Authors: Blake Charlton
But the present situation afforded few options: he could either try a respell or lurk around Starhaven until the sentinels or the golem discovered him.
So he made another attempt at the subtext, this time deliberately altering the fractious paragraph. When finished, the respelled text glowed deep purple.
Wincing, Nicodemus cast the pale cylinder into the air, where it floated and began to spin faster and faster until it seemed as if it might split apart.
But the misspelled subtext did not break; rather it cast out a sentence from either side of its body. The whirling lines covered Nicodemus’s feet and wove a textual sheet up his leg. Within moments, he was enclosed from boot heel to top hair in light-bending prose. The spell left two thin slits open for his eyes so he might see out from the disguising words.
Elation flushed through Nicodemus.
Slowly, he stepped from behind the tapestry. His boots made no sound on the cobblestones. But as he drew near a torch, the sentences nearest the light began to fray and deconstruct.
This was strange; light shouldn’t damage magical language. He moved away from the torch and fed more purple sentences to the subtext. The deconstruction stopped and the spell regained its integrity.
Carefully Nicodemus stepped through the gate and past the guards. A nervous smile began to curl his lips. The guards could not see him; they could not hear him.
It was a wonderful feeling. He had respelled the ancient sceaduganga. Perhaps, one day, he would publish his creation and name it the shadowganger subtext.
His smile grew as he slipped across the drawbridge and onto the mountain road. “Dear heaven, I’m free,” he whispered as Starhaven’s lofty towers came into view, black against the starry sky.
With a laugh, he turned away from the academy of strict wizardly language and knew that he was safe under his disguise—safe under an epic of concealing, respelled prose.
Nicodemus walked into the cold autumn night.
Wind rushed through the evergreens and tore leaves of scarlet and yellow from the aspens. The crisp air smelled of damp earth, moldy leaves. Before him a steep mountain road curved down to the hamlet of Gray’s Crossing. Behind him rose Starhaven’s black silhouette.
Even though Nicodemus had seldom left the academy and never traveled this road at night, he noticed little of the dark beauty; his mind was too distracted by recent memories and new emotions.
At first he felt only exhilaration. His cacography had helped him escape! But then he turned a bend and saw a rotting log that resembled a woman’s body, curled up and facing away. A shiver ran down his body. The toppled trunk grew larger in his vision, revealing pale mushrooms scattered like warts across the wood, their roots eating into the rot.
Devin’s half-crushed face flashed before his eyes. He tried to think of the emerald, but his fear and grief would not dissipate. Devin and Kyran were dead. The demon Typhon had turned John into an unwitting killer. Far worse, the monstrous Fellwroth was still alive. The damage Kyran had done to the metal golem was of no consequence. Fellwroth might already be forming another body.
Nicodemus closed his eyes and again sought the emerald’s image, but again he failed. Fellwroth would keep coming, no matter how many times he escaped, no matter how many golems he deconstructed.
And yet, when the golem had grabbed his throat, he had heard the emerald’s voice as his own childhood voice. He had learned that the gem was the missing part of himself. He had learned that his nightmares had contained visions of Fellwroth’s living body.
But could that knowledge do him any good? He wasn’t the Halcyon. Prophecy dictated that the Halcyon would be born with a Braid-shaped keloid. Nicodemus’s keloid had been created after his birth, when his father had branded him with the emerald.
Worse, Nicodemus still had no idea where Fellwroth’s true body mightbe. True, he knew it was lying in a cavern with a standing stone…and inhabited by nightmare turtles? It was nonsensical.
His fear grew and the keloid began to burn again. The scars grew so hot he feared they might singe his hair. He paused to fan the back of his neck.
While he waited for the keloid to cool, he pulled the Seed of Finding from his belt-purse and tore off its encircling root. As before, part of the artifact melted and then recongealed on the back of his hand as barklike skin. Now Deirdre could find him.
However, the Fool’s Ladder had landed her on Starhaven’s eastern side. She would have to make a long hike around Starhaven to the road Nicodemus now traveled. Even if the druid had set out at once, she could not find him before morning. Until then, he needed a safe hiding place.
He started down the road again, hoping to reach Gray’s Crossing quickly.
But the night was not the same; he was not the same. The forest loomed larger and blacker. In the blue moon’s light, once familiar meadows became otherworldly landscapes. All around him lurked the loneliness of the road. He shook his head and tried to push away thoughts of Kyran and Devin.
But the night was not to be denied; it had his imagination as an ally. Everything changed. A stump took on a lycanthrope’s shape; a leafless branch opened gnarled fingers and hung ready to grab; the wind in the trees began to talk of Chthonic footsteps.
For most of his life, Nicodemus had dreamed of venturing into these woods, of battling monsters on this very road. But he never guessed that he could feel so alone, or that it could be so dark.
And then the blue moon slipped behind a cloud, leaving only the white moon in the sky. The world grew darker still.
Every falling leaf made him jump. Every snapping twig conjured images of lurking horrors. He felt as if his heart were beating an inch behind his eyes. The road seemed to shake. He dropped the Index and fell to his knees.
Behind boughs and under bushes, nightblue terrors grew legs and teeth; they slunk through the tall meadow grass and hid in the shadows. They began to chant in croaking voices, telling stories of how they had drifted among the woods as impalpable wraiths for many long years. They chanted about how Nicodemus’s long-awaited journey on the night road was making them stronger.
The night creatures congregated at the forest’s edge. And when he looked away, they darted across the road to the trees on the other side. They went mostly unseen, but every so often he glimpsed a gnarled elbow or two shining violet eyes. No two were alike, and they were all around him, muttering and spitting their low chant.
Now breathing hard, Nicodemus realized he was in mortal danger. He realized that he could go back to Starhaven. He looked up at the dark towers. If he returned, the sentinels would imprison him. But what of that? Other people would pass him in the halls, and he would know that the world was constant. He could explain about the golems. The academy would protect him. It would give him a place to lay down his language in the tracks of literary convention.
Still on his hands and knees, he turned to face uphill.
All around, the terrors whispered about their fear that he would flee back to Starhaven and deprive them of a feeding.
An endless moment passed as Nicodemus kneeled, adrift in a fantastic universe.
But then the image of the small emerald appeared before his eyes. At that moment, he decided to remain. He would rather die trying to find the missing part of himself.
The nightblue terrors burst onto the road, moaning with rapture. They circled him: a nightmarish jamboree of limbs, bellies, and teeth. He remained on his knees, frozen with fear.
Some of the monsters were strangely familiar—a small eyeless dragon; a giant insect with a human face; a troll’s three-horned head.
Others were such phantasmagoric unions of limbs and fins and fangs that they were impossible to perceive in their entirety. Some of the monsters grabbed at his clothes; others ran their claws through his hair.
But as the night terrors touched him, Nicodemus began to sense their thoughts and feelings. Somehow he knew that his choice to stay on the road had affected them in ways they did not realize.
Just then the wind brought rhythmic hoof beats up from the mountainside. The night terrors froze like stone carvings. Some put claws to batlike ears. Now they could hear the four-beat song of a galloping horse.
Every monster shuddered; they knew what was coming up from the town. They had felt the foul thing riding down this same path not an hour previous.
Suddenly and completely, the emotions in their oily hearts transformed. The monsters changed their minds. With split lips and forked tongues, they whispered around fangs and tusks, telling each other what must be done.
Fighting through his paralyzing fear, Nicodemus tried to crawl farther down the road. But dread placed too heavy a weight on his back and he collapsed. The keloid scar on his neck burned.
Having reached a decision, the nightblue terrors scooped up Nicodemus and carried him into a roadside ditch. There they piled on top of him likechildren rough-housing with their father. They were determined to cover his every inch with their deep-blue skin.
The horsesong slowed to the two-beat rhythm of a trot. Realizing that he had forgotten the Index on the road, a three-horned troll scampered out, picked up the codex with bony claws, and dove back into the pile of monsters just before a horse and rider came into view around the bend.
Still paralyzed, Nicodemus lay under a blanket of phantasms, all of which had become as still as death. Though a webbed hand covered his right eye, he could still see with his left.
Four white horse legs appeared as the animal trotted to within five feet of where he lay. Two tattered boots dropped into view as the rider dis-mounted.
The newcomer spoke with a low, gruff voice: “I know you are near, Nicodemus Weal. Your keloid calls out to me.” The boots took halting steps around the horse.
Through terror’s haze, Nicodemus recognized Fellwroth’s voice.
“Moments ago the keloid’s texts became diffuse. Something is interfering. But still, I knew I’d find you on this road. You took your sweet time, whelp. I had to wait in the miserable town until I felt you coming down the mountainside.”
The boots limped up the road as Fellwroth searched. The monster inhaled with a slight whistling sound.
“Impressive, this spell that hides you and masks the keloid’s spells,” he growled. “It must be in a language I have never encountered. You must have a new protector; we both know your retarded mind could never manage such a subtext.”
Fellwroth now stepped into the meadow on the road’s opposite side. Nicodemus, numb with terror, could do nothing but watch as the fiend’s cloaked back came into view.
The monster had donned a new white shroud, but he limped badly and his right sleeve hung lifelessly at his side.
This was the same iron golem Nicodemus had faced in the compluvium.
Apparently finding nothing in the grass, Fellwroth staggered back to the horse. “This body has known too much abuse. I have only a few moments. Likely this golem will fail before I find you.”
The creature took in another whistling breath. “You are out of Starhaven now, so the game has changed. Your power is greater than I’d supposed. Perhaps we can come to an agreement.” He paused for another difficult breath. “Whelp, you now have a choice. And it is vital that you make the right one.”
The monster stepped straight toward Nicodemus. “If you continue to run from me, you will die.”
The boots stopped not a foot from the pile. “I would rather you lived. That is why I will tell you how to recover the missing part of your mind.”
F
ELLWROTH WAS SO
close now that Nicodemus could hear something squeaking like a rusty door hinge inside the golem’s body. The monster’s heart?
“I trust Shannon has told you about Language Prime,” Fellwroth said in a slow, metallic voice. “I trust he told you that it is the first language, the source of all magic. But your old teacher might not have known that Language Prime can be used to change a living creature’s body and mind.”
The monster’s boots shifted toward the meadow. “You should know your father was a demon-worshiper. When you were an infant, Typhon gave your father an emerald we brought across the ocean from the ancient kingdom of Aaraheuminest. But that is an archaic name. The fools of this age have contracted the name to Aarahest.”
With a gravelly crunch, the boots pivoted back to face Nicodemus. “Your father used the emerald to cut into your mind. It stole a rare talent that you inherited from your Imperial ancestry. It stole your ability to spell correctly in any language, even Language Prime.”
The boots turned downhill. “When I touched you, we both saw your father drawing your ability to spell into the emerald. I had not realized until that moment that the emerald had scarred you. If I had, I could have used the keloid to identify you. But no matter. Now anyone holding the emerald gains the Language Prime fluency that you were born with.”
Now the boots turned uphill. Apparently the monster had not given up searching for him. “But unfortunately, the gem loses strength over time. So once every four years, Typhon had to replenish the emerald by touching it to you. The gem is losing strength now. I tell you this so you will know how valuable you could be to me. I reward those I value.”
The monster paused as if to emphasize this last claim before continuing. “Who you were and how to reach you, the old monster hid from me. And when I killed the demon, I did so before learning how to find you.”
An eerie, metallic laugh filled the night as the monster moved out of Nicodemus’s view. “And maybe that is what the emerald wanted. The gem looks after itself, Nicodemus. It longs to return to you. It is insidious. It sends dreams to those near it; it tries to deceive its wielders. It betrayed Typhon. It showed me in a dream how to kill the demon when he was trying to infect a minor deity.”
Fellwroth’s footsteps halted. “The emerald is using me to find its way back to you. But its desire to be near you now betrays you.”