Wordscapist: The Myth (The Way of the Word Book 1) (18 page)

     It…He was going through my memories again. I didn’t care anymore though. I was separate and distinct, calm and objective. Also, watching my memories dispassionately with his understanding thrown in showed them to me in a new light. I understood better. The gift of the word had clearly started messing with my head very early on indeed.

     I went deeper still, cutting myself off from the slightest thought process. I left the voice to his ruminations. I had to find that deep silent part within me. I hadn’t done this for a very long time, but I needed it now more than ever. I needed to relax and analyse where my life was going. I needed to come up with a plan. And for that, I needed complete silence. Slowly, I felt reality recede as I came close to achieving complete and utter thoughtlessness.

     “Very nice,” the voice echoed in the empty cavern of my head, shattering the moment. The peace that came with the state prevented me from losing my temper and lashing out. I sighed, releasing the effort of maintaining the state and turned my attention to him. He very obviously wanted to talk, and I couldn’t turn a deaf ear to a voice inside my head. However, I was calmer. And I could deal with this now.

     “Yes, you can. I see you’re not entirely without training after all.” De Vorto sounded thoughtful, almost taken aback.

    “That was merely meditation. I was trying to clear my head so that I could figure this out better.”

    “That was a pretty good tabula rasa for a non-practising, so-called untrained wordsmith.”

    “Tabula rasa? A clean slate. I’ve heard the term before, but not with reference to thoughtlessness.”

     “Thoughtlessness, yes. A nice way of putting it. By the way, the man who taught you this technique is an uninitiated wordsmith himself.”

     “Sheikh sir? Come on! The man has many virtues, but he had nothing to do with this madness. He merely guides people to find peace and calm within themselves.”

     “With remarkable ease, apparently. Something you thought was pretty normal. Any reason why he should have succeeded so easily where so many others failed?”

     I fell silent at that. My natural protests muted in my calm state. It was true. Sheikh sir did have an air to him that calmed all people who came into touch with him, irrespective of their state or nature. It had awed our group, the bunch of medley youngsters he had taught the art of self-restraint and objective interaction. It had impressed everyone he met. The man did have a gift. Whether it was the gift of the Word, I did not know. It wasn’t so much his words as his mere presence that had the effect it did.

     “His talent is vast. He channelled his gift towards the sole purpose of helping others. The effect, as you noticed, was quite extraordinary.”

     De Vorto’s habit of responding to my thoughts was not so irksome now, especially because he did not sound as condescending as before.

     “You mean to say there are more wordsmiths out there in the world than the members of the Guild or the Free Word?”

     “I know as much about the Guild and the Free Word as you do. In our days, wordsmiths were rare, and most of them were hailed as wizards and witches. There was no group as such, though every now and then I would hear about a bunch of them trying something or the other. The druids in particular were always up to brewing potions, trying to imbue some soup or the other with their gift.”

     “Soup?!”

    “You do realise that mere herbs and animals cooked together can at best cure a cold. Everything else was done with words.”

     “Hmmm,” I digested this quietly. Magic was real after all, though words seemed to be the real source of power and not the rest of the paraphernalia.

     “Right you are. The staff and the wand were mere channelling devices, with the wood and the precious stones helping store spells and power words that could be used later.”

     “And what else can be done with this gift?” I asked, half-tentatively.

     “What else can be done…Let’s see…” De Vorto’s voice grew dead serious at this. One by one, flashes of memories came back to me, half discovered by my conscience, half flung at me by De Vorto. “You can get everyone to like you. You can live a rash life without ever succumbing to the insane risks your days are filled with. You can grab your life and twist it any way your whimsy wants to take it. With a little more effort, you can do the same with another’s life. You can make or break a person with a few words. You can make your friends believe they’re much better than they are, pushing them down paths they could barely fathom. You can consign your enemies to the pits of hell or to a life of slobbering stupor. You can charm the stockings and every other article of clothing off any woman who takes your fancy. You can pretty much do anything you want. Don’t you know what the gift can do, Slick my boy? You have gone about your petty little life weaving away like an adept, shaping the norms and the world around you to your fancy.”

     I saw the memories play out as De Vorto threw out statements, each one a bigger slap than the previous one. My words came back to me, only now with the full realisation of how exactly they were linked to the events that followed. And suddenly, like it was yesterday, the memory came back.

It was a warm day. I could remember the sweat dripping down my 14-year old face, trickling along the fuzz that passed for a stubble. I was angry. I was furious. The memory brought back the intensity of the emotion. I was shouting at a kid. I vaguely remembered some childish quarrel, the details of which were completely irrelevant. What I remembered were the words… my words. “You're going to be sorry! You will never sleep again! Don't think you’ll get away! You bastard! You will have nightmares! Worse! As you scream to escape your nightmares, monsters will crawl out of your dreams! They will take you down with them to deepest pits of hell! You will…!” This is where I stopped. The boy was genuinely horrified. And it was not my childish threats that were scaring him. I blinked as I noticed that the air in front of me had gone dark. It twisted and bucked like something was trying to break through. It coiled and twisted into a diabolic question mark, as if waiting for me to finish what I was saying. I realised that I had run out of steam. The kid however was petrified, waiting for me to finish what I was saying. I should not have said what I did. But sweet lord, I did not know. I did not know!

“You will… you will… die,” I whispered, unable to stop my childish vindictiveness. My stomach sank within me as I saw the gnarled knot of air going crazy. The kid gasped and took a step back. I reached out a hand trying to stop it. Too late. The demonic swirl swooped straight into his head. There was a blip in reality and I blinked again. The kid blinked too. Both of us looked around us. It was still the same, sunny day and we were both still in the school playground where it had all started. He stared at his hands and touched himself to check if he was still alive. A nervous giggle escaped me. He glared at me. “You are crazy,” he declared, his voice hoarse and devoid of all energy. And then he turned around, stumbling, and took off. I was left standing alone, a meaningless smile of triumph pasted on my face. I had the feeling I had done something I did not begin to understand.

     The memory faded away, leaving me numb as always. The other snippets came flowing out from the attic of my memory into my mind. The boy had withered away before my eyes in the days following that fight. I would see him every day at school, his face drawn, his eyes red from no sleep. He would glare at me each time he saw me looking at him, but he would never say a word. There was too much fear in his face. He did not dare start another fight. I tried to feel good about it. I had scared him silly. But, my stomach kept sinking each time I saw him till it could sink no more. It was almost like I knew what was coming. One day, he was absent from the first class. When he did not turn up till lunch, I went to the bathroom and shut myself in the loo for an hour, tears running down my face as guilt wracked me. That afternoon, one of the teachers came into the class to ask if any of us knew where he was. He had disappeared from his room in the middle of the night. They had found the room a mess, with traces of slime, ash and his blood all over the place. 

     I had spent many nights howling into my pillow, tortured by my imagination trying to answer the question, “What had come for him that night?” The papers and news channels did not make it any easier for me. It was sensational news and for years triggered what-could-have-happened articles and shows. Every time, the nightmares I had cursed him with came back with a vengeance to haunt my nights.

     The memory still hurt. Other memories sneaked in too, shouldering each other for space in my mind. A succession of faces. All those people. All the times my temper had caused trouble. No, not my temper. The words. Always the words. It never did get so bad again, but there was no comfort in that. I had killed that kid. It might as well have been me crawling out of a hell-hole to drag him down with me.

“… You will die!”

     And then there were others...

“… You will live your life out as a vegetable, your feeble brain and overgrown body useless to you!”

“… Of course you’re pretty, my love. Why do you think I thirst for one look of those gorgeous eyes?”

     Each time, with growing realisation, I had known exactly what I had been doing. I was using words to change things. So that was what had happened to the kid. A creature from hell had indeed come to drag him away. The college bully had not been mentally paralysed by an epileptic fit. It had been me. The girl had ended up prettier, but had also grown vain and petty. Again, because of me. The numerous instances where my words caused one thing or another came back to me full force. I had done good, but I had wreaked chaos as well. I had been using my gift throughout. At some level, I’d known it too. I had known what I was doing, even if I had not truly believed.

     “All that can be done, and a lot more,” De Vorto added softly, as my memories faded into the distance. “You have used your gift, even if you did it without fully knowing what you did. Wordsmith, you have not acquitted yourself well in the way of the Word. You have been petty and foolish. You acted as a child would, wanton and irresponsible. You did a little good, but small charmscapes cannot erase what you have wreaked. You have taken much more than you have given.”

     My chest and throat tightened until I could barely breathe. Again, the objectivity brought on by the meditative state prevented inane outbursts and denials. What good were any of those against a presence that could sense each and every one of my actions, my intentions, and moreover the consequences of my deeds. De Vorto knew more about what I had done that even I realised. And in his voice, I could sense a distaste that was all too real, all too justified. I sensed the sheer monstrosity of what I had done, the extent of the destruction and hurt I had wreaked. I hadn’t been a good guy, after all. I had never been a good guy. I had been a selfish, inconsiderate sonofabitch who had gotten away with murder. And I honestly had nothing to say in my defence. Except, perhaps, that I hadn’t known what I had been doing. I hadn’t known I could cause the harm I did. It had been more wishful thinking than anything else. But to wish for such things!

     “Yes, I’m glad you see that. I don’t really have anything more to say about this, then. I’ll leave you to your thoughts for a while. Later, when you’re more at peace with yourself, we will talk about what we must do, what lies in the future, for both of us. Things cannot be undone, but you can try and make amends by doing good with your gift, by helping me do good.” I didn’t protest this time. I didn’t yet have the capacity to think of doing good or making amends. And neither did I have the strength to fight or debate anymore. I couldn’t take any kind of a stand and had no surprise arguments. For once, I had lost completely. I had been let down, betrayed by my own self. I guess I did need the time off after all.

     “Go out for a while, boy. It will clear your head. Walk, see the sights, feel the air and the sea on your skin. It’s not so bad. And you’re not really a bad person. You’re just human. And in your human weakness, you asked for things without realising what you would get. Don’t flog yourself too much, not yet. Right now, focus on feeling and seeing with your gift. Go on now, go out.”

     Again, I didn’t protest. I got up quietly and walked to the dirty, cracked washbasin to wash my face. As I ran the water, I looked up into the mirror. I saw a stranger in the faded and dirty mirror, weary and old, with eyes much older than his years. The eyes…

    “De Vorto,” I called out aloud, my voice quivering with a sudden surge of fear.

    “Yes?”

    “Why has one of my eyes turned green?”

CHAPTER 9

The Trail of the Wordscapist

There are so many ways to weave

And so many threads to choose

The pattern emerges with time

As the weaver is drawn into the loom

The Historian

     Zauberin did not leave me much time to come to terms with what was happening. We soon had a team pick us up from the warehouse, which turned out to be in an isolated part of Goa, a state on India’s western coast.

     It was the first time I had been to India. I had been on scapes to the east, but they were more often in China and South-East Asia, for some reason. India had often been viewed as a Free Word stronghold and the Guild rarely sent teams out here. It made sense that my stint as a Free Word Historian should start in India.

     The team that came to collect us brought a couple of huge SUVs. The people were all norms, but were apparently well-versed with the ways of wordsmiths. I even saw some packaged recording equipment, top-of-the-line stuff. Zauberin had obviously been planning this one for a very long time. I wondered what she had intended to do if Silvus hadn’t tried to knock me off. I wouldn’t have been so agreeable about switching teams then. I gulped as I realised that I was to be a part of the Free Word’s rebellion whether I liked it or not. Remembering Zauberin’s telepathic missive, I reminded myself that she could easily read every thought in my head, even if I was protected against scapes. I decided to keep my thoughts neutral and politically correct. I wish I had had some training in thoughtlessness like wordsmiths do right at the beginning of breathsmith training.