Wordscapist: The Myth (The Way of the Word Book 1) (10 page)

     “Well, I’ll see what I can fix up for you; any preferences?” I asked, noting the way he was so fascinated by the menu.

     “Sure! I’ll take the battered calamari, the Goan sausage curry, the surf’n’turf, the pork vindaloo and rice. Also, I’d like some buttered, garlic bread on the side. And yes, some cold beer as well, please.” He reeled this off, but continued looking at the display menu, as if he was considering adding to the list. That was an awful lot of food. I guess that kind of power took a lot of sustenance. Well, if I could get him to pay for this, the morning would not be such a loss after all! I took off to the kitchen, pulling out my phone to call Gomes and tell him to get himself over as soon as possible. I would need backup to get this spread together. As I walked out, he called after me, “You do have dessert, don’t you?”

     “Yes!” I shouted back, walking on. I sighed to myself; this was going to be a lot of work. 

Just for a moment, as I walked into the kitchen, the thought occurred to me. Could it be that he was a powerful Guild wordsmith who was using a glamour to befuddle me? Could glamours be used on wordsmiths? I discretely muttered up an identification scape. It was a standard Free Word scape that helped us identify wordsmiths whose allegiance lay with the Guild. I brought up my scape sign and saw tendrils of his aura all around me, even though I had walked right into the next room. I tied the scape to his scape sign, and waited. There was no flare of warning. He wasn’t with the Guild. He was safe. I could relax. And even as I did, the thought came to me right away…he was cute!

CHAPTER 6

Down the Spiral Helix

Chaos is a beautiful thing

Manifold patterns and brilliant hues

Look but do not lose yourself

Beauty’s whim might cast you adrift

Just another flap of the wings

Just another random variable

The Historian

     Sign and her beasts vanished as mysteriously as they had appeared, leaving behind a devastated scape-field, Jimmy Sau’s purple corpse, three very troubled wordsmiths and one completely terrified historian. Though the space warp had receded and all of us could move, it took a long time before anyone budged. Silvus stayed put on the ground, holding on to his scape-staff, almost curled around it. Zyx dropped to her knees, ashen and shaken, staring at Sau’s body. Lily looked grim, but in better shape than the other two. She was moving her lips, whispering words. She might have been swearing or weaving. I was too far gone to want to know which.

    I had seen Sign. Finally. I had come face to face with the elemental and was still alive. Her words, ‘you are exempt’ echoed in my head like a triumphant requiem. I was right after all. Historian immunity! I promised myself never to be on a dangerous scape again. Even Historian immunity lasted only for so long. I finally summoned the courage to move, and found my knees a little wobbly. One of those hellcats had been barely five feet away from me. It’s difficult to walk away from an experience like that with steady feet. I went to my console and wound it back, checking to see how much it had managed to capture. Out on the field, Silvus finally got up, leaning on his scape staff. He was shaken to the core. He probably had never tasted defeat in his life. And he had never come so close to dying either. He half-staggered towards Sau’s body, still leaning heavily on his staff. A few meters away, he stopped. I guess whatever he saw convinced him that he did not need to go any closer. He summoned the support operations team with a shout, and they came running. I guess all the sound of what had happened had been contained within the space warp and the norms had not heard a thing. Silvus barked a few curt orders to them and they got busy. A couple of them started working on clearing the debris and two more zipped up Sau in a body bag and took him away.

     Silvus asked Zyx, Lily and me to come with him to a makeshift tent that had been erected close to the scape-field. I had completed packing my equipment, and after handing it over to the one of the norms, I made my way to the fluttering tent. As I entered Silvus called out to me. Change of plans. I was to wait at the helipad, while the wordsmiths discussed whatever wordsmiths discuss in these situations.

     I decided to spend some more time with my lenses and filters (these stayed with me), checking to see if everything was functional. Thankfully, nothing important had been damaged.

     The scape and Sign’s appearance kept playing in my head. I shook with fear as I recalled   the overwhelming terror I had felt at seeing her beasts leaping out of the scape-crux. Sign herself had numbed all thought. I could not even remember fear. It was like she had purged all senses and all I could remember were her words and how her liquid skin flowed with every frown and smile on her face.

     And then it hit me like a ton of bricks. I had seen Sign and had walked with my life! I decided that when I was back at home, I would spend more time reading up on Sign’s appearances and how to keep oneself safe from her. My survival had been more fluke than anything else. I did not want to leave my continued existence to something as capricious as luck. I picked up my carry-all and started walking towards the helipad. The support ops guys standing there asked me to wait for the wordsmiths before boarding the helicopter. Used to being at the bottom of the word chain, I did not complain and stood around in the freezing wind, hoping that the wordsmith discussion would not take too much time. Bleak weather and landscapes tend to bring on bleak thoughts. As the horror of Sign’s appearance started receding, my mind turned to other disaster scenarios. I started wondering if Silvus was going to leave any witnesses alive. If there was to be a witness elimination program, then I would be the first to go. Historians usually top the list of acceptable losses. Each time a wordsmith went renegade, each time a scape went bad, there was always a historian casualty on the cards. I waited for the wordsmiths to come back, wondering what fate lay in store for me. Soon I saw the three approaching, Silvus in the lead, followed closely by Zyx. Lily was walking to the scape-crux, presumably to collect something.

     I picked up my bag, impatient to get on to the helicopter. The cold, damp island was getting on my nerves and ironically I wanted to be back to cold, damp London. At least the combined bouquet of the London smog and the pea-soup sludge of the Thames would be infinitely better than this.

     Silvus was the first to reach me and he motioned at me with a gesture. “Historian,” he said in a voice that was neither hearty nor warm, “I’m afraid we will be leaving you behind. I will need Zyx and Lily for the hunt. You are an unnecessary risk and must be terminated.”

     The words were rather matter-of-fact and it took a couple of seconds for their meaning to sink in. I felt the cold seeping right into my bones, freezing everything up. I was right. They were going to kill me!

     “It will be quick and painless. I have asked the support team to administer a lethal injection. Your body will be delivered to the Historian crypt and interred with full honours. I thank you for doing a professional and wonderful job. I wish it had worked out and you could have lived to tell the tale.” With those final words, he waved me a little goodbye and stomped off to the helicopter. I stood there looking at him go, with bile and sheer desperation rising up in my throat. I was going to die, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I looked around, trying to see if there was any chance of escape. I was surrounded by armed members of the support ops team. The island had no cover and no other means of escape save the helicopter. One of the support ops guys came to take my backpack. I noticed a little thought nudging me in my head. I had been trying to ignore the voice, afraid that the fear of death was driving me insane. Finally, I let the thought in. It was a voice, a voice that sounded familiar. Lily! “Move to the scape-crux. I have left an untraceable teleport spell on it. You will find a pair of spectacles. Put them on and they will do the rest. Stay put at the destination. I will join you imminently.” Lily was trying to save me! I was not going to die yet!

     Two of the support ops murderers came to guide me to the tent where their medic would be waiting with the injection. I figured that the tent was about 20 metres from the scape crux. I could make a break for it. I had never done anything physically challenging in my life and I began to wonder how I was going to run for it. The support ops guys looked in terrific shape and weren’t expecting any kind of resistance. I wondered if Silvus had woven a submissive spell around me. But then, I was a historian, I was scape-resistant. I decided that I did indeed have a chance of getting out of this mess alive. I had to run and I had to put in everything I had into those 20 metres. I said a silent prayer.

     The entrance of the tent and all it implied was fast approaching. I waited till we came to a rough patch and then made my move. I stumbled and fell against the guard closer to the scape-crux. He had not been expecting a middle-aged historian to put up a fight and was easily pushed off balance. I did not tarry to make a point and took off for the runic rock. I had a head start on those guys, but they were far younger and in very good shape. 20 metres suddenly felt like a long way. I could sense them gaining on me. I scrambled to the rock and leapt across the last couple of feet, landing hard, almost knocking myself out. Luckily, the promised pair of spectacles was not too difficult to find and were placed on the rock itself. I grabbed them and almost fumbled as I put them on. I twisted around as I heard a sound. Through the tinted glasses, I could see the ops guy closest to me was within grabbing distance. I threw myself back, trying to avoid his desperate lunge. There was an ear-shattering crack that always accompanies a teleport and everything dissolved into nothingness. Swirls of colours and sounds exploded as my body was whisked across thousands of miles of space through a warp. An infinite moment later, I was alone in an abandoned warehouse. I went on my knees and threw up. I was always sick after a port, even if the port had just saved my life. I grabbed the spectacles and threw them aside, afraid that they would somehow port me elsewhere. I then went back to the important task of retching and throwing up.

     I recovered after a while, looking around to see where the port had brought me. It was a dark, dusty warehouse. I could not make out much about what lay outside, and for the moment I didn’t feel brave enough to find out. There were some boxes around the place and a few farm implements. The standard rakes, shovels and crowbars leaned incongruously against the walls, leading me to believe I was in the midst of a farm. The smell around the place was a little weird though. It did not smell dusty and farm-like at all. There was an oiled, efficient smell to the place, like it was used often, and not for farming at that. Before I could try and lock down that sense of wrong-ness, there was another crack and a flash of light right beside me. My nerves were not at their best and I jumped at the sound, letting out a scream of alarm. I turned to see Lily Pendleton, a little dishevelled and winded, but otherwise alright. I did not know what would be appropriate conversation and settled for a ‘thank you’. She looked at me like she was seeing me for the first time and nodded. She was reasonably unperturbed given that she had just been ported through god-knows-how-many miles in a fraction of a second. She probably saved a lot of cab fare teleporting herself wherever she wanted to go. Me, I would be glad if I missed out on porting altogether for the rest of my life.

     She got up and brushed herself off. Once again, I could not help noticing how tall the woman was. I watched her walk across the warehouse, checking for whatever security measures she had put up. I could hear her muttering certain words, no doubt weaving verification spells on the protection woven around the building. She seemed to know her way around the place and unerringly homed in on the most innocent looking objects, checking each and every spell that went into making this place untraceable.

     Finally, she was reassured that there was no one following our teleport and that it had indeed been untraceable. “We are in a spot of trouble, Historian,” Lily said as she walked to a dusty window in the warehouse.

     “Yes Mistress,” I said, wondering whether the Inner Council specialised in understatements. I had many questions in my head, but decided to wait for her explanation. I sat back, rubbing my bruised elbows and knees where I had skinned myself in my desperate lunge across the rock. I looked at Lily Pendleton, the Lily Pendleton, walking around, pacing like an Amazon on the warpath.

     “I’ve called for a rescue team,” she said. I realised that she had not been aimlessly pacing around. She must have sent a telepathic missive to someone to come pick us up.

     “Someone from the local Guild office, Mistress?” I asked, almost instantly regretting the stupid question.

    “I said rescue team, Historian, not execution team. No, I did not contact the Guild. The team I called is from another organisation.”

     “Oh, I guess that’s alright then.” I waited for a while. My curiosity got the better of me. “What really happened, Mistress? Why did you do what you did?”

     “Silvus was not planning on an all-out hunt like Sign had suggested. He wanted to try again to capture the gift for himself. That man will not give up and will end up getting everyone else killed. I am done indulging his games. I’d rather not have another visit from Sign and her cats.”

     Cats! Another fabulous understatement! I thought about what she had told me. It did not make sense. I asked the obvious question, “Sign said something about an elemental being loosed. I did not understand that part. Did we create an elemental?”

     “Of course not!” Lily came as close to snorting as a lady could. She took two steps towards me and sat on her haunches, again managing to do it in a lady-like way. “Silvus, in his arrogance, failed to consider a very important fact. And that is why the scape went wrong.”