Wordscapist: The Myth (The Way of the Word Book 1)

by Arpan Panicker

  “Dew!” I whispered fiercely.

  “Yes?” she responded, her cautious monotone was strained, the effort of keeping still beginning to show.

  “I don’t think we should do nothing. We really must respond.”

  “That’s how they kill, Slick,” Dew whispered, speaking slowly. “Don’t respond. Don’t act like a wordsmith. Wait and watch. Their entire purpose as spooks is to hunt out and kill renegade wordsmiths. A lot of very good Free wordsmiths have gone down trying to repel a spook attack.”

  “Ok,” I breathed out, trying to relax. It was impossible when you were surrounded by hundreds of ghosts. “And does this mean that someone dangerous from the Guild is around and that they are going to do something bad to us?”

  “Well, based on everything I heard back in Goa, Silvus is out to get De Vorto and you. I don’t think he realises there are two of you yet.”

  “Silvus is...” I left that hanging.

  “The bastard who is responsible for everything bad that has happened to me, yes,” she said that a little more quietly, a little more slowly. Definitely a 10 on the menace level.

  “And you think he is here?” I asked, wondering at how we were keeping a conversation going in this insane situation.

  “Either he is, or his bitch Zyx is. And we should be able to deal with them much better than we would be able to deal with these damn spooks.”

  Ah. I digested that. I realised that the terror had receded somewhat. We were still surrounded, but my mind was slowly getting used to being group haunted by a dead wordsmith reunion. It’s incredible what the mind can get used to.

  The relative calm did have an advantage though. The ideas were back, and there was a silent surge of power in my head as I skipped through several options. My head cleared completely and I was alert and ready. Ready for what exactly, I was yet to decide. I could feel the spooks converging around me.

  “Slick,” Dew’s voice betrayed more than a trace of nervousness. “What are you doing?”

  “Shush,” I whispered, as one of the ideas shoved the others away and settled down, ready for some action. Swoop into me, would they? Well, what if I was ready for them? I had some kind of a massive monster in my head that felt powerful enough to take on pretty much anything. Now was a good time to figure out just how much. I didn’t pause to think about the what-ifs. From what I had heard about Silvus and the rest of the Guild smiths, I wanted to be free of this spook menace and ready to face them when they got here.

  Once again, the words appeared as mental whispers, coalescing and taking form as I shaped them into clear intent. This was fun!

  “Dust to dust

  Ashes to ashes

  Drawn to power

  And burnt by it

  Time to let go

  Time to move on”

  This one was a biggie. I could feel it opening up what felt like a massive sinkhole in my head. It whirled and swirled. My warp came up and went nuts, doing an incredibly accurate tornado imitation, funnelling right into my head. Dew was screaming something out, but I didn’t hear her. I needed to focus here. I saw the grey blur of the spooks go crazy as they went into a violent outward spiral, building up into the swoop that I knew was coming. The final words were ready to cast.

  Into the void

  Each one, every one

  Dissolve”

  The swooping spiral of the spooks met the intensely powerful tornado of my warp. There was a complete absence of sound for a long, frozen moment. And then with a huge blip, everything disappeared. Spooks, warp, everything. I felt the surge in my head swell and then it blinked out completely. It was gone, for the moment. I waited for something to happen, but nothing did. I could see the sky again, and the world around me; the black rock and the mountains.

  “They’re gone,” Dew said, her voice flat and toneless. She was in shock.

  I nodded, almost afraid to speak.

  She looked at me for a moment, as if seeing me for the first time. “And you’re ok,” She said, sounding vaguely disappointed.

  I nodded again, carefully. My head felt a little funny and I didn’t want it falling off.

  “What did you do?” she asked, her voice still lifeless, sounding like she didn’t really care.

  “Sent them somewhere else,” I said.

  “Where?” she asked, staring into the space that had recently been packed with a bunch of ghosts.

  “One way place,” I said vaguely, moving my hands to try and add more meaning. “Won’t come back,” I continued. “The end.” I wasn’t being very eloquent, but then, I didn’t really know what I had done. And right then, I was afraid of words.

  “And the way to this place is through your head?” she asked, her voice sounding just a little sad.

  “It’s kind of like the portal, I guess,” I said. I didn’t like the sad tone. I wanted to explain. “There’s this immense energy rolling around in my head, and I suspect it’s just the surface. It’s from someplace else, some place much more powerful. Alien, all powerful. I just sent everything there...to be dissolved.”

  “You opened this portal,” Dew said, looking at me.

  “Not really opened,” I tried to defend myself, knowing where this was going. “Just shoved things through it.”

  “And how did you know,” Dew asked, her sad voice making my heart drop, “that nothing would be shoved through from the other side? That nothing has been shoved through from the other side?”

  “I don’t know, Dew,” I said, shuddering a bit. “I don’t think anything came through. I built up a bit of vacuum to let the ghost spiral thing through. Physics says that nothing can come in from the other side.”

  “You think, Slick?” Dew asked. “You hope, you mean.”

  I shuddered again, as I hugged myself, looking around. “Yes,” I agreed, “I hope. Let’s go find that damn wordsmith now. I have a feeling things are going to get worse.”

  I walked off towards the scene of the morning’s confrontation. Dew followed me wordlessly.

  Amra

  “Yes, ma’am,” the agent said. “There has been no mistake. There was a reading of 220 on the CM.”

  “220?” I asked again. That was not possible. No one had ever breached 200. This was impossible!

  “Well, 219.5,” the man conceded, looking a little nervous in the face of my angry disbelief.

  “And there is only one signature on this?” I asked, repeating another of my questions.

  This time the man merely nodded, looking even more nervous.

  “You’re scaring the guy, Amra,” Kermit said. “He’s just reporting what happened. Don’t kill the messenger.”

  Though I hated to admit it, he was right. The problem was not here, it was there.

  “And this was in Scotland?” I asked, trying to calm my voice, but unable to stop myself from repeating stupid questions.

  “Yes,” the man, nodded.

  “220, one man, Skye in Scotland,” Kermit summarized. “Looks like we know where we need to go. Goa hasn’t turned much up anyway. And I think we can let the Andaman lead go now. I think these freaks are skipping all over the place. We know where they are now and we need to get there.”

  He said ‘we’. He was planning to join the hunt. I couldn’t allow that. I wouldn’t allow that. I’d had enough of this man over the last couple of days.

  “It’s one signature?” I asked, despite myself, “not an anomalous, intertwined dual signature?”

  “Just the one, ma’am,” he said, trying to sound even more confident, hoping he could convince me with his tone, “though the signature does resemble one of the two signatures in the dual one we traced here in Goa.”

  De Vorto had fled the host, the boy. He had probably assumed his own body and was weaving again. 220 made it clear that it was the Wordscapist; there was no question about that. It would take a warren of wordsmiths augmented with a bunch of spells to even attempt to come close. “Set up a teleport for Skye,” I said. “I need to get there right a
way.”

  “You’ll have to travel to Delhi, ma’am,” the agent said, trying to make it sound like it was an inconsequential detail. It wasn’t. I hated flying. But I’d have to do this.

  “So when do we start?” Kermit asked, quite happily.

  “We don’t start,” I said, as I started walking towards my stuff. “I do. You stay here and find out everything there is to find out. And set up something a little more solid so that we catch anyone who comes back.” I was quite a distance away from him by the time I finished saying that. I wasn’t sure he heard all of it. I didn’t care. I just didn’t want to hear his response. The Wordscapist was mine, and I wasn’t letting anyone else spoil the party, especially not Kermit.

  CHAPTER 16

  Of Scapes and Smiths

  There was a tale

  That was told long back

  It held a smidgen of mischief

  That broke loose and ran off

  It’s still around somewhere

  Causing laughter and grief unbound

  Dew

  There was no trace of De Vorto when we got back. Nor the faerie. Slick was quiet and pensive, and so was I. The incident with the spooks had been scary, but the way he had just whisked them all away through his head and beyond was much scarier. I could only wonder what was in there, and how it was doing whatever it was doing. Actually, I did not want to wonder.

  I had a growing realisation that the Wordscapist was not just a powerful wordsmith. He was something else entirely, a whole different creature. I was a wordsmith. I didn’t have anything in my head. I merely shaped the world around me, using words to mould energy. What Slick was doing was not weaving at all. I did not understand how it worked or what it could do. I wanted to find De Vorto and have some questions answered. Desperately. I could not go on like this.

  “He isn’t here,” Slick said, his tone apologetic for stating the obvious. I didn’t bother responding to that.

  “So, what do you think we should do?” he asked.

  Again, everything about how he spoke was almost beseeching me to make peace with him. I didn’t want to; not yet. “You’re the hotshot Wordscapist, absorbing hundreds of spooks into your head,” I retorted. “You decide what we do.” It was a mean shot, but I was feeling mean.

  He went silent. But he wasn’t a patch on me. I could do silence much better. We sat and stared into our respective spots of space. Predictably, he broke the silence.

  “I’m sorry,” he offered. An outright apology! This was new!

  “You’re not, Slick,” I responded, sounding half-tired and half-numb. It was exactly how I felt. “You’re going to do this all over again. I’m not even sure if it’s a bad thing, considering the kind of situations we’re getting thrown into. So far, you’ve managed to come through and save the day. What scares me is the possibility of you going wrong. I have a feeling that you are not going to get a second chance. You won’t survive that first mistake. Neither will anyone around you. Hell, I don’t even know if the life on Earth will.”

  “Come on,” he implored, “it’s not that bad!”

  “Yes, it is, Slick,” I said firmly. He had to understand. “You have the power to do pretty much anything you want. That’s scary. And something like that doesn’t come without repercussions. The stunt you pulled off back there is what us regular wordsmiths call a Continuum wrenching scape. Something that powerful will have some far reaching consequences.”

  There was silence again after that. This was a more uncomfortable brand of silence. I didn’t like it. But then, I wouldn’t take back anything I had said. He needed to know what he was doing and what it implied.

  “Dew, I don’t really understand how any of this works, all I know is that my life, our life, is in danger. And I think of some way to get us out of danger. And honestly, at this moment, I am not going to stop and wonder what the implications of my actions are. I need to react to keep us alive. And you know I just did something to keep us alive.”

  I shook my head, exasperated. He was right, but he was also an arrogant brat who was going to cause us all a lot of grief. “OK, so you took care of some spooks. What are you going to do when Silvus comes?”

  “He’s your problem,” Slick muttered.

  “No, Slick,” I spoke, gritting my teeth to prevent myself from losing it. “He is the most powerful wordsmith there is – or was, before De Vorto and you came along. He is the Mastersmith of the Guild and is experienced enough and shrewd enough to be able to take us out before we even know he’s here. My hatred for him will not stop him. And neither will your limitless power.” His patience had given out. I could see that. He stood there, glaring at me. I glared right back. I intended to make this point with him, even if I had to pick a fight.

  “I’ll figure it out; I’ll counter him some way,” Slick muttered.

  “How?” I asked. I didn’t intend to let him go this time.

  “The same way I did this morning, with the faerie. The same way I did with that colourful dreadlocked freak back in your carnival,” he shouted at me, his control slipping for a moment.

  “Mother Gaia? What do you mean?” I was curious despite myself, curbing my instinct to point out that he had De Vorto in his head then, guiding him, shaping his words.

  “I can read people. I can see what’s happening in their heads. If I try,” Slick muttered. “I can get in this Silvus’s head if I have to.”

  “That’s not really how it works,” I said. I didn’t believe this part. It sounded far-fetched, even for him. “When faced by a wordsmith enemy, you need to tune into the reality around you. There is a feel to it that you need to tap into. It is this feel that will tell you what the other person is weaving. It is easy to figure out whether the intent is hostile or not. In Silvus’s case, it will inevitably be hostile. That’s what you can hold onto and take guidance from.”

  “I don’t really need to do that,” Slick said, drawing himself up, feeling a little more confident. “I can read your thoughts, what you’re planning to weave. Especially if I know you’re hostile.”

  “OK,” I said, pursing my lips, “stop this, then!” I took a breath, preparing to weave up a scape.

  “You are weaving up something that will tie me up,” Slick said, sounding almost bored. “Ah, and you’re planning to use something with frills, to embarrass me further.”

  “What!” I was completely shocked. I had no clue how he had done that.

  “You’ve been telling me about how scapes work,” Slick said, explaining it rather patronisingly. “Intent forms words, words shape energy, energy shapes reality. If I tap into the intent, I can counter whatever reality you’re modifying before you even get through your words.”

  “Thoughtscapes,” I whispered. The maniac was figuring it all out in his head. I had had enough, I wasn’t equipped to deal with this.

  “De Vorto!” I called out.

  Slick looked confused for a moment.

  “De Vorto,” I shouted louder.

  “Umm, you want me to call out too?” he asked, not quite sure what was happening.

  “ALAIN!” I put everything that I had into that. And suddenly, there he was. De Vorto appeared right above us, going through shades of translucence as he became more visible.

  “We have a problem,” I said.

  De Vorto nodded. “Yes, we do.”

  Slick gave us a nasty look, but wisely said nothing. I heaved an internal sigh of relief, though. De Vorto was back. Slick wasn’t my problem anymore. At least, not for a while.

  The Historian

  I was a lot closer to home than I had been 24 hours ago. But then, Glasgow is still not London, and the relative closeness didn’t mean the likelihood of going home had gone up. We were still in hiding, hunted by the Guild. The Mastersmith of the Guild himself was in hiding, hunted by the CCC. I wondered idly for a moment if the CCC was hiding from someone.

  I picked up the glass of golden amber in front of me and took a sip. I sighed appreciatively. The Scotch I was
having was amongst the best; smoky, peaty, and all the y’s that mattered. I let the warmth comfort me some. Word knows I needed the comfort.

  The door opened with a loud sound. The bartender who had been trying to catch a snooze jumped awake. I would have jumped too a couple of days back. But living around the insane woman who was now walking furiously toward me had numbed me somewhat to little things like loud sounds. I saw someone hurrying after her. Ah, Chains. Another of the psychos. I wondered where Isis and Wind were. They were the sanest. They hadn’t joined us for the Scotland leg of the Free Word version of the Insane Race.

  I saw Zauberin signalling to Chains to get her a drink, and then she came to the table I was at, sitting down heavily. Her body clearly screamed out her exhaustion and anger. I wisely kept quiet. At times like these, silence was a lot more than golden. After a point, my curiosity got the better of me.

  “Any word on the boy yet?” I asked, keeping my tone benign and mildly curious.

  I got a dirty look in response. I took it with stoicism and washed it down with another sip of the whiskey. Chains walked over with two huge mugs of stout. He let Zauberin swig down half of it in one go, while he delicately sipped at his mug, apparently not much a fan of the beer. He was doing the me-too version of the yes-man.

  He leaned closer to Zauberin, “Mistress, I think we should bring Akto’s colleagues into the hunt. There aren’t enough Free wordsmiths. We are spread out too thinly to be effective. The boy and the girl are moving too fast. Their movements are completely random and cannot be second-guessed.”

  Zauberin ignored him and kept at her beer till it was done, and then looked at him meaningfully. He scuttled across to the bar to get a refill.