Wordscapist: The Myth (The Way of the Word Book 1) (33 page)

    We were in a little valley. It was gorgeous, green and lush, very unlike the bleak, black surroundings. I couldn’t get a grasp of the size of the place, as the horizon melted into a haze that showed a trace of the mountains that surrounded us. De Vorto had built some kind of illusion that combined with the natural inaccessibility of the place to ensure that no one could see it from the outside. I wondered how he had worked with all the problems of attempting something like this; the sheer physics of hiding a location and stitching everything else around it on the outside; the one-way vision and the obvious shielding it had from all wordsmith senses; the energy it took to sustain something like this. It was an incredibly brilliant example of weaving, something that only the Wordscapist could have come up with. For now, it looked like we might be safe again.

     Slick was walking around the place, his mouth wide open, stopping now and then to give me can-you-believe-this-place looks. He was cute when he wasn’t trying to be a smartass. I smiled at him, and settled down on a patch of grass. I didn’t want to explore. I wanted De Vorto to be back so that I could talk to him. I needed some answers. After some walking around, Slick returned and settled down next to me. We sat for some time in silence. I liked that. I liked him better when he wasn’t talking. I stopped the thought before it could sneak away and go to other places I didn’t want it to go to.

     “I’m hungry,” Slick said after a while. “Can you do an accio fruit thingie?” 

     “We’re not in the Harry Potter world, Slick,” I replied with a heavy sigh. “Wordsmiths need to work harder. I suggest we go fruit hunting, if you want to eat any time soon.”

     He stuck his tongue out at me, and then scrambled up. His leg was back to normal, and so were his antics. I guess cute could become irritating very soon. But it was still difficult to stay mad at the idiot. I followed him with a smile as he exclaimed loudly at having found a patch of apple trees. Before he could try something stupid like climbing one, I wove up something that brought down a shower of lovely ripe apples. He leaned to pick one up and threw me a look. “I thought we had to work harder.”

     “Well, apples won’t come zooming to you,” I responded, picking one up myself. “But you can convince them to fall a bit sooner.”

     He bit into one, making a face at me as he did. Only he could manage to do that.

     “I hope De Vorto is doing alright,” I said.

     “Well, he can weave,” Slick spoke through a full mouth. “And he is the incredible, amazing, and ultimate Wordscapist. He can probably wrap them up and sell them as Christmas tree decorations without breaking a sweat.”

     “I need to talk to him about that,” I said after chewing through a mouthful of extremely delicious apple. “We need to know what he can and cannot do. There is no point pretending he cannot weave. And if he doesn’t act so damn cryptic, we might be able to get things done more easily than we could have otherwise.”

     He nodded vigorously as he demolished another apple, his second.

     The next hour was pleasant, if slightly strange. We spoke and ate, and spoke some more. Every now and then we would wonder about De Vorto. Eventually, we would give up and get back to talking. Slick had lots of questions, and I was glad to answer what I could. He wanted to understand how weaving worked. He wanted to know the science behind it. He wove by instinct, stringing words together as they came to him. His scapes definitely got results, though his words were without form or structure. I tried to explain to him the logic of the classic structure I had learned as best as I could. My responses made him thoughtful, and every now and then there would be a lull in the conversation as he digested what he had learned. And then he would plunge right back in with another question.

     I told him about scapes and the training process. I told him about the Guild and the Free Word. I even told him about Sign; what little I heard, and the fact that she was more myth than fact. He found all this endlessly entertaining. I leaned back during one of the quiet periods, resting against a tree, twisting some grass in my hands. I liked this place. It was nice. And Slick could be nice too, if he didn’t try so hard to be himself. I watched him frown at some thought running through his busy head. His strange mismatched eyes glowed brown and green for a second as he turned to me again. That bit was going to take some getting used to.

     “So I use one path to construct and another to deconstruct,” he said suddenly, repeating what I had told him a while back. “Why can’t I just reverse the same path?”

     I gasped in horror, “Don’t even think about doing something like that! You come up with the most bizarre ideas! Using a scape path in reverse indeed! What do you think this is? A card game?”

     “Well, it seems logical to me.”

     “Slick,” I tried to keep my voice calm, despite the sheer insanity of what he had just proposed. “Weaving is complicated. It’s not child’s play. Your element might be water, or ice. That might come naturally to you, like fire does to me. But other things take time. You need to try and learn the classic paths. You need to...”

      He closed his eyes and suddenly a twig lying in front of us burst into flame. It made me jump, and I almost shrieked. That was completely unexpected!

      “What is wrong with you!” I shouted at him. “You are sitting on this huge reservoir of power that you barely understand. De Vorto has expressly forbidden you from weaving. And you just play around with it like it’s nothing. And thoughtscapes! Inside your head! With no control over what you wreak! You could blow yourself up! There is a reason why wordsmiths are taught as inksmiths before they can move to breathsmiths!”

     “You’re just plain jealous!” he retorted, with a smirk.

     “No, I am not!” I shouted again, outraged at how clueless he was about the seriousness of the situation. “I know the power of the thoughtscape lies with the Wordscapist. But you are yet to learn the basic skills of a rookie. You have power, yes. But you lack the knowledge to control it and use it constructively.”

     He looked at me seriously. I think he finally understood just how serious I was. “Dew, tell me,” he said, “Do you know what it feels like to wield this power?”           

     That threw me off. I wasn’t sure how to respond. I finally decided to just go with honesty, though I didn’t like what he was implying. “I guess not,” I muttered.

     “Then, how do you know the best way to use it?”

     “I do not,” I snorted. “De Vorto is probably the only one who can train you. And he has already forbidden you from weaving! I could guide you to the way of the inksmith and the breathsmith. Anything beyond that is up to him.” My volume had gone up again, despite myself.

     “Dew, do you realise that a lot of the gift I have is beyond even what De Vorto had?” he asked, his voice irritatingly reasonable. “To make matters worse, he’s not really being completely honest about anything at all. We don’t even know how much he can do right now, and why he says the things he does.”

      “Slick, do you realise just how perfectly arrogant, incorrigible and unbearable you are?” I asked, giving up on trying to convince him.

      “Dew, do you realise how perfectly beautiful you look when you flush like that?”

      That one threw me off completely. I flushed even more and was at a complete loss for words. The bastard! He had snuck that one in and caught me off guard! I saw him smiling at me, leaning back to take in the view. Cute could definitely get extremely irritating really fast.          “You are incorrigible,” I muttered, getting up. “I see you’re good at charmscapes though!”

     “That was not a charmscape and you know it,” Slick retorted, standing up too. “I was merely telling you something I observed.”

     “Never mind. I give up. I’m not going to argue with you. Let’s go check on De Vorto,” I said, walking back towards the point we had entered, visible as a tear in the haze around us. “It has been way too long.”

     Slick was walking alongside me, looking at the portal as we approached it. “You really think we should step out? He asked us to wait here for him.”

     “Well, we did wait,” I said, as I continued walking. “I’m beginning to get a little worried though. We did leave him in the midst of a crazy situation.”

     “Hmmm, I guess,” Slick said. “Hold on, let me go through first.” With that he stepped through the portal. With an exasperated sigh, I moved to follow him. I walked right into him on the other side, again. He was frozen right in front of the portal, and this time I sensed that there was something a lot more serious holding his attention. I moved around him to see what was wrong.

     There was a grey-black mass of ectoplasm in front of us. I could make out a bunch of shadows. We were surrounded by what looked like a few hundred ghosts!

Slick

     I could feel the fear prick every inch of my body. I didn’t know what they were, but they were really scary. I could feel the combined weight of their hostile rage pressed against my mind. I wasn’t able to think straight, much less move. I felt Dew standing right next to me, staring at the immense mass of grey swirling around us. There were a lot of them, distinct for a split second and all mixed up the next. They made it impossible for us to move, and I didn’t really know how to fight them.

      “Dew?” I asked, my voice quivering a bit.

     “Spirits,” Dew whispered. “Ghosts. I have never seen so many of them together.”

      I did not need to know that. I hated ghosts! Not that I had had any personal experience. But this was insane! Zombies, psychotic wordsmiths, murderous faerie, and now ghosts! Where had these sprung from?

    I tried to think of a way to counter them. But the fear was overwhelming. I couldn’t clear my mind, I couldn’t focus on one thought. And I knew better than to try weaving without achieving a tabula rasa first. What worked against ghosts? I couldn’t think of anything beyond a proton pack, and I didn’t think the Ghostbusters script writer was a wordsmith. Not in the traditional sense at least. And even if they did work, I didn’t have a proton pack! Damn it, I had to focus!

     The ghosts crowded us, surrounding us on either side. I reached out, trying to sense the portal behind me. We could slip back into it and leave these things behind. They wouldn’t be able to follow us. I felt nothing, however. I turned around to look for the tear in the air, and saw nothing. It had closed! De Vorto had set up a single entry portal for us! Damn it! I looked back and saw that we were completely surrounded now. The sense of terror was off the charts, and my mind was closing down. I looked at Dew - she was riveted, staring at the grey forms.

     “Why aren’t you weaving?” I whispered at her, wondering why I was whispering even as I did.

     “I sense them. They’re wordsmith ghosts. Spooks. This is a Guild attack. They attack wordsmiths, especially the ones who are weaving. They are drawn to scape signs. Don’t try to weave. Just stand still.”

     “Stand still?” I wasn’t sure how to take that. “And they will go away?”

     “No, they won’t,” Dew whispered back at me, still staring out at the ghosts. “But if you try to weave, they will all swoop into you and drive you completely insane.”

     I gulped. That didn’t sound good.

     The ghosts, the spooks, were done crowding us. It was probably because they had run out of space. They were inches away from us, swirling around like...ghosts, I guess. I felt the power rolling in my head, almost responding to this danger. I was trying very hard not to let it loose. I think the spooks sensed it, and they were definitely getting chummier with me than Dew. I could feel the occasional feathery touch, and it was creeping the hell out of me!

     “Dew!” I whispered fiercely.

     “Yes?” she responded, her cautious monotone was strained, the effort of keeping still beginning to show.

      “I don’t think we should do nothing. We really must respond.”

       “That’s how they kill, Slick,” Dew whispered, speaking slowly. “Don’t respond. Don’t act like a wordsmith. Wait and watch. Their entire purpose as spooks is to hunt out and kill renegade wordsmiths. A lot of very good Free wordsmiths have gone down trying to repel a spook attack.”

     “Ok,” I breathed out, trying to relax. It was impossible when you were surrounded by hundreds of ghosts. “And does this mean that someone dangerous from the Guild is around and that they are going to do something bad to us?”

      “Well, based on everything I heard back in Goa, Silvus is out to get De Vorto and you. I don’t think he realises there are two of you yet.”

     “Silvus is...” I left that hanging.

     “The bastard who is responsible for everything bad that has happened to me, yes,” she said that a little more quietly, a little more slowly. Definitely a 10 on the menace level.

     “And you think he is here?” I asked, wondering at how we were keeping a conversation going in this insane situation.

     “Either he is, or his bitch Zyx is. And we should be able to deal with them much better than we would be able to deal with these damn spooks.”

     Ah. I digested that. I realised that the terror had receded somewhat. We were still surrounded, but my mind was slowly getting used to being group haunted by a dead wordsmith reunion. It’s incredible what the mind can get used to.

     The relative calm did have an advantage though. The ideas were back, and there was a silent surge of power in my head as I skipped through several options. My head cleared completely and I was alert and ready. Ready for what exactly, I was yet to decide. I could feel the spooks converging around me.

     “Slick,” Dew’s voice betrayed more than a trace of nervousness. “What are you doing?”

      “Shush,” I whispered, as one of the ideas shoved the others away and settled down, ready for some action. Swoop into me, would they? Well, what if I was ready for them? I had some kind of a massive monster in my head that felt powerful enough to take on pretty much anything. Now was a good time to figure out just how much. I didn’t pause to think about the what-ifs. From what I had heard about Silvus and the rest of the Guild smiths, I wanted to be free of this spook menace and ready to face them when they got here.