He studied her arms with obvious suspicion for a moment. “You promise?”
“I promise.”
He took a few tentative steps toward Francesca. Gently she slid one arm behind his back and the other under his legs. She grunted while straightening; he was heavier than she had expected. He clung to her shoulders.
“It’s going to be fine,” she said as she waded out into the bay away from the other children. She waded until the water was about waist deep and then sank down, submerging Lolo’s feet.
Nothing happened.
She lowered herself farther, submerging his legs, hips, shoulders. Nothing. He was staring at her with dark eyes.
“Everything is going to be just fine,” she said and dunked him under the water. A sudden shockwave ripped through her body and the water around her erupted. The boy in her arms was gone and in his place was an inhuman back, covered with tiny gray scales and incredibly muscular. It thrashed against her. All around her shot vectors of force and need. Before her appeared a snapping maw, teeth wide and serrated. Teeth that Francesca had seen growing from a womb.
The young demigod fought harder in her arms. She could feel his hunger, how he longed to speed away from her and toward the warm bodies splashing nearby. Such easy feeding.
But Francesca held tight. The nightmare maw clamped down on her arm, trying to punch serrated teeth into her flesh. Her own textual nature reacted. The resulting detonation sent the demigod flying up through the air to land with a heavy black slap on the beach.
There was a moment of unearthly silence. Francesca calmly jogged up the shore and took the distraught five-year-old into her arms. He clung to her and sobbed.
Everyone else on the beach stared at Francesca. She smiled at them to show that nothing was amiss. You know, just your standard, everyday clash between two creatures half made of flesh and half of magical language. Nothing to get excited about. Lovely beach weather, isn’t it?
Now she could make out the little boy’s whimpering: “I killed her. I killed her.”
Francesca made cooing sounds.
“I killed her when I was a fish swimming in her belly. I killed her.”
Francesca let out a long sigh. So that was it. He didn’t know his mother’s name, didn’t know his own name, but he knew that his creation had been his mother’s end. Those teeth his creation had created in her uterus had cut into his back.
Wasn’t a safe business at all, creating or being created. Francesca held the boy tighter as he let out long, despondently blue howls. The poor child, not two days old and he’d discovered the terrifying, hateful part of himself. There was no hatred like self-hatred.
In the empire, there were some that said that the proliferation of deities in the league was bringing back the Age of Wonders, which had taken place uncounted millennia ago on the Ancient Continent. It had been an age of gods, goddesses, heroes, epic wars, heavenly cities, marvels beyond imagination. But Francesca knew now that it must have also been an age of great horror and sorrow.
The boy was still sobbing in her arms. “Hush now,” she whispered in his ear while carrying him up the beach. “Hush. Hush. It’s all going to be all right. It’s going to be all right. We just need to teach you how to control yourself once you’re in the salt water. We just need to teach you when to bite and when not to. Hush hush. It’ll be okay. We’ll take you up to the Floating City.” She patted him on the back until he began to calm down.
When Lolo was at last quiet, she leaned back a little to look at his tear-stained face, his small nose slick with mucus. “It’s all going to be okay,” she said.
“It’ll be okay?”
“It will. Just remember today’s lesson: Even though you’re a shark god, it’s still a really, really bad idea to bite a dragon.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
By midlife a man should learn to avoid both tasks beyond his capabilities and forces beyond his comprehension. Or put another way, by midlife a man should know to avoid a fight between his wife and daughter. That, at least, was Nicodemus’s conclusion fourteen years ago in Port Mercy when he had attempted to mend the rift between Leandra and Francesca. Since then neither woman had seen the other, but now they were about to meet—or perhaps already had met—under alarming circumstances.
Walking up the Jacaranda Steps and into the Water Temple, Nicodemus struggled to keep his expression calm.
Ahead of him strode Sir Claude, confident as ever. Doria walked silently at his right, her expression blank. Rory, figuratively and literally on the other hand, wore a scrunched expression of anxiety so obviously uncomfortable that Nicodemus felt both sorry for him and better about his own disquietude.
John was taking news of their return to the family compound and would rejoin the party in the Floating City.
After passing through the Water Temple’s rounded marble gate, Nicodemus proceeded onto an arched wooden bridge that crossed a small moat. The water was bright with lily pads, lotus flowers. Drifting about the moat were small pavilions atop pontoons. Each one carried a pair of blue-robed hydromancers lying on cushions and dangling bare legs or arms into the water. To Nicodemus, such hydromancers seemed languorous, but Doria had assured him that all such watermages were rigorously spellwrighting in the water.
Across the moat stretched many whitewashed buildings of the temple compound. At their center stood the massive Water temple-mountain, which, unique among its kind, boasted small fountains bubbling out of the limestone at various levels. The resulting streams fell down the temple-mountain by small baffled steps to the civic canals.
Normal limestone would have eroded under this constant flow. But centuries of hydromancers had built the Watertemple with many and ingenious aqueous spells. The textually infused limestone was impervious to erosion and so perfectly preserved the temple’s unique and ornate architectural flourishes.
First-time pilgrims were often impressed by the myriad waterfalls; however, closer inspection revealed that the water flowed over intricate stone carvings: smoking volcanos, elephants crashing through bamboo forests, a man and woman in improbably flexible sexual congress, a mighty storm, a sunburst, a procession of monkeys in a ruined city, stylized waves above blocky sharks. Different carvings had been deemed sacred to various deities and knots of devotees gathered around them, their palms pressed together over their hearts.
At the temple-mountain’s base stood a wide tunnel guarded by eight red cloaks. When Nicodemus approached, a watch captain commanded the guards to part. Inside the tunnel, two hydromancer acolytes joined the party; each held a staff tipped with a long thin glass vial.
When the party had walked far enough that the tunnel’s mouth became a pinpoint of light, the older of the acolytes touched the glass on their staffs. Churning luminous tendrils climbed up the vials until they radiated soft blue light.
The party began to climb the first set of stairs. Nicodemus eyed Doria; it would be a hard trek through Mount Jalavata to the Floating City.
“What?” Doria asked without looking over. “You’re expecting the old lady to curl up with a heart attack?”
“Only trying to be thoughtful.”
“Then I wish your thoughts were less full of my falling off the perch.”
“They’re much less full of those now. You’re not breathing half so hard as Rory. But maybe he’s out of shape.”
“What was that?” Rory asked distractedly.
“I just noticed that Magistra looks like she could run circles around you.”
“She could run circles around all of us.”
Doria made a satisfied sound and they continued in silence until Nicodemus said, “Sir Claude, are you feeling ill?”
“No, my lord. Why do you ask?”
“You missed a chance to quip with Rory, so either you are suffering an uncharacteristic bout of charity or we should turn around and march down to the infirmary.”
“It must be charity then, my lord. I hear it’s contagious.”
Rory’s posture seemed to relax.
Nicodemus smiled. “What do you think, Druid? Sir Claude given to charity?”
“Indeed, I believe he is.”
“Well, well, everyone seems to be trying out getting along for a change.”
“My lord warden is chatty this afternoon,” Doria observed.
“Just trying to keep up morale,” he replied.
“Or trying to distract yourself from thinking about your wife and daughter?” Doria asked.
“Is it that obvious?”
No one spoke.
“Oh come on,” Nicodemus said, “you’re all exaggerating.”
Sir Claude coughed, pointedly.
“So what, exactly,” Doria asked, “are we supposed to do if your wife and daughter try to kill each other?”
“Stop them.”
“Funny,” Doria replied, “you’ve never ordered us to commit suicide before.”
Nicodemus sighed. “All right, stay out of their way. See if you can keep anyone else from getting hurt. I should turn the question around: If they go at it again, what should I do?”
“You’re the only one who might stop them,” Doria said with a shrug.
“Still,” Sir Claude said, “would be a shame to watch you die, my lord.”
Nicodemus snorted. “Remind me why I chose you lot for my advisors?”
“Our good looks,” Doria offered.
“And sage wisdom,” Sir Claude chimed in.
“And bravery in combat,” Rory added.
“But mostly our good looks,” Doria insisted. “Especially mine.”
That got a laugh out of everyone. They continued up the steps in silence. Their breathing grew heavier, and their legs ached.
Hot dread began to brew in Nicodemus’s stomach once again. He could not keep out thoughts of imperial forces bearing down on the bay, of some neodemonic plot conspiring against Leandra, of his daughter and his wife glaring at each other. Likely everything would go straight to one of the burning hells in a handcart; it seemed part of the general trend.
A circle of light appeared at the tunnel’s end and drew Nicodemus out of his ruminations. The hydromantic acolytes touched their glowing vials and their blue lights dimmed.
The party emerged onto Crater Landing—a wide stone plaza cut into the volcano’s inner slopes. Behind them stood the monastery of the Trimuril, where two hundred or so priests and priestesses slept and ate.
Behind the monastery, a stone staircase zigzagged up the crater wall to the volcano’s rim, which stood so high above them as to occlude much of the sky. A single cloud hung above the crater, churning with such speed and fluidity as to seem dreamlike.
Ahead of Nicodemus stretched the steep green bowl of the crater. From the plaza, wide stone steps ran down to a slate gray lake. Upon the dark water floated a disorder of small vessels—rafts, canoes, kayaks, boats, any and every type of floating thing. There were long stretches of pontoon bridges that connected different parts of the lake and presently bore the steady foot traffic of brightly robed priests and blue-robed hydromancers as they moved about the Floating City performing their duties. The crater valley echoed with discordant voices—some of them singing, some chanting depending on which of the floating craft they were near.
Each of the small vessels contained at least one divine ark stone. To become a member of the Ixonian pantheon, a divinity had to make the pilgrimage to the Floating City at least once and then bind a large portion of their textual soul into one such ark stone. These divine receptacles were then kept upon the lake as hostages. If a divinity were found to be betraying Ixos, the priests would sink whatever craft held the offending deity’s ark and the hydromancers would cast powerful spells to dissolve the ark and the soul contained within.
Nicodemus remembered the first time he had brought Leandra to the Floating City. She had been only six years old. The new order of the world had just begun forming. In Dral the rule of the forest prevailed, and the structure of clan and tribe that had shaped the divinities continued to govern them. The strong hunted the weak and a new divinity might be labeled a neodemon for nothing more than attracting the disapproval of a more powerful divinity. A phenomenal amount of divine text was destroyed.
In Lorn too, much divinity was wasted. Worship of any divinity but Argent, the kingdom’s metallic oversoul, was forbidden unless the divinity had fused its soul into Argent’s divinity complex. All deities with requisites falling outside conservative Lornish sensibilities were destroyed. Even more wasteful, to maintain his domination of the complex, Argent forbade any divinity to approach his power. Therefore, any seraph that attracted too many prayers was labeled a neodemon.
In contrast, Ixonian laws and customs were tolerant even though the trickster Trimuril’s authority was unequivocal. By creating the Floating City, the Ixonians allowed an array of divinities to coexist while focusing their power. As a result the archipelago could call upon as much divine power as the other two league kingdoms combined.
When Nicodemus explained this in simpler terms to little Leandra, she stared at the Floating City and asked if that meant that Ixos would be less afraid of the empire. Nicodemus had known his daughter was precocious, but still the observation surprised him. And, indeed, four years later the Wars of the Ogun Blockade were won decisively by the Ixonians against the Trillinonish, whereas the Goldensward War that pitted Lorn against Spires was a disaster for the league.
His little girl had seen all that when she had frowned at the Floating City. Back then no one had thought Leandra would outlive her first decade. Thinking about the little girl he had known—her dark fierce eyes, the force with which she would scream when her disease flared up—filled Nicodemus again with dread.
At the end of the plaza stood six of the Trimuril’s priests. Wordlessly, they surrounded Nicodemus’s party and began the short walk down the steps to the crater lake.
Nicodemus tried to empty his mind and looked up toward their destination.
At the lake’s center, amid the chaos of small craft, the Floating Palace twisted slowly around its anchor. As large as any compound in Chandralu, the Floating Palace consisted of three stories, each decorated with wooden beams lacquered bright red and upturned awnings trimmed with gold leaf.
When Nicodemus’s entourage reached the water, they discovered that several priests had maneuvered four rafts into proximity so that his party could walk over one raft after another to a stretch of floating bridge that was currently connected to the palace.
Once on the floating bridge, the party resumed its formation. “You know…” Doria said while peering into the black depths of the crater lake, “we hydromancers cast enough text in this lake that if Lea and Fran do get to violence, we might be able to break any of their spells by just pushing them into the water.”
Above them the sky darkened as a cloud blew in from the sea. A sheet of warm rain swept across the lake. As one, the party picked up their pace. The hurrying worsened the confusion of Nicodemus’s thoughts. He wondered what life would have been like if he were not a cacographic spellwright caught up in prophecy. What if he were a cattle herder or a cobbler or master of some other mundane profession in northern Spires where he had been born? Maybe it wouldn’t matter. Maybe he’d make the same mistakes of ambition and desperation. Maybe his wife and daughter would still quarrel.
The rain intensified, and again the party sped up. The rain became hard, weighing down on them and spurring the party into a jog.
Nicodemus’s thoughts coiled in on themselves. Did it matter that Leandra and Francesca had placed kingdoms between each other? Wouldn’t it be just as painful if they had placed counties or villages between each other? So long as there was ill will, what did space matter?
He wondered if the doom hovering over his family came not from demons or empire or anything far away, but from within himself. He had the strange sensation that he had changed who he was so many times—cripple, killer, lover, husband, father, warden—and yet this doom had changed with him. Maybe this doo
m had been part of him, had been separated from him when he was young and was now inexorably making its way back to him.
As a younger man, Nicodemus had thought of life as a presence, like a candle flame that had been lit and would eventually burn out. But with every passing year, he developed a stronger premonition that life was a separation. Before he was born, he had been a complete void; then something had happened that split his birth from his death and flung them far apart; now they were slowly drawing closer together, and though he could twist and turn, baffle their fall toward each other, one day his demise would reunite with his conception, a circle would add a degree to the three hundred fifty-nine already drawn, and he would return to void. Nothing sad about it.
The rain intensified yet again as the party reached the eaves of the Floating Palace. One by one they jumped from the floating bridge to the palace steps. Two priests waited for them at the palace’s wide doors. Nicodemus climbed the steps while the others tried to dry their clothes.
“My Lord Warden,” one of the priests said while pressing his palms together over his heart. “The Sacred Regent is expecting you. There should be a reception within the hour. We are preparing quarters for you in case you should spend the night. In the meantime, would you like to dry off and change your clothes?”
When Nicodemus said that he would, the priest led him up a flight of stairs to a small room on the second story. Diaphanous curtains covered wide windows looking onto the lake. The clouds had darkened the day and Nicodemus could see that the rain was driving another party to rush along the floating bridge toward the palace. He heard a screen door sliding behind him and turned to see a young priest bringing in dry clothes and a towel. Nicodemus found he was shivering slightly, though from the wet or his nerves he could not say.
He thanked the priest, who put the clothes and towel down before withdrawing. From the floor below sounded the racket of the new party arriving in the palace. Nicodemus gratefully peeled off his longvest and shirt and then picked up the dry towel and pressed it to his face. It was cotton, likely from Trillinion, rough against his skin but with the smell of clean laundry. Looking over the clothes, Nicodemus saw that the priest had brought him a Spirish-style white silk blouse, linen pants, and a beautiful deep green longvest. It pleased him that the palace servants had remembered his preferences.
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