Wordscapist: The Myth (The Way of the Word Book 1) (17 page)

     “That tastes different,” the voice said reflectively, “rather bland and dead.”

     “What tastes bland?” I droned, not really caring anymore.

     “What you’re smoking,” the reply came.

     I sat up with a start. “You can sense what that tastes like?”

     “How many times will I need to remind you my boy that I am in your head? You really need to get better baccy.”

     Breathe, I told myself, breathe. Don’t freak out. It’s normal. Jesus! Nothing was normal! This mental trespasser could not only read my thoughts, but also could feel what I felt! Nothing was private anymore!

     “It’s not baccy. It’s a cigarette.” I muttered.

     “A see-garr-ette,” the voice intoned in my head, “cured tobacco rolled in treated paper, with a filter at one end to prevent some of the more poisonous stuff from entering the lungs.”

     I started, and then realised he had pulled that out from my head too. If I had to define a cigarette, I’d probably go about it like that. Meanwhile, flashes of memories related to the ills of smoking, cancer, chemotherapy, and many related subjects flitted through my mind. The intruder was busy catching up on a lot of concepts he was clueless about. I’d never imagined someone would be using my head as a quick-reference Wikipedia!

     “Smoking does all that?” the voice sounded aghast, “I had no clue! Is that all true or is it nonsense someone has fed you, boy?”

    “It’s mostly true,” I conceded grudgingly. I did not like admitting the inherent stupidity of any habitual smoker with half a brain.

     “Holy word! And all the pipes I puffed! I wonder what would have happened if I had come back with my body. Maybe I was halfway through to death when I put myself to sleep. And here I am in another body wracked by the ills of baccy!”

     “I am not a body! And I am not wracked by the ills of baccy!” I almost screamed this time, quite infuriated by being side-lined, inside my own head.

     “Yes, quite,” the voice said, rather condescendingly.

     I took a few deep breaths. I was still freaking out about having a powerful magician and wordsmith in my head. I was either extremely creative in my delusions, or this world of wordscapes was a lot more messed up than I realised. Either way, I had swallowed that entire story way too easily. I was too shocked to ask questions, and De Vorto compensated for my lack of interrogatory skills by quizzing me about everything from the vagaries of contemporary English language to India’s history. It was time to turn that around. I had questions to ask!

     “Why, again, did you end up in my head?” I asked, stubbing out the suddenly tasteless cigarette.

     There was silence for a while, and I wondered if De Vorto had gone quiet again. After a while, he spoke.

     “I sensed you. You were half a world away, but I sensed your power. You were not like any of the other wordsmiths out there. You were probably the only one I could have ended up with who wouldn’t blow or go completely insane. I could see your scape sign like a burning beacon, and I latched on to it. The next thing I knew, I was in your head. It’s messy in here, but you are a capable host.”

     There it was again, that word! I hated the idea of being a host. I liked the idea that I was ‘emanating a scape sign’ even less. God knows how many others could sense it and latch on to it. I didn’t want my head ending up as the next hot venue for the wordsmith spooks convention!

     “And what am I… what are we to do now?” This question came from me after some thought. Some very scary thought.

     “I’m afraid there isn’t much to do. We need to go back to Scotland to see if we can find my body. If we’re lucky, the protection I wove around it is still in place and will preserve it, and we can try to figure out a way to put me back in there.”

     “And if we’re not lucky?” I asked, much as I knew I’d hate this answer.

     “Then we’re one body short, and need to find a solution that will free us of each other. I like the idea of being in your head even less than you do, boy. There is much I need to do, and right now, you’re the only medium I have to get these things done.”

     “Wait a minute! I’m not going to run errands for you!”

     “We’ll talk about that.”

     “No, we will not. I have a life!”

     “That you have abandoned, running away from a situation you couldn’t handle. If only I had been there, you might have made more of it, and maybe even saved that poor wordsmith’s life. The shambling corpse demon could have been dispatched easily.”

     I choked in indignation at that. The bastard had been conveniently tapping into my memories, digging up dirt he could throw at me.

     “That was the first time I had seen a demon! Otherwise, I have enough tricks up my sleeve to have sliced and diced that rotting piece of meat myself!”

     De Vorto snickered in my head. I realised then that there could be no lies to someone who lived inside my head. Bravado wouldn’t work. I was exposed in all my inglorious detail.

But I wasn’t giving up yet.

Dew

    There wasn’t much left to do at the shack. Papa Loon was busy fuming and sharpening his knife. I got a bottle of water from the cooler and walked out. I made my way to my bike thoughtfully, taking sips of water, bracing myself for the weaving to come. I didn’t know yet what I would do, but I knew I had to do something. I had always wanted to be a battle smith, but not for the sake of violence. I hated violence. I had seen fights amongst norms, but knew that they couldn’t inflict anything close to what wordsmiths let loose with their scapes. I had seen the injuries on Free wordsmiths who had run into Guild Hunters and their demons. I had never fought myself and wasn’t looking forward to it either. I wasn’t afraid. I just hated the mindlessness of it all. They struck. We struck back. And it went on ad infinitum, ad nauseam.

      I knew that the next meeting between Papa Loon and Slick would be marked with blows and worse. I still didn’t know what to make of him. Was he an adept who was fooling us, or was he a freak cipher who had ended up with more power than any other wordsmith I knew? He had shrugged my attack away like it was nothing, but he had also reacted only at the last possible second. Someone had to be really good to let things go that far, or really stupid. Remembering the things he had said and the way he had acted, I was leaning more towards stupid. But stupid or not, I had to be really careful. One thing I knew for sure; he was incredibly powerful. Whether he knew it or not, whether he could control the gift or not, did not change the fact itself. He could pretty much blow up all of Ingo’s if he went loco. Perhaps all of Goa even! Given that Papa Loon’s negotiation would start with an attempt to slice his tongue out, there was a high chance of him going loco. If I was to avoid a bloodbath, I would have to find Slick first. And I would have to find some answers. And fast. I tossed the bottle into my sling bag and started the bike. I rode out, thinking of ways of tracing the guy. I could go norm and put the word out or I could weave up something that tracked down a strange scape sign in the neighbourhood. The only problem was that the Free Word convention tonight ensured that there would be lots of Free wordsmiths and a Guild spy or two as well around town, along with a CCC team to keep an eye on both parties. Any questions doing the rounds, or even an anonymous trace scape, would put all of them on alert. Being a Free wordsmith was all about stealth and caution, and that severely limited my options.

I rode home, turning down the narrow lane off the Baga main road that I always took. The chaos of the main road quickly receded until I was back in the Goa I loved; the sleepy, quiet, green heaven I had grown up in. It was some solace that the tourist madness seldom intruded so far in. A few turns later, each one down a narrower lane, I reached the house. I parked the bike and quickly strode around to the back. In the midst of several coconut trees was a small cottage Papa Loon and Andy da had made for me, woven together with a combination of norm and wordsmith skill. I pulled the screen door, woven with palm fronds, aside and ducked into the small room.

     The light was much softer inside. It always was. For once though, the small world I had made for myself failed to calm me down. I kicked my chappals off and dropped on the soft bed. My body was still tense, but I didn’t have the time to go through my entire routine. I tied my hair up tight, yanking it back almost painfully, and quickly took up my favourite weaving position, the padmãsana - one of the fundamental yoga postures, perfect for instant thoughtlessness.

     A few deep breaths later, I was ready. First things first; I had to know for sure what it was that I was chasing here. Was he an adept or a cipher? I brought up Papa Loon’s memories and my own. I compared them for inconsistencies. If Slick had been projecting a glamour, there would be inconsistencies. A glamour was always woven to suit the one seeing it. There was no way he could project the same glamour for the both of us, and keep it consistent all the way through. I concentrated hard and superimposed the two images in my mind, looking for tell-tale signs of a glamour. Nothing came up. They were just straightforward memories. He was who he was and claimed to be. I couldn’t believe it! An incredibly powerful cipher! What did this mean? I went back to the memories. I had to know if he was lying, if there was deceit. I focused on Papa Loon’s memory again, noting the little flares in his scape sign as Slick spoke, all of them reflecting genuine emotion. He wasn’t weaving. The flares were particularly powerful when Papa Loon had jumped him. I ran through that scene half a dozen times, and every time that flare signified only plain fear. There was no anger or any trace of a weave that a wordsmith would have used to defend himself. I could see the thin line of red the knife left on his throat. He had actually been cut, and it was only Papa Loon’s restraint and sheer luck that had kept him alive. There was not even a basic sheath defence in place. I don’t think he quite knew how to create one.

     He wasn’t an adept. I heaved a sigh of relief, as I let the memories fade away. It would be easier now to bring him in. But I would have to find him for that. The memory of the mossy hue came back to me. I knew exactly how I was going to do that! I started weaving, bringing up the identification scape I’d woven on him at the shack. I repeated the words to bring up the scape warp. I saw it twisting and turning as I fed it more words. I took care to tie every word deep into his identity as far as I could perceive it, ensuring that no other wordsmith would be touched by the trace. Slowly, I watched in amazement as the shape started splitting into two. And then it got crazier still. The two tendrils started intertwining, curling up together, and still struggling to stay apart. I remembered thinking about the duality of his scape sign earlier. It was the same pattern, consistent, scary. This didn’t make sense. Was I messing up? Or was there more to this than my barely adequate training had prepared me for?

     I continued weaving any way, a lot more cautiously than I had started off. Feeding the scape one word after another, each more tentative and delicate than the previous one, I watched the scape take definite shape. It only confirmed my suspicions. There were two entities here, and in some way, they were both tied together. Slick was one of them; I didn’t know the other. What struck me was the sheer power both the entities emanated, and how they were entwined in a way that magnified the extent of their gift. It was almost like two wordsmiths had decided to meld their consciousness and existence into one self just to achieve this dizzy zenith. That didn’t make sense. It didn’t sound possible! Well, that was just another thing I’d have to figure out when I met him. I decided to try some identification scapes again, this time going through each one individually. From memory, I ran off all the ones that represented the top layer of the Guild leadership, the devil’s inner circle as they were called. The last name was of course the devil himself, AJ Silvus. The manifest scape signs twisting and struggling in front of me showed no reaction to any of these names. I didn’t have identification scapes for the lower levels of the Guild hierarchy, but I wasn’t too bothered about that. The kind of power we were talking about here could be yielded only by very senior wordsmiths. I then turned to the Free Word roster, just to make sure of what I was beginning to suspect. A few minutes later, the results were out. Neither of the scape signs belonged to wordsmiths from the Guild or the Free Word.

     I flopped back as I allowed the scape sign to dissolve into nothingness. I wearily pulled aside unruly strands of hair from my face, wiping away a sheen of sweat that had appeared despite the cool winter day. I was dizzy from the realisation of what I had discovered. We were talking about not one but two ciphers; both extremely powerful and within one body. I was way out of my depth!

Slick

    CRASH!

     I watched through a curtain of fury as pieces of glass went skittering around the room and water ran down the cheap paint of the wall. That had been a spontaneous reaction to the voice egging me beyond the final reserves of my patience. And it hadn’t taken any fancy wordscapes either. I had merely flung a glass of water at the wall. So there!

    A long peaceful moment passed with no comment from the voice. I allowed myself a sigh of relief. Had I managed to intimidate it into silence?

     “Some temper you have, boy!” De Vorto mocked, almost in response to the unspoken question.

     I ignored it, telling myself to take deep breaths. A point of light, deep within. Focus on it and let your thoughts go. I used the old mantra I had learnt during a meditation programme and tried to achieve a peaceful, thoughtless state. Years of practice overcame the intense emotion and I found myself floating towards a more tranquil state.

     “Tabula rasa! Where on blessed earth did you learn to do that?” the voice sounded genuinely taken aback. I ignored it and continued moving towards the blissful state where I would be able to view this entire crazy situation with a much more balanced perspective. I felt parts of my mind stirring without my volition and flashes of memory came back to me; a younger me, the unrest of the gift stirring inside me; only then I hadn’t known it was the gift; I had assumed I was going mad; meeting Sheikh sir; the first meeting, where in just one conversation he had managed to soothe my rebellious spirit and provide answers to unspoken questions; the meditation lessons; how I struggled with a mind on the verge of going renegade; finally learning the technique of calming myself, purging myself of intense emotions; a year of disciplined living where I had internalised the technique; all the years of practice where I had retreated to the reliable practice that afforded me peace beyond what anything and anyone else could.