Authors: Blake Charlton
Smallwood lectured on. “Now, about the Index, there is tremendous demand for the thing. The Council on Artifact Use must approve every query to make sure the book is never endangered. It is a difficult job, especially considering that, even though we know how to use the Index, we don’t know what makes it work. Its operative spells are written in an unknown language.” The wizard laughed. “There is also the matter of private libraries. Because the Index can search any codex within Starhaven’s walls, many grand wizards who illegally keep private libraries worry that their secrets might be discovered by rivals using the Index.”
The party continued with Shannon and Smallwood in the lead, Nicodemus in the middle, and the four sentinels trailing behind.
They reached the library’s rear wall and ventured into one of the many alcoves. Nicodemus had never noticed this particular inlet before. It stretched on for at least a hundred yards and seemed like a long, book-lined cave.
“You see, Nicodemus,” Smallwood said as they walked, “our research spell seeks to learn how the text around the Index works, for clearly the artifact possesses some form of textual intelligence. It might tell us much about quaternary cognition—how certain spells allow us to think with text. Some speculate the Index might be a Chthonic creation.”
Just then the party came to the cavern’s end and beheld a guardian spell sleeping in front of a wide metal door. The golden construct’s massive head rested upon her spherical Magnus passage. Slowly a single canine eyelid rose to reveal a burning eye. Suddenly the construct was on all fours, growling fiercely. Shannon tossed a thick stack of passwords at it.
The guardian snapped the text out of the air as if it were a ham steak. After a long distrustful stare, it bowed. Behind the spell, the door swung open to reveal a windowless room with stone walls. At the chamber’s center, a marble podium held the Index.
Polished brown leather covered the book’s face. Two brass bands wrapped around its spine, securing themselves to the board with three steel studs apiece. A single brass fore-edge clasp held the book shut, and trian-gular steel tabs protected its corners. As Nicodemus drew closer, he saw innumerable sunbursts etched into the brass. There was no ornate boss upon the face or jewels encrusted in the metalwork, but still it was one of the handsomest books he had ever seen.
After putting down his stack of manuscripts, Smallwood began to undo the buttons that ran down his sleeves, all the while instructing the sentinels to unload their books onto the empty shelves that lined the walls.
Shannon had already unbuttoned his sleeves to reveal arms that constant spellwriting had kept muscular in spite of his age. “Our research spell is named traseus,” he explained to Nicodemus. “It’s a Numinous and Magnus hybrid designed to visualize the movement of the artifact’s language as it searches for a mundane text. The only problem is that traseus is an expansive spell; that is why we need your assistance.”
Nicodemus cringed as he slipped his arms out of his apprentice sleeves. If Shannon and Smallwood required more runes than the two could produce on their own, it was going to be an onerous task indeed. He looked back at the sentinels, who presently were suffering one of Smallwood’s lectures. “Might we ask them to help?” Nicodemus asked Shannon softly.
“As fully invested wizards they would be offended. Besides I’d rather have them lounging about. If they become bored they’re more likely to be distracted.” He cleared his throat meaningfully.
Nicodemus nodded. “And how much of the spell has been written?” Most often grand wizards wrote long research spells over several days, storing subspells in scrolls or books. Then, at casting, they would peel off the subspells and splice them together.
“None,” Shannon admitted. “We’ve only drawn up outlines.”
“And how many runes will we require?”
“Several hundred thousand in each language,” Shannon said with asigh. “I’m sorry, my boy, but this might tire you.” He stepped closer, a green sentence conspicuously draped across his forearm.
Nicodemus took the common language spell and translated it: “
Don’t forget; your to distract Smlwd and wtch-hntrs.
”
Nicodemus whispered, “Yes, Magister. Do you have any ideas how to sidetrack them?”
The old man shook his head slightly. “Do you?”
Nicodemus’s heart beat faster. “Not yet.”
The traseus spell proved to be epic indeed. But Nicodemus could not help parse or analyze the text. The only thing he could contribute was strength. And to harness his strength, Shannon had composed the wordweave spell: a text he hoped would endear Nicodemus to other wizards.
To cast wordweave, Nicodemus arranged both the Numinous and Magnus alphabets into a grid of common language sentences. The linguists then used the grid to pull Nicodemus’s runes into their bodies.
As soon as a wizard withdrew a rune, Nicodemus forged a replacement and maneuvered it into position. Instantly a rune in the opposite alphabet disappeared—Shannon was writing in Magnus, Smallwood in Numinous—and Nicodemus would replace it, and then a rune in the other alphabet would disappear and so on for hours.
The first to tire of this were the sentinels. They paced or inspected the Index or the bookshelves. Two stepped outside to examine the guardian spell standing watch before the door.
During this time, Nicodemus forged in his arms and slipped the runes down to his fingers. But after two hours of dropping runes into place, his wrists began to ache. When he asked if they might break, Smallwood explained that traseus would be volatile until it was nearly complete; interrupting its composition early would make the spell deconstruct. They worked in silence for another hour.
Though he never found time to look away from wordweave, Nicodemus could hear the sentinels pacing. At one point, Shannon cajoled one of them into writing shields around the bookshelves—this to prevent a chain deconstruction if something went wrong with traseus. Toward dinner, a new set of Northern wizards replaced those on duty.
To vary his routine, Nicodemus began forging within his forearm. He rolled the characters down the back of his hand to a cocked index finger and then flicked the runes into the grid. This saw him through another hour. But then, in a moment of inspiration, he began forging within his tongue and spitting the runes into place. Unfortunately, Magister Smallwood found this distracting, so Nicodemus had to return to forging within his arms.
One napping sentinel began to snore.
Occasionally Smallwood or Shannon stood and placed a completed subspell near the Index. But because Nicodemus’s task was so demanding, he did not look up until the traseus spell was nearly complete; by then he was lightheaded and famished.
But the sight of the resplendent text filled him with so much wonder that it eased his discomfort.
Thousands of silver and gold sentences had been spun into a seven-foot-tall sphere. Rubbing his sore arm muscles, Nicodemus walked closer to admire its stunning detail: all across the spell’s globelike surface, Numinous and Magnus passages formed miniature streams that flowed like ocean currents.
The spell was stable but not yet seamless; in two places the text parted down a vertical slit. Shannon pulled back one of these as if it were a tent flap. Smallwood climbed into the spell and began editing the slits together.
Meanwhile Shannon shooed the sentinels out into the hallway. “Magisters, you are welcome to watch from a distance,” the old man said, “but we must have room to work.”
Nicodemus admired the traseus spell for a few moments and then the Index. Retreating to a stool, he discovered that his exhaustion and hunger had produced a headache. “Magisters,” he said, kneading his temples, “may I ask a question?”
“Of course,” Shannon said, now studying a luminescent passage he was forming in his deltoid and bicep.
“What are we going to search the Index for when the traseus spell is active?”
“Something of known location,” Shannon explained, sending the finished passage into his balled fist. “Specifically, Bolide’s ‘Treatise on Staffs, Wands, and Magical Advantage.’ All copies of which are resting on that scroll rack.”
Nicodemus saw the wisdom in this. “Might we search for something else when it’s finished?”
“Such as?” Smallwood asked. He was scrutinizing several Numinous passages he had fused and hung above the spell’s surface like a tiny cloud.
Nicodemus paused. “Such as possible remedies for cacography, researched at institutions other than Starhaven.”
“An excellent idea,” Smallwood said, plucking a sentence from a textual cloud. “But you must put it before the Council of Artifact Use. And they’re always busy.”
“But might I conduct a quick search once we’re done?” Nicodemus replied.
Smallwood changed two runes and looked up. “I’m sorry, what was that?” When Nicodemus repeated his question, Smallwood smiled and shook his head. “Oh dear, no. Rules are rules. And the council might not want a…” He paused to consider another sentence. “They might not want a cacographer using the Index.”
Nicodemus looked at the floor.
“I will apply for such a search,” Shannon said, “if you will search all Starhaven texts on the matter, and of course”—he coughed meaningfully—“after all pressing matters have been resolved.”
Nicodemus looked up. Shannon was scrutinizing a passage with his all-white eyes. “Thank you, Magister, I can promise you that I already have scoured the Starhaven libraries a hundred times.”
“Then I will apply.”
These words made Nicodemus feel giddy and lightheaded.
“Well, Agwu,” Smallwood said, while massaging his right hand with his left, “all the Numinous domains are aligned.”
Shannon smiled. “That means I’m holding the only two unconnected lines. My friends, let us pray to Hakeem.” The three men bowed their heads to the patron god of wizards. Outside the chamber, the sentinels looked on.
“Timothy, begin the search on the Index now,” Shannon said. He bound two sentences and dropped them into the globe.
Smallwood unfastened the Index’s fore-edge clasp. With a nod to Shannon, he opened the book, paused, then closed it, paused again, opened it again. He repeated this procedure over and over.
Each time he did this, the Index magically retrieved the information Smallwood sought. “Watch carefully,” Shannon said, sitting down next to Nicodemus. “The traseus spell should visualize the Index’s language.”
For a few moments traseus swirled sluggishly. But then the textual currents gained a windlike fluidity and blew around the textual globe in thousands of different currents. Faster and faster the spell spun until Nicodemus could no longer make out individual sentences. When Smallwood next opened the book, faint purple light flashed around the Index. The grand wizard yipped in joy as the traseus spell gained velocity.
But then something caught.
Several sentences became rigid. Lines snagged and split. Currents spun out of control and formed a linguistic hurricane in the spell’s lower hemisphere. The textual storm raged with percussive force, sounding miniature thunder cracks as it broke through stiff sentences. The purple glimmers around the Index disappeared.
“The text is deconstructing!” Shannon called to the sentinels. “Shut the vault!”
They needed little convincing; in the next instant the chamber door began to swing closed.
Shannon withdrew a scroll from his belt-purse and peeled a Numinous spell off its parchment. “Whatever happens, stay within this text,” the wizard instructed Nicodemus, casting a golden, spherical shield around him. As an afterthought, Shannon placed Azure on his apprentice’s shoulder.
A metallic clang reverberated through the room as the vault’s door shut. All was silent for a moment and then several traseus lines broke with a deafening crack. A feathery Numinous geyser spewed from the sphere’s upper pole, making the spell wrinkle like a winter apple.
With a backhand stroke, Shannon cast a Magnus lash against the spell and cut open a man-sized rift. “Timothy!” he called. “Get out now.”
Smallwood didn’t need to be told twice; he scooped up the Index and dashed out of the spell.
Together the linguists hurried back and edited themselves into the protective Numinous spell that surrounded Nicodemus.
Outside the shield, traseus collapsed and began to deconstruct violently. Decaying sentences flew about, striking the translucent shielding spell with jarring force. The three men silently watched the resplendent chaos. All were exhausted.
Unfortunately, their protective spell was no larger than a broom closet and they found themselves standing uncomfortably close.
“Nicodemus,” Shannon asked, buttoning up his sleeves, “what did you see when the spell was functioning?”
“Purple flashes around the Index.”
Shannon nodded. “As did I. What did you see, Timothy?”
“Nothing,” said the pale-faced wizard as he crouched on a stool, which was contained within the protective spell’s limited space. Both Nicodemus and Shannon stared at the Index lying in the man’s lap.
The air was cold, and so Nicodemus drew his arms back into his sleeves.
With a little shuffling, Shannon managed to turn back toward the vault. Ostensibly he was watching the deconstruction, but by patting Nicodemus’s shoulder, he furtively cast a common language sentence into the younger man’s chest.
Translating the line, Nicodemus read: “
Mst get Index frm Smllwd while valt is closed. Ideas?
”
Nicodemus had been staring out at the deconstruction with unfocused eyes. The message gave him a wild idea.
He handed Shannon a reply: “
Y have an other shield? Like this won?
”
Shannon nodded.
“
Get it redy.
”
Shannon pretended to cough. “When?” he grunted between hacks.
Nicodemus made a show of thumping Shannon’s back then grabbed the grand wizard’s robes and yanked down hard. Just before the old man fell sideways, Nicodemus cast an answer into his chest: “
Now!
”