Spellbreaker

by Blake Charlton

  Leandra’s heart ached a little as she remembered how sure of herself Dhrun had been before. “Dhru, come in,” Leandra said and motioned to the window. They stood side by side for a moment, and then Dhrun rested her hands on the sill while Leandra turned around to sit upon it. “Ellen took the loveless off again.”

  “Won’t that make your disease flare worse?”

  “It might, but I wanted it off to talk to you.”

  Dhrun searched her eyes. “What did you want to say?”

  “I suppose you’ve noticed a change in yourself since I deconstructed my mother’s draconic nature.”

  Dhrun’s lips pressed together and her posture seemed to straighten. “I … I can’t assume my Dhrunarman manifestation.”

  “I did that to you.”

  She was searching Leandra’s face again. “Why?”

  “When I was attempting to protect my mother’s draconic text, I wanted to use some of your text as a model. The problem is that I lost consciousness in the process of completing the task. I’m afraid I’ve locked you into this manifestation. I should be able to unlock you, but before I do so, I need to examine you again in a few days. I hope you’ll forgive me.”

  “How long will I be stuck like this?”

  Leandra wondered if she should lie, but seeing the fear in her friend’s eyes, she told the truth. “I don’t know.”

  Dhrun nodded.

  “Is it very hard for you?”

  “It’s the first time since I formed my divinity complex that I’ve been confined to one body and one sex.” She tucked a lock of her black hair behind her ear.

  Leandra took her friend’s hand. “I am sorry for that. I’ll make it as short as possible.”

  “You can’t examine me now?”

  “No, I need to see how both you and my mother adapt to the changes I made. And anyway, I’d need to have the loveless put back on to fully perceive and edit your text.”

  Dhrun’s expression became more concerned. “We have to be more careful about preventing your disease flares. Is it bad now?”

  “Only mild belly pain. Hopefully the stress hormone will keep it from being too bad.”

  “Do you think that … what we were doing right before your last flare … do you think that touched it off?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What we did,” Dhrun asked tentatively, “what do you think about it?”

  Leandra thought for a moment before she said, “It’s hard to explain when you’re like this.”

  “When I’m female?”

  “To be honest, yes.”

  “But I’m no different. I am still Dhrun in either the Nika or Dhrunarman manifestations. They’re both me.”

  “I know they are. I’m…” Leandra felt ashamed that she could not look her friend in the eyes. “I’m…”

  Dhrun placed a hand against her cheek. It sent an uncomfortable thrill through Leandra. She closed her eyes and turned her head into Dhrun’s palm.

  “I still feel the same,” Dhrun said softly.

  Leandra didn’t open her eyes. “When the loveless is off, I feel the same too. But, Dhru, it’s different for me. When you touch me like this, I imagine you as the handsome young man. When I open my eyes, I’ll see you as a beautiful goddess, my closest friend and confidante. You are the same person in each manifestation, but to me you are different aspects of the same person.”

  “How is that different than anyone else? What a person can be, it’s such a big thing. Everyone is both the same person and a different person when they were younger or when they are with family or among enemies. The only difference is that I wear different bodies.”

  “I am sorry, Dhru.” Leandra took the other woman’s hand off her cheek. “This is difficult. For me, the different bodies matter.” The resulting expression of hurt on Dhrun’s face made Leandra pull her into an embrace. “Give me time. Things are changing so fast, and you won’t be locked forever in this manifestation.”

  When they separated, Dhrun had regained her composure. She nodded. “I won’t give up. But will you try to see through the different manifestations to me?”

  “I will, honest. But right now, I have to go see Francesca. Will you come with me?”

  When Dhrun said that she would, they set off down the hallway. It was awkward at first, walking side by side, but then they passed the twin druids in the hallway and the presence of others reinforced their public roles of a Lady Warden and her officer. Outside Francesca’s suite, Leandra asked Dhrun to guard the door. The divinity nodded and produced her old, inscrutable smile.

  After Leandra knocked, she heard her mother’s voice and slid the door open. Inside, all the curtains had been drawn and her mother was sitting on the edge of her bed.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, Mother; I didn’t mean to wake you.”

  Francesca paused and then stood. “No, no.” Her tone was so weary it alarmed Leandra. “I couldn’t sleep, so we should get this over with.” She walked to the window and drew back the curtain. Early-evening light filled the room.

  “Get what over with?”

  “I was wrong about Vivian’s feint.” She pulled the next curtain open. “You were right. If I had been in a draconic form, Vivian’s Numinous spell would have killed me.” She paused, grimaced, pressed a hand to her stomach.

  “Are you all right? Should I get Ellen or one of the other physicians?”

  “No, no. I am still a physician myself, Lea. It’s one of the few things I have left.”

  “You’ve said that physicians make the worst patients.”

  “Horrendous patients, so there’s no point torturing Doria or Ellen with my care.”

  “Can I get you something to drink or eat?”

  “Food sounds awful right now.”

  Leandra walked toward her. “Mother, I…”

  Francesca looked up at her. Her face had not changed—fair complexion, long brown hair, dark eyes, a light spray of freckles—but her expression of slack exhaustion didn’t seem real. It felt as if this smaller, defeated person couldn’t possibly be her indomitable mother.

  “Mother, I wish it could have been different.”

  She nodded. “Circumstances demanded action.”

  Leandra didn’t know what to say.

  Francesca looked out over the city. She spoke then as if to herself. “All the things you could have done differently begin adding up in your head and you weigh their sum against the present. You wonder how it was you made the choices you did. Then you start adding up all the things that I could have done differently or your father could have done differently, and before you know it you’re locking yourself into a calculus of what-might-have-been. But there’s no time for that, and the world rushes on, and far too soon circumstances force you to act again.”

  “It’s a little frightening that you know so well how I feel.”

  Francesca smiled at her. “It was how I felt.”

  “In Port Mercy?”

  “Especially then, but also during every crisis in your treatment when you were a child.”

  “This would be a lot easier if you were ranting, obstinate, and overpowering.”

  Her mother laughed. “It’s not easy for me either. I’m trying to work myself up to thanking you.”

  “I would appreciate it if you did.”

  “You would really care one way or the other?”

  “I would,” Leandra said, a little stung.

  “We are so alike, you and I.”

  “Isn’t it exasperating?”

  “Infuriating, really.” She smiled. “You are so much my daughter, and so much a child of what I was.”

  “You are still a physician and one of the most powerful stateswomen in the league.”

  Francesca looked out the window again. “It should be a consolation, shouldn’t it?”

  “And you must have heard that Dad survived and is coming down from the Pavilion of the Sky.”

  “That’s true. I’ll thank the God-of-gods forever that Nico s
urvived.” She looked at Leandra again and then down at her hands. “You forced me into this state, but it’s the state in which I can survive … so, thank you, Lea.”

  “Just like you did to me in Port Mercy.”

  “It’s a time of reversals. At some point, the dangers of creating or being created turn themselves upside down; the daughter outgrows the mother. As your strength grows, you will need to diminish mine.”

  “Mom, you’re being dramatic.”

  “How well would you tolerate my political fiddling if you became the greatest power in the league?”

  “About as well as the night sky tolerates the sun.”

  “Exactly. But given the current choices, I would prefer that you continue to diminish me.”

  “Are you going to start insisting I flee to the South again?”

  “Right now the city is celebrating, but you and I both know that today’s attack was just a feint. Now that I am not there to fight off the airships, Vivian can take this city. We have to get you out of here.”

  “There might not be time.”

  “But if there is—”

  “And still,” Leandra interrupted, feeling her passion rise, “what is the point of escaping? If I go on to manifest myself as Los, humanity will be exploited by neodemons and eventually replaced by deities. If I die, humanity will be enslaved by the empire’s spellwrights until language stagnates. What’s the point in choosing between two unacceptable choices?”

  “My daughter would still be alive in one of them.”

  “There has to be some third way out, something better.”

  Francesca studied her. “Let’s go outside. I’m feeling better.”

  Leandra followed her onto a balcony looking west. The compound’s garden stood ahead of them. In the gathering darkness, someone had lit a kukui lamp near the pond. Koi were circling near it.

  “Your father sent word that he’s going to sleep in the Floating Palace at the Trimuril’s request. I’ll join him there in the morning to meet with the Sacred Regent. Would you like to accompany me?”

  “I’ve already told the Trimuril I will. And perhaps Ellen told you already, several influential citizens met with the Sacred Regent to object to her supporting me.”

  “Ellen did mention that. And I should warn you that Ellen has her doubts about you as well.”

  “She doesn’t do a very good job of hiding those doubts.”

  “Her transparency was one of the reasons I picked her as a student.”

  “Perhaps I have been jealous of how close you and Ellen are.”

  “I always wished you had been my student instead.”

  “But that’s just it, Mom, that was the only way you gave me to be close to you, but I can never be your student.”

  “You made that abundantly clear.”

  “It’s not in my nature.”

  “I wish I could have done better for you, Lea.”

  “I think … I think I finally understand why you did what you did.”

  “Will you be able to forgive me for it?”

  “If you could return the favor.”

  Francesca looked at her then, a little of her old vitality returning. “With all my heart.”

  Something like fear and something like relief flushed through Leandra. “Okay, I’ll go.”

  Francesca’s eyebrows sank in confusion. “Go where?”

  “To Lorn or Dral. If there’s a way to sneak out to safety, I’ll go. I mean, being the reincarnation of the Dread God has to have some perks, right? I should have enough time to try to change the league?”

  Rather than answer, Francesca nearly tackled Leandra with a hug.

  Leandra could only stand stiffly uncomfortable, but then her mother spun her around. “Darling, I couldn’t stand the idea of the world without you in it.”

  A dull pain opened up in Leandra’s chest. Awkwardly, she returned her mother’s embrace, feebly patted her back.

  “I was so afraid this day would never come,” Francesca murmured. “I thought some imperial spy would kill you, or a disease flare would spin your consciousness across the world, or that you’d get so mad at me you’d deconstruct me into sentence fragments and blow them into the wind, I can’t—”

  “What did you say?” Leandra interrupted, pushing herself away from her mother.

  “You know, the prophetic insight about your needing to kill someone you loved. I had this vision of you deconstructing me and then casting me into the wind.”

  Ideas teemed through Leandra’s mind. She looked up at the volcano’s summit. The sunset was painting a cloud with gold and crimson. The powerful western wind was making the cloud twist. Leandra thought of her father, his metaspell, Aunt Vivian, the Emerald, the Floating City.

  “Lea, what is it?”

  “I may … I may have the solution.” As she said these words, a jolt of fear and sadness moved through her as she realized that she could not tell anyone—especially not her mother—of her realization. They’d stop her.

  “What solution?”

  She shook her head. “Nothing, nothing. I have to … get ready before we go to the Floating City.”

  “But you’ll still go to Lorn or Dral?”

  “Yes, yes. There are just a few matters I have to address.” She squeezed her mother’s shoulders and then embraced her. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

  With that, Leandra hurried from her mother’s rooms, through the hallways, and then out into the gathering dark. All the while, her mind reeled with visions of all that she would have to do and hide and how the world might still be changed.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  In a dream, Francesca roamed her childhood home. She was searching for something valuable and lost. The sky was a starry expanse, but the short adobe buildings and the dusty roads were bright with daylight. Her heart was intoxicated with hope far more intense than any waking emotion. She was climbing a creaking staircase.

  And then she woke under a mosquito net thousands of miles east and hundreds of years after the memories of her dream.

  There were urgent voices and footsteps in the hallway. Something was wrong. Outside her window, the sky was filled with stars.

  Francesca rose and pulled on her black wizard robes. A knock rang from the door and it slid back to reveal Tam. A faint blue light shone from his wooden staff. “The empire’s attacking again,” he said. “We’re evacuating to the Floating City.”

  “On whose authority?” Her instinct was to join the battle in draconic form, but then the reality of her new limitations settled on her.

  “The Sacred Regent has ordered all souls who do not wish to be subject to Tagrana’s godspell to shelter in one of the temple-mountains. Those important to the regency are to report to the Floating City.”

  Francesca swore. Tagrana’s godspell would transform every soul it touched into a tigerlike construct with murderous instincts. “Where’s Leandra?”

  “I’m here,” her daughter said from the hallway.

  “Why was I the last to be woken up?” she asked while scanning the room for anything she needed. She might not be a dragon anymore, but if they thought they could leave her out of events, they were going to find out how wrong they were.

  “Mother, don’t be dramatic. I never went to sleep, so I heard the news as it came in. Somehow the imperial fleet snuck in. The galleys are forming a line outside the harbor right now. So hurry.”

  Deciding that she did not need anything from her room, Francesca slipped on sandals and went out into the hallway. She found Leandra and the now two-armed and female goddess of wrestling. Tam and Kenna, dressed in lacquered wooden plate armor, stood on either side of Lolo, who had grown about a foot. Tam spoke, “The Sacred Regent ordered a squadron of red cloaks to see us through the city.”

  Leandra frowned. “What’s unsafe about the city?”

  “I doubt there’s anything safe about the city,” Ellen grumbled from the back of the crowd.

  “We’re wasting time,” Leandra sa
id and nodded to Tam and Kenna. “Druids, take us out of here.”

  Then they were hurrying through dark hallways and down the pavilion stairs. Kukui lamps flickered and servants and guards hurried about. Somewhere a child was crying. The deep roar of cannon fire rolled through the building. Someone yelled.

  Out on the street, a dozen red cloaks wielding spears and torches waited. A strong wind made the torch flames flicker and dance. They were staring at the eastern sky. Francesca followed their gaze and to her horror saw the billowing shapes of the two airship carriers. Their massive lofting sails shone in the two moonlight.

  Icy fear gripped Francesca. Once the carriers were over the city, they could drop thousands of warkites.

  If Francesca could still transform, she would take wing and tear the carrier’s lofting sails into shreds before they came within ten miles of the city walls. But now there was nothing she could do but follow her party as they hurried along Utrana Way. The street was crowded with civilians, their arms filled with hastily gathered possessions or bawling children.

  An orange light flashed beyond the harbor waters, outlining war galleys that seemed twice as many as the one that had formed during yesterday’s feint. A moment later a second flash burst in the air above the harbor as the city’s anti-cannon war gods threw something in the path of the cannon fire.

  Two gouts of orange cannon fire erupted out on the bay. Then five more. Then ten. Booming reports rolled over the city. Smaller explosions burst above the harbor as the anti-cannon deities sought to block the bombardment. But it was too much. A blast of flame shot up in the harbor, and then another in the Naukaa.

  Leandra shouted something but Francesca could not understand. A fiery explosion shattered the darkness on a terrace ahead and below them. Then Francesca and her party were running. Leandra reached out and Francesca gladly took her hand.

  The Jacaranda Steps were crowded with panicked civilians running for higher ground. The red cloaks bellowed for the crowd to make way, but their voices were drowned out by the roar of cannons.

  At the next terrace, they passed a massive god. Maybe thirty feet tall, his body was that of a banyan tree. Perhaps he was a bellicose reincarnation of the Banyan God. With gigantic wooden limbs, the god pried up one of the stones used to form the Jacaranda Stairs. The cut stone must have weighed a thousand pounds, but with a graceful spin, the war god threw the stone high out into the night toward the imperial war galleys.