Spellbreaker (41 page)

“Go on,” Leandra said.

Still on his knees, Baru settled on the scared warrior's face. “They wanted to know about the demon in the bay. They said they would hurt me if I left anything out.”

Again Leandra looked around the street for possible threats. Nothing. “And what did you tell them?”

“Only what Baruvalman knows, which is what everyone on the street knows, what everyone is saying.”

“Which is what?”

“There is a lava demon on the bay.”

“Neodemon.”

“No, no, no. Great Lady, don't you know this? This is a demon from the Old Continent. The War of Disjunction is here. No doubting it now. Your Cult of the Undivided Society has finally brought a demon of the Ancient World across the ocean, and now he is stalking the bay.”

“
My
cult? I belong to no cult.” Which was technically true; the cult belonged to her rather than the other way around.

“B-but great lady, it is said that after the lava demon burned Feather Island you converted the demon and made your own cult. That is why they are calling you ‘circle maker,' because you will turn the demons all the way around and use them against themselves, turn them around in a complete circle.”

Leandra sighed in relief. She had feared that somehow her secrets had leaked. “Wild rumors, Baru, nothing more. I've found no demon.”

“Then … you have not usurped the Cult of the Undivided Society who worship the ancient demons?”

“There is no such thing as the Cult of the Undivided Society,” she lied.

The pitiful god began wailing again. “Then I am doomed. There is no hope for poor Baruvalman. Poor poor Baruvalman, who was a humble god of this city. Now I have the lava demon's sickness in me and now I will die of the divine disease!”

“Divine disease?”

Baru only wailed.

“Baru! I can't help you if I don't know what is going on.”

The pitiful deity quieted enough to look at her with the old crone's face.

“What do you mean by ‘divine disease'?”

“Truly, the great circle maker does not know?”

“Truly, you're making this circle maker feel not so great. No, I don't know or I wouldn't have asked.”

“But … then…” He looked up at her and his head rotated to that of the baby, his mouth pulled back with fear and confusion.

“Baru!”

His head swiveled back to the warrior's. “The disease is like leprosy of the gods. The first struck down was the god of the Banyan districts. After he was attacked, his incarnation began rotting. His limbs fell off, so did his nose, right off his face. Yes, yes, it's true. I have heard it from everyone. He deconstructed this afternoon.”

“Dhamma told me only that the Banyan god was missing.”

“That is only what the red cloaks are saying because they are not knowing. They are saying the street is full of rumors, but this is no rumor. Too many are saying so. And more humble gods have gone vanished. The red cloaks are saying that it is they are being safe, but no, no. The street has it that they have the demon's disease, that they are coming apart. And now I have the disease.” He gestured to his recently lost limbs. “You must help your faithful servant Baruvalman. Please, please, you must.”

A dull headache pressing down on Leandra's temples. The pitiful god's story was all mixed up. “Baru, I need you to stay calm and tell me what you know. You were telling me about the two spellwrights who attacked you behind the warehouse. They wanted to know about the lava demon out on the bay. You told them about the rumors … and then what?”

He shuddered. “Then they infected me with the divine sickness. And that was when Baruvalman thought that they were your agents, great lady. And Baru cried and yelled and begged for them to let him go because he was a friend. But they would not listen and grabbed his arm.”

He shuddered again and all of his remaining hands went to the socket where the uppermost left arm and shoulder had been. “But brave Baruvalman pulled and pulled and then the arm came off in their hands. And Baru ran as fast as he could and hid behind some crates outside another warehouse. Behind him, the spellwrights said that there was nothing good or useful in Baru's arm and there was no use chasing after him.”

His head swiveled back to the warrior. “So then, once the spellwrights had gone, Baru asked around where you might be, great lady. When they told me to come here, I came here. But I am brittle now because of the divine sickness. You saw, you saw.” He gestured to the forearm that moments ago had snapped when he had fallen.

Leandra drew in a breath and tried to piece together what Baru had told her. Long experience had told her that wild street rumors sometimes grew from seeds of truth. “You thought the spellwrights that attacked you were my officers?”

“They gave me the sickness, so they had to be of the lava demon.”

“You're jumping to a conclusion.”

“But great lady, where else would the sickness come from?”

Leandra was not even sure the divine sickness was real, but she had never seen anything like what had happened to Baru. “I am not sure, and I suppose it is entirely possible that whatever is stalking the bay is an ancient demon. I must investigate further before making any conclusions. Baru, I am afraid there is nothing I can do for you at this moment, and I cannot be late for—”

“No!” Baruvalman wailed, his head spinning. “No, no, no, you must help. You must!”

“Baru, we can keep you safe by—”

“No, no, no!” He lurched toward her, arms outstretched. Instantly Dhrun was beside him, two of her muscular arms grasping Baru's to restrain him. There followed two loud cracks and a dull flash. An astounded Dhrun stood holding two of Baruvalman's arms—one broken off at the elbow, the other at the shoulder.

With an unearthly scream, Baruvalman stumbled the other way. Holokai jumped back to keep the pitiful god from crashing into him. Baru slipped, fell. All his remaining arms went flailing, but his chest struck the muddy ground. With a sharp crack, a long fracture of red light ran across his torso. Slowly the two halves of his body slid apart, revealing what seemed to be cables of red light and darkness, linguistic viscera.

With a baby's face, Baruvalman looked down with horror. He was trying to scream, but the shrill cries had become rasps.

Filled with horror and pity, Leandra knelt beside the broken god. He reached out to her. But the instant her skin touched his, the world shifted and Leandra felt as if she might stumble. But then the ground steadied and Baruvalman vanished. Or, more accurately, Leandra could no longer perceive Baru as she had. Rather than the flabby, many-headed body, she saw only a miniature cathedral of crimson prose.

To her surprise, Leandra discovered she was fluent in his red language. The god's linguistic structure was as apparent to her as the segments of an orange are to anyone who removes its peel.

The spell that was Baruvalman was broken, she saw that now. Too many of his essential passages had been corrupted. Leandra knew how, with only a few casual actions, she could break the god into subspells that she then might preserve for her own use.

Shocked, Leandra drew her hand back. The world again spun around her, and then she regained her prior perception of Baruvalman: an agonized, broken god screaming with mortal terror on the ground. Above him stood Dhrun and Holokai, both of their expressions taut.

Leandra's heart was racing. She did not understand what had happened, but she did understand the broken god's suffering and fear. Maybe he could be saved. But likely not. With sudden clarity she saw what she had to do.

“It's going to be all right,” she said as soothingly as she could. “Baru, listen to me. The pain will stop soon.”

The wide, terrified eyes of Baru's old warrior face found hers.

“It's all right, Baru. I'm here.”

His expression relaxed. He stopped trying to scream.

“It's going to be all right. We're here.”

“Baruvalman,” he mouthed, “is a humble god, a good god.”

“Yes, you are. Now … here … give me your hand.”

He reached out for her.

Wearing her most reassuring smile, she reached into him and, as gently as she could, shattered him.

It didn't take long, and once his bright sentences melted into nothing, she set off again down the street. They couldn't be late.

*   *   *

Francesca checked her subtexts again and avoided Ellen's eyes. They were standing before a third-story window overlooking the Lesser Sacred Pool. Presently the plaza was adopting the evening sky's crimson and deep blues. Beyond the pool, the Palm Steps descended before a panoramic view of terraced Chandralu. If Francesca leaned out of the window, she could have seen—to her left and through the green thorns and crinkle-paper flowers of a bougainvillea vine—the dark heights of the Cloud Temple.

The room belonged to a wealthy rice merchant from the northern part of the main island. The owner had departed for his estates several days ago and left behind only a few servants; who, while dedicated to their employer, had not been above accepting a stack of Francesca's silver rupees for the use of the room.

Francesca had written several subtexts onto the window that made it appear empty even when she was standing in it. A Numinous spellwright searching for a subtext might glean her deception, but to anyone else she would be perfectly hidden.

Francesca had considered hiding places close enough to the pool to cast an eavesdropping subtext on Leandra and the smuggler, but the two of them would take precautions to prevent spellcasting in their vicinity. If either detected a subtext, the encounter would shed more blood than information. So Francesca had played it safe.

“In summary,” Ellen said while proofreading the tricky paragraphs in the subtext, “your husband uses more entrapment games than we do to bring down neodemons. Likely it's not terribly useful to us. Rory explained that the situation in Lorn has become complicated since Argent began to reform the inquisition; it's forced many neodemons into more clandestine worship. Rory thinks that Nicodemus will be able to convince Argent to dissolve the inquisition again.”

“He'd better,” Francesca grumbled. “Their last inquisition touched off two skirmishes with Dral and killed the God-of-gods knows how many innocent Lornish.”

Ellen paused but then spoke with more animation than usual. “Funny thing about all this, when Rory and I were comparing notes about Lornish neodemons, the Lornish knight just sat there quietly, stared off in the distance and then smiled at the oddest moments.”

“How peculiar,” Francesca mumbled.

“I couldn't figure out what he was about. Every other Lornish knight I've known has been rather stuffy.” She turned a golden Numinous sentence this way and that in her hand. “You don't think he came to certain … conclusions about my intentions?”

“I can't imagine why he would,” Francesca said as she finished checking the subtext on the window and then went to the screen door to examine the spells she had cast about it. They were mostly barriers to entry.

Ellen did not reply. In the ensuing silence, Francesca was, for the first time, embarrassed around her student.

“Magistra?” Ellen asked.

“Mmm?” When Francesca looked back she saw that her student was still twisting the Numinous sentence this way and that. Francesca went to her. “Is everything all right?”

Ellen sighed and then edited the sentence she was holding back into the subtext. “Do you think I'm very foolish for having such a sudden … interest in Rory.”

“No, not at all.”

“But there's something you're not telling me.”

“There might be,” Francesca said, a flush of guilt.

“I've made a fool of myself?”

“Not in the least.”

“Rory's made a fool of himself?”

“No…”

“Your husband is uncomfortable with the idea?”

“Well, not uncomfortable exactly.”

“There's another woman?”

“Well, not another woman exactly.”

“Then there's another woman inexactly?”

“Not exactly a woman.”

“But…” Ellen blinked. “Oh.”

Francesca walked over to her.

Ellen let out a dry laugh. “That would be my luck, wouldn't it?” She nodded. “The Lornish knight?”

“I'm not supposed to know.”

“Wrangled it out of Lord Nicodemus?”

“He's no good at secrets.”

“Well…” Ellen sighed. “The knight was more courteous than I would have been. If someone had fawned over my man, I would have scratched her eyes out.”

“Didn't you once? Back in Thorntree?”

“In my defense, she was a neodemon of revenge. And it was more her skull I was opening. The eyes just happened to be in the way.”

“Understandable. Ellen, would you like a hug?”

“You've never hugged me before, Magistra.”

“Your stoicism in the face of disappointment is stoking my maternal instincts.”

“Don't those usually involve someone being gruesomely and draconically devoured?”

“Age softens all of us; hugging becomes an acceptable substitute.” She opened her arms.

Ellen pretended to shudder. “If you really must. But I have to warn you, it'll be like hugging a post.”

Francesca stepped in and wrapped her arms around her student, gently patted her on the back. Ellen, as promised, became postlike.

“See, it's not that bad.”

“I'd rather be gruesomely devoured.”

“Oh, honey, that can still be arranged.”

Ellen snorted with amusement.

Smiling, Francesca released her and in the corner of her eye saw a lone figure dressed in brown robes reach the top of the Palm Steps. She recognized Holokai's bald head. “It looks like Lea's crew is showing up. You had better get back to the compound.”