I gingerly picked myself. The Yen was levitating in the standard posture, suspended vertically, leaning forward a little with arms and legs bent slightly as if floating in some liquid. He was looking at me expectantly. There was someone else in front of him. I looked closely, unable to believe my eyes. It was a little man with wings and all, looking very much like a faerie. I had seen something like that in one of those fairy tale books back in my childhood. But there he was, fluttering his wings lazily as he too stared at me rather curiously. I could see that he was translucent and wondered if this was a mental projection of some sort. The Yen did have a strange sense of humour.
“Amra?” the Yen spoke, his voice an unmistakable query.
I quickly saluted, offering the standard greeting, “Health and peace, Yen-Hito.
“To you too, Amra. What was that about? You sounded desperate.”
“The Free Word is attacking the Glasgow bureau, Hito. I had to make a quick exit.”
“I know about the attack. I have sent Yen Alahae with his team to help you.”
“Oh, you knew?” I was taken aback. I did not think the call for backup would have reached the Yen.
“Well, De Vorto here helped some with an advance notice on what was happening.”
“De Vorto?” I looked incredulously at the fluttering faerie, “Alain de Vorto?”
The faerie gave me a rueful grin. “The boy did this,” he explained with a gesture to his form, “I must say I do not find it so shocking now. It is pretty convenient to have this form and shape, especially when you’re a spirit.”
“Alain de Vorto?” I repeated, rather stupidly.
“Yes, Amra,” I could feel the smile in the Yen’s voice. Yen expressions always remained the same. You had to watch the voice for inflections that betrayed what they actually felt like. “De Vorto gave himself up to the CCC some time back, asking for a Yen, specifically me, to come pick him up. We have some history, going back a while. I have always been curious about all that he did and how he managed to stay off the CCC records. We were having a nice chat when I received your request. And gathering by the state you are in, I guess it was an emergency.”
I stole a glance at myself and discovered that my clothes were torn and stained in a dozen places. I remembered the circumstances I had left in. I felt myself flush with embarrassment and anger. It was a matter of some pride to me that I was always immaculate in presentation. “I apologise, Hito. I was engaged in combat with Lily Pendleton, Zauberin as she now is. She took quite a few shots at me with a lethal energy spell.” I felt the surroundings swirl grey as the Yen’s rage sympathetically affected the section of Alter we were in.
“She dares! The Corps will be avenged, Amra. Each one of those wordsmith rats and the norms with them will be hunted down like Continuum vermin.”
I saw the grey swirling pretty violently, making me dizzy as the entire space around me changed from pristine white and took on the appearance of the centre of a storm cloud. I was not surprised though. The CCC was firm in Continuum management and just about ruthless when it came to any kind of law-breaking. An attack on the CCC was completely unprecedented and needed to be dealt with swiftly and without mercy. They would be made examples of.
I waited patiently for the grey to turn a lighter and more comforting shade. De Vorto too faded into the background, his translucent form almost disappearing into the grey around him. I could not help wondering at the almost casual air between the Yen and De Vorto. It was almost like two friends catching up. There had been an order out for the execution of this character, and now the Yen was having a ‘nice chat’ with him. It was pretty confounding. Presently, the grey started clearing up. I sent the Yen a thought, not wanting to speak out the query aloud, “Hito, I was under the assumption that Alain de Vorto was a terminal convict. I do not understand the state of affairs right now.”
“I can understand your confusion, Amra,” the Yen went on, his voice still trembling from residual rage, “this last hour has been most enlightening. De Vorto has cleared up a lot of misunderstandings. The Lirii have been playing the obsessive alarmists all over again. We’ve had this problem with them in the past. They tend to act like their eyebrows are on fire the moment they see someone smarter than them. De Vorto had been busy the two hundred odd years he was active, and his work is commendable. I do not understand how the Lirii could have read any of his actions as threatening; especially when he went to such lengths to minimise the impact of his scapes on the Continuum.”
I realised that my jaw was slightly agape, astounded by the way the Lirii had just been written off like a bunch of paranoid spinsters. I had taken the report, word for word, as the absolute and incorruptible truth. All my actions had been guided by these very assumptions. Now, as what the Yen told me started filtering down and making sense, I felt like a complete idiot. I was not ready to give in, though.
“But Hito, the boy has resisted arrest and woven scapes that are incredibly powerful. He has probably done more damage to the Continuum than the rest of the miserable bunch of wordsmiths put together. He has also hurt and humiliated CCC officials. We cannot let him go!”
The last traces of grey around us disappeared. The Yen spoke, the smile once again apparent in his voice, “Perspective is a wonderful thing, Amra. I could have wrung that boy’s neck myself an hour back. Talking to De Vorto has been most enlightening. I have seen how the boy was torn from his world, thrust into the skewed realities of the Way of the Word, stuck with De Vorto here as a voice in his head. It would have driven anyone insane, leaving a trail of bodies on the way. Instead, the boy maintained his cool, and learned to weave under the most stressful conditions. I must say, I haven’t seen any damage due to his scapes yet.”
“He has only sought to stay alive in a world where everyone he met tried to do him harm,” De Vorto said, flitting forward. “Tell me, Amra. Do you blame him?”
I ignored the little figure. “Hito, I’m afraid I must bring him in for a trial. I agree that he is not a candidate for terminal execution anymore. But boy or not, I will not let him get away with all that he has done.”
“I appreciate that, Amra,” the Yen said, nodding his head, “And I support that decision. Justice must always be served.”
I could see that De Vorto was not too happy about that, but then that was the best he was going to get. I wondered if I should push my case for a conviction for Alain de Vorto too, but then decided to leave that to the Yen. I just wanted to get the boy alone in a scape-proof room for an hour. I think I owed myself that for the hell he had put me through.
I decided to leave. I wanted to be part of the team that hunted down the Free Word murderers. “Hito,” I saluted, “Permission to leave. I would like to be part of the team hunting the Free Word members.”
“Permission granted, Amra.” The Yen nodded.
As I turned to leave, summoning the words that would take me to the head office in the bureau nearest to the California City centre, I heard De Vorto speak.
“Amra, one piece of advice. Give up on the thought of arresting the boy. He won’t surrender. And neither will you be able to catch him if he is unwilling. He is simply too powerful.”
I turned around to reply with a ‘we’ll see’ as a parting shot. But I did not get the chance. The window opened up and swallowed me, leaving a half-uttered ‘we’ll’ hanging in the air. It just wasn't my day, I guess.
Slick
Devil and Deep Sea if you’re orthodox; frying pan and fire if you’re feeling culinary; Scylla and Charybdis if you are mythologically inclined. Call it what you will, but it was the worst situation I had ever been in. I had heard that the Guild and the Free Word were both hunting me. And here I was, stuck between two of history’s most powerful wordsmiths. Some days, life tended to be just peachy.
I saw Silvus raise his staff, summoning whatever nightmare he had woven up for me. Simultaneously, Zauberin arced a glowing blue warp between her hands. They both wanted me dead. Very dead. I desperately
thought up my time warp again, slowing everything to a tenth of its speed. It still was not enough. I remained a split second away from death. I had just managed to stretch that split second a bit.
They say your entire life passes in front of your eyes in moments like these. I could only think of one person, and she was lying unconscious a couple of feet away from me. In that one moment, all that Dew was and the best moments I had spent with her did come to my mind, though they did not really pass in front of my eyes quite the way I had imagined. I knew it was supposed to mean something that I could think only of her. But I was too much of a survivalist to dwell on sentimentality when there was still some hope left. Did I say hope? Yes, I was also quite an optimist.
At the same time, I saw two powerful arcs shoot towards me; one from Silvus’s staff and the other from Zauberin’s spell warp. In that instant, I knew what I had to do. I thought up a piece of pure vacuum right over my head.
“Nothing
That holds its own
Small enough to hold
But too powerful to control
Absolute vacuum
Now!”
I dove down even as I felt the air surge in response to the scape. I hit the ground hard, sliding into Dew’s form. I could feel immense power building over me.
It was an abstract thought given form, but it worked. I felt space twist and turn as a sphere of absolute nothing came into existence, displacing the air that had been there. And as absolute nothing usually does, it pulled violently at everything around it, including the two powerful spell bolts arcing roughly in the same direction. I grabbed Dew and tried a thought teleport, desperately trying to get the hell out of there. It did not work. I should have asked De Vorto to teach me how to do that too. Just as I was about to give up, I felt a sliver of reality open up, almost beckoning to me. It was a small tear in space-time that I could weave myself and Dew into, away from the mayhem that was going to break loose in less than a second. I could see it glowing a midnight blue, a tantalising possibility, as words kicked up a veritable storm in my head, trying to find a way into it. I did not spend any more time thinking. I held Dew tightly and willed myself into that space. The words that came to me were powerful and fantastic; words I had never used before. I felt everything twist and turn as the tear opened to swallow us up. The last thing I saw was the spell bolts converge in the sphere of vacuum even as a huge cat leapt right into that space. Before I could figure that one out, I felt myself, and Dew along with me, being pulled violently into another reality.
We emerged in another world altogether. Everything around me felt really weird. But right then, I needed to check if Dew was okay. Everything else could come later. Dew was still unconscious, limp in my arms. I checked her breathing and pulse. She was breathing evenly and her pulse was firm and steady. I heaved a sigh of relief. Now, I could figure out where we were and see what turn events had taken. I looked around. The terrain was completely desolate, rocky and bleak. It was like a desert; only it was like no desert I had seen. Come to think of it, I had not really seen any deserts, I just knew that no desert was supposed to look this!
A furious wind whipped up sand in harsh and gritty flurries. There was no sun to be seen, but the place was hot enough to get me sweaty and sticky in the few seconds we had been there. But the most alien part of the landscape was that everything was a shade of dark, disgusting purple, quite like the lifeblood of one of those slimy aliens in a B-movie. Where the hell had I got us!
“Welcome to my world,” came a voice that was sexy and deadly at the same time. It sounded like what every femme fatale in the history of mankind had aspired to, but could not quite achieve. A couple of days ago, it would have frozen me on the spot in anticipation and terror. But life has a way of preparing a man for everything that comes his way. I turned around and looked at the owner of the voice. I had spoken too soon. I did freeze. I had heard about this lady from Dew to know on sight that I was in the presence of the formidable and deadly Sign.
CHAPTER 20
Word and Sign
I am a myth
A story
A ghost
Slick
So this is how it ends - the thought came to me, settled down and made itself comfortable. From norm to cipher to Wordscapist to incredibly powerful wordsmith doomed to die...to this? I had gotten into and out of more hairy situations in the last couple of weeks than a mouse at a cattery. And after all these feats, I was to be executed like a common wordsmith by Sign; hoodless and scytheless, but still every bit as omnipotent and inevitable as Death. I slowly got up, leaving Dew lying on the hard terrain. What was to happen now?
She was some sight, decked like a goddess of chaos, and accompanied by her three beasts. Three? There was a fourth, and before I started turning around to look for it, I remembered the leaping kitty that had disappeared into the vacuum I'd summoned. Oh well!
Sign stepped closer, every move and gesture threatening, and spoke, “You are finally mine, Alain de Vorto. You have taunted me for centuries, evading me time and again with your little tricks. You disappeared into your hole when I attacked you. You come back after so many centuries and start your old tricks all over again. And now, to make matters worse, you have also destroyed one of my pets; a companion I have had for centuries. I will make you pay, Alain de Vorto, for each of these crimes.”
I stood there and calmly took all this in. That voice was definitely hypnotic. Then again I always had a lamentably short attention span. The effect was beginning to fade.
“Let’s take this one at a time,” I said, looking her right in her glowing purple eyes, “To begin with, I am not Alain de Vorto. I have no idea where that useless bum is. I have had to fight the CCC, the Free Word and half the Guild all on my own today. Dew was right alongside me through all this, but then got knocked down a minute ago. Now I have to deal with you. And the Alain de Vorto you hunt is off being miffed in some corner.”
I could see her eyebrows going up at this. This was not what she had expected. I was going to continue keeping her off balance. This might just turn out to be fun.
“Two; I have never seen you, so you can’t blame me for all those centuries of irritating behaviour. I’ve hardly been around for a quarter of a century myself, and had no clue that there was a psychopathic elemental called Sign until a couple of days ago.”
I could see a range of emotions flitting across that coldly beautiful face. I wondered what I would do when I ran out of points. Until then, I was going to lay it on, thick and powerful. I was done with being pushed around, even if it was the almighty Sign doing it.
“And yes, I have no clue what you mean when you say that I destroyed your pet. I personally like cats. Yours are a bit too overgrown for my taste, but I still would not go so far as destroying one.” I was pushing it. And I could feel my adrenaline pumping as I realised I was having fun doing this. I was egging Sign on. But I hadn’t lied. Except for the cat part. But that was collateral damage.
Sign glared at me, and then took a few moments to regain her calm. She pulled off a convincing smile and spoke, making her voice a bit more hypnotic and arresting, “Your insouciance is irreverent and misplaced. But I shall pardon that as a consequence of your youth and ignorance. You say you are not Alain de Vorto. Who are you then, child? You are apparently unaware of me and all that I am.”
I put on my deepest, classiest voice and spoke, “I am Slick. My real name does not matter. And I heard very recently about your power and your exploits, how you have terrorised the wordsmith community ever since it came into being. But if you don’t mind me saying you seem a little clichéd in form and presentation. I mean, come on! Four cats made up to a night-in-hell theme? And you look like Trinity’s replacement in a Matrix revival series. Does it get any more obvious than that?”
The entire world around us went dark and stormy. She was silhouetted in lightning, her glare piercing enough to bore holes in me. The pop cultural reference might have escaped her (her world looked lik
e it was short on HDTVs and multiplexes), but I think she grasped the general tone I had adopted. I gulped and braced myself for some more ‘insouciant irreverence’. I put on a show of checking out the thunder and lightning, and then brought my hands out in a flashy see-what-I-mean gesture. Unfortunately, that just got her more pissed. The world went all the more stormy. I wondered if it would start raining next. Given the purple all around, it would probably rain blueberry juice here. I decided not to say this though. I had pushed her enough.
“Stop!” she thundered at me. I did not bring to her notice that I had stopped quite some time back. “You dare! You disrespect me?” She came closer. I tried very hard not to flinch or back away. I succeeded, barely. I knew conceptually that one touch of that black skin and I would be dead. “You have gone too far, child. I might have let you live, even after your foolishness led to my pet’s destruction, but you must be punished for your insolence. And with me, there are no warnings, and all punishments are terminal.” She leaned closer. “Do you understand?” She smirked a radiantly cruel smile at that.
It was time to quit fooling around and do what I did best. Only, I could not speak aloud. I quickly thought up the words to summon my ice-balls. Nothing happened. I tried again. Nothing continued to happen. I saw Sign’s smirk growing. I chucked the silence and said the words aloud. No ice-balls. Not even a snowflake.
Wordscapist: The Myth (The Way of the Word Book 1) Page 31
