Spellbreaker

by Blake Charlton

  The party set off down the steps. New Village lay below them as a loose collection of buildings centered round a small wharf. Only three of the houses had more than one story. There were no whitewashed walls, no roofing other than palm thatch, and nothing but red mud in the streets; nevertheless, the village was cleaner and less crowded than anything in the Naukaa district.

  “Ellen,” Francesca asked as they turned onto a street, “have you heard of this Pillow House or the Mithuna divinity complex? I don’t remember it being mentioned on my previous visits.”

  “I heard a lot about it when I was training at the infirmary. They are not the sort of things one mentions to visiting dignitaries in my assessment.”

  “Oh? So then, what is your assessment of Mithuna?”

  “Do you want my overly optimistic or my overly simplistic assessment?”

  “I want you to tell me what you actually think. What are the chances I can hear that?”

  “Slim to none.”

  “Fine. Then let’s start with your overly optimistic assessment of Mithuna.”

  “Very well,” Ellen answered in her rapid, dispassionate physician tone, “Mithuna is an often misunderstood divinity complex with the requisite of illuminating the erotic aspects of human affection, which despite being demonized by some cultures are both natural and potentially enriching to the mind and soul; and whom—considering my personal frustrations in such matters for a depressing number of years—I should probably spend more time contemplating, but whom I probably won’t contemplate secondary to my belief that all men are either too dumb, obnoxious, or self-centered to make any of it worthwhile.”

  “Whatever happened to that druidic scholar you used to visit in Thorntree?”

  “Turned out to be too dumb, obnoxious, and self-centered to be worthwhile.”

  “All three? An overachiever.”

  “Certainly that’s how he saw himself.”

  “But returning to Mithuna: What is your overly simplistic assessment?”

  She shrugged. “Goddess of prostitution.”

  “Ah,” Francesca said. “You know, I’ve always thought it strange how the three different kingdoms react to such divinities. In Lorn, they label them all neodemons and my husband is obliged to deconstruct them, which I think is a little obtuse as prostitution continues with or without them. In Dral, we tend to ignore them or leave them to local custom. And now you’re telling me that Ixos has brought their erotic divinities within their pantheon. I suppose that would make the whole affair easier to govern.”

  They were nearing the village’s edge. Only a few buildings stood ahead; beyond them the terrace became a taro paddy.

  “Well,” Ellen said, “I wouldn’t say that the Ixonians have completely accepted Mithuna. She is forbidden within the city walls, so she built her Pillow House out here. There is still prostitution in the Naukaa, especially on the second terrace. There it’s illegal and of a cheaper sort, run by local thugs and mixed up with opium running. So the men with money and reputations have to hike out to the New Village. It can make for quite a lot of male foot traffic out the Lower Gate.”

  Francesca snorted. “Men, sometimes they won’t pray to a god of healing during a plague, but they are always willing to pray to the erotic deities. Do we know where this Pillow House is anyway?” She gestured to the rickety wooden structures lining the street. “If we can’t find the child, I suppose that would be the next logical place to investigate.”

  “I don’t, but we could always wait until dusk and follow the line of furtive rich men. Meantime, I believe that is the orphanage.” She pointed to a wide complex of buildings.

  Francesca frowned. It seemed too quiet. When she knocked on the doorway, a tired-looking woman with deep-set eyes appeared and reported that all of the children had been taken down to the beach.

  So Francesca walked down narrow stone steps placed between two taro paddies and discovered a small white-sand beach. The sandy bottom shone beneath the gentle waves and extended maybe ten feet from the shore.

  A small chaos of children stretched across the beach. The eldest splashed about in the water. The youngest tottered in the shade of a plumeria tree. Several minders moved among them. All were women, young, exhausted, even when smiling at their charges.

  Francesca saw only one man—tall, thin, bushy black hair, wearing the flowing robes of a priest of the Trimuril. Noticing the spellwrights, he walked over and introduced himself as Brother Palakan.

  Ellen introduced Francesca and explained their search for a newly adopted ward of the regency. The priest looked dubious, so Ellen produced from her belt purse a writ from the Starfall Council. If anything, the writ increased Brother Palakan’s skepticism; however, he eventually gestured to a group of children sprinting up and down the beach.

  “The one you’re after is the tall boy with dark hair. The one who’s hanging back from the others. So far, he never seems to be in the middle of things, but always a few steps away.”

  “And what is his name?” Francesca asked.

  Brother Palakan laughed. “I was hoping you knew. He refuses to tell us his name or where he comes from. The children have taken to calling him Lolo since an older boy tried to push him around and he fought back. Lolo is slang among the Sea People for a crazy person. I’m hoping it doesn’t stick.”

  “How did he became a ward of the regency?” Francesca asked. “There are many destitute children in Chandralu. The regency isn’t in the habit of adopting them all.”

  Brother Palakan shook his head. “Sadly it is so. But Lolo is something of a mystery. Two days ago, I received a letter ordering me to expect a new ward and describing him. It was written on Floating City parchment and delivered by an acolyte. But it was unsigned. I thought more information would come with the boy. But that evening at dinner, Lolo simply showed up in the doorway. The next morning, I sent a messenger to the Floating City but no one knew who wrote the letter about Lolo. So when I saw your party, I thought you had come to tell me about him.”

  Francesca frowned. “Could the letter you received have been faked?”

  The priest thought about it. “Unlikely. But perhaps you could tell me why you are looking for Lolo?”

  Francesca shook her head. “I dare not, for your sake and for his. I should like to talk to him though.”

  Brother Palakan studied her for a long time before nodding. “Very well, Magistra. But do take care; Lolo is not the easiest child to approach, and I would guess that he has already been through a great deal.”

  Francesca nodded and then walked past the priest.

  Centuries ago, Francesca’s predecessor had noted that there is a unique sense of embarrassment felt by someone who walks onto a warm beach fully clothed; this sense is accentuated when others are splashing about in less or no clothing.

  Surrounded by children dressed in lungi or—in the case of the youngest—nothing at all, Francesca became acutely aware of her preposterous full-length black robes. Some children cast curious looks at the party.

  “Ellen,” Francesca said in a soft voice, “it occurs to me now that I don’t know how you are around children.”

  “Because I avoid them, religiously.”

  “What did you do when you had a child for a patient?”

  “I made sure to cry before and louder than the child.”

  “How did that work out for you?”

  “Pretty well, actually. Some of the toddlers would try to comfort me.”

  Just then the party came within fifteen paces of Lolo’s knot of boys, who were now roughhousing. He stood away from the tumbling bodies, on the beach just above the water, neither included nor excluded.

  The other boys noticed the newcomers and—with the easy acceptance of children who are cared for by many different adults—ignored them. One boy yelled something about getting another boy in trouble. Suddenly the whole pack of brats began to joyfully shriek before sprinting away down the beach. In moments they were halfway across the cove from Francesca
and Ellen.

  “Can’t we just find a neodemon to attack us?” Ellen complained. “It would be so much easier to bear.”

  “But I’m good with children,” Francesca said.

  “Good at making them run away?”

  “Remind me to halve your allowance.”

  “But, Magistra, you don’t pay me any allowance.”

  “That doesn’t seem right. All right, tell you what, figure out how we can talk to that boy and I’ll start paying you an allowance.”

  “I sense a trap.”

  The boys had resumed their play, this time where a small cool stream ran down the beach into the bay. The water from the volcano’s crater was icy cold, so the boys kicked it at each other and yelped when splashed.

  Francesca wondered if she should hike up her robes and go wading in after them. Maybe splash a few boys? How had playing with children become so strange to her?

  “Magistra,” Ellen began to suggest, “what if I pay you to…” A sudden chorus of childish wonder interrupted her.

  Both women turned to see that Tam and Kenna had stripped themselves down to small clothes and waded out into the waves with the children. Both the twins were thin and wiry. Their pale skin shone in the sunlight like the city’s whitewashed walls.

  Together the twins had planted one of their quarterstaffs into the sand beneath the waves, where it had grown roots and a thick-trunked broad-leafed tree that looked something like a mangrove. One bough grew to about thirty feet before it dropped a single aerial root that had woven itself into a rope swing.

  As Francesca watched, the twins climbed up the trunk of their creation. Tam fetched the root for his sister and then, after she had taken hold, pushed her out of the tree.

  With a shrill yip, a bright green sound, Kenna swung far out over the small waves. Her toes cut a line in the aquamarine salt water before she swung up to the top of her arc. She released the root-rope and with an exalted yawp tucked herself into a ball. Her mane of blond hair became an upward flume, and she splashed, butt-first, into the water.

  As one, every child on the beach made that particular, strained sound that all parents recognizes as meaning, “Me next!”

  There followed a miniature stampede of children from all over the beach toward the tree. Lolo’s pack of boys shot past Francesca. In moments the boys were wading out toward the tree. But Lolo remained on the beach, watching.

  “I’m taking back every mean thought I have ever had about the twins being weird,” Ellen said.

  “Or creepy,” Francesca added.

  “Or creepy. Definitely taking those back too.”

  Kenna had stayed in the water so that after Tam helped a child swing out from the tree to plop into the water, she could direct the young one back to the shore. Some of the children’s minders had waded out, at first seemingly concerned the children were going to hurt themselves, but then curious. Francesca saw one young woman climbing up the tree for her own chance to swing.

  “Ellen,” Francesca said, “since I don’t pay you enough—”

  “Or anything.”

  “—since I don’t pay you anything, why don’t you try out the swing—”

  “I’d sooner chew twenty cotton balls for an hour.”

  “—or walk along the beach, while I try talking to young Lolo?”

  “Yes, Magistra. Right away, Magistra. It’s amazing how well you read my mind, Magistra,” Ellen said flatly as she walked in the opposite direction of the children.

  Francesca studied Lolo as she approached. He did indeed seem to be about four to five years old. The skin on his back seemed darker than his belly. Two lines of linear dark brown scars, very much like bite marks, ran down his back, just along the outer aspect of his shoulder blade. So then, the boy had either been attacked by a shark, or maybe during his birth he had been cut by …

  “Lolo?” Francesca said.

  The boy calmly looked up at her. His face was indeed paler than his back. “You’re not a woman,” he said with a child’s frankness.

  “Oh?” she said squatting next to him.

  “I can see it hanging around you. It looks like a cloud that is sometimes dark and sometimes light.”

  “You’re very clever. I am not like other women. My name is Francesca.”

  The boy only nodded and went back to watching the other children on the tree.

  “Do you want a turn on the rope swing?” she asked.

  He only shook his head.

  “Doesn’t it look like fun?”

  He frowned and—in that peculiar way some little boys can—looked as if he were an old man. “It looks fun,” he admitted. “But not in the salt water. No salt water.”

  “And why is that?”

  “The other day, Brother Palakan told us three stories of how humans were made on the Old Continent.”

  “Three stories?”

  The boy nodded his head solemnly. “He said that because we are Ixonians, we have to be able to believe in three different stories at the same time. One story for each of the three Peoples.”

  “Did he now?”

  “The Sea People have a story about how the humans were once fish in the sacred ocean, and it was only the bravest and cleverest fish that learned to worship the gods and walk on land to become our ancestors on the Ancient Continent. The Lotus People have a story about how the first man and first woman were born in a lotus blossom in a garden of the gods. And the Cloud People have a story about the first humans being made out of light by a god who lives beyond the sky. But you know what, Francesca?”

  “What, Lolo?”

  “I know I was a fish.”

  “You were a fish?”

  He nodded gravely. “Can I tell you a secret?”

  When she nodded, he leaned forward, put two small hands on her shoulders and then put his mouth to her ear before whispering dim gray words: “When I was a fish I did a bad thing.” He looked down at his right big toe, which he was absently driving into the sand.

  Francesca put her head to one side. “What did you do?”

  The boy only shook his head.

  “Lolo, do you have another name?”

  Again he shook his head.

  “Do you know who your father is? Or your mother?”

  For a moment Francesca feared he was about to cry, but then his expression set. “No, I don’t know.”

  “Lolo, how old are you?”

  “Two and a half days old.”

  Well, Francesca thought, he could be right. Some deities were incarnated fully grown. So what would be so strange about a demigod growing two years a day? “Lolo, I would like to take you to a very special place, where gods and goddess and people like you and me live. I would like to take you to a city on a lake that sits inside that volcano.” She pointed up to Mount Jalavata.

  “You mean the Floating City?” he asked. “Brother Palakan told us about it.”

  “Yes, the Floating City. We might be able to find your father there. Would you like that?”

  The boy looked back down at his foot. “Maybe.”

  “What wouldn’t you like about that?”

  He continued to drill his toe into the sand. Francesca waited but he still did not respond. It was then that she remembered that sometimes with children and elderly patients, one had to wait for prolonged periods of time. One of her mentors would start counting in his head after he asked a patient a question and would only break the silence if he reached one hundred and twenty-three. She hadn’t asked why that number, though she guessed it was as good as any other.

  She got to fifty-six when the boy quietly said, “Because of the water.”

  “The water below the Floating City?”

  The boy nodded without looking up from his foot.

  “That is fresh water. Not salt water.”

  “You’re sure?”

  She nodded. “It’s the same water that flows down the channels and that everyone in this city drinks every day. You can’t drink salt water.”

>   “But I can,” he said softly.

  Just then Francesca noticed the sound of soft footfalls on the beach. She looked up to see Ellen approaching. With a flick of her hand, Ellen cast a dull green sentence between then. Francesca caught it and translated the script into “The priest wants to take the children back to the orphanage. Should I stall?”

  “Who’s that?” Lolo asked.

  “This is Ellen,” Francesca she explained. “She’s a friend of mine.”

  “She’s not like you. She’s a normal woman,” Lolo proclaimed in his solemn voice.

  “You know,” Francesca answered, “I think that is the single nicest thing anyone has ever said about Ellen.” She cracked a smile at her student and then cast a reply spell. “No need to stall. This is the boy. Tell the priest we will take custody of him.”

  Ellen caught the sentence, nodded, and replied. “What kind of deity is our mysterious sea deity?”

  Francesca replied. “Give me a moment and I might find out. But whatever he is, holding his son hostage should give us some leverage.”

  Ellen translated the text and nodded again. “It was nice to meet you, Lolo.”

  The little boy just stared at her.

  With uncharacteristic discomfort, Ellen turned and walked up the beach. Francesca turned back to Lolo. “So we’ll take you up to the Floating City, okay?”

  “Okay,” he said softly.

  “You know, Lolo, since I’m not a normal woman, since I’m more like you, I can help you with your salt water problem.”

  “How?”

  “First I have to know what kind of problem it is. Would you let me carry you into the water?”

  He shook his head vigorously.

  “I promise you; I can stop any bad thing from happening. Then, maybe, we can take you out on that swing.”

  They both turned to watch as Tam launched a girl from the tree trunk. She swung down, laughing, lost her grip at the bottom of the arc and toppled into the water, much to the amusement of her peers. A moment later, the girl came up spluttering and laughing.

  Lolo was looking up at her. “I want to go.”

  Francesca held out her arms. “Then let’s go.”