Mightiest of Swords (The Inkwell Trilogy Book 1)

by Aaron Buchanan

  “How can you be here?” I wondered aloud, incredulous.

  It seemed to be purring, though I knew it was my rational mind trying to make sense of the internal noises it was making. “Is that because your father was supposed to have disposed of me?”

  Joy posted near the door, at the edge of my spell’s field. She was difficult to see there, but knowing she had my back was reassuring. I assumed she was there so she could listen for movements from the hall. Getting away from the ala’s stench was an added bonus.

  “Yes, how have you ended up here? With Von Ranke of all people?” I asked, fetching out my dart gun. I meant to shoot it with the tranq gun for some truth, if needs be.

  “Child—your father was never rid of me while he lived. He called me a lodger and put me up in your old bedroom. He and I had a great many conversations,” it jammed one of its eyes through a square opening in the cage, protruding outside the cage grotesquely. “Along with that friend of his. I promised them I would be good. If they let me go, I would take human form and never bother anyone again.”

  Joy coughed audibly, as if to clear her throat, jumping on “the other one” of the raven’s description “You talked to my father?” The creature jammed the eye on the other side of its head flush between more slats of iron. I had known it to have the speech of a civilized creature, but the way it was conducting itself in that cage signified something entirely different. That it was something entirely different; crazed and malevolent. When I had originally caught it, I merely looked at it as a misguided force of nature. That still might be the case, but it chose to manifest itself destructively.

  “Of course, Jonathan Hansen and I talked many evenings. He was quite interested in what I had to say. He was even working on a paper to submit to one of his journals based on what I told him.” It looked back to me, stuffing its beak in its own feathers. “But it was your father, Ms. Theroux, who first called me Zala. I have grown fond enough of that name,” it rasped. It was a Slavic feminine name. And my father had a penchant for rhyming unnecessarily. As a little girl crossing streets, he’d say “Holdy-goldy” as a way to hold my hand. And when we rode in the car, it was “Seatie for my sweetie” as a reminder to buckle my seat belt. Zala the ala brought back those memories and they hit me in the gut.

  “How is it that you have come to be here—with Dr. Von Ranke?” Victoria spoke for the first time.

  Zala turned herself around in the cage, squawking as ravens do. She defecated in plain view and turned back to face us. This creature was unsettling us on purpose. I doubt she had many allegiances—but they were certainly not to us. “They killed your father,” she wheezed to me, stifling a cough. I didn’t think ravens—or ala—could smoke, but I was beginning to think otherwise. “Once they realized they could not enter your family vault, they killed your father.”

  “And my dad?” Joy shouted. I hoped no one was in the hallway on the other side of that door. I kept my grip firmly on the tranquilizer gun. I even briefly wondered why I hadn’t obtained an actual firearm. It would surely have come in handy tonight. Or, at least, put my mind somewhat at ease.

  “They killed your father first, dear girl,” Zala cawed to Joy, sinking down into the cage and holding there. “They were going to leave me there to starve—but I told them I would tell them everything I heard your father talk about! Your father had no idea exactly how good my hearing is!” Zala shot up hard against the iron cage, feathers flying wildly outside of the cage. The creature was truly insane. If the spellcraft on the cage were not there to hinder its abilities, that movement would like have conjured a hurricane-force gale.

  I was stunned. My father was dead no matter what, but the reason for all the pain, all the strife since then could be traced to this creature caged before us. While she was not responsible for my father’s death, she was the conduit of information for rEvolve. I looked at my bag, contemplating writing Zala her own curse spell. The more painful the better.

  Victoria did not have an emotional investment whether the bird lived or died, and addressed the bird with her no-nonsense authority. “We will free you if you tell us what rEvolve is doing. What do they need with this logomancer?”

  Zala was, for the first time since we found her, taken aback. She squatted, shit herself once more for good measure, ruffled her feathers and stuck her eye up to the iron, eye turned upon Victoria. “Free me first.”

  “That would be impossible. We are not fools. We have no reason to trust you and every reason not to trust you,” Victoria spoke. She was correct.

  The raven turned its eye upon me, “Give me your word, logomancer. If I tell you, make an oath upon your skin that you will free me.

  I was not sure what the ala meant by forswearing upon my skin. I supposed it was meant literally. I looked to Joy and Victoria, whose stares offered me no guidance. “Okay, I will swear it.”

  “Make the truth mark upon your arm and tell me you will free me.” Ah, that’s what she meant.

  “Zala, she will do as you ask, but you must also promise no guile, and to cause us no further harm,” Victoria had the presence of mind to make the addendum. “You must allow her to mark you beforehand.”

  The raven squawked and stirred, pecking herself. “Done.” She kept one eye peering at me through the iron. Zala reeked. Von Ranke must have no sense of smell. Or, her information was so vital he dared not letting her out of his sight whenever possible and simply willed himself to withstand the olfactory barrage.

  “I have no way to make this permanent, so you must make your promise and adhere to it. If you cause anything like the turmoil you did when I caught you, I will find you again.”

  Zala crowed again loudly, and flitted her wings against the cage. She did not like this addendum, though she had to expect it. Well, if she were sane, she had to expect it. “Hurry, logomancer. Von Ranke will return soon. It is no wonder he has not returned already.”

  I took out the black Sharpie. “Present your foot, please,” I requested. It dawned me as I wrote my own version of the lotus-eater on Zala’s foot, that I could write my own “truth” spell in languages of which Zala could not possibly know—and I would not have to tell her the truth at all. Just as quickly, I dismissed the thought. If she ever did get free, she would come for me if I did such a thing. I already had enough people after my hide. As I finished the spell, Zala would be impelled to not harm us. I also included the same truth spell I would write on my own skin—for her peace of mind and mine.

  I marked my own wrist with a truth spell, “I swear to free you upon satisfactorily explaining who Von Ranke is, what he wants with me and giving us any information you have heard that could help us undermine their plans.”

  The calming spell was having its effect. The ala perched comfortably—as comfortable as it could get—in its cage. She cocked her head to the side, “Arthur Von Ranke is a man of Science. He—and his organization wish to eradicate every last vestige of The Monde Cachet.”

  That phrase was direct from my father.

  “Wouldn’t that include you?” Joy asked.

  Zala lazily turned its other eye upon Joy, “Yes. This is why I must escape. He will kill me as well when he is finished—with the obsidian dagger he stole from you.”

  “As well? You’ve seen it in action?” I asked, surprised Von Ranke allowed this creature to be privy to his murders.

  “Of course,” answered Zala. “He has slain no less than 30 deities that I know of.”

  “And drained them of their ichor?” Victoria asked. She rubbed at her arm nervously, finishing with a scratch at her wrist.

  “Yes,” the ala replied.

  “To what end?” Victoria asked, letting her anxiousness dissipate. Joy paced in front of the door, pausing as though she heard something, but resuming once she realized she hadn’t.

  “To fill the Well of Gods with their blood would be to silence the Well for eternity.” The words fell on each of us in a sobering jolt. Victoria’s complexion was already white, now it
was alabaster. Joy stopped pacing, visibly shuddered and turned to look at the raven. I had seen the barbarism of draining a deity of their life force in Cernay-la-Ville. I was still disturbed by what I had witnessed, but the confirmation of my suspicions gave me pause. I noticed my pulse hammering away, and I was cold, but sweating profusely. “This is why the doctor needs you, Well-keeper—he needs you to open the Well so he can fill it.”

  Having solved the mystery of the logomancer pictogram, it was what I expected. “How could Von Rake have known this?” I squeaked, not really directing at Zala, even though I knew what her answer would be.

  She answered anyway. “I told him.”

  “And my father told you?” I asked, feeling that familiar lump rising in my throat. I dared to close the space between the cage and me.

  The bird hesitated at my approach—fearing reprisal? Then she answered, “No. I heard him speaking to another man.”

  “My father?” interrupted Joy. She had abandoned her post to step closer to the cage as well. Victoria took the cue and stood by the suite’s door.

  “No,” the bird whispered. “Another man whose voice I do not know, though he called himself the emissary of the Trick Into.”

  An offshoot of rEvolve. A new question emerged in my mind, and I asked before I realized my mouth was even open. “If the Well is closed, does that mean there can be no more gods?”

  “Nevermore,” she cackled at her own joke.

  My immediate inclination was to kick the cage over. “Would it kill the ones currently alive?”

  “That was the same question the man from this Trick Into asked. Your father said not immediately, but it would hasten their fading,” Zala replied.

  Joy stepped even closer, “Why would you not fade?” she asked, almost in challenge to the creature.

  “I am not born from the Well of Gods,” she did not shrink from Joy’s question or from her challenge.

  “How many Wells are there?” I asked.

  “This exceeds the confines of our contract, logomancer,” the ala creaked in protest.

  Even so, it did not seem angry—which was a good thing. It meant my spell was working just as it should. “We are nearly finished. Telling me would help me understand what rEvolve plans should they succeed here.”

  “They must not succeed. They will close the Well of Gods. I have heard of the Well of Souls, though I know not of any other.”

  If it took the blood of gods to close the Well of Gods, I wondered how one would close the Well of Souls. I took a moment to percolate the information Zala just gave me. Though belief was something intangible, in these Wells, the intangible was forged into the concrete. I guessed it worked like this, but felt even more slighted that my dad left me in ignorance. Why hadn’t he told me? And who was this other man Zala spoke of? The Trick Into?

  I walked to the cage and, with Joy’s help, lugged it over to the nearest window. I opened it by unfastening its pins, leaving the cage sitting on the stone-brick sill. The cage was opened, but the ala did not fly. Given its size and its time imprisoned, I thought it might have forgotten how. “Go. I free you,” I exhorted. “My oath is fulfill—“

  That was when Victoria jerked to attention, hearing someone in the hallway.

  She walked to the window, whispering to me along the way: “I will fly down. I can take this thing, too, but not all three of you.”

  “Go!” I exhaled. “We’ll figure this out!” And then Victoria jumped. I thought I saw translucent wings unfurling, but the cage and the ala inside made flight difficult. I had no time to look as I closed the window and waited for the room door to open.

  I leaned up against the wall, and did not breathe. Joy did her best to copy me.

  When the door opened, three men entered the suite. It was now well into the night, and none of them spoke. They were all well dressed—suits, ties, and—the bald man in the waistcoat. Though it was difficult to see, one of them looked like the man I had left in the cemetery in Cambridge: Linden. The third man was slender, middle-aged with salt-and-peppered hair and a narrow face. His face looked gaunt, his eyes sunken in a look of malnutrition. This had to be Dr. Von Ranke.

  “Did you leave this lamp on?” Von Ranke asked his lieutenants. “Never mind. I suppose I must have.” His speech was very delicate and thickly accented. “Get some rest, doctors. Logic dictates the magician will no doubt be arriving to the coordinates within the next 24 hours. Her friend’s life hangs in the balance. Once she has gotten the message at her hotel, she will come.”

  As an American hearing someone with a German accent speak, we often hear either a level of sophistication or something from fairy tales. However, I heard Von Ranke’s sophistication in his diction and nuance. He could just as easily have been presenting a paper to a room full of colleagues at a convention. Instead he was talking about issuing me some message that would bring me to him. Whatever that was, I did not think it could bode well for Gavin.

  “Of course, doctor,” the bald man spread himself on a couch and looked to close his eyes.

  “In the morning, then, doctor?” This was the unmistakable voice of Dr. Linden.

  “Yes, doctor,” Von Ranke confirmed. Their usage of the honorifics was peculiar and a bit unsettling. In a different context, I could imagine it in a Monty Python skit. Here, it was nothing short of chilling. Looking down, I saw my own skin breaking into gooseflesh.

  Linden excused himself from the suite. The bald doctor on the couch was already snoring softly. Von Ranke sat on his bed and stared at the window we had just opened. I reached for my tranquilizer gun knowing it was already too late—Von Ranke was already reaching for his pistol.

  “We're not on our journey to save the world but to save ourselves.

  But in doing that you save the world.”

  —Joseph Campbell

  “The gods were never the inspirers of Art. It was always us inspiring each other. Shred says there’s a musician and songwriter in England who lights the flame of his inspiration. Joy, too, says that contemplating the Dutch Masters kindles something inside her, too. I know this to be true—nothing gets me going quite like Tolstoy.”

  —Grey Theroux

  rEvolve: 9

  What we have learned:

  In Lucerne, there is a lovely little church called, in the German tongue, Hofkirche. It was unlike any other church, minster, or cathedral I have ever visited in my travels. The place is more brightly lit, but the light is absorbed by an inordinate amount of black: black-painted pews, altars, anything. There is also gold paint that trims and highlights, but the overall effect brings to mind the atmospherics of a funeral. It dawned upon me there, Christians are not alone in this either: but the religious have been attending the same funeral now for thousands of years. The church’s doors stand open, people come, but no one stays.

  Our kind have drawn the waters from the God Well. The God Well will no longer sustain our thirst. We are not threatened by the gods; not any longer. They are impotent. However, to carry out our next act is to hasten their demise. This is not an act of impatience: this is a coup de grace. This grants them the kind of mercy they were unwilling to give humanity; this not only will show us superior, but to close the Well will also prohibit any of their kind from being born in the future. This is the most important aspect: we must not ever allow ourselves to be tempted to return to our childhood.

  Moral convictions based on spiritual enlightenment and rooted in human experience are just as real and certain as mathematical deductions based on physical observations, but on another and higher level.

  —The Urantia Book

  Chapter 25

  “THE BIRD IS GONE!” Von Ranke screamed. The bald man jumped off the couch, reaching for his own weapon.

  The suite was spacious enough that I wasn’t surprised he didn’t notice at first—especially given the hour. That he immediately reached for a weapon should not have been a surprise, but it was. I found myself hitting the floor with such force that I knew they both
had to have heard it. Joy had a similar reaction. Our timing proved fortunate as bullets sailed over our head, hitting drywall, and coating us with powdery residue.

  “Someone is with us, Doctor!” Von Ranke thundered, as if an order to the bald man to also open fire.

  With little else to do, I started army-crawling to the window as the bald man headed to the door to block our escape. My talent for words was likely unmatched in this world and the litany of curse words pouring through my brain only augmented my own personal legend. I reached for my tranq gun and aimed it at Von Ranke as a set of chairs and other furniture blocked me from hitting Dr. Baldy. My first shot arched over his head. The trajectory of these darts did not match those of bullets by any stretch. I tried to compensate and sent another dart…somewhere that wasn’t Von Ranke. As bullets started hitting lower to the floor, I rolled again, toppling a crouching Joy. I jumped up, stood to full height and fired at the bald man at the door. His eyes rolled up in his head and he dropped to the floor.

  It was only then that I noticed I too was hit. I looked down to see blood blooming into a large flower on my thigh. I dropped down to my good knee and rolled left, lying prone on the floor. I grabbed for the Sharpie in my back pocket, hoping to write…something. I was losing so much blood he had to have hit something vital. I was blinking stars from my eyes, trying to stay conscious. I knew I only had moments, before more henchmen came, and before I bled to death. I tossed the tranq gun and my bag to Joy, hoping she’d have the sense to use something. She did.

  Joy flung the bag—and all of its contents—at Von Ranke. He did not see it until it knocked the gun from his hand. Joy grabbed me and helped me to the door while Von Ranke was fumbling to find his gun. The door hit Dr. Baldy in the head as we opened to make our retreat. The suites next to us were apparently empty, but other rEvolvers were bounding out of the stairwell and down the hallway running at full tilt. We stood flush against the wall by the elevator, the rush of wind blowing our hair around our faces. The Sharpie, still in my hand, I pulled my jeans down and wrote the healing spell on a small patch of flesh not covered in blood. While I would heal now, I had no way to replace lost blood. When the elevator dinged, the men fanned out of the door of the suite led by Von Ranke. Guns fired, but we fell backward into the elevator. I stared at the floor, not seeing Joy hit the down button. The doors closed on the maelstrom and we readied for what could be waiting for us below.