Authors: Blake Charlton
A different voice responded. It took a moment for Shannon to recognize it as Kale’s. “The chances of the bookworm being wounded in just that way—losing its ability to subtextualize and its homing protocol—are very slight. You could have safely assumed you would never be identified. But unfortunately, Magister, chance conspired against you.”
Shannon snorted. “Or the true villain has fooled you into accusing me of his crimes.”
Amadi responded dryly. “We’ve searched your quarters more thoroughly than before. We swept the room for subtexts.”
Kale spoke. “We found a subtextualized chest strapped to your ceiling. It holds a fortune in Spirish gold.”
For a moment Shannon could not understand what he was hearing. How could the golem have gotten that much coin into his room? The thing couldn’t spellwrite within Starhaven’s walls.
“So who was it, Magister?” Kale asked. “What Spirish noble was paying you to disrupt this convocation and why?”
“Amadi, you’re making a grave error,” Shannon said hoarsely.
His former student let a moment pass before replying. “Did you know that Nora Finn was also taking bribes from a Spirish noble?”
He nodded. “I read of it in her journal.”
“Why did you not tell me?” Amadi asked.
Shannon scowled. “Because I was more concerned with convincing you of the true villain’s existence.”
Amadi let another silent moment pass. “Or perhaps you were glad to be free of a competing spy. Tell me, Magister, how did the Spirish gold come to be in your quarters?”
“It was put there.”
“By your clay monster? Impossible. As I told you: I had a sentinel watching your quarters. What’s more, all the doors and windows were warded and then protected by robust, bisecting texts. Even if your monster did sneak past my guards, the thing would have been cut in half at the waist. It would have had to hide the chest and escape with half a body.”
Shannon’s blind eyes widened. A clay golem could do just such a thing. “Amadi!” he blurted. “The thing must have done its spellwriting in the Bolide Garden and then used prewritten texts to sneak in and hide the chest. Search the surrounding area. Somewhere you’ll find a deposit of clay.”
“Magister,” Amadi said in a low tone, “the Bolide Gardens are being renovated. Do you want me to slop through all that mud for a lump of clay that looks like a monster?”
Shannon took a deep breath. The monster had planned well. After planting the research journal in his quarters, it must have thrown itself down into the garden. There the golem could have deconstructed amid the dirt piles.
But Shannon couldn’t convince Amadi of that. Not here at least. “So you suspect I’m a spy,” he said, changing tactics. “Do you also believe I killed Eric and Adan, my own students?”
The room grew quiet. “Some remember how vicious a politician you were back in Astrophell; more than one voice has suggested that—”
“That I murdered my own students to disrupt this convocation?” Shannon growled. “That I sold my soul to some illiterate lord? Amadi, I have never heard such a foul suggestion. And I’ll swear under any power you like that I—”
“The witch trial hasn’t begun yet,” her cold voice interrupted. “Do nothing rash. In this room stands every free sentinel under my command.”
Shannon began to respond but then stopped. “You mean, every sentinel but those you sent to guard the Drum Tower and Nicodemus?”
“Still trying to convince me that the clay man is after your cacographers?” Amadi asked. “I think you’d better hold your tongue, Magister. We have wards on the tower’s doors and windows. No one’s getting to a cacographer tonight. Besides, I couldn’t spare the spellwrights to guard the place if my life depended on it. The libraries need every free author to contain the bookworm infection. Unless of course, you can tell us how to eradicate the infestation?”
“I have nothing to do with the bookworms!” Shannon exclaimed. “You can’t leave the Drum Tower defenseless!”
No one replied.
Shannon was breathing hard. “Amadi, listen to me! When researching the Index today, I learned of an ancient construct called a golem which is made of clay but contains its author’s mind—”
“Magister, some of us here will help decide your witch trial,” Kale said. “It would help your cause if you refrained from saying anything foolish.”
Shannon realized that there would be no reasoning with the sentinels. He leaped for his bookcase, hoping to reach a stun spell he kept in a hidden scroll.
But before he had taken two steps, a wave of censoring language flashed toward him. Netlike texts wrapped around his mind.
The world seemed to spin and then the lines of glowing text disappeared. Everything went black.
A low, grating screech jolted Nicodemus awake. Sweat had soaked through his robes. “Who’s there?” He struggled out of bed. His candle had burnt to a dark stub.
The screech came again along with the flapping of wings. A golden flash made him look at the window. “Azure!” he exclaimed, pulling out the paper screen.
The parrot flew into his chest. Squawking with surprise, man and bird tumbled onto the sleeping cot. “Shannon! Shannon!” Azure called in a terrified, pitiful voice. “Shannon!”
The familiar was standing on his stomach. Her tiny chest heaved; her head bobbed. A small scroll was bound to her leg by a Magnus sentence. “It’s all right,” Nicodemus cooed, pulling the scroll free.
Azure scrambled onto his shoulder, and he sat up to read the scroll. His brows knitted in confusion. “Azure, this makes no sense. There’s a key for the front door ward. Magister said he’d send that. But there’s ink all over the mundane text and these other Numinous paragraphs are gibberish.”
He translated the common language words above the gibberish: “
Research
***” and “
Dogfood.
”
“Shannon!” the bird called and cast a Numinous sentence into Nicodemus’s head.
Shannon, having impressed his linguistic abilities into the bird, could have made perfect sense of this sentence. But Nicodemus’s translation yielded “
My-old-home-ones ate Shannon!
”
Nicodemus’s palms began to sweat. Azure had hatched in Trillinon. Those from her “old home” must be Northerners.
Nicodemus went to the window and peered down into the Stone Court. The sentinels who had been guarding its door were gone.
“Ate” to Azure meant consumed, enveloped. The Northern sentinels must have seized Shannon. “Demigods of the Celestial Canon defend us!” Nicodemus whispered.
Azure leaped from his shoulder and flapped into the night. No doubt she was going in search of where the sentinels were holding Shannon.
Nicodemus turned back to his room and shivered as he remembered his most recent nightmare. “Fly from Starhaven!” April had said. “Fly and don’t look back!”
He took a clean apprentice robe over to the fireplace’s clicking embers. With trembling fingers, he changed out of his sweat-soaked night robe and thought about the nightmare.
Like the others, this dream had made little sense. The cavern and the body, the episodes from his childhood, April’s warning—none of it seemed to fit together.
However, unlike the others, this nightmare provided a clear warning: “The white beast has your shadow!” April had said.
No doubt the “white beast” was the pale monster Nicodemus had seen attacking Eric. That monster must have been the murderer’s golem. Therefore, it would make sense if the shrouded body in the cavern was their enemy’s true, living body.
But that still left the question of the cavern’s location.
Nicodemus thought of the nightmare turtles he had seen in his first cavern nightmare. Then he thought about the hexagonal pattern carved at the end of the Spindle Bridge. The hidden body had to have something to do with the Spindle. But what? Shannon’s texts had found nothing but rock in the mountain.
And who might be sending him the dreams? Not the murderer: all evidence indicated the fiend did not know Nicodemus’s identity, and even if he did, the villain wouldn’t want to reveal any hint of his body’s location.
But then again, Shannon had said the nightmares came from special spells that ancient authors knew how to write. Who else besides the golem-wielding murderer had knowledge of ancient texts?
Perhaps there was a clue in the dream? April’s voice had spoken directly to him. No one had spoken to him in previous dreams.
The wound on Nicodemus’s cheek throbbed again as he remembered April’s warning: “The white beast will find you unless you fly from Starhaven!”
Normally such an indication of danger would have sent him running to Shannon, but now the old man was locked up.
Nicodemus noticed that the scroll Azure had brought had fallen to the floor. He picked it up. “
Dogfood,
” Shannon had written above each paragraph—and at the top: “
Research
***.”
Had the old man not had time to tell him what to research? Had he meant to come back and edit the phrase? Perhaps Nicodemus was supposed to research three stars. Or something about Starhaven? But where could Nicodemus research anything?
He began to pace. He tried to breathe on his hands but accidentally brushed the Magnus stitches on his cheek. Pain lanced into his skull and brought with it a sudden memory of his nightmare: “Fly and don’t look back!” April had warned him. “Never look back!”
Nicodemus looked at the door. He should run, he thought, taking a step forward. But then he realized that even if he ran, the murderer would continue killing male cacographers. He turned back to the fire. He had to stay.
But he couldn’t ignore the dreams. He looked back at the door. Perhaps he should take the other male cacographers up to the compluvium? But if Shannon had wanted him to do that, he would have said so on the scroll.
Again Nicodemus raised his hands to breathe on them, and again he brushed the wound on his cheek.
“Fiery blasted blood!” he swore out loud, the pain igniting his frustration and anger. “I was supposed to be the Halcyon! I was supposed to be sure and decisive. And now I’m afraid to do anything!”
He sat before the fire and held his hands toward the coals.
He must have been cursed. He wasn’t supposed to be like this. The golem’s author must have stolen his strength and his ability to spell.
But if that were true, it would mean that he could restore his ability to spell. It would mean he could end his cacography.
Nicodemus focused all of his attention on the hope of completing himself. He fed it all of his fear and uncertainty. His desire grew and began to radiate heat. He wasn’t going to pace about like a dithering boy. The monster had stolen part of his mind. Hatred blazed within him. He would get the missing part of himself back!
He stood up and decided that he would take the male cacographers up to the compluvium; from there he could plan his next move. Perhaps he would seek to free Shannon. Perhaps he would find a way to strike back against the golem.
Again the most recent nightmare returned to him. “The white beast will find you unless you fly from Starhaven,” April had said. “Fly with anything you have!”
In a way, he was fleeing out of Starhaven proper to the compluvium. The dream must have predicted this. But what to take with him? He looked around at his cot, his robes, his books, his endless pages of spelling drills. What would help protect the boys or harm the golem? His eyes fell on Shannon’s open scroll and its radiant Numinous paragraphs.
Abruptly, he realized he couldn’t take the boys to the compluvium.
Not yet.
The meaning of Shannon’s words was suddenly clear. The old man wasa linguist after all, and linguists studied all aspects of language…even metaphor.
Dogfood.
L
EAVING THE
D
RUM
Tower proved simple. Shannon’s key disspelled the ward on the door and, of course, there were no guards in the Stone Court.
Nicodemus worried about being stopped in the hallways. But as he hurried through the stronghold, he found it mostly empty. Occasionally he spotted teams of wizards rushing through a hallway as if on an urgent errand. Oddly, they were usually led by librarians.
At the Main Library’s entrance, Nicodemus reached into Shannon’s scroll and pulled out the passwords. Careful not to hold the text too long, he tossed the paragraph to a guardian spell.
The construct snapped it out of the air and glared at Nicodemus. The canine spell would tear his arms off if it discovered a misspelled rune sequence. A long moment passed as it chewed the words. Nicodemus was about to turn and run when the spell stretched into a dog bow.
Filled with dread, Nicodemus stole into the library. Without sunlight streaming through the windows, the place was dark. Rows of tapers produced dim globes of shifting light that stretched up to the ceiling like an ascending column of stars.
Nicodemus found the place unnervingly empty. He had expected at least a dozen wizards to be working by candlelight. But instead he saw only a handful of librarians rushing off to unknown tasks.
Finding the Index’s chamber was easy enough. And the guardian standing watch before the chamber let him pass when he fed her Shannon’s second paragraph.
As he approached the Index, his hands began to shake. Back in his room he had been so sure—use the Index to discover Shannon’s message, then sneak it away to the compluvium where he could use it to research spells that might harm the golem.
But now Nicodemus noticed faint Numinous sentences running through the chamber’s door frame that he hadn’t seen before. They could only be the sentences of an alarm spell. Removing the Index would trip that spell and summon swarms of sentinels.
He could not steal the Index, but he could still discover why Shannon had sent him there.
With nervous steps, he crept into the chamber and stared at the Index’s blank cover. From outside came the grinding vibration of the guardian shifting her Magnus ball. After cradling the book in his arm, Nicodemus undid the clasp.