Libriomancer (9781101597552)

by Hines, Jim C.

  “What would you do with individuals who became dangerous or unmanageable?” de Leon asked. “Magical imprisonment isn’t terribly cost-effective, and execution seems rather extreme.”

  “Banishment works,” Lena suggested.

  De Leon smirked. “Does it really? We’ll see.”

  “Locking someone’s power wouldn’t be enough,” I said slowly. Maybe you could seal off a man’s magic, but that wouldn’t prevent him from returning the next day with a high-powered rifle and taking his revenge, or from simply going to the media to spill the truth about the Porters. “You’d have to erase his memories of magic, too.”

  “Keep going,” said de Leon. “This is a fascinating mental exercise.”

  It would need to be a selective wipe. Total amnesia would raise too many questions. But how? Gutenberg was a libriomancer. We couldn’t simply rewrite a human being, erasing whole chapters out of his life.

  No, I assumed we couldn’t do it. It was becoming more and more clear how much had been withheld from my training. Had Ray Walker known about this? Did Pallas? “How often do they do it? Lock people?”

  De Leon shrugged. “As you know, I’ve not been a member of your little club for many years.”

  “Hubert’s injury broke that lock,” Lena said.

  “How?” I asked.

  “The brain can rewrite itself to some extent, bypassing damaged areas,” she said. “As he healed, his brain could have found a way around those spells. He would have started to remember what had been taken from him. That’s why he was lashing out at Porters. They stole his magic and his memories.”

  Anger narrowed my vision as I yanked the wheel and sped past a semi. It was disturbingly easy to imagine myself in Hubert’s place. If things had gone differently two years ago, if Ray hadn’t been there to speak on my behalf, would they have stolen my magic, too? I had given up magic for two years, but to lose even the awareness of magic, to have those memories ripped away . . .

  What had it been like for Hubert? First the explosion, then awakening in the hospital. The disorientation, the pain of his injuries, and the memories swelling free and floating to the surface. Had it been a gradual thing, or had his previous life returned to him in a single overwhelming flash?

  “If Pallas and the other higher-ups know about this practice,” Lena said slowly, “why haven’t they pieced it together and gone after Hubert?”

  “Excellent question.” De Leon sounded like a professor praising a favorite student.

  “You couldn’t just erase Hubert’s memories,” I said, my heartbeat growing sharper as I worked through the implications. “They don’t want lowly field agents or catalogers knowing what they’ve done. They’d have to erase Hubert from our memories as well, to make sure we didn’t question the disappearance of a colleague. If Hubert has access to Gutenberg’s knowledge, he could have worked the same spell to hide himself from the memories of the Regional Masters.”

  “What about the records?” Lena asked.

  “Victor Harrison.” I glanced at the mirror, but de Leon neither confirmed nor denied my guess. “We thought the attack on Harrison was a way to tap into our communications, but that was only part of it. Harrison also had access to our databases. Hubert could have used him to wipe his records.”

  “That could be why he stole those books from the archive,” Lena said. “Not to use their magic, but to figure out how to reverse a magical lock. If there are others like Hubert, he could be planning to help them.”

  “Or he could be trying to reverse engineer the process, to find a way to do to Gutenberg and the rest of the Porters what they did to him.” I needed time to process everything, to sort through the various pieces, but one significant question remained unanswered. “I reached through one of those books, trying to find Hubert. He sent something back after me. Something that felt alive, made of hatred and desperate hunger. I’ve never felt magic like that, powerful enough to wipe me out of existence as casually as you or I might slap a mosquito.”

  The last traces of humor vanished from de Leon’s face. When he spoke, he was as cold and sober as I had ever seen. “You are a very fortunate man, Isaac Vainio. Do the Porters know about this?”

  “We told Nicola Pallas what happened,” said Lena.

  I saw comprehension in his eyes. “She forbade you from leaving, didn’t she? And you defied her.”

  “You know what that was. What Hubert conjured up to destroy me.”

  The muscles in de Leon’s jaw twitched, like he was struggling to speak. He shouted in frustration, then threw back his head and laughed bitterly. “Johannes, you fool!” His hands seemed to grab the sides of the mirror, and he leaned in close. “I would tell you what it is you face, and perhaps even help you to survive your next encounter long enough to save Gutenberg’s life. Only Gutenberg’s own geis prevents me.” Another laugh, this one softer. “He would have appreciated the irony, I think.”

  “So why aren’t the Porters doing more?” Lena asked.

  “‘Why do the other pieces stay behind?’ ask the pawns.” De Leon chuckled and brushed his mustache with thumb and forefinger. “The Porters are doing what they have always done. They are preparing to eliminate the threat and contain the damage, once you or another of their pawns flush out their quarry. Only I’m afraid they underestimate the danger. With Gutenberg gone, there’s not a single one who remembers . . .”

  “Remembers what?” I demanded.

  “Find Gutenberg,” de Leon said urgently. “If the thing you saw enters his mind, then what you experienced will be a mere hint of the suffering to come.”

  “What is it?” I asked. “Where did it come from, and if the Porters know about this threat, why hasn’t that information been shared?”

  “Those, Isaac Vainio, are some of the many questions that led to my eventual departure from the Porters.” He moved closer, until his eyes filled the mirror. “If you fail to rescue Gutenberg,” de Leon said softly, “then I promise whatever is left of you will answer to me.”

  He disappeared before I could respond.

  “It isn’t right,” Lena said. “Rewriting a man’s mind. Stealing his memories.”

  “We don’t know what Hubert did.” It was little more than a token protest. Punish me, imprison me, even kill me if the crime warranted it. But don’t strip away the very thing that defines me.

  “I won’t let the Porters do that to you,” Lena said, as if reading my thoughts.

  “Given what de Leon said, that might be a moot point.” I pushed the gas pedal, and the needle jumped past eighty. “How long until we reach the camp?”

  “About a hundred miles or so.”

  My knuckles were white on the wheel. “Plenty of time to see what Ponce de Leon’s custom-spelled car can do.”

  It took most of the afternoon to find our way to the dirt back roads leading to Charles Hubert’s hunting cabin in the woods. The little convertible jolted and lurched through ruts and canyons left by spring rains. Birch trees leaned together on either side, their branches forming a canopy that blotted out the sky.

  Hubert wasn’t the only one with property in these woods. We passed four other hand-painted signs before reaching the turnoff another mile or so down the road. I shifted into first gear. Tree roots jabbed the tires, and exposed rock scraped the underside of the car, making me cringe.

  We had to stop twice so that Lena could clear fallen branches from the road. They had been there for a while, judging from the dead leaves, which meant nobody had driven this road for weeks.

  The air over Smudge rippled with heat, though whether that was due to whatever waited for us at Hubert’s cabin or to my own driving, I couldn’t say. I checked my directions, then killed the engine. “The camp should be another quarter mile up ahead.”

  “I’ll check it out.” She retrieved her bokken from the
back and thrust them through her belt. She walked to the nearest birch and climbed it like a ladder, her fingers sinking into the wood as she pulled herself higher. Once she was about twenty feet up, she strode from branch to branch, holding the trunks for support. The leaves soon hid her from sight.

  I checked my books, mentally reviewing which weapons would be best against a possessed libriomancer. The Odyssey was starting to show signs of char, but I should be able to get more Moly, and I needed to be able to counter whatever Hubert might throw at us. A stun grenade would be good if we could get the drop on him.

  I thought back to what de Leon had said. Whatever Hubert had inside of him, it was enough to frighten one of the most powerful sorcerers in the world. If de Leon was nervous, my chances were pretty dismal. But if we could sneak in long enough to find and rescue Gutenberg . . .

  Invisibility. Speed. Silence. We needed to be magic-enhanced ninjas. I picked out a few more titles, then looked over my books for healing magic. Possession couldn’t be cured, not once it had gone this far. There was nothing I could do to save whatever remained of Charles Hubert.

  Lena rapped on the window. I yelled and dropped the books I had been studying. Okay, I needed some ninja magic. Lena seemed to be doing fine on her own.

  “It’s abandoned,” Lena said as I climbed out of the car. “Looks like he left a while ago.”

  “Dammit.” I lifted Smudge to my shoulder. He was hot to the touch. “Are you sure? This is not a happy spider.”

  “The place is a wreck, Isaac. Nothing lives there now except maybe the raccoons.”

  I gathered my books and followed her down the road. A short distance on, it branched to the left into an overgrown clearing beside a plain-looking wooden cabin. What was left of it, at any rate.

  “Automatons?” asked Lena.

  “Maybe.” Something had smashed its way into the cabin. Only two of the four walls remained. Half of the roof had splintered and fallen in, and the rest sagged dangerously. A wooden staircase on the far side led downhill toward a small stream.

  The interior walls that remained were unfinished, and the floorboards were bare plywood. A flannel jacket hung from a peg on the wall. A set of shelves had collapsed, spilling canned food beside a rust-dotted refrigerator that looked to be at least forty years old. Torn, moldy books were strewn through the wreckage, along with something metallic.

  I stepped closer, testing the floor. An ominous cracking made me back away. “Could I borrow a sword?”

  Lena handed me one of her bokken. I used it to poke at the books, searching for the glint I had spied. After a few attempts, I uncovered a gold coin slightly larger than a quarter. I slid it close enough to pick up and brushed it off on my sleeve. Though worn, I could make out the image of a stern-looking woman and the words “Dei Gratina.”

  “What is it?”

  “A two-guinea coin.” I flipped it to Lena. “A piece of treasure from Treasure Island. It’s a training exercise. Ray had me create and dissolve that same coin time and again in our first year working together.” I stared at the ruined books. “Hubert was practicing.”

  “You think the Porters noticed?”

  “And sent an automaton to deal with him? Maybe.” I turned in a slow circle. A clear, grassy area the width of a two-lane road led down to the stream. On the other side of the clearing, a pair of pine trees had toppled over, the trunks splintered like matchsticks. Most of the needles had fallen off, forming a brown carpet on the ground.

  “Hubert walked away from this,” said Lena. “So what happened to whoever or whatever attacked him?”

  I took Heart of Stone from my jacket and pulled out the enchanted sunglasses I had used before. Beneath one of the fallen trees, the air rippled slightly, like a cloaking device from an old SF flick.

  Smudge grew hotter as I approached. I heard the telltale puff as his body ignited, and leaned my head to the left to avoid singeing my ear. I pointed to the distortion. Lena readied her bokken and moved downhill, approaching from the other side.

  Something clinked underfoot. I held up a hand for Lena to wait. I couldn’t see anything in the dirt or grass. I crouched, moving my hands slowly through the knee-high weeds until I found what I had stepped on: a pair of invisible metal blocks, each one the size of a small LEGO brick. Both were smooth on all but one side, where small ridges formed the letters I and W.

  I clutched them in my fist and continued toward the magical distortion. Lena extended one of her bokken, giving whatever it was a gentle poke. “It’s heavy,” she said. “Feels like metal.”

  Ponce de Leon would have yanked the concealment spell aside like a stage magician pulling a tablecloth from beneath a vase. I had to do it the hard way.

  I went through six sprigs of Moly, setting them around whatever it was and watching each flower wilt and die as it leached away the magic hiding this thing from our sight.

  I removed the sunglasses and hung them from a belt loop. Even without them, I could now make out a dark shape, larger and broader than a man. Smudge ran down my body, igniting dead pine needles as he scurried away. I stomped out the small flames he left behind. Smudge scrambled up an old beech tree, where he turned around and refused to come back down.

  “That’s not a good sign.” I pulled out a blaster and aimed it at the shape, just to be safe.

  I had always thought the dissolution of magic should have more pizzazz: swirling lights, colored smoke . . . even just a loud popping sound. Unfortunately, the universe didn’t share my taste in special effects. I saw the shine of metal, and then—

  “Shit!” I scrambled back, tripping over fallen branches.

  Sprawled before us, pinned face-up by a four-inch-wide branch that speared it to the earth, was one of Gutenberg’s automatons.

  Chapter 17

  FEW PEOPLE EVER SAW ONE OF Gutenberg’s mechanical enforcers. Far fewer walked away from the experience. I swallowed and stepped closer. A layer of dirt and pine needles blanketed the automaton, meaning it hadn’t moved in a while. The trunk of the fallen tree had rolled to one side, crushing the automaton’s left arm and leg into the dirt and leaving that single branch protruding from its chest.

  The automaton looked like an eight-foot-tall tailor’s dummy, clad in silver armor made up of metal blocks fitted together so perfectly they appeared to be a single fluid layer. I unclenched my fist and looked at the blocks I had picked up. They matched the armor, and I could see where some of the blocks had been ripped away to expose dark, aged wood.

  The head had been split like an apple to reveal the mechanism inside. Bronze gears and broken cables littered the ground between the halves. One eye had fallen loose, a perfect black marble the size of a plum.

  I touched the right arm, half-expecting the automaton to come to life and grab me for daring to disturb its rest. When nothing happened, I swept off the worst of the dirt. A crack in the arm exposed the hammered metal joint of the elbow, and the wooden hand had been smashed, revealing smaller skeletal rods and hinges.

  More metal blocks lay scattered in the dirt. I picked up another and scraped the dirt away to reveal a backward letter F.

  “Movable type,” I whispered. These were what made up the automaton’s armor. Metal blocks, each one hand-cast and filed to perfection. Awe at what I was holding warred with intestine-knotting fear of the thing lying so close. Awe won. I was holding magical history. For all I knew, it had been Gutenberg himself who poured molten metal into the hand-molds to create these letters, though these were significantly larger than the pieces of type he had used for his printing press.

  The blocks on the automaton faced inward, the letters stamping the wooden body. I crouched over the thing’s stomach, fear all but forgotten as I examined the exposed wood where the pine branch had staked the thing to the ground.

  “Isaac, are you sure that’s smart?”

 
I barely heard. The wooden torso had been hand-carved; I could see the tool marks. The surface of the wood was a deep, oiled brown. I spat on my fingers and rubbed away the worst of the dirt. I could see the letters imprinted into the surface of the wood. “This thing is like a living printing press.” No, not just a press, but a living book. I sat back, trying to absorb what we had discovered.

  Lena touched two fingers to the exposed wood.

  “Be careful. It’s a construct, fueled by magic, and it retained enough power to conceal itself until my Moly drained that spell.”

  “What could do this?” Lena gestured to the split head and the impaled chest.

  “Charles Hubert. Meaning we are seriously outmatched.” A flicker of light pulled my attention toward Smudge, who had managed to set the side of his tree on fire. I grabbed a broken branch and extended it toward him until he climbed onto the end. Lena climbed up and beat out the flames with one hand.

  I transferred Smudge to a bit of exposed rock and searched the woods to either side. “Keep an eye out. He might just be freaking out about the automaton, but if not . . .”

  Lena flexed her shoulders and gave her swords a quick spin.

  I slipped the sunglasses back on. The sprigs of Moly appeared as shadows, empty holes in the faint magic that flowed even now from the automaton.

  This automaton was hundreds of years old, one of only twelve in existence, constructed with some of Gutenberg’s earliest spells. Never, to the best of my knowledge, had anyone managed to destroy an automaton. Though given what I had learned, maybe Gutenberg had raised an entire army of mechanical warriors, and that knowledge had simply been wiped from our histories.

  Dissecting its magic could reveal how Gutenberg had animated these things; it could help me to understand the very foundation of libriomancy. But I trusted Smudge’s instincts. It was time to get out of here. Reluctantly, I turned away from the automaton and headed back toward the cabin.

  “We should gather up those books to see what else Hubert was studying. If he found something with the power to stop an automaton, that might . . .”