Spellbreaker (16 page)

Vivian's more recent memories were nebulous things; they seemed to have shape until she reached for them, and then they dissolved. Nicodemus had recently committed … some transgression. What … she couldn't remember.

The wizardly prophecies described the Halcyon as the protector of humanity during the Disjunction, but they also described the Storm Petrel, who would betray humanity. She had hoped Nicodemus would not be involved in prophecy. But perhaps Vivian's previous self had discovered that Nicodemus was in fact the Storm Petrel.

Vivian tried harder to recall, but the halo's sentences began to strike her head more frequently. Tension gathered in the Numinous matrix. She put aside everything but the master spell. She had to keep casting and recasting.

Before she had begun this spell, she had decided on a course of action. Vivian could remember her feelings of absolute certainty, but now she couldn't recall the reason for her actions. Whatever they had been, they had been good enough to convince her former self; therefore, her present self had to trust in the unknown Vivian who had made those decisions. Trust at least until the master spell had served its purpose and the return of her memories would build a bridge between her past and present.

So she edited and it was glorious. Time passed, she could not tell how much. She found herself musing about time and emotion. Usually, she decided what she wanted to feel in the future and then acted to bring that future into being.

She wondered if it was better to be guided by the person she had been or by the person she wanted to be? Perhaps there was no difference. In both cases one was subject to the urgencies and uncertainties of now.

As more and more of the gloriously intricate sentences flowed through Vivian's mind, she felt more detached, more suffused with the beauty of language.

In a way, she decided, believing that one's past or future could guide the present was a necessary fantasy. The truth of the future or past was unknowable. Every soul existed and acted within the eternal and pressing instant of now, and then—to make existence bearable—wrote a story to connect past, present, and future.

The thought filled her with tranquility. At some point, she would need to leave the spell, attend to her body. But before that time came, she had to build up enough reserve text and governing subspells for the master spell to function for the five or six hours she would need to eat and sleep.

It was an act of war, she remembered briefly. That was what Nicodemus had done. A covert act of war he must have thought she would not discover. But the truth had come to light, and now there was an end to the thirty years of tenuous peace.

Now humanity needed one leader to fight the coming demonic horde, the Pandemonium. Vivian would be that leader. Again, the tension gathered in the sentences that pierced her mind.

So she refocused on line editing. The text became the universe. It was cold, intricate, uncaring, beautiful. There was no past and no future. Every moment struck the universe and sent beauty running through it like vibrations through a temple bell.

Gradually Vivian became aware of someone else moving through her room, picking his way through the matrix of golden sentences. He edited with skill, moving the filamentous prose without deconstructing a single word. Only one imperial spellwright would be so gifted.

Vivian judged that she had given the master spell enough reserve that she could take the time to greet her old friend. He wouldn't have disturbed her spellwrighting for anything other than important news.

Vivian cast the governing subspells into action and felt several sentences withdraw from her brain. The miniature lightning sentences ceased to strike. When only a few words connected her to the master spell, she reached up and lifted the halo of text a few inches above her head.

Bodily sensation—exhaustion, hunger, fatigue—returned, and her mind cleared a little.

Before her stood her oldest friend, her most trusted advisor, Dean Lotannu Akomma. Age had coarsened his dark features, but he was still handsome if no longer strikingly so. The silver in his goatee and dreadlocks, the wrinkles around his eyes made him look distinguished, pleasingly worn-in by the world. He was dressed in the black robes of his office. An eight-pointed silver star on a field of red had been sewn into his sleeves, indicating his rank as a Dean of Astrophell, one of the most powerful spellwrights alive.

“Empress,” he said with a bow.

She smiled, feeling both her fatigue and the anamnestic fog that had covered her recent memories. “There's no need for ceremony, old friend, is there? No one else is here?”

“No one else,” he said with a smile, perfect white teeth. Then he studied her face. “How are you, Vivian?”

She rolled her shoulders. “It's hardest when I pause.” Her mind and eyes wandered up to the halo of text. “I can only spare a few moments. I should get back to it so that there will be enough reserve text for me to sleep.” She looked back down at him. “How do I look?”

“Surprisingly well considering the feat you're attempting, or … achieving I should say. Perhaps you've lost a pound or two that you shouldn't have. I can have the servants bring up a second dessert each night.”

She smiled. “Thank you, but I can't finish what they bring now. I haven't much appetite.” She stretched her back, found it sore. “So, what's so important that I am lucky enough to see you?” A thought occurred to her. “Has the master spell served its purpose? Am I to stop?” She felt a little dismay about that prospect.

“Not yet,” Lotannu said with a bow. “I've disturbed you because a report has just come in from Chandralu. Our agent in that city confirms that Leandra Weal has returned with a godspell that augments her cognition. Our agent speculates that Leandra acquired the text from a godspell smuggler.” He smiled knowingly.

A dull pain sprouted behind Vivian's eyes, threatened to bloom into a headache. Trying to remember hurt. “Apologies, Lotannu, I know we want to stop such smuggling, but I can't remember what.… Didn't we decide that it was in our best interest if she gained independence?”

“Correct. This is both expected and a beneficial turn of events; however, there is an unforeseen development. It seems that Leandra is able to modify the godspell to briefly give her stronger-than-predicted prophecies.”

“With what consequences?”

“Likely none; however, there is a possibility that she might become too powerful for us to contain. If that were to happen … well … we have talked about the need to remove her, but I never thought it might come when you were writing the master spell.”

“Ah,” Vivian said, remembering snatches of conversation, “you worry that you might need to assassinate her in the next few days and you want my permission.”

“She is your relation.”

“She is. All other things being equal—though they never are—I'd rather she was safe. But given that the world is what it is, you still have my permission to use the force you deem necessary.” She paused. “But, old friend, if she has such powerful prophecy won't that make her hard to assassinate?”

“I might have contrived something.”

“You brought me out of my reverie so you could brag?”

He turned his palms upward in a comical gesture of helplessness in the face of his own brilliance. “Leandra's godspell allows her to feel the emotions of her possible future selves. I happen to have a counterpart spell—derived from the same deconstructed goddess—that will prevent Leandra from feeling any of the future selves directly affected by the caster.”

“You've created a subtext in time?” Vivian asked. “It blinds Leandra to the possible futures you create?”

“It should make Leandra more vulnerable. She will learn to trust the godspell, making her more vulnerable to ambush from whatever agent I confer the counterpart spell upon.”

“Let us hope it doesn't come to that.”

“Indeed.”

“Was there anything else you needed from me?”

“No, Empress.”

She looked up to her halo of prose, felt both elated and exhausted by the prospect of venturing back into the master spell. “Before I go…” She looked back down at Lotannu. “How are things going, generally?”

“I could tell you specifics.”

She shook her head. “Trying to remember the present circumstances makes it hard to keep up with the master spell. It's easier if you tell me generally how we are doing.”

He bowed. “We are doing well.”

“Does Nicodemus suspect?”

“Not as far as I can tell. No one but our agents in Ixos knows what is headed their way.”

“Good,” she said and reached up to her halo. “Very good.” She pulled the halo down and the golden sentences descended. “You may leave me now, old friend.”

And so the empress began to edit again, line by line. She cast and recast her master spell. Its intricacy was just as cold and beautiful as the world.

Soon, confined in the expanse of her spell, Vivian discovered that infinity stretched only from one sentence to its close and that eternity was well contained within an hour.

 

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Leandra was continually being surprised by the stupidity of men. Not that she hadn't done a few stupid things herself. Not that she didn't have regrets, some of them powerful. But if she were a man, she'd never be so idiotic as to threaten a woman guarded by two gods.

Even if she hadn't recognized the gods—in this case, Holokai and Dhrun—she would have at the very least trod lightly around a man brandishing a paddle studded with shark teeth and accompanied by a four-armed wrestler.

No matter how she looked at it, two pairs of muscular arms on one body seemed like one very compelling reason—or four very compelling reasons, depending on how one looked at it—for any and everyone contemplating mischief to piss off now and forever.

This was why she was so surprised when the beggar came at her with a knife.

They had been walking north into the Jacaranda District via the Utrana Way, about a quarter the way up the city. Beyond the walls, the terraces became mirrorlike flooded rice or taro paddies. To the east, the bay stretched out and the many dappled clouds cast a giant checkerboard pattern upon it. At the bay's edge the Standing Islands serrated the horizon.

It was a beautiful and tranquil morning, casual in its tropical brilliance, and of a kind that reminded Leandra of why she had fallen in love with the city.

Utrana Way itself was nothing grand, but nothing dingy either. It ran along the fifth of the city's sixteen terraces. On the bayside stood a waist-high wall; volcanoside, houses and pavilions. A lone monkey had been perched on a gutter, scanning the street with larcenous intent.

Leandra's party had passed light traffic: young women carrying baskets of fruit, an elephant hauling timber for some new building, a rice merchant pushing a cart laden with heavy sacks. Then they had passed the beggar.

He was a squat man, with a dirty lungi and a single wooden bowl. He had been singing. They'd heard it a long way off. “A ruuu-pee. A rupee please. A rupee for a simple man and his starving children.” At the end of this refrain, he would shake his wooden bowel causing the few coins inside to jingle. Then he'd start again. “A ruuu-pee. A rupee please.”

As Leandra had walked past, he had shaken his bowl three times rapidly and then flung his arm out. In the next instant, he was on his feet lunging at her with a knife.

Leandra jumped back, cried out in alarm. Before a thought could form in her mind, Dhrun's lower right hand clamped down on the attacker's wrist. He diverted the man's thrust away from her and pulled along the axis of the thrust, making the attacker yelp as he fell forward.

There was a slap and then a twittering sound. Dhrun's right upper arm snapped up and, as if performing a conjuring trick, held the shaft of a small vibrating arrow. A moment later Leandra realized that a few steps down the street, another beggar was pointing a crossbow at her. As she realized that Dhrun had caught the crossbow bolt, the god of wrestling wrapped his upper right arm around the forehead of the man who had lunged at her and then twisted. There was a crack.

Behind Leandra someone bellowed. She spun around and began fumbling for the knives in her belt, but then she saw that Holokai was standing over a third attacker, a big man dressed in a fine lungi. He lay sprawled out, his mouth working as if he were trying to speak. A ragged wound ran down the man's left collarbone, his chest, and then opened up into his belly. At the end of the wound lay Holokai's long-handled leimako, its shark's teeth glistening with blood.

“Wait!” Leandra screamed. “We need to question—”

But Holokai's eyes had gone black. The skin on his face and belly were white as paper. His arms and back were dark gray. He crouched and with a powerful jump leapt at the man who had been holding the crossbow.

The would-be assassin turned to run. But Holokai flew nearly eight feet into the air and closed the distance between them in moments. With a vicious overhand slash, he brought the leimako down on the man's back. When the weapon made contact, the shark's teeth sprang out, becoming twice their size, digging into the crossbowman.

“No!” Leandra found herself yelling. “Alive. We need them alive.” But she turned to Dhrun and saw that he had thrown the knifeman to the ground. The thug's head tilted at an angle that was not possible with an intact spine. “We need … to question them,” she finished lamely.

Dhrun turned around, looking up and down the street, up to the rooftops. Suddenly Leandra realized with relief that Dhrun had held his human incarnation, the one called Dhrunarman. If he had assumed his most powerful incarnation, the neodemon named Dhrun, there would be potential for massacre. “Keep your incarnation,” Leandra heard herself say stupidly.

“Of course,” Dhrun growled.