Spellbreaker (59 page)

 

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

Leandra studied her father as they walked through starlight back to the family compound. Doria and Dhrun followed a few steps behind. Leandra would have said that her father was silent, but that wouldn't have described half of what was radiating off of him like light. It was a particular kind of silent.

Not all silence is the same, she decided. Silence always has a quality. What a person says, how they say it, such things are what a mind latches on to with labels like witty, cruel, shy. But the quality of someone's silence reveals so much more about a soul. Thinking back, Leandra could hear in her memory thoughtful silence, tense silence, the implacable silence of death.

If she tried hard enough, Leandra could hear the silence of Thaddeus and Holokai, the void they left. For the rest of her mortal life, Leandra would hear their silence. Perhaps her father was hearing the silence of the Savanna Walker's death. Perhaps that is why she was so fascinated by him now.

Leandra tried to feel forward in time again, but there were so many different future selves ahead in the next hour that she could draw no conclusions. “Dad,” she said as they walked along Utrana Way.

Nicodemus looked up. He made no sound, and yet he had broken his contemplative silence, replaced it with one of attentiveness.

“What are you thinking?” she asked.

“I don't know if I can say, really.”

“Was it about the Savanna Walker?”

“I suppose it was. Something about the choices we make. His cacography led him into so much rage. I…” He looked away. “He could have become so many different people. Maybe it's the same for me … Maybe he and I weren't so different.”

“All the different people we could have become but didn't, what do you suppose happens to them?”

“Maybe they get drunk together in the fiery heaven.” He looked at her, smiling weakly. “What are you thinking?”

She thought about telling him about his silence, her reflection on its nature, but she doubted she could have found the right words. So she said, “About what the Savanna Walker said about Mother.”

“That Vivian will cast her anti-dragon spell, or whatever it is, against Francesca next?”

“I could protect her.”

“Oh, how?”

“With the loveless on, I can break down aspects of divinities. As a dragon, she's close enough to a divinity that I could remove her draconic aspects without killing her.”

Nicodemus produced a single humorless laugh. “She'll love to hear that.”

Leandra had to agree. “Do you think it's true, what the Savanna Walker said about you and him being reincarnated around me?”

“Oh, heaven, who could say? Los was said to be the great destroyer and changer. James Berr and I are cacographers. A goddess once told me that only those things that create a new origin are original, and that there is always something monstrous in a new origin. Maybe the universe works that way. But, truly, who could say?”

“No one,” she agreed. Looking back on the day, Leandra saw how rapidly she was changing. The loveless spell was no longer a refuge for her. It was weakening. She could no longer find the detachment and clarity that had allowed her to take such outrageous action. “You asked me if I had any … deeper … sense of what truly was happening,” she said slowly. “It seems to me that we are all moving along cycles. That we imagine our choices lead to different types of cycles. The empire or the league. We think that each is going to produce a different future, a different history, but in fact we are trapped in the same cycle. If anything is going to change…” Her voice trailed off as she suddenly became unsure.

“Going to change, Lea?”

“I'm sorry. It was a vague sensation, came and went.” She was staring up now at the volcano's dark silhouette. As she had before, she thought of all the textual energy stored in the crater lake and wished there were some way she could tap into it.

“Lea?”

She blinked, realized that Nicodemus had just said something. They were now standing in front of their compound.

“I'm sorry,” she said as several guards let them into the pavilion. “I was distracted.”

“Lea,” her father said as they climbed the stairs, “I wish I could make you see how great a role you could play in the world's course. I know you don't see a difference between the league and empire, but if you survive, you will become the league and can improve it. You will become the engine of change.”

Dhrun also reached the top of the steps and moved into the dark hallway ahead. Doria headed off to her quarters.

Leandra was shaking her head at her father. “The bloodiest history comes by those who think they are breaking the world for the better.” She laughed. “Hell, in my last life, I tried to extinguish humanity. My record doesn't exactly inspire optimism.”

“You aren't bound to become anything in this life.”

“How do you know, Dad? I've killed a man and a god in the past two days. I poisoned you.”

“You paralyzed me to save me.”

“You have to think that because I'm your daughter.”

“Does that mean I'm wrong? Just … think about it, will you?”

“But what if you're wrong—”

A ragged scream cut off her sentence. Motion blurred at the corner of her vision. Leandra tried to spin around but slipped on the top stair and fell. Looking up, she saw Dhrun. One pair of his arms were drawing the sword on his left hip; the other pair, the sword on his right. But though his muscles bunched with inhuman speed, they produced no motion.

Thick black branches had entwined his scabbard and hands. They punched long thorns into his flesh, sending rivulets of blood down his lungi. The ragged scream came from Rory, who was jamming his hands into Dhrun's chest, pushing him up and back, trying to press the god against the railing. Though Dhrun's thighs bulged underneath his lungi, he had been caught off balance. He tottered backward.

In a moment of vivid recall, Leandra saw Dhrun knocking the Lornish knight over this same railing. She remembered Rory bending over the knight's corpse.

Now Rory's druidic robes were disheveled. The branches were springing from his wooden plate armor, which was more draped around than strapped to him. His long auburn hair fell over an expression of intoxicated rage.

Nicodemus was yelling at Rory to stop, stepping closer to him and then jumping back, afraid that his touch would misspell Dhrun's divine language or Rory's Language Prime. Something glass broke against Rory's chest and water ran down the two combatants. As Leandra struggled to her feet, she realized it was one of a Doria's glass vials. But the dispelling aqueous texts only froze the bloody branches in place around Dhrun.

Leandra took a step toward the struggle and pain leapt up her leg. She had to catch herself against the wall. Then she noticed Rory's expression.

It was a mixture of hatred and longing distorted by … what was it? Had he been drinking? Just then she remembered Doria's statement that the man had been so heartbroken that she'd given him something to help him sleep. Now the drugs and heartbreak and rage were boiling through the man.

For a stunned moment, Leandra studied Rory's face with the fascination of a chemist watching some novel spirit distill in an alembic.

Roots sprouted from the floorboards and wrapped around Rory's legs, stabilizing and pushing him forward. Dhrun tottered backward. His hip hit the railing, and he began to tip. Dhrun turned his head one way and then another. Leandra caught his expression, its great pain and its struggle.

Leandra struggled forward, ignoring the pain in her leg. It was clear enough what had to be done: she'd deconstruct Rory's every text and, if needed, appropriate aspects of Dhrun to subdue the druid.

But then Leandra met Dhrun's eyes and time slowed. Air seemed syruplike. She realized, a moment too late, that Dhrun had been fighting to stop Rory, but now he was fighting to stop himself.

Rory's mouth twisted into a rictus of anguish, of murder. He lunged into a last shove. But as Dhrun began to tilt over the railing, his expression slackened. His eyes burned with light as blank as the sun's. All aspects of his expression that had come from young handsome Dhrunarman or wise old Nika dissolved. His eyes burned pitilessly bright. Scintillating white light danced around his body. This was the true incarnation of Dhrun, the North Star, He Who Could Not Be Moved.

Rory bent his knees to push again and again.

With a wet pop, Dhrun pulled all four of his arms apart at the elbows, leaving his hands still bound by the branches to his sword hilts. The bone and sinew of the joint capsules shone pearly smooth in the lamplight.

From Dhrun's bones sprouted new forearms, massive black hands. The lower two of his new hands grasped the railing and pulled him back into balance. With his upper two arms, he slid Rory's hands off his chest. Fast as a striking snake, Dhrun flowed around the druid. His arms slid up the other man's armpits to wrap around the back of his neck.

A cry teared out of Leandra's throat as she ran forward. She wouldn't make it in time, and Dhrun was too far gone into his manifestation. Rory had tried to move the immovable. Dhrun's muscles bunched. Rory folded over.

In the next moment, a moment too late, Leandra was in front of Dhrun. He threw Rory away and crouched, all four arms poised. Leandra had seen this manifestation before, in battles and brawls. The result was, unvaryingly, death or dismemberment for anyone unfortunate enough to so much as bump into Dhrun.

But Leandra did not need to move him. He reached for her, already swiveling his body to toss her over him in a hip throw. But the instant their skin touched, Leandra spun him out into an expanse of crimson language. She dove into him as if he were water.

Her mind was hot with terror and anger. Her life had been marked by death from the beginning, her disease announcing itself so soon. She had tried to make something of it, to change what she could with the little time she had. But now death was spreading out from her like roots from a tree.

It was then that Leandra knew in her heart she was Los reborn, a goddess, a demoness, a creature of death and change. The realization sickened her and filled her with determination not to be ruled by her nature.

So she used her talent to tear Dhrun away from the rest of the divinity complex. She cut away every sentence that composed Dhrunarman and Nika until there was only the immovable, implacable Dhrun left in her grasp. With a few concentrated thoughts she disspelled him into nothing.

Then the world was around her again. Shock and terror coursed through her veins, making reality seem unreal. Leandra was standing on the second floor of her family's pavilion. Beside her a strange growth of roots erupted from the floor to wrap around a man's legs. The man himself lay slumped forward, dead already, his neck snapped. Leandra's father knelt beside the man, tried to gather him in his arms. But everywhere her father touched the dead man, black and gray tumors erupted from his skin.

Leandra wondered then how she could have lived so long without realizing who she truly was. If she had just examined her parents, her own nature, everything would have come clear.

In her own arms, Leandra was holding a beautiful youth, his dark skin seeming to capture the lamplight. He lay motionless, stunned. Leandra was mesmerized by the line of his jaw, the scrim of black beard. His musculature, though still impressive, was nothing compared to what it had been. And his arms … well … now he had only two of them.

Gingerly Leandra knelt. As she did so, he became a she—tall, fair skin, prominent aquiline nose, short black hair. Leandra laid her on the floor and then stood.

Others were filling the hallway. Guards and servants peered at her, their faces underlined by lamplight. Among them she saw Ellen's severe expression and the pale faces of her mother's twin druids. Between them stood a boy of ten or eleven years with Holokai's eyes.

Leandra's heart ached.

Suddenly her father was beside her, then her mother. There was a flurry of questions and repetitive statements of shock and grief. But it was obvious what had happened. The senselessness of it.

Though no one spoke their thoughts, Leandra could feel the nascent sentiments of blame moving among them. Dhrun was at fault for violence. No, it was Doria who shouldn't have given Rory an intoxicating sedative.

But Leandra knew, and said so in monotone, that she was the cause of all this. Her father tried to explain her actions, to pardon her. Even her mother said so.

But Leandra wasn't listening. She waited until the talking and tears stopped. Then she picked up what she had left of Dhrun and retreated to her suite.

Carefully she laid Dhrun on her bed and placed the mosquito net over them both. Dhrun tossed fitfully for a while. Leandra sat up and studied the other woman's face, wondered if she could forgive her for ripping out the strongest component of her divinity complex. In her restlessness, Dhrun found Leandra's hand. Their fingers interlaced.

Leandra closed her eyes, plummeted into dreamless sleep.

 

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

Leandra woke to heat and chattering parrots. Blinking and stretching, she sat up. Everything seemed a blur of tropical sunlight. More blinking resolved the visible world into a diaphanous white mosquito net, luffing in a breeze.

At first all Leandra could remember of the previous night was that she had taken the stress hormone. It was surprising that she had slept at all. But then she recalled the deaths, and the bright sunlight became blackness.

A woman stood by the window, looking out toward the bay. She wore a red lungi and black blouse, which in the breeze illustrated that the muscles of her shoulders and legs were shapely but no longer impressive. She had only two arms, two hands.

Leandra rose and went to the other woman. Before the two of them stretched a city, bright and busy.