Codex Born (45 page)

Had I been a more petty man, I might have gloated. This was the man who had broken into my house, stolen my research, and used it to attack my town and the woman I loved.

On second thought, I had time for a little pettiness. “You see what happens when we steal other people’s magic toys and try to use them without knowing what we’re doing?”

He watched in silence as Lena and I stepped carefully over the outer edges of the roots. I stepped carefully, at any rate. Lena was barefoot, and strode as easily as a cat. Being here seemed to have restored some of her strength, though she still leaned on her branch for support, her fingers lost in the budding leaves.

“This is your doing,” Harrison said. “Victor’s death at the hands of creatures the Porters hid from the rest of us. The students of Bi Sheng, victims of Gutenberg’s war.”

“And this is your plan to make it better, eh?” I pretended to look around. “How’s that working for you?”

His face reddened, but before he could respond, the root around his neck pulsed. His fingers went to his throat, and then he settled back. He glared hatefully, not at us, but at the trunk of the oak, where Deifilia was emerging from the wood.

Harrison’s dryad had auburn hair, and her skin was a lighter tan than Lena’s, but she had come from the same mold. She
was eerily familiar: short and plump and delightfully curved, like an assembly line doll painted by a different artist.

A sleeveless gown made of interwoven leaves clung to her skin like scales. Her legs were bare from the knees down. A wooden sword hung from her hip, though I saw nothing holding it in place. It could have been a part of that living dress. A smaller wooden knife clung to her opposite hip. Both had straight double-edged blades and heavy pommels.

She stepped toward Harrison and stroked her fingers through his hair. To Lena, she said, “You have something for me, sister?”

“I thought you loved him,” I said, nodding toward Harrison.

She smiled. “He’s a beautiful man. I owe him my existence.”

“What do your other lovers think of him?” Lena asked.

Her loving expression never changed. “She sees a pathetic, magically worthless worm of a man.”

“She?” I repeated. Jeneta had referred to a “she” when talking about the devourers in her dreams. “Does this other woman have a name?”

“You’ll learn her name soon enough,” she said lightly.

“How did you get out of the mine without Gutenberg seeing you?”

“You don’t understand.” She gestured to the two people standing like zombies. “Your Porters study magic, but they
are
magic. We flew through earth and stone as easily as air.”

“Cool.”

Lena’s toes dug into the roots. “It must be difficult, loving someone you can never touch.”

I searched for the glint of metal among the green of Deifilia’s dress. The leaves clung like a second skin. The cicada had to be on her, but where?

“She’s waited more than a thousand years,” said Deifilia. “I can wait, too.”

“You long for her, don’t you?” Lena stepped closer. “You hear her whispering to you, but a ghost isn’t enough. You want to feel her legs curling with yours, the sweat as your bodies
tighten against each other.”

Deifilia didn’t answer, but I saw goose bumps on her skin.

I caught Bi Wei’s attention, wishing there were a way to communicate without Deifilia overhearing. She inclined her head ever so slightly. Doubtless she could feel Lena’s magic. I turned toward Deifilia’s two mindless guardians, both of whom were now watching Lena.

“I know what it’s like to feel alone.” Lena pointed to Harrison, then to me. “They would have us kill one another, the only other person who understands what it’s like. Who knows the strength and passion of the oak.”

“His wishes no longer matter,” Deifilia said.

“Can you imagine the things we could do together?” Lena whispered.

There was a question with more layers than I could count. Yet, on some level, I think she meant it. The longing in Lena’s words wasn’t sexual. Not just sexual, at least. She reminded me of myself years ago; the first time I met other Porters. The first time I truly understood that I wasn’t alone.

Deifilia’s answering desire was enough to flatten me. She spoke, but the drumbeat of my blood deafened me to her words. All I could see was the longing in her eyes.

Lena’s hand snapped out, catching my arm and stopping me from walking toward her, from pulling those leaves away one by one.

The touch of Lena’s hand both helped and made things worse. I clasped my fingers over hers, my mind careening into a new and utterly inappropriate fantasy involving my lover and the woman who would happily destroy everyone and everything I knew.

Lena bent my arm, wrenching me around behind her without ever breaking eye contact with Deifilia. With her free hand, she reached for the other dryad.

Just before Lena made contact, Deifilia realized what was happening. Her arm snapped up, striking Lena’s hand away. Lena spun with the impact and whirled around like a dancer to slam the back of her fist into Deifilia’s cheek.

“Oh, hell,” I muttered to myself. “All right, time for plan B.”

I don’t believe in immortality. Which is odd, considering I’ve met Juan Ponce de Leon and Johannes Gutenberg, both of whom are effectively ageless. Not to mention vampires who have survived unchanged for centuries.

I’ve killed some of those vampires. Ageless doesn’t mean immortal, and there’s always something capable of taking you out. Even if that something is simple entropy.

Gutenberg relies on the magic of the grail, which he created using his first mass-printed Bible. It’s kept him alive for five hundred years, but that’s nothing in the larger scheme of the world. Christianity is only 2000 years old. Who’s to say his religion will last another millennium, and what happens to the power of the grail when all those who believe in it are gone?

Or maybe he’ll go on indefinitely, until the sun falls into its death throes, cooking all life from this planet. Hopefully, humanity will have moved on by then, but even the universe will end someday. Unlike the heat-death of Earth, the universe will die in cold silence, taking even the so-called immortals with it.

Perhaps science or magic will offer a way to outlive the universe. I have a hard time proclaiming anything impossible these days. But by any reasonable standard, death is a certainty.

I blame Isaac for this train of thought, for the endless “What ifs?” I’ve found myself asking lately. For the nights spent dreaming in my oak, imagining not only the coming years, but the centuries.

I’ve survived the death of my tree. My human body appears not to age, save for cosmetic changes dictated by the unconscious desires of my lovers. I don’t know what would happen if this body were killed but my tree survived. Nor do I have any interest in finding out.

(All right, fine. Maybe there’s a small, nagging streak of curiosity, which I again blame entirely on Isaac.)

The point is, if I’m both careful and lucky, I could survive longer than any ordinary human being. Perhaps even longer than Gutenberg.

At the same time, I’ve already died more than any of them, and my deaths are potentially as limitless as the stars. Even if my body survives, my lovers pass. Each time that happens, the person I was dies with them.

M
ETAL RODENTS SWARMED DOWN the side of the tree, and the buzz of insects grew deafening. Birds swooped from the branches, and wendigos leaped to the ground.

I spun, only to have bark shear away from the undulating roots beneath me. My foot slipped, and roots the size of my thighs pinched my ankle in place. Something popped in my knee, and pain exploded through my leg.

The problem with plan B was that it required a great deal of concentration on my part. Between the pain and the fact that the world’s largest and grumpiest oak grove was trying to smother me, this was going to be difficult.

Deifilia ripped her weapons from her side. Lena raised her branch to parry. Deifilia’s first overhead blow dropped her to one knee. I saw the roots of Lena’s grafted branch twining around her fingers, sinking into her skin, until the weapon was
a literal extension of her arm. The wood flattened, and the buds and twigs ripped away with Lena’s counterattack.

Both dryads moved too quickly for me to follow. Within seconds, Deifilia was bleeding from cuts on her arm and thigh. The right side of Lena’s face was bloody as well.

Lena dodged past Deifilia and scrambled up the tree like Spider-Man. Her hand and feet sank into the wood, giving her just enough traction to climb out of reach of the roots.

I didn’t know much about Lena’s study, but I was certain no sensei had ever taught the stance she adopted next. She turned to face Deifilia. Her left leg was stretched up over her head, anchored to the wood, while her right braced her full weight. Her leg muscles shook as she swung her sword two-handed, knocking Deifilia’s sword from her hand.

Lena’s training and experience gave her an edge over Deifilia, but it wasn’t enough. A rat dropped onto Lena’s back and sank metal teeth into the flesh between her shoulder blades. She jumped down, smashed her back against the tree, then spun to cut the arm from a wendigo sneaking up behind her. In that time, Deifilia scooped up her sword and lunged. Lena parried, but the blade sliced the skin over her ribs.

I tried to concentrate on Deifilia. Gutenberg had demonstrated how easily he could rob Lena of her power. I had seen him perform the same trick two months before, pulling Smudge’s magic into himself and flinging fire against an enchanted car. Smudge hadn’t liked that one bit, so I had excused him from guinea pig duty, but I had tried time and again to duplicate Gutenberg’s feat. For the most part, I had failed utterly.

But I had been relatively stable those times. Given how magically raw and exposed I was now, I should be able to tap into any book-related magic I touched. The real trick would be holding on to my sanity long enough to use it.

A root shot upward, shaping itself into a spear. Deifilia dropped her dagger, snatched the spear, and thrust the point at Lena’s chest. Lena twisted and stepped inward. She caught Deifilia’s other wrist, blocking a sword thrust, and smashed her forehead onto Deifilia’s nose.

Until now, the two empty shells who had once been students of Bi Sheng had been content to watch. Maybe Deifilia was enjoying the fight, or maybe the Army of Ghosts needed time to adjust to their human bodies. Whatever the reason, they acted now.

I saw them move toward Lena, and then my vision flickered, and there was only magic pouring forth to tear her from existence. It was like staring at an optical illusion, a landscape that suddenly resolves into the face of a man, or a goblet that becomes the silhouette of two faces. They weren’t casting a spell; they
were
the spell. They reached out, flesh and magic stretching to touch Lena’s arm, to unravel the cells of her body one by one.

I couldn’t read the expression on Lena’s face as she collapsed. Fear? Sadness? She didn’t appear to be in pain, for which I was grateful.

“Wait!” I could bargain for her life, trade the books for Lena. Trade myself, if that was what Deifilia wanted.

Deifilia stepped back and watched, completely entranced by Lena’s pain. She seemed not to hear me at all.

Nor did she see as Bi Wei reached skyward and pulled down the stars’ fire upon the two magical ghosts.

They should have died instantly, but I could see them moving within the twin pillars of white flame, pulling Bi Wei’s attack into themselves, trying to reshape her magic.

Bi Wei’s eyes bulged. Blood trickled from her neck as the millipede clamped tighter, cutting off her breath and the circulation to her brain. Inside her body, tiny metal serpents seemed to be finishing the job. She would be dead in seconds, as would Lena.

I studied Deifilia, trying to see not the physical form, but the words that had brought her to life. I didn’t have her book with me, but the text was seared into my memory. I focused on the final battle when the nymphs and the commoners rallied together behind John Rule to overthrow a false ruler. I knew this book, knew the snippets of text that defined her powers.