by Jim C. Hines
Welcome to the moon! I crowed silently. Let’s see how your five-hundred-year-old minds cope with one-sixth gravity.
I skipped toward them, taking great bounding steps. Before, I had been the clumsy one. Now the others stumbled as they tried to adjust to this new environment. I would have smiled, if my hinged jaw had allowed it. I landed hard, bending my knees to absorb my momentum and sliding into the closest automaton. It reached for my head, but I crouched lower, gripping it by the waist and hurling it skyward.
I wasn’t strong enough to toss it into orbit, but judging by the arc of ascent, it wouldn’t come back down for a good half mile or so.
Another automaton charged me. I dug my feet into the ground and braced myself as it slammed a wooden fist into my side. I skidded backward, but it was the other automaton that lost its footing, spinning in a circle from the power of its own attack. I seized it by the head and twirled, swinging it like a club against the next of its fellows.
Unfortunately, my makeshift weapon was already adapting. Hinged fingers tightened around my wrists, twisting hard enough to strain my joints. I raised it overhead and slammed it to the ground, but it refused to let go. Another automaton closed in, hands outstretched. I was still outnumbered, and once they got their hands on me, the moon’s weaker gravity wouldn’t stop them from ripping me apart piece by piece.
The automaton’s fingers dug through the metal blocks on my wrist, tearing several of them free. A strip of my wrist went numb as that spell died. I allowed myself to fall backward, raising both feet to my chest. The other automaton followed me down, and I kicked it in the neck with all of my strength. The automaton snapped away, spinning like a bicycle tire.
I fled, stalling as long as I could, trying to absorb every detail of the experience: the gentle pull of gravity; the way the dust dropped in a vacuum, every speck falling like a lead weight; the Earth hanging overhead, so large it gave the impression it could come crashing down on us at any moment. I scooped up another rock and held it as if it were more precious than gold.
They spread out to surround me. Two bounced through the air, while the third kept to the ground, looking like a slow-motion jogger. Interesting . . . different automatons adapted differently, suggesting they retained at least a little individuality and independence within their wood-and-metal shells. The fourth flickered into view to my left.
Ready for another ride?
How much time had passed since I arrived? Five minutes, maybe? It would never be enough. I stared at the Earth, mentally reorienting myself so that I was no longer looking up, but down. That was an awfully long way to fall.
The nice thing about this body was that I appeared to be incapable of experiencing vertigo. Fear, on the other hand, I could feel just fine.
I studied the Pacific Ocean, still shining in the sunlight. Another automaton flew at me. I jumped away, doing my best to estimate distances and calculate acceleration. I had to guess at both. The radius of the Earth was roughly 6400 kilometers. Using that as my guide, I picked a spot roughly 7000 kilometers up, activated the automaton’s magic, and disappeared.
Earth’s gravity began to pull me home from the moment I materialized. There was no air here, which meant I had no way to control my fall, and nothing to slow my acceleration.
For the first time, I noticed a significant design flaw in Gutenberg’s automatons: there was no way to close my eyes. I tried to lose myself in math instead. This high up, the pull of gravity would be fractionally less than 9.8 meters per second squared. Maybe eighty percent of normal?
The other automatons flickered into view around me, but I fell right past them. They vanished and reappeared, trying to get ahead of me, but each time they lost momentum.
I used my own magic to travel to a point just above them, shedding velocity in a brilliant flare of light. We weren’t quite close enough to touch each other. Light-speed travel didn’t allow for precision. One appeared directly below me, but I plowed through it like a locomotive, leaving it pinwheeling overhead.
After that, we simply fell together. For the moment, they seemed content to follow. Nothing could flee forever.
This body lacked the inner sense of balance and acceleration that would have allowed me to gauge our speed or how long we fell. Earth grew noticeably larger, and continued to expand below us. Given time and a calculator, I might have been able to estimate our height based on the apparent size of the planet, but that was beyond my ability to do in my head.
My thoughts began to drift. What would the Porters tell my parents? They couldn’t exactly head out west, knock on the door, and say, “We regret to inform you that your son was stabbed by a dryad, then lost his body when he entered a clockwork golem.”
They should make pamphlets. How to cope with the loss of a loved one: A guide to selective magical amnesia. I could have used some instructions back in college, for that matter. How to make your girlfriend believe you’re really not cheating on her, and you’re just a member of a secret magical organization called Die Zwelf Portenære, founded by a guy who supposedly died in 1468.
Die Zwelf Portenære. The Twelve Doorkeepers. Books were a doorway to magic, and the automatons were living books. I had passed through that doorway. Surely there was a way to pass back, to re-create my physical body . . .
Doorkeepers. Guardians.
I thought back to my first encounter with Hubert, in Detroit. Whatever had come after me in that book had felt like a living mind. Not a character, not a spell, but another presence, desperate and starving.
What if Hubert hadn’t sent that thing through the book? What if it had already been there, living in magic itself? Locked away. What had Hubert said? Everything comes down to locking the doors. Creating prisons.
It made sense. That was why Pallas had wanted to keep me under guard. I had reached too deep into magic, and she was afraid of what I might have brought back.
Turbulence jolted me back to the present. At this speed, even the thinnest air at the very edge of Earth’s atmosphere battered me harder than any automaton. I spread my arms and legs, tilting my hands like rudders to spin myself toward the closest automaton. The air below grew hotter as I flew closer.
It reached out to grab me, but this time I welcomed the attack. I wrapped the other automaton in a bear hug, wrenching us both around so it was beneath me. “Ever wonder why meteorites burn up in the atmosphere? Welcome to your first and last lesson in twenty-first-century physics.”
By now, we should have been traveling at many times the speed of sound. Our bodies compressed the air, superheating the gases below us until they reached temperatures hot enough to vaporize rock . . . or melt metal. Most meteorites burned up within seconds. My timing would have to be perfect.
I did my best to stay atop the other automaton, using it as my own personal heat shield. The metal skin on my exposed arms began to melt. The air around us turned to flame. I concentrated on the other automaton’s magic, watching spells snap and melt away. The wooden body began to crumble as its protections vanished. I could feel my own magic struggling to hold me together.
“Yeah, it’s a short lesson.” Praying this worked, I concentrated on the ground below and shouted, “Dixitque Deus fiat lux et facta est lux!”
I imagine I looked a bit like the Human Torch as I materialized above the parking lot, my arms blackened, my body covered in flame. I dropped a good forty feet, smashing through a Hummer that was too slow to drive out of the way.
My hands were useless lumps of coal, held together only by magic. The air rippled from the heat rising off my body. But I was alive, more or less. I rolled off the crumpled remains of the truck and climbed to my feet. The winged vampire who had been guarding the roof swooped toward me, then apparently thought better of it.
I strode through the open garage door. Hubert stared at my glowing form. “What did you do?”
“Research.” I could still bend my left arm at the elbow. My right arm was dead from the shoulder. Blobs of molten metal streaked
the charred wood.
Hubert backed away, hands shaking as he clutched his silver cross like a shield.
Time in this body had acclimated me to its senses. I could see Hubert’s possession, the other minds tumbling and fighting for control like some sort of magical spin cycle. What remained of Charles Hubert was tattered, shredded almost to nothingness.
I could see something else, too: a darker thread of consciousness woven through those invading minds, seeping into Hubert from elsewhere. “End this, Charles. Let me—”
“Let you help me?” He sounded weary. “You and I both know we’re past that.” He raised his cross to his forehead. Behind him, Lena lifted a black revolver.
I rapped my left hand against my metal-clad chest. Chunks of charred wood fell away from my fingers. “You can’t kill me with that.”
Lena pressed the barrel of the gun beneath her chin.
“Oh.”
A true sorcerer could have manipulated the gunpowder in the bullets, transforming it into something inert. I needed my books, and a way to pause time or freeze Lena in place before she pulled the trigger.
“Show me how you claimed that body for your own, and I will give Lena back to you.”
Give him and the darkness that infested him the ability to take a new form, one which would be all but unstoppable? “This isn’t your fault,” I said softly. “You didn’t know what was out there.”
Hubert jabbed the cross at Lena. “I will kill her.”
I looked down at myself. I could try to drain the magic from the cross, but that would take too long. I couldn’t risk Lena pulling that trigger.
“And the delusions of their magic art were put down,” I whispered, finding the corresponding text on my body that shielded me from hostile magic. Two years ago I had performed libriomancy without a book, channeling the magic of War of the Worlds through myself to destroy the zombies that would have slaughtered me. Now I was the book. I concentrated on that single line of text, the spell which shielded me from outside magic, and flung it around Lena and Smudge.
Metal blocks fell away from my body and clinked on the floor. I hadn’t counted on that. Having extended that spell to others, I had lost its protection for myself . . . but it did what I had hoped. Slowly, Lena lowered her weapon.
Deranged and dying, Hubert was still a genius. He was several geniuses, in fact, if you included the various characters in his head. He looked from Lena to me, and his face twisted into a snarl as he put the pieces together. He pointed the cross toward me, and I felt its magic take hold of my mind and body. “Kill her.”
To my horror, I moved to obey. Lena jumped to the side and fired the gun. Hubert fell, blood dripping from his arm. The silver cross clattered away, but didn’t release me from his final command. I swung at Lena with my remaining arm.
She rolled out of the way, then jumped over one of the open repair bays. She picked up Excalibur from the floor and lunged at me. The blade chipped deep into my right arm. The blackened wood cracked, and the lower part of my arm fell away.
“I’m sorry, Isaac.”
I swung again, then jumped forward, using the weight of my body to knock her off-balance. She stumbled, and I kicked at her knee. She twisted to avoid the worst of the blow, but my foot caught her thigh, and she fell.
I felt Hubert’s will guiding mine, manipulating my thoughts . . . and then the strings snapped. I froze, my leg raised to stomp Lena’s chest. Slowly, I lowered my foot and turned around.
Hubert screamed. Standing atop the silver cross was Smudge, doing what could best be described as an eight-legged jig. White-hot flames danced over his body.
I straightened. “You should not have pissed off the fire-spider.”
A ruby fell free and rolled across the floor as the cross softened beneath Smudge’s onslaught. Hubert crawled toward it on hands and knees, his shoulder leaking blood. He snatched up the ruby, then reached for the cross.
Lena and I both shouted at him to stop, but he ignored us. His hand closed around softened metal, and I heard the sizzle of burning flesh. Smudge skittered back, his work done. When Hubert lifted the cross, it sagged and melted around his hand.
The winged vampire had entered through the garage door. Fangs bared, he clutched his rifle with both hands, looking from Lena to me to Hubert.
Tears poured down Hubert’s face. His hand shook violently. One bar of the cross broke free and fell to the ground. “Why?” he demanded. “Why do you protect them?”
I glanced at the vampire, who tossed the gun to the floor and bolted away. “They’re what we made them. Our magic. Our belief. Our books.”
Hubert’s sobs changed to laughter. He looked up, and his eyes literally shone. “You can’t stop us,” he mumbled.
I studied the pattern of magic, trying to discern who or what was speaking. Charles Hubert was all but gone, drowned in the whirling energies trapped in his body. They were consuming him, burning his life from the inside.
Burning . . . I started toward him as I realized what was happening. “Charles, don’t!”
I was too late. The light in his eyes spread, destroying him just as he had destroyed his vampire slaves. One by one I watched the other minds die, until only one remained. Eyes of flame stared into mine. I had touched that presence once before, and it terrified me. The hatred was just as powerful as the last time, but now it was personal. I felt it studying me. Remembering me.
And then it, too, was devoured, and nothing remained of Charles Hubert.
Chapter 22
“ISAAC?” LENA FLUNG THE GUN AWAY and stepped cautiously toward me. “Are you all right?”
“I’ve been better.” One of my arms ended at the elbow; the other was a charred, brittle mess. On the other hand, considering that I had recently been stabbed, plummeted through Earth’s atmosphere, and destroyed four of Gutenberg’s automatons, I was doing pretty well.
“You look like flame-broiled crap.” Lena touched my arm. I could see the magic flowing through her, trying to strengthen the wood. Trying to strengthen me. She hissed and pulled her fingers back as if she had been burnt.
“What’s wrong?”
“The limbs are too far gone. It’s . . . disturbing. Like touching death. Isaac, what did you do to yourself?”
“I’ll tell you later.” I dropped to one knee and reached for Smudge with my blackened limb. He approached even more warily than Lena had. He brushed his legs over the misshapen lump of my hand, smelling me. Whatever he found must have satisfied him, because he raced up my arm and onto my shoulder as if nothing had changed.
Had this body been capable of it, I think I would have wept then. Whatever I had become, however badly I had damaged myself, Smudge knew me.
“What happens now that Hubert’s dead?” Lena asked.
Any vampires he had enslaved were once again free. Most would return to the nest, though I suspected some would take advantage of the chaos and freedom to indulge their darker natures. “I don’t know. The automatons are able to act independently, to some extent. They might simply revert to their original instructions.”
“Or they might continue to follow Hubert’s last orders.”
We both turned toward the office where Gutenberg lay unconscious. Hubert had locked the door. Lena started to reach for the frame, but I simply forced my arm through the upper corner and pried the whole door free.
Inside, Johannes Gutenberg lay unconscious in a metal cot wedged into place beside the door. He was bound by magic and medicine both. An IV tube snaked into his left arm, the needle and tubing clumsily taped to his flesh with duct tape.
He was shorter than me. Shorter than my human body, I mean. A bushy black beard and mustache hid much of his pale face. His shaggy hair came past his ears, and he had the worst case of bedhead I had seen in a long time. He reminded me a little of a young, skinny Santa Claus.
I turned in a slow circle, checking the room for any unpleasant surprises. Empty metal filing cabinets lined the wall. A few key rings hung
from a large pegboard to the left. Books were scattered over the large desk in the corner. I recognized some of the locked books from our archive in that careless pile. Others had fallen onto the floor. One book in particular caught my attention: a thick leather-bound tome that crackled with old magic.
Lena bent over Gutenberg and pinched the skin on the back of his hand. “He’s dehydrated.”
I turned away from the books to study Gutenberg’s form more closely. “I think I can remove the magic Hubert used to keep him down.”
She hesitated. “Isaac . . . are you sure this is the right thing to do?”
I didn’t have to ask what she meant. When I concentrated, I could see the Grail’s power in every cell of Gutenberg’s body, trying to regenerate the damage Hubert’s drugs and magic had done, keeping him young and healthy and alive. Such power was forbidden to the rest of us, but Gutenberg had made himself the exception.
As an automaton, I could dissolve that spell.
Was Gutenberg so different from Charles Hubert? Like Hubert, Gutenberg had enslaved his enemies, trapping their spirits within the bodies of his automatons and forcing them to serve him throughout the centuries. Who had Katherine Pfeifferin been? A criminal who deserved imprisonment, or a would-be lover who had spurned Gutenberg and paid the price?
Saving Gutenberg’s life meant restoring him to his position of power over the Porters. It meant allowing him to continue to manipulate the minds and magic of those who broke his rules.
Nobody truly knew Johannes Gutenberg. He had watched over the Porters for so long, and his presence had maintained a degree of peace and stability. But how far would he go to protect the organization? What had he done to maintain his seat as de facto lord of all things magical?
I looked down at the frail, pale figure of the world’s most powerful libriomancer and whispered, “I don’t know.”