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Authors: Blake Charlton

BOOK: Spellbound
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Had she worked some spell on his mind, given him quaternary cognition? Was he already lost to the Disjunction? Then he remembered her eyes when she had left him. Nicodemus looked at Typhon. “I will accept.”
The demon smiled. He stood from the throne. “Then come here, my son. Let me look into your thoughts.”
Francesca swung her tail away, and Nicodemus climbed the dais to Typhon. Both the Savanna Walker and Cala watched the proceedings without expression.
“Kneel,” the demon ordered. Nicodemus obeyed. Typhon pressed an alabaster palm to his cheek. The demon could crush his skull with that hand. Suddenly Nicodemus's every thought and every intimate emotion swirled around his mind in a nauseating blur. Then the demon's hand left his cheek. Strangely weak, Nicodemus fell forward onto the dais.
“My son,” Typhon said in a low voice, “it is done.” Fighting the dizziness and nausea, Nicodemus stood up straight. The demon was looking down at him, all-black eyes wide with what seemed like exhilaration. “Francesca has you spellbound.”
And then the demon looked to Francesca. “Swear on the Creator's name?” A blur of Numinous text flashed between them.
Then the demon's massive white arms were around Nicodemus's neck fastening a thin chain, at the end of which dangled the Emerald of Aarahest.
Nicodemus grasped the gem. As it had been when he had briefly possessed the gem ten years before, he felt no different. There was no flash or rush of energy, but even so his mind was now complete. So long as his skin was touching the emerald, he was not cacographic.
Nicodemus walked down the dais and stood next to Francesca.
“Excellent,” Typhon rumbled as he sat on the throne. “When the siege begins, we shall send Ja Ambher to the ancient continent. Nicodemus, your escort of druids and highsmiths will awaken and see you and Francesca in her human form attacking me. We will make it appear that you have driven me off. Their testimony will assure your ascendency in the League of Starfall. I will disappear, and most of my followers who control this city will be killed or captured, giving your half sister and Celeste the impression they destroyed the demonic threat until I resurface.”
The demon turned to the Savanna Walker and began speaking. Just then a Numinous script hit Nicodemus's shoulder. He translated it:
“Stand beside me.”
He looked up to see Francesca staring at him.
Typhon was still speaking, but Nicodemus backed away until he stood next to Francesca.
“Typhon did not anticipate what your cacography can do to me,”
she wrote to him.
“Separate yourself from the emerald so it doesn't touch your skin. Then lay your hand on me.”
Nicodemus swallowed and brought his hand up to grasp the emerald. Careful not to attract the demon's attention, he pulled down hard and broke the thin necklace from which it hung. Above him Francesca tossed her head, perhaps to distract Typhon. Nicodemus brought his hand down to his waist and then tucked the emerald into his belt purse, away from his skin.
Typhon was still issuing instructions to the Savanna Walker.
Nicodemus pressed his palm to Francesca's side. It was almost painfully hot. Now he saw into her Language Prime texts, how infinitely complex they were, how they had become entwined with magical language.
He also felt how his cacography could shift her text. Unlike a being of pure Language Prime or pure magical runes, she resisted all but subtle changes caused by his touch.
A Numinous message appeared on the back of Nicodemus's hand. He translated it,
“Weve mispeled the part of my mind that must obey an oath sworn on the Craetor's name. Should we braek the oath?”
Instantly he replied,
“Yes!”
No sooner had he cast this text than Francesca kicked with her hind legs, cracking terracotta tiles and launching herself forward. Wings outstretched and roaring thunderously, she crashed into Typhon.
The
Queen's Lance
had covered half the distance to the line of battle when a crewman shouted. Izem looked back. “Our target went down into the savanna. But the
Pike
lost an aft sail. They're ditching her in the lake.”
Cyrus glanced back to see
Pike
's long white hull crumple onto the reservoir. Jumpchutes, mostly extemporized from the hull, bulged up as the crew tried to jump away from the impact. Some might reach the docks. Others would have to tread water or face the lycanthropes waiting on the banks.
But Cyrus had no time to worry. Ahead, the
Kraken
and the
Shark
were turning away from the engagement. “What are they doing?” he called and pointed.
The two remaining polytheist destroyers, now bolstered by more lofting kites, were advancing on the monotheist fleet.
“Reduce aft sails!” Izem shouted. “The carriers are editing some of the warkites to engage anything in the air that—”
Before the captain could finish, Cyrus saw it drop from the
Cyclone
: a storm of seething white cloth and flashing steal. Simultaneously, all the warkites bulged wide to catch the wind, each setting its sail at exactly the same angle. Cyrus extended the lateral wings, gliding the
Queen's Lance
toward the
Kraken
.
A cheer went up from the polytheist fleet. They had forced a carrier to start deploying prematurely. Cyrus grimaced. Their devotion to their city would have to border on fanatical for them to celebrate an air-to-air warkite engagement. As if to prove their zeal, every last enemy lofting kite cast out jumpchutes to intercept the warkites. They engaged just as Cyrus brought the
Queen's Lance
into company with the
Kraken
. There were maybe two hundred monotheist warkites, half that number of lofting kites. As they neared an enemy, the warkites changed from large, floating sails to serpentine streamers, talons flashing. Some fell upon the lofting-kite canopies, cutting and slashing. Five or six pilots went plummeting down to the city. Other warkites attacked the pilots suspended below the canopies, their talons slashing against flesh. Still, the majority of pilots
were using their canopies to enfold and incorporate the warkites into their canopies.
“They're dropping crew!” Izem called out, pointing to the two remaining enemy destroyers. Cyrus saw green-clad figures, each followed by a chute only large enough to slow their fall to less than terminal velocity.
“They're pulling windward,” Cyrus yelled. “Insanity!” The destroyers advanced into the fray between lofting kite and warkite. The warship's broad sails pushed the smaller combatants aside and sent them tumbling in their wake.
Cyrus looked over at the captain. “What are they doing?”
“It doesn't make any sense.”
Some of the warkites began cutting into the destroyer's lofting sails. But whatever pilots remained onboard paid this no mind. Wounded, but still pulling fast windward, the destroyers broke out of the fray. They were only a mile distant from the
Cyclone
. “They're going to ram the carrier!” Izem yelled. “The others can't get there in time.” He pointed, and indeed the
Kraken
had let fly the flags for attack, but she was coming around too slowly. The
Shark
was even farther away.
Cyrus dropped the
Queen's Lance
into a dive to pick up speed and then brought her around and engaged all aft sails. “We'll get only one pass,” Izem shouted. “Then they'll hit the carriers.”
Cyrus glanced back and saw that both carriers had spread all their canvas in an attempt to pull themselves up. If they could gain enough height, they might float over the destroyers to the sanctuary.
The
Queen's Lance
closed the distance to the nearest enemy destroyer. Cyrus called out before impact and pulled up, trying to turn within the sail. But he struck too soon, punched clear through the top of the canopy, and then punched through its lateral aspect: two holes rather than one long tear.
He looked back at the destroyer and cheered when he saw it was sinking. The two holes had been enough to disable the underpiloted airship. Its lofting sail blew ragged, and its hull pointed down toward the Auburn Mountains.
But the other destroyer had stayed its course and risen just as fast as the
Cyclone.
They were only moments away from impact. Cyrus prayed for mercy as the doomed carrier deployed its full complement of warkites. The constructs took wing for the sanctuary like a swarm of locusts.
 
FRANCESCA PINNED TYPHON with her right forepaw and then with a backhand swipe sent him flying into a pillar. His alabaster body fractured the stone.
Francesca lunged at the Savanna Walker. The pearly white dragon
leapt at her, widening his maw to show translucent fangs. Francesca dodged left and raked her claws down his scales, trying to find purchase. He clamped his teeth on her shoulder even as she did likewise to his neck. They tumbled backward, rolling tail over top scale. He struck a pillar. A redwood beam crashed down on her hindleg. She snarled and kicked it off.
Though Francesca could not see the language in which he was working, she could feel the Savanna Walker casting spell after spell against her mind, trying to interrupt her perception. But her mind, like his, was now draconic—halfway between human and demonic.
The Savanna Walker screamed, and Francesca realized that she had sensed textual signals move from his mind to his throat and chest. She had known he was going to scream the instant before he had. Her quaternary cognition allowed her to prognosticate his action.
A signal shot from the Walker's brain to his left hind leg to cock it back and kick her head away from his neck. The instant he began this action, she twisted her jaws and slammed her left wing forward, rolling him onto his right side and rendering his action useless.
The Walker intended to open his mouth and bite her neck, but the moment he unclenched his jaw, she brought her left foreleg up and smashed it into his eye. The Walker's head snapped back, and all signals to his body momentarily stopped. Then he sent a score of signals down to his tail, commanding it to swing around to knock out her legs. She pinned his tail down with her right foreleg. His eyes were as wide as dinner plates, as nacreous as abalone shell. He knew.
The Walker went limp, his head hanging slack in submission. Francesca readjusted her jaws and made ready to crush his windpipe. But just before she clenched her jaws, the topography of the future sunk all around her. It was as if she had been walking on a fog-covered coast and the fog to her right suddenly vanished to reveal a massive canyon. Before her stretched wide, gaping futures she had not perceived until now.
She had just enough time to tense before an explosive force detonated against her left breast and tossed her into the ceiling. The carved redwood splintered under the force of her body.
The next instant she fell back to the floor, landing on all four feet. Typhon charged her, both fists blazing dazzling red. He cocked one hand back. She lashed out with her tail, knocked him flat. The demon's red wartext flew from his hand and blasted through a pillar ten yards away. An instant later an avalanche of plaster and wood crashed down.
Typhon struggled to his feet and bellowed, “Fly!” The Savanna Walker bared his teeth and backed away, preparing to flee. In that instant, Francesca understood what Typhon had done to alter the future. If she pursued
the Savanna Walker, the demon would cast another blasting text. He couldn't hope to defeat her, but he could detain her long enough for his other creation to escape. That would mean subjecting himself to her full strength. He was willing to sacrifice.
The demon cast his second blasting text, aiming for her chest. She ducked and bunched her wings above her. The resulting detonation jammed her down, driving her claws through the tiles and into the plaster and wood below.
After pulling her paws free, she reared up on her hind legs and brought her foreclaws down on Typhon. They struck a textual shield he had written around himself. “Fly!” Typhon screamed. The Savanna Walker bolted for the outer wall and the open sky beyond. Francesca couldn't chase the Walker or Typhon would strike her with another detonating text.
She again brought her claws smashing down onto the protective text that Typhon had written around himself. Growing frantic, she reared up again. Just before she started to come down, a lance of Numinous prose struck Typhon's protective text. Francesca glanced left and saw Nicodemus, his hand still outstretched from the spell he had cast. Her lover had put his skin back into contact with the emerald. He was the Halcyon again, capable of infinitely complex spells.
Francesca brought her claws down again. All of the demon's text, now weakened by Nicodemus's disspell, crumbled under her force. She felt the demon fold under her claws.
When she pulled her claws back, she saw the demon's body broken open, brilliant ruby light bleeding out of his abdomen. This stone body was his ark, the physical seat of his soul. Leaning forward, she drove a single claw into the demon's skull. It burst into an eruption of bloody light.
The rubicund shockwave dazzled her mind with the sensations of burning and passion and injury and ecstasy and a hundred other sensations that seemed the incarnation of deep, deep red.
In the next instant, the synesthesia passed and she found herself with her author's remains beneath her claws. She shook with primal hunger. A gallon of caustic saliva gushed into her mouth. She bit into the demon. Text burned and shifted within her mouth as she chewed the divine language down to fragments.
Years ago, Fellwroth had betrayed Typhon and cut him into sentences. Still, the demon had infected Boann's ark and returned to his full strength. Francesca would ensure that did not happen now. She ground him with her teeth until not one of Typhon's runes was connected to another. She took the second bite of the ark and chewed that into nothing before swallowing it as well.
Then she saw her lover.
Nicodemus had lowered his hands. He was surrounded now by revived druids, highsmiths, and wizards. They stared at her and then at him. But Nicodemus looked nowhere but at her, and in his wide green eyes she saw naked shock at what she had just done.
She froze and looked into the landscape of the future. Time seemed almost flat save for the now-retreating possibility of catching James Berr.
“The Walker!”
she cast to Nicodemus.
“I must try to stop him. Keep yourself alive. I will come back for you.”
Nicodemus caught and read this. With the speed of a Halcyon, he wrote a response. But before he could cast it to her, the hallway was flooded by a seething riot of sailcloth and steel talons.
Warkites.
 
WITH THE SKY
clear of enemy airships, Izem retook control of the
Queen's Lance
and joined company with the
Kraken.
The suicide destroyer had brought down the
Cyclone.
Their combined wreckage had crashed into the Auburn Mountains on the far shore of the reservoir. A square mile of giant trees now stood shrouded by torn sailcloth and dead or dying pilots.
However, the
Thunder
was still flying with its full complement of warkites. What was more, the
Cyclone
's warkites had reached the sanctuary and were swarming all about the dome, attacking any source of magical text they could detect.
By now, every enemy lofting kite should have flown flags of surrender. But only half the polytheist pilots had done so. The rest were rallying to the sanctuary, trying to fight off the warkites; however, with the
Thunder
now flying nearly on top of them, it was hopeless.
“Do you think they want to become martyrs?” Izem asked.
“What, those pilots?” Cyrus asked while watching the bloody chaos that surrounded the dome. “Martyrs for polytheism? It seems insane for a devotee to Cala to care—”
His voice died as a large swath of the flying cloth—both warkites and lofting kites—lost the blue glow of hierophantic language. Like mundane sheets, they fluttered down toward the ground. “Captain, look!” he pointed.
“What under heaven?”
The vanishing language continued upward through the chaos, leaving a trail of mundane cloth. “Some kind of massive disspell?” Cyrus asked before jumping slightly.
Izem looked at him. “What do you see?”
He pointed. “There. It's a blind spot. Look there, you won't see anything.”
“Cyrus, what are—” his voice died as something large and dark took to the air from the base of the sanctuary.
At first Cyrus thought it was an airship made of dark sailcloth, but then it flapped its wings and rose fast up into the air. It was heading west, toward the ocean. Sunlight glinted off its brassy scales.
“Captain,” Cyrus yelled, “that creature is important to polytheistic rebellion. I suggest we investigate.”

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