Spellbreaker

by Blake Charlton

  “Seeing how they’re huddled, I’m guessing the crew was trying to get them off the island, away from whatever was attacking,” Doria said beside him. “The children’s burns are bad, but not bad enough to kill. It’s mysterious. Those two however…” she gestured behind Nicodemus.

  He turned to find two adult bodies sitting against the wall, their heads lolling at odd angles. Below the neck, each man was painted with blackening blood. In each hand, each man held a curved knife. “Opened each other’s throats?” he asked.

  “Too far apart. Slit their own.”

  “Madness then. Something drove them mad.”

  “Something on Feather Island,” someone said from behind them. Nicodemus looked back to see a pale Rory and a thin-lipped Sir Claude standing in the doorway. Their expressions were tense. Apparently the present situation was enough to quell their feud.

  Nicodemus nodded. “Or something that was on Feather Island a few hours ago.”

  Doria sighed. “Should we continue on to Chandralu?”

  Nicodemus rolled his neck as he thought. His keloid scar was itching again. Distracted, he wondered if he should rewrite the tattooed spells around it. But then he forced himself to focus. Head to the city or investigate? “If we did find trouble on Feather Island, we’d be in river barges, which are hardly ideal for fighting. And except for Doria, none of us is suited for combat afloat.”

  Doria shrugged. “Leandra on her catamaran and with her shark god in tow wouldn’t be a bad idea … but, Nico, what if this neodemon gets away?”

  “My Lord Warden,” Sir Claude added, “the neodemon who did this must have very, very malicious requisites. Burning his victims, driving them to…”

  Nicodemus nodded. “One of the deadliest creatures I have ever faced was the Savanna Walker of Avel. He had been born with the same capabilities that I have, but by distorting his Language Prime and his magical language, he learned how to wound the minds around him, causing insanity.”

  Doria made a thoughtful sound. “You never told me the Savanna Walker produced carnage like this.”

  Nicodemus shook his head. “It was different. The Savanna Walker could induce blindness, deafness, aphasia, that sort of thing. When he completely corrupted a mind, he made men his homicidal slaves. But he never made men suicidal and he had no power of flame. The lava neodemon that did this may be as dangerous or even more so. Sir Claude, I take your point. We can’t let this monster roam the bay.”

  The knight bowed his head.

  Nicodemus turned to look at the three children. He tried not to shudder. “It seems I had better figure how much we will have to bribe the captain to change course for Feather Island.”

  Whatever trouble Leandra had gotten herself into, she was going to have to manage it alone for a bit longer. And whatever had made Leandra think she might murder her mother … well … he would just have to trust his wife and daughter to find some way to avoid killing each other.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Empress Vivian Niyol, the Blessed Halcyon, the Creator’s Champion of Humanity, the Future Vanquisher of Los and his Demonic Invasion, the Sovereign of all the Kingdoms of the Second Neosolar Empire—whose exalted person had been raised above every menial task—had to line edit.

  And it was glorious.

  Vivian had to line edit every waking moment without pause, rest, reservation. She wrote in Numinous. Its golden spun-glass sentences coursed into her room from every direction and wove themselves into an incandescent halo suspended a few inches above her head. Down from this halo a hundred thousand sentences dropped like lightning bolts to pierce her brain.

  This was her master spell.

  Maintenance of this glorious text required all of her attention, all of her strength. The text was of staggering length and spread out from her in all directions for several miles, coordinating several thousand subspells of many different languages.

  The task of constantly casting, recasting, editing, rewriting the master spell required so much of Vivian’s mind that it intoxicated her. Literally, wonderfully. Her existence had become trancelike. The intricacy of the world had been replaced by innumerable concatenating paragraphs, the brightness of the sky by a luminosity of prose.

  In this exalted state, Vivian could not remember or understand things which previously had been elementary. She knew that she sat on a wide comfortable wooden throne. The room around her was small, but furnished with thickly woven rugs and white cushions. She remembered, vaguely, that along one wall ran a gallery of windows looking out onto blue sky and swirling clouds. But the brilliance of her Numinous text outshone the daylight and illuminated the dark. Vivian had lost track of time shortly after she had first cast this master spell twenty days … or had it been thirty … or even forty … days ago. She couldn’t tell.

  And as for the spell’s function … it was for … for … She could remember only that it was designed to fool her half-brother Nicodemus.

  Older memories were clearer. For example, around her neck she wore a simple silver necklace, which held the Emerald of Arahest against her chest. She remembered that it was only through this magical artifact that she could cast and recast the master spell.

  She remembered that the Emerald held her half-brother’s ability to spell. The demon Typhon had stolen this ability into the Emerald when Nicodemus was an infant. Vivian had been born with an identical ability; however, years ago, during the intrigue in Avel, the creature known as the Savanna Walker had destroyed that portion of Vivian’s mind.

  After Typhon had been defeated, Nicodemus had given her the Emerald. At first she had not understood it. His explanation at the time—that his cacography had made him a champion for creativity and intuitiveness in language—had seemed weak.

  However, once Nicodemus had begun to cast his metaspells and new divinities swarmed across the league kingdoms, she had seen how shrewd her half-brother had been to give up the Emerald. Nicodemus was infinitely more dangerous without it. He and his demonically written wife had created a new, dangerous civilization through exploitation of religion and superstition.

  Vivian’s more recent memories were nebulous things; they seemed to have shape until she reached for them, and then they dissolved. Nicodemus had recently committed … some transgression. What … she couldn’t remember.

  The wizardly prophecies described the Halcyon as the protector of humanity during the Disjunction, but they also described the Storm Petrel, who would betray humanity. She had hoped Nicodemus would not be involved in prophecy. But perhaps Vivian’s previous self had discovered that Nicodemus was in fact the Storm Petrel.

  Vivian tried harder to recall, but the halo’s sentences began to strike her head more frequently. Tension gathered in the Numinous matrix. She put aside everything but the master spell. She had to keep casting and recasting.

  Before she had begun this spell, she had decided on a course of action. Vivian could remember her feelings of absolute certainty, but now she couldn’t recall the reason for her actions. Whatever they had been, they had been good enough to convince her former self; therefore, her present self had to trust in the unknown Vivian who had made those decisions. Trust at least until the master spell had served its purpose and the return of her memories would build a bridge between her past and present.

  So she edited and it was glorious. Time passed, she could not tell how much. She found herself musing about time and emotion. Usually, she decided what she wanted to feel in the future and then acted to bring that future into being.

  She wondered if it was better to be guided by the person she had been or by the person she wanted to be? Perhaps there was no difference. In both cases one was subject to the urgencies and uncertainties of now.

  As more and more of the gloriously intricate sentences flowed through Vivian’s mind, she felt more detached, more suffused with the beauty of language.

  In a way, she decided, believing that one’s past or future could guide the present was a necessary fantasy. The truth of
the future or past was unknowable. Every soul existed and acted within the eternal and pressing instant of now, and then—to make existence bearable—wrote a story to connect past, present, and future.

  The thought filled her with tranquility. At some point, she would need to leave the spell, attend to her body. But before that time came, she had to build up enough reserve text and governing subspells for the master spell to function for the five or six hours she would need to eat and sleep.

  It was an act of war, she remembered briefly. That was what Nicodemus had done. A covert act of war he must have thought she would not discover. But the truth had come to light, and now there was an end to the thirty years of tenuous peace.

  Now humanity needed one leader to fight the coming demonic horde, the Pandemonium. Vivian would be that leader. Again, the tension gathered in the sentences that pierced her mind.

  So she refocused on line editing. The text became the universe. It was cold, intricate, uncaring, beautiful. There was no past and no future. Every moment struck the universe and sent beauty running through it like vibrations through a temple bell.

  Gradually Vivian became aware of someone else moving through her room, picking his way through the matrix of golden sentences. He edited with skill, moving the filamentous prose without deconstructing a single word. Only one imperial spellwright would be so gifted.

  Vivian judged that she had given the master spell enough reserve that she could take the time to greet her old friend. He wouldn’t have disturbed her spellwrighting for anything other than important news.

  Vivian cast the governing subspells into action and felt several sentences withdraw from her brain. The miniature lightning sentences ceased to strike. When only a few words connected her to the master spell, she reached up and lifted the halo of text a few inches above her head.

  Bodily sensation—exhaustion, hunger, fatigue—returned, and her mind cleared a little.

  Before her stood her oldest friend, her most trusted advisor, Dean Lotannu Akomma. Age had coarsened his dark features, but he was still handsome if no longer strikingly so. The silver in his goatee and dreadlocks, the wrinkles around his eyes made him look distinguished, pleasingly worn-in by the world. He was dressed in the black robes of his office. An eight-pointed silver star on a field of red had been sewn into his sleeves, indicating his rank as a Dean of Astrophell, one of the most powerful spellwrights alive.

  “Empress,” he said with a bow.

  She smiled, feeling both her fatigue and the anamnestic fog that had covered her recent memories. “There’s no need for ceremony, old friend, is there? No one else is here?”

  “No one else,” he said with a smile, perfect white teeth. Then he studied her face. “How are you, Vivian?”

  She rolled her shoulders. “It’s hardest when I pause.” Her mind and eyes wandered up to the halo of text. “I can only spare a few moments. I should get back to it so that there will be enough reserve text for me to sleep.” She looked back down at him. “How do I look?”

  “Surprisingly well considering the feat you’re attempting, or … achieving I should say. Perhaps you’ve lost a pound or two that you shouldn’t have. I can have the servants bring up a second dessert each night.”

  She smiled. “Thank you, but I can’t finish what they bring now. I haven’t much appetite.” She stretched her back, found it sore. “So, what’s so important that I am lucky enough to see you?” A thought occurred to her. “Has the master spell served its purpose? Am I to stop?” She felt a little dismay about that prospect.

  “Not yet,” Lotannu said with a bow. “I’ve disturbed you because a report has just come in from Chandralu. Our agent in that city confirms that Leandra Weal has returned with a godspell that augments her cognition. Our agent speculates that Leandra acquired the text from a godspell smuggler.” He smiled knowingly.

  A dull pain sprouted behind Vivian’s eyes, threatened to bloom into a headache. Trying to remember hurt. “Apologies, Lotannu, I know we want to stop such smuggling, but I can’t remember what.… Didn’t we decide that it was in our best interest if she gained independence?”

  “Correct. This is both expected and a beneficial turn of events; however, there is an unforeseen development. It seems that Leandra is able to modify the godspell to briefly give her stronger-than-predicted prophecies.”

  “With what consequences?”

  “Likely none; however, there is a possibility that she might become too powerful for us to contain. If that were to happen … well … we have talked about the need to remove her, but I never thought it might come when you were writing the master spell.”

  “Ah,” Vivian said, remembering snatches of conversation, “you worry that you might need to assassinate her in the next few days and you want my permission.”

  “She is your relation.”

  “She is. All other things being equal—though they never are—I’d rather she was safe. But given that the world is what it is, you still have my permission to use the force you deem necessary.” She paused. “But, old friend, if she has such powerful prophecy won’t that make her hard to assassinate?”

  “I might have contrived something.”

  “You brought me out of my reverie so you could brag?”

  He turned his palms upward in a comical gesture of helplessness in the face of his own brilliance. “Leandra’s godspell allows her to feel the emotions of her possible future selves. I happen to have a counterpart spell—derived from the same deconstructed goddess—that will prevent Leandra from feeling any of the future selves directly affected by the caster.”

  “You’ve created a subtext in time?” Vivian asked. “It blinds Leandra to the possible futures you create?”

  “It should make Leandra more vulnerable. She will learn to trust the godspell, making her more vulnerable to ambush from whatever agent I confer the counterpart spell upon.”

  “Let us hope it doesn’t come to that.”

  “Indeed.”

  “Was there anything else you needed from me?”

  “No, Empress.”

  She looked up to her halo of prose, felt both elated and exhausted by the prospect of venturing back into the master spell. “Before I go…” She looked back down at Lotannu. “How are things going, generally?”

  “I could tell you specifics.”

  She shook her head. “Trying to remember the present circumstances makes it hard to keep up with the master spell. It’s easier if you tell me generally how we are doing.”

  He bowed. “We are doing well.”

  “Does Nicodemus suspect?”

  “Not as far as I can tell. No one but our agents in Ixos knows what is headed their way.”

  “Good,” she said and reached up to her halo. “Very good.” She pulled the halo down and the golden sentences descended. “You may leave me now, old friend.”

  And so the empress began to edit again, line by line. She cast and recast her master spell. Its intricacy was just as cold and beautiful as the world.

  Soon, confined in the expanse of her spell, Vivian discovered that infinity stretched only from one sentence to its close and that eternity was well contained within an hour.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Leandra was continually being surprised by the stupidity of men. Not that she hadn’t done a few stupid things herself. Not that she didn’t have regrets, some of them powerful. But if she were a man, she’d never be so idiotic as to threaten a woman guarded by two gods.

  Even if she hadn’t recognized the gods—in this case, Holokai and Dhrun—she would have at the very least trod lightly around a man brandishing a paddle studded with shark teeth and accompanied by a four-armed wrestler.

  No matter how she looked at it, two pairs of muscular arms on one body seemed like one very compelling reason—or four very compelling reasons, depending on how one looked at it—for any and everyone contemplating mischief to piss off now and forever.

  This was why she was so surprised when the begga
r came at her with a knife.

  They had been walking north into the Jacaranda District via the Utrana Way, about a quarter the way up the city. Beyond the walls, the terraces became mirrorlike flooded rice or taro paddies. To the east, the bay stretched out and the many dappled clouds cast a giant checkerboard pattern upon it. At the bay’s edge the Standing Islands serrated the horizon.

  It was a beautiful and tranquil morning, casual in its tropical brilliance, and of a kind that reminded Leandra of why she had fallen in love with the city.

  Utrana Way itself was nothing grand, but nothing dingy either. It ran along the fifth of the city’s sixteen terraces. On the bayside stood a waist-high wall; volcanoside, houses and pavilions. A lone monkey had been perched on a gutter, scanning the street with larcenous intent.

  Leandra’s party had passed light traffic: young women carrying baskets of fruit, an elephant hauling timber for some new building, a rice merchant pushing a cart laden with heavy sacks. Then they had passed the beggar.

  He was a squat man, with a dirty lungi and a single wooden bowl. He had been singing. They’d heard it a long way off. “A ruuu-pee. A rupee please. A rupee for a simple man and his starving children.” At the end of this refrain, he would shake his wooden bowel causing the few coins inside to jingle. Then he’d start again. “A ruuu-pee. A rupee please.”

  As Leandra had walked past, he had shaken his bowl three times rapidly and then flung his arm out. In the next instant, he was on his feet lunging at her with a knife.

  Leandra jumped back, cried out in alarm. Before a thought could form in her mind, Dhrun’s lower right hand clamped down on the attacker’s wrist. He diverted the man’s thrust away from her and pulled along the axis of the thrust, making the attacker yelp as he fell forward.

  There was a slap and then a twittering sound. Dhrun’s right upper arm snapped up and, as if performing a conjuring trick, held the shaft of a small vibrating arrow. A moment later Leandra realized that a few steps down the street, another beggar was pointing a crossbow at her. As she realized that Dhrun had caught the crossbow bolt, the god of wrestling wrapped his upper right arm around the forehead of the man who had lunged at her and then twisted. There was a crack.