Jonathan Strahan - Swords & Dark Magic - The New Sword and Sorcery

“Oh, shit, ” he muttered.

“Known,” chuckled the creature. Its voice was now a bass rumble, deep as oncoming thunder. “Now will kill boy. Now EASY.”

“Uh,” said Laszlo, scanning the smoke-swirled area for any surprise, any advantage, any unused weapon. While it was flattering to imagine himself charging in and dispatching the thing with his sword, the treatment it had given Lev was not at all encouraging in that respect. He flicked his gaze from the bookshelves to the ceiling—and then it hit him, a sensation that would have been familiar to any aspirant ever graduated from the High University. The inherent magic of all undergraduates—the magic of the last minute. The power to embrace any solution, no matter how insane or desperate.

“No,” he yelled. “No! Spare boy!”

“Kill boy,” roared the creature, no more scintillating a conversationalist for all its physical changes.

“No.” Laszlo tossed his sword aside and beckoned to the vocabuvore. “Spare boy. I will give new words!”

“I kill boy, then you give new words!”

“No. Spare boy. I will give many new words. I will give all my words.”

“No,” howled Lev. “No, you can’t—”

“Trust me,” said Laszlo. He picked a book out of the mess at his feet and waved it at the vocabuvore. “Come here. I’ll read to you!”

“Book of words…” the creature hissed. It took a step forward.

“Yes. Many books, new words. Come to me, and they’re yours.”

“New words!” Another step. The creature was off the bookcase now, towering over him. Ropy strands of hot saliva tumbled from the corners of its mouth…good gods, Laszlo thought, he’d really made it hungry.

“Occultation!” he said, by way of a test.

The creature growled with pleasure, shuddering, and more mass boiled out of its grotesque frame. The change was not as severe as that caused by proper nouns, but it was still obvious. The vocabuvore’s head moved an inch closer to the ceiling. Laszlo took a deep breath, and then began shouting as rapidly as he could:

“Fuliginous! Occluded! Uh, canticle! Portmanteau! Tea cozy!” He racked his mind. He needed obscure words, complex words, words unlikely to have been uttered by cautious librarians prowling the stacks. “Indeterminate! Mendacious! Vestibule! Tits, testicles, aluminum, heliotrope, narcolepsy !”

The vocabuvore panted in pleasure, gorging itself on the stream of fresh words. Its stomach doubled in size, tripled, becoming a sack of flab that could have supplied fat for ten thousand candles. Inch by inch, it surged outward and upward. Its head bumped into the stone ceiling and it glanced up, as though realizing for the first time just how cramped its quarters were.

“Adamant,” cried Laszlo, backing away from the creature’s limbs, now as thick as tree trunks. “Resolute, unyielding, unwavering, reckless, irresponsible, foolhardy!”

“Noooo,” yowled the creature, clearly recognizing its predicament and struggling to fight down the throes of ecstasy from its unprecedented feast. Its unfolding masses of new flesh were wedging it more and more firmly in place between the floor and the heavy stones of the overhead gallery, sorcery-laid stones that had stood fast for more than a thousand years. “Stop, stop, stop!”

“Engorgement,” shouted Laszlo, almost dancing with excitement. “Avarice! Rapaciousness! Corpulence! Superabundance! Comeuppance! ”

“Nggggggh,” the vocabuvore, now elephant-sized, shrieked in a deafening voice. It pushed against the overhead surface with hands six or seven feet across. To no avail—its head bent sideways at an unnatural angle until its spine, still growing, finally snapped against the terrible pressure of floor and ceiling. The huge arms fell to the ground with a thud that jarred Laszlo’s teeth, and a veritable waterfall of dark blood began to pour from the corner of the thing’s slack mouth.

Not stopping to admire this still-twitching flesh edifice, Laszlo ran around it, reaching the collapsed bookcase just as Lev did. Working together, they managed to heave it up, disgorging a flow of books that slid out around their ankles. Laszlo grinned uncontrollably when Casimir and Yvette pushed themselves shakily up to their hands and knees. Lev pulled Yvette off the ground and she tumbled into his arms, laughing, while Laszlo heaved Casimir up.

“I apologize,” said Caz, “for every word I’ve ever criticized in every dissertation you’ve ever scribbled.”

“Tonight we will get drunk,” yelled Lev. The big lizard’s friendly slap between Laszlo’s shoulder blades almost knocked him into the spot previously occupied by Yvette. “In your human fashion, without forethought, in strange neighborhoods that will yield anecdotes for future mortification—”

“Master Molnar!” said Yvette. In an instant, the four aspirants had turned and come to attention like nervous students of arms.

Molnar and Astriza were supporting each other gingerly, sharing Molnar’s staff as a sort of fifth leg. Each had received a thoroughly bloody nose, and Molnar’s left eye was swelling shut under livid bruises.

“My deepest apologies,” hissed Lev. “I fear that I have done you some injury—”

“Hardly your fault, Aspirant Bronzeclaw,” said Molnar. “You merely served as an involuntary projectile.”

Laszlo felt the exhilaration of the fight draining from him, and the familiar sensations of tired limbs and fresh bruises took its place. Everyone seemed able to stand on their own two feet, and everyone was a mess. Torn cloaks, slashed armor, bent scabbards, myriad cuts and welts—all of it under a thorough coating of black vocabuvore blood, still warm and sopping. Even Casimir—No, thought Laszlo, the bastard had done it again. He was as disgusting as anyone, but somewhere, between blinks, he’d reassumed his mantle of sly contentment.

“Nicely done, Laszlo,” said Astriza. “Personally, I’m glad Lev bowled me over. If I’d been on my feet when you offered to feed that thing new words, I’d have tried to punch your lights out. My compliments on fast thinking.”

“Agreed,” said Molnar. “That was the most singular entanglement I’ve seen in all my years of minding student book-return expeditions. All of you did fine work, fine work putting down a real threat.”

“And importing a fair amount of new disorder to the stacks,” said Yvette. Laszlo followed her gaze around the site of the battle. Between the sprawled tribe of slain vocabuvores, the rivers of blood, the haze of thaumaturgical smoke, and the smashed shelf, sixty-one Manticore Northwest looked worse than all of them put together.

“My report will describe the carnage as ‘regretfully unavoidable,’” said Master Molnar with a smile. “Besides, we’ve cleaned up messes before. Everything here will be back in place before the end of the day.”

Laszlo imagined that he could actually feel his spirits sag. Spend all day in here, cleaning up? Even with magic, it would take hours, and gods knew what else might jump them while they worked. Evidently, his face betrayed his feelings, for Molnar and Astriza laughed in unison.

“Though not because of anything you four will be doing,” said Molnar. “Putting a section back into operation after a major incident is Librarian’s work. You four are finished here. I believe you get the idea, and I’m passing you all.”

“But my book,” said Laszlo. “It—”

“There’ll be more aspirants tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that. You’ve done your part,” said Molnar. “Aspirant Bronzeclaw’s suggestion is a sensible one, and I believe you deserve to carry it out as soon as possible. Retrieve your personal equipment, and let’s get back to daylight.”