk.’ Gale said.

  The young man had a straight coiffed moustache, skinny jeans and a casual shirt in contrast to a sword belted at his side in a golden scabbard. The candidate hesitated.

  ‘Or you could just go home…’

  ‘No, I’ll pay!’ The young man said and handed over one gold to Gale. Gale placed it in the collection sack.

  Gale waved him on, ‘Canute’s blessing on you friend.’

  From there, things only got easier. A large number of candidates handed over gold without question, fearful of offending anyone.

  A bogan looking teenager, stepped up with a grin. His beard trimmed into a ‘throatie’, so that only the area under his chin remained. A mix of muscle and fat bulked him out. His skin was covered in Canuteian tattoos, black ink marks that flowed into one another. The bogan dressed in thongs, trackies and a flannelette shirt. A tinnie of beer peeked out of one pocket, and he was wolfing down a pie in the early morning light.

  He was built like a brick shithouse.

  ‘Well strike a light mate, a man bloody well pays his debts. Rule twenty-nine.’ The bogan fished into his pocket and dumped out a coin into the sack. The coin stuck to the side, covered in dried chocolate milk.

  ‘Hooroo then. Titus Mangrove has work to do. Have a ripper of a day.’ Titus Mangrove finished and shook Gale’s hand up and down.

  The girl behind him had shoulder-length brown hair with an athletes body, built like a professional swimmer or maybe more like a professional hockey player? Certainly in better shape then Titus Mangrove and just taller than Gail. Gale sucked in his gut as she approached. She was covered partly in armour and partly in bright pink and green activewear. Through a gap in the shoulder armour, he saw a twisting burn mark trailing down her right arm. She wore a blade of twisted slag metal at her hip.

  ‘Are you okay miss?’ Gale asked, ‘Do you need somewhere to change?’

  ‘Its activewear. I’m ready to fight.’ She said

  ‘Come on Swan, make way for the real nobles.’ Yelled someone behind her.

  The girl, Swan, flipped them the bird and paid up. She paid up and moved on in a huff of pink lycra, clanking armour and surprisingly choice curse words.

  After nearly a hundred had passed through, Gale was starting to feel good. His next mark was a short runty looking male, barely four feet tall, dressed in the style of a Volkstorm islander. The islander had his own sack of gold which he carried, his face and arms covered with brown splotches.

  ‘One gold to get in and see the show, candidates pay the entry fee at the desk.’ Gale said with a firm smile. He was well-practised at this now, he was a genius, a con man, a grifter.

  The short guy looked up at him and narrowed his eyes. ‘There’s nothing in the entry manual about a door fee, and I should know, I’ve read every manual for the past fifty years.’

  ‘Well now see master….’

  ‘Yip.’

  ‘Well master Yip, we’ve been getting all sorts of sticky-beaking from folks who don’t actually sit the exam. The University has to pay its costs somehow, helps to keep your tuition fees down and all.’ Gale said.

  Yip just stared at him as another candidate lined up behind him.

  It was Alisdair.

  Mother-frakker.

  Gale leaned forward, so his hood perched further over his face, masking it.

  Yip started to say ‘I think this is bull…’ when Alisdair cut off Yip from behind.

  ‘Move it along you little piece of flotsam, if you can’t pay let your betters through.’

  Yip twitched, paused, looked slowly back to Alisdair behind him, considered Gale and then winked. Yip reached into Gale’s collection bag with a gold coin in his hand. Gale felt the sack get lighter and Yip pulled out about half of the coins, palming them up his sleeve silently. He winked again at Gale and moved on without mentioning anything to Alisdair.

  Frak, thought Gale, well at least the little bastard didn’t rat me out. I still need about a hundred coins. I need to get them now. I still need time to set things up. Alisdair stepped forward impatiently, and Gale kept his hood low over his face.

  ‘Is this going to take all day, I have important business to see to.’ Alisdair said, barely glancing at Gale, brushing some dandruff off his shoulder. The miserable bastard didn’t even recognise him. Put on a show…

  With a spark of inspiration, Gale gestured Alisdair to lean in and whispered. ‘Of course my lord, in fact for the nobles we’re offering a premium discount. Just pay half your entry fee up here, and we’ll cut you to the front of the line ahead of the riff-raff.’

  Gale dodged around waiters leaving the kitchens of the Cathedral. He now wore a simple sparring outfit from the Ironchurch. His plan was in motion, nothing to do but let it play out. Gale joined the line to the entrance panel.

  The other accepted applicants stood to the side. A few cast a confused look at him, recognising him as the one who'd taken their money at the entrance.

  The line ahead of him shrank and shrank until there was only one person in front of him.

  ‘Rejected.’ Said the head of the panel. The candidate ahead of him was dragged out, crying and struggling.

  ‘Next.’

  Gale stepped in front of the panel and dropped his sack of coin to the ground. A few gasps and curses came from the crowd.

  ‘Your resume please.’ Said a frumpy man in a black cloak, without looking up from his papers. That would be Professor Giltynan, Gale thought. Provided his intel was good. Gale looked around at the crowd. He considered the panel of Professors. The students who’d already been cut, about half of them, standing to one side.

  ‘Your resume please.’ Said Giltynan, tapping a pencil on the desk.

  Gale held out his hand, heard Liam’s advice in his head, considered all the people who’d spat at his Script in the past. He thought of his preparations for med school applications, now seeming so long ago. All the crap he’d put up with, the hours of resume building, the extracurriculars piled on top of study. He thought of all the smug gits he’d been extra nice to, to avoid making waves.

  Frak them.

  Cerulean blue energy erupted around him then slid down his arm. The Script condensed into his resume. A flickering scrap of white paper cut with cerulean sliced through the air. Gale could taste the salt in his mouth and felt his chest clamp down. He stared down the entrance panel.

  Put on a show.

  ‘Deep magic,’ said Professor Giltynan, scowling. Giltynan was a squat man with clad in a black suit and shirt but with a tie with…cats on it? Giltynan, Gale mused, Gilty-nan…Guilty Nan. I wonder what his Nan was guilty of. Probably of starting the genetic path to him.

  Bursar Gibraltar, a rock golem of the Strata, looked down his nose at it. Rock golems were around eight-foot and built of stone and ore. Different rock golems were built of different materials based on their region. Sand and shale. Dirt and diamonds. Oreheim was a diverse realm.

  ‘Look at the way this resume is formatted, hobbies before prior experience, why not just write it in comic sans.’ Gibraltar said.

  ‘There are more pressing issues Gibraltar.’ Said Giltynan. ‘We haven’t accepted a Deep user to the univer
sity since Addison, with good reason.’

  An aide whispered in Giltynan’s ear. ‘And it seems this candidate is guilty of defrauding others, impersonating a university official.’

  Put on a show Gale thought to himself.

  ‘You are right Professor.’ Always start by agreeing with them, Gale thought. Hard to argue when someone agrees with you. ‘In one morning I have outwitted at least a third of the other applicants you have. I have no resources of my own, but I have fought fathomless. I had to pony up the funds for admission to the most prestigious University, just for the chance to join the College one day.’

  ‘Urmm...War is not won with truth and honesty alone’ Said a man to the right of the panel, Master Urms. ‘The boy does have a point.’

  Gale had counted on Urms military background to convince him. Urms looked faded. He reminded Gale of a weatherworn mural in a skate park. Once vibrant colours rebelling against the system now stained with old vomit, run over by countless wheels. Urms was a veteran of the War of Brothers and Gale had expected something more.

  Master Giltynan pulled a dagger and jabbed it at Urms. ‘We are at war with the Deep, and you would let in one of their spies. Fathomless they are, and we cannot fathom the depths to which they would go to infiltrate us. You know all about that though, don’t you Urms?’

  ‘Fascinating.' Chancellor Helios said, over the top of the two of the others. Helios was a man whose musing reverberated the building, commanding attention. Broad-shouldered and screaming vitality despite looking around fifty. He looked at Gale over steepled fingers, ‘I say, no, the risk outweighs the benefits.’

  Gibraltar, the rock-golem from Strata, nodded in agreement with the Chancellor. Gale’s jaw tightened slightly, he’d known Gibraltar would vote with the Headmaster, but he’d hoped to convince the Headmaster in his favour.

  ‘Really Giltynan, practitioners of the Deep arts are rare but certainly aren’t barred in the College guidelines. You didn’t cut out every male applicant just because Addison was a man.’ Mistress Arancina said with a refined whip of a voice. She turned her oil painting of a face to regard Gale. Her pointed ears showed her to be a Paramouran.

  Time for a roll of the dice, Gale thought, keep the show rolling.

  ‘It’ll be two to three Urms, no point in a vote.’ Master Giltynan said with disdain.

  ‘I’d like the vote sirs, if it’s all the same to you’ Gale said, fiddling with something in his pocket.

  ‘So be it, boy,’ sighed the Chancellor. ‘All those opposed?’

  Gale grasped rapidly with his Deep Script and activated his spell. Giltynan’s grin widened, and he went to speak. His face reddened, his hand went to his mouth, and he heaved as though to vomit. Gale felt the spell click into place.

  A bubble came out. Giltynan belched a stream of bubbles, each one giving off a faint reflective glow. He struggled to mouth the words nay. He began to froth at the mouth. Bubbles overflowed from his jaw. Bursar Gibraltar had kept his mouth tightly shut, but bubbles had formed a moustache dripping down from his nose and leaked out of the corners of his mouth. They glopped together making him look like a statue with a big white beard.

  Chancellor Helios just stared Gale down. There was not a single bubble on his face, nor on Arancina’s or Urms. In the crowd, several other officials and students swiped bubbles from their mouth. He’d tried this technique on Ironchurch after he wouldn’t stop telling him to wash his mouth out with soap. It had earned him night shift at the bar for three weeks. The technique had to be prepared in advance, and the prepared liquid had to be drunk but once ingested, it could be activated by Gale. He’d snuck a bunch into all of the bottles of victory wine.

  ‘Technically, verbal decisions are required for the record.’ Gale said.

  Giltynan thumped the table, and his nostrils flared as he spluttered out incoherent words.

  Helios stared him down. The board of five had become a board of three. Gale stared back up at the Chancellor whose drink he had avoided triggering. Now for the coup de grace.

  ‘This University makes soldiers Chancellor. I’ll try to do some good, but you don’t have to trust me to employ me. Just trust I love my paycheque. The defences of this school could be improved. Gale pulled out a copy of Tony Robbins, ‘Awaken the Giant within.’

  ‘Tony Robbins teaches "Constant and never-ending improvement". Although you Chancellor and some of your colleagues clearly have defences in place against the Deep, some do not.’ Gale paused, he’d left the Chancellor with a way out to save face. ‘Ignorance is not a defence.’

  Chancellor Helios stared him down ‘You have come into my house and poisoned my staff.’

  Gale felt his chest tighten, and his hand twitched for his puffer. Had he overplayed his hand?

  Arancina burst into tinkling laughter. ‘Let him undertake the entrance exam if he wants it that bad…what better punishment after all.’

  Chancellor Helios looked at Aranacina and gave the slightest nod of his head. ‘Very well, if he fails, he’ll still suffer the same punishment all Earthers do. All in agreement’.

  Punishment?

  ‘Aye’ Said Arancina and Urms.

  ‘Master Knott may sit the entrance exam.’

  Gale clicked his fingers, and the stream of bubbles slowed from Giltynan, Gibraltar and the other students. Gale passed to the group of candidates, who gave him plenty of space. He hadn’t made any friends getting in. Now he had to work with that.

  Ironchurch would be so mad. There was no way he’d sell any of his conditioner now.

  The Membranous Cathedral’s bones were old. Slabs of metal and stone formed the Cathedral's ribcage with billowing polymer sails fluttered outside the stained glass mosaics. Statues of ancient kings and warriors lined the walkway. They showed Canute standing before a tidal wave and winged angelic figures in the skies, surrounding floating monstrous jaws. Portraits hung the walls, in one, Canute handed a glowing relic to a winged knight. In the next, a golden figure crashed to Earth, a dark-robed figure with a silver collar plunging a sword into the angels back.

  The other students gave him a wide berth, and one occasionally hiccoughed a bubble. Gale had no allies here, but he was through the first hurdle, now he just had to sit the reef-damned exam itself.

  They emerged into a half amphitheatre facing a harbour the size of a football field. The desalination harbour had a stone walkway that projected out over the harbour twelve foot wide. It projected into the harbour, right out into the middle where a podium stood.

  A fleet of kayaks floated beneath the podium, bumping up against the desalination wall. Script played over the desalination wall, splitting salt from the freshwater. The university staff gestured for them to get into the kayaks.

  ‘Be careful. The current flows to the filter. Don’t fall in.’

  The Chancellor stood atop two kayaks armoured in a rash shirt, boardshorts and safety jacket. Warpaint of pink zinc lined his nose and his eyes, each of the kayaks he straddled, paddled by a university staff member, presumably a PhD candidate. Chancellor Helios thrust his arm forwards, and the fleet put out to sea.

  They paddled against the current, out into the harbour of Ionhome. A low fog lay across the water. Gale felt the adrenaline pumping, feeling the flimsy wood which separated him from the ocean. Thoughts of his last trip out to the reefwall, the attack, of Blush filled his head. Yet there was no sign of fathomless. The light-coral stood strong.

  Something cracked into his kayak.

  ‘Trenchborn’. Alisdair cursed and cracked his paddle down on Gale’s kayak again. Alisdair had taken a large dose of the contaminated victory wine. A leak sprung in the kayak, and Gale sealed it with his Script. Alisdair narrowed his eyes and paddled ahead.

  Other students cursed him, paddling past. The female student in armour and activewear flipped him the bird. Titus, the bogan looking dude from earlier, came level with him. He chewed on a pie one-handed, paddling with the other. Flakes of golden pastry blew away in the wind as he p
assed. A dollop of tomato sauce dripped onto his pants, and he wiped his mouth with his flannelette sleeve. Gale eyed off the meat pie. He hadn’t had one since he entered Ionhome.

  ‘Gale Knott,’ Gale called over. ‘Don’t suppose you’ve got an extra pie?’

  Titus stared into him, chewed, a bit of meat plonked into the water.

  ‘Pies are for top blokes only. A true man does not use cheap tricks, rule forty-five.’

  A small book skimmed across the water, flitting round his head and Gale swatted it away. It retreated to the hand of the little runt, Yip, who had seen through his disguise. Yip studied Gale, not with anger, more like curiosity. Like he was testing a hypothesis.

  The wall of fog thickened. The further the fleet paddled, the more the other students became silhouetted figures. In the haze, gale could only follow the sound of paddles, trying to find the way in the murk. One by one, the other students dropped away until it was just him. Alone in the world again.

  Finally, Gale broke through into open air. A colossal island atop the back of a giant turtle rose before him. The turtle was a floating city, tall as the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Cliffs of black volcanic rock ringed the island-turtle with waterfalls cascading down the side. From the black rock, five towers reached up like a hand grasping at the heavens. Coral reef had grown into the turtles shell and the cliffs. In the centre, a golden statue of Canute held its hand out towards the ocean, and a faint white light formed a semi-translucent bubble around the island. Flying shapes circled the bubble and amongst the cliffs.

  A winged gryphon swooped by overhead and Gale reached out a hand to wave it down. It circled back and swept in low, responding to his call.

  A white mass of gryphon shit exploded off his kayak. The bulk of it flew past Gale and carried on to hit Swan, coating her activewear. She flung white goop off her and stared daggers at Gale. She conjured a blade of twisted slag metal from the air and got ready to swing. A huge splash of water came from nearby as Titus flicked water over Swan with his paddle. Swan turned to him, and he gave two thumbs up with a childlike grin. A floating book hovered over Swan sketching the image as the little runt looked thoughtful nearby. Swan cleaved through the floating book with her blade, and her face flushed red. The runt winced.