Spellbreaker (54 page)

The Savanna Walker stood straighter. “That was when I ceased to be Typhon's slave and became yours.”

“I have no slaves.”

“You have two.”

“You're straining my credulity.”

“Your present life, it is one of bondage to your human body, to the disease that is wracking it.”

“I have been cured of my disease.”

“Cured? By the loveless spell?”

Discomfited, she said nothing.

“The loveless spell did not cure you; it only masks your humanity, bringing your divine nature to the surface. That is why you have heightened senses and can deconstruct gods.”

Again the nightmarish inevitability filled Leandra. “Not cured?”

The Savanna Walker's expression darkened. “That day nearly thirty-four years ago, I brought you news of Nicodemus Weal and Francesca DeVega and how Typhon had brought them together in hopes of starting a new version of the Disjunction in which the divine language and Language Prime intermingled. I told you how your mother had destroyed Typhon and eaten his remains. In return, you showed me how time truly is, how the future stretches out before us like a landscape, but the past is as confining as a prison cell. You showed me the truth of the past.”

“And what is the truth?”

“When our ancestors fled the Ancient Continent, the demons languished. Without human prayer to refresh their divine language, they weakened. Without Los to govern, they fell to fighting. Over the millennia they perished until there were only a few dozen patrolling the southern coast, longing to cross the ocean to seek revenge on humanity. Without sustaining prayer, and with the constant fighting, their minds degenerated into brutishness. Typhon was the only surviving demon who retained his intellect. Then, when he discovered the half-finished golem named Fellwroth on Mount Calax, he transformed the creature into his ark and together they crossed the ocean.”

Leandra shook her head. “But Fellwroth reported to my father that demons still stalked the Ancient Continent. Typhon was trying to create a dragon to fly over them to revive Los.”

“So they did when Typhon left, but he sailed from the Ancient Continent centuries ago. And his presence on the Ancient Continent stabilized the Pandemonium. Many of the demons had formed a loose alliance against him, agreeing to protect each other should Typhon attack any one of them. Once Typhon left, they destroyed each other.”

Suddenly Leandra understood. “That is why the Disjunction hasn't come. Humanity has been wondering why the Pandemonium has not crossed the ocean for the past thirty years. It's because there are no demons left?”

When the Savanna Walker nodded, excited murmuring sounded from Lotannu's hierophants.

Leandra ignored them. “Leaving only you, old man? Are you the invasion?”

He shook his head. “The invasion began thirty years ago. That is why I want those men”—he gestured to Lotannu's party—“to hear what I have to say. If they don't, I will have to find someone similar. You gave specific orders about whom I had to inform to complete the demonic invasion.”

Leandra looked around. “You'll forgive me if I'm skeptical about this demonic invasion. There is an acute lack of destroyed civilizations at hand.”

“Your goal was never to destroy human civilization, but replace it with something purer, something better. That is your fundamental passion.”

The words chilled Leandra. She would have traded empire and league for a less degenerate civilization in a heartbeat.

The Savanna Walker nodded at Leandra. “I see it in your eyes; you are the same in this life. You strengthened me so that I could protect you while you were still young and mortal.”

She could only blink at him.

“After commanding me, you gave me your old and massive body. I used it to make this island. With it I can make the fire burn, the lava flow. You showed me how to enhance my talents. Before I could block perception, cause blindness or deafness or aphasia; you showed me how to drive any man or woman into madness. The smoke you believe you see, for example, is nothing. You see in it your projected fears. What happened on Feather Island will give you evidence for all that I say.”

Remembering her father's reports of madness and lava flows, Leandra nodded. “But why attack Feather Island?”

“The imperial forces there were tracking you. They were also about to discover your father sailing into the bay from the Matrunda River. To ensure your safety, I destroyed them.”

“And the innocent villagers.”

The Savanna Walker produced a toothy grin. “I wasn't trying to show off.”

“You disgust me.”

“With pleasure.”

Anger flared in Leandra.

The old man continued. “After empowering me on the Ancient Continent, you told me to return to the human kingdoms and await your reincarnation. You decided that you would be the child of Nicodemus and Francesca. Francesca had eaten the body of Typhon, so her union with Nicodemus became a conduit for your soul into this life as a creature of both divine language and Language Prime.”

Francesca flexed her claws.

The Savanna Walker looked up at her. “That was when I first began to wish that you, Francesca, had killed me in that redwood forest. I had been enslaved for nearly a decade already, but all during the quest for Los, I hoped that the dread god would reward my service with freedom. But as his spirit sped away south to be reborn, I knew that I would never be free again.”

The old man looked down at his slender frame, his knobby feet. “My true body might not impress. But with the stone and fire of your old incarnation wrapped around me, I became a great dragon. With wings as wide as a city, I flew back to the human lands. It wasn't hard to find you. Your mother and father were then on Starfall Island, as the league was taking its shape. So I became a creature of the sea, floating across the waves just over the horizon. Human eyes could not perceive me, though a few encounters with sailors led to increased rumors about the fabled floating island. Deities straying closer were more troublesome. I had to hunt them down and eat them. Later that year, you were born. Though I was over the blue horizon, I recognized your reincarnation the way a blind man feels the sunshine.”

“But … why?” was all Leandra could think to ask.

“Your command was to stay close to you and to protect you from any harm. To reveal myself only if you should be in mortal danger. And, not a half an hour ago, that happened when the airships bombarded you. A moment longer, and you would have died. I had no choice but to reveal myself. Your commands were quite clear: Once I revealed myself, I was to reveal to you and your opponents the nature of the struggle you all had unknowingly entered. Conveniently, I've caught all of you together.”

Leandra shook her head, trying to keep up. “But … you could not have followed me my whole life. I would have noticed something.”

“Ah, but you did.”

“I did?”

“When you were young, your parents protected you admirably well. I had no cause to come within a hundred miles. But when you became warden of Ixos, especially early on, you would take on neodemons too powerful. I tried to hide my influence as—”

“The mosquito goddess,” Leandra said, suddenly understanding. “When we were in the mangrove swamp, hiding from her swarms.”

The old man nodded. “I filled the air with smoke that confused the mosquitoes.”

“We assumed it was a volcanic eruption,” she said numbly, then looked into his eyes. “And when we were fleeing the giant jellyfish neodemon?”

“I made the sea hazy, as if covered with vog, so that you could escape in the night. And as soon as you were in the harbor, I attacked it during a storm and left it dead on the shore.”

“And when I botched that conversion of the elephant mercenary god, you drove one of his lieutenants to insanity?”

He nodded and his smile took on an almost avuncular quality. “Only those three times.” His gaze became indistinct. “There is little I have enjoyed since Typhon enslaved me, but those three times, when I could move against those gods … the sharp taste they had in my gullet.” He closed his eyes again.

“But why protect me? Why would I order that?”

“Because early in this life, you were vulnerable and weak. So you ordered me to help you become as strong as possible before I revealed the past and the possible futures to you and your opponents.” He nodded to Lotannu's party.

Leandra turned to see the wizard and his two hierophants staring at them with stony expressions.

“I suppose that brings us,” Leandra asked, “to the possible futures.”

The Savanna Walker was nodding. “As Typhon once explained to your parents, there are two visions of the Disjunction. And although no more demons remain on the Ancient Continent, both visions are coming to pass.”

Leandra tapped her index fingers together in the Sea People gesture for “get on with it.”

The old man continued. “Life is living language. Your goal was always to escape the brutishness of Language Prime. You started the war that ended civilization on the Ancient Continent by creating a metaspell that began to stop language misspelling. Your plan then was to sterilize all language and create a species more virtuous than humanity. The golem Fellwroth was to be the first such creature, but you were frozen in stone before he was completed. Typhon brought Fellwroth to this land, but being incomplete he failed. However, Typhon also began casting your metaspell to end misspelling in Language Prime, this resulted in the Silent Blight.”

The Savanna Walker nodded to himself. “Though Typhon is dead, the Empress Vivian has continued to cast his metaspell. If the empress is victorious in the coming conflict, her metaspells will eventually make the world so sterile as to cause the collapse of civilization. In the resulting chaos, the few remaining divinities will easily enslave humanity.”

Leandra looked at Lotannu. “Take that message to my aunt, won't you? Especially the terrifying collapse of civilization and the enslavement of humanity part. He phrased it so well.”

The wizard only narrowed his eyes.

“The other vision of the Disjunction was devised by Typhon,” the old man continued. “In it, there is hybridization of divinity and humanity. You are the direct result of all this. And through Nicodemus's metaspells, the demonic horde has been re-created in the myriad league deities. True, your deities don't want to destroy all of humanity, only half of humanity, the half living in the empire.”

“Lovely world we've built for ourselves,” Leandra muttered.

The old man didn't seem to hear. “The result of this conflict will hinge upon you and how you choose to manifest yourself in this life.”

“There are choices?”

“The two parts of your nature—divine and mortal—cannot tolerate each other for long. If you can avoid physical harm for ten or maybe twenty years, your divine nature will complete its maturation and kill your mortal body. You will arise then as Los Reborn. You will rally the league's divine host and crush the empire. A new civilization conjoining humanity and divinity will arise and rule for millennia as mortality is slowly weeded out and divinity finds a way to propagate on its own. There will be no more death or disease. The world then is as unimaginable to us as the ocean is to an ant.”

Leandra grumbled, “An ant doesn't need to understand the ocean to have strong feelings about being thrown in it.”

“However,” the Savanna Walker said, “should you die before your life runs its natural course—either by mismanagement of your disease or by violence—then the empire will prevail and—”

“And my aunt will screw everything up in the other direction; I get it. But is there any way we could avoid destroying the underpinning principles of life as we know it?”

The Savanna Walker produced another toothy grin. “Certainly, you just need to find two civilized and powerful people on opposite sides of the current political and religious divide to cooperate with each other and—”

“No, stop. I knew we were all screwed when you got to ‘and powerful.'” She turned to Lotannu. “Do you think we could cooperate—”

Two jumpchutes leapt up from the hierophants by Lotannu's side. An instant later, the rigging had pulled all three men two hundred feet into the air and toward the circling
Empress
.

Francesca crouched, ready to leap after prey. But pillars of black smoke erupted from the island, barring Francesca's flight.

Mother and daughter, dragon and woman, rounded on the Savanna Walker. He glared back at them with a leering smile.

“Why?” Leandra growled.

“The wizard must tell the empress what was said here. You commanded a war between the two forms of the Disjunction. Now it is so.”

“Then I now command it to be God-of-gods damned not so,” she replied.

“You commanded me to prevent you from altering previous orders,” the Savanna Walker said through a growing smile. She could see he enjoyed hurting his captor by enacting his captor's orders.

“Why would I command such a stupid thing?”

“You are the dread god, remember? You want the War of Disjunction to happen.”

“Tell me what possible future takes place if I command you to be free of slavery and then tear your face off. What happens then?”

His smile stayed wide as he shrugged thin shoulders. “The empress would prevail. I have become the most powerful dragon in the world, and I'm dedicated to protecting you.”

A blast of wind washed over them as the
Empress
engaged all her sails and flew off to wherever the imperial forces were concealed.

“I don't own slaves—” Leandra started to say.

“You do now,” the Savanna Walker interrupted, still leering.

“What happens if I set you free?”

He closed his eyes and seemed to shudder with pleasure. “You can't, and if you could I would fly as far from humanity as I could and find a part of the world populated by large and very dumb animals that taste good.”