Shannon, now standing in a separate protective spell, nodded to Nicodemus and rolled his shield toward the chamber’s other side. Just before the wizard disappeared into the storm of deconstruction, Nicodemus saw him cradle the Index in his right arm and open its cover.
“Nicodemus, how could you have been so careless?” Smallwood squawked, finishing the seal on their protecting spell.
The shield had shrunk. Nicodemus had to crouch, his head tilting to one side as he pressed a hand to his cheek to stop the bleeding.
“Shannon trusts you cacographers too much,” Smallwood said in the harshest tone Nicodemus had ever heard him use. “You could have killed us. Could have killed us and deconstructed the Index!”
Nicodemus mumbled an apology.
“Well… show me that cut,” Smallwood said, his tone softening. “I’ll do what I can until Shannon can stitch you up with Magnus.”
Nicodemus dropped his hand and looked away. Spikes of pain lanced into his head as Smallwood scrubbed the wound with his sleeve; nevertheless, Nicodemus couldn’t suppress a small, self-satisfied smile.
“That stunt with the shield was exceedingly foolish and…” Shannon muttered to Nicodemus.
Four sentinels were accompanying them back to the Drum Tower, and one of the Northern spellwrights was now frowning at the old man.
Shannon waited for the Northerner to look away before finishing his sentence. “Exceedingly foolish, Nicodemus, and exceedingly brave.”
Nicodemus started to smile but agony lanced across his wounded cheek. Despite being placed with care, Shannon’s Magnus stitches were extraordinarily painful. “What did you learn?” he asked.
Sitting on Shannon’s shoulder, Azure raised her head to inspect the nearby sentinels. The party was now marching along a wide Spirish arcade in Starhaven’s northern quarter. Presently none of the sentinels was close enough to overhear.
“Nothing about a gem or emerald and Language Prime. And nothing about the Chthonics, ivy, or turtle shells.” Shannon paused. “I am sorry, Nicodemus; I just realized I forgot to search for remedies for cacography.”
A sinking sensation filled Nicodemus. “That’s not important right now. What of our enemy?”
A smile formed beneath the wizard’s short beard. “I discovered what manner of creature we face.”
Nicodemus turned to the grand wizard. “Magister!” he whispered before remembering himself and returning his gaze to the ground. “What is our enemy?” he asked more quietly.
“We face a golem,” the wizard whispered. “They are spells of the ancient world. According to the literature, no one has encountered or created one on this side of the ocean.”
“Los in hell,” Nicodemus quietly swore. “So we face an author with knowledge of the ancient texts. Perhaps a demon-worshiper after all. What else, Magister? What kind of construct is a golem?”
Again Azure examined the sentinels; they were still too far to overhear. “To create a golem text,” Shannon whispered, “an ancient spellwright had to convert his mind into complex text called a ‘spirit,’ which contained all of an author’s magical and mental abilities. This spirit was then invested into a golem body made of earth-most were clay, but there was mention of metal or rock. While animate, a golem is not a construct but a living creature. A golem’s durability depended on its substance: an iron golem would outlive a brass golem, a brass golem would outlive a mud golem, and so on. But the sturdier the golem, the more text and time it required to form.”
Nicodemus held his tongue as a turn in the arcade brought a sentinel within earshot. Only when the man had moved away did he reply: “And that’s why cutting off the murderer’s arm didn’t slow him down?”
Shannon nodded. “The author’s spirit simply disengaged from the wounded body and then formed a new one. But from what I understand, any golem entering Starhaven would suffer from the stronghold’s Chthonic metaspells. A clay golem shouldn’t last five hours in this place. And one couldn’t spellwrite within our walls.”
Nicodemus eyed the nearest sentinel. “So the malicious author is not in the stronghold. He could be anywhere.”
“Anywhere close by,” Shannon corrected.
Fear began to cool Nicodemus’s excitement. “We must find the author himself. We could slay the man or creature or whatever it is while its spirit is still in the golem.”
Shannon shook his head. “If we knew where the author’s body was hidden, we could do just that. But we’ve no way of finding the fiend.”
“But then how can we fight it?”
Shannon started to reply but then stopped as the sentinels stepped in close. Ahead of the party stood the entrance to one of the long halls that separated the Spirish Quarter from the Imperial Quarter. The Drum Tower wasn’t far off now.
Once inside the hall, the sentinels spread out, giving Nicodemus and Shannon enough room to whisper.
Shannon explained in a murmur: “If a golem deconstructs before its author’s spirit can disengage, then the author dies along with the body. Different golems have different vulnerabilities. Clay golems, being malleable, are impervious to all but the most severe crushing and piercing attacks. However, as I discovered, they can be easily cut.”
“But a golem made of granite?”
“Would be slower, stronger, and endangered by blunt attacks of sufficient force.” The wizard took Azure onto his hand. “Nicodemus,” he said loudly, “would you hold my familiar for a moment? I need to readjust my hood.”
Nicodemus held out his hand and was not surprised when the parrot pressed a short Numinous sentence into his palm. “Take a good look at that sequence,” Shannon murmured while pretending to fuss over his hood. “Do you think you could recognize it?”
Nicodemus shifted Azure to his other hand and squinted down at the line. If translated it would read, “nsohnannanhosn.” Nicodemus cleared his throat. “It’s your name written backward and then interdigitated with your name written forward?”
The old man chuckled. “You can’t spell out the ingredients for ham and eggs, but you can glean that?”
Nicodemus shrugged. “Order never mattered to me.”
“You may hand Azure back now,” Shannon announced for the sentinels’ benefit.
When Nicodemus obliged, the wizard whispered. “That will be my cipher for any broadcast I send. If anything should happen we can find each other using… what’s the matter?”
“I’m sorry, Magister, I know most apprentices can cast broadly, but I’ve never-”
“It’s a ball of short messages that’s cast into an ever-expanding sphere. Spellwrights use them to find each other when lost. They’re forbidden in Starhaven because of the confusion they’d cause. However, in an emergency, I’ll begin casting many of them so you can find me. Some will have the correct cipher, some a decoy cipher. Each one is an expanding sphere. You are to follow only the correct cipher to its source.”
The party climbed a short, wide stairway.
“One more thing,” the wizard said: “that furrow in my Numinous shield back by the Index, how did you make it?”
Nicodemus explained how he had deliberately used his cacography to misspell the shield’s smooth sentences into crinkled conformations. He didn’t mention the strange sensation of increased control he had felt when corrupting the text; that still confused and troubled him. So instead, he focused on how his misspelled sentences had pulled the furrow down into the shield and so distracted Smallwood.
Shannon raised his eyebrows. “You did that by misspelling?”
“No, Magister,” Nicodemus said, grinning despite the pain. “When I did that, I couldn’t have spelled more correctly.”
Shannon chuckled. “Well done, my boy.”
The party filed out through a door and into the Stone Court. Nicodemus was shocked to see that the Drum Tower’s main door and the ground floor windows were covered by blazing Numinous bars.
The old man explained: “The spells blocking the doors and windows are wards. They can be lifted b
y applying a key, much like a door’s passwords. I’ve convinced Amadi to give me a key. I’d like you to have a copy in case you need to leave the tower. If possible, I will send Azure with a key to your window tonight. Otherwise I’ll give you the key tomorrow.”
Nicodemus nodded. “The wards are to protect us cacographers from the murderer?”
“I wanted more, but the provost doesn’t want the convocation’s attendees to know about the murderer. I don’t know if the wards will stop an author capable of composing a golem. But there will be two sentinels guarding the tower. There will also be two of them watching my quarters. So at least we will be safe tonight.”
Nicodemus glanced at the old man. “But we haven’t talked about everything in my last nightmare. There’s the cave I saw with the body and the strange turtles and the hexagonal pattern at the end of the Spindle Bridge. Perhaps our enemy has something to do with the Spindle. Some door in the mountainside or something about moving the mountain…”
Shannon motioned for Nicodemus to quiet down. “I’ve thought of that too. But there’s nothing we can do tonight. Now we need to rest while it’s still possible.”
The old man paused. “Tonight I want you to pay special attention to your dreams.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
As before, Deirdre regained consciousness and found herself on the ground, crying as Kyran kneeled over her. But this time he had no caresses or soft words. This time his eyes were wide with fear. “Los in hell, Deirdre! Why did you send me away? Are you hurt?”
“No,” she gasped between sobs. “No, I’m… I’m fine.”
Magical willowisps floated about the room, shedding a soft blue-green light. She was still in the Chthonic cell where the creature had caught her. “The vision!” she whispered. “The vision returned.”
Kyran wrapped his arms around her and murmured that if she was not hurt everything would be all right.
“In the visions,” she said tremulously, “I was on the riverbank again, in the Highlands, and the white wolf came. It had a man’s head with burning red eyes. He…” She gulped down air. “He stabbed me somehow… and I came apart and floated down the river.”
“It was only a vision,” Kyran murmured. “What happened here?”
Haltingly, she told him how the creature had chased her into the cell and how she had fallen into a seizure just as the creature forced the cell’s door open. “But, Ky, why am I still alive? How have you found me?”
“I followed the sentinels to the ground level then back up to the Spindle Bridge, where they met Shannon. They reported his trick to no one. Shannon, the boy, and the sentinels went into a library too well guarded for me to follow.” He glowered. “Deirdre, you should never have sent me away! I could have-”
“Ky, you’re not listening!” She pushed his hands away. “Why am I still alive? Why didn’t the beast kill me?”
“Our goddess must have manifested herself directly in you, so you could slay the beast.”
Deirdre sat up. “What are you saying? That Boann is controlling me during my seizures? Why would she do…”
Her voice died as her eyes fell on the body lying along one wall. It was covered with a ripped white cloak.
“Perhaps,” Kyran whispered, “we won’t need to find its true body? Perhaps you slew the construct before the author’s spirit could disengage?”
From her current angle, Deirdre could see nothing of the creature’s head save the clay neck, which a single sword stroke had cleaved in two.
Standing on a tower bridge in the Imperial Quarter, the creature looked down at the Stone Court and the wizards standing guard before the Drum Tower.
“Sentinels for guards, Shannon?” he asked the air. “And wards on the doors and windows?” That would stop him from luring the boys out of the academy with dreams.
Now bolder action was needed.
Perhaps a direct attack? In the Stone Court he could spellwrite. That would let him kill the guards, disspell the wards, and move into the Drum Tower with a blade. But the sentinels might raise an alarm, or a guarding construct might attack when he was inside.
It was too risky.
He thought again about rewriting more of Starhaven’s constructs. He had already rewritten a gargoyle on the Erasmine Spire to spy on the wizard’s colaboris spells. And he had drafted a ratlike gargoyle with a large ear on its back. Perhaps he could corrupt a war-weight construct?
No, that would take too long.
The creature thought again about Shannon and pulled the back of his hand across his lips. The old human had gone to the sentinels, gaining protection but sacrificing freedom; the sentinels would now watch everything Shannon did.
This was not the intriguing counterstroke the creature had hoped for.
He thought about attacking the Drum Tower with his true body; that would be less dangerous than using a golem. Still, it was too risky. He should be able to devise a safer plan, especially now that he had encountered that girl in the druid robes.
Somewhere among the towers, a raven began to cry. The creature remembered that he still had to run down to Gray’s Crossing. “Wretched village,” he grumbled.
Leaning on the bridge’s railing, he narrowed his eyes and began to think. It was time to remove Shannon from play.
Deirdre turned over the clay head with her boot. Its face had been squashed flat against the floor. No distinguishing feature remained. Long fragments of what looked to have been hair lay scattered around on the dusty ground.
Next to her, leaning on his wooden staff, Kyran grunted. “Perhaps you killed the author along with the body?”
She shook her head. “We must assume the fiend lives. We should take the Peregrine to our goddess’s ark as soon as possible. The creature is aware of my presence now and may become more desperate.”
“We can’t reach the boy now with the sentinels guarding him. But they will keep him safe for the night. We should sleep.”
Deirdre looked at her protector. “Do you really think he is safe?”
He regarded her for a moment, his brown eyes nearly black in the green light of his spells. “We must sleep.”
When the idea came, the creature laughed out loud.
A cold wind was blowing over the tower bridge. Far below, in the Stone Court, several torches fluttered and winked. The two guarding sentinels pulled their black cloaks more tightly about their frail bodies.
The creature laughed again; the plan was brilliant. By enlisting the sentinels, Shannon had forged the tool that would be his undoing.
During the creature’s first encounter with Shannon, he had fled with Nora Finn’s research journal, hoping to find the boy’s name inside. The woman had been prudent enough to avoid that. But the creature still had the journal, and now was the time to use it.
His new plan to trap Shannon would be a challenge; he could not spellwrite within the libraries. However, he could cast texts into the libraries from outside. Entering the old fool’s rooms would be more difficult. He would have to sacrifice his present golem to place the book. Worse was the issue of time: the creature had to run down to the miserable village and back.
Still, it would be possible if he cast the curses immediately.
The creature turned and started for the nearest tower. He did not need to remove Shannon; the sentinels would do that for him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
When Nicodemus opened his common room door, the tapers were snuffed and the fire smoldering. Since leaving Shannon, his excitement and fear had faded. Now his empty stomach groaned, his wounded cheek throbbed, and his exhausted eyes stung.
“Fiery heaven,” he grumbled, picking his way across the darkened common room. What if he were not excused from apprentice duty in the morning? Would he have to avoid a golem while mopping-
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 be
d 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-”
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