Authors: Blake Charlton
“The runes of Language Prime are extremely weak. They can affect little outside a living body. No human synaesthetic reaction is sensitive enough to detect them.” She paused. “But you’re not considering what will happen now that you know the Creator’s Language. Think harder. Your mind rewrites nearby eugraphic languages—that is how your childhood dreams wrote the night terrors that saved you from Fellwroth. But the original languages are not eugraphic. They are cacographic; their spellings are redundant and illogical. What happens when you touch text written in a cacographic language?”
The realization felt like a kick to the stomach. At first Nicodemuscouldn’t talk. His heart raced and his tongue felt as if made of leather. “I…misspell them.”
When Chimera spoke again her voice was low and doleful. “Look at the moth.” A sphere of soft white light appeared next to Nicodemus’s hand.
He looked and cried out in terror.
She had once been a delicate creature with a furry body, wide black eyes, feathery antennae. Her gossamer wings had once been pale cream punctuated with iridescent eyelike markings of yellow and black.
But the animal on Nicodemus’s finger was now a bulbous, blackened corpse. Tiny, angry cankers of necrotic black bulged across her body like nightmare parasites.
Nicodemus cried out again. With his new knowledge, he saw how his cacographic mind had rearranged the moth’s Language Prime text, causing parts of her body to grow into the monstrous swellings.
He snapped his hand back and the dead moth fell. The light winked out and Nicodemus was again floating in total darkness.
“Those were canker curses, weren’t they?” Nicodemus asked between frantic breaths. “That’s what Fellwroth did to Magister, isn’t it? The monster misspelled the Language Prime texts in Magister’s gut, and they’re growing out of control.”
Chimera didn’t answer. She didn’t have to. He knew it was true.
“I will misspell any living creature I touch,” he realized aloud. “My cacography will spawn error inside their bodies. I will spread cankers everywhere I go.” He felt as if he might vomit.
Chimera made a low huffing sound. “Not all the changes you make will lead to cankers. Many of the changes you will impart to a living creature will have no effect. Some will even be beneficial. But now…” She stopped and made the huffing sound again. “Now you see the price I have exacted from you.”
“I do,” Nicodemus said, pressing his hands to his belly. “You said I might learn how Shannon’s curse could be removed. You never said that I would be able to remove it.”
“You still have hope. Presently the cankers are spread about his stomach like gauze. If you touch him and concentrate, you might aggregate the curse into a discrete mass—”
Nicodemus interrupted. “—which Deirdre’s goddess might then remove.” Shannon might yet be saved.
“I can’t say that you’ve cheated me,” he said after a moment. “This gives Magister a chance for life. I would have agreed to your terms even if I had known that it would make me into a monster.”
A sudden idea made him start. “What if I recovered the Emerald of Arahest from Fellwroth?”
The darkness undulated. He could again feel her swimming around him. She said, “I would not want that.”
“But if I regained my ability to spell, I wouldn’t give the canker curse to everyone I touched. I could become a Language Prime spellwright like those of the Solar Empire. Chimera! Fellwroth said there is no Halcyon, but I might still use my Language Prime against the Disjunction.”
The waves in the darkness stopped. “If you regain that part of yourself, you will be useless to the struggle against the demons.”
“How can that be?”
She began to circle again. “Fellwroth wants to hide the full truth about prophecy from you.”
“The golem said all the prophecies are false.”
“All the human prophecies are false,” she corrected. “And the golem spoke truly about that. The golem also told you that the members of your family are pawns to be played by humanity or the Disjunction. In that too, he spoke part of the truth.”
“What, then, is the whole truth?”
“Humanity uses the word ‘prophecy’ as if it were synonymous with the word ‘destiny.’ Nothing is destined. Prophecy is like rain falling on a mountain. The water must flow down. It must find its course in creeks and streams and rivers. One might calculate where the water would flow in a static world. In an unchanging landscape, we might say that this drop is destined to flow into this lake, this river flow into this ocean. But the world is always changing.”
She paused to take in a long, liquid breath. “More important, the powerful may throw dams across rivers, may dig canals, may build waterwheels. And that is exactly what I have done to you, Nicodemus. I have pushed you into the river that will oppose the demons of Los. I would see you become a river-king.”
The sickening dread returned to Nicodemus. He was all too certain what she would say next. “And what metaphorical river are you speaking about?”
“You see this world as a battlefield between your kind and demonkind. But humans, gods, and demons are simply currents in a conflict of two larger forces: that of linguistic order and stasis, and that of linguistic error and change. The wizards worship order. They look to the forces that flow toward increasing order. They long for a Halcyon, a river-king of immutable language. They want everything made smooth and calm. And they fear the Petrel—a river-king of mutable language. The academy fears the storm andthe change the Petrel will bring. The academy assumes that unchanging language will fend off the demons.”
Nicodemus’s hands were no longer trembling; they were clenched in anger. “And you’ve decided that it’s chaos and error that will oppose the demons? You’ve made me into a champion of mutable language?”
Chimera growled, “Life is mutable language, language that grows through error. Without error in Language Prime we are doomed. This is what I showed James Berr: I showed him that he could become the avatar of change, of disruption, of originality.”
“Originality?” Nicodemus asked through grinding teeth. “By making us into monsters?”
“That which is original creates a new origin. That which is original, by definition, must stray off the previously worn paths. It must wander; it must err. Because of me, Nicodemus, you will generate mutable language, you will become mutagenic.”
Something hot pressed against Nicodemus’s back. “ALL THAT IS CREATIVE COMES FROM ERROR!” Chimera’s voice boomed in his ear.
He spun round and tried to grab hold of her. “Damn you!” he bawled. “Damn you! You’ve made me into the Storm Petrel! You’ve made me into the monster!” His arms flailed wildly but struck nothing.
“You call that which errs grotesque?” Chimera asked from a distance. “You call the original monstrous? Then know that you’ve always been the monster. You’ve always been a cacographer. This is your true nature. This was James Berr’s true nature. He too railed against it, and it consumed him. Will you deny your own self?”
“I AM NO JAMES BERR!” Nicodemus bellowed. “I never will be. I am no force of error. I wasn’t supposed to be this way; I was cursed. I’ll recover the emerald. I’ll complete myself and become the Halcyon.”
Chimera’s response came as a low hiss. “You might yet wrest the Emerald of Arahest from the demons. That would make your life a lie. You will never escape your past as a cacographer. The emerald would make you a partial Halcyon. But know that there already is a true Halcyon.”
“Impossible!”
“Fellwroth told you of the Alliance of Divine Heretics? The renegade deities also trying to breed a true Imperial?”
Nicodemus clenched his jaw. “The monster told me.”
“Then know the Alliance has given you a half sister, your mother’s other child. She’s only a child now, but she may one day become the Halcyon. You never will.”
The rage burning in Nicodemus exploded. Summoning all his strength,he filled his body with miles of sharp Numinous sentences and lashed out in the direction of Chimera’s voice.
He shrieked as the incandescent sentence uncoiled into the darkness. The words of anger burned with a dazzling golden light.
And for a moment, outlined against the mundane blackness, there shone a creature made of darkness tangible. Her endless body spread out, looping and bulging like a worm’s. In places her skin shone slick with black slime, in others knobby branches covered in scales erupted from her serpentine flesh.
And then Nicodemus’s misspelled sentences crumbled into a coruscation of golden sparks.
Chimera’s next words hit Nicodemus like thunder. “GO THEN AND DENY YOUR NATURE! SEEK YOUR EMERALD, YOUR LAPIDARY LIE!”
S
UDDENLY BACK IN
his body, Nicodemus found himself falling away from the Bestiary. Tears filled his eyes and hot pain tore through his throat.
He was shouting wordlessly.
His tailbone struck ground and shot a jolt of agony up his spine. He fell backward and stared at the ceiling.
“Nico!” exclaimed John. Suddenly the big man was leaning over Nicodemus, bending down to grab his shoulder.
“Don’t touch me!” Nicodemus bellowed, whipping his arm around to cast out a hasty sheet of Magnus.
The spell flashed out into a plate of silver light that smashed into John’s hand. The misspelled text shattered but not before breaking the big man’s ring finger back until it snapped.
John cried out as the spell sent him sprawling backward.
Nicodemus pushed himself away from John. “STAY BACK!” he yelled at Shannon and Deirdre as they stepped toward him.
Hot tears blinded his eyes. Mucus coated his upper lip.
“No one touch me!” he bawled. “No one touch me ever again!”
Nicodemus let go of Shannon, who turned away to vomit Magnus bywords on the ground.
No one spoke as he retched. Azure reformed her textual connection to Shannon and then provided an image of Nicodemus squatting beside him. The firelight made the boy’s green eyes seem darker, more haunted.
“Well?” The old wizard spat out a last bit of the diseased language.
“I consolidated the canker into a single mass at the top of your stomach,” Nicodemus said quietly. “Since I dealt only with that text, I created no new curses. But my touch has made the canker more malicious.”
Shannon looked down at his belly. Indeed, a small stream of silver prose was already leaking into his stomach.
Above them, the cold wind was blowing harder through the trees.
“We must get you to Boann,” Nicodemus said flatly. “Now she can cut out the curse.” He looked at Deirdre. She nodded.
“I still don’t like it,” Shannon grumbled. He thought again about how Nicodemus had come out of the Bestiary, weeping, terrified, and filled with revelations about the prophecies and Language Prime. “What if Fellwroth is waiting for us?”
“He might be,” Nicodemus replied in an exhausted voice. “But it’s our only option now. Chimera has made me the Storm Petrel, made me mutagenic.”
He paused to close his eyes. “I would sooner die than stay this way. Alliance with Boann is my only hope. And she is your only hope, Magister. Only she can cut this canker out of you.”
“He’s right, Shannon,” Deirdre said from the other side of the campfire.
Nicodemus stood. “John, are you all right?”
The big man was crouched beside the fire, gingerly holding his right hand. Shannon had splinted the broken finger with a Magnus passage. “Yes,” John said slowly. “I am fine.”
“John, I am sorry.”
The big man laughed. “I’ll say it again: I’m happier with a broken finger than I would be with a canker curse.”
Through Azure’s eyes, Shannon watched an ivy leaf shudder in thewind. “Very well, if we’re determined to go dashing into danger, let’s do it before it gets too late. I’m old and it’s nearing my bedtime.”
No one laughed.
B
EFORE THEY LEFT
the ruins, Nicodemus walked into the woods. Making water was his excuse. But as soon as he was away from the firelight, he collapsed.
No tears came. No expression of agony twisted his face. But his chest rose and fell, rose and fell until his fingers and forearms tingled. The world began to spin.
Regaining control, he slowed his breath until the tingling left his fingers. He felt hollow. He was the Storm Petrel, the monster.
The insistent wind rushed through the trees. Beyond their leaves shone the icy light of stars.
He stood and wandered until he found a creek. To his eyes, all living things now radiated Language Prime’s soft cyan light. This allowed him to see the glow of several tiny fish swimming in the black water.
He wrote a net of simple Magnus sentences and used it to pull a fry from the water. With the silvery sentences, he held the tiny fish before his frowning face. He dropped it into his open palm.
The poor creature flopped about in his palm. Nicodemus could feel the thing’s Language Prime text changing every time its cold scales touched his skin. He could feel the power of his spellwriting accelerating the changes.
In only a few moments a shiny black growth bulged out of the fry’s gills. “It’s true,” he mumbled, and his eyes filled with tears.
He killed the fish with a quick, clinching paragraph and watched as its cyan glow began to fade. It took a long time.
At last he dropped the fry and buried his face in his hands.
Before him shone an image of the emerald—small, dark, perfectly lacriform. He tried to feel his fear and anger and self-loathing. But he could feel nothing. So he imagined the emotions becoming light.
He poured the light into the emerald and watched it begin to glow. More and more he poured into the gem until it shone with a brilliance that seemed to penetrate into his body.
When they recovered the gem he would no longer have to be afraid. He would no longer need to feel rage or self-hatred. When they recovered the missing part of himself, he would cease to be a monster.
T
HE FORESTED HILLS
below Starhaven descended in slow undulations for five or six miles to end in the wide oak savanna.