Unbound (32 page)

Lena sighed. “How?”

“The same way we free Jeneta. By separating their stories.” I could see they didn’t understand. I wasn’t sure I did. I turned to Ponce de Leon. “How do you experience magic? What do you see and feel when you command those energies?”

“Wind.” His expression changed, losing a little of the tension he had carried since Gutenberg’s death. “It’s like being at sea. You learn to sense the air, to anticipate every change and adjust your sails to capture the breeze. I’ve always been able to feel it.”

I turned to Nicola. “I’m guessing you don’t see magic at all. You hear it.”

“Not exactly,” she said. “It’s . . . there’s a
pressure
inside me. I don’t hear the magic as much as I feel it pounding through my body. The music is how I get it out.”

That left Bi Wei. Of all of us here, her magic was closest to my own. She had spent centuries clinging to existence through her book. She carried the imprint of that book within her, helping her to resist Meridiana’s call. “Look at Lena and tell me what you see.”

“A being of magic,” she said slowly. “The strength of her tree within her body, flowing through her weapons. The ties linking her to you, and to Doctor Shah. The power of the books
of Bi Sheng growing inside of her. And the threads of the book that bore her, woven through it all.”

“Good. Now, can you read it?” I pressed. “Can you read her?”

Her eyes and mouth compressed. “We can make out the words of her book.”

“Not the book,
her
.” I jumped up and pointed toward Smudge. “You’re not looking the right way. Try to read Smudge. Stop thinking of him and his book as separate things.”

She blinked. “I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

“Slow down.” Nidhi had slipped into clinical mode, calm and soothing. Her hand circled my wrist, her fingers pressing to check my pulse. “You’re manic. What else happened in there?”

I set the list on the desk. She was right about the mania. I was exhausted and my throat felt like I had swallowed a cheese grater, but I didn’t care. “When I was inside the sphere, I saw Meridiana. I
read
her. Her history, her power . . . I saw magic in a way I’ve never experienced before. I can’t explain it, but I know how to fight her.”

“How?” asked Lena.

“Bi Wei, what did you do to unlock
Nymphs of Neptune
?”

“I forced the lock.” She shook her head. “I’ve already told you we can’t do the same for you. It was unpleasant and inelegant, and would likely destroy your mind.”

“I know, I know. I don’t need you to unlock my mind. I just need—” I looked around. “What I
really
need is to get to the archive at Fort Michilimackinac. The books there would let me . . . why are you staring at me like I just turned back into a newt?”

“Our apologies. We forgot.” Bi Wei tapped my forehead, sharing her own memories with mine.

I shivered as I realized where we were. I had been seeing this place all along without recognizing it. “Wow. That’s just creepy.”

I grabbed one of the crates and brought it to the desk. This room held the books taken from the Porter archive at
Michigan State University. The books that had survived its destruction, at any rate. That made it
my
archive, the place where the books I had reviewed and recommended for locking would have ended up, back when I was working as a cataloger for the Porters.

“What are you searching for?” asked Nidhi.

“Robert Jordan.” Packets of desiccant were positioned in each one to absorb moisture. Thin, sturdy plastic sheets separated layers of books. I pawed through all three layers, then shoved the box aside. “The
Wheel of Time
series. Where is it?”

Jackson pointed to a crate near the bottom of the center pile.

Lena lifted the three boxes on top and set them aside without straining. Jackson opened the crate. I pressed close as he pulled out stacks of books.

“There,” I said. “
Towers of Midnight
.” There were at least ten different editions, paperback and hardcovers in various languages. I snatched the English mass market paperback.

Ponce de Leon wrinkled his nose. “Modern fantasy is little more than juvenile escapism and anachronistic longing for a time that never existed. I’ve never understand the appeal.”

“That’s because you suck.” I sat down at the desk, skimming for the reason the Porters had locked these books in the first place. I jabbed a finger at the pages. “Balefire.”

“What does it do?” asked Nidhi.

“Burns things out of existence. When it’s strong enough, the effect extends backward through time. It makes it so that something never existed at all.”

“If you unmake the sphere, you’ll just set Meridiana free,” said Bi Wei. “And the ghosts are capable of diffusing and deflecting every spell we throw at them. We have no reason to believe this balefire would be an effective weapon.”

“Let me worry about Meridiana.” I pulled out Gutenberg’s gold pen and slammed it onto the desk. “Use the balefire on this.”

Nobody moved. Ponce de Leon was the first to speak. “Isaac, think this through.”

“I have.”

“You’d have your magic back.” Nidhi’s face and her tone were equally unreadable.

“That’s right,” I said. “And we’ll have the resources of every book Gutenberg locked with that pen.”

“These books are dangerous.” Jackson stepped sideways, moving closer to the door and the blunderbuss he had set in the corner.

“More dangerous than Meridiana?” I countered.

“If you alter the past, don’t you risk erasing us all from existence?” Nidhi was a fan of comics, meaning she had a decent understanding of how messed up things could get when you started trying to unravel and rebraid different timelines.

I shook my head. “It won’t really change the past. Every experiment the Porters have tried suggests you
can’t
alter history. It takes too much power to even try.”

“Then why bother with the pen?” asked Ponce de Leon.

Bi Wei picked up the pen, holding it between us. She appeared to be looking through the pen into my eyes. “To change the present.”

“Exactly,” I said triumphantly. “Every spell that thing created should dissolve.”

“Even if this works,” said Nicola, “think of what you could unleash.” Her hands were twitching again. “Plagues, superweapons, predators who could be worse than Meridiana. All available to any fool of a libriomancer who decided it was worth the risk.”

“Fools like me, yes,” I said impatiently.

“Like anyone who has left or been thrown out of the Porters,” she continued. “There are others whose magic and memories were taken from them, Isaac. People whose true loyalties lay elsewhere. Will you be responsible for opening the way to all-out magical war?”

“Every lock can be broken,” I said. “The Students of Bi
Sheng exposed the Porters, but they haven’t tried to use these books against us. If . . .
when
Meridiana escapes, she will.”

“You’re risking an awful lot on theories,” said Nicola.

“They’re
good
theories. Better than anything else we’ve got.” Into the silence that followed, I added, “If it’s any consolation, I think I should be able to lock the books again once we’re done.”

It was probably wrong to enjoy the way they stared.

“You know how to lock books?” asked Ponce de Leon. “Even without the pen I made for Johannes?”

“Gutenberg was locking books before you gave him that pen, right? All I need is one locked book. I should be able to read that lock, to peel back its magic and duplicate it. It’s the same concept I’m talking about with Meridiana’s ghosts, just a slightly different application.”

“This is the worst excess of conjecture and wishful thinking,” snapped Jackson. “We don’t know if Isaac is capable of any of this.”

“He believes he is,” said Bi Wei.

“I once met a woman who believed she was abducted by aliens who looked like the Teletubbies,” Jackson shot back. “That doesn’t make it true.”

“Enough.” Nicola raised a hand, and Jackson fell silent. “Doctor Shah, what is your assessment of Isaac’s current mental state?”

“I’m not his doctor,” said Nidhi. “I can’t—”

“It’s all right,” I said quietly. “Tell them the truth.”

She looked at me, then nodded. “Isaac has been depressed since he lost his magic. He blames himself for the deaths of his friends and neighbors in Copper River, and for the loss of Jeneta Aboderin. He has isolated himself from others. The combination of guilt and depression has made him significantly more reckless than usual.

“His judgment is questionable. Last night, he was physically assaulted, and his home was destroyed. He is physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted. If he were a Porter agent, I would order him pulled from the field immediately.”

Lena took my hand and squeezed.

“Isaac has pinned his guilt, desperation, and powerlessness on one thing: regaining his magic.” Nidhi turned toward Nicola. “And you should help him.”

“He’s unstable,” Jackson protested. “You just said so!”

“Yes, I did.” Nidhi’s voice hardened ever so slightly. “And even in the depths of that instability, he successfully discovered Meridiana’s identity, learned of her origin from Pope Sylvester II, and figured out how to retrieve her prison. Isaac’s focus and performance in other areas of his life have been erratic, but when it comes to Meridiana, he’s been more effective than anyone within the Porter organization. If he says he can stop Meridiana and her ghosts, then it’s my professional opinion that you should trust him.”

I felt simultaneously exposed, humbled, and grateful. “Thank you.”

Nicola picked up
Towers of Midnight
. “Thank her by making sure Meridiana doesn’t conquer the world and kill us all.”

From:
Whitney Spotts

To:
Nicola Pallas

Subject:
FWD: Real-Life Superhero Busts Drug Dealers

Ms. Pallas,

This story has been making the rounds online today:

A man calling himself “The Wizard” is claiming responsibility for the capture of four alleged drug dealers on the streets of New York City. Dressed in a black trench coat and carrying a staff that could have come straight out of Middle Earth, The Wizard describes himself as a modern-day superhero who uses magic to make his city safer for everyone.

A fedora and black mask cover his head and eyes, and a long gray beard obscures his face, making identification difficult. However, authorities do have a recording from a 911 call in which The Wizard let the city know where they could “pick up their trash.” Assuming his voice hasn’t been altered, the accent suggests he’s a local from the Brooklyn area.

While real-life superheroes aren’t a new phenomenon, The Wizard appears to be the real thing. Witnesses describe him using a spellbook to conjure a maelstrom of garbage, a “trashnado,” that attacked the suspects, subduing them with only moderate injuries.

Many people applaud The Wizard’s efforts, but the police have announced a zero-tolerance policy for vigilantism. More importantly, if magical superheroes are now patrolling our streets, can supervillains be far behind?

Between the accent and the “trashnado,” this sounds like Jerry
Howze. I thought he was restricted to cataloging. Jerry’s got to be what, a hundred years old by now?

Will someone please yank him off the street before he gets his ass killed?

Thanks,

Whit

I
SORTED THROUGH ONE
book after another, setting most aside. Some were simply too destructive. Others might be able to stop Meridiana, but would probably take out the rest of Copper River along with her.

I hesitated over Pearl North’s
The Boy from Ilysies
. A magical pen capable of literally rewriting the world had potential, but a single careless word could unintentionally kill us all, and Nicola had just asked me not to do that. Not to mention the amount of power it would take to use such an artifact. I could char myself into ash with the first spell. On the other hand, the conclusion to the series,
The Book of the Night
, contained a library of pretty much every book on Earth.
That
would be handy.

Bi Wei pored through Jordan’s brick of a novel, unraveling
Gutenberg’s lock. Jackson and Ponce de Leon watched over her shoulders. I longed to do the same, but for the moment, I remained blind to the manipulation of magic.

I wiped my hands on my shirt and tried to swallow. If this didn’t work . . . It
should
work, according to everything I knew about magical theory, but what we didn’t know far outweighed what we did. And it wasn’t like anyone had ever tried this before.

“We’re ready,” said Bi Wei a short time later. Too short. I had picked out only three books that might help. “You’ll want to back away.”

Jackson had already cleared the desk of everything save Gutenberg’s pen. We pressed together on the far side of the room as Bi Wei reached into the pages of
Towers of Midnight
. She tilted it toward the desk, and what looked like droplets of blinding light spilled from the edge.

This was magic Gutenberg himself had deemed too dangerous to use. I looked toward Nidhi, who shrugged as if to say,
It was your idea.

I felt like I was back on my very first roller coaster with my mother and brother. I could almost hear the clacking of the wheels as we climbed higher and higher toward the top of what she described as “Shit Peak.” I had no idea what awaited us on the other side. All I knew was that there was no going back, and to fail at this point was to fall off the tracks and die. And that whatever happened, it was better than turning back.

Light sprayed forth to envelop the pen. Its afterimage burned purple on my retinas.

The room spun around me. I dropped to one knee and pressed my hands to the floor. I could feel Gutenberg’s pen burning its invisible tattoo into my skull all over again, only this time my skin felt inflamed, blistered by fire and smoke that tried to burst free, as if Bi Wei had poured the balefire directly into my flesh.

Maybe this hadn’t been the best plan after all.

I closed my eyes and clutched my head, physically trying to keep my skull from exploding.

I heard the angry words Gutenberg had spoken that day in Lena’s grove a month before, as Meridiana dug her way into my mind like a mining drill crushing through stone. I remembered his pen carving a single word into my being.

Sileo
.

For the past month, I’d been unable to accept the silence, the emptiness where there had once been magic. I’d spent every waking moment trying to flee from it.

I looked to where Bi Wei continued to send balefire onto the pen. Beyond them, Smudge was burning like a highway flare. Ponce de Leon was working to keep Smudge from setting the room on fire. The archive had protections from normal fire, but it was best not to take chances with the magical variety.

Jackson was shouting. Nicola was singing. Lena was saying my name. Their voices battered my senses. I pressed my hands to my ears, but it didn’t help. I couldn’t shut them out.

I sank to the floor. I felt like I was back in Wisconsin, drowning in Euphemia’s pool.

“Stop fighting it.” Ponce de Leon’s voice, cutting through the noise.

My breath huffed through my nostrils. My heartbeat battered my chest. I closed my eyes and thought about a night on a lake months before, the paddles tucked inside the canoe as Lena and I drifted lazily through the water, looking up at stars and the cloud-misted moon.

Sileo.

I relaxed my hands and turned inward, seeking stillness. Seeking silence. Not an empty void, but acceptance. This would work or else it wouldn’t. There was nothing I could do to change that.

For the first time since Gutenberg’s pen touched my scalp, I heard the magic. A humming, like the buzz of insects, crept into the silence to rouse my nerves.

“Isaac?” Lena sat beside me, her arms circling my waist.

“I’m all right.” I opened my eyes and touched a hand to my face. My cheeks were wet.

I pushed myself up and hobbled toward the desk. The balefire had burned a hole a foot wide through the antique wood. It had taken out the floor as well, leaving a deep crater in the dirt below.

Bi Wei was pale, but otherwise appeared okay. The Jordan novel, on the other hand, was black with magical char. The balefire must have channeled enough magic to burn out the book in a single use.

“How are you feeling, Isaac?” asked Nidhi.

I touched the three books I had set aside. Only one was unlocked: a large, thin hardcover, its power warm to the touch. Decades of untapped belief begged for release. The others must have been locked with some other magic than the pen Bi Wei had erased from existence.

I turned to the end of the book, where the magical items descriptions were laid out. Skimming these pages conjured memories of the clatter of plastic dice on the dining room table from years ago, the last time I had read an earlier edition of this particular role-playing manual. I scanned a paragraph, and my fingertips slid into the pages.

“Whole,” I whispered. “I feel whole.”

“All the books in the Porter archive, and you created a headband?” asked Lena.

“That’s right.” I carefully tied the silk band around my forehead. “It gives me plus six to intelligence, which should boost my IQ about twenty to thirty percent, not to mention helping with spellcasting.” The magic headband couldn’t impart new knowledge, but it would help me to process the information I had.

To Ponce de Leon, I asked, “Could I borrow your cane?”

He pursed his lips, then shrugged and tossed it to me. It was heavier than I expected. I held the cane horizontally in both
hands and thought back to what I had learned in Gerbert d’Aurillac’s prison, how I had looked past Meridiana’s appearance to the magic underneath. Words woven together at a subatomic level.

“What are you doing?” asked Nicola.

“Making sure I know what I’m doing.”

“Better late than never,” Lena murmured.

The cane was beautiful, but nothing about its appearance shouted
magic
. There were no carved runes, no magical jewels tucked into the wood. The tip was hard black rubber, textured for traction. I tried twisting the handle, but it didn’t budge. No sword or wand hidden away, either.

I slowed my breathing, searching for the calm silence I had touched only minutes earlier. I had done this before. I remembered touching the roots of Lena’s oak and reading the words of her book. I had reached into those words to seize control of her grove’s magic. But Lena was a creation of libriomancy, and
Nymphs of Neptune
was a book I had read and remembered. This cane was neither.

But it was magic, and like everything else, it had a story of its own. A story that began with the death of a tree and the shaping of the wood. The cane was older than I realized. Ponce de Leon’s magic kept it looking new and perfect.

Words flitted past my vision. I let them go. Trying to chase them would break my focus. I waited in silence as each brushstroke of text outlined the cane’s history.

“Gutenberg gave this cane to you.” It had been the early part of the twentieth century. They were in Petra, Jordan.

“That’s right,” he said quietly.

But it was Ponce de Leon who had enchanted it. I watched him wrapping spells around the wood and metal, but I didn’t truly understand how the power fit together, any more than I understood how a sculptor transformed a lump of marble into a masterpiece. I saw him strip the polish and rub a thick, dark oil into the wood. He hardened the metal in flames so hot they
couldn’t be seen. And then he raised the cane to the sky and captured the wind.

The cane showed me another story, one that threatened to pull me back down into despair. Ponce de Leon’s blood dripped down the wood, absorbed into the cane before it reached the end. The power of the Fountain of Youth healed his body, just as it always had before. I read his hopelessness, the emotions and passion he rarely let the world see.

“You tried to kill yourself.” I spoke without thinking.

“Yes,” he answered in the same neutral tone. “It was after my banishment. After my final split from—from the Porters.” When he spoke again, it was with morbid humor. “I didn’t try particularly hard, and as you know, I’m rather difficult to kill.”

“I’m sorry.” I hadn’t intended to violate his privacy, only to confirm that I could read magic.

“It would seem you’ve mastered a new aspect of your art,” he said mildly.

Not mastered. Not yet. Reading wasn’t enough. I had to be able to control that magic.

“How does that work?” asked Lena. “He spends a few minutes in a metal ball and comes out with new magic?”

“Not new,” I said. “A better understanding of what I can do. It’s like spending your whole life looking up at the night sky from the city, then finally seeing the stars from space, without lights or atmosphere to distort your view. There’s so much more . . .”

“It’s not unheard of,” said Ponce de Leon. “My master called it baptism. The apprentice would meditate for days, fasting until his body weakened enough for him to leave it behind. The goal was to become one with magic itself. When he returned to himself—
if
he returned—he often brought new insight and abilities back with him.”

“Like the students of Bi Sheng,” I said, thinking of everything I had seen Bi Wei and her fellow refugees do. They had existed in that magical limbo for five hundred years, and it had
changed them. They were far stronger now than when Gutenberg attacked their temple.

“The Land of Midday Dreams,” said Bi Wei. “Great grandaunt told me about a river made of the dreams and fears of every man, woman, and child. Where even the strongest soul could lose herself and wander forever, or be consumed by the demons that swam within the dreams. The Ghost Army.”

“The practice of baptism was mostly abandoned when I began my study.” Ponce de Leon crouched in front of me, peering into my eyes like a doctor. “We thought it a myth.”

Not a myth, but a technique made far more dangerous once Meridiana had been trapped within the river, waiting to drown whoever passed by.

I wanted more than anything to sit down with Ponce de Leon and Bi Wei and mine every magical rumor and legend from their memories. If they were correct, Meridiana’s existence had fundamentally altered the study and practice of magic. What else had we lost or forgotten over the centuries?

I looked at the cane. This was the knowledge I needed right now. Reading the cane’s story was one thing. Manipulating it was another. The magic in that cane was unlike any I had performed.

But what was libriomancy, truly? Jeneta had proven it wasn’t the ink and paper that held the magic. Laser-etch a story into ten-thousand hockey pucks and hand them out to fans, and I could theoretically use those pucks as easily as a midlist mass-market paperback.

This cane was unique, but its story was stronger than any book. It had been “written” by Juan Ponce de Leon, after all. I reached for the words and let them flow past in silence. I found myself again in that moment of despair and loneliness. Ponce de Leon had believed nothing could truly split the bond between him and Gutenberg. They might have fought over the years, but each relied on the other for support and comfort. The betrayal tore at my chest. They were strangers from
another time, the only two people on Earth who understood where the other had come from, and what they had left behind.

“Isaac . . .” Lena pointed to the cane.