A Conversation in Blood

by Paul S. Kemp

  “Fak him,” Nix said.

  “Fair point,” Egil said.

  A buzzing sounded in Nix’s ear, an itch, a sharp pain. He put a hand to his ear and exclaimed.

  Egil tensed, hefted his hammers, and looked around. “What is it?”

  “It’s all right,” Nix said, realizing what was coming. “It’s Jyme.”

  “Jyme? What?”

  “Shh,” Nix said, as a monotone voice sounded in his ear.

  Something big attacked the Tunnel searching for the plates and I think it can track them and is coming for you and it cannot be hurt with weapons run you fakkers.

  Egil must have read his expression. “Now, what?”

  “Something is coming for the plates. Jyme says we can’t hurt it with weapons. He says to run. Oh, and he also called us fakkers.”

  Egil looked back at the archway that led into the library. “Being called fakkers I’m used to, but I’m getting a bit tired of running. You?”

  Ordinarily Nix would have agreed with Egil, but given what he’d just learned, given what the plates were, he thought differently.

  “Yes,” he said. “But we run anyway. For now. Trust me on this, yeah? I need some time with this book. Besides, Jyme said the thing can’t be hurt. He wouldn’t make light about it.”

  “Maybe it just can’t be hurt by Jyme,” the priest said, raising his eyebrows and hefting his hammers.

  “Maybe, but now’s not the time. I need to think and plan. So let’s get clear, yeah?”

  Egil looked him in the face, looked over at Kazmarek, then back at Nix. “You have something in mind? Because if that thing came through the gates, we need another way out.”

  “Get him sensible,” Nix said, indicating Kazmarek. Meanwhile, he grabbed up the book and the plates and placed them in his satchel.

  A roar came from the first floor somewhere above them.

  Egil pinched Kazmarek’s nose, eliciting a squeal of pain and a shake of his head. He opened his eyes. His split lips parted in a pained grimace and he glared at Egil.

  “You had it coming,” Egil said. “All three times.”

  Nix bent down and put his face in the wizard’s. “Whatever attacked the gates is big and can’t be harmed with weapons, or so we’re told. It’s here and, as you said, it wants the plates. There are tunnels out of here. Where are they?”

  “No,” Kazmarek said. “You’re not leaving.”

  “It’s after us,” Nix said. “Not you. We stay here and it will get us all. And I’ll leave you tied to the chair the whole time. Maybe it will overlook you, but I’m doubtful. I heard it roar. It sounded angry. Egil?”

  “Very angry.”

  The wizard clamped his mouth shut.

  “Maybe I should break one of his knees?” Egil asked.

  Another roar sounded from somewhere on the ground floor, closer this time, savage, the rumble echoing down the stairway and reverberating around the library. The book sprites flew from their perches and flitted about in fear or agitation.

  “Getting close,” Egil said, and laid one of his hammers over his shoulder. “And I’m getting impatient.”

  “I will fix this,” Nix said to Kazmarek.

  Kazmarek looked at him as if he’d gone mad. “You’re a warren rat, Nix Fall. You’ll fix what the most powerful people in history could not? You?”

  “The difference is that I don’t want to use them,” Nix said. “I want to destroy them.”

  “I don’t believe you. And even if I did, your understanding is that of a child….”

  Another roar, yet closer. Kazmarek struggled against his bonds, but Egil knew knots, and there’d be no escape unless Nix freed him.

  “Time is getting short,” Nix said.

  Kazmarek was sweating. “For you, too.”

  “We’re used to it,” Nix said.

  “Aye, that,” Egil said with a sigh.

  Kazmarek gritted his teeth. “They can’t be destroyed. The plates, the Great Spell. They’re fundamental to creation.”

  Nix hadn’t thought of that, and he heard no lie in the Grandmaster’s tone. He bit his lip, thinking. “Then I’ll figure out something else. But we have to get out of here first. I have a place I can go. Where are the tunnels?”

  “Let me come with you,” the Grandmaster said. “We’ll figure it out together. Like we should have long ago, master and student.”

  Egil guffawed. “No chance. No wizards. Much less you, for fak’s sake.”

  “As the priest said,” Nix said, using a tone that left no room for negotiation, “your role in this is done except to tell us where the tunnels are.”

  Kazmarek ground his teeth, bunched his fists, glanced back at the stairway that led down into the library, then back at Nix.

  “Free me first.”

  Nix stared. “A way out first.”

  Kazmarek stared at Nix a long while. Nix saw the walls crumble. “Behind the shelves on necromancy. The smallest of the shelves pivots out. The tunnel is there. It lets out into a safe house just outside the Sward. There’s no one in it. Free me now.”

  Nix pointed Egil to the section on necromancy, down a few tiers against the far wall. He waited while Egil sprinted over there.

  “Don’t use them, Nix,” Kazmarek said.

  Nix looked him in the face. “I won’t.”

  “You’ll be tempted.”

  “No, I won’t.” He gestured to indicate the library, the academy, all of the Conclave. “None of this ever drew me. I don’t want power. I don’t want anything other than…Hells, I don’t even know. But I do know that I like who am I, what I am. I won’t use it.”

  Kazmarek studied his face, as if looking for a lie. “I believe you, or at least believe that you believe what you’re saying. So listen to me. You know now that the world is made and unmade with words. Those plates…those plates are a tongue of their own. The Language of Creation is just their echo.”

  “The tunnel’s here!” Egil called from across the library. “Tight fit but it’ll serve.”

  Nix went about loosening but not fully releasing Kazmarek’s bonds. “Work at the rope some and you’ll get yourself the rest of the way.”

  The snarl sounded from above, a crash, as though a door were smashed in.

  “I’d be quick,” Nix said. He held up the cloaking shroud. “You know what this is?”

  Kazmarek eyed it while he worked at the rope. “A cloaking shroud.”

  “Right,” Nix said. “So none of your spells will get through it. So even though you spouted some pretty words, don’t try anything or I’ll have Egil come back here and have a conversation with you that ends in blood.”

  “You’re making a mistake, Nix. But you don’t see it, yet. I hope you do eventually.”

  “Goodbye, Grandmaster,” Nix said, and ran for the stairs.

  Before he’d gotten halfway, Kazmarek called out, “The stakes are too high for me to let you take the plates. I’m sorry, Nix.”

  Nix cursed himself for not killing the bastard while the Grandmaster shouted a phrase in the Language of Creation, the syntax, cadence, and some of the vocabulary beyond Nix’s ability to understand clearly. The purpose, however, became immediately clear.

  The book sprites flew from their shelves and tables in their multitudes. They looked like pyrotechnics going off. There had to be thousands, far more than Nix would have suspected. They gathered in a cloud and flew fast for Nix.

  Nix bounded down the stairs.

  “Come on!” Egil said.

  “Just drop the plates, Nix!” Kazmarek called, grunting as he struggled with the knots. “I’ll call them off.”

  “Fak you!” Nix shouted, as the book sprites swarmed him, all around, colored lights, buzzing. He could barely see through the fog of them, shining before his eyes, changing colors rapidly to confuse and blind him. He kept moving toward Egil but stumbled on the stairs, fell to his knees. Cursing, he swung the cloaking shroud in an arc before him, caught a bunch of them within its folds and at i
ts touch their light went out for a moment and they fell to the ground. Nix jumped to his feet and kept going. He avoided stepping on them as best he could, though more than a couple crunched under his boots.

  The rest continued to buzz and flit all around him, the beat of their wings a metallic buzz in his ears. Scores of them clutched at his satchel and tried to lift its flap. He smothered them in the shroud, temporarily extinguishing their glow, but the moment he did that, a dozen more pulled at his hair, poked his ears, jabbed his eyes. It was as though he were being stung by a swarm of bees. He swung the shroud around him wildly, taking the stairs as fast as he could, keeping one hand over the satchel flap to hold it closed, cursing at the sprites as he went.

  “Nix!” Kazmarek shouted. He sounded like he’d moved, like maybe he’d gotten out of the bindings.

  Nix swung the shroud around before him wildly, scattering sprites, downing others, but in the process the shroud got caught on something. He stumbled but held on to it, tore it free, but in the process he pulled it across the flames on one of the candelabra.

  The candles were enspelled to not ignite parchment or wood, but the magic did not reach fabric and the shroud caught instantly, the flames racing along its folds.

  Nix tried to shake it to put it out but that only made it worse and he almost burned himself. Several of the sprites were caught within the flames, their magic extinguished, their burned bodies falling to the ground like ash. In moments Nix was holding nothing more than a curtain of flame.

  “Damn it,” he said, and dropped it.

  “Nix!” Kazmarek said. “Stop!”

  “Come on!” Egil said.

  A roar sounded from within the library, the sound deep and full of frustrated rage.

  The sound startled the sprites, and they left off their attack on Nix for a moment. Nix spared a glance back, saw a hulking silhouette of a creature filling the archway that opened onto the library.

  “What have you done, Nix?” Kazmarek said, and started to incant in the Language of Creation.

  The sprites scattered.

  The creature in the archway audibly chuffed the air, and the angle of its huge head told Nix it was looking at him. It roared and rushed into the library, toppling tables and chairs, shouting in a slobbery tone as it came.

  “Thespellthespell​giveusthespell!”

  “Nix!” Egil called.

  Nix turned and ran the rest of the way down to Egil and the escape tunnel.

  “Go,” Egil said.

  The tunnel, carved out of the limestone that served as the foundation for the academy, was small enough that Nix had to crawl in. For Egil it would be tight, but the priest squeezed in behind him and pulled the bookcase closed after them.

  Egil said, “I think that thing is too big to fit in here after us, but let’s not count on it.”

  “Aye,” Nix said. “If that thing can get in, we’re dead.”

  “Not without a fight,” Egil said.

  Veins of phosphorescent ore lit the way down the tunnel, which extended out as far as Nix could see before turning slightly. He scoot-crawled along, trying to put some distance between them and the tunnel’s opening.

  Behind them a thump and a crash told them that the bookcase had been torn away.

  “Can you see it?” Nix said. He could turn his head but Egil blocked his view.

  Egil grunted, trying to position himself to see behind them.

  The creature roared, a prolonged wet, slobbery growl that Nix imagined sprayed the walls with spittle. The creature seemed able to roar and mumble and shout all at once.

  “Giveusus​thespell​thegreatspell​giveitgive​giveit!”

  Nix kept moving, Egil right behind him.

  “Move, Nix,” Egil said, tension in his voice. “Faster.”

  The creature growled and Nix heard it slam itself into the tunnel, as if trying to squeeze its otherwise too large form into the opening. Nix heard fabric rip, something pop and snap.

  “Gods,” Egil said. “It’s trying to shove itself through. Keep going. Keep going.”

  Nix did, crawling as fast as he could.

  The creature’s wet breathing and frustrated roars echoed off the stone. It sounded as much like a trapped animal as anything.

  “Talk to me,” Nix said.

  “It’s stuck, I think,” Egil said.

  “Giveitgiveitgiveit!” it screamed.

  The creature’s wet exhalations went silent.

  “It’s gone,” Egil said.

  “Aye,” Nix said, but remembered what Jyme had told him through the enspelled parchment. “But if Jyme was right and it can sense the plates somehow, we need to hurry.”

  “We get out of here and what? What’s next, Nix?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know. I need to think.”

  “The guild house, then,” Egil said.

  “Rusk isn’t going to shelter us again,” Nix said.

  “He will,” Egil said. “Or we’ll burn the fakkin’ place down, yeah?”

  “Yeah,” Nix agreed. They had nothing else. They had to get back in the guild’s Vault, where presumably the creature would not be able to sense the plates. That would give Nix some time and a few moments of peace to read the rest of the book and figure out what to do next.

  —

  The Afterbirth could almost taste the remnants of the Great Spell, the spoor of it a tangible line trailing down the tunnel after the two men. The proximity of it drove him mad and his inability to pursue them drove him madder still so he stood, growling, his mouths mumbling frustrated exclamations. His body was already rebuilding itself from the damage he’d done to it trying to squeeze into the tunnel.

  “Gods,” said a voice, that of a man who stood near one of the tables across the library. He wore elaborate robes and tattoos colored his flesh.

  The Afterbirth could smell the fear on him, the stink of it pungent even over the smell of parchment and leather and burning fabric. He took a step toward the man, another, starting down a short staircase that led toward the upper tier upon which the man stood.

  “Icomecomeforthespellspell.”

  “The Great Spell,” the man said, coiled, prepared. “Are you…? What are you?”

  The question halted the Afterbirth for a moment and he stared at the man, then lowered his hood, revealing his visage. The man winced and the stink of his fear intensified.

  “TheAfterbirth​Iamthe​Afterbirth.”

  The man took a step back, shielding himself behind the sturdy wooden table near him as though it could somehow slow the Afterbirth’s approach.

  “You’re the leftover? From the most recent casting or an earlier one?”

  The Afterbirth did not understand the question and he had delayed too long. He bounded forward, intending to leave, pick up the scent of the Great Spell, and find the two men who bore it.

  “Do you remember your name?” the man asked. “You had one once, yes? Or is it many names now? I’m very curious about you. Do you understand me?”

  The mention of his namenamesname stopped him again and a word rose up out of the cacophony of voices screaming in his skull.

  Ebenor.

  The name rose unbidden but as quickly as he heard it the screaming drowned it out once more.

  “I can’t allow you to leave,” the man said. “This is the world and it must stay that way.”

  The man’s words made him a feel a pressure inside and he screamed from all his mouths in unison. “No! Aworldaworldaworldonlyaword.”

  The man swallowed, nodded knowingly, raised his hands, intertwined his fingers, and spoke words in the Language of Creation.

  The Afterbirth saw how things must go, snorted, and charged at him, leaping up the short stairway, plowing through chairs and tables while the man shouted the final words of his incantation and a spiraling column of blue energy exploded outward from his palms and entwined the Afterbirth. The energy sparkled and spun around him, a cage of blue lines.

  But it was a cage built of
the magic of a world to which he did not belong and which could not hold him, could not damage him any more than could the weapons of this world. He lumbered through the blue lines toward the wizard, fists clenched, mouths twisted in anger.

  The man retreated, eyes wide, but speaking anew the Language of Creation, his voice strained. He stumbled over a chair as he backtracked and lost the thread of this speech and fell to his rump. The stink of fear on him intensified and the Afterbirth threw aside the table that separated them, heard it crash into another table nearby, scattering a few of the glowing mote creatures that inhabited this place. He stood over the prone man and glared down, his breath a bellows, his anger a storm.

  “You shouldn’t be,” the wizard said.

  “IamtheAfterbirth,” he said, and stomped the wizard’s chest, cracking bone and crushing organs. Unsated, he stomped the corpse and stomped and stomped, all while shouting, his cries sending the glowing creatures into a frenetic swirl near the ceiling. “Thisisnot​myworld​notmyworldworld​notmine!”

  By the time he was done, the wizard was a slurry of sticky cloths, bone shards, and gore. The Afterbirth hurried out of the library and out of the building and onto the grounds, his bloody footprints marking the floor as he went.

  The moment he stepped outside the doors of the buildings, a score of voices started reciting in the Language of Creation all at once and he saw that they had been waiting for him, that they stood on the stairs that led down to the grounds, half a dozen robed figures, two holding wooden staffs, one holding a thin golden wand, all of them with their hands making arcane gestures. A curtain of flames enveloped him, a shower of magical green darts shot toward him, a triangle-in-circle formed at his feet, to what purpose he didn’t know and didn’t care. None of it affected him and he stormed down the stairs, pummeling the wizards as he went. His fists felled one, sent another head over heels, his head hitting pavement with a loud crack. He grabbed another before she could run and threw her into another one of the wizards farther down the stairway. They all cursed and exclaimed and tried more of their futile magic while retreating from his advance and stinking of terror. Other people clustered in huddled groups across the grounds, near the buildings, pointing, murmuring, terrified. He resisted the urge to slaughter them all because the scent of the Great Spell was fading and he needed to find the two men who carried it.