Codex Born

21

I don’t believe in immortality. Which is odd, considering I’ve met Juan Ponce de Leon and Johannes Gutenberg, both of whom are effectively ageless. Not to mention vampires who have survived unchanged for centuries.

I’ve killed some of those vampires. Ageless doesn’t mean immortal, and there’s always something capable of taking you out. Even if that something is simple entropy.

Gutenberg relies on the magic of the grail, which he created using his first mass-printed Bible. It’s kept him alive for five hundred years, but that’s nothing in the larger scheme of the world. Christianity is only 2000 years old. Who’s to say his religion will last another millennium, and what happens to the power of the grail when all those who believe in it are gone?

Or maybe he’ll go on indefinitely, until the sun falls into its death throes, cooking all life from this planet. Hopefully, humanity will have moved on by then, but even the universe will end someday. Unlike the heat-death of Earth, the universe will die in cold silence, taking even the so-called immortals with it.

Perhaps science or magic will offer a way to outlive the universe. I have a hard time proclaiming anything impossible these days. But by any reasonable standard, death is a certainty.

I blame Isaac for this train of thought, for the endless “What ifs?” I’ve found myself asking lately. For the nights spent dreaming in my oak, imagining not only the coming years, but the centuries.

I’ve survived the death of my tree. My human body appears not to age, save for cosmetic changes dictated by the unconscious desires of my lovers. I don’t know what would happen if this body were killed but my tree survived. Nor do I have any interest in finding out.

(All right, fine. Maybe there’s a small, nagging streak of curiosity, which I again blame entirely on Isaac.)

The point is, if I’m both careful and lucky, I could survive longer than any ordinary human being. Perhaps even longer than Gutenberg.

At the same time, I’ve already died more than any of them, and my deaths are potentially as limitless as the stars. Even if my body survives, my lovers pass. Each time that happens, the person I was dies with them.

METAL RODENTS SWARMED DOWN the side of the tree, and the buzz of insects grew deafening. Birds swooped from the branches, and wendigos leaped to the ground.

I spun, only to have bark shear away from the undulating roots beneath me. My foot slipped, and roots the size of my thighs pinched my ankle in place. Something popped in my knee, and pain exploded through my leg.

The problem with plan B was that it required a great deal of concentration on my part. Between the pain and the fact that the world’s largest and grumpiest oak grove was trying to smother me, this was going to be difficult.

Deifilia ripped her weapons from her side. Lena raised her branch to parry. Deifilia’s first overhead blow dropped her to one knee. I saw the roots of Lena’s grafted branch twining around her fingers, sinking into her skin, until the weapon was a literal extension of her arm. The wood flattened, and the buds and twigs ripped away with Lena’s counterattack.

Both dryads moved too quickly for me to follow. Within seconds, Deifilia was bleeding from cuts on her arm and thigh. The right side of Lena’s face was bloody as well.

Lena dodged past Deifilia and scrambled up the tree like Spider-Man. Her hand and feet sank into the wood, giving her just enough traction to climb out of reach of the roots.

I didn’t know much about Lena’s study, but I was certain no sensei had ever taught the stance she adopted next. She turned to face Deifilia. Her left leg was stretched up over her head, anchored to the wood, while her right braced her full weight. Her leg muscles shook as she swung her sword two-handed, knocking Deifilia’s sword from her hand.

Lena’s training and experience gave her an edge over Deifilia, but it wasn’t enough. A rat dropped onto Lena’s back and sank metal teeth into the flesh between her shoulder blades. She jumped down, smashed her back against the tree, then spun to cut the arm from a wendigo sneaking up behind her. In that time, Deifilia scooped up her sword and lunged. Lena parried, but the blade sliced the skin over her ribs.

I tried to concentrate on Deifilia. Gutenberg had demonstrated how easily he could rob Lena of her power. I had seen him perform the same trick two months before, pulling Smudge’s magic into himself and flinging fire against an enchanted car. Smudge hadn’t liked that one bit, so I had excused him from guinea pig duty, but I had tried time and again to duplicate Gutenberg’s feat. For the most part, I had failed utterly.

But I had been relatively stable those times. Given how magically raw and exposed I was now, I should be able to tap into any book-related magic I touched. The real trick would be holding on to my sanity long enough to use it.

A root shot upward, shaping itself into a spear. Deifilia dropped her dagger, snatched the spear, and thrust the point at Lena’s chest. Lena twisted and stepped inward. She caught Deifilia’s other wrist, blocking a sword thrust, and smashed her forehead onto Deifilia’s nose.

Until now, the two empty shells who had once been students of Bi Sheng had been content to watch. Maybe Deifilia was enjoying the fight, or maybe the Army of Ghosts needed time to adjust to their human bodies. Whatever the reason, they acted now.

I saw them move toward Lena, and then my vision flickered, and there was only magic pouring forth to tear her from existence. It was like staring at an optical illusion, a landscape that suddenly resolves into the face of a man, or a goblet that becomes the silhouette of two faces. They weren’t casting a spell; they were the spell. They reached out, flesh and magic stretching to touch Lena’s arm, to unravel the cells of her body one by one.

I couldn’t read the expression on Lena’s face as she collapsed. Fear? Sadness? She didn’t appear to be in pain, for which I was grateful.

“Wait!” I could bargain for her life, trade the books for Lena. Trade myself, if that was what Deifilia wanted.

Deifilia stepped back and watched, completely entranced by Lena’s pain. She seemed not to hear me at all.

Nor did she see as Bi Wei reached skyward and pulled down the stars’ fire upon the two magical ghosts.

They should have died instantly, but I could see them moving within the twin pillars of white flame, pulling Bi Wei’s attack into themselves, trying to reshape her magic.

Bi Wei’s eyes bulged. Blood trickled from her neck as the millipede clamped tighter, cutting off her breath and the circulation to her brain. Inside her body, tiny metal serpents seemed to be finishing the job. She would be dead in seconds, as would Lena.

I studied Deifilia, trying to see not the physical form, but the words that had brought her to life. I didn’t have her book with me, but the text was seared into my memory. I focused on the final battle when the nymphs and the commoners rallied together behind John Rule to overthrow a false ruler. I knew this book, knew the snippets of text that defined her powers.

Her hand glided over the shaft of her spear. The wood thickened in response to her gentle touch.

Correction: I knew the snippets of really bad text that defined her powers.

Branches swung low, weaving together to form nets, ripping soldiers from their footing and dangling them in the air like freshly killed smeerp.

Her fingers sank into the crevasses of the bark, touching the hot wood beneath.

Why would the wood be hot? Neptune was a cold planet, even with— I stopped myself. Following that trail of thought would only lead to distraction and frustration.

Under ordinary circumstances, the nymphs were no match for the Lords of Neptune, but here in her grove, the strength of her oak pumped through her veins like fire.

I could imagine my fingers sinking into the text, but the wood of the tree remained stubbornly solid. How had Gutenberg done it? He hadn’t touched Smudge to take his magic. He had simply reached out and drawn it from the air between them.

I stretched my arm toward Deifilia. The movement sent new pain tearing through my leg.

Bi Wei collapsed. Blood dripped from her mouth and nose. The starfire was fading, leaving behind a smell like an arc welder. The two ghosts remained standing, but they were in bad shape.

I wasn’t strong enough. Not without my books. I could see the words, but I couldn’t touch their magic. I wasn’t Gutenberg. This was my plan, and it was going to fail, and I was going to have to watch Lena die in front of me.

Even Gutenberg used books for magic, though he was a lot cooler about it than I was. But he hadn’t had Smudge’s book, and I doubted he had bothered to read it before that encounter. He had never struck me as a fan of lowbrow sword and sorcery. How did you tap into the magic of a book you didn’t have and had never read?

But he had read it. During that battle two months ago and again at the library, I had seen words inked beneath Gutenberg’s skin. And he had referred to spells written on my being.

I needed to stop thinking of the book as separate. The text was a part of Deifilia. Her core. Her soul.

I imagined the overlapping blocks of printed text swirling through Deifilia’s center. I had done this before. I had glimpsed Gutenberg’s spells. I had read the words printed into the automatons. As I stared at Deifilia, I saw the magic sparking within her. I saw it in Lena, too, though the words were blurring.

Deifilia pressed a hand to the trunk of the tree. Bark pulled free in a long, thick strip, which lengthened into a dagger.

I concentrated on the words I had seen in that moment. Gutenberg had made this look so easy, dammit. I didn’t even have to cast a spell. That work had already been done. I just needed to borrow it for a minute. But without that physical connection, I couldn’t—

“Idiot!” I had a physical connection. This was Deifilia’s grove now. She had raised these trees, and she had all but taken Lena’s oak for herself.

How many times had Lena explained that the tree was as much her body as her human form?

I reached into the tree, read the magic there, and pulled it into myself.

I had to close my eyes to keep from passing out. I could feel my roots sinking deep into the earth, the dry taste of the soil and the moisture trapped far below. The trees swayed with every breeze, the leaves catching the wind like tiny sails. I felt every one of the metal insects and rats and squirrels scrabbling over my bark. I felt each restricted breath of the prisoners trapped in the roots, the heat of their bodies, the feeble strain of muscle against wood.

I felt Lena struggling to rise, tasted her blood and sweat. With a movement as natural as shrugging a shoulder, I twisted the roots beneath Deifilia. She stumbled, but it wasn’t enough to stop her from thrusting her dagger.

The wood was mine now. It shattered like balsa when it struck Lena’s chest.

I freed the students of Bi Sheng next, but the tree wasn’t the only thing holding them prisoner. Deifilia had sent her insects into their bodies as well. They doubled over in pain as magical parasites bored through their insides.

I pinned Deifilia’s leg and grew shoots of wood through her foot, trapping her in place. The ghosts were next. I opened the roots, pulling them deeper. Wood coiled round their bodies and through their flesh. Bi Wei had weakened them, and the oak—my oak—finished them off.

Lena snatched her fallen weapon, spun, and thrust.

The sword pierced Deifilia’s chest and struck the oak behind her. I could feel the wood sending threads into the rest of the tree. The bark swelled outward to engulf the tip of the sword. Blood dripped from Deifilia’s human body, and the graft dragged her toward the oak.

“The queen,” I said.

Lena put her hand on Deifilia’s left shoulder. Her fingers curled through the leaves, and she ripped a gleaming cicada from Deifilia’s skin. She clutched the metal body in one hand, gripped the head in her other, and twisted.

The end of Victor Harrison’s enchantment spread like a shock wave. Metal rained from the branches. A clockwork squirrel hit August Harrison on the back of the head. Even the insects felt like stones pounding down. I twisted to avoid a falling rat that smashed into the roots beside me.

The students of Bi Sheng were using magic to heal the damage the insects had done. I watched them reach into one another’s bodies, dissolving metal into dust, sealing pierced organs and arteries. All save Bi Wei.

“Can you help her?” I asked.

I don’t know if they understood me. I could hardly see them anymore through all of the magic.

Lena eased Deifilia’s body back against the oak, even as the branch protruding from the other dryad’s chest continued to grow. I couldn’t make out what they were saying. Lena whirled around as a wendigo landed behind her, but the creature was only interested in fleeing. It smashed through the branches and disappeared.

Lena was walking over to August Harrison. She tugged at the roots holding him in place. “Isaac, it’s all right. I’ve got him. Please let me bring him to Deifilia. She wants to say good-bye.”

I tried to relax, to cede control of the oak back to Lena. I pulled my hands from the wood and clenched them against my body. It seemed to be enough. Lena tugged Harrison free and led him to his dryad lover. Lena whispered something in Harrison’s ear, and he nodded. Deifilia took his hand. She was crying.

“Isaac?” Lena dropped to one knee in front of me. “Can you hear me?”

Her right eye was bruised and swollen, and a cut traced a line down her cheek and jaw. Her knuckles were cracked and bloody, and her upper sleeve was a shredded mess, as was the skin beneath. She had left sticky footprints on the roots where blood had trickled down her leg.

“Isaac, look at me.”

I tried to focus, but broken lines of text floated through my vision. “I am yours now, John Rule of Earth.” She knelt on the ice, head bowed, blonde hair flowing like a golden river over the voluptuous curves of her body.

Strong hands lowered me to the ground.

“He is lost. Soon, the Ghosts will find him.”

That voice was unfamiliar. He spoke in another language, but I understood. My hands were shaking from the ice. No, the ice wasn’t real. I was in the grove. Lena’s grove. For a moment, I saw one of the students of Bi Sheng looking down at me.

“He knows us. Knows our books.”

“None shall harm him while I live.” Lena’s words, or her book? I couldn’t tell anymore. “I am his, and I shall slay any who try to hurt him.”

It had to be the book. Lena would have skipped the posturing and punched the man in the throat.

“He saved your lives.”

“He serves Gutenberg.”

How was Lena able to understand them? Were they speaking English now? I couldn’t even tell.

“If he served Gutenberg, we would all be dead now. I brought Bi Wei into this world. Bring Isaac back for me.”

Bi Wei. Had they been able to save her?

“How didst thou come here?”

“I don’t know.” I remembered the ice giving way. I had fallen deep into the blue glacier, my ice ax ripped from my gloved hands. I remembered the shouts from my team, and then a web of golden light.

“We cannot help you, Isaac Vainio of Earth. There is no returning from this place. If you would stay, you must earn your place among the People. You must fight.”

“Stay with me.” One of the nymphs cradled me against her. My knee throbbed. I must have twisted it in the fall.

“What happened?” Gutenberg’s voice.

Why had the warriors of Harku’unn taken me to this cave? How could I pass their trials with no food or water, no weapons of any sort? The Ghosts of Neptune circled like the vultures of Earth, waiting for their prey to die. Each time I drifted off, their talons raked my skin, and their beaks tore flesh. They wouldn’t wait for me to die. They would devour me alive.

“You let them escape? Freed them from their bonds, and did nothing?” Gutenberg shouted.

Another presence approached through the darkness. The strongest of the spirits cupped my face in her claws and opened my mind like a tin can. Her fingers stirred my thoughts.

“Even if I wanted to help the man who betrayed the Porters, he’s too far gone.”

Empty syllables. The spirits pulled me deeper, and a woman laughed from the shadows.

“Two months ago, Isaac Vainio saved your life. You will help him, damn you.” The words jolted me awake. Lena’s voice, furious and determined. The magic of her tree surged to life, even as the spirits tightened their grip.

“Who are you?” I demanded.

Laughter. “Would you like me to show you, Isaac?”

“Look at him, Lena. His skin charred by magic, power tearing through him from within. I know of only one way to stop that power from destroying him.”

I could see her now. A small woman emerging from the darkness, clad in bronze armor. She smiled at me, but her eyes were empty holes into nothingness.

“What’s your name?”

The world jerked into focus, and I saw Johannes Gutenberg standing over me, a gold pen in his hand. I tried to pull away, but I could no longer feel my body. The cold had frozen my blood, turning me to a statue. I would die here, trapped beneath the surface of an alien world.

The bronze woman stretched out a hand and whispered a single word. “Meridiana.”

And then the world shattered.