Jim Hines - Libriomancer

“What do you mean?”

He sighed. “Johannes is a brilliant, stubborn, prideful man. The Porters did their best to cover up his disappearance, but this night has destroyed their efforts. The world of magic will know what has happened. After all this time, we know that Gutenberg is vulnerable. There are those who would exploit such vulnerabilities.”

“Tell me what I saw in Hubert’s mind.”

He shook his head. “Only Gutenberg knows the truth.”

And if Gutenberg died, that truth went with him. If I wanted answers, I had to restore him.

Ponce de Leon’s mouth quirked, suggesting he knew exactly what I was thinking. Had that been his intent all along, to make sure I saved Gutenberg by reminding me how much knowledge would be lost if he died?

De Leon bent over the body and planted a soft kiss on Gutenberg’s lips. “Te amo, you old fool.”

I stared. Over the years, I had often wondered what would happen if Ponce de Leon and Johannes Gutenberg were to confront one another face-to-face. This had never come up as a possibility.

De Leon cupped Gutenberg’s cheek, then backed away. “Suerte, Isaac Vainio and Lena Greenwood.”

“Good luck to you, too,” I said automatically.

He walked through the desk and the wall beyond, disappearing like a ghost.

I turned my attention to Gutenberg. Whatever sins he had committed, he knew more of magic than anyone alive. If destroying a book was an act of evil, how much more evil was it to destroy a mind? I nodded to Lena.

She set her sword aside and peeled back the tape of Gutenberg’s IV. The flesh beneath was red and raw. Blood seeped from damaged skin. Lena tugged the needle free, and a single drop of dark blood trickled down his arm.

I reached out with my remaining arm, touching the magical web Hubert had woven to suppress Gutenberg’s power. With what remained of the automaton’s magic, I tore Hubert’s spell away like cobwebs.

Johannes Gutenberg bolted upright in the cot, blinked at Lena and myself, and vomited onto my legs. Lena grabbed his shoulder to steady him.

When he finished, his face was pale, and beads of sweat had broken out on his forehead. He wiped his lips on his sleeve. “I’m sorry about that. Thank you, Lena.” He nodded a greeting to her, then turned his full attention to me. “Isaac Vainio? What are you doing in my automaton?”

“How did you know?”

“You’ve inscribed yourself into the text, for those with the ability to read it. Also, the fire-spider gives you away.” He rose on shaky legs, leaning on Lena for support. “What of Charles Hubert?”

“Dead,” said Lena. “Consumed by magic.”

“A shame.” He combed his fingers through his hair, his movements becoming visibly stronger from one second to the next. I could see his magic at work, like antibodies devouring the remaining drugs in his system.

He brushed his hands over his wrinkled purple silk shirt and black trousers. His silver belt buckle gleamed like polished chrome. “Hubert was brilliant, but undisciplined. He used magic to protect the men in his unit ten years ago. He killed six enemy combatants. That… was not his first violation.”

“You punished him for protecting his own people?”

“For his methods in doing so,” Gutenberg said. “What would happen when those deaths became public, Isaac? The Porters are not an American organization, but a global one. We cannot afford to interfere in political conflicts. How long before national interests would splinter us? Before we turned on one another in an ever-escalating war of magic?”

“Hubert sent the automatons to attack the Detroit nest of vampires,” said Lena. “Alice Granach is holding Nidhi Shah as a hostage.”

Gutenberg stepped toward the desk, examining the books. “There was an old text, bound in leather. I remember Hubert taking it from my library. Have you seen it?”

I knew exactly which book he meant, and I knew what must have happened to it. Only one other person had entered this office since Hubert’s death.

“I… don’t remember seeing a book like that.”

He studied me closely, then shrugged. “I’ll find it eventually.”

Somehow I doubted that.

Gutenberg grabbed another book from the desk. It opened in his hand. He glanced at the pages, then reached into the book to retrieve a small, black cell phone. “I assume Pallas is overseeing the conflict in Detroit?”

I nodded dumbly, trying to understand what I had just seen. Gutenberg hadn’t even looked at the cover or title before picking up that book. It was like he had known instinctively which one held the potential magic he wanted, and had opened the book to that exact page.

“Nothing.” He tossed the phone at the book. It vanished the instant it touched the cover. “They’re following standard containment practice. A single libriomancer uses a book to create an electromagnetic pulse to scramble radios and cameras. Unfortunately, such magic also plays havoc with communications.”

He gathered a handful of books from the desk, then marched out of the office and through the garage, stopping only briefly to survey the damaged automobiles in the parking lot. A Volkswagen Beetle growled to life and crept toward us. One headlight flipped upward, trying to blind us. The other pulsed with magic.

That second headlight was the piece that had come from Stephen King’s killer car. I braced myself. Hubert was dead, meaning the remaining cars were free of his control. My arms were useless, but I should be able to stomp these things into-

Gutenberg snapped his fingers, and flame exploded within the Beetle’s haunted headlight. The magical pseudolife within the car flickered out, and the engine died. Momentum carried the Beetle onward, but it was easy enough to intercept. The car crunched harmlessly into my leg.

Gutenberg spun in a slow circle, and magical fire blasted the cannibalized parts Hubert had welded to his other cars. I stared at him, trying to understand how a libriomancer could fling magic with such ease. For an instant, his body seemed to flicker. I saw not living flesh but text, skin made up of layer upon layer of pages, a palimpsest of books, magic, and humanity. At the same time, I felt Smudge fade. For that brief span as Gutenberg eliminated the last of Hubert’s guardians, Smudge was simply a spider, oversized and mundane.

Smudge was a manifestation of a book’s magic. Gutenberg had bypassed the book, stealing Smudge’s magic directly and using it to disable the cars. I felt simultaneously protective of Smudge and eager to figure out the trick myself. “What are you?”

“Sorry.” Gutenberg winked. “Trade secret.”

Smudge’s body exploded in fire as his magic returned, and he scrambled around to the back of my head, hiding from Gutenberg.

“I do appear to owe you both a favor, however.” He looked to Lena first, and nodded. “I know what you want, and I’ll do what I can to reunite you with your lover.” To me, he said, “What would you ask of me, Isaac Vainio?”

I stared down at myself. “This body-”

“Given enough time, I might be able to repair it. But returning you to what you were?” He sighed and rubbed his eyes. “Though I rarely admit it these days, there are limits to my power. Your body has been destroyed, and libriomancy cannot create life. With the proper texts, I could perhaps construct a caricature of Isaac Vainio, but it would be a shallow thing, a mockery of the man you were. I am not God.”

This body lacked the physical reactions of my own, but despair hit me hard nonetheless. I felt emptiness, hope sinking away through my gut… phantom grief, perhaps, like the shadow pain of a patient with a lost limb. My prosthesis was a five-hundred-year-old creation of wood and brass and magic.