Creation Mage 6 by Dante King (red scrolls of magic .TXT) 📗

“Drink?” he said affably, waving the open vessel invitingly under one of the guard’s unsuspecting noses. The man recoiled.

“Sorry, sir,” said Sergeant Mullock, “not while we’re on duty.”

Reginald shrugged and took a swallow himself.

Off to one side, I heard one of the guards say in a barely sotto voce tone, “Bloody out of towners are like hemorrhoids: pain in the ass when they come down and a blessed relief when they head back up again.”

Leah giggled.

Mort said, “That sounded slightly derogatory, didn’t it, Igor?”

“Now, look here Sergeant Mullock my old mucker,” Reginald said, talking over his kin, propping his booted feet up on the rail of the sleigh and crossing them at the ankle. “I appreciate that you and your lads have a job to do, but we really aren’t a threat. I understand fully well that the Castle of Ascendance is only a stone’s throw away. And you have to be seen to be doing a good job, but I’m in and out of here fairly often. In fact, my family’s own ranch is on land that directly adjoins that of Queen Hagatha’s estate. We’re just in the area for a festive family get together.”

To my surprise, Sergeant Mullock seemed to blanche at the Headmaster’s words.

“Adjoin the Castle of Ascendance grounds… You don’t mean… You’re not another bunch of—”

“Chaosbane. Reginald Chaosbane, at your service, Sergeant,” Reginald said loudly, reaching up to doff a hat that wasn’t there.

“Cripes, I thought I recognized that geezer,” the shortest guard said to one of the other ones.

“Bugger me, but we’ve already had about a score of them cuckoos come through here already,” his fellow replied, a touch of dismay coloring his words. “A convoy of about a dozen came through, and it took four hours to check all the paraphernalia they were trying to bring in!”

“Headmaster of the illustrious Mazirian Academy,” Reginald finished grandly, bowing low.

A guard sporting a red beard was walking around our ride and doing the sleigh equivalent of kicking tires. He snorted derisively when he heard Reginald’s words.

I shot him an unfriendly look.

“What’re you looking at, fella?” the walking armored mountain shot at me.

I held up my hands. “Just wondering why you’d find the name of the Mazirian Academy so funny. Surely, you support us in the Mage Games? There can’t be any other Academies that come close.”

The guard gave me a queer, frozen look. Then, to my astonishment, he burst out laughing.

“Here, Loinsan, did you hear what this bloke just said?” the red-bearded guy said.

Loinsan, the shortest guard, looked up. “What’s that, Randulf?” he asked.

“This chap here just asked me whether we supported the Mazirian Academy in the Mage Games!” Randulf wiped a tear of mirth from the corner of his eye.

Loinsan began making a noise that most closely resembled a goat that had just swallowed a lit cigarette. I realized, after a second, that he was laughing.

“Blimey, that’s a good one!” he gasped. “Can you imagine, the Mazirian!”

I looked from one man to the other.

“What’s so funny?” I asked.

“There’s something that you probably don’t know about our Academy, Justin,” Enwyn said, leaning across Mallory.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“The Mazirian Academy’s reputation outside of Nevermoor and the surrounds is not exactly stellar,” Enwyn said. “The Headmaster’s genius is well-known and held in high regard, but so too are his… eccentricities.”

The two guards, Randulf and Loinsan, were still laughing heartily together.

Loinsan, between pained gasps, said, “The Maz-Maz-Mazirian! Over the likes of Belgarath!”

“Or Taranaki!” Randulf choked.

“Or Proelium’s!”

“Or even fuckin’ Battlebone!”

“That’s enough, Privates Randulf and Loinsan!” Sergeant Mullock snapped, a trace of color reentering his cheeks. “A bit of professionalism might see the pair of you spending more time conducting searches and less time cleaning the crappers with your toothbrushes!”

“Sorry, Sergeant,” the two privates said in unison.

“Randulf, you get the scanner and do a vector check. Make sure that none of these travelers have anything on them that has been reported stolen.”

“Yes, Sergeant!” the guard with the red beard said, snapping off a crisp salute.

“Loinsan, you carry on with an exterior visual check of the conveyance.”

“Yes, Sergeant!” Loinsan said, going back to his half-assed scanning of the sleigh.

Moving with slow, careful, frown-faced deliberateness, Randulf walked around the sleigh and asked each of the passengers to present their vectors in turn. He scanned the vector of each member of our party with an unpretentious little item that looked like a metal fly-swatter. Where the mesh of the swatting part of the apparatus would have been though, there was a grid of golden light beams. They were gossamer-like things and yet gave the impression of being harder than diamonds somehow.

When it was my turn, I held up my two vectors for inspection—the black crystal staff of my father and the white crystal that was my mother’s vector in disguise.

Randulf shot me a strange look, and for a moment I thought that he was about to raise the alarm. Thankfully, the man seemed only to want to get us the hell out of his border station as quickly as possible. Seemed that he’d had his fair share of Chaosbanes for one day.

With a grunt, he moved on to Mort, who was sitting directly behind me.

And that was when it suddenly hit me.

Idman fucking Thunderstone, former High Warden and owner of the Eldritch Prison and one Avalonia’s most wanted fugitives, was sitting in the back of the fucking sleigh!

Of course, Barry was in there too, but as a poltergeist, he could change his appearance at the drop of a hat. I wasn’t too worried for him.

Mallory Entwistle was a fugitive from Queen Hagatha’s justice too. I had heard her and Mort though, cooking up a story