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

“Then I’ll be brief, Your Majesty,” I said. “We’re just a couple of students who got let in by the guys on the front gate so that we could talk to some Inscribers as part of a bit of research we’re doing back at the Mazirian Academy.”

“You’re students?” the Queen asked. “Of the Mazirian Academy?” She seemed somewhat surprised at that, and rather than speak the name with disdain, it came out bearing a marked amount of interest.

I lowered my voice and continued conspiratorially. “In all honesty, I was hoping to ask them a few questions and leave. I’m eager to get to an inn for some food, but we got lost, and here we are.”

The Queen looked at me more than a little skeptically. I was aware that she wasn’t some empty-headed figurehead, but a savvy woman in her own right. I was hoping, though, that her pressing business might stop her asking for our names.

“Who are you?” she asked in her cool, calm voice.

“I’m Qildro Feybreaker,” I lied. I thought it would be prudent to leave the name of Justin Mauler out of this. I also thought that the sooner we parted ways the better. “Look, Your Majesty,” I said, pressing on, “if we could have one of your Arcane Knights here show us to where the Inscribers work, then we could be on our way and out of your hair.”

“Very well, Qildro Feybreaker,” she said. “I’ll allow you and your friend to go on your way in the company of one of my very own Arcane Knights.”

“I owe you one, Your Majesty,” I said. “Although, I’m not sure what I could give you to repay the favor.”

The Queen’s bright emerald eyes narrowed. A phantom smile played across her clever lips. “I shall think of something, I am sure,” she said, “should our paths ever cross again.”

I bowed, not wanting to push my luck.

“Eliz,” the Queen said, “escort these two to the Tower of Inscription. Tell the Inscriber with whom you leave them to conduct them to the gates after they are done.”

“Yes, Majesty,” Eliz the Arcane Knight said.

Queen Hagatha gave me one last look; it told me that while she was a queen, she was also, first and foremost, a beautiful young woman with desires like any other woman.

“Come,” Eliz said brusquely as Queen Hagatha disappeared down the corridor.

The Arcane Knight led Leah and me through a maze of corridors that we could never have hoped to navigate by ourselves. She knocked on an elaborately carved, all-metal door at the end of a straight hall with no windows. A window in the door snapped open, and we were admitted inside.

We entered a large round room carpeted with plush rugs and a selection of warmly colored tapestries hanging on the walls. A fire blazed in the spacious hearth. A selection of mismatched, squishy armchairs and a sofa were spread around the room. The smell of baking filled the air, and I located the source of the stomach-rumbling smell as a large tea trolley in one corner stacked high with scones, tea, and those little quartered sandwiches that I could go on eating indefinitely.

It was also, I couldn’t help but notice, full of little old women.

“These are the Inscribers?” I asked Eliz.

The Arcane Knight nodded curtly. “Choose one, Qildro,” she said, “so that I may pass on the Queen’s message and return to my duty.”

Her tone suggested she wasn’t impressed with being relegated from Arcane Knight to errand girl.

“Actually,” Leah said, pulling a scrap of parchment quickly from one pocket and pretending to read something off it, “we were meant to chat with someone specific…”

“Gertrude,” I chipped in, filling in the deliberate pause that Leah had left at the end of the sentence.

The Arcane Knight sighed impatiently. She scanned the room.

“There,” she said. “There is Gertrude. Come on.”

Eliz led us over to a particularly wrinkled old dear who was enjoying a short nap in an armchair nearest the fire. The tall Arcane Knight attempted to rouse the small, slumbering figure—complete with purple perm and round spectacles hanging about her neck by a silver chain—with a couple of subtle coughs. Then, when that did not work, she gave the chair the old woman was sitting in a surreptitious kick.

The old Inscriber awoke with a snort and looked up. She slipped her glasses onto her nose and peered owlishly up at Eliz.

“Tell me, Knight,” she said in a creaky voice, “is it common practice for those of your order to go around rousing weary old women who are trying to catch up on some much needed sleep?”

Eliz colored under her helmet. With a jerk of her head, she nodded at Leah and me.

“These two are from the Academy,” she said.

“The Mazirian Academy,” I said, putting the gentlest strain on the second word.

The old woman’s eyes seemed to sharpen at that.

“Quite,” Eliz said. “They wish to talk to you, Inscriber Gertrude. When you have helped them with their inquiries, please take them to the front gate and release them back into the city. Those are the orders of Queen Hagatha, Inscriber.”

“Yes, yes,” Gertrude said, “run along with you now, you great kicking brute.”

Eliz’s jaw worked, but she said nothing. She turned on her heel and marched across the room and through the door.

Once the Arcane Knight had disappeared, Gertrude got up from her chair.

“Follow me to my workshop, you two,” she said. “And bring us some tea.”

Ten minutes later, we were settled in the privacy of Inscriber Gertrude’s workshop. It was a tight space, filled with clutter of all sorts; paraphernalia of various magical purposes, stuffed animals, and heaps of scrolls lying all over the place. There was also a door at the back of the workshop that I imagined led to the