Spellbreaker (20 page)

Sir Claude hacked a serpentine cloth in half. The cloth whipped around, slashing into his chest but made only a dull clang against his armor.

Doria kicked the spellbook out of the pyromancer's hands and then spiked a glass vial on the floor beneath the woman. The pyromancer staggered backward. With another vial, Doria splashed some colorless liquid into her face.

Suddenly wind buffeted through the room and sent Nicodemus's long hair flying. An expansive sheet billowed up and flew toward the door. Ropes extended from the cloth to form a harness around one of the hierophants. “He's escaping on a lofting kite!” Nicodemus yelled, as a blast of wind knocked him over.

Sir Claude leapt forward with a backhand slash but missed as the hierophant shot away. His lofting kite hit the door with a thump. Nicodemus's ears popped. Then the lofting kite was through and pulling the wind mage up into the sky. Sir Claude threw something that glinted metallic in the sunlight before it struck the fleeing wind mage in the calf. The hierophant rose up and out of sight.

Nicodemus scrambled to his feet and ran to the door. The hierophant was flying over bay water, gaining altitude and flying north. A moment later he passed over a standing island and out of view. “Fiery heaven!” Nicodemus swore. “Now whoever sent those wind mages will know we're on to them.”

He turned back to the room. Rory was on his knees, holding his head. His wooden plate armor had fallen off. Meanwhile, Doria and Sir Claude were facing the pyromancer. She had backed against the wall, stumbling as if drunk. A few gouts of flame leapt from her hands as she extemporized sentences of the pyromancer's incendiary language.

Sir Claude was pointing his two swords at her. But Doria held both her empty hands up. “Peace, Magistra,” she said. “Peace. There's nothing you can do now except get yourself hurt. I cast a hydromantic spell onto you when I dashed that water into your face. You're feeling a bit funny now. You're going to go to sleep soon.”

For the first time, Nicodemus got a good look at the pyromancer. She had dark olive skin and long black hair. Her brown eyes were full of hatred and her lips pulled back in a sneer. She stumbled and steadied herself against the wall. Her head swung around and she seemed to focus on Nicodemus. Her eyes narrowed as if in recognition.

Nicodemus held his hands up to show that he had no weapon.

“Peace, Magistra,” Doria said again. “It's over.”

The young pyromancer screamed and charged at Nicodemus. At first he stood his ground, thinking to block her exit. But the moment before she reached him, Nicodemus realized that if their skin touched, the resulting canker curse would kill her in a matter of hours. So much for questioning her then. Clumsily he jumped out of the way, stumbled, fell on his back.

In the next instant she was on him. Tiny flames danced along her knuckles as she punched him in the cheek. Suddenly, metal-clad arms wrapped around the pyromancer and pulled her off of Nicodemus. “Her hand!” he said. “Doria, where she hit me. The canker curse.”

He struggled to his feet and saw that Sir Claude had the pyromancer pinned to the floor. Her eyes were fluttering and she struggled weakly, clearly altered by whatever spell Doria had cast into her face. Meanwhile Doria was examining her hand. Three black tumors already grew from the woman's knuckles. The dark tissue spread down her fingers and onto the back of her hand.

“This hand comes off right now,” Doria commanded. “Rory, pin her down. Sir Claude, you'll amputate.”

The druid took the knight's place holding the pyromancer down. Sir Claude hurried to stand behind Doria.

“She has only moments before this canker spreads into her blood. Then she's dead.” She spread the woman's hand open and pulled hard on her index finger and pinky. “That spell I cast on her mind, she's as anesthetized as I dare make her. She should also be amnestic. It's going to hurt like hell, but at least she won't remember it. I need your blade to be as sharp and as hot as possible. It's got to be hot enough to cauterize the wound, to burn it, so she won't bleed out afterward. Can you do this?” She looked up at the knight.

Sir Claude's helmet had peeled back to reveal his grim expression. Nicodemus understood. Killing a violent enemy was one thing, chopping off a restrained woman's hand quite another. But with steady hands the knight brought both his swords together. They became liquid, began moving up and down against each other. It created a horrible screeching sound. Within moments the friction and whatever spells the knight was casting in the metal made the blade glow orange.

Doria pulled harder on the pyromancer's index finger and pinky, stretching the arm taut. “Cut just along the palm. Try to save her thumb.”

She pulled back harder. Sir Claude raised his sword, and Nicodemus fought the urge to look away. With a grunt, Sir Claude brought his sword down. The blade crashed into the floor and Doria fell back onto her bottom. In her lap, smoking slightly and stinking, were all four of the pyromancer's fingers.

There was a moment of unearthly silence. “Creator,” Nicodemus whispered to himself, “be merciful.”

Then the pyromancer began to scream.

 

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“Hating yourself is underestimated,” Francesca said as she, Ellen, and the twins hiked up the Jacaranda Steps.

Returning to Chandralu was a strange experience for Francesca. She had been written from the memories of a physician who had trained in the city's infirmary three hundred years ago. The resulting clash of her recollections with present realities was making Francesca maudlin and philosophical; that, she supposed, was not a good combination for any woman, but it was especially not so for a semi-draconic one, in whom the two emotions might result not only in pessimistic musings but also in a bodily transformation, much wailing, gnashing of foot-long teeth, and generalized dragon-based chaos among the citizenry.

The party had stepped ashore not half an hour before and had been met by a lesser wizard from Chandralu's colaboris station. He carried a cyphered message from the Counsel of Starfall to Francesca. She had eagerly pulled several luminous Numinous paragraphs from the envelope. But after translating the magical text, she found nothing encouraging.

The message reported that nothing new had been learned regarding her “recent grave discovery,” which she had come to Chandralu to deliver to Nicodemus. The message went on to explain that the Council had attempted but failed to establish a diplomatic connection with the empress's court.

Francesca was disappointed, scared, and brooding on what she could have done to avoid the present political situation, hence her present and dangerous self-critical and philosophical mood.

“No one can hate you as much as you can hate yourself because no one knows you as well as you know yourself,” she said to her party. “In fact, loathing of similarities is underestimated in general. Think of all the attention we give to differences. We act as if all prejudice or injustice or war is caused by hating things or people who are different from us. I hate that woman because she wears different clothes. Or we fought that war because they worship different gods. We always say that sort of thing. We pretend that we could enter a golden age of peace if we could learn not to distrust foreign things and people.”

“We couldn't?” Ellen asked, deadpan. The twins, as usual, were silent.

“No, the distrust of difference isn't everything,” Francesca continued, warming to her argument. “Who can upset you more than someone who is similar to you?”

“But Magistra, you upset me all the time.”

“Exactly my point. I chose you as a student because you reminded me of myself when I was younger.”

“I find that very upsetting.”

“You see!” Francesca said, playing up her passionate voice against Ellen's flatness.

“Magistra, I am astounded by your rhetoric.”

“What kind of hatred is worse than self-hatred?”

“Hatred of menstrual cramps?”

“Isn't that usually a punch line from one of my jokes?”

“That's why I thought it'd make you laugh. But given your present argument, maybe I should have guessed you'd dislike your own punch lines more than anyone else's.”

“Well, regardless, isn't that a form of self-hatred? Are you not hating your own uterus at that moment?”

“It is such a surprise,” Ellen said in a tone that indicated that it was anything but, “to find that you have turned my attempt at humor into substance for your argument.”

“And in medicine, Ellen, in medicine what disease is worse for a body than a disease perpetrated by one's own body? Consider how the body's inflammatory response to infection can cause septic shock? Or how our own tissue can turn against us to become a lethal tumor?”

“Yes, Magistra,” Ellen answered, her tone suddenly soft. “And there is the torment your daughter suffers as the different aspects of her nature attack each other.”

Francesca looked at the younger woman, surprised by her frankness and perspicacity.

Ellen squeezed Francesca's shoulder. A natural gesture, reassuring for a moment, and then painful, as Francesca realized that Leandra would never have done the same. Francesca's anger melted into guilt and misery.

“Yes, you're right,” Francesca said, wondering how she had screwed things up so royally that she was closer to her student than to her daughter.

The party continued up the Jacaranda Steps. On either side of the steps the poor called out for money or prayers, depending on whether they were human or divine. Looking at them rekindled Francesca's exasperation. It was a good feeling; one that helped her stop thinking about her daughter.

“Another example of my argument,” Francesca said, resuming her impassioned tone. “There never have been so many poor on the Jacaranda Steps. It used to be that anyone half able to work had enough to eat. The regency made arrangements for the sick and destitute. But the past thirty years have produced crowds of poor in every kingdom and they are growing every day. Because of the god mob, more children are surviving infancy, the elderly are living longer. But we haven't figured out how to care for them. The rich are getting richer, the poor poorer. All in the name of matching our strength to the empire's.”

“Magistra?” Tam said. Prompting both Francesca and Ellen to look back at the twin druids.

The twins had been together since birth. Early in puberty they had been born to magic at exactly the same time. As sometimes happens with twins, Tam and Kenna had developed their own unique dialect; however, whereas most twins developed unique spoken communication, Tam and Kenna had developed a unique communication in the druidic magical languages. This is what gave them both their special abilities and their uncanny reticence.

In fact, Tam and Kenna spoke so infrequently that others often mistook them for mutes or forgot that they were nearby.

Tam had lowered his eyebrows. At least Francesca thought that he had. Both of the twins had hair so blond and skin so fair that sometimes she could not make out their eyebrows. “I fail to see what relevance the poor have to do with your argument about hatred and similarity.”

“Ah!” Francesca said with a nod. “Because this world changed, this glorious burgeoning of our kingdoms, has been caused by creatures like me.” She tapped her chest. “It's the mixing of divine and human language that's created the god mob and because of the benefits the mob brings, a burgeoning population that outstrips our ability to care for it. Then there are the neodemons, who are not all that different from me, who terrorize the weak and empower the wicked. And why do we do it all? Why do we keep populating our lands with divinities? Simply to try to keep up with the empire. If we gave half as much thought to caring for our own as we do to matching the empire's might, we wouldn't have any poor lining these steps.”

Tam nodded and then glanced at Kenna. Both of their faces became blank as stone. They began walking in perfect step with each other.

Francesca and Ellen turned back to the steps. Above them one of the billowing clouds had covered the sun and had begun to drop a light tropical rain. The merchants retreated farther into their stalls. The poor huddled closer to the jacaranda trees or each other.

“You know Plumeria Way used to be where the upper city walls stood? What are now the Upper Banyan and Plumeria Districts were just rice paddies,” Francesca explained as they passed Utrana Way. She could have turned right and sought out their family's compound. Likely that would have helped her find Leandra. But she wanted to investigate one thing first. They continued up the steps.

“No, Magistra, I didn't know that,” Ellen said.

“Granted, that was three centuries ago, but there's no doubt that now the city is growing too fast,” Leandra complained. “Look at all this poverty. Far too fast. It's enough to make a woman mad.”

“Of course, Magistra,” Ellen said.

“I sound like a sour old woman who complains all the time, don't I?”

“Of course not, Magistra.”

“Ellen, I have always admired how well you are able to lie.”

“The feeling is mutual, Magistra.”

Francesca cracked a smile and then let the party fall into silence. They continued up the steps. The crowds of poor slowly dwindled as they rose higher in the city. They passed an elephant hauling produce down to the Bay Market. The massive animal's ears displayed stylized lotus flowers drawn in red-and-white chalk. The rain was making the design run. The mahout riding on the elephant's back called out a singsong warning to the traffic ahead of him.

At last, Francesca turned left onto Plumeria Way, which ran the length of the city's eighth terrace. Being the only wide and well-paved street that connected all four major stairways, Plumeria Way was nearly always thick with traffic: pedestrians, palanquin crews, elephants, hand-pushed carts, all in a variety of colors, styles, and wealth that ranged from resplendent to tattered.