Book of Names (Casters of Syndrial 1)

by Rain Oxford

  “We will.” He nodded to Painter before leaving. I figured he and a few of the others would have helped us if it weren’t for the rule against fighting in the temple.

  “A big old softy, that one is,” Painter said sarcastically.

  Before I could respond, Whisperer pulled a crooked wand from his pocket and pointed it at me. Lightning blasted from it and struck me right in the chest. It was easily the most painful thing I had ever experienced. It not only knocked me on my ass, but I was pretty sure I blacked out for a while. The next thing I knew, it was a full-out magic war, which was a lot cooler in Dungeons and Dragons than in real life, although that was probably because I was seeing it from the viewpoint of the floor.

  Listener nearly stepped on my face trying to corner Painter. I grabbed his ankle and twisted it, earning a pained shout from him and a knee to the face as he collapsed on me. An instant later, one of the dogs dragged him off me, kicking and screaming. The bastard couldn’t speak, but he had good lungs.

  The pain in my crispy-fried body was disorienting. I should have had adrenaline to help me, but apparently, that didn’t work on lightning strikes. I managed to roll out of the way of more attacks by luck and the Painter’s timely help. As much as he made for a terrifying enemy, he made a fantastic ally. He deflected curses from me multiple times even when it meant taking a hit himself. Then again, he could take lightning like it was a mosquito bite. Damned demigods.

  I was still wondering how the guilty priests had escaped from their traps, which was stupid. I tried to shake the fog from my mind and ended up crawling to the statue of Anubis. I realized I had dropped my pen and paper at the same time I saw Whisperer about to step on my pen. Painter was quicker; he shot forward and kicked Whisperer in the family jewels. Whisperer collapsed, crying foul. I probably would have felt sympathy pain if I wasn’t wishing it had been me to kick him instead. The man did not need to procreate.

  “Sjokve,” I said. My book and pen shot into my hand.

  Painter joined me and created a clear shield between us and the four priests. Reader was missing and ear and all of them were bleeding. Painter didn’t look too good, either.

  “Can’t you squeeze their hearts or something?”

  “To people of other worlds, yes. The priests know how to protect themselves against the same kind of magic. They wear rings, pendants, and tattoos that shield their bodies and organs.”

  “Well, you can’t really blame them for that,” I said, finally gaining my wits. Painter helped me to my feet. “Thanks. What do we do now?” The priests were flinging curses at the shield, since they couldn’t get to the door. The dogs were all gone, and I didn’t ask why because I was afraid of the answer.

  “That will hold them for a few minutes. We need something they can’t beat. We need to combine our magic into a creature that is powerful enough to crush them.”

  “Shove them into the portal,” I corrected.

  He rolled his eyes. “Yes, that.”

  “I know a creature that can do it, but he won’t fit in here.”

  Painter grinned. “I really hope you mean Cthulhu.”

  I gaped. “How do you know him?”

  He scoffed. “You didn’t make him up, you know. I happen to be quite well-read.”

  “Earth reading?”

  “Why not? All planets have something worth reading.”

  “How do we do this?”

  “Well, we can’t actually summon him. I have no proof he exists. We can combine our magic and create a Cthulhu-like creature with killer abilities.”

  “Do we have enough power to create one?” He frowned and looked around. I did as well.

  “The statues,” we both said at the exact same time.

  The Painter pretended that wasn’t weird. “If we concentrate hard enough on one spell, put all our powers in it, I’m sure we can do it.”

  “What about my limited practice?”

  “You’ve been practicing since it first developed, you just didn’t know it. We need to focus on the statues crumbling and fusing together to create the frame of Cthulhu. Describe every detail you possibly can.”

  I nodded and got to work. He painted carefully, delicately. I let the words come to me as I visualized the scene.

  The marble statues disintegrated like burnt, hollowed out logs and then rose again like a phoenix from its ashes. In their malleable state, they fused together and formed a magnificent creature of legend. The creature had a twenty-foot-tall humanoid body, a smell that could gag a maggot, and a face that even its mother couldn’t love. Its face was a mass of wiggling tentacles and its head was bulbous, as if someone had sewn an octopus on a man’s body instead of a head. Its back was adorned with tattered wings that were not protected by fur or feathers and could not lift the creature from the ground.

  This creature longed only to serve its masters, the Painter and the Writer, by banishing their enemies to a world of fire. Creature of my power made flesh, manifest before me and do my bidding. With the name Cthulhu, I command you.

  I looked up from my book to see Painter’s. The creature he had painted was such a perfect match it was as if he had seen it in my mind. Then we both turned as a deep rumble shook the air. Just as Painter and I had envisioned, the statues were forming a massive creature. It took a few minutes for its complete transformation, but in that time, none of the four killers tried to escape; they were too busy gawking.

  By the time Cthulhu moved, it was too late for them. He crashed through the invisible barrier of magic, grabbed Listener, and threw him into the portal. Listener vanished. Whisperer pointed his staff at Painter and I shoved him out of the way, barely dodging the lightning. I hadn’t thought about it or the fact that lightning didn’t seem to affect the Painter.

  Then Reader pointed his staff at me. Water formed in the air, creating an arrow, and froze. It flew right at me with a speed I couldn’t match, but instead of piercing my chest, it struck an invisible shield in front of me.

  I could feel my energy slipping out of me with every passing moment, as Cthulhu fed off our power. He defeated Dowser next, effortlessly picking up the priest and dropping him in the portal. Meanwhile, Whisperer tried to shoot Painter with a ball of black energy. I put up a shield over him, and it did stop the energy, but it felt like I had been struck in the head with a rock. I could almost hear my skull crack.

  Whisperer narrowed in on me as the weaker of the two, and since I didn’t have time to write in my book, he was right to. He pulled a dagger out of his pocket. Before he could slice open my guts, Painter stepped in the way and Whisperer plunged the dagger into his heart. Instead of dying, like I would have done, he backhanded Whisperer across the face. Whisperer went flying and Painter gingerly plucked the dagger from his chest.

  “How the fuck did you survive that?! I thought gods could be killed here!”

  “They’re semi-mortal. I’m less mortal, but I’ll explain later.” His chest wasn’t gushing with blood, so I let it go for the moment.

  Painter opened his book to paint, but Cthulhu wasn’t going to be cheated out of his prey. He grabbed Whisperer in one hand and Reader in the other, then jumped through the portal with them. It was grotesque how his body contorted to fit, contracting in some areas and elongating in others.

  Once they were gone, Painter and I looked at each other. “I told you it would have been easier to kill them all.”

  “You’re immortal?”

  The Painter held up his hand. “As long as I’m wearing this ring, I am.” The band was the body of a silver snake wrapped around his finger twice. A black star sapphire was trapped in the snake’s fangs. I recognized it from Roman’s description and wondered what the matching dagger did if the ring was so powerful.

  I was exhausted, and barely had enough energy to lift my pen, but I needed answers. He frowned at me as I wrote in the book. When I was done, I snapped the book closed.

  “What did you do?”

  I didn’t have to answer, because an instant
later, his disguise fell away and I saw… myself.

  That was the last thing I had ever expected to see. “What the fuck is going on?”

  The shock in the Painter’s eyes was covered up by a malevolent glint. He grinned. “You knew all along that you were your own worst enemy.”

  “You’re not me.”

  “No? Are you sure you’re not me?”

  “It’s another disguise meant to confuse me.”

  “That would be a very poor trick. It would be boring. How did you cast off my disguise?”

  “Cthulhu leaned more heavily on your power.”

  “That’s not it. Either you’re much, much more powerful than I thought, which you’re not, or you have my true name.”

  “How could I have your true name?”

  He scowled. “Fine, if you must know, it’s because this is my real appearance. My mother was Talot, my father is Set, and you are my twin brother.”

  Chapter 17

  On the world Duran, there was a farming land called Tumordii where a couple lived in the Kutsako era. This was a good time for Duran— a time of peace. Maki-tai Seri and Kei-tai Mekeko were both born of farmers and inherited good, prosperous land. They were not content, however; they wanted to live in luxury.

  One warm day, Seri heard crying in the field. Realizing that it was not the cries of a lost animal, she decided to investigate. She soon found a newborn, wrapped in a sand-colored blanket. The baby stopped crying when he saw the woman. Beside him, there was a scroll and a gold necklace. Seri opened the scroll, but it was in a language of another world.

  This must be a royal child, she thought. If I treat it well and raise it properly, its mother will reward me. She was quick to think up such a plot, for a woman as ambitious as she would be poised to seize any opportunity to gain power and wealth.

  She picked up the baby gently and brought him before her husband. “That had better not be mine,” Makeko sneered at the baby.

  “Of course it’s not. It will make us rich when its mother comes for it.”

  “It looks abandoned.”

  “It has already proved its worth,” she pointed to the necklace she had already placed around her neck.

  “Gold does us no good if the baby eats up our food.”

  “It will grow its own food when it learns to walk.”

  “Then you’d better teach it to walk and work quickly, because if it does not earn its keep, I will throw it out.”

  “Its mother will find it and reward us soon.”

  Little did she know, the baby’s mother would never find him.

  * * *

  Seri and Mekeko chose not to tell the boy they were not his parents. He learned to walk and speak quickly, and he was eager to do more than his share of work. By the time he was five, he did three times the work of his father in half the time, but no matter how hard he worked, his father was never happy.

  It was when he was five that weird things started happening to the boy. Magic was common to Duran, but the boy was smart enough to realize it would not please his parents. When his father would strike him and his mother would watch, he did nothing to defend himself. Nevertheless, they blamed him for the household objects that would explode or the crops that would wither and die.

  Soon after he turned seven, a powerful wizard named Merlin appeared to him and told him he would someday be a magnificent wizard. Merlin said he had seen it in a dream, and that his dreams always came true. He said that the boy was too young, but when he came of age, he should find Merlin and Merlin would teach him magic.

  The promise of a better life, of becoming a man who was loved and respected, excited him. Boy stopped fighting his magic and started practicing it. He could have run away and sought a teacher, but he felt he owed it to his parents to stay and help their crops, even though it meant taking their abuse.

  He imagined places where there were bodies of water as far as the eye could see, creatures both ferocious and beautiful, and people other than his parents. He saw them in his dreams, as if he was visiting another world in his sleep. He knew the names of people he never met, knew how to do things he had never done, and heard thoughts that weren’t his. The boy drew these things in the dirt and carved them into wood. He couldn’t help it; he had to make them true. That was all he ever said when he was caught doing so.

  On the tenth anniversary of the day they found him, Mekeko let the boy go with him to the market for the first time. By then, he could hide his magic flawlessly. He was an extremely smart boy who was given nothing to focus his mind on except magic. At the market, he saw books and paintings. His parents had no books and never taught him to read, yet he was fascinated by the written word, and even more so by art.

  One day, while his father was in the field, he approached his mother, who was cooking in the kitchen. “Why aren’t you doing your work, Boy?” she asked.

  “I wanted to ask for a book.”

  “A book? What good’s a book for? There’s plenty of wood to burn and it’s far less expensive.”

  “I want to learn to read.” He was thirteen and thought he was old enough to learn.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. I just do.”

  “Books will do you no good and I won’t waste my hard-earned money on that.”

  He noticed her gold necklace, which sparkled in the sunlight, and wondered what good it did her and how much she spent on it. Then it occurred to him that if she had gold, maybe she also had books, which meant more to him than any shiny metal. He had no idea where the yearning for books was coming from, but it drove him to do something he’d never done before; he went into his parents’ room. He hoped there was a book hidden in the night stand, but there was nothing. Seri and Mekeko had very little, so they needed few places to hide trinkets.

  In his mother’s wardrobe, he found a scroll, which he unrolled.

  My precious son,

  I hope that you can forgive me. If you are reading this, you have already discovered your magic, as it is a language our people know by blood. I write this to you on my last day and your first day. Since the moment you were conceived, others have been plotting your destiny and telling me who you are, but I know better. Your destiny is yours to decide. Our time together has been devastatingly short, but not wasted. You can live a lifetime in a day, and I have loved you a thousand lifetimes today.

  I am not leaving you with nothing. I own one possession in this world. It looks like a harmless necklace, yet it contains the most powerful magic there is. It will lead you to love.

  You have a twin brother. Whereas you came into this world fighting, he was still and silent. He needed you then and he always will. I have to separate you because together, your magic grows insurmountable. When you can control your power, you must find him and teach him to do the same. Now I must send you away to protect you.

  Your brother is the only one you can trust. Anyone on this world could betray you, even the gods, except for your brother. You are all he has and he is all you have. Please find him and protect him.

  I will be waiting in the next world for you both. Our time on this world is too short, but we will have forever in the next one. Live well and be free.

  Love,

  Your Mother

  Boy felt in his heart that every word was true. He was not loved by Seri and Mekeko because they were not his parents. Worse yet, his mother would never find him and rescue him because she was gone. He had a brother, though. A brother who needed him.

  He was so absorbed in rereading the letter that he didn’t hear Mekeko enter the room. He did, however, feel the fire poker that Mekeko bashed across the boy’s arm. “What are you doing, Boy?” Mekeko yelled as the boy collapsed to the floor, cradling his arm. He snatched the letter from the floor, which Boy had dropped. “This isn’t yours!”

  “Yes, it is!” Boy insisted.

  “You’re stealing from your own parents now?”

  “You’re not my parents. You lied to me!”

  “How d
are you speak to me that way! I took you in when your mother threw you away!”

  “She didn’t throw me away! Her letter said she loved me!”

  “That letter is nonsense.”

  “No, it’s not! You just can’t read it!”

  “What’s going on in here?” Seri asked, drawn to the yelling.

  “I caught the boy trying to steal from us.”

  Seri sneered. “Beat him good and put him back to work. We’ve obviously been too nice to him. Tonight, we’ll chain him up outside.”

  “You’re not my mother. You can’t do anything to me anymore.”

  “I’m the only mother you’ll ever get and you’d better learn some respect. You owe us everything.” Boy opened his mouth to argue, only to cry out in pain when Mekeko struck him with the poker again. “Make sure he doesn’t forget the lesson this time,” Seri said before leaving.

  Mekeko kept hitting the boy, each strike harder and faster than the last. Although it wasn’t the worst beating the boy had gotten, it was the first time he was afraid Mekeko would go too far and kill him. It was also the first time he didn’t believe he deserved it.

  He wanted his real mother to appear and save him. She can’t, he thought. She won’t ever be able to save me. He then thought about his brother. He had a brother who needed him, who hadn’t gotten a letter and didn’t know who his mother was.

  The sound of glass breaking startled him and Mekeko stopped beating him. Boy looked up to see Mekeko covered in broken glass and shielding his face with bloodied hands. Boy scrambled away, cutting his hands on the glass scattered on the floor. It didn’t matter; it was less painful than broken bones.

  Mekeko lowered his hands, fury reddening his face. There was murder in his eyes and the boy knew it. Only one of them was going to be leaving the room. He reached out his hand and the poker, which had been dropped, flew to him.

  “What do you intend to do with that, Boy?

  “I intend to leave.”