Slick
De Vorto’s words ran a shiver through my body. It was fear and it was thrill. It was the realisation that I was setting out to fulfil my destiny as a wordsmith. It was the terror of yielding to a power I did not begin to understand. It was the misery of all the damage I had already wreaked with my careless words. It was all this and more, all mixed together.
I drew a deep breath and started talking. The voice was mine, but I knew the words weren’t. I was drawing on what De Vorto was giving me.
“She is death itself
Of the Aos-sí
From the mounds
A faerie with flails for limbs
And blades for teeth
Sharp from end to end
Deadly in intent
She slashes, she slices
She stabs, she cuts
Her banshee shriek freezes
As she plunges
Her sharp, stinging tail!”
(the tendril began thickening, curling in on itself, devouring its tail, taking on a form that was still invisible, yet menacing)
The ox stared at me, as if a bug he had been planning to crush had suddenly started tap-dancing in front of him. But I was just beginning to warm up. I did not understand it, but then I didn’t have to. Words came all by themselves. De Vorto sounded almost triumphant now. He goaded me like a delighted football coach, even as I wove.
“She’s on my call,
and I will let her loose on you.
All I need to do is whistle,
And once I let her free
with the word ‘Attack’,
there is no turning back.
I cannot call her back
till the task is done!”
(the deed was done… the tendril now knew what shape it was destined to take… what was expected of it… Sliverette cut and sliced her way into existence… a vision of hell with a lot of sharp ends started forming, twisting the air around it…)
There was an air of impending disaster, and the ox’s friends, those who were not drunk enough to overlook what was happening, started backing away. I backed away a couple of steps too. I saw something happening just above the ox’s head. I could not quite figure out what, but it was scary as hell. The space warp that usually formed was taking on a shape this time, an invisible shape that I somehow could just about see. The shape was stretching and skewing to look like something very scary, something I had just described. This was getting insane!
“Well done, boy,” De Vorto said. I could almost feel the smile. “Now, finish what you started. Say the word.”
I gulped as I realised what I had done. I had created an entity. I had talked to the very fabric of reality, and woven something into existence. And from the words, I figured I had created something very, very dangerous. I wondered if there was any way I could stop this madness.
At that moment, the ox took things out my hands. He raised his hand in a smooth and swift arc, bringing the knife really close to my thighs. I leapt back desperately.
“The femoral artery,” De Vorto shouted in my head, “He almost killed you. And you want to stop! You want to kill yourself! Bampot! Do not hesitate! Or it will be too late!” The shape in the air twisted and struggled and almost shrieked to me, adding another voice in my head, “Set me free!”
There are only so many voices I can handle. I exhaled the word, “Attack!” Hell bristling with blades broke loose. The knife in the ox’s hand clattered to the ground, followed by two fingers and a thumb. Blood splattered freely as the ox shrieked in a voice that did not sound anything like his. Some of his other friends lunged forward, trying to help their mate against what they believed was one unarmed man. They ran into Sliverette’s rear guard. As promised, it was sharp and stung like hell! It stabbed viciously and did plenty of damage. Pandemonium escalated to mayhem and then to sheer insanity. Grown men were screaming like children as they blundered about, trying to escape death. They tried to ward her off with knives and rocks and wooden sticks. Nothing worked. She cut, sawed and drilled through everything. She flitted about at a speed that defied the eyes, flicking aside weapons and other missiles. She was too fast for any of them, for all of them put together. The gang was screaming in chorus now…different pitches and scales. I saw men running around, jumping and leaping. Initially, there were attempts to attack her. But the moment any of them caught sight of her, they would turn and run. She would not stop. She would dart after whoever retreated, dealing a vicious cut that disabled him on the spot, and then she would be back into the melee of confused and scared men who ran headlong in their terror.
I realised that I had been silently whimpering at the gory sight. There was also a sense of quiet satisfaction inside my head, an echo from De Vorto. I ignored the feeling. I had to stop this! All of them would end up getting killed! I screamed, “Stop! Stop! Stop!” The vicious little nightmare stopped for an instant and snuck a glance at me, grinning in a manner that gloated, crowed and derided simultaneously. For the first time, I actually caught sight of the nasty piece of work. She was silvery and shaped like a statuette of a woman, sketchy yet beautiful, only with her limbs gone all awry. I caught sight of a variety of sharp blades before she went right back to the prey.
“… I cannot call her back till the task is done.” I remembered my words. I could not stop her! She was going to kill all those guys!
“Serves them right,” De Vorto said, his voice cold and deadly.
“No!” I protested. “We will not kill anyone! We have to stop this!” I could feel De Vorto holding out for an instant, but then he relented. The words came to me. Before I could say them, however, I heard another voice, spoken over my shoulder, the voice of a girl, quiet, coherent and strangely powerful.
“I call out
To the spirits
Of the winds
And the waters,
Stop this faerie.
Stop her now!
Gusts and waves,
Quench her spirit,
Quell her!”
I turned around to see where the words were coming from. There she was, Dew! She looked prettier than ever in the moonlight. The sound of water and wind made me turn around, back to where the action was. My sight was arrested by a twister of water and wind rising out of the sea. It shrieked with power as it bore down towards the chaos on the beach. The men turned and fled, unable to deal with this additional threat. Sliverette turned around and looked at the twister. I swear to God, I actually saw her grin!
What followed was a sight that was majestic and beautiful, and extremely scary. Sliverette plunged into the twister and moved through it like she was a thousand faeries in one. The wind and the water raged around her, but in moments it was over. A gust of wind hit me with spray as the twister melted into nothing. Remaining floating in the air was Sliverette, supremely triumphant. “No!” I heard the word whispered in horror.
I turned back to see Dew backing away. I couldn’t see her very well, but I knew she was scared. I saw something silvery whizz past. Sliverette! She was headed for the girl. Dew quickly whipped out a slim piece of wood and pointed it at Sliverette. Some sort of a shield appeared that stopped Sliverette in her tracks. But it wasn’t working very well. Sliverette was moving forward, one relentless inch at a time. I could see sparks jumping out of the piece of wood - I presumed it was a wand - as it strained to stop the faerie. I could see Dew straining as she yelled out word after word, trying one thing after another to stop the deadly thing from getting to her.
For a frozen instant, I was stuck there, watching her. I could feel my heart sinking with every inch the faerie gained. There could only be one outcome here, and I was almost in denial of it. Dew kept screaming out words, trying to stop the thing. She was trying every possible way to destroy the faerie. The desperation in her voice filtered through to my numbed brain. She was fighting for her life, and she was losing. If I didn’t help her, she would fall prey to the malevolent spirit. And suddenly, just like that, I knew what to do. “Th
is has to stop,” I spoke quietly, calmly. “There has been enough violence.”
I could sense De Vorto’s agreement. I felt some relief that he wasn’t a cold-blooded murderer. I closed my eyes for an instant of peace. The word came to me. Partly my own, partly De Vorto’s. I opened my eyes. “It took just one word to put Sliverette to sleep…SOMA!”
Sliverette spun around, a look of shock on her face. And a miniature twister started twirling around her tail. She made a dismayed moue with her bloody serrated lips and vanished.
I sighed in relief. That was done. Now for the guys. I turned around to check the scene there. I saw the men shouting and swearing at me, even as they staggered away, pulling their comrades who were incapable of walking by themselves. I realised that each one of those men would carry scars from this day for the rest of their lives. There was a lot of blood, marked in dark patches on the silvery sand. There were also dark lumps lying around that I did not want to think about; I would have to be sick right there if I allowed myself to admit what they were. I did not know whether to feel disgusted at all that violence or to feel thankful that the blood was not mine.
“Hey!” I heard her scream. “Hey, you!” I turned around again, slightly dizzy from all the turning. Dew was closer now. I could see much better. I was right; she did look incredibly beautiful. My earlier judgment of cute had definitely been unfair. And yes, she was also incredibly furious.
“You murderer! You bloody murderer!” She could barely speak coherently, her fury choking her up, as she stomped closer to me.
I could only stare helplessly, left mute by her anger and the way her animated face looked so intensely beautiful in the moonlight.
She walked up till she was inches away from me, almost grabbing me, but then deciding not to. She shook her fist under my nose, as she spoke through gritted teeth, “You deliberately wove that thing up. You murderer! You wanted to kill those men. You stood there watching, doing nothing, while that vile thing cut them up. You sick, sick man!”
I shook my head stupidly, wondering what to tell her, how to explain myself to her. I didn’t want her hating me; I didn’t want all that disgust and anger directed at me. And for once, I was at a complete loss for words.
She stood there, glaring at me. She was breathing heavily, the blood rush and adrenaline slowly leaving her. “Ok, I’m done screaming,” she said, her voice dead flat now. “Do you want to try and explain why you did what you did?”
“I didn’t…” I started, and then realised I had no clue where to go with that sentence. I tried again after a pause, “I had no clue…” No, that was even worse. I had to do better. I could hear De Vorto chuckle and that definitely didn’t help. “He tried to kill me.” The moment that came out, I realised that I really couldn’t have done worse. That came out sounding petulant and childish. “He tried to kill you?” Her voice and expression didn’t cut me any slack. “And you wove up an elemental faerie to massacre the whole lot? Doesn’t that strike you as overkill?”
I had to give it to her; put like that it did sound pretty bad. But I had no clue what I was doing! Saying that wouldn’t help though. I didn’t know what would. I imitated a breathless fish for a while, and then shut my mouth.
She took a deep breath, and then started speaking slowly, like she would to a kid; a really small and slow kid. “You almost murdered a dozen men. I waited while I heard you building that scape, hoping that you would stop after scaring them off. But everything you said was sheer murder. You summoned one of the people of the mounds, one of the worst. I have not even heard of Sliverette. She sounds like you created her, taking a spirit from the faerie folks and casting her in your twisted imagination!” She grew more animated as she spoke, almost spitting out her words, condemning me with every one of them. I tried to protest, but she stopped me with a gesture. She was not done yet.
“You created that scape just to kill. And then, to make matters worse, you let it make havoc without trying to stop it. At first, I thought you didn’t know how to stop it. But no! You knew what you were doing! You called it off with a simple word at the end when it came for me! Just like that! But you didn’t make the slightest effort when that thing was slaughtering those men!”
“No one died,” De Vorto noted wryly. With my own conversational ability apparently lost for the moment, I echoed those words, including the wryness, to my belated horror.
“No one died!” she repeated the words with such vehemence that I wilted a bit. “How do you know! Those people were bleeding all over the place! How do you know who died and who didn’t! How can you be so callous! You’re a...you’re a...monster!”
“You did go overboard,” De Vorto’s voice conceded, with some reproach thrown in. I didn’t believe this! He was telling me that I went overboard! How much of that madness was him and how much was me? I had no clue, but now was not the time to figure that out. I had to calm this girl down before she chucked another fireball at me. Caught between my newfound fish mimicry skills and my supposed tendency to ‘overkill’, one of us would end up dead. I really did not want either of us hurt at all.
“Say something! Don’t just stand there and stare at me!” She almost screamed these words. She had flushed as she blasted me with those words. God, she looked stunning! I was still too distracted to know what to say or how to react.
“You said you were done screaming,” the words escaped me before I realised what I was saying. Oh god!
“Of course, and I’m the one who’s wrong here!” She was exasperated too now. Great!
“I really didn’t know what would happen. That was the first time I tried anything like that! It was all De Vorto’s fault!” The words tripped over themselves in a hurry to get out. And then, there was silence. She raised one eyebrow, looking at me in anticipation, waiting to hear what that meant. I was dumbstruck at my own stupidity, and going by the horrified silence in my head, so was De Vorto.
“My…my…mentor,” I stammered, “He just started teaching me this morning, and I am new to all this. I don’t know wordsmithing any better than…than someone who doesn’t know it.” I was stumbling to new depths of verbal ineptitude.
“Your mentor?” Her tone made it clear that I was once again using the wrong words to say what I should be saying. De Vorto’s silent fury was flooding my mind like the buzzing of a thousand bees, making it difficult to think.
Her expression made it clear that she wouldn’t let me stop there and definitely expected me to complete my explanation. I took a deep breath, and collected what thoughts I could. “I’m not a wordsmith. I’m not with the Guild or the Free Word or any other organisation. I’m a…a cipher.” I said the word as I struggled to describe who I was. I was using those damn words! I was becoming part of this crazy world!
“Slick, let me have you know that I am a wordsmith and I have walked the Way of the Word for long enough to know that there is no way in hell you’re a cipher. You summoned an entity, a particularly powerful one, without using a spell, a scape-staff or any kind of pre-woven scape. You cast her in the image of your needs, of your words. You violated the most important rules of the Way by leaving the scape open-ended in terms of intent, potential and control. To make matters worse, you actually put in a clause that specified that you could not stop the monster until it completed the deed. And worst of all, you did not even mention what the deed was. God knows how many people that imp would have gone on to kill or maim before someone stopped it! I do not even know how you managed to weave it without following the set path. You have done all of this, and you expect me to believe you are a cipher?” She managed to make ‘cipher’ sound like some kind of vermin that crawled in dark, dirty places.
I absorbed this analysis of what I had done; those crazy words that had come out of nowhere. I was reminded of my mathematics professor who used to tick me off for finding obscure derivations to regular theorems just because I had never bothered to memorise the standard solutions. At this point, De Vorto offered a “Well, at least she’
s smart.” I guess she was. And I was responding by being my daftest. I was still processing everything she had said and at the same time acknowledging De Vorto’s comment mentally, when she snapped her fingers before my face.
“What?” she demanded, waiting for an explanation, “Are you going to say something or are you going to space out again? Are you high on something?”
“No,” I countered. This, I could deny confidently. “I’m completely sober.”
“Well, why can’t you tell me why the hell you did what you did?”
On second thoughts, denying that wasn’t a good idea. And then I remembered my entire honest bluff sequence with Akto, and decided what worked once could definitely work again! Only I decided to skip the outrage. I took a deep breath and spoke, “I’m sorry. I’m just shocked. I have never done anything like this before. Meeting you yesterday was bad enough. You attacked and I reacted with pure instinct. I had no clue what you did or what I did. It’s only after that, through conversations with my mentor and Akto that I have learned about the existence of things like the Way of the Word, the Guild or the Free Word. It’s only then that I recognised that I do indeed have the gift. In all those words he used, I heard the word ‘cipher’ - that came the closest to describing what I was. That’s why I used that word when I tried to tell you who I was, what I was. I do not know anything more than this, Dew.” I said her name for the first time, tasting the way it sounded; liking it very much.
She gave me a long suffering sigh. “Really? That is your story? You’ll have to do better than that. You resisted my elemental attack like it was nothing, bouncing it right back at me, and you expect me to believe this ‘I-don’t-know-what-I-did’ story? You figured all of this out and wove up a murderous faerie because of conversations with Akto and this mysterious mentor you met today? Are you going to come out with the truth or shall we just say goodbye to each other now? You can figure this mess out by yourself!”
Wordscapist: The Myth (The Way of the Word Book 1) Page 16
