His left shin slammed into something hard. Whatever it was clattered on the floor. “Blood of Los!” he swore. By feeling around with his hands, he discovered a chair’s square legs. The squeaking of a bed frame came from Simple John’s room.
Nicodemus righted the chair. “Bind those idiots for not cleaning up,” he growled. “When I—”
A door opened to spill a vertical beam of firelight into the darkness. “Simple John?” Simple John asked.
Nicodemus’s anger melted. “It’s all right, John. I just tripped.” The door swung wide to fill the common room with the shifting light of the big man’s fire. “John, I’m fine.”
Simple John inspected Nicodemus’s face with concern. “No,” he said while plodding over to his fellow cacographer. A powerful hand landed on Nicodemus’s shoulder.
“Really, John, the cut was just a research accident. There’s no need—”
“No,” Simple John said before enveloping Nicodemus in a hug. “Simple John,” Simple John said while mashing Nicodemus’s head into his chest.
At first Nicodemus leaned into the massive wall that was John and let his arms hang limp. But after a moment, he half-heartedly returned the hug. Simple John released him and said, “Splattering splud!”
“Splattering splud,” Nicodemus agreed. “That about describes my life: splattering splud.”
They exchanged goodnights and Nicodemus stumbled into his chamber. He’d forgotten to put the paper screen in the window and now the room was cold.
“Oh, hang it all,” he sighed and tossed the ignition words into the fireplace. Soon a flame danced among the logs and illuminated his room’s usual disarray. He untied his belt-purse and tossed it onto his cot.
At the sound of a knock, he turned to see Devin standing in the doorway. She was pinning a cloak about her shoulders and trying on different frowns.
“I heard you come in,” she grunted. “I’ve been put on nighttime janitorial duty. The bloody provost wants the refectory cleaned in the dark so that none of the foreign—blood and fire! What happened to your cheek?”
Nicodemus covered it with his hand. “Nothing. An accident during Shannon’s research.”
“Nico, don’t be stupid about wanting a linguist’s hood. If Shannon’s giving you work you can’t safely handle you should—”
“Dev, I’m fine.”
She held her hands up. “All right, all right. No need to be fussy. But it proves what I was saying about how Starhaven treats us. You think illiterates get cut up when doing their chores?”
Nicodemus sat heavily in on his sleeping cot. “And, Dev, I’m sorry about what I said today in the refectory—about your wanting to get married. I just assumed that because you gossip so much about who’s fooling around with whom…well, that—”
“It proves you’ve got donkey dung for brains, I agree,” Devin retorted. “But you’re not entirely worthless; everything you told me about Los becoming the first demon helped with Magistra Highsmith today.”
Nicodemus opened his mouth, but before he could make a sound she said, “Anyway, like I said, I have to go to janitorial in the refectory. I’ll be back at some unholy hour in the morning. It’s just you and John here tonight. The young ones are asleep despite all the excitement the sentinels outside caused.”
She ticked off a few obscenities about sentinels writing wards on their door. “I have to call out and wait for the guards to open the door.” She looked up. “You know why they’re bottling us up or why we’re not allowed to leave Starhaven?”
Nicodemus shook his head. He had promised Shannon his silence.
“Well, if any of the cacographic girls get upset tonight they’ll be coming to you. Think you can handle that?”
When Nicodemus said that he could, she left without closing the door. Tiredly he rose and shut it himself. When he turned back, he saw his newest knightly romance lying under his cot. A weak smile creased his lips.
After lighting a bedside candle and covering the window with its paper screen, he sat on the bed and retrieved the book. It was The Silver Shield.The peddler had wanted seven Lornish pennies for the romance; Nicodemus had talked him down to four.
It was a plain codex, leather-bound, without metalwork, and clasped with a simple rawhide cord.
Lightly, he ran his fingers down the spine and remembered the many long between-duties hours he had spent reading.
As the logs in the fire began to crackle, Nicodemus opened the cover and stared at the first line. He passed his eyes over it four times, but each time he saw the letters and not the words. His attention wandered to the illuminations drawn in the margins. Two mounted knights charged each other. A spear-wielding soldier battled a black, scaly-tongued monster.
He lay back, propped up his head on a pillow, and he rescanned the first line. But still his mind refused to read. Slowly, carefully, he traced a finger along the illuminations.
In the morning perhaps he would scold himself for sentimentality, but now his chest rose and fell with a slow sigh.
As a boy he had wanted to escape into such a story. In his dreams, he had populated the nearby woods with imaginary monsters that he could venture out to defeat.
He had wanted to don armor and clash with Tamelkan, the eyeless dragon, or Garkex, the horned firetroll, or maybe a neo-demon who distorted magical language for its own purposes. He had wanted to restore the peace, save the kingdom, be the hero.
One of these boyhood longings echoed through his heart now. Slowly he laid the open book on his chest. He closed his eyes and tried to find the dreams of youth.
He wanted to see a flock of birds, white as snow, flying high above bare stone peaks that surrounded a verdant valley. He wanted a sword on his hip and a chance to walk down into that valley at sunset. He wanted to find night resting on the waterfalls, golden firelight half-hidden in the human dwellings.
And so he fell slowly, gently into sleep. At first he dreamed of the things he had longed for, and he knew peace.
But then came the nightmare.
MAGISTRA AMADI OKEKE stifled a yawn as she began another circuit around the Dagan Courtyard with her secretary.
“But what if neither Shannon nor Nicodemus is connected to the recent deaths?” Kale asked, rubbing his eyes.
It was late and they had been discussing their investigation for hours.
As Amadi considered Kale’s question, she looked out into the courtyard. The wide rectangular space was illuminated by incandescent prose strewn along the surrounding spires and vaulting arcades.
Walkways divided the yard into quarters, each of which held flower gardens with a few stone benches tucked into shrub-lined alcoves. On some of these sat green-robed hierophants enjoying the crisp air after a night of treaty negotiation in stuffy libraries.
In the courtyard’s center stood a copse of aspen trees, their outermost leaves already autumn gold.
Amadi turned back to Kale. “It’s exceedingly unlikely that we will discover a delegate or another academic who wished Nora ill. That’s why we must focus on Shannon.”
Kale shook his head. “Magistra, you’ve always said a sentinel can’t afford to ignore unlikely possibilities. Shouldn’t we question more Starhaven wizards and foreign delegates?”
“Kale, you’re upset that I withdrew some authors from your investigations. But we are terribly shorthanded, and we must guard the Drum Tower and Shannon.” She exhaled in exasperation. “I’m still amazed by his story of a creature turning from flesh into clay.”
Kale shrugged. “Maybe the old man’s lost his wits.”
“Or maybe he only wants us to think he’s lost his wits. Or maybe Nicodemus truly is the Storm Petrel and has corrupted the old fool’s mind. It’s all too dangerous with those two.”
Kale looked at her. “And what of the provost’s request to post more sentinels around the delegates’ sleeping quarters?”
Amadi rubbed her eyes. “Sweet heaven, that’s right. If a delegate ends up dead, the provost will hav
e me skinned alive. But how can we come up with any more authors?”
“I’ve inspected the wards on the Drum Tower,” Kale said carefully. “It would take a master spellwright to disspell them. Perhaps the guards are superfluous?”
Amadi chewed her lip as they turned a corner. “Tempting, but no; we’ll leave the guards until I know more about Shannon’s story. There’s a chance he’s telling the truth.”
Kale said nothing.
Amadi looked back at the courtyard. “Starhaven must be the strangest bit of architecture humans have ever inhabited.”
“Why’s that?”
She gestured first at the courtyard in general and then at the aspen trees in its center. “Look at these interlacing arches, these brightly tiled fountains. We’d have to ride clear up to Dar for a better example of royal Spirish architecture. And yet at the center of all these minarets are aspens.Aspens! There should be palm fronds swaying in a sea breeze, not gold leaves quaking in thin mountain air.”
Kale smiled. “It is odd to think of the royal Spirish colonizing this place. They must have been miserable when it snowed.”
Amadi nodded. “Three kingdoms tried to remake this chunk of Chthonic rock in their image. All failed, and now we wizards play in the ruins.”
Kale chuckled. But before he could say what he found funny, the sound of running feet filled the courtyard.
Amadi turned around to see a young Starhaven acolyte skid to a halt. “Magistra Okeke, you’re to come to Engineer’s library immediately!”
Amadi frowned. “On whose command?”
The boy shook his head. “Don’t know her name, Magistra. A grand wizard, she wears a white badge and three stripes on her sleeves.”
Amadi swore. Only a deputy provost could wear such marks. “Take us there quickly,” she said.
The boy turned and ran. Amadi hiked up her robes and followed.
They pursued the young page through a blur of hallways to an archway large enough to admit seven horses running abreast.
Beyond sat an extraordinarily wide library. Long ago Starhaven engineers had filled the place with a row of limestone bridges that spanned the width of the room.
Along each arch stretched wooden facades decorated in the ornate Spirish style and converted into bookshelves. A labyrinth of traditional bookshelves flowed beneath the bridges like a river’s convoluted currents.
The place was alive with yelling librarians. Teams of black-robes rushed across bridges and among the bookshelves. A sudden, golden jet of Numinous prose exploded from one bridge and was quickly followed by a chorus of shouts.
“Mother ocean!” Kale issued the Ixonian curse. “What’s happening?”
Suddenly a nearby bookshelf burst into a molten ball of silvery Magnus. Amadi had just enough time to turn away and cover her face before a shockwave of fragmented prose and manuscripts struck.
When Amadi looked back, she saw a pile of rubble where the shelf had stood. “Firey blood of Los!” she swore. Amid the detritus now wriggled four pale-skinned constructs that took the shape of giant worms or grubs.
Each was roughly a foot long, possessing huge eyes and a segmented body. Just below each spell’s bulbous head sprouted three pairs of legs that ended in childlike human hands. More distressing were the bulging hind portions; in those segments speckled bits of half-digested text shone through their translucent carapaces.
“Disspell them before they reach a shelf!” Amadi barked and drew her arm back. Within moments she had filled her fist with a lacerate disspell.
Already the nightmare constructs were scurrying for nearby books. Their grasping, childlike hands moved them over the debris with alarming speed.
Beside her, Kale extemporized a spear made of common magical language. With an ululating war cry, he charged.
Amadi cast her disspell with her best overhand throw. The lacerate text—a whirling mass of Magnus shards—shot through the air to slice through a monster’s abdomen. The spell wailed as its carapace split open and disgorged its textual viscera.
Kale leaped over the deconstructing monster and gracefully thrust at the next worm. The thing jumped back to avoid the spear’s blade.
Kale, like many Ixoanians, was an excellent spearman. The instant his boots touched ground, he leaped and thrust again.
The worm retreated again but too slowly. Kale’s spearhead plunged into its abdomen. The thing shrieked and tried to pull away, but Kale had twisted his spear and caught the thing’s carapace with the spearhead’s barbs.
“Magistra,” he called, improvising a club of blunt passages. “By the bridge!” With a powerful club stroke, he split the construct’s head with a crack.
Amadi looked beyond the secretary and saw another construct scampering toward the bridge. By this time, she had composed another lacerate disspell. “Where’s the fourth?” she shouted. “Find it.”
As she had written it to do, her lacerate dispersed midair and bom-barded the unfortunate monster with a storm of blades. The thing clicked and squealed as it began to writhe into deconstruction.
“I can’t find the fourth!” Kale called. “I can’t find it!” He was turning around frantically, looking for the fourth monster.
Amadi’s heart went cold. Not eight feet behind him, one of the monsters had reached a bookshelf. It reared up on its abdomen and used its childish hands to pull a heavy codex from the shelves.
“Behind you!” Amadi shouted.
As Kale spun around, the giant worm opened the book. Its head unraveled itself into a cloud of glowing golden prose.
Kale lunged. But even as his spear whistled through the air, the creature jammed its textual head into the book. Instantly, the thing’s body textualized and dove into the pages.
Kale’s spear swung through empty air as the codex fell to the floor and snapped shut.
“Damn it! Get back from the book!” Amadi ordered. Kale deftly jumped away. She ran in and covered the infected codex in a thick Magnus shield.
“Magister, what’s happened?” a frightened voice asked. Amadi glanced up to see the boy who had led them to the library staring at Kale. She returned to swaddling the book with Magnus sheets.
“What were those things?” the boy asked.
Kale squatted down to look in the boy’s eyes. “Are you all right, lad? There’s no danger anymore, but we need to stand farther away.”
The boy nodded as Kale pulled him back. “What were they?”
“Bookworms,” Kale explained gravely. “Malicious language that invades manuscripts. They eat all the prose in a text and use it to make copies of themselves. When there are too many bookworms in a codex, it explodes. They use the explosion to spread themselves to other books.”
“And one of them got into that book?” the boy asked.
“That’s why Magistra is casting a containing spell around it. That will protect us if it bursts.”
Amadi had never encased an infected codex before, and so she was relieved when she glanced up and saw a small train of librarians rushing toward her. At their head strode an ancient grand wizard in a deputy provost’s robe.
“Sentinel Amadi Okeke of Astrophell, I presume?” the deputy provost boomed. She was a short, fat woman. A thin halo of white hair wreathed her wrinkled face. Her hood was lined with orange cloth signifying that she was a librarian. Given her rank, she was undoubtedly Starhaven’s Dean of Libraries.
“Yes, Magistra,” Amadi blurted, silently cursing herself for not learning this woman’s name.
The dean wasted no time. “What is this situation?”
“A violent deconstruction produced four class-four bookworm constructs,” Amadi reported. “Three curses were deconstructed but the last infected this codex.”
The ancient dean nodded to a librarian behind her. “Hand that to Magister Luro here. He’ll lift the curse or destroy the book.”
Amadi handed the infected codex to the young grand wizard who stepped forward.
The deputy provost studied her for
a moment. “Magistra, we are facing a bookworm infection unlike any I have known. Starhaven’s protective language is among the most robust in the world, and yet these curses have spread to four libraries. They are rapidly destroying invaluable manuscripts.”
The ancient woman shook her head. “They’ve tertiary cognition and their executive language confounds all but our most direct methods of deconstruction. Whoever wrote them has an astounding understanding of textual intelligence.”
“Textual intelligence?” Amadi repeated. That was Shannon’s specialty.
“Indeed,” the dean continued. “I must have all available sentinels under my command until this infection is contained. We cannot let the foreign delegates see this chaos. It would embarrass the academy.”
As if to punctuate her point, a massive silver ball blossomed on the farthest bridge. An instant later, a thunder-like boom shook the library.
Amadi flinched. “Yes, Magistra, right away.”
But the other woman was already striding off in the direction of the blast. Her train of librarians hurried after.
Amadi turned to her secretary. “Wake our sleeping authors and fetch those not fulfilling essential duties. They’re to report to her immediately.”
Kale raised his eyebrows. “Even those guarding the Drum Tower and Magister Shannon?”
Amadi took a deep breath. “Leave the two following Shannon, but pull the guards from Shannon’s quarters and the Drum Tower. We’ll put them back as soon as the infection’s contained.”
“Right away, Magistra,” Kale said and was off running.
CHAPTER
Twenty-four
Strangely, Nicodemus knew he was dreaming.
Around him seethed a tunnel of gray and black language—an endless, meaningless mash of written words. He was traveling down it. Magister Shannon’s voice sounded above him: “I don’t understand. Turtles?”
Then his own voice: “Look, that hexagonal pattern…”—the words became faint—“…of a turtle shell.”
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