Authors: Blake Charlton
The Bestiary’s glow brightened as Nicodemus approached. Silently, the fore-edge clasp unwove and the book opened with a creak. Shafts of amber light spilled upward from the yellowing pages. Incandescent specks flew up from the spine like embers from a fire.
“Be careful, Nico,” John said. Shannon said something too, but Nicodemus could not hear what over the rush of blood in his ears. He pressed his palm against one of the Bestiary’s warm, luminous pages.
There was a pause. Nicodemus held his breath and waited for the sensation of flying upward into a night sky that he had known in the Index.
But it did not come. Another pause. “I don’t—” he started to say before the ground below him dissolved.
A cry escaped his throat as he plummeted down into blackness.
Nicodemus fell into the Bestiary, his mouth filling with what felt like warm, thin oil. He gagged and then accidentally inhaled the slippery blackness. He was drowning. Panic flooding through his mind, he began to thrash.
But his mind could not disengage from the book.
The liquid around him thickened, slowing his fall. With a heave, he pushed the fluid from his lungs and fought the urge to inhale. But instinct soon forced him to draw the thin oil back into his chest.
Slowly his thrashing stopped. He wasn’t drowning; he was breathing darkness. His limbs felt weightless. His long hair floated around him.
Nearby, some swimming thing made small waves of force. “Another child of error? A second chance?” said a rough, feminine voice.
Nicodemus’s heart beat faster. “Who are you?” He was surprised that he could speak while breathing the liquid dark.
The thing replied with a low, purr-like laugh. It sounded as if it was now circling him.
Nicodemus turned about, trying to see what he was addressing. “I’ve come to learn about Language Prime. And to learn about the one who came before me.”
Again the feline laugh. “I know what you seek, Nicodemus Weal. As long as you are within this tome, I know all you know.”
He reached out in the direction of the voice. “Who are you?”
A slippery something wound around his head and slid away so quickly that he did not have time to flinch.
“I am the beast. I am the Bestiary. I am the test-maker, the word-taker, the one who gives the trial before the rule, the power before the purpose. I am a sliver of Chimera, who was the goddess of all Chimerical peoples.”
“You’re a spell?”
Low laughter replied. “You might call me a spell. You might also call me a fractional soul. When I was myself complete, I made this book one of my avatars and placed myself incomplete into it. You may call me Chimera.”
Nicodemus paused to gather his fortitude. “Can you teach me what I want to know?”
Again something silky wrapped around Nicodemus—this time his left arm—and slipped away. “I can,” Chimera rumbled. “But only if you accept the price. For if you learn Language Prime, you can never unlearn it.”
“And why would that be bad? Will I go blind?”
A current pushed against Nicodemus’s back and sent him floating forward. After a moment, Chimera spoke. “Quite the opposite from going blind, you will see more. You will see the truth about the Creator’s language.”
“Is that what happened to James Berr? You taught him Language Prime, and he learned what cacography really is?”
Chimera’s next word came from directly above. “Yes.”
Some of Nicodemus’s hair floated into his eyes. He pulled it away. “And what of Magister Shannon’s curse? Will learning Language Prime allow me to cure him?”
“It would show you how Shannon’s curse might be removed. Whether you have the skill to remove it, I cannot say.”
Nicodemus could feel Chimera swimming about him more quickly. “My enemies would keep knowledge from you,” she rumbled. “If you do learn Language Prime, you will gain the ability to confound Fellwroth and his demon masters. But as in all things, there must be an exchange. I would give you knowledge; you would give me your happiness.”
Nicodemus laughed. “That’s the trade: my happiness for your knowledge?”
Chimera hissed, “Yes.”
“You wouldn’t be getting much of a bargain. I haven’t much happiness to give.”
“Is that supposed be profound or cynical?”
Nicodemus shook his head. “If I ignore an opportunity to remove Shannon’s curse, I will never know happiness again.”
“You will trade your happiness for the chance, not the certainty, of healing your teacher?”
“I would.”
Chimera made no response.
Nicodemus pursed his lips. Was this a mistake? “How will you or Language Prime remove my happiness?”
“By making you completely into the man you are becoming.”
His head bobbed back. “Who could be harmed by becoming more thoroughly himself?”
“Who wouldn’t be?”
Nicodemus snorted blackness through his nose. “Is that supposed to be profound or cynical?”
Chimera did not answer.
Nicodemus changed the subject. “How will you teach me Language Prime? Will it be like when the Index thrust its purple language down my throat?”
Chimera chuckled. “No, Fellwroth spoke truthfully about your family. The Solar Empire bred an understanding of the Creator’s language into Imperials. Your ancestry has provided you with an uncanny and unconscious knowledge of how to read and write Language Prime. James Berr also possessed Imperial ancestors.”
Nicodemus’s throat tightened. “I am related to him?”
Chimera made a sound like a yawn. “Berr would be your distant cousin. He paid the price and it broke him. Perhaps you are stronger. Will you learn the first language?”
Nicodemus took a long breath of liquid black. “I will.”
T
HE DARKNESS LIT
up with four aquamarine characters.
“These are the four runes of Language Prime,” Chimera said behind him.
Nicodemus glanced over his shoulder to try to glimpse Chimera but saw only blackness. So he turned back to the complex cyan characters. All were three-dimensional. Two had hexagonal structures; the other two, pentagonal structures. As the runes rotated slowly, Nicodemus realized that he had instantly memorized their every detail. He could already see how they would fit together into long, spiraling sentences.
“I’ve never learned anything so quickly,” he remarked in amazement.
Chimera spoke. “You are not learning; you are awakening an ancestral knowledge. And now that I have shown you the runes, your education is nearly complete.”
Nicodemus laughed, but when the hidden creature did not reply, he realized that she was serious. “But I have no Language Prime vocabulary, no grammar.” He laughed again. “I don’t even know what kind of spells are written in Language Prime.”
Chimera’s reply came in a whisper. “Look at your hands.”
Nicodemus did as he was told and then jumped. An aquamarine glow now suffused his fingers and palms.
“Fiery blood! I’m casting in Language Prime!” He brought his hands closer to be sure. “But the runes are impossibly small,” he said in amazement. “There must be…I don’t know a number large enough to describe how many runes there must be in my pinky alone.”
He pulled back his sleeves and then peered down the collar of his robes. His entire body was saturated with Language Prime. “It doesn’t makesense,” he said. “The other magical languages we forge in our muscles, but these runes are forming in every bit of my body.”
The darkness around Nicodemus undulated as Chimera’s voice drew closer. “That is because Language Prime runes are not controlled by your body. They are your body.”
“That makes no sense. And what is this place, anyway? Is this my real, physical body? Are you showing me illusion?”
“Only your mind is within my book. But the magical body I have given you here will behave just as your physical body does. When you leave the book, you will see that I am not deceiving you.” Suddenly her voice was whispering an inch from his left ear. “Now look into nature.”
Nicodemus turned to see a square window cut into the darkness. On the other side was an image of the nearby nighttime forest. Much was familiar: pine trees, sword ferns, a young buck picking his way among the vegetation and rocks.
But most wondrously, the deer glowed faintly with cyan light. “He’s casting Language Prime!” Nicodemus said. “But that’s impossible. Only humans can…unless he’s a familiar and…” His voice died as he realized that the ferns too glowed with Language Prime spells. Only the rocks were devoid of text.
“This must be fantasy!” he whispered.
“No, Nicodemus Weal, what you saw before you learned Language Prime was illusion. Now see the world with new eyes.”
Just then a pale emperor moth fluttered before the window. A dark tentacle shot out to encircle the moth and drew it into the blackness.
Nicodemus jerked back in surprise. The liquid darkness around him became as thin as air. The window into the forest winked out of existence.
The large moth fluttered about in a panic. Because of the dark, Nicodemus could not see the insect’s body; rather, he saw the Language Prime texts that saturated the creature.
“I have pulled this moth’s mind into the Bestiary and given it a magical body that will behave exactly as its physical counterpart would. Now hold out your hand, Nicodemus Weal, and see into the life of things.”
Nicodemus reached out and the moth fluttered about his arm for a moment before alighting on his thumb.
As the insect’s legs grabbed hold of Nicodemus’s skin, an ecstatic heat rushed through his body. He felt dizzy, almost intoxicated. His thoughts became as light and far ranging as smoke tendrils caught in the wind. Time slowed; even the movement of his blood seemed suspended.
Shining in his mind was a text longer than any he previously could have imagined. All the books in Starhaven could not have held half its length.The spell—though consisting of only four runes—contained innumerable twists, turns, and self-referential passages.
But what shocked Nicodemus most, what spawned a mystical sense of wonder, was the certainty that this text was the same thing as the moth.
Nicodemus would have thought the spell beyond human comprehension if not for the perfect knowledge of it now shining in his mind.
It was true, then. He was an Imperial. He had been born with the gift to read and comprehend Language Prime.
The moth flapped its wings once. Nicodemus looked again at the pale, delicate creature and felt its endless, intricate beauty so keenly that his heart ached.
To him the moth was both a living animal and a poem.
He tried to speak, tried to explain the awe coursing through his veins like a drug, but all he could manage was a rapturous whisper, “She’s the most beautiful spell.”
“Touch any living thing and you will find the same language,” Chimera said in a voice that had become almost sing-song. “I could provide for you the prose within an oak leaf or a trout’s belly. I could show you the miniature creatures that infect wounds. In each you would find Language Prime. That is why this tome is called the Bestiary. It reveals that every beast and every plant is made from the Creator’s language, from the Creator’s godspell.”
Nicodemus understood. “Life is magical language.”
S
LOWLY
N
ICODEMUS’S TRANCE
began to dissipate. He put his free hand to his brow as the implications of his revelation unfolded. “So, if life is language…then Language Prime spellwrights could edit diseases from the sick, or close wounds by coordinating a body’s healing, or rewrite wheat plants to produce more grain.”
Chimera responded with an amused sniff. “You see why the Solar Empire was a paradise. Under the rule of the Imperial family, the continent knew neither plague nor famine.”
“How do you know this, Chimera?”
She produced a long hissing sigh. “I was the oldest and most malcontent goddess on the ancient continent. I wanted to do more with the original languages. I wanted to rewrite a new breed of humanity. I thought that the Empire’s use of Language Prime to improve the life they knew, and not invent new life, would lead ultimately to stagnation. And when Los was born, I knew I was correct.”
“You knew Los? The first demon?”
Again the sigh. “I knew him before he rebelled. I knew his plans forLanguage Prime. That is why I fled the ancient continent. The Empire had forbidden me from textual experimentation. So I took my followers across the ocean to this new continent. Here I transformed my followers into the Chimerical peoples.”
Something occurred to Nicodemus. “The Chthonics were once human?”
“They were. And so too were the Kobolds, the Goblins, the Lycanthropes, the Pelagics, the Incultans, and too many others. At first this continent was a paradise, but then my peoples began to fight each other. In hopes of governing them, I split my soul and impressed its parts into the many different Bestiaries. To each tribe I gave three books. But my efforts proved futile. The differences between the Chimerical peoples grew too great. When your ancestors crossed the ocean, they found my peoples divided.”
She paused and made a low swishing sound. “At first, I hoped to repel your kind. Your deities were weak then. To escape the demonic host and cross the ocean, they had to slumber within their arks. This made them forget nearly everything they had known, including Language Prime. And your Imperial family was scattered. But my peoples, as divided as they were, were no match for humanity. Once your ancestors established a foothold on this continent, they slaughtered my peoples.”
Nicodemus considered his words. “Chimera, why do you give me this knowledge? It is an extraordinary gift.”
She did not answer for such a long time that Nicodemus began to worry that she had left. “I have given you the bitterest of knowledge. This marks the beginning of your suffering.”
“What do you mean?”
“Think on the consequences of learning the original languages.”
Nicodemus’s brow furrowed. “I will see a glow around all living things. But…there’s something I don’t understand. Why haven’t I or any other spellwright felt a synaesthetic reaction to Language Prime?”