Spellbreaker

by Blake Charlton

  “Mother, you sound as if you have something specific in mind.”

  Nicodemus looked at the two of them. “Creator damn it, you two. What is going on?”

  The two women stared at each other for a long moment. But then, at last, Leandra looked away. “It’s complicated, but I hope you both appreciate that I am the Warden of Ixos and it is my duty—”

  Francesca interrupted. “What we are dealing with goes beyond Ixos.”

  “Yes, Mother, I see that far better than you imagine. I don’t want us to work against each other. If you would let me finish?” She raised her eyebrows.

  Francesca took in a sharp breath but then let it out slowly. “Yes, of course.”

  Nicodemus had never known his wife to back down so easily. Maybe there was hope after all.

  Leandra too seemed affected. “Thank you. In fact…” She paused as if deciding something. “In fact, after everything that’s happening, I could use some wine. Maybe you could too?” She stood and went to the tea service.

  Francesca started to speak but again checked herself.

  “Don’t worry, Mother,” Leandra said with a sigh. “My disease flare has resolved.”

  Nicodemus frowned as he realized that Leandra’s rash had disappeared.

  Leandra added, “I will explain how that happened, but first may I serve you two?” She adjusted the tray and looked at Nicodemus. “Dad, tea or wine?”

  “Both?”

  Leandra smiled. “Let’s start you on tea then.” She set out three cups and picked up the brass teapot. While she poured, she looked at Francesca. “Mom, tea or wine?”

  It was the first time in sixteen years that Nicodemus had heard his daughter use that word. It didn’t seem to be lost on Francesca. “God-of-gods, wine,” she said with the slightest quaver. “I could definitely use a glass of wine.”

  Leandra poured wine for her mother and herself before distributing the cups. Nicodemus wrapped his hands around the cup, felt its heat.

  “To survival,” Leandra said and started to raise her cup but bumped the teapot’s handle with her elbow and had to quickly correct her motion.

  Nicodemus reflexively leaned forward to try to catch the pot if it fell but then remembered how hot it would be. Fortunately the ornate brass thing only wobbled. He saw what he thought was a silver wire below the pot and wondered if it had fallen off. But before he could remark on it, Leandra repeated her toast, “To survival.”

  So the three of them clinked their cups and sipped.

  Leandra said, “I’m leaving the city.”

  “Oh, God-of-god’s damn it, Lea!” Francesca groaned. “I thought you were serious about working together.”

  “I am serious.”

  “No, you’re not. There’s no way you can leave the city. And why would you even want to?”

  “Calm down—” Nicodemus started to say.

  “I am calm!” Francesca snapped before turning to Leandra. “Why?”

  “My people are out on the bay. They aren’t safe. It’s my duty to protect them.”

  Nicodemus frowned. “Your people?”

  “Dad, I am the one who has been smuggling gods and goddesses out of the empire.”

  Nicodemus started to laugh but then saw that his daughter’s flat expression was not changing. “You’re not serious. Lea, that’s impossible…”

  “It is not. For more than a decade, I’ve run a secret society that has helped about a hundred deities escape the empire. Mostly I’ve brought them here to Ixos, but maybe thirty have gone to Dral. The shape shifter that the empress discovered was one of mine.”

  “But … Lea … that’s insane. It’s tantamount to declaring war on the empire.”

  “Maybe.”

  “But…” Nicodemus felt as if his heart were beating behind his eyes. He took another sip of tea to preserve his nerves. “But … you can’t have done this. It’s our duty to preserve peace so we can fight the War of Disjunction.”

  “What’s the point of saving humanity if we’re corrupt?”

  “God-of-god’s damned survival is the point! That thing you just had us toast to. We have to survive.”

  “You never understood that, Dad. That’s what I could never make you understand. All those talks about disability and disease, you never understood. All your life your disability has made you focus on survival. If you had a disease like mine you would know that there’s no point to survival if it means doing the wrong thing.”

  “The wrong thing? What in the burning hells are we doing that’s so wrong?”

  “We’ve built a civilization in which the strong prey on the weak. We create divinities to answer our prayers even though many of those prayers are malicious. Our neodemons abuse and kill the weak. And why do we do it? So we can keep up with the empire. And what’s the empire do? Cannibalize their deities so they can keep up with us. There’s no point to trying to survive the Disjunction if we are no better than the demons.”

  Nicodemus shook his head. “So you’re fixing things by starting a war?”

  “I wasn’t trying to start a war. I was trying to do the right thing.”

  “The right thing?” Nicodemus squawked.

  “You raised me to defend vulnerable humans from the neodemons in the league. Then why shouldn’t I defend vulnerable deities from the spellwrights in the empire?”

  “Because it’s going to get us all killed!” Nicodemus thumped his hand down on the table and felt his fingers tingling. He was breathing too fast. He turned on Francesca. “This is all about what happened in Port Mercy, isn’t it? That god that seduced her was a refugee from the empire and you ate him, so now she has to save every deity in the empire?”

  “Nico,” Francesca said flatly, “you need to calm down.” She looked at Leandra. “He will calm down.”

  “Calm?” Nicodemus asked. “Our daughter just started a war that will critically weaken humanity before the demons come, and you want me to be calm?” He paused. “Fran, why under a fiery heaven are you so calm.”

  “There’s nothing to gain by being upset.”

  “Wise advice,” Nicodemus said, “which you have taken exactly never!” Then something occurred to him. “Creator help me, Fran, you knew. Why is it I’m always the last one to know anything in this family?”

  Judging by a momentary widening of her eyes, Leandra also seemed to be surprised by Francesca’s knowledge.

  Nicodemus took a long breath, pressed both his hands against the table and felt his fingers tingling. He tried to breathe more slowly. Then he became aware of the tension in the rest of the room. He could hear his followers shifting and saw his wife’s spellwrights staring at Leandra’s two gods.

  Nicodemus blew out a long breath. Francesca was right. He needed to calm down. “All right, so, what do we do about it?”

  Leandra replied. “I have a hidden village in the Standing Islands. There are refugees there I must protect.”

  Francesca leaned forward. “Send Holokai to fetch them back. We don’t know where the imperial forces are. And there is still the matter of the lava neodemon loose on the bay. There’s no need to risk yourself, Lea.”

  Leandra shook her head. “These godspells have changed me. You saw when I turned the lightning back on that airship. I will be fine.”

  Francesca started to talk but paused for a moment before saying, “But as you pointed out, the empire won’t let you get away with it again.”

  Again Leandra shook her head. “I have acquired other talents. Another of my spells has decoupled my ability to misspell from my disease.”

  “It what?” Nicodemus asked, remembering how Leandra had misspelled every text that the Trimuril had cast at her.

  “It’s a tertiary cognition spell that stops me from being able to love. And it prevents me from suffering a disease flare when I use my talent. And…” Her face became thoughtful. “One other thing … these godspells make it seem that there is something more … to who I am…” Leandra’s voice trailed off and her ga
ze became vague for a long moment before she looked at Nicodemus. “I must separate myself from the league. I will find a way to contact Empress Vivian. I will explain that I acted on my own and that I have since broken from my family. I will let her know her attack against the league is unfounded. All you two have to do is survive until then.”

  “Lea, that’s crazy,” Nicodemus said. “If Vivian’s launched an invasion of Ixos, there’s no turning back.”

  Leandra gave him a mischievous smile, as if she were still a little girl. “I don’t know, Dad, I can be very persuasive.”

  He stared at her in disbelief. “Lea, the spells on your brain are preventing you from thinking straight.”

  Francesca cleared her throat. “Lea, we can’t let you leave Chandralu.”

  “You won’t be able to stop me.”

  Francesca cleared her throat. “Lea, in my draconic form I was wounded, but I have been back in contact with your father. If you tried to leave, I’d fly after you.” Francesca reached out and took Nicodemus’s hand.

  Oddly, his fingers felt numb against her touch. He frowned at his hand.

  “You could do that, Mom, if you didn’t have a patient to tend to.”

  Both Nicodemus and Francesca stared at her dumbly. At last Francesca said, “Lea, you are sounding very far out of your head. What patient?”

  “Yesterday, early in the morning, I acquired a weakly prophetic godspell from Lotannu Akomma. Though it usually gives me limited insight an hour into the future, I temporarily misspelled it so that I could learn what would happen a day in the future. During that time, I discovered that I would have to choose between killing someone I loved and dying myself. If I ran or tried to avoid this fate, everyone I loved would die. Now I know that if I had run, the empire would have destroyed Chandralu. Now something is stopping their attack. I’m not sure what it is yet, but I have to discover what is staying their hand. That is how I will reach the empress.”

  Francesca tightened her grip of Nicodemus’s hand. “Lea this is madness. You don’t have to kill anyone.”

  Leandra looked between her parents, her large brown eyes studying them. “I have been trying to find some way to escape killing one of you. I can’t tell you how much I have agonized over it. Even though this spell keeps me from loving, I still feel worry and guilt and the hundred other horrors that it would bring on. That’s why I had to try this.”

  “Try what?” Nicodemus asked more breathlessly than he intended. His lips were tingling.

  Leandra looked at her mother. “What is death now in this age of wonders? If a heart stopped, and you were nearby you might be able to restart it. You might say that man died and you brought him back.”

  Francesca shook her head. “It’s more complicated than that, Lea. If a heart were in an arrhythmia I could…” She shook her head, spoke again in a firmer voice, “Lea, what are you thinking?”

  “Death is a state from which no one has yet come back. And until someone is brought back from one such state, it is death. But what if I put one of you in a state that, for all I know, is death and yet the other one of you were able to bring the other back. Then I would have killed one of you and yet not.”

  “Lea,” Francesca said in disbelief, “are you trying to get into a semantic argument with prophecy?”

  Nicodemus’s hands and feet felt numb. His lips tingled and it seemed an effort just to breath. “Lea, what are you saying?”

  Leandra reached out and took Nicodemus’s hand and to his horror he found that he couldn’t move his fingers.

  Leandra looked at her mother. “I think your first problem will be his mind. If I understand, being aware during what follows would drive him mad. After that, you’ll have to write some text that breathes for him. Maybe some spell to pump his blood. I don’t know. Maybe it’s impossible. If I did know, this wouldn’t have a chance of cheating prophecy.”

  And then Nicodemus understood. His body felt insubstantial. He tried to stand but his legs only flopped beneath the table. He looked at the brass teapot and saw what he had thought had been a bit of silver wire which in fact was a needle.

  “Lea,” he mumbled with clumsy lips, “what have you…”

  She looked at him with haunted eyes. “I’m sorry, Daddy. I have to go.” She stood.

  Francesca screamed something. Nicodemus wanted to stand but flopped backward. Then he was aware that Francesca’s arms were around him, laying him on the ground.

  His body no longer seemed a body. He could move no limb, could feel no sensation. The visible world blurred, but he could still see his wife hovering over him, pressing her fingers to his neck to find a pulse. Doria and Ellen stood beside his wife, wanting to help but unable to touch him for fear of contracting a canker curse.

  Nicodemus could see on his wife’s face how fast she was thinking, how desperately she was trying to make a diagnosis. Within the muscles of her forearm, she extemporized a censoring spell to render him unconscious. Frantically she tilted his head back pressed her mouth to his and blew a breath into him. His chest inflated as if it were a bellows or some other lifeless and mechanical thing.

  Then Francesca sat up and pulled the censoring spell from her forearm. He tried to push the air from his lungs, to form the sounds to tell her what she needed to know to save his life. But the air came too slowly “T…” he said. Tried again. “T…” But she cast the spell, and sent him down into unconsciousness before he could speak the name of the poison.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  The nauseating guilt and fear of a murderer churned through Leandra. It was the same emotion she had felt when her prophetic godspell first projected her mind forward twenty-four hours. Hopefully she had just cheated prophecy.

  Dhrun began to lead her out of the tearoom, but Francesca managed to jam a breathing spell down Nicodemus’s throat, pass the spell to Ellen, and then run after her daughter. “Lea, don’t!”

  Leandra wondered if she had misjudged her mother, if draconic jaws were about to close around her. Holokai stepped in front of Francesca. Mother and daughter locked eyes. “Lea, don’t do this.”

  “It’s already done,” she answered coolly, sadly.

  “My lady,” Doria said from behind Francesca. “My lady, only one side of his chest is moving. The breathing tube is in too far or maybe he’s misspelled your text.”

  When Francesca looked back, Leandra knew she would get away. Her father’s cacography would slowly misspell any therapeutic spell, requiring the physicians to continuously edit their texts. Moreover Francesca was the only one who could tend to Nicodemus without contracting a deadly canker curse.

  Leandra straightened. “Go to him, Mother.”

  Francesca turned back to her daughter. Holokai put out a hand to stop her, but Francesca grabbed the shark god’s arm and pulled him close and snarled before pushing him back. “What did you give him, Lea? Tetrodotoxin?”

  “My lady,” Doria said, “he needs you!”

  After glaring for another moment, Francesca went to Nicodemus. As Leandra turned to go, her mother shouted, “Stop her!”

  Dhrun stepped out of the tearoom and into the hallway. Leandra followed and saw Mykos with two of his guards all leveling knives at Dhrun. Each man carried a spear, but in close quarters they were useless.

  Dhrun crouched. His four arms circled in a wrestler’s anticipation. “Step aside, Mykos,” Leandra said calmly. “There’d be no point to killing you and your men.”

  The old guard looked from her to Dhrun. Slowly he lowered his dagger and then nodded to his men, who followed suit with apparent relief. They stepped aside and Dhrun led the party through the dark hallways.

  On the wide balcony atop the pavilion’s staircase they found her father’s spellwrights, Rory and Sir Claude. The druid brandished a large wooden staff, and the knight was covered with fluid metal armor. Two thin blades protruded from the basket hilts around his hands. Behind the spellwrights stood five red cloaks with spears and the space to wield them.

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sp; Leandra looked behind her and saw that they had been followed by her mother’s twin druids, Mykos, and the two guards.

  “My lady warden,” Sir Claude said, “you seem lost. Let us conduct you back to your ailing father.”

  “Very amusing, sir, but stand down and spare us all bloodshed.”

  “You know we cannot,” Sir Claude said. “Please, my lady, for the sake of your father.”

  Leandra murmured to her gods, “Can we manage it?”

  “Not without killing,” Dhrun replied. “And maybe not at all if the spellwrights are good.”

  She nodded. “Leave the spellwrights to me. Take the guards down as fast as you can. Kai, protect our backs.”

  The shark god grunted in the affirmative.

  Leandra walked toward her father’s spellwrights. “I appeal to your loyalty to my father. He will need you by his side.” She stopped before the knight. Rory’s knuckles tightened around his staff and the red cloaks shifted. But Sir Claude did not so much as blink.

  “Sir,” she said, “there is no point fighting a tidal wave.”

  “You are not a wave, my lady. You are a woman.”

  “Betting on what I am would be reckless. Last warning.”

  “My lady, for your father’s sake, turn back.”

  “For my father’s sake, step aside.”

  “I cannot,” he said softly. He paused. His eyes softened. He spoke in a near-whisper. “We’ve all seen enough death.”

  Leandra saw the resolve in his dark eyes. He was twice her age, the veteran of a horrible war. She wondered if she would ever know as much of life as he had.

  “Very well,” she said with a sigh, “take my hand and then lead me back to my father.” She held out her empty palm.

  Rory and Sir Claude looked at her hand.

  “Sir, take my hand and lead us back in peace. Or do you doubt my honor?”

  Sir Claude studied her face for a moment. Then the blade and basket hilt on his right hand retracted. He laid his hand in hers and said, “I trust your honor.”

  “You shouldn’t have.” She sent a shock of cacographic force through Sir Claude’s armor, breaking every spell in his steel and freezing him in place. She lunged for the druid even as blue light burst from his staff. She grasped the wooden weapon and dispelled the text within it. A small explosion knocked her to the ground.