Spellbreaker

by Blake Charlton

  To either side of the staircase, the sheer slopes bristled with vegetation. White-feathered seabirds nested among the leaves and made the air echo with shrill complaints. Occasionally they stepped from their homes to ride the crater’s contrary winds. Their graceful long wings cut a pleasing contrast with the blue sky.

  As Nicodemus rested, he dared look down. A moment of vertigo made him lean forward and place his hands on the steps. But then, reassured, he stood again and studied the world below.

  On the next switchback down, ten hydromancer guards had also paused to catch their breath. The poor souls had to haul gallons of aqueous disspells in case of imperial attack.

  Far behind the hydromancers were two recently incarnated war gods. The prayers that had written them were inspired by the Savanna Walker’s black dragon. Each had a draconic head and foreclaws. Their stone bodies were scaled, potbellied, more humanoid. Because each god stood over ten feet tall, they did not walk along the narrow switchbacks but rather stretched up to grab the recurring path above them, going straight up the slope as if it were a ladder.

  Below them, the monastery of the Trimuril was a small gray patch. Doria, unable to climb to the summit, waited for him somewhere in that building. Out on the crater lake, priests and hydromancers milled about the pageantry of ships. Watching the Floating City’s gentle motion was calming, like watching waves.

  “What’s this I see?” a thin voice creaked in Nicodemus’s ear. “The Storm Petrel surveying the Pandemonium?”

  “Burning heaven, Goddess!” Nicodemus said to the Trimuril. “You surprised me.”

  “You seemed so peaceful. I thought this might be a good time to talk.”

  “I just wasn’t expecting you. I thought you would talk to Lady Warden Francesca.”

  “Oh, yes, we had a fine chat about airships. Then Francesca renewed her appeal that we evacuate the new incarnation of Los to Dral or Lorn.”

  “Did she call Leandra that?”

  “No, no, my interpretation.”

  “You are certain then?”

  Ancestor Spider’s wheezing laughter rattled in Nicodemus’s ear. “Certain? I would never be so stupid as to be certain, but seeing the Savanna Walker left little doubt. I’ve known divinity on this continent in all its forms, and I have never seen anything like that black dragon. There are things about Leandra I should have seen before. She has something of the trickster about her, though she does not know it. She’s made all of us, humanity and divinity, the fools. Maybe that’s what she did in her last life as well.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The mighty empire, the noble league, she’s shown us how cruel they are. Although she is herself just as cruel in revealing the truth. I should know; I’ve committed the cruelty of truth upon countless Ixonian souls over the centuries. And what better way to show us our foolishness than inducing us to fight each other in a cataclysmic war?”

  “But perhaps we can change the league’s society so that—”

  The creaking laughter returned. “Change it how, my great Storm Petrel? You want to stop neodemons from preying on the weak and poor? That should be simple. All you have to do is stop casting metaspells or convince men and women to stop praying for evil to befall each other.”

  “You think it’s impossible.”

  “Impossible by the rules as we presently understand them.”

  “But we could change the rules?”

  “Nicodemus, would you like to play a game?”

  “No!” he answered then quickly softened his tone. “I mean to say, Goddess, that I do not think I am presently—”

  Again she interrupted with laughter. “You don’t want to play because of how my last game turned out. But unfortunately, dear Storm Petrel, you are already playing a game and so am I. We are playing Leandra’s game.”

  “What game is that?”

  “I don’t know and neither does Leandra.”

  A wind whipped around Nicodemus, throwing his long black hair into his face. After trying to tame it, he said, “So how do we play this unknown game? If Leandra is truly the trickster goddess who’s shown our present rules to be broken and who will rewrite the future rules, shouldn’t we keep her alive?”

  “There is no need to repeat your wife’s argument. It’s a moot point. Leandra wouldn’t leave the city. She told your wife that she refuses to abandon the city.”

  “But—”

  “Oh, don’t keep playing a losing hand; it is so boring. I will not discuss this when we have just been dealt other and more interesting cards. We need to be thinking of the play that will keep us alive.”

  “And what particularly interesting cards have we been dealt?”

  “Let’s see,” Ancestor Spider said with creaking amusement. “We are under attack from an evil Halcyon with unmatched spellwrighting ability, which she derives from a magical emerald that stole its power from the brain of the infant Storm Petrel. Since its creation, that emerald has been trying to return to its origin.”

  “Oh,” Nicodemus said, then suddenly understanding, “Oh!”

  “Could you?”

  “Remove the spells from around my keloid?”

  “It would be an interesting play.”

  Carefully, Nicodemus sat down on a tall stair. “The gem will manipulate the situation to reunite itself with me. That would work to our advantage if it eventually deprived Vivian of the Emerald. But it would also open a channel between Vivian and me, one that might be manipulated. In Starhaven, Typhon manipulated that channel to destroy Fellwroth and free himself.”

  “You think Vivian could manipulate you?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “Could you manipulate her?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Can you think of any other interesting plays?”

  Nicodemus stared down at the Floating City, its slow churning movement. Other interesting plays? “Francesca mentioned that she asked the Council of Starfall to send a support convoy with the war gods of the South. Do we have any more news as to if they were sent or not?”

  “We did get a colaboris communication from Starfall. The ships set sail on schedule. But they were supposed to touch at Port Mercy before proceeding to Chandralu and there’s been no report of that yet. Perhaps they are caught in doldrums or a storm.”

  “No good then. Do we have any other sources of strength, perhaps closer to home? Something on the archipelago?”

  “None I can think of.”

  Nicodemus frowned and stared down at the Floating City. What could he do to weaken Vivian? A shadow was working its way across the lake. He looked up and saw a churning cloud advancing over the volcano. It was going to rain on him again soon. Idly he wondered if he could pray to some Ixonian wind deity to blow the clouds away.

  Realizing that his mind was wandering, Nicodemus shook his head. “Vivian wouldn’t be expecting me to free the keloid. At the very least, it would surprise her.”

  The Trimuril did not respond for so long that Nicodemus thought she might have left him. A curtain of rain drew itself across the far side of the crater.

  “Storm Petrel,” the Trimuril asked in a playful tone, “would you like to play a game?”

  Slowly, Nicodemus smiled at the coming rain. “Yes,” he said and reached behind his neck to the smooth, dark scar.

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  Midday clouds tumbled over Mount Jalavata to scatter rain across Chandralu before twisting themselves into nothing. The day’s heat grew even as the tropical sun slouched toward evening.

  Walking back to her quarters through humid hallways, Leandra felt forward though her godspell. The majority of her future selves felt her present anxieties. A small minority felt flashes of fear or the nothingness of death; those had to be from a possible but unlikely imperial attack. Perhaps a rocket hitting the compound? Another, larger minority of her future hours were filled with profound relief. That was encouraging.

  Clutching a book she had newly acquired, Leandra wonder
ed what might lead to such future relief. But concentration was difficult; the compound’s walls were thin and through them she could hear an older maid complaining to a friend, a guard snoring on watch, and from somewhere farther a faint roaring.

  She stopped. It didn’t make sense, this sound. At times distant shouts punctuated the roar. Other times, it fell into silence.

  She turned and walked down another hallway until she reached the kitchen’s exit onto the upper terrace. Just outside the gate, in a small depression between the compound and street, a circle of men had gathered. They were chanting, or at least many of them were. Their cadence was irregular, building slowly and then collapsing into a chaos of shouted imperatives: “Kill him! Kill him!” “Not like that!” “Stay low, stay low! Damn it!”

  Then she understood the sound like one recognizing rot when taking a suspicious sniff. Her expression crinkled. She shouldn’t investigate. This was none of her affair. She turned back into the kitchen and saw a cook at work. He was a squat man, maybe forty, a ruddy complexion, chopping vegetables with a rhythmic intensity. The shouting continued behind Leandra. She couldn’t leave it alone. She had to know if it was him or—possibly but unlikely—her.

  So, again clutching her new book to her chest, Leandra slipped out of the kitchen, past the men, and up the stairs to the street. Once there, she turned back to look down on the chanting men.

  What she saw was familiar. It was an impromptu wrestling match. The ring of white chalk had been laid down in a circle. The kind of thing seen at a winehouse. And, indeed, many spectators shouted with an abandon that suggested intoxication. Who could blame them? An empire had, after all, besieged their city. Wasn’t it every man’s civic duty to raid their compound’s rice wine and kava to keep them out of imperial hands?

  In the ring, two combatants circled each other. Both were bare-chested with lungi folded short. The older wrestler was a tall and hulking man, light brown skin, shaved head, a crooked nose, salt-and-pepper stubble. The very picture of a bruiser, a brawler.

  The younger wrestler, despite his lean muscularity, seemed insubstantial in comparison. He wore his long kinky black hair in a tight bun. His sparse, youthful beard had been trimmed close. His eyes were wide, his lips pulled back in a manic smile.

  The bruiser lunged, but the younger man danced around him and slipped both his arms around his opponent’s waist then pivoted his hips to provide a fulcrum over which he could throw the bruiser. But though the young man’s shoulders jumped into cords of muscle, he could not lift his opponent more than an inch.

  Leandra’s heart felt as if it were shriveling. The younger man’s maneuvers were only those of a master wrestler; once they had been those of a god. It was him, what was left of him, looking terribly and beautifully human.

  Now the bruiser, bellowing into an attack, turned around in the circle of Dhrun’s arms and slammed an elbow into his jaw. Dhrun’s head snapped around. An arc of saliva flew from his mouth and became silver in the sunlight. Dhrun spun halfway around before collapsing. The chalk ring, and therefore defeat, lay inches from his head.

  The crowd’s chanting dissolved before coalescing into a slower, more ominous rhythm. The bruiser advanced. Dhrun threw himself sideways, away from his opponent and just barely within the circle. The bruiser crouched and advanced again. Dhrun scrambled to regain his feet, moving faster than he had before. For a moment, it looked as if he would make it to safer ground. But then, seeing how close he was to the ring’s edge, he faltered and stuttered his feet.

  The bruiser rushed forward then and threw an overhand punch at the younger man’s ear.

  But somehow the punch struck only air. Dhrun had rolled onto the ground. He had caught the bruiser’s wrist and pulled down, while at the same time, he jammed his foot into the bigger man’s gut and his own back onto the ground. The lines of Dhrun’s thigh muscles jumped into sharp relief as he used the force of the bruiser’s attack to flip him over and out of the ring.

  With a comical expression of shock, the bruiser found himself on his back. His flailing legs knocked over an unfortunate bystander.

  The crowd erupted into cheers and curses. Sunlight glinted off brass and silver rupees changing hands. A huddle of men surrounded Dhrun, hauled him up to his feet and began slapping his back and arms as if he were on fire. Dhrun’s smile was so bright, it hid his swelling lower lip and the blood running freely down a cut in his eyebrow. He was turning around, beaming at the men he had just made slightly richer.

  Then he caught sight of Leandra. Their eyes met and she did not know what he saw in her face because she did not know what she felt. Guilt most likely, or pity. He was so much less than he had been, and she had made him so. His smile wilted. Self-hatred washed through Leandra as she realized that she had ruined his victory, this small joy. She smiled at him, but her heart continued to shrivel.

  One of the men gave Dhrun an especially hard clap on the back, and Leandra looked away. Wanting to be alone, she hurried down the steps and through the crowd. Several men were holding back the bruiser as he called for a rematch. Some men grew quiet when they noticed her, but most were drunkenly oblivious. Dhrun was smiling again and talking loudly of an ancient goddess of victory called Nika. Maybe one or two would pray to her.

  Suddenly everything seemed disgusting to Leandra. The men were too close and smelled of sweat and alcohol. The day’s humidity was made thicker by the smell of kitchen waste: fruit rinds and fish heads in the sun. She pushed her way back into the compound.

  The dim privacy of the hallways provided welcome relief as she made her way to the pavilion. Blessedly, the stairway was empty and she made it to her room without seeing another soul. She threw her new book on the bed and went to the window.

  She set her hands on the sill and felt the great extent of her guilt. She thought of how beautiful Holokai had been, a captain, a creature of the open sea. And yet, in the end, he had been an animal, simple and vicious. He had killed some poor prostitute to get his son. Maybe a dozen prostitutes. Food and sex and progeny. That’s what drove him. But, on some level, that’s what drove everyone. Maybe every soul on the earth was simple and vicious, even the gods. Especially the gods.

  Then she remembered Thaddeus, his long and languid intoxicated dreams. She felt the bite of nostalgia for when she and Thaddeus had been lovers, their intoxicated minds and bodies entwining through long, balmy nights. That had been just before the discovery that Thaddeus was screwing most if not all of the women in his immediate vicinity. Then she saw his aspirations as an addict’s empty delusions.

  Leandra had killed both Holokai and Thaddeus. Had they deserved it? She’d paralyzed her father and brought about the deaths of two of his followers. She’d torn out the part of Dhrun that was most beautiful and most deadly. How could he go on living as a husk of what he had been?

  Leandra felt like a child overwhelmed by emotion. Maybe it was the stress hormone. She cursed herself and balled her hands into fists. But she could not move her mind from her own pain and wretchedness. She remembered then her first lover, Tenili. She’d thought he was a Verdantine merchant, madly in love with her. He’d come to steal her away from her mother and the miseries of her lifelong disease. But he had been a refugee god. He had not loved her, only wanted to trade her to the empress. Leandra could still remember watching her mother’s draconic teeth sinking into him.

  Since then, Leandra had hated her mother. But now, as Leandra looked on the city, she lined her own life up against her mother’s. Were they so different? Hadn’t Leandra consumed Thaddeus and Holokai? Her mother’s judgment and her swiftness to act had lain upon Leandra’s life like lead. But had Leandra not judged both the empire and league? Had her own swiftness to act not started a war?

  She found herself gazing up at the volcano, wondering where her father was. Perhaps he’d made it to the shores of crater lake, that massive reservoir of hydromancers and divine language. Her mind wandered farther. There had to be some way of using the lake’s disp
elling waters against the empire. But how? Catapults perhaps? Water deities to spray it up on the enemy fleets? It seemed phenomenally poor planning, on the part of Ixonian civilization, to lock away such energy.

  The sound of a door sliding open made her turn. Dhrun stood in the doorway, his youthful face uncertain. He had bathed, changed back into his red lungi and white blouse. His hair hung down to his shoulders. Apparently a few of the wrestling spectators had indeed prayed to Nika and she had used the prayers to repair their body. The swelling was gone from Dhrun’s lips and there was no evidence of a cut or stiches near his eyebrow. He was also slightly taller, slightly more muscular.

  Leandra stood up straighter. “Your throw at the end was excellent.”

  His smile was uneasy. “I thought so.”

  “Well…” she said impatiently, “come in.”

  Dhrun slid the screen shut behind him and walked toward the window. “Lea, are you angry that I wrestled?”

  “Why should I be mad?”

  “I just saw you on the street … and…” His dark eyes searched her face.

  “I was only curious. I didn’t mean to distract you.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  She turned to the window. “Nothing.”

  “You’ve never worried about distracting me when I wrestled before.”

  “You were never … never like this before.”

  Silence radiated off of him; it scared her a little that she could not tell its quality.

  At last Dhrun said, “It was harder wrestling with only two hands. But I still can do it, and I can still win.”

  “Good. That is very good.”

  “Will you tell me what’s bothering you?”

  “I said nothing is the matter.”

  He stood beside her and they both looked out at the bay. Two catamarans were patrolling about a mile out of the harbor.

  “When I was a boy,” Dhrun said, “I lived in a nothing of a farming village on the eastern side of the big island. The land is poor and the people are poorer. Whenever the crops failed, many starved and others left. Two of my older siblings died in bad years before I was born. Anyway, the wrestling matches on Bright Souls Night and the Solstice Feasts were the most exciting thing that ever happened. They would make a circle of taro leaves and then put the two youngest kids into the ring. Whoever could push the other kid out stayed in the ring. When I was ten, I stayed in the ring until a sixteen-year-old pushed me out. And when I was sixteen no one could push me out.”