Fellwroth began to write a Numinous disspell down the sand golem’s right leg. “I will edit you from the stasis, boy, so don’t squirm-” He jerked back in shock. “You!”
Staring down with a lopsided smirk was the big male cacographer whose mind Typhon had distorted.
“What is meant by this?” Fellwroth growled.
The big man’s mouth quivered. “Siii… Simple John show himself to north sentinels on road. T-th-they never have see Nico, so they believe John when he says he is Nico.” The big man exhaled as if saying so much exhausted him.
Fellwroth resisted the urge to grind the golem’s sandy teeth. “Don’t waste my time, oaf. If the sentinels come before I have answers, I’ll rip you in half.”
The cacographer started to stutter and struggle, but the stasis text kept the oaf spellbound. Fellwroth waited impatiently for what felt like a quarter hour before speaking. “All right, calm down. I won’t hurt you if you tell me what I need to know.”
The big man swallowed. “Nnnn… Nico sends John as messenger. Nnnn… Nico wants to have proof that red-eyes man is… t-t-telling the truth. Then Nico submit to… submit-t-t… to red-eyes man.” The oaf stopped to pant.
A soft crunch in his jaw filled the golem’s mouth with sand. “Blood and damnation,” he cursed and spat the sand out. He had been unconsciously grinding the golem’s teeth. “So what does the boy want?”
The oaf took a few breaths. “Red-eyes man is to go t-t-to place in Gray’s Town… no, Gray’s Village… no, Gray’s Crowing…”
“Gray’s Crossing,” Fellwroth snarled. “Hurry!”
The cacographer nodded. “Red-eyes-man is to find Mag-g-gister Shannon and is to fix broken person part of Shhhh… Shannon. Nico will be-”
A ratlike gargoyle scurried into the stable. “Fear! Fear! Took too long to reach you. Had to ask other gargoyles where to reach you.”
Fellwroth glared at the construct. “What is it? What did you hear?”
“Fighting in the Spindle!” the thing yelped. “Our protections torn apart! Living body under threat!”
Suddenly the stables rang with loud, hearty laughter.
Fellwroth looked up at the big man’s smiling face. “Fool! So willing to believe in my disability? You truly think I talk that slowly?”
A wordless, animal shriek escaped from Fellwroth’s sandy throat. The monster lashed out with the half-written disspell. But the unfinished text was too dull. It bounced off the stasis spell. Worse, the force of the rebound snapped the sand arm off at the shoulder.
“Weal!” Fellwroth shrieked, “I’ll tear your throat out for this, Weal!”
Fellwroth wrenched his spirit from the sand golem and sent it racing upward toward the Spindle Bridge.
Fellwroth’s true eyes snapped open to see Deirdre. Her rusted greatsword swung up above her head and then flashed downward with all her divine might.
Fellwroth flinched, but the blade came to a clanging halt as it struck the Magnus shield written above the black table.
Light from a hundred flamefly paragraphs illuminated the cavern. Previously Fellwroth had seen the place only in the dark.
The low ceiling sparkled with quartz chips. The cavern widened only a little way into the mountain. The floor was smooth and gray.
Boann’s ark-encased in Numinous-stood at the head of the table. Farther into the mountain, the cavern descended into myriad kobold tunnels. In the other direction loomed the entrance to the Spindle’s tunnel. A patch of starry sky shone through a hole the humans had torn into the tunnel’s roof.
With another screech, Deirdre’s greatsword crashed down onto the textual shield above Fellwroth. A plate-like paragraph buckled under the strain.
Suddenly the world flashed full of golden light, and Fellwroth realized that Shannon was standing beside Deirdre and dashing disspells against the shield. The blue parrot sat on the old linguist’s shoulder.
More terrifying, Nicodemus-standing at the table’s foot-was jamming his fingers into the shield. Blurry rings of misspelled prose radiated out from the whelp’s touch.
Fellwroth bellowed out his rage and terror. The attack had almost worked. If the big oaf had distracted him for a few moments more, the three humans would have broken through his shield and slain his body.
But now his left hand closed around the Emerald of Arahest. With a flash of heat, the gem bestowed the ability to craft infinitely detailed prose without error. When touching the artifact, a spellwright did not fear misspelling even when extemporizing the most complex text.
With a savage yawp, he punched a fist of incendiary Magnus sentences against the protective shield. The spell exploded outward with enough force to knock the three humans onto their backs.
Fellwroth leaped off the table and turned.
The avatar was the first to attack. She launched herself across the stone table and thrust out her greatsword.
Extemporizing through the emerald, Fellwroth wrote a fine Magnus lace and cast it from floor to ceiling.
Deirdre’s sword point stuck into the mesh. The blade snapped a single sentence but then turned. Shock widened the girl’s eyes as a force invisible to her twisted the sword out of her hands. Her body crashed into the mesh. The spell stretched but did not break. She fell awkwardly onto her shoulder.
Fellwroth wrote a thick Magnus chain and tied it around her neck.
Gasping, the woman grabbed the spell and heaved against it. Only the divine strength in her arms kept the text from crushing her neck. But that strength would not last long.
The cave flashed brighter. Fellwroth looked up to see Shannon cast a many-bladed Numinous spell. The parrot on the linguist’s shoulder screamed.
Though impressive for a human text, the spell posed no real threat. With a wave of his hand, Fellwroth extemporized a spray of Numinous disspells that ripped Shannon’s attack into fragments.
Shannon kneeled and slammed his fist against the ground, casting a tundern spell. Like subterranean lightning, the silvery bolt shot through the stone floor. It was meant to erupt into a geyser of crushing sentences. But Fellwroth stamped his foot on the incoming spell and shattered the text as if it were made of glass.
With a short laugh, Fellwroth wrote a thin Magnus net and with a wrist flick cast the thing around Shannon’s stomach. As the spell tightened, the wizard had to turn away to vomit out the logorrhea bywords that had filled his belly.
Through the emerald’s power, Fellwroth could see that the canker curse in the wizard’s stomach had consolidated. That would not do. Fellwroth cast a net of Language Prime that scattered twenty new cankers throughout the old man’s gut.
With another flick, Fellwroth cast a Numinous censor spell around Shannon’s brain. When the text dug into the wizard’s mind, the old man collapsed and left his parrot to flap in short circles.
Something struck Fellwroth’s head. The world spun for a moment but then stopped, leaving only a ringing in his left ear. Some kind of subtextualized censoring spell? Fellwroth turned to see Nicodemus’s face twist with rage. The boy had written several white sentences around an ancient codex and was using them to float the open book beside him.
The whelp must have attempted a censoring spell in a language Fellwroth did not know. “So here you are in all your glory, Nicodemus. The heir to the Imperial family and you’ve got nothing to write but cacographic mush.”
The boy pulled back his right fist as if to make a second attempt. Amused, Fellwroth raised his palm, ready to disspell the boy’s text into nonsense.
But no spell formed in Nicodemus’s hand. The boy lunged forward and slammed his knuckles into Fellwroth’s jaw.
The brief contact with the Nicodemus’s skin showed Fellwroth a glimpse of the boy’s past-a beautiful woman with long brown hair, reading.
Not caring what private memory was now flashing through Nicodemus’s mind, Fellwroth cast a voluminous Magnus wave that knocked the boy back onto the stone table. The boy’s spellbook struck the tabletop and lay open b
y his hip.
“There shall be no more!” Fellwroth bellowed, and raised the emerald. “Today, Nicodemus Weal, your mind shall be splintered.”
A wafer-thin Numinous paragraph grew from the emerald to become the thinnest of blades. Fellwroth stepped forward and swung the textual sword down.
Desperately, Nicodemus lurched backward but found his hands useless on the slick tabletop.
Fellwroth’s arm flashed through the air, but when the blade was an inch from Nicodemus’s brow, a blast of crimson light burst from Boann’s ark and struck Fellwroth’s hand.
The blow was not strong, but it was enough to pry the emerald from Fellwroth’s pale fingers.
The gem dropped.
The instant Fellwroth lost contact with the emerald, the Numinous blade misspelled into dull sentence fragments that splashed harmlessly into Nicodemus’s face.
“No!” Fellwroth bellowed.
The green stone fell quietly onto the boy’s chest.
In that moment, Fellwroth recognized the emerald’s betrayal: it had somehow told Boann’s ark when and how to pull it free.
The boy’s hand flew up to his chest and closed around the emerald.
AS AMADI AND Kale hurried to the stables in the Spirish Quarter, the secretary explained about Simple John’s appearance and the golem attack.
To Amadi’s profound relief, two of the provost’s officers-the rector and the dean of libraries-followed close behind. They were coming from a closed meeting in which Amadi had tried to explain the events of the past two days to the provost. It had not gone well. Blessedly, Kale had saved her with urgent news.
By the time they reached the stables, two of her sentinels had edited John out of the stasis spell. Though they had censored the big man, they had also sat him down on a stool and brought him a cup of water.
“John,” Amadi said when she stood before the cacographer. “Where are Shannon and Nicodemus?”
He pursed his lips and looked at her with narrowed eyes. “You wouldn’t believe,” he said slowly.
“I know about the golem,” she said curtly. “Blood of Los, but I know about the golem! And I have a day, maybe two, to prove that the creature exists or the provost will censor magical literacy out of my mind.”
The big man thought about this before nodding. “Nico and Magister have gone to attack the golem’s author in the Spindle Bridge.”
Amadi took a long breath. “That’s a long way off. And forming a party will take time.” She stopped. “You said ‘in’ the bridge?”
“Go there,” said John. “You will see what I mean. Only…” He paused. “Only take all your spellwrights… and all your strongest words.”
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Nicodemus saw no dazzling flash, felt no rush of power. Everything seemed the same.
And yet, somehow, he knew exactly what to do. His right hand tightened around the emerald and his left landed on the opened page of the Index.
His mind flashed into the Index’s starry sky to collide with tirade-an epic Numinous-Magnus spell possessing an aggressive and self-reflexive style.
A scriptorium of grand wizards would have needed a year to craft such a versatile text without error.
But when Nicodemus forged within the emerald, perfectly formed sentences exploded into his hand and spilled down his arm. In the next heartbeat, he blazed from toe to tongue with violent language.
The spell’s dazzling glare illuminated Fellwroth’s white-robed figure. The creature’s hood had fallen during the fight, and Nicodemus looked on his enemy’s face.
Limp white hair hung down to Fellwroth’s thin shoulders. His pale skin shone with a dull sheen like maggot’s flesh. His smooth jaw, hollow cheeks, and snub nose seemed human but strangely asexual.
Between the creature’s pale lips opened a maw filled with a hundred quivering tendons. His eyes gleamed red. His forehead presented a golden rectangle of flowing Numinous sentences.
With a backhand slash, Fellwroth cast a spray of needle-like disspells.
But Nicodemus threw out both hands and cast his tirade. The spell produced a Numinous sheet that enveloped the disspells and then discharged a Magnus sphere. This latter passage smashed into Fellwroth’s chest and knocked the monster to the ground.
Nicodemus leaped up from the table and cast a thousand filaments of intertwined Numinous and Magnus.
Though sprawled on the floor, Fellwroth thrust his right hand upward to produce another spray of disspells.
But Nicodemus’s tirade was too cogent. The filaments darted through Fellwroth’s disspells and unwound.
The Magnus tirade coiled around the creature’s body, binding his arms to his side and wrapping his legs together. The Numinous tirade spun a web around the monster’s mind, cutting him off from all magical language.
“Hold!” Fellwroth cried. “I yield!”
Nicodemus stood over his spellbound foe expecting to feel triumphant. But the only emotion he felt was uncertainty.
Just what in the Creator’s name happened now?
Though tirade’s glow had faded, the remaining flamefly paragraphs provided ample light. Nicodemus looked around and saw Deirdre lying on the floor. She was struggling against the Magnus chains contracting around her neck.
Nicodemus caught the text between thumb and forefinger. Using the emerald, he gleaned the spell’s structure and edited two passages. A link snapped, and Deirdre yanked the thing from her throat.
Across the cavern, Shannon was lying motionless on the ground. Azure stood beside him, trying to pluck Fellwroth’s censoring text out of the old man’s mind.
Nicodemus thought for a moment and then extemporized a vinelike Numinous disspell. He cast it onto Shannon with an underhand toss. The disspell grew up the old man’s body and delicately removed the censoring text.
Groaning, Shannon began to stir.
A smile crept across Nicodemus’s face as his self-doubt began to fade. Without the emerald, he would have misspelled such a text within moments. He was whole now, complete.
“You cannot kill me,” a voice rasped. “Without me, Shannon will die.”
Nicodemus turned back to see a spellbound Fellwroth glaring at him with baleful red eyes.
“Only I can disspell the old wizard’s canker curses,” the creature rasped. “I spread dozens more throughout his gut. You need me. Only I can teach you how to remove them. Only I can teach you the meaning of Language Prime. You will never understand that life is made of magical text and-”
Nicodemus flicked a Magnus gag across the monster’s mouth.
He went to Shannon. The old man was on his hands and knees, vomiting another glowing pool of logorrhea bywords. Threads of blood now coiled within the silvery text.
It seemed that Fellwroth had told the truth about planting more curses in Shannon’s body.
“No,” the old linguist sputtered while trying to wave Nicodemus away. “Find out about the Disjunction. Question the monster.”
Nicodemus scowled. “Magister, hold still. I have to disspell your curses.”
“Later,” Shannon grunted. “The sentinels will be here soon. We must get Fellwroth to-”
“Magister!” Nicodemus snapped. His voice was firm though his hands had gone cold with fear. “Be quiet and hold still!”
The wizard sat on his haunches. “Very well, but hurry. We don’t have long.”
Nicodemus had to touch the old man to disspell the curses. But as he reached for his teacher’s cheek, his hand froze. It was shaking.
“I’m not the Storm Petrel anymore,” he whispered to himself. “I won’t curse him. I’m the Halcyon now.”
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. He had the emerald. His doubt and fear should have vanished with his disability.
“I am the Halcyon now,” he assured himself and pressed his palm against his teacher’s cheek. The old wizard drew in a sharp breath.
Suddenly Nicodemus was looking through Shannon’s skin and sinew to the old man’s stomach.
It was not pink flesh he saw, but the cyan glow of the organ’s Language Prime text. Five knobs stood out on the otherwise regular folds. They glowed brighter than the rest of the stomach.
Nicodemus set about disspelling the cankers. It was difficult work; Fellwroth had cruelly restructured Shannon’s Language Prime prose. Worse, the old man flinched every time Nicodemus made a major textual change.
“Is it done?” Shannon asked when Nicodemus removed his hand. The pain had made his face shine with sweat.
“I disspelled the worse curses around your stomach, but I saw smaller cankers on other organs. They’re not growing quickly. And I want to study them more before-”
“Disspell them later,” Shannon said while restoring Azure to her perch on his shoulder. “We haven’t long before Starhaven realizes we’re here and comes for us.”
Nicodemus helped his teacher stand. “Why do we need to worry about the other wizards?”
Shannon took a step on unsteady legs. “When the provost learns the truth about you, Nicodemus, we’ll land in the largest embroilment in the history of academic politics. If we want to avoid becoming the provost’s political prisoners, we must learn everything we can from that monster.”
Nicodemus turned to look at Fellwroth, still spellbound and lying on the floor.
Deirdre had picked herself up and gone to Boann’s ark. Fellwroth had written a Numinous shield around the object, but the avatar had forced her arms through the prose to lay her hands against the stone.
The contact seemed to be strengthening the ark; a red aura was growing around the stone and gradually deconstructing Fellwroth’s Numinous shield.
“Monster, I’ll have the truth from you.” Shannon limped over to stand above Fellwroth. “What do you know about the Disjunction?”
The creature glared with bloody eyes. When Shannon disspelled the gag, the thing laughed. “With what do you threaten me, Magister? Torture? Death? Neither will work. You, old goat, will never have my obedience.” The bloody eyes swiveled to Nicodemus. “But the boy might.”
Nicodemus frowned. “What are you playing at?”
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