Libriomancer

Chapter 18

I stood over the automaton, an untrained coroner about to perform the world’s oddest autopsy. The trouble was, even “dead,” the automaton was all but invulnerable. Hubert might have been able to impale this thing, but so far I had failed to pry even a single metal block from its wooden body. Smudge watched warily from my shoulder. He had calmed enough to join me, but shifted to and fro, ready to flee at the slightest provocation.

As eager as I was to uncover the automaton’s secrets, I couldn’t stop thinking about Lena.

It had been one kiss, and a relatively brief one at that. We had fought an automaton and survived. Who wouldn’t get swept up in the relief and excitement after living through that? Whatever she might feel for me, it didn’t change the fact that she was in love with Nidhi Shah.

But what happened to that love the longer she was separated from Shah? The more time she spent with me…?

I turned away from that train of thought. Lena wasn’t a thing to be stolen. She had made her choice. She didn’t need me, not with Shah alive and human.

Despite the past week, I knew so little about her power. The way she entered her tree reminded me of my own magic, of reaching into the pages of a story. The tree was her portal to magic. But how could Lena pass into and out of that magic at will? Did the tree absorb and hold her physical body? There was no way that tree had been large enough to contain both Lena and the automaton, suggesting their bodies somehow transformed, becoming a part of the tree.

“What happened when you pulled the automaton in with you?” I asked. “How did you fight it? How do you know it won’t escape?”

“It’s hard to describe,” she said. “It fought against me, and against the tree itself. As its strength waned, it tried to steal mine.” She touched the ground, as if reaching for the roots below to touch those memories. “That’s why it lost. It didn’t understand the tree’s magic.”

“I don’t understand either.”

“I didn’t fight it, Isaac.” She gestured toward the trees. “Do they fight the wind? Do they fight the snow and ice in winter? They endure. They live. They grow. Fire a bullet into the trunk, and it will heal, growing to encompass that bullet within itself. Chop off a branch, and the bark will seal the wound.”

“Unless you chop the whole thing down,” I said.

She glanced away. I wondered if she was remembering her own tree, killed by vampires. “The automaton tried to take my strength. I let it. The more I flowed through it, the more it became a part of us. A part of the tree.”

“The bulk of the automaton’s body is wood,” I mused. That might have made it easier for Lena to absorb it into the tree. I tried again to pry the letters free from the broken body in front of us. “Can you soften this one enough for me to pull these loose?”

Lena put her hand over mine. She grimaced when she touched the body, but the rigid splinters gradually bowed beneath our grasp. I wiggled one of the letters like a loose tooth, back and forth until it finally twisted free. More letters followed. I set each one down in order and studied the indentations in the wooden body.

“Lux.” I checked the blocks to be sure. “Latin for light.”

Lena pried more letters free from both sides of the word. Even with her magic, they clung hard. It took ten minutes to remove and reconstruct the rest of the sentence.

“Dixitque Deus fiat lux et facta est lux,” I read. “And God said, ‘Be light made,’ and light was made.”

“From the Bible?”

“Genesis.” Latin text. I stared at the blocks, excitement prickling the back of my neck. “Pry off the next row. Hurry!”

I stopped myself from reaching past her to try to rip the letters free, knowing it would be futile. I placed the letters together one by one while I waited, trying not to fidget. “Et magicae,” I whispered as more words formed.

“Magic?” Lena asked.

“Yes!” I flushed and lowered my voice. “Yes, that’s right.”

She laughed, but pulled more letters free until I had laid out the entire sentence. “Et magicae artis adpositi erant derisus et sapientiae gloriae correptio cum contumelia.” I jumped up, laughing like a madman. “That’s the same spell Gutenberg used for his lock. I knew it sounded familiar.”

“Which means what?” Lena caught my arms. “Spill it.”

“And the delusions of their magic art were put down, and their boasting of wisdom was reproachfully rebuked.” I picked up one of the letters, cupping it in my hands. “This is from the Latin Vulgate Bible. The Mazarin Bible.”

“Some of us aren’t libriomancers, and don’t spend our lives memorizing everything we read.”

“Also known as the Gutenberg Bible,” I said. “This thing is a walking Bible.” But not a line-by-line reconstruction of the Bible. Gutenberg’s Bible had been well over a thousand pages. This was more like clippings, rearranged and hammered into place to create something new. The first line was from Genesis, while the next was from a completely different part of the Bible. The Book of Wisdom, if I was remembering right.

“Wasn’t Gutenberg a devout Christian?” Lena asked. “Maybe this was a reflection of his belief. Let your faith be your armor, and all that?”

“Not just armor.” I reread the first row, thinking of how the automaton had first arrived. “Be light made. It’s a spell. That’s how they travel. Their bodies transform into light.”

Lena looked at the second sentence. “The delusions of their magic were put down… another spell. To protect it against magical attacks?”

I sat down hard. Multiple spells bound together. Individual, self-contained spells combined to power the whole. “Belief is bound and anchored to books. Gutenberg took that book and pulled it apart, remaking it into this.” I realized I was shaking my head. “But you can’t do that! If you cut up a book, you start to lose the magical resonance with other copies of that book. You can’t-”

“ You can’t.” Lena pulled off another block. “He could.”

I snatched up one of the letters, trying to understand. If they had been smaller, taken from the press itself, then maybe some of the book’s magic would have flowed backward through the keys that had created it. Maybe. But these blocks were too large to have come from that press. “It doesn’t make sense!”

“How many years did it take Gutenberg to develop printing and libriomancy?” Lena asked gently.

“Decades.” I continued to examine the letters. Gutenberg’s studies had included both alchemy and sympathetic magic. Maybe if he melted down the keys from the original press and blended them into-

“And you expect to figure it all out in one afternoon?”

“Not all of it, but- You don’t understand. This creates a whole new model of libriomancy. It’s like Copernicus reshaping our understanding of the solar system. It’s revolutionary. Everything I thought I knew… there’s so much more, just sitting here. Waiting to be deciphered.”

“What do you think Charles Hubert is doing while you pore over these blocks?”

I could have spent weeks, even months examining the automaton, but she was right, dammit. “You were able to soften the wood to remove the letters. Do you think you could heal it?”

“Maybe.” She studied the split skull and the wood impaling the body. “Why would I do that, exactly?”

“The automatons were created to protect Gutenberg. Hubert destroyed this one, which suggests it wasn’t under his control. So if we can repair it, it might lead us to them both.” One by one, I pressed the letters back into the matching indentations in the wood. They snapped into place, as if the wooden body was the world’s strongest magnet. When I was done, Lena gripped the branch in its chest and twisted. Her fingers sank into the wood, all the way to the knuckles. The muscles in her arms, shoulders and neck tightened like ropes as she slowly pulled it free. The other end of the branch had penetrated a good four feet into the earth, hammered by the weight of the falling tree.

“Aside from the hole in the chest, the most significant damage was to the head.” I scooted over to examine the two halves, which had fallen away like the shell of an enormous coconut. The jaw hung from a bent brass pin on one side. I gathered other gears and rods from the ground. There were no springs that I could find. Magic took the place of mechanical propulsion.

A metal rod an inch wide jutted from the neck. Broken silver chains threaded through smaller, brass-rimmed holes. I picked up a small wooden wheel which appeared to fit into the back of the empty eye socket. A second wheel followed at an angle from the first. I pressed the glass eye into place. A metal ring was supposed to screw into the front of the socket to hold it there, but that ring was dented beyond repair.

“Move your hand.” Lena touched the eye socket, and the wood swelled slightly, just enough to keep the glass sphere from rolling free. She rotated the eye one way, then another. I could hear gears grinding behind the glass.

“The head rotates side to side on a primary axis here.” I tapped the rod in the neck. “This rod threads through a hole in the larger one to allow it to look up and down, giving it a full range of motion.” I fitted a small gear over the first rod, pressing it down into the neck. The chains would have looped up over the secondary rod, fitting with two spiked gears to provide movement on the vertical axis.

I could visualize most of the mechanism. A secondary chain and gear system ran to the jaw. A copper cone fitted up against the ear, providing hearing. But there were a handful of larger gears and disks that lacked any obvious function. They appeared to fit in the center of the head, but they didn’t connect to anything, nor did they provide any additional articulation.

I rubbed the disks clean on my shirt. There were letters along the edges. J-O on one, S-T on another, beautifully etched in careful, flowing calligraphy. The J was even decorated, like an illuminated manuscript in brass. “This is another spell.”

“Maybe that’s the automaton’s brain.”

“That depends on when it was made. In the early sixteenth century, people still didn’t understand the brain. Many scientists, da Vinci among them, thought the brain was the seat of the soul.” If Gutenberg had subscribed to such beliefs, this wouldn’t necessarily be the source of the automaton’s artificial thoughts, but the metaphorical heart of its magic.

I slid the gears onto either side of the horizontal rod. A smaller gear added a pair of Ns. A sharp-toothed crown-wheel escapement slid over the top of the vertical rod, bringing an H-A. I rotated them together until the letters lined up: JOHANN.

“Gutenberg wouldn’t be the first artist to autograph his work,” Lena suggested.

I pointed to the S-T on the second disk. “We’re missing a piece.”

It was Lena who found the thick cylinder, an inch-high pipe with a jagged upper edge and a magnificently carved F, followed by a smaller U.

I disassembled the disks, sliding the cylinder over the central rod, then pushing the rest into place. Rotating one disk moved the other, and as I lined up the first name, the second came together below. “Oh, God.”

“Who was Johann Fust?”

“A businessman,” I whispered. “An investor who helped to fund Gutenberg’s press. Gutenberg failed to repay the loan, so Fust ended up suing him. The details are scarce, but Fust nearly destroyed him. According to some historians, Fust took Gutenberg’s equipment as payment for that debt. One way or another, Fust then went on to set up his own press.” The gears in my hand twitched, rotating a single click on their own.

“Do you think Fust made the automatons?”

“No. I think this automaton is Fust.” I sat back, staring at the broken figure. “Libriomancers cheat,” I said numbly. We weren’t strong enough to work magic any other way. As a traditional sorcerer, Gutenberg had been a failure, so he had spent his life finding another path to power. “He used the magic of the Bible to define his automatons, to give them their powers, but he’s not God. He couldn’t give them life, or the independence they needed in order to fight his enemies.”

“So he used people?” Lena stared at the automaton in horror. “Which means when I dragged that thing into the tree with me, I killed it.”

“Or you freed it.” The gears clicked again. “Fust supposedly died of the plague. Gutenberg must have gone to him just before he died.”

Had he revealed his power? Offered Fust the chance to live free of the pain? Death from plague was a nasty way to go. Or had Gutenberg simply ripped Fust’s spirit from his body, trapping it in a mechanical head.

“He enslaved them,” said Lena. “Isaac, what happens to Fust if we repair this thing? If he’s finally at peace, are we dragging him back into servitude?”

“I don’t know. Ghosts and spirits… it’s hard to separate facts from superstition. Does a medium truly contact ghosts, or does the medium’s own magic create the ghost in the first place? I don’t think there’s a single Porter in North America who can talk to the dead.” Though there were a handful of vampire species who could theoretically do so. “Gutenberg has kept so much from the rest of us.”

“Can you find him without repairing the automaton?” Lena asked.

“Maybe eventually. But we don’t have time.” I jogged back to the Triumph, where I dug out an old space opera. When I returned to Lena and the automaton, I had created a small handheld monitoring pad and a shiny silver pellet the size of my thumb.

“That looks like the same toy you used on Ted Boyer.”

“Exactly. Which could be a problem, now that I think about it. Let me change the frequency.” I grabbed the pellet, gripped both ends, and twisted forty-five degrees. The light blinked three times. I adjusted a dial on the tracking pad until the red dot appeared again. “Are you able to carve out a place for this?”

She dragged her index finger through the inside of the automaton’s head, whittling a groove with her nail. I pressed the explosive into place while a lip of wood grew around it, securing it in place.

“I’m not sure what’s going to happen when we fix this thing,” I said. “But if it decides to destroy us, that should take it out.” They might be invulnerable from the outside, but an explosive nested against the heart of its magic was another matter entirely.

“Promise me that when this is over, you’ll press that button.”

Whatever Fust might have done to Gutenberg back in the fifteenth century, he had paid for it many times over. I nodded and reached over to the other side of the head, carefully pulling it into place so that the horizontal rod slid into the matching hole below the ear.

Lena straightened the rod for the jaw. Her fingers slid between mine as we pushed the head together. Just as before, I felt her magic sinking into the wood, infusing it with life.

“This was an oak,” I whispered.

“That’s right.” She smiled at me as splinters on either side twitched and reached out, knitting the cracks.

“Hubert couldn’t repair it,” I said. “That’s why he left it behind.” I couldn’t have done it either, not without carving an entirely new head and body. I marveled at the magic flowing through her hands. It was like she was reaching into the tree’s past, reminding it of the days when it had stood tall and proud, drinking in the sun and the rain.

The automaton’s fingers twitched, and Smudge seared my ear in alarm. As one, Lena and I rose and backed away. I armed the explosive and held my thumb over the button, just in case. The head turned, then started to twitch. I could hear a metal clicking from within the neck as it tried and failed to straighten its head.

“I think we missed a piece,” I said.

“Do you know who you are?” Lena asked it.

The automaton rolled onto its side and slowly pushed itself upright. The hole in its chest was gone, replaced with young, bright wood, naked and unprotected. How many spells lay scattered on the ground, broken and useless?

Even as I asked the question, something crawled over my foot, making me jump. The metal keys were moving through the grass, climbing up the automaton’s body like silver insects. The automaton didn’t move.

On impulse, I stepped forward and touched the metal skin. I could feel the individual spells crackling with magic, but the metal nearest the chest was cold and dead.

“Isaac, what are you doing?”

More letters clicked into place, and I felt another line of magic surge to life. The sensation reminded me of steam rushing through a pipe, all of that energy waiting to be tapped and directed. “He transferred the essence of a living person into another body. Can you imagine what else we could do? You could build prosthetic limbs that respond like living flesh, or entire bodies for people dying of injury or disease.”

“Or living weapons,” Lena said, watching the automaton.

The automaton stared at us in return. Its jaw hung open, giving it a vaguely shocked and dimwitted expression. We hadn’t fixed all of the chains and cables inside. Would those repair themselves with time as well?

“Johann Fust.” I waited, but there was no sign of recognition or awareness. After so many centuries, it might not remember who it was. Gutenberg was the only one who knew the automatons’ identities, and I couldn’t imagine him ever addressing them by name.

“Isaac… are you sure we should be doing this?”

“Fixing a wood-and-metal golem that could crush us both? Not at all.”

“No. Trying to save Gutenberg. He enslaved his enemies in these things. He manipulated the minds and memories of people like Charles Hubert. He runs the Porters like his own little dictatorship. Does anyone know what other secrets he might be hiding?”

“De Leon might,” I said.

“What do you think Ponce de Leon was really banished for?”

I had asked myself the same question. All I knew was that de Leon had been a Porter for centuries. He had been one of the original twelve, and he had left the organization at some point during the twentieth century.

Maybe he had been right to do so.

The last of the metal blocks slid into place. The automaton limped forward. The jaw wasn’t the only damaged component, but overall, it appeared functional. Protecting Gutenberg would have been one of its core spells, and now those spells had been rebuilt.

Whatever crimes Gutenberg might have committed, we had to find him. We had to stop Charles Hubert, or whatever he had become. “Where is Johannes Gutenberg?”

The clicking in the neck grew louder as the automaton turned to look at me.

“Gutenberg is in danger.” It didn’t move. Maybe it couldn’t hear or understand me, or maybe it wasn’t programmed to obey anyone but its creator. I tried again. “Wo ist Johannes Gutenberg? Er ist in Gefahr.”

It was modern-day German, but hopefully whatever was left of Fust might recognize it. The automaton went perfectly still, and I sensed its magic building like a capacitor preparing to discharge. I backed away, gesturing for Lena to do the same.

It brightened like a miniature sun, and then it was gone. I checked my tracking device. The screen was blank. Panic tightened my throat. If we had blown up our only link to Gutenberg-

The red dot reappeared, and the map zoomed outward, recalibrating as it picked up the signal. I saved the location. “We’ve got him.”