“Who is Silvus?” I asked, trying to move the conversation away from hide-nailing.
“He is Mastersmith of the blasted Guild.” The answer was growled back at me, like it was supposed to be the most obvious thing in the world. Again, the same look. He was watching me, trying to catch me in a lie.
“Akto, I am afraid all these words do not make sense to me. Wordsmith, Guild, Mastersmith, Wordscapist…”
Suddenly, Akto was at my throat and I was flat on my back on the sand, the point of the knife threatening to penetrate my delicate skin. It was another one of those surreal moments; the type that I had read so often about but had never come close to experiencing. Big threatening man pinning me down, knife suspended at my throat, back pressing against the sand, waves coming within inches of my face, cool breeze on my skin. All these thoughts passed through my head in a split second as I considered the possibility that I was on the verge of dying for the second time in 24 hours. What scared me even more was what was happening inside my head. The voice almost screamed in outrage, “How dare he! A norm! Punish him! Come on boy! What are you waiting for!”
“How do you know about the Wordscapist?” Akto growled the words in my ear, distracting me from the voice’s tirade. I was too terrified though, to respond.
“How do you know?” Akto repeated, increasing the pressure on my throat.
It was all a little bit too much to take, but I decided to prioritise. The voice could wait. I had to take Akto’s question first.
“The notebook… I read it in the notebook…” I could not recognise the strangled words said in a voice choked with fear. I realised that it was I who had responded. My baritone had deserted me and I had begun to sound like a thin alto on the verge of breaking into a falsetto. Operatic analysis; I was going nuts!
“Why don’t you just make him into a nice little piglet!” the voice demanded. I continued ignoring it, tough as it was given that it was in my head.
“You tell me you can read Esperanto?” Loon asked, the voice becoming all the more hostile, the knife pressing down an infinitesimal bit more. “You, who are not a wordsmith!”
“Esperanto? I don't know what that is.” I gasped out. My voice was almost a shriek now.
“The notebook was written in Esperanto; a language you apparently do not know about. And you say you read about the Wordscapist in the notebook?” I felt a fleeting bite at my throat and a trickle of warm wetness.
“No!” I screamed. “Don’t kill me! Don’t… Don’t!” I was beginning to get hysterical.
“Calm down!” the voice was clear and loud in my head. “He is not going to kill you! He is nothing, just a norm. Why would you fear him?”
I had no clue what the voice meant, but it worked. I did calm down, marginally. I spoke slowly, coherently and carefully, “Akto, I have no clue what’s Esperanto and what’s not. I remember that word because it sounded like English. A few others because they sounded like names.”
The knife eased up a bit. I could almost hear Akto thinking that part through.
“Get up,” he said as he got off me. I took a couple of moments to catch my breath. I pushed myself up into a sitting position. I touched my throat and my fingers came away red from the trickle of blood. “You’re crazy. You’re fricking mad,” I said in a strangely dead and hoarse voice, looking at my fingers smeared with my blood. This was beyond unreal!
Akto gave me a long, hard look. “What is ‘fricking’?” he asked.
I could not believe his question. I squinted at him as he stood above me, his form silhouetted against the sun. “I say ‘frick’ instead of the f-word. And it’s none of your goddamn business!”
“F-word?” he asked. This conversation was getting more and more surreal.
“Fuck, man! I do not say ‘fuck’! Is that clear now? You understand?”
“You should say ‘fuck’ when you feel like saying ‘fuck’ instead of saying stupid things like ‘frick’.” He dispensed this advice in a very matter-of-fact way, completely ignoring the fact that he had tried to kill me half a minute ago.
“The man has a point,” the voice said, also rather matter-of-factly. I could not believe this bullshit!
Akto offered me his hand, rather reluctantly. I refused to have anything to do with it. I glared at him as I continued to rub my throat.
“I’m sorry,” he said with great difficulty, “It just felt suspicious when you used that word. I had not mentioned it, and there was no way that someone who did not know anything about the Way of the Word could have heard about the Wordscapist.” Akto looked straight into my eyes as he said these words. The words still sounded too much like an explanation and not enough like an apology. But it looked like the best I was going to get for almost having my throat cut out. I took his hand and pulled myself up. We settled down again, and picked up our bottles of beer, going back to swigging and staring at the sea, trying to pretend that nothing had happened.
“Well, ask your questions,” he said after a while, “It’s obvious that you’re not a wordsmith. Not a good one at least. You let me get close enough to kill you, and your skin is not protected from my steel. No wordsmith worth his salt would have allowed that.”
I digested that. Skin not protected from steel…poetic but scary. I had to figure out how to do this skin protection.
“Well… so what is the Way of the Word?” I asked, absent-mindedly rubbing sand off my elbows.
“You really do not know?” he asked, looking at me carefully. I kept up a deadpan expression and look back at him.
“I still can’t make up my mind about you,” he continued, “You could be lying, but could just be really good at it…wordsmith good. I have a good nose for the gift, and I can feel it in you; strong. You have the stench of a wordsmith on you.” Akto fingered his knife as he looked at me. The sun was in my eyes as I looked at him, and I couldn’t figure out if he was staring at my eyes or my throat.
“Akto, I do not know what you are talking about,” I said, keeping my voice cautiously steady, “That will not change, no matter what you think.”
He gave it some thought, and then went on, “I’ll play along for now. I’ll answer your questions. But listen well, boy. If you are playing with Akto Loon, you will be skinned and fed into the meat grinder. You will be part of the hundreds of pink sausages we sell in our deli.”
My stomach did a little flip at the thought of the sausages I had just had. I stopped myself from thinking about where that meat had come from. I gulped and managed an ‘appreciate it’.
“I do not believe you’re taking this from a norm,” the voice sounded disgusted. “Shut up!” I retorted, careful to keep it in my head. I wanted to hear Akto talk. I wanted to try and make sense of all this.
“For thousands of years, ever since Man discovered speech, there have been wordsmiths, those who can weave reality with words, and there have been norms, those who can’t. You are a norm, or at least, claim to be one. The wordsmiths follow what is called the Way of the Word; a world that is woven around the gift of the Word, and all that had to do with it.”
I felt my stomach dropping as I heard the words. Weaving reality with words…that sounded a lot like what I did with the strange warp. I had never stopped to consider the implications of what I wrought as changes to reality. But it sure sounded like it. It was confirmed now, I definitely was a wordsmith! I could not let Akto know! He would kill me!
“Hallelujah! The boy realises he’s a wordsmith!” the voice exclaimed in mock glee.
Once again, I let the voice be. However, the voice soon reaffirmed my suspicions. Wordsmith. I tasted it in my head. It felt right. Wordsmith. I could do this later. I had to come up with a reaction and quick. Akto was looking at me strangely.
“Considering I know nothing about the Way of the Word, I guess I am not a wordsmith. So I would be a norm?” I was desperately trying to avoid becoming a long string of sausages.
“Norm, a normal. Wordsmiths are abnormal, freaks,” Akto explai
ned. “When nature goes crazy, it allows some men and women to meddle with it. That is what wordsmiths are. Dew sensed it in you, and though I don’t have the curse, I can feel it in you too. There is a small chance that you are a cipher; a wordsmith who has not been discovered by the Guild. In that case you are not lying, and I will not kill you.” Akto said this with his by-now-familiar deadpan expression, looking me straight in the eyes. “But then, ciphers are usually not so strong. Dew made you out to be the most powerful wordsmith she had ever seen. With that kind of power, a cipher would plain explode, not knowing how to control the power and channel it.”
A cipher. There. I had found another word that described me in this crazy world. The Guild, whatever that was, had definitely not discovered me. And I was beginning to realise that I was most definitely a wordsmith. There was some comfort in that. But I could not celebrate yet. I had to find out more. I decided to bluff some more. “First you tell me that I am a wordsmith. Then I am a cipher,” I almost shouted at Akto, getting a little aggressive, “Next you will be calling me the chosen one or something. Akto, do me a favour. Why don’t you start at the beginning? Tell me what this Guild does. Also, tell me what a wordsmith is, especially considering you think I am one.”
Akto gave me another one of his looks. He definitely specialised in those. I managed to keep my cool and eyeballed him right back. When it came to bluffing, I had few peers.
“The gift of the Word allows you to change reality, using only words. You can change the way people feel; you can change objects; you can make things happen; and in some cases, you can even create things out of nothing. It is like magic, only much more complex. It is not merely knowing spells. It is about using words to shape the world around you. That is what the gift of the Word allows you to do. And anyone with this gift is called a wordsmith.” I gulped as I heard those words. It was one of those moments when all your life comes into perspective and you realise what it’s all about. I wondered how many other wordsmiths there were. I wondered what more I could do with this gift. Not now! Ask more! Find out more!
“And you think I am one?” I asked, trying to give him one of his long, hard looks. It missed by a mile and then some.
“Yes. You have the stench of a wordsmith about you,” he said, “You’re not just a smooth talker; you’re gifted. You might not know it yet though. Or maybe you’re one hell of an actor. I’ll find out soon enough.”
Damn it! He was too close to the truth for comfort. I had to distract him! More questions! “You mentioned magic. You mean to say, magic is real?”
“Magic is nothing but a simple form of weaving wordscapes, using pre-woven scapes called spells,” Akto stopped me with a gesture before I could interrupt him, “A wordscape or a scape is made of the words a wordsmith uses when weaving reality, changing it, sometimes even creating it. Each wordscape is independent in intent, and must be woven using words that have to be uttered by a wordsmith. These words have to be powerful and said right to have the intended effect. Sometimes, some of these scapes are recorded and the words are passed on to other wordsmiths who just repeat them. Thus, they become spells. Do you understand now?”
Memories came back, swooping into the new structure I was learning. It felt right. It was the right word. Wordscape. And wordsmith. I liked the ring of it.
“You are much more than a wordsmith, boy,” the voice commented dryly. Christ! Here I was coming to grips with being a wordsmith, and already I was much more than it. I asked the voice to shut up again, especially because Akto was doing a repeat of his do-you-understand rather irritably.
“Yes, I guess. It kind of makes sense, even if it’s tough to believe,” I muttered, trying hard to come across as a belligerent norm, “So wordsmiths are like powerful magicians who can just create any spell they want?”
“Yes, you could say that. They work with words and the essence of their meaning. They do not need spells except when working on group scapes.” He continued, almost expecting my question, “Group scapes are coordinated efforts where multiple wordsmiths are required to pull off the scape. In this case, they work with predetermined spells to ensure that they are doing the same thing.”
“And the Guild manages all this coordination?” I asked, playing the part of the bright student who suddenly sees it all. Deep inside, I felt a rush as I understood the implications of these words. I was finding it really hard to keep a straight face.
“The Guild controls most of the scapes woven in our world. It controls the entire world that is linked to the Way of the Word. It spots and recruits all those individuals with the gift who can become wordsmiths. The Guild also trains these wordsmiths and employs them in various tasks across the world.”
I felt slightly sick at the thought of an organisation that recruited and trained wordsmiths, and then employed them to do ‘tasks’. “What are these tasks?” I asked, knowing almost intuitively what the answer would be.
“They control the way our world works. They decide what happens and who gets to be in power, which group gets to propagate their ideas and which one gets slaughtered for theirs, which war happens and who wins in that war. The Guild controls the whole world and every power group running a country or company worth two cents.”
I stared at the sea, now bright blue under a cloudless sky and a bright sun. I took a swig of lukewarm beer and let Akto’s words sink in. No wonder I had such trouble sticking to a job. The one organisation that could recruit my talents had not ‘found’ me yet. ‘Controlling the world’ sounded pretty attractive. I had to know more about this setup. I pumped Akto with another question, “This man who died; Andy, your brother; he was with the Guild?”
Akto like me was staring at the sea, chugging his beer. He continued staring at the sea, which was fine by me, as he spoke, “Andy was with the Guild, yes. He could not stick for too long. He had funny ideas about free spirit and independent thought. The Guild does not encourage that kind of talk. Andy joined up with the Free Word, an underground movement of sorts, a bunch of renegade wordsmiths. Joining the Free Word automatically means a death sentence from the Guild. Andy lived a charmed life for six years, escaping multiple attempts on his life. But then he kept upping the stakes. He kept working on bigger things. The last scam he was working was to uncover something illegal Silvus, the Guild Mastersmith, was up to. It was supposed to be a big deal. With Silvus arrested, the Guild would weaken considerably. But then poor Andy ran out of luck.”
More pieces fell into place. The diary, the words, Andy’s death. I believed in free spirit and independent thought too. But I was not anything like Andy, I realised. He seemed to have been a real hero, which I was not. I valued my well-being way too much to want to be a hero. Heroes ended up dead or worse way too often. A thought hit me. “Illegal? Arrested? Do the cops know about the Way of the Word and everything you told me?”
Akto chuckled at the thought, “No. Not your cops. The Guild has another agency doing their coppering. It is called the Continuum Control Corps. Silvus was up to something that would have got him into trouble with the CCC. Andy was after proof when he set out from home a year or so back.”
Both of us spent some more time contemplating the ocean. I could almost feel a third person in the group… the voice in my head. I could feel the comfort and camaraderie you share in a group when engaged in this kind of activity. The sea, the sand, the beer (even if it was warm beer). I did not stop to consider the implications of getting pally with a voice that had invaded my mind and consciousness and that commented on my thoughts and actions with the air of a disapproving school teacher. But I did relax a bit. I laughed aloud at the fact that in the midst of all the crazy things I had discovered from Akto, an opinionated voice in my head seemed perfectly normal. That got me a strange look from Akto, but I waved it away with a don’t-mind-me wave of my hand.
I settled into a more comfortable position, shifting the sand to form hollows for my elbows. However, a nagging thought kept coming back to me. I decided to ask Akto, no ma
tter how silly it sounded.
“Akto,” I called out, letting the word hang in the air, continuing to stare at the sea.
He looked at me in response, waiting for me to complete the unspoken query.
“I guess this stuff is all pretty secret. I hope you are not going to kill me because you told me all this.” I felt pretty stupid saying it, but then it was always better to know.
“I will kill you if I find out that you have lied to me. If not, I will not harm you. If your story is true, you were the last one to see my brother alive. You helped him send word to me. You were there for him in whatever way you could be and you have now come down all this way to see me and give me his notebook. And it looks like you are in trouble with the law because of that incident. It looks like I owe you for whatever you did. You shall stay with me as my guest for a while. In the meantime, I will make my own enquiries about you. For your own sake, let us hope that you have not been lying to me.”
I had lied to Akto alright. I had lied about my gift. I watched Akto swigging his beer nonchalantly. I tasted my beer. It was lukewarm and tasted flat and bitter. I looked at the sea too. Suddenly, the waves weren’t so charming after all.
CHAPTER 8
A Voice in the Head
Wishes are horses
And horses run wild
Hold on for the ride of your life
Remember?
Wishes don’t heed to whistles
Slick
I came back to my room after my conversation with Akto. Beyond a point, my mind had stopped registering words, let alone concepts. Fortunately, Akto hadn’t had much more to say. He saw me off with an invitation to the Saturday night market, to his stall. “You will come, yes?” was the way he had put it. The look he gave me let me know that the invitation was to be taken pretty seriously. I guess I had no choice but to turn up at his lantern stall (whatever that was), later that evening. But then, I had always wanted to come to Goa and do all this, I told myself. “Not like this,” the voice in my head piped up. The me-voice. The other voice stayed silent.
Wordscapist: The Myth (The Way of the Word Book 1) Page 11