Spellbreaker (72 page)

“How do you mean?” Nicodemus asked.

“On the other side of that tunnel is a city filled with terrified, wounded, and hungry souls who are even now discovering powers beyond anything they supposed they would ever wield. As spellwrights they will need divinities far less than before. When the people stop praying, there will be many desperate deities in all of the league's kingdoms. More immediately, every soul in Chandralu harbors great animosity toward the empire for destroying their homes and killing their loved ones. That makes things a little precarious for the empress who is presently surrounded by guards up there.” The Trimuril gestured to the crowed plaza.

Then the Trimuril turned back to them. “Normally, I would not overly concern myself with the empress's well-being; however, the empire now has millions of newly made spellwrights and their crops are failing. They will be looking to their monarch to provide order and security. Chaos in the empire could be dangerous for Ixos. So, after an intimate discussion with the Empress Vivian, I am committed to getting her quickly out of my kingdom and back into one of her own.”

“But why do you need us?” Leandra asked.

“In Chandralu, some are already declaring that the Halcyon Nicodemus, through the Creator's grace, has created a miracle and given them the power of spellwrights. Other rumors speak of the dragon Francesca who has magically spread her protection over the city. And still others are whispering that the Lady Leandra is not the reincarnation of Los, as some ugly rumors have put out, but a prophet of the Creator who has brought a gift to the virtuous people of Chandralu in their time of need.”

“You want us to be figureheads?” Nicodemus asked in a tone that implied he would rather spend the rest of his life sucking hot tar.

“In a manner of speaking,” the Trimuril replied. “The people need leaders who will prevent further bloodshed. The people would follow your family.”

Francesca looked at Nicodemus. The muscles of his jaw flexed and she could tell his rage at the Trimuril was warring with his reason.

“Why not use the regent?” Francesca asked.

“The Sacred Regent is no longer with us. When the Floating City broke apart he fell into the water and was too weak to swim.”

Nicodemus made no sound, but Francesca said, “I am sorry to hear that,” even though she wasn't, not after his betrayal.

The Trimuril's incarnation nodded as Ancestor Spider said “I hope you'll forgive me, but I could not help but listen in when Leandra was suffering. I believe she would have wanted you to play her game and help the people of Ixos. What were her last words again?”

“‘Make them write it all new,'” Nicodemus said gruffly and then looked at Francesca. When she nodded, he glared at the Trimuril. “Very well, we will do what we can, but not without many reassurances from both you and my sister.”

The Trimuril bowed deeply. “The whole archipelago will be in your debt, and I will swear on the Creator's name to anything you require. But perhaps we can discuss the specifics at a later time. The city is growing restless as we speak, and our window of time to maintain order may be closing. Might I send our hydromancers and red cloaks down to act as your escorts? The two of you might then climb up to the tunnel and negotiate with the empress.”

“Give us a little longer with our daughter,” Francesca said curtly.

“Of course,” the Trimuril said with another bow and began walking up the crater slope.

Francesca looked down at Leandra. She brushed her daughter's cheek and became aware that Dhrun was standing beside her. The goddess's face was tight with pain. She had loved Leandra as well. Knowing this both increased Francesca's sorrow and her solace.

Nicodemus knelt on Francesca's other side and took her hand. With an exhausted heart, Francesca leaned into him and was grateful when he embraced her. In the circle of his arms, she let the tears come again as she thought of her daughter's imperfect life, of all that she had fought for, of all that she had loved.

Sorrow filled Francesca as she remembered the pain that Leandra had known and inflicted. At the same time, gratitude filled her as she marveled at the change her daughter had wrought.

 

EPILOGUE

Once a life was spent searching for a greatly desired thing. At times it was found, at times lost. Sometimes it was forsaken. Along the way there was blood and love and desire and disgust—which is to say nothing of the monsters or the demons or the long hours of lonely reflection. Those things, they were all difficult to survive. But there were also moments of profound wonder and joy, but not enough of those. Never enough of those.

With age, the soul in question came to a series of important, if perhaps not quite profound, realizations. Chief among them was the understanding that a greatly desired thing found, lost, or forsaken turns out to be less important than the act of searching for it. Another not-quite-profound realization was that while the young might die, the old must. That one was both true and growing truer every year.

So it was with solemnity and gratitude that the soul in question entered the autumn of its life, knowing that too soon its search would end.

*   *   *

In the first lecture theater built on the Ancient Continent in millennia, Nicodemus gave the day's last lesson. It was a plain but functional room—wide ceiling windows let in late-afternoon winter sunlight, and the terraced seats rose steeply to thirty feet. The theater's sheer geometry ensured that even the tardiest students could sit close enough to peer down upon the demonstration of the varied aspects of spellwrighting.

At first, Nicodemus disliked the theater; it felt like he was lecturing in a pit. But this particular class had an infectious enthusiasm. The subject was subtextualization and the gleaning of subtext. Nicodemus wrote out five light-bending paragraphs, each in a different language, then demonstrated what diction and sentence structure would hide the prose.

The class was appropriately impressed as each of the paragraphs vanished. Nicodemus briefly described how they might visualize even subtextualized prose, but the students were too eager to attempt their own subtextualizations to listen carefully.

So he instructed the students to write their own passages and hide them from each other. Afterward they were to transcribe the successful subtexts onto paper. He would not let a single student go until everyone had turned in a subtext.

The students started spellwrighting and Nicodemus set to massaging his sore hip. There was more silver than black now in his hair. Many years had passed since his daughter had changed the world. Now in his eighties, Nicodemus was by no means old for a spellwright, but the cares of age were beginning to weigh upon him.

He and Francesca had served the decaying league and empire for more than a decade. They had striven for the world Leandra would have wanted. The old orders had crumbled and new ones had arisen. The years had produced tumults: revolutions, riots, wars, and plagues. Many of the old problems had reincarnated themselves in different manifestations. But even so, the six human kingdoms had reinvented themselves with far less bloodshed than one might have expected.

Nicodemus doubted that either Francesca or he could claim credit for much, or perhaps any, of the resultant success. Others were more than willing to attribute it to them, which led many to believe that they—along with Vivian—had gathered too much power. So several years ago, the political maneuvering and intrigue to remove them began.

Vivian had kept something like her empire together; Spires had quickly fractionated into two kingdoms, only one of which chose to remain loyal to her. Still, Vivian, with Lotannu and Cyrus at her side, had fought with all her wit and cunning to stay in the currents of politics.

For their part, Nicodemus and Francesca had been more than happy to relinquish power. In fact, after much discussion, they had decided to exile themselves. A society dedicated to returning to and resettling the Ancient Continent had formed in Chandralu. Francesca and Nicodemus had happily joined—she with the intention of founding the first infirmary on the new old land, he with a similar intention for an academy.

Nicodemus's thoughts returned to the present as the lecture hall echoed with the scattered laughs and triumphant cries of students. One by one, their brightly worded paragraphs were winking out of sight. Nicodemus walked around the theater, lending assistance to those who struggled so that the class might stay together. As he finished, the sounds of triumph turned to murmurs of worry or frustration. Having subtextualized their paragraphs, the students could not find them.

“But why all the consternation, my adolescent acolytes?” Nicodemus asked with great relish. “Worried that you won't be able to turn in your assignments? If you've lost your subtext, all you need do is recall my description of how to glean such texts. Or … were you perhaps not paying the closest attention?”

This won him a chorus of good-natured boos and accusations that he had set them up … which of course he had.

So, enjoying himself entirely too much, Nicodemus repeated his lecture on gleaning, now with the class's dedicated attention. Most of the students retrieved and inscribed their subtext by the time he had finished. With a little personal attention, the remaining students did likewise. Soon the class had lined up and, on their way out, handed their spellbooks to him.

After locking up the lecture hall, Nicodemus walked outside and looked out on the city of Leanda, named for the woman who had created the new age.

A cold wind was blowing, but Nicodemus paused at the top of the academy's stairs to take in his new and last home. It was still a small place, more of a frontier colony than a proper city. There were maybe seven hundred buildings, most made of wood. The only stone structures were the pyromantic cannon turrets by the river, a new infirmary, and a hall of government.

Leanda was built in a wide and verdant river valley. To the south rose hills covered with cypress forests. Inland, the trees stood tall and straight with great strata of pine boughs. Beneath them grew ferns and laurels in an understory that reminded Nicodemus of the Spirish redwood forests. On the coast, the cypress grew short and thick, contorting themselves into strangely evocative wind-sculptured shapes.

The coast itself consisted of rocky cliffs that stretched for thousands of miles. Just offshore of the Leana River, down through the cold waters, fishermen caught glimpses of ancient and toppled towers covered with kelp.

North of Leanda, the land stretched out into a sunny savanna that once had been and would soon again be rich farmland. Beyond the savanna towered massive gray mountains, their peaks snowy even in the dry season.

And beyond these mountains … who could say what would be found? There was an entire continent to rediscover.

Nicodemus came out of his reverie when he realized that Dhrun and his grandson had sat down at the bottom of the academy's stars.

When deconstructing the draconic aspects of Francesca's text, Leandra had protected the draconic text within Dhrun. Through a process that Nicodemus did not understand and preferred not to contemplate, the result of hiding the draconic text within Dhrun was a pregnancy that had locked the divinity complex into her Nika manifestation for years.

Dhrun remembered a brief conversation in which Leandra hinted at the reason for her inability to change manifestations. Leandra had claimed she needed more time to see how Dhrun's texts would react. But that time had not yet come when Leandra sacrificed herself.

Years after Leandra's death, Dhrun had given birth to her son. Though he appeared to be a normal male infant, Francesca declared that he would be the next dragon, and the only dragon left in the world.

Nicodemus had wanted to name the boy Agwu after his old teacher. Francesca had liked the idea, but Dhrun wanted her son to have a connection to Ixos and so named him Tarakam, which came from the ancient Lotus Culture word for star. Since turning eleven, the boy had decided he could only be called Kam.

The boy had inherited the bold features of Dhrun's male incarnation, Leandra's glossy black hair, and his grandfather's green eyes. His grandmother's inheritance, however, had not yet surfaced. As each day went by, Nicodemus had a sinking certainty that the emergence of Kam's draconic nature would coincide with his adolescence. So it went.

Presently, Dhrun was sitting in his male incarnation and tearing off pieces of the rosemary flatbread that was becoming the city's signature dish. It seemed that father and son would eat alternate strips of bread. As Nicodemus approached, he felt the particular kind of silence that follows a family argument.

“Got any spare flatbread?” Nicodemus asked.

“Grampa!” Kam said while leaping up to hug his hip.

Dhrun sighed in a way that made Nicodemus suspect that Kam's sudden display of affection was directed more at his parent than his grandparent. “Hey there,” Nicodemus said while patting his grandson's head. “Rough day?” he asked of Dhrun while accepting a strip of flatbread.

“Bit of a disagreement about how much time our little hero should spend at lessons and chores versus wrestling and playing with his friends.”

“Ah, the injustices of childhood,” Nicodemus said with a sigh and they set off down the road.

It was a late-winter day, clear and crisp. The sun was low in the west and a chill was coming on.

Their family compound was a tiny thing compared to what they had left in Chandralu. Its architecture was that of the new frontier style—no pavilions, many small rooms, everything unpainted wood and bold arches. Nicodemus found John sleeping by the fire.

The old spellwright had come with them across the ocean. What hair he had left was snowy white. Over the past year, John's vision had dimmed and his memory loosened. Nicodemus was beginning to fear that he would have to say goodbye to his old friend far sooner than he wished.