Spellbound (34 page)
Authors: Blake Charlton
“But what if your disability weren't important?”
“What do you want me to say, Magistra?” For the first time anger heated his voice. “That I'd give up the emerald for a chance to see Typhon dead and Shannon cured? Of course I would.”
“Of course,” she said quickly, worried she pushed him too far. “I was only curious about who you would be if you weren't obsessed with the emerald.”
He didn't answer.
“I'm sorry, don't mind me. I was only playing philosopher and wondering about the things we imagine will make us feel complete.” She was, in fact, thinking of her disappointment at having been appointed a physician in Avel's less-than-prestigious infirmary. And she was thinking about the strange pangs of jealousy she felt when encountering accomplished women like Vivian.
Nicodemus said, “I find it difficult to think about anything other than keeping both the war against Typhon and Magister Shannon alive.”
“Perhaps there is something I can do, as a physician, for Magister.”
“Perhaps. But I saw what the canker curse spread across his gut. It's nothing you could cut out of him without cutting him into nothing.”
“You don't know how well I can cut.”
He didn't reply.
A wave of irritation washed over Francesca. She found Nicodemus too cold, too obsessed with his own lack of power. She had to fight the urge to walk faster and far enough away that they couldn't talk.
But she'd come back here to convince him to take Cyrus to the wind garden. So she said, “Tell me about the lycanthropes. How did you come to deal with them, through an ancient alliance between them and the kobolds?”
Nicodemus grunted. “The opposite. They were once bitter rivals. Both creatures came from the same group of immigrants from the ancient continent.”
“When humanity fled the demons during the Exodus?”
“Before.” He went on to explain how, back in Starhaven, he had sent his mind into a tome known as the Bestiary and within it found a fragment of what had been the ancient goddess Chimera. Long ago, she had fled the Ancient Continent with her devotees to settle this land. She had then used Language Prime to modify her followers. Some became kobolds or goblins or other types of humanoid. To populate the savannas and woods, Chimera had combined the Language Prime of wolves with those of her devotees to create lycanthropes.
“For a time, Chimera had governed all her children. But then the kobold mountain kingdoms sought to expand their influence to the plains. Wars raged between kobolds and lycanthropes for centuries. Then the demons forced humanity across the ocean to this land. Divided, the Chimerical peoples could not repel the landfall kingdoms. Later, when the kingdoms were unified under the Neosolar Empire, humanity began to eradicate the Chimerical kingdoms.
“But the people we now call the Canics were sly. When the empire reached this savanna, the Canics used their Bestiary to change their Language Prime so they appeared human for large portions of their lives. They built towns and even a small city around the base of their Heaven Tree.”
“Like the Heaven Tree you mentioned earlier, the one you and Shannon inhabited after you fled Starhaven?”
“Much like it, but it was a redwood of almost unimaginable height. In any case, their scheme worked; the empire incorporated them even while destroying the other lycanthropic peoples.”
Francesca made a thoughtful noise. “So when the empire fell, Spires destroyed their Heaven Tree and Bestiary?”
“Exactly. So they acquired a cynical philosophy. They see themselves as a fallen people, exiled from control of Language Prime.”
Francesca frowned. “But none of us can control our Language Prime. It's not natural to control Language Prime.”
“It's not natural for humans, but they're not human.”
Francesca looked at Nicodemus. “Can you alter your own Language Prime?”
“No. Only that of others.”
“I find that reassuring, but I'm not sure why.”
“It is a bit odd, thinking about what it would be like if I could rewrite myself.”
“What would you change?”
“I'd edit out my disability,” he said automatically. “Prompt whatever part of my brain was altered by the curse to regrow.”
This bothered Francesca, but she didn't say so.
“How would you rewrite yourself?” he asked.
“I'd make myself smarter. I suppose.”
“Smarter?” he asked with a laugh. “You're a wizard and a cleric. What else do you want to become? The goddess of the academy? Give Hakeem a push out the door?”
“Don't be so dramatic!” she said with more heat than she intended. “I'd simply like to be a better physician.”
“You saved Vein; that was almost miraculous.”
“I also killed Deirdre,” she answered flatly, and then instantly regretted her words. “I'm sorry. I didn't thinkâ”
“I know what you meant,” he said in a low voice. “I know what it's like to lack ability.”
Silence fell as they continued to walk. Francesca again wanted to walk faster, but she felt as if there was something more to be said. Suddenly Nicodemus spoke: “How hard is it when your patients die?”
“It depends on the patient,” she said. “Sometimes it doesn't affect you much at all. Sometimes there's too much to do for it to affect you.” She paused. “But some patients break your heart.”
Twilight was fast progressing toward night. Behind her, Nicodemus made a soft noise that she took to mean, “Go on.”
“When I first earned my physician's stole in Port Mercy,” she found herself saying, “I cared for this crabby old man who had started seeing double. He put on a show of being sullen around others, but when we were alone he would talk and talk and talk. He liked me because when he got sassy, I'd sass back. One of his grandsons would walk into the city to see the old man. After two days, his double vision worsened and he developed a pounding headache. That night he began to vomit. None of our drugs or spells could stop it. It went on for two days. Between the heaves he would cry a little. Not a word of complaint, just tears. The vomiting got worse. He was very dehydrated. There are certain texts that allow us to restore water to a patientâingenious spells, they push fluids into a shinbone and the body redistributes it.”
“Into the bone?” Nicodemus asked.
“Yes. The phrase âdry as a bone' turns out to be horse crap. They're wet organs, filled with marrow and blood vessels.”
“Huh.”
“In any case, we were preparing to push such a text into the old man's
shin, but he fell into a seizure. When it stopped, he didn't know where he was. He kept begging for water and asking when his grandson would arrive. One eye was now completely blind. The other clerics feared that giving him fluids wouldn't help the cause of his vision changes and seizures. They worried that spiking him would only increase his pain before he died.”
shin, but he fell into a seizure. When it stopped, he didn't know where he was. He kept begging for water and asking when his grandson would arrive. One eye was now completely blind. The other clerics feared that giving him fluids wouldn't help the cause of his vision changes and seizures. They worried that spiking him would only increase his pain before he died.”
She paused to let out a long breath. “But he kept asking for his grandson. Hearing him ⦠I felt that if I could keep him alive until his grandson returned, it would make a difference. So I explained about the spell and the shin. He seemed to understand, but when I pushed the text he screamed. God-of-gods, did he scream. However, the fluid we returned to his body took him out of mortal danger.”
She paused to swallow. “The seizures came back that evening. They made him confused and frightened. I stayed with him all that night and much of the next day. Once his confusion passed, he cried quietly and was still ⦠so still that I worried he'd stopped breathing. I've never seen anyone cry like that again. I ⦠had to keep him alive until his grandson came. But the boy didn't come that day. A storm had turned most of the mountain roads to mud. The next morning the old man had his worst seizure yet. I thought it would kill him. Somehow it didn't. He was so disoriented afterwards it was like he was drunk. After making sure he was stable, I moved on to my other patients. I wasn't in the room when the grandson showed up. The boy was only fourteen, and apparently the old man was so strange after his seizure that the boy ran out. Someone caught him and browbeat him into staying in the hospital.
“By the time another physician fetched me, the boy was ready to jump out a window. I pleaded with him to stay, promising that his grandfather's mind would clear. He waited in the hallway. I went in to see the old man, and he was more lucid. When I said his grandson had come, the old man smiled for the first time in days. I went out into the hallway to tell the boy to go in, but ⦠you never saw a child so frightened ⦠he wouldn't look me in the eye, kept staring up at the ceiling and blinking to stop himself from crying. The boy hadn't seen his grandfather; he'd seen senility and frailty replace his grandfather. I suddenly felt weak. I couldn't push the boy anymore, so he left the infirmary. When I told the old man what had happened, he didn't make a sound. The next night, he entered a seizure that did not stop until he died.
“I felt nothing but hollow. I had to work straight through that night. Then in the morning, when I was heading to my bed, I saw the boy standing in the hallway with his father. I knew he had come back with his dad to see his grandfather. I don't know what expression I had on my face. I still wonder if it was surprise or grief. Whatever it was, the boy knew. He turned
and ran. I brought the father in to see the body, but I never saw the grandson again.”
and ran. I brought the father in to see the body, but I never saw the grandson again.”
When Francesca finished, the sky above them had become deep violet and the darkness seemed to be rising up from the ground and into the grass as if it were mist.
She peered behind her and found Nicodemus looking at her. In the dark, she couldn't see his face, but he nodded as if to indicate she still had his full attention.
“I didn't cry much at all,” she said and turned her eyes back to the path. “Maybe a little before I fell asleep. But when I woke up, everything felt empty for days.” Again she fell silent. Nicodemus made his soft sound again but said nothing. They walked in silence, and Francesca began to hear the nocturnal savanna: wind whispering through the grass, the fibrous stalks creaking and clicking against one another. Ahead of them came the footfalls of the kobolds, their heavy breaths.
“What was it that killed the old man?” Nicodemus asked.
“Autopsy found a brain tumor.”
When Nicodemus spoke again, it was in an even softer voice: “I worry about that happening to Magister.”
Francesca sucked in a sharp breath. “Oh! Nicodemus, I'm so sorry. I didn't think ⦠I mean, I had forgotten.” She remembered Shannon's frail face. “It's so blasted stupid of me. How could I be so retarded?”
He laughed. “I don't think using the word retarded around me is going to make you feel any better.”
Heat flushed across her face. “Oh, God-of-gods damn me. I did it again. And I'm a physician, for crying out loud. I've spent a lifetime trying to learn how not to say heartless things. Dear sweet heaven, I'm never going to open my mouth again.”
He laughed again. “Now it's my turn to tell you to stop being so dramatic.”
She didn't speak ⦠for a few moments at least. “I'm not saying anything,” she announced. “That might sound like I'm saying something, but really I'm not talking right now.”
He laughed softly.
She wanted him to speak, but he didn't. So she said, “I'm embarrassed I didn't think of Magister Shannon.”
He exhaled. “Deirdre suffered from seizures as well,” he said. “It's odd how much I miss her. We spent so little time in each other's presence. In a way, it was the idea of her I loved. The idea of her escaping possession and of returning to Boann. None of it will happen now.”
Francesca tripped. It wasn't until she regained her balance that she realized
she had been tripping less and less. She was learning how to walk on the grass, but now in the rising dark she could make out little of the ground. She wrote several flamefly paragraphs so they would circle around her knees. The instant the Numinous spells began to incandesce, the night exploded into a chorus of hissing. She jumped and looked about for the creatures making the sound.
she had been tripping less and less. She was learning how to walk on the grass, but now in the rising dark she could make out little of the ground. She wrote several flamefly paragraphs so they would circle around her knees. The instant the Numinous spells began to incandesce, the night exploded into a chorus of hissing. She jumped and looked about for the creatures making the sound.
“It's Dross and Jasp,” Nicodemus said calmly. “The light will deconstruct any spells they might cast.”
“Well then, they can bloody well carry my nonnocturnal butt all the way back to your camp,” she snapped.
Nicodemus laughed. “They'd approve of that sentiment if I translated it, especially Dross. But go, share your light with Cyrus. He's been looking back at you to see how you're doing at pumping me for information.”
“I wasn't pumping you for information! Why would I be so foolish as to assume you have any useful information to pump out? I might have been trying to manipulate you into taking Cyrus to the garden tower. Manipulation, fine. But information pumping? Leave a woman some pride.”
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