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

How, though, was beyond any leap of logic I could make.

“Excuse me for eavesdropping,” she said, “but I heard familiar voices and listened despite breeding being against such behavior.”

“How the hell did you know we were going to make our way here?” Leah asked.

“And how did you get here?” I added.

“That is immaterial now,” Mallory said in an offhand voice. “What is of chief concern is that I overheard what you were saying. It sounds very much like you’ll be going on a little relic hunt. You two really need a woman who knows her way around the Castle of Ascendance.”

“And you think that a woman with a bounty on her head is the right chick for the job, do you?” I asked.

Mallory laughed in a thoroughly unconcerned fashion.

“That little misunderstanding? That little bureaucratic error of paperwork? I’ve cleared it,” the Galadriel-like figure said.

“Ooooh, Mort’s not going to like that,” Leah said delightedly. “He hates it when people screw with the system!”

“How did you manage it?” I asked Mallory.

“Gertrude here kindly forged a few letters for me.” Mallory indicated the sweet old woman sitting contentedly in her chair. “She also placed some rather incriminating evidence here and there. Now, the true culprit for a great many bad deeds has a few of my misdemeanors added to her rap sheet. She is already on her way to being arrested, I believe.”

Next to me, Gertrude nodded.

“You’re saying you framed an innocent person?” I asked. “That’s a bit... icy, isn’t it?”

Mallory laughed again and placed a hand on my shoulder. “Oh, Justin. Finding a deservingly guilty and vicious party to take the fall is not hard in Avalonia. My crimes pale in comparison to hers. In fact, I believe I was doing a great deed in ensuring this particular criminal was apprehended.”

“Mallory is correct,” Gertrude assured me. “They were hardly innocent, Justin.”

“If this sweet old duffer is convinced,” Leah said, “then that is good enough for me.”

I looked around at the three women. “All right, then. If it means that you’re free to walk in broad daylight again, I guess I can get on board with that.”

“Fabulous! Now, shall we be about the relic hunt?” Mallory said.

Chapter 12

We left dear old Gertrude to sleep off her tea and scone in her workshop.

Mallory led the way out of the room, her new dress swishing softly about her ankles. Her long-legged strides made the same gentle noise a relaxed sea makes when it laps the shore.

“You’ve known Gertrude a long time, have you?” I asked the Holy Mage as we walked quickly through the echoing corridors.

Mallory thought for a second. In the time that she took to consider the question, I realized that I couldn’t even guess at the ethereal woman’s age. She really was like Galadriel in that respect; she might have been thirty or, then again, she might have been edging toward three hundred.

“Yes,” she said after we had gone ten more paces, “I have known the Inscriber Gertrude for a long time, I suppose.”

“And you trust the old biddy? That’s what Justin is trying to say, I think,” Leah said. “That’s the more pertinent question.”

Mallory smiled a thin-lipped smile.

“Yes, I trust Gertrude. She was one of the first to come over to Zenidor and Istrea’s way of thinking when it was first broached. When their theories for preserving the Universal Magic were first made public. When your father made such a splash with his talk of culling magic users to preserve the fabric of this world and all the others. Before your mother refined that theory, made one that was not so…”

“Morally reprehensible?” I supplied.

“Quite,” Mallory said.

“And even after seeing what my dad might have been prepared to do if no other way had presented itself, if my mother hadn’t come up with a better scheme, Gertrude was still happy to take his side?” I asked.

“Sounds like she took a little more than his side…” Leah said from behind me.

I bit back a retort.

“Gertrude can be trusted to help us, don’t worry,” Mallory said. “There is a common misconception that wisdom comes with age. This is not true. The aged do not grow wise; they grow careful. Gertrude has not survived so long under the very nose of Queen Hagatha by being careless. She has never wavered in her resolve to help the Twin Spirits.”

Whether by chance or by Mallory’s design, we didn’t come across any servants, guards, or palace denizens. I got the feeling that we were using lesser-known routes, perhaps those hallways that weren’t grand enough for the Queen and her chief lackeys to use, but not basic enough for the serving folk to walk through.

“So, how is it that you know your way around here so well, Mallory?” Leah asked as we cut quickly down a side passage to avoid the noise of scurrying feet from a corridor up ahead.

“Oh, I used to spend quite a bit of time here at the Castle of Ascendance,” Mallory said in a blithe tone of voice. “Before the little mix-up that saw me placed on Mort’s bounty list.”

“You should have been very honored,” Leah said, “so far as being put on bounty lists goes. My cousin really is top of his field, you know.”

“I don’t know if bounty hunters enjoy the same prestige and fame as, say, a good proctologist does, Leah,” I said drily. “I doubt people feel all that starstruck to see their friendly neighborhood bounty hunter when he kicks their door in, looking for their head. Even if he is the one with the best reputation in his field.”

Leah made a face. “I’m just saying, that if I was being hunted by someone who was going to take me dead