Jim Hines - Libriomancer

The automaton saw me as a spirit to be excised. Our body staggered, and my awareness began to fade. The mind trapped here had five hundred years of experience in this form, and I hadn’t even figured out how to walk.

Another verse flared to life. And a fire was kindled in their congregation: the flame burned the wicked. I had spent enough time with Smudge to recognize magical fire as it spread through me.

“I’m not here to hurt you!” I might have spoken the words out loud. There was no way of knowing.

Get out!

Pain worked its way inward, surrounding me. I pushed back, but it was like trying to stop the tide with my bare hands. The magic surged past my efforts. I felt the metal keys growing hotter, searing the wooden skin. The automaton would destroy itself before it let another mind take control.

Could I turn the automaton’s magic against itself? Use one of its protective spells to block this attack?

No… forget the text encasing our body. I turned my awareness toward the gears and rods in our head, and the letters that bound that other spirit here.

Katherine Pfeifferin. Not a name I recognized from the history books. I could feel the magic spreading out from those carefully engraved letters, a web that both trapped Katherine here and infused her spirit throughout the automaton’s body.

“Katherine!” Nothing. Like Johann Fust, she appeared to have no memory of who she had been.

I tried once again to manipulate the flames, but instead of fighting them, I channeled them toward that metal disk, adding my own strength and will to their heat in an attempt to burn away those letters. I felt Katherine’s fear and confusion, a momentary sense of disorientation. Flames spread over my body, and the metal keys began to soften.

And then, just like that, I was alone. The flames died. I toppled onto my back. My head felt like someone had stabbed a red-hot poker directly into my brain stem. Which was essentially what I had done.

“How did you do that?” Charles Hubert’s voice. I could sense the specific line of Biblical text that allowed me to hear. Then shall the eyes of the blind be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. The world slowly flickered into place around me.

I saw Hubert and the other automatons. Lena stood in front of me, Excalibur held ready. Her bokken was gone. I touched my side, remembering the agony spreading through me from her sword. What did it mean that I could no longer feel the pain? Had I healed myself when I fled into the automaton, or-more likely-had I destroyed my own body in the process?

Another automaton stepped toward me. I could sense the magic connecting it to Hubert. The entire building buzzed with magic. The silver cross in Hubert’s hand was a magnet, tugging at everyone it had touched, including Lena and Smudge.

“Go to repair bay three,” Hubert commanded me. “Lie down and be still until I can study you.”

I started to move before I realized what I was doing. Something in that voice, in that presence, demanded obedience. This was my Lord and creator.

No… the true Gutenberg lay beyond, in the office. I could sense him there, unconscious but alive. I stopped walking.

The automaton at the cabin had absorbed the magic from my fairy dust, dragging me back to Earth. I turned around and reached one hand toward the silver cross, just as that other automaton had done. I could end this now. I could free Lena and Smudge, and break Hubert’s control over the vampires. All I had to do was find the right spell.

Wooden fists clubbed me from behind, slamming me to the ground. There was no pain, which was a nice change from the beatings I’d taken lately. I rolled over as another automaton kicked my side, knocking me through a garage door and into the parking lot.

Hubert had four other automatons in here, all of whom were far less clumsy than me. We were pretty much indestructible, but with four of them against me, I had no doubt they would eventually inflict enough damage to destroy me.

I tried to push myself up, but another automaton seized my head. Two others grabbed my arms. They hauled me into the air, straining to rip me apart.

“Wait.” Hubert hurried toward me. “Tell me what you did!” For a moment, the madness was gone. He was simply another libriomancer, eager to understand a new facet of magic. And then his face shifted, the muscles going taut. “Tell me!”

I turned my vision upward, even as another blow sent a hairline crack through the side of my face. He might not know how to repair an automaton, but he knew how to destroy one.

I found the text that gave the automaton the power to speak. And they cried with a loud voice to the Lord their God. My words reverberated through the building, powerful enough to make the doors buzz. “I’ll tell you when I get back.”

My wooden bones creaked, the brute strength of the other automatons threatening to unravel the spells that held me together. I needed to take them to a place where they’d be just as disoriented and clumsy as I was.

“Dixitque Deus fiat lux et facta est lux.” The spell I needed warmed to life. I chose my destination, activated the automaton’s magic, and flew.

For roughly one and a quarter seconds, the automaton ceased to exist. I was nothing but magic and light. There was no sense of movement as more than two hundred thousand miles rushed past, and then I was tumbling out of control toward a pockmarked gray desert.

I fell for close to a minute before slamming face-first into the moon. Fine dust exploded outward from the impact. Despite the lessened gravity, my mass was unchanged, and I bounced a good thirty feet into the air.

My arms whirled like windmills. I landed at an angle, my feet skidding through the dust. I fell again, and when I finally slid to a halt, I was on my back staring up at the Earth. Darkness shrouded half the planet; the other half was blue and white and perfect.

I sat up and scooped a handful of regolith. It trickled through my wooden fingers like sand, only grittier. The hills and craters stretching out around me banished all thought of Charles Hubert, of the battle far overhead in Detroit, of the automatons who would no doubt be coming after me. I was on the moon!

I had aimed for Mare Insularum, safely within the sunlit side of the moon, but I had no idea how close I had come.

I jumped into the air, marveling at the slight but visible curve of the horizon. My feet sank into the grit, and I jumped again, turning to look at the sun. If I had hit my target, Kepler Crater should be somewhere west of here.

I shook with what could have been laughter, had there been air to carry the sound. I had dreamed of this since I was a child watching clips of Armstrong’s historic first steps during the Apollo 11 mission.

Could automatons travel to other planets as well? Depending on where Mars was in its orbit, it would take anywhere from five to twenty minutes to reach the surface traveling at the speed of light. It might require multiple jumps, though. I had come in high when I arrived at the moon, and any errors would be magnified on a longer journey. But it should be possible.

Maybe there was a way to cheat. Automatons traveled as light. What if I used a telescope to find my target, to pinpoint exactly where I wanted to go?

I was like a child who had discovered the way to Neverland. I wanted to clap and laugh and run and explore. This was true magic. This was wonder and awe and exploration. Had any Porter traveled like this before? We could go anywhere.

The possibilities were endless. I was in a position to revolutionize our understanding of the universe. We could explore the entire solar system and beyond. I turned toward the sun. How would magic fare against the power of the sun’s corona?