Wordscapist: The Myth (The Way of the Word Book 1) (45 page)

    I was staring at De Vorto with my mouth slightly agape. This was beyond insane! He wanted me to go hunt monsters! I turned around and looked at Dew. She was grinning at my reaction.

    “But didn’t you say that it was potentially fatal for me to weave?” I asked, half tentatively.

     “I think you’ve fixed part of the problem, boy,” De Vorto said, giving me a piercing look. “I told you that you weren’t made to be the Wordscapist. It looks like you wrenched yourself into shape. You should be alright. I’m more worried about the world around us.”

      I chewed that for a while. There was one other question though, the most important question of all.

     “De Vorto,” I spoke and hesitated. De Vorto’s expression changed. He sensed it, but didn’t say anything. He just looked at me expectantly. “What about the Lirii? We can’t let them go, not after what they did to Lorna, to you.”

     There was a long pause. I could literally see the thoughts running through his head.  

     “You read Sign’s thoughts?” he just about whispered the question.

     I nodded sheepishly.

     He went a shade of red I had never seen before. I was half afraid he would explode. But then he swallowed and flitted around until he resumed some of his calm.

      “How much do you know,” he asked, his voice still strangled.

     “Most of it,” I said, unable to keep the guilt out of my voice. I had, after all, peeked into a very private part of his life. I just didn’t know it then. I could see Dew’s face burning with curiosity, but she wisely kept silent.

      De Vorto flitted around some more and finally spoke, this time almost in a normal voice, “We will talk about this later. There is much you need to know. You’re not ready for the Lirii yet. But you will be. I think you have proven yourself. However, if I hear you try anything as stupid ever again, I will work my way back into your head and drive you insane. Is that clear?”

     I nodded quietly. I didn’t know if it was possible, but I would give him the benefit of doubt any day.

     “Then, let’s get started. We have a lot of work to do.” With these words, De Vorto did his disappearing act. I turned back to look at Dew. She was almost bursting. I sat her down and started telling her the details.

Amra

     The teams had been at work for two weeks, repairing the office. It had been a mess. Entire chunks of wall and floor were missing, especially near the interrogation area. The tapes, those of them that survived, showed the biggest battle had been between Silvus and Zauberin. I guess it was too much to hope that they would snuff each other out. They exhausted each other to a stalemate, and then Silvus bailed out with a teleport. Zauberin tarried long enough to discover that the CCC backup team had arrived before taking Silvus’s lead, teleporting with an untraceable port. Not much of the Free Word survived that assault. There were a few that escaped. However, the CCC backup team had orders to attack with extreme prejudice. And that meant take no prisoners. There was a terrified historian in the mix, who was caught alive. He provided enough evidence to lock down a watertight case and put a shoot-on-sight bounty on Zauberin’s head. It also helped establish the innocence of the Free wordsmiths who did not play an active part in the attack. He was still being interrogated and had turned out to be extremely cooperative. He was almost relieved to be dealing with normal human beings and not wordsmiths. Can’t say I blame him.

      Silvus and Zauberin were on the run, but not for long. We had teams on the lookout for them, and it wouldn’t be long before they were caught. Slick or the Wordscapist, call him what you will, was also at large with the girl. They were still wanted by the CCC for prosecution, but the most serious charges against them had been dropped. I tried hard to build a strong case, but with my Yen going soft after his conversation with De Vorto, I had very few options left. De Vorto stood trial for his crimes against Wordkind and humanity, presented a watertight case, and bailed under the spirit with no host clause. He walked free - or flitted free - and was now no doubt with that absconding couple. I tried to hook a trace on him, but with no corporeal body or scape sign to lock down that proved impossible. The entire forgive and forget approach didn’t go down very well with me. My Yen might not understand, but I had another appointment with the Lirii. I would find all the help I needed there. I would catch that twerp after all. And when I had him...well, I could always claim he resisted arrest and I had no choice but to terminate him.

      The last two weeks had been tough, back to the cat-and-mouse game. Only, this time I didn’t have complete CCC backing and was acting under my own steam. My Yen was more amused than anything else at my persistence. Nothing had gone according to plan, but all that was going to change soon. Slick had been on a monster hunting campaign of sorts since his escape. He had been going after the worst kind of scape nightmares, presumably honing his skills in the bargain. It wasn’t illegal, but it was still vigilantism. And it set down a pattern of behaviour that I could track and use to capture him. We had a fair idea what the next target was; a succubus, one of the worst. That should be interesting. This time I would go myself. I might just get to catch him. Well, a girl can live in hope, can’t she…

EPILOGUE

It will never end

Because it never began

And if it feels like the past

It’s probably tomorrow

It always was and will be

And you have my word on that

The Historian

     It was over and done with, finally. After almost two months of detailed interrogations and discussions, I was free again. If that’s what you call persona non grata status at the Guild and the Free Word, and an unspoken but perfectly obvious death threat from the two most powerful wordsmiths in the world. Although of course they weren’t the most powerful, not anymore. They weren’t even close. I had seen the boy face them both down. That said they were still powerful enough to snuff me out without a second thought. The CCC knew this and provided sufficient round-the-clock protection. I think I was more bait in the trap to apprehend Zauberin or Silvus, should they turn up - I was just a pawn in the game, and I was all too aware of that.

      Pawn or not, I had done a remarkable job of staying alive through all the madness. I was part of some of the most tumultuous happenings in the history of Wordkind and had survived to tell the story. Not really. My tale would not make it into the historian archives. But I had noted it all any way. There would come a day when I’d find the time, place, and stage to tell the tale. Before that, I had a lot more recording to do. I was done with the Guild and the Free Word though. I had to find the boy. He was the one to watch. He was the one to follow. I had thought long and hard about it. I knew the dangers associated with such a foolhardy enterprise. But that is the purpose of a historian’s life. To record worthy deeds. And I could think of no honour greater than to be the personal historian of the Wordscapist. I didn’t know how I was going to accomplish that, not yet. But it was the direction I was headed in. Even historians have resources. Even historians have methods. And I would use everything at my disposal to make this happen, even if it was the last thing I did.

     The first thing to do was to arrange a meeting with some friends I had made recently. Isis and Wind were no longer with the Free Word. There were two more who were out there; Necros and Lonigan. I had heard from them not long after the Glasgow debacle. They wanted to know who else could be relied on. I had been the coordinator, and soon we were all to meet. There was a definite agenda, a common purpose; to find and help the greatest wordsmith in all of history...the Wordscapist.

***

      A young man makes his way rapidly up the stairs of a seedy motel, on one of the lesser frequented streets of Venice. He takes the stairs two at a time and quickly makes his way to the narrow corridor on the third floor. He pauses beside an ancient looking door and knocks twice, and then after a pause, twice again. The door is opened by a pretty girl, about his age.

     “That wasn’t the password! Why did you open the door?”

     “I can recognise knuckle-heads by the quality of the rap; the number doesn’t make a difference.” She smiles playfully at him.

      He responds in kind, and then raises one hand in acknowledgement, “I’ll have to give it to you though, that was a good one!”

     “So are you ready for this?” she asks, “She’s supposed to be one of the old ones. She pretty much ate up a wordsmith who tried to summon her.”

     “Isn’t that what they do? I mean they aren’t called succubae for nothing! Except, I think there is supposed to be some pre-meal sex as well.”

     “Ha! You wish!” The girl throws in a punch with that.

    “Ow! Alright, fine! I’ll keep my distance. Though I always wonder why you get so uppity about it!”

     “Go have your succubus sex! And come back as a dripping doggie bag, what do I care!”

     At this point, there is a brief warp in the air and a translucent figure, barely a few inches in height, materializes over them.

     “If you kids are done, we have business to do. Louise is in her room. You have a scryscape to weave and a call to surf.”

     “You don’t surf calls, Alain. You make calls.”

     “Make, surf, click. Whatever. Get to it. Amra’s team is watching, so be careful.”

     “No worries, Alain. This will be an easy one. I even have a little love letter to deliver to Amra. I was writing it while I took a gondola to this godforsaken street.”

     “What love letter?” the girl aims for casual curiosity but misses it by some.

     “Oh, nothing at all,” the boy pockets the note and heads for the phone. He makes a motion in the air that brings up a polished warp. The warp starts as a grey swirl that clears to show a beautiful woman in a red dress. A hotel room can be seen in the background. The boy smiles and picks up the phone. He dials a number. The woman in the warp picks up the phone.

    “Louise...?”

    “Oui...Qui est-ce?”

     The Wordscapist starts weaving his next scape.

***

     A conversation between Lirii is impossible to document in a coherent format. A structured maelstrom of thoughts, ideas and intents that transcends time and space is exchanged through a shared communal pool. One such exchange however is critical to this tale, and is summarized here for the sake of context. 

     There is a place outside the universe as we know it. It is outside time too, existing in a pocket of probability that will never happen. This place is home to inter-galactic mystics who are known to Wordkind as the Lirii. What they call themselves doesn’t translate too well into any language known to beings that use standard means of communication (written, spoken, telepathic).

     There aren’t many Lirii. Sexless and formless, the Lirii sustain their numbers by voting into being any required additions. Formed by thought and purpose, with the Continuum as their only sustenance, each Lirus is powerful enough to destroy entire worlds.

     The Lirii are omniscient. This isn’t the same as omnipotence, as knowledge of everything that can and may happen does not necessarily translate into knowledge of what will happen. The Lirii have their ways though of working through high probability futures and narrowing down options. At times, for the odd rare occurrence that is important enough for them to want a particular outcome, the Lirii meddle. With their all-seeing vision into all possible pasts, presents, and futures, the Lirii realize the severe repercussions of this interference (an extreme outcome of what is known on Earth as the Observer effect). At times, they deem these repercussions acceptable. The Lirii have been concerned about half a millennium’s worth of space-time planes on an otherwise inconsequential planet called Earth. Some possible futures show that a Continuum source might open up on these planes and might even find a sentient host, who could control this power. A sentient being connected to the Continuum is either a Lirus or a myth. Once in a time-space eternity, a third possibility opens up; a physical life form with the power of multiple Lirii.

     Such a being is usually outside the Lirii vision. There is nothing the Lirii detest more than a blind spot. This occurrence needs to be mitigated at all costs, through indirect facilitation or direct intervention. This particular blind spot had managed to evade the Lirii for too long. They had tried indirect facilitation and it hadn’t worked. It looked like the problem had compounded now. There might even be two of them.

     It was time for direct intervention. The possible extinction of all life on Earth comes up as a possible outcome on some planes. The Lirii unanimously agree that this is an acceptable loss. They have started planning for the event. It would take time and painstaking effort, at least by Earth standards. But to one outside time, patience isn’t a virtue; it’s inevitable.