Spellbreaker (27 page)

The boy nodded without looking up from his foot.

“That is fresh water. Not salt water.”

“You're sure?”

She nodded. “It's the same water that flows down the channels and that everyone in this city drinks every day. You can't drink salt water.”

“But I can,” he said softly.

Just then Francesca noticed the sound of soft footfalls on the beach. She looked up to see Ellen approaching. With a flick of her hand, Ellen cast a dull green sentence between then. Francesca caught it and translated the script into “
The priest wants to take the children back to the orphanage. Should I stall?
”

“Who's that?” Lolo asked.

“This is Ellen,” Francesca she explained. “She's a friend of mine.”

“She's not like you. She's a normal woman,” Lolo proclaimed in his solemn voice.

“You know,” Francesca answered, “I think that is the single nicest thing anyone has ever said about Ellen.” She cracked a smile at her student and then cast a reply spell. “
No need to stall. This is the boy. Tell the priest we will take custody of him.
”

Ellen caught the sentence, nodded, and replied. “
What kind of deity is our mysterious sea deity?
”

Francesca replied. “
Give me a moment and I might find out. But whatever he is, holding his son hostage should give us some leverage.
”

Ellen translated the text and nodded again. “It was nice to meet you, Lolo.”

The little boy just stared at her.

With uncharacteristic discomfort, Ellen turned and walked up the beach. Francesca turned back to Lolo. “So we'll take you up to the Floating City, okay?”

“Okay,” he said softly.

“You know, Lolo, since I'm not a normal woman, since I'm more like you, I can help you with your salt water problem.”

“How?”

“First I have to know what kind of problem it is. Would you let me carry you into the water?”

He shook his head vigorously.

“I promise you; I can stop any bad thing from happening. Then, maybe, we can take you out on that swing.”

They both turned to watch as Tam launched a girl from the tree trunk. She swung down, laughing, lost her grip at the bottom of the arc and toppled into the water, much to the amusement of her peers. A moment later, the girl came up spluttering and laughing.

Lolo was looking up at her. “I want to go.”

Francesca held out her arms. “Then let's go.”

He studied her arms with obvious suspicion for a moment. “You promise?”

“I promise.”

He took a few tentative steps toward Francesca. Gently she slid one arm behind his back and the other under his legs. She grunted while straightening; he was heavier than she had expected. He clung to her shoulders.

“It's going to be fine,” she said as she waded out into the bay away from the other children. She waded until the water was about waist deep and then sank down, submerging Lolo's feet.

Nothing happened.

She lowered herself farther, submerging his legs, hips, shoulders. Nothing. He was staring at her with dark eyes.

“Everything is going to be just fine,” she said and dunked him under the water. A sudden shockwave ripped through her body and the water around her erupted. The boy in her arms was gone and in his place was an inhuman back, covered with tiny gray scales and incredibly muscular. It thrashed against her. All around her shot vectors of force and need. Before her appeared a snapping maw, teeth wide and serrated. Teeth that Francesca had seen growing from a womb.

The young demigod fought harder in her arms. She could feel his hunger, how he longed to speed away from her and toward the warm bodies splashing nearby. Such easy feeding.

But Francesca held tight. The nightmare maw clamped down on her arm, trying to punch serrated teeth into her flesh. Her own textual nature reacted. The resulting detonation sent the demigod flying up through the air to land with a heavy black slap on the beach.

There was a moment of unearthly silence. Francesca calmly jogged up the shore and took the distraught five-year-old into her arms. He clung to her and sobbed.

Everyone else on the beach stared at Francesca. She smiled at them to show that nothing was amiss. You know, just your standard, everyday clash between two creatures half made of flesh and half of magical language. Nothing to get excited about. Lovely beach weather, isn't it?

Now she could make out the little boy's whimpering: “I killed her. I killed her.”

Francesca made cooing sounds.

“I killed her when I was a fish swimming in her belly. I killed her.”

Francesca let out a long sigh. So that was it. He didn't know his mother's name, didn't know his own name, but he knew that his creation had been his mother's end. Those teeth his creation had created in her uterus had cut into his back.

Wasn't a safe business at all, creating or being created. Francesca held the boy tighter as he let out long, despondently blue howls. The poor child, not two days old and he'd discovered the terrifying, hateful part of himself. There was no hatred like self-hatred.

In the empire, there were some that said that the proliferation of deities in the league was bringing back the Age of Wonders, which had taken place uncounted millennia ago on the Ancient Continent. It had been an age of gods, goddesses, heroes, epic wars, heavenly cities, marvels beyond imagination. But Francesca knew now that it must have also been an age of great horror and sorrow.

The boy was still sobbing in her arms. “Hush now,” she whispered in his ear while carrying him up the beach. “Hush. Hush. It's all going to be all right. It's going to be all right. We just need to teach you how to control yourself once you're in the salt water. We just need to teach you when to bite and when not to. Hush hush. It'll be okay. We'll take you up to the Floating City.” She patted him on the back until he began to calm down.

When Lolo was at last quiet, she leaned back a little to look at his tear-stained face, his small nose slick with mucus. “It's all going to be okay,” she said.

“It'll be okay?”

“It will. Just remember today's lesson: Even though you're a shark god, it's still a really, really bad idea to bite a dragon.”

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

By midlife a man should learn to avoid both tasks beyond his capabilities and forces beyond his comprehension. Or put another way, by midlife a man should know to avoid a fight between his wife and daughter. That, at least, was Nicodemus's conclusion fourteen years ago in Port Mercy when he had attempted to mend the rift between Leandra and Francesca. Since then neither woman had seen the other, but now they were about to meet—or perhaps already had met—under alarming circumstances.

Walking up the Jacaranda Steps and into the Water Temple, Nicodemus struggled to keep his expression calm.

Ahead of him strode Sir Claude, confident as ever. Doria walked silently at his right, her expression blank. Rory, figuratively and literally on the other hand, wore a scrunched expression of anxiety so obviously uncomfortable that Nicodemus felt both sorry for him and better about his own disquietude.

John was taking news of their return to the family compound and would rejoin the party in the Floating City.

After passing through the Water Temple's rounded marble gate, Nicodemus proceeded onto an arched wooden bridge that crossed a small moat. The water was bright with lily pads, lotus flowers. Drifting about the moat were small pavilions atop pontoons. Each one carried a pair of blue-robed hydromancers lying on cushions and dangling bare legs or arms into the water. To Nicodemus, such hydromancers seemed languorous, but Doria had assured him that all such watermages were rigorously spellwrighting in the water.

Across the moat stretched many whitewashed buildings of the temple compound. At their center stood the massive Water temple-mountain, which, unique among its kind, boasted small fountains bubbling out of the limestone at various levels. The resulting streams fell down the temple-mountain by small baffled steps to the civic canals.

Normal limestone would have eroded under this constant flow. But centuries of hydromancers had built the Watertemple with many and ingenious aqueous spells. The textually infused limestone was impervious to erosion and so perfectly preserved the temple's unique and ornate architectural flourishes.

First-time pilgrims were often impressed by the myriad waterfalls; however, closer inspection revealed that the water flowed over intricate stone carvings: smoking volcanos, elephants crashing through bamboo forests, a man and woman in improbably flexible sexual congress, a mighty storm, a sunburst, a procession of monkeys in a ruined city, stylized waves above blocky sharks. Different carvings had been deemed sacred to various deities and knots of devotees gathered around them, their palms pressed together over their hearts.

At the temple-mountain's base stood a wide tunnel guarded by eight red cloaks. When Nicodemus approached, a watch captain commanded the guards to part. Inside the tunnel, two hydromancer acolytes joined the party; each held a staff tipped with a long thin glass vial.

When the party had walked far enough that the tunnel's mouth became a pinpoint of light, the older of the acolytes touched the glass on their staffs. Churning luminous tendrils climbed up the vials until they radiated soft blue light.

The party began to climb the first set of stairs. Nicodemus eyed Doria; it would be a hard trek through Mount Jalavata to the Floating City.

“What?” Doria asked without looking over. “You're expecting the old lady to curl up with a heart attack?”

“Only trying to be thoughtful.”

“Then I wish your thoughts were less full of my falling off the perch.”

“They're much less full of those now. You're not breathing half so hard as Rory. But maybe he's out of shape.”

“What was that?” Rory asked distractedly.

“I just noticed that Magistra looks like she could run circles around you.”

“She could run circles around all of us.”

Doria made a satisfied sound and they continued in silence until Nicodemus said, “Sir Claude, are you feeling ill?”

“No, my lord. Why do you ask?”

“You missed a chance to quip with Rory, so either you are suffering an uncharacteristic bout of charity or we should turn around and march down to the infirmary.”

“It must be charity then, my lord. I hear it's contagious.”

Rory's posture seemed to relax.

Nicodemus smiled. “What do you think, Druid? Sir Claude given to charity?”

“Indeed, I believe he is.”

“Well, well, everyone seems to be trying out getting along for a change.”

“My lord warden is chatty this afternoon,” Doria observed.

“Just trying to keep up morale,” he replied.

“Or trying to distract yourself from thinking about your wife and daughter?” Doria asked.

“Is it that obvious?”

No one spoke.

“Oh come on,” Nicodemus said, “you're all exaggerating.”

Sir Claude coughed, pointedly.

“So what, exactly,” Doria asked, “are we supposed to do if your wife and daughter try to kill each other?”

“Stop them.”

“Funny,” Doria replied, “you've never ordered us to commit suicide before.”

Nicodemus sighed. “All right, stay out of their way. See if you can keep anyone else from getting hurt. I should turn the question around: If they go at it again, what should I do?”

“You're the only one who might stop them,” Doria said with a shrug.

“Still,” Sir Claude said, “would be a shame to watch you die, my lord.”

Nicodemus snorted. “Remind me why I chose you lot for my advisors?”

“Our good looks,” Doria offered.

“And sage wisdom,” Sir Claude chimed in.

“And bravery in combat,” Rory added.

“But mostly our good looks,” Doria insisted. “Especially mine.”

That got a laugh out of everyone. They continued up the steps in silence. Their breathing grew heavier, and their legs ached.

Hot dread began to brew in Nicodemus's stomach once again. He could not keep out thoughts of imperial forces bearing down on the bay, of some neodemonic plot conspiring against Leandra, of his daughter and his wife glaring at each other. Likely everything would go straight to one of the burning hells in a handcart; it seemed part of the general trend.

A circle of light appeared at the tunnel's end and drew Nicodemus out of his ruminations. The hydromantic acolytes touched their glowing vials and their blue lights dimmed.

The party emerged onto Crater Landing—a wide stone plaza cut into the volcano's inner slopes. Behind them stood the monastery of the Trimuril, where two hundred or so priests and priestesses slept and ate.

Behind the monastery, a stone staircase zigzagged up the crater wall to the volcano's rim, which stood so high above them as to occlude much of the sky. A single cloud hung above the crater, churning with such speed and fluidity as to seem dreamlike.

Ahead of Nicodemus stretched the steep green bowl of the crater. From the plaza, wide stone steps ran down to a slate gray lake. Upon the dark water floated a disorder of small vessels—rafts, canoes, kayaks, boats, any and every type of floating thing. There were long stretches of pontoon bridges that connected different parts of the lake and presently bore the steady foot traffic of brightly robed priests and blue-robed hydromancers as they moved about the Floating City performing their duties. The crater valley echoed with discordant voices—some of them singing, some chanting depending on which of the floating craft they were near.

Each of the small vessels contained at least one divine ark stone. To become a member of the Ixonian pantheon, a divinity had to make the pilgrimage to the Floating City at least once and then bind a large portion of their textual soul into one such ark stone. These divine receptacles were then kept upon the lake as hostages. If a divinity were found to be betraying Ixos, the priests would sink whatever craft held the offending deity's ark and the hydromancers would cast powerful spells to dissolve the ark and the soul contained within.