Authors: Blake Charlton
Even from his present distance, he could see the designs the Chthonic people had scored into the mountain’s face. To the left of the Spindle were outlines of ivy leaves; to the right a geometric pattern—three squat hexagons stacked one atop another and flanked by two taller hexagons.
The carvings made him think of the fabled Heaven Tree Valley. Some stories said the Chthonic people had escaped the Neosolar Empire by following the Spindle Bridge to a valley where the flowers bloomed as large as windmills and the mushrooms grew as wide as pavilion tents. With a sigh, Nicodemus looked down at his book.
But he could not find the book.
In his hands sat a lump of bloody clay.
With a cry, Nicodemus dropped the wet mass. It struck the bridge stones with a plop. He tried to step back but his legs wouldn’t move, nor would his arms. The blood and clay blackened until it seemed to be made of the night’s starry sky.
Slowly, the dark mass crept onto Nicodemus’s feet. The oil coated his ankles and made them dissolve. He fell like a toppled statue.
His jaw struck the bridge stones, mashing his molars down on his tongue. Salty blood filled his mouth.
He shrieked as he felt the oil spreading up his legs, his torso, his neck. The sky went black and descended like a sheet. His skin began to rot into large gray scales. The bridge stones trembled and then dissolved into waves that stretched out to the horizon and became the ocean.
Blood seeped from between the patches of Nicodemus’s skin. Bones erupted from his back to form wings. His throat convulsed and then stretched out. His rotting skin hardened into rubicund scales.
And then Nicodemus was aloft, pushing his wings down through thick ocean air. Before him flourished the dawn’s golden effulgence. But he wassomething brighter still. If others could see him now, then all would bask in the splendor of his broad chest, golden eyes, ivory teeth. His tail shook like a streamer in the air.
On the horizon, a dark strip of land emerged and became an urban silhouette. Nicodemus had never seen the place before but knew it well. The city encrusted a half-moon bay like a scab around a sore. Further inland stood five hills. Even from this distance, Nicodemus could see the citadel’s crumbling marble walls. Behind and above this memory of the ancient world, the Neosolar Palace towered high, its magically polished brass reflecting the red sunrise.
Suddenly the world froze. Nicodemus, wings outstretched, hung perfectly still in the air. Somehow he had become more than one person. He was now an old fisherman looking up from the harbor at the strange flying creature. He was also a beggar girl gazing up from an alley at a cube of solid blackness hovering in the sky. And yet he was also a young wizardly apprentice, far away and asleep in the Drum Tower.
But then a blaze of irrational hatred ignited inside of him. The world unfroze and he was again a glory of claws, wings, teeth.
He dove. The air screamed past as the city rushed up at him. The moment before impact, he flared out his wings and whipped his hind legs around and into the palace. His claws struck the roof, making stone and metal splash into the air like water drops. Working his powerful wings, he exhaled a plume of fire into the palace’s open wound.
It took eight more diving passes to topple the central tower. Now the sun was up, but the smoke from his destruction dimmed its brilliance to a burning haze.
The first attackers were insignificant beings, as helpless as the ants they resembled with their metal armor and swarming regiments. They came screaming up from the city. Against his scales, arrows produced only pinpricks of pain. He climbed high into the air, then stooped into a sharp dive. The soldiers bristled with spears and pikes. But at the last moment, he fanned his wings and veered right. With claws extended, he struck a wall.
The falling debris crushed most and sent the others fleeing. Perched atop the crumbling wall, he ended each remaining life with a thin jet of fire.
When he took wing once more, an arc of silvery Magnus leaped up from the citadel and struck him just above his right foreleg. The blow sent him plummeting toward the ground. It was only with a desperate working of wings that he stayed aloft.
Slowly, he regained altitude and turned toward the citadel. As he approached, a second textual blast erupted from the walls. Now prepared, Nicodemus ducked under the spell and dove toward the huddle of wizards who had been casting the attack spells.
A few of the black-robes fled, but most held their ground and cast up a wall of text. A single tail lash shattered the shield, leaving the wizards sus-ceptible to his breath.
In savage celebration, he toppled another wall and loosed a roar that rattled his teeth.
But then the world exploded into strange fire. All around him, gouts of orange-black flame gushed from the toppled stones. Searing pain awoke his instincts. He leaped into the air, but the fire rose with him. The undying flames flickered and snarled in the wind of his wing-beats. What strange magic was this?
Nicodemus bellowed.
Then he saw them peering from behind light-bending subtexts—a whole caucus of pyromancers in their orange robes.
An ambush! He had flown straight into a spell written in the fire-mages’ pyrokinetic language. Now the malicious text was burning into his scales, turning his glorious body into ash.
Panicked, Nicodemus worked his wings. To the east, the ocean gleamed in the morning light. The sea! Perhaps it could quench the textual fire.
With a few powerful flaps, he was away from the citadel and high above the city’s mercantile heart. But the spellwrights would not let him go so easily. A burning lance of yellow light tore into his right wing. The spell shattered the fourth phalangeal bone and opened a hole in the wing’s membrane. A second spell smashed into his belly and sent him faltering down toward the city.
He screamed out terror and flame. Five excruciating wing-strokes stopped his fall and renewed his sprint for the sea.
Slowly he realized that the ocean could no longer save him. Each painful stroke tore a larger hole in his left wing. Once in the sea, he would not be able to regain flight. He would be an easy target for the human warships. Worse, he might not reach the ocean; one more spell would send him crashing down into the city.
But the moments stretched on; each wing-beat flooded his mind with agony. He was not a mile from the estuary now, and still the fire-mages withheld the killing blast.
A realization took shape: the spellwrights would not finish him while he was above their precious city. They knew that his burning carcass would loose a civic wildfire and destroy their gleaming domes, their precious towers.
His broad, serpentine self shook with fury. Why should he die languishing in the waves? Anger cooled his mind and sustained him long enough to turn back toward the buildings.
If he had to die, then so would they.
But then the world froze again. He hung motionless in the air. Again he became more than one person—a beggar girl hiding in an alley, a soldier’s wife screaming at the sight of the burning palace, an aged fisherman praying for salvation.
But his anguish and pain grew and the world leaped back into motion.
So down he fell with folded wings to set the city burning. The textual flames roared and then guttered while the city lay quietly in the light of morning. Soon the world would see his terrible beauty in all its glory.
So down he fell and struck with violent fury. His impact shook the earth and set every city bell ringing…ringing…ringing…
Ringing…ringing…ringing…
High above the Drum Tower, in the belfry of the Erasmine Spire, an apprentice had spotted the first ray of daylight and begun tolling the massive dawn bell.
Nicodemus, still half-asleep in his cot, came fully awake with a start.
Cold sweat covered his body and made him shiver. His ragged pillow displayed a dark stain. He wiped his mouth and found it encrusted with dry blood. He must have bitten his tongue during the nightmare.
In the wan light he fumbled around on the floor for his clothes. The dream haunted him still; its every image, from bloody clay to the burning city, flickered before his eyes.
After he pulled off his shirt and wiped off the sweat, the crisp autumn air made him hurry to pull on a clean shirt. From outside came the flapping of pigeon wings. Shaking his head, he tried to dislodge the dream as he pulled aside his long hair and tightened his robe’s laces at the back of his neck.
“Only a nightmare,” he muttered, pulling on his boots. “Only a nightmare,” he repeated as he washed his face.
His eyes stung and his body would not quit shivering; the strange dream had prevented his sleep from being restful. Nothing for it but to keep moving.
By the dawn bell’s last ring, he was jogging down the Drum Tower’s steps toward breakfast.
It was early still and, blessedly, the refectory was nearly empty. Nicodemus never knew where to sit when the hall was crowded. It usually came to a bleak choice: eat with the cacographers and publicize his disability, or eat with the other apprentices and listen to conversations about texts he would never spellwrite. But today he could sit alone and enjoy a breakfast of yo-gurt and toasted brown bread.
Several seats to his right, a huddle of young lesser wizards sat gossiping. The orange lining of their hoods identified them as librarians. A few were debating how to disspell a bookworm curse, but most were whispering to each other with an urgency that suggested fresh intrigue.
Nicodemus leaned closer and caught a few details: a senior grammarian had failed to attend her evening seminar, and none of her students could find her. Some thought she had been sent to Lorn on a secret quest, another that she had jumped from a tower bridge; a few thought she had gone rogue.
Nicodemus wondered which grammarian they were talking about until one of the gossips noticed his eavesdropping and cleared his throat. He looked away.
To his left, two glassy-eyed apprentices were corresponding in a common magical language. Nicodemus watched the dim green text flit between the sweethearts.
Memories of long-ago breakfasts with Amy Hern drew a thin smile across his face. She hadn’t minded his misspelled correspondence. They had often laughed at some of the wilder malapropisms his cacography had produced.
But his smile faded when he thought about finding another woman who would want a lover whose prose was nearly indecipherable.
A moment later, John joined him and began wolfing down the first of his three bowls of oatmeal. “Good morning, John. How do you feel?”
The big man pretended to nod off into his bowl. “You’re sleepy?” Nicodemus guessed. John flashed him a lopsided smile. He put a hand on Nicodemus’s elbow.
“I’m sleepy, too,” the younger man said. “I dreamed I turned into a monster.”
“No,” Simple John said gently.
Nicodemus nodded. “I hope not.” He smiled. “John, does anyone else understand you as well as I do?”
“Simple John!” Simple John piped, brown eyes beaming.
Nicodemus nodded. “Yes, of course they do.” He patted his friend’s shoulder. “You can say more with your three phrases than I could manage with the grand library’s heaviest lexicon.”
Laughingly the big man said, “Nooooo-ooo.”
With a chuckle, Nicodemus stood up. “I have to hurry off to the old man’s study; I’ll see you tonight.” After returning his plates to the kitchen, Nicodemus left the refectory for the Grand Courtyard. It was a broad, grassy place covered with elm trees and slate-tiled walkways. Everywhere black-robed wizards strolled alone or in pairs. To the west, a horseshoe of blue-clad hydromancers stood around a statue. Nicodemus spotted a gaggle of snowy druid robes in the northeast corner. He hoped Deirdre wasn’t among them.
Cutting directly across the courtyard, Nicodemus gazed up at the airyheights of the Erasmine Spire, which at that moment was splitting a hapless cloud in two.
A lance of golden light burst from the tower’s peak and shot over the eastern mountains. Nicodemus stifled a yawn and wondered which grand wizard had cast that colaboris spell. Perhaps it had been a communication to some distant monarch or maybe even to a deity.
Nicodemus had nourished so many adolescent dreams of becoming a grand wizard—almost as many dreams as he had of becoming a knight errant. How wonderful it would have been to spend a life counseling monarchs and casting the resplendent colaboris spells that instantly carried information across vast distances. He rubbed his sleep-deprived eyes and wondered if he would ever earn even a lesser wizard’s hood.
Another dazzling colaboris spell arced over the northeastern mountains and silently struck the Erasmine Spire. An incoming message, he thought, and wondered where it came from. Abruptly a second colaboris spell flew in from the northeast to strike the Spire. Another golden blast followed on its tail.
Shocked, Nicodemus stopped. An outgoing spell erupted from the tower, this one heading north; it was answered instantly.
“Blood of Los!” he swore. Throughout the courtyard, all those fluent in Numinous stood amazed. Casting a colaboris spell required a vast amount of intricate text and therefore was done only with great justification. Usually that justification was gold; the Order maintained its great wealth by charging monarchs and deities exorbitant fees to cast the spells on their behalf. In fact, the Order had established an academy in Starhaven solely because its soaring towers and location made it an ideal relaying station. But not once had Nicodemus seen so many colaboris spells cast in such a short time. Something important must have happened.
Suddenly a flurry of the Numinous-based spells came raining in from several directions. Nearby wizards cried out in dismay.
The horizontal storm of spells went on and on until Nicodemus thought that every scroll must have been emptied and every grand wizard exhausted. But the golden barrage continued. Moments passed like hours. Then, as abruptly as it had begun, the magic tempest stopped, leaving the morning sky strangely dim.