“What threat is she talking about,” I sent a mental thought to Dew. The response took some time coming back. When it did come, I didn’t like it one bit. “I think she might be talking about you.”
De Vorto and the faerie had gone back to glaring at each other. This was getting a little tiring. I started studying the faerie, one after another, trying to discern differences between the vague pretty forms. My warp shrank as I stopped focussing on it, and then blinked out. After a while, Dew let hers go out too. This was going to take a while.
“Aeiea, do not anger me!” De Vorto shouted, suddenly. “I demand my host back, or the fey will face my wrath!”
“Go on then, Alain de Vorto,” Aeiea smirked. “Let’s see you hurt even one of my people in a fair fight.”
De Vorto glared at her. The faerie were slowly getting up, one by one, rising from their comfortable positions. I now knew that there were eight of them - from what I remembered of Sliverette, that was far too many. Both Dew and my scape signs came back in an instant, flaring brightly. It was time to do something. I wondered what.
“Do not weave, boy!” De Vorto’s voice was clear inside my head, just like old times. It was a telepathic missive; he wasn’t in my head anymore. But it was bad enough. Unfortunately, for the rebel in me, that is just the kind of trigger that gets me going. I knew I couldn’t speak aloud. I had to cook something up in my head. So be it. I knew what I wanted to do; ensure that none of these crazy faeries could hurt us. I had to freeze them in place, immobile and, if possible, unharmed. I wasn’t too worried about the unharmed bit. They were hostile and had some harm coming as well-earned payback. I let the words swim up, shaping them in a form that just felt natural. It was almost like writing poetry. I had never been much of a poet, but this came easily to me.
“Capture form
Immobilise intent
Prevent escape
Hold in limbo”
As the words appeared in my head, my warp stopped swirling around, becoming almost solid in my hands. The faeries hadn’t noticed anything and were still focussing on De Vorto as he glared at Aeiea. I felt my warp getting heavier and heavier. I had to cast whatever I had woven soon or it would go out of control. Would it even work?
I shot another glance at Dew. She was staring at my warp, her eyes huge and round, full of alarm. Before she could shoot me another thought, the faeries made their move. Four of them darted forward, two towards me and two towards Dew. The rest moved towards De Vorto. Well, if that’s how they had calculated the threat, they were very wrong. I released the scape with a breath and a few words…
“Freeze where you are
Until it’s time to thaw”
The effect was instantaneous – they all froze right where they were. I saw De Vorto glowing bright, in the midst of what looked like another warp. He was ready to strike! He could weave!
Furious, he glared at me. His warp winked out as he darted towards me. I almost brought up another freeze spell in self-defence, but stopped myself. I didn’t want to take him on.
“What have you done?” he demanded, flitting inches away from my face.
“You can weave!” I shouted. He had lied!
“What did you do, boy?” He almost growled this one out, his form glowing dangerously again.
“Didn’t I just save us all?” I asked.
“You attacked the faerie!”
“You were going to do the same!”
“I need to reason with them, or they will not return my body.”
“Why do they have your body?”
“That is not the point. The point is that you are a bawbag who has once again screwed up. You proved the faerie right!” he shouted, right in my face.
“They were making their move, attacking us, when I finally decided to let loose what I’d woven.” I wasn’t backing down this time. I was right, and I wouldn’t let him take that away from me.
“You had no business weaving!” This time it was Dew. I had pretty much had it with the both of them.
“What do you guys expect of me, dammit!” I shouted, my warp appearing almost instantly, flaring up. All of us fell silent, staring at it, as it glowed between my clenched fists. I took a deep breath and let it go out. It took some effort.
“Whatever is happening inside you is not stable enough, Slick,” Dew said, more quietly this time.
I nodded quietly, biting my lip to prevent any retorts. That had been scary, the way my power had sprung up when I was angry.
De Vorto continued glaring at me. He was really angry, and as my rage cooled down, I was beginning to understand why.
“He acted for the best,” Dew said, speaking up softly but firmly. “I was on the verge of attacking too, only I had no idea how to bring them all down at once.”
De Vorto threw her a dirty look and then got back to glaring at me. He looked back at the frozen faerie. Some of them were beginning to thaw. He turned towards us, his face more composed.
“Both of you will walk out that way,” De Vorto spoke in a voice that made it clear that there was to be no further debate, pointing towards the valley below. “You will see a portal that I have set up. Walk through it, and you will find yourself inside my home, where no one else can enter. Go and wait there. I will clean up this mess and come.”
“You sure you don’t need help thawing them out?” I asked.
“Boy, you forget yourself,” De Vorto said, his voice carrying more ice than my scape had. I half raised my hands in surrender. I nodded to Dew and both of us set out to find De Vorto’s home.
As we walked away, the thought came to me that I had just pulled off my first scape independently. It worked quite well, and was super cool too. I stored it away in my head, labelling it as the Freeze spell. I was sure it would come in useful sometime soon, no matter what De Vorto or Dew said.
Dew
The portal was a little rip in the air. I had a feeling it had been set up so that only Slick and I could see it. De Vorto could definitely weave. We had to talk about this. For now we just went quietly through the portal. I let Slick go first. He was tentative, unsure how to deal with this new phenomenon. Again, the thought came to me, how strange it must be to enter a world where everything was so different. I wondered how it felt. He reached out with his hand, slowly slipping into the portal, stepping through as the rip expanded to encompass him. I followed him, and bumped into him on the other side. He was standing, frozen to the spot. I gently shoved him aside and looked at what had left him dumbstruck. I had to admit; it was quite a sight!
We were in a little valley. It was gorgeous, green and lush, very unlike the bleak, black surroundings. I couldn’t get a grasp of the size of the place, as the horizon melted into a haze that showed a trace of the mountains that surrounded us. De Vorto had built some kind of illusion that combined with the natural inaccessibility of the place to ensure that no one could see it from the outside. I wondered how he had worked with all the problems of attempting something like this; the sheer physics of hiding a location and stitching everything else around it on the outside; the one-way vision and the obvious shielding it had from all wordsmith senses; the energy it took to sustain something like this. It was an incredibly brilliant example of weaving, something that only the Wordscapist could have come up with. For now, it looked like we might be safe again.
Slick was walking around the place, his mouth wide open, stopping now and then to give me can-you-believe-this-place looks. He was cute when he wasn’t trying to be a smartass. I smiled at him, and settled down on a patch of grass. I didn’t want to explore. I wanted De Vorto to be back so that I could talk to him. I needed some answers. After some walking around, Slick returned and settled down next to me. We sat for some time in silence. I liked that. I liked him better when he wasn’t talking. I stopped the thought before it could sneak away and go to other places I didn’t want it to go to.
“I’m hungry,” Slick said after a while. “Can you do an accio fruit thingie?”
&n
bsp; “We’re not in the Harry Potter world, Slick,” I replied with a heavy sigh. “Wordsmiths need to work harder. I suggest we go fruit hunting, if you want to eat any time soon.”
He stuck his tongue out at me, and then scrambled up. His leg was back to normal, and so were his antics. I guess cute could become irritating very soon. But it was still difficult to stay mad at the idiot. I followed him with a smile as he exclaimed loudly at having found a patch of apple trees. Before he could try something stupid like climbing one, I wove up something that brought down a shower of lovely ripe apples. He leaned to pick one up and threw me a look. “I thought we had to work harder.”
“Well, apples won’t come zooming to you,” I responded, picking one up myself. “But you can convince them to fall a bit sooner.”
He bit into one, making a face at me as he did. Only he could manage to do that.
“I hope De Vorto is doing alright,” I said.
“Well, he can weave,” Slick spoke through a full mouth. “And he is the incredible, amazing, and ultimate Wordscapist. He can probably wrap them up and sell them as Christmas tree decorations without breaking a sweat.”
“I need to talk to him about that,” I said after chewing through a mouthful of extremely delicious apple. “We need to know what he can and cannot do. There is no point pretending he cannot weave. And if he doesn’t act so damn cryptic, we might be able to get things done more easily than we could have otherwise.”
He nodded vigorously as he demolished another apple, his second.
The next hour was pleasant, if slightly strange. We spoke and ate, and spoke some more. Every now and then we would wonder about De Vorto. Eventually, we would give up and get back to talking. Slick had lots of questions, and I was glad to answer what I could. He wanted to understand how weaving worked. He wanted to know the science behind it. He wove by instinct, stringing words together as they came to him. His scapes definitely got results, though his words were without form or structure. I tried to explain to him the logic of the classic structure I had learned as best as I could. My responses made him thoughtful, and every now and then there would be a lull in the conversation as he digested what he had learned. And then he would plunge right back in with another question.
I told him about scapes and the training process. I told him about the Guild and the Free Word. I even told him about Sign; what little I heard, and the fact that she was more myth than fact. He found all this endlessly entertaining. I leaned back during one of the quiet periods, resting against a tree, twisting some grass in my hands. I liked this place. It was nice. And Slick could be nice too, if he didn’t try so hard to be himself. I watched him frown at some thought running through his busy head. His strange mismatched eyes glowed brown and green for a second as he turned to me again. That bit was going to take some getting used to.
“So I use one path to construct and another to deconstruct,” he said suddenly, repeating what I had told him a while back. “Why can’t I just reverse the same path?”
I gasped in horror, “Don’t even think about doing something like that! You come up with the most bizarre ideas! Using a scape path in reverse indeed! What do you think this is? A card game?”
“Well, it seems logical to me.”
“Slick,” I tried to keep my voice calm, despite the sheer insanity of what he had just proposed. “Weaving is complicated. It’s not child’s play. Your element might be water, or ice. That might come naturally to you, like fire does to me. But other things take time. You need to try and learn the classic paths. You need to...”
He closed his eyes and suddenly a twig lying in front of us burst into flame. It made me jump, and I almost shrieked. That was completely unexpected!
“What is wrong with you!” I shouted at him. “You are sitting on this huge reservoir of power that you barely understand. De Vorto has expressly forbidden you from weaving. And you just play around with it like it’s nothing. And thoughtscapes! Inside your head! With no control over what you wreak! You could blow yourself up! There is a reason why wordsmiths are taught as inksmiths before they can move to breathsmiths!”
“You’re just plain jealous!” he retorted, with a smirk.
“No, I am not!” I shouted again, outraged at how clueless he was about the seriousness of the situation. “I know the power of the thoughtscape lies with the Wordscapist. But you are yet to learn the basic skills of a rookie. You have power, yes. But you lack the knowledge to control it and use it constructively.”
He looked at me seriously. I think he finally understood just how serious I was. “Dew, tell me,” he said, “Do you know what it feels like to wield this power?”
That threw me off. I wasn’t sure how to respond. I finally decided to just go with honesty, though I didn’t like what he was implying. “I guess not,” I muttered.
“Then, how do you know the best way to use it?”
“I do not,” I snorted. “De Vorto is probably the only one who can train you. And he has already forbidden you from weaving! I could guide you to the way of the inksmith and the breathsmith. Anything beyond that is up to him.” My volume had gone up again, despite myself.
“Dew, do you realise that a lot of the gift I have is beyond even what De Vorto had?” he asked, his voice irritatingly reasonable. “To make matters worse, he’s not really being completely honest about anything at all. We don’t even know how much he can do right now, and why he says the things he does.”
“Slick, do you realise just how perfectly arrogant, incorrigible and unbearable you are?” I asked, giving up on trying to convince him.
“Dew, do you realise how perfectly beautiful you look when you flush like that?”
That one threw me off completely. I flushed even more and was at a complete loss for words. The bastard! He had snuck that one in and caught me off guard! I saw him smiling at me, leaning back to take in the view. Cute could definitely get extremely irritating really fast. “You are incorrigible,” I muttered, getting up. “I see you’re good at charmscapes though!”
“That was not a charmscape and you know it,” Slick retorted, standing up too. “I was merely telling you something I observed.”
“Never mind. I give up. I’m not going to argue with you. Let’s go check on De Vorto,” I said, walking back towards the point we had entered, visible as a tear in the haze around us. “It has been way too long.”
Slick was walking alongside me, looking at the portal as we approached it. “You really think we should step out? He asked us to wait here for him.”
“Well, we did wait,” I said, as I continued walking. “I’m beginning to get a little worried though. We did leave him in the midst of a crazy situation.”
“Hmmm, I guess,” Slick said. “Hold on, let me go through first.” With that he stepped through the portal. With an exasperated sigh, I moved to follow him. I walked right into him on the other side, again. He was frozen right in front of the portal, and this time I sensed that there was something a lot more serious holding his attention. I moved around him to see what was wrong.
There was a grey-black mass of ectoplasm in front of us. I could make out a bunch of shadows. We were surrounded by what looked like a few hundred ghosts!
Slick
I could feel the fear prick every inch of my body. I didn’t know what they were, but they were really scary. I could feel the combined weight of their hostile rage pressed against my mind. I wasn’t able to think straight, much less move. I felt Dew standing right next to me, staring at the immense mass of grey swirling around us. There were a lot of them, distinct for a split second and all mixed up the next. They made it impossible for us to move, and I didn’t really know how to fight them.
“Dew?” I asked, my voice quivering a bit.
“Spirits,” Dew whispered. “Ghosts. I have never seen so many of them together.”
I did not need to know that. I hated ghosts! Not that I had had any personal experience. But this was insane! Zombies, psychotic wordsmiths,
murderous faerie, and now ghosts! Where had these sprung from?
I tried to think of a way to counter them. But the fear was overwhelming. I couldn’t clear my mind, I couldn’t focus on one thought. And I knew better than to try weaving without achieving a tabula rasa first. What worked against ghosts? I couldn’t think of anything beyond a proton pack, and I didn’t think the Ghostbusters script writer was a wordsmith. Not in the traditional sense at least. And even if they did work, I didn’t have a proton pack! Damn it, I had to focus!
The ghosts crowded us, surrounding us on either side. I reached out, trying to sense the portal behind me. We could slip back into it and leave these things behind. They wouldn’t be able to follow us. I felt nothing, however. I turned around to look for the tear in the air, and saw nothing. It had closed! De Vorto had set up a single entry portal for us! Damn it! I looked back and saw that we were completely surrounded now. The sense of terror was off the charts, and my mind was closing down. I looked at Dew - she was riveted, staring at the grey forms.
“Why aren’t you weaving?” I whispered at her, wondering why I was whispering even as I did.
“I sense them. They’re wordsmith ghosts. Spooks. This is a Guild attack. They attack wordsmiths, especially the ones who are weaving. They are drawn to scape signs. Don’t try to weave. Just stand still.”
“Stand still?” I wasn’t sure how to take that. “And they will go away?”
“No, they won’t,” Dew whispered back at me, still staring out at the ghosts. “But if you try to weave, they will all swoop into you and drive you completely insane.”
I gulped. That didn’t sound good.
The ghosts, the spooks, were done crowding us. It was probably because they had run out of space. They were inches away from us, swirling around like...ghosts, I guess. I felt the power rolling in my head, almost responding to this danger. I was trying very hard not to let it loose. I think the spooks sensed it, and they were definitely getting chummier with me than Dew. I could feel the occasional feathery touch, and it was creeping the hell out of me!
Wordscapist: The Myth (The Way of the Word Book 1) Page 25
