Spellbreaker (43 page)

Just as she had, the smuggler must have felt an hour forward to their meeting. He must have felt reassured or he would not have come. He would have known she had a similar sense of the future. Therefore, he would know he could not get the better of her unless … unless …

Leandra's heart began to kick.

The smuggler must have known he could not get the better of Leandra unless he could hide certain futures from the godspell he had sold to her. In fact, if he were to hide the dangerous futures, she would sense only the positive ones. She would take inappropriate risks. Another, stronger thrill of fear ran through Leandra. Was this why she sensed fewer possible futures?

Dhrun had pulled a crimson sentence from the folio and had stepped toward the smuggler's bowed head. Leandra brought her hand to her mouth and, as casually as she could manage, said, “It was surprisingly humid today.”

Hearing the coded expression, Dhrun looked up. She balled her hand into a fist and then splayed out her fingers.

“Humid?” the smuggler asked.

“Didn't you think so?” Leandra touched her neck in the gesture for “kill” and then pointed to the smuggler.

Dhrun hesitated only for a moment, but just then the smuggler brought his head up, tossing back his dreadlocks. His face was alive with shock as he felt new futures evolving. Then his expression hardened into grim determination. Dhrun lunged for him, but the smuggler opened the folio in is hand.

A white flash blinded Leandra just before a shockwave knocked her off her feet. She heard a voice crying out. It sounded like her mother calling out a name. A Trillinonish name. A name she had often heard in her childhood. A name that Thaddeus had recently mentioned.

Faintly, Leandra felt her body striking ground. The world spun. Finally she understood the name. She saw how the fracture lines of the past cut jagged paths to intersect in the present.

That was why, just before the world dissolved, Leandra realized who the smuggler truly was.

Francesca's voice cried again.

Mother. Too late.

 

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Francesca had watched her daughter with growing apprehension. When the smuggler's expression had changed from greed to annoyance, Francesca thought Leandra's bargaining had outmaneuvered his. Maybe it had, but there was something else, something out of place.

A deal had been reached, and the smuggler removed his head wrap while Dhrun prepared to place some text on his head. With growing horror, Francesca watched Leandra flash hand signals to Dhrun. The four-armed goddess hesitated, and the smuggler looked up. It was then that Francesca recognized him. She had never thought to see his face again.

Dhrun reached for the smuggler. Too late. The smuggler opened his folio and a blast of silvery Magnus enveloped them all. Francesca belted out the smuggler's name, “Lotannu!” She planted one foot on the windowsill and leapt out of the window and herself. Time slowed. Her wings stretched out and above, filling with wind. Auburn scales gleaming in the twilight, she dove.

Lotannu's silvery spell had swarmed around Leandra and Dhrun, pinning them to the ground. The goddess struggled, but Leandra lay still. Something erupted from the crowd of robed penitents near the Wind Temple. But Francesca focused on Lotannu, extended her claws and mind toward him to resolve the puzzle of his appearance.

Nicodemus had learned that Lotannu was commanding the imperial expedition. Apparently, Lotannu had established a clandestine connection with Leandra. But why sell such powerful language to Leandra? To win her over to the empire? That seemed an unlikely motive given how revolted Leandra was by the imperial deconstruction of deities.

As Francesca plummeted toward Lotannu, time crawled. Her mind worked furiously. Lotannu looked up. When his eyes landed on Francesca, they widened. A man, even a spellwright, he could not have fully perceived Francesca's draconic form, but Lotannu was expert in how spells and mind interacted. He had some text about his brain allowing him to perceive her. He opened his folio to reveal a page bright with Magnus weaponry.

Now only ten feet above Lotannu, Francesca pushed down hard with her wings and brought her hind legs around, claws spread. Like a hawk, she reached for the man. But his hand closed around a brilliant Magnus paragraph and pulled. Silvery prose erupted from the page. Francesca's talons were seven feet from his chest. He pulled the warspell free of the folio. Luminous sentences spun around his chest. Two feet. Lotannu's spells wove themselves into a shield. One foot. A sudden flash of prophecy then, and Francesca saw the landscape of time disarrayed. Somehow the future had become more fluid than ever before. Her claws splashed into Lotannu's warspell.

Time lurched forward. The air became fluid again, and Francesca crashed down through the prose and her claws dug into the cobblestones, sending up a spray of stone and red dirt. Long silver lashes of Magnus whipped out from where Lotannu had stood to strike her chest and neck. But the sentences shattered on her scales. She grasped her claws around what she hoped was Lotannu's crumpled remains and brought her forelegs around to crush him. But as she smashed her foreclaws into the stone, she saw that she had caught only dirt and stone.

Everywhere people were screaming. Francesca perceived the panic voices as varicolored flairs of light. She strained to pick out one among them that was Leandra's but could not. There was suddenly too much wind, rushing white and gray.

Bellowing rage Francesca swung her head around, searching for her quarry. That was when she saw that the twilight air had filled with what she first thought were massive birds but then realized were hierophantic lofting kites. There had to be more than a dozen of them, the jumpchutes blasting the plaza with torrents of air. They swarmed above her, unable to fully perceive her but aware a powerful force was attacking their leader. Francesca wondered where they had come from but then remembered the unexpectedly large crowd of robed penitents before the Wind Temple.

Just then, one of the hierophants dove at her. The cloth of his jumpchute split into a dozen warkites. Francesca leapt high and then lunged with her long neck between the warkites to the hierophant behind them. He had no time to react. Her jaws closed around him, her teeth punching through the text in his robes, pierced the delicate body beneath. The warkites around her fluttered toward the ground.

Francesca rose, intent on killing another hierophant. But just then pain raked down her back. She turned and saw three warkites raking her wings. In places the spell-sharped cloth cut through her scales. The brave pilot who had attacked her had constructed a small jumpchute and was trying to escape, but with a quick swat of her foreclaws, she tore him open.

It was then that she saw Lotannu, splashing his way out of the Lesser Sacred Pool on the opposite bank. She dove after him.

Dhrun, now male, had somehow escaped his Magnus bonds and was carrying an unconscious Leandra toward the Palm Steps. Beside him ran Holokai, brandishing his leimako. A hierophant swooped upon them; part of his jumpchute cut itself free and snaked down to encircle the trio, but Holokai slashed through the cloth.

Francesca tried to turn back to Lotannu, but a jumpchute appeared before her, its seams forming razor edges. Nimbly she twisted to fly around it. However, the ploy had given Lotannu enough time to see her attack and leap back into the water.

Francesca splashed down into the pool, trying to crush the wizards. She sent water flying in every direction. Then she realized her mistake. The water burned like acid. The hydromancers had filled it with disspells, which were now eating into her draconic texts. With a tooth-rattling scream, she leapt back into the air, working her wings frantically.

Her spray of dispelling water had at least cleared the air of hierophants; two of them, their jumpchutes disspelled, fell to injury or death. A flair of pain ripped across Francesca's belly. She turned and saw that the hydromancers on the pavilion were throwing glass vials. At the top of their arcs, the vials exploded into blue starbursts.

Roaring, Francesca rose higher. Lotannu ran north toward the Cloud Temple. The urge to attack filled Francesca, but as another hydromancer vial burst, she mastered her instincts and turned toward the Palm Steps to find and protect Leandra.

Below her, Lotannu escaped into the streets behind the temple. Francesca could see two hierophants flying after the wizard, trying to gather him up and escape.

With a few wingbeats, she was above the range of the hydromancers' vials. The city stretched out before her and she became aware of the pedestrians fleeing down alleys and stairs. Pairs of red cloaks were running in the opposite direction. Francesca could not see Leandra. She hoped that Dhrun and Holokai had been smart enough to hide away. With luck, Holokai would take them back to the family compound.

Just then Francesca realized that she was not alone in the twilight sky.

A stranger airship was diving out of the darker eastern sky. No doubt, she was the empire's support for Lotannu's hierophants. Someone aboard her must have a textually augmented mind capable of perceiving Francesca. The airship's white foresails projected forward like curved blades. Her stiff aft sails made reflexive adjustments to keep her on course and in so doing caught glimpses of the sunset's rubicund light. It was one such flash that had caught Francesca's eye. Otherwise, Francesca would have been unaware of the ship until the foresails pierced her like a skewer. A moment later, the ship passed into the volcano's shadow, becoming nearly invisible.

Rage fueled Francesca's heart. She banked down toward the Palm Steps, forcing the airship to increase her angle of attack and so the danger of striking ground. In another moment, Francesca was winging her way down the broad Palm Steps, her wing tips brushing the whitewashed walls on either side, her body snapping clotheslines strung between pavilions.

On the steps below, pedestrians shrieked in bright violet voices as a dimly sensed creature passed overhead. Before her, fluttering kukui lamps illuminated the cityscape, folding down the volcano's slope to the glassy black harbor water.

Francesca saw that her tactic had forced the airship to abort her attack dive. The stranger now flew behind and above Francesca, waiting for her to rise out of the corridor of the Palm Steps. It wasn't going to work; Francesca could follow the steps down to the Bay Market. The airship would either have to pass over her or hover, but an airship without speed was defenseless, unlike a hovering dragon with her teeth, claws, tail.

So Francesca tucked in her wings and dove faster along the steps. As the buildings flashed past, she turned to examine her opponent. It was a lovely airship—long graceful lines, a delicate hexagonal hull, many aft and side sails to allow for maneuverability.

Most times Francesca struggled to distinguish an airship transport from a destroyer, but now the one ship she could identify was flying above. The hierophants had revised her, adding twenty more feet to her length and an additional foresail that ran along the inferior aspect of her bow. Nevertheless, Francesca saw plain as day that she was the
Queen's Lance
.

But who was her captain?

Francesca could make out five green robes in the delicate hexagonal hull. These would be the hierophantic crew. Unexpectedly there were also two bright yellow-and-orange robes. Pyromancers. Francesca had known the empire fostered collaboration among its magical societies, but she had never heard of the wind and fire mages sailing together. The two orange robes began moving their hands rapidly. Abruptly the twilight was broken by a hellish blast. The sound was a burst of fiery orange and red to Francesca's mind. Black smoke billowed down and out of the airship and was swept back over her sails.

A horrible screaming sound, bright green, shot over and ahead of Francesca and then a wide pavilion exploded into fire and rubble. A shockwave smashed into Francesca, pushing her off course and pressing her wing against a building. Frantically she flapped upward through the nightmarish smoke.

So the empire now had pyromantic cannon on hierophantic airships, which they had no qualms about firing into a peaceful city. Wasn't that just God-of-god's damned lovely?

Francesca guessed that the airship's captain would expect his opponent to use the same tactics as a fixed-wing craft. Fortunately for her, dragon wings were anything but fixed.

Hoping the airship had lost sight of her in the smoke, Francesca climbed straight up with heaving wingbeats. A moment later and now directly below her, the
Queen's Lance
shot through the smoke, dragging tiny black tornadoes in her wake.

Francesca lunged with both her foreclaws; even so, she nearly missed the ship, so great was its speed. She caught only one side sail with her left claw. In the next instant she was yanked forward with unbelievable force. For a moment she thought the ship would tear her claws off. The thrust from the aft sails thrashed against her hind legs and tail. Her hold began to loosen.

Instinctively she pulled her way forward. Her weight brought the stern down and the bow up. Together ship and dragon rose quickly into the air.

The roaring wind, bright white, drowned out most other sounds. But faintly Francesca sensed shouting and suddenly the hull's cloth split to reveal a veiled hierophant. The green-robe was working his hands across the hull's cloth. All around Francesca, the silk formed finlike blades meant to repel her. But with a quick snap of the jaws and head flick, she flung the hierophant into the churning air. She managed to get her hind legs onto the wing. They were flying over the harbor and as high as the volcano's summit.

Bellowing, she raked her front claws across the hull, tearing it open to reveal a hierophant and two pyromancers. With a quick backhand swipe, she knocked one of the fire mages out of the sky. She tried to bite the second, but he cast a blast of fire into her maw.

When she recovered, Francesca found the spellwrights had been enveloped in protective sheets of cloth. She pulled back a foreclaw to strike, but then the world began to spin into a vertiginous whirl of dark water, incandescent sunset, starry sky. The ship had entered a tight barrel roll. She sank her claws into the wings and held on.