Creation Mage 6 Page 7

  “Saved the day, you mean?” I shot back as I began to climb the rope ladder.

  “Justin, you handsome ball of testosterone and magical prowess,” Leah called down, still waving her nails, “you are quite comely to gaze upon, but you must know there is a time and a place for splitting hairs. Now clamber up here and let’s go and get a drink.”

  At the mention of a drink, a snuffling snort, like a boar trying to get a pea out of its nostril, burst from the back of the sleigh. Igor’s tousled head popped up over the edge.

  “Somebody called?” he said.

  “Your cousin was just suggesting that we all go and seek libations at your ranch house,” Idman said.

  “Pass one over the tonsils, you mean?” Igor scratched the hair on his head and then the hair that covered his top lip. “What a capital idea. Lead on, driver!”

  So the driver, Reginald, clicked his tongue and turned the sleigh back toward the great log edifice that was the homestead of the Chaosbane clan.

  Chapter 4

  The Klaus Cruiser touched down with remarkable and, let’s face it, completely unanticipated delicacy on the large swathe of lawn on the edge of the forest.

  “Home’s—” said Reginald, hopping down from the sleigh as it coasted to a halt.

  “—where,” said Mort, stowing his throwing knives again.

  “—the heart,” chimed in Leah.

  “—is,” finished Igor, tumbling out of the back of the sleigh but managing to turn his fall into a smooth roll that brought him to his feet. “Not to mention a most notable barrel of Old Bizarro’s Ripsnort Brandy, if my memory serves me rightly,” he added, smacking his lips excitedly.

  “Best not to let your great grandfather here you talkin’ about his brandy, sir,” said a voice that pronounced the letter ‘r’ with something approaching fanaticism.

  A rotund figure wearing a cowboy hat and a plaid shirt was ambling across the lawn toward us.

  The person heading over the snow with a rolling gait was so plump, with a beer gut of such immensity, that if you’d cut his stumpy legs and arms off, he would have been a beach ball. The belt holding up a pair of cut-off jeans looked like the equator of some small, hairy planet—for the wearer of the belt was hairy. Extremely so.

  “Chubbs! Good to see you, you son of a bitch!” Igor boomed genially.

  It was a rugged greeting, but when the figure—Chubbs—stopped by the head of the lead bull, I noticed that he was of the werewolf persuasion. The all-over body hair, reversed knees, pointed ears, and snout and tail were a dead giveaway.

  Son of a bitch, indeed.

  “Chubbs?” Enwyn asked Leah in an aside, as Igor and the werewolf fell into an easy conversation. “That’s a bit mean, isn’t it? I mean we all have our crosses to bear, don’t we? Don’t need to rub the poor werewolf’s snout in it.”

  Leah pinched Enwyns’s cheek between my thumb and forefinger. “My! The golden heart that beats under that rather beddable bossom, Enwyn Emberskull! You’re a warrior-princess and a sweetheart, I knew it since the moment we met. Never fear though; Chubbs has one of those ironic nicknames, you know. Like tall people who are called ‘Shorty’ or really thick people that go by the name ‘Brains’.”

  Enwyn glanced over at Chubbs. The almost spherical werewolf was panting and puffing as he took the reins of the six ginormous black bulls. His cowboy hat was pushed back on his head so that his pointed ears stuck out like the wings of an airplane. His legs were so fat that his knees were almost invisible.

  “Yes,” Enwyn said slowly and tactfully, “but Chubbs is actually chubby.”

  “Grossly fat, I think you’ll find,” Mort said helpfully, helping Mallory down from the sleigh like a footman helping down a lady from a carriage. “Excuse me for butting in.”

  “Right,” said Enwyn. “That’s my point, really.”

  Leah snapped her fingers. “I see what you’re getting at. Yes, that can be a bit confusing, sugar. When he started working here though, you see, he was rake thin. That’s why Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock coined the name Chubbs. Then, after working here for a few years and dealing with the constant strain of having Great Granddaddy going off his head every few moments, dear old Chubbs took refuge in chocolate pudding, thus taking took on the form that you see now.”

  We watched as Chubbs nodded respectfully to Reginald and shook hands with Igor, and then ambled away with his bovine companions, toward a large barn.

  “Don’t worry about Chubbs,” Leah said, patting Enwyn on the shoulder as Idman came to stand with us. “Having a vaguely insensitive nickname is probably the last thing on his mind.”

  “Why—” Enwyn started to ask.

  Our attention was diverted by the sound of the front door to the main ranch house crashing open behind us.

  A portly old man, hobbling quickly along with the aid of a walking stick, came bursting out onto the porch. He was yelling incoherently and gesticulating wildly with his free hand, his slippered feet thumping on the wooden boards.

  Without warning, he took the walking stick in both hands, aimed it in our direction like a shotgun, and a spray of spiraling silver Chaos Magic darts came spouting forth from its tip.

  “Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock!” Reginald cried delightedly, throwing out his arms wide as if to hug the old man from afar. The swarming burst of silver swirling projectiles were stopped dead in mid-air, just as they were about to tear into the Headmaster of the Mazirian Academy. They contorted, scrunched inward, like a soda can being stepped on, and shattered into wisps of nothingness.

  Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock stopped in his tracks and glared down at the sleigh and those of us who had just alighted from it. He was an imposing figure, despite only being about five feet tall. He had a heavy oval head, wobbling jowls, and the same dark, erudite eyes that all the Chaosbanes shared. He wore a small knitted blue hat, from under which bright white curly hair stuck out around the brim. Suspenders held up a pair of typical old man beige slacks. His feet were slippered, but his torso was clad in the most eye-watering paisley waistcoat that must ever have seen the light of day.

  “Damn me, boy,” the old fellow bellowed, “you may go about most things completely backasswards, but it can’t be denied you’re a fine mage!”

  Reginald walked up the steps of the ranch house, his arms still spread wide.

  “Well, I had to get pretty good at warring, didn’t I, Granddaddy, what with you trying to curse me everytime I walked around a corner?”

  “Kept you and your cousins sharp, didn’t it?” the old man said, lowering his walking stick.

  “It kept us hospitalized for much of our youth as well, if I recall,” Reginald said.

  The Headmaster moved in to embrace Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock, but the old man held up a warning hand.

  “Hug me and I’ll tear you a new asshole,” the old man grumbled. “Gods, I always make the mistake of thinking that I’m dealing with an adult when you visit.”

  Reginald dropped his arms. “Can I make the introductions then, Grandaddy?”

  “Let me see my family members first, boy!” Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock snapped.

  Mort, Leah, and Igor all trooped dutifully up the steps while the rest of us hung back.

  Leah was the only one of the clan who got a quick embrace from the old patriarch.

  When Mort came to stand in front of Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock, the oldest Chaosbane clapped the lanky assassin on the shoulder and said, “I’ve been following your work in the monthly periodicals, lad. Bounty Hunter Monthly thinks you're the dog’s bollocks, don’t they?”

  Mort mumbled something and moved aside to make room for Igor, who was jostling behind him, no doubt eager to get at Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock’s cellar.

  Grandaddy Chaosbane didn’t say anything for a while. He just ran his eyes over the delinquent-looking Igor.

  “Why d’you smell of hotdog water, Igor?” the old man asked eventually.

  Igor put a companionable hand on Great Grandd
addy Gorlbadock’s shoulder. “Why indeed?” he said. “I think that’s one of many pertinent subjects we must touch upon this evening, Grandaddy. However, what say you to doing it over something cold and corrosive, hm?”

  Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock snorted and jerked his thumb at the ranch. “I’ll be in to join you in a moment, you young reprobate,” he said, and there was a definite note of pride in his voice.

  After the family had said their how-do-you-dos, Reginald introduced the rest of us to the old man.

  Barry, Enwyn, and Mallory were let through with impartial grunts of welcome. Idman, as former lawman, was greeted with stony suspicion by the gnarled old Chaosbane clan chief. The old man’s demeanor thawed only after Reginald explained how Idman was no longer the owner-operator of the Eldritch Prison and was, in fact, a fugitive.

  “And this,” Reginald said, beckoning me forward “is Justin Mauler.”

  The clever dark eyes regarded me from under the snowy brows.

  “I know who this one is.” Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock extended a hand that looked like it had been carved out of a piece of walnut.

  I grasped the hand, intent on making a good impression. This man was, after all, the head of, despite their idiosyncrasies, one of the most formidable wizarding families around.

  “A pleasure to meet—” I began, but then recoiled in surprise as the hand I had grasped turned suddenly into a very realistic dildo.

  “What the shit?” I said.

  Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock was snorting with mirth. He even went as far as to slap his thigh, so I figured he was pretty pleased with himself. I was left standing like a lemon and holding a big rubber wiener.

  “Ah, just a jape on my part, Mauler,” he said, grabbing me by the elbow with a horny hand and guiding me toward the front door. “No need to look so shocked. You might not be aware, but we keep a reasonably relaxed house here.”

  I was half-tempted to tell the old coot that I’d just seen how relaxed a place he kept; the wreckage strewn about his private carnival ground was testament to that.

  “Gorlbadock!” a shrill voice called from the doorway as we approached. “Gorlbadock, have you been rummaging around in my pleasure chest again, you old pain in the— Oh, who have we here?”

  An older woman had revealed herself in the spacious front doorway—older certainly, but not old like Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock.

  She was dressed in the type of frock that you might expect a wealthy chick in a period drama to wear; all petticoats and flowing skirts and those cinched waists that made their knockers pop out so brilliantly. I’d always found that element of the fashion of those days to be such a contradiction. In an age where modesty was everything, these rich ladies would swan about with their magumbos squashed out for all the world to see.

  I held out a hand.

  “Justin Mauler,” I said.

  The woman took my proffered hand, and we shook. Her grip was firm, her hand soft. Her hair was an artful arrangement of chestnut curls with streaks of silver through them. She had a heart-shaped face and crinkles at the corners of her eyes, which were dark and quick and clever, as I had thought they would be.

  Slice it how you would, this woman was the definition of a cougar.

  “I’m Aunt Ruth,” the woman said, hitting me with a modest little smile.

  “You’re… You’re Aunt Ruth?” I said, just managing to keep the incredulity from my voice.

  “That’s right,” Ruth said.

  I looked at Leah, who was standing in the hallway behind Ruth.

  “Aunt Ruth, as in Aunt Ruth, the ‘less’ is silent?” I asked.

  Aunt Ruth gave a small smile and rolled her eyes.

  “I can be a little… spiky,” she said. “Especially when it comes to getting things that I want.”

  Was it my imagination, or did the cougar’s eyes flick over me, giving me the north to south in lightning fast time?

  “Come,” Aunt Ruth said, taking me by the arm, “let me give you—and all our new guests—the grand tour.”

  “Perhaps a drink might be nice…?” Igor prompted. “It’s been a hell of a trip.”

  Aunt Ruth made a little tutting noise of annoyance. She glanced at the mustachioed Rune Mystic. “You’ve always been a rascally pain in the unmentionables, Igor dear, perhaps you can take the day off?”

  “Perhaps, I could,” Igor said evenly, “but I’ll be dashed if I’ll be doing it sober.”

  We stopped off for a drink or three in a lavishly decorated dining room, which looked as if it had been decorated by a team of paintballers who had been locked in there with a bear for company.

  Afterward, Aunt Ruth, with Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock limping along at her side, gave us the tour of enormous log manor. Each room was totally different and unique to the one that had come before it, as if the layout and decor of the house as a whole had never been a consideration. It was so different from any home I entered that I thought it was overwhelmingly marvellous.

  It was also stuffed with children.

  “Aye,” old Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock said, when I mentioned this to him, “who knew Chaos Magic could lead to such fecundity, eh?”

  “They’re all your family?” Idman asked, a note of horror just detectable in his voice. No doubt the thought of all these future Morts, Reginalds, Leahs, and Igors was one that he found deeply disturbing.

  “Aye, they’re all kin,” Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock said. “The Chaosbanes have always been blessed with mighty enthusiastic jism.”

  Aunt Ruth whacked the old man on the arm and shot me an apologetic look. She seemed a little too familiar with me during our extensive tour. She lingered with me when I stopped to look at some curiosity, and found any excuse to brush up against me.

  I found myself dwelling on what I might do, should the opportunity to lift her many skirts present itself to me. She was a mature lady, sure, but I couldn’t help thinking that she was also very fuckable.

  When the tour was complete, Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock excused himself and said that he had a date with a strong brandy and a good armchair.

  “The rest of you have my leave to walk the grounds and house as you will. The only place that is off limits is the blasted cellar! Igor I am looking directly at you, boy! Reginald too!”

  Both Reginald and Igor, who had been at the back of the group, slurping covertly from a decanter of milky blue liquor, started guiltily.

  “Would never - would never dream of it, Grandaddy,” Reginald said, failing to stifle a hiccup.

  Igor started burbling something, but Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock waved him down.

  “Save it, Igor,” he said with a gruff good-naturedness, “if I wanted to hear from an asshole, I would have farted.”

  Leah laughed.

  “We’ll reconvene on the porch at nine o’clock sharp,” Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock said as he stumped away. “Your timing is impeccable as usual, for tonight we enjoy and take part in the Celebration of Chaos.”

  * * *

  It was some time after nine o’clock. After being summoned to the porch by a gong that echoed out through the woods, I found myself standing by the edge of the lake I had spied from the sleigh.

  I tried to quiz the Chaosbanes as to what we could expect down at the lakeside for this Celebration of Chaos, but none of the clan were willing to divulge what this ceremony involved. All they would tell Idman, Enwyn, Mallory, Barry, and me was that we had to go down to the lake.

  We took the single, tight path along with a host of other silent and somber folk from around the district. At the end of the path, there stood the giant rock I had glimpsed from the air. It was a statue of an animal of some kind, but of what exact kind I couldn’t tell. The huge carved boulder stood about three stories tall. It was set in the undergrowth on a small island in the middle of the still, partly frozen lake.

  “It’s a… chimp?” I asked in a hushed voice. I turned my head to one side and then the other. “An ape?”

  “A monk
ey,” Reginald said in a low voice from my right.

  “A monkey...” I let the word hang in the air, hoping that someone would tell me exactly what the hell kind of significance it held.

  “You ever seen how fucking chaotic a monkey can be?” Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock growled from my other side. “They’re clever little buggers. Can cause no end of mischief. Now shut up, the pair of you!”

  At some signal that I did not see, the gathered throng of onlookers walked further around the lake until we all came to a row of benches made from logs with a quarter of their length cut out.

  I took a seat beside Leah and Mallory, with Enwyn sitting in my lap. Chaosbanes surrounded us—a surreal experience in itself. From this new vantage point, I could see a stage set in front of the monkey statue, the monkey looking down on it with its stony, almost cartoon-like eyes.

  The ritual began. A boat started to drift across the stream. Standing inside it were twelve hooded figures. Nine of the figures held torches that illuminated the night that lay thick and deep under the eaves of the fir trees. The other three were carrying what looked like a body across their right shoulders.

  The body wiped away the incredulous smile that had been growing on my face. This whole thing had smelled of some kind of out there ritual, but a body being brought along gave it a sinister twist.

  The boat landed on the shores of the monkey statue island, and the dozen robed figures alighted. One of the cultish figures, wearing a great diadem crown, took the stage. In somber tones, the diadem-wearing figure welcomed everyone.

  I had never been a big one for religious or supernatural rituals. I had always believed what was presented in front of my eyes. I tried to stay focused and interested but, with the droning and the chanting, I soon zoned out and started thinking of all the dirty stuff that I’d rather be doing to Aunt Ruth.

  The ritual relied heavily on smoke and mirrors, obtuse language, and some pretty low-grade spell work. After the first ten minutes, I had realized that the ‘body’ was most likely an effigy of some kind, and I started to see the funny side of things once more.