Spellbreaker

by Blake Charlton

  “I-I … I think so.”

  Leandra exhaled, annoyed. What else would he say after being beaten half to death? She looked to Dhrun. The goddess seemed to think something over before saying, “You don’t seem affected by that medicine, if that’s your concern.”

  Leandra balled her hands into fists, again felt the pain in her gut. Once more she thought about the glorious uplifting future, then nodded to Thaddeus.

  “Please,” he said, “lie down.”

  Obeying, Leandra took a deep breath to steady her nerves. Pain squirmed in her chest. The disease flare rekindling? She closed her eyes as Thaddeus leaned over her.

  “Hold very still. Very still.”

  She felt his hands stir the air above her face, heard him shifting weight. In the hallway, Holokai was biting, biting.

  Nothing happened.

  Long moments passed. Leandra felt Thad’s hands move away, heard him step over to the desk. She took another deep breath and noticed that the pain was still there, but no worse. “How much longer?”

  “Not long,” Thad replied. “Well, not long for such a complicated spell.”

  Leandra chewed her lip and tried to relax. At last Holokai stopped making the horrible noise in the hallway. Leandra heard the irregular, heavy thud of his feet. The door creaked and the shark god asked, in a blood-drunk voice, what had happened. Dhrun explained. Then silence fell again. Lea tried to count to one hundred but only made it to eighty before again asking, “How much longer?”

  “Just … a moment.”

  Thad’s hands returned to her face. She started counting again. Around forty her irritation grew. By sixty she wondered if she should ask again. But then she realized that she was counting more and more slowly. Was it sixty she had reached or eighty? Or was she still on forty? Intoxication washed over her.

  The room had gone silent. She tried to ask what was happening but could not seem to make her mouth work. She was not breathing, but she did not want for air. Now that she listened for it, she realized that her heart was no longer beating.

  A thrill of fear then. Had Thaddeus killed her? She remembered her mother’s stories of how the Savanna Walker had deprived her of all sensation, the horror of a mind in isolation, of how Francesca had raged against the Creator at that time. Was that what had happened to Leandra now?

  But then Leandra felt the air slowly flowing into her chest, a sudden two-noted thud. Her heart beat, impossibly slow. A vision of tattered curtains pierced through the sliver that she had cracked between her upper and lower eyelid. The motion of her human blood was suspended; she saw in perfect detail the fiber of the tattered curtains, stars just starting to shine through the dimming sky. The brightest star was being circled by a small, pockmarked moon.

  As her eyes opened, nature’s light spilled into her brain. The universe in both fine and gross detail was dissected for her, demonstrating all of its hot beauty, all its cold indifference.

  Then time snapped like the film of a soap bubble. Leandra’s lungs expanded. Crying out, she sat up with terrific speed. Her thundering heart seemed to be filling with light, her mind with an elevated emotion that brought her up and up and up, toward ecstasy. All pain had left her gut and joints. Fatigue evaporated like raindrops falling on fire.

  Bruised Thaddeus stood beside her, both hands raised as if the moment before he had been holding something delicate. Behind him Dhrun had both sets of arms crossed, her expression tight. Holokai had become taller, more muscular, his eyes all black.

  “I…” Leandra started to say.

  “Did it work?” Thaddeus asked.

  She looked at him. His bruised lips and swollen eye were already beginning to darken. And yet his expression shone with curiosity and excitement. She studied him, took in everything from the grease under his nails to the tiny broken blood vessels in the white of his eye. She could see his bruised skin was hotter than the rest of his face. She did not know how she could see heat. But she could.

  “Yes. Yes, it worked.”

  “And the other godspell, did I leave it intact?”

  “Yes,” she said with some hesitation. She could still feel into the future; however, all future selves felt the similar elevating, expansive mood that she now knew. All choices in the future maintained her present state of lightness.

  Leandra drew a deep breath and felt no chest pain. She stood without difficulty.

  “And the prophecy?” Dhrun asked. “Are you still bound to murder someone you love in the early morning? Can you tell?”

  Leandra frowned, answered with a question: “The rash on my face, how is it looking?”

  “Much better. Still there, but better.”

  Leandra nodded. She needed to test a theory. Closing her eyes she induced a small flare of her disease and misspelled the prophetic godspell around her head so she could feel farther into the future.

  “It’s … different,” she said then paused. “I will not murder someone I love. I cannot. It’s impossible for me to use the word ‘love’ as I did. Now I might escape that prophecy. I might not. It doesn’t matter because I have been falling toward this night all of my life, the way a rock falls through water.”

  “Huh?” Holokai asked with slack incomprehension.

  Leandra again induced a flare of her disease and returned the godspell’s range to an hour before the present so the prismatic futures would not challenge her sanity. She could not say how she knew—perhaps it was the resolution of her pain—but she could tell that invoking her particular talent, invoking her disease, would no longer hurt her. “Thaddeus, you have cured me.”

  “I have?”

  “Misspelling no longer induces a flare. My two natures have ceased warring with each other.”

  “They have?”

  A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. “They have.”

  Thaddeus looked at the deities, who looked dumbly back at him. “Well,” he said, “that is unexpected.”

  Leandra’s mind raced with new opportunities, new dangers. “Thad, this loveless spell, how might it be removed?”

  “If you sit still, any Numinous spellwright could disspell it. But I also wrote a few passages to sense a particular Numinous signaling spell so I can deconstruct it in an emergency.”

  “I suspected you might have taken such steps. A wise choice. Problem is someone could force you to teach them the deconstruction spell.”

  He blinked. “Well, yes. I hadn’t thought of that. But why should they want to do such a thing?”

  “Your loveless has begun a transformation they might want to reverse. I’m afraid that means that we cannot risk your falling into their control.”

  Thaddeus glanced between her and Dhrun. “Then … I’ll go with you?”

  She shook her head. “You’re no good in a fight. And the Creator knows when you might go into withdrawal from whatever you’ve been using. So, please, sit down.” She gestured to his bed.

  He stepped back defensively.

  “It’s all right. We only need to keep your secret safe for the night.”

  With a look at Dhrun, Thaddeus hesitantly sat.

  “Might we take him to your family compound?” Dhrun asked.

  “No, if my mother discovered this secret she would use it against our case.”

  “Keyway Island?” Dhrun suggested.

  “No way to get him there safely.”

  “Hide him somewhere?” Dhrun asked.

  “Not possible,” Leandra replied, “we have to assume we’re being watched. Trust me, with this loveless spell upon my mind and my ability to feel forward by an hour, I have considered every possible future and can tell you there is only one way for us to be entirely safe.” She stood and went to the shelf where Thaddeus kept his opium and paraphernalia. “But this won’t be difficult. Thad is like me: He keeps no bad habits—”

  “Only full blown addictions,” Thaddeus said.

  “Precisely so.” She moved his smoking paraphernalia to examine the bottles behind them. Most
ly he had kava, the traditional drink of the Sea People. It was derived from the roots of a particular pepper plant and caused a state of relaxation without dramatically clouding thoughts. She reached passed these to a small porcelain bottle of rice wine and a small vile of dark brown liquid.

  “Thad, how much tincture of opium would you need to sleep until sunrise? The drugs will keep us safe. We need a high enough dose that even if the thugs come back and try to wake you, you won’t be able to divulge the signal spell. If I remember correctly, that would be about thirty drops?”

  “Fifty now,” he said with relief. He went on to justify the dose by comparing himself to others in the winehouse who required much more to sleep. So it went with addiction and self-justification. So it went.

  Keeping her back to Thad, Leandra prepared two small pewter cups. When she turned around, he had made his bed and was lying back. He had several paper sheets on the bed and was moving his hands between them and his forehead as he cast the Numinous spells that would intensify his intoxication.

  Dhrun stepped next to Leandra. “My Lady Warden, did you tell me that the hydroma—”

  “Thank you, goddess,” Leandra interrupted and handed Thaddeus the first cup. He drank it with apparent expectation. She started to hand him the second, but then paused. “Thad … I am sorry. I should have thought about the thugs trying to use you to get to me.”

  He was pinching something that seemed to be floating before his eyes, likely an intoxicating Numinous sentence that needed to be tucked into place. His expression was one of fixed concentration and he went a little cross-eyed as he worked. “Well, Lea, I haven’t always been exactly gentle with you.”

  “You haven’t. But I’m still not sure you deserved what you’re getting.”

  He pressed his thumb to his forehead in an action beyond Leandra’s conjecture. “Who gets what they deserve?” he asked with a note of wry Cloud Culture philosophy. “The Creator made this world so that we’re all confined within our minds. We have to dream and live and die alone. Even the worst man deserves better than that.” The tension around his eyes softened. “I always wonder,” he said, and gestured to his head, “if I do all this to get away from life, or into it.” He closed his eyes and pushed his head back into his pillow. A smile tugged at his lips.

  A dull ache formed in Leandra’s chest. Before her transformation, she would have called it pity. His eyes saw only the surface of nature, and yet he had opened the universe to her.

  She studied her old lover for a while. His face seemed content despite the bruises. Behind her Dhrun shifted. After maybe a third of an hour had passed, and Leandra was certain the opium had reached its tendrils into Thaddeus’s brain, she pushed him gently on the shoulder. “Thad?”

  Dreamily, he opened his eyes and smiled. “Lea?”

  “Thad,” she asked on impulse, “do you remember the first time you saw me?”

  “How could I forget?” He paused, eyes floated shut. “That neodemon had its teeth in me … neodemon of addiction … and the teeth … felt so good … I would have died … and…” His eyes floated open. “What man wouldn’t want to be saved by a pretty woman?” He held out his hand. Leandra took it. “You saved me, Lea.” He squeezed her hand and his eyes fluttered shut again. He smiled. “It is too bad I couldn’t save you.”

  “Maybe you have,” she said and wondered at the clarity with which she saw things. “Thad, there’s more.”

  His eyes fluttered open. “More what now?”

  “I split up your dose of opium.” She held up the second pewter cup.

  He took it with an unsteady hand and so she helped him bring it to his mouth and swallow it. “Bitter,” he mumbled but then smiled.

  She took the cup away from him and set it gently on the desk. “Goodbye, Thad,” she said and stood. Holokai and Dhrun were studying her. She motioned for them to follow and went out into the blood-covered hallway. There was no sign of the bodies. “Creator, Kai, even the shoes?” she asked.

  The shark god burped.

  She didn’t look back to see the contented smile she knew was creasing Holokai’s face.

  Downstairs they found the winehouse empty. Walking out onto the evening street made a few city dwellers scatter. Well, at least the human city dwellers. Two macaque monkeys perched upon a nearby roof stared down at Leandra’s party with dark eyes. Leandra could see the lice crawling through their fur, the larcenous thoughts written on their simian expressions.

  The palanquin crew that had carried her from the Floating City was gone. She couldn’t blame them. Fortunately, with the pain gone from her knees, she could walk on her own.

  To the east, the volcano’s shadow was stretching out across the bay and the distant Standing Islands were growing bright with the light of the falling sun. “Well,” Leandra said, “that took longer than expected. We had better hurry if we’re going to make our meeting.” She headed east along the terrace road and then the Lesser Sacred Pool. She looked up at the volcano and thought about all of the textual energy stored in the crater lake. She wondered if there were some way to harness that energy to make things right. “Dhrun, I want you to stop by the compound to pick up the chest with the smuggler’s possible payment.”

  “Yes, my Lady Warden,” Dhrun said at her side but then added, “Apologies for starting to bring this up in front of Thaddeus, but didn’t you once tell me that the hydromancers have a spell that can bring someone out of an opium stupor?”

  Leandra nodded. “They do. They cast it directly into the veins and it instantly counteracts the drug. It’s amazing to watch. The person comes welling up out of their intoxication like a drowning man comes swimming up to the surface. Instantaneous withdrawal.”

  They walked in silence down an abandoned street. When the Jacaranda Steps came into view, Dhrun said, “Forgive me, but if the hydromancers can bring someone out of an opium stupor, then didn’t we just leave Thaddeus vulnerable again?”

  “We would have if I hadn’t dropped tetrodotoxin in his second dose.”

  “But doesn’t that mean…” Holokai said slowly.

  “By now…” Leandra said, her thoughts moving faster into the future, making the possibilities clear, orderly, almost crystalline. “By now, he’s dead.”

  PART 2

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  When Nicodemus’s party reached the compound, exhausted from the hike from the Floating City, they were greeted by John. Doria embraced the big man as did Rory and Sir Claude. Nicodemus took this as evidence that ever since facing the horrors of Feather Island, the party had grown closer.

  John reported that the compound was in chaos. The house guards were maneuvering a long table onto the pavilion, while the servants hurried the finest plates and bowls out of storage. The kitchens were hotly engaged. When Vhivek, the pavilion’s chamberlain, had learned Nicodemus’s party was returning, he and the chef had embarked upon an ill-conceived three-course banquet. John had advised against it but had been overruled.

  Once inside the pavilion, Nicodemus discovered the promised chaos of guards and servants. Out from the crowd came Vhivek, a gray-haired old man of the Lotus culture, who went into an apoplexy of apologies about his failure to impress. Nicodemus remembered enough of Ixonian protocol to realize that he could not simply call off the banquet without insulting Vhivek. So he claimed a fatigue that would make a banquet impossible. He begged for the personal favor of being allowed to eat simple fare with his party in the kitchen.

  Vhivek agreed and boasted that he could serve the team in the Southern fashion. So while Vhivek reversed some of the chaos, the others retreated to their chambers to change before dinner. Nicodemus was about to do likewise when Francesca’s twin druids arrived, each one holding the hand of a young boy with a pale face, dark hair, dark eyes. This had to be Lolo.

  As they walked, Lolo would stop his feet forcing the druids to pull on his hands and allowing him to swing forward like a pendulum. Nicodemus had seen many parents doing the same, but he couldn’t re
member if he and Francesca had ever done so for Leandra. He guessed not.

  Nicodemus led the druids up to Francesca’s quarters. When he asked if they needed anything else, the druids shook their heads, but Lolo walked over to Nicodemus and looked up at him with wide dark eyes. “You’re the man who married the dragon?”

  Nicodemus took a step back so that he wouldn’t accidentally touch and misspell the boy and then squatted down to his eye level. “I am.”

  Lolo nodded, suddenly solemn beyond his age. “Don’t bite her.”

  “I try not to.”

  “Very bad things happen if you bite her. And she doesn’t like it.”

  “Thank you for the advice,” Nicodemus said while suppressing a smile. “I hope you like it here, Lolo. I’m sure we’ll find a wonderful place for you in the Ixonian pantheon.”

  The boy nodded solemnly again.

  Nicodemus stood and looked with curiosity at the druids. Tam explained about how Francesca had dunked the boy in the bay to provoke his transformation. The druid seemed ready to say more, but with a sigh Nicodemus told him to wait. He would need Francesca to explain her thinking. In the meantime he had enough to do, start another metaspell for example. He invited the druids to join him for dinner but they requested a tray be brought up so they could better look after Lolo.

  Nicodemus left the room and was about to head back to the pavilion when, for no reason that he could fathom, he thought of Roslyn. Quietly he stole through the hallways to her room. He tapped gently on the door but got no response. He thought he could hear faint snoring so he slid the door back to peer in.

  The old nurse, who had cared so diligently for Leandra, was lying on her bed. Nicodemus was again surprised to see how skeletal her face had become, how her lips clung to the teeth she had left. A plate of untouched curry sat on a side table. Despite snoring with a volume surprising for such a small woman, Roslyn seemed peaceful.

  Nostalgia and regret churned in Nicodemus as he marveled that time should pass with deliberation in the moment but then speed itself faster and faster into memory. It seemed only days ago that a sickly young Leandra had been sitting in a younger Roslyn’s lap. Now there wasn’t much time left for Nurse Roslyn before whatever came after life came after her.