God of Magic 7 Read online

  The man in the crow’s nest was screaming now, and several of the sailors stopped their work to line up along the railing, swords and sabers at the ready. I saw Lavinia and Dehn pop onto the deck, followed closely by Maruk and Imogen.

  “What’s going on?” Maruk asked as he hefted his shield.

  “Not sure,” I replied. “Something in the water.”

  “There!” Dehn called out.

  I watched in disbelief as a swarm of crab-like things clambered over the sides of the ship. They were about the size of my hand, and they scuttled around the deck at lightning speed. One of the claws in front was more hand-shaped than claw-like, and the body bore a remarkable resemblance to the blob fish.

  “Sea gremlins!” Maruk warned as the rest of the Shadow Foxes made it to the deck.

  “Figures,” Aerin huffed.

  “At least it’s not a kraken,” Yvaine replied as she jabbed her sword at one of the creatures.

  “Haven’t you heard?” I said. “Krakens aren’t real.”

  “I have some cousins who would be very offended by that,” Maruk replied. “They could tell you a thing or two about krakens.”

  “Since this isn’t a kraken, I don’t really care,” Lavinia sniped as she kicked one of the gremlins back over the railing.

  “What’s the big deal?” Dehn demanded as he tried to stomp on some of the gremlins. “We can just step on them.”

  “If you can catch them,” Yvaine grunted as several of the creatures scurried out of the range of her blade.

  Dehn was right. It did seem like it should be easy enough to reclaim the ship, but it was tricky trying to destroy the crabs without damaging the Passionate Lady as well. Emeline was able to blast several gremlins, but smoke started to billow up from one set of remains and a small flame charred the wood. A nearby sailor doused it with a bucket of water and received a pinch on the ankle in return.

  The ship groaned, and I heard something splash into the water. The sailors became more frantic, and they started to swing wildly at anything and everything to try to dislodge the creatures. Lena unleashed one of her jars, which sent a small group of the things back over the side.

  “They’ll pull the ship apart!” Maruk yelled out as he brought his shield down on a small pack of gremlins.

  “Why?” Lavinia demanded as she tried to find a target in the seething mass that had taken over the deck.

  “When there’s no more ship, we’ll be forced into the water,” Maruk replied as he smashed into another group. “Then they’ll eat us.”

  “Oh, gross,” Aerin huffed.

  “They won’t eat me,” Dehn declared. “Halflings are too tough.”

  “No argument from me,” Lavinia said as she finally managed to nail some of the gremlins. “Your meat’s probably tougher than a grizzled old elk.”

  “Not what I meant!” Dehn retorted as he jumped around the deck and swung his axe.

  There was more splashing, and I risked a look over the side of the ship. An army of the gremlins were working along the planking and several pieces of wood had already been pulled off and tossed into the sea, so I summoned a blast of wind and fired it at the nearest group, sending them plunging back into the water. The things actually squealed as they fell, and those still clinging to the ship began chattering in earnest. Several looked up and spotted me, and a more than a few claws and hands were waved in my direction.

  “Gabriel!” Imogen called out in warning.

  I turned around just as a small herd of gremlins charged towards me. I tried blasting this group with air as well, but most managed to latch onto the deck with their claws when they saw me raise my hand. I could have sent them sailing over the edge of the ship, but only if I sent half the deck with them.

  There was another splash from the side, and then several more gremlins scuttled up the side of the ship near me, their fists and claws still raised in anger. A green smoke suddenly filled the air around me, and I had to close my eyes to keep from tearing up. Something hissed, and then I heard a cracking noise. I risked opening my eyes and saw that Merlin had shifted into a large sea otter, and he was moving along the deck, cracking the gremlins like crabs and gorging on the meat.

  “Eat later,” I told the puca. “Just kill them for now.”

  Merlin chirped as he snatched up another gremlin that couldn’t scurry out of the way fast enough. I looked around and realized that we were outnumbered and outgunned. Too many of the things ran along the deck, and that didn’t include the ones that were hard at work removing the sides of the ship.

  “I hate seafood!” Aerin shouted as she brought her mace down on a pair of gremlins that had made it to the tiller.

  “We need a way to knock all of them off the ship at once,” I yelled.

  “I’m open to suggestions,” Lavinia yelled back.

  Another jar shattered on the deck, and a flood of Lena’s fireflies descended on the gremlins. A few squealed and ran blindly around the deck until Yvaine and Imogen knocked them overboard but most managed to avoid the stings simply by flattening themselves against the deck until the lights were carried out over the water by the breeze.

  “Maruk,” I called as I used my mana blade on a pack of gremlins that were scuttling along the railing near me, “is there anything that Lena might have in her bag that would kill these things?”

  “Harpie blood,” Maruk suggested as he tried to remove several gremlins that were trying to climb his pants.

  “I’ve used it all,” Lena wailed as she kicked a large gremlin along the deck.

  “Mermaid tears,” Maruk continued as he swatted at a pair of gremlins that had made it to his waist.

  “There’s no such thing as mermaids!” Yvaine shouted. She had a rack of dead gremlins on her sword that she was trying to dislodge while another group pinched her ankles.

  “Fine, no such thing as mermaids either,” Maruk harrumphed.

  “What else?” I called out.

  I saw one of the sailors trip over a rope, and he went down hard. The gremlins quickly descended, and the man wailed out in pain. I sent a gust of wind that knocked most of the gremlins off while his shipmates pulled him to his feet.

  “Gypsum weed,” Maruk bellowed as one of the gremlins managed to clamp a pincer into Maruk’s back. Imogen speared it but two more were starting to climb up the back of Maruk’s legs.

  “I have some of that,” Lena yelped as she danced on her tiptoes around the deck.

  “What about if we burn it?” I asked. “Will the gas kill them?”

  “It should,” Maruk declared as he dropped one of his shields on a gaggle of gremlins and then jumped on it. There was a squishing, cracking sound and when Maruk picked up his shield, it was smeared with little gremlin bodies.

  “Okay, Emeline, Lena, meet me in the middle,” I ordered as I knocked yet more new arrivals off the railing. I stomped my way across the ship towards the main mast where Emeline and Lena soon joined me.

  “Damn it,” Emeline hissed as she toasted a gremlin that was hanging onto her boot.

  “Here’s the plan,” I said. “Emeline, you ignite the gypsum weed and I’ll direct the fumes towards the gremlins. Lena, please tell me this won’t kill the crew as well.”

  “Not in gas form,” she assured me. “Though anyone who breathes in too much might be a little loopy for a while.”

  “Better than being eaten alive by crabs,” Emeline muttered as she sent several small bursts of fire into a pack of gremlins that were trying to climb the mast.

  “Let’s do it,” I said with a nod to Lena. She tossed one more gremlin to the side and then started to dig through her pack. She pulled out a small linen sack and then a large ceramic bowl.

  “To keep the fire from spreading,” she offered as she set the bowl on the deck and filled it with the weed.

  Several of the gremlins moved in our direction, and I hit them with another blast of wind. Two of them didn’t dig their claws in quickly enough, and I felt a moment of supreme satisfacti
on when I saw their blobby bodies skid across the ship and drop into the water below.

  I kept sending out bursts of air as I waited for Emeline to get a good blaze going. I noticed that everyone was caked in gremlin goo, but still the little buggers kept pulling themselves over the edge of the ship. I could still hear planks hitting the water as well. Even Merlin, who had been merrily pursuing gremlins at the start of all this, was starting to look overwhelmed by the sheer numbers.

  I caught a whiff of something that reminded me of burning tires and several of the gremlins near us suddenly stopped. A few scampered away but the less speedy ones started to convulse.

  “It’s working,” I said as several of the blobs collapsed to the deck and twitched for a moment before going completely still.

  “That’s about as much flame as I can give it without shattering the bowl,” Emeline replied.

  “That’s enough,” I said as I pushed my mana through the bracelet again. I focused it on the surrounding winds, and just like I had done with the sails, I started to prod it gently, so that the gas stayed low to the deck as it spread across the boat.

  It took the gremlins a moment to realize what was happening, and an angry buzz that sounded like a million cicadas went up once they understood that the gas was killing them. They clambered towards the rails again, this time to escape. I made sure the gas followed them, even as they dropped over the sides and back into the sea.

  The army of gremlins that had latched to the sides of the ship watched their fellow attackers plunge back into the sea in surprise. In a trick that was much harder to control then simply spreading the fumes along the deck, I slowly lowered the gypsum gas down the sides of the ship. The buzzing noise soon gave way to the plop-plop-plop of gremlin bodies returning to the water.

  There were only a few gremlins left and the sailors and the Shadow Foxes made quick work of the survivors. When the ship was finally cleared, the sailors clapped and cheered. Jerrold wrapped me in a bear hug and even offered Lena and Emeline a small nod of approval.

  Jerrold though wasn’t one for long celebrations. He soon had the crew and the Shadow Foxes making repairs to the ship while he kept a fretful eye on the disappearing sunlight. I was assigned to work with one of the sailors, a small Persan named Cherzo, with bulbous eyes, stringy hair and a passable grasp of our language.

  We were suspended over the side of the ship on a narrow bit of scaffolding. It was my job to hold a piece of wood in place until the Persan had nailed it as tightly as he could to the ship. Maruk, naturally, was part of the team that came behind us and placed tar over the new boards. Maruk had almost thrown himself over the ship when he received his assignment, but someone found several old grain sacks in the hold, which Maruk had converted into a smock of sorts to try to protect his clothing.

  Jerrold even let the women remain on the deck, clearing away the rest of the gremlin bodies, until there was nothing left to clean. I could hear Lavinia protesting as Jerrold instructed them to return to the cabin, and I noticed the other sailors on repair duty were scowling when they heard Lavinia’s voice. I was about to call up to Lavinia, but then I heard Yvaine’s voice say something to the captain, and then the sound of footsteps retreating across the deck. I glanced over at Maruk, who shrugged and painted another strip of tar along the Passionate Lady.

  We worked well past sundown under the glowing light of oil lanterns, but we had the holes repaired, and the Passionate Lady was as close to whole as we could make her. As the sailors spread out across the deck to rest and eat, I opened up my mana one more time and sent the ship skimming along the waves towards Maraz. Jerrold gave me another nod before returning his gaze to the horizon.

  I was beat by the time I made it to the cabin and I reeked of tar and gypsum and sea gremlin. I fell into my hammock and slept until the last bell of the morning watch. But the new day dawned bright and pleasant, and the land of Persans was within our sight.

  Chapter 2

  The Passionate Lady limped into Maraz almost on schedule. The Shadow Foxes were more than happy to leave the ship, and the crew was just as happy to see us go. Despite our help in battling the sea gremlins, more than a few sailors believed that their bad luck on this particular voyage could be traced to the presence of women and a puca on the ship. If the crew was any indication, I really wanted to be in and out of Persans as quickly as possible.

  The ship was given a slip on a small island in the harbor. The island was called Maymak and was home to the city quarter that was reserved for foreigners and those of ‘lesser’ species. Two bridges connected the island to the city of Maraz, but I noticed that the bridges were carefully watched, and that it was mostly humans and elves who were allowed to cross.

  Imogen had led us to a small inn only a short distance from both bridges. The rooms weren’t large, but they were comfortable, and after the tight quarters on the Passionate Lady, I was happy to have a space to myself again. Well, a space shared with a puca.

  Imogen slipped out while the rest of us enjoyed the sensation of being on solid land again. She had a few contacts in the quarter that she wanted to get in touch with and she hoped to track down the guide with the unpronounceable name. I myself was tempted to just slouch in the lounge chair in the bar the rest of the day, but my mind kept drifting back to that second ship.

  It had been closing in on the Passionate Lady when Jerrold had decided to take the ‘safer’ route out to sea. We hadn’t seen any sails follow us, so they must have tried to stay near the coastline. There was a good chance they had it made it here before us, especially if they had more than one air mage onboard. I needed to know if that ship had arrived, and Aerin was just the person for the job.

  I found Aerin in the tearoom playing cards with three elderly ladies. Aerin had a nice little stack of peanuts going, but hers wasn’t the largest pile on the table. The elf had a small frown on her face as she studied her cards and then the other players’ faces.

  “Could I borrow you for a bit?” I asked as I stepped up behind her.

  “Let me just finish this hand,” she replied.

  She slapped two cards onto the table and drew one from the stack in the middle of the table. One of the ladies cackled and quickly scooped up the cards Aerin had just dumped.

  “Damn it,” Aerin murmured as she scowled at her cards some more.

  The lady on Aerin’s right tossed a card onto the table and drew two from the stack. Aerin stared at the card for a moment but let it pass. The game had progressed, with players alternately discarding and claiming cards. If there was a pattern, I never spotted it. The game finally came to an end when one of the ladies threw her hand onto the table and yelled “Salto!”

  Aerin stood up and thanked the ladies for the game. The women smiled at Aerin and invited her to join them anytime.

  “Who were they?” I asked as we stepped outside the inn. “And how did you find a card game so quickly?”

  “They’re sisters,” Aerin replied. “The oldest one, that’s Bernice, was supposed to marry a Persan named Lothar and Jora and Clarissa were going to be her bridesmaids. But Lothar died before the wedding took place, and the girls’ family didn’t have the money to bring them home. So they stayed here and earn money to pay for their rooms by playing Salto. Except on the day of rest, when they only play for peanuts.”

  “Wait, how long have they been here?” I asked.

  “Oh, about fifty years now,” Aerin said with a shrug.

  “In fifty years, the family couldn’t find the money to bring them home?” I asked in disbelief.

  “They were girls,” Aerin noted. “If the family brought them home, they’d have to find new husbands for them. If they left them here, they wouldn’t have to deal with it.”

  “But... fifty years,” I protested.

  “Well, now I think they like it here and they don’t want to go home,” Aerin explained. “So, what did you need?”

  “That other ship,” I said as I shook my head and tried to shift gears. �
�I want to know if it made it into port ahead of us.”

  “Well, checking the shipping traffic here in Maymak is easy enough,” Aerin mused. “But if they put in at one of the other sections, I’m not sure how we could find out.”

  “Let’s start with Maymak,” I suggested. “They would have been foreigners, just like us, so they were probably sent here as well.”

  “Do you really think that was Maderel’s mages?” Aerin asked as we started walking back towards the docks.

  “None of those other ships had much interest in leaving,” I replied. “Somebody with a great deal of power and influence had to have been involved. And then there’s the speed at which they were moving. That chain would have delayed them for at least a day, so they must have been really moving.”

  “An air mage,” Aerin acknowledged. “But those bigger ships usually all have one.”

  “But they don’t work nonstop,” I pointed out. “You’d have to have more than one air mage to keep the ship moving the way they did.”

  “They took the route through the rocks,” Aerin noted.

  “That’s what I think,” I agreed.

  “That had risks of its own,” she said. “They may have had their own problems.”

  “Let’s hope so,” I sighed. “I would sort of like to spend tonight in my own room.”

  “What, Maruk’s snoring kept you up at night?” Aerin laughed.

  “Forget Maruk,” I replied. “Dehn snores like a buzzsaw when he’s at sea.”

  “I have no idea what a buzzsaw is,” Aerin said with a smirk, “but it sounds horrible.”

  “It is, believe me,” I agreed.

  We arrived at the docks and scanned the ships. The problem was that we had no idea which ship had followed us. The sailors had been certain that it was a clipper, but could offer nothing more.

  There were quite a few clipper ships in the harbor at the moment. A few were unloading their cargo, and I guessed those weren’t the mage ship. But that left quite a few possibilities, and that was just here at Maymak.

  “Let’s check with the harbormaster,” Aerin suggested. “I think I can probably learn something useful from him.”