Unbound

by Jim C. Hines

  “Paeniteo,” I whispered.

  “What’s that?”

  “One of the words from the poem d’Aurillac used to hide Meridiana away. It means repent.” I thought about the connection I had shared with Gerbert, and his guilt for not recognizing Meridiana’s evil sooner.

  He felt responsible for the damage she had caused, the pain she had inflicted through her lies. He had known how dangerous she was. But he also pitied her. She was without mercy, but Gerbert d’Aurillac wasn’t. He could be flawed and vengeful and petty, but he strove to do better. He had also been close to Anna’s family. He even loved her, in his way.

  I couldn’t be certain, but my gut—or else the lingering memories from Gerbert’s mind—told me I was on the right track. “That’s why he gave Meridiana the ability to speak from her prison. He wanted her to be able to repent. He could ask her if she atoned for her sins, and she was forced to answer honestly. I’d bet that if she were ever able to answer yes, it would free her.”

  How long had he waited and prayed before realizing Meridiana would never feel guilt for her actions? What he had intended as a chance for redemption had only added to her never-ending torment. Meridiana could have freed herself at any time, if only she had been able to lie, something she had done so effortlessly in life.

  I shifted in my seat, and fresh pains pierced my body.

  “What is it?”

  “Maybe I should have gone to the hospital after all.” I breathed through clenched teeth. I couldn’t fully inhale. On the right side, my lung felt like someone was jabbing it with a jagged stick. I pulled up my shirt to see that much of the skin over my ribs had turned purple.

  Lena swore and pushed the gas pedal to the floor. I dug my fingers into the seat as we zipped through traffic. I hoped Ponce de Leon’s magic would protect us from the police, and Lena’s reflexes would keep us from smashing into cars and trucks that might as well have been parked.

  By the time we reached Fort Michilimackinac, I could no longer focus on anything but the pain. I needed help just getting out of the car.

  Nicola was waiting for us in the parking lot. The moment her song reached my ears, the pain eased somewhat, enough for me to walk without gasping.

  She didn’t bother buying tickets this time. Her song turned every eye away as we passed through the gift shop. My ribs ground together with each step.

  Ponce de Leon and Bi Wei met us on the other side of the gate. I sagged to the ground and closed my eyes as they used their magic to begin repairing damage. A man dressed like a British soldier approached, asking if I was all right.

  “Low blood sugar,” said Ponce de Leon. “He’ll be fine.” He waited for the man to leave, then added, “We all heard your confrontation with Meridiana. That was an interesting strategy, Isaac. Walking toward the angry mob. I take it American schools don’t teach self-preservation?”

  “I was out sick that day.” I worked my jaw back and forth, then touched my forehead. The swelling was gone, and there was only a dull ache as I rubbed away the dried blood, all that remained of the scabbed cut.

  “I’m sorry about your home,” said Nicola.

  “Thanks.” I gasped as my ribs moved beneath my skin. When I could speak again, I asked, “Any progress on the sphere?”

  “Gutenberg’s plan will work,” said Bi Wei. She and Lena helped me to my feet. “He locked most religious texts, but we’ve torn through his locks before. We can apply them to Meridiana and bring her to an end.”

  The students of Bi Sheng could open any text in the archive, but they couldn’t restore my magic. At least not directly . . .

  I set that idea aside for the moment. “If we kill Meridiana, we unleash the Ghost Army. We have to find another way to contain or destroy them first, and we don’t have much time. I think she’s been stalling. With her prison restored to the world, she might have found another way out.”

  “Right now, Meridiana’s power is limited,” said Ponce de Leon. “And still she was able to use Jeneta to kill a five-hundred-year-old libriomancer. If she escapes and regains her full strength, she could be unstoppable. If she’s stalling, that’s all the more reason to act now.”

  “Not yet.” I wondered if anyone else noticed the hitch in his voice when he spoke of Gutenberg’s death, or the way he avoided his name? “You fought her ghosts one at a time, with help. If we destroy the sphere, how much destruction will they cause while we hunt them down? And once it comes out that the Porters were responsible for releasing the Ghost Army, we’ll turn the whole world against us.”

  “Does that matter, Isaac?” Ponce de Leon’s words were flat, as if to relax his hold on his emotions would unleash them all in a single catastrophic eruption. “Those forced to make impossible choices are rarely loved. If it’s approval and reputation you care about, then you have no place here.”

  I thought back to the blows crashing into my body, to my friends doing their best to break me. “This isn’t about reputation. It’s about turning every one of us into a target for angry, frightened people.”

  “People like us have always been targets,” he said. “You’ve lived in an era of unprecedented safety and security. Locked away in your magical tower with your books and your research.”

  “When I wasn’t out fighting madmen or trying to stop a magical war, you mean?” I shot back.

  Nidhi cleared her throat. “Yelling at one another probably isn’t the best way to deal with your grief and exhaustion. Isaac, if you don’t like the plan, focus on finding a better one.”

  She had the habit of being right at the most annoying times. “I’ve got a better one,” I said. “But I need to ask the sphere a couple of questions first.”

  “And then what?” asked Ponce de Leon.

  “Research, just like you said.” I stood up and tested my limbs. My body was bruised and sore, but I could move without screaming. It was enough. I started toward the fort. “I’ll peer into that sighting tube, climb into Gerbert d’Aurillac’s contraption, and figure out how Meridiana’s been controlling her ghosts.”

  The armillary sphere seemed heavier than before, as if it had somehow doubled in mass since I left. I tapped one of the rings. The cold metal hummed like a tuning fork.

  Folklore described d’Aurillac’s creation as a brazen head. Standing here, I could feel Meridiana watching me from within her prison.

  I fixed my attention on the central sphere. “If I look through the sighting tube, will I be drawn in and trapped with Meridiana?”

  The sphere shifted slowly into the configuration of my birth. Yes.

  “Isaac, I can’t pull you back from this,” said Bi Wei. “If we can’t get you out, you’ll be destroyed along with Meridiana.”

  I yanked Ponce de Leon’s handkerchief off the end of the sighting tube. “All you have to do is ask me if I repent. That’s the magical escape pod d’Aurillac worked into his prison. Isn’t that right?”

  Yes.

  Oh, good. I would have been embarrassed as hell if I’d been wrong about that. “Will my entering or leaving the sphere help Meridiana to free herself?”

  No.

  “That’s it?” asked Lena. “Just ask if you repent? Or does it have to be specific to work?”

  The sphere moved back and forth, unable to answer three simultaneous and contradictory questions at once. I was reminded of old episodes of Star Trek, where Captain Kirk logic-bombed various evil supercomputers into destroying themselves. Somehow I doubted that would work here. “Will repenting for a specific sin, like stealing my brother’s Easter candy when I was nine, work?”

  No.

  I had to repent for everything. To acknowledge and ask forgiveness for all my sins. Dammit, I hadn’t set foot inside a church for two years, and now I’d have to go to confession.

  “What if you’re unable to truly repent?” asked Bi Wei.

  “Then I’ll have a lot more time to look around inside this thing and figure out how it works.”

  “This isn’t your fault,
” Nidhi said gently.

  I blinked. “What isn’t?”

  “What happened to Jeneta. To your home and the people of Copper River. None of this is your fault.”

  I took another slow breath. “Don’t play therapist with me, Nidhi. Not now.”

  “Looking into that thing could kill you,” she pressed. “It’s a stupid risk.”

  “Stupid risks are what I do,” I countered. “I’m good at them. As long as you’re here to pull me back—”

  “You’re assuming there will be anything left for us to rescue,” Ponce de Leon pointed out. “You will be entering a universe where Meridiana is a literal god. She might destroy you.”

  “Will you kill me if I join you in there?”

  Nothing. Another question the sphere couldn’t answer.

  “What about the block on your memories?” asked Nicola. “If she can bypass that spell, she’ll know where we are.”

  Ponce de Leon picked up his cane. “Erasure is probably the safer path.”

  “Wait.” I turned back to the sphere. “If I look into this tube, will Meridiana have access to my thoughts and memories?”

  Yes.

  Damn. “All right, but I want Bi Wei to do it, not you.”

  He stepped back with an amused smile and waved his arm in a “Be my guest” motion to Bi Wei.

  I did my best to relax as Bi Wei approached. She circled me twice, then stopped. Her fingers stretched out like a conductor preparing to direct a full orchestra.

  “I’m ready,” I said.

  Her mouth quirked. “It’s done.”

  I looked around, trying to reconstruct the past few minutes. I couldn’t recall what it was she had done to my memory, only that it was important Meridiana not find out. “I do not like this. How long was I out?”

  “She spent fifteen minutes pulling thoughts from your head,” said Ponce de Leon. “Delicate work, but she did well, considering her lack of experience. You should know within the next day or two whether there were any unfortunate side effects. Hopefully you won’t need to be toilet trained all over again.”

  I scratched my cheek with my middle finger, and he smirked.

  “Will Isaac survive?” asked Lena.

  The sphere didn’t move. “Too many variables,” I said. “We’ve got to find out the old-fashioned way.”

  I looked to the ceiling, imagining the sky beyond. I needed to align the sighting tube with the pole star. It would be easier if I knew where we were, but that shouldn’t matter. “Which way is north?”

  Bi Wei rotated the sphere about thirty degrees to the right. “It’s ready.”

  Lena cupped my face and kissed me. When she finally broke away, I held her close. Home and magic came in many forms. Our noses brushed together, and I rested my forehead on hers. “I’m sorry for being such an asshole lately.”

  “Don’t worry.” Her lips tickled mine when she spoke. “Once this is over, I expect you to make it up to me. With interest.”

  “We’ll check in with you every five minutes,” said Nicola. “Simple yes/no questions. Meridiana may try to answer as well. With Lena and Nidhi’s help, we’ll try to select questions only you could answer.”

  “Give me half an hour, then ask if I repent.” That should give me enough time to explore Meridiana’s prison, and if I needed more time, I always had the option of looking into the tube again.

  I moved to the other side of the desk and folded my arms tight, as if I could physically contain the anxiety expanding within my chest. There was excitement as well, eagerness to see the inside of d’Aurillac’s masterpiece, but excitement wasn’t even in the same weight class as the fear. “Allons-y.”

  I saw Lena grin as she recognized the Doctor Who reference. Before I could change my mind, I leaned forward, and peered down into the sighting tube.

  The interior of the tube was polished to a mirror finish, perfect despite its age. Light reflected from the sides, elongated like I was racing through space in an old SF film. Colors stretched toward me. As I fell, I found myself thinking this was the effect Kubrick had tried to achieve in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

  I saw the Earth first, a bronze sphere so dark it appeared black. Violent clouds swirled beyond the globe, their edges lit with metallic flame. They spun like a hurricane, with the Earth floating above the eye.

  Without a physical form, I had no sense of scale. My awareness plummeted toward the metal world that could have been as small as a single molecule or as large as the Virgo Cluster. But the magic flowing through it—

  I could feel magic.

  Laughter echoed through space. My laughter. Gutenberg had carved his spell into my flesh, and I had left that flesh behind. I was complete again.

  Other spheres entered into my awareness. A bronze moon orbited the Earth. Silhouetted metal flames ringed an enormous sun. All the celestial landmarks of d’Aurillac’s time were here, separated by the vastness of space yet so close you could stand on the surface of the Earth and press your palm to the rust-red metal of Mars.

  Beyond it all, an enormous wall of bronze circled the sky, setting the boundaries of existence. A second wall intercepted the first, constellations chasing one another along a never-ending metal trail. The stars were abstractions, artistic renderings that formed bulls and lions and hunters, with points of metal fire scattered over the outlines.

  Magic held each world in its proper place. Magic was light and gravity and momentum and perspective. I felt myself drawn into the pattern of Gerbert d’Aurillac’s spell, like I was a being of liquid iron and this place a nexus of finely balanced magnetic fields.

  I explored the emptiness between the metal bands. I saw nothing to represent the sighting tube which had pulled me in. Nor did I find Meridiana herself, which was troubling.

  How had this thing endured for so long? I couldn’t get a damn toaster to last more than a few years, but d’Aurillac’s work had outlasted nations. Books lost their magic over time, as did most libriomantic spells. What kept this place going?

  “I do.”

  I searched for the source of the voice that filled all of existence. I found it at the intersection of the two enormous metal bands. Seated with her back against a bronze wall as high as a city block was the woman who had invaded my thoughts to taunt me when Gutenberg took my magic, the woman I had glimpsed from the bottom of Euphemia Smith’s pond. Meridiana sat upon a throne built into the wall behind her, the back melting into the metal, leaving her seated over the emptiness of space. The horizontal wall rippled outward like a riverbed. Light green corrosion spread like mold where the back of the throne joined the wall.

  Meridiana’s arms and legs were fused to the chair, as if she had fallen partway into the molten bronze, only to have it harden around her. Even her skin was bronze, cold and perfect.

  Her eyes were empty pits to the stars, though these stars didn’t twinkle like those in the real world, nor were they the stylized etchings of the constellations. These were the stars as seen from space, with no atmosphere to block your vision. Pinpoints of slowly shifting light, like an entire galaxy whirled within her.

  She must have been aware of me, but she gave no physical sign. I crept closer, feeling the power pouring from her to the rest of the universe.

  Most of the brazen heads I had seen in museums were cast as solid works of bronze, but Meridiana’s features had been welded together from more pieces than I could count. She looked like d’Aurillac’s memories of Anna, with a rounded face and a strong, cleft chin. Her nose had been broken, and appeared flattened and bent to the left. Lashes like scimitars shone in the orange light that bathed this world. Rippling layers of metal hair cascaded past her shoulders like a waterfall, each lock sharp enough to cut flesh.

  Why would she have a metal body while I was formless? Was this part of d’Aurillac’s magic, or something she had constructed for herself over the centuries?

  Looking into her eyes, I saw her memories as if they were my own. Meridiana was the heart of this universe. He
r magic powered this prison, keeping the lifeless worlds and stars in motion.

  I could sense it drawing strength from me as well, using my magic and will to maintain a delicate, never-ending balance. It was nothing, a single mosquito drinking my blood, but that drain would never end.

  Meridiana was strong enough to survive such a drain for years. Decades, perhaps. Not centuries. Not a thousand years. Not alone. But then, Meridiana had never been alone.

  In her memories, I saw her begin to lose herself. I shared her desperation as she joined with her prison, adopting the bronze skin as her own and praying it would help her to hold on. I watched her reach out to the dead . . .

  I pulled back from her thoughts before they could drown me. How long had it been since I looked into the tube? I had no sense of time here, but surely five minutes had passed by now.

  I tried to focus on the problem at hand. I turned back to study the storm raging beyond Earth. Everything else I had seen related in some way to the armillary sphere d’Aurillac had constructed, but that was different, distinct from his plan. I flew toward it, but like a reflection in a window, it remained beyond my reach.

  “Isaac, do you remember the first time you touched the life in my oak?”

  The words reverberated between brass worlds. Trust Lena to come up with a question only I could answer.

  Beyond the bronze sky, I saw Lena looking down at us. I saw not her physical body, but the entirety of her existence. I saw her oak and her flesh and the branches growing within her all at once. I saw Nidhi and myself, our desires twined through Lena’s core.

  I also saw the effects of the book Bi Wei had given her. Its magic had grown like a lattice of spun glass, a skeletal tree within Lena’s skin. Its power was fragile, but it was real, stabilizing her identity and personality.

  I could have wept with relief, if I had possessed a body with which to do so. The book had worked. If I died, that book would help her to remain herself.