Blademage Dragontamer Page 6

  “Right.”

  “Your buddy Chummilk really screwed you over, didn’t he?” said Crosseyes. Looking closer at him, it was easy to see why he’d earned his name; the red lines on his face that were his eyes were in the shape of X’s, only changing when he smiled.

  “This is Chummilk’s planet,” said Larynk. “He must have changed the portal. He sent me a star message telling me the demi-gods were coming, probably to draw us out to the portal where he knew Mia would be waiting.”

  “But if this is his planet, can’t he do anything? Couldn’t he just have, I don’t know, teleported you to the Pantheon, or something?” said Flink.

  “A god can’t control another god. Only mortals. And gods aren’t omnipotent. Do you realise the brainpower it takes to stay aware of everything happening on a planet? Not even a god can process it all.”

  “So, we can’t trust Chummilk. What about this dude, then?” Charlie said, pointing at Crosseyes.

  “He’s okay. He’s an ass, but he’s not with them.”

  “If he’s a demi-god, how can you be sure?”

  Crosseyes’s red face lines formed into a grin. “You’re suspicious. That’s good. But you have nothing to worry about on my account.”

  “I don’t know. You can see how I’d be a little wary.”

  “Listen, guy. I was done with all that stuff years ago. Sure, I used to be like Mia. I hunted for the gods. We used to travel the celestial tunnels, going from planet to planet taking treasure, guys, girls. But I gave it up when they made me a demi-god for my efforts.”

  “You’re some kind of interplanetary pirate?”

  “I was. One day I realized that I was getting obsessed with treasure. I was taking it from every planet I could, killing people, stealing from them. I had so much treasure I didn’t know what to do with it. But then I realized something; true treasure wasn’t the gold and the trophies and the gems. It was the friendships I’d made along the way.”

  “You’re full of shit,” said Larynk. “Who sent you here?”

  “Ha. Fine, Larynk. Mia turned on me and started a mutiny on my own ship. So, I stole all the treasure, took this ship from our convoy, and I left them before they could make me walk the plank into a blackhole. Now that I’ve got all the treasure that we took from people, I go from planet to planet, giving it back to try and restore a little of my karma. Some of what I said is true. I really am done with all that.”

  “That doesn’t explain why you’re here.”

  “Because I’m a good person now, Larynk. And tell you the truth…the demi-gods scare the hell out of me. What they’re doing in the Pantheon, it ain’t right. The question is, what do we do now?”

  Larynk ran his marble hands through his long fringe, brushing it back. “The pantheon is off limits. Other than that, I don’t know where we can go.”

  Charlie looked at him strangely. “We were going to your planet.”

  Larynk shot back a glare. “Thanks a bunch, Charlie.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “New leaf or not, I’m not telling a demi-god where my planet is.”

  Crosseyes’s red face lines spread into a smile. “Same old Larynk. Never trusting anyone.”

  “Look,” said Charlie. “We need to get to Larynk’s planet, no two ways about it. Could your ship take us there?”

  “It’s capable of celestial travel, yeah. It might look rickety, but it’ll handle the tunnels.”

  “Then we don’t have a choice. Come on, Larynk. We can’t stay here, and you don’t have enough sphere power to get us to your planet. We’re gonna have to trust Crosseyes to take us there.”

  “You’re talking like I’m just gonna click my fingers like a good little demi-god. I want something in return.”

  “Here it comes,” said Larynk.

  “Mia’s been hunting me for centuries now. She doesn’t just want the treasure back; she wants to feed me into a crusher and listen to me scream. I’ll help you guys, but in return, you’ll swear an oath.”

  “What do you need?”

  “At some point, you gotta help me get Mia and her bastards off my back for good.”

  “Let me talk to Larynk alone,” said Charlie.

  He and the corn god walked across the deck. Charlie risked a glance to his side, only to see the planet miles below him. Suddenly, he became all too aware that only this flying galleon separated him from plummeting toward the ground. His legs felt shaky, but he forced the feeling back.

  “What do you think?” asked Larynk.

  For a second, Charlie was a little surprised. Larynk rarely asked for anyone’s help. Maybe his ego had been hurt more than Charlie realized after the island and portal business.

  So, what did he think? It was a tough one. He didn’t know Crosseyes, and the only thing he knew about demi-gods were that they couldn’t be trusted. Who was to say that Crosseyes wasn’t going to take them to the Pantheon? Maybe he was lying to them and trying to keep them calm while he took them to the celestial tunnels and delivered them, wrapped and with a bow, on the demi-gods’ doorstep.

  On the other hand, there wasn’t much else to do. They could hardly leap out if his ship when they were miles above the ground, could they?

  “We’ve got no choice but to trust him. If he wants us to promise to help him with Mia, then fine. We’ll just say the words, and when we’re safe, we can ditch him.”

  “It’s not that simple, Charlie. Aren’t you learning yet? Words might not mean much to a man, but they carry weight in the world of gods. He’s not talking about just any kind of oath; he means a soul oath, one that has pretty weighty consequences for your immortal soul if you break it.”

  “What choice do we have?”

  “Damn it all the to. Fine.”

  They re-joined Crosseyes and the others. Flink dry heaved over the side of the ship, but she’d emptied her stomach, and nothing came out now.

  Watching her struggle with the height, Charlie felt pangs of guilt. She was caught up in this just like he was. Maybe she’d come along on the journey willingly, but Larynk hadn’t given any of them the facts, and they were pawns caught up in his game. Charlie was too far gone to turn back now; he had no idea where Earth was in the galaxy compared to this place. But it wasn’t too late for the others.

  “Crosseyes,” he said. “Let’s say we agree to your oath. Flink, Gully and Longtooth come from this planet. If they wanted to, could you take them back home before we leave for the tunnels?”

  “It’ll be cutting it fine, but yeah.”

  “Okay. Flink, Longtooth, Gully, what do you say? We’re leaving this planet. God knows when you’ll get the chance to come back…”

  “Actually,” began Larynk.

  Charlie cut him off. “God knows is just an expression. Guys…this is the last stop. If you’re coming with us, you might not be able to come back, and I don’t want the weight of forcing you to come along, so I want you to decide. Do you wanna come with us, or do you want to go home?”

  Longtooth nodded immediately. “I’m with you.”

  Gully grunted. “There’s nothing left for me down there,” he said.

  Flink paused, deep in thought. She glanced back over the side of the deck, at the planet below them where somewhere, her village waited.

  She opened her mouth to answer, but as she did, a shape loomed beside the ship, rising up in the air like a sea beast until it stared down on them. Charlie glanced through the fog, and when his eyes adjusted, he saw that it was Mia’s pirate ship. Her ship dwarfed the Thunder Struck, and it had cannons fasted to the decking rails on the port side.

  Crosseyes faced Flink. “Sorry, darling. No time to decide now. We’ve gotta head for the celestial tunnels.”

  Charlie wasn’t going to argue with that. He griped the decking as the space galleon rose toward the heavens, bound for the god-version of a subway network where it’d carry them to the God of Corn’s home planet.

  Huh. A trip to his local bar used to pass for excitement in
his world.

  Chapter Five

  Crosseyes sprinted across the deck to the front of the ship, where a chest-high wooden helm waited, circular but with wooden spokes jutting off it. He gripped it and spun the wheel around, and the ship lurched vertically.

  Charlie hadn’t had time to grip the deck, and he fell downwards. His breath left him as he tumbled down the decking, the steep angle carrying him down the ship. He grasped for something to hold onto as he dropped, but it happened too fast.

  He was going to fall out of the ship. He’d fall back down to the planet, where he would splat on the black plains or onto the giant corn cob, and there was nothing he could do, nothing he could grab.

  “Catch him!” shouted a voice, maybe Gully, maybe Larynk, he couldn’t tell, they were blurs to him.

  His pulse thudded so fast he was going to pass out. He shouted something, not words, just sounds, unintelligible shouts that he was sure he’d cringe about later.

  Then there was a thump behind him. Pain spread across his skull and down his spine. But at least he hadn’t plummeted down to Chummilk’s planet. He was still in the ship, somehow.

  He got to his feet and looked behind him. There was nothing there, yet something had stopped him falling out of the ship. It made sense; if the galleon was going to leave the planet, then it had to have some kind of protection against the elements and then, later, the vacuum of space.

  “The field will readjust in a second,” called Crosseyes.

  Charlie only had time to wonder what he meant, before Crosseyes’s promise came true. The barrier around the hip, the one that had stopped him falling out of it, buzzed, and a misty kind of light seeped across it. Charlie’s stomach lurched for just a second, and then it was different. The ship was still going vertically, still tiled toward the heavens, but Charlie felt like he was the right way up, as though he was cheating gravity. Now, he could walk along the decking as normal.

  Something roared. It sounded like the engines of a plane spurting to life, and the ship flew faster into the sky, its bow piercing the clouds. Wind wailed and screamed around them, and the planet grew smaller below until it looked like a life-sized version of a map, all greens and blues. The ship carried on relentlessly until finally, it pieced the atmosphere, and drew them into space.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it,” said Larynk. “The first time you see it, anyway.”

  It was an expanse of utter black, punctuated by the burning stars that seemed millions of miles away. The planet became an increasingly small sphere in the distance, until soon it looked no bigger than Larynk’s power sphere.

  Beautiful? Maybe. Scary? Absolutely. There was nothing like it. Charlie’s breath caught in his throat. The utter darkness of space, the endlessness of it, made him woozy. It was the opposite of claustrophobia, and utter helplessness at how vast it was. Astronauts trained for years before they saw space, and he’d been given a second of warning.

  He fell to his knees and vomited, but his stomach was too empty, and all he got for the effort was an aching throat.

  The ship righted itself until it was horizontal again, and Charlie stood up. He felt woozy, like a drunk after a dozen shots of whiskey. He stumbled across deck, where he found Flink in a similar state.

  “Everyone okay?” he asked.

  Longtooth mumbled something. He didn’t look much better than Flink. Papa Gully, meanwhile, was asleep. Unbelievable.

  Crosseyes beckoned them over to the wheel. “Larynk, which tunnel do we take?”

  Larynk paused, eyeing Crosseyes with uncertainty.

  “Come on,” said Crosseyes. “They’ll find us if we mess around.”

  “It’s in the Athens system, on the Thor trail. Get us there, and I’ll guide you.”

  “Damn it. That’s lightyears away. Couldn’t you have made it any closer to the Gub systems?”

  “The thing about a secret planet is…they tend not to be near anything else.”

  “Guys…” said Flink, pointing behind them.

  Charlie saw it. Another ship left the planet’s orbit. Orange streams of flames gushed from behind it, propelling it toward them at an insane speed. It dwarfed Crosseyes’s ship, yet it seemed to have no trouble catching up to them. Painted around the bow was a giant wide smile, one that seemed more sinister than the last time Charlie had seen it.

  Crosseyes pounded the wheel. “They’ll catch us before we get to the Athens system.”

  “Then speed it up.”

  “The rig’s going as fast as it can. This is no good, Larynk, we’re gonna have to-”

  The words dropped from his mouth and instead, he just stared at a comet-like blur of light rushing at them from the direction of the other ship. It rushed silently through the vacuum of space, but its lack of noise didn’t make it any less fearsome.

  “Get us out of here,” said Larynk.

  Crosseyes spun the wheel, and the ship turned at an achingly slow speed. The comet smashed into them, and the invisible barrier inside the ship fizzled. It gave off an ethereal screech, a sound was so loud that Flink covered her ears. A spark hit Charlie in the face, scorching his skin, and he smelled burned hair from his beard. He patted his face, worried his whole beard would set on fire.

  Three more comets fired from their pursuer’s ship. Crosseyes’s red face lines formed into an expression of anger. “Forget the Athens system. We’ll never make it.”

  “Then where do we go?”

  “We don’t have a lot of choice. We’re heading for the nearest celestial tunnel, and I don’t give a damn where it takes us.”

  Crosseyes pointed a metal finger in front of him, and a holographic blue map spread in front of him. It looked like the map of a subway station, with multi-coloured lines crisscrossing each other. Text labelled each one, and Charlie saw the names Athens, Thor, Gados, Lokreal.

  Crosseyes swept his hand, and the map disappeared. “Lokreal it is,” he said.

  “Are you crazy?” said Larynk. “That’s full of…”

  The comets crashed into the ship, one after the other, rocking the galleon from side to side. Charlie lost his balance and fell forward, smashing his nose against the deck. Longtooth gripped the deck with one arm and grabbed Flink with the other, while Apollo was standing firm with Gully on his back.

  The ship barrier exploded. Sparks of yellow and red spat at them, fizzing on the deck and catching fire on the wood.

  “One more hit. That’s all it’s going to take,” said Crosseyes.

  As soon as he said it, six more comets gushed from the rapidly approaching ship behind them.

  “Go anywhere,” said Charlie. “It doesn’t matter where. Just get us out of here.”

  “Screw it,” said Crosseyes.

  He spun the wheel, and the ship turned. With a whoosh, its unseen engines flared to full throttle and sent them hurtling through space. The whole ship shook, each vibrating sending flares of pain through Charlie’s bleeding nose.

  He staggered to his feet and held onto a mast rope. Ahead of them, a giant, oval-shaped tunnel opened in the darkness of space. It looked like a celestial splattering of color, like something he’d seen on the Nasa website of photographs taken through the Hubble telescope. Awe spread through him, and he realized his mouth was open.

  The comets approached behind them, and Mia’s galleon loomed close, but their pursuers were too late. The Thunder Struck entered the illuminated tunnel.

  Charlie held his breath. He didn’t know why; it just felt right, like it was the sort of things someone did when they rode an interplanetary galleon into a series of god tunnels. Soon his lungs ached and he had to breath so he did, and he looked around a little.

  The vacuum of space was gone, and the sound of the tunnels battered his ears; the screeching of the cosmos flying past them, a rush of what sounded like wind. Light flashed so bright on either side of him that Charlie had to close his eyes or he thought he’d go blind. He kept them shut, and he held onto the mast rope as the ship rocked, and the sounds threa
tened to burst his ears drums, and he expected the comets to rip them apart any minute.

  And then the sound died, and the shaking stopped.

  “Where are we?” said Flink.

  “That’s the question,” said Larynk. “Crosseyes?”

  “No idea.”

  Charlie opened his eyes. The darkness of space was gone, replaced by what was unmistakably a skyline. Rather than the blue sky of Earth, this one glowed orange and pink. Miles and miles below them he saw land, long misshapen green masses, continents that he’d never seen before.

  What planet was this? Was it safe? Could they breath the air when they left the ship? So many questions, but it looked like nobody had the answers.