Spellbound (21 page)

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Authors: Blake Charlton

BOOK: Spellbound
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One monster jumped forward to land an overhand hatchet strike on Cyrus's shoulder. The paragraphs in his robes interlocked and stopped the axe blade as sure as plate armor, but the blow made him stumble backward. He pulled several paragraphs from his robes and looked at the monsters, hoping to cast the spell into their clothes and immobilize them. But the monsters wore only leather pants that stopped below the knees. There wasn't a stitch of fabric on them. Cyrus growled. They'd learned not to wear cloth when fighting hierophants.
The creature to his left struck with a high sidearm chop. Cyrus ducked under the swing and then reached for the creature. But as he did, the blunt head of the monster's other axe smashed into his stomach. Lacking a cutting edge, the axe head did not activate the protective paragraphs. The blow drove the wind out of Cyrus. He staggered backward.
Both monsters advanced, studying him with cold golden eyes. One uttered something. The other responded.
Cyrus stepped toward the creature on his right. But the monster backed away while the other landed a sidearm blow to his thigh. Again, the spells in Cyrus's robes protected him, but again he staggered backward. The creatures were trying to push him into the temple, into the dark and whatever spells lurked within.
One monster stepped forward with an overhand swing. This time, Cyrus stepped into the attack, meeting the blade with a raised forearm. Though blunted by his protecting spells, the blow sent a jolt of force down Cyrus's arm. The monster paused. Cyrus edited a swath of his robes so that text boiled out of the cloth as a blast of wind. Instantly, he was flying upward.
Something struck his left leg with enough force to make it go numb. But he was too busy editing his miniature jumpchute to mind. Deftly, he arced through the air to alight on a stone chimney.
Something thudded below him. He looked down to see a quivering hatchet stuck in a beam leaning against the chimney.
Someone shouted. It was a man's voice, a human voice. Cyrus turned
but saw only ruined temple and darkening rubble. The creatures had vanished.
Another twinge of pain shot through Cyrus's chest, making him gasp. He had a quarter hour, maybe less, until Francesca's death sentence strangled his heart.
In the sky, a few stars had appeared. Frantically, he scanned the city for a source of light. To the north, torches flickered on the distant outer wall. Too far. He'd die before he could fly there and back. Southward, he saw only dark buildings and empty alleyways. But above that was a rectangular break in the cityscape that glowed orange. The night market.
Cyrus grabbed his robes and jumped into the air. Ravens on the wing croaked their surprise as he flew to the street. A few children cried out as he landed on the cobblestones.
Quickly, he edited his makeshift jumpchute back into his robes and ran. The night market was filled with Canics and merchants hawking honeyed breads or skewers of grilled meat. Only a few artisan stalls remained occupied. Relief washed through Cyrus as he saw one filled with lamps, several burning to attract attention.
“I need lamp oil, flint, and a firesteel,” Cyrus blurted while fumbling with his belt purse. “I'll pay but only if you hurry. Dawdle or haggle and I'll commandeer what I need in our canonist's name.”
The lamp maker—a plump woman with a round face and graying black hair—moved quickly.
Cyrus laid down three silver sovereigns on her counter. He was overpaying, but there was no time to argue. The woman scooped up the coins and placed a heavy flask in his hands. Suddenly Cyrus realized that his heart should be in agony by now. The lamp maker handed him a bit of flint and a curled firesteel.
He took them and hurried away. Above the night market, a lofting kite cut a slow circle. The kite's hierophantic spells made its canopy shine like a rectangle of daylight sky flying through twilight.
No doubt the pilot should be patrolling the outer walls, watching for lycanthropes in the grass. Probably he had grown bored enough to cut an excursion out of his patrol. Cyrus would have words for the patrol's wing commander about discipline … if he outlived the night.
He ran back down the street toward the ruined temple. Again, he wondered why his heart wasn't in agony. A few twinges of pain moved through his chest, but no more than would be expected from exertion and anxiety.
Suddenly he realized what Francesca had done. But how had she disspelled it? And when? He turned into an alley and then remembered
standing behind the tobacco salon. Francesca had laid a hand on his shoulder and said, “I trust you now.”
The memory made him clutch his flask of lamp oil. He thought she had been flirting. In fact it had been an act of trust, the disspelling of her death sentence. And yet she hadn't trusted him enough to tell him what she had done.
The realization filled Cyrus with a rush of contrary emotions: frustration at her little game, but also excitement. He remembered what it had been like to hold her—her slender waist, her slight breasts, the warmth of her neck.
But then he shook his head, trying to think clearly. This was foolishness. He needed to get Francesca out of the dark.
 
THE BLACKNESS LIFTED from Francesca's eyes, and she found herself still inside the ruined temple.
She had not moved an inch from where some foreign text had spellbound her. The trap had censored her mind, stopped her ears, blinded her eyes, held her perfectly still. After the initial shock, she had for a while grudgingly admired the spellbinding. But then her anxiety rose. Likely she was blind because a subtext was bending light around her and thereby rendering her invisible. Cyrus, unable to see her, might step into the trap as well.
Suddenly she could hear a conversation spoken in hushed but passionate voices. She strained to make out individual words and was shocked to realize that the conversation was not between humans. It couldn't be. The voices hissed and clanged. It sounded like several forks arguing with each other while tumbling in a pot of boiling water.
A rush of fear moved through her then. Perhaps she had found not Nicodemus Weal but the Savanna Walker. Perhaps her mind was about to get textually mashed into aphasic mush.
“Magistra.”
She jumped, straining hard against her spellbindings. Nothing happened. She stopped struggling and set every ounce of her wit to appearing calm.
“Magistra,” the voice said again—a man's voice, low and controlled. It was frighteningly close, as if the speaker were leaning over her shoulder. “I need your full attention.”
“Do you now?” she asked conversationally. “Then it's a shame I'm so busy being bound up tighter than a God-of-gods damned sausage. Why don't you come back in an hour, hmm?”
The man laughed dryly. “If I do, can you compose a defensive prose style that wouldn't embarrass an apprentice?”
“You know, I've always wondered if it's possible to be both pretentious and retarded,” she replied. “Thank you for settling the matter, Magister Weal.”
“Magistra is too polite,” he said coldly. “I was far too retarded to ever become a wizard. But at least I was never careless enough to dash headlong into disspells and endanger my fellow spellwrights.”
The word “careless” made Francesca's throat tighten as she remembered Deirdre dying on her table. “What did you do to Cyrus?”
“If you mean the hierophant following you, we merely tried to keep him from endangering us or himself. He fought back; some hatchets were thrown. We weren't keen on doing that, but we couldn't let him escape to fetch other wind mages. The damned thing is that he did escape, and I'm a little worked up about having to kill or be killed by whomever he brings back. Do you understand?”
“Cyrus isn't your enemy. I'm not your enemy.”
“Will he bring other hierophants here?”
She tried to shake her head but found it still spellbound. “I don't know. He knows many of them unknowingly serve Typhon.”
These words were greeted at first by silence but then by a flurry of words in the harsh language. Then something—could it have been a parrot?—squawked. A raspy voice began to coo the word “Azure … azure …”
Francesca spoke louder. “I bring a message from Deirdre.”
When Nicodemus answered, his voice was softer. “Is she well?”
Francesca strained to see her interlocutor, but she could make out nothing but rubble. To hide her anxiety, she spoke dispassionately: “She was wounded in the lycanthrope ambush this morning. They brought her into the infirmary and she died on my table. Moments later, she came back to life. A creature that caused aphasia came after her. I tried to help her run, but she couldn't escape. She wanted to punish my failure in the worst way possible, so she—”
“Made you find me,” Nicodemus interrupted coolly. “I get it. I'm the worst punishment there is.”
“It's good you know what your role in this world is.”
“But did Deirdre know she was interrupting our efforts? Why did she send you?”
“She said Typhon intends to wound you when capturing you and that I was to keep you alive during that capture. But she ‘put me in play,' to use her words, with a message for you. She said to tell you that …” She paused. “That there are two dragons.”
These words were followed by a rapid conversation of clanging voices. This time, Francesca could distinguish several speakers. One of them, she
realized, was Nicodemus closely approximating the harsh sounds with his human mouth.
“Deirdre said,” she continued, “that she has sometimes escaped the demon's control to read his documents, one of which named me as the only one who can keep the second dragon from killing you.”
This produced a blast of cacophonous laughter. Nicodemus laughed loudest. “Could you pull my other leg, Magistra? It's got brass bells on it.” Another laugh. “But, honestly, you don't need to make up stories. Unless you're a danger to my students, I won't harm you.”
“I'm not lying!” she said. “Deirdre said that a blasted demon knows my name and is worried about my interfering with a second dragon—of all the rotten impossible things—and that only I could stop it from catching you in some God-of-gods damned trap.”
Nicodemus chuckled and said in a voice that dripped with arrogance: “All right, Magistra Dragonsbane, what are you? Who are you?”
“Magistra Francesca DeVega,” she said in her best physician's voice, “appointed cleric in Our Lady Cala's infirmary, trained in medicinal language at the Port Mercy Hospitals and in Magnus and Numinous and all common languages in Astrophell.”
“And what else?”
“Not enough for you, cacographer?”
“You're something other than a cleric.”
She paused. “What do you mean?”
“What else are you?”
“I don't know what you mean.”
“Are you Lornish?”
“Spirish, born in the Burnt Hills along the Verdantine border. And don't even think about mocking my antique way of speaking.”
There was a moment of silence. “Did you ever know a Lornish tutor by the name of April?”
“Pardon my frankness, but what, in all the burning or flameless or even mildly intemperate hells, are you talking about?”
“Tell me what else you are,” he nearly hissed.
“Not as blasted crazy as you is the only thing that's coming to mind just now.”
Again he was silent. “Then tell me about this second dragon.”
“I can't, nor could Deirdre. She only reported to me what she had read.”
There was more talking in the harsh alien language. It sounded like a debate. Then a man who wasn't Nicodemus spoke: “Nicodemus, whatever you think she is, we had better go.” It was an elderly voice.
“I agree, Magister,” Nicodemus replied before issuing what sounded to be orders in the alien tongue. There followed heavy footsteps.
“Magistra, we're moving to a safer location. If you cause trouble, I will bind you. Endanger my students or magister, and I will instantly split your skull. Clear?”
If only because of how dispassionately he said “split,” Francesca believed him. “I'm a physician,” she said hotly, “I've sworn never to unduly endanger human life.”
He sniffed. “My students aren't human.”
Francesca started to ask what in all the hells they were when a creaking came from above. She looked up and saw a figure standing in a hole in the ruined temple dome.
It took her a moment to recognize Cyrus. He'd somehow gotten onto the temple's roof.
An alien voice called out, and footsteps sounded in every direction. “Tell him to come down and not to make any light,” Nicodemus growled into her ear.

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