Time to wait. Slowly the murmuring subsided. Anticipation grew. The floating palace creaked. Water lapped against wood. Distant voices chanted.
Nicodemus began to wonder how the contest would be decided. He had thought the Trimuril would try to find him. But he had not challenged the goddess to find him; he had challenged her to a game of concealment.
The dignitaries began to shift, their anxiety lessening, boredom threatening. Nicodemus was becoming uncomfortably hot inside his spells. Slowly he stood up straight to relieve the ache in his thighs. So, how could he win? Discover the Trimuril, he supposed.
Carefully he cast a fine spray of indigo sentence fragments written to attach themselves to unknown language. With luck the linguistic spray would be thin enough to avoid whatever textual detection the Trimuril had and yet could adhere to any concealing godspells.
With each gesture, Nicodemus cast a wave of dim indigo that rolled away from him like heavy mist. The linguistic tide rolled out among the audience. The runes formed faint nimbuses around two men wearing blue hydromancer robes. But the spaces between the members of the audience remained clear. The Trimuril did not seem to be near Nicodemus.
Nicodemus stole back toward the dais, casting faint waves of indigo text as he went. Again Nicodemus’s spells rolled out but found no purchase.
In the gloom, Nicodemus could now see the rash blooming across Leandra’s cheeks. He stepped toward her but then stopped for fear that he might step on some spell the Trimuril had cast as a pressure-sensitive trap.
Again Nicodemus cast out waves of the indigo sentence fragments. The runes formed nimbuses around the shark and the wrestling god. But there was no sign of a concealed deity near them. Then he cast the spells through his wife’s party. A nimbus formed around Francesca and her student but revealed nothing else. So Nicodemus cast his spells onto the dais. His texts adhered to the Sacred Regent, but still no sign of the Trimuril.
Running out of ideas, Nicodemus cast his spells into the room’s corners but found nothing. So he cast again into the audience of dignitaries. Again, nothing. Now Nicodemus was sweating inside his spells.
He was just about to return to the dais when a creaky voice asked, “Isn’t this great fun?”
Nicodemus froze.
“Where are you going to look next?” Ancestor Spider whispered in his ear as she had done for centuries, causing the rise of heroes, the downfall of villains.
Nicodemus did not know if he had been discovered or if the Trimuril was trying to fool him into thinking so. How could he tell?
“Maybe you should look up,” the spider said.
Nicodemus did not dare to breathe.
“Really, I think you should look up.”
At last Nicodemus had to exhale and did so as slowly as possible.
“Everyone is waiting.”
Unsure of what else to do, Nicodemus slowly, very slowly looked up and saw … nothing. There was only the ceiling’s ornate wooden rafters painted in reds, blues, and gold leaf. Nicodemus’s stomach sank. Had had just fallen into a trap?
“Over here,” the spider said to his left so suddenly that Nicodemus reflexively looked. What he saw in the darkness looked nothing so much as two slender legs, not an inch from his nose. He flinched, danced a few steps to one side, but somehow the legs followed. Now he could see that the leg connected to two delicate feet perched on the shoulder of his longvest.
Suddenly a disspell struck Nicodemus and his subtext broke into a coruscating chaos of violet and indigo prose that burned into nothing. Nicodemus looked up and saw that, impossibly, the Trimuril’s stone incarnation was standing on his shoulder. Her lower two arms were pressed together in prayer, but the uppermost pair reached out and tore down one of the curtains. Tropical sunlight poured down on Nicodemus, and the goddess on his shoulder.
The room broke into excited murmuring. Someone even started clapping. Nicodemus stood, flushed with embarrassment and confused about how he had lost.
The Trimuril jumped down to the floor, all six of her hands moving in different directions to maintain her balance. As she did so, her movements became fluid but then returned to the usual jerkiness.
“You fell onto my shoulder when I walked over here?”
“Oh no,” Ancestor Spider said as the stone incarnation bowed. “Right after you disappeared, I hopped onto your shoulder. You see my bodily incarnation does not weigh more than a spider.” She smiled and then conducted a quick dance, moving softly from one foot to another to demonstrate her lightness. “Most people assume all this stone is heavy.” She danced a circle. “In fact, I am quite insubstantial.” She stopped and looked at him with a smile.
“You were always on my shoulder?”
The Trimuril bowed with slight twitches.
Nicodemus realized the others in the room—Francesca, Leandra, their followers, the dignitaries—had shifted themselves to face the pool of light in which he now stood. It struck him how well positioned they were to be seen, as if on a stage.
Cold anger rolled through Nicodemus. He tried to hold on to the feeling, to feed it. He focused on the ridiculousness of this contest. What would the Trimuril gain by publically besting him? The cold anger gave Nicodemus a sudden idea. If he couldn’t best the Trimuril by spellwrighting, then maybe … maybe he could best her by doing the opposite. Clenching his jaw, he stepped toward the Trimuril and held out his hand, palms up.
The goddess put her head to one side and regarded him. “We shall go another round? What fun. How do we play?”
“Give me your hands.”
The Trimuril hesitated, regarding him with her infuriating smile. For a moment, Nicodemus thought she would refuse or would question what he would do next, either of which would be at least a small victory. But then the goddess reached out with her middle pair of hands to press her palms atop his.
Nicodemus closed his fingers around the goddess’s and sent a shock of cacographic force up her arms, dispelling whatever godspells she had in those limbs. It was a risk, he knew; if the goddess treated it as an attack, several hundred furious deities might soon descend upon him. But the Trimuril only stepped backward, her movements again becoming fluid.
Nicodemus glared into the goddess’s face, hoping to see shock or anger. But she was quite calm.
Stripped of their godspells, the Trimuril’s middle arms had frozen. “The challenge then,” Ancestor Spider said into his ear, “is to misspell my arms?”
Without hesitation, the goddess rotated her upper arms downward and her lower arms upward, so that they reached around the frozen middle pair. With fine twitches, she touched the palms of her upper and lower hands. Heat flushed across Nicodemus’s face as the lower set of the goddess’s arms went rigid.
Nicodemus felt his own back stiffen as he realized that he had lost again. Judging by the increase of whispering in the crowd, the audience had apprehended—perhaps by his posture or expression—that the goddess had prevailed. “Shall we play again?”
Nicodemus glared at the Trimuril, hating her. For the last thirty years, he had never met a neodemon that was his match, but they were all young deities. The Trimuril had a hundred times more devotees and experience than the most powerful neodemon he had ever defeated. Why had he ever agreed to this absurd contest?
The Trimuril gave another of her twitchy bows.
Nicodemus’s frustration doubled watching her tiny lurches as she projected her soul elsewhere in the Floating City. Not only was she defeating him handily, she was doing so while governing an entire pantheon.
Suddenly a peculiar idea bloomed in Nicodemus’s imagination. He had been reaching for challenges that involved his unique skills. Perhaps he should have been searching for challenges that involved how ordinary he could be. Anger drained out of Nicodemus and he let his posture and his expression relax.
Sensing a change, the Trimuril looked him up and down. “Another game?”
Nicodemus bowed and then got down onto his knees. The floor pressed against
his ankles and knees, but he forced himself to focus.
“Is this another game you won’t tell me about until the play has begun?” the Trimuril asked. All six of her arms again moved without hindrance. She had repaired all the damage his cacography had done.
“Goddess, I make a simple challenge,” Nicodemus said. “I do not think you can imitate the following sequence of gestures.”
“Ah, like a challenge of dance.” The Trimuril nodded and then knelt into a pose identical to Nicodemus’s.
Carefully, slowly, Nicodemus raised his right hand and held it out in front of him. A moment afterward, the Trimuril did the same with her lowermost right hand, her movements fluid.
Slowly Nicodemus brought up his other hand. So did the Trimuril. Nicodemus fought down a sudden flush of self-consciousness. But it didn’t matter what he did so long as he kept at it. So he used his left hand to touch his elbow and then his wrist, the gestures meaningless. The Trimuril imitated him. He raised his right hand slightly and repeated the gesture. The Trimuril mirrored him.
The room had grown quiet but now there came the sound of shuffling. Nicodemus ignored this and repeated the nonsense gestures on his opposite side. Again, the goddess copied him. But now her enigmatic smile had changed; something about its character seemed harder.
Nicodemus held out his right hand, this time with his palm facing up and began the process over again. The Trimuril followed suit, but then the spider spoke in his ear, “How much longer will this particular game last? The pantheon is agitated.”
Nicodemus did not respond but continued his meaningless gestures.
“Warden,” Ancestor Spider said, “there are matters I must see to during this game for our mutual protection.”
Nicodemus wondered if the Trimuril were causing these words in any other ears. He doubted it, so he said, “If the divine Trimuril must attend to her pantheon, I will humbly accept an annulment of this challenge.”
The Trimuril’s expression tensed and then relaxed into understanding. She tilted her head back to silently laugh. “Oh, oh!” the spider wheezed in his ear with great enjoyment. “Oh, I am beaten. What great fun!” The statue was still for a moment and then turned to the audience. “I concede defeat to the Lord Warden,” the spider announced in his ear, and apparently in everyone else’s for there rose a sudden confusion of voices.
“As the victor,” the spider said, “the Warden of Lorn may now ask a favor. What would you like?”
“That my daughter be able to resume her investigation in the city immediately, that all the wardens be allowed to return to Chandralu if it would help assist her.”
The Trimuril bowed again. “So it shall be. Now, let us return to the matters at hand.” She gestured toward the dais.
Together Nicodemus and the Trimuril walked toward the throne. Around them the curtains were being drawn back and the throne room flooded with tropical sunlight.
Nicodemus saw Francesca and Ellen flicking green sentences to each other. Leandra looked steadier, but her facial rash had spread across the bridge of her nose.
“Why did you do it?” Nicodemus growled under his breath.
“For your daughter of course,” Ancestor Spider replied.
“Why should you want to adopt her? It makes no sense.”
“Oh, my friend, I have no desire to adopt her. But anyone can see that she’s gotten herself into trouble. She’s going to need help getting herself—and the rest of us—out of whatever she’s gotten into. She’s showed us how unwilling she was to accept help. So I need her indebted to someone—namely you or me—who could make her accept help. If I helped Leandra escape her mother, she would have accepted help from me. But now you have saved her from me, so she is in your debt.”
When they reached the dais, the Trimuril leapt onto the stage and stood next to the throne.
“Don’t you think,” Nicodemus grumbled under his breath as he went to his previous seat, “that you could have tried talking to Lea first? Or at least warned me?”
“I could have,” Ancestor Spider said nonchalantly, “but that wouldn’t have been in the trickster style.”
As Nicodemus knelt again, he saw Doria, Sir Claude, and Rory looking at him with concern. He held out a hand to them in what he hoped was a reassuring gesture.
“Besides,” Ancestor Spider continued, “I think we both learned something today.”
“What do you mean?”
“About her power, of course,” Ancestor Spider whispered in his ear. “Who knew she could misspell any text I threw at her. It is troubling.”
Nicodemus looked over at Leandra. She was again ignoring him and staring straight ahead.
The Sacred Regent held up his hands. “As our divine Trimuril has determined, the Warden of Ixos shall return to Chandralu as she sees fit. And now, I will call an end to this wardens’ council and call for the formation of an immediate war council. All present are to await orders in the front hall.” The old man made a gesture and some unseen priests began to beat loud, resonant drums.
The throne room came alive with chatter and movement. Nicodemus rose to his feet, still watching his daughter. Again Leandra glanced at him. But this time he saw not his little girl but a dangerous woman. For the first time, Nicodemus felt guilty relief that his daughter’s ability to misspell was tied to her disease. If it were not so, she could break the world’s every spell, human or divine.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Francesca peered through the crowd, looking for Leandra.
Dignitaries and officials were milling about the front hall. Francesca perceived their indistinct chatter as a muddy colored sound. Some had formed cliques to discuss the political developments. Others were calling for servants to carry messages back to Chandralu. Nicodemus was in private conversation with the Sacred Regent. But Francesca didn’t mind; there was someone she wanted to see without her husband.
“Shall I ask if the twins need help with Lolo?” Ellen asked.
“No, I need you to make our offer as discussed.” Francesca looked over at her student. “Besides, if the twins couldn’t handle Lolo, would you want to help?”
“Only if I could complain about it so bitterly that you would regret sending me.”
“Such a great help you are, Ellen.”
“It’s not my fault that Lolo is a strange child. He gives me the shivers.”
“I bet you were a strange child.”
“Are you saying I’m not a strange adult?”
“If I lie to you, will it make you feel better?”
“Probably. By the way, who is the druid in your husband’s service?”
“Rory of Calad? He’s been with Nico a little over a year. Veteran of the White Forest Wars.” She looked at the other woman. “Why?”
“No particular reason. He made a few interesting remarks to me in the throne room. I should like to take his measure since we’re likely to be working with him in the coming days.”
Francesca frowned at her for a moment, but then glimpsed Leandra’s four-armed wrestling god … or goddess, rather. The divinity had changed genders between throne room and hall. On her daughter’s other side stood the sea god who had to be Lolo’s father.
Francesca held up a finger to silence Ellen. “Time for you to make our offer,” she muttered and then strode through the crowd and bumped into a man who had accidently stepped back into her way. The unwitting dignitary turned, angry words perched on his lips, but on recognizing Francesca jumped into anxious apologies.
When Francesca planted herself before her daughter’s party, the wrestling goddess and the sea god eyed her with apprehension. Leandra was leaning heavily on the wrestler’s arm. There was a tightness around her eyes and mouth that hinted at the agony of a disease flare. A florid rash now covered her cheeks, nose, eyelids. The sight formed something tight and painful in Francesca’s chest. Her suffering daughter …
Time seemed to slow. Those around them became unusually still. Then Francesca said, “Leandra,” beca
use despite having rehearsed a small speech about putting the past in the past, that was what came out.
“Francesca,” Leandra replied in the same tone.
Francesca felt a sudden pang that her daughter had not called her “mother,” but in the next instant she decided that she was being unfair. Hadn’t she greeted her by name? Francesca cleared her throat. “You need to start taking the highest dose of the stress hormones.”
During Leandra’s childhood, Francesca had desperately sought a treatment. After much research, Francesca had deduced that her daughter’s symptoms were similar to rheumatologic diseases in humans.
One of the few pieces of medical knowledge that had survived from the civilization on the Ancient Continent was that such diseases were caused by certain aspects of a body attacking others. Francesca had discovered that women who had mild forms of rheumatologic disease might experience relief from their symptoms toward the end of pregnancy. Curiously, other patients with rheumatologic disease who sustained traumatic injury experienced brief resolution of their symptoms when recovering.
Extensive experimentation in Port Mercy revealed that a stress hormone produced by the adrenal glands caused reduced rheumatologic symptoms. Francesca had used her influence on the Council of Starfall and in Port Mercy to assign several hydromancers to research how to re-create this specific stress hormone with the hydromancer’s aqueous spells.
The results had been immediate and encouraging. By giving Leandra high doses of the medication, she could stop a disease flare; however, they also caused increased risk of infection, muscle wasting, weight gain. It was both a vital and a horrible drug. Unsurprisingly, deciding when and how much to give Leandra had led to some of the fiercest clashes between mother and daughter.
That is why, as soon as Francesca mentioned the drug, she knew it had been the wrong thing to say. To Francesca, the stress hormone symbolized everything she had done for her daughter. But to Leandra, the drug symbolized a childhood of misery. “Thank you, Francesca, I am well aware of how to treat my disease.”
“Yes, of course,” Francesca said automatically even though she had the powerful urge to remind her daughter to taper the dosage over several days to prevent withdrawal. “Of course. I am sorry.”
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