Spellbreaker by Blake Charlton Read Free Book Online

watching for whatever Holokai might have seen flying between the Standing Islands. Seeing nothing but moonlit limestone, she turned back to divinity complex.
    â€œSo, you think that under the right circumstances—perhaps if deconstructing you would benefit our cause—I could become that ruthless?”
    Dhrun took both of her shoulders in his upper hands and looked into her eyes. “I know what our cause means to you. I know how much you have suffered.” He paused. “And, given how much I believe in our cause, part of me hopes that, if it would mean victory, you would be that cold and calculating. So if I may, I’ll turn the question around: Do you think you could be that ruthless?”
    Leandra made her expression as blank as her heart felt.
    Slowly, he nodded. “I thought so.”

 
    CHAPTER FOUR
    There was only one problem with Nicodemus’s metaspell: Wherever he cast it, prayers were answered.
    Literally.
    In league kingdoms, five thousand or so humans praying about a specific need incarnated a deity dedicated to that need’s resolution. The goals that helped answer those prayers became a deity’s “requisites.” Satisfying such requisites caused prayerful text to be cast from ark stones to deities, bestowing power and pleasure.
    As a result, Nicodemus’s metaspells created disciplined armies led by war goddesses, artisans trained by sly deities of skill, crops protected by jovial—if not always sober—harvest gods, and so on. The “divine mob” or “god mob,” as they were called when tongues were in cheeks, had made the league as powerful as the empire. The problem was that some human prayers, and therefore some gods of the mob, were malignant. The problem was the proliferation of neodemons.
    And it was one hell of a problem.
    Neodemons were far weaker than the true demons of the Ancient Continent, but they could nonetheless manifest all the malicious potentials of the human heart. And thirty years of hunting neodemons had lead Nicodemus to believe that such potentials were nearly infinite in variety and ingenuity.
    *   *   *
    Nicodemus opened the doorflap and stood amid a dark camp—round tents, a cooking fire gone to ash and embers. On three sides, nightblack jungle climbed up to starry groves of sky. Just beyond the camp, a sandy riverbank formed a cove where five river barges had been moored. A gap stood between the first and the third boat like a missing tooth.
    Roughly sixty yards out on the mile-wide river floated the stolen barge. Three stranger vessels—a riverboat and two canoes—were lashed to the barge. Several figures moved between them: humans, or at least humanoids, probably piratical devotees of the River Thief.
    Nicodemus groaned. After arriving in Chandralu twenty days ago, he had learned that Leandra had failed for a year to dispatch two neodemons—one a monkey goddess of brigands, attacking caravans south and east of the city; the other, a water god known as the River Thief, was stealing cargo from the Matrunda River merchants between Chandralu and the ancient Lotus capital of Matrupor.
    None of the merchants had realized they were the River Thief’s victims until they docked in Chandralu and discovered their merchandise had been replaced with river stones. The merchants had tried setting guards, changing routes, employing mercenary divinities, but nothing deterred the River Thief. More disconcerting, Leandra had twice led investigations to Matrupor without uncovering a clue as to how the pirate god achieved such spectacular larceny.
    Hearing this, Nicodemus had suspected one of Leandra’s officers was corrupt and informing the River Thief. So Nicodemus had told both Leandra and the Sacred Regent of Ixos he would hunt the monkey neodemon when, in fact, he had secretly led several barges filled with Lornish steel up river to Matrupor, hoping that the River Thief would mistake him