Codex Born

18

Every religion I’ve studied has laws or commandments against killing.

Historically, humanity has shown tremendous creativity in finding every possible loophole, rationalization, and justification to ignore those commandments.

Animals kill for food, and to protect their territory, which suggests killing can be a normal, natural part of life. But humans are civilized. They’ve supposedly moved beyond mere instinct. Yes, animals kill. They also eat their young, but if you suggest a human mother do the same, people tend to react poorly. Animals will happily interbreed with their siblings as well, but that’s frowned upon among humans. (Though some of them do it anyway, and many others fantasize about it.) The behavior of animals does not provide moral justification for human beings to do the same.

Is killing ever a moral choice? What if the personal decision to avoid inflicting harm leads to a greater evil? Countless writers have penned tales of traveling back in time to kill Hitler. Would such a murder be right if it prevented millions of other deaths?

Isn’t doing nothing while a vampire attacks my loved one a greater crime than destroying the vampire? Both choices lead to death. One choice stops a killer.

In The Fellowship of the Ring, Gandalf praised the pity of Bilbo Baggins in sparing Gollum, despite Gollum’s evil nature. As it turned out, that choice saved all of Middle Earth in the end. But then, it’s easy to present simple answers to ethical questions when you’re the one shaping the story. What of those times when Gandalf rode his moral high horse into battle, helping to kill countless orcs and goblins?

Gollum was a victim of the ring, corrupted and twisted. The vampire is diseased, driven by maddening thirst and inhuman urges. And I…given a cruel enough lover, I could become a creature much worse than any of them. Can I judge and kill others for acts I have the same potential to commit?

I’ve killed before. To defend myself and those I love. Was that the right choice, or simply the easy one?

The day Kawaljeet Sarna began teaching me Indian stick fighting, he began with a simple lesson: Prevent, Practice, Protect.

Prevent conflict when you can. Avoid the enemy. Diffuse their anger. Take their mental balance, and search for peaceful resolution.

Practice confrontation. Learn to deescalate the conflict, to dampen the flames instead of adding fuel. Seek peace, even in battle.

Protect yourself and those unable to defend themselves. When possible, protect your opponent as well. Protect your physical self, but also your mental and emotional selves.

If any of the words I’ve written here have the power to shape who I am, let it be these. If I’m unable to hold to these rules, if I become a monster like those I’ve fought, then I ask only that others not hesitate to end me.

THE FIRST PORTER TO join us in the library was Antonia Warwick, who greeted us each in turn. She whistled softly as she surveyed the damage. “I’ve heard of giving an old building a facelift, but I’m pretty sure this isn’t what they meant.”

Like Nicola Pallas, Toni was one of the handful of Porters who wasn’t a libriomancer. She performed sympathetic magic, manipulating small objects to create larger effects. I had once seen her summon a nasty ice storm with nothing but an old Snoopy Snow Cone maker. She lived in Winnipeg, but her talents were always in demand, meaning she traveled more than most field agents.

She was in her early forties, with faint wrinkles by the eyes and a crooked nose. Dreadlocks hung just past her shoulders. She wore a black tank top, exposing well-muscled arms. Around her waist was what appeared to be the result of a one-night stand between a handyman’s leather tool belt and Batman’s utility belt. Gleaming silver studs decorated the black leather belt, which was weighed down by an array of pouches and tools of every shape and size. Additional straps rose over her shoulders for support.

She had a mug of pop as big as her head, and sucked absently at the straw as she studied me more closely. “What the hell have you been doing to yourself, Vainio?”

“The usual.”

“That would explain it.” She climbed onto the desk and studied the broken ceiling beams. “Lena, you’re good with wood, right? How about you get up here and let’s see if we can keep this place from caving in any more.”

Normally, I would have been fascinated by the way they worked together. Lena strengthened one of the cracked beams, giving it life enough to grow and heal. Toni spread that strength to the rest. The ceiling groaned, and we backed away as plaster and insulation snowed down, but by the time they finished, the exposed beams were visibly stronger.

I watched the entire process, but my thoughts were elsewhere. “How much worse is this going to get?”

“That depends on how swiftly we can find and stop August Harrison,” said Gutenberg.

I had lost control of the situation the instant Gutenberg arrived. Not that I ever really had control. Harrison and his wendigos I could have dealt with, but the students of Bi Sheng and an Army of Ghosts? I needed help.

I just wished I knew what the cost of that help would be. How much of Copper River would be left when this was over?

One by one, the rest of the Porters gathered in my library. Most I had met, at least in passing. All were field agents, with the exception of Nicola Pallas and Gutenberg himself. The amount of active magic in the air tickled my skin. I dug my nails into my palms to keep from scratching.

Every libriomancer carried his or her own arsenal of books. Some wore backpacks or messenger bags. Whitney Spotts had fashioned what looked like a makeshift skirt of books, each one clipped to a thick leather belt by a light cha in. John Wenger’s books simply followed him through the door in a self-propelled red wagon. I had no idea how it had navigated the broken steps.

Then there were the weapons. I saw two different Excaliburs, a monofilament whip, some sort of electrified jumpsuit (in neon pink), a steampunk-style short rifle, and a pair of six-shooters that could have come straight from Billy the Kid’s holsters. Toni was one of the few who appeared unarmed, but in her hands, just about anything was a potential weapon.

“Is the town contained?” Pallas asked.

Maryelizabeth, a libriomancer from New York who worked for one of the major publishing houses, tugged a small black gas mask from her face. “Diluted spray of Lethe-water took care of most of the bystanders.”

“Electronics are covered,” said John, waving a trade paperback. “Broad-field magnetic blaster. Anyone who tried to record this on their phones will have a very bad day. A few shots probably leaked onto the Internet, but we can track those down and discredit them later.”

“I intercepted the cops,” said Whitney. “They’re back at the police department, writing the whole thing up as a nasty traffic accident.”

One by one Pallas took their reports. In less than a half hour, the Porters had swept through the streets of Copper River and erased most of the evidence of our battle with the dragon. Even the dragon itself was no longer recognizable, having been carved into scrap. I didn’t know how the Porters meant to pass off the huge pile of metal in the road as a traffic accident, but I had no doubt they would find a way.

“Good.” Pallas was rocking back and forth, snapping her fingers to a rhythm nobody else could hear. She was even less comfortable with noise and crowds than I was, and music was one of the ways she coped. I wondered if it would work for Jeff DeYoung, who was looking from one person to the next, trying to watch everyone at once. He knew and liked me, but he was a werewolf, and part of his brain instinctively classified the Porters as potential predators.

Given what I had learned, I couldn’t entirely disagree with that assessment.

Pallas turned to Gutenberg. “We have between 90 and 95 percent containment. We can finish cleaning up later. Dream-manipulation should help take care of any lingering memories.”

Without preamble, Gutenberg set the last of his books atop the pile and said, “As some of you know, when Victor Harrison died earlier this year, we were unable to control the scene before the police arrived. As a result, August Harrison was able to gain access to his son’s work, including a swarm of mechanical insects. He used those insects to break into the Porter network, as well as to access Isaac Vainio’s private research notes. He also discovered a cult called the Bì de dú ;, the students of Bi Sheng.

“Harrison then tracked and killed a pair of wendigos near Tamarack, Michigan. Using the magic preserved in their skins, he attempted to create monsters of his own, soldiers who would be stronger and deadlier.”

“How many?” asked Whitney.

“At least twenty-four,” I said. “They’re not true wendigos, but they have most of the strength and temper. Depending on the amount of skin he used, the transformation might not be permanent.”

“The wendigos are the least of our concerns. Harrison has also created his own dryad.” Gutenberg extended his arm toward Lena like a museum curator showing off an exhibit. “Unlike Ms. Greenwood, this dryad is new and untrained. However, she possesses the same strengths and weaknesses.”

“What weaknesses?”

I didn’t see who asked the question, but I cringed as Gutenberg began detailing how the loss of Lena’s tree could cripple her, how her skin would resist normal weapons, but not magical ones. She stood like a statue, her eyes fixed on the wall as Gutenberg verbally dissected her. I took her hand, offering what comfort I could. Nidhi squeezed her other hand.

“Why go to the trouble of breaking into our archives and making a dryad if he already had wendigos?” That was Whitney again.

Gutenberg nodded at me. I grimaced and stepped into the center of the ring of libriomancers. “Five hundred years ago, some of the students of Bi Sheng were able to preserve their thoughts and memories in books. Their descendants have spent centuries protecting those books, and searching for a way to restore them. When Harrison hacked into my private notes, he found the answer. Not only does Lena recreate her physical body each time she leaves her tree, but earlier this year, we discovered she can do the same for another person.”

Everyone began talking at once. New comments and questions poured forth, one atop the next.

“That’s a hell of a magical kluge.”

“Can you change the body you create? Make it younger or thinner?”

“Or better looking? Especially for Bobby over there.”

“Bite me. What about cloning? If you had access to the mind, how many copies could you make?”

“Have you examined the body at the genetic level? Are they affected at all by their dryadic birth?”

“Do they have belly buttons?”

Lena turned to me and mouthed the word “libriomancers” while rolling her eyes. I gave her a sympathetic smile.

Gutenberg clapped his hands once. “August Harrison forced Ms. Greenwood to restore a woman named Bi Wei. In her time, Bi Wei would have been a rudimentary libriomancer of limited ability, but time in her book gave her a more direct connection to magic. She was a part of magic, able to manipulate it without books or other tools. While she appears to have retained this power, the greater danger is what else Lena brought forth. Bi Wei had been touched by what the followers of Bi Sheng call duì. The Ghost Army.”

Maryelizabeth snorted. “Wendigos, insects, dead libriomancers…how many armies does this dude need?”

“Harrison doesn’t know about the Ghost Army,” I said. “They’re using him, not the other way around.”

“Why haven’t we heard any of this before?” asked John. The handle of his book wagon wagged back and forth like a scolding finger.

“Because libriomancers are utterly incapable of letting sleeping dragons lie,” Gutenberg said calmly. “The Ghost Army slumbered for centuries. I was aware of something that occasionally reached through to corrupt and consume whoever it touched, but such contacts were rare. I feared that too much poking and prodding would rouse it, so research into the Ghost Army has been restricted and carefully monitored.”

“Carefully?” Lena asked. “You assigned Isaac to study this thing.”

“Only when we realized it had begun to stir,” Gutenberg said sternly. “Isaac survived an encounter with these ghosts, an accomplishment limited to only a handful of Porters throughout the years.”

He raised his hands, forestalling further questions. “Isaac was attacked when he channeled more magic than he could control. These ghosts strike when our barriers are weakest. They are awake, and they are watching. Use precision over power. Do not overextend yourselves.”

“How do we find them?” asked Whitney.

“Originally, I intended to use Ms. Warwick.” Gutenberg waved Toni forward.

“Worst assignment in years.” Toni grimaced. “If I can touch the corpses of the wendigos Harrison butchered, I’m pretty sure I can find him, or at least his pets.”

“And what do you intend to do about the war you’ll be starting with every werewolf in Michigan?” Jeff asked, his words a full octave lower than normal.

Toni looked from Gutenberg to Jeff. She was a good field agent, but occasionally neglected the research side of things. She clearly had no idea how close she was to starting a brawl in the middle of my library.

“Werewolves were originally scavengers,” I said. “They dug up graves to feed on corpses. They’ve spent centuries trying to distance themselves from that piece of their past, to the point where they’ll circle a half mile out of their way simply to avoid the smell of road kill. It’s almost a religious taboo. The wendigos are buried in a werewolf cemetery. Messing with their burial sites is a good way to get yourself torn apart.”

“But wendigos aren’t werewolves,” Toni protested.

“Which is why Jeff hasn’t tried to kill anyone yet,” Nidhi said.

Toni folded her arms and turned to Gutenberg. “You never mentioned that.” She sounded like a pissed-off parent.

Gutenberg studied Jeff, giving everyone just enough time to imagine how such a confrontation would play out. “Fortunately, we have a simpler option.” He took an old pulp novel by A. E. van Vogt from the closest stack of books. “Even unconscious, Guan Feng’s memories should guide us.”

“She doesn’t know where Harrison was going,” I protested.

“She said she didn’t know. Even if she told you the truth, the brain retains much more information than it can consciously process or remember.” He skimmed the book and strode toward Guan Feng. As he bent over, golden tendrils flickered from his scalp, like an afterimage that faded when you tried to look at it directly.

I hadn’t read Slan since I was in middle school, so the details of the story and its rules for mind reading were vague. Gutenberg would be able to read Feng’s thoughts, but I didn’t think the process would hurt her.

“Feng flew to the U.S. six weeks ago,” Gutenberg said slowly. “The students of Bi Sheng are spread throughout the world. We face fewer than half of their total number.” He grabbed his gold pen and appeared to scribble a series of notes in the air. Magical note-taking so he would remember the locations of the rest?

“In the beginning, Harrison’s hope was infectious,” he continued. “He saw himself as a savior, and when he showed them a selection of documents he had taken from our computers, they saw salvation. As the weeks passed, he spent more and more time alone. When not locked in his cabin, he sent his insects to spy on Lena, watching through their eyes.

“Two weeks ago, Harrison left the camp. When he returned, he was quite drunk. He said the time for planning was past. In order to overpower Lena, he needed soldiers. If they wouldn’t help him to capture a wendigo, he would do it alone.”

“Two weeks?” Nidhi asked sharply. “Was this the twentieth?”

Gutenberg nodded.

“What happened July twentieth?” Lena asked.

“That was Victor Harrison’s birthday.”

“They tracked and killed the first wendigo the following morning,” Gutenberg said. “The body you investigated in Tamarack was the second murder.”

“Where did they go after they attacked Michilimackinac?” Toni’s impatience was palpable.

He raised a hand and stared at Guan Feng, as if he could dig out the truth with his eyes alone. “The tree he prepared for Lena didn’t survive the restoration of Bi Wei. He needed a stronger oak for his new dryad, as well as additional soldiers to defend her.”

“Between Bi Wei and Deifilia, they could grow a new oak anywhere,” said Lena.

“But it was to be hidden. Protected.” Gutenberg blinked. “Harrison asked Deifilia whether her oak could survive underground.”

Without the sun…but how difficult would it be to conjure sunlight? Jeff carried the moon’s rays around in a rock. Bi Wei could provide whatever Deifilia’s tree needed. “They’re at the mine.”

Gutenberg nodded, the transparent tendrils on his scalp making him look like Medusa. “Isaac is correct.”

That would explain where the dragon had come from, and the mine employed more than enough healthy, strong people to build Harrison’s wendigo army.

“Find them.”

I turned to Lena. “Find what?”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Nidhi?”

Nidhi’s brow creased. “What did you hear, Isaac?”

The room grew silent. My neck and cheeks warmed as I realized everyone had stopped to look at me. “I’m not sure.”

“Find .”

Slowly, I stepped toward the edge of the library to look out at the sky. Despite the rising sun, stars burned clearly in the sky, stars which were completely wrong for this time of year. I searched until I spotted the constellation known as the Phoenix. “Oh, damn.”

Not too long ago, I would have tried to cover up what was happening. I would have blamed my confusion on the ringing in my ears from the explosion. But if I was seeing nonexistent stars, I was far too vulnerable. That didn’t make my next words any easier. “I need to stay behind.”

I tried to tell myself I wasn’t betraying Lena, Jeff…all of Copper River, really. If I was hearing voices, then the next spell I cast could be enough to let the Army of Ghosts into my head. Trying to help could get everyone killed.

“Are you armed?” asked Pallas.

I showed her the shock-gun.

“Isaac.”

I clenched my fists and focused on my surroundings.

“Lena will remain here as well,” Gutenberg said.

“No, she won’t,” Lena shot back. “Nobody knows what Deifilia can do better than me.”

“Nor do we know what will happen if the two of you face one another.” He sounded deceptively calm. He reached out, fingers coming together as if he were snatching an invisible thread. As he did so, printed type seemed to crawl over his tan skin, the characters burrowing into his body too quickly for me to read.

Lena’s knees gave out.

Nidhi jumped to catch her. “What did you do?”

“Lena is book-born.” Gutenberg released his hold, and the color slowly returned to Lena’s face. “If I can take her power, what do you think Bi Wei might do? What if she does worse? She could rewrite Lena, transform her into an enemy.”

“Can you do that?” I asked sharply. “Rewrite her?”

Gutenberg’s mouth tightened ever so slightly. “I cannot, no. But while Bi Sheng’s magic is similar to ours, we do not know all his secrets. Lena stays here.”

He neither raised his voice nor changed his expression, but everyone in the library recognized the discussion was over. Almost everyone.

“She’s my responsibility,” Lena pressed.

“In what way?” asked Gutenberg. “Did you create her? Did you write the book from which she sprang? Was it your stolen research that allowed our enemies to discover what she could do? Did your defenses fail to protect our archive? In what way are you responsible, Lena Greenwood?”

“Because she’s family.”

“That’s one more reason you will not be accompanying us.” He raised his voice. “I will lead a team to the mine. Nicola will command the others in Copper River.”

“We’re splitting our forces?” asked John.

Toni snorted. “You think they’re just waiting around for us to visit? They know Guan Feng has been spilling her guts to the Porters, they know Isaac blew their toy dragon all to shit, and they know he has reinforcements.”

“Indeed,” said Gutenberg. “They will attack Copper River for all those reasons, and to attempt to keep us from finding the mine. The longer they hold us off, the more of Bi Sheng’s students they can restore, and the stronger their power grows.”

Toni Warwick pulled a small roll of purple duct tape from her belt. She used utility scissors to snip the end from one of her dreadlocks, and sprinkled a few strands of hair onto the sticky side of a square of tape. She slapped the tape onto John Wenger’s shoulder. “This should let me track you, and give us limited communications. Please don’t scream into the duct tape.”

One by one, she did the same for the rest of the Porters. I was the last to receive my duct tape communicator, which she pressed onto my shirt with a whispered, “Sorry, man. For what it’s worth, I’m jealous as hell that you got to fight the dragon.”

Gutenberg wasted no more time in assigning a small group to protect Copper River, then led the rest out of the library. A single automaton waited like a statue in the middle of the road.

Pallas was snapping her fingers again. “Isaac, I could use your help deciding where to position people. You know the town better than anyone here.”

“Some of us were living in these parts before Isaac’s parents were born,” Jeff muttered.

I trudged toward the ruins of the entryway and dug out one of the brochures that described all the exciting things to do in Copper River, Michigan. It was a relatively short brochure. However, it included a decent enough map on the back.

I pointed to various locations that would give us—that would give them—a better vantage point against incoming forces. “The water tower. The clock tower at City Hall. The mine’s north of here, so I’d suggest putting people at the railroad bridge here. It has a good view of the river.”

In twos and threes, the Porters set out with their books and weapons. Toni and Nicola were the last to go, leaving me, Lena, Nidhi, and Jeff alone with the unconscious body of Guan Feng.

“I don’t care what anyone says,” Jeff announced once they were gone. “That man is a douchebag.”

“Isaac, please.”

I made my way around the front desk and retrieved Bi Wei’s book from the drawer. The whispers in my head grew louder when I touched the cover.

“What are you doing?” Nidhi asked warily.

“I can hear her.” I sat on the floor and flipped through the pages.

“Isn’t that a good reason to not read the book?” Jeff asked.

Even without donning my translation glasses, I could almost understand the words. “I’m not going to try magic. I promise. I just…I don’t think this is possession. She’s asking me for help.”

Lena leaned over my shoulder. “Do you trust her?”

“I’m not sure.” I could barely hear her, as if she were shouting from a great distance. I made out August Harrison’s name, and something about ghosts, but we needed a stronger connection. I sagged back in the chair. “The Porters tried to kill her five hundred years ago. Now we—I—gave Harrison the tools to bring her back, and to let the Army of Ghosts into her mind. She’s fighting for her sanity. She’s a victim. Our victim.”

“Or she’s trying to get her hooks into your head so she can find out what the Porters are up to,” Jeff said.

“I don’t think so.” I pulled the glasses from my jacket, unfolded the earpieces, and slipped them on. Text flickered to life. I started to read, then hesitated. “But if I start spewing pea soup or anything, I’d appreciate it if you got me the hell away from this book.”

I chose a page at random and began reading about Bi Wei’s first attempt at magic, the continuation of a project her great-grandaunt had begun years before her birth. They had hoped to create a book in which writing on one of the blank pages would cause the same message to appear on other copies. The goal was to find a replacement for the signal beacons on the Great Wall.

Using blocks of movable type painstakingly carved from wood, they created identical books using a technique known as butterfly binding. Printed pages were folded in the middle and stitched together, leaving the reverse sides blank. The text included everything from poetry to military strategy, with one thing in common: thematically, every piece emphasized the importance of communication.

Imagining Bi Wei poring over her copy of the book, reading and rereading as she attempted to imbue its pages with magic, made me feel ashamed. My own early magic had been entirely selfish, limited to pulling toys and trinkets from one book after another.

How open had the practice of magic been in China during the Ming Dynasty? Had the Emperor been aware of Bi Sheng’s students? What of the common people?

“Isaac.”

I jumped. “ Bi?”

“Where is Guan Feng? Is she—”

“She’s alive. Gutenberg put her to sleep.”

Her words seemed to come from the book itself. “You heard me.” I sensed the quiet laughter she wouldn’t let reach her lips. “It worked.”

I found myself smiling in return. I had theorized that something like this might be possible, but the last time I had tried, a ghost had attempted to eat my soul. “Are you thinking in English or Mandarin?”

“Mandarin, which is how I hear your words. You hear English?”

“That’s right.” I wanted to warn her to get as far from the mine as possible. Instead, I simply asked, “Wei, what’s happening?”

“August Harrison collapsed a short time ago, and hasn’t awakened.”

“That was probably my doing,” I said smugly. Blowing up the dragon had hit him harder than I could have hoped.

“Then you may have destroyed us all. Deifilia has bound him in ropes of living oak. She brought two of my fellow refugees from their books, and she now commands Harrison’s metal creatures.”

“Deifilia’s in charge of the magic bugs?” I blinked and looked to Nidhi, trying to split my focus between the book and the real world. “That doesn’t make sense.”

Nidhi was shaking her head. “August Harrison would never surrender his power to Deifilia, nor would he want a lover who desired his power. It shouldn’t be possible for her to take control of his weapons. She can’t act against his wishes.”

She brought her fingers to cover her mouth. From the shock in her eyes, she had made the same leap I had. There was at least one way for a dryad to grow beyond the desires of her mate.

“She has another lover,” Lena whispered.

“She’s existed for less than twenty-four hours.” It had taken days for Lena to begin to bond with me, for my desires to come into conflict with Nidhi’s.

That conflict was the key. The tension between our desires gave Lena a degree of freedom. Every time she argued with one of us, whether it was about the ethics of killing in self-defense or whether Douglas Adams should have stopped his trilogy after the fourth book, she lit up inside. It was hard to stay angry with someone who took such obvious joy in being able to disagree.

“I would love to see Harrison’s face when he finds out.” My moment of schadenfreude passed quickly. How could this have happened? Given Harrison’s possessiveness, Deifilia wouldn’t have sought another lover on her own. At least not deliberately…“Lena, your personality began to change even before we—”

“I prefer ‘evolved,’” Lena said. “But you’re right. Sex isn’t the key. Frank Dearing owned me long after his body lost its potency.”

“Wei, when Harrison collapsed, did Deifilia take a large insect from his body? A cicada?”

“She wanted to protect him, and to keep anyone from taking control of his weapons.”

The cicada which was telepathically connected to the Army of Ghosts. Lena had created a degree of freedom for herself by taking another lover. Deifilia had found an entire army. An army that wanted only two things: to live, and to destroy.

Nidhi summed it up with surprising succinctness. “Oh, shit.”