Cursebreaker

by Carol A Park

  “All right,” she said. “I looked.”

  “Do you recognize it?” he asked. “The language around its mouth, not the serpent itself.” He pointed below the drawing to a few lines of text. “The author reproduced it here, if you can’t see it well enough.”

  Ivana glanced up at him. His voice was taut, the relaxed tone of a moment ago gone, and he now perched on the edge of his chair.

  She ran her eyes over the words below the sketch. She turned the book upside down, and then back around again. The script—such as it was—was sharp and angular, at least as it had been reproduced. It literally looked like chicken scratches, and she had never seen anything like it before in her life.

  She looked back up at Vaughn. “This is unfamiliar to me. If it’s a language I know, it’s not in a script I recognize.”

  He sat slowly back in his chair, looking crestfallen. “Damn.”

  She flipped absently through the rest of the book. “What is this?”

  He sighed. “A vain hope, apparently.” Pounding the chair arm, he stood up and paced a few times back and forth in front of her desk. “It’s half a book we found in the Weylyn City university library,” he said. “Right before the whole city descended into chaos. The book appears to be a personal record of an archaeological expedition in Donia a couple of decades ago.”

  “Half a book? Recording an expedition that turned up information about the heretic gods? In the library?” That was too outlandish to be believed. If the Conclave had known this existed—however little information it contained about the heretic gods—it would have been destroyed, not preserved.

  “Well, sort of. It wasn’t in the stacks. They were doing renovations on the Weylyn University library. The last time a university library was renovated, we heard of some manuscripts discovered that might have information about Banebringers, but the Conclave got to them first. So, this time, when we heard they were going to renovate the Weylyn University library—this was before I even met you—we planted one of our own people in there. The workmen opened an old wall to look for a leak and our plant found the book shoved in a hollow space that had been covered over. But it looks as though the book was ripped in two, and we only found this half.”

  Ivana turned to the next page of the book and read the text written there with interest. Once upon a time, this was the sort of thing that would have absolutely fascinated her. Once upon a time, before Sweetblade. “And?”

  “He returned to Gan Barton’s estate last year, after the Conclave seized control. But it got particularly interesting when Dax came back with an old manuscript containing a myth that describes a similar statue. The myth describes Banebringers using this statue to travel between our world and ‘the heavens’ at the sky-fire, like some sort of doorway to the gods.”

  Ivana snorted. “Uh-huh. So what?”

  “Well…the myth seems to indicate that the writing around the serpent’s mouth tells the would-be traveler how to use it. Unfortunately, the story doesn’t relate the instructions, only that they exist.”

  She finally understood, and she had to laugh. “You think you’ve found a doorway to the gods? Vaughn…”

  “Well, no. We never found the serpent monument. We presume the Conclave destroyed it and any other artifacts once they found out about this dig.”

  “Let me get this straight. You found a journal that tells about finding some…serpent statue with writing in a mysterious language. Then you found a manuscript with a myth that tells you the serpent-statue is a doorway to the gods, and that the writing around its mouth would tell you how to use it. You also don’t know the location of this presumed serpent-doorway. But you feel if you could only translate the writing, you could still use this door and pay the heretic gods a visit?”

  Vaughn fiddled with the leather wrapping that had been around the book. “When you put it that way, it sounds rather insane.”

  “It sounds beyond insane.” She flipped the book closed, face-down, so the back page was exposed. “Regardless, if I knew the language, I would translate it for you. Or if I had this tablet the author describes, I could try to translate it via Xambrian. But I don’t, on both counts.”

  There was silence in the room for a moment, and Vaughn slumped back in his chair. “Danton’s going to kill me,” he muttered.

  “Danton?” Ivana remembered him. A friendly, likeable young man Vaughn had rescued from the Conclave.

  “Yes. He’s with me. We have a room over at the inn.” He closed his eyes.

  There was silence for a moment. Vaughn showed no sign of moving.

  “Even if any of this were true and possible, what precisely were you hoping to discuss with these gods?” Ivana asked.

  He opened his eyes. “Not just any god. Ziloxchanachi, the head god—Zily.” Wry amusement traced his lips, but it quickly faded. “See, Danathalt is somehow involved with the Conclave. Helping them, goading them, behind it all—I don’t know—but I do know his involvement isn’t good for any of us.”

  Danathalt. The new heretic god they had discovered over a year and a half ago. The god—or some sort of entity, anyway—who had appeared to possess his own Banebringer. A god who had been seemingly working with the Conclave, though she never knew to what end.

  “Yaotel is trying to figure out a completely mundane, mortal solution to this mess”—he waved his arm wildly in the air, as if the “mess” he referred to were the entire contents of her study—“yet at the source is a god, Ivana. We can come up with plan after plan after plan, but in the end, how are we supposed to fight against a god?” He raised a hand, no doubt to ward off any hypothetical response on her part. “I’ll tell you how: with another god. Another god more powerful than—or at least as powerful as—Danathalt.”

  There was a certain amount of logic to that. But… “Instigating these crazy gods to start another war amongst themselves seems like a terrible idea. After spending so long in your ancient texts, I’m now a firm believer that mortals and deities don’t mix. I think we’ve done enough.”

  Vaughn winced and slumped down. “Don’t remind me.”

  She tilted her head and studied his face. He had shadows and bags under his eyes. He looked…tired. “Please don’t tell me you feel personally responsible for destroying the Setanan Empire?”

  “You know, it’s hard not to.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Vaughn. Really.”

  “The whole thing was my stupid idea. Expose the Conclave! Turn the people to our side! That worked out real well.”

  “The Conclave was exposed,” she pointed out.

  “Yes. And so some people think they’ve been working with Banebringers and now hate them and us, and others support their efforts, saying they had to do what was necessary for the safety of us all. Whatever divides there were before amongst common people have been sharply accentuated, and neither view helps the Ichtaca. Meanwhile, the Conclave has seized the power they’ve always wanted, and we essentially no longer have a centralized government.”

  “Is that so bad? I don’t think any of the outer regions ever wanted to be part of Setana anyway.” Certainly, Ferehar hadn’t.

  “Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if the Conclave had seized Weylyn and left well enough alone. But, no, that’s not good enough. Ivana, you know they won’t just quietly cede back the independence of the outer regions.”

  He rose from his chair, the leather wrapping he had been playing with falling to the floor, and walked to the window. He drew back the curtains a bit and looked into the dark. “Have you heard about the blood tests? Weylyn City, Arlan, Carradon—all the major cities in the three central regions are requiring them entering or leaving. And there’s talk that they’re going to start enforcing the tests in the outer regions as well. They want the Empire under their control, not just Weylyn, or even only the three central regions. And for the Empire to be under their control, they cannot have Banebringers around.”

  She was surprised at his vehemence, but she supposed she shouldn’t have
been. It was easy to forget that he was a Banebringer. The Conclave had given up the pretense of Sedating all Banebringers; as many were killed outright—consequences be damned—as captured or Sedated anymore. And Vaughn, as a Banebringer, would have surely felt that increased pressure.

  “This isn’t common knowledge yet,” Vaughn said quietly into the window, “but there’s been talk of Donia and Venetia attempting to secede. Fuilyn might follow if they do.” He let the curtains fall and turned to face Ivana. “If they do, there will be war. It’s already started. The Conclave knows the danger; they’re bolstering the United Setanan with troops from the central regions, just in case. If any of us, not just Banebringers, survive this mess, I can’t imagine our new Conclave overlords will be benevolent rulers.”

  Ivana wasn’t surprised to hear that the outer regions were considering withdrawing—a rather mild word for what would ensue, as Vaughn had pointed out. But she also hadn’t heard that information before.

  Vaughn was in the thick of it. She had been hiding in Fuilyn, trying desperately to start a new life for herself and ignore whatever else was happening. She had managed the latter well enough; the success of the former was still up in the air.

  And Vaughn was right: If even one or two of the outer regions tried to withdraw, it would mean civil war. If Fuilyn was one of those…

  The days of her relatively peaceful life here were numbered.

  She looked back down at the book and opened her mouth to tell him to leave it with her till he departed—perhaps something would come to her—but the words died on her tongue.

  At the bottom of the page, an anomaly had distracted her.

  She peered closer. A series of tiny letters, squished into the thin margin as though they had been an afterthought, had been scrawled along the edge of the paper. AP. AP. AP. The two letters were written repeatedly, each iteration slightly different in form. An abbreviation? A code? Probably nothing important.

  Except something niggled at her, as though her subconscious mind disagreed with her assessment. There was something familiar about some of the pairs of letters. The little swirl at the start of the A, the flourish at the tail of the P.

  No doubt alerted by her abrupt silence and sudden attentiveness to the book, Vaughn strode over to the desk and stood next to her, scrutinizing the page as well. “What?” he asked. “What is it?”

  She pointed at the line of letters. “What’s this?”

  His shoulders slumped when he saw what she was pointing at. “Oh. We have no idea. It’s the only place something like that is found in the book.” He shrugged. “To me, it looks like the author was doodling.”

  Doodling? She read the rest of the page and then reread the final line. I’m meeting G in a few minutes. “Who’s ‘G’?”

  Vaughn shook his head. “Someone else at the dig, apparently. The author mentions them a lot. Colleague? Friend?” He smirked. “Lover?”

  AP. G. Doodling. Lover…

  A realization crept over her. It couldn’t be.

  AP. Avira Payiz.

  G. Galvyn.

  The names of her mother and father.

  Chapter Four

  Insights

  No. That was crazy. It simply couldn’t be! What were the odds?

  Ivana’s heart was suddenly pounding so hard, she could feel it pulsing in her fingertips. “When was this written?” she asked, though the entries were dated. She just hadn’t paid attention to the dates as she had flipped through. She didn’t want to look now.

  “A little under thirty-three years ago.” He gave her a quizzical look. “Does this change things somehow?”

  She flipped back to the beginning of that last entry. Sure enough, it was dated about a year and five months before she had been born. It was not only possible, but…

  She traced her fingers over the letters. She recognized it now. At least some of them looked like her mother’s initials as she remembered them.

  Her mother had been playing with her and her father’s initials like some love-addled schoolgirl. It would have made her smile, if it were possible for her to resurrect fond memories of her past.

  It wasn’t.

  She splayed her hand over the top of the page, as if to keep the knowledge where it belonged, on this page, thirty-three years in the past—and out of her head.

  But the image of her mother writing these very words, some thirty-three years ago, sitting in the middle of an archaeological expedition, pining over her father, stuck fast in her brain.

  Where was the rest of this journal? What had happened? What had they been doing?

  And why had fate made it so she could never find the answers to those questions?

  An uncomfortable ache grew in her chest. A familiar one, but one she hadn’t felt in an eon.

  The unmistakable hollowness of loss, the knowledge of an empty place that could never be filled.

  “Ivana?”

  Her palm hurt, and she realized she had clenched her fist, and her fingernails were digging into her hand. She drew in a sharp breath and schooled her expression. She had almost forgotten Vaughn was there; what had he seen played out on her face during those few moments?

  “No,” she said. “It’s nothing.” She was dimly aware that too long had passed since he had asked his original question, and her words now made little sense. Control. She had to regain control. She reached for it, but it seemed suddenly elusive, swallowed up in that hole. The ache changed to reflect a different sort of loss.

  Where was Sweetblade when she needed her?

  Silence. And then, a moment later, he had grabbed her desk chair by both arms and turned it to face him. He crouched in front of her. “That wasn’t ‘nothing.’”

  He had seen too much, apparently.

  And there, in his deep brown eyes, was that same probing, questioning look that had sought to see beyond her many layers a year and a half ago, sought to know the real person he had insisted existed underneath.

  In the short time they had worked together, he had singlehandedly breached her walls and shredded her cloak of indifference. The weaknesses in her defenses had never seemed as real to her in the past year and a half as they did now. Panic constricted her throat at the thought that when he looked at her, he might see…her.

  She broke the gaze and stood up, unnerved. “It’s nothing important,” she revised, walking around the chair so it was between them—as if it would somehow protect her from the unexpected assault he had brought with him.

  “But it’s something,” he pressed, straightening up.

  “It doesn’t matter to your purposes.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “Perhaps I can decide that?”

  She gripped the back of the chair with her hands. Where are you? she screamed into the void. “It doesn’t matter.”

  He crossed his arms. “I’m not leaving until you tell me.”

  She exhaled, and, thankfully, the familiar feeling of annoyance at him washed over her, smothering everything else. “Damn it, Vaughn, why do you have to be so difficult?”

  He puffed his chest out. “It’s my specialty.”

  That, at least, was true.

  It wouldn’t hurt anything to tell him. And then he would take his probing eyes away and leave her in her illusion of peace. That was worth almost anything.

  Her defenses had been damaged, but the latter half of her life hadn’t been for naught. She gestured toward the book. “My mother wrote this,” she said evenly, banishing the encroaching feelings with practiced efficiency—now that she had overcome the initial shock.

  His eyes widened. “What? How do you know?”

  “Those letters are her initials.”

  He studied the letters. “Initials? But why should she have written them over and over?”

  She snorted. “You’ve clearly never been a love-addled schoolgirl.”

  He stared at her blankly for a moment, and then comprehension dawned on his face. “‘G’ was your father.”

  “I’m assuming
. So, as you can now see, this is irrelevant to—”

  “Irrelevant?” He paced to the window and back. “This is hardly irrelevant! Your mother knew how to translate this!”

  “Unless you have some Banebringer magic that can speak to the dead, I don’t see how that’s going to help you.”

  “Surely, she must have mentioned—”

  She cut him off. “She didn’t.”

  “Don’t you have anything of hers? You’re sure she didn’t…bequeath you the second half of this journal or something?”

  Ivana couldn’t help it. She laughed, and the sound was tinged with bitterness. “Bequeath? What do you think I was, the daughter of a noble, left an inheritance? I have nothing left from that time of my life.” Her hand went automatically to her rose necklace, which suddenly felt heavy against her throat, belying her statement. It had belonged to her sister, and the reminder of that now brought back a pang, along with another memory of another item they hadn’t sold. “Except…”

  He jumped on the word like a bloodwolf on prey. “Except? Except what?”

  “My father had a chest. I gave it to an…acquaintance…for safekeeping and never retrieved it.” She had intended to. Had certainly wanted to.

  Things hadn’t worked out in a way that had let her do so when she had left, and she had never gone back.

  “What was in it?”

  She shook her head. “He kept his research notes and important papers locked in it. What those consisted of, I don’t know.” Her eyes drifted to the book on her desk. The writing flowing across the pages. And once again that evening, she found herself under assault from feelings she did not want, this time of a different sort. An irrepressible longing to know more, to retrieve that chest—if only to see evidence of her father’s hand again as her mother’s now lay in front of her.