by Jim C. Hines
“How many?” asked Whitney.
“At least twenty-four,” I said. “They’re not true wendigos, but they have most of the strength and temper. Depending on the amount of skin he used, the transformation might not be permanent.”
“The wendigos are the least of our concerns. Harrison has also created his own dryad.” Gutenberg extended his arm toward Lena like a museum curator showing off an exhibit. “Unlike Ms. Greenwood, this dryad is new and untrained. However, she possesses the same strengths and weaknesses.”
“What weaknesses?”
I didn’t see who asked the question, but I cringed as Gutenberg began detailing how the loss of Lena’s tree could cripple her, how her skin would resist normal weapons, but not magical ones. She stood like a statue, her eyes fixed on the wall as Gutenberg verbally dissected her. I took her hand, offering what comfort I could. Nidhi squeezed her other hand.
“Why go to the trouble of breaking into our archives and making a dryad if he already had wendigos?” That was Whitney again.
Gutenberg nodded at me. I grimaced and stepped into the center of the ring of libriomancers. “Five hundred years ago, some of the students of Bi Sheng were able to preserve their thoughts and memories in books. Their descendants have spent centuries protecting those books, and searching for a way to restore them. When Harrison hacked into my private notes, he found the answer. Not only does Lena recreate her physical body each time she leaves her tree, but earlier this year, we discovered she can do the same for another person.”
Everyone began talking at once. New comments and questions poured forth, one atop the next.
“That’s a hell of a magical kluge.”
“Can you change the body you create? Make it younger or thinner?”
“Or better looking? Especially for Bobby over there.”
“Bite me. What about cloning? If you had access to the mind, how many copies could you make?”
“Have you examined the body at the genetic level? Are they affected at all by their dryadic birth?”
“Do they have belly buttons?”
Lena turned to me and mouthed the word “libriomancers” while rolling her eyes. I gave her a sympathetic smile.
Gutenberg clapped his hands once. “August Harrison forced Ms. Greenwood to restore a woman named Bi Wei. In her time, Bi Wei would have been a rudimentary libriomancer of limited ability, but time in her book gave her a more direct connection to magic. She was a part of magic, able to manipulate it without books or other tools. While she appears to have retained this power, the greater danger is what else Lena brought forth. Bi Wei had been touched by what the followers of Bi Sheng call duì. The Ghost Army.”
Maryelizabeth snorted. “Wendigos, insects, dead libriomancers…how many armies does this dude need?”
“Harrison doesn’t know about the Ghost Army,” I said. “They’re using him, not the other way around.”
“Why haven’t we heard any of this before?” asked John. The handle of his book wagon wagged back and forth like a scolding finger.
“Because libriomancers are utterly incapable of letting sleeping dragons lie,” Gutenberg said calmly. “The Ghost Army slumbered for centuries. I was aware of something that occasionally reached through to corrupt and consume whoever it touched, but such contacts were rare. I feared that too much poking and prodding would rouse it, so research into the Ghost Army has been restricted and carefully monitored.”
“Carefully?” Lena asked. “You assigned Isaac to study this thing.”
“Only when we realized it had begun to stir,” Gutenberg said sternly. “Isaac survived an encounter with these ghosts, an accomplishment limited to only a handful of Porters throughout the years.”
He raised his hands, forestalling further questions. “Isaac was attacked when he channeled more magic than he could control. These ghosts strike when our barriers are weakest. They are awake, and they are watching. Use precision over power. Do not overextend yourselves.”
“How do we find them?” asked Whitney.
“Originally, I intended to use Ms. Warwick.” Gutenberg waved Toni forward.
“Worst assignment in years.” Toni grimaced. “If I can touch the corpses of the wendigos Harrison butchered, I’m pretty sure I can find him, or at least his pets.”
“And what do you intend to do about the war you’ll be starting with every werewolf in Michigan?” Jeff asked, his words a full octave lower than normal.
Toni looked from Gutenberg to Jeff. She was a good field agent, but occasionally neglected the research side of things. She clearly had no idea how close she was to starting a brawl in the middle of my library.
“Werewolves were originally scavengers,” I said. “They dug up graves to feed on corpses. They’ve spent centuries trying to distance themselves from that piece of their past, to the point where they’ll circle a half mile out of their way simply to avoid the smell of road kill. It’s almost a religious taboo. The wendigos are buried in a werewolf cemetery. Messing with their burial sites is a good way to get yourself torn apart.”
“But wendigos aren’t werewolves,” Toni protested.
“Which is why Jeff hasn’t tried to kill anyone yet,” Nidhi said.
Toni folded her arms and turned to Gutenberg. “You never mentioned that.” She sounded like a pissed-off parent.
Gutenberg studied Jeff, giving everyone just enough time to imagine how such a confrontation would play out. “Fortunately, we have a simpler option.” He took an old pulp novel by A. E. van Vogt from the closest stack of books. “Even unconscious, Guan Feng’s memories should guide us.”
“She doesn’t know where Harrison was going,” I protested.
“She said she didn’t know. Even if she told you the truth, the brain retains much more information than it can consciously process or remember.” He skimmed the book and strode toward Guan Feng. As he bent over, golden tendrils flickered from his scalp, like an afterimage that faded when you tried to look at it directly.
I hadn’t read Slan since I was in middle school, so the details of the story and its rules for mind reading were vague. Gutenberg would be able to read Feng’s thoughts, but I didn’t think the process would hurt her.
“Feng flew to the U.S. six weeks ago,” Gutenberg said slowly. “The students of Bi Sheng are spread throughout the world. We face fewer than half of their total number.” He grabbed his gold pen and appeared to scribble a series of notes in the air. Magical note-taking so he would remember the locations of the rest?
“In the beginning, Harrison’s hope was infectious,” he continued. “He saw himself as a savior, and when he showed them a selection of documents he had taken from our computers, they saw salvation. As the weeks passed, he spent more and more time alone. When not locked in his cabin, he sent his insects to spy on Lena, watching through their eyes.
“Two weeks ago, Harrison left the camp. When he returned, he was quite drunk. He said the time for planning was past. In order to overpower Lena, he needed soldiers. If they wouldn’t help him to capture a wendigo, he would do it alone.”
“Two weeks?” Nidhi asked sharply. “Was this the twentieth?”
Gutenberg nodded.
“What happened July twentieth?” Lena asked.
“That was Victor Harrison’s birthday.”
“They tracked and killed the first wendigo the following morning,” Gutenberg said. “The body you investigated in Tamarack was the second murder.”
“Where did they go after they attacked Michilimackinac?” Toni’s impatience was palpable.
He raised a hand and stared at Guan Feng, as if he could dig out the truth with his eyes alone. “The tree he prepared for Lena didn’t survive the restoration of Bi Wei. He needed a stronger oak for his new dryad, as well as additional soldiers to defend her.”
“Between Bi Wei and Deifilia, they could grow a new oak anywhere,” said Lena.
“But it was to be hidden. Protected.” Gutenberg blinked. “Harrison asked Deifil
ia whether her oak could survive underground.”
Without the sun…but how difficult would it be to conjure sunlight? Jeff carried the moon’s rays around in a rock. Bi Wei could provide whatever Deifilia’s tree needed. “They’re at the mine.”
Gutenberg nodded, the transparent tendrils on his scalp making him look like Medusa. “Isaac is correct.”
That would explain where the dragon had come from, and the mine employed more than enough healthy, strong people to build Harrison’s wendigo army.
“Find them.”
I turned to Lena. “Find what?”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Nidhi?”
Nidhi’s brow creased. “What did you hear, Isaac?”
The room grew silent. My neck and cheeks warmed as I realized everyone had stopped to look at me. “I’m not sure.”
“Find .”
Slowly, I stepped toward the edge of the library to look out at the sky. Despite the rising sun, stars burned clearly in the sky, stars which were completely wrong for this time of year. I searched until I spotted the constellation known as the Phoenix. “Oh, damn.”
Not too long ago, I would have tried to cover up what was happening. I would have blamed my confusion on the ringing in my ears from the explosion. But if I was seeing nonexistent stars, I was far too vulnerable. That didn’t make my next words any easier. “I need to stay behind.”
I tried to tell myself I wasn’t betraying Lena, Jeff…all of Copper River, really. If I was hearing voices, then the next spell I cast could be enough to let the Army of Ghosts into my head. Trying to help could get everyone killed.
“Are you armed?” asked Pallas.
I showed her the shock-gun.
“Isaac.”
I clenched my fists and focused on my surroundings.
“Lena will remain here as well,” Gutenberg said.
“No, she won’t,” Lena shot back. “Nobody knows what Deifilia can do better than me.”
“Nor do we know what will happen if the two of you face one another.” He sounded deceptively calm. He reached out, fingers coming together as if he were snatching an invisible thread. As he did so, printed type seemed to crawl over his tan skin, the characters burrowing into his body too quickly for me to read.
Lena’s knees gave out.
Nidhi jumped to catch her. “What did you do?”
“Lena is book-born.” Gutenberg released his hold, and the color slowly returned to Lena’s face. “If I can take her power, what do you think Bi Wei might do? What if she does worse? She could rewrite Lena, transform her into an enemy.”
“Can you do that?” I asked sharply. “Rewrite her?”
Gutenberg’s mouth tightened ever so slightly. “I cannot, no. But while Bi Sheng’s magic is similar to ours, we do not know all his secrets. Lena stays here.”
He neither raised his voice nor changed his expression, but everyone in the library recognized the discussion was over. Almost everyone.
“She’s my responsibility,” Lena pressed.
“In what way?” asked Gutenberg. “Did you create her? Did you write the book from which she sprang? Was it your stolen research that allowed our enemies to discover what she could do? Did your defenses fail to protect our archive? In what way are you responsible, Lena Greenwood?”
“Because she’s family.”
“That’s one more reason you will not be accompanying us.” He raised his voice. “I will lead a team to the mine. Nicola will command the others in Copper River.”
“We’re splitting our forces?” asked John.
Toni snorted. “You think they’re just waiting around for us to visit? They know Guan Feng has been spilling her guts to the Porters, they know Isaac blew their toy dragon all to shit, and they know he has reinforcements.”
“Indeed,” said Gutenberg. “They will attack Copper River for all those reasons, and to attempt to keep us from finding the mine. The longer they hold us off, the more of Bi Sheng’s students they can restore, and the stronger their power grows.”
Toni Warwick pulled a small roll of purple duct tape from her belt. She used utility scissors to snip the end from one of her dreadlocks, and sprinkled a few strands of hair onto the sticky side of a square of tape. She slapped the tape onto John Wenger’s shoulder. “This should let me track you, and give us limited communications. Please don’t scream into the duct tape.”
One by one, she did the same for the rest of the Porters. I was the last to receive my duct tape communicator, which she pressed onto my shirt with a whispered, “Sorry, man. For what it’s worth, I’m jealous as hell that you got to fight the dragon.”
Gutenberg wasted no more time in assigning a small group to protect Copper River, then led the rest out of the library. A single automaton waited like a statue in the middle of the road.
Pallas was snapping her fingers again. “Isaac, I could use your help deciding where to position people. You know the town better than anyone here.”
“Some of us were living in these parts before Isaac’s parents were born,” Jeff muttered.
I trudged toward the ruins of the entryway and dug out one of the brochures that described all the exciting things to do in Copper River, Michigan. It was a relatively short brochure. However, it included a decent enough map on the back.
I pointed to various locations that would give us—that would give them—a better vantage point against incoming forces. “The water tower. The clock tower at City Hall. The mine’s north of here, so I’d suggest putting people at the railroad bridge here. It has a good view of the river.”
In twos and threes, the Porters set out with their books and weapons. Toni and Nicola were the last to go, leaving me, Lena, Nidhi, and Jeff alone with the unconscious body of Guan Feng.
“I don’t care what anyone says,” Jeff announced once they were gone. “That man is a douchebag.”
“Isaac, please.”
I made my way around the front desk and retrieved Bi Wei’s book from the drawer. The whispers in my head grew louder when I touched the cover.
“What are you doing?” Nidhi asked warily.
“I can hear her.” I sat on the floor and flipped through the pages.
“Isn’t that a good reason to not read the book?” Jeff asked.
Even without donning my translation glasses, I could almost understand the words. “I’m not going to try magic. I promise. I just…I don’t think this is possession. She’s asking me for help.”
Lena leaned over my shoulder. “Do you trust her?”
“I’m not sure.” I could barely hear her, as if she were shouting from a great distance. I made out August Harrison’s name, and something about ghosts, but we needed a stronger connection. I sagged back in the chair. “The Porters tried to kill her five hundred years ago. Now we—I—gave Harrison the tools to bring her back, and to let the Army of Ghosts into her mind. She’s fighting for her sanity. She’s a victim. Our victim.”
“Or she’s trying to get her hooks into your head so she can find out what the Porters are up to,” Jeff said.
“I don’t think so.” I pulled the glasses from my jacket, unfolded the earpieces, and slipped them on. Text flickered to life. I started to read, then hesitated. “But if I start spewing pea soup or anything, I’d appreciate it if you got me the hell away from this book.”
I chose a page at random and began reading about Bi Wei’s first attempt at magic, the continuation of a project her great-grandaunt had begun years before her birth. They had hoped to create a book in which writing on one of the blank pages would cause the same message to appear on other copies. The goal was to find a replacement for the signal beacons on the Great Wall.
Using blocks of movable type painstakingly carved from wood, they created identical books using a technique known as butterfly binding. Printed pages were folded in the middle and stitched together, leaving the reverse sides blank. The text included everything from poetry to military strategy, with one thing in
common: thematically, every piece emphasized the importance of communication.
Imagining Bi Wei poring over her copy of the book, reading and rereading as she attempted to imbue its pages with magic, made me feel ashamed. My own early magic had been entirely selfish, limited to pulling toys and trinkets from one book after another.
How open had the practice of magic been in China during the Ming Dynasty? Had the Emperor been aware of Bi Sheng’s students? What of the common people?
“Isaac.”
I jumped. “ Bi?”
“Where is Guan Feng? Is she—”
“She’s alive. Gutenberg put her to sleep.”
Her words seemed to come from the book itself. “You heard me.” I sensed the quiet laughter she wouldn’t let reach her lips. “It worked.”
I found myself smiling in return. I had theorized that something like this might be possible, but the last time I had tried, a ghost had attempted to eat my soul. “Are you thinking in English or Mandarin?”
“Mandarin, which is how I hear your words. You hear English?”
“That’s right.” I wanted to warn her to get as far from the mine as possible. Instead, I simply asked, “Wei, what’s happening?”
“August Harrison collapsed a short time ago, and hasn’t awakened.”
“That was probably my doing,” I said smugly. Blowing up the dragon had hit him harder than I could have hoped.
“Then you may have destroyed us all. Deifilia has bound him in ropes of living oak. She brought two of my fellow refugees from their books, and she now commands Harrison’s metal creatures.”
“Deifilia’s in charge of the magic bugs?” I blinked and looked to Nidhi, trying to split my focus between the book and the real world. “That doesn’t make sense.”
Nidhi was shaking her head. “August Harrison would never surrender his power to Deifilia, nor would he want a lover who desired his power. It shouldn’t be possible for her to take control of his weapons. She can’t act against his wishes.”
She brought her fingers to cover her mouth. From the shock in her eyes, she had made the same leap I had. There was at least one way for a dryad to grow beyond the desires of her mate.