Jim Hines - Libriomancer

“That’s not a good sign.” I pulled out a blaster and aimed it at the shape, just to be safe.

I had always thought the dissolution of magic should have more pizzazz: swirling lights, colored smoke… even just a loud popping sound. Unfortunately, the universe didn’t share my taste in special effects. I saw the shine of metal, and then-

“Shit!” I scrambled back, tripping over fallen branches.

Sprawled before us, pinned face-up by a four-inch-wide branch that speared it to the earth, was one of Gutenberg’s automatons.

Few people ever saw one of Gutenberg’s mechanical enforcers. Far fewer walked away from the experience. I swallowed and stepped closer. A layer of dirt and pine needles blanketed the automaton, meaning it hadn’t moved in a while. The trunk of the fallen tree had rolled to one side, crushing the automaton’s left arm and leg into the dirt and leaving that single branch protruding from its chest.

The automaton looked like an eight-foot-tall tailor’s dummy, clad in silver armor made up of metal blocks fitted together so perfectly they appeared to be a single fluid layer. I unclenched my fist and looked at the blocks I had picked up. They matched the armor, and I could see where some of the blocks had been ripped away to expose dark, aged wood.

The head had been split like an apple to reveal the mechanism inside. Bronze gears and broken cables littered the ground between the halves. One eye had fallen loose, a perfect black marble the size of a plum.

I touched the right arm, half-expecting the automaton to come to life and grab me for daring to disturb its rest. When nothing happened, I swept off the worst of the dirt. A crack in the arm exposed the hammered metal joint of the elbow, and the wooden hand had been smashed, revealing smaller skeletal rods and hinges.

More metal blocks lay scattered in the dirt. I picked up another and scraped the dirt away to reveal a backward letter F.

“Movable type,” I whispered. These were what made up the automaton’s armor. Metal blocks, each one hand-cast and filed to perfection. Awe at what I was holding warred with intestine-knotting fear of the thing lying so close. Awe won. I was holding magical history. For all I knew, it had been Gutenberg himself who poured molten metal into the hand-molds to create these letters, though these were significantly larger than the pieces of type he had used for his printing press.

The blocks on the automaton faced inward, the letters stamping the wooden body. I crouched over the thing’s stomach, fear all but forgotten as I examined the exposed wood where the pine branch had staked the thing to the ground.

“Isaac, are you sure that’s smart?”

I barely heard. The wooden torso had been hand-carved; I could see the tool marks. The surface of the wood was a deep, oiled brown. I spat on my fingers and rubbed away the worst of the dirt. I could see the letters imprinted into the surface of the wood. “This thing is like a living printing press.” No, not just a press, but a living book. I sat back, trying to absorb what we had discovered.

Lena touched two fingers to the exposed wood.

“Be careful. It’s a construct, fueled by magic, and it retained enough power to conceal itself until my Moly drained that spell.”

“What could do this?” Lena gestured to the split head and the impaled chest.

“Charles Hubert. Meaning we are seriously outmatched.” A flicker of light pulled my attention toward Smudge, who had managed to set the side of his tree on fire. I grabbed a broken branch and extended it toward him until he climbed onto the end. Lena climbed up and beat out the flames with one hand.

I transferred Smudge to a bit of exposed rock and searched the woods to either side. “Keep an eye out. He might just be freaking out about the automaton, but if not…”

Lena flexed her shoulders and gave her swords a quick spin.

I slipped the sunglasses back on. The sprigs of Moly appeared as shadows, empty holes in the faint magic that flowed even now from the automaton.

This automaton was hundreds of years old, one of only twelve in existence, constructed with some of Gutenberg’s earliest spells. Never, to the best of my knowledge, had anyone managed to destroy an automaton. Though given what I had learned, maybe Gutenberg had raised an entire army of mechanical warriors, and that knowledge had simply been wiped from our histories.

Dissecting its magic could reveal how Gutenberg had animated these things; it could help me to understand the very foundation of libriomancy. But I trusted Smudge’s instincts. It was time to get out of here. Reluctantly, I turned away from the automaton and headed back toward the cabin.

“We should gather up those books to see what else Hubert was studying. If he found something with the power to stop an automaton, that might…”

My voice trailed off. One of the ruined books in what remained of the cabin was magically active. I pushed the sunglasses higher on the bridge of my nose, squinting at what appeared to be a rip in reality, edged in char. “Uh-oh.”

“Uh-oh as in this is going to be hard, or uh-oh as in we should be running away as fast as we can?” Lena joined me, swords ready.

“Do you remember how I tried to find Hubert, back in the auto factory in Detroit? I think Hubert has done something similar here.” I stepped onto the cabin floor, slowly shifting my weight forward until the boards bowed and cracked. Lena jabbed one bokken into the ground and crouched, touching the floorboards. The wood creaked as she used her magic. Through the glasses, I could see the plywood strengthening, the fibers knitting together.

I crawled forward to snatch the book. The cover was torn away, and exposure to the wind and rain had taken its toll, but the interior pages were still legible. The page header revealed this to be The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

“One of the characters in Hubert’s head comes from Holmes.” That couldn’t be a coincidence. Was possession the result of overusing this book, which was badly charred? Or did Moriarty’s connection to the text make it easier for Hubert to access its magic? There had been frustratingly few studies on the effects of possession on magic.

“Can you seal it?” Lena asked.

I grimaced. The safest way would be to access the book’s magic myself, then use that connection to close off whatever Hubert had done. It was the same strategy I had used to end Deb DeGeorge’s chlorine gas attack. Only Deb hadn’t been using a text so damaged it could fail catastrophically, unleashing God only knew what.

I peered over the top of my glasses. Even without them I could see the magical damage, like someone had held the book spine-first over an open flame. I wondered briefly if the connection worked both ways, if I could use this book to peek in on Hubert again.

With that thought came the memory of the last time, and the madness that had found me there. I shuddered.

“What is it?” asked Lena.

I tried to will my hands to stop shaking. “I can do this now, or I can do it safely. I can’t do both.” And I wasn’t all that sure about the “safely” part, even if I had a month to study.

A flash of light momentarily blinded me. I ripped off the glasses and rubbed tears from my eyes, trying to focus on the thing that had materialized in the woods on the far side of the cabin.

“They’re a lot more intimidating when they’re moving,” Lena said, raising both bokken and stepping in front of me.

An automaton stepped out of the woods like an oversized armored knight. Metal enclosed its body, all save the head and hands. Those glassy black eyes found us, and a jaw that made me think of a ventriloquist’s dummy opened slightly as it strode forward.