Spellbound (40 page)
Authors: Blake Charlton
“Jaaaambher,” the creature wailed as if compelled to do so. The monster's shoulders slumped. It seemed to crumple as if exhausted, defeated.
Then its head bobbed as if sniffing. The bloated lycanthrope body pawed over to one of its fallen comrades. The animated body opened its jaws wide, and a sleek head and shoulders emerged from the maw. The man was covered in a thick glistening liquid, saliva perhaps. “Always in all ways hungry. So hungry.” A slick arm emerged from the mouth to pull the carcass closer so that it could take noisy bites of flesh.
“Ja Ambher!” Nicodemus called.
Like a long giant tongue, the man's body slipped back into the lycanthrope's mouth. The monster reared up on its hind legs. “Scatter rat!” he bellowed. “Scatter rat and bother me no more, no more with your iron talk, your almost diamond mind. Cram your eyes full of filth. Cram yourâ”
Nicodemus peeled off and cast a target sentence onto the cadaver next to the walker. With a single smooth motion, he cast a blasting spell. The corpse exploded into a shockwave of blood and bone that knocked the monster onto its side.
“Ja Ambher, now!” Nicodemus yelled. The Walker scrambled to his feet and sprinted at him. Nicodemus reached a hand behind his head and let it rest on his most powerful wartext. But the Savanna Walker stopped ten feet away and hunkered down. “There was a woman in my camp,” Nicodemus said, “a wizard and a physician. You stole her memories and ability to hear.”
The creature shook his head. “Nononono!”
“You did.”
“She didn't have the memzies to steal. And nonono sound of the ear to hear. She had noâ”
“Shut it.”
The Walker cowered.
“What did you do to her?”
“Was supposed to catch you in daylight, bring you back to make the emerald shine and complete the diamond mind. But I wanted to know her, to feel her, to feeeel what she was. But it shocked, it burned like ice. She has it. She has all of it.”
“Has all of what?”
“Diamond Mind. Diaaamond Miiiind.”
Nicodemus took a threatening step forward, and the monster cringed. “Make sense damn it! What does she have?”
The Walker was shaking. “The demon didn't know I could catch her. She didn't have memzies to steal, she didn't hearing to have.”
Nicodemus took a deep breath. “Does this have to do with her Language Prime shining so bright?”
He nodded. “And the second one has come into the city now, straight from mother. Mother of us. She is what mother wanted.”
“The second dragon?”
The creature shuddered and backed away. “Worse than you know, so much so much worse. They have minds not filthy not like you and I do. Me do. I do. They have minds that are crystalline. Crys-ta-line-mind.”
“Who does?”
“Demons do. Dragons.” He shook his head. “Demonic minds like diamonds.”
“Make blasted sense!”
“They have minds not fertile, not filthy, not fecund.”
A surge of anger heated Nicodemus. “Can you restore Francesca's memories or her hearing?'
“Nonono. Not ever. They never were there.”
“And how did you find our camp in the redwoods after we had remained hidden for so long?”
The lycanthropic jaw opened and the slick face of the man became visible underneath. “Typhon gave me Deedee to feed the hunger. Always in all ways so hungry and we had her in the gullet and knew where the ark was.”
Nicodemus felt his gorge rise. “You ate Deirdre's body?”
The monster shivered, but this time in undeniable pleasure.
Nicodemus's hands began to shake. “And Boann's ark, what have you done to it?”
“Cracked it open and sucked out the diamond mind within. So sharp a sensation in the gut.”
“You murdered Boann?”
“A sharp sensation sliding down.” The monster paused and then opened the lycanthropic mouth so that his human head could extend. After blinking
the saliva out of his eyes, the man named Ja Ambher looked Nicodemus up and down. His ancient face was wrinkled and blotchy, the hair brittle and short, but his eyes â¦
the saliva out of his eyes, the man named Ja Ambher looked Nicodemus up and down. His ancient face was wrinkled and blotchy, the hair brittle and short, but his eyes â¦
His eyes were bright green.
“They want their diamond minds,” Ja Ambher said slowly. “The emerald to put to you and make me into the diamond-minded dragon.” His voice has become level, calm. “I have the fertile mind, the fetid mind, the filthy filthy mind. They want that always to end, no more misspellings.”
“Who?”
“Demons and Los the first demon. They want no more for there to be misspelling in Language Prime. They want the Silent Blight to become all.”
“Tell me about the Silent Blight.”
The monster nodded. “It is the iron talk come to Language Primeâno more nonsense, no more error in language. Make no more. They make you speak by rules. Only ⦠language like ice.”
Nicodemus shook his head in confusion.
The monster continued. “I wanted you to have in my belly the slow pain, so I could leech the language from your mind. But then I found that woman with no memzies. I knew Typhon would make my mind crys-tal-line, like hers. It was what they wanted in Starhaven.”
Nicodemus blinked. “Starhaven?”
The still-glistening face nodded. “Ssstarhaven, where they write like iron, where I was like you before you were like me.”
“I'm nothing like you.”
“The purple prose, the violate violence. Your tattoos, if I didn't know the lie of iron, I could have them too. I learned the Chthonic ghost words. They wanted me to stay, to stay, but I broke away and learned and went away. Born long before you; I am your cosang, consanguinity, cacographer cousin.” The monster paused and spoke as clearly as any sane man. “I know Language Prime. I know what a cacographer truly is.”
Nicodemus took a step back as his mind made a sudden connection. “Ja Ambher,” he whispered. “That's not how your name used to be said.”
“Jaaaambher,” the creature crooned. “Jamber. Jams Bherr.”
“James Berr,” Nicodemus said.
“James Berr,” he repeated. “Once, long ago once, James Berr.”
“History's most hated cacographer,” Nicodemus whispered as he met the green eyes. “You didn't die three centuries ago when you fled into the savanna.”
James Berr shook his head. “I mished and I mashed Language Prime. I made life into Jibberish. I learned to slip in and slip out of the beasts, to mix them. I learned to drive men mad with Jibberish.”
“Jibberish is your dialect of Language Prime.”
“And languages made filthy.”
“All these hundreds of years, you've been the Savanna Walker.”
“Until diamond-minded Typhon made me tame, made me a city dweller, forced into my mind the iron language. He's made half a dragon of me, so I can knock out language in others.” The monster shuddered. “Words, words, words! Must and lust and unpacking my heart with words, words, words, like a whore.” His voice shifted if impersonating someone else. “We take it from you, James, we take it from you! We break you, Nicodemus. Your mind must be icelike or not at all. They jammed their language into me, and I made all profit on it to curse them in their own language, curse their mechanical minds.”
Nicodemus swallowed. “All those years ago, when you were a student at Starhaven, and all those wizards died of misspells, was that an accident? Your mistake?”
Sharp laughter. “All misted take, no mistake. The red plague of misspells. My curses burned them into boils. Always they should suffer and die for forcing my mind.”
“You are a monster,” Nicodemus whispered.
Berr smiled at him, imperial green eyes shining bright. “You're just like me, cosang. We have the filthy minds. We rot their rules. Rot their rules. Rotrotrotâ”
“I am nothing like you!”
Berr smiled and stepped closer. He began to croon: “Cousin, cosang, coooousin. Hatred is for the iron language, the diamond minds. You must free me from Typhon.”
“Free you? You are his half dragon!”
Berr grimaced. “His slave. If we get that emerald to touch you, he will crystallize my brain, make it think latticewise. He will make me unable to misspell, unable to err. You must set me free before the demon figures to make me catch the second. Once I am diamond minded, I will cross the ocean, and the demons will cross. The Disjunction will make it impossible for anyone to misspell.”
Nicodemus took a step back. “I thought the Disjunction would make language meaningless by making language chaos.”
Berr shook his massive wolf's head. “Backwards cacographer.” He laughed. “Language is meaningless without error, without fetid rotting chaos. Perfect order makes it de-script-ive, slave to nature. Fecund chaos makes it pre-script-ive, creating nature. When all language is perfect, feces-loving life will expire and only the diamond minds will remain. Language Prime needs the
slippery mind, the error, the monsters, the war. Obscene words to find the fittest, fattest word.”
slippery mind, the error, the monsters, the war. Obscene words to find the fittest, fattest word.”
Nicodemus took a step back. “You are telling the truth?”
Berr nodded his lycanthropic head and then looked down at his massive body. “This wolf flesh, your touch would turn it to necro canker. Were I to set upon you with this flesh, you would rot it away.” The lycanthropic body gagged and then vomited out Berr's slick human body.
As the naked man rose to his feet, the lycanthropic body fell over and convulsed once before dying.
Nicodemus pulled his most powerful wartext from his back. The violate and indigo runes leapt off of his skin into sharp paragraphs that interlocked to form a long sword, pointed with dancing flamelike spikes.
Nicodemus leveled the blade at Berr.
The grotesque man only smiled. In a calm tone he said, “I am the older cacographer. Anything you write will misspell on my skin.”
Nicodemus took a step back. “I killed your devotees without your misspelling my texts.”
Berr's smile broadened. “I meant you to. How else would you come so close? Why else would I tell you so much?” He took a step forward. “You must free me before I am diamond minded. You must become like me, powerful in your filthy, fecund mind. You must do this now to stop the demon.”
Nicodemus took another step back. “I'd sooner burn on every level of hell.”
“They are forcing you into the iron talk. If you fight the demon, you will become the demon. You think you want the emerald, the crystalline mind. But you must be original as monsters are original. Now I have freed you. You must free me. Free me!”
“Take another step, and I'll free your head from your neck.”
Berr walked straight for him.
Nicodemus thrust the textual sword at his chest, but the instant it touched the Savanna Walker, the textual blade dissolved. Nicodemus started to peel a tattooed blasting spell from his forearm, but Berr grabbed him and the text broke itself into nothing.
Like streams of water, all the spells written across Nicodemus's body fell to the ground and splashed into nothing.
“I am the older cacographer,” Berr said in a singsong tone. “You must come with me now. You cannot fight the demon without becoming the demon. The filthy mind is life's only hope of escaping the diamond minded, of escaping the Disjunction.”
Nicodemus froze and stared into the eyes that were the same shade of
green as his own. Berr was holding his arm. He was the first human in ten years to touch him without withering with disease.
green as his own. Berr was holding his arm. He was the first human in ten years to touch him without withering with disease.
Berr nodded slowly. “You understand it all now. I will show you how. We shall be free. We shall not become the demons. We shall escape the Silent Blight and the Disjunction.”
Nicodemus searched the eyes of his ancient cousin. Hot panic and cold certainty swept through his body like the fever and chill of an illness. He felt as if he might vomit. He felt relieved; this was his fate, no denying it.
“I am the older cacographer,” Berr said softly, revealing the jagged teeth that had eaten Deirdre.
Terror and frantic rage burned so hotly through Nicodemus that the world became unworldly. With all his strength and fury, Nicodemus slammed his fist into the old man's mouth.
Berr's head snapped back.
Nicodemus grabbed his shoulders and pulled him in to drive his knee into his cousin's stomach.
James coughed out air and fell over.
“I am the younger cacographer!” Nicodemus snarled. He was strong, faster, more alive with hatred.
Nicodemus fell on the man, pinning him down with one knee as he slammed long, looping punches into his cousin's mouth.
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