A Conversation in Blood

  The spoor of the Great Spell was rich in the air, more powerful than he’d ever sensed since…since as far back as he could remember, and what he could remember he could not trust as his own. He drooled and muttered as he ran, following his noses, sometimes needing to double back and circle around because he hit a dead end, but moving ever south through the city. The sun would rise before too long. Already the sky to the east had gone from black to gray, the stars fading into the background. He had to hurry.

  “Fasterfasterfaster.”

  In time the roads gave way to a large park or plaza, a swath of grass and trees and statues. The Afterbirth did not slow and hurried across the park, muttering with excitement and hope, moving toward a large walled compound at the park’s far end. The Great Spell was behind the walls, he could smell it, could almost taste it, and spit dripped from his malformed mouths, mingled with the blood to further wet his cloak.

  Somewhere in the minds that inhabited his numb malformed body was the knowledge of how to cast the Great Spell. He would use it to end his existence, end his pain, for a word rose out of the murky depths of his memories, hit him hard enough to temporarily slow his stride.

  Palimpsest.

  He could not remember what it meant but the word stuck, a splinter in his memory, irritating, needing to be pulled out. He knew that it had to do with the Great Spell, with an error in the casting, but…

  It struck him and he remembered that in the casting there were leftovers, always leftovers, like him, the Afterbirth, that was it, that was what he wanted to recall.

  He shook his head, trying to remember more but failing, the voices in his mind clamoring, the cacophony maddening. He couldn’t remember or they couldn’t remember or maybe he could maybe the spell could be cast differently, to account for the leftovers, he didn’t know, and…

  He put a big fist to his temple, thumped it against his skull, his anger growing.

  Ahead, the walls of the compound rose tall and dark and even he would never be able to climb them or break them down. But he saw a gate, saw the two large metal statues that flanked it, towering metal men cast to look like warriors. He smelled magic on them and without hesitation he rushed up the paved walkway toward the gate.

  “Thespellthespellthespell.”

  As he neared, the two statues came unexpectedly to life, the metal of their bodies screaming as they lurched into motion. They pointed their spears and stepped before the gates to block him and the Afterbirth leaned toward them and sped up his approach, intending to push through them, and one of the statues stabbed its spear into his torso and out his back and still he did not slow. Muttering, drooling, bleeding, he pulled himself along the spear’s length until he was within reach of the statue, staring at its unmoving, emotionless face. He heaved himself at it and he was as big as the metal man and his weight toppled it. It held on to its spear and he fell atop it, bleeding, still impaled, the gore-coated spear pointing skyward.

  He reared back and pummeled the statue in the head, his fists landing with great dull thuds, but the blows doing the statue no more harm than its spear had done him. The second statue, the metal of its form grinding as it moved, stabbed him from behind. The second spear pierced his back, went through his body, and sank deep into the dirt, pinning him to the ground.

  Unable to move, stuck to the earth, an unadulterated bout of panic seized him. He moaned, whined, seeing in his mind’s eye the terrible possibility of living his life constrained, an eternal existence of pain and purposelessness with no hope of an end.

  The panic gave way to rage, a rage that filled him, saturated him, anger at any delay in finding the Great Spell. He wrenched his body and half-turned, the two spears’ shafts bending under his effort, the hafts grating against his bones and flesh and gouging open his body. Blood and gore rushed from the wounds but he did not care. He reached back, his hands slick with his blood, got a hand on the spear of the statue standing behind him, and wrenched it from the statue’s grasp. He tore himself free of the statue on the ground and rose to face the other, gore pouring from him in a crimson shower, the two spears still stuck in him and jutting from him like pennons. His body already was resealing wounds and he pulled both spears out of him and they came free with a wet slurp.

  The statue behind him started to stand and the one before him advanced on him, arms reaching. He had no more time to waste and roaring and screaming and shouting from his mouths, many of them ruined for the moment by the spears, he launched himself at the statue in front of him, ducking under its grasp, and wrapping it around the middle, matching his strength against its weight. It slammed its fists down on his back, cracking bone and splitting flesh, but he grunted and lifted it from the earth and flung it into the other statue before the second one had fully risen and the two collided with a great metallic clang.

  His anger was not sated nor his work done so he jumped atop them, raging, took the head of one in both hands and slammed it into the head of the other, again and again and again. Their hands closed on his arms, clutched handfuls of his flesh and squeezed but they could harm him only for a moment. The blood pouring from him made his grip slippery but he held on and smashed until the statues’ faces deformed under the impact of his beating, their visages becoming odd reflections of his own deformed mien. They seemed to be slowing, the magic that animated them beginning to fail.

  He reared back and stood and took one of them by the leg, spun, and swung it hard into the wall. It struck with a loud, hollow boom, its metal body snapping apart at the shoulder and waist. A puff of glowing smoke exited the hollow body and the statue went still. He turned to face the other statue, his fists clenching reflexively. The statue was trying to rise in its slow, awkward way. He lunged forward and grabbed it by the midsection and lifted it fully over his head and threw it against the gates. The gate mountings broke under the force of the impact and the doors flew open, the left one losing a large hinge and hanging askew. One of the statue’s legs snapped off and again a puff of glowing red smoke flew from the hole, the magic animating the creature dissipating into the air. The Afterbirth, soaked in his own gore, chest heaving, stepped over the metal man and through the ruined gates and roared.

  A few people had gathered outside buildings some distance away to the left and right. Probably they’d heard the melee at the gates. More of them ran out of the buildings to see what was happening, or poked their heads from windows, some of them young, some of them old. They froze when they saw the Afterbirth and even across the grassy expanse he smelled their growing fear. A few pointed; several shouted. The Afterbirth heard words spoken in the Language of Creation but all of them fled back inside, the younger ushered along by the older. He resisted the impulse to crush them all. His senses were attuned to the Great Spell, on fire with the scent of it, and he would endure no further delays. He ran toward the large building with wide staircase and domed tower, his feet putting deep divots in the soft soil.

  —

  A tap on his cheek and a woman’s voice brought Jyme back. He blinked open his eyes, found himself looking into Tesha’s face. Her eyes crinkled with concern, putting a deep divot over the bridge of her nose.

  “Jyme!” She shook him by the shoulder. “Jyme!”

  “Did I—?” He tried to get his bearings. He must have passed out for a moment. He put his fingers to the robin-egg-sized lump on the back of his head and winced. “Shite. How long was I out?”

  “Moments only,” Tesha said. “What in the Hells was that?”

  “We should call the Watch,” another of the girls said.

  “No watch,” Tesha said. “Everyone, back to your rooms. No, just…stay in the building but do whatever you must. Jyme?” she asked, and started down the stairs.

  Jyme recovered himself enough to check on Gadd. He crawled over. The big Easterner was breathing.

  “He’s alive,” Tesha said to him.

  Jyme nodded. A lump the size of a stone fruit was forming on the side of Gadd’s head. “He needs a heale
r.”

  “Lis, Gretta, go get a priest of Orella,” Tesha ordered. “Hurry now. Tell her she’ll be paid well if she’s quick.”

  “I don’t want to go out there,” one of the two girls said.

  “Gretta—” Tesha said.

  “I’ll go,” Lis said. Jyme saw she was a petite redhead, maybe twenty winters old. “Let me get a cloak.”

  Tesha came over and knelt near Gadd, alongside Jyme. She ran her fingers along his jawline, said something that sounded like a prayer in a language Jyme didn’t know.

  “A healer can save him,” Jyme said. He felt around his chest where the creature had stuck him. Nothing broken, but breathing hurt. The knot on the back of his head ached. Tesha nodded. No tears, Jyme saw. The woman was tough.

  “Are you all right?” she asked. “I thought you were dead when you fell over. I checked you for wounds, but—”

  “I’m all right. That creature is after the enchanted plates Egil and Nix have. I think it senses them somehow, smells them.” He stood, felt all right. “You see the way that it chuffed? Like an animal.”

  “I saw. Do you know where they are?”

  He nodded. “I think so.”

  “Go warn them, then. I have this. Go on, Jyme. They can’t harm that thing any more than you and Gadd could but they won’t know that and they’ll…do something foolish. Go.”

  Jyme nodded and hurried out of the Tunnel.

  He’d head to the Conclave, hoping to catch Egil and Nix before they tried to get inside. He assumed he knew the city better than the creature, and he knew where he was going. It was just following a scent. He should be able to beat it there.

  He ignored the pain in his chest and head as best he could and ran through Dur Follin’s dark streets.

  Halfway to the Conclave he remembered the enspelled parchment Nix had given him. He cursed himself for a fool, stopped in the street in front of a cobbler’s shop, and took out the parchment and a chalk stylus. He composed his thoughts and started to write with a shaking hand.

  —

  Nix read, the script swirling under his gaze, and as he did his heart began to race, his head to ache. He could feel a vein pulsing behind his eye.

  Your script is probably not mine. Small things change in the casting no matter the will of the speaker. The creation is not entirely our own. But the writing in this tome is magical and will change to allow you to read it and hopefully understand. It’s possible that what you’re reading now isn’t even from the latest casting, but is from one much earlier. Many things carry over, even across multiple castings.

  Be warned. At first you will not believe what you read. You’ll think me mad. Possibly you’ve heard me described so already. I will leave that behind again, to amuse myself. But soon enough you will come to believe. It is always thus, I think, cycle after cycle. I’m not certain why I’m leaving this book for someone to find. Perhaps that, too, is always the case. Perhaps I don’t want knowledge to disappear. The speaker of the Great Spell leaves an imprint of himself in the wake of the casting, a deep mark on the world. I was mighty in my history, or in a history. That is the very point of the casting, or at least is often so. My name is Ool, and I will tell you what I know, though it will mean you can undo what I’ve done.

  “You can stop,” Kazmarek pleaded. “Nix, you can stop right now.”

  But Nix couldn’t stop. He felt connected to the writing, immersed in it. He ignored the Grandmaster and pored over the book, the words soaking into him. Some trick of the magic in them not only made them decipherable but also allowed him to read them more quickly, to understand them more thoroughly. As he read, his disbelief grew, just as Ool had warned.

  “This can’t be true,” he said, shaking his head. “It can’t.”

  “What?” Egil asked, stepping closer. “What does it say?”

  The priest made no attempt to read over his shoulder. Nix knew that Egil had no appetite for magical tomes.

  Nix made no reply and instead looked up and over at Kazmarek. “Do you know what this says?”

  Kazmarek’s pained expression told Nix the answer before he spoke it. He looked every bit the frail old man he probably was. “Much of it. Not the words. Reading the words is too much. I started once, but stopped. But I grasped the meaning. All Grandmasters know of it. It’s heavy, Nix. And the weight, once placed, is never lifted.”

  “But this isn’t possible,” Nix said, his voice higher than he liked. “No.”

  “What does it say?” Egil asked again, this time a note of tension creeping into his voice.

  Nix looked up at his friend, stricken. “I don’t…I can’t, Egil. It’s…not possible. This is some wizard trick.”

  Egil’s expression turned questioning. “You’re pale.”

  “I’m all right,” Nix lied.

  “No you’re not,” Kazmarek said. “And what you read is not only possible, Nix, it is the truth, insofar as we’ve been able to determine. For generations it’s been nothing but knowledge, a thought experiment, more an article of faith than a subject for study. But that changed the moment you brought those thrice-damned plates here.”

  “I don’t even know what they are yet!” Nix said.

  “Yes you do! Or you soon will! And that’s why you must leave them with me. I’ll keep them safe. Hidden. No one else need ever know. No one else can ever know.”

  “Other people already know,” Egil reminded them.

  Nix didn’t seem to hear him, instead said to Kazmarek, “Then the plates are…?”

  “Yes,” Kazmarek said. “I surmised it the moment I saw the script on them. They’re the spell, Nix. The Great Spell. The One Spell. The Original Act. It’s all there on the plates.”

  Nix found it hard to breathe. He stared at his hands, the table, the library, the Grandmaster. “But he’s implying…worlds. How many?”

  Kazmarek responded to Nix. “No one knows for certain. How could we? The knowledge could be implanted when—”

  “Implanted? Worlds? What is this?” Egil said.

  Kazmarek suddenly went rigid, his eyes wide. He blinked, sagged in the chair.

  “What is it?” Nix asked, half-rising from his seat, thinking it a ruse.

  “If this is a trick…” Egil warned, and let the threat dangle.

  “It’s not,” Kazmarek said, his voice hoarse. “Someone is attacking the statues at the gate. Someone…destroyed them.”

  “Kerfallen,” Egil said. “Shite.”

  “Kerfallen would never attack the Conclave,” Kazmarek said. “No, this is…something else.” He looked at Nix, franticness in his eyes. “It’s coming for the plates.”

  “It?” Egil asked.

  Kazmarek ignored the priest and looked at Nix, his eyes intense. “Nix, there are things you don’t know yet. And you don’t need to learn them. You shouldn’t. Don’t burden yourself further. Just leave me the plates. Leave them right where they are and go. The Conclave will handle whatever attacked the gates and there will be no more castings of the Great Spell. Grandmasters take that oath.”

  Nix pushed back his chair, his thoughts bouncing around, his body weak. He felt outside himself. He thought about standing, but wasn’t sure his legs would support him.

  “No,” he said. “No one can keep them safe. And I’m not leaving them in the possession of some fakkin’ wizard. Your oath is worth shite.”

  Egil put a hammer in each hand. “Whatever came through those gates is going to be here soon. We need to get ready or get clear.”

  Nix stood, his hands on the table for support. He stared at the plates. He’d taken them on a whim, a lark, nothing more. “We never should have brought them out of the swamp, Egil. We should’ve left them at the bottom of that bog, guarded by that fakkin’ thing, and never known any better. Shite, shite, shite.”

  “Are you gonna tell me what they are?” Egil asked. He sounded tentative, as if he didn’t really want to know.

  “Tell him,” Kazmarek said, in the superior tone of voice Nix ha
d always hated. “Tell the hillman what they are. Or maybe I should?”

  “Fak off, wizard,” Egil said, pointing the head of one of his hammers at Kazmarek. “For all your spells and training, you’re still the one in bindings who got punched in the face. By the hillman.”

  “Punched twice,” Nix said, standing under his own power. “And even now you can’t resist being a smug bunghole. I should give you a third punch. Third time being lucky and all.”

  “I tried to warn you,” Kazmarek said. “Didn’t I? Didn’t I? But you always have to know, always have to prod, always have to learn things you can barely understand.”

  “In fairness he seems to know you pretty well,” Egil said.

  Egil poking at him made him feel more normal. “Fak off,” he said, and half-grinned.

  Kazmarek went on: “You still speak the Language, don’t you? Don’t you? But you barely understand it. It’s just a tool you use to impress the fools you associate with. You just—”

  Egil stepped beside Kazmarek and punched him in the face. His nose broke and blood sprayed. He groaned and sagged in his chair, semiconscious.

  “I’d heard about enough,” Egil said. “You?”

  “Third time was lucky,” Nix said. “In that it shut him the fak up. He can drown in his own snot for all I care.”

  Nix looked down at the book and felt a new wave of dizziness. He wobbled. Egil’s hand on his biceps steadied him.

  “That bad?” Egil asked.

  Nix nodded. “That bad. Shite, Egil. Shite.”

  “We going to get around to you telling me or…?”

  The words rose up, eager to be spoken, but Nix swallowed them down. He couldn’t tell Egil, at least not yet, and maybe not ever. Kazmarek had called the knowledge a weight, and he’d been right. Nix could not imagine anything heavier. He wasn’t ready to put it on Egil’s shoulders, too.

  “I barely scratched the surface,” Nix said, which was true, but worked as well as a lie to deflect Egil’s question. “Let me learn more, understand it better.”

  “He told you not to,” Egil said, nodding at the Grandmaster.